For GOP only

[NorthSideSox72]

What religion are we fighting for? We are "One Nation Under God". I guess all our actions are in the name of Christianity.

I am sure you are aware that the "Under God" part of the pledge was added in the 50's by a red-scared Congress.

[Cknolls]

June 7, 2006 


 

The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes 


309 Hart Senate Office Building 


Washington DC, 20510 


 

Dear Senator Sarbanes,

 

As a native Marylander and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service in an effort to determine the 
process 
 for becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you. 
 My reasons for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to 
illegal alien stem from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's 
provisions is 
accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five years, what 
I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and income 
 taxes 
for three of the last five years.

 

I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious to get the process started before everyone figures it out. 
Simply 
put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes every 
year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This would yield an excellent result for me and my family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005. 


 

Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications. 
 If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become 
illegal (retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be most appreciative.

 

Thank you for your assistance. 


 

Your Loyal Constituent,

Pete McGlaughlin

[Damen]

How many muslims have denounced ANY terrorist act committed against the U.S., U.K., Spain, Israel, Germany, Indonesia, Italy. Any clerics? It is not limited, even though that soundbite plays well. That thinking will kill many more Americans.

 

 

Just because you haven't been listening, doesn't mean that muslims haven't denounced terrorist acts (although, in fairness, the US media rarely covers these denouncements, so its easy to understand why so many Americans think they haven't happened.) But here's an example of some through a quick google search.

 

In mosques and Islamic seminaries from Morocco to Indonesia, moderate Muslims have been scouring the Koran to demonstrate that a true vision of jihad can never be squared with Sept. 11, even while expressing how aggrieved Muslims may be with America over issues Mr. bin Laden has identified in his videotapes, like Israel's treatment of Palestinians, the presence of American troops in the Arabian peninsula and the United States' role in maintaining sanctions against Iraq.

 

"Don't make the mistake of thinking that Osama bin Laden is the true face of a billion Muslims, or the true voice of the Koran," said Dr. Safir Akhtar, a research scholar at the Islamic University in Islamabad, a Saudi-financed institution that has long been a magnet for young militants from around the Islamic world.

 

"He may have a special appeal through his religiosity," Dr. Akhtar said, "and his spartan way of life, and he has certainly drawn deeply from Muslims' deep sense of frustration, but people think of him more as an adventurer than as an Islamic leader, and they know from their own studies that his sense of jihad is deeply flawed."

 

Conversations with ordinary Muslims in Pakistan tend quickly to turn to their disillusionment with the inglorious figure Mr. bin Laden has cut since Sept. 11 — as he counseled future jihadis that "this world is an illusion," valueless beside paradise, and posed for the videotapes with a Kalashnikov and a camouflage jacket, while avoiding the hazards of combat himself. Moreover, many of Islam's most militant theologians now rebuke Mr. bin Laden, who suggested in the videotapes that he cast himself in the mold of Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century.

 

From Cairo, Beirut and Tehran, and a dozen other centers of fervent Islamic belief, pioneers of Mr. bin Laden's kind of jihad — violent, anti- Western, above all anti-American and anti-Israeli — have called him a coward and an enemy of Islam.

 

No example is starker than that of Sheik Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah, spiritual leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Party of God, for 25 years a scourge of Israel and the United States with its suicide bombings and other terror attacks in Lebanon and Israel. After a 1983 truck bombing of a United States Marine barracks near the Beirut airport killed 241 servicemen, American officials accused Sheik Fadlallah of having ordered the attack, an allegation he returned when he blamed the Central Intelligence Agency for a 1985 car bombing outside his Beirut home that killed 75 people.

 

But Sheik Fadlallah, now 66, has been relentless in his condemnation of the attacks in America.

 

He preaches that they were "not compatible with Shariah law," the Koranic legal code, nor with the Islamic concept of jihad, and that the perpetrators were not martyrs as Mr. bin Laden has claimed, but "merely suicides," because they killed innocent civilians, and in a distant land, America. In an interview with a Beirut newspaper, Al Safir, Sheik Fadlallah again accused Mr. bin Laden of having ignored Koranic texts.

 

"There is no concept of jihad as aggressive combat," he said, quoting verses of the Koran that Islamic theologians have argued over for centuries. In misreading these texts, he said, Mr. bin Laden had relied on "personal psychological needs," including a "tribal urge for revenge."

 

An Egyptian-born theologian, Sheik Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, with a history of anti-American militancy even longer than Sheik Fadlallah's, expresses a similar view. From his base in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, the 75-year-old sheik has issued Islamic fatwas, or decrees, on issues like the need for Muslims to boycott McDonald's restaurants, and on husbands' right to beat their wives as long as they do not draw blood.

 

But on the Sept. 11 attacks, he has used language similar to that of Mr. Bush and other American politicians.

 

"Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers the attack on innocent human beings a grave sin," said. "Even in times of war, Muslims are not allowed to kill anybody save the one who is engaged in face-to-face confrontation with them.

 

"Killing hundreds of helpless civilians," he added, "is a heinous crime in Islam."

http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/bin_laden.html

 

Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world’s first “fatwa,” or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader.

 

The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country’s 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain.

 

...he fatwa said that according to the Quran “the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organization al-Qaida ... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam.”

 

It added: “Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of ‘istihlal’ and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such.” The Arabic term ‘istihlal’ refers to the act of making up one’s own laws.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7153214/

 

MORE than 1,000 Egyptian hotel workers, Bedouin sheikhs and foreign dive-school instructors marched through Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday to condemn the bombings.

 

"There is no God but God, and terrorism is the enemy of God," chanted the Egyptian protesters, who included hotel chefs, technicians and road sweepers, as they marched along the main road of Sharm el-Sheikh, hit on Saturday by three bombs.

 

..."People are against those who did this. They have no religion and are not from us, neither as Bedouin nor Egyptians. It is a cowardly act," said Saleh Mohamed, a south Sinai Bedouin wearing flowing robes and a lilac headscarf.

 

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1677142005

 

Just about every time I write about Islam, I get an e-mail or three from people who want to know why “the media” gives “those Muslims” a free pass. If Islam is really such a religion of peace, as President Bush has said, why don’t the so-called moderate Muslims condemn the terrorist bombings?

 

Which is a fair question. Or would be, except for the answer that I already know: Muslim organizations routinely issue denunciations every time there’s a major terror attack. News releases clutter e-mail boxes of reporters as predictably as sunrise. And just as predictably, the condemnations are never considered big news.

 

That’s not the fault of the Muslim groups. They issue their statements. Should they take out ads? Send up fireworks? Include jugglers and fan dancers at their news conferences?

 

But it’s not really the fault of the media that these releases usually end up as one line in a long story, if that. After all, how newsworthy are these now-routine news releases? (It would be much bigger news if they came out in favor of the bombings…)

 

And yet, for a segment of the population, these releases might actually be newsworthy — proof that there are Muslims who oppose bombings.

 

Critics may still ask, with some justification, who these groups actually represent. They may challenge the sincerity or effectiveness of the condemnations. But they’d at least know the condemnations exist.

 

So feel free to forward this dispatch to whomever you think might find it remarkable. I’ll list the releases that have appeared in my e-mail today:

 

1) In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

CAIR CONDEMNS 'BARBARIC' LONDON TERROR ATTACKS

 

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 7/7/05) - A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today condemned this morning's bomb attacks in London as "barbaric crimes."

 

In its statement, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said:

 

"We join Americans of all faiths, and all people of conscience worldwide, in condemning these barbaric crimes that can never be justified or excused. American Muslims offer their sincere condolences to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured in today's attacks and call for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators."

 

The Muslim Council of Britain and other British Islamic groups issued similar condemnations of the attacks and urged Muslims to help in the recovery effort.

 

In 2004, CAIR launched an online petition drive, called "Not in the Name of Islam," designed to disassociate Islam from the violent acts of a few Muslims. SEE: http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=169&page=AA

 

(etc.)

 

2) (Washington, D.C., 7/7/05) This morning, four explosions in central London’s public transportation system have killed scores of people and injured hundreds more.

 

The Muslim Public Affairs Council unequivocally condemns this brutality against the people of London.

 

Islam considers the use of terrorism to be unacceptable for any purpose. Any individual or group that claims that these heinous actions serve as a redress for legitimate grievances is dreadfully mistaken. MPAC condemns the exploitation of people and issues, regardless of the perpetrators and their justifications. This assault is unmistakably an act of terrorism, an attack against humanity.

 

(etc.)

 

3) In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful

 

>

 

MAS CONDEMNS HEINOUS TERROR ACTS IN LONDON

 

http://www.masnet.org/takeaction.asp?id=2594

 

The Muslim American Society (MAS) utterly condemns the heinous acts of

 

terror that rocked the London transit system and killed and injured scores

 

of innocent people. Our most heartfelt condolences and sympathies are

 

extended to the bombing victims and their families.

 

(etc.)

 

4) British Muslims utterly condemn acts of terror

 

The Muslim Council of Britain utterly condemns today's indiscriminate acts of terror in London. These evil deeds makes victims of us all. It is our humanity that must bring us shoulder to shoulder to condemn, to oppose and to overcome those who would spread fear, hatred and death.

 

Our sympathies and our prayers are with the victims, their families and friends. We extend our support and gratitude to the emergency services, the Police and all the frontline services charged with our collective security.

 

"The evil people who planned and carried out these series of explosions in London this morning want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us as a people. All of us must unite in helping the Police to capture these murderers. Yesterday we celebrated as Londoners, euphoric that our great city had secured the Olympic Games. Today we stand aghast as we witness a series of brutal attacks upon our capital city. We were together in our celebration; we must remain together in our time of crisis,” said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

 

(etc.)

 

5) FREE MUSLIMS COALITION CONDEMNS LONDON TERROR ATTACKS

 

(Washington, D.C., 7/7/05) The Free Muslims Coalition (FMC), a national Muslim organization with 15 chapters world wide, condemns the London terror attacks and calls on the silent majority of Muslims to stand up against the terrorists who commit evil in their name.

http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/nwsltr/rel...7.83a85436.html

[southsider2k5]

If Bush lied for us to go to war, what did these guys do?

[Damen]

If Bush lied for us to go to war, what did these guys do?

 

I don't consider statements made about WMD to be lies, by either democrats or Bush. I consider Bush's statements contrary to the intelligence at the time, be it completely contradictory or just distorting what the intelligence had actually stated (ie claiming the aluminum tubes could only be used for procuring uranium when intelligence said the exact opposite and Cheney saying it's "pretty well confirmed" that Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi's in Prague, when it was never confirmed and most intelligence disproved the notion) to be lies.

 

Without getting into all the details I could bring up about how the Bush administration misrepresented the intelligence to the American people, here's the main problem, and why a bunch of quotes from 1998 and 2002 and even Jan 2003 mean very little. We should have called for weapons inspectors to return to Iraq. In order to accomplish that, it was important to back that with the threat of force. But once they were in, the weapons inspectors were finding nothing. Yet the Bush administration was still claiming to the American people that we knew where the weapons sites were. When the UN Inspectors asked for this information so they could follow up on it, the administration did not provide it.

 

That's where Bush went off the deep end. We were being flooded with new intelligence each day the inspectors were on the ground, much of it disproving it what our own intelligence had thought (especially the most absurd intelligence produced out of Rumsfeld's DoD). They proved immediately that the nuclear threat wasn't there. They weren't finding any evidence of an ongoing biological or chemical weapons program.

 

A rational president would have allowed them to continue to do their job, continue with the threat of force, while allowing our resources to complete the job of securing the new Afghan government and catching Bin Ladin. But Bush pulled the inspectors out before they further disproved his case for war (at that time).

 

And the result has been 315 billion dollars spent, thousands of US troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqi civillians killed, all to create a terrorist training ground and, if we're lucky, another Iranian-style theocratic regime. Had they bothered to listen to anyone other than obviously self-serving actors like Ahmed Chalabi and every other neo-conservative idealogue, this all could have been predicted and avoided.

 

But bringing up out-of-context quotes from democratic politicians means absolutely nothing. They didn't make the ill-fated decision to pull out inspectors and invade Iraq. Bush did.

 

Oh, and not to beat a dead horse, but here's some more Muslims denouncing terrorism for you cknoll.

[southsider2k5]

[mreye]

 

That is the best political cartoon I've seen in a long time!

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

That is the best political cartoon I've seen in a long time!

 

 

Pure comedy gold right there!

[samclemens]

Bush Has Met Privately With 1,149 Relatives Of Dead Service Members

[NorthSideSox72]

Bush Has Met Privately With 1,149 Relatives Of Dead Service Members

 

Nice.

[southsider2k5]

[kapkomet]

That's just about the truth. I'm not laughing, either. And hypocrasy exists on this side, too.

[Rex Kickass]

Except it's not.

[mr_genius]

those cartoons are great

 

[kapkomet]

Except it's not.

oh really? It's not the truth? So why is it that they try to vote down all the stuff that the cartoon mocks?

[Rex Kickass]

You can be against the Patriot Act and for tougher measures to fight terrorism. There are few people in the Congress and Senate who oppose NSA surveillance programs as long as they act within the law which would require getting a FISA warrant 72 hours after you actually start the surveillance. Opposing torture is not the same thing as opposing interrogation. And locking someone up forever isn't a problem as long as they are granted due process and the ability to have justice fairly and transparently imposed upon them.

 

The fact that the debate has even been framed between "you either torture terrorists or you coddle them" is everything that's wrong with our political world today IMHO.

[NorthSideSox72]

You can be against the Patriot Act and for tougher measures to fight terrorism. There are few people in the Congress and Senate who oppose NSA surveillance programs as long as they act within the law which would require getting a FISA warrant 72 hours after you actually start the surveillance. Opposing torture is not the same thing as opposing interrogation. And locking someone up forever isn't a problem as long as they are granted due process and the ability to have justice fairly and transparently imposed upon them.

 

The fact that the debate has even been framed between "you either torture terrorists or you coddle them" is everything that's wrong with our political world today IMHO.

I really, really agree. This whole thing where everything has to be one extreme or the other, us versus them... its small-minded and pathetic. And it also seems to parallel the increasing preoccupation with violence in this country.

Edited October 5, 2006 by NorthSideSox72

[southsider2k5]

Fun blog I stumbled accross from another site I frequent...

 

http://gunsnbutter.typepad.com/gunsnbutter...tists_al_g.html

 

Scientists: Al Gore primary cause of global warming

By Calla Dewilde

Environment Reporter

 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A panel of the world's leading climatologists released a "conclusive" study today showing that he existence of former Vice President Al Gore is "the primary cause of global warming."

 

"Ninety-eight percent of global warming can be attributed solely to the existence of Al Gore," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Dhananjay Wilson.

 

"Global temperatures really began to take off in 1948 -- the year Al Gore was born. With highly sensitive devices made possible by a federal earmark Gore himself inserted into a military spending bill back in 1991, we've been able to trace almost all of the rise in the earth's temperature directly to Gore's own physical existence. We think it has something to do with his unstoppable, seething anger. The remaining 2 percent we think is attributable to Gore's dog, Shiloh."

 

Gore was at a United Nations conference on global climate change when the report was released. Asked for comment, he called the report inconclusive and said scientists remained divided on the cause of global warming. He blamed the rise in the earth's temperatures on cigarettes, lava lamps and "that damned Ralph Nader."

 

In the scientific community, however, the findings immediately drew widespread consensus. Scientists worldwide called for an immediate halt to all Al Gore emissions, as well as a global treaty to prevent the creation of any more Al Gores in the future. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said President Bush would immediately sign such a treaty the moment it settled upon his desk.

 

Link to front page http://www.gunsnbutter.com/

[sox4lifeinPA]

it must have been the diet vanilla pepsi, but I thought this said:

 

- A panel of the world's leading dermatologists released a "conclusive" study today

 

instead of

 

- A panel of the world's leading climatologists released a "conclusive" study today

 

I was waiting for the "eating chips gives you pimples..." but then Al Gore's name was mentioned. I was totally off then.

[mreye]

You can be against the Patriot Act and for tougher measures to fight terrorism. There are few people in the Congress and Senate who oppose NSA surveillance programs as long as they act within the law which would require getting a FISA warrant 72 hours after you actually start the surveillance. Opposing torture is not the same thing as opposing interrogation. And locking someone up forever isn't a problem as long as they are granted due process and the ability to have justice fairly and transparently imposed upon them.

 

The fact that the debate has even been framed between "you either torture terrorists or you coddle them" is everything that's wrong with our political world today IMHO.

 

 

I really, really agree. This whole thing where everything has to be one extreme or the other, us versus them... its small-minded and pathetic. And it also seems to parallel the increasing preoccupation with violence in this country.

 

I must have misunderstood something when I read "GOP Only - Sink or swim together"

 

 

Hmmmmmm????

[kapkomet]

I must have misunderstood something when I read "GOP Only - Sink or swim together"

Hmmmmmm????

Oh, don't go there. There's a lot of cross pollination going on, and as long as it's civil, who cares?

[NorthSideSox72]

I must have misunderstood something when I read "GOP Only - Sink or swim together"

Hmmmmmm????

I've pointed it out before... give me one of those online tests that covers a large number of political issues, and believe it or not, I'll side with the GOP (not BushCo, but GOP tenets) almost as often as the Dems. When we did the Prez candidate profiler in here a while back, I was one of only a few whose list wasn't all Dems over GOP or the opposite.

 

Just because I have a lot to complain about, that doesn't automatically make me a Democrat. I'd probably be complaining just as loudly with Dems in office.

[southsider2k5]

Interesting polls from the Foley fallout...

 

An ABC News/Washington Post survey taken Oct. 5 to 8 found that three of every four respondents did not think Democrats would have handled the Foley matter any better, and roughly two in three thought Democrats were pursuing the matter for political gain, not to raise legitimate concerns.

 

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-fo...dlines-politics

[Rex Kickass]

I must have misunderstood something when I read "GOP Only - Sink or swim together"

Hmmmmmm????

 

I have worked for Republican campaigns ya know....

[southsider2k5]

What's good for Hastert...