July 10, 2007
Cheney Converts to Islam
Posted by Eric Kenning on March 02, 2007
Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, was sworn in as the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress in early January, but he is not the highest-ranking Muslim official in the United States. That honor belongs to Vice President Dick Cheney, who during one of his many trips to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s on behalf of Halliburton secretly converted to Wahabbi Islam, a rigorous fundamentalist version of the faith. In 1997, according to sources in Riyadh, Cheney visited the dusty provincial town of Bakh-Asward, a Wahabbi stronghold, where he realized he had found exactly what he was looking for, a religion that was grim, rancorous, authoritarian, and violent, and yet, on the other hand, insane.
Since that time, Cheney has been working tirelessly to restore the medieval Islamic empire, or caliphate, in the Middle East and has actually been toying with the idea of naming himself caliph, or at least pulling strings behind the scenes as vice caliph. The centerpiece of this secret strategy has been the carefully planned and executed war in Iraq, which has done so much to raise the prestige and power of jihadists in that country and elsewhere. That’s why Jihadtime magazine, a weekly published out of a cave somewhere between the lawless Pakistani border region of North Waziristan and the lawless Afghan border region of South Wazooistan, sent Cheney a copy of its year-end issue with a mirror on the cover, which proclaimed that “Our annual ‘Person of the Year’ is you–yes, you, along with all the other neo-armchair warriors out there who have done so much for our cause.”
Cheney has kept his faith a private matter, choosing not to reveal it to President Bush, a sincere Christian who has vowed to read the entire Bible someday, just as soon as he finishes My Pet Goat. But it has led to considerable tension in the Cheney household, where the devout veep unrolls a prayer rug and prays five times a day facing toward an oil well just outside Mecca. In particular, his conversion to Wahabbi Islam has led to bitter arguments with his daughter Mary, who converted to an entirely different sect, Wasabi Islam, while having dinner at a fusion sushi and shish-kebab restaurant in Georgetown last month with her partner Heather Poe. The heated exchanges between father and daughter have been further complicated by the fact that Cheney’s wife, Lynne, is a devotee of the ancient Egyptian snake goddess Irma.
Cheney’s strict adherence to militant Islam has also caused problems with his fellow neoconservatives, most of whom are equally devout, but adhere to a rival sect, militant Bedlam.
Eric Kenning is the pen name of a writer in New York. He can be reached at eric_kenning@hotmail.com. This piece originally appeared in the journal Liberty. Article URL: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/cheney_converts_to_islam/
February 15, 2007
I came across a “political” blog the other day and, like many amateur politic blogs these days, it was full of vitriolic name-calling and hostility. Add to that a liberal sprinkling of morality hoo-hah and self-righteousness and you have a really nice commentary on what is wrong with the world today.
Now I’m the last person to deny my belief in God, but my belief doesn’t rest on the basis that everyone else is wrong. This belief of mine is what resonates in the very core of my being. I can’t deny it even when I try. But beating someone over the head with it is not who I am. It’s not who God wants me to be either.
I really think those people who are name-calling from one side of their mouths and calling on the name of God from the other, need to sit back and do a little reading. Cuz frankly I’m tired of it. And God’s tired of it. It makes Him look bad. It puts Him in the political arena where He does not want to be. He is not running for office. If you believe in Him, then He is the first and last word. He is Alpha and Omega. He is the creator of the universe and every person in it.
When we force God to fit in with our own personal agenda, we put Him in a box. We limit His power and influence. God is not Democrat or Republican. He is God. So much bigger and better than we give Him credit for. Don’t use Him, respect Him and honor Him and be humble before Him.
August 2, 2005
Got this from the MNdaily.com. What the heck? How far down the river of denial did they paddle to get this law? You can’t get birth control on a college campus in Wisconsin but you CAN get a beer? What about the young women who are taking birth control for other reasons like severe PMS? And a woman CAN’T get rape counseling?! That’s just friggin’ inhumane!
Protecting women’s reproductive rights on college campuses Minnesotans should be wary of Wisconsin’s ban on birth contol on its university campuses.
By Kristina Shaw
ollege campuses have emerged as the latest battlefield in the nation’s war on women’s reproductive rights. Wisconsin has passed a bill entitled UW Birth Control Ban-AB 343. This bill prohibits University of Wisconsin campuses from prescribing, dispensing and advertising all forms of birth control and emergency contraceptives. Wisconsin State Rep. Dan LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, introduced this bill based on the belief that “dispensing birth control and emergency contraceptives leads to promiscuity.” In reality, full access to all birth control options — including emergency contraceptives — has no effect on the level of women’s promiscuity. Instead, birth control and emergency contraceptives help prevent more than 35,000 unintended births and 800,000 abortions each year.
The bill denies thousands of women essential health-care services and reproductive choices and affects their lives and futures in many ways. With this bill, rape victims will no longer be able to turn to campus health services to obtain emergency contraceptives to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, or receive postrape counseling and education — adding even more stress to a traumatic event. Students who want birth-control prescriptions, emergency contraceptives or even information about preventive birth control are forced to seek out these services at off-campus clinics. This poses a problem not only for students who attend rural Wisconsin university campuses and might not have a clinic nearby but also for many students who attend urban campuses but do not have access to transportation, money, insurance or time to travel to an off-campus clinic. By removing the convenience of having these services on campus, students are less likely to seek out preventive birth control, which could lead to more unintended pregnancies and abortions. Emergency contraceptives are especially vulnerable to this bill because they must be taken within 72 hours to effectively prevent pregnancy, thus, adding even more pressure for students to find a way off-campus to receive the prescription.
Any rollback of women’s reproductive rights is inexcusable, but the bill is especially disturbing because it is directed at college campuses and targets a population in which there tends to be a high concurrency of sexual assaults and unplanned sexual encounters. During a time in their lives when they need full access to all birth control options the most, this bill denies women access to any options at all. College is also a time when students are transforming into young adults and are taking control of their lives and futures. Denying women full reproductive services and choices sends the message that women cannot be trusted to make decisions that affect their bodies, their lives and their futures.
In passing this bill, Wisconsin has the distinct honor of becoming the first state in the nation to limit college students’ access to full birth control options. Minnesotans should be concerned about what this bill means for their future. Not only does the bill affect the 13,000 Minnesotans who attend college in Wisconsin, but it also sets a dangerous precedent for similar bills to be introduced on college campuses across the nation in the future. Currently, University of Minnesota students have access to full reproductive services at their on-campus clinics, including emergency contraceptives, pregnancy counseling, access to birth-control prescriptions and more. However, Minnesota, as Wisconsin’s nearest neighbor, might be the next stop in the introduction of college campus birth-control-ban bills.
Women’s organizations are fighting back. The National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others have announced their opposition to college campus birth-control bans. In addition, the Minnesota chapter of the National Organization for Women has launched its Birth-Control NOW! campaign, focusing on stopping the gradual rollback of women’s reproductive rights. A recent victory for the organization was when Walgreens amended its Pharmacist Refusal Clause. This clause stated that if a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription, usually birth control or emergency contraceptives, on the basis of his or her “moral beliefs,” the customer was sent to another store to get her prescription filled. The amended policy places this burden back on Walgreens, making the company deliver the prescription from another store to the store the customer is at, or the customer’s house, in a timely manner. This insures that women are able to receive their prescription without undue burden or distress. Actions such as NOW’s campaign and others provide some light in the dark, uphill battle for the preservation of women’s reproductive rights.
Above all, Minnesotans should train a watchful eye on the development of Wisconsin’s bill because, one semester, a similar bill might end up at the University of Minnesota’s doorstep — stripping students of the essential reproductive-rights services they now take for granted.
Kristina Shaw is vice president for the National Organization for Women, Minnesota Chapter. Please send comments to letters@mndaily.com.
But I suppose the rules will change when all the women leave and the Wisconsin men are left with the sheep and horses.
July 6, 2005
New York Times reporter sent to jail in leak case
By James Vicini Wed Jul 6, 6:03 PM ET
A New York Times reporter was jailed on Wednesday after she said she could not break her promise and reveal her confidential source to a grand jury investigating who in the Bush administration leaked a covert CIA operative’s name to the media.
Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered correspondent Judith Miller to jail immediately and said she must stay there until she agreed to testify or for the rest of the grand jury’s term, which lasts through October.
Another case involving Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper was resolved when he told the judge he had just received the “express personal consent” of his source to reveal his identity. “Consequently I am prepared to testify,” he said.
The dispute has become an important case involving freedom of the press. It has pitted the news media’s traditional use of anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.
Miller told the judge she did not want to go to jail but had no choice but to protect the identity of her source as a matter of personal conscience and to stand up for a vigorous, independent press.
“If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press,” she said in a clear, firm voice in the packed courtroom that included her husband and the newspaper’s top editor.
The grand jury investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, a Justice Department prosecutor, seeks to determine who in the Bush administration leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media in 2003 and whether any laws were violated.
Plame’s name was leaked, her diplomat husband said, because of his criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war.
Journalists say using anonymous sources is crucial to their reporting, including exposing government wrongdoing in cases like the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency and the printing of the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War.
When Hogan ordered Miller to jail, she showed no emotion, and one of her lawyers put his arm around her shoulder. The judge said confinement at a jail in the Washington, D.C., area might convince her to change her mind and testify.
CONFIDENTIAL PLEDGES
Earlier in the hearing, Miller was firm that she would not testify. “I do not make confidential pledges lightly, but when I do, I must honor them. If I do not, how can I expect people to accept my assurances,” she said.
“Your honor, in this case I cannot break my word just to stay out of jail,” Miller told the judge.
“My motive here is straightforward; a promise of confidentiality once made must be respected or the journalist will lose all credibility and the public will, in the end, suffer.”
Miller, an investigative reporter who covers national security and foreign policy issues, said she did not consider herself to be above the law.
She said she had thought long and hard over the July 4 Independence Day holiday about her decision.
After Cooper entered the courtroom, he went over to Miller and they briefly hugged. Before the hearing began, perhaps anticipating that she would have to go to jail immediately, Miller handed her necklace to her husband.
Her attorney, Robert Bennett, told the judge she had not committed any crimes and that she never even
“After 40 years in this business, I have the nagging feeling that Judy Miller may be the only person to go to jail in this case,” Bennett said. No one has been charged as part of the grand jury investigation which began in January 2004.
Hogan said Miller had no choice but to cooperate under the law. He said she was defying the law by not testifying and “may be obstructing justice.”
In a statement, Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, said: “There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience. Judy has chosen such an act in honoring her promise of confidentiality.”
Cooper said that as of last night he had planned to tell the judge that he would not cooperate. But that changed “a short time ago” when he received word from his source that Cooper was no longer bound by his pledge of confidentiality.
After an unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Time magazine last week handed over the subpoenaed records. Cooper said those documents included notes containing the identity of his source and their conversations.
(Additional reporting by Patricia Wilson)
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
April 1, 2005
Starving to death is a painful thing. Your tongue swells up. You don’t have enough fluids to blink or process bile. Your acid content rises and becomes increasingly uncomfortable. It’s not a good way to die.
If the end result was the same, why couldn’t they just give Terry a overdose of morphine or something.
I just don’t think it’s fair that Terry Schiavo had to suffer so much when that rotting bastard Timothy McVeigh got to make his peace, close his eyes, get an injection and drift off into neverland.
That’s all I have to say about our system of “justice.”
March 7, 2005
Why is it when peopled were expressing their dissatisfaction with Clinton they were exercising their freedom of speech.
But when people express their dissatisfaction with Bush they are anti-American?
I got the “if you don’t like it, leave” thing again. Am I safe in assuming that they only returned to the country four years ago? Perhaps they don’t realize they have more in common with the 17th century meanies who drove the Puritans out of England than the forefathers of this country. Perhaps they are the ones who should leave, eh?
The whole thing is reminding me of that eerie episode of the Twilight Zone where that kid would send you to the cornfields if you weren’t thinking happy thoughts.
I’m not thinking happy thoughts right now. Will I get sent to France? (crossing fingers and hoping).
The fact of the matter is this country was founded on the acceptance of differences. The Statue of Liberty doesn’t read “Give us your poor, your huddled masses only if they sign this contract and hold to the opinions we set in this here manifesto.” The preamble to the constitution doesn’t grant life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness only if you believe in the God of the Bible.
As Christians we have allowed nationalism to supplant the power of God. We have blustered in and declared our way the one true way and by golly the nation is going to run under that premise no matter who gets lost in the process. We, who were allowed to freely choose God, are trying to force everyone else to make that same choice. Why, when our salvation was a gift, do we try to make it another person’s sentence? People have to choose to accept the gift. Some people are not going to accept it. That is what free will is all about. But those who wave the flag of Christianity simultaneously with the flag of the United States are saying that God isn’t good enough on His own. It is one thing to be proud of your country, it is another thing altogether to wrap that pride up in a package deal that God never offered.
As Christians, our behavior is supposed to model God’s grace toward us. We are to be merciful because He is merciful. We are to love because He is love. We have a choice each morning when we wake up to live a life that points people toward God or away from God.
I am a registered Democrat. I am a Christian. I believe in the elemental freedoms this country stands for. I believe that Bush and his cabinet are the Sanhedrin of our times. I believe in the God of Abraham. If He told me to renounce my party affiliation, I would do so in a heartbeat, regardless of my politics. Because deep down I know that He is good and right (all the time). But the thing is that, while He has convicted my heart on many a thing, He has never done so about my vote. Why? Because I don’t think our politics play that big a role in the relationship we are to have with our Creator. Why do we insist on double-billing God along with politics?
October 11, 2004
Thought this was funny and just had to share.
October 5, 2004
Here’s an article my friend sent me. It really hit me.
As I Lay Crying
On feeling what no patriotic American is supposed to feel
by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
October 1, 2004
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/whitehurst.php?articleid=3682
“I was at a rap concert the other night,” said a 17-year-old neighbor last night. “And they were saying all kinds of crazy things, like ‘Bush is a baby-killer.’” He rolled his eyes and laughed.
I asked him, “Well the truth is that children and infants have been killed this very week - did you not see the photos of those kids who’ve been killed by U.S. air strikes over the last few days?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head vigorously, “that’s not true. Or if it was true, it wasn’t intentional.”
“But still they are dead, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Yes, but for a good cause - to bring democracy. But Bush certainly hasn’t killed any babies! I mean, come on!”
I asked, “Is it killing only when we do it by our own hand, or is it killing also when we order it? Is it killing when we set the forces in motion so that other people are doing the killing?”
“No, you can’t believe those things. I mean people have told me it’s just a bunch of terrorists over there causing the problem. Bush is trying to bring democracy to Iraq. People get killed - it’s just part of war. Nobody’s to blame, it’s just part of the process.”
“So if it’s an accident, it isn’t really killing?”
“It’s not the same,” he said, “as the insurgents and the way they kill. We’re just trying to kill the rebels, and we don’t target civilians. They do. Anyway, foreign forces are making most of the trouble and taking hostages, all that stuff. It’s not the Iraqis who are fighting our troops; I read it on a blog from Iraq, and I know a lot of guys in the Marines, so I know it’s true.”
I read it on a blog, so I know it’s true. The U.S. would never kill innocent people intentionally. It isn’t killing when you don’t target the civilians - it’s just a part of war. Photos of babies and children supposedly killed by allied forces should not be believed. Or, if one does believe the pictures, one must understand that somebody else killed them because the U.S. would never do that. And if it did do that, it wasn’t intentional. It was an accident. It was war. Just a part of war. We have to understand that. Nobody’s to blame. I read it on a blog.…
He is so young. Untouched, protected, “from a good family.” He prides himself on his resolve, on his confidence that every death will be worth it if we “finish what we came to do.” He is so trusting, it hurts to look at his eyes as he says these things. Perhaps I remember too much from the Vietnam days, when friends came home without limbs or in a box with a nice memorial service and salutes and honors and then nothing …nothing.
Maybe it’s my hypersensitivity, or simply the fact that I’m a woman -even worse, a mother - who can’t seem to see things objectively, or understand that some kids simply have to die that others may be liberated, or freed from the threat of terrorism, the way a man can.
Or maybe it’s Jesus whispering in my ear that’s causing all the trouble, leading to these unpleasant rumblings of conscience and pain. Doubtless I’d be far better off (not to mention more popular) listening to Rush Limbaugh or Donald Rumsfeld or Pat Robertson or George Bush or
Scott McClellan (another young untested one with trusting eyes).
A contented lack of concern about matters that are so very far away and thus should not concern me (except insofar as they keep me safe from bombings and wars) is the way I should, as a patriotic American, see things. This is what I’ve learned on every cable TV news and talk show - Have faith, war is the answer.
Even now, when I read that the U.S. and their Iraqi proxies are preparing for “decisive action” against the “insurgents,” I should not worry about the frantic families who will die in the process. More babies, children, women, the disabled, the old people, and all the peace-loving Iraqi males that we are told do not exist will perish … but I should not think of these things.
I should be more patriotic. I should clamp down on my imagination. I should not see what is about to happen, nor what has already happened, to my brothers and sisters in Iraq. I should not weep for the victims who are even now breathing, laughing, getting a midnight snack, sleeping, playing with grandma, all the while not knowing that their days - or their hours - are numbered.
As I lay crying.…
I know that I have not been “all that I can be” as an American. Even as a Christian, I am aware that I am a disappointment to those who have adjusted Christianity’s less popular elements to fit the doctrine of eternal war - war conducted by the people and for the people, killings that are done only by accident and for the very best of reasons.
Headline after headline reassures me: the U.S. military command targets only the “militants,” the “insurgents,” the “terrorists.” If anyone else dies in those bombing runs, those midnight raids, those “returns of fire,” there is no need for sorrow, nor for guilt. It was not intentional. It was blameless.
Truly, I do not doubt this. I have full confidence that civilian killings will not be intentional when the clampdown comes in October. It’s just that I wonder if not being intentional is the same thing as not being accountable. I wonder if not targeting a family is the same thing as being blameless when its members perish.
I wonder, in my moments of weakness, if a child killed by a bomb not intended for her is any less dead.
But such questions are unpatriotic, aren’t they?
Yes. These questions betray a lack of resolve, a lack of
follow-through, a lack of “doing what we came to do,” a lack of faith in war.
My grief, whenever I see the carnage that this war has left behind - car bombs, beheadings, dead toddlers with blood oozing from their
nostrils - is evidence enough that I am no longer measuring up to the new revised Christianity that has corrected Jesus’ teachings. The new Political Christianity teaches that wars and assassinations and accidental killings are to be tolerated or even admired, as long as they’re for a good cause.
You may wonder why I say all this. It is not the popular thing to say. As an evangelical Christian, I am told by the men pounding on their Bibles and pointing their fingers at their studio audiences that I should vote for Bush. Yet I see the children in my dreams, the children and all the “family values” promoted with such fervor in this country that will be washed with their blood into the Iraqi soil.
But tomorrow I will drink an extra cup of coffee and square my shoulders and try to forget that on this night I lay crying.
August 9, 2004
Has political orientation become our new religion? Has the Great Commission been changed over the years to spread the news of liberalism vs. conservatism to the masses?
I think not, and yet talking to some folks I would swear there is an eleventh commandment: “Thou Shalt Vote Republican.” And it is rampant through the church.
My church has, as part of its mission statement, a goal of reaching people within a 20 block radius. Surprisingly, my church is predominantly white while the neighborhood it calls home is predominantly Black, Latino and Asian. It is also, according to voter registration, predominantly Democrat. I probably wouldn’t be attending this church if I had a choice in the matter, but that’s another story for another post.
Our parking lot is filled with Bush/Cheney bumper stickers. People have absolutely no qualms about discussing why their candidate is the greatest and constantly spread gossip about the opposing party.
I get these emails from one of my Christian friends and they are always about something John Kerry is supposed to have done. For the last month I have attempted to counter them, but she doesn’t want to listen. When I tell her I can find no corroborating evidence to support the statements, she doesn’t back off but just sends me more of the same.
Case in point: I get this email about Kerry’s Vietnam service and a link to some Swift Boat Veterans site. I read it through and a couple of things strike me odd, one is that the age of the veterans who supposedly served with or under Kerry is all over the map. And they are from several branches of the military. Plain old common sense says they couldn’t have all served with Kerry, so I write her back saying I think she’s been taken. That she’s passing along gossip disguised as truth. As this is about the fourth time I’d mentioned to this particular person that just because someone sends you something via email, doesn’t mean it’s the God’s honest truth, I emailed a copy of Kerry’s service record as compared to Bush’s (from Mother Jones magazine). I get in response an explanation that she doesn’t feel that a person should be judged on what they did 30 years ago because that’s a long time and people change. She doesn’t even realize that the email she sent out was asking that we judge Kerry on what may or may not have happened 30 years ago.
The Moral Majority has succeeded in making conservatism the new religion. They have made conservative politics synonymous with Christianity. If you’re liberal, you don’t want to hear about Christ because, well, that’s Jerry Falwell territory - and gosh, do I really want to protest against the Teletubbies? If you’re middle of the road you don’t want to hear about Christ because you don’t want to be involved with any of the extremists. If you’re conservative you don’t need to hear about Christ because you are obviously already on the team, right?
I went to a Chonda Pierce concert last year and she said something extremely disparaging about Democrats during her show. All I could think was how close I had come to bringing my non-Christian friend! I wondered how many people were sitting next to their non-Christian, non-Republican friends. Friends who were thinking, “see, I knew this church thing obviously wasn’t for me!”
How humbling will it be to learn that our political agendas kept us from reaching people with the gospel message? A message that is supposed to be intensely personal and full of grace and mercy. Yet we have reduced it to an issue on proposition whatever. There are many times when I ask God why I am attending the whitest church in San Diego. There are times when I have not gone to events simply because I wasn’t in the mood to hear someone’s politics. And there are definitely times when I feel combative rather than loving simply because I constantly feel the need to defend how I feel about something. How must it feel when you’re on the outside looking in?
I think it’s great to be enthusiastic about politics and political candidates, but, as in all things, our endorsement must be of a different sort than the rest of the world’s. Nevermind that neither Presidential candidate is running a particularly Christian ad campaign right now, we can only account for ourselves. So instead of pointing out the negative aspects of the opposing candidate, point out the positive aspects of your candidate. Don’t slam other people for their point of views. And finally, if you are not sure how your words will be received, keep them to yourself.
You cannot serve two masters. You have to make a choice. Would you rather I elected your candidate as my President or your God as my King?
