Is the US Ship of State Sinking?

Any reform short of single payer and the nationalization of health insurance companies delays our recovery. If we allow SCOTUS to expand campaign contributions, the special interests will end any chance of reform or of economic recovery.
Americans failed to notice the fall of the Republic [1950] or the demise of the Bill of Rights [2001]. How much liberty must we lose before we become aware of the loss? Pundits discussing these matters remind of the rats arguing the best ways to desert the sinking ship.

Pakistani Christian Gets Life under Blasphemy Laws

Pakistani Christian Gets Life in Prison under ‘Blasphemy’ Law

By Jawad Mazhar


FAISALABAD, Pakistan (CDN) — A young Christian shopkeeper was sentenced to life term in prison and fined more than $1,000 last week following a dubious conviction of desecrating the Quran, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP).

Peter Jacob, general secretary of the NCJP, said 22-year-old Imran Masih of the Faisalabad suburb of Hajvairy was convicted of desecrating the Quran (Section 295-B of Pakistan’s legal code) and thereby outraging religious feelings (Section 295-A) by Additional District & Sessions Judge Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan on Jan. 11.

The conviction was based on the accusation of a rival shopkeeper who, as part of an Islamic extremist proselytizing group, allegedly used a mosque loudspeaker system to incite a mob that beat Masih and ransacked his shop.

Neighboring shopkeeper Hajji Liaquat Abdul Ghafoor accused Masih of tearing out pages of the Quran and burning them on July 1, 2009. Denying that he burned any pages of the Quran, Masih told investigators that the papers he burned were a heap of old merchandise records he had gathered while cleaning his store.


The shopkeepers added that Ghafoor was a hard-line Muslim and part of an Islamic proselytizing group.

Section 295-B of Pakistan’s legal code, desecrating the Quran, is punishable by imprisonment for life. In accordance with Section 295-A (instigating religious hatred and outraging religious feelings), Masih was also sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 rupees (US$1,170); if he is unable to pay the fine, he will be assessed an additional six months in jail.

A conviction for blaspheming Muhammad (Section 295-C) is punishable by death under Pakistani’s notorious blasphemy laws. Widely condemned by the international community as easily invoked to settle personal enmities, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have come under review in recent months, but to no avail.

The laws are routinely invoked to harass members of minority communities.

Additionally, while police cannot make arrests without a court-issued warrant for Section 295-A, they can arrest suspected blasphemers under sections 295-B and 295-C on the complaint of a single individual.

Source: Anti-Mullah

The Palestinians Do Not Want a State

Ehud Yaari, a less optimistic commentator, sat for five weeks in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and wrote a paper entitled “Armistice Now: An Interim Agreement for Israel and Palestine.” ....

Yaari’s basic assumption is that the Palestinians do not really want a state, not if it entails resigning themselves to dividing the land. The Palestinian strategy is to collapse into the arms of Israel. From Israel’s perspective, that is disastrous. It must force them to establish a state. Since they are incapable of signing a comprehensive agreement, they must be compelled to establish a state as part of an interim agreement.

It appears that Yaari’s basic assumption is correct. Abu Mazen and his colleagues in Fatah are missing two vital ingredients for the establishment of a state—willingness to impose painful concessions, and the desire and ability to take responsibility for everything that the day-to-day running of a state requires. The only one in the Palestinian leadership who is working seriously in this direction is Salam Fayyad. It is no accident that he is not a member of Fatah. It is no accident that he sees David Ben-Gurion, rather than Yasser Arafat, as a model to emulate. ....

Source: Laura Rosen, Politico

Official Iranian Brothels - Temporary Wives

Using "temporary marriage" religious laws

IRAN MULLAHS OPEN A BROTHEL ORGANIZATION AND HAVE PUT OUT ADVERTISING FOR VIRGIN WORKERS

(official website)
http://www.aqrazavi.org/
(audio played indicates evening ceremonies)

Information received from sources inside Iran

"To render service to male pilgrims to the holy site of Imam Reza - Astan Quds Razavi - (saint of miracles, in Mashhad, N.E. Iran and hometown of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), who are away from their wives, the holy Endowment will provide them with "temporary wives".

With this in view, we need to recruit such temporary wives (seegheh) aged 12 - 35 years old, who must be virgins and must provide the following:

- Two full length photographs
- Certification by the local Dept.of Health authorities:
confirming they are virgins and in good health (physical and emotional)
- Education diplomas
- Written permission, if they are under 16-years old, from a male head of family (father, grandfather or paternal uncle to participate in this project

Each female participant will sign a two year contract and be available for 25-days a month for their duties with a 5-hour minimum assignment and 10-day average.

Remuneration to act as temporarty wives will be as follows:

(quoted in equivalent Iranian Rials)

5-hours: $50
1-day: $75
2-days: $100
3-days: $150
4-days to 10-days: $300 (total)

An addition a one time $100 will be paid for loss of virginity

FIVE PERCENT OF THE EARNINGS WILL BE WITHHELD AND DONATED TO THE IMAM REZA ENDOWMENT ORGANIZATION

At the end of two years, if still under the age of 35-years and in good health, the contract may be renewed according to a waiting list priority

(The advertisement/announcement ends as follows):

Baargaheh Imam Reza
Shaheed (martyr) Navab Safavi
Sahneh Kossar (Kossar hall)
Daftareh Omour Sigheh (Office of the Temporary Wives)

For more information contact:

Haj Mahmoud Momtaz
Tel: 00 985-11222- 5790

Or visit http://www.aqrazavi.org/

Source: Anti-Mullah

The Karl Rove Incubator

A group that includes leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and several senior officials of the last Bush administration is denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.

Senate Republicans have demanded details of the lawyers' past work and Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” has questioned their “values." A drumbeat of Republican criticism forced the Justice Department reluctantly to identify seven of them last week. But the harshness of the criticism – Keep America Safe labeled a group of them the “Al Qaeda Seven” — has provoked a backlash from across the legal establishment.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34050.html#ixzz0hfK0GB4n

The Age of Obama is a Racial Nightmare

Recent data shows, though, that much of black progress is a myth. In many respects, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and uprisings swept inner cities across America. Nearly a quarter of African Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same percentage as in 1968. The black child poverty rate is actually higher now than it was then. Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that’s with affirmative action!

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our “colorblind” society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure -- the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.

This is not the Martin Luther King dream. This is not the Promised Land. The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.

Michelle Alexander, Tomdispatch

GOP Bringing Down America

"Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?
Andrew McCarthy
Indeed. Look at it from the Dems' point of view. You pass Obamacare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years. And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier. That's a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.
Mark Steyn

McCarthy and Steyn assume that HCR in its present form will become law through reconciliation. They claim HCR is so unpopular the 2010 mid-terms will be a disaster for the Democrats. With Obama in the WH till 2012, he can veto bills posed by Republicans to amend the HCR.
The major problem with this scenario is that much-needed reform in areas such as education, alternative energy, collective bargaining [EFCA], deficit financing, banking and the stock market will stall. The factors that combined to start the first major recession remain in place to bring about a second one.
Both McCarthy and Steyn think GOP obstructionism will put the economy into neutral for two years while the Republicans regain the Presidency in 2012. Many economists believe other dynamics such as joblessness, homelessness, financial chaos, war and trade deficits will continue to extract a toll.