Malaysian Muslim clerics: No Yoga for the faithful

Showing once again how enlightened Islam is, a council of Muslim clerics in Malaysia have issued a non-binding fatwa which rules that Yoga is "inappropriate" and can "destroy the faith" of Muslims who engage in such a sinful act.

Malaysia's top Islamic body on Saturday ruled against Muslims practicing yoga, saying it has elements of other religions that could corrupt Muslims.

The National Fatwa Council's non-binding edict said yoga involves not just physical exercise but also includes Hindu spiritual elements, chanting and worship.

It might be that whole flexibility thing with Yoga they actually object to.

Global warming my ass

Yeah...17.8F here in Fredericksburg, VA this morning. In freakin' November. I hate to think of what it'll be like in January when Obama starts healing the planet.

Bad marketing

"Rough Rider" condoms? Who's the genius who came up with that name?

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A kibitz from Mark:

You know you've been in California too long when you think it's OK to use your camera phone in the men's room.
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It was a one-holer.

Coastal

Say what you want about about California...I know I do. But they truly have some of the most beautiful coastal areas in the world.

I was driving by this spot just north of Half Moon Bay and had to pull off and pause for a look just now. (Photoed and posted from my cell phone.)

Premature worm food

Possibly the worst thing I've read this week month year. OK, well after the news of Obama's election win.

Doctors in Arizona thought a Phoenix-area woman had a possible brain tumor, but it turned out there was something else penetrating her brain – a worm.

Far be it from me to copy the shtick of a certain blogger at Hot Air, but...dude.

Time for some 'punk for sissies'

"Song For The Dumped"...one of the more amusing songs by Ben Folds Five. I always kind of enjoyed this one. But then again, I've always kind of liked Ben Folds. He once described his music as "punk rock for sissies".

Escalation

I've been following off and on for the past year and a half or so the growing trend in acts of sea piracy off the coast of Somalia, but I had no idea it was this bad. The image above is a zoom of the Google map at the link. Each marker represents a hijacking or attempted hijacking this year.

Now these guys have captured a super tanker and will, in all likelihood, get the ransom they want. As I've said before, this huge increase in piracy got going in full swing after western governments started choking off funds to al Qaeda and their affiliates, and almost certainly represents a new way of putting money into their pipeline.

It's well past time to get serious about stopping this.

Too bad not to link

This clip has already been linked all over the 'net, but what the hell...here it is again. I'd have had it up Monday, but I'm traveling this week so time is scarce.

The video is from these guys, and even at nearly 10 minutes in length, it's well worth the time. Watch it and recall what I said about "idjit voters".

The only stupid thing here was Palin-Alaska-Russia quote thing. Pointing to that as an example of voters getting their information from SNL is weak.

Change we can gag on

Nice. Here's Obama's new transcendent politics for you...picking a Clinton administration retread for Attorney General...the same guy who rammed through the Marc Rich pardon in the closing days of that administration.

Thank you, Captain Bullshit!

How about some Dinosaur Jr.?

I kinda liked this song when I used to hear it on WHFS in Washington DC back in the early '90s. The golf-themed video is appropriate for a song titled "Feel The Pain". Or maybe "Feel The Pain" is an appropriate title with a Democrat moving into the White House.

I hadn't thought about the song for years until I saw my son playing it on "Guitar Hero" the other day. Cool tune with catchy guitars.

Funding the jihad

Let's say there was one street in your town which was well-known for its high rate of armed robbery and nearly complete lack of police presence. Let's also say that on occasion, you had no choice but to travel this street. You just couldn't avoid it. How would you do it? Well, you'd probably do it armed to the teeth (let's assume for the sake of discussion that the robbers on this street are, in general, armed with nothing more than a knife) and you probably wouldn't do it alone. You'd have every buddy of yours with you, and they'd be armed to the teeth, too.

One thing you know you wouldn't do is waltz down the street naked waving your wallet in one hand and your Rolex Submariner in the other, yet that's pretty much what international shipping companies do every day off the coast of Somalia. The most recent cases are described here.

It seems that in most cases I've read about over the past few years, the ship and crew are released unharmed after a ransom is paid by the shipping company or by the government of the shipping company. It seems that the risks and the ransom are viewed as simply a cost of doing business. But in shrugging off these hijackings, the shippers and their governments are aiding and abetting international terrorism. I mean, seriously...where do they think this money is going? Mansions and Ferraris for the hijackers? Please. This is fucking Somalia we're talking about. While I'm sure some ringleaders are being handsomely paid off, it's a sure bet that the lion's share of the ransom money is going into the international Jihadi treasury.

Think about it for a minute. How many of these hijacks-for-ransom did you hear about six, seven, eight years ago? Not a whole lot. But since western nations started getting sophisticated about shutting off the sources of financing for al Qaeda and their ilk, these hijackings have become a nearly daily occurrence.

While the US and other NATO countries have dispatched ships to the waters off Somalia to counter the hijackings, it's time to get tough. Not just with the hijackers, but with the shipping companies. Put them on notice that if a ship is hijacked, we won't permit a ransom to be paid. An effort will be made to rescue the ship and crew but failing that, the ship - along with its crew and the hijackers - will be sunk.

This may sound harsh, and it is. But since it's more likely that these ransoms are paid through murky international funds transfers than by suitcases full of cash, this will have to do until international banking laws catch up with the times and can stop the new flow of money to the jihad.

Update: It seems the pirates are making themselves rich from the ransom money. But I think it's still safe to say that the bulk of the money is going to international terrorism.

Reading between the lines

During last summer's campaigning, Barack Obama called for a "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as our military. There are those who say "nah...he didn't really say that" or things to that effect. Well, here's the clip:



And last week, this audio clip surfaced with Obama's soon-to-be Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel discussing three months of "civil defense" training for all 18- to 25-year-olds:



The usually reliable FactCheck.org did their readers a disservice (and revealed their own pro-Obama bias) when they attempted to downplay Obama's statement by addressing this question:

I read a quote from Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia which stated that Obama wants to set up a civilian national security force that was similar to the "Gestapo" or the Nazi Brownshirts.

What is the truth behind Obama's statements that he wants to create a "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the military]"?

Great...pick the worst alarmist hyperbole and respond to that. They respond by providing the broader context of that portion of Obama's speech:

...I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots [from 75,000] and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals, like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their effort connected to a common purpose.

People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve. Because when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem – they are the answer. So we are going to send more college graduates to teach and mentor our young people. We'll call on Americans to join an energy corps, to conduct renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.

We will enlist our veterans to find jobs and support for other vets, and to be there for our military families. And we're going to grow our Foreign Service, open consulates that have been shuttered and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy.

OK, so that's the context, but how does that constitute a "civilian national security force", unless Obama's definition of "national security" is so broad that it proves he doesn't really know the meaning of the term? Do environmental clean-up projects, mentoring students, and jobs programs for vets really fall under the category of national security?

Clearly when taken together, there's a shared belief between the two in having some form of a domestic quasi-military organization, but what I think Obama's really talking about here is dramatically slashing defense spending in favor of a lot of feel-good bullshit.

On right-wing blogs, the common question is where the hell Obama would get the money for such an organization. Well, that's pretty easy. If you halve the current defense budget and give the other half to this "civilian national security force", they'd be equally funded. And it would probably take that much money to build up the organization and infrastructure to cycle every 18- to 25-year-old through three months of "civil defense" training and to fund all the other things completely unrelated to national security that Obama mentioned in his speech.

Is this really the change we need?

Time for some Dire Straits

Because our economy is in, well, Dire Straits.

By far my favorite song by the band. I prefer the studio version because it's of course a bit cleaner, but no matter...Mark Knopfler is a genius.

And dig those '80s threads.