Has anyone asked Cat Stevens, er, Yusuf Islam what he thinks of all this, recently?

Haram; " forbidden by Islamic law"

Islam: ‘appalling and abhorrent’ in the eyes of a blind world?   "A few days ago in Sudan, an eight-month pregnant wife and mother was sentenced to death by hanging for refusing to renounce Christ and embrace Islam.  According to the LA Times:"
...
"Of more significance is the Amnesty International statement concerning Meriam Ibrahim’s plight. While its criticism is aimed at Sudan’s legal system, the statement unwittingly provides a glimpse of how the international community would view Islam if it could actually understand that these human rights abuses are not products of this or that government or regime, but of Islam itself.

"According to the Amnesty International statement:" More...

.barenakedislam

 

U.S. Becomes Chief Enabler of Christian Persecution: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2014 ... "Libya offers a more recent precedent.  Since U.S.-backed “rebels” overthrew Qaddafi, Christians—including Americans—have been tortured and killed (some for refusing to convert), their churches bombed, and their nuns threatened.

"January’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity."

Happy is haram! Iranians Arrested and Forced to Repent on State TV for Dancing to Happy Song

"The original purpose of making the video, one of the dancers shared, was to show that Iran’s young people “have moments of joy and happiness even though they live with many difficulties.' ”

“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.” — Ayatollah Khomeini

The First Lady's Control-Freak Lunch Program

Michelle Malkin   ... "Progressives blame kid-hating Republicans and greedy businesses for the revolt against Mrs. Obama's failed policies. But the truth is right around the corner in your students' cafeterias. Districts are losing money. Discarded food is piling high. Kids are going off-campus to fill their tummies or just going hungry.

"According to the School Nutrition Association, almost half of school meal programs reported declines in revenue in the 2012-13 school year, and 90 percent said food costs were up. Local nutrition directors are demanding more flexibility and freedom. Look no further than school districts in Los Angeles and Chicago." ...

New O’Keefe video “punks” Hollywood enviros

Hot Air   "For those who remember the controversy surrounding the financing of the anti-fracking Matt Damon film Promised Land, this new undercover video from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas will simply confirm suspicions. O’Keefe set himself up as an ersatz Middle Eastern oil baron in order to test the Hollywood environmental waters to see how welcome his supposed money would be in attacking American energy independence. The big names in this effort, Ed Begley Jr and Mariel Hemingway, will get the most notice but are in essence collateral damage. The real targets for this probe are Josh and Rebecca Tickell, award-winning producers who are all too keen to take Middle Eastern money to attack American natural-gas exploration:"
 

 

... The point of O’Keefe’s sting is to expose Hollywood enviro eagerness to accept oil-baron money from the Middle East to attack American energy production, and this video certainly does that much. Not that people couldn’t figure that much out from Promised Land‘s Abu Dhabi funding, if they wanted. ...

Sowell; Politics Versus Education (Updated)

Thomas Sowell

 

"Of all the cynical frauds of the Obama administration, few are so despicable as sacrificing the education of poor and minority children to the interests of the teachers' unions.

"Attorney General Eric Holder's attempt to suppress the spread of charter schools in Louisiana was just one of the signs of that cynicism. His nationwide threats of legal action against schools that discipline more black students than he thinks they should are at least as damaging.

"Charter schools are hated by teachers' unions and by much of the educational establishment in general. They seem to be especially hated when they succeed in educating minority children whom the educational establishment says cannot be educated." ... 

 Is this where Common Core will take us?

The Age of Academic Ruin    ... "America will have finally gotten what the Progressive’s have dreamed of: a substantive equality of result: not only in economics, but of the mind.  Without the impediments of a thousand competing voices pleading for their share of the human soul, the State will finally have the monopoly of hearts and minds it needs for attaining its quest of the Universal Homogenous State." ...

God help us….. 

Yes, Some People Will Have to Pay Back Their Obamacare Subsidies

Heritage

"Obamacare offers subsidies to help pay for health insurance – if you are buying insurance through the federal exchange and your income qualifies. But now the word is out that at least 1 million people are probably getting the wrong subsidy amounts.

"The Washington Post has inside sources providing all sorts of juicy details on this problem – but it didn’t take an investigative reporter to predict this was going to happen.

"Heritage expert Alyene Senger warned that Obamacare’s subsidies are tied to income – and if your income changes at any point during the year, your subsidy is supposed to change, too. She explained in January:" ..
...
"Is it any wonder that 60 percent of voters in a recent poll said the debate about Obamacare is not over? And 89 percent said Obamacare will affect their voting decisions this fall.

"Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is right – Obamacare is still not the answer for America’s health care needs. It’s time for Congress to look at patient-centered alternatives that would restore choice to American health care – and stop the unending tales of Obamacare disaster."

What of the Barack Obama-Bill Ayres relationship?

Snopes comments on the rumors of their relationship; "Partly true"

FactCheck.org:  McCain cranks out some false and misleading attacks on Obama's connection to a 1960s radical.    ... "We wrote back then that Clinton had gone too far by suggesting that "people died" as a result of Ayers’ actions. And nothing Obama said then has since been shown to be false. It is true that he did not bring up his work with Ayers on a second project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama was board chairman and Ayers was an early organizer, and where the two were together for half a dozen or so meetings. But neither Clinton nor Stephanopoulos asked him about that project. McCain could fairly accuse Obama of not volunteering the information, but it is false to claim he "lied.' "

WND

Ayers dishes details on relationship with Obama   ... "Ayers did not discuss the role he and his Weather Underground wife, Bernardine Dohrn, played in launching Obama’s public career. In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn held in the living room of their Hyde Park home the first fundraiser for Obama in his effort to win a seat in the Illinois state Senate.
"In 1985, the Woods Foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project in Chicago that allowed the DCP to hire Obama, then 24 years old.
"It was the job offer that allowed Obama to move from New York City to Chicago.
"Ayers was a director of the Woods Foundation for nine years, from December 1999 to December 2008, overlapping with Obama for three years, with Obama serving on the board from December 1999 to December 2002." ..

Truth or Fiction;  Controversy Over Senator Obama's Relationship With William Ayers-Truth!   ... "Critics said a special investigations unit composed of Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston from CNN looked into the Ayers story and concluded that "the relationship between Obama and Ayers went deeper, ran longer and was more political than Obama -- and his surrogates."   

The CNN story said that:       A review of board minutes and records by CNN show Obama, crossed paths repeatedly with Ayers at board meetings of the Annenberg Challenge Project in Chicago. For seven years, Ayers and Obama -- among many others -- worked on funding for education projects, including some projects advocated by Ayers. While working on the Annenberg project, Obama and Ayers also served together on a second charitable foundation, the Woods Fund, and that among the Woods Fund recipients was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church where Obama had his church membership. Obama praised Ayers' book on the subject of juvenile justice in a 1997 Chicago Tribune review, calling it "a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.    Stanley Kurtz in the WSJ: Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools   "The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."   Breitbart; Ayers and Obama: What the Media Hid   ... "Ayers methods have certainly changed since the 60s, but his commitment to bringing down the American system has been a constant throughout his life. Therefore, it's fair to ask what Obama saw in Ayers, the committed anti-capitalist radical. It's also fair to ask why the NY Times (and the rest of the media) were so quick to dismiss the import of the connection. No one is saying Obama and Ayers were part of a secret cabal, but they do seem to have been friends over a period of years, so presumably they had something in common. Given Ayers' consistently extreme views on America and government, isn't that worth exploring?"

Obama is so Mad About All of His Scandals

American Glob   "No one is madder than Obama about the VA scandal. And the IRS. And Fast and Furious. Etc. Etc.
"Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
 

 

Jay Carney: Obama Learned About VA Scandal From News Reports    "Of course."

 

"Consoling phone call placed to Sandra Fluke within minutes of her mention on the Rush Limbaugh show. Congratulatory phone call placed to gay athlete the instant he comes out.

"VA scandal? Saw it on the news. Still no public statement. Speaks volumes.
"Video via Hot Air.
 

ABC, NBC Ignore Report Showing Obama Administration Knew About Ongoing VA Problems
"Of the big three networks, only the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley covered the new revelations in the VA scandal. CBS News host Scott Pelley noted that “The Bush White House was so concerned about this back in 2008 that it warned the incoming Obama Administration.' ”

Ron Fournier: Quiz: How Dumb Does Obama Think We Are?   "The Veterans Affairs policy fiasco is magnified by an insulting-public relations strategy."
"It's harder to BS the public these days. White House press secretary Jay Carney still tries. On Monday, he repeatedly suggested that the American Legion had praised the move.

"The American Legion said that the group looks at Petzel's resignation as a, quote, step towards addressing the leadership problem at the VA. So I think that undercuts the assertion that that is not a meaningful development."

"Carney cited the American Legion nine times during the briefing.
Unfortunately for Carney and his boss, ABC's intrepid White House correspondent Jonathan Karl has access to the Internet. "It turns out, however, the American Legion had issued a statement dismissing the resignation as 'business as usual,' " Karl wrote." ...

Dingy Harry*; Lost In Space

Legal Insurrection
"How long will it take Harry Reid to blame the growing VA scandal on the Koch brothers?"  American Glob

*Harry Reid’s Koch Brothers Dementia – The Rush Limbaugh Show  “Reid also rejected concerns from many Democrats that his focus on the Kochs has done nothing to help the party. ‘The Koch Brothers, I’m not walking away from them. I’m going to be on their tail for the whole campaign because if they think Romney was watched closely by me, that’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be like with the Koch Brothers...' "

 

The Origins of Political Correctness

An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind  "Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.

"We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been the case. And we have always regarded them with a mixture of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they would be afraid of what words they used. But we now have this situation in this country. We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is spreading throughout the whole society. Were does it come from? What is it?
More...

 

 

 

 

 

Mainstream Media Incest

Always on Watch

 

"The Newspeak noose continues to tighten so as to control the information that WE THE PEOPLE receive (links below the fold):

1. FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation --- like PACs

2.  FCC’s grab for new regulatory power could go beyond broadband providers

This 3200 Year Old Tree Is So Huge It’s Never Been Captured In A Single Image. Until Now.

Funky Pickens  “ 'The President” is one of those trees. The giant sequoia stands 247 feet tall, measures 45,000 cubic feet in volume, and is an estimated 3,200 years old."

....
"Absolutely incredible. To see how it was done, check out this video:"
 

 

Hat tip to Bill Smith; Rainier, Oregon

You had to know this was coming: White House says Obama only learned of VA wait-list scandal on TV

UK Daily Mail  "White House Press Secretary Jay Carney wound up with egg on his face Monday as he told reporters that President Barack Obama first learned from a TV news report that his Veterans Administration was denying medical care to vets with secret off-the-books-waiting lists.

 

"But new evidence emerged this morning that his transition team was notified five years ago about how VA medical centers' official wait-list times bore little resemblance to reality and risked denying military heroes critical health care." More...

 

Lessons of the VA Scandal; Lengthy wait times, bureaucratic abuse, rationed care: par for the course in government-run health care. 

... "According to VA figures for 2012, as reported by the Washington Post, “a veteran who takes an appeal through all available administrative steps faces an average wait of 1,598 days.” That’s more than four years of waiting.

"Obamacare will dramatically expand access to the health-care system at the same time that many surveys show doctors are likely to retire or cut back their hours. It is almost inevitable that we’ll see more waiting-list scandals as the need to ration care grows.
This is the record of many single-payer health-care systems, and both Obama and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have said that establishing a single-payer system is their long-term goal." ...