The Council Has Spoken – Post Thanksgiving Edition

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The Council Has Spoken – Post Thanksgiving Edition

JoshuaPundit on Nov 26 2010 at 2:15 am | Filed under: The Council Has Spoken!

I hope everyone enjoyed yesterday’s festivities. I know the heroic men and women pictured above enjoying a well deserved break in their routine certainly did.

The votes have been cast, the sacred runes read and this week’s Watcher’s Council results are history. But before I get to that, a word, if you don’t mind.

Yesterday we celebrated a holiday that is uniquely American…well, almost. Our pals residing in the Great White North celebrate Thanksgiving as well, albeit a month earlier and with entirely different traditions.

Our Thanksgiving comes from an innate gratitude for G-d’s bounty and the fact that we live in a free country, with rights derived from our Creator, not from government. That’s something the men who risked their ‘lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor’ for that principle understood innately…and perhaps it might be helpful in these times to hear from one of them, reaching out to us across the ages:

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty G-d, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to “recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789,

George Washington, President

This week’s winner by a nose was Joshuapundit for JCS Mullen: ‘We Can Stop Islamic Extremism by Teaching People to Read The Qu’ran…’ , my fact checking of the head of our Joint Chiefs of Staff’s fanciful remarks that ‘radical Islam’ is caused by poverty and illiteracy and that if Muslims really could read the Qu’ran themselves and understand it, all would be well:

I’m not sure which is more shocking…Admiral Mullen’s ignorance of the Qu’ran itself or of the people who comprise the leadership and even much of the rank and file of the groups he’s talking about.

They are mostly highly educated, from the middle and upper classes and know what’s in the Qu’ran, the Sirrah and the Hadiths a lot better than Admiral Mullen apparently does.Let’s look at just a few of these uneducated, poverty stricken ignorant Muslims.

Osama bin-Ladin came from a wealthy and privileged family in Saudi Arabia, studied economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University and earned a degree in civil engineering. Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, the number two of al-Qaeda, was born to a prominent upper middle class family in Egypt and came from a large family of doctors and scholars.He graduated from from Cairo University in 1974 with an advanced degree, served three years as a surgeon in the Egyptian Army and later earned a master’s degree in surgery.

Khalid Meshaal, the leader of Hamas holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Kuwait University. The late unlamented Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas attended al-Azhar University in Cairo and had a career as an educator. Another now deceased founder, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi was a pediatrician who graduated first in his class at Egypt’s Alexandria University. Ismail Haniyeh, the current Hamas political leader in Gaza graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Arabic literature,Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’ ‘foreign minister’ and bagman got his degree in medicine from Cairo University.

Hezbollah’s supreme authority is Iran’s Ayatollah Khamanei, but Sheik Hassan Nasrallah studied at Shi’a seminaries in the Beqaa Valley town of Baalbek, at Najaf, Iraq,and at Qom in Iran. Former chief of operations Imad Mughniyeh was a student in the engineering department at the American University of Beirut, while Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s second in command came from a wealthy merchant family and likewise studied at Shia seminaries.

There are a great many more examples, not least of which are a number of American jihadis like Sami al-Arian, the Fort Hood killer Major Hasan and Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who likewise were poverty stricken, illiterate and experienced the message of Islam only through what their imams and mullahs told them, right?

Yes, just a group of ignorant peasants with far less insight into the Qu’ran than Admiral Mullen. Some of them have only spent decades studying it.

Our non-Council winner was Stop Shouting with My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice …. an inspired rant telling the Left that no, all is not well, the gloves are off and there are some pretty heavy scores to settle.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

*First place with 2 votes! – Joshuapundit--JCS Mullen: ‘We Can Stop Islamic Extremism by Teaching People to Read The Qu’ran…’
Second place*t* with 1 2/3 votes – Bookworm-George Soros: A missing moral compass
Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes -Right Truth- Sentenced to Death for Being Christian
Third place with 1 1/3 votes – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD-Grand Bargain
Fourth place with 1 vote -Mere Rhetoric- J Street Co-Founder Daniel Levy – Israel ” Does Everything To Try And Turn” Palestinians Violent
fifth place with 2/3 vote – The Razor – Why Two Friends Hate Sarah Palin
Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – What’s Wrong With Employment
Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Your Superintendent, you know…

Non-Council Winners

First place with 2 votes! – Stop Shouting - My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice ….submitted by Right Truth
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Jihad Watch – Ground Zero mosque developers want $5 million in federal money intended to rebuild Lower Manhattan after 9/11 submitted by Snapped Shot
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Jedediah Bila/Human Events – A Reply to Mona Charen’s ” Why Sarah Palin Shouldn’t Run” submitted by Joshuapundit
Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –American Digest – The Address: Seven Score and Seven Years Ago submitted by The Glittering Eye
Third place with 1 vote - Wall Street Window – Quantitative Easing Explained submitted by The Razor
Fourth place with *t* 2/3 votes - Full Comment -China mouths platitudes while its ally provokes war submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes - The Propagandist -The Demagogue submitted by Simply Jews
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 votes - T.F. Stern’s Rantings – The Ultimate Form of Wealth Redistribution submitted by Rhymes With Right
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Political Punch – Biden on Afghanistan: ‘Daddy is Going to Start to Take the Training Wheels Off.’ submitted by Mere Rhetoric
Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -American Thinker – A Mass Nervous Breakdown of the Left submitted by VA Right

See you next week!

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About Tom White

Tom is a US Navy Veteran, owns an Insurance Agency and is currently an IT Manager for a Virginia Distributor. He has been published in American Thinker, currently writes for the Richmond Examiner as well as Virginia Right! Blog. Tom lives in Hanover County, Va and is involved in politics at every level and is a Recovering Republican who has finally had enough of the War on Conservatives in progress with the Leadership of the GOP on a National Level.

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