Jeremiah has a rally at the National Press Club

America’s favorite Crazy Uncle, Rev Jeremiah Wright escaped the basement where Barack Obama had been keeping him. He appeared Monday April 28, 2008 at the National Press Club along with supporters of his church, whom by the way drove the actual press club to the balcony. He went on a tirade about all the good things his church has done, which by the way has never been in question. He spoke for approximately 15 minutes, defending every program his church is involved in, not only in America but also in Africa. He then answered (only pre-screened, pre-prepared) from the “audience” otherwise known as his supporters. He then taunted the woman who was merely reading the questions handed to her by others.

What this retired loony tune doesn’t understand is that America and the press don’t condemn his church OR their actions, they do however condemn HIS words and actions. The problem is, as he sees it, “You are not attacking Jeremiah Wright, you are attacking the black church.” Recently at a friend’s funeral, he turned the eulogy into but yet another political rant. As far as I am concerned, what he did was disgraceful to the memory of a friend who had passed away. He without a doubt made a mockery of the National Press Club, and did nothing to calm the waters about his past remarks. If anything he cemented his past remarks, and possibly turned on even Obama, by remarking, “ If you win the Presidency, I’ll be coming after you.” Then later commented as if he was a school yard bully, “If you talk about my Mama………..”

It’s nice to know that god makes idiots of all colors

Time To Clean House

The President of the United States by law may only serve 2 full terms in office. Many state governors are limited to terms that equal not more than 12 full years. These amendments to the federal and many state constitutions have been placed there for various reasons. No POTUS has ever served more than 2 terms with the exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt. George Washington set the standard of 2 terms when he refused to seek a third term in office arguably because he did not believe that Americans should elect a ruler for life no matter how popular of a President they are. Shortly after Roosevelt’s death, the constitution was amended and the two- term limit established.

As for Governors, the states have amended their own constitutions for a variety of reasons. Such reasons have been corruption or the appearance of, becoming out of touch with the voters, fear of becoming too powerful and others. Whatever the reasons, the states had every right to limit the terms. The debates over these amendments being good for the each of these states remain an ongoing issue.

Why do we only restrict these seats of power? Are not all elected officials supposed to serve as an elected representative of those entrusting him or her to the office that they hold? Could the same reasons these seats have limited terms attached apply also to everyone from United States Senators all the way down to the local City Council and School Board Members?

Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely – Lord John Dalberg Acton

The real power in government does not always lie with the man holding the highest office. We have a three tiered system of government at both the federal and state level. Each is supposed to keep the other in check but it does not always work that way. The legislative branch is the ones who make the rules and approves or denies request from the President or Governor unless they issue an executive order. The President and Governors are placed into positions that if they do not sign into law those bills that have been passed by the state or federal congress, then when the “executives” want something passed that they do not overwhelming support, it becomes harder regardless of the good it does the people they serve.

United States Senators serve 6 year terms and members of the U.S. House of Representatives serve 2 years. Why do we not limit the time these people serve in office as we do the President? Is it inconceivable that a member of congress could become too powerful (Kennedy, Kerry, Byrd, Reid, Rangel, Hatch, Stevens). Is it not possible that they could over time become out of touch with their constituents?

The President has up to 8 years to complete their vision for America. Some Governors have between 8 & 12 depending on the state. Why can’t Senators and Representatives complete all the things they want for America in 12 years? If I had an agenda and could not complete it in 12 years, I think I would need to forget the idea. Why not the same here?
Who do you think all those paid lobbyist are meeting with? Who receives PAC money year round for reelections? What government officials are riding around on corporate jets and eating on corporate credit cards at places you and I will never afford to eat at in our lifetime?

If we were to limit our representatives to 12 years only, then party politics will not cease to exist, but would be cut down by a large amount. The stalemate that has existed in congress and has continued to grow for the past 40 years would start to crumble. The “career politician” will start to take a back seat to political production. Either you produce or you limited time is cut even more. If 12 year limits were in place, this general election we would be seeing the end of 55 Senators (55%) and 208 members of the House of Representatives (47.8%). With that big of a change, perhaps congress could start working together for a change for the real common good of the people.

Kevin Bryant

No Obamanation Part 1: Barack who?

No Obamanation Part 1: Barack who?
By Mark Alexander (Part 1 of 3 on Barack Hussein Obama)
It is unlikely that Hillary Rodham Clinton can turn enough Demo super delegates her way to defeat Barack Hussein Obama for the Democrat presidential nomination. Her prospects for a big win in the 22 April primary in Pennsylvania are diminishing, and even if there were a Michigan revote and the Florida delegates were seated, it would not put Clinton over the top.
Though Clinton has pledged to “fight to the convention,” having pulled out all the stops she and hubby Bill could muster to sink Obama, the once seeming inevitability of her nomination has faded to black, and she may drop her bid by June.
So, that leaves us with Barack Hussein v. John McCain in the general election match-up.
McCain is a well-known political commodity with a long-established record, but who the heck is Barack Obama?
It’s hard to believe, given Obama’s exponential rate of poll climbing, that 18 months ago he was not a household brand.
Of course, for some, he was. Diehard Leftists became sycophantic Obamanites after his 2004 Demo Convention keynote speech. They, and Obama’s primary promoters, Jean-Francois Kerry and Teddy Kennedy, have been grooming him for this campaign since his Senate election in 2004.
Obama’s selection as the Demos’ 2004 keynote ensured his successful bid for the U.S. Senate, and a $1.9-million book deal to boot. The grooming exercise paid off for his true believers, though Obama is not much more than a lapdog for Kerry, who is, himself, just a lapdog for Kennedy.
This cadre of “useful idiots” comprised the sum total of those who took Obama seriously when he announced his candidacy last February.
How arrogant, Clintonistas thought, that this freshman senator from Illinois, whose credentials were little more than “community organizer” and state senator (oh, and “African-American”), would dare challenge the former co-president of the United States.
Asked about his qualifications to be president, Kerry said, “Because he’s African-American. Because he’s a black man, who has come from a place of oppression and repression through the years in our own country... President Obama [would be] a symbol of empowerment [who has] the ability to help us bridge the divide of religious extremism, to maybe even give power to moderate Islam... an important lesson for America to show Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other places in the world where disenfranchised people don’t get anything.”
Of course, from Kerry’s “limo-liberal” perspective, I suppose that a black guy who lives in a $2-million Georgian mansion on Chicago’s South Side (with a little help from Tony Rezko) appears to have been “oppressed and repressed through the years.”
Kerry’s cosmological assessment notwithstanding, it is time to ask, “Who is Barack Hussein Obama?”
Well, like so many Leftists, his roots are shallow and broken.
“Barry,” as he was called when a youngster, was born in 1961 in Hawaii. His mother, Stanley “Ann” Dunham (whose father wanted a boy and so named her Stanley) was an anthropologist from Kansas, known to her friends as “the original feminist.” According to Maxine Box, Dunham’s best friend, “She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue.”
His father, Barack Obama, Sr. , was a Muslim from the Luo tribe in Kenya. Barack’s parents met in a Russian language class (somehow fitting) while students at the University of Hawaii.
When Obama was two, his parents separated and later divorced. His father had two children by a first marriage to a woman in Kenya whom he had never divorced, and after leaving Barack’s mother he returned to his former wife and had two more children, accounting for four of the candidate’s half-siblings.
Obama’s mother then married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian national. Barack and his mother moved with Lolo to Jakarta, where he spent four years in local schools. Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Barack’s fifth half-sibling. They would later divorce. Then Obama moved back to Hawaii to reside with his maternal grandparents and attend the exclusive Punahou School until his graduation in 1979.
After high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles and studied for two years at Occidental College, transferring to Columbia University and graduating with a BA in political science in 1983. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to become a “community organizer.”
In 1988, prior to entering Harvard Law School, Obama met another Chicago lawyer, Michelle Robinson. They dated through law school and were married in 1992, a year after Obama’s graduation, by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the now-infamous “black liberation” heaver of hate rhetoric under the banner of “social justice.” They have remained active in Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years, and their two daughters were baptized by Wright. (More on Obama’s racist mentors in Part 2).
Michelle Obama attended elementary and high school in Chicago and then went to Princeton to major in African-American studies. After completing her senior thesis, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” she went on to Harvard Law School, where she received her J.D. in 1988.
Barack became an associate attorney with a law firm, and between 1993 and 2002 he represented mostly community organizers and discrimination claims. In 1996, he ran successfully for the Illinois State Senate and continued to work summers for his law firm. In 2000, he made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House, but in 2004, buoyed by his stardom at the Democrat Convention, he won his Senate bid.
Since that time, Obama has continued to burnish his extreme-Leftist credentials, having recently been listed by the non-partisan National Journal as the Senate’s most liberal member. Think about it: Obama’s voting record is to the left of every other senator, even that of Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders.
All this may constitute Obama’s background but it is not who he is. To get at the real question of “Barack who?” one has to look beyond his bio.
Barack Hussein Obama is an archetypal liberal case study. Obama, William Jefferson Clinton, Albert Arnold Gore, John F. Kerry and, of course, Edward “Chappaquiddick” Kennedy, all share a common ailment—what I have aptly described in some detail as the Pathology of the Left.
Leftists are uniformly defined by their hypocrisy and dissociation from reality. They speak of unity, but they foment division, appealing to the worst in human nature by separating Americans into dependent constituencies. They support freedom of thought, unless those thoughts don’t comport with theirs. They feign tolerance while practicing intolerance. They resist open discussion and debate of their views, yet seek to silence dissenters. They protest for natural order while advocating for homosexuality and abortion. They assert their First Amendment rights, except, of course, when it comes to religion, whence they impose the doctrines of secular atheism on everyone else. They decry SUVs, except those that they own. They advocate mass transit but commute on private jets. They believe trial lawyers save lives and doctors kill people. They believe the solution to racism is to treat people differently on the basis of the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. They deride moral clarity because they can’t survive its scrutiny.
Ad infinitum...
Why do most liberals believe what they believe—and act the way they act?
Psychopathology dictates and frames worldview, and worldview manifests in such things as political affiliation.
Leftists politicos tend to be chronic overachievers because they have suffered significant loss—often the result of the disconnect with their earthly fathers. They subscribe to rigid doctrines and “nanny state” regimes to satiate their persistent insecurity, the result of low self-esteem and arrested emotional development associated, predominantly, with fatherless households or critically dysfunctional families in which they were not adequately affirmed.
Obama manifests all of these characteristics, and clinically speaking, there is a diagnosis. Leftists are pathological case studies of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the standard reference used for psychiatric evaluation.
Of course, there are many conservatives who were raised by a single parent or in critically dysfunctional or impoverished homes. However, somewhere along the way, they were lifted out of their misery by the grace of God—often in the form of a significant mentor who modeled individual responsibility and character. As a result, they have the courage to internalize their locus of responsibility.
Leftists, on the other hand, externalize responsibility for problems and solutions by holding others (read: conservatives) to blame for their ills, and by bestowing upon the state the duty for arbitrating proper conduct—even proper thought.
A footnote: It’s no coincidence that conservative political bases tend to be suburban or rural, while liberal political bases tend to be urban. The social, cultural and economic blight in many urban settings are Leftist breeding grounds for legions of the disenfranchised, those who are largely dependent on the state for all manner of their welfare, protection and sustenance.
These legions identify with Barack Obama. That is the substance, the essence of Obama.
To be sure, all good-hearted Americans should feel a degree of compassion for Barack Obama, whose formative years were marked by complete familial disintegration. But that is not a reason to elect him president.

Reprinted from Patriot Post(www.PatriotPost.us)

Is This Really Progress?

Several times I have sat at this computer and started to write another opinion piece and each time I start one, I can never seem to finish it. I have started on subjects like taxes, local governments, conservatism, human stupidity, radical Islam political correctness as well as a few more. They have all ended up sounding more like an argument than an opinion. Perhaps it’s from the passion that I have for my own beliefs and convictions. There is probably some truth to that. I believe that mostly it’s because I start in on a subject and I start to see everything that is wrong with it from a fiscal and social conservative’s point of view.

Over the past few months I have began to stop asking myself what is wrong with America and it’s citizens and have more often than not find myself asking and looking for anything that is actually right with America. Before you start to tell me what is right with America, I do know that there are many things right with her. My argument is, Are things as right with America as they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago?

Just think, 30 years ago we had less gun control and the murder rates were lower than they are today. 30 years ago, mothers primarily stayed home and raised the kids and we have the largest middle class society of any nation. 30 years ago only average, 20 percent of our income was going towards taxes instead of the 52% of today. 30 years ago the public education system actually functioned as it was intended. 30 years ago no one would have dared try to fly planes into our skyscrapers. 30 years ago, if you didn’t make the team that was just too bad. Parents were actually parents and they disciplined their children without fear of going to jail. Nativity scenes of the birth of Christ were on the county court lawns at Christmas time and Christmas was known as Christmas and not “The Holiday Season”.

When did we lose the right to say a prayer on government property or expect our kids to recite the pledge of allegiance at the beginning of the school day? When did we lose the right to have gun racks in our pickups and actually have a rifle or shotgun be in it? Why do we pay 5 to 8 different taxes on our landline phones, our cell phones and our cable TV?

I know those of you as old as I am or older know and remember the items I just listed and have probably thought of many others yourself. If this is how we define progress, someone please send me back to the either the pre or post Jimmy Carter era.

I say again, as I look around me, I ask myself, what is right with America?

Kevin Bryant

Worst President of our generation on tour

EX-President Jimmy Carter must be on a world ant-Semitic book tour. Either that or he now has dementia and doesn’t remember that he was voted out of office 27 years ago, against the wishes of almost everyone except Hamas (militant group) of the PLO.

A bi-partisan group of the congress issued a letter to EX-President Carter condemning him for his actions, but he doesn’t intend to back down. Carter thinks the way to peace is through face-to-face meetings with a group that has been linked to the deaths of 26 Americans. The Israelis, our congress, state department, and President George Bush have all asked him not to go, as it interferes with present negotiations, gee, wonder what part of that he didn’t understand?

Obviously he has some grandiose self-importance, not to mention NO ability to broker any peace deal of any sort, any more then I do! The recent Ex-president rantings in his book clearly state his anti-Semitic position, and have turned that many more people against the failed Ex-President including his own staff!

Hopefully his wife can corral the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner (let’s see what other political idiot got that award), and bring him home to build more houses for Habitat for Humanity, before he becomes more of a laughing stock then he already is. On the other hand, maybe he will forget his way home, or the government will revoke his passport in transit, and then maybe he can build houses on the west bank. He needs to mind his own twisted view of the world and stay out of the business of an administration that isn’t his!


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/foreign-affairs/2007/01/12/

Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself "Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."-- Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)

Taxes on tobacco used for non-smoking programs?

Governor O’Malley collects $540.8 million this year from tobacco settlements and tobacco taxes, and yet he will only spend $18.4 million on tobacco prevention programs. The CDC or Center for Disease Control has a recommendation that MD spend $30.3 million on tobacco cessation programs, while tobacco companies spend more then 192 million on marketing in Maryland. The amount that O’Malley will spend is just slightly over half the amount recommended. Other troubling figures are as follows; Kids (under 18) who become new daily smokers each year 7,700. Adults who die each year from their own smoking 6,800. Annual health care costs in Maryland directly caused by smoking 1.96 billion a year.

Maryland's spending on tobacco prevention amounts to 3.4% of the $540.8 million in tobacco-generated revenue the state collects each year in tobacco settlement payments and tobacco taxes.

What few people understand is that the tobacco settlement is only income for 25 years from date of settlement. This isn’t a “cash cow” forever, and to put $522.4 million into the state “slush fund” is doing nothing to curb tobacco use (the supposed purpose of the suit.) Not one dime of the recent $1.00 a pack increase in cigarettes has been earmarked for cessation programs or to be put towards tobacco users health care.

Now let’s look into the future for a minute. Martin O’Malley won’t be the Governor, so of course he doesn’t care what happens when the money from big tobacco dries up. But I ask you, when tobacco’s substities to state coffers is over, and the politicians have gotten so used to spending that money on other “programs,” who do you think they will come to make up the difference? And you thought 18.4 million in new taxes per year was a lot?


http://www.mdpolicy.org/research/pubID.88/pub_detail.asp

http://tobaccofreekids.org/reports/settlements/state.php?StateID=MD

Want some cheese with that whine?

“We spend between the two kids, on extra-curricular activities outside the
classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports
supplements. And do you know what summer camp costs?” (1)

“The
salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you are in your
40’s, paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids”
(1)

“We have become a nation of struggling folks, who are barely
making it every day. Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my
lifetime. The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten
progressively worse since I was a little girl. We’re a country that’s just down
right mean” (2)

These comments come from Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s wife Michelle. Actually her income is 10 times the median income in the county of Ohio where she made those remarks. Michelle’s income was $316,962 two years ago when her husband was elected to the US senate. She also receives an undisclosed amount from sitting on the boards of six corporations. Add her salary to the dismal salary of her husband Barack of a mere $169,300 as senator and add his two best selling book royalties, and you can see why she is so upset. (dripping in sarcasm) She went on to say; “You are looking at a couple that’s just a few years out of debt, see because we went to good schools and didn’t have any trust funds.” It seems to me that they both took this path by choice, (to Princeton and Harvard), and now that she has her education behind her, she has chosen to bash the very system that has allowed her to make $300k per year. I think the underlying question here is ……whom does she blame for this debt she was in? The government? America as a whole? It sort of goes back to the same idea Kevin Bryant was talking about in an earlier blog. Everyone wants the benefits of a prosperous society, but they don’t want to accept the cost of that prosperity. Michelle seems to be not only out of touch with society, but it’s doubtful that not many Americans will share the empathy she demands.





(1) Comments made to a women’s group in Zanesville, OH before the primary
(2) Comments made at Pee Dee Union Baptist Church in Cheraw, SC

Who’s your daddy?

On March 25, 2008 Genealogist Christopher Child, a researcher for the New England Genealogical Society made some rather startling discoveries about our Presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton is of French-Canadian descent on her mother’s side, and is a distant cousin with singers Madonna, Celine Dion, and Alanis Morrissette. She is also related to Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of Prince Charles of England. Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton are ninth cousins twice removed, both related to Jean Cusson whom died in 1718 in Quebec, Canada.

Barack Obama often jokes about his cousin Dick Cheney in campaign appearances, but the truth is that Dick is one of his distant cousins on his mother’s side as is both Presidents Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and James Madison. Other cousins include Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Civil War General Robert E. Lee. Obama and President George W Bush are 10th cousins once removed. Brad Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, linked to Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769.
Senator Obama’s kinships span the political spectrum, Childs remarked.

Mc Cain’s lineage was somewhat harder to trace, because records on his relatives were not as complete as the records of Obama and Clinton. Senator McCain and the First Lady, Laura Bush are sixth cousins.

Christopher Child along with senior researcher Gary Boyd Roberts have spent the last three years researching the presidential candidates, as well as authoring the 1989 book entitled “Ancestors of American Presidents”

Just goes to show you that things aren’t quite what they appear!

Are we unbiased?….Let me count the ways

On March 24, 2008 the Maryland House of Delegates (house of dem) passed a law that will allow a Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. What, you ask is wrong with that? Absolutely nothing if the Commission is unbiased. After they conveign, the 19 member group will be asked to report on; ranked at # 4 “the risk of the innocent people being executed”, ranked at #3 “socio-economic disparities”, ranked at # 2 “jurisdictional disparities”, and the #1 Ranked question, as if you didn’t know, “racial disparities.”

This is but yet one more “stick in the eye of Marylanders”, from our dear Governor Martin O’Malley, and the two others Mike Bush and Mike Miller, otherwise known as the 3 amigos. They have adapted every controversial platform from the democratic party so far such as, illegal sanctuary status for MD, including driver’s licenses for illegals, in state tuition for illegals, same sex unions, socialized medicine, maximum increase of taxes, recinding capital punishment, hopeful passing of slots, taxing of the wealthy (unproportionate). How much more are we expected to endure? One political pundit once said, “ A politician’s legacy will be described in the terms of …..how long will it take to undo his/her mistakes.”

To get back to this Commission on Capital Punishment…… Unbiased would be fine, that is as long as we agreed with another 19 members on the payroll. But this commission is to be stacked with (now get this), 12 members to be appointed by the governor! This all about the governor stacking the deck to have the death penalty repealed, but you see he needs a recommendation, and I’m sure with 12 of 19 members he will once again get what he wants, regardless of national statistics from the Dept. of Justice, Gov O’Malley thinks he knows best.

Civil Rights Leader Convicted of Incest

By MATTHEW BARAKAT (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated PressApril 10, 2008 5:41 PM EDT
LEESBURG, Va. - A jury convicted an iconic civil-rights figure of incest Thursday after concluding that he had sex with his teenage daughter 15 years ago. The Rev. James L. Bevel, 71, a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. who also helped organize the Million Man March, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced.
The four-day trial in Loudoun County Circuit Court included bizarre testimony about Bevel's philosophies for eradicating lust, and parents' duty to "sexually orient" their children.

Bevel's daughter testified that she was repeatedly molested by Bevel beginning when she was just 6 years old, culminating in an act of sexual intercourse in 1993 or 1994 that formed the basis of the incest charge.
The jury reached its verdict after about three hours of deliberations.
Before the verdict, the jury had heard only passing reference to Bevel's role in the civil rights movement. But during the sentencing phase of the trial Thursday afternoon, the jury saw a documentary that spelled out Bevel's key role in organizing the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade. Bevel and King were leading organizers of the marches, in which police turned fire hoses and dogs on child protesters, drawing international attention to the brutality that was keeping segregation in place in the South.
Bevel was also a leading organizer at other iconic events in the civil rights movement, including the 1965 march at Selma, Ala.
Prosecutor Nicole Wittmann acknowledged Bevel's accomplishments but said the jury shouldn't be swayed by them.

"There's nothing I can say to take away what this man has accomplished, but there are two Jim Bevels," Wittmann told the jury. "We're talking about the one who had sex with his child."
Jurors heard a phone call between Bevel and his daughter in which he never explicitly admits to sexual intercourse but seems to take for granted that it occurred. During the call he explains the importance of teaching his daughter "the science of marriage" and admits that he did not want her to get pregnant after the incident.
Family members who confronted Bevel in 2004 testified that Bevel read a written accusation by his daughter and replied that he did not contest the facts she laid out.
But Bevel denied the charge on the witness stand. He testified that his family mistakenly perceived his refusal to deny the specific allegations against him as an admission of guilt.
Public defender Bonnie Hoffman urged the jury to ignore evidence that Bevel led an unconventional, communal lifestyle in which he taught that it was parents' duty to "sexually orient" their children.

Instead, she told the jury to focus on the single incident for which Bevel was charged: an act of sexual intercourse that occurred in 1993 or 1994 while the daughter was a teenager and was living with her father in Leesburg.
Hoffman said there were questions about the timeline - the daughter said she could not recall exactly what year the act occurred, and her recollection of when she lived in Virginia did not fully mesh with school records and other testimony.
Hoffman also questioned why the daughter returned to voluntarily live with her father after the alleged incest. The daughter testified that she went back because she had nowhere else to go.
Prosecutor Nicole Wittmann warned the jury against getting confused by Bevel's sometimes convoluted explanations of his philosophies and his justifications for his actions.
"There's no excuse for his philosophy in the law, or whether he's eccentric, or whether he's an historical figure. ... There's no exception" Wittmann said.
The Associated Press generally does not identify the victims of sexual abuse. The daughter is one of 16 children Bevel said he has had with several different women.
The trial divided members of Bevel's large family, with relatives testifying for both the prosecutor and defense.

Even the daughter expressed mixed emotions. As she waited Thursday for a verdict, she was occasionally joined by her father as the two smiled and cooed over the daughter's new baby girl - Bevel's granddaughter.
"The hardest part is I love my father, and I wish he loved me as much as I love him," The daughter told jurors during the sentencing phase.
The jury must recommend a prison term ranging between five and 20 years. The judge will then have the option to accept the recommendation or lower it, but he cannot increase it.
In the 1960s, Bevel was a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), two of the stalwart organizations that led efforts to desegregate the South.
In 1992, he was vice presidential running mate to political maverick Lyndon LaRouche, who has a home in Loudoun County but at the time was in a federal prison for a tax conviction.

It's George Bush's fault

Written by Kevin Bryant, a blog reader

It’s George Bush’s fault. How many times have we heard this in the past 7 years? For me, it’s impossible to track the number of times.

We have become a nation that is willing to blame anyone but ourselves for our own shortcomings. We blame Bush for radical Islamist killing innocent people throughout the world. We blame the oil companies for the rising price of gasoline. We blame the lenders for foreclosures on homes. We confuse greed with success and blame the successful for our own lack of success.

What ever happened to the idea of personal responsibility and personal accountability? These were the driving principals that this country was founded on. Now people want their freedoms and liberties yet they do not accept the responsibilities that go with them.

When my wife & I bought our house, we didn’t go out and buy the biggest and most expensive house we could get a loan for. We based our decision on what could we afford in the event that one of us became disabled or otherwise could no longer work. We then set out to find a match for what we were looking for in affordability and location.

We both have credit cards but refuse to use them. If we can not afford to buy something, then we do without it. We don’t buy things on credit other than vehicles and our house. It’s alarming just how many Americans are $20,000 or more in debt just from credit cards. Last I heard, it was over 15% of American households.

A report this morning said that the unemployment rate in the U.S was 5.1%. In the Kansas City Star, there are over 200 help wanted ads listed. Many more on websites like careerbuilder and monster, yet many of that 5.1% refuse to have a job. It’s easier to live off the taxes that others pay into the system by way of unemployment checks, food stamps and other social programs that do nothing but add to the economic burden this country is experiencing.

We have become a nation that elects it’s leaders based not on their principals and beliefs, but by how willing are they to give me something in return for my vote. This person wants to up my welfare checks, I’m voting for him. This person wants to give amnesty to all my cousins that are here illegally, I’m voting for that person.

Thousands of gallons of blood has been spilled over the course of the past couple of centuries by men and now women who have held a belief that this country as a whole is greater than any of it’s citizens. Millions more with that same belief has served in it’s defense so that all of us can enjoy the freedoms and liberties that our forefathers fought for and sacrificed their lives for because they believed in them and they believed in this nation.

Without being accountable for our own actions and relying on government to bail us out of our own stupidity, we are destroying this nation one freedom at a time.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. – Ariel Durant

The “Audacity of Division”

Senator Obama talks about “change” and “bringing the races together” but his agenda of division is alive and doing well. Although never actually saying what he wants to change to, or how he expects to bring the races together, he exhibits a regular need to “divide and conquer.” Obama draws his collective audience from a group that “covets” possessions of others, thereby instilling a feeling of jealousy. As an example…..he wants to raise taxes, but promises his followers that he will tax the rich more then he will the poor. This income division makes his followers feel that he’s for the “little guy” and they as a group are against the wealthy. When you really think about it this division doesn’t differ much from racism, it makes one group feel superior while making the other group they should feel guilty because they have succeeded on a monetary sense. I know much has been said about his minister Rev Wright, but this same division is visible here too. Obama’s speech about Wright was a divisive diatribe on race relations in America. The senator tried unsuccessfully to address something that as far as I am concerned wasn’t race related at all. As I see it Wright’s comments were racist, and anti American, but what really sets the stage here is HOW Obama dealt with the whole situation. The proper way that I think all Americans could accept would have been to denounce him totally, and then state that he was leaving the church. But alas that isn’t how he dealt with it did he? He decided to tell America that he couldn’t walk away from Wright anymore then he could walk away from his white grandmother. Maybe I don’t understand the radical black ministry, because as a white man in America I have never heard the kind of hateful words that Wright or Meeks have spouted, in any white church I have been in. Maybe I have a problem with ministers promoting hate of any sort, as it surely doesn’t sound very “Christian” to me. But for Obama to “throw his grandmother under the bus” as a white woman, to defend the minister Wright, who is not a family member at all shows this division I am talking about. The senator is not only asking for tolerance for his minister as a black man who has been through a lot in his life. What the senator doesn’t understand is not everyone feels the need to understand Wright, nor do they feel the need to tolerate him. The real kicker was Obama talking about his grandmother’s comments as being those of a “typical white woman.” Now how exactly am I, as a white male in America supposed to process those comments? Obama is playing off the guilt of white America to once again give black America concessions. Senator Obama needs to look at the issue through the eyes of white America for just a minute, and wonder when the guilt of the slavery idea has run it’s course, and how many more generations should pay a moral debt. As I said earlier this is a division, not a campaign to bring anyone or anything together. Misery loves company, and Obama’s campaign is based on dissatisfaction with the status quo, and he joins with others who feel the same “anger” toward society………..not exactly a healing feeling is it?

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the
troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they
have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because
they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want
the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” —Booker T. Washington

Celebrity makeover

Friday March 21, citizens were treated to the “after” version of a facial makeover from Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Now that Barack Obama has torched his own black heritage with the latest controversy of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist remarks, Gov Richardson appears, looking somehow more “ethnic,” sporting the result of an accidental nap under a sunlamp, and new facial hair, to lend his support to the floundering presidential campaign from a fellow Democratic ex-candidate. His before and after pictures are almost comical in their comparison. I feel as if this was a really bad reality makeover show, but we know that NOTHING in the political arena happens without a reason, and his darkened complexion and his new facial hair is no exception. Obama needs a group to replace the now waning white vote he enjoyed for so long but recently abused. The Hispanic vote is not such a far stretch to assume, especially since the democratic stance is so supportive of the illegal alien issue, as is Richardson’s. Now Senator Obama sees fit to play musical chairs with voting ethnic groups because he has alienated himself to the latest group and merely needs a replacement.

Sub-prime loan failure explanation for the average person

My cousin was a local bank president before he passed two years ago, and he told me at that time that banks were going to feel the brunt of this long before it actually happened. He was infuriated that everything he learned in college, and from his banking experience was about to be defeated by a President Carter era law. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that claimed to prevent “redlining” (denying mortgages to black borrowers), by pressuring banks to make loans in poor to moderate income neighborhoods. Every time my cousin had to endure government audits and defend his position on the granting of what he considered to be “bad loans” his mood was somber to say the least. As he told me, “I was hired to make good decisions and make money for my investors, and yet the government is making the decisions on a certain number of loans, in trade for a silly rating system instituted by the government. During the Clinton era this act was made even more stringent through his “Welfare Reform Act”. Loyola College economist Thomas DiLorenzo said that, to insure that banks got a high government rating, they had to issue increasingly riskier loans to people who wouldn’t normally have even qualified for a mortgage. This combined with an over-inflated housing market (land and property), has now attributed to the tumbling of the house of cards of “sub-prime” loans. The rules are ridiculous by anyone with a shred of common sense…..lax underwriting standards, no down payment, no verification of income, interest only payment plans, and weak or non existent credit history. The housing bubble has now burst, mortgage lenders are going bankrupt, and thousands of sub-prime borrowers are loosing their homes. Senators Obama and Clinton demand now that the government bail out the borrowers. Although not blaming the Bush administration directly, the insinuation is there. This is normally the answer from the democrats, “let’s throw money at it, and it will go away”. Neither of the democrats has suggested repealing this act to fix the problem. Clinton doesn’t because her husband was part of the problem; Obama doesn’t because he believes not only in the Act but also in “affirmative action”. The problems of our country will never be fixed unless bad laws are repealed. But they should remember when they point a finger at someone that four more are pointing back at them.

And the hits just keep on coming!

Barack Obama’s supporters, as Rev Jeremiah Wright would say…”have come home to roost!” The newest name to surface is but yet another black minister from Chicago, who Obama admits as being another spiritual advisor. Rev James Meeks, isn’t just outspoken as Rev Wright is, but he is also an Illinois State Senator, a man of power. As I looked over his good work in Chicago, it all seems to be over shadowed by his divisive, and racist comments. He has called white American mayors "slave masters," and referred to black preachers and politicians who "protect" the "white man" as "house n-ggers." "We don't have slave masters, we got mayors," exclaimed James Meeks, pastor of one of the largest churches in the state, in an August, 2006 sermon broadcast on a Chicago community television channel. He went on to say, "But they are still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able to be educated. You got some preachers that are house n-ggers. You got some elected officials that are house n-ggers. Rather than them try and break this up, they're gonna fight you to protect that white man." At the time he was referring to Mayor Daly of Chicago, protesting public school funding issues. In 2006 Mike Flannery, a political news editor of a local CBS news affiliate asked him about his inflammatory rhetoric, to which he replied, "They do the same thing. They preside over systems where they have the control of the lives of African-American and Hispanic people.” When questioned about his use of the “N” word he replied, "The N-word is not in the African-American community a bad word. It's a term of endearment. And I don't see it as derogatory or defensive, offensive." But Flannery retorted: "That is an insult. You weren't using that term as a term of endearment."
After that diatribe in 2006 he encouraged through the Rainbow Coalition PUSH for its members to stop using the “N” word.

Aside from his senatorial duties, Meeks is an Illinois super-delegate pledged to Obama, and also presides over Salem Baptist Church, described as the largest church in Illinois with some 20,000 members. He has served as an executive vice president for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH organization.

In a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama described Meeks as an adviser who he seeks out for spiritual council.

In my opinion it appears to be just another minister (supposedly a Christian man of god) spewing hatred, (yes Barack, HATRED, this goes way beyond anger). Maybe I don’t understand the black radical theology; maybe I don’t understand what it’s like to grow up black in America. I certainly have never been anyone’s slave, but then again neither has Obama, Wright, or Meeks. There are other ways of expressing one’s opinion then to put it into terms of racism.

Hannity and Colmes interview about Rev Meeks
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339770,00.html

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.
Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.
"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.
It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.
"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.

An Open Letter to Democrats

You use a new catch phrase to define the people who don’t believe the way you do. That term is Neo-conservative, but what you don’t understand is that you have created that persona. As your party moves to the left, the defense of the Republican Party moves farther to the right. Our two parties used to meet in the middle, what exactly happened to widen the divide? Your desire to take from the rich and give to the poor? Your programs of entitlement? Your disrespect of the very things that our forefathers had intended while forming our country? The disrespect for our military? The cutting of funds to assure the strength of our military? The ability to outspend every dollar taken in the name of the down trodden? The need to hand our rights as a country over to a world court system? The desire to acquire unfettered control to enact an unfair world emissions treaty? Maybe the need to attach pork barrel to real programs so they will be voted down based entirely on the pork barrel and not the real issue? Possibly the need to keep illegal aliens in our country, thus alienating the legal aliens since the formation of our country? Eliminate religion from our schools and government buildings? The need to control every facet of our lives in the name of federal law? Maybe the social programs that not only include the people of our country, but for other countries as well.


What is it exactly that you wish us to do? Raise taxes the same magnitude as your party does? Congratulate you on your programs of entitlement and suggest more? Creatively interpret the Constitution? Cut funds to our fighting men and women on a much larger scale, and then spit on our heroes as they arrive home after a long fought battle for freedom? Hand over world trade and security to the United Nations? Let the UN tell us what emissions we are allowed to produce and then monetarily punish us for anything over that? Attach our own pork barrel programs to yours so the main bill now becomes a “side show?” Grant illegal aliens the same rights as citizens as our country, and let them access all government programs they have never paid a dime into? Form an all-volunteer “army” to remove the “Ten Commandments” from the Supreme Court Building, and remove all crosses from the Arlington National Cemetery? Eliminate all state laws and instead institute only federal law, making it very easy for a sitting president to declare martial law? Spend more money on countries outside our own, so they will like and accept us?


We are half the equation of balance in our country, just as you are, and we deserve and demand the same amount of respect!

Tax cut for Venezuela?

Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez is cashing in on new Democrat energy policies, which are triggering higher oil prices. They are now threatening to add $18 billion in new taxes for oil companies. That should help. Coincidentally, Citgo, which is the oil company owned by Venezuela, is the only company which is exempt from Democrats’ new taxes.
Passing 236-182 on a House vote last week, H.R. 5351 terminates the tax deduction for major oil companies for exploration, extraction, refining and marketing of petrochemical energy. Thanks to the Democrats, the petro-dictator’s oil subsidiary retains its six-percent deduction for U.S. domestic manufacturing because Citgo buys from Chavez.
The rub for American consumers is that they ultimately will foot the $18-billion bill for a single winter’s worth of reduced-price heating oil given to a few thousand customers in two states, in addition to the privilege of suffering through secondary job losses and higher prices on goods. Remember that the next time you fill up at the pump after prices jump another 50 cents a gallon. Only in the twisted mind of Democrats does their professed revulsion at oil company profits justify such redistribution of wealth.
Reprinted from [The Patriot Post (PatriotPost.US)]

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself”………..Abraham Lincoln

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the crazy uncle in the basement?

Senator Obama characterizes Rev.Wright as his religious mentor, and the very man who introduced him to Christianity. His connection with this man has lasted for two decades, and yet the Senator says there have been many times that he doesn’t agree with his incendiary remarks on race and government. We remember just a month ago when Senator Obama was defending himself about another supporter, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan, and Rev. Wright have one thing in common, they don’t apologize for their bigoted comments, and in fact they thrive on them. The video clips we have seen on TV come from a DVD collection that Rev. Wright and his church chooses to market to the public. The very idea that he personally chose the clips to include on that DVD set, shows they were the crass remarks, and actions he wanted his followers to see about his character. Senator Obama likened the remarks of Rev. Wright to those of his “white grandmother”, although his grandmother was from another point in time and wasn’t in the position of inciting many people to take actions on her bigoted point of view. He also made a point of saying how the Trinity United Church of Christ is a church founded by white benefactors. These remarks on their own are incendiary, as they play the race card. It makes NO difference whatsoever, if his grandmother was white, or whites founded his church, he seems to miss the point entirely, that the remarks of the Minister were wrong, and yet he made the choice to play to white guilt, to drive home those points. There have been reports that a newscaster was in the church the very Sunday after 9/11, and had confirmed that Senator Obama was present also, to hear Wright’s ranting about how the US government has brought this on themselves. It seems to me that if Senator Obama didn’t agree with this assessment, he should have chosen to distance himself at that point in time. Senator Obama’s wife seems to share a lot of views that Rev. Wright does, recently voicing her opinion about how only since her husband has chosen to run for president, does she have anything to be proud of in America.

My opinion is this……Senator Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place right now. He rode the waves of bigotry, as a means to achieve the position as an Illinois, state and later a US Senator. He needed the support of Farrakhan to win his position, and now that he has the position he wishes to distance himself from the Nation of Islam. I think we are seeing a reverse discrimination of sorts, serving only to alienate the white vote that he has enjoyed. Although the black contingient wants us to believe that we are “cherry picking” statements in this discussion, I think they are stating a far deeper rooted problem of a problem in Illinois of a radicalism that doesn’t seem to go away. Obama has chosen to continue his friendship with Rev. Wright; even after admitting he has known about his inflammatory remarks for years. But the bigger problem seems to be, that Barack Obama wants to use his race to divide America, making the republicans feel guilty for condemning the left as a black and white issue rather then a moral issue. How can he pull the races of America together, when he surrounds himself with bigoted people?
An old proverb has said……. ”Show me your friends and I’ll show you your character”
If this is the case, Senator Obama sees fit to certainly “run with the wrong crowd”, and doesn’t apologize for it, only to try to explain it away.

Rev Wright’s DVD set

http://www.tucc.org/store/index.cfm?action=moreinfo&pid=5514

Partial interview on Hannity and Colmes truly shows this man's anger

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,256078,00.html

Live From Dearbornistan:

Live From Dearbornistan: Welcome to Islamofascist, Price-Fixing Walmart (Store's Agreement Not to Undercut Muslims Violates Federal Anti-Trust Laws)
By Debbie Schlussel

For the last two years, representatives from Walmart's corporate headquarters met with and pandered to the most extremist, Islamofascist leaders in Dearborn's Islamic community, including FBI award revokee and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, so that they could plan the new so-called "Arab American" Walmart in Dearbornistan. But there's nothing "Arabic" about it. Walmart didn't meet with Chaldeans (Catholic Iraqis) or Maronite Christians from Lebanon or even the Druze community. They met only with Muslims.

This store is not "Arab-American." It's ISLAMIC. That's why the Walmart panderers met with extremist, Hezbollah-supporting Imams, and terrorist Hamad. And that's why Newsweek writes about his second wife (his first was a sham marriage for citizenship when he violated his student visa), Arwa Hamad (who has a penchant for filing insurance claims and lawsuits over "car accidents"--not, of course, mentioned in the Newsweek article). No mention if there are footbaths in the locker room for the store's many Islamic employees, but I'm sure they're there.
And, to make matters worse, Walmart hired Suehaila Amen, an openly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite Muslim to give ethnic sensitivity training to Walmart employees. Yup, an anti-Semite supporter of Islamic terrorists giving sensitivity training. Sounds about right. As a teacher in the Dearborn Public Schools, Amen violated campaign finance laws by using Dearborn Public School resources to campaign for her Muslim friend and Medicaid defrauder Ismael Ahmed when he ran for University of Michigan regent (he now runs the State of Michigan's Medicaid unit, after defrauding it). Yup, Walmart is into ethics . . . Islamic world "ethics".
But it gets even worse. Walmart is violating the law--engaging in price-fixing agreements with the Islamic community and agreeing not to underprice its local Hezbollah-financing Shi'ite stores, so as not to put them out of business. Why will they do this for Ahmed and Mohamed, but not Mom and Pop Smith in other American communities?

If I were one of the many businesses across America driven into the ground by Walmart, I'd sue Walmart on discrimination and unfair competition grounds, since the retail giant only helps its Muslim competitors stay in business. Who wants to join me in my complaint against Walmart to the Federal Trade Commission for unfair, anti-competitive practices and price-fixing? It's patently illegal. I wish I could say this is capitalism at its worst. But it's not capitalism or free market competition. It's whoring:

As Arwa Hamad strolls a new Wal-Mart, an eight-foot display of olive oil stops her in her tracks. "Oh, wow," she says, marveling at the sight of so many gallons of Lebanese extra virgin. "We could go through one of these in a week in my house." Around the corner, row upon row of gallon jars of olives—from Turkey, Greece, Egypt and Lebanon—soak in deep hues of purple, red and green. "Look at the size of these olives," says the stay-at-home mother of three and native of Yemen. Hamad, 34, has shopped at Wal-Mart before, but never one like this. She is overcome with nostalgia as she spots Nido powdered milk and Al Haloub Cow, canned meat she calls the "Arabic Spam." "My father loves this," she says. "People from war-torn countries, this is what you lived on when you couldn't go out of the house to shop." This Wal-Mart, though, isn't in a war zone. It's in Dearborn, Mich., home to nearly a half-million Arab-Americans, the largest concentration of Arabs outside the Middle East. [DS: Um, Dearborn is, indeed, a war zone. It's a silent cultural war. And we've lost.]

As America changes, so does the store where America shops. In Dearborn this week, the world's largest retailer opens a store like no other among its 3,500 U.S. outlets. Walk through the front door of the 200,000-square-foot supercenter and instead of rows of checkout counters, you find a scene akin to a farmers market in Beirut. Twenty-two tables are stacked high with fresh produce like kusa and batenjan, squash and eggplant used in Middle Eastern dishes. Rimming the produce department are shelves filled with Arab favorites like mango juice from Egypt and vine leaves from Turkey used to make mehshi, or stuffed grape leaves. A walled-off section of the butcher case is devoted to Halal meats, slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law (when a Wal-Mart manager noticed the pork section was too prominent he ordered it moved, since Muslims don't eat pork). In the freezer case, you'll find frozen falafel. You can also pick up a CD from Lebanese pop singer Ragheb Alama or buy Muslim greeting cards.

Wal-Mart's Arab-American emporium provides a preview of the retail giant's latest strategy to boost business as it reaches the saturation point in its American expansion. . . . The Dearborn store, though, is the most extreme example of the concept. Wal-Mart offers its standard fare, plus 550 items targeted at Middle Eastern shoppers. "In the past, Wal-Mart has been pretty cookie-cutter when it comes to merchandise," says Dearborn store manager Bill Bartell. "But this time, we really got to know the community. We're blazing a trail here." . . .
Wal-Mart started two years ago to meet with imams and moms, conducting focus groups at Middle Eastern restaurants.

Wal-Mart learned the community wasn't as concerned about seeing Arabic-language signs as they were with dealing with Arabic-speaking staff. So Bartell hired about 35 Arabic speakers, including Suehaila Amen, a local middle-school teacher who is providing ethnic-sensitivity training to the 650 employees. He also learned not to bother stocking traditional Muslim clothing, like the headscarf, or hijab, Amen wears. "The community told us, 'I would not feel comfortable coming to Wal-Mart to buy my hijab'," says assistant store manager Jordan Berke. "We're not here to overstep our bounds." [DS:; Translation. We're here to pander. How much further would you like me to bend over?]

Despite the sensitive sell, local shopkeepers still worry about Wal-Mart. "There is a fear factor in the business community," says Osama Siblani, publisher of Dearborn's Arab American News. To allay those fears, Wal-Mart is making an extraordinary promise: it will not undercut the prices of the small local merchants (though it will still go after Kroger). The insular company even agreed to be scrutinized by a "community advisory board" made up of local Arab-American leaders to ensure it isn't harming the mom-and-pop shops. One example: Wal-Mart agreed to charge one dime more than local grocers for a six-pack of pita bread.
Arwa Hamad says her devotion to Dearborn's Muslim merchants doesn't simply rest on one thin dime. After all, when her husband goes to their Arab butcher, he buys in bulk. "It's hard to get half a lamb at Wal-Mart," she says. And yet, the more she wanders the aisles, the more she likes. There are the Turkish sweets and dried dates her kids love, and the Nescafe coffee she adores. "This brings back memories from home," she says. "I'll never forget Mustafa's corner store, but as soon as this place opens, I'm coming here with my checkbook." Going native just might be the next way Wal-Mart wins.

Mustafa's "corner store" (the Green Market--a giant Hezbo-financed market with the blessing of Sheikhs Nasrallah and Fadlallah back in Lebanon) is well-known as a supporter of Hezbollah, and he's been under investigation for years (by then-U.S. Customs agents in Detroit) for money-laundering to the terrorist group. And we can't have Walmart hurting that. Can we?