…this response by the Dutch government to the aforementioned Wilders video amounts to little more than snivelling in hopes that the usual suspects (Muslims) don’t do the usual “how dare you imply that we’re not the Religion of Peace®!? Now we’ll have to remind you that we are peaceful by rioting, murdering, burning and blowing things up!!!!”

Bracing for reaction, the Dutch government late Thursday distanced itself from a lawmaker’s newly released film linking the Koran to violence and terrorism, saying the problem was “not religion, but the misuse of religion to sow hatred and intolerance.”

Truncating…

“The vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence,” Balkenende said in a statement read during a press conference. “In fact, the victims are often also Muslims.

“We therefore regret that Mr. Wilders has released this film. We believe it serves no purpose other than to cause offence. But feeling offended must never be used as an excuse for aggression and threats.”

Wilders late last month accused the prime minister of cowardice, saying he appeared to be so fearful of the consequences of the film that was willing to capitulate, rather than defend democratic freedoms.

Geert Wilders is 100% correct. The cowardice of dhimmi governments is only enabling these Seventh Century animals to increasingly cow western countries into bowing down to the concept of submission that is the English translation of Islam.

Consider that word: Submission.

Those of us here in the civilized world who are of secular belief are thus because we love our G-d. Love of G-d, think about that for a moment.

Then consider those among us who are atheists. They enjoy the freedom of not believing in G-d, and we don’t oppress them for this. They have free will, and are entitled to believe or disbelieve according to their choice.

On either side of the equation, there is freedom to practice our beliefs according to our own choices.

Under Islamic rule (and I say “rule” because that’s exactly what their 7th Century form of leadership entails), there are no such freedoms. Either you worship Allah according to the strict laws of Sharia (SUBMISSION!) or you are severely disciplined — here in the harsh, barbaric environs of the civilized world, we think of severe discipline as fines or incarceration, which at the very worst includes, in addition to 3 hots and a cot, all sorts of civil rights barely accorded the victims of crimes. In the Islamic world, we’re talking more mellow, Religion of Peace® kinds of stuff like amputations, stonings and decapitation, you know, the less extreme, civilized kinds of things that we here in the west haven’t yet graduated to. We are so far behind!

The Dutch Council of Churches Thursday called the film a “caricature” of Islam, and a Dutch lawyer, Els Lucas, lodged a legal complaint against Wilders, accusing him of inciting violence and discrimination. Lucas has in the past filed complaints against Wilders, charging that his stance on Islam violates Dutch law.

In a separate legal challenge, a Dutch court Friday is due to consider a petition, brought by the country’s Islamic Federation before the film’s release, asking whether the material breaches hate-speech laws.

It’s dhimmitude and cowardice like the above that Islam and its proponents count on to score here in the western world. They prey on our civilized, humanitarian nature, exploit it, in fact, while also threatening us with violence, in order to insinuate their doctrine on us, and stoooopid, naive politicians go along with them — why fight violence with violence when you can simply surrender to it, right?

G-d help us all….

…has Fitna, the Geert Wilders video, an absolute must-watch.

AOW, I salute you!

This year, I decided to do my own taxes for a change, just to see how easy or complicated it might be.

Wow!

Tax accountants really have a good racket, though I won’t say that it’s an easy one — on the other hand, they do have the specialized knowledge that most of us non-accountants don’t. What we laymen (and lay-women) don’t have any particular training in is meat and drink to the accountant.

Now, I realize that lawyers and accountants in Congress bend over backwards to enact rules and regs that guarantee work for their colleagues and, once they return to the private sector, them by the simple expedient of complicating their respective fields to the point of requiring interpretation by said professionals, I also have to say that this practice is directly comparable to the steamy brown piles one encounters in your run-of-the-mill cow pasture.

The government already charges us for the privilege of earning money, why should we also be required to pay others to figure out how much we have to pay for the selfsame privilege of making a living?

So I get the 1099 from my brokers, listing all my trades on both the buy and sell sides (keeping in mind that I once worked back office on Wall Street, some 2-plus decades ago and learned to pluck liquidations from long lists, in actively complex accounts, of day trades, etc). I have a number of trades that involved averaging up from the original investments, that is, adding shares to already existing members of my portfolio because the original positions were notably bullish.

The problem is that the 1099 provides one list of buys and another of sells, and it’s left up to the client to match them up with the liquidations. Sure, this may sound like a no-brainer, but they don’t bother to include a breakdown of which added purchases belong to which positions, and the appropriate tax forms (1040, schedule D) demand only purchase and liquidation figures.

Do these extra 400 shares belong to this position, or that one? Do these 200 belong to this initial trade, or the other one in the same stock? Etc, etc…

I call my brokers, and they suggest that I ask my tax advisor. I call the IRS, and they give me what amounts to doubletalk — I say, “Look, I’m only interested in paying taxes on whatever profits I made on stocks in the course of 2007. I can present that figure to the dime.” They say, “You have to itemize each buy and sell, stock, dates and P&L.” and then get into the form numbers of the additional documents I’ll need to submit.

What a bunch of B.S.!!!!

Considering the hassle versus the volume of my trading, I don’t think I’ll ever buy stock again. If it’s absolutely necessary that I pay someone else to figure my taxes on same, then why should I? I already have to pay the government thousands of dollars in taxes, why should I also have to pay someone else to figure out how much I have to pay? Either they simplify the process, or stay at home!

Now, I have no objection (well, little objection) to paying taxes, since that seems to be a part of the scheme of things, but having the general issue complicated to the point of having to pay what amounts to an interpreter is beyond the pale! The 1099 includes the P&L for the year, yet the IRS requires that I itemize to detail what is already on the effin’ document (Line 1A) rather than submit the document {as someone who works for someone else would a W-2} with a single figure in a box.

My point is that if the a&&h@%%s want to collect taxes, they should take it upon themselves to make calculating the damn things a simple process for those who have to pay them, not a feat that requires a middleman (or woman) whose services require a secondary payment.

I can’t help but wonder what one of those folks dressed up as indians who participated in the Boston Tea Party would have thought of this…

If ever a short-but-on-point video that was both really funny and a total “must watch” arrived in my in-box, it has got to be this one!

A major hat tip to Brenda.

…life of late has been a bit crowded where time is concerned. I’ve been dividing my time between a work project and a commitment I made to help someone out in the maintenance of his own business (no compensation to speak of, more in the nature of a favor), and it hasn’t left me much time to post. I manage to make my rounds in the blogosphere, but only have limited time to comment. This will shortly change — I’m beginning to think I was born with a shoestring schedule or the like, considering that I’m trying really hard to be semi-retired.

I commented recently to a friend, while we were listening to Katrina & The Waves’ Going Down To Liverpool (to do nothing) that I had come to Chicago to do precisely that, only it hasn’t yet worked out as such.

That said, I took some time out earlier to watch a DVD of Live Free Or Die Hard, and must say that I found it profoundly entertaining. The Die Hard series is among the few whose sequels are worth watching, and a third one that qualifies thus is worth remarking upon.

Non-stop action (though the stunt scenes are a bit unbelievable when applied to “real life” probabilities), a plot based on something that I’m not entirely unsure couldn’t happen given the criminal minds that seem to migrate into the field of computer hacking and, as a welcome change, an F.B.I. deputy director who is portrayed by Hollywood as a competent, dedicated law enforcement official rather than the usual corrupt, criminal mastermind the left coast film liberals enjoy portraying.

Okay, having gotten that bit out of the way…

Anyone who visits this blog with any regularity knows how I feel about John McCain being the next President of the United States (Tancredo or Thompson, one of you guys get your ass back here, right now, or send Mitt!).

While I know where Ann and Rush are coming from — let Hillary preside over the coming four year disaster, so a Democrat will have been on watch — I’ve finally come to terms with the distasteful fact that I’ll have to pull the lever for the RINO — he’ll be the lesser of two evils in the general election, albeit not by much, though I won’t donate a dime to his campaign. Let Russ Feingold or La Raza make a donation in my name if it strikes their fancies.

As I said before, I despise the thought of having to choose between the measles or the mumps, but there it is…

But I didn’t come here to rehash things I’ve already posted. I came here to talk about one aspect of a McCain Presidency that actually gives the Arizona guy a checkbox in the positive column, at least for me, as a Jew: His stance on Israel.

Yesterday, I got into a debate with a new friend, one who is a kindred spirit from a political point of view rather than a shiftless liberal, over the concept of negotiating with Arabs. He firmly believes that as far back as the Golda Meir administration, Israel could have struck an equitable deal with Egypt and, as a result, the Arabs in general, in the way of establishing peace in the Middle East.

While his points were good from the usual optimistic humanist viewpoint, they were delivered from the perspective of western thinking — that everyone shares our outlook on life, reasonableness and can, as a result, be negotiated with. My own point that Muslims are 180 degrees different in that respect from us didn’t seem to register. What I couldn’t get across was that when you’ve “negotiated” agreements with an entity more than half a dozen times and while you honor your side of the deal every time while the other party ignores theirs, you have to realize, finally, that it’s pointless to enter into further negotiations.

Especially when each time, you make major life and death concessions that give the other side major strategic advantages that afford them ever increasing, indelible opportunities to destroy you, all your issue and all you stand for.

Elements of his side of the debate cited the massive proportion of Arabs to Israelis with the factors of Iran (he believes that Iran could beat Israel in a war, I believe that given a free hand to conduct such a war utilizing all their capabilities without politically motivated restriction, Israel could kick Ahmadmanjihad’s butt) and Hezbollah mandate negotiation in the interests of Israel’s survival.

How many times does Israel have to “negotiate” away land and release terrorists from prison before it sinks home that dealing with the Arabs is a one way street? When Israel is down to one square mile of sovereign territory, all incarcerated terrorists have been freed and “Palestinians” are hailing down rockets on that tiny, crowded acreage, will our leaders continue to press for “negotiations”?

But as usual, I digress.

Back on topic (have I actually been there yet, to begin with?), McCain’s statements regarding the Israeli-”Palestinian” situation are right on point. My debating “opponent” was right when he said that McCain is a true friend of Israel.

The success of Hamas and Hizbollah in the Middle East is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to US national interests, said John McCain, the US Republican presidential candidate.

“If Hamas/Hizbollah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn’t the only enemy,” Mr McCain said in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel.”

The American who will almost certainly be the next POTUS actually grasps the reality of the situation.

“I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States,” he said. “If you are partners, then you don’t dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be.”

If only our last several administrations had been bestowed with such clear insights into the Israeli-Arab situation…

…seems to be underway.

An international humanist organization has warned that Islamic governments are trying to use the United Nations to shut down free speech. The warning comes as a bloc of Islamic states is holding a summit with “Islamophobia” high on the agenda.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on Thursday began a meeting in Senegal, with the shadow of Danish cartoons satirizing Mohammed and a Dutch lawmaker’s film criticizing the Koran hanging heavily over the gathering.

The 57-member bloc is considering a report by a new body set up to monitor instances of what many Muslims view as growing prejudice against them and their religion, particularly in the years since 9/11.

Warning that Islamophobia poses a threat to global peace and security, the 58-page report by the “Islamophobia Observatory” examines the reasons for the perceived trend — exemplified by stereotyping, hostility, discriminatory treatment and the denigration of “the most sacred symbols of Islam” — and suggests ways to combat it.

The recommended steps include a range of responses, including monitoring of and responding to incidents, and a campaign to show Islam to be a “moderate, peaceful and tolerant” religion.

But the report also says that legal measures are required.

Legal measures, huh?

“There is a need for a binding legal instrument to fight the menace of Islamophobia in the context of freedom of religion and elimination of religious intolerance,” it says.

“The Islamophobes remain free to carry on their assaults due to absence of legal measures necessary for misusing or abusing the right to freedom of expression.”

Islamic states must therefore keep “the pressure on the international community at the multilateral forums and bilateral agendas,” the OIC report recommends.

Since the uproar over the Mohammed cartoons in 2006, the OIC has stepped up its attempts in international forums to protect Islam against criticism. Late last year it succeeded in getting the U.N. General Assembly to pass a first-ever resolution on the “defamation of religions.” Islam was the only religion mentioned by name in the text.

The OIC has 56 votes at the 192-member General Assembly, but it managed to win sufficient support from non-Muslim nations, mostly in the developing world, to see the resolution pass by 108 votes to 51, with 25 abstentions.

Repeat after me: The U.N. is our friend. The U.N. is our friend. The U.N…. ah, forget it, even after I repeated it 1000 times, I still wouldn’t be able to convince myself of its veracity.

As the U.N. prepares later this year to mark the 60th anniversary of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights, some observers worry about the growing clout of the Islamic bloc, and its agenda.

In a statement delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a non-governmental organization with consultative status at the U.N., voiced concerns about the OIC push.

“The implications of this [defamation of religions] resolution for freedom to criticize religious laws and practices are obvious,” the IHEU said.

“Armed with U.N. approval for their actions, states may now legislate against any show of disrespect for religion however they may choose to define ‘disrespect.’”

As I understand it, the U.N. is supposed to deal between governments, not supplant them.

“The Islamic states see human rights exclusively in Islamic terms, and by sheer weight of numbers this view is becoming dominant within the U.N. system,” the organization added. “The implications for the universality of human rights are ominous.”

And this,

The charter would be in accordance with the provisions of the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam - the last major OIC human rights document - which says that all human rights and freedom must be subject to Islamic law (shari’a).

“Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the shari’a,” it says.

Emphasis mine.

Of course, the U.N. will do the usual — perform the kiss of shame on the Islamofacists of the OIC and in so doing, attempt to hammer yet another nail in the coffin of the free world.

These people are truly amazing in the scope of their stupidity: Anyone with an IQ of 6 who has their access to information should be able to see what the leaders of the Islamic nations are trying to do, yet they simply suck it up and go with the program, not seeming to grasp the very real fact that their own personal freedoms are as much on the line as everybody else’s, that once Sharia has been successfully foisted on the western world, they’ll be the first to go.

I’d like to see our government and those of other free countries fight the OIC charter tooth and nail at the U.N., but with their collective recent track record of sucking up to Islam as any kind of indicator, I won’t hold my breath.

The question of free speech and its effect on religious sentiment has been on the Human Rights Council’s agenda this week.

On Wednesday, the council considered a report by a U.N. “special rapporteur” on freedom of expression and opinion, Kenyan lawyer Ambeyi Ligabo.

Ligabo said he was concerned about attempts to expand the scope of defamation laws beyond the protection of individuals, to include the protection of “abstract values or institutions” such as religions.

Where international human rights documents placed limitations on freedom of expression, he told the council, they were designed to protect individuals — not religions — from criticism.

Ligabo also said he “strongly rejected” the view that the use of freedom of expression has undermined people’s ability to enjoy other rights, such as the freedom of religion.

His stance drew criticism from some Islamic states in the council.

Iranian representative Asadollah Eshragh Jahromi said Ligabo should address the issue of freedom of expression and religion “in a more balanced and comprehensive manner.”

“Insulting religions is incompatible with the right to freedom of expression and cannot be justified or interpreted under such a pretext,” he said.

“When someone defames a religion or religious personalities or symbols, he hurts the believers of that faith and impinges on his exercise of right to religion and belief,” said the representative of Bangladesh, Mustafizur Rahman.

The OIC and its allies effectively dominate the Human Rights Council, where 26 of the 47 seats are earmarked for African and Asian countries.

Emphasis again mine.

I fully understand that the oil lying underneath so much Islamic soil is a major factor behind Islam’s international “influence”, so perhaps we need to rethink certain policies in that regard.

…of New York Governor Eliot SPITzer’s liberal do as I say, not as I do moment. Or, I should say, many do as I say, not as I do moments.

ALBANY, N.Y. - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has decided to resign, completing a stunning fall from power after he was nationally disgraced by links to a high-priced prostitution ring, a top state official said Wednesday.

I posted about one or two of the witch hunts in which he engaged as the Empire State’s attorney general a couple or so years back, all in the name of furthering his political career at the expense of any company or individual he could find to prosecute, guilty or not. His most high profile targets were Wall Street based, though he also added to his resume by crusading against organized prostitution.

The recurring theme of his campaigns has been ethics “enforcement”, and, well…

The scandal erupted Monday when allegations surfaced that Spitzer, a 48-year-old married man with three teenage daughters, spent thousands of dollars on a call girl named Kristen at a swanky Washington hotel on the night before Valentine’s Day.

Client 9 apologizes:

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong,” the governor said at a news conference with his wife, Silda, at his side. “I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.”

Yes, you have, Eliot, you weasel. Now be a good chap and see if you can arrange pardons for all those you successfully prosecuted for the same thing and volunteer to do all their time for them.

Calls for his resignation came immediately. Republicans began talking impeachment if he didn’t step aside. Meanwhile, Spitzer stayed holed up in his Manhattan apartment, where he was reportedly weighing his options, including waiting to use resignation as a bargaining chip with federal prosecutors to avoid indictment.

Laying low, huh? Good luck with that! I hope the federal prosecutors indict you to hell and back, your inevitable resignation notwithstanding. Leaving office isn’t an option for you, resignation is simply a less messy way of arriving at that destination than having to be kicked out.

Since your wife’s not seeking a political career and yours is at its end, Eliot, what do the future prospects of your marriage look like? I only ask this because your wife’s name isn’t Hillary. What have your three daughters had to say about all this, knowing that their father not only cheats on their mother (paying tens of thousands of dollars to prostitutes, no less!), but is also a hypocrite of the first order?

Of course, Eliot has long been a hemhorroid on the political landscape, anyway. His anti-family policies and his aborted attempt to issue driver’s licenses to criminal aliens were in anything but the best interests of his constituency.

So, as they say, the riddance will be good.

Bye bye, you schmuck!

I have absolutely nothing against two or more consenting adults, sequestered in properly private surroundings, indulging in whatever non-lethal activities they please, so long as they keep it among themselves and refrain from involving anybody who does not wish to be included in the realm of their respective perversions.

In fact, while I strongly oppose same sex marriages, I have nothing against a same sex couple making legal arrangements in areas of family level hospital visit access (without veto power over such family decisions as life support issues and also without being permitted to adopt children) and dependent benefits, as long as all parties, including the employer in question, are agreed. The same applies to inheritances via will. This is done all the time between individuals who aren’t sleeping together, as it were.

However, I do have a problem with those same people imposing their chosen lifestyles on the rest of us via the courts and via our political system.

The conservative policy group Concerned Women for America is speaking out against a new project launched by a coalition of homosexual activist groups designed to recruit and vet openly homosexual professionals to serve in influential political positions in the next presidential administration.

Truncating…

Members of the homosexual lobby have done a masterful job of equating their chosen, changeable sexual behavior with immutable characteristics such as skin color, says Barber.

“They’re comparing apples to oranges, of course, because they are not the same,” he says of the homosexual lobby’s attempt at comparison. “They have hijacked the language of the genuine civil rights movement and, as such, in corporations around the country and in various governmental entities are considered minorities worthy of special consideration and special rights in terms of hiring practices.”

That is the issue in a nutshell.

A Burl Ives song I recall from my days as a wee lad, called The Monkey and the Elephant contained a verse,

The monkey asked the elephant
oh why are you so gray?
I’m gray because I’m gray, said he
and why are you so brown?
The monkey simply answered,
I’m brown because I’m brown.

Neither had any choice in the matter, one was born gray, the other was born brown. You can be born white, black, brown, tan, yellow or burnt umber, what you see is what you get. Depending upon where you are in the world, you can be a minority because of your skin color.

Here in the United States, if you’re not white, you’re considered a minority. If you hang with Republicans, you’re likely not suffering from any sort of racial oppression. If you choose to live in a Democrat managed environment, well, you made your bed… If they don’t keep you down so as to champion the quest for your “equality” and you get ahead, they might lose your vote. Is that convoluted, or what? Yet for some reason, it apparently works and is therefore a mainstay of Democrat policy.

But I digress.

Homosexuality is a matter of choice — I know, I know, I could be bombarded by arguments that it is more than a matter of personal option, it is a case of mix-up: A woman’s psyche was born in a man’s body or whatever, someone has a gene imbalance, etc, etc, etc — the attraction to folks issued the same gender as onesself is a far cry from the carved-in-stone reality of being born with skin of one color or another.

However, liberal lawyers, judges, activists, media and politicians have been aggressively, tirelessly misinterpreting the Constitution and twisting the truth long enough and successfully enough that they’ve mastered the art of sneaking in a veritable cornucopia of dogmas that run contrary to mainstream American beliefs and even logic itself.

They’ve successfully promoted homosexuals to the same status as genuine minorities and given them power in that regard, making them a favorite butt-munch for vote-hungry liberal politicians.

We’ve allowed our self seeking, ambitious politicians to lead us off the beaten track, as it were, into a kind of moral quicksand, and we are getting in ‘way too deep…