Topic for the March 26th Radio Show

Tomorrow is our second Tuesday morning show.  Please give us a listen and call tomorrow starting at 10:30 AM CDT.  To listen to the show live head over here and to listen to previous episodes head over here.   

Wobbles’ Topics –

Topic:  Muslims: Are they truly good neighbors or are they not so quietly fighting to transform America?

Headline:  U.S. Muslims: A new consumer niche

Opening Paragraphs:  New Brunswick, N.J.: In the ballroom of an upscale hotel a short train ride from New York, advertisers, food industry executives and market researchers mingled — the men in dark suits, the women in head scarves and Western dress. Chocolates made according to Islamic dietary laws were placed at each table.

The setting was the American Muslim Consumer Conference, which aimed to promote Muslims as a new market segment for U.S. companies. While corporations have long catered to Muslim communities in Europe, businesses have only tentatively started to follow suit in the U.S. — and they are doing so at a time of intensified anti-Muslim feeling that companies worry could hurt them, too. American Muslims seeking more acknowledgment in the marketplace argue that businesses have more to gain than lose by reaching out to the community.

"We are not saying, 'Support us,'" said Faisal Masood, a graduate of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and management consultant. "But we want them to understand what our values are."

Headline:  Muslims in Michigan to Rally Against First Amendment

Opening Paragraph:  Muslim Americans in Michigan, including a local newspaper editor, will be rallying Friday in Dearborn to protest the YouTube film, "Innocence of Muslims" and advocate for blasphemy laws. Here's an image of a poster advertising the rally.

Headline:  ‘ALLAHU AKBAR’: SHOCK VIDEO SHOWS MUSLIMS ALLEGEDLY ‘STONING’ CHRISTIAN PROTESTERS IN…MICHIGAN

Opening Paragraph:  The conservative preoccupation with presenting Sharia law as a threat to the United States’ culture as well as its national security has long been an unwarranted source of liberal derision. They may want to rethink their attitude after this story.

Recently, the city of Dearborn, Michigan, hosted the 2012 Arab International Festival. Naturally enough, the event drew demonstrators, specifically a group of Christian protesters who wanted to voice their discontent with what they saw as the predominately Muslim character of the event. Whatever you may think of this motive, the results of their behavior were unquestionably shocking.

Topic:  Separation of Church and State:  The world tells me I'm overreacting, I don't think so and here's why.

Headline:  Michigan: the Islamic capital of the US

Opening Paragraphs:  As of 2005, Michigan held the largest and still growing Muslim population in the United States and the second largest Arab population outside of the Middle East. Outside of Muslim-run countries, Paris — which still experiences nightly vehicle torchings and mayhem in its Islamic neighborhoods — has the largest. It is estimated that eight million Muslims now live in the US and their numbers are continuing to grow. Islam is now the second-largest religious body in the United States and is said to be its fastest growing religious movement.

Although hundreds of long-time residents of Hamtramck, MI protested the city allowing the five-times-per-day Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over Hamtramck's loudspeakers, the city council voted unanimously in April 2004 to allow it. Prior to the city council making its decision, public input from any citizens (except Muslims) had not been allowed. This continues today. Hamtramck resident Bob Golen was outraged by the city council's actions and said: "So they had made up their mind before any public meeting and it's been five-nothing ever since. This is only the beginning. They're going to use Hamtramck as a precedent. This is coming to your town, to the town down the road, and to the [next] town down the road." Golen added that, after the city council voted to allow the calls to prayer, one of the city councilmen said that he was "proud to set a precedent in this country."

Headline:  College student says he was suspended for not stomping on name of Jesus

Opening Paragraphs:  A Florida college student says he was suspended from class for speaking up over a controversial classroom assignment.

                                             

Ryan Rotela, a student at Florida Atlantic University, says his course instructor told students to write the name Jesus on a piece of paper and then put the paper on the floor and stomp on it.

Rotela, a Mormon, said he was offended by the task and refused to participate.

Headline:  MEDIA JIHAD: AMERICAN JOURNALISTS EMBRACE ISLAM AND ASSAULT CHRISTIANITY

From the Story:  Journalists using their status to push an agenda is nothing new. But they do more than that today. The media have been depicting Islam as a modern David facing off against the Christian Goliath. David, predictably, gets good press no matter how often radical Islamists get arrested for terror plots or riot around the world over cartoons or a YouTube video.

Christians and conservatives, on the other hand, get the exact opposite treatment. They have become the stock villains for both news and entertainment media. Every critic of Christianity—especially those in the gay community—gets treated like a hero. The institutions themselves get derided as “dictatorial” or worse for not bowing to a liberal agenda. And the faithful are forever the butt of jokes and derision—all without uproar and threats of violence from the victims of the abuse.

The Center for Security Policy’s Gaffney warned that the coverage could get worse in reaction to pushback from Islamic groups. The recent documentary “Silent Conquest” cautioned that there is an “ominous pattern” of not being able to offend Islam. Muslim nations have been working with the United Nations to institute laws against “blasphemy.”

In September, President Obama argued for just that result. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he told the United Nations. 

Headline:  Senate Democrats pass $1 trillion in new taxes

Opening Paragraphs:  WASHINGTON (AP) — An exhausted Senate gave pre-dawn approval Saturday to a Democratic $3.7 trillion budget for next year that embraces nearly $1 trillion in tax increases over the coming decade but shelters domestic programs targeted for cuts by House Republicans.

While their victory was by a razor-thin 50-49 vote, it allowed Democrats to tout their priorities. Yet it doesn’t resolve the deep differences the two parties have over deficits and the size of government. 

Headline:  FUMING EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT WARNS HE WILL DO ‘WHAT IS NECESSARY’ TO ‘PROTECT’ HIS COUNTRY ‘VERY, VERY SOON’

Opening Paragraphs:  (TheBlaze/AP) — Egypt’s president delivered a stern warning to his opponents on Sunday, saying he may be close to taking unspecified measures to “protect this nation” two days after his Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opposition protesters fought street battles in the worst bout of political violence in at least three months.

Nearly 200 people were injured in Friday’s violence, some seriously, outside the Brotherhood headquarters.

“If I have to do what is necessary to protect this nation I will, and I am afraid that I may be close to doing so,” a visibly angry Morsi said in an animated speech to the opening session of a conference on women’s rights.

“I will do so very, very soon. Sooner than those trying to shake the image of this nation think,” the Islamist leader who took office in June warned.

“Let us not be dragged into an area where I will take a harsh decision,” he added.

 

Topic:  Benghazi: Whether you belive it was a senseless tragedy or a cover up, apparently hackers want answers too!

Headline:  FIRST ALLEGED EXCERPTS FROM HACKED HILLARY CLINTON BENGHAZI MEMOS REVEALED — DO THEY EXPLAIN THE VIDEO STORY?

Opening Paragraph:  A hacker known only as “Guccifer” reportedly distributed confidential memos earlier this week between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her former political adviser Sidney Blumenthal.  The documents were said to contain information shedding light on the September 11 Benghazi attack.

Nubs’ Topics –

Topic:  Social Mobility

Headline:  Social Mobility: Is The American Dream Slipping Away?

Summary:  Discussion of the ability of American’s to move up the social and economic ladder. 

Headline:  Jeb Bush Calls Gap Between Rich and Poor 'Un-American'

From the Story:  Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush Tuesday described the growing economic chasm between rich and poor as "un-American" and called it the biggest "structural" problem facing the nation on Tuesday.

[…]

Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, was also questioned about his view of Mitt Romney, who on Sunday expressed regret in a Fox News interview over his loss to President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.

"I wish Mitt Romney was president right now because I think we’d have someone who would be in the midst of trying to forge consensus," Bush said, describing him as a "good man" whose campaign, unfortunately, "wasn't the best."

"It just breaks my heart that he's not there. . . But he would have been a really fine president," he added.

Bush also offered high praise for another Republican often mentioned as well as a possible contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

"I love Chris Christie," Bush said, smiling broadly when he was asked what he thought about the recent snubbing of the New Jersey governor by the Conservative Political Action Conference.

"I love the guy," he added, suggesting that conservatives in the Republican Party may end up needing Christie more than he needs them.

"I think he's been an incredible leader and a role model for a lot of people about how to lead and how to govern," he said.
Related Blog Post:  Why People Hate CEOs or The Obscenity of the Difference in Pay Between Workers and Bosses

From the Post:  When I worked for Sprint, there was a CEO who made $53K a day. That is twice the average yearly wage of a call center worker (oh and at least three call centers were closed during his tenure as CEO). That is obscene.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people getting rich but it seems excessively immoral and unethical for the leader of an organization to make more in a day or an hour than his/her employees make in a year.

How is this good for the economy? How is this even good or sustainable for the business? Why in the world should a company have so much invested in one single person? That one individual will not make or break the company alone. Yes his or her leadership can make the difference between success and failure but that doesn’t mean that he/she is worth that much more than everyone else. Also, how are the employees to feel when they see things like this? Where is their buy-in? Where is their share of the success or failure? They are treated like nameless and faceless numbers and people wonder why things like quality and service have gone down the tube over the years.

Workers need to be shown that they matter. They need to be given their share of the success that they help to create (and failures as well but that part seems to already be happening like crazy). There is nothing free about this. I would go so far as to say this goes directly against the free market and capitalism. This is corporatism. This is oligarchy. This is feudalism. And it needs to be stopped.

Headline:  Circle Of Accountability Widens In Steubenville Rape Case

From the Story:  After two football players were convicted in the Steubenville rape trial, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says he will convene a grand jury in April to consider bringing charges against partygoers, school officials and parents who may share responsibility in the rape of a 16-year-old girl.

NEAL CONAN, HOST:  This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Guilty verdicts in the Steubenville rape trial appear to be just the start. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine will ask a grand jury to consider charges against others who may share some responsibility for what happened at those now-notorious parties back in August.

Text messages, videos, testimony could cast a wide net: partygoers, parents, school officials and coaches - all in a town where just about everybody knows everybody else and where many people can't believe just how quickly the social fabric's come unraveled.

So how wide is wide enough? Where do you draw that line between moral and criminal responsibility?

[…]

RACHEL DISSELL:  One of the things that people have been really talking about here in Ohio and in Steubenville is that the youths involved in this case, they really didn't have any education in school on some of these issues in terms of consent and what really amounts to rape.

And it was really eye-opening for many of us covering the trial to hear teen after teen get on the witness stand and say that they really didn't understand that what happened was rape, and also not have very much of an understanding of the idea that if someone's that inebriated that they can't consent to some kind of sexual activity.

[...]

DISSELL:  But the casualness in which many of the teen boys were talking to each other, I mean no one's surprised, you know, at some of the conversations teen boys have, but the real casualness and kind of the nastiness in the way they spoke about the young women and asking each other to send pictures and describing pictures and describing acts. And I'm trying to be cautious because I'm on the radio. I can't really get into it.

[...]

CONAN: Let's - here's - we're going to read from some op-eds. This, Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times in January suggesting that Delhi and Steubenville may not all be that different. The case in Steubenville has become controversial partly because the brutishness of the young men - the brutishness the young men have been accused of, but also because of concerns the authorities protected the football team. Some people in both Delhi and Steubenville rushed to blame the victim, suggesting she was at fault for taking a bus or going to a party. They need to think, what if that were me?

Michael Kimmel says there were more than two perpetrators in Steubenville. There are 18,437. They did what they did because they felt entitled to, because they knew they could get away with it, because they knew that their coaches, their families, their friends, their teammates and the police department, indeed the entire town, would rally around them and protect them from the consequences of what they've done, because the Steubenville Two is really the Steubenville 18,437. I've subtracted the girl victim and her parents. Until the community rallies around the victim and not the perpetrators, the shame of gang rape is on them all. All.

[...]

LORIE: Hi. There's a whole aspect of this that I haven't really heard anybody speak about yet. Maybe they've touched on it. But it's the fact that, you know, as a society we're individuals and we are a corporate society. We all have something to do with the society we live in. None of us is, you know, an island. And what I keep thinking about in this is that I keep seeing this correlation between dehumanizing people. Our society today - and we can go back and figure out all kinds of reasons - but part of it is that our technology has developed faster than we know how to deal with it.

And I don't - I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have all kinds of things on television and video games and everywhere else to teach our kids that it's OK to kill and shoot and maim. And I have - I'm 60 years old and I have grandchildren who spend so many hours on video games. And the bloodier it is, they better they like it. This is the boys, of course. But we don't value humans as we used to and I'm talking about society as a whole. And I know that will bring up - there's a lot of people who do value humankind and life, but we disregard life so much. We take it for granted so much in so many ways. We've got kids doing what these boys did, and all the bystanders that either joined in or clapped or laughed or didn't tell somebody, didn't help, and then all the people afterwards that are now trying to point fingers and blame and everything else. And in all of that there's this whole dehumanization of this young girl who didn't know what was happening to her, and it's so horrible. And we've got kids killing kids in school, strangers walking into a room or a building and shooting strangers and on the street. And I think that the big issue is that we have this whole dehumanizing, this whole disvalue of life.

Headline:  Ohio School Shooter TJ Lane Laughs, Gives Finger at His Sentencing

Opening Paragraphs:  Ohio school shooter TJ Lane spewed vile and unprintable words today at the families of three students he killed, gave them the finger and then laughed and smiled as they described him as an animal and a monster.

Lane, 18, got another chuckle when the judge sentenced him to three life terms in prison with no chance for parole.

Lane was waiting for a bus to an alternative school when he killed three students during a Feb. 27, 2012 rampage at Chardon High School. Daniel Parmertor, 16, Demetrius Hewlin, 16, and Russell King Jr., 17, died in the attack. Three other students were injured.

Lane arrived at his sentencing hearing today wearing a blue button down shirt. After he sat down, he unbuttoned the shirt to reveal a white T-shirt with the word "killer" emblazoned across the front in black marker.

When Lane was given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, he gave a short, crude statement that ended with "f*** all of you" before sticking up his middle finger in the courtroom filled with the loved ones of the three students he gunned down.

Nubs’ Philosophical Topic of the Week:  What is really destroying society?

Summary:  Discussion of the three mindsets that I believe are destroying society –

1. Hyper individualists for putting greed as the top priority (Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, etc)
2. Collectivists for putting the collective over the individual
3. Entitlement mentality (The rich for thinking their owed because they are rich; the poor for thinking they are owed because they are poor [dependent on nanny state]; minorities for thinking they are owed because of past wrongs; etc.