Iran Busts A Move On Rap Music

As told in this Breitbart (AFP) article, Iran plans to institute a nationwide crackdown on rap music, citing that a majority of rap music lyrics are “obscene” or offensive:

“There is nothing wrong with this type of music in itself,” the official for evaluation of music at the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry, Mohammad Dashtgoli, was quoted as saying.

“But due to the use of obscene words by its singers this music has been categorised as illegal,” he said.

“In coordination with the police, illegal studios producing this type of music will be sealed and the singers in this genre will be confronted,” he said.

Dashtgoli said a large number of illegal rap singers have been already identified.

The Islamic republic’s hardline officials have repeatedly complained about a “cultural invasion” by “decadent” western music which they believe diminishes Islamic values.

Where we generally agree with their assessment that the music is obscene, what really “diminishes Islamic values” is not the music, but is the public hanging of gay boys, and stoning of women who had sex, lashes for rape victims, and death threats for anyone who accurately describes Mohammad as a vicious child rapist or murderer without morals or conscience.  The religion of perpetual rage needs to kick back, spark up a blunt, and move into the 21st century.

Flights Of Fancy

Airline ‘discount’ charges heterosexual customers more - 10% penalty applied if buyers don’t get tickets from ‘gay’ site

Here is an excerpt from this World Net Daily article:

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have announced a new program that will charge heterosexuals 10 percent extra for their air travel to specific locations during the Christmas season.

The company actually offers the 10 percent as a discount but only if the purchaser obtains the ticket through a “gay” page of the company’s website, a location not typically patronized by families seeking travel arrangements, according to an Idaho activist who was distressed by the offering.

Bryan Fischer, of the Idaho Values Alliance, told WND the company boasts of its “nondiscrimination” policies, but, “here they are blatantly discriminating against heterosexuals in their pricing structure.”

Word of the discount came through an airline employee, who needed to remain anonymous because of concerns over retaliation. The employee reported the company had sent e-mails out announcing the “very soft launch” of the new promotion.

“They are giving preferences to male passengers who want to wear dresses on the planes, and giving them preference over married couples,” Fischer said, noting families typically buy more tickets than individuals or pairs traveling together.

“It just doesn’t seem like it’s smart business for them to stick their thumb in the eye of the main passengers,” he told WND.

He said he had called the company’s reservations number and the clerk was unaware of the program and it didn’t come up on the general list of discounts available to reservations agents, but he did verify that the “gay” page discount was valid - but only by going through the “gay” page.

If The Shoe Fits…

Saudi Islamic school rejects ‘Terror High’ label

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Its most virulent critics have dubbed it “Terror High” and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down.

The teachers, administrators and some 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years - after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a few years later when a class valedictorian admitted he had joined al-Qaeda.

Now the school is on the defensive again, with a report issued last month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom saying the academy should be closed pending a review of its curriculum and textbooks.

Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school’s director general, says criticism of the school is based not on evidence but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system.

The school, serving grades K-12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government and its textbooks are based on Saudi curriculum. Critics say the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam in their schools.

But al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers’ versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain “that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others.”

At an open house earlier this month in which the school invited reporters to tour the school and meet students and faculty, al-Shabnan seemed weary of the criticism.

“I didn’t think we’d have to do this,” he said of the open house. “Our neighbors know us. They know the job we are doing.”

Indeed, many people familiar with the school say the accusations are unfounded. Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district includes the academy, has defended it and arranged for the county to review the textbooks to put questions to rest. That review is underway. The academy’s Alexandria campus is leased from Fairfax County.

Schools that regularly compete against the academy in interscholastic sports - many of them small, private Christian schools - are among the academy’s strongest defenders.

Robert Mead, soccer coach at Bryant Alternative High School, a public school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax county, said the academy’s reputation has been unfairly marred by people who haven’t even bothered to visit the school.

“We’ve never had one altercation” with the academy’s players on the soccer field, Mead said. “My guys are hostile. Their guys keep fights from breaking out.”

The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks. Criticisms were revived in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaeda while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Most recently, the religious freedom commission - an independent federal agency created by Congress - issued its report, saying it was rebuffed in its efforts to obtain textbooks to verify claims they had been reformed.

The commission recommended that the academy be shut down until it could review the textbooks to ensure they do not promote intolerance.

Since the commission’s report, the academy has given copies of its books to the Saudi embassy, which then provided them to the State Department. The commission is waiting to get the books from the State Department.

On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission’s recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to write the commission’s recommendations regarding the academy into law.

Michael Cromartie, the commission’s chairman, said he does not question the character of the student body or the faculty, most of whom are Christian. The commission is focused specifically on the textbooks, and has legitimate concerns given the problems that have been endemic in the Saudi curriculum, he said.

“It’s not about whether the students are civil to their opponents on a ball field. It’s about the textbooks,” he said.

At the open house, seniors said they worry that news accounts will hurt their college applications. Most students said they were shocked that the government panel had recommended closing the school.

Omar Talib, a senior, said the school caters to students from across the Muslim world, not just Saudis. It makes no judgments on other religions or against Shiite Islam, as some critics have contended.

“I have four children at this school. I’ve never heard them say ‘Mom, today we learned we should kill the Jews,”‘ said Malika Chughtai of Vienna. “If I heard that kind of talk, I would not have them here.”

Source: USA Today - Saudi Islamic school rejects ‘Terror High’ label

The World Doesn’t Hate America; the Left Does

One of the widely held misconceptions is that the world as a whole hates America. This world-hatred has been exacerbated by the Bush administration and overuse of force. Dennis Prager, snydicated radio talk show host and author takes aim at this misconception in this Front Page Magazine article:

The World Doesn’t Hate America; the Left Does

One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world — so widely held it is not disputed — is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.

But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world’s news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.

That it is the left — and those influenced by the left-leaning news and entertainment media — that hates America can be easily shown.

Take Western Europe, which is widely regarded as holding America in contempt, but upon examination only validates our thesis. The French, for example, are regarded as particularly America-hating, but if this were so, how does one explain the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France? Sarkozy loves America and was known to love America when he ran for president. Evidently, it is the left in France — a left that, like the left in America, dominates the media, arts, universities and unions — that hates the U.S., not the French.

The same holds true for Spain, Australia, Britain, Latin America and elsewhere. The left in these countries hate the United States while non-leftists, and especially conservatives, in those countries hold America in high regard, if not actually love it.

Take Spain. The prime minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004, Jose Maria Aznar, is a conservative who holds America in the highest regard. He was elected twice, and polls in Spain up to the week before the 2004 election all predicted a third term for Aznar’s party (Aznar had promised not to run for a third term). Only the Madrid subway bombings, perpetrated by Muslim terrorists three days before the elections, but which the Aznar government erroneously blamed on Basque separatists, turned the election against the conservative party.

There is another obvious argument against the belief that the world hates America: Many millions of people would rather live in America than in any other country. How does the left explain this? Why would people want to come to a country they loathe? Why don’t people want to live in Sweden or France as much as they wish to live in America? Those are rich and free countries, too.

The answer is that most people know there is no country in the world more accepting of strangers as is America. After three generations, people who have emigrated to Germany or France or Sweden do not feel — and are not regarded as — fully German, French or Swedish. Yet, anyone of any color from any country is regarded as American the moment he or she identifies as one. The country that the left routinely calls “xenophobic” and “racist” is in fact the least racist and xenophobic country in the world.

Given that it is the left and the institutions it dominates — universities, media (other than talk radio in America) and unions — that hate America, two questions remain: Why does the left hate America, and does the American left, too, hate America?

The answer to the first question is that America and especially the most hated parts of America — conservatives, religious conservatives in particular — are the greatest obstacles to leftist dominance. American success refutes the socialist ideals of the left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the left’s pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the left as “Manichean”; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the left because the left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.

It makes perfect sense that the left around the world loathes America. The final question, then, is whether this loathing of America is characteristic of the American left as well. The answer is that the American left hates the America that believes in American exceptionalism, is prepared to use force to fight what it deems as dangerous evil, affirms the Judeo-Christian value system, believes in the death penalty, supports male-female marriage, rejects big government, wants lower taxes, prefers free market to governmental solutions, etc. The American left, like the rest of the world’s left, loathes that America.

So what America does the American left love? That is for those on the left to answer. But given their beliefs that America was founded by racists and slaveholders, that it is an imperialist nation, that 35 million Americans go hungry, that it invades countries for corporate profits, and that it is largely racist and xenophobic, it is a fair question.

Hosanna Church Sex Abuse Trial Set To Begin

The trial of the first sexual abuse suspect in the 2005 Hosanna Church case is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Amite [Louisiana.]

Austin “Trey” Bernard III, 39, of Hammond, is accused of one count of aggravated rape of a 2-year-old girl in 2002. Under Louisiana law, an aggravated rape conviction carries an automatic life sentence in prison.

Bernard is one of seven members of the now-defunct church in Ponchatoula indicted in 2005 on charges of having sex with children as part of occult rituals. The case includes allegations of the abuse and killings of animals, specifically dogs and cats.

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday.

Source - WDSU.COM - Hosanna Church Sex Abuse Trial Set To Begin

And here’s the video:

Contributing Criminals

Now class, if you receive a Presidential pardon, it is proper etiquette to contribute to any subsequential Presidential campaign. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Clintons:

What do these three Americans have in common?

John Deutch, the CIA director between May 1995 and December 1996, faced criminal charges for storing state secrets on his home computer.

David Herdlinger, a former Arkansas prosecutor and judge, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1986, having accepted bribes to waive charges against those accused of drunk driving.

Alfredo Luna Pharr Regalado failed to mention to a Customs official that he was smuggling into America more than the $10,000 permitted.

If your answer is “They are all free as a bird, having been given a last-minute pardon by President Clinton,” you are right, though that is not the answer the examiners are looking for.

The correct answer is that all three, who were indeed pardoned at the last minute by Mr. Clinton, have made recent financial contributions to the presidential campaign coffers of Senator Clinton. Mr. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave the maximum of $2,300. Mr. Herdlinger, who has relocated to Georgia and now describes himself as “a coach, catalyst, and facilitator helping people and companies discover and develop their potential,” gave $1,000. And Mr. Regalado, an “insurance agent,” gave $2,000.

Read the full New York Sun article here.

The Business Of Global Warming

Last week, former Vice President Al Gore was named as a new partner in the investiment capital firm Kleiner Perkins. The motivation behind this decision begs many questions. Will Al Gore use his business acumen and environmentalist background to develop viable products, or will Al Gore use his notoriety to obtain large, permanent government subsidies?

This Wall Street Journal Editorial Page article explores the reality both scenarios:

Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry–the global warming business.

And like the energy barons of an earlier age, Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being named last week as a new partner at the famously successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. No fewer than three of his new colleagues sit on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. If Mr. Gore can develop market-based solutions to environmental challenges, we will cheer the well-deserved riches flowing his way. On the other hand, if he monetizes his Nobel Peace Prize by securing permanent government subsidies for nonmarket science projects, he’ll have earned a different judgment.

There’s no shortage of new capital pouring into alternative energy projects these days. According to the National Venture Capital Association, “clean tech” start-ups attracted more than $800 million in venture capital last quarter, a new record. What’s not clear is whether these are fundamentally energy ventures or political ventures. The Manhattan Institute’s Peter Huber, a former engineering professor at MIT, exaggerates only slightly when he says that “Basically, ‘alternative’ means stuff that nobody actually uses.” If that turns out to be true, then alternative energy companies could struggle for market share without government assistance.

Those doubts exist even for the companies backed by Kleiner Perkins. After making more than a dozen “green tech” investments, Kleiner is still waiting for its first exit. According to a Kleiner spokeswoman, many companies in its portfolio are “in stealth mode.” The firm will “neither name nor comment on them.” So it’s impossible to determine precisely how much the Kleiner-backed firms will benefit from either current federal subsidies, or new provisions that are part of the House and Senate versions of the stalled energy bill. But we do have some hints.

Of the portfolio companies acknowledged publicly by Kleiner, at least two, Altra and Mascoma, are involved in the production of ethanol, which is already heavily subsidized and would get more subsidies in the House bill and higher mandates in the Senate version. A third firm in the portfolio, Amyris Biotechnologies, is developing a biofuel that will provide “more energy than ethanol,” according to its Web site, and should be just as eligible for government set-asides.

Two portfolio companies in the solar energy field, Miasole and Ausra, should benefit if a House provision requiring investor-owned utilities to generate 15% of their power from wind, solar or geothermal sources becomes law. The same is true for Altarock Energy, a Kleiner-backed geothermal company. Lux Research analyst Ying Wu reports that “company valuations will take a pretty big hit” in Miasole’s market segment if Washington turns off the subsidy spigot.

To put it another way, Kleiner’s “risk-taking” here isn’t all economic. When everything is going according to plan, do venture capitalists normally turn to a politician/filmmaker to help them cash out of engineering firms?

Nope, but then again alternative energy has never fit the usual venture model. Jack Biddle, co-founder of Novak Biddle Venture Partners, says there’s a reason few start-up companies try to build commercial jetliners. “Large, complex systems with slow deployment cycles do not play to venture’s strengths. The whole idea with venture-backed companies is speed, speed, speed.” Mr. Biddle says the size and complexity of energy systems “make 787s look like tinker toys. You need lots of capital, lots of time, lots of people.”

Mr. Gore seems to grasp the scale of the challenge, and the need for government help, telling Fortune magazine, “What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally.” That’s the kind of “green” vision that will require a lot of greenbacks.

We’ll be as happy as the Sierra Club if one or more of these new technologies turns out to solve the secrets of cheap, efficient energy. But we recall the same technological promises being made in the 1970s, the last time the feds poured subsidies into alternative fuels.

Which leads us to suspect that maybe Mr. Gore has been hired by Kleiner Perkins for more than his technological knowhow, investment acumen, or global vision. His new partners may have hired him for the more prosaic task of getting 60 Senate votes to keep those taxpayer greenbacks coming.

In The Kitchen With Heather Mills

It appears that vegan activist (and former Paul McCartney wife) Heather Mills is at it again; this time suggesting some rather unappealing dietary replacements.

According to this London Evening Standard article, Mills said:

“The easiest and most effective way of cutting our contribution is to change our diet and go vegan. It is that simple.

“We are the only species that drinks another creature’s milk so why aren’t we drinking rats’ milk, dogs’ milk or cats’ milk? That is how crazy it is.”

Crazy indeed. Got Rats Milk? No.

CNN’S Politics Of Planting

Considerable question has been raised as to the credibility of “undecided voters” that the mainstream media chooses to place on camera and ask questions of our candidates. Are we to believe that “undecided voters” are average citizens that are taken from the streets to ask pertinent questions? Or, are these people that the mainstream media has carefully chosen, in conjunction with the candidates, to represent a larger agenda?

Hot Air’s Bryan Preston produced this short video that exposes a number of CNN’s “not-so-undecided” voters:

Here We Go Again

First Hillary Clinton recruits Sandy Burglar (Berger), now this:

Sid Blumenthal had cultivated a strong relationship with Hillary Clinton when he was Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, so when he quit to join the Clinton White House in 1997, there were jokes about whether he’d ask for back pay.

Since his controversial tenure as an assistant to the 42nd president–Blumenthal wound up having to testify on the Monica Lewinsky messiness–he has, among other things, been a Bush-bashing columnist for Salon.

Now, to no one’s great shock, Blumenthal is again abandoning the world of punditry to join Hillary’s campaign. Salon Editor Joan Walsh broke the news this morning:
“His incisive thinking and incomparable writing will be missed. Sidney was our Washington bureau chief during the 2004 election, presided over one of the best accounts of George W. Bush’s missing year in the Texas Air National Guard, and has been a weekly Salon columnist since 2003.”

The onetime Washington Post and New Republic writer has plenty of contacts in the press. But he also became something of a lightning rod for criticism during his White House stint, particularly after his longtime friend Christopher Hitchens said Sid had described Lewinsky to him as a “stalker” of the president. Blumenthal’s hiring will undoubtedly give Hillary Clinton’s detractors a new target.

Source - Washington Post - Blumenthal Back to Working For a Clinton (Howard Kurtz)

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