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Minnesota Muslims brutally honest: 'We want Shariah'

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A French Soldier's View of US Soldiers in Afghanistan

"We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing "ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events". Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.

They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever State they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other. Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine- they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.

And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.Here we discover America as it is often depicted: their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley.

And combat? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks: they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

(This is the main area where I'd like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: 'If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white/remember it's ruin to run from a fight./ So take open order, lie down, sit tight/ And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. 'In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.' Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.

This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder it surprises the hell out of our enemies.)

We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America's army's deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers".

Source:
A French Soldier's View of US Soldiers in Afghanistan - Warrior Lodge

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Michelle Malkin: Entrepreneurs are not 'lottery winners'

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There he goes again.

Barack Obama, who insists he is "president of all America," lashed out last week at well-off citizens. Peddling higher taxes to further fund the failed 50-year-old, $22 trillion War on Poverty, he singled out the "top 25 hedge fund managers" for scorn at Georgetown University, President Obama's class-envy diatribe applies to everyone who has earned too much for his taste. "You pretty much have more than you'll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use," Obama scoffed — as if capitalists stash their capital like toilet paper in the utility closet.

Our president then casually derided America's top achievers as "society's lottery winners" who need to stop being selfish and start being their "brother's keepers."

For radical progressives, life is a Powerball drawing. Success is random. Economic achievement is something to be rectified and redistributed to assuage guilt. Only those who take money, not those who make it by offering goods and services people want and need, act in the public interest. Those who seek financial enrichment for the fruits of their labor are cast as rapacious hoarders in Obama World — and so are the private investors who support them.


Read more:
Michelle Malkin: Entrepreneurs are not 'lottery winners'

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FCC's Open Internet Order Won't Stand Up To The First Amendment - Forbes

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Is watching Netflix on the broadband Internet more like (A) watching cable television or (B) talking on the telephone? Common sense suggests the answer is “A,” and the court that overturned the previous open Internet rules chose “A”; the First Amendment demands it. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nevertheless chose “B.”

In the 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC concluded the Internet is the functional equivalent of the public switched telephone network and is subject to the common carrier regulations in Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. If it had admitted the Internet offers communications capabilities that are functionally equivalent to the printing press, mail carriage, newspaper publishing, over-the-air broadcasting, and cable television combined, it would have been too obvious that its decision to classify broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers is unconstitutional. Like all other means of disseminating mass communications, broadband Internet access is a part of the press that the First Amendment protects from common carriage regulation.

Read more:
FCC's Open Internet Order Won't Stand Up To The First Amendment - Forbes

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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - Scientific American

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When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

Read the rest of this story:
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense - Scientific American

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Laura Bush on First Lady Salary (C-SPAN)

'Just Asking' - Thomas Sowell

In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave
another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric -- and disregard of reality.

One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor.

Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just "ask" for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.

Despite pious rhetoric on the left about "asking" the more fortunate for more money, the government does not "ask" anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don't pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.
So please don't insult our intelligence by talking piously about "asking."

And please don't call the government's pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit "investment." Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about "investing in the industries of the future"? After Solyndra and other companies in which he "invested" the taxpayers' money went bankrupt, we haven't heard those soaring words so much.
Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama's rhetoric, these producers are called "society's lottery winners."

Was Bill Gates a lottery winner? Or did he produce and sell a computer operating system that allows billions of people around the world to use computers, without knowing anything about the inner workings of this complex technology?

Was Henry Ford a lottery winner? Or did he revolutionize the production of automobiles, bringing the price down to the point where cars were no longer luxuries of the rich but vehicles that millions of ordinary people could afford, greatly expanding the scope of their lives?

Most people who want to redistribute wealth don't want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want "the rich" to pay their undefined "fair share" of taxes. This "fair share" must remain undefined because all it really means is "more."

Once you have defined it -- whether at 30 percent, 60 percent or 90 percent -- you wouldn't be able to come back for more.
  
Read more:
'Just Asking' - Thomas Sowell - Page 2

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When Did America Turn Into Such A Nation Of Wimps?

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When I think about America, I think of the Founding Fathers who were willing to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” to defeat Great Britain and make this a free country. I think of John Paul Jones saying, "I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way." I think not only of the brave men who died fighting for their countrymen at the Alamo, but of Sam Houston and his force slaughtering a Mexican force twice their size in retaliation during the Battle of San Jacinto. I think of Teddy Roosevelt getting shot in the chest by an assassin at a political rally and then FINISHING his 90 minute speech before getting medical attention.

I think of the line from George Patton’s speech that was immortalized in the movie,

"When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans."

Americans toughed it out through the Depression, saved the world in WWI, WWII and the Cold War -- and then just to put a cherry on top of it, we put a man on the moon.

We live in a warrior culture. Our most popular movies feature gun-toting SEALS, ferocious cops who dispense justice one bullet at a time and superheroes who throw tanks farther than you can throw a Frisbee. We love mixed martial arts and football where 300 pound behemoths slam into each other with enough force to break a normal man’s back on every play. Even our children play video games that quite literally allow them to rip their virtual opponent’s heart out and show it to them before they die.

Despite all of that, this country has become increasingly soft and decadent. What the hell happened to us?

How did we get to the point where our politicians have handcuffed the greatest military in the history of Planet Earth to such an extent that we can’t seem to ultimately “win” wars anymore? How did our rules of engagement become so restrictive that we’d rather see our own men die or even lose the war rather than win and kill enemy civilians at the same time?

How did we turn into a nation where parents face jail time for letting kids play unsupervised in the park?

Read the rest:
When Did America Turn Into Such A Nation Of Wimps? - John Hawkins - Page 2

The Bible is Fiction: A Collection of Evidence

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The similarities between the stories and characters in the Bible and those from previous mythologies are both undeniable and well-documented. It is only due to extreme the extreme religious bias that pervades our world today that people rarely get exposed to this information.

In this short piece I’ll attempt to show blatant similarities with regard to two of the most important Biblical narratives: the Genesis story and the character of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Genesis’s Flood Story Mirrors The Epic Of Gilgamesh From Hundreds Of Years Earlier

Here are a number of elements that both Gilgamesh and the flood story in Genesis share:

1. God decided to send a worldwide flood. This would drown men, women, children, babies and infants, as well as eliminate all of the land animals and birds.
2. God knew of one righteous man, Ut-Napishtim or Noah.
3. God ordered the hero to build a multi-story wooden ark (called a chest or box in the original Hebrew), and the hero initially complained about the assignment to build the boat.
4. The arc would have many compartments, a single door, be sealed with pitch and would house one of every animal species.
5. A great rain covered the land with water.
6. The arc landed on a mountain in the Middle East.
7. The first two birds returned to the ark. The third bird apparently found dry land because it did not return.
8. The hero and his family left the ark, ritually killed an animal, offered it as a sacrifice.
9. The Babylonian gods seemed genuinely sorry for the genocide that they had created. The God of Noah appears to have regretted his actions as well, because he promised never to do it again.

Keep in mind the level of detail in these similarities. It’s not a matter of just a flood, but specific details: three birds sent out, resisting the call to build the arc, and a single man being chosen by God to build the arc. Then consider that the first story (Gilgamesh) came from Babylon — hundreds of years before the Bible was even written.

Do you honestly think, based on the similarities above, that those who wrote the Genesis story had not heard the Gilgamesh story? And if they had heard it, and they were simply rehashing an old, very popular tale, what does that say about the Bible?

Continue reading:
The Bible is Fiction: A Collection of Evidence

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Yes, There's A Republican Health Care Plan: Bobby Jindal's Plan | RedState

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There’s a Republican alternative to Obamacare – a health insurance plan rolled out today by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. It’s not only a better plan, but starts with a better way to think about how we pay for healthcare.

The Search For A Republican Alternative

One of the hoary, beaten-to-death talking points of Obamacare’s last-ditch defenders has been that it’s impossible to repeal the Affordable Care Act because there isn’t an alternative on the table. Of course, while there are some transitional issues that would arise in unwinding the damage Obamacare has done to the pre-Obamacare insurance market, if you believe (as most Obamacare critics do) that the statute has made things on balance worse, then there’s no reason why Congress couldn’t or shouldn’t first tear the thing up and then get to work finding a different way to improve our healthcare system. And part of what is at work in this line of criticism is the Wonk Hack Trap: the desire of liberal policy writers and Democratic ad-makers to force Republicans to submit detailed plans to be picked apart with one-sided propaganda before there is any realistic prospect of them even being seriously debated, and possibly improved, in Congress (see this Jonathan Chait piece on the 2015 Ryan budget for a classic example of the genre – of course, with Harry Reid running the Senate, no Republican policy proposal has any prospect of being considered for a vote).

But as Ben Domenech has noted, there are actually a number of principles that already attract the consensus support of most Republican lawmakers:

1. They want to end the tax bias in favor of employer-sponsored health insurance to create full portability (either through a tax credit, deductibility, or another method);
2. They want to reform medical malpractice laws (likely through carrot incentives to the states);
3. They want to allow for insurance purchases across state lines;
4. They want to support state-level pre-existing condition pools;
5. They want to fully block grant Medicaid;
6. They want to shift Medicare to premium support;
7. They want to speed up the FDA device and drug approval process; and
8. They want to maximize the health savings account model, one of the few avenues proven to lower health care spending, making these high deductible + HSA plans more attractive where Obamacare hamstrung them.

The best time to put such plans on the table is in a presidential campaign, or when the party holds both Houses of Congress (as it may next year, but does not now) and can pass at least parts of it and force the President to veto. Unfortunately, in 2012, Republicans were unable to offer a forceful message on this issue, because their candidate had already signed into law a plan nearly identical to Obamacare at the state level, and was generally interested in avoiding discussion of specific plans. Many Republicans would prefer to just stay silent for now, at least until 2015, in hopes of capitalizing on longstanding voter dissatisfaction with Obamacare. But with the Senate up for grabs and potential presidential candidates beginning to gear up, Governor Jindal has decided that it’s time to put his cards on the table with a plan that includes many of these elements and some specific ideas of his own.

Jindal is already a veteran of the healthcare wars. In 1996, he was appointed – at age 24 – as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, running the entire state hospital system, and in 1998 he served as Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a Clinton-created bipartisan commission. A bipartisan majority of the commission ended up recommending a “premium support” plan for Medicare reform based on a model that Jindal had originally put together as a Congressional intern – a plan that (in varying forms) has resurfaced in Paul Ryan’s annual budget proposals. Jindal went on to work as a policy advisor to Tommy Thompson in the Bush-era Department of Health and Human Services before his tenure as a Congressman and Governor, and he’s been engaged in healthcare issues in his two terms as Governor of Louisiana. So, his plan is not merely a thrown-together campaign document, but represents his long-term thinking about how to approach healthcare.

Read the rest here:
Yes, There's A Republican Health Care Plan: Bobby Jindal's Plan | RedState

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