This and That...

[Warph]

Minneapolis: Feminist Lesbian Police Chief Dons Hijab In Solidarity With Islamic Law

(One Bossy, Misguided Bitch.  Maybe the Taliban can put her in her place)

Via FPM:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/minneapolis-lesbian-police-chief-dons-hijab-for-hijab-day/

When the left finally cracks up, the few survivors will have a really good laugh.

According to a Facebook post, Somali staffers that work at Minneapolis City Hall declared February 28 "Hijab Day" at City Hall and convinced the police chief and female city council reps to wear hijabs on the job.

Pictures include: Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau (who recently married her favorite female sergeant – not very hijab like), city council members Elizabeth Glidden and Lisa Bender as well as other staffers.

There's nothing like a lesbian feminist authority figure who boasts of being the first female police chief in Minneapolis donning a symbol of male ownership in a patriarchal tribal society to express the deep schizophrenia of the left in its enthusiastic enabling of Islamists.

[...]

Indian Cleric Issues Fatwa: Gays And Lesbians "May Be Burned Alive, Pushed From A High Wall, Or Beaten Publicly With Stones"

(Someone may want to break the bad news to Chief Janee Harteau and her female sergeant)

On December 11, 2013, the Supreme Court (SC) of India struck down a lower court decision to decriminalize gay sex, thereby upholding the 153-year-old colonial-era Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which punishes gay couples with a 10-year prison term. The judgment came on a petition to which several Islamic and Hindu religious groups were party. The SC pointed out that it was the government of India that had to pass legislation in order to remove Section 377.

On December 20, the Indian media reported that an Islamic cleric of the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam based in the northern Indian town of Bareilly had issued a fatwa against both homosexuality and heterosexual cohabitation, calling such relationships anti-Islam and stipulating punishments for gay couples such as stoning and burning.

The fatwa was issue by Mohammad Afzaal Rizwi, the mufti (a scholar qualified to issue a fatwa) who is based at the Darul Uloom Ifta at Bareilly. Fatwas are legal advisory opinion in Islam, usually delivered in response to a question. Rizwi's fatwa came in response to a query by Akhlaq Ahmed Siddiqui Noori, who sought clarification on the issue.

"The mufti has cited two hadiths (teachings of the Prophet Mohammed) from the Koran as a premise for his fatwa. As per Hadith Dur-re-Mukhtar, such acts could attract severe punishment, he said. 'A person may be burned alive, pushed from a high wall, or beaten publicly with stones if he indulges into either of the two behaviors,' the fatwa states.

[Warph]

Defiance: A Third of Uninsured Americans Say They Will Refuse To Buy Obumacare

(Obviously motivated by racism)

Via Newsmax:
A third of Americans currently uninsured still have no intention of buying health coverage even though they are required to do so by the Affordable Care Act, according to Bankrate's latest Health Insurance Pulse survey.

Thirty-four percent contacted by telephone said they still have no intention of buying insurance. Most, 41 percent, cited cost as their reason, while 17 percent said they oppose Obamacare and 13 percent said they are healthy and don't need insurance.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said they do plan to purchase health coverage... (but from whom).

"We did all this discombobulating for nothing, because the uninsured are not signing up," Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto said on Monday.

[Warph]

Biden Sent To Europe To "Reassure Our Allies"
Obuma Won't Throw Them Under The Bus

(With Joe as spokesman, what could possibly go wrong?  You know, Joe's an expert on foreign relations, having learned everything he knows from Jimmy Carter.

But tooooo late, Joe... Obutthead threw them under the bus right after he took office by taking out the missile shield.  He did that to show the Russians how nice we are.  That worked out so well)

WARSAW — Vice President Biden arrived here Tuesday to reassure a set of allies anxious over Russia's move into Crimea, a visit he will use to pledge additional security assistance and American help in diversifying Eastern European energy supplies heavily dependent now on Russian natural gas.

Over two days, Biden will meet with the leaders of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all NATO members with old memories of Soviet domination and new fears of a resurgent Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

A day after Putin declared Crimea independent, Biden will outline the next steps that the United States intends to take to reverse the Russian move into Crimea and prevent a broader military push into eastern Ukraine, an escalation that would bring the conflict to the doorstep of Poland and the Baltic states.

Before addressing the Russian parliament, Putin on Tuesday approved draft legislation to annex Crimea, a step the Obama administration is seeking to head off. Putin's actions follow a Sunday referendum in which Crimean voters — under the eye of Russian troops — chose to split from Ukraine and join Russia. The Obama administration and its European allies have condemned the takeover of Crimea as a violation of international law.

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the vice president's plans, said his trip is "first and foremost to reassure our allies that we are deeply concerned about Russia's action in Ukraine and what the deeper implications might be."

UPDATE:

Biden To Polish President: "You Have An Ally Whose Defense Budget Is Larger Than The Next 10 Nations Combined, So Don't Worry"

(But the guy who's in charge of that military is a pathetic joke.  So yeah, Poland and our other allies in the region should worry... big time)

[Warph]

Taliban On Missing Malaysian Jet:
"We Wish We Had An Opportunity To Hijack A Plane"

(I suppose it isn't easy to hijack a jet when you live in a cave)

(Reuters) – Aviation officials in Pakistan, India and Central Asia as well as Taliban militants said they knew nothing about the whereabouts of a missing Malaysian jetliner on Monday after the search for Flight MH370 extended into their territory.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8 about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard and investigators are now increasingly convinced it was diverted thousands of miles off course.

Malaysia said it had sent diplomatic notes to all countries along an arc of northern and southern search corridors including India and Pakistan, requesting radar and satellite information as well as land, sea and air search operations.

[...]

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, who are seeking to oust foreign troops and set up an Islamic state, said the missing plane had nothing to do with them.

"It happened outside Afghanistan and you can see that even countries with very advanced equipment and facilities cannot figure out where it went," he said. "So we also do not have any information as it is an external issue."

A commander with the Pakistani Taliban, a separate entity fighting the Pakistani government, said the fragmented group could only dream about such an operation.

"We wish we had an opportunity to hijack such a plane," he told Reuters by telephone from the lawless North Waziristan region.

[Warph]

Pic: Blatant Global Warming Propaganda In Kindergarten School Book

(It's pretty sad when you have to start de-brainwashing your kids when they are only in kindergarten.  But... nothing new there. The magic school bus series has been around for a long time and has always had a left wing bent.  Looking at that page, I'm surprised they didn't include the Koch brothers with oil burning blow torches melting the ice.... and Sarah Palin shooting the polar bears)

Via EAG News:
http://eagnews.org/michigan-mom-slams-her-kindergartners-school-book-as-global-warming-propaganda/

A West Michigan mother is questioning a book her kindergarten son brought home from his school's library, because it portrays the global warming debate from one perspective only, and ignores other arguments.

The book – "The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge" – tells the story of a teacher, Ms. Frizzle, taking her students on a globetrotting trip to show them the impacts of global warming.

Published by Scholastic in 2010, it features drawings of the what the Artic used to look like – with ice as far as the eye could see – to today, with polar bears supposedly clinging to measly icebergs with desperate looks on their faces.

[Warph]

Yes, by George... and don't you forget it!

[Ross]

This woman is a threat to your rights and needs to be stopped by any means necessary.

[Warph]

How Ukraine's Military Stacks Up Against Russia's

by Charles Recknagel - The Atlantic

The worst-case scenario in the Russia-Ukraine crisis would be a war between the two states. How do their respective forces compare?:

Russia has about four times as many soldiers as Ukraine does, twice as many tanks, and more than six times as many combat aircraft. The huge imbalance in forces reflects the defense budgets of the two countries. Russia spends about $78 billion on its armed forces annually, Ukraine $1.6 billion.

However, only a part of Russia's forces is available to deploy against Ukraine. Moscow cannot afford to remove forces from its North Caucasus region, from its border with China, or from the Pacific. Mark Galeotti, a Moscow-based regional expert with the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, estimates Russia might be able to muster a force twice the size of Ukraine's for any war. That leaves open the possibility that the difference in strength might not be so overwhelming as to guarantee victory.

What about the two sides' operational capabilities? Since the 2008 Georgia war, Moscow has stepped up its military spending by 30 percent, reflecting the importance it gives to modernizing its forces and using its military as an arm of its foreign policy.

By contrast, Kiev has a history of delivering less money to its armed forces than budgeted. Its most elite units have deployed alongside NATO in international peacekeeping operations but the rest are underfunded and underequipped. Most of Ukraine's equipment was inherited when it declared independence from the Soviet Union more than two decades ago.

Christopher Langton of Independent Conflict Research and Analysis in Britain says the Ukrainian military has also been shaken by reforms that were intended to make it a more professional force but remain incomplete. "They have undergone major upheavals in recent years, major reforms, [but with] very inadequate financing of equipment programs and personnel reform programs," Langton says. "And they tried to end conscription but this was never achieved, so there is still an element of conscription in the Ukrainian armed forces and this, of course, weakens the deployability of the army."

Over the past five years, the size of Ukraine's military force has shrunk from 245,000 to 184,000. But it still includes about 60 percent conscripts. Would Ukraine's army split in the face of an invasion? Ukraine's population includes both native Ukrainian speakers and native Russian speakers, and many in the latter group, particularly in the east of the country, have close ties to Russia. That could create a regional pull on the loyalty of Ukraine's soldiers and officers.

There are less obvious factors to consider, too. Ukraine's senior military leaders served much of their careers in the Soviet Army with their Russian counterparts. The possibility of defections was highlighted when Ukraine's newly appointed navy chief declared allegiance to the pro-Russian Crimea region on March 2 as Russian troops took control of the peninsula.

Still, the Ukrainian Army has two glues to keep it together. One is the heightened sense of national identity an invasion by any foreign force helps create. The other is the strong sense of identity of the Ukrainian army itself. "The Ukrainian military has evolved really quite a long way from its Soviet roots," Galeotti notes. "It has got quite a strong esprit de corps, quite a strong culture of service to the state."

What form might combat take? Moscow could attempt a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, along the lines of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Or it could try to replicate its successful tactics in Crimea of encouraging so-called "self-defense forces" to take over a region while mixing its own unidentified troops among them.

Langton says that a full-scale invasion would almost certainly precipitate a conventional state-to-state war that could prove too costly for Moscow to pursue. "Although on paper these two forces are imbalanced in terms of capabilities, if it came to a full-scale Russian military operation in Ukraine, this would be on the territory of Ukrainians and they would fight," the British analyst explains. "There would probably be a fairly bloody struggle which would not be acceptable to the Russians, and this would be followed by, maybe, a period of partisan or guerrilla-type warfare which, of course, the defending forces would be able to conduct on their own territory."

The cost of such a direct showdown might lead Moscow to prefer the stealthier strategy of wresting control of individual regions, particularly in heavily Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, under the guise of interceding in supposedly local conflicts. That strategy caught Kiev flat-footed in Crimea and places Ukraine in the weak position of having to retake seized land.

In either case, Ukraine is not immediately well-prepared to cope with an attack by Russia. Thanks to the legacy of the Soviet Union, its infrastructure of military bases remains configured to support a ground war against a western invader, not an eastern one.

[Warph]

CAIR Already Freaking Out Over New ABC Show "Alice In Arabia"
Without Even Seeing A Single Episode

(You know, because women are treated so well in Saudi Arabia)

Via Variety:
The greater Los Angeles-area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) announced Wednesday that it has asked ABC Family to meet with Muslim and Arab-American community leaders to discuss concerns about potential stereotyping in the pilot for the network's new series "Alice in Arabia."

One of three drama pilots ordered by ABC Family, the show centers on an American teen kidnapped by her Saudi Arabian family after tragedy befalls her parents.

In a letter sent to ABC Family president Tom Ascheim Tuesday, CAIR explained, "As the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, we are concerned about the negative impact this program could have on the lives of ordinary Arab-American and American Muslims."

While CAIR-LA officials say they understand that the pilot's writer (Brooke Eikmeier) says the series is designed to "give Arabs and Muslims a voice on American TV" and has "noble intentions," they still believe the concerns brought to their org should be addressed.

"We are concerned that, given media references to the main character 'surviving life behind the veil,' the pilot and any resulting series may engage in stereotyping that can lead to things like bullying of Muslim students," CAIR-LA exec director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement. "We urge ABC Family Channel to meet with representatives of the Muslim and Arab-American communities to discuss this important issue."

This is not the first time that Washington-based CAIR, the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy org, has spoken out. CAIR previously challenged actual and potential anti-Muslim stereotypes in "Executive Decision," "24," "The Siege," "True Lies," "Rules of Engagement," "Obsession," "The Third Jihad," "Jihad in America" and "The Sum of All Fears." The org has also acted as a consultant on films including DreamWorks Animation's "The Prince of Egypt."

[Warph]

Federal Judge Hands Republicans In Kansas, Arizona A Big Win In Voting Rights Fight

by Eric Lach – March 19, 2014

DOJ Crooked Eric Holder is fast and furiously shopping for another Judge to overturn the ruling... Pray it doesn't happen.

Via TPM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/arizona-kansas-voting-rights-ruling

A federal judge in Kansas on Wednesday ruled that the federal agency which oversees the federal voter registration form must include the state-specific proof-of-citizenship requirements requested by both Kansas and Arizona.

The ruling was hailed by Republican officials in both states. And it also does away with the need for the "two-tier" voting systems that were proposed while the case was pending.

"This is a huge victory for the states of Kansas and Arizona," Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) said in a statement. "They have successfully protected our sovereign right to set and enforce the qualifications for registering to vote. We have now paved the way for all 50 states to protect their voter rolls and ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote."

The case was complex. Both Kansas and Arizona have proof-of-citizenship laws on the books, requiring people to prove they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote. But the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the agency which maintains the federal voter registration form, had denied requests from the states to add the proof-of-citizenship requirements to state-specific instructions on the form. So the states sued. (If you want more on the technical background, University of California-Irvine law professor Rick Hasen wrote a helpful summary of the here.)

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren found that "the decision of the EAC denying the states' requests to be unlawful and in excess of its statutory authority. ... Therefore, the Court orders the EAC, or the EAC's acting executive director, to add the language requested by Arizona and Kansas to the state-specific instructions on the federal mail voter registration form, effective immediately."

In an interview with TPM, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (R) expanded on a statement he issued in response to the ruling.

"I feel there's been a media cover up of the extent to which voter fraud is a significant problem in Arizona," Horne said, citing findings a few years ago in which he said more than 200 people who filed out jury duty forms in the state had also fraudulently registered to vote. "[The ruling is] a significant victory for the people of Arizona over the Obama administration to assure that only citizens and not illegals vote in Arizona."

Last year, before the resolution of the EAC issue, officials in both states faced the prospect of having residents register to vote using a federal form that didn't require proof-of-citizenship. So they took steps to create "two-tiered" voting system, where people who registered with the federal form could vote in federal elections — but not state or local ones. Wednesday's ruling appears to make that matter moot.

It remains to be seen if the ruling will be appealed. But Horne pointed out that the ruling is effective immediately, and the 2014 election is not far off.

"Somebody will appeal it I'm sure, but the decision by its terms says that it has to be implemented immediately," he said.