Conservative Thoughts and Profundity

November 7, 2009

“Fort Hood jihad shooter handed out Korans the morning of his attack”

Filed under: ACT for America — nhiemstra @ 8:23 pm

Will the “Establishment Media” Report the Truth?

The massacre at Ft. Hood yesterday has stunned and grieved America. Everywhere people are asking questions. How could this happen on a secure military installation? What drove him to do it?

Our heavy hearts go out to the families who have suffered this shocking loss.

What is not shocking is the spin the “establishment media” is trying to put on this horrific massacre. For instance, Fox News this morning interviewed a “criminal profiler” who asserted definitively that this attack had nothing to do with religion, that the man was “troubled.” (In fairness to Fox News, they are at least raising the questions about jihadism as a motive.)

Others are suggesting he had some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome — an insult to all our brave soldiers who have actually served in combat (Hasan hasn’t).

CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) immediately jumped into the fray last night, arguing that no religion or ideology could justify this, in spite of the hundreds of passages in Islam’s holy books calling for jihad against non-Muslims. (As our readers know, ACT! for America recently launched a petition calling for a government investigation of CAIR.)

What is largely being ignored is that Hasan was a devout Muslim. An internet post in his name earlier this year compared suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save their comrades. A former colleague, Col. Terry Lee, recalls Hasan arguing “Muslims have the right to rise up against the U.S. military.”

Hasan passed out Korans the morning of the attack and “donated his furniture to anyone who would take it” (see story below). This certainly appears to be the actions of someone preparing for martyrdom.

The story below also notes that he once listed his nationality as “Palestinian” rather than America.

Perhaps Hasan had emotional problems. But there appears to be an abundance of evidence that he was ideologically predisposed to do what he did yesterday. Survivors of the attack said Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire.

The tragedy at Ft. Hood yesterday deeply grieves us and we mourn with those who are mourning. But the tragedy will only be deepened if a politically correct narrative is once again foisted on the American people.

After the succession of Islamist terror plots were recently foiled, many in the media and law enforcement said they could not find any “connection” between the plots — overlooking the obvious jihadist connection. When a Detroit imam was shot to death last week, law enforcement and many in the media went to great lengths to downplay any connection to militant Islam.

And now we see the same pattern taking shape today, in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.

Fort Hood jihad shooter handed out Korans the morning of his attack

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

He handed out Korans? But didn’t what he read in the Book of Peace make him think that he shouldn’t go through with the massacre?

Or maybe he read that Paradise was guaranteed to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111), and took that seriously.

Note also that he affected Islamic clothing — as did another “moderate,” Maher Hawash, before the latter embarked upon his jihad.

“Police raid shooting suspect’s Killeen apartment,” by Victor O’Brien for the Killeen Daily Herald, November 6 (thanks to Ernest):

Bell County SWAT teams barricaded and evacuated a downtown Killeen apartment complex where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan lived before authorities say he killed 13 people and injured 30 more during a massacre at Fort Hood Thursday….

In the morning, neighbors said Hasan handed Qurans and donated his furniture to anyone who would take it.

Neighbors described Hasan as a quiet man who began wearing “Arabic clothing” in recent weeks. Edward Windsor, a neighbor, never suspected Hasan was in the Army. Hasan’s rank surprised Windsor who would never have imagined an officer with a rank of major would have lived in an apartment that rents for $350 and houses soldiers ranked as private first class….

Posted by Robert on November 6, 2009 4:56 AM | 8 Comments

Spencer: Jihad at Fort Hood

In FrontPage this morning, I summarize what we know so far:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, “shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting.” Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR [1], “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post [2] agreed: “The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.” The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that “there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab.”

Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored.

Nidal Malik Hasan was born in Virginia but didn’t think of himself as an American: on a form he filled out at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, he gave his nationality not as “American” but as “Palestinian.” A mosque official found that curious, saying: “I don’t know why he listed Palestinian. He was not born in Palestine.”

He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and has a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. While there, NPR reports, Hasan was “put on probation early in his postgraduate work” and was “disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues.”

He was a staff psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before transferring to Fort Hood earlier this year. While at Walter Reed, he was a “very devout” member of and daily visitor to the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring. Faizul Khan, a former imam at the Center, expressed puzzlement over Hasan’s murders: “To know something like this happened, I don’t know what got into his mind. There was nothing extremist in his questions. He never showed any frustration….He never showed any remorse or wish for vengeance on anybody.”

So he identified himself as Palestinian and was a devout Muslim – so what? These things, of course, have no significance if one assumes that Islam is a Religion of Peace and that when a devout Muslim reads the Koran’s many injunctions to wage war against unbelievers, he knows that they have no force or applicability for today’s world. Unfortunately, all too many Muslims around the world demonstrate in both their words and their deeds that they take such injunctions quite seriously. And Nidal Hasan gave some indications that he may have been among them.

. . . . continue reading . . . .

Pelosi: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

Filed under: infowars — nhiemstra @ 7:01 pm

via: infowars

House Committee On Ways & Means Republicans
November 7, 2009

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail.  The  JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

featured stories   Pelosi: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail
Pelosi

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said:  “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail.  It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

– – – – – – – – – -

If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

– – – – – – – – – -

Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses.  Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties.  The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration.  Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates.  Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the  Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016.

Pelosi’s Flip-Flop

Filed under: Youtube.com — nhiemstra @ 4:21 pm

On September 24, 2009, Speaker Pelosi said she was “absolutely” committed to posting the final health care bill online for 72 hours before it would be voted on. But now, she is trying to force her health care bill through the House without posting it for the American public to read. That’s why we need to take action today.

Cost Of Pelosicare Over True 10 Year Window Is $2.4 Trillion

Filed under: bluegrasspundit — nhiemstra @ 3:11 pm

via: bluegrasspundit


The CBO projection of the cost of Pelosicare includes 4 years of front end loaded taxes and six years after full benefits kick in. A true ten year window is 2014 to 2023. The cost over that time period would be at least $2.4 Trillion according to the Heritage Foundation.

As Heritage analysts noted earlier in the week, the Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary score of the bill (H.R. 3962) but too many in the media have not been reporting its true cost. The true cost is not the net spending on only the coverage related provisions ($897 billion) but rather the total gross spending for the coverage provisions ($1.05 trillion) as well as any additional spending in the bill (approximately $217 billion). That would raise the plan’s price tag to about $1.5 trillion when including the roughly $210 billion cost of the “doc fix” is included. The “doc fix” refers to the undoing of the flawed Medicare payment update formula, which Congress created but has routinely stopped from being enforced. Under current law, that formula would result in a 20 percent reduction in doctors’ pay under the Medicare program.

The real story about the true cost is even more dramatic. The bill is front loaded with taxes, and back-loaded with spending in the first ten years. Since most of the spending in the House bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, the 10-year cost estimates based on the preliminary CBO score (for years 2010 through 2019) only account for six years of new spending under the plan. Once it is implemented (over a full 10-year window from years 2014 to 2023), the giant House health bill carries a price tag of $2.4 trillion, or as much as $2.6 trillion with the “doc fix.”

Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson Becomes Pro-Life After Seeing Abortion Ultrasound

Filed under: Burning Hot — nhiemstra @ 2:01 pm

Amen!!!

Via Moonbattery via Gateway Pundit which has video:

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson’s life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

“I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it,” said Jonhson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition’s executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

As Moonbattery poster Gregory of Yardale adds:

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. – Acts 9:18

For more on why exactly seeing what an abortion looks like might make Abby Johnson become pro-life instead of pro-infanticide, see the following:

    • Hey, Do You Think We Should We Kill Babies? – Then I inserted my forceps into the uterus and applied them to the head of the fetus, which was still alive, since fetal injection is not done at that stage of pregnancy. I closed the forceps, crushing the skull of the fetus, and withdrew the forceps. The fetus, now dead, slid out more or less intact.”

    Obamacare Throws Young Voters Under The Bus

    Filed under: bluegrasspundit — nhiemstra @ 12:54 pm


    President Obama and Democrats in Congress are pushing hard to pass one of their versions of health care reform. The effect of this reform on health insurance premiums will be significant for young Americans. They could see their premiums double and they will face fines and even jail time if they refuse to pay these skyrocketing premiums. Sixty-six percent of voters in the age group of 18-to-29 year-olds voted for President Obama. How’s that hopey-changey thing working out?

    From Cato@Liberty:

    A new study by Cato Adjunct Scholar Aaron Yelowitz concludes that the cost of President Obama’s health care plan would fall inordinately upon younger Americans, meaning they are in essence being asked to subsidize the care of their elders:

    President Obama won the presidency with 66 percent of the vote among 18-to-29 year-olds. That’s a larger share than any presidential candidate has won in decades. Yet his health care overhaul could impose its greatest burdens on young adults, says Yelowitz.

    Health care proposals moving through Congress would force most or all Americans to purchase health insurance (an “individual mandate”) and would impose price controls on health insurance (“community rating”) that would limit insurers’ ability to offer lower premiums to low-risk enrollees.

    Those provisions would drive premiums down for 55-year-olds but would drive them up for 25-year-olds—who are then implicitly subsidizing older adults. According to the Urban Institute, many young people could see their premiums double, whereas premiums for older adults could be cut in half.

    The entire Cato report is here in pdf format.

    10% Unemployment Shows Objective Failure of Obama Stimulus

    Filed under: Heritage.com — nhiemstra @ 12:49 pm

    Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind.

    And since that report was issued, a once compliant press has filed story after story tearing the credibility of the Obama administration’s job creation claims to shreds. Just enter the words “stimulus”, “jobs”, and “report” in a Google News search and these are just some of the headlines you will receive:

    Luckily the American people do not need to count on phony new jobs studies to provide the objective data necessary to hold President Barack Obama accountable for his economic policies. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s. When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs.

    Today, BLS released its monthly jobs report and the numbers speak for themselves. The economy shed another 190,000 jobs in October, bringing the number of jobs lost since Obama was sworn in to 3.8 million. Worse still, the unemployment rate rose from 9.8% to 10.2% percent. With only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

    The Obama stimulus failed because it was based on faulty Keynesian beliefs. Heritage fellow J.D. Foster explains:

    The Keynesian stimulus theory fails for the simple reason that it is only half a theory. It correctly describes how deficit spending can raise the level of demand in part of the economy, and ignores how government borrowing to finance deficit spending automatically reduces demand elsewhere.

    Fortunately, the economy’s natural recuperative powers may be ending the recession. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at 3.5%. But if this recovery is going to include job growth along with GDP growth, then job killing initiatives like Obamacare and cap and trade will have to be abandoned.

    Quick Hits:

    Expanding Medicaid Means Reducing Education

    Filed under: Heritage.com — nhiemstra @ 10:41 am

    In his September address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama stated he would be the last President to take on health care. Perhaps, but that may be at the cost of everything else, including education.

    By expanding Medicaid in the health care bill, Congress will set off political tornadoes across the country that will leave governors and state legislators to clean up afterward. The math is simple. State revenues are still in a slump and will continue for a least a few more years. The two largest state and local expenditures are education and Medicaid. If you have a balance a budget, which nearly every state does, and you cannot touch the entitlement to Medicaid, where will you turn to fill the budget gap? There will be little choice than to go after education.

    According to The Fiscal Survey of States, published by the National Association of State Budget Officers, 31 states cut higher education and 26 states cut K-12 education in 2009. Even with additional federal funding for Medicaid, 25 states still made reductions in Medicaid by cutting reimbursement to providers. Next year will be more of the same. Some states are already reporting higher Medicaid costs due not only to increased enrollment because of higher unemployment but also because of packed emergency rooms due to the swine flu. Governors of both parties are wondering whether Washington really knows what is going on around the country.

    There are more former governors serving in the U.S. Senate than in the U.S. House of Representatives which means the Senate should be more aware of the Medicaid vs Education cage match. When legislation gets to the Senate floor, it will be interesting to watch whether the “former governor caucus” will work together across party lines to protect all states or only their own.

    Congress and the President have incorporated all sorts of budget gimmicks to protect the federal budget. But they will be wrecking havoc on state budgets.

    For more on Medicaid and Obamacare see:

    Federalization of Medicaid: Health Reform Bill Would Reduce State Authority

    Why Congress Wants to Force More Americans into Medicaid

    The Baucus Medicaid Provisions: The Senate’s Massive Welfare Expansion

    How the Pelosi Plan Kills Jobs

    Filed under: Heritage.com — nhiemstra @ 9:25 am

    Today the Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported that despite all of the Obama administration’s job creation claims, unemployment has risen to 10.2%. Instead of focusing on job creation, the left in Congress continues to pursue other priorities like their $1.5 trillion health care plan which is partially finance by job killing employer mandates. See chart below:

    mandatetax

    A recent study by the Kaufman Foundation found that small businesses have led America out of its last seven recessions, generating about two of every three new jobs during a recovery. But as Heritage’s John Ligon explains, Pelosi care discourages small business hiring at a time when government should be getting out of the way:

    Health care reform cannot ignore how such legislation’s employer coverage mandates would negatively impact small businesses. The Pelosi plan eliminates the exemption for businesses with 25-49 workers created in the Baucus plan, and it would also impose new marginal penalties on small firms with 25 or fewer workers. This creates a punitive cost for firms, which significantly raises the costs for businesses on the margin.

    Establishing disincentives for small firms to grow would lead to a slower, less robust economy–and labor market. Altering these incentive structures is harmful to small businesses and the way they allocate labor. Federal health care reform legislation, therefore, should avoid creating steep new marginal costs relating to business growth–particularly in terms of wages and worker compensation.

    What Superman and Barack Obama Don’t Have in Common

    Filed under: Heritage.com, Youtube.com — nhiemstra @ 8:54 am

    When Superman rescued a small boy who was plummeting toward the depths of Niagara Falls, it was pretty clear that the kid was in danger and that, but for Superman’s ability to fly, the boy would have faced certain death. It goes without saying that if the boy were not in danger, Clark Kent wouldn’t have donned his cape and flown to the rescue.

    Well, back to the surreality of modern American politics, it appears that the purported success of President Barack Obama’s Super Stimulus is as fictional as the Man of Steel, but many of the jobs that Obama claimed to save weren’t in need of rescue.

    That, of course, didn’t stop his administration from playing hero in California and taking credit for saving some 26,156 jobs, all at the cost of $268.5 million.

    According to the Sacramento Bee:

    In a required state report to the federal government, the [California State University] system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

    That total represents more than half of CSU’s statewide work force. However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

    “This is not really a real number of people,” CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. “It’s like a budget number.”

    This story comes on the heels of latest reported jobs numbers, which we at The Foundry have said evidences the objective failure of President Obama’s stimulus. It’s not a pretty report card.

    The economy shed another 190,000 jobs in October, bringing the number of jobs lost since Obama was sworn in to 3.8 million. Worse still, the unemployment rate rose from 9.8% to 10.2% percent. With only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people.

    This week, President Obama noted that he holds his daughters to a high standard of academic success and said that, as parents, “You’ve got to set a high bar.”

    Perhaps the president should set a higher bar of success for U.S. job growth, recognize the truth behind the failure of his stimulus, see a failing grade for what it is, and leave fantastical tales of dramatic rescues to the experts at DC Comics.

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