Murfreesboro Mosque

Larry P sent me an email that had the following link embedded in it.

The link opens to an article that raises some interesting questions:


"Why is it such a big deal that a Muslim community is simply trying to build a house of worship?

Let’s start with a little math. Murfreesboro, TN has just over 100,000 residents. According to estimates provided by the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, there are 200 to 300 Muslim families living in the area. When they announced their plans to build a 53,000 square foot mega mosque, a lot of questions came up. One subject of concern was why they needed such a huge compound for so few families. What is particularly disconcerting is that, according to their own documents (attached 2009 annual report) the ICM only has 45 active paying member families. Naturally this begs another question – who is paying for this massive compound?

And, what will it really cost to build something that looks like this, per square foot, at 53,000 square feet, when the project is completed? How many millions of dollars will these “45 active members” be coming up with – and where is all this money coming from?"

That is a good question, and my answer is:

From someplace and somebody else.

Now before you start waving the First Amendment let me point out religious buildings are subject to the same zoning laws as everyone else.

In this case the mosque members went to the county Planning Commission and received approval.

But then we found out that the meeting where approval was given was not properly advertised. A judge said that but didn't halt construction.

Some people aren't subject to the same rules as others.

But let's go back. Where is the money coming from? Obviously from the same place all the Muslim school money is coming from. From Muslim sources outside the country.

Does the First Amendment say that people are free to practice their religion by building religious buildings all over the country using money from outside the country?

"But the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro says it’s just a place of worship, right?

According to a passage on the ICM website from 2008, since scrubbed from the web, but preserved in the attached documents, here is what the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro website used to say about an objective of their presence, in Tennessee (before they scrubbed this from the web):

“The main focus is to insure the masjid (mosque) stronghold on our community and to expand beyond religious teachings… We must work hard so that the ICM have a prominent role in the development and progression of not only Mufreesboro, but of Middle Tennessee.”


No. The First Amendment doesn't protect "....(mosque) stronghold on our community and to expand beyond religious teachings......."

Here's the link. Be warned that it is not PC so don't complain. You don't have to read it.

Link


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

ISM

This cartoon was put out by Harding College in 1948, 64 years ago. It is frighteningly accurate.


Link to cartoon.


Hat tip to Trish G!




"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper


 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Tick Warning

From: joe coombes
Date: Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 2:55 PM
Subject: Tick Warning
To:

Forewarned is forearmed!

I hate it when people forward bogus warnings, and I have even done it myself a couple times unintentionally...but this one is real, and it is important.

So please send this warning to everyone on your e- mail list.

This is the time of year to think of ticks once again.

If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!! They only want to see you naked.

I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid.

Hat tip to Mike L!


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Pure velvet

It is very hot today, so I got to thinking of old and colder times.

Flying is often described as hours and hours of boredom followed by a few moments of stark terror.

It was 53 years ago on New Year’s Day.

We had had a nice crew New Year’s Eve party; hosted by the Patrol Plane Commander, PPC, and early on the 1st we dragged our miserable selves out to the aircraft. The mission was a routine patrol looking for Soviet subs and the Soviet ships that were registered as merchants but had more antennas on them than a porcupine has quills. The weather was terrible. Cold with rain and sleet mixed but it had warmed up a bit so there was no need to de-ice the plane but the eyelets used to secure the tie down ropes were filled with ice  so thick a crash ax’s pick was needed to clear them to get the ropes pulled out.

The only nice thing was that instead of coming back we were going on to Bermuda. Not that Bermuda is all that great in January but temperatures in the low 70’s and high 60’s is a heck of a lot better than 20’s, 30’s and low 40’s. Besides, we could bring back some cheap booze and Bermuda was a foreign place and thus strange and exciting to us twenty something’s.

We had a nice visit. Stayed at a nice hotel, met some nice people and departed for CONUS around 9AM local.  Local weather clear. Forecast called for a cold front to be about 150 miles off the East coast complete with rain showers but nothing serious. Probably the same front that had dumped sleet and rain on us two days before. The Radar operator kicked back and went to sleep. I was on the Electrical panel and Radio position. Every hour I reported our position to New York Control. Boredom quickly set in.

About 3 hours out the pilot had the radar operator woke up and told him to fire up the radar and take a look.

The radar was the APS-44 S band high powered search radar. Great for finding aircraft carriers and mountain ranges. Not so good for submarine snorkels and weather. I stood up and looked over my shoulder. The static on the radio was getting progressively worse and the last time I tried to raise New York on voice I couldn’t and had to send our position to the squadron’s radio station at Norfolk in Morse code and request they relay it to New York. I couldn’t see what was on the screen but I watched the Radar operator wave the Navigator over for a long look.

The news was as expected. The weather line appeared to be about fifty miles in front of us.  It was heavier to the south, looked weaker to the north. The pilot pulled the nose around to starboard a bit and the navigator sent me back a message with our current position to send to the squadron that we would penetrate ADIZ north of the filed flight plan and we would then go VFR for a straight in approach to Hampton Roads and ask for clearance to land at NAS Norfolk at that time.  I added a request they relay our position and intent to New York Control.

After I had sent the message I notified the pilot we needed to pull in the trailing wire antenna.  I did and then switched to the fixed wire antenna, retuned the HF radio, a WWII vintage ART-13, to the ATC frequency and checked that it was loaded properly. A quick radio check gave me signal strength of 5 but the static was so bad that if I hadn’t have known what the message was I couldn’t have figured it out. I would have loved to have kept the long tailing wire antenna out but it also acted as a neat lightening rod and we were going into bad weather. Yeah, lightening isn’t supposed to hurt but avoidance is the best part of valor.

So we droned on. We were at 4,000 feet with some light intermittent chop.  I waved my relief Radio operator to take over and I went aft, relieved myself and grabbed a cup of coffee from the pot in the galley.  I went back to the aft racks and woke up the Ordnanceman and told him we had some bad weather in front of us. As I went back forward he and the Metalsmith was checking the Sonobouy load to be sure they were secure. I got back in my seat, strapped myself in and then it hit.

Or we hit. There was a shudder and the plane seemed like it was trying to bank to the port while climbing. Suddenly we started dropping like a rock. I had grabbed the coffee cup and watched the coffee float out of it just as we hit bottom.  The coffee splashed out on the impact I felt like I had just dropped 10’ on my butt. The plane shuddered and the PPC who was flying co-pilot to give the young co-pilot some yoke time yelled “Get the nose over,” as the air speed dropped us into a stall but immediately we started up as if we were in an elevator for what was probably thirty seconds but seemed like hours.  

Then we started down again with negative G’s and hit bottom again. The props went out of synch and the AC generators popped out of parallel. The question being, would a single generator carry the load? I tried to hit the APU start button but I had to stand up and reach it but I kept getting knocked down. On the third or fourth cycle of up and down I managed to hit the start button and amazingly it started up and I put in standby in case one of the generators kicked off. The DC generators, which ran the flight controls, looked good.

At some point the hail hit. If you’ve ever been inside a commercial flight that flew into hail you know what it sounds like. A very loud roar that comes and goes as you fly through waves of it. Water started coming in around the hatch besides the ladder next to the radio position and I realized the deck was wet. The aircraft kept going up and down like a ping pong ball inside a can and every time it came down and bottomed out I could a crack and a pop as the airframe was stressed and twisted.

The pilot called back and told me to issue a May Day message using the last position we had. I kept calling May Day giving our BUNO and position but I could see the HF transmitter wasn’t loaded right and it wouldn’t load.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this we were hit by lightening. There was a very loud pop and a blue flash. A few minutes later several circuit breakers popped on the Ordnance control panel and I thought I could spell smoke. The relief Radio operator was setting on the floor trying to hold on and he tried to get up and take a look but he kept getting knocked down. A few minutes later another pop sizzle and blue flash announced the second hit. The turbulence continued and continued and continued.

And then we fell like a rock, hit bottom and popped out. One minute we were in severe turbulence and the next we were around 2000 feet in clear air. About fifteen minutes had elapsed.

The PPC told the Navigator to prepare a message for ATC advising them of extreme turbulence at our position and new altitude. He did and passed it back to me but the HF radio wouldn’t load. We later discovered that the fixed wire antenna was missing. I re-deployed the trailing wire antenna and got the message out. ATC didn’t ask for additional information. They had never heard my May Day.

The Plane Captain and First Mechanic went around looking at everything. The Sonobouys had not broken loose in the aft but our luggage was scattered. The tripped circuit breakers on the Ordnance control panel wouldn’t reset but I could detect no fire and since we weren’t planning on dropping any mines or bombs no one was concerned. A motor was later found to have shorted out probably because of the water coming into the bomb bay.

So we limped along. No one said much of anything. The world seemed grainy and very quiet. The landing was routine.

For the first time in my short life I understood the expression, “From this time on everything will be pure velvet.”

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Shingles - A tale of burning blisters

I’ve had “Shingles” now for over a week. For those who don’t know, Shingles is a disease of the nerve endings just below the skin. It starts off with pain radiating around a spot or section and then, if not treated, erupts into multiple small blisters.  If you have had chicken pox you’re at risk. There is no known cause for an outbreak although stress is suspected. Type A personalities, of which I am a AAA, beware.

This is my second attack. The first happened in spring of 2000 while I was in Las Vegas on a business trip. I woke up around 6AM with pain centered around my left shoulder and arm radiating into my chest. Good morning 911! After about 6 hours or so of being poked, pulled, strapped, tested and blood work the Doc stepped into what passed as a “room” and announced, “Good news you haven’t had a heart attack.” As I relaxed he followed, “You have Herpes Zoster.”

Say what??????? Herpes???? He must have seen the look on my face. “Herpes Zoster is not genital herpes. It is a chronic inflammation of the nerve endings……”

“Damn,” I said. “You folks need some new names.”

“It’s also called Shingles,” he said.

Valtrix was relatively new back then, they started me on it and I never suffered many blisters. What the drug does is suppress the symptoms but not the pain. Advil worked in 2000 but Advil is not good for us with high blood pressure so this time around I was given some ‘tabs. Hello happy days…

This time it showed up on a Saturday morning. Only it was around my right shoulder and arm which I  had exercised heavily the day before on my Poulan  chainsaw. (Hint: If you know nothing about small engines then buy a Poulan. The educational opportunities are almost unlimited.) So I iced the arm and tried some Tylenol. Felt better but Sunday morning I was still hurting and when I looked I could see the red spots .

So on to Urgent Care where they dispensed some Valtrix and the “tabs” for pain and an appointment to see my PCP on Wednesday. She noted that the  Valtrix had stopped the threat and  started me on Predisone steroid. By Thursday morning the relief was fantastic and by now it is almost gone. She also gave me a script for a vaccination to prevent the disease. Said get it filled in about three weeks. It’s around 90% effective for 100% suppression and 100% effective in reducing the seriousness. 

I’m gonna give it a shot, no pun intended. 

Wanna hear some irony? Maybe a reason our healthcare system is so screwed up???

The shot is around $200. 

Medicare doesn't cover it.

But it does cover Shingles.... I figure this time around the bill is passing $500 with another visit to the PCP to go... and if I had wound up in the hospital with damage to some control nerves... who knows??? Can you say $250,000 or so???

I've got the $200. A lot of old people don't.

But the government has trillions. To waste.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

PUNS FOR THE LITERATE

 1. King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites.. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan.
 Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."
 "But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am the king!"
 Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."


 2. Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed in a fire, ...and so we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.


 3. A man rushed into a busy doctor's office and shouted, "Doctor! I think I'm shrinking!" The doctor calmly responded, "Now, settle down..
 You'll just have to be a little patient."


 4. A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of seagulls. One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road. Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he was arrested and charged with -- transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.


 5. Back in the 1800's the Tate's Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products, and since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California . This, of course, is the origin of the expression -- "He who has a Tate's is lost!"


 6. A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We have absolutely nothing to go on."


 7. An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew, and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief shrugged and said, "The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on."


 8. A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, "I must have taken Leif off my census."


 9. There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.


 10. A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal Brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the Brujo looked him in the eye and said, "Let me tell you, with fronds

Hat tip to Mike L!

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper


“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Snipper and Pets

I almost always had pets. My earliest memories include a white ball of fluff named Penny. She followed me everywhere and my Mom use to tell the story about how I would share my potato cake treat with her. A bite for her. A bite for me. A bite for her. Mom tried but never convinced me that I shouldn’t share “bite for bite” with my best friend. Penny died of old age and I never had a pet during WWII. We lived for a long time with my maternal grandparents while Dad was at war and we almost slept in shifts as everyone but Granddad and Mamaw worked at the bullet plant.

When Mom finally found an apartment, actually one half of a small house in which we shared the bathroom, a dog was verboten.  Later I had other dogs. In the Fall of 1950 our barn burned and Janie, a small mixed breed, died when she ran back inside trying to find her puppies. I never forgot that. A dog doing what many humans wouldn’t. Try to save their children. I remember vowing then and there that I would be at least as good as Janie.

Mom and Dad bought a small farm in November and we moved into a house that, to be charitable, used the linoleum rugs as weather stripping on the floor to block the cracks. The house had no underpinning and when the wind blew the rugs would “float.” But we were happy. No more share cropping, no more being told where to shop and what to do. We had entered the 50’s southern version of the middle class.

Dad got a job as a machinist and Mom sewed collars on coats at a nearby factory.  When spring came I was 13 and we planted cotton, corn, set out tomatoes and planted a garden for fresh veggies and canning what we couldn’t eat.  The days ran from 4 AM to dark. We milked and tended the stock by the lights of lanterns.

I could drive a tractor and work a pair of horses. That was standard stuff. So was milking three cows twice a day by hand. You’ve never lived until some bovine critter slaps you up side the face with her tail at 5AM when you’re trying to milk her in 40 degree weather.  I had a library card and we subscribed to the county paper. Somewhere in there I discovered science fiction and the world became a much larger place. Amazing Stories cost a quarter and the radio brought us all together.

We had nothing but life was good. The house was slowly repaired and the back porch extended and part of it turned into my room.  We dug a new well and at about 30’ down a flint arrow came up. How it got there was an endless fascination for the drilling crew and me. The land was bordered by a small creek that could have been a river a few thousand years ago and endless floods could have built a plain of rich topsoil. My favorite theory was that we had penetrated a burial ground. I did endless research at the local library and was hopeful that we hadn’t brought down the spirits of the dead on us. Somehow we escaped any curses for disturbing their sleep.

The house was at the junction of two roads that defined the school districts. Walk 50 yards one way and I could go to the school I had attended for years. Walk another direction and I could attend another school. Naturally I chose to stay with my friends.

Sometimes in the Summer of ’51 a collie mix became mine. He was almost grown and would nip at and play with everything. He became “Snipper.” He loved me and he loved my Dad and nothing suited him any better than following us around the farm. He was convinced he could catch the occasional rabbit we would stumble on but the rabbit was never in any danger.

Along about then I had my first “public” job. Handy man at a local grocery on Saturdays. I saved my money and bought a camera and the chemicals I needed to develop and print. One of my subjects was Snipper. His picture survives. The others are gone.

On the morning of April 3, as was his habit,  he followed me down to the bus stop. The school bus to the other school bus came down the road  and without  slowing ran over Snipper. He was killed instantly. There was no doubt that he saw the dog. He just thought he would kill him a dog that morning.

The bus ran early, about 6:30. My Mom and Dad left for work at about the same time. They saw it all. Dad said nothing. He just picked up Snipper and placed him in the back of the truck, told me to get in and drove my mom to where she met her ride to work. After letting her off, and still not talking, he drove to the school where the bus was going. The bus had not arrived. We waited. Eventually it did. The kids got out and walked away unaware of what was happening.

But the driver wasn’t. He finally came out of the bus and my Dad met him. Not a word was said. My Dad calmly whipped his ass, pulled him over to the truck, showed him the dead dog, kicked him in the ass and shoved him away. He then got back into our truck and we drove home and buried Snipper behind the barn. As we covered him I saw a tear in his eye. The only other tear I ever saw there was when we buried his Mother.

That night I took his picture and penned an almost 14 year old’s deep thoughts and wrote his name. Through my hurt and tears I misspelled his name. When I discovered it I was distraught but my Mom wisely told me she was sure Snipper wouldn’t mind since all of us knew his real name.

Those were different days then. Different values. And better.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine