sarah palin: the next generation of american stupid

I guess we’ve already seen the Biden/Palin debate. And, for some reason, there are a curious number of people who refuse to admit she is, without a doubt, a person without any business whatsoever running anything, anywhere, for anybody, let alone the most powerful country on earth.

Here are what the headlines at NRO read:

THE EDITORS: Gov. Sarah Palin, once again, confounded her critics with a strong performance. “Palin’s Triumph” 10/03 2:00 AM

LISA SCHIFFREN: She can’t win this for McCain. But from here on out none of the negatives can be ascribed to her. “Straight to the Swing Voters ” 10/02 11:39 PM

ANDY MCCARTHY: She’s the real deal. “Straight to the Swing Voters ”

A strong performance? No negatives can be ascribed to her? Does she create some kind of alternative reality field around her visible only to Republicans? Are they watching the same person I am?

I’ve seen NRO operatives like Kathryn Jean Lopez worship Palin’s lack of credentials up until this moment and thought it odd a quotient of Americans would actually think it’s a good thing not to read stuff. I’ve watched them fawn over the way she shoots wolves from airplanes and kills and dresses moose with her teeth. I’ve thought it curious the way they slavishly forgive the fact she can’t even handle Katie Couric interviews without coming off like a special needs student who got lost in the bathroom. Sometimes I think they’d be happy if the only responses she gave to any question were to light farts or shoot something in the face. But to think Palin came out of this looking like anything other than a terrifyingly unqualified also-ran is disturbing.

atlas shrugged?

So I’m at this Pacific Gateway economic forum downtown yesterday, and this guy in a suit is talking about what I guess we’re gonna call the new-new-new economy, one in which everyone’s either broke or a millionaire, and he’s gearing up for how we’re in for a paradigm shift, which is a fancy way of saying if we haven’t already made it rich, we’re screwed. And then he says “What happened? You could say that Atlas shrugged.”

Funny way of looking at this:

Figure 1: Atlas Shrugged?

I don’t think it’s so much that Atlas shrugged. Atlas spent the last six years or so on a bender, drinking gallons of Middle American hooch, so much so that Atlas got projectile diarrhea all over the world’s financial markets. This ain’t simply a phase in economic development; this is the ultimate result of laissez-faire greed coupled with cronyism–this is what happens when rich assholes get to forget about accountability. And once again, the younger generation’s being handed a crap sandwich and has to take a bite.

story submission for the clarion fund: terror in the desert!

So when I first started looking into the Clarion Fund, I discovered their affiliate site radicalislam.org gives you the option of sharing your own pant-soiling stories of encounters with radical Islam. You’ve just got to register to post. Kind folks that they are, they give you four “campaigns” to choose from, including:

• Fuelling Terror
• Radical Islam
• Sharia Law
• Vote 2008

That last one probably seems a bit incongruous, especially for a supposedly non-partisan charity group. But who am I to judge?

Anyway, I heartily encourage all of my tens of readers to share their own harrowing stories with the Clarion Fund and its backers. I intend to do so often.

Here’s my first entry:

Terror in the Desert

On a recent trip to Las Vegas, an enormous tourism market for America and home to a sizeable extremist Muslim minority, I had a harrowing experience with what I can only reasonably assume was a reconnaisance mission for future Islamofascist terror attacks. Riding a bus down the Strip, I came across an easily-identifiable Muslim extremist–a bearded male–and his subservient forced-marriage mate, clearly identifying herself as his chattel with a dark-colored headscarf, or hijab. The male had a video camera and was taking surveillance footage of the south Strip, including several minutes’ worth in the front of New York New York (as if he and his kind haven’t done enough damage there!)

The pair got off the bus after a short ride, and I decided to follow. “Today ain’t your day, Ahmed!” I said to myself and several fellow busriders, who nodded in agreement. I remained a discreet 10 feet behind them at all times as they snapped dozens of photos of key American assets in and around the Strip, getting valuable intel on hotels, landmarks and attractions. I followed them inside the Flamingo Hotel, where the subservient wife used the restroom–presumably to find the best location to leave a bomb–and left her handbag with her bearded mujahideen husband. He looked around nervously, the bright lights of the Sin City casino glancing off his sweaty head and clashing with his dreams of Paradise.

And then he saw me.

My cover blown, there was nothing more for me to do but to show him a look of steely determination, a vision of American fortitude cast back against his swarthy cowardice. The look in my eye said: “I don’t think so, Ahmed–not on my watch!” He looked at me, slightly confused, as if suddenly realising that a confrontation with the USA wasn’t going to be as easy as eating day-old baklava. I hardened my gaze.

His wife came out of the bathroom and he waved her towards him, then pointed at me and conferred with her. Ever the obedient wife, she started toward me. “Aren’t you from Arlignton?” she said in a perfected Texas drawl–wonder how long she’s been working on that? And damned if she didn’t have good intel!

“What’s it to you,” I said. No quarter given, nor asked.

“Well, nothing really, but I think you live just down the street from us. Don’t you drive an old Mustang with a defective muffler?”

“You’re real good. You’ve been watching me,” I replied.

She laughed at me, openly mocking America and all it stands for. “No,” she said, “but we can hear you coming from a few blocks away. My husband likes your car, though!”

I bet he does, I thought. But I kept quiet. I smelled a setup.

“Hey,” she said, “would you mind getting a picture of my husband and me over by the showgirls?”

As if I’m going to help them in their Jihad, I thought to myself. “Uh, no, I gotta go.” I backed away slowly as she reached into her pocket. But I’ll keep my eye on you, I said under my breath.

Was this a dry run for a serious terrorist attack, or a surveillance operation to gather information on America’s tourism capital? To be honest, I haven’t heard enough evidence to convince me either isn’t true. But I know this: these extremists better think twice before coming out of their hidey-holes on my watch. Semper Fi, brave brothers and sisters of the Clarion Fund!

update: teh jooz did it!

Okay, so it’s come to my attention that my previous post on the Clarion Fund got just about all of it wrong, which isn’t surprising considering I hadn’t really put any thought into it. I just saw Frank Gaffney’s name and saw an opportunity to point at him and laugh. However, I’ve received emails and comments numbering in the tens about my crack journalism and I don’t want to lead anyone astray: The CSP probably shares ideology, material, and jackboots with the Clarion Fund, but other than that, who knows.

Meanwhile, everybody else seems to have figured this out, leaving me once again at the back of the bus: Radical Jewish group Aish Ha Torah are, very likely, the real culprits. Of course, I was reluctant to put the finger to Aish Ha Torah myself because, like every other Muslim on the planet, the last place I’d ever want to put blame for a smear campaign against me designed to promote the election of the elitist asshole most likely to send me to Cuba and rape me with a chemical light is a Zionist organization. Heaven forbid.

Anyway, read about it just about anywhere, but the links are substantial, if unconfirmed:

• Clarion Fund founder Raphael Shore, an Israeli Canadian, is a full time employee of Aish Ha Torah
• Shore was the producer of today’s Der Ewige Musselman, Obsession
• HonestReporting.com, a media watchdog that hunts down articles critical of Israel, locating their authors and burning down their houses, was originally a side project of Aish Ha Torah and a partner of the Obsession film

And so on. So there’s probably something there. But that’s yesterday’s news. Onto another interesting find: radicalislam.org’s awesome Story Sharing Feature, wherein you get to tell them about all the close calls you’ve had with Muslims who want to kill you, is available. With my crack computer skills, I was able to infiltrate and share a particularly harrowing encounter I had with Muslims taking pictures of key American interests in Las Vegas. All you’ve gotta do is register.

scoop! the clarion fund is…

…or, rather, may be closely linked to, the Centre for Security Policy, an ultraright think tank designed to shape neocon policy and come up with new, innovative reasons to make Islam illegal and bomb Iran. If the Clarion Fund isn’t closely linked to the Center for Security Research, we can at least say they’re not terribly imaginative: a good chunk of the material at Clarion’s RadicalIslam.org web site is lifted straight from CSP-related sources.

Take, for instance, the magnum opus Where are all the Liberal Muslims? Penned by Frank Gaffney Jr, the head of the Center for Security Policy. You might recognise Frank Gaffney Jr’s name as a primary agent of the movement against Sharia Compliant Finance (SCF). His main reason for opposing this easy and legal means to incorporate Muslim money into the free market is his (some might say insane) opinion that SCF is composed entirely of the proceeds of limb amputation and wife beating. He’s also notable for quoting David Yerushelmi of the Society of Americans for National Existence, who one great pundit once described as “not so much a self-hating Jew as a Jew who hates the vast majority of other Jews,” as if Yerushelmi wasn’t a lunatic but rather a serious commentator on Sharia finance schemes.

Okay, so maybe the links aren’t really that close–there’s a couple other articles on there from CSP-related sources. But check it: centerforsecuritypolicy.org’s WHOIS reveals they were registered by GoDaddy.com under a domain anonymizer called Domains by Proxy, Inc of Scottsdale AZ.

clarionfund.org were also registered by GoDaddy.com under a domain anonymizer called Domains by Proxy, Inc of Scottsdale AZ.

And radicalislam.org? You guessed it: Registered by GoDaddy.com under a domain anonymizer called Domains by Proxy, Inc of Scottsdale AZ.

And I suppose it just so happens that Domains by Proxy, Inc hail from Arizona, the very state of which John McCain is currently Senator!

Coincidence?

Well, probably.

who is the clarion fund?

As you’ve probably heard, a mysterious group called the Clarion Fund has been waging a propaganda war through the media, distributing millions of copies of the extremist DVD Obsession through paid advertisement supplements in major newspapers throughout swing states. The movie, in case you haven’t seen it, is a modern day Der Ewige Musselman, featuring high-value propapaganda tactics, quickly interspersed shots that clearly link through adjacentness Islam and Fascism, and lots of neocon talking heads debating the seriousness of the Muslim presence on earth and how best to deal with it (Mark Steyn’s “if you can’t outbreed ‘em, cull ‘em!” Final Solution seems to be a popular option). Here’s a sample cutscene:

• Shot one: Actors in pantomime Arab costume feast on Jewish babies while shaking their scimitars.
• Shot two: Overview of the Nuremburg Rally.
• Shot three: A fifteen minute solliloquay by Robert Spencer screaming through spittle-encrusted beard that Muslims are Nazis who eat babies.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I may have made some of that up.

Regardless, coming this close to the US elections, where our neighbors to the south will carefully look over each candidate, evaluating individual policies for the good of their families and neighbors, and then vote for the white guy, the timing is suspect. So who’s doing it, anyway?

Hard to say. The Carion Fund sure ain’t saying. Their site doesn’t have much on it. They do list a 888-number (1-888-610-2221) for “general information and screening requests,” but when I called to see if they’d show it at my mosque they hung up on me. Their “Online Education” section just links to a site called radicalislam.org (naturally). There, you’ll find all kinds of fun facts, including:

• Fuelling Terror, which directly links fossil fuels to radical Islam and terror
• Sharia Law, which explains that your Muslim neighbors are really just waiting for the right opportunity to impose hand-amputatin’, woman-beatin’, dhimmi-bootin’ Sharia on you…so watch out!
• The Death Sentence for Converts, which kind of backs up Mark Steyn’s position that the only good Muslim’s a dead Muslim
• Where are all the Liberal Muslims? See above–they’re dead! Haha!
• Set America Free, a gripping Q&A on why America is currently dhimmified, and what you can do about it

And probably the most important one, which I’ll quote outright:

• Vote 2008: As the 2008 Presidential election approaches, the threat of radical Islam is the defining issue of the campaign. What are the positions of the Presidential candidates?

Wanna guess which side they’re on?

More fun stuff: The radicalislam.org site includes a link to Tell Your Story: Post your experiences with radical Islam, but alas, the link’s dead letter. I had a doozy for them too, about how this one time, I was riding a bus, and I saw these terrorist Arabs, and they were talking Muslim, and I snuck up behind them and knelt behind their seat and recorded their conversation on my cell phone, but then this LIEberal dhimmi feminazi who was sitting there got mad and accused me of taking upskirt photos and I got kicked off the bus even though its THEM who should be kicked off the bus!

But I’ve got hopes the link will be up again soon, and once it is, please feel free to share.

charming…

And just in time for Ramadhan, we have Muslim Massacre:

Fig 1: USA! USA! USA!

A computer game in which players control an American soldier sent to “wipe out the Muslim race” has been condemned as offensive and tasteless by a British Muslim group. The goal of Muslim Massacre, which can be downloaded for free on the internet, is to “ensure that no Muslim man or woman is left alive”, according to the game’s creator.

Players control an “American Hero” armed with a machine gun and rocket launcher who is parachuted into the Middle East. Users progress through levels, first killing Arabs that appear on screen and later taking on Osama bin Laden, Mohammed and finally Allah.

The game’s creator, a freelance programmer known as Sigvatr, described the game on the SomethingAwful.com website as “fun and funny”. In a “How you can help” section, he writes to visitors: “Don’t whinge about how offensive and ‘edgy’ this is.”

And in MMORPG format, you can choose between Mark Steyn, Robert Spencer, Pam Atlas, or Debbie Schlussel avatars.

Notes for Version 2: Run an infinite loop of Mark Steyn’s most famous tagline along the bottom of the screen during gameplay, “If you can’t outbreed ‘em, cull ‘em.”

the canadian elections and the cic

I haven’t gotten the memo yet, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling the Canadian Islamic Congress is going to deliver the lucrative Muslim vote to the NDP party in the upcoming Canadian elections on October 14th, for whatever that’s worth.

Let me be serious for a second.  I’m not a fan of block voting.  A CIC executive once came to our Centre and tried to sell us on the idea, and it went over like a turd in a punchbowl.  I don’t think Canada will ever see a “Muslim vote,” and I think that’s a good thing.  Ethnic politics drive me nuts, and here in BC we see it in spades.  Religious block voting is even worse, and the day a religious leader tells me for whom to vote, I’m walking out and won’t come back until I’ve got reasonable assurance that sort of thing won’t happen again.

But in this post, Mohamed Elmasry of the CIC puffs the NDP as the real party of change, the Grits and Tories being continuations of past and failed policies (now where have we heard that before?). Granted, he’s not speaking in this instance of what he believes Muslims should do; Media Matters isn’t a sectarian site after all. But it is reasonable to assume, given that Elmasry’s CIC does believe in block voting, that he’d like to be able to tell Layton he’ll give the NDP our votes.

He starts with a pretty crude caricature of American politics:

Thank God that Canadians, unlike Americans, do not vote in elections based on their family histories. Traditionally, a Republican votes Republican irrespective of who is running for the White House, or their political platform. A Democrat does likewise. And both follow the rationale that “it was good enough for my parents and grandparents, so it’s good enough for me.” It’s a tribal mentality at best, and our neighbors to the south seem happy with their inherited political status quo.

Frankly, I don’t buy that. True, you’ve got registered Democrats and registered Republicans, but we’ve got the same thing here, particularly among Tories and Liberals, and to a lesser degree Greens and NDPers. But that’s not “tribal mentality at best,” it’s partisan politics and it’s never going to go away–and I really don’t think it’s genetic. It’s based on ideologies and convictions, which are shaped in part by the culture of the place you’re from, which–what a shock–tends to have some geographical and generational patterns. Not so different from Canada.

Don’t believe me? Think what political party is going to take Alberta. Take a minute.

If you didn’t come up with “Conservative,” of course, you’re entitled to your opinion. But you’re wrong.

Anyway, Dr. Elmasry comes up with some pretty good reasons to vote NDP, among them:

• Jack Layton seems to be a strong leader.
• The NDP have a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Jack’s likely to push Canada’s peacekeeper role in international relations.
• NDP loves welfare.

Yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, the more I think about the big-government policies of the NDP, the more angry I get. This ultimately derives from a deeply-seated belief I have that politicians are, to a man or woman, incompetent boobs who can’t get decent jobs doing anything else, and as a result I would like to limit their influence on my freedom, choices, and wallet. The NDP stands for everything but. I would agree that Jack Layton is the strongest leader of the bunch, but that’s not saying much.

Regardless, I just want to focus on the Afghanistan issue for a minute. I know Dr. Elmasry thinks he’s preaching to the choir here, especially among his Muslim readers, and I realise I may be alone in this, but I’m pretty convinced that an unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2011, no matter who’s proposing it (and you’ll note Layton’s timeline is pretty close to Harper’s), is a big mistake. What in our history of dealing with Afghanistan indicates cutting and running will make things better? It didn’t work for the British or the Russians; why would it work for NATO?

Call me what you will. The Taliban are retrograde evil, and they need to be crushed, utterly and without hope for recovery. I’m not so warlike as to think a military answer is the only answer. Afghans need to have options other than joining the Taliban. That means economic investment and infrastructure development that will make Afghanistan the type of place people want to live and do business safely, and Canadians need to play a role beyond just the role our armed forces are undertaking. That’s the only compassionate solution. But pulling out the armed forces when we can’t be sure the Afghan forces will be able to handle the Taliban insurgency is basically telling the Afghans, once again, we don’t care about them. And that’s wrong.

Anyway, I know that opinion isn’t very popular and probably doesn’t have much traction among fellow Muslims. To be honest, I’m not even remotely sure who I’ll be voting for come October. The only thing I know is I’ll have to hold my nose while I do it.

discoverthenetwork.org–the greatest web application in the history of the intertubes.

I have a new ambition in life. I want to be featured on DiscoverTheNetworks.org’s web application, which proves with the strongest proof allowed in Law, adjacent images, that Katie Couric is a vicious terrorist intent on destroying America.

Here’s how it works:

1. Open the application.
2. Type “Couric” in the search box and hit Enter.
3. You’ll see all the terrorism-related outfits, including the Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS), linked to her with scary straight lines. Follow the line to CBS and click its icon.
4. CBS is affiliated with the Columbia School of Journalism. Click it.
5. The Columbia School of Journalism is linked to Nihad Awad of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Click him.
6. As the line linking Awad to Hamas clearly illustrates, Nihad Awad is a Hamas operative.

Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself:

Figure 1: Nihad Awad

These people are the real deal. Their logic is unassailable. And there’s no reason to think either the project or its financial and ideological backers, including head smearguru David Horowitz, are batsh*t insane. And as they have proven with devastating lines drawn right there on your computer screen, Katie Couric hates America and is working closely with Hamas operatives CAIR and CBS to destroy it. The more you know, heh indeed!

Personally, I’m going to do everything in my power to get my name listed there. I’ve got my heart set on one of those free tickets to Cuba. Katie, if we’re on the same flight together, I want to sit next to you.

oh no he didn’t!

Young M Junaid Levesque-Alam of Crossing the Crescent got some ’splainin to do. He’s impugned my good lady, everyone’s favorite Muslim Refusenik, Sister Irshad Manji, and I for one ain’t taking this lying down.

First, he hates on her book simply because she sells Muslims and Islam down the river–as if the brother doesn’t realise that that’s what ijtihad (or, rather, its Manji-branded variant Project Ijtihad©) is all about. And so what if torture enthusiast Alan Dershowitz loves her, almost as much as he loves waterboarding and pushing needles under people’s fingernails? Don’t blame that on Irshad–Alan’s a man who knows what he likes, even if the rest of us find that repugnant.

Anyway, Junaid moves on to Sister Irshad’s firm denunciation of radical terrorist Mazen Asbahi’s sabotage of America/resignation from the Obama campaign. Says the brother:

In a Huffington Post piece, she demonstrates no concern about the vilification enabled Asbahi’s dismissal. Indeed, she fails to mention it even once. Is this because Manji is too busy contributing to the problem to pause and reflect? Or is it because this would upset her core base – the neoconservatives who mount these smear campaigns?

Whatever the case, Manji performs her predictable pre-programmed attack routine, observing contemptuously, “…Mazen Asbahi has just resigned. I can’t say I’m disheartened. He’d been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and ‘moderate’ double-speak.”

And what’s wrong with that? MPAC and ISNA are big, scary words, meant to inspire fear and loathing whenever you see them on your screen. I’m surprised and a little disappointed she didn’t insert “Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated” to turn up the heat a little, but she probably had to watch her word count. And, you see, “Moderate Muslim” is defined by Irshad (and Daniel “Crack” Pipes, and Alan Dershowitz, and the rest of the neocon clown college under whose praise Sister Irshad has perfected that celebrity tan) as a Muslim who doesn’t have an interest in the so-called “Palestinian” “people,” or any other of the political, social, economic, and environmental concerns the vast majority of Muslims share. This means, of course, that she’s absolutely right to question their “moderate” credentials–and yours, and mine. When you make up the rules yourself, you get to decide who plays the game.

If Sister Irshad says ISNA and MPAC, and Mazen Asbahi, and CAIR, and the entire mainstream Sunni and Shi’a establishments, are the new focus of our daily Ten Minutes Hate, I ask you brother, who are we to question her?