Islam = Submission

From American Enterprise Institute Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali - a refugee from Islam, as well as a refugee from Dutch political correctness (read cowardice) - comes the following essay on Islam and what is happening and evolving on the streets across the M.E. I urge you to read it - even two or three times - as it gives invaluable insight into the muslim mindset from a person with direct experience with the collective hypnotic effect of the Ummah.

We live in very perilous times.

The revolutionaries’ fervor is also their weakness

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Published: February 8 2011 23:36 | Last updated: February 8 2011 23:36

When I practiced Islam, I remember praying alone as a chore: I would perform my ablutions, shroud myself and spread my little prayer mat, face Mecca and go through the obligatory series of bows and prostrations. My thoughts would soon wander away but it was obligatory and the prayer-enforcers in my family would notice if I didn’t. So I went through with it.

The experience was very different, however, when I went to mosque. There I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other women; all shrouded, on a wall-to-wall mat; below us the men were assembled in even larger halls; we faced Mecca and went through the movements of submission. This time I felt a sense of animation. At the end of the recitation we all sang – aaaaammmmeeeennn!!!. My heart throbbed. I was in the crowd of the faithful. I felt its power.

Watching the images of the masses in Cairo I can imagine the strong sense of unity they feel. Many western television viewers also identify with the thousands who have taken to the streets – not only in Egypt, but in Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen and elsewhere – to call for an end to authoritarian rule. Innumerable commentators have drawn analogies with the revolutions that swept eastern Europe in 1989.

This is to miss the profound difference between the western and the Muslim crowd. The people taking to the streets in north Africa and the Middle East have many motivations. But nothing unifies them more than the mass prayer of their religion – particularly the Friday prayer. It is the mosque as much as the street that is key to understanding this uprising.

Nearly all religions rely on crowd cohesion, but Islam is exceptionally good at doing so. None of the despots of the Muslim world who emerged in the era of decolonization dared to challenge the crowd of the faithful. They purged the Muslim Brotherhood, killed their leaders and imprisoned them by condemning them as the perverters of the true faith. But the mosque was sacrosanct. That is why for so long it has been the only place of association for the Arab masses. That, of course, is why the most effective political force in the Arab world has for years been Islamism.
Those who look forward to a 1989-style outcome – a peaceful transition to a secular, multi-party democracy – should remember how little experience the proponents of secular democracy have. The Muslim Brotherhood has been around since 1928, and draws on a 1,400-year-old tradition of submission.

The problem with political Islam was something identified by Elias Canetti in his classic Crowds and Power. “Believers,” he says, “yearn for God’s force; His power alone does not satisfy them; it is too distant and leaves them too free. The state of continuous expectation of command, to which, early in life, they surrender themselves for good and all, marks them deeply and also has a momentous effect on their attitude to other people.”

The Mubaraks and Gaddafis of the Middle East are not an anomaly; they are the product of structural lack of freedom inherent in the crowd culture of the Islamic world. In this culture submission is instilled early on. If you are not allowed to talk back to your father, or teacher, or clergyman, submission to state tyranny becomes almost second nature. In such a setting, the methods to empower oneself – indeed to survive – are conspiracy, manipulation, intrigue and bribery. Those aspiring to positions of power fear that sharing it will weaken them and lead to humiliation. So once a position is achieved it is made permanent, from the lowliest bureaucrat to the president.

A culture that elevates individual submission oscillates between periods of apathy and occasional bouts of revolt. Arab leaders either rule for life, grooming their sons for succession, or end up having to flee.

So what can today’s Muslim crowds do to avoid the fate of all those mice who thought they glimpsed freedom but were in fact mere playthings of the cat?

The protesters must begin by acknowledging the factors that create an environment where tyrants thrive. For too long, outside forces have been the scapegoats of the Arab street. It is easy to blame the Zionists and America. It is harder to admit one’s own shortcomings.
But today’s crowds also need to articulate what they want. A participant in Egypt’s mass protests was asked on the BBC to comment on the leaderless quality of the demonstrations (February 4). His answer – “We don’t need a leader” – baffled the interviewer and no doubt most western viewers.

His aversion to leadership is understandable in the light of past Arab regime changes. Here, men who arrive as liberators have a way of morphing into dictators until the time when another man mobilizes the masses to liberate the nation from their ex-liberator. The new man then rebuilds the old infrastructure of spies and torture chambers.

But is it realistic to have a leaderless revolution? In my view it is not. In the absence of leadership – which means not just one man but a legitimate command structure, as well as some kind of explicit manifesto – these protests will never achieve the truly revolutionary changes we saw in Europe in 1989.

Instead we shall see chaos and instability followed by a new era of authoritarianism; a brief democracy followed by a coup or a sharia government led by the Brotherhood.
So the crowd must become a real movement. They have to build civil institutions. They must hurry and compose a list of demands before they are dispersed. It is not enough just to ask for the despot to go. There need to be amendments to existing constitutions or new ones need to be written. And here America and Europe can offer help.

But when it comes to changing the culture of submission no one can help the Arabs but themselves. It is not their inexorable fate to be ruled either by dictators or by religious fanatics. They will achieve true freedom, however, only when they emancipate themselves from the peculiar power structure imposed on the Muslim crowd – by itself.

The writer is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and founder of the AHA Foundation, which works to protect Muslim women’s rights. Her books include ‘Nomad’ and ‘Infidel'·

News From The Obamaphate: Let's do the Time Warp Again....

Wish I had the photoshop skills to blend BOTUS into this outfit:

Source: Moonbattery

I guess that my lack of competency in that area kinda tells ya I'm one of the last of the boomers.

What does THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW have to do with the Obamaphate? Well, as I see it, this administration is becoming ever more like Dr. Frank N. Furter's dysfunctional and incompetent household of freaks. Some of you may remember that the main song of the cult classic is titled LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN.... Well, BOTUS et al are doing just that, by channeling Jimmi Cartah.

Read all about it here: U.S. to Rebuke Israel at U.N.

BOTUS Be Jimmy Carter, Version 10x

Comparisons between Barack Obama and Jimmi Cartah are of course nothing unusual. They've been made since shortly after Obama's inauguration. But now, with the events unfolding in Egypt, the full scope of the comparisons comes into sharp focus and the resulting image of Obama's weak and badly damaged presidency are both shocking and somewhat demoralizing.

With the full knowledge that I will be perceived by many as a useful idiot of the "Elders of Zion", I present this insightful piece by Aruf Benn of Israel's Haaretz newspaper:

Obama will go down in history as the president who lost Egypt

The street revolts in Tunisia and Egypt show that the United States can do very little to save its friends from the wrath of their citizens.

By Aluf Benn Tags: Israel news Egypt protests Middle East peace

Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as "the president who lost Iran," which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic Republic. Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who "lost" Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled.

The superficial circumstances are similar. In both cases, a United States in financial crisis and after failed wars loses global influence under a leftist president whose good intentions are interpreted abroad as expressions of weakness. The results are reflected in the fall of regimes that were dependent on their relationship with Washington for survival, or in a change in their orientation, as with Ankara.

America's general weakness clearly affects its friends. But unlike Carter, who preached human rights even when it hurt allies, Obama sat on the fence and exercised caution. He neither embraced despised leaders nor evangelized for political freedom, for fear of undermining stability.

Obama began his presidency with trips to Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and in speeches in Ankara and Cairo tried to forge new ties between the United States and the Muslim world. His message to Muslims was "I am one of you," and he backed it by quoting from the Koran. President Hosni Mubarak did not join him on the stage at Cairo University, and Obama did not mention his host. But he did not imitate his hated predecessor, President George W. Bush, with blunt calls for democracy and freedom.

Obama apparently believed the main problem of the Middle East was the Israeli occupation, and focused his policy on demanding the suspension of construction in the settlements and on the abortive attempt to renew the peace talks. That failure led him to back off from the peace process in favor of concentrating on heading off an Israeli-Iranian war.

Americans debated constantly the question of whether Obama cut his policy to fit the circumstances or aimed at the wrong targets. The absence of human rights issues from U.S. policy vis-a-vis Arab states drew harsh criticism; he was accused of ignoring the zeitgeist and clinging to old, rotten leaders. In the past few months many opinion pieces have appeared in the Western press asserting that the days of Mubarak's regime are numbered and calling on Obama to reach out to the opposition in Egypt. There was a sense that the U.S. foreign policy establishment was shaking off its long-term protege in Cairo, while the administration lagged behind the columnists and commentators.

The administration faced a dilemma. One can guess that Obama himself identified with the demonstrators, not the aging dictator. But a superpower isn't the civil rights movement. If it abandons its allies the moment they flounder, who would trust it tomorrow? That's why Obama rallied to Mubarak's side until Friday, when the force of the protests bested his regime.

The street revolts in Tunisia and Egypt showed that the United States can do very little to save its friends from the wrath of their citizens. Now Obama will come under fire for not getting close to the Egyptian opposition leaders soon enough and not demanding that Mubarak release his opponents from jail. He will be accused of not pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hard enough to stop the settlements and thus indirectly quell the rising tides of anger in the Muslim world. But that's a case of 20:20 hindsight. There's no guarantee that the Egyptian or Tunisian masses would have been willing to live in a repressive regime even if construction in Ariel was halted or a few opposition figures were released from jail.

Now Obama will try to hunker down until the winds of revolt die out, and then forge ties with the new leaders in the region. It cannot be assumed that Mubarak's successors will be clones of Iran's leaders, bent on pursuing a radical anti-American policy. Perhaps they will emulate Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who navigates among the blocs and superpowers without giving up his country's membership in NATO and its defense ties with the United States. Erdogan obtained a good deal for Turkey, which benefits from political stability and economic growth without being in anyone's pocket. It could work for Egypt, too.

All Deficit, All the Time.

From yesterday's Financial Times comes a stark warning of where we are now, and where we might end up if we don't get our fiscal house in order. Very sobering stuff.

Image Source: The Financial Times

Note to WH Office of Presidential Personnel: Here's a Smart Guy with Your Ethical Standards

Adam Wheeler has an impressive resume of successfully persuading the smartest guys in the room that he is a peer.

Read his story here

News From the Obamaphate: DHS Rebranding itself as "ВЧК"

In coordination with the White House Office of Re-Branding - because, after all, a good marketing campaign is all it takes to win the public's support - DHS has undertaken an image overhaul and has renamed itself "ВЧК" (which, transliterated to the Latin alphabet, reads Cheka). As part of the re-branding campaign, the Corner of 12th and C Street, S.W. in Washington, D.C. has been renamed to "Felix Dzerzhinsky Place" and ВЧК has adopted a new emblem (below) to be rolled out over the next several weeks on all departmental vehicles, stationery, business cards, lapel pins, coffee mugs, baseball caps, tee-shirts and other collectibles. The Department of Justice will enforce all ВЧК trademarks and copyright interests in the emblem.

As part of the new branding effort, the Secretary's title has been re-branded to Commissar, and Commissar Napolitano has just announced a new partnership with Walmart to encourage shoppers to spy on each other:

Press Office
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Dec. 6, 2010

IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING'

WASHINGTON -- Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the expansion of the Department’s national “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign to hundreds of Walmart stores across the country—launching a new partnership between DHS and Walmart to help the American public play an active role in ensuring the safety and security of our nation.

“Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe,” said Secretary Napolitano. “I applaud Walmart for joining the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign. This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities.”

The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign—originally implemented by New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and funded, in part, by $13 million from DHS’ Transit Security Grant Program—is a simple and effective program to engage the public and key frontline employees to identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities.

More than 230 Walmart stores nationwide launched the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign today, with a total of 588 Walmart stores in 27 states joining in the coming weeks. A short video message, available here, will play at select checkout locations to remind shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity.

Over the past five months, DHS has worked with its federal, state, local and private sector partners, as well as the Department of Justice, to expand the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign and Nationwide SAR Initiative to communities throughout the country—including the recent state-wide expansions of the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign across Minnesota and New Jersey. Partners include the Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.

In the coming months, the Department will continue to expand the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign nationally with public education materials and outreach tools designed to help America’s businesses, communities and citizens remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the county safe.

News For The Obamaphate: Karzai & Bros. Ltd Selling Get Out of Jail Cards

At the risk of irritating some of my more right end fellow bloggers, if in fact the following story is true, I propose that we pack up our bags of money and guns and leave the Graveyard of Empires as soon as possible.

From Reuters, here's why:

(Reuters) - Afghan security forces are freeing captured senior Taliban for payment or political motives, with President Hamid Karzai and his powerful brother among those authorizing and requesting releases.

The practice is so systemic that the Taliban have a committee focused on getting their fighters out of jail. It undermines the deterrent effect of arrest and the potential of the prisoner population as a card to play in peace talks, analysts say.

The releases, which were confirmed to Reuters by several sources familiar with a range of cases, also raise questions about the capacity and political will of Afghan security forces meant to be taking over from foreign troops starting next year.

U.S. forces will begin drawing down numbers from next July and NATO hopes to meet Karzai's 2014 target for all security to be provided by Afghan police and military.

But cases uncovered by Reuters including that of Ghulam Haidar, a top insurgent in the southern Taliban heartland of Kandahar, suggest that a web of complex loyalties and widespread corruption are undermining the fight against the insurgency.

Ghulam Haidar, meaning "servant of God," is a common name in Afghanistan so when Canadian forces turned one of the most dangerous men in Kandahar city over to their Afghan counterparts in March, they may not have realized who he was.

Days later he was walking free again, according to three sources who have investigated prisoner releases or have seen documents about Haidar's capture. They asked not to be named because they are not authorized to release information.

"They took this guy into custody in mid-March, but he was out again in a few days. This is a classic example of what has been happening," one former Western official told Reuters.

A Kabul-based source with links to Western intelligence services confirmed Haidar was a Taliban leader known to have a major role in the insurgency around the city.

Yet his freedom was requested by Karzai's younger brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.

Dubbed "AWK" by Westerners working in Kandahar, he has an iron grip on the city but his loyalties are considered less solid. A U.S. government cable dated 2009, released by WikiLeaks, described him as a corrupt drug trafficker.

"When Ghulam Haidar was in (Afghan) custody AWK asked for his release," said a second source, who rejected the idea that Haidar could have been set free because he was a double agent.

"If the Afghan government had good agents within the Taliban things should have gotten better -- but that is obviously not the case," the source added.

Ahmad Wali Karzai said he had never asked for the release of a Taliban prisoner and had not heard of Ghulam Haidar.

"I am the person most wanted by the Taliban, with nine suicide attacks against me," he told Reuters by telephone.

Hat Tip to Christopher Fountain who properly asks: Why waste another American life?

Really; who in the hell needs this shit?

News from the Obamaphate: Obama Ill No More, Clinical Narcissism is No Longer a Disorder

In a classic CYA maneuver, America's shrinks have de-listed Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a condition warranting treatment. My understanding is that the condition is impervious to treatment protocols (i.e.: incurable), so I can sort of understand why America's "The rapists" have decided to absolve themselves of the responsibility of dealing with narcissists. Presumably, Obama is relieved that he doesn't have a treatable condition.

A deep Hat Tip to Weasel Zippers who treats this news more thoroughly than I.

UPDATE: Weasel Zippers' link is 4-ought-4. Here's a new source link.

FREE AASIA BIBI !!!

Discussing this Story:

Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican who has quite properly chastised most of the other Libertarian bloggers for their silence on this. Here

Ran at Si Vis Pacem. Here

Les Carpenter for Left Coast Rebel. Here

"Walt", A Follower of my Friend Chris Fountain's Blog Concocts the PERFECT Bomb Screening Solution for TSA - Move Over Michael Chertoff

As some of my more regular readers know, I have a blogging friend in neighboring Greenwich, CT. He's Chris Fountain and runs the very often funny (or should I say, rarely disappointing) and wildly eclectic blog For What Its Worth.

In the Comments section of one Chris' most recent posts ("We focus on bombs, Israelis look for terrorists ... And that’s the difference. Here’s how Israel screens plane passengers."), one of his readers, a certain "Walt" came up with a bloody brilliant screening solution for the TSA that I'm quite sure would win the support of all but those who's life mission is to blow up airplanes in mid-flight. Walt's solution is genuinely elegant in its poetic justice, efficient and extraordinarily cost effective. Enjoy!

Walt

November 24, 2010 at 6:33 pm

Weasel Boy -
So I have been noodling this whole pat down screening issue, and I finally figured it out. Here is what we need to do.
All we need to do is develop a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have hidden on or in your body. The explosion will be contained within the sealed booth. This would be a win-win for everyone. There would be no racial profiling and the device would eliminate long and expensive trials. This is so simple it’s brilliant! I can see it now: you’re in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion. Then an announcement comes over the PA system, “Attention standby passengers, we now have a seat available on flight number…
Talk about a win-win!!
Your Pal,
Walt

Hey Walt! Hire the engineers, find a VC company to fund the start-up, and let me in on the first and subsequent private placement offerings.

Rasmussen Reports: 27% View U.S. Society As Unfair and Discriminatory

From Rasmussen Reports comes this interesting piece:

27% View U.S. Society As Unfair and Discriminatory
Saturday, November 20, 2010

More than one-out-of-four Likely U.S. Voters (27%) now believe American society is generally unfair and discriminatory, the highest negative finding in over a year.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 60% of voters believe U.S. society is generally fair and decent, but that’s down 10 points from October and is also the lowest level found since October 2009. Another 13% are undecided. (Read the rest here)

Interestingly, this is the same percentage of respondents who, as of today, Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president in Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Click the image to enlarge

While the background numbers may not reflect a perfect correlation between the political viewpoints of the respondents to the respective polls, I would not be at all shocked to learn that there is a very high degree of overlap between responders who believe that U.S. society is "unfair and discriminatory" and those who strongly approve of Obama's performance.

Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair of UN's IPCC Admits That "Climate Policy" Really is Just a Big Redistributionist Theft Scam

A hearty tip of the beret is due to Ran at Si Vis Pacem who put me on to this story.

Background: Ottmar Edenhofer is a German economist who deals with climate change policy and environmental and energy policy and energy economics. He is currently professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research as well as Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, Germany.

...

In 2004, Ottmar Edenhofer was a lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. See, Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Edenhofer

In an interview with Germany's NZZ Online, Edenhofer freely admitted that the goal of Climate Policy is to transfer wealth from the West to the Third World by imposing economy eviscerating carbon caps on the West. If you're lucky enough not to be worried about keeping your job, paying your rent or mortgage and feeding your children now, just wait until this elitist skank pushes through his socialist agenda. You'll be lucky if you can afford a tent, sleeping bag, alcohol stove and pinto beans.

(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

(EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Well, at least Ottmar is being honest about his objectives in this regard, unlike that other-smartest-guy-in-the-room and serial grad school drop-out Al Gore.

Read more at NEWSBUSTERS.

Elitist Demoncrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller Wants to Discard the First Amendment

Real Clear Politics has a video up (here) of Sen. Jay Rockefeller saying:

"There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: 'Out. Off. End. Goodbye.' It would be a big favor to political discourse; to our ability to do our work here in Congress; and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future."

HEY JAY, ONE BIG FAT ROADBLOCK FOR YOU. IT'S CALLED THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO OUR FEDERAL CONSTITUTION, YEAH, THAT THING YOU SWORE TO UPHOLD AND DEFEND. SINCE YOU'VE OBVIOUSLY FORGOTTEN WHAT IT SAYS, I'LL REMIND YOU, EMPHASIZING IN PERTINENT PART WITH BOLD TEXT SO THAT YOUR APPARENTLY DAMAGED BRAIN CAN GRASP WHY YOU CAN'T SILENCE FOX NEWS OR MSNBC.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

UPDATE:

Weasel Zippers has a similar post up here:

Al Sharpton Demands Dems Push FCC to Limit Rush Limbaugh’s Freedom of Speech So People Aren’t “Subjected” to What He Says…

We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For....

Well, this says it all. No additional analysis required.

Stupid is as Stupid Does. Three Democrat Voters Who Won't Get to the Polls Today

While combing my hometown paper's stories, I came across the following piece on three complete idiots. Enjoy!

Police: Mistaken identity most likely prompted carjacking

Daniel Tepfer, Staff Writer

Published: 10:45 p.m., Monday, November 1, 2010

BRIDGEPORT -- A case of mistaken identity nearly cost a city man his life and resulted in a carjacking and wild ride through six towns.

It all began Friday afternoon when, State Police said, when a 30-year-old city man was driving along Sanford Avenue here.

Police said as the victim was driving his 2004 Hyundai sedan toward the intersection with Harral Avenue two men and a woman ran up to his car.

Nicole Bowen, 27, had arrived at her Sanford Avenue apartment a short time earlier from her job in Yonkers, N.Y., to find it ransacked, police said. Enraged, police said she had enlisted the aid of two friends, Tye Thomas, 20, and 18-year-old Lavar Perry, to get back at the people she believed burglarized her apartment.

Bowen left her apartment armed with a handgun and a roll of duct tape. As the victim was driving by, police said Bowen mistook him for being one of the burglars and she and her two companions charged his car.

Police said the trio stopped the victim's car and ordered him at gunpoint to move into the front passenger seat. Bowen then got into the driver's seat while Thomas and Perry got into the back seat, police said. They said Bowen then began driving while pointing the gun at the victim.

"I told the guy in the front passenger seat that everything was going to be all right. I just needed to get back to New York," police said Bowen later told them.

Bowen pulled off Interstate 95 in Darien to get gas. While either Thomas or Perry held the victim in a headlock, police said the other man removed cash from the victim's pocket and used it to pay for gas in the car. They then continued south on I-95.

As they neared exit 2, police said the victim became convinced the trio would kill him and he made the decision to try and jump out of the car as it slowed for traffic. They said he managed to get the passenger-side door open but Bowen realized what he was trying to do and began hitting the victim with the butt of the gun while yelling to Perry and Thomas to grab him.

Police said the car began swerving from lane to lane as the four struggled inside. At one point, they said the victim managed to get a hand on the gun and it went off, shattering the back window.

As the four continued to struggle, police said Bowen lost control of the car and it crashed into the median barrier. The victim, taking advantage of the dazed condition of his attackers, managed to get out of the car and began running along the highway. Police said a passing motorist stopped for the victim and stayed with him until police arrived.

Meanwhile, Bowen, unable to restart the car, got out and began to run. At some point police said she told them she looked back to see her two companion still standing by the car. "I yelled back to them, 'what are you doing, let's go,' police said she related. They said she threw the gun over the cement barrier into the opposite lanes only to see a car stop and someone inside get out of the car, pick up the gun and continue driving.

Bowen, Thomas and Perry were arrested a short later after causing near pandemonium in downtown Greenwich.

The three were charged with first-degree kidnapping, first-degree kidnapping with a firearm, first-degree robbery, third-degree assault and third-degree larceny.

They were each being held in lieu of $500,000 bond.

Linda McMahon: Why didn't you run on this from the beginning?

Below is a new embedded radio advertisement from Linda McMahon advising that she'll (1) self limit her service in the senate to two terms, (2) take no government salary and (3) refuse congressional benefits for herself.

All I can say Linda, is that you should have started your campaign with this promise. I'm certain it would have helped your chances enormously. I'll be voting for you because the alternative of pathological liar and narcissist Dick Blumenthal is intolerable.

Good luck Linda!

From the Reaganite Republican...

My blogging friend James who writes Reaganite Republican has a great post up.

Here's a tease.

Cross Post from Simple Justice: Blogger Warren Redlich Meets Political Insanity

Scott Greenfield, a criminal defense lawyer in New York City who writes Simple Justice - easily one of the finest blawgs on the net - posted this piece this morning condemning a political character assassination flier attacking New York Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Warren Redlich as a dangerous sexual predator. Scott was kind enough to let me re-post it here in its entirety. I agree completely with Scott. What do you think?

Blogger Warren Redlich Meets Political Insanity

When I first heard that Warren Redlich, a DUI lawyer up in Albany who blogged for business, was running as the Libertarian candidate for governor of the State of New York, I chuckled. Talk about an endeavor without a payoff. Of course, I had no idea at the time that the alternatives would be a zombie and the only one of Mario's offspring who got his good looks. Suddenly, Warren doesn't look nearly as silly.

Apparently, others are concerned about Warren as well. In order to screw with him, this appeared:



There are place[s] no one should go, and this is one of them. Is there a word, lie, defamation, libel, that captures just how twisted this is?

The purported basis for this "attack" is a blog post of Warren's that questions the prevalence and hypocrisy of Puritanism in America.

The story also hits on how Puritanism is still so prevalent in America. The greatest love interest in the history of romance is at least arguably Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was 13 years old. For some reason females become fertile in their early teens and peak before the age of 18. You would think those who believe in the theory of evolution would see this as the design of the species. And in an interesting alliance with Darwin, shouldn't religious people (and not just those in cults) believe teenage girls should be sexually active (in marriage of course), as that would appear to be the intent of the intelligent design? Instead both groups appear to be together on the opposite side.

Another take is the notion that men who find teenage girls attractive are perverts. If you look at literature like Shakespeare, and at some historical figures like Sir William Johnson (a prominent pre-revolutionary leader in New York), you get the impression that it used to be normal for men, even much older men, to be interested in teenage girls.

While this isn't something I would have written, and I frankly find it distasteful and, well, wrong, the flier is just outrageous. Rough politics is hardly unheard of in New York, but this goes beyond the pale and hits a new low.

Warren blames the Paladino campaign for the flier.

Redlich said Paladino was responsible for the ad, without backing up this claim. Paladino spokesman Michael Caputo rejected it on Sunday.

Redlich has said his goal is to get more votes than Paladino on Tuesday, which would give the Libertarian party the second highest spot on the ballot, a big advantage in voting, just below the Democratic Party.

The Paladino campaign denies responsibility.

"That would be like Bill Clinton jabbing Pat Paulson in the 1996 New Hampshire primary," Caputo said, referring to the joke campaign of Paulson, a comedian. "Never wrestle the comic relief _ you just get clown white smeared all over your suit."

However, one-time Nixon and Paladino campaign strategist Robert Stone, rather than disavow the flier, argued that it was fair:

Roger Stone, a former campaign consultant to President Richard Nixon who now advises the anti-Prohibition party candidate Kristin Davis and once worked for Paladino, but no longer does, said neither he nor the Davis campaign produced the mailer. But Stone defended its content.

Stone said Redlich has "exotic views on sex with teens," citing postings on Redlich's blog. Stone also said Redlich is "crying crocodile tears" after calling Davis a prostitute, when the former Manhattan Madam has repeatedly said that although she ran a prostitution enterprise, she was never a prostitute.

The minor party candidates in New York have been appreciated for bringing some fun moments into an otherwise moribund campaign. Heck, anything is better than being forced to watch Paladino's face of death on the telly, and no one will ever forget the Rent Is Too Damn High candidate, whose party name alone said all that needed to be said. But this gutter politics, outright defamation, goes way too far. Way, way too far.

Given the views of many in the criminal defense community toward sex offender registries, the gross over-reach of sex offender laws and designations, and the unreasonable prohibitions heaped on those given our modern day demonization, there aren't many criminal defense blawgers who wouldn't be staring down a flier just like this should they run for office against someone sleazy enough to smear a candidate in this way.

What cannot be tolerated is the inability to express oneself in the blawgosphere on these controversial issues without exposing oneself to such a wholly unjustified and flagrantly false smear campaign. To say that whoever did this is a disgrace is insufficient. The line has been crossed by a mile.

The Daily Telegraph Gets It, Why Can't The New York Times?

This piece by Janet Daley in the British Paper The Daily Telegraph captures the real mood of the nation on the eve of this historic election.

Its a shame that America's print media has slipped so far into the ditch of progressive ideology, that its now completely incapable of producing any objective pieces on political phenomena.

H/T Left Coast Rebel

Midterm elections 2010: Prepare for a new American revolution

Popular rage against the elite could change the nature of US politics, says Janet Daley.

By Janet Daley
Published: 9:00PM BST 30 Oct 2010

More than three centuries ago, the residents of America staged a rebellion against an oppressive ruler who taxed them unjustly, ignored their discontents and treated their longing for freedom with contempt. They are about to revisit that tradition this week, when their anger and exasperation sweep through Congress like avenging angels. This time the hated oppressor isn't a foreign colonial government, but their own professional political class.

In New York last week I was struck by the startling shift of mood since my last visit, during Barack Obama's first year in office. This phenomenon took varying forms, of course, depending on the political orientation of my interlocutor, but the underlying theme of despair and disgust was almost universal. Liberal Democrats (who hugely outnumber most other factions in that city) were despondent and disappointed with the collapse of Obama's popularity. A few of them (remarkably few, actually) were ready to blame this on a "Right-wing conspiracy" of vaguely racist motivation. But most of them were frankly critical of the strategic mistakes they believed the White House had made, and the baffling inability of their President to connect with the people in an engaging way. His shocking lack of emotional expression during last month's commemoration of 9/11 – a point of particular significance to New Yorkers – was remarked upon by a number of people I met.

There was a general sense that his personality was over-controlled and repressed, and that this was perhaps a function of his self-invention: the effect of having made a conscious choice to adopt an identity and a history (the Chicago black activist) which was unconnected to his real past. It occurred to me that, in an odd way, he was a Gatsby-like figure who had reinvented himself but whose new persona could be sustained only with a tremendous act of will. This psychological analysis seemed not unconnected to the political one, which revolved around his peculiar inability to sense what most Americans would regard as alienating and contrary to their own values and culture.

My Republican friends, perhaps surprisingly, were not gloating. They were too furious. But contrary to the superficial British assumption (heavily promoted by the BBC), they were not devoting their excoriation exclusively to the Obama Administration – or even to its clique of Congressional henchmen, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. That they were opposed to the Big State, European social democratic model of government which Obama had imported to Washington went almost without saying. But they were at least as angry with the leadership of their own party for having conceded far too much of the argument.

And this anger – again, contrary to the general understanding in Britain – is not new: it goes all the way back to the Bush presidency. It was widely known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more, Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central government.

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of the official Opposition as well.

Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were just a new incarnation of the gun-totin', gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government: the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which governs least.

One of the more electorally far-reaching effects of this is that Republicanism could become the home once again of a plausible political and economic programme, rather than simply an outpost for those who seem to reject many of the features of modern life. The gun-toters and gay-bashers and pro-lifers may have jumped aboard the bandwagon, and Sarah Palin may be frantically attaching herself to the parade, but this is not their show: the Tea Party protests began (as their name suggests) as a campaign against high taxation and the illegitimate intrusiveness of federal powers. That is what they are still about.

As some astute commentators have observed, the ascendancy of the Tea Parties has meant that fiscal conservatism can replace social conservatism as the raison d'être of the Republican cause. So rather than being a threat to Republicanism, the election of Tea Party candidates might be its salvation. It represents a rank-and-file rejection of what many Americans see as a conspiracy of the governing elite against ordinary working people. All of which makes clearer the appeal of even the naivety and inexperience of some of the Tea Party contenders who have challenged incumbent Republican candidates. If what you are rebelling against is a generation of smug, out-of-touch professional politicians, then a little dose of amateurishness or innocence might strike you as positively refreshing. (In a poll last week, more than 50 per cent of voters said that they would be more willing this year than usual to vote for someone with little political experience.)

The Democrats, too, are experiencing internal turmoil, with the Blue Dog congressmen (who represent conservative Democratic states) having to fight all their natural instincts to support Obama's healthcare and cap-and-trade policies. If they are annihilated in these midterm elections, their resentment against the White House will be terrible to behold. This could be a seminal moment in American post-war history, when popular rage against the political elite brings about realignments within parties which change the whole nature of the country's democratic choices.

The New American Hero: You!

Be an American Hero

H/T Judy Aron at Consent of the Governed