How the military will be affected by a shutdown

uniformed military service members will continue to work — but they won’t get paid until Congress appropriates the funds. Some civilian workers will stay on the job, but they, too, won’t see a paycheck until after the shutdown ends, Defense officials said Friday. Other civilians will be furloughed, possibly with no pay at all.

if any troops are killed in action after Oct. 1, death benefits will not be paid to their beneficiaries until a deal is reached.  Defense contractors who have a fully-funded contract can continue to work, but new contracts would not be allowed unless they were needed to support essential activities within the department. All temporary duty travel after Oct. 1 will be canceled, unless it’s to Afghanistan, in support of foreign relations duties or related to protecting life or U.S. property.

A Tranquil Break .. put yourself in my front yard

An HDR photo a few moments ago.

5:43PM 9/30/13

Eastern Maine

Report: Muslims To Account For 70% of World’s Population Growth Over Next 30 Years

Allahu Akbar

Around 70 per cent of global population growth over the next 30 years will be in Muslim countries as the Muslim population of 1.6 billion is growing at twice the rate of the global population thus representing the fastest growing consumer segment in the world, said Russell Haworth, Managing Director, Middle East and North Africa, Thomson Reuters. 

He said global Islamic banking assets, which stood at $1.3 trillion in 2011, are expected to reach $2 trillion in 2014 and have registered an average annual growth of 19 per cent over the last four years. 

He added that the global market for halal food is estimated at $685 billion a year as the Muslim countries’ food industry imports are valued at $126bn, 12 per cent of global food imports while the GCC food market was worth $83 billion in 2012, and is expected to rise to $106 billion by 2017.

Keep reading…

Most Popular Question At Healthcare.gov: How Do I Get An Exemption From Individual Mandate?

TWS:

One day away from the launch of the Obamacare marketplaces, the question most on the minds people visiting the Healthcare.gov website is not about coverage, but rather about avoiding the penalty, or tax, for not having health insurance. As of Monday morning, here is how the website listed its “Most Popular” items:

Keep reading…

America’s Largest Gun Shop Dropped By Visa Subsidiary For Selling Guns

From Gateway:

A subsidiary of Visa, a key Obama campaign donor, that specializes in credit card transactions has abruptly stopped servicing the nation’s largest gun store after four years because the store sells guns, a fact the owners never hid.

Hyatt Gun Shop of Charlotte, N.C., told Secrets that the subsidiary, Authorize.net/CyberSource, simply sent an email to owner Larry Hyatt to announce that it was suddenly breaking off the business relationship. The reason: “The sale of firearms or any similar product.”

The company email said that gun sales violated a section of the service agreement the two signed over four years ago and after Hyatt went into detail about its sales and products — and name.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Justin Anderson, Hyatt’s marketing director. He said it took a week and thousands of dollars to line up a “gun friendly” credit card processor for online sales.

The brushoff of Hyatt’s business has sparked a national boycott effort against Authorize.net and parent company CyberSource organized by the website Grass Roots North Carolina. “It looks like the small but noisy anti-gun crowd has gotten to what must be a jelly-spined PR department at CyberSource and Authorize.Net. Either that, or leadership at these companies have simply become anti-gun all on their own,” said the website in announcing the boycott.

Anderson suspects that the company, purchased by Visa in 2010, got cold feet dealing with a leading gun seller and he said that he’s heard of other gun stores being dropped. The company had no immediate comment.

Tomorrow is DAY ONE of new America, or some place

Obamacare begins tomorrow.

It is as much a way station to something else as today, what most arabs think a recognized palestine would be.

Tomorrow, it begins RIGHT IN THIS LINK

Every leading democrat has stated they believe we need a single payer system.

In a single payer system you can bet there will be COMPARATIVELY no research by Pfizer, Hoffman La roche, Upjohn, Merck, etc. There is only one customer!

In a single payer system what criteria will be used to decide what an experimental procedure or drug is? (Zeke Emanuel anyone?)

In a single payer system what would prevent accounts payable, and materials management from buying expensive drugs from the manufactory in Goa, or Penang, or San Salvador?

I don’t think Obama wants to destroy the USA, just the parts we love. What we love he regards as evil. Profit. Expectation that hard work will have financial reward. Expectation that talent, inventiveness, ingenuity and hard work will differentiate you in every way from others.

Since we are all born equal before god, all rewards that differentiate us are immoral. Since the universe is zero sum all differential positive to one is negative to another.

Those directing the system which can reward more, more equally, are excepted from this logic since they create greater good in doing so.

What he does not realize, just as much as he could not foresee what Mubarak being destroyed in favor of the Ikwhan would mean, is that he actually WILL destroy the USA since the emerging divisions will take a century to be healed, and only IF THE RIGHT PEOPLE are elected to lead us.

Which IMHO, is no longer possible.

He perceives only that he can reach a political victory over the republicans on key issues if he does this or that, and has no care for what lies on the other side of that. That does not SEEK cloward piven but may have cloward piven as a by product

I am extremely discouraged, not by Obama, but that people continue to support him rather than face the music and admit he is an horrible, president, un-American in his deeds towards those who are the pioneers. He is not evil, just arrogant , self entitled, and short sighted and incompetent.  This attempt to rectify uninsured americans is a perfect example. When I got on Bloomberg and politico, and pointed out what I found about obamacare (similar to my post), I was accused of being a liar. MANY TIMES.  When I posted the actual links and numbers there was a deafening silence. No one can comment because the truth of this is SO RIDICULOUS, that like me people must have looked at the numbers and said to themselves … this just CANNOT BE RIGHT. Except that Barack Obama went way out of his way, and made ridiculous promises to this state and that, ruined political careers, took up a year, and a now term long fight all to get my insurance to $3600+/month? If that’s not incompetence, if that’s not terrible administration and law making, I cannot imagine what is.

The Best Article On Jihad I Have Ever Read By a Leftist

Brendan O'Neill

You're not going to believe this.

From Brendan O'Neill at The Guardian:

In Western news-making and opinion-forming circles, there’s a palpable reluctance to talk about the most noteworthy thing about modern Islamist violence: its barbarism, its graphic lack of moral restraint. This goes beyond the BBC's yellow reluctance to deploy the T-word – terrorism – in relation to the bloody assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya at the weekend. Across the commentating board, people are sheepish about pointing out the historically unique lunacy of Islamist violence and its utter detachment from any recognisable moral universe or human values. We have to talk about this barbarism; we have to appreciate how new and unusual it is, how different it is even from the terrorism of the 1970s or of the early twentieth century. We owe it to the victims of these assaults, and to the principle of honest and frank political debate, to face up to the unhinged, morally unanchored nature of Islamist violence in the 21st century. 

Maybe it’s because we have become so inured to Islamist terrorism in the 12 years since 9/11 that even something like the blowing-up of 85 Christians outside a church in Pakistan no longer shocks us or even makes it on to many newspaper front pages. But consider what happened: two men strapped with explosives walked into a group of men, women and children who were queuing for food and blew up themselves and the innocents gathered around them. Who does that? How far must a person have drifted from any basic system of moral values to behave in such an unrestrained and wicked fashion? 

Yet the Guardian tells us it is “moral masturbation” to express outrage over this attack, and it would be better to give into a “sober recognition that there are many bad things we can’t as a matter of fact do much about”. This is a demand that we further acclimatise to the peculiar and perverse bloody Islamist attacks around the world, shrug our shoulders, put away our moral compasses, and say: “Ah well, this kind of thing happens.” 

Or consider the attack on Westgate in Kenya, where both the old and the young, black and white, male and female were targeted. With no clear stated aims from the people who carried the attack out, and no logic to their strange and brutal behaviour, Westgate had more in common with those mass mall and school shootings that are occasionally carried out by disturbed people in the West than it did with the political violence of yesteryear. 

And yet still observers avoid using the T-word or the M-word (murder) to describe what happened there, and instead attach all sorts of made-up, see-through political theories to this rampage, giving what was effectively a terror tantrum executed by morally unrestrained Islamists the respectability of being a political protest of some breed. 

Time and again, one reads about Islamist attacks that seem to defy not only the most basic of humanity’s moral strictures but also political and even guerrilla logic. Consider the hundreds of suicide attacks that have taken place in Iraq in recent years, a great number of them against ordinary Iraqis, often children. Western apologists for this wave of weird violence, which they call “resistance”, claim it is about fighting against the Western forces which were occupying Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion. 

If so, it’s the first “resistance” in history whose prime targets have been civilians rather than security forces, and which has failed to put forward any kind of political programme that its violence is allegedly designed to achieve. Even experts in counterinsurgency have found themselves perplexed by the numerous nameless suicide assaults on massive numbers of civilians in post-war Iraq, and the fact that these violent actors, unlike the vast majority of violent political actors in history, have “developed no alternative government or political wing and displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern”. 

One Iraqi attack has stuck in my mind for seven years. In 2006 a female suicide bomber blew herself up among families – including many mothers and their offspring – who were queuing up for kerosene. Can you imagine what happened? A terrible glimpse was offered by this line in a Washington Post report on 24 September 2006: “Two pre-teen girls embraced each other as they burned to death.” 

What motivates this perversity? What are its origins? Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to face up to the newness of this unrestrained, aim-free, civilian-targeting violence, Western observers do all sorts of moral contortions in an effort to present such violence as run-of-the-mill or even possibly a justifiable response to Western militarism. 

Some say, “Well, America kills women and children too, in its drone attacks”, wilfully overlooking the fact such people are not the targets of America’s military interventions – and I say that as someone who has opposed every American venture overseas of the past 20 years. If you cannot see the difference between a drone strike that goes wrong and kills an entire family and a man who crashes his car into the middle of a group of children accepting sweets from a US soldier and them blows himself and them up – as happened in Iraq in 2005 – then there is something wrong with you. 

Other observers say that Islamists, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the individuals who attacked London and New York, are fighting against Western imperialism in Muslim lands. But that doesn’t add up. How does blowing up Iraqi children represent a strike against American militarism? How is detonating a bomb on the London Underground a stab at the Foreign Office? It is ridiculous, and more than a little immoral, to try to dress up nihilistic assaults designed merely to kill as many ordinary people as possible as some kind of principled political violence. 

We have a tendency to overlook the newness of modern Islamic terrorism, how recent is this emergence of a totally suicidal violence that revels in causing as many causalities as possible. Yes, terrorism has existed throughout the modern era, but not like this. Consider the newness of suicide attacks, of terrorists who destroy themselves as well as their surroundings and fellow citizens. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were an average of one or two suicide attacks a year. Across the whole world. Since the early and mid-2000s there have been around 300 or 400 suicide attacks a year. In 2006 there were more suicide attacks around the world than had taken place in the entire 20 years previous. Terrorists’ focus on killing civilians – the more the better – is also new. 

If you look at the 20 bloodiest terrorist attacks in human history, measured by the number of causalities they caused, you’ll see something remarkable: 14 of them – 14 – took place in the 1990s and 2000s. So in terms of mass death and injury, those terrorist eras of the 1970s and 80s, and also earlier outbursts of anarchist terrorism, pale into insignificance when compared with the new, Islamist-leaning terrorism that has emerged in recent years. 

What we have today, uniquely in human history, is a terrorism that seems myopically focused on killing as many people as possible and which has no clear political goals and no stated territorial aims. The question is, why? It is not moral masturbation to ask this question or to point out the peculiarity and perversity of modern Islamist violence. My penny’s worth is that this terrorism speaks to a profound crisis of politics and of morality. 

Where earlier terrorist groups were restrained both by their desire to appear as rational political actors with a clear goal in mind and by basic moral rules of human behaviour – meaning their violence was often bloody, yes, but rarely focused narrowly on committing mass murder – today’s Islamist terrorists appear to float free of normal political rules and moral compunctions. This is what is so infuriating about the BBC’s refusal to call these groups terrorists – because if anything, and historically speaking, even the term terrorist might be too good for them.

Twitter Not Only Allows Terrorist Accounts, But Suggests Terrorists to Follow

From PJM:

As terrorists increasingly have embraced social media, Twitter has increasingly come under criticism for hosting terror feeds. Al-Shabaab is on it sixth account after getting suspended in the past for tweeting photos of a dead French special ops soldier, and most recently the Somali terror outlet blazed through a few accounts after suspensions for gloating about the Westgate mall massacre. Their latest account, @HSM_PR, has remained active for many days now and has racked up 59 tweets. 

During the attack and its aftermath, journalists were checking the Shabaab feed for its latest claims and links to statements. 

So when al-Qaeda announced it had launched its first official Twitter account, I, like other journalists who cover terrorism, hit the follow button. The @shomokhalislam account was suspended Sunday by Twitter after being allowed to remain open since Tuesday, posting nearly 50 tweets that included an attack on “the servants of worshipers of the cross” in a bombing that targeted staff of Pakistan’s interior minister in Peshawar. 

On Saturday, I received one of those occasional emails from Twitter offering suggestions based on a recent follow — suggesting that I follow other terrorists:

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

Obama's 'OBAMA CARE' turned the country upside down for seven million people?

Obama's 'OBAMA CARE' turned the country upside down for seven million people?

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

Obama's 'OBAMA CARE' turned the country upside down for seven million people?HT:Scaramouchee.

Obama has upended the ship of state so that every last American (of whom there are more that 319 million) can have access to "affordable" heath care. Given that, you would think that tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people will soon be signing up for health insurance listed on Obamacare "exchanges." In the following exchange, though, the actual number is revealed to be mega-puny:

SARAH KLIFF: It’s actually a very small group of Americans. The White House expects that about seven million people will buy insurance on these new exchanges where people who don’t have insurance right now can go and compare plans and potentially purchase an option. The people who are not affected are people who get insurance right now through their employer or people who are on Medicare or Medicaid or number of other government programs.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And that’s the vast majority of Americans?

SARAH KLIFF:  It is. We’re actually talking about a pretty small segment of the population for all the debate we’re having here in Washington. At their height the budget forecasters estimate that about seven percent of Americans will use these exchanges. So we’re talking about a sliver of the American population.

He turned the country upside down for seven million people!!!

Swedish Government: Press subsidies must depend on attitude to immigration 

From the Vlad Tepes blog:

I’m not sure how to define communist totalitarianism better than this in some senses)

 According to the responsible minister, a “democracy clause” should be included in the new legislation, barring “immigrant-critical” news outlets from receiving the statutory subsidies.

Syrian Muslims Turned On Christian Neighbors During Al Nusra Front Attack On Ancient Christian Village

From Asia News:

Beirut (AsiaNews) - According to families who fled Maaloula (Syria), some of their Muslim neighbours were involved in the attack that devastated their village located about fifty kilometres from Damascus, dispersing its residents.Perceived as a betrayal of the long-lasting trust that existed between Christians and Muslims in Maaloula, where Muslims make up about 30 per cent of the village population. 

The presence of young Muslim fighters from the village among Syrian rebels appalled the Christian population. However, it is a sign of the growing ambiguity of Syria's armed rebellion. 

These facts give that battles that occurred in Maaloula from 3 to 7 September another perspective. Speaking for the first time anonymously, survivors from Maaloula described how elements from the Syrian Liberation Army and the al-Nusra Front coordinated their attack in an attempt to take control of the town. 

The explosion of a car driven by a suicide bomber at an army checkpoint at the village entrance was the signal for the attack. Almost immediately, armed rebel groups sprung out from within Maaloula, smashing doors to gain entrance into Christian homes. 

With dramatic details, witnesses describe the climate of terror that prevailed, the summary execution on Saturday of three men who, after a failed attempt by the Syrian army to retake Maaloula, refused to recant their faith as well as the kidnapping of six others, whose fate remains unknown to this day. 

One of the survivors reports that his house was invaded almost immediately after the car's explosion at an army checkpoint. Rebels came into the house and moved around as if they were familiar with the place.

Tea Party Rep. Raul Labrador Reminds Chris Matthews His Former Boss Tip O’Neill Helped Shut Down Government 12 Times

MAN TO COLLEGE PRO-LIFE GROUP: I WANT ‘A WORLD WHERE ALL YOUR CHURCHES BURN’

The anti-abortion movement has gone completely off the rails. Now, if we don't agree that it's ok to rip 6+ month fetuses from the womb and stir their brains up with a spike, we are haters.

I can find no compromise with that kind of insanity.

And, until the entire movement issues an official apology, I will post anti-abortion information from time to time.

From the Blaze:

A video uploaded to YouTube by a pro-life organization appears to show a university student verbally attacking a campus pro-life group on Thursday.Students For Life said in an email that the video, which has garnered a little over 2k views since it was posted Thursday, captures “one of the most disturbing ones our team has yet to take on a college campus.”The 26-second clip appears to show an unidentified student at Indiana University approaching the pro-life college group, allegedly upset with a display they had erected on the campus.“You’re in conflict with the world that I want which is a world where all your churches burn,” the student then tells the group. “And if we are ever strong enough, we are going to stop you.”Watch the video below (Warning: Strong language used):
According to the email Students For Life sent out, another student also ripped out pink crosses they had placed in the ground that were supposed to symbolize the amount of “babies that Planned Parenthood kills each day.” The student allegedly shouted abortion “was awesome” as he removed the crosses.

David Wood On the Kenya Mall Massacre

Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Deja Voodoo

Voodoo Child

Separating Kafirs from Muslims

The following was written by Bill Warner, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam:

When the al Shabaab jihadi group from Somalia attacked the mall in Kenya, they gathered the crowd together and asked who were Muslims and let them go. According to the media, they then started killing the non-Muslims who were left. But non-Muslims is not the word what the terrorists would have used. No, they would have called them Kafirs (actually they would have called them the Arabic plural of kafir, kuffar. Kafirs is the standard English plural form).

Why did members of al Shabaab do this? Why did they ask the Muslims to leave and keep the Kafirs and start killing them? Let’s start with the word terrorists. Members of al Shabaab are not terrorists, they are jihadists or mujahedeen. That is what they call themselves.

So what difference does it make which words we use? Non-Muslim or Kafir? Terrorists, militants, jihadists or mujahedeen? It makes all the difference in the world. You cannot think precisely with imprecise words and a Kafir is much more than a non-Muslim.

The word “non-Muslim” does not imply anything, except not being a believer in Islam.

Kafir, on the other hand, has enormous implications. Kafir is the actual word that the Koran uses for a non-Muslim. Indeed, one of the many remarkable things about the Koran is that over half of its text is devoted to the Kafir. Think about that: most of the Koran is not about how to be a Muslim, but about the Kafir. Every single verse about the Kafir is not just bad, but terrible. Allah hates Kafirs and plots and schemes against them. The cruelest punishments await the Kafir in hell, but who cares about that? The real problem is what is promised to the Kafir in this life — torture, hatred, death, ridicule, rape, enslavement, political domination and deception.

It is the same with mujahedeen or jihadist as opposed to militant or terrorist. The words militant or terrorist do not tell anything about the motivation of the militant or terrorist, only that they are using violence.

Notice that the words non-Muslim and terrorist are not related to each other; they stand alone. There is no implication of one by the other. But that is not true about Kafir and jihad. Jihad is only carried out against Kafirs. Jihad implies Kafir and vice versa.

Jihad and Kafir are all part of a system of Islamic politics. Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for 13 years and garnered 150 followers. When he turned to politics and jihad, he died ruler of all of Arabia, and every Arab was a Muslim. The religion of Islam was a failure, and Islam triumphed by the use of politics and jihad, war against the Kafir.

Islamic doctrine is found in the Koran, Sunna (Mohammed) and Sharia law and divides all of humanity into Muslim and Kafir. There is no middle ground. Unfortunately, both Christian and Jewish leaders have bought into the fiction that they are all People of the Book and are brothers in religion. When you read the fine print (as none of them have done, being professionally ignorant), they are brothers in Abraham who must be politically and religiously subjugated, but that is a small detail.

If jihad, mujahedeen, and Kafir are pure Islamic doctrine, we can now understand why the media refuses to the correct words that Muslims use — it is all too horrible to contemplate. We are not just having independent terrorist events, such as the West Gate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya or the Boston Marathon bombing; we are in the middle of a civilizational war with a historic enemy — an enemy who is winning because we are in total denial.

Published as an article on American Thinker.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Warner, Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam
Permalink: http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/separating-the-kafirs-from-the-muslims/
copyright (c) CBSX, LLC, politicalislam.com
Use as needed, just give credit and do not edit.
www.politicalislam.com

"I have no idea what this thing’s going to look like on Oct. 1"

The director of the Obamacare Health Exchange in Oregon, TODAY

NY TIMES:

cross the country, officials are issuing warnings that despite fevered efforts, their new insurance exchanges — online markets where people can shop for health plans and see if they qualify for federal subsidies — will not be fully operational for weeks or even months.

Last week, the District of Columbia’s exchange announced that it would not immediately be able to determine online whether people qualify for Medicaid, which about half the states are expanding under the law, or for a federal subsidy to help cover the cost of private coverage. In Colorado, for the first month, people who want to know if they are eligible for a subsidy will have to call a customer-service line.

In Nevada, home to a large Hispanic population, a Spanish-language version of the exchange Web site will not be ready until mid-November. And in Maryland, small businesses will not be able to buy insurance for their employees through the state exchange until January. Federally run exchanges are having similar problems.

Now many of the 16 directors of state-run exchanges are describing October as a “soft launch” period, when Americans can start exploring their coverage options — but on Web sites that may be incomplete, vulnerable to glitches, and perhaps not ready for a full onslaught of customers.

“I have no idea what this thing’s going to look like on Oct. 1,” Mr. King said one afternoon last week as dozens of tense-looking programmers on laptops, scattered through the the exchange offices outside Portland, rushed to finish testing and fix problems. “We could crash and burn and have to close it down.”

The outcome could hardly be more important for President Obama. With Republicans threatening to shut down the government unless Democrats agree to delay the law for a year, even small problems with the exchanges could be powerful fodder for the law’s opponents.

In an indication of the difficulty of the job, some of the states with delays, like Oregon and Maryland, have been preparing for many months and have political leaders who strongly support the law.

“It makes you wonder about the exchanges that actually have been at this a shorter period of time,” said Jon Kingsdale, a managing director at Wakely Consulting Group, who is advising several state-run exchanges. “Do they even know what their problems are?”

…..

Because of the errors, Ms. Kofman said, a family might be told it qualified for a tax credit of $150 a month when it was eligible for only $50.

The agency will be able to determine eligibility in November, she added, and people who qualify will still be able to get subsidized coverage on Jan. 1, as originally planned.

This sounds like my experience so far.

Tuesday may turn out to be a very historic day fore the nation

Islamic Honor Killing In Canada: So many Stab Wounds That From Her Waist Up “There Was No Body”

From Freedom Outpost:

Sharipa Fazli, shaking her head, says her sister suffered so many stab wounds that from her waist up, "there was no body."

Yasin Wafa, 17 months, is the son of the dead woman and her husband, who is charged in her fatal stabbing. Every night, little Yasin Wafa scurries over to his grandparents’ front door, hoping his mom will be picking him up as she used to.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

Compare Barack Obama's Quotes About Islam With His Quotes About Christianity

Compare Barack Obama's Quotes About Islam With His Quotes About Christianity

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

Compare Barack Obama's Quotes About Islam With His Quotes About Christianity.HT:
FreedomOutpost.

20 Quotes By Barack Obama About Islam.

Even though he claims to be a Christian, throughout his political career Obama has repeatedly attacked traditional Biblical Christianity and he has a very long history of anti-Christian actions. 

In public speeches he has repeatedly cast doubt on the Bible, he has repeatedly stated that he does not believe that Jesus is necessary for salvation, and he has consistently said that he believes that all “people of faith” believe in the same God. 

At the same time, Obama has always referred to Muhammed as “the Prophet”, he has always expressed great love and respect for Islam, and he has even removed all references to Islam from terror training materials used by federal government agencies. So what in the world does “the leader of the free world” actually believe? 

Read the quotes below and decide for yourself…

#1 “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam”

#2 “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”

#3 “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”

#4 “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

#5 “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”

#6 “Islam has always been part of America”

#7 “we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities”

#8 “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

#9 “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

#10 “I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.”

#11 “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

#12 “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed”

#13 “In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education.”

#14 “throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

#15 “Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality”

#16 “The Holy Koran tells us, ‘O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.’”

#17 “I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.”

#18 “We’ve seen those results in generations of Muslim immigrants – farmers and factory workers, helping to lay the railroads and build our cities, the Muslim innovators who helped build some of our highest skyscrapers and who helped unlock the secrets of our universe.”

#19 “That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

#20 “I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.”

20 Quotes By Barack Obama About Christianity.

#1 “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation”

#2 “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

#3 “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?”

#4 “Even those who claim the Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages – the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ’s divinity – are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.”

#5 “The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.”

#6 From Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope: “I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.”

#7 Obama’s response when asked what his definition of sin is: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

#8 “If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn’t have to keep coming to church, would they.”

#9 “This is something that I’m sure I’d have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.”

#10 “I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.”

#11 “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.”

#12 “I’ve said this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally embraced Christianity as far as I know … I do not believe she went to hell.”

#13 “Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God’s will–they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.”

#14 On his support for civil unions for gay couples: “If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount.”

#15 “You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

#16 “In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology”

#17 “On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites.”

#18 “we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, and their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own”

#19 “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra — (applause) — as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause.)”

#20 “I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

Hmmm.......I'm still waiting to see his Baptismal certificate.

His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama's baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV for weeks last spring.

Nobody, except Obama knows if his conversion to Christianity is real or not. Although some reports and even Obama have referred to a "baptism", there doesn't appear to be any record of a baptism.

Chicago-based journalist, broadcaster and critic Andy Martin, when asked about Obama's baptism, wrote, "I have never been able to obtain any evidence that he was baptized, although I asked for those records."

It seems that Obama's conversion occurred when he answered one of Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's altar calls by walking down the aisle of Trinity Church to make a formal commitment of his faith.

Cathleen Falsani, religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, writes, "He (Obama) described his conversion experience in his mid-20s, how he walked the aisle at Trinity United Church of Christ one Sunday in a public affirmation of his private change of heart."

"I came to Christianity through the black church tradition where the line between evangelical and non-evangelical is completely blurred. Nobody knows exactly what it means."

Falsani warns us that Obama’s walking the aisle at Trinity is poles apart from what Christians commonly refer to as being "saved, transformed or washed in the blood." In other words, it’s not to be confused with what Jesus called being "born again." As Mr. Obama himself explains, "It wasn’t an epiphany … but just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."

In another account of this event, Manya Brachear, writing in the Chicago Tribune, describes the event thusly: "When Obama sought his own church community, he felt increasingly at home at Trinity. Before leaving for Harvard Law School in 1988, he responded to one of Wright's altar calls and declared a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Falsani wonders, "What kind of faith is it that is growing in Barack Obama? Is it the historic Christian faith? Not according to the good senator, who describes his faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions."

Unlike traditional Christianity, which Mr. Obama bemoans for its "call to evangelize and proselytize," the good senator’s faith is strictly a personal and private affair. Although he has no qualms about parading it in public in hopes of bolstering his political career, he would never dream of preaching it to others in hopes of converting them to Christ.

At the core of Obama's faith -- whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two -- is African nativism and Obama's having pledged allegiance to the Black Value System raises political issues of its own.

The phrase, “having been baptized,” is apparently based on Obama’s claim about being baptized. Our major media haven’t questioned the claim.
Miller went on to say, “His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama’s baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV…”
Notice the formulation, “at the time of Obama’s baptism.” She carefully does not say that Wright performed the baptism. In fact, there’s no evidence it was a baptism in the traditional sense that it was performed by Wright or anybody else. It looks like Obama walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith. That is not a Christian baptism.
The Canada Free Press published a very interesting article in February by Madeline Brooks, who asked, “Where is the baptism certificate? We do not see one because there was no baptism. That central part of Christianity was not required at Obama’s former church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, during the years Obama attended…”
She cites the research of a pastor, Usama Dakdok, who had called Obama’s church to ask about membership:
“Do I have to be baptized to join the church?” asked Pastor Dakdok. “No, you don’t,” was the answer. “You can be a member without being baptized.”
“And what exactly is required to become a member?” The answer: “You attend two Sunday school classes in a row about membership, and then you walk the aisle.”
The phrase, “having been baptized,” is apparently based on Obama’s claim about being baptized. Our major media haven’t questioned the claim.
Miller went on to say, “His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama’s baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV…”
Notice the formulation, “at the time of Obama’s baptism.” She carefully does not say that Wright performed the baptism. In fact, there’s no evidence it was a baptism in the traditional sense that it was performed by Wright or anybody else. It looks like Obama walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith. That is not a Christian baptism.
The Canada Free Press published a very interesting article in February by Madeline Brooks, who asked, “Where is the baptism certificate? We do not see one because there was no baptism. That central part of Christianity was not required at Obama’s former church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, during the years Obama attended…”
She cites the research of a pastor, Usama Dakdok, who had called Obama’s church to ask about membership:
“Do I have to be baptized to join the church?” asked Pastor Dakdok. “No, you don’t,” was the answer. “You can be a member without being baptized.”
“And what exactly is required to become a member?” The answer: “You attend two Sunday school classes in a row about membership, and then you walk the aisle.”