Gee, Joe. Maybe a nifty statue of Pee Wee Gaskins, next

Musings

Comments from the Dock

Are We At War with Islam?

I have noticed this for a while. I don’t think we understand what’s happenning.

This is very long. We live in a sound-bite world. Take the time to read this.

Draw your own conclusions.

The Islam Tax
copyright (c) CBSX, LLC

Bill Warner,
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam

January 25, 2010

Look at your next airline ticket and you will find a “Security Fee”. What is the Security Fee that was passed after September 11, 2001? It is an Islam tax. It is more money out of an American’s pocket to pay for the privilege of living with Muslims amongst us.

It turns out that we pay an enormous amount of money for our life with Islam. Let’s look at a list of expenses that we bear because of Islamic ideology. If there were no Islam we would not have the Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, all that so-called terrorist work by the FBI, rebuilding the World Trade Center and who knows what else. The Iraq war has cost about $700 billion, the Afghan war has cost about $250 billion and all of the government agencies cost in the neighborhood of tens of billions per year. We are up to at least a TRILLION dollars of our Islam tax. That little $10 Security Fee may seem small, but that is for every round trip ticket sold in the US. What will the trial in NYC for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed cost? Millions of dollars. And the hits just keep coming.

Another part of the Islam tax is the jizyah (the dhimmi tax) that we call foreign aide. We pay various Islamic governments, including Egypt, Pakistan, the so-called Palestinians and others. Why do we pay the jizyah? We want to be friends (Never mind the 12 verses in the Koran that say that Muslims are never the friends of kafirs, unbelievers).

We are bringing Muslim refugees into America where they receive more benefits than American citizens, another Islam tax.

Why did Islam attack the World Trade Towers? Because they were the World TRADE Towers, an economic target. What was the purpose? To destroy the economy of America.

The Islam tax is a trillion dollars and counting. If we did not have this tax, it would certainly ease the economic crunch we have today.

This economic squeeze is 1400 years old. Mohammed created jihad, civilizational war. His concept of war was very sophisticated and included all forms of force against kafirs. He used threats, spies, secret agents, slavery, sex, propaganda, assassinations, deception, religious attacks, and the destruction of kafir economies.

As soon as Mohammed started his jihad, he warred against the economy of the kafirs. He kept up a running attack on the trade caravans of Mecca. When he attacked one tribe of Jews in Medina, he destroyed their economic base—their date palm plantations. This act was against the Arab customs of war, but Allah said it was a good thing. When he attacked Taif, he destroyed their plantations as well. Economic war.

One of his last acts was to attack the Christians north of Medina. Once he had crushed them, he made them pay the jizyah tax (the dhimmi tax). He did the same to the Jews of Khaybar. The jizyah tax was 50% of their income.

All Islam has to do is to keep up the attack. It does not matter whether they win or lose a particular battle. The more Islam practices jihad, the more we deny it and create some governmental nightmare that avoids the ideological war with Islam, but costs a fortune. Our self-deception is bankrupting us.

Islam produces poverty. Without oil, the income to all of the Arabic nations is less than that of Spain. This is not an accident. Mohammed was a businessman, but after he became a prophet, all of the money he made came from the loot from his victims, not a great business model. Mohammed knew how to bleed his enemies dry. We are bleeding today as a result of the Islamic war against the kafirs.

But Islam does not just tax kafirs for money. Kafirs have to submit to Sharia law and this means the loss of freedoms. Only Muslims are allowed to dictate what is taught about Islam in our schools. Islam gains the benefits of a deceitful history lesson, and we lose our freedom of speech. This is a tax on our Constitutional freedoms.

Everyday we submit a little more to Sharia law when we allow Muslims to take time off to pray at work and school. Article 6 of our Constitution says that our Constitution is the law of the land, but we are submitting to the demands of Sharia law when we declare that the sports facilities must be divided in use so that Muslim women can obey Sharia laws about mixing sexes. Our sovereignty decreases and Sharia law gains. This is a tax against our laws.

So now in America, kafirs are poorer and Muslims are richer because of Islam.

Political Correctness Kills, Says Islam Expert Tuesday, 26 Jan 2010 By: Ken Timmerman

The U.S. military missed multiple direct warnings that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was contemplating mass mayhem once he learned he was going to be deployed to Afghanistan but ignored them because of political correctness, an Australian scholar of Islam told Newsmax in Washington, D.C. recently.

“At a certain point, someone explained to Major Hasan that he had a duty to fight Americans and that if he didn’t, he would go to Hell,” says Dr. Mark Durie, who has written several books on Islamic ideology. Hi latest is, “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom.”

Hasan made a presentation to Army colleagues 18 months before the Fort Hood massacre, warning them that Muslim soldiers were compelled by Quranic teaching to turn against the U.S. military if they were ordered into combat against fellow Muslims.

“A public debate needs to take place about whether . . . an Islamic worldview can be in conflict with loyalty” to the United States or any other non-Muslim country, Durie said. “This debate needs to be pursued without being censored by political correctness.”

And yet, the 86-page Pentagon report on the Ford Hood massacre, released last week, failed to mention the words “Islam” “Muslim” or “jihad,” and called Hasan’s actions the product of “self-radicalization.”

Challenged at a press conference where he presented his findings last week, the report’s main author, former U.S. Army chief Togo West, dismissed Hasan’s Muslim faith as a cause of his murderous rampage.

“Suppose it were fundamentalist-Christian-inspired,” West said. “Our concern is not with the religion. It is with the potential effect on our soldiers’ ability to do their job.”

For Durie such views are profoundly misguided, since they fail to take into account the guidance Muslim authorities are providing to their co-religionists around the world on how they should live and interact with the West.

Durie cited recent rulings by some of the world’s most respected Islamic jurists on the subject of “divided loyalties” that eventually drove Hasan to murder.

“Their rulings presuppose that naturalization in a non-Muslim nation, without proper justification, is unacceptable,” he said. A condition for making naturalization acceptable was that the Muslim should not seek to advance the cause of his adopted nation above that of Islam, for example, by fighting against fellow Muslims.”

Rulings calling on Muslims to reject assimilation into non-Muslim societies are not being issued by clerics the West would call radical, but by mainstream Muslim authorities who are currently advising the U.S. government on issues such as Shariah finance, Durie said.

“Major Hasan explained, citing chapter and verse, the beliefs that could lead to a member of the U.S. armed forces attacking his fellow soldiers. He cited examples where they had happened before.”

Dure said that Muslim scholars and interest groups in the West have engaged in a massive campaign to disguise the true nature and goals of Islam. They lie about the true content of Muslim scripture, claim that key quotes calling for violence have been mistranslated, and advance spurious allegations of victimization that have no basis in fact.

He pointed to the violence that erupted in the Muslim world when Pope Benedict XVI made a public reference during a speech in Regensburg to Islam’s historical practice of spreading the faith through violent jihad.

The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abd’al-Aziz al-Sheikh, issued a press release to refute the Pope’s claim, objecting that the sword was only “the last resort” offered to non-Muslims who refused to convert or surrender to the armies of Islam.

While Muslims expect to be allowed to live without hindrance in non-Muslim societies, “Islamic teaching doesn’t accept reciprocity” when it comes to non-Muslims living under Islam.

“From the Islamic perspective, non-Muslims are expected to display two psychological characteristics as part of their surrender. One is a sense of gratitude to the Islamic community for having spared their lives. The other is a sense of their own inferiority.”

Durie says he sees both on display in the actions and speeches of President Obama, in particular his frequent references to the “debt” the U.S. owes the Muslim world.

“The important thing about what President Obama is saying is not whether it is factual or not, but the need to express gratitude as a means of engaging the Muslim world.” This is the response demanded of the “dhimmi,” or the subjected peoples who live under Muslim rule, Durie argues.

Many in the West wonder whether Islam can undergo a Protestant-style “reformation” and become more West-oriented and less violent. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars since the Sept. 11 attacks trying to foster “moderate” Muslim thinkers and institutions.

Durie thinks these are wasted efforts. “Reformation in Islam is already happening, and al-Qaida is the product,” he says.

The Quran itself calls for “virtually unlimited war against unbelievers,” Durie writes in “The Third Choice,” citing chapter and verse of the Islamic text. “It is a sad fact that incitement against non-Muslims, and specifically against followers of biblical faiths, is an integral part of Islam, being hardwired into the Quran and the Sunna,” the authoritative Muslim texts.

The key concept the West needs to understand is “fitna,” an Arabic word that means “trial, persecution, or temptation” and is used in Islamic texts to describe efforts by non-Muslims to inhibit the spread of Islam.

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is currently on trial in Holland for engaging in “hate speech,” because he made an 18-minute film called “Fitna” that juxtaposes quotes from the Quran and from prominent Muslim scholars with scenes of Islamist terrorist attacks.
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

An email I recieved on January 25th:
This is written by a woman born and raised in Egypt and later in Gaza. Joys of Muslim Women

by Nonie Darwish

In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child. Consummating the marriage by 9.

The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.

Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce.

To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses.

Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives ‘at will’ and he does not have to say why he has beaten her.

The husband is permitted to have (4 wives) and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.

The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.

In the West World ( America ) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.

By passing this on, enlightened American women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law.

Ripping the West in Two.

Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.

She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.

Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to America in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel .. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza .

When he died, he was considered a “shahid,” a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.

But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.

In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law – what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.

For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.

Peace and prosperity for one’s children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.

While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics – one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.

While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.

It’s hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.

While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.

In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so… You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA .. Dearborn Mich. is one… and there are others…

I think everyone in the U.S. should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.. the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion.. While America is getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on America .

Now, the clincher:

Former WMD Chief: Al-Qaida Awaiting Nukes
Tuesday, 26 Jan 2010
By: Theodore Kettle

A new report by retired longtime intelligence officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as chief of the CIA’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Department, accuses the U.S. government of seriously misreading al-Qaida’s operational objectives.

“Al-Qaida’s reasoning,” according to Mowatt-Larssen’s new report from Harvard’s Kennedy School, “runs counter to analytic convention that equates the ease of acquisition of chemical, biological or radiological weapons with an increasing likelihood of terrorist use — i.e., a terrorist attack employing crude weapons is therefore more likely than an attack using a nuclear or large scale biological weapon.”

“In fact, it is the opposite” of that conventional wisdom, according to the analysis, entitled “Al-Qaida Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality.” Al-Qaida’s motivations suggest “the greatest threat is posed by the most effective and simple means of mass destruction, whether these means consist of nuclear, biological, or other forms of asymmetric weapons.”

That makes all the scarier the scolding that came this week from the congressionally authorized Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation. That panel gave the Obama administration an F grade for its performance in preparing the U.S. homeland for a terrorist attack that utilized biological warfare.

Mowatt-Larssen was stationed in Moscow and other critical venues in the course of his long career gathering intelligence. The details he provides of al-Qaida’s scheming in this report are nothing short of chilling.

“Considering the potential that such weapons hold in fulfilling al-Qaida’s aspirations,” it says, “their WMD procurement efforts have been managed at the most senior levels, under rules of strict compartmentalization from lower levels of the organization, and with central control over possible targets and timing of prospective attacks.”

That kind of planning suggests extreme sophistication and patience – a willingness to wait until such an operation against the U.S. could be sure to work. According to Mowatt-Larssen, “their approach has been ‘Mohamed Atta-like’ — similar to the modus operandi Khaled Sheikh Mohammed employed in making preparations for the 9/11 attacks — as opposed to resembling the signature characterizing most terrorist attacks to which the world has become accustomed.”

He noted that “Al-Qaida’s patient, decade-long effort to steal or construct an improvised nuclear device (IND) flows from their perception of the benefits of producing the image of a mushroom cloud rising over a U.S. city, just as the 9/11 attacks have altered the course of history.”

Mowatt-Larssen concludes that “This lofty aim helps explains why al Qaida has consistently sought a bomb capable of producing a nuclear yield, as opposed to settling for the more expedient and realistic course of devising a ‘dirty bomb,’ or a radiological dispersal device.”

In 1996, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri, emir of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which eventually merged into al-Qaida, was detained in Russia where he may have been seeking nuclear weapons or material. Al-Zawahiri later stated that al-Qaida obtained nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union.

According to Mowatt-Larssen, “There is no indication that the fundamental objectives that lie behind their WMD intent have changed over time.”

By comparison, “the pursuit of crude toxins and poisons appears to have been of little interest to the al-Qaida leadership, even though the production of such weapons is easier and thus might seem more attractive for potential use in attacks.”

He adds that “there is no evidence that the al-Qaida leadership regarded the use of crude toxins and poisons as being suitable for conducting what would amount to pin prick attacks on the United States; on the contrary,” it seems that “a relatively easy attack utilizing tactical weapons would not achieve the goals the al-Qaida leadership had set for themselves.”

According to the Kennedy School analysis, “Osama bin Laden’s morality-based argument on the nature of the struggle between militant Islamists and the U.S.-led coalition of secular forces focuses the group’s planning on the acquisition of strategic weapons that can be used in mass casualty attacks, rather than on the production of tactical, more readily available weapons such as ‘dirty bombs,’ chemical agents, crude toxins and poisons.”

If this former WMD chief for the CIA is to be believed, a big reason we have not suffered a repeat of 9/11 more than eight years later may be that Osama bin Laden and al Qaida are patiently working toward the day when they can successfully hit us with something a lot bigger.

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.

What part of we are at war do we not understand?

A Pyrrhic Victory?

The People’s Seat?

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Winston Churchill
The Brown/Coakley race has obscured an incredible irony.

One year ago, Barack Hussein Obama took office.

Today, the first Republican from Massachusetts in 30 years will packing up to head to Washington. Talking heads are going nuts.

Well, at least now, the Socialists have to punt. One thing that might happen if health care fails is that many Blue Dog Democrats might get re-elected because they didn’t have to pass that onerous bill.

Does that mean the Democrat Party will come to their senses?

Well, maybe not the far left. As Nancy Pelosi told Reuters, “The U.S. House will move ahead with healthcare.”

Obama and Reid are maintaining that healthcare can wait until Brown is seated.
Right now, my friends on the right are saying that a huge win in November is possible. They’re right.

Today.

A lot can happen in a year. Witness hope and change morph into pessimism and gridlock.

The loss of Massachusetts doesn’t seem to bother the White House told Reuters, “U.S. President Barack Obama will stick to his policy agenda despite his Democratic Party’s loss of a key Senate seat in a Massachusetts special election”

According to CNS, “A bill currently before the Senate would empower the Obama administration to nationalize the student lending industry, eliminating the federally subsidized private loans millions of university students rely on to finance their educations.

“The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act – currently being considered by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – would eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. FFEL loans are federally subsidized and make up approximately 80 percent of the student lending industry.

“According to the Department of Education, 14.3 million of the 17.5 million student loans were federally subsidized for the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Under Obama’s plan, the government would consume the entirety of this industry – a total of $103 billion in 2009-2010.”

Stay tuned. There’ll be much more.

I’m glad Brown won, but as Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Trust of government is like marriage. It’s a lifetime committment. If you’re a conservative, you want the ability to go go in the other room. Even if you feel that maybe the credit card is getting a bit maxed up, hell,$14 trillion of borrowed money is what it is, you love its institutions, the thought of it.

Like an old woman idealizing a long marriage, you will not dwell on the bad times. There has to be a plan B, though, another room if you will, and people like David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel will not go gently into that good night.

Paine also opined, “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

I think Brown recognizes that. In normal times, that would be enough.

These are not normal times.

It will not be enough.

Kai is Six with Stage 4 Cancer. Let’s Dance At His Wedding

Kai on a good day last month with his beautiful sister, Kira. He re-entered the hospital on Tuesday.

The pictures coming from Haiti are heart-wrenching. Please go to the Red Cross and contribute.
Sadly, tragedy knows no locus. There is no convenient time or place for catastrophe.
Young Kai Dutton who turned six a couple of days before Christmas suffers from stage four cancer.
There is a way you can help –
<a href="http://helpforkai.org/Home.html</a&gt”>http://www.helpforkai.org/Home.html.
Part of the site reads, “Kai was diagnosed with a sudden aggressive cancer that invaded various parts of his body including his abdomen, kidneys, spine and lungs. Immediate removal of the tumor wrapped around his spine was required, even though his parents were cautioned he may not walk again. Kai is beating the odds by shocking doctors when he started to walk again recently. With Kai’s strength and the help of a caring community, we can join together to help Kai battle Stage IV cancer.”

Kai is a great kid. I might be prejudiced, because I am his Godfather. His father is one of my best friends.
You don’t know this child. I do. He is strong and smart. It is my sincerest wish to dance at his wedding.
Please help let that happen.
Go to http://helpforkai.org/Home.html</a>. Please pass it to everyone you know.
The situation in Haiti is horrendous, truly the nightmare we all feel, we all dread, but here’s a chance to help someone locally.
Let’s all dance at his wedding.

Shagging To The Right Music

editor’s note, the above is not shagging.

My girlfriend wants to learn how to shag. She’s not from these parts and has never actually seen anyone shag to my knowledge. Shagging to those from off is much like boiled peanuts, esoteric and individual to Southerners. Much to the chagrin of my generation we are a long way from “be young, be foolish, be happy.”

The Tams at Folly Pier and Art’s New Seaside at the Isle of Palms (I’ve been hurt, hurt) were as inimical to youth in 1960s Charleston as Burger beer and Booby Nash. If you went to college in the South, you saw the Tams whether you were in Charlottesville or Athens or Columbia.

About ten years ago, my ex-wife and I went to a beach music revival at the North Charleston Coliseum. Among the featured acts were the Tams. Well, kind of. It was more like the Tam, and to be quite honest I was suspicious that he wasn’t stuffed and stuck in the corner.

His grandson was the lead singer and after “You Lied,” he tossed off his hat (for the uninitiated among you, it was, not surprisingly an over-sized tam or Scottish cap) revealing a bald head. Off came the traditional coat to expose a sleeveless shirt and tattoos running up his arms, and he began to sputter and scream an unintelligible rap song.

It was bizarre.

What bemused me was the unreal tableaux that unfolded. When the band was playing the traditional stuff, the dance floor filled with middle aged couples swaying and stepping back to their teens. When the discordance began they continued to shag. Even as the second song began and the kid was shouting obscenities , they continued to pirouette in their oxblood weejans and no socks. They were clueless.

We left.

I’ve told that story over the years, and as I have, it has become more and more emblematic of what’s been happening in this country. For years, we have been shagging to dissonant music. We are so embraced to our held perceptions that we didn’t notice that the movie had ended.

Well change it has. In our guts, we know it has. Yet, we dance to the same tune.

Recently, I conducted a poll suggested by Peggy Noonan.

Here are the results:

Have we become a more vulgar country? 74% Yes

Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago? 74% Yes.

Do we talk more about sensitivity and treat others less sensitively? Less 75%

Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling? Falling 81%

Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated? Degenerated 76%

Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together? Less 85%

Is there less courtesy in America now than when you were a child, or more? Less 85%

Two things: 1) Those who took the poll were, in the majority, WSJ Online readers. 2) The majority missed the point.

So what’s that say locally? Some of my regulars voted, but half of them are from away.

I had occasion to speak to a small but very diverse group last Saturday (Apparently, there was a huge baby boom ‘round these parts.), a group fraught with liberals, conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.

They were also a group that decided enough was enough. City and county governments were gaining too much power, spending too much money. They were shagging to rap music.

The group was the Grassroots Call To Action Group.

Their website is: http://grassrootschange.ning.com

A recent headline appeared in the Hill newspaper announced: IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman does not file his own taxes in part because he believes the tax code is complex.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/75119-irs-commissioner-doesnt-file-his-own-taxes

By the way: A big shout-out to Ali of the Fort Johnson Café at 1014 Fort Johnson Road
For more information, go to www.fortjohnsoncafe.com.

If I recall, Ali is from Turkey. He probably thinks of the word “shag” in the British sense. Good story. Different place. Different time.

No matter,Ali will be taxed. He will be taxed by a man considered to be so important he didn’t get punished for paying taxes, an offense that would land Victoria sipping their double latte over in the corner in federal prison.

The Treasury Secretary’ employee, a tax expert can’t do his own taxes.

Corruption beyond comprehension is replacing a sense of decency, of ethics of justice on every level of government.

All of us know this. The train has gone off the tracks. Organizations like the grass roots organizations might be the answer. Maybe if we fight for our fundamental rights from the ground up, we can affect the outcome.

What the hell it’s worth a try.

By the way, this is shagging:

Farrow Speech — Saturday 1/9/10. This Changes Everything!

I have given scores of lectures and speeches in my 57 years of travailing this pesky trail of tears we call life. After my novel, “The Root of All Evil” was published, I came to the conclusion that my IQ must have risen 50 points in a year for in 1996, I could have accurately predicted that something was amiss at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and children would be discreetly steered away from “that man.”

In 1997, I was lecturing groups from the board of directors of Wachovia (so, how’d that work out, hmmmm?) to the International Miniature Book Club (I’m not making that up. I have a teeny little version of “Charlotte’s Web” that I couldn’t read before bi-focals dominated my life).

This Saturday, if you have absolutely nothing else to do at 11 am, I will be giving a speech at the Fort Johnson Café at 1014 Fort Johnson Road (I’m told it is located to the left of James Island Charter High School. There is a huge parking lot with easy access behind the café’s back door entrance — “Wake up, mamma, turn your light down low”). By the way, unless you’re giving birth, I’d love to see you there.

For more information, go to www.fortjohnsoncafe.com.

The group sponsoring my quiet, thoughtful and reasoned mild objections to those pesky gross abuses of power is called Grassroots Call To Action Group.

Here’s their website: http://grassrootschange.ning.com

Although the organizer of this group, Shea Onofrey, was once part of Carroll Campbell’s inner circle, many would argue that she’s gone over to the dark side. (W. seemed to have that affect on a lot of people) She’s effective, though and, to tell you the truth, I’m with her and a lot of others when it comes to local issues.

Therein lies the rub. I have had the opportunity to speak with her at length, and her organization is truly non-partisan. What’s more important to me, though, is that she has agreed to oversee the progressive side of thecharlestontimes.com coming soon to a screen near you.

The Charleston Times forum, itself, will be a unique opportunity to present all sides. Part of my presentation will be an explanation of the concept of the project which I believe will revolutionize media as we know it.

Pretty grandiose statement, hmmm?

It is. It will.

In the early oughts, I spoke to a number of Sheppard’s clubs. I spoke to the Confederate Home. Aside for a couple of jabs, I had to stay with history and observations. I had to stay away from politics.
This trip I am under no such constraints. Those who know me might mention that I say exactly what I think.

People close to me might take me to task on this, but my contention is not really to persuade you, but to make you think.

I’d love to have you attend.

The coffee’s excellent, the company interesting – the talk priceless.

You see, I really am mad as hell, and I am really not going to take it any more.

Neither should you. Come find out why.

Charleston’s December Deluge

Here’s a You Tube film detaiing the flooding in my little corner of the peninsula.

This was filmed December, 18th and 19th, 2009.

The city of Charleston website reads, “Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. is widely considered one of the most visionary and highly effective governmental leaders in America.”

So how’s that working out?

We will spend almost $100 million on a slave museum. We need $147 million for drainage.

What part of this makes any sense at all?

Are We Becoming Too Coarse As A Society? A Poll

Lambert video

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal Online, Peggy Noonan writes about the uneasy pall that sits over our beloved land from sea to shining sea. She acknowledges the economy (after all our credit rating could be downgraded, there is 12.3% unemployment in South Carolina) accounts for much of the malaise.

However, she makes the point, “But something tells me this isn’t all about money. It’s possible, and I can’t help but think likely, that the poll is also about other things, and maybe even primarily about other things.

“Sure, Americans are worried about long-term debt and endless deficits. We’re worried about taxes and the burden we’re bequeathing to our children, and their children.

“But we are concerned about other things, too, and there are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture. “

She picks Adam Lambert (see video) as the exemplification of coarseness, but as far as I’m concerned, one could swing a swordfish and whap something out of whack in this culture.

She makes interesting and relevant points.

Read it all here: http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

At the end of her piece, Ms. Noonan asserts, “I’d like to see a poll on this…”

Okay. Your wish, my command and all that.

(A shoutout to Chip Dowis.)

Here are her questions in poll form. It’ll be curious to see what the results (though woefully unscienticfic) are.