Terrorists

From this link.

Strange... what could be the common denominator with all these terrorists? 

White, male, and stupid.

Moon dust and cereal...

Moon dust and its dangers.

Negotiating with terrorists.

An Iraq War Veteran says what he thinks about war and warmongers.

Why ignorance is being embraced as a virtue in the GOP.

Life in the most religious states.

Tom Tomorrow gets it right.

Plastics, even non-BPA, can affect your hormones.  And pesticides may give your child autism.

10 invasive species

Women listening to men in Western Art History.  And speaking in a sexist language.

Cereal killers...

Boston

Video of the bombs. Reporting the news.

Hope for the future by how we've behaved today.  How we should handle it.

Anyone could see this was coming...

Watch NRA heads explode: Al Qaeda spokesman urges terrorists to buy lots of guns at gun shows.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction will be. Besides blaming Obama for being a secret Muslim and setting this up so that he could clamp down on the Second Amendment and take away people's right to bare arms. I mean arm bears. Whatever.

I assumed Bin Laden was dead long ago

But killing him now will make no difference. His vision of the world has metathesized already to other radical cells around the world. The US has been proved vulnerable and will suffer more terrorist attacks in the future.

Celebrating Bin Laden's death is unnecessary, will not end the wars we are bogged down in right now and will inflame those who want a reason to be so. It will not change anything. We've removed one icon of defiance and made him a martyr.

But still, quoting Clarence Darrow: I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

Update: Marc Lynch's viewpoint on the death of Bin Laden. Amanda Marcotte's.

Headlines

The Republicans Are Like Frat Boys in 'Animal House'. Quote:

However, they soon fall in line after the fraternity's leader, the far more respectable, presentable, all-round-cad, Otter (Tim Matheson), backs Bluto's call to arms against the university authorities. "Bluto's right," he says. "Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards … I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

The Republican party, in particular, and American conservatism in general, have taken to operating in a similar manner to the Delta fraternity – increasingly reckless, anarchic and strident. Faced with defeat they respond with desperation. Only where the Deltas were motivated by ribaldry, conservatives are driven by rage.

Budget deficit shrink. Quote:

You know that staggeringly huge budget deficit bequeathed to the Obama administration by George W. Bush's and the rotten Bush recession? Don't look now, but that deficit is getting smaller.

The Ghost of Bobby Lee. Quote:

What undergirds all of this alleged honoring of the Confederacy, is a kind of ancestor-worship that isn't. The Lost Cause is necromancy--it summons the dead and enslaves them to the need of their vainglorious, self-styled descendants. Its greatest crime is how it denies, even in death, the humanity of the very people it claims to venerate. This isn't about "honoring" the past--it's about an inability to cope with the present.

Report: Palin Has Earned An Estimated $12M Since July. Quote:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's speaking engagements may have earned her $12 million since she resigned in July, ABC News estimates.

Palin has been making the media rounds for the past few months, and is raking it in from her estimated six- to seven-figure appearance fees, according to a "conservative estimate" by ABC News.

Aside from becoming a Fox News contributor, Palin also toured the country to promote her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

The cash flow won't stop there, either: She will reportedly make $1 million for each episode of her Alaska travel show.

ZAZI PLOT DETAILS EMERGE. Quote:

I realize conservatives don't want to talk about this story, which is probably why major media outlets aren't paying much attention to it.

But that's a shame because when it comes to counter-terrorism, this is a big f'in deal. Here we had a serious terrorist threat -- arguably the most important since 9/11 -- and an al Qaeda recruit who was poised to kill a lot of people. Obama administration officials thwarted Zazi's plan, took him into custody, read him his rights, and gave him a lawyer.

And the results couldn't have been better for the United States. Zazi will spend the rest of his life behind bars, but only after cooperating with federal officials and becoming a valuable source of intelligence.

If Republicans really want to debate the efficacy of Obama's counter-terrorism policies, we can start right here.

DNA On Envelopes Identifies World War II Sailor. Quote:

Gerald Lehman is going home to Michigan, 68 years after he was killed at Pearl Harbor. The young sailor's remains were thought to be among the hundreds trapped under the water when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed. But his remains were recovered and buried with the remains of four other "unknowns." Lehman's remains were finally identified by using DNA collected from the letters he sent home — Lehman had licked the envelopes to seal them.

Michelle Obama Visits Haiti: First Lady Makes Unannounced Trip. Quote:

Obama and Biden's visit is intended to underscore U.S. commitment to the Haitian reconstruction effort and to thank American officials who have worked in the country for the past three months, the administration said in a statement.

It is Obama's first solo trip as first lady, and she will visit Mexico next, spokeswoman Katherine McCormick-Lelyveld said. Haiti was included when the trip was planned a month ago but not announced for security reasons.

Is the U.S. Army Losing Its War on Suicide? Quote:

From the invasion of Afghanistan until last summer, the U.S. military had lost 761 soldiers in combat there. But a higher number in the service — 817 — had taken their own lives over the same period. The surge in suicides, which have risen five years in a row, has become a vexing problem for which the Army's highest levels of command have yet to find a solution despite deploying hundreds of mental-health experts and investing millions of dollars. And the elephant in the room in much of the formal discussion of the problem is the burden of repeated tours of combat duty on a soldier's battered psyche.

RRS James Cook Voyage 44. Quote:

Join our team of scientists and engineers exploring the Cayman Trough, a three-mile deep rift in the seafloor of the Caribbean, in search of the world's deepest volcanic vents and new species of deep-sea creatures.

The White House Blog "An Opportunity -- Not Simply to Talk, But to Act". Quote:

Today the President and delegations from 46 other nations are working to address the most dire threat of our time: nuclear terrorism. It is the second day of the Nuclear Security Summit, following a first day during which several nations made significant commitments which will strengthen the global effort to maintain nuclear security and nonproliferation. For instance:

* Chile has shipped its highly enriched uranium to the United States; Ukraine has agreed to ship its highly enriched uranium out of the country within two years; and Canada has agreed to ship its used highly enriched uranium to the United States.
* The United States and Russia have reached an agreement on plutonium disposal, a deal that has been stalled since 2000, and which commits both countries to eliminate enough total plutonium for approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons.
* Recognizing the importance of this summit, and that its goals require a long-term commitment, South Korea has agreed to host the next Nuclear Security Summit in 2012.

NOW we can get him for war crimes!!

Right? Right? You heard him, he confessed right there!

Former Bush Adviser Karl Rove says he's "proud" the Bush administration used techniques like waterboarding "that broke the will of these terrorists, and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots."

In an interview with the BBC, Rove was asked about the Bush administration's interrogation techniques, and whether he is "proud" of its use of waterboarding.

"I'm proud that we kept the world safer," he replied. These techniques are "appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with U.S. law."

Keep us safe? Really? Your actions were the greatest recruitment tool al-Qaeda ever had. Safe? You activated the worst planned vanity war in American history and broke our military. Safe? Historians will look back on the Bush era as the point where the USA finally stepped over the line and ceased to be a superpower. Safe? I don't fucking think so.

They don't look like me!!

Doocy: ‘All The People Who Tried To Blow Airliners Out Of The Sky Pretty Much Look Alike’





Coulda fooled me, Dooche.

WHY does John Yoo have a teaching job?

At UC Berkeley no less.

Torture Advocate John Yoo Justifies Need For Radical Legal Paradigm By Citing Death Toll Of Terrorist Attacks

Listening to him justify horrific inhumane torture in that calm smarmy voice just set my teeth on edge.

*Update* TPM has all three sections of his conversation with John Stewart.

Do people really want him to educate their college students? Really?

Balance what Yoo claims were just treatments of Gitmo prisoners to this ex-Gitmo guard (my bold):

The journey of reconciliation began almost a year ago in Huntsville, Texas. Mr Neely, 29, had left the US military in 2005 to become a police officer and was still struggling to come to terms with his time as a guard at Guantanamo.

He felt anger at a number of incidents of abuse he says he witnessed, and guilt over one in particular.

Highly controversial since it opened in 2002, Guantanamo prison was set up by President George Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to house suspected "terrorists". But it has been heavily divisive and President Barack Obama has said it has "damaged [America's] national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda".

Mr Neely recalls only the good publicity in the US media.

"The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place," he says, "like 'they [prisoners] were treated so great'. No it wasn't. You know here I was basically just putting innocent people in cages."

Watch the two videos and read the full story to get an inkling of what the 'legalized' use of torture has done to us as a nation. Thanks to the work of John Yoo.

Teaching the vocabulary of Teabaggery

Can you imagine getting death threats over such a cartoon? JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie has the fascinating story.

Update: Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly discusses the fissures in the various Teabaggery groups.

On the subject of squirrels

Capability
(for ellroon)

What critter litters on your lawn?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
What totes its nuts at dusk and dawn?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
What lands on roofs, and creeps 'neath eaves,
And pilfers, filches, nabs and thieves
Until a patient person grieves?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)

What scurries over power lines?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
What skips the bill when out she dines?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
What munches seeds you left for birds,
Has manners far too rude for words,
And once he's done, leaves lots of t^>ds?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)

What object, when you've had enough
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
Will end this nonsense, stuff this stuff?
(A squirrel can. A squirrel can.)
What sort of trap, 'neath Moon or Sun
Will hold a squirrel, stop its run
While you depart to get your gun?
(A SQUIRREL CAN! A SQUIRREL CAN!)

- SB the YSS

Underpant bombers and crotch terrorists

Can only be defeated by the boring work of intelligence and police work, not by gazillion dollar jets and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Robert Scheer:

Preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland has nothing to do with occupying vast tracts of land or winning the hearts and minds of backward villagers whom we falsely depict as surrogates of an evil empire, as we did in Vietnam and are now doing in Afghanistan. What is needed is smart police work to catch these highly mobile fanatics, and that begins with actually reading and then acting on the readily available intelligence data. It requires detectives with brains and not generals with firepower.

The ballooning of the defense budget after 9/11 has proved a great boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, which suddenly found an excuse to build weapons and deploy conventional forces against a superpower enemy that no longer exists. But our stealth fighters and bombers designed to defeat Soviet defenses that were never built are a poor match against a terrorist’s stealth underwear.

The reason why the Republicans are afraid of Gitmo prisoners...

Is because we'll finally find out that most of 'the worst of the worst' detainees have been a bunch of Afghani farmers, foot soldiers of the Taliban, or confused impressionable teenagers along with a few hardened criminals.

We'll find out these scary terrorists are nothing to be afraid of and that all this time... for eight long years... the real terrorists were in the White House.

Bryan of Why Now? explains the US prison system to those poor terrified Republicans.

Targeting Americans?

Isn't that what terrorists do?

Report: CIA Assassin Program Could Operate Anywhere -- Even Inside U.S.
Since the news broke (sub. req.) at the start of the week that CIA director Leon Panetta had pulled the plug on a secret program to assassinate or capture al Qaeda leaders, we've been raising questions about one key aspect of the story. In particular, what was it about the program that was so shocking that Dick Cheney reportedly ordered it kept secret from Congress, Panetta quashed it as soon as he heard about it, and Congressional Democrats risked being painted as soft on terror by shrieking about being kept in the dark?

We may have gotten a good piece of the answer here: The Washington Post reports today on how the program had been revived and then put on hold several times since 2001. But it also says, referring to the "presidential finding" with which President Bush authorized the program in 2001:

The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.

"No geographical limitations" presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone -- including even the US itself. And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question.

Just thinking back to the days during the anthrax attacks. Remember the odd deaths of an astonishing crowd of microbiologists? If, for example, take Cheney... If he had had a hand, say... in sending militarized anthrax to governmental and news media offices... wouldn't he want that covered up?

You know it would be irresponsible not to speculate....

Giving hate free rein

It's intentional.

Blog sprinkles

Crop circle predicts end of the world!

Cows explain the political systems of the world.

Meteorites, mysterious earthquakes and jellyfish-like lightning

Cookie Jill tells us the oceans are beginning to boil...

Spocko asks: What can we do economically about violent rhetoric on talk radio?

There will always be those waiting to prey on the elderly: How To Protect Susceptible Relatives From Scams

Just an thought: Who the hell thought up the word 'normalcy' and decided to make everybody use it? It's NORMALITY! You don't go around talking about abnormalcy, do you?



China reassesses North Korea:

Immediately after the May 25 nuclear test, Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) expressed the Chinese government's "resolute opposition", adding that Pyongyang had failed to heed the "international community's general opposition" to nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Yet, the MOFA also called on all parties to use "cool-headed and appropriate means" such as "consultation and dialogue" with the DPRK so as to resolve the question in a peaceful manner. Moreover, Beijing did not employ the highly charged word hanran, or "brazen", that it had used in October 2006 to condemn Pyongyang's first nuclear test after the start of the six-party talks. In a statement on June 2, MOFA spokesman Qin Gang further appealed to relevant countries to "remain calm and restrained, and not to take actions that will further escalate the situation".

Yet it is evident that the Hu leadership is undertaking a thorough revaluation of China's relationship with its "ally". This sea-change in Chinese opinion has apparently been brought about by Beijing's realization that Pyongyang is really serious about building a full-fledged nuclear arsenal.

What could possibly go wrong?

US navy prepares to intercept North Korean ship: The UN sanctions only allow the US to hail a North Korean ship and demand to be allowed to conduct a search, but not forcibly board it. North Korea has said a forcible search would be regarded as an act of war.

Reflecting heightened tension, the US today began moving radar systems and ground-to-air missiles to Hawaii. The Pentagon said it fears that Pyongyang could test-fire an intercontinental missile in the direction of Hawaii over the next few weeks in retaliation for the UN sanctions.

US officials designated the Kang Nam as being of "special interest" soon after it left port.

If the North Koreans refuse to allow a US crew to search the ship, the US could order it into the nearest port. Failing that, the USS John McCain could closely follow the ship until it reaches a port. The US would then be entitled to demand, under the UN sanctions agreement, that that country inspect the ship.

Media Matters' latest post on health care and the idiots who deny its need.

Ummmm....WTF?

WASHINGTON — People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report.

One less reason to read the Washington Post?

Walking Sausage!

Don't get into an argument with Randi Rhodes

You'll lose.

Unloading on the NRA

Bryan of Why Now? is a sharpshooter.

Just in case...

How to survive a nuclear blast.



Apparently getting into an old refrigerator won't save you....

Bullshit from Cheney's secure undisclosed location

This is so when the next inevitable terrorist attack comes, the loyal Bushies can yell, "SEE? Obama didn't keep us safe!"

Right.

After eight years of poking a stick into the rabid fanatical terrorists groups, ignoring diplomacy, turning up their noses at respectful discourse with Islamic countries and bombing innocents in uninvolved countries, they think they can wipe their brows and declare Bush kept us safe?

Not a fucking chance.

WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Americans are less safe now that President Barack has overturned Bush terrorism-fighting policies and that nearly all the Republican administration's goals in Iraq have been achieved.

"There is no prospect" that Iraq will return to producing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorists, Cheney asserted, "as long as it's a democratically governed country, as long as they have got the security forces they do now and a relationship with the United States."

Fulfilling campaign pledges, Obama has suspended military trials for suspected terrorists and announced he will close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as overseas sites where the CIA has held some detainees. The president also ordered CIA interrogators to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual's regulations for treatment of detainees and denounced waterboarding, part of the Bush program of enhanced interrogation, as torture.

Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe with those actions, Cheney replied, "I do."

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said.

Bullshit, Dick. Torture begets hate which begets more terrorists.

It's the hard work of diplomacy, understanding and compassion that will keep us 'safer' in the end.

Bill Moyer's interview with Karen Armstrong:

There's been a Gallup poll that asked Muslims what they liked most about the West. And what the biggest thing that they all liked was our freedom. They'd like to see more of it themselves. What do they fear most about the West? What do they dislike most about the West?

What worries them most? [Our] disrespect for [their] religion. And when they hear ill considered, uneducated remarks about their religion, this is a gift to the extremists who can use it to show that the West is making a crusade against Islam. And it's also endangering our own security.