Tag Archives: terrorists

There’s a sucker born every minute and Wayne LaPierre needs them to join the NRA

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Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, wrote an incredible op-ed published by the Daily Caller, after President Obama’s called for a vote on proposed gun safety legislation in his SOTU speech.

TPM: “LaPierre detailed in his op-ed the scary situations in which Americans will need guns to protect themselves, including ‘terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster.’”

Here’s a list (which I’ve helpfully annotated):

  • Latin American drug gangs (i.e. brown skin threat… enough said?)
  • Hurricanes, and other natural disasters: (quote by LaPierre, demonstrating that he’s now completely off his meds: “After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia…”)
  • Riots brought on by financial collapse: (No one will laugh at your stockpiles of gold and survival seeds now…)
  • Terrorists: (Or turrists… fightin’ the war on turr!)

Hey, remember 9-11? What if all the good guys in the WTC had been armed! is all LaPierre is saying.

What other dystopian hellscapes did LaPierre not describe? Aliens and zombies. Obviously, he didn’t want to insult his NRA members. Conversely in any of the scenarios above, who would LaPierre’s personal bodyguards be protecting him from? Yep, his well-armed NRA members.

 

President Obama responds to angry teaparty activist in Iowa on ‘toning down the rhetoric’

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“I absolutely agree that everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric. In fairness, since I have been called a socialist who wasn’t born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I am all for lowering the rhetoric.” — Obama goes head-to-head with tea party activist who claimed to be insulted by Biden calling Tea Partyers ‘terrorists’

Funny, the rhetoric is just fine for the teahadists when they’re carrying signs of Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose, or signs that say “We’re not armed — THIS TIME!” or when Palin puts gun sights on a map of Democratic seats and someone on the map really gets shot. But call them terrorists when they’re acting like terrorists and NO WAY, too far! Fee-fees hurt!

The 112th Teaparty Republican Congress convened 01/03/2011. The credit rating of the U.S. was downgraded for the first time on 08/05/2011

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That only took 7 months — and it’s an historical first! When bad things happen to our country, expect the Teaparty to be there cheering their handiwork.

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011. — S&P Downgrades U.S. Debt Rating — WSJ Press Release

“When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy.” — Speaker of the House John Boehner, August 1, 2011, CBS News interview

Was the credit rating of the United States the hostage you ransomed, Mitch McConnell?

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And for what? The wealthiest 1%? To make them wealthier?

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the GOP. Don’t call them terrorists though. [WP via Political Wire]

“Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2010 (video below)

From now until the 2012 election, not one American should forget either of these statements.

The Ever Shrinking TeaParty

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“…who was driving the absolutist view in Congress over the past few months? If it was the no-compromise wing of the tea party, that’s less than 10% of the country. So riddle me this: how did we manage to let 10% of the country bring us to the brink of disaster? It is a remarkable thing.” — Kevin Drum, The Ever Shrinking Tea Party

Exactly what I was saying last week.

Understanding terrorism: rightwing Christians vs. fanatical Muslims

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[image: progressivefriends]

Crazy Christian kills 90+ people in Norway because he thinks Islam is taking over Europe. Western media immediately points to Muslim terrorist groups before hearing he’s a conservative Christian. Thanks, religion. [via bobbycaputo]

“Notice how “organized terrorist attack” becomes “lone crazy individual” and “isolated incident” when perpetrator(s) are discovered to be white.” — Eric Ward, Former Director of the Center for New Community. [via akagoldfish]


[image: zeitgeistmovement]

Related:

Torture and Osama bin Laden’s capture

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An op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post (emphasis mine):

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.

– Senator John McCain

Read it all…

Stupidity Toxin

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Regarding that video shot at Beckfest by NewLeftMedia, Tbogg says,

It is almost like the terrorists unleashed an unstoppable stupidity toxin into American airspace on 9/11. Yes, I know people like this have always existed. but in the good old days they at least had the decency to stay indoors gorging on Slim Jims and 84oz buckets of Mr. Pibb while watching Raymond reruns.

Someone once said:

If the terrorists are smart, they will give up on trying to attack us and just sit back and wait, because eventually our entire country is going to be so stupid that people will start sticking their tongues in wall sockets just to see what electricity tastes like.

We are way past that now.

I give up. We’re fucked. The terrorists won.

I decided to post what he said after I found this in my RSS feed reader:

Yep.

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oops!

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It’s kind of comical how Fox News assumes (and counts on) its viewers to be stupid and ill-informed:

Yesterday morning on Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor Dan Senor observed that The Kingdom Foundation, whose chairman Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (Fox News-parent company News Corp’s second-largest shareholder), is a funder for the Cordoba House Initiative. “The Kingdom Foundation, so you know, is this Saudi organization, headed up by the guy that tried to give Rudy Giuliani $10 million after 9/11 that was sent back, funds radical madrassas all over the world,” Senor said. “And he funds this imam,” Fox host Brian Kilmeade chimed in. Watch it

[ ... ] Prince Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana. As irony would have it, the Arab News just published this picture today of Prince Alwaleed meeting with News Corp executives to discuss how to “further strengthen the strategic corporate alliance between Rotana and News Corp”:

princely

“If we want to cut off funding to the terror mosque, we must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.”

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In a segment called “The Parent Company Trap,” Jon Stewart shared with his viewers how Fox News’ plan to “follow the money” from mosque builder Imam Rauf to terrorists will be a tricky one because it leads right back to Fox News.

HuffPo:

Stewart showed clips from his show last week, in which he mocked Fox News for playing a dangerous game of association based on speculation, and wherein Fox continued to mention a nameless man with ties to Imam Rauf through the “Kingdom Foundation.” It turns out the man they are referring to but never name is Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the biggest shareholders of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Showing a photo of the prince shaking hands with Rupet Murdoch, Stewart exclaimed, “That’s right, the guy they’re painting as a sinister money force OWNS Fox News.” Stewart then used Fox’s own logic to explain how the “terror mosque” is funded by Prince Alwaleed, despite being a co-owner of Fox News, and therefore funding terrorism. So, using their logic, Stewart said, “If we want to cut off funding to the terror mosque, we must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.”

But with this new information, one thing is now uncertain. Did Fox actually not know the name of the Kingdom Foundation leader or that he is a News Corp investor? Or did they, as Stewart said, “purposefully cover it up because it didn’t help their fear-driven narrative?”

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