The Coffeespy

I realize I’m a few days behind on this, but Powerline has a good summary and quote on the incidents in Minnesota, especially where it pertains to Minneapolis Technical Community College:

Why is it that Minneapolis, of all places in the United States, faces the eruption of controversies over Sharia law? From the Somali taxi drivers who refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol to the Target cashiers who refuse to ring up pork products and the flying imams testing airport security, something’s happening here.

An update from the Minneapolis Star Tribune shows the fundamental flaw in reasoning where Islam is concerned in the U.S.  In response to the Metropolitan Airport Commission’s crackdown on taxi drivers not picking up fares if they have alcohol:

“We see this as a harsh penalty against fellow Americans only because they are practicing their faith,” the Muslim scholar said. “This does not reflect the American values of tolerance and accommodation.”

American values include tolerance, not accomodation.  This is a common mistake.  Tolerance means you will be allowed to exist, not that every insane whimsy of your deranged belief system will be catered to.

The Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, and Protestant 10 Commandments state that “You shall have no other gods before Me.”  Now imagine people of those faiths refusing to serve those worshipping other gods in whatever their daily job is.

Yeah, it’s that damn stupid.

Aside from BWAHAHAHA, I guess I can say this.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Watch Demolition Man to see where this is headed.  Be well!

• Right Wing Nuthouse has the best send-up so far.

…if the contents of the post mentioned below comes into contact with reality, it could set off a chain reaction in which all reality is destroyed.  Such is the danger of reality and anti-reality colliding.

Right Wing Nuthouse finds an absolute pearl:

But we have a new entry in the Idiot Sweepstakes. This post by Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake is an updated version of an article she evidently wrote a while ago:

Ever wonder how the last six-odd years might have gone, had all the votes been counted in 2000? 

I’d like to think that they might have gone something like this…

…

December 15, 2004: In exchange for his aid in rooting out Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay are encouraged by Gore and by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to work out a plan for Iraq’s transition to a secular democracy after Hussein’s death, with Hussein and his sons in pivotal roles on the democracy commission. American conservatives immediately decry this as “appeasement”, whereas Iraq-based observers congratulate Gore, Clinton and Carter for working on a plan to stave off the horrifically bloody civil war that would likely follow Saddam’s death or removal from power.

To follow up -

January 1, 2005 - Algore invents the ‘love and peace beam’ which he mounts on an orbital plushie in the shape of an environmentally acceptable carbon footprint.  Powered by the magical healing touch of Jimmy Carter and propelled by Pelosi Hot Air Technology, the beam is used in Operation Soft Touch anywhere violents erupts on the planet.  The announcement of the event prompts the formation of the first world government: Global Friends for Goodishness.  Wealth is spontaneously redistributed and traffic congestion ceases worldwide.

Instapundit shined the light on Back Talk’s article on the effects of the troop surge.  From Back Talk:

My latest analysis shows that there is good news and bad news from Iraq concerning the troop surge. The good news is that casualties in Baghdad have come down very substantially. The bad news is that casualties elsewhere in Iraq have increased substantially. And, no, it’s not because the civil war spilled over to the rest of the country. It’s because al Qaeda started targeting innocent Shiite civilians where it was easier to do so. And, no, such attackes do not represent “sectarian violence” between Shiites and Sunnis. Only Democratic Senators and Representatives and mainstream media reporters believe that nonsense. The violence expanded beyond Baghdad because Sunni al Qaeda jihadists are doing everything in their power to get Shiites to kill Sunnis. Civil war is al Qaeda’s goal (because it suits their jihadist objectives), and that’s how this differs from the civil war schema that Democrats and reporters simply cannot get out of their heads. (italics mine)

Well, kind of.  Back Talk’s numbers, and adjustments for anomolies, looks very diplomatic to me.  I highly suggest reading the full post.  What I want to point out here, though, lies in the italics above.  If you read here regularly, you’ll already know of this from Acute Politics, the blog by the guy who’s over there now:

There are thirty-one major tribes int the Al-Anbar province. Of those thirty-one, twenty-five support the Anbar Awakening effort of the Anbar Salvation Council- the social and political gathering of sheiks and former insurgents who oppose terroism in Al-Anbar. Of the six remaining tribes, the Iraqi government, Coalition Forces and the Anbar Salvation Council are attempting to split two off from the Al-Qaeda umbrella organization Islamic State of Iraq. Those two tribes are the Al-bu Issa and the Al-Zuba’a. Both have started to fight against Al-Qaeda, and are beginning to pay for it dearly. One chlorine bomb detonated in the Al-bu Issa region of Falluja, as I wrote before, injuring 250 civilians.

That’s Sunni on Sunni, folks.  So much for ’sectarian violence’ in any sense of the phrase.

And as for sectarian violence as a concept at all, where it pertains to Muslims, if you can’t separate your politics and your religion, ALL the violence is sectarian… and political.  And if you think for even a second that the combination of religion and politics is something that only reaches Americans working overseas in Islamic nations - think again.

Burning a terrorist flag has consequences, even in San Francisco, because the word ‘Allah’ is incorporated in their design.  From NRO:

The story begins last October during an “antiterrorism rally” held by a dozen or so students from the school’s chapter of the College Republicans. As group president Leigh Wolf explained over coffee in a Borders bookstore in this city’s Union Square recently, the students wanted to send a gesture which the two Islamist terrorist groups could understand. So they downloaded images of the flags from the Internet and drew handmade copies on butcher paper to stomp on—flag burning being disallowed by the school for safety reasons.

…

What they didn’t know at the time is that the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah bear the name of Allah.

…

It [the school] has placed the College Republicans under scrutiny for “attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment” and “incivility.”

Oh no!  Not an environment of incivility!  Funny how exercising one’s civil rights can be punished under a banner of incivility.  Not surprisingly, the religion of perpetual outrage had representatives on hand to try and start a fight.

I also find it strenge that NRO chose to characterize stomping on the name of Allah as ‘religious intolerance’ vice an expression of religious protest.  Intolerance means not allowing something to exist.  Protesting is exercising your constitutional right to say you don’t approve.  Personally, I don’t approve of the name of Allah being used by terrorist groups to emblazon their flags as thought the Almighty approves of their tactics.  Any of you ‘moderate Muslims’ I hear about agree with me?  Or are you all too busy picking fights in San Fran?

I didn’t have time to read and research anything.  But here’s Rosie O’Donnell explaining that you should get your news from foreign sources, Americans are brainwashed by the company that employs her, and Tower 7 was probably an inside job.  Via Instapundit and Hot Air:

A ROSIE O’DONNELL MELTDOWN: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the video against which all future Rosie clips will be compared.”

Is Rosie representative of the mainstream left?  Perhaps it’s just because I blog, read blogs, and read the news that I’m starting to think Rosie isn’t far left, but really a mainstream lefty.  It all just seems so ‘party-line’ anymore.  Everything’s a conspiracy or scandal.  Nobody is more corrupt than America.  Calling someone good or evil is wrong.

Yech.  What the hell’s going on?

No comment.

From NewsBusters, again:

Town hall or pep rally?  Hard to tell, judging from the first half-hour of Hillary’s appearance on Good Morning America today.  Host Robin Roberts lavished praise on Hillary, suggested there’s unanimous support for the Dem Iraq policy, and fielded only one audience question — which came from someone who worked on Hillarycare in 1993 and beseeched Clinton to try it again as president.

…

It wasn’t until the second half-hour that ABC disclosed that 45 members of the audience had been hand-picked by Hillary’s campaign.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t to the Donut) In the United States we have enclaves of religions that do not mainstream well.  They have, however, adapted and become Americans in the sense that there is an overall live-and-let-live attitudes.  The most obvious example would probably be the Amish in Pennsylvania.  Amish beliefs do not allow them to perform certain functions in society, yet there is no radical Amish group pushing their ’special needs’ upon mainstream America.  In return, America holds them as a cherished part of the diverse landscape.

Why, then, is America tolerating the rise of Shariah?  From the Wall Street Journal op-ed by Katherine Kersten:

Troubling incidents began several years ago, when taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport–about three-quarters of whom are Muslim–started refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. One woman, returning from France with wine, was turned away by five cabs in succession. Refusals of service now number about 100 a month, and heated altercations have erupted.

In September 2006, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) proposed a two color top-light pilot project to indicate which drivers would accept passengers with alcohol. The proposal, later dropped, would apparently have marked the first time that a government agency in the U.S. officially recognized Shariah law, and distinguished individuals who follow it from those who don’t.

Bad precedent narrowly avoided.  The United States has gotten in the habit of enacting laws catering to minorities (in this case, not as a racial term, simply any group that is not in the majority).  We started with ‘all men created equal;’ added freedom of religion; somewhere along the way morphed that into ‘gender, race, creed, or national origin;’ and just recently added ’sexual preference.’  Rather than moving ahead in a nation where many cultures blended into one, we’ve moved into a divided lunchtray mentality where the peas don’t touch the meat.

More from the WSJ op-ed:

Earlier this month, the six imams filed suit in U.S. district court in Minneapolis against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, claiming discrimination and defamation. Now some Muslim cashiers at Twin Cities Target stores have begun refusing to scan pork products, like bacon and pepperoni pizza, and insisting that other cashiers or the customers themselves do it.

I think we all know about the flying imams by now.  If you don’t, the op-ed explains it or you can head over to Michelle Malkin’s site, I think she has a shrine dedicated to them by now.

What do you do with taxi drivers who won’t transport people with alcohol, scan pork, or generally object to performing primary functions of their jobs due to religious reasons?  You fire them.  It’s that simple.  Terminate their employment. 

“But wait, that’s making a decision based on their religious beliefs,” you might say.  Nonsense.  They made a choice based on their religious beliefs, firing them is a choice made based on job performance.  And let’s be plain, the choice the taxi drivers and pork protesters made isn’t even based in deeply held beliefs - it’s from a fatwa issued by a local imam and contested by others practicing Islam as an attempt to ‘radicalize’ immigrating Somalis.

I don’t think I have a better way to sum up Ms. Kersten’s point:

The events here suggest a larger strategy: By piggy-backing on our civil rights laws, Islamist activists aim to equate airport security with racial bigotry and to move slowly toward a two-tier legal system. Intimidation is a crucial tool. The “flying imams” lawsuit ups the ante by indicating that passengers who alerted airport authorities will be included as defendants. Activists are also perfecting their skills at manipulating the media. After a “pray-in” at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., one credulous MSNBC anchor likened the flying imams to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

The Army had a clause under which it releases soldiers back to civilian life called ‘failure to adapt.’  Maybe it’s time the nation took a page from the warriors.

It’s the radicals, I keep hearing.  They’re the ones that do crazy stuff.

Well, apparently the ‘radicals’ have not only cornered the ‘beheading of schoolgirls’ market, they also own the Indonesian judiciary.  From the Jakarta Post:

Panel of judges in Central Jakarta District Court Wednesday sentenced Muslim militants between 14 and 20 years in prison for beheading Christian schoolgirls in Central Sulawesi’s town of Poso in 2005.

Hasanuddin was found guilty for masterminding the beheading, buying the machetes and leaving a handwritten note at the scene vowing more killings to avenge the deaths of Muslims in an earlier conflict on Sulawesi island.

Any guesses whether or not the sentences would have been higher had the girls been Muslim?  More on how the ‘radicals’ treat their children comes from an Early Birded story yesterday:

Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday.

Insurgents are radicals.  Terrorist beheaders are radicals.  And now the people who sentence them are radicals.  Who’s left to be moderate?  Even more important, where are the moderates denouncing these acts?

In the U.S. political spectrum, you have so-called “moonbats” on one end and “wingnuts” on the other with the moderates in the middle.  So on the Islam insanity scale, you have terrorists on one end and on the other you have… on the other end you have…  wait, if there’s no other end, where are the moderates?  It’s like a teeter-totter with only one side, and we can see which way this one’s tilting.

Everyone’s clamoring to confirm Anna Nicole Smith died of a drug overdose in order to point out parallels between her and her self-styled idol, Marilyn Monroe.  As if the woman’s life wasn’t out-of-the-ordinary enough, her death appears to have started up a three-father circus.  The husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor might be the father?  Is he really a prince?  Is anyone else waiting to hear this is a media stunt?

As if the media weirdness isn’t enough, widely read bloggers are coming to blows over this thing.  Balloon Juice’s John Cole seems to have attracted the ire of Protein Wisdom’s Dan Collins.  Balloon Juice carped over the media’s fascination with celebrity downfall and Protein Wisdom took offense to their treatment of “the dead lady with big tits.”

This is on the level of astronaut love triangle weirdness if you ask me.  Real Archie In Space kind of stuff…

Oh well, back to important news.

Best comment on that page goes to John:

You haven’t done your homework any better than the rest of the media. No suprise there.

The range of a C-20B, the aircraft used by the former Speaker, is 4,250 miles. It is fully capable of making the nonstop flight from D. C. to San Francisco.

http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=87

Yet, Her Royal Highness requires a bigger, ozone busting C-32. Just another example of elitist “do as I say, not as I do” liberalism.

You know that time of December when you haul our your Christmas lights only to find you balled them up the previous year?  You stare at the mass of intertwined, rainbow bulbs and wonder if it’s possible to make a straight line out of what looks like a giant, robotic cat’s hairball.

From an Early Birded story in the Washington Post in Iraq:

A Shiite cult leader, who claimed to be a revered Muslim figure who vanished in the 10th century, was killed Sunday along with scores of fighters who were poised to attack a holy city in southern Iraq and assassinate the country’s Shiite religious leadership, Iraqi officials said Monday.

Well, that seems a little insane.  Scores of fighters, some accounts claim up to 200 armed men attacked in unison, followed this guy?  Then I read an Early Birded piece from the New York Times (in the Houston Chronicle) detailing another incident where Iraqis called in for U.S. support after being repelled by another cult on the outskirts of Najaf:

A commander in the Scorpion Brigade said the combined American and Iraqi forces killed 470 people. He also said some of the dead Soldiers of Heaven fighters were found bound together at the ankles and suggested that the chains had probably been used to keep people from fleeing and to keep them moving as one unified group.

I start to wonder with the ease the Iraqi public seems to be controlled by madmen and monsters, is it possible to allow the security forces to concentrate on threats like Iranian agents, insurgent forces, and rogue clerics?  Tangled ball, indeed.  To add an even deeper dimension, between the two stories from the WaPo and NY Times there are conflicting messages.  From the WaPo:

“This is a very clear message from the government that no one except the government carrying arms is acceptable, whether Shia or Sunni,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “It reveals the firm commitment of the prime minister that any outlaw will be dealt with very strongly.”

…

“The aggressive manner in which the Iraqi soldiers performed north of [Najaf] going after the anti-Iraqi forces was impressive,” said Col. Michael Garrett, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, in the statement.

Then from the NY Times:

Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia in a weekend battle near the holy city of Najaf and needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

…

The Iraqis and Americans eventually prevailed in the battle. But the Iraqi security forces’ miscalculations about the group’s strength and intentions raised troubling questions about their ability to recognize and deal with a threat.

Various cults, varying accounts.  Iraqis are standing up.  Iraqis are lying down.  They don’t need the U.S.  They do.  Maybe if I start untangling the Christmas lights in January this year I’ll be able to sort through all the wacko cultists, slanted reporting, differing views, and varied accounts so I can come to a decision as to where the U.S. and Iraq really stand by next December.

Oh, wait… I still have to untangle that ball of blue and red lights before they get too tightened up in partisan squabbling to work.  Nah, let’s just criticize whoever makes any decision at all.  Wouldn’t want to upset the status quo.