Obamaville July 24, 2013 - Does the Term Molasses Mean Anything to You?

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About the only time we hear from the president now is when he attends another fund raiser, has rock, pop and blues stars for personal concerts in the White House, or has to apologize for something someone in his vast administration did or said.

 

Why does the White House cost keep going up, now $1.4 billion a year, when very little is being done by our elected officials?  I bet things would happen a lot faster if we stopped Beyonce from playing for the first family in the White House or withheld checks to Congressmen until they passed a budget and some meaningful laws.

 

When it comes to the performance of our elected officials including the president, his cabinet, and both the House and Senate, molasses would be the odds on favorite to beat them all in a sprint to the finish line.  Nothing gets finished in Washington, D.C. and it doesn't matter if you are Democrat, Republican, Catholic or Prostitute or any other ingredient of our vast melting pot.

 

I, for one, favor turning over the government to different groups and give them a chance to mess it up for a while.  Could they do any worse than what we have?  Our new set of political standards in America have reached such a new low that it really should not matter what background our temporary government members bring to their office.

 

If we rotated our political leaders every six months or so they wouldn't have time to arrange for kickbacks, payoffs, and all the other forms of corruption and ethics violations currently found in government.

 

Since these temporary politicians did not come up through the election process but were appointed, then they haven't sold their souls to the financial demons that control the economy, government, wars, health care, energy, education and international relations, meaning international trade and the flow of cash it represents.

It would be the first government administration in a very long time that came with "no strings attached."  Campaign financing is one of the top three most corrupt of all ways to manipulate and leverage money, along with health care, wars, energy resources, frivolous lawsuits, alienation and discrimination.  Oh my, that is seven not three ways.

Obama Kills Osama declares Al-Qaeda on the run.

 

Too bad our president didn't get Man of the Year from the National Rifle Association after he led the Navy Seal raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden, mastermind of the World Trade Center terrorist attack.

 

At the time the news media was aglow with praise for our commander-in-chief for dealing a devastating blow to Al Qaeda, the terrorist network founded by Osama.  It was only a matter of time before they would become extinct.

 

That NRA plaque would look great next to Obama's Nobel Peace prize awarded before he even had a chance to brush the confetti off his tux from his first inauguration.

 

Here is a timeline for the few things that actually happened since Barack Obama became president.

 Barack Obama Presidential Timetable

 

January 20, 2009 -  Obama first inauguration

 

January 20, 2009 - Beyonce performs at President's Inauguration

 

October 9, 2009 - Obama wins Nobel Peace prize

 

August 2010 - Obama completes troop buildup in Afghanistan

 

May 2, 2011 - Obama kills Osama

 

December 18, 2011 - Last US troops leave Iraq

 

September 11, 2012 - American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, Libya, attacked by Al Qaeda - US Ambassador one of four Americans murdered.

 

July 22, 2013 - Al Qaeda attacks Iraq prisons, frees 500 terrorists.

 

You get the idea.  Not much for prosperity or the history books.

 

Sunni and Shiite Islam Muslims continue their war of extermination against each other.  With the Shiite in control of Iraq and Iran while the Sunni and Al Qaeda represent most of the Arab world, there is no end in sight for the sectarian bloodshed.

 

The following is the NBC News report on the prison attack.

 

By Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent, NBC News

 

Al Qaeda-linked militants have claimed responsibility for Monday’s assault on Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail, which freed some of the terror network's top leaders amid U.S. fears that the country is back in civil war.

 

Checkpoints were set up Tuesday as the search continued for up to 500 militants freed by the attack, which followed the deaths of 250 Iraqis in 10 days of violence. 

 

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which was formed earlier this year through a merger between al Qaeda's affiliates in Syria and Iraq, said in a statement that it was behind the storming of the jail late on Sunday night.

 

The attack began when suicide bombers smashed explosives-laden cars into the prison’s front gate, while gunmen attacked guards with rocket-propelled grenades.

 

As fighters held off reinforcements outside, other militants, some wearing suicide vests, stormed into the prison and freed the convicts.

 

“Most of them were convicted senior members of al Qaeda and had received death sentences," Hakim Al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defense committee in parliament, told Reuters.

 

"The security forces arrested some of them, but the rest are still free," Hakim Al-Zamili said.

 

The group also said it was behind a second, almost simultaneous assault on Taji Jail, to the north of city. But Iraqi authorities said those attackers had been fought off with a couple of helicopters.

 

They added that checkpoints had been set up around Abu Ghraib, as the search for the escapees continued.

 

 Both attacks took place exactly a year after The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's most senior leader, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, launched a campaign dubbed "Breaking the Walls" to make freeing imprisoned members a top priority. 

 

“The mujahideen brigades set off after months of preparation and planning to target two of the biggest prisons of the Safavid government," the group said in the statement, Tuesday.

 

Safavid is used by hardline Sunnis as a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims and refers to the dynasty that ruled Iran from the 16th to 18th centuries.

 

Abu Ghraib gained notoriety because of abuses carried out by U.S. personnel while the country was under occupation following the removal of Saddam Hussein. 

 

The prison assaults followed a violent 10 days in the country, which has seen 250 killed by car bombs, ambushes and gun fights, according to violence monitoring group Iraq Body Count. 

 

The spiral of violence has led U.S. officials to warn that the country is sliding back into civil war, undoing the work achieved by the 'surge' of U.S. troops.

 

NBC News' Henry Austin and Reuters contributed to this report.

 

So what exactly is the difference between the Shiite and Sunni Moslems?  Here is what the staff at the History Channel had to say about the difference.

 

The Islam religion was founded by Mohammed in the seventh century. In 622 he founded the first Islamic state, a theocracy in Medina, a city in western Saudi Arabia located north of Mecca. There are two branches of the religion he founded.

 

The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs--Mohammed's successors--rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break-up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War.

 

Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, "Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, [believe they] had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership" at the time of the Imam's disappearance. Not "until the ascendancy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1978" did they believe that they had once again begun to live under the authority of a legitimate religious figure.

 

 Another difference between Sunnis and Shiites has to do with the Mahdi, “the rightly-guided one” whose role is to bring a just global caliphate into being. As historian Timothy Furnish has written,  "The major difference is that for Shi`is he has already been here, and will return from hiding; for Sunnis he has yet to emerge into history: a comeback v. a coming out, if you will."

 

In a special 9-11 edition of the Journal of American History, Appleby explained that the Shiite outlook is far different from the Sunni's, a difference that is highly significant:

 

... for Sunni Muslims, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate ... as they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate.

 

In 1928, four years after the abolishment of the caliphate, the Egyptian schoolteacher Hasan al-Banna founded the first Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Sunni world, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Al-Banna was appalled by"the wave of atheism and lewdness [that] engulfed Egypt" following World War I. The victorious Europeans had "imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices." Suddenly the very heart of the Islamic world was penetrated by European"schools and scientific and cultural institutes" that" cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western."14 Most distressing to al-Banna and his followers was what they saw as the rapid moral decline of the religious establishment, including the leading sheikhs, or religious scholars, at Al-Azhar, the grand mosque and center of Islamic learning in Cairo. The clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters.

Osama bin Laden is a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1920s was catastrophic, as he made clear in a videotape made after 9-11. On the tape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 7, 2001, he proclaimed: "What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. ... Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more [than] eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated."

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Al-Qaida's Attack on Christians Signals Change in Tactics to Get More Press

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Shocked mourners honor the dead Christians

The recent tragedy October 31 that occurred when Al-Qaida terrorists attacked a Christian Church in Bagdad, Iraq taking hostages and the siege ended in the slaughter of 70 innocent Christians including three priests represents a new strategy by the Osama bin Laden terrorists to target higher profile targets in Iraq.

It seems the Western media had lost interest in the hundreds of thousands of Shiite and Sunni Muslims being killed by the Muslim extremists or terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan among other countries. If nothing else bin Laden has demonstrated since 9-11 that instilling fear in Americans is just as important as the number of deaths that take place and the news of Muslim extremists killing Muslims no longer is news worthy.

Apparently going after the Christian minority in Iraq insures much broader news coverage and the result was exactly that. Lost in the American news coverage of the wars have been the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shiites slaughtered at the hands of Sunni terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Christian targets, on the other hand, indicates an expansion of the bloodbath to Christians and since America is a Christian nation it will get attention.

One wonders if Al-Qaida might have made a tactical mistake as the extension of attacks to include the Christians could be a unifying action for all Muslims who are opposed to the terrorist cause. We can only hope that peace loving Muslims will help stop the terrorist expansion to save their countries. The following AP account provides background on the latest terrorist activity so you can understand the terrible situation that faces any Muslims seeking peace.

France has offered temporary asylum to the Christian victims who want to leave Iraq and dozens have already moved to France. International outrage has been fast and furious but will it help reinforce the will of the Iraqi people to oppose the terrorists? In a nation that has been unable to form a new government since elections almost 6 months ago, any form of unity would be welcome.

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Sinan Salaheddin, Associated Press

BAGHDAD – Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq has threatened more attacks on Christians after a siege on a Baghdad church that left 58 people dead, linking the warning to claims that Egypt's Coptic Church is holding women captive for converting to Islam.

The Islamic State of Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for Sunday's assault on a Catholic church during Mass in downtown Baghdad, said its deadline for Egypt's Copts to release the women had expired and its fighters would attack Christians wherever they can be reached.

"We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood," the insurgent group said in a statement posted late Tuesday on militant websites.

The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq and other allied Sunni insurgent factions.

It is unclear exactly what led the group to seize on the conversion disputes between Egypt's Muslims and its minority Christians, although the issue has become a rallying point for hard-line Islamists in Egypt.

In announcing its reasons for Sunday's attack, the group said it had given the Coptic Church 48 hours to release the women it says had converted to Islam. The group also demanded the release of al-Qaida-linked prisoners held in Iraq.

"All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) wherever they can reach them," it said.

The group specifically mentioned two Egyptian women married to Coptic priests it says are being held against their will. The church denies the allegation. Some believe the women converted to Islam to leave their husbands because divorce is banned by the church.

Over the past few years in Egypt, arguments over these kinds of alleged conversions have exacerbated Muslim-Christian tensions already high over issues like the construction of new churches. The two communities generally live in peace, though clashes have taken place.

The Baghdad church siege was the deadliest ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as members of the community have fled to other countries to escape the violence.

The death toll in a series of attacks mainly targeting Shiites in Baghdad, meanwhile, rose to 91, according to Iraqi police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Iraqi state TV aired footage Wednesday of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visiting victims of the blasts in Baghdad's hospitals. The televised trips to civilians wounded in attacks were a first for al-Maliki, who has been struggling to keep his job since his Shiite-dominated alliance was narrowly defeated by the Sunni-backed bloc of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in the March 7 parliamentary election.

Neither bloc won an outright majority, setting up a fight for allies that has left the government stalemated. There was a glimmer of hope for political progress Wednesday when parliament's acting speaker, Fouad Massoum, called the lawmakers to convene Monday and elect his successor.

However, the acting speaker only has the right to call parliament to session and can't necessarily force all the members to show so it was unclear whether the date would hold or that the announcement signified any progress in the political talks.

Last week, Iraq's highest court ordered the 325 lawmakers back to work after a virtual eight-month recess. The parliament has met only once since the March 7 vote for just 20 minutes to allow more time to choose a new leadership.

Under the constitution, parliament was required to meet within 15 days of final court approval of election results and choose a speaker, then a president. The appointments had to be put off because they are part of the negotiations over the rest of the new leadership — including a prime minister and top Cabinet officials.
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