THE DAILY BLADE: Obama To Offer Jobless A Pocketful Of Miracles -- But No Wages
One of the partisan raps on Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and his "Texas Miracle" is that most of the jobs created during his tenure are low-paying or minimum wage jobs - a claim that Investor's Business Daily swiftly debunks:
We'll leave it to liberals to explain why minimum-wage jobs are worse than no jobs at all. In any case, job growth in Texas has been widespread. In the past year, construction jobs grew more than 5%, professional services 4.5%, hospitality 3%. Plus, as our National Issue story pointed out this week, wages in Texas have climbed faster than the national average since May 2008 — 7.4% vs. 5%.
Well, how are liberals and their MSM army of winged monkeys going to explain away this Wall Street Journal article on Obama now looking to use taxpayer money to create no-wage jobs for the 6.2 million Americans who have been out of work for six months or more:
The White House is particularly interested in a Georgia program that allows jobless workers receiving unemployment insurance to train for jobs at participating businesses, at no cost to the employer. …
The 44% of the unemployed who have been out of work for six months or more are of special concern. Economists fear their detachment from the workforce will prevent them from returning to work even after the economy recovers.
Under the Georgia Works program, workers continue to collect unemployment benefits, plus a small stipend to cover transportation and other expenses. After eight weeks of training, the company may hire the person, or not. It can amount to a free tryout. …
[P]rograms such as Georgia Works may amount to free labor for employers, who could cycle through jobless participants without helping them at all.
Participants in the Georgia program are considered trainees — not employees — so minimum wage and other laws do not apply. [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]
With job creation ideas like this, even a miracle won’t make a dent in the unemployment rate.
Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means (The U.S. Military Edition)
Basic training protocols are “scientifically and psychologically designed to tear apart the ‘civilian’ and build from scratch a proud, physically fit, and dedicated member of the United States Armed Forces.” But instead of bending Muslim recruits to the culture and ethos of the military – as has been the case for generations of Christian and Jewish recruits – there is increasing evidence that U.S. military is bending to Islam.
Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a former U.S. Navy Lt. Commander, sounds the alarm that “[o]ur armed forces are becoming ground zero for American Muslims in the ideological struggle between Americanism and Islamism” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
[U.S. Army Pvt.] Naser Abdo was arrested on July 27, 2011, in Killeen, Texas, in a motel near Fort Hood, site of the massacre in November 2009. As he was led out of a federal courtroom, he shouted "Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!" And like Maj. Hasan, the shooter in that massacre, he did not become a militant overnight. Radicalization is a natural evolution for an individual consumed by the narrative of anti-American, theo-political Islamism.
There is an irreconcilable conflict between allegiance to the United States, with its secular Constitution, and fealty to the consciousness of an Islamist state that centers on the Quran as its constitution and the ummah (Muslim nation) as its global citizenry. The crucial question a Muslim soldier needs to be asked is this: "Do you have any sense of loyalty to the ummah and its Islamic state?" Those who answer in the affirmative pose a problem.
The Pentagon's 2010 after-action report, "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood," revealed a blind spot by failing to address the warning signs of Islamist radicalism that were abundantly clear prior to the massacre. Pvt. Abdo's history has shown again that our military leadership is not equipped to deal with the challenges political Islam presents to national security and the protection of our armed forces. …
[T]he country needs to send a clear message that the Hasans and Abdos of the world will be prosecuted with the full force of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. America's national security hangs in the balance.
Jasser’s warning may be too late. Timothy Furnish, Ph.D., an expert on Mahdism who learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute and attended the Army chaplain’s school at Ft. Jackson,, describes a “voluntary religious education” class held “in a chapel converted to a mosque at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio” on August 7th by a representative of Harun Yahya – an Istanbul-based organization devoted to Islamic Creationism and “very inimical to Darwinian evolution as well as a strong proponent of Islamic Mahdist da`wah (“propaganda” or “evangelism”)” – at the invitation of the Muslim chaplain at Lackland, Captain Sharior Rahman:
Two classes [were presented]: a morning one on “The Collapse of Darwinism and the Fact of Creation” and an evening one covering “Miracles in the Qur’an.” It would appear that the morning class was attended solely by basic trainees …
The Turkish Muslim group further claims about the evening class … “attendants were high rank officials [sic]: sergeants, master sergeants and captains. The talks were very well received and appreciated and the attendants were gifted the Quran [sic] (emphasis added).
Furnish notes that a dozen female Air Force trainees sat separately from the males, but “whether out of military, or Islamic, mandate is unclear,” and adds there are several serious issues that arise from the classes:
† It is “debatable” whether the religious instruction class was voluntary (Training Instructors (T.I.s) can suggest that non-attendees “spend extra time shining brass or doing KP (kitchen patrol) duty” and “[g]iven such a choice, agnostic trainees might very well opt for the Islam classes”).
† They were not provided by a mainstream Sunni group but were “sect- or cult-specific classes on highly charged topics” even within Islam so that “allowing such a contentious Islamic group to teach other Muslims on a US military installation would be … analogous to bringing … John Hagee, to lecture on to Christian trainees.”
† Instead of bringing an Imam to the base to tend to the spiritual needs of Muslims “the Air Force, at least at Lackland, is thus allowing Islamic proselytizing among non-Muslim Air Force trainees (and possibly higher ranking permanent party).”
Furnish concludes that “Lackland Air Force base is in the business of promoting Islam in general, and the Mahdi in particular, over the faith of the vast majority of military personnel (73% of Air Force enlisted are Christian; 0.2% are Muslim). And that should be unacceptable to all Americans.”
Editorial Notes:
Furnish’s article includes several photographs of the morning session of the class, and explanatory commentary.
Click here to read The Stiletto’s previous post, “Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means.”
The Stiletto Scoops James Taranto And "Baghdad Bob" And The Associated Press (A Trifecta)
- The Stiletto Blog, June 8, 2011
The Left's Summer Of Discontent
- James Taranto, OpinionJournal.com, August 12, 2011
The GOP's Summer Of Discontent
- E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post, August 18, 2011
President Barack Obama's summer of discontent has been marked by rumblings within his Democratic political base over his willingness to fight congressional Republicans and his approach to fixing the economy.
- Liberals Complain About Obama; Will It Cost Votes?, The Associated Press, August 19, 2011
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