The Main Enemy:  Islamism Chapter V: Radical Islam Resurgent When did Radical Islam or Islamism first come into being as a significant phenomenon internationally? It is well-known that several strands of Moslem radicalism have existed independently in a number of geographic areas since the early decades of the twentieth century. These include: *the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood (Ikhwan al Moslemin) founded in 1928 as a reaction to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924. *the Deobandi Islamic school in India and its proselytizing arm, the Islamic missionary movement of Tablighi Jamaat. *the preservation and growth of the Wahhabi extremist creed under the protection of the Saudi Kingdom in Arabia in the 1930s and beyond.  This chapter will focus primarily on Wahhabism as the primary driver of present-day Islamism, made possible by Saudi oil money.

Once and probably future Harvard Prof. Michael Ignatieff deserves a footnote in the history books for making what was the one of the most bone-headed moves in the history of electoral politics. You probably haven't heard of Mr. Ignatieff and his blunder because he's a Canadian politician.  Americans are about as interested in developments in our neighbor to the North as we are in synchronized swimming. News coverage of Canada reflects that. The excitement last week over Osama bin Laden reduced news coverage of Canada's national election May 2 "from 0 percent of network airtime to 0.0000 percent of network airtime," noted Canadian expatriate Mark Steyn. That's too bad, because we missed a helluva show that may have profound implications.

Financial fraud is one or more intentional acts designed to deceive other people and cause them financial loss. Who is the world's greatest financial fraudster? Bernie Madoff? Not even close. The unemployment rate just went up again to 9 percent, and the proportion of the adult population at work continues to fall. These dismal numbers are a result of slow economic growth, which is caused mainly by the world's biggest financial fraudster, who robs businesses and individuals of what is rightfully theirs. The world's biggest financial fraudster is not one person; it is a group composed of those politicians and government bureaucrats who, on a daily basis, ignore the consequences of their actions as they misuse hard-earned taxpayer funds to further their own political or personal agendas. We will call this fraudster the TPHP (for Thoughtless Power-Hungry Politicos). 

First, an apology for the fake "OBL Dead" photo.  You'd think, having been taught by the master himself, I'd follow Ronald Reagan's advice to "trust but verify."  But I didn't this time, being caught up in the excitement of getting what I thought was a pic of OBL shot in the head in the arms of a Navy SEAL. If you knew who my source was and his bona fides, you'd be blown away.  But even he got suckered - the pic was photoshopped from the movie Blackhawk Down - and forgot RR's advice as well.  So I screwed up and am really sheepish. Sorry about this.  I'll never forget Reagan's words ever again. *  *  *  *  *  * One good way to recover from too much cheap tequila celebrating Cinco de Mayo last night is to read Cinco de Reality (May 2010).  It will sober you up for sure.  (Plus it's a great nutshell history of the creation of Mexico.) *  *  *  *  *  * Back to the Obama-Osama Saga.  What Jack Kelly calls a "botch" is getting more farcical and fun by the hour.  Through his sheer incompetent perversity in refusing to release the OBL death photos, Zero has manufactured this ridiculous "deather" controversy that's taken off like wildfire. The quote of the week:  "Obama killed Osama and we got 72 versions."

The Main Enemy: Islamism Chapter IV: The Limited Scope of Sharia in Past Moslem Empires Perhaps the greatest failure of the American (and Western) approach to radical Islam is our unwillingness to identify and expose it as an essentially totalitarian political ideology under the guise of religion, rather than a religion as such. This despite the fact that the Islamists themselves claim that what they believe in and promote is not just a religion but the perfect fusion between a faith and a political system (din wa dawla). This is an absolutely fundamental part of the Islamist ideology and the main justification for what they see as a religious obligation to impose by violence if need be a political system in the form of a Caliphate, i.e., worldwide Moslem rule. Therefore, an understanding of what sharia is and what it is not is essential not only for a better grasp of the Islamist mindset, but more importantly it is of vital importance for a critical assessment of Islamism's bogus claims and poor grounding in traditional Islamic teaching.

President Obama and many other Democrats - and even a few Republicans - claim that the huge deficits the United States is experiencing result from the George W. Bush-era tax rate cuts. Is this true, and must we have a tax rate increase? The short answer is no.  First, a little budget history. In the 40 years prior to the 2007-09 Great Recession, tax revenues as percentage of gross domestic product were remarkably constant, never varying more than 2.3 percent above or below 18.3 percent of GDP.  This fact is all the more remarkable given that the maximum individual income tax rate during this period varied from a low of 28 percent to a high of 70 percent. Federal government expenditures also were remarkably constant during this same 40-year period, never lower than 18.2 percent or higher than 23.5 percent of GDP, and deficits averaged about 2.5 percent. The debt-to-GDP ratio rose and fell during this period and was a manageable 36 percent as late as 2007. Yet, in the past four years, the debt-to-GDP ratio has almost doubled.

The White House has botched the rollout of the greatest success of Barack Hussein Obama's presidency. The screwups began last Sunday (5/01) when we learned U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden in his million dollar "hideout" in the resort town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. The White House asked the networks for time at 10:30 p.m. EDT.  But it was more than an hour later before Mr. Obama spoke.  By then the news had leaked out, and many people had gone to bed. We're told the delay was because the president was still working on his remarks.  If so, it wasn't worth it. "The first part of the announcement, evoking 9/11, was vulgarly overwritten," said Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter.  "The adjective-bloated compote was unworthy of the subject, banal and self indulgent." The awkwardness of the delivery of the news was little noticed in our euphoria over the substance of it.  But subsequent White House screwups are fraught with consequences.

Osama bin Laden is dead.  President Barack Obama deserves much of the credit. Most of the credit, of course, belongs to the Navy SEALs who assaulted bin Laden's compound; to the intelligence officers who traced him to that compound, and to the interrogators at Guantanamo Bay who extracted the first critical lead from a captured al Qaeda terrorist. But it was President Obama who ordered the risky assault, despite the diplomatic repercussions that would have accompanied failure, and may accompany success.  He had to have been aware of what happened to Jimmy Carter -- a president to whom he's been compared a lot lately -- after the botched rescue mission in Iran. And it was President Obama who had the good sense not to inform the Pakistani government of the raid, even though the SEALs launched from a base in northwest Pakistan, and were attacking a target virtually within the shadow of the capital.

This was the week Zero changed his middle name from Hussein to Pandora.  And it wasn't due to Trump, as the Cajun Clown James Carville is claiming, but to my buddy Jerry Corsi. In fact, Jerry was set to write my biography - How We Won The Cold War:  The Greatest Adventure of Modern Times - when Joseph Farah prevailed upon him to write Where's The Birth Certificate? instead.  Go for it, I told Jerry - helping to save America is infinitely more important than telling my story. Jerry's book zooming to best-seller status the instant its publication was announced on Drudge last week (4/20) is what prompted Zero to release - finally! -  his long form BC exactly one week later (4/27) and becoming Pandora Obama thereby. Yet here is the real issue with Zero.  It's not where he was born or who his parents were or whether he was adopted in Indonesia, etc.  It's that he's not an American in his soul.  There are millions upon millions of naturalized U.S. citizens far more genuinely American than him. Zero is Anti-American in a fundamental way, far more deeply than the superficiality of where he was born.  He means us harm, he has already done grave damage to our culture, our economy, our military and national security, our future as a nation. Thus anything that delegitimizes his presidency in the eyes of voters is a move in the right direction.  He may well be a fraud in the circumstances of his birth, his school accomplishments, his entire curriculum vitae.  Much more importantly, he is a fraud as an American.  That's why he is Not My President, nor is he truly America's.