Comment worth noting: ‘Mad in Maine’ wants to know what she can do

In response to my post this morning about another immigrant food stamp scam, this one in Utica, NY, here.    Frustrated ‘Mad in Maine,’ a lady we met a few days ago (here), is asking what she can do.

Back again and getting Madder in Maine.

We’ll pay for public defenders and use tax dollars to keep them in jail/prison. Our tax dollars are probably the money they’re going to use to bail out as well. I say send them home. If they can’t follow the rules here, they shouldn’t be here. I have to follow the rules.

This is another thing that’s really grating my cheese today. I have to budget $100 for our weekly shopping trip that will include groceries for the next week (and hopefully a few things I can put in the freezer for upcoming meals), toiletries, paper products (toilet paper, as I refuse to use leaves even in Maine) and cleaning and maintenance products. I’ve heard of some refugees (of all nationalities) using food stamps to buy grocery items that they then turn over to the resturants and shops their families/friends/neighbors own, to ultimately sell back to us!!

Mortgage payment due, car insurance due, electric bill due…I still haven’t turned the furnace on though.
And I’m about to lose another part on my old car…hopefully it will hold out until next payday.

I guess I have a really big question: Is there anything I can do to help put a stop to all of this?

Mad in Maine

First, I don’t think any one person can stop all this, look at ACORN for example, people have been investigating the fraud there for years and finally it took one daring effort by a couple of brave young people to finally push the whole issue into the mainstream.  Few of us are going to become James O’keefes or Hannah Giles, but we can do our  little bit within the framework of our lives.   My first admonition to ‘Mad’ and everyone else, is to find your role and focus like a laser on it.   I don’t know you, ‘Mad in Maine’, or what sort of person you are or how much time you have so these suggestions are for you and all of our other angry and frustrated readers to think about.

1) Write a blog.  Don’t just run your mouth with your opinions, but pick a topic and become an expert on the topic (you can still throw out your opinions!).  Research and provide a service to your readers.  Eventually, if you are patient, what you do will have an impact.  You could for instance write a blog about welfare/food stamp/home health care fraud in Maine, or the whole US.  Or, write a blog about immigration issues in Maine.  There is enough material out there for that for sure!  And, there are very few real investigative reporters anymore, so this is a sorely needed job.

Don’t be deterred by computer technology.  Blogs like this one are really simple and free.  Oh, and one more thing.  To fit blogging into your life, you can write posts as often as your schedule allows.

2)  Get involved in local and state politics.  Goodness knows you have a couple of US Senators in Maine who need their backbones stiffened from time to time.   I don’t know what city you live in, or are near, but you could get involved there too.

3)  Write letters to the editor.  I was at a meeting this past weekend and a few people told me they set google alerts for some topic (like illegal immigration) and then when they see an article, even in another state, they write a letter to the editor in response.

4)  Join a group that is fighting for the same things you are, and become involved enough to run a local chapter.  Maybe a local Tea Party, Beck’s 9/12 Project, Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and so forth.

5)  I know some people who have built e-mail lists and they send out articles daily to their lists on given topics.

6)  Here is a suggestion for the ’skulker’ personality.  Pick a subject that you are personally passionate about.  I’m thinking more about local type issues.   Dig into documents, use the Freedom of Information Act or your states open government laws, attend meetings of groups you oppose or are promoting what you object to, and basically gather information to make a case someday to expose the whole corrupt business–whatever it is.

7)  If you are someone most comfortable in a circle of local people, get together with others who have the same concerns and jointly make a plan for what you can do.

Those are just a few ideas.  But, I need to emphasize again, don’t get frustrated if you can’t work at this every minute of the day. Don’t be a gadfly either.  Pick your project, focus and know that you are doing your little piece to save America.  I hope that helps!

New civil rights group to protect former Muslims will launch next week

Earlier today I told you about a new group making its debut in Washington next week called  Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), and now tonight I received a press release for another group concerned with the threat of Islamic activity in America.  This one, Former Muslims United, has formed to protect the rights of apostates and it too will hold a press conference in Washington next week.

WASHINGTON, DC (September 21, 2009) – Prominent former Muslims– apostates from Islam– will hold a press conference Thursday, September 24 to announce the launch of a new civil liberties organization, Former Muslims United, and the start of a national campaign to educate the American public and policymakers about the threat from authoritative Shariah– Islamic law– to the religious freedom and safety of former Muslims.

At the press conference, Former Muslims United founders Nonie Darwish and Ibn Warraq (both internationally-respected authors and scholars) will release letters calling on the Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to investigate possible hate crimes and civil rights violations against apostates from Islam, including the circumstances of the current Florida case of 17-year old Rifqa Bary, a former Muslim. The letters are also signed by Former Muslims United co-founders Mohammad Asghar, Wafa Sultan and Amil Imani.

Darwish and Warraq will release the text of Former Muslim United’s groundbreaking “Muslim Pledge for Religious Freedom and Safety from Harm for Former Muslims,” copies of which will be received in the offices of dozens of Muslim leaders across America by September 25, the 220th anniversary of Congress passing the Bill of Rights. They will also distribute a list of the names of this first group of Muslim leaders to be asked to sign the Muslim Pledge. Additional Muslim leaders will be sent the pledge in the next month as the national campaign gets underway. The names of all pledge recipients will be listed at Formermuslimsunited.org

President Obama, an apostate himself, might want to join this much-needed new group.

New group launched to educate about the Islamization of America

From New English Review:

WASHINGTON – Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) will hold an organizational launch and press conference with speakers and panel discussion on September 25th, to coincide with Islam on Capitol Hill Day and the 220th anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights.

[....]

SIOA’s mission is to educate the American people about the political doctrine of Islam, its history, Sharia (Islamic Law), and Jihad. SIOA believes that Sharia Law is incompatible with our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

So what’s this Islam on Capital Hill Day?  Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the inside story, here.

We were there — among hundreds of thousands in Washington

I got home a short time ago from the 912 March in Washington. Ann and I went, along with my daughter, on a bus from Hagerstown. Eight buses went from the Hagerstown area, and that’s a little sample of what was happening from all over the country.

You’ll hear widely varying estimates of the number of people there. I’ve been on a lot of demonstrations in Washington (because I used to be a leftist), starting with a civil rights march in 1958 and continuing with other civil rights demonstrations, and then peace marches (until I came to my senses in 1967).  I could hardly believe how large today’s march was. The original meeting place, Freedom Plaza at 14th and Pennsylvania, filled up so fast that the march to the Capitol had to start much earlier than planned to make room. Pennsylvania Avenue was packed, and it took hours to get all the people into the Capitol area. No, that’s wrong, because not everybody fit into those huge grounds in front of the Capitol and there were always people on the Mall and on the sidewalks blocks away.

I was at the famous 1963 civil rights march, where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech. That was estimated to be 200,000 to 300,000 people. In my opinion this one was bigger. I don’t think there were a million people, as some have claimed, but there were at least 350,000 and possibly many more. That is huge.

It was also the politest demonstration I’ve ever been to. Nobody was angry. I mean, they were angry at the government, but nobody seemed to have the kind of chip-on-the-shoulder anger that so many leftists have. It was good-humored. Also — and this was astounding — there was no trash on the ground. None. Unlike the Obama inauguration, unlike Woodstock, unlike even an ordinary crowd standing around, this event was as clean at the end as at the start.

Maybe that’s because there were no journalists strewing trash, or almost none. There was a Fox truck and a CNN truck and that’s all the TV we saw. When Ann and I went to a counterdemonstration to an ANSWER peace march in 2007, the streets were lined with trucks from every media outlet we’d ever heard of, and some we hadn’t. We were interviewed by Australian and German reporters. And that was a march of about 5,000 on ANSWER’s side and about 15,000 on ours. I know some people were interviewed today because I read some reports, but there was nothing like the coverage that peace marches routinely get.

I’ve just heard a few reports that lead me to believe some reporters accidentally went to Mars instead of the Capitol. One said there were Confederate flags in evidence, and Ku Klux Klan type signs. We spent a lot of time walking around looking at people and their signs, and we commented that there were no confederate flags. And I don’t even know what is meant by Ku Klux Klan type signs. Maybe the one that said “I’m not a racist — I hate Pelosi and Reid too.”

That was typical of the signs — original, and often funny. There were no mass-produced signs, and not more than a few of any one type. Here are some we saw:

      Spread my work ethic, not my paycheck.

     Chicago gangsters go home.

     Give me liberty, not debt.

     Thank God for Glenn Beck.

     Right wing extremist: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, me.

     Capitalism delivers what socialism can only promise.

     Read the bills or get off the Hill.

     Constitution: read, learn, live it.

Lots of signs about czars — 44 czars; Czar wars; Czars czuk; You’ll be czarry; and more.

Lots of signs about ACORN — ACORN: bringing brothels to your community; Congress investigate ACORN; shut ACORN down–cancer on our republic; and more.

I kept calling my husband at home to see what the media were saying. He didn’t go because he doesn’t walk well. He’s a bit crippled from his 5-1/2 years as a guest of the North Vietnamese government during the Vietnam war. But he also didn’t go because he was so moved by the idea of all these Americans coming together to oppose socialism and big government that he was afraid he would cry. He was thrilled to hear the reports from Fox during the afternoon.

Now I’m going to look for more reports. I hope some of them are true.

Addendum, 9/14:  After looking at aerial photos I have to update my estimate. I think there were a million people there, maybe more.  It is harder to estimate this than the usual demonstrations on the Mall. The Mall is a plain rectangle and you can just photograph from above and count, or count a small area and multiply. The west side of the Capitol has a lot of trees and you can’t see what’s under them unless you’re on the ground. The area is far from rectangular and is not continuous. And the crowd was spread far and wide beyond the west lawn.

Note from Ann:  On Judy’s point about how clean the Tea Party demonstrators left Washington, see Gateway Pundit’s photo essay on clean conservatives vs. filthy liberals here.

CAST: Taking a stand against the spread of Shariah law

Update August 14th:  Protests continue, here.

Amid all the very large and angry demonstrations occurring over the last week and planned for the coming weeks on Obamacare, a small cheerful band of patriots stood outside the JBS Swift meatpacking plant  in Greeley, CO on Saturday to declare that Shariah law was not going to get a foothold in America.   Coloradans against Shariah Task Force (CAST) maintain, as do we, that when meatpacking companies and other employers give in to religious demands by Muslim employees for special workplace accommodation that is the beginning of the Stealth Jihad.  See my first report about CAST here.

This protest in Greeley (the birthplace of Al-Qaeda) in advance of Ramadan, the Muslim holiday which surely portends another contentious month in meatpacking towns across the country, is believed to be the first time that citizens have stood up to tell the public of the dangers they see with employers caving to Muslim (Somalis mostly in this case) demands.  By elevating Islamic requirements to the highest concern in workplace functioning, these demands are detrimental to other ethnic and religious workers in the plant.

Although the Greeley Tribune interviewed CAST leader Michael Gale, little mention was made of the real purpose of the demonstration.  See the Greeley Tribune coverage here (very strange, I know the paper had more the other day, I saw it!).   Read Jerry Gordon’s reports here and here.

Here is my recent post about Greeley and the Somalis filing Civil Rights complaints against Swift.

To catch up on this contentious issue, visit our entire category on the Greeley/Grand Island Swift controversy going back to last year here.

“You magnificent bastard, I read your book.”

What a fabulous line from George C. Scott in Patton and used to illustrate so appropriately the points David Stokes makes in his piece at Townhall today.    Hat tip:  Paul

Stokes, writing about the shock the extreme leftwing is experiencing when real grassroots America does some community organizing of its own, begins in “Rules for Witnesses:”

There is a scene early on in the movie Patton, where the feisty general watches the forces under his command do battle with those led by the legendary German Panzer leader, Erwin Rommel. To prepare for this particular skirmish, “Old Blood and Guts” studied the writings of his adversary, prompting the memorable line uttered in a gravely voice by actor George C. Scott: “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”

Stokes goes on to describe Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sputtering and muttering about Nazis and how she relates Nazism and vile people to middle Americans who have had it with the Obama Administration and Congress’ attempt to seize the health care system of the entire country, and are organizing opposition.

Stokes says, we have read your book!   He is talking about Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and the seminal writing that all community organizers , including Obama, study when they sign up to “change” America.  All I can say is it’s about time everyone reads it.  I myself should have read it 40 years ago, but then in 1969, that tumultuous year for college students, I sadly would not have understood the significance.  [Historical note:  The earlier version of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" was published in hardcover in 1969 by Random House under the title "Reveille for Radicals"]

What Nancy Pelosi is seeing is her side being on the receiving end of some of the kind of methodological medicine the left has been forcing down the country’s throat for quite a long time. I recently got around to reading Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals. Yes, I know I should have done so long ago, but I thought I had a good enough grasp on what the man said back in 1971 via the thorough treatment his musings have received from the conservative punditry.

I was wrong. My bad. Every American should read it. It’s chilling.

I believe what we are now witnessing is a case of people being, as the saying goes (and as is actually used in Alinsky’s book) “hoisted with their own petard.” Fire is being fought with fire. The reflexive dismissal of angry citizens showing up at town hall meetings these days to give Washington insiders a piece of their mind as somehow orchestrated, notwithstanding.

This is not a top-down campaign with a few sinister puppeteers pulling the strings. The opposition to liberal health care machinations and other stuff is very real. What they see as orchestration is actually mobilization.

I have been laughing all week watching the radical Left twist themselves inside out as they watch conservatives do real community organizing!  Now, it seems the strategy is not so cool, right President Obama!  Right Mr. Axelrod!  Right Nancy!

What about immigration?

Now that conservatives are understanding community organizing and reading Alinsky, I look forward to the day when we begin to understand the connection of the Alinsky model (create chaos to bring about change) and how it relates to immigration.

Alinsky began his work in ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago.  In order for the entire Alinsky strategy to work organizers need angry, poor people (with a little racial tension thrown in for good measure) to continually demand more of the government.    The original minorities Alinsky agitated gradually became middle class citizens basically content with their lives and often very patriotic.  Darn, there went the army of the revolution—right into decent jobs, their own homes in the suburbs, sending kids to college or proudly to the military.

For all of us wondering where the  common sense is of the open borders leaders who continually demand that we import millions of poor immigrants who won’t have jobs and will thusly depend on government support, they are building  (or re-building) an Alinsky army.  The poor immigrants are just cannon fodder and the humanitarian do-gooders are their cover.

We have been talking about Alinsky in our Community Destabilization category since Obama was elected, here.

A different kind of refugee arrives in New Hampshire

A Tea Party times ten!  That’s what you  might call this event for ‘refugees’ of big government and over regulation!    Check this out!  In a story entitled, ‘Free Staters Go Camping in New Hampshire — With Rifles, Swords and Defiance,’ we learn that  hundreds of people, feeling the time has arrived, are headed to New Hampshire and some are even moving there in an effort to carve out one place where they can be free (well sort of free) of big government.   Hat tip:  Blulitespecial.

LANCASTER, N.H. — There’s no escaping the long arm of big government — even here at the far edge of a state whose license plate decrees that without freedom from oppressive authority you might as well choose death.

But for a group of about 500 in a tent colony here, the Porcupine Freedom Festival is about as close to Libertarian Nirvana as they’re likely to get.

Held in June, the four days are about beer, burgers and bonfires. But more importantly, participants aim to carve out an enclave of less government and more liberty to do as they wish.

They aim to show a lost nation the way back to its political roots.

Please go read the whole article.  Here is one of the many things in the story that interested me, besides the fact that the movement was started by a Yalie.

Flapping overhead, on lines between spruce trees where others might dry bathing suits, Free Staters fly the Gadsden flag, with its serpent and warning to government: “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Hundreds of the Gadsden flags were handed out at our local 4th of July Tea Party.

Who do we complain to about a refugee issue?

That is a question we have been getting with more frequency.    So, here is the answer!

Eric P. Schwartz, the new, just sworn in, Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration in the US State Department.   I first told you about his nomination here, and just this past week he was sworn in at the State Department, here.

If you want to tell him what you think about the program for any reason— refugees not being cared for by their federal contractor, too many refugees in your city/state, any criminal elements, news clips about unhappy refugees from your local papers, incompatible religious/cultural practices you see going on, health issues and so on and so forth—write to him.  You can be angry, but be polite!

Eric P. Schwartz

Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration

US Dept. of State

2201 C St. NW

Washington, DC 20520

AND DON’T FORGET!  Any letter you send to him should be copied to your Senators and Representative in Congress, with a question.  That is, you need to ask your elected officials to do something, answer a question for you, not just copy the letter otherwise they will ignore it.   Well, they might ignore it anyway, but you have a better shot at getting some action if you ask them to take action!

American Congress for Truth urges citizens to contact Loews Hotels and complain about decision to cancel conference

Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth (ACT) is filling an important void in our movement to bring attention to creeping shariah in America.  This is a powerful and rapidly growing grassroots organization and I encourage readers to consider signing up at ACT’s website here.

Free speech being threatened!

I told you the other day that I was one of those conference attendees given the boot from the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel in Nashville.  Today I see ACT is calling on its members to contact the public relations office of Loews Hotels and voice concern about the decision in Nashville to silence free speech.

By the way, I was very fortunate to meet some of ACT’s grassroots coordinators in Nashville and can assure  you they are top notch citizen activists—genuine activists, as opposed to the phoney activists created by Nashville’s Open Borders community organizers.

From ACT’s action alert this a.m.:

Hotel managing director Tom Negri was quoted in The Tennessean newspaper: “We canceled the group for both the safety and the health of our guests and employees here at Vanderbilt hotel.”

Negri refused to provide any specific examples of “threats.” Even if such occurred, if all that was necessary to get hotels across America to cancel conferences was some threats, then free speech as we know it would be gone.

Whether threats from Islamists actually occurred, or whether Negri cancelled the conference for other reasons that he is not revealing, this occurrence is a perfect illustration of the early stages of “cultural jihad” in a free society like ours – and makes the case why conferences like the one Negri canceled are so necessary.

During the early stages, Islamists and their apologists speciously claim that those critical of radical Islam are engaging in what they call “hate speech.” They use threats and other forms of intimidation to prevent speech they don’t agree with from occurring. With every victory, as in this case in Nashville, they are emboldened, increasing their demands and intimidation tactics.

Just ask Austrian Member of Parliament Susanne Winter where this road ultimately leads. In January Ms. Winter was convicted of the “crime” of publicly insulting Islam.

We stop that road from going there by acting now.

We are therefore urging every ACT! for America member to either phone or email the national Loews Hotels Vice President of Public Relations, Emily Goldfischer. (A phone call is preferable). When you do, in a respectful but clear and concerned manner, communicate the following:

ACTION ALERT

Express your disapproval of the action Tom Negri took in cancelling the conference.

Ask that Loews Hotels publicly investigate the action Negri took, disavow Negri’s action, and apologize to the New English Review, the organization that sponsored the conference.

Let Ms. Goldfischer know that until Loews corporate offices issues such a public repudiation of Mr. Negri’s actions you will not do business with or stay in a Loews Hotel.

Ms. Goldfischer can be reached at the following phone number and email address in New York:

Phone: (212) 521-2833
Fax: (212) 521-2379
Email: egoldfischer@loewshotels.com

If Ms. Goldfischer is unreachable (which may be the case if enough of you take action!!) contact Ellen Gale, Vice President of Public Relations for the Loews Nashville Regional office at her contact information below.

Ellen Gale
Phone: (202) 587-2686
Email: egale@loewshotels.com

 

Phyliss Chesler to speak about radical Islam at NYC demonstration today

Phyllis Chesler wants you all to come out and join those fighting to defeat radical Islam.

On Sunday, May 3rd, at noon, in Times Square, in New York City, a gathering of eagles and of angels will take place. Come rain or come shine, the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam is holding a rally. Please join us. The coalition is composed of Muslim, ex-Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist, and human rights leaders who are “calling for the defeat of radical Islam.”

As fundamentalist Islam continues to expand around the world among the most persecuted are the women, says Chesler whose experience in Afghanistan makes hers an important voice in the movement.

Radical Islam’s greatest crimes are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and include the cruel subordination and persecution of Muslim women, Muslim apostates, and Muslim independent thinkers. Islam is the world’s largest and only practitioner of both gender and religious apartheid. Such apartheid and barbarism is indigenous to Islam. It was not imported by western colonial powers. Now, Islamic gender and religious apartheid have penetrated the West and have grown even harsher, more barbaric in Muslim lands. Children, as young as five years-old are used to blowing themselves and others up. Women are raped, then forced into becoming human bombs to “cleanse” their shame. Both Palestinians and Al-Qaeda are doing this.

Radical Islam is an obvious threat to human rights all over the world.

Chesler feels a special kinship with women in Afghanistan who are standing up to the most stifling and oppressive form of Shariah Law.

Here’s one reason, among many, that I will be speaking on Sunday.

Today in Kabul, when women march for women’s rights and for women’s lives, they risk being beaten, arrested, and murdered—by the mob that stalks them, by the police, by the Taliban. Still, they have marched twice now in the last month.

They could not be here to join us today. Although I lack their bravery, I am here to speak for them.

For those of you who do not know this:

In December of 1961, I escaped from captivity in Afghanistan.

Read her story.

So why is this important to us?  As refugees/asylees and immigrants from Muslim countries pour into the US we must guard against this radical and fundamentalist form of Islam creeping in with them.    I always thought it would be women like Phyliss Chesler (not that men aren’t in this war too), those who have fought so hard for the rights that women have in the West. who aren’t going to let those rights go easily to men who want to see them covered head to toe, want to marry little girls, or murder sisters and daughters for disobeying them.