Mad Dogs

I try to be a tolerant person (my wife would probably disagree, but what does she know?).

Anyway, my guiding principle is "You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone." A corollary to that is my belief that everyone has the right to go to Hell in his or her own way, as long as they don't take anyone else along with them. If you want to drink 32 ounce Big Gulps, more power to you. If you want to roll a giant spliff and toke your life away, I have no problem with that. Just don't ask me to pay for your food stamps when you get the munchies.

Where I draw the line, however, is when a person's actions inconvenience or endanger others. Which brings us to a group of zealots who believe that their religion allows them to run roughshod over everyone else on the face of the earth.

I speak, of course, of islamists.

Islamic law fuels polio resurgence

Once close to eradication worldwide, the dreaded disease polio is resurfacing in Muslim-majority countries where vaccinations are hard to come by due to war, religious edicts and ignorance, experts say.

The latest example comes this week in Syria, where a strain of polio originating in Pakistan has crippled more than a dozen children, according to doctors for the Kurdish Red Crescent. Cases have also been showing up in Somalia, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

What do all those countries have in common? They are contaminated by islamic extremists who intimidate, kidnap, and even kill volunteer medical workers whose only desire is to eradicate a debilitating disease.

Polio is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus in the throat and intestinal tract that can cause paralysis, crippling and even death. It was once the leading cause of disability in the United States and infected millions of people worldwide until the introduction of the polio vaccine in the 1950s.

The disease was eradicated in the United States. Worldwide, there were fewer than a thousand cases and it was headed for total eradication until recently, according to the World Health Organization.

However, ignorant islamics who want to keep people subjugated and chained to the Middle Ages have decided that eliminating polio is a Western plot.

A cleric in Pakistan's Punjab province warned that a jihad would be launched against polio vaccination teams, whose mission he labeled a Western conspiracy, frightening away a team that arrived in Muzaffargarh, according to The Express Tribune.

This week, militants in northwestern Pakistan kidnapped 11 teachers involved in a polio vaccination campaign. Local official Khyali Gul said the teachers were taken from a school in the Bara area, close to Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan.

The United Nations in Pakistan pulled its staff involved in immunization from Pakistan after three eradication workers were shot in Peshawar and two of them were killed, in 2012. Since then, more vaccine teams have been targeted.

Killing people who only want to help others live a better life. What an ignorant, intolerant, barbaric 'religion.'

I remember when I was a small child. Polio was still very much in existence in the U.S. We had to get annual vaccinations. People who contracted polio often spent months, years, or even lifetimes in an iron lung.

At one time it was thought that the polio virus could be caught from swimming in public pools. My mother forbid us from swimming in the summer, when the pool was crowded. But she let us swim during the other seasons, when the water would turn our lips and fingers blue. And for some reason swimming in muddy creeks and lakes was perfectly okay. My mother wasn't the most logical of people.

But she was light-years ahead of these fools.

Muslims Get Special Treatment At Public Pool

One of the widely recognized tenets of Islam is a notion of modesty among women in the faith. Muslim females are commonly garbed in head scarves and full body coverings meant to prevent men from seeing too much of their flesh.

Naturally, water sports in particular present a problem for practitioners of the religion, which has been resolved in many communities by prohibiting women from swimming in front of men. When two Muslim women in Tuckwilla, Wash. realized the city’s public pool did not cater to them at the exclusion of everyone else, they complained.

Instead of explaining that the pool is a resource for the community as a whole, management decided to offer female-only swimming hours...

While Christians complaining of unfair treatment under the law are generally disregarded, these two women were successful in achieving a 90-minute standing reservation each Sunday at the city pool.

It is telling that the radical left insists on removing faith out of virtually any policy decision – with the notable exception of Islam.

I wonder what would happen if I showed up at that pool and claimed my religion insisted that all swimmers must be nude. I'm sure they'd set aside a '90-minute standing reservation' for me and my flock of unclothed bathing beauties.

Yeah, right...