Islamophobe (is-slahm-o-fohb) - A non-Muslim who knows too much about Islam.

Islamophobia is a fear of losing life or liberty to Islamic rule merely because the laws, sacred texts, and modern practices of Islam demand the submission of culture, politics, religion and all social expression. It tends to afflict those most familiar with the religion, while sparing the more gullible.

And many more...

Islam offers a little something for everyone

While rumors of a Qur’an desecration or a Muhammad cartoon bring out deadly protests, riots, arson and effigy-burnings, the mass murder of non-Muslims generally evokes yawns. In the six years following 9/11 more than 10,000 acts of deadly Islamic terrorism were perpetrated, yet all of them together fail to provoke the sort of outrage on the part of most Muslims that the mere mention of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo inspires.

This critical absence of moral perspective puzzles many Westerners, particularly those trying to reconcile this reality with the politically-correct assumption that Islam is like other religion.  The Judeo-Christian tradition preaches universal love and unselfishness, so it is expected that the more devout Muslims would be the most peaceful and least dangerous... provided that Islam is based on the same principles.

Obama: On second thought, let’s make community service for students voluntary

Blue Dogs want a seat at the leadership table

I’m not sure that anyone would have described John Dingell as a Blue Dog Democrat before now, but he’s certainly more moderate than Henry Waxman.  Waxman wants Dingell out of the Energy and Commerce Committee so that Waxman can pursue more radical solutions on global warming.  Dingell wants to protect the auto industry from excessive regulation, and has fought back against Waxman’s attempt to wrest control of the committee away from him.

The Blue Dogs see this kind of leftward tilt as a threat to their seats.  If the 111th Congress runs hard to the left, voters in their more conservative districts will punish them by replacing them with Republican challengers in 2010 — and Democrats will lose their majority just as they did in 1994.  Their need for self-preservation pushes them to get more of their members into leadership.

This leadership fight will give voters a clear indication of how radical the upcoming single-party government will get.  If the Blue Dogs get their committee chairs and their leadership positions, they may help keep the worst excesses of Pelosi and Barack Obama in check.  If not, we can expect major overreach, and Republicans can start getting ready to take back these conservative districts in two years.

AQI wants Obama to keep his promise on Iraq

On Iraq, I think both terrorists and Code Pink will have to deal with some disappointment.  With casualties dropping to almost zero, Iraq is a war that Obama can win easily in the first few months of his term simply by not making any sudden shifts in strategy or personnel.  AQI and the other insurgencies are all but destroyed; the only real damage being done by them now is to their own credibility.

The downside to a sudden pullout could be disastrous for Obama.  If he did pull American forces out on a fast timetable, the security gains may not last with the still-developing Iraqi Army.  A collapse in Iraq following a forced withdrawal by Obama would make him look incompetent and impetuous, and could force us to return to Iraq and take casualties we could have avoided by following the current Bush plan instead.  He can’t risk starting his presidency with that kind of disaster.

By the time the general election rolled around, Iraq stopped being a major issue, and for good reason.  We’ve won the war, and we’ve finally won the peace.  Regardless of which candidate got elected, the policy in the next administration is likely to be the same despite Obama’s rhetoric during the primaries.

Right on time!

We have all complained about the pro-Obama tilt in this election cycle.  News media consistently gave John McCain much harsher treatment while refusing to perform the same kind of investigative journalism on Barack Obama, whose thin track record and Chicago Machine background should have given reporters enough red flags for a bullfighting league.  Instead, the media gave Obama the elevator and McCain the shaft.

Ombud Deborah Howell’s column goes on to justify or at least rationalize the imbalance:

Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Post reporters, photographers and editors — like most of the national news media — found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics.

So that must mean they absolutely adored Sarah Palin and gave her the same benefit of the doubt, right?  Er, no:

When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

The hell with Joe Biden.  Howell never answers the real issue here — why did the Post, and the rest of the national media, go on the attack with Sarah Palin and not with Barack Obama?  The two candidates had a similar amount of time in politics, and Palin had more executive experience than Obama.  Obama ran for the top job, while Palin ran for VP.  And yet the national media parachuted dozens of reporters into Wasilla and Juneau looking for dirt and scandal, coming up with a tanning bed in the governor’s mansion (which Palin bought herself) and the Troopergate story that turned out to be a nothingburger and was already known prior to her nomination.

Where were the Post reporters doing the same thing in Chicago?  Why didn’t the Post want to look at the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama’s only executive experience prior to his run for the presidency?  The media never bothered to make a hundredth of the effort on Obama that they did with Palin, and they had two years to do it.

That’s the issue Howell should have addressed in her column.  We already know that the Post gave imbalanced coverage of Obama and McCain, as did most of the rest of the media.  And now Howell gives the mea culpa in her first column after Election Day, when it’s far too late to do anything about it.  Where was Howell during the last three months?  Why wait until the election is over to speak up?  That’s an answer in itself.

"One of these guys is going to be running the country," said Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News.

Really? Run the country?

"That has to be a joke -- or a misunderstanding," said George Mason University economist Walter Williams on my recent TV special, "John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics".

Williams pointed out that the White House doesn't govern what happens in your house. And a president certainly cannot control the economy. We, all of us, run the country.

"Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good," Williams says.

The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.

"Most of life is outside the government sector," says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. "Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up."

The farm bill doesn't even keep its other promise: saving family farms.

It's why although Nebraska corn farmer Mike Korth received about half a million dollars in subsidies, he's still against the farm bill. "We sold this on the fact that this is helping the family farmer and the small beginning farmer. It's not. It's hurting them."

That's because most subsidies go to those that are best at manipulating government: the agribusiness giants. Small farms can't compete.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City study found that the more farm aid a county gets, the more likely it is to lose population.

So not only do farm subsidies cost every taxpayer $550 per year, they also raise food prices by paying farmers not to grow certain crops. Other crops are subsidized and exported, destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers in the Third World.

How could we go after Obama for his illegal alien aunt and for supporting driver's licenses for illegal aliens when McCain fanatically pushed amnesty along with his good friend Teddy Kennedy?

How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so?

How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the "rich," when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich?

As liberal Democrat E.J. Dionne Jr. exuded about McCain in The Washington Post during the Republican primaries, "John McCain is feared by Democrats and liked by independents." Dionne proclaimed that McCain "may be the one Republican who can rescue his party from the undertow of the Bush years."

Similarly, after unelectable, ultraconservative Reagan won two landslide victories, James Reston of The New York Times gave the same advice to Vice President George H.W. Bush: Stop being conservative! Bush was "a good man," Reston said in 1988, "and might run a strong campaign if liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails."

Roll that phrase around a bit -- "liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails." This is why it takes so long to read the Times -- you have to keep reading the same paragraph over again to see if you missed a word.

Bush, of course, rode Reagan's ultraconservative coattails to victory, then snipped those coattails by raising taxes and was soundly defeated four years later.

I keep trying to get Democrats to take my advice (stop being so crazy), but they never listen to me. Why do Republicans take the advice of their enemies?

How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that "moderate," "independent," "maverick" Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Read Full Article

California voters shot down both clean-energy propositions on the ballot. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40% of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50% by 2025. It lost 65% to 35%.

Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high-fuel-economy or alternative-fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology. It failed 60% to 40%.

Even in San Francisco, the capital of liberalism and greenie fervor, voters rejected Proposition H, which would have mandated a rapid increase in the city's use of clean energy to achieve its goal of being 100% renewable by 2040. It would also have meant taking over the city's private electric company.

Obama took the former red state of Colorado, which also elected environmentalist Senate candidate Mark Udall over oil executive Bob Shaffer. Yet Coloradans struck down a measure to pay for conservation and clean energy by increasing taxes on oil companies.

Only in Missouri did green energy score a victory. There, Proposition C mandated a 15% increase in renewable energy by 2021 with slow and steady yearly increases that energy companies felt they could phase in without disruption and with which voters felt more comfortable.

The mantra is that oil and car companies are blocking the increased use of renewable energy. The truth is that consumers, through their choices and their votes, are slowing the stampede. They worry about the cost in tough economic times and whether such efforts are worth it based on dubious evidence of global warming. Energy independence is one thing, but going bankrupt to achieve it is quite another.

Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear plants. A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would generate more dependable power than 2,800 1.5-megawatt, occasionally operating wind turbines sitting on 175,000 acres.

Nuclear power is clean energy, and you wouldn't have to wait for a sunny or windy day to plug in your electric car.

Read Full Article

With joblessness and serious economic problems rising, the last thing we need is public policy that makes them rise even faster. Yet, there is a danger this could happen if President-elect Obama's proposed punitive taxes on the oil industry are enacted and lead to less energy development.

Read Full Article

New taxes on oil companies would drastically cut capital that otherwise could be invested in emerging energy technologies and the expansion of refinery capacity. Taxes would negatively impact domestic energy production, reducing revenues. And they would tilt the playing field against U.S. companies that compete globally. 

As demand for oil continues to rise, investor-owned oil companies are searching for new resources throughout the world, from sub-Sahara Africa to South America and the republics of the former Soviet Union. 

Faced with such challenges, U.S. oil companies are investing huge sums — more than $1.2 trillion over the last decade or so — in a range of long-term energy initiatives. 

A sizable amount has gone to emerging energy technologies — everything from oil shale to solar and wind energy — to meet future energy demand with a diverse mix of resources. 

Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the new Congress to impose billions of dollars in additional taxes on oil and natural gas companies. Others are calling for a windfall oil-profits tax. 

Never mind that the top 27 U.S. oil companies have seen their annual taxes rise to more than $100 billion — an 80% increase from 2004 to 2006. 

It's only fair to point out that oil companies aren't owned by a small group of corporate insiders. Only 1.5% of industry shares are owned by management. 

Most shares are owned by tens of millions of Americans, many of them middle-class people with IRAs, pension funds, mutual funds and shares in oil companies. If you have a 401(k) or personal retirement account — and 45 million U.S. households do — there's a good chance you are investing in energy stocks.

Since the war on terror began in 2001, Washington has sounded an intermittent drumbeat for the wealthy to make a greater "sacrifice" in the form of higher taxes. The dubious charge is that these taxpayers have been shirking a duty performed in other conflicts.

Read Full Article

Of course, the tax impact on the economy does not measure taxes' impact on income groups. So are the wealthy paying relatively less? According to an analysis of the latest IRS data (2006) by Congress' Joint Economic Committee, just the opposite is true.

The top 50% of income tax filers paid 97% of all income taxes. The top 5% paid 60%, and the top 1% paid 40% of all collected federal income taxes. Each of these levels is the highest recorded for which we have comparable data — since 1986's fundamental tax reform.

"Sacrifice" is evidently not lacking on the tax side of the federal fiscal equation. The spending side is a different story, however.

If there is a lack of "sacrifice," it lies not with the taxpayers but with the "tax takers."

Washington's talk of "sacrifice" is no more than a stalking horse in the left's hunt for higher taxes. This call for higher taxes is not so much about funding the war against terrorism as it is about the left's desire to use the tax code to redistribute income.

The contrast between taxes and spending during the current and past three conflicts could not be starker. And it could not demonstrate more clearly the left's divergent view of taxes. It differs fundamentally from the rest of America's.

Examining the "sacrifice" charge, we see that income taxes as a percentage of the economy actually have a higher average during the current conflict — 8.1% from 2001-07 — than in any of the previous three: slightly higher than Vietnam's 8% and far higher than the Korean War and even WWII's percentages.

The overall federal tax burden shows a similar relationship. The current period's 17.9% of GDP is close to Vietnam's 18% level and far higher than WWII's or Korea's.

Read Full Article

Automotive chiefs are meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with their hands out. At issue: vast pension obligations to 780,000 retired workers that already add $2,300 to the cost of every new car sold. Credit-strapped consumers want value, not pension-inflated price tags. So, the bailout is in the works.

Bankruptcy is a better solution, but if a bailout can't be stopped, taxpayers are owed a reckoning about how this industry got into a situation that a downturn could knock it over. This ought to be a condition for the bailout.

Unions are at the center of every problem affecting industry competitiveness. It's not only the United Auto Workers' lavish pensions, generous health care and leaden bureaucracies, it's unions' reflexive hostility to free trade.Yet if profits matter, new markets can return automotive companies to profitability — and rid the industry of the dead weight of those pensions.