connecting the dots

When I heard about the failed attempt to blow up an airplane yesterday, my first reaction was "how long will it take the Republicans to blame it on the President and/or Liberals. Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, as if he'd read my mind, stepped right up to the plate with

“People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration.”

Of course he has no way of knowing exactly or even generally what is known by the President, his advisers, the NSA or anyone else for that matter, but by implying that something is obvious and Obama has been oblivious, he wins another point in the fantasy touch football game of insinuational politics. Of course by some rule of the game I've never understood, it's still off-limits to insinuate that the George W. Bush administration ignored the idea that Terrorists could use airplanes and followed some imaginary, if not fraudulent dots straight to Baghdad.

Hoekstra, or Hokey, if you prefer went straight to Twitter and implied to whatever birds of that feather read his bird brained utterances, that the Obama administration had made some sort of outrageous solecism worthy only of an incompetent and coward by calling a failed attempt a failed attempt, which, of course it was.

"Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned." tweeted our friend Hokey.

A white House spokesman had been quoted by AP as saying

"We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism."

By that logic, I'd have to say that my tossing a rock in a northerly direction is an actual attack on Atlanta, the importance of which is undiminished by Atlanta being some 500 miles away and my throwing arm no longer what it was.

I'm guessing with some confidence that the correct course of action would, according to Hokey, be to run down Pennsylvania Avenue shrieking "terrorist attack -- terrorist attack" because the panic factor has proved to work in the Republicans' favor often enough to warrant another try.

Unfortunately the determination as to whether we've indeed suffered an official terrorist attack is the job of the Attorney General who may have wanted to take more than 5 minutes to look into the sketchy and ever changing reports coming in from Detroit as to who did it, what was done and with what kind of device.

Of course I continue to assert that if the Republicans can do no more than sift and comb through ever word, action or inaction of the opposition for something that can be twisted, misrepresented or edited into a scandal they can use to bash Obama, they continue to be the worst enemy we have.

God is great - Bill O'Reilly? Not so much.

Blurry words and fuzzy logic are the tools of the deceiver. Take the word "terrorist." We're still trying to fit it into the Procrustean bed, or should we call it the Republican Bunk? In fact we can no longer distinguish between terror, the emotion or terrorism; the acts designed to produce terror. We're always arguing about who is a criminal and who is a terrorist but, always willing to help us find our balance, Fox news and Sean O'Reilly are on the job.

In order to keep the terror, angst and anger flowing and the ratings high, it's important to keep the supply of terrorists visible and to keep them ethnic -- and here comes Sean Hannity to tell us that what makes a terrorist a terrorist is that he praises God before he terrorizes. It's not all that simple though, he has to do that in Arabic otherwise every foxhole would be full of terrorists of many faiths.

It's simple enough however to say that because Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly said Allahu Akhbar before shooting up Fort Hood. On the other hand, attacks from the bombing of Guernica to the Rape of Nanjing to the shocking and awing of Baghdad are not. Simple haters like simple rules for hating. They like simple things that can be used to create convenient groups: tropes like "political correctness" of which O'Reilly accused The Washington Post's Sally Quinn Wednesday night. It's much easier to condemn a group fabricated for the purpose than to address her reluctance to call the man a "Muslim Terrorist."

"You have a hard time saying the words 'Muslim terrorist. I don't know why."

I do know why. If the only difference between Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, David, Son of Sam, Berkowitz and Major Hasan is religion, it becomes awfully hard to launch the Fox Crusade against Muslims alone. So one hates along with Bill, or one is politically correct which means unwilling to hate along with Bill. One jumps to convenient conclusions with him or one refuses in that politically correct way, thus defining PC as smart and honest and responsible for people more logically adept than the Fox Fools.

One must be a hater of Muslims or a terrorist supporter and without that assertion O'Reilly melts on the floor like the Wicked Witch. A nice binary, Good V. Evil choice to replace the kind of reasoning stupid people hate and fear and are incapable of: the kind of choice Lyin' Bill peddles like crack in the high school parking lot.

The plots thicken

I don't know why, but since the Vietnam era, the hawkish types seem to have preferred the world "embolden" to the more conventional "encourage." It may be simply that we prefer not to use the word "courage" when talking about our enemies, but figuring that one out is beyond any area of expertise I might pretend to. None the less, the Cheneyesque assumption that Obama, by being Obama, the liberal/fascist/Commie/Muslim born in Kenya and Indonesia will spur or "embolden" Islamic enemies to attack us to a greater extent than the refulgent presidency of George W. Bush did, is sure to be in the news again.

The last few days have seen the arrest of people involved in credible bomb plots, including the attempt to blow up a skyscraper in Dallas, Texas. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Jordan was arrested after he dialed a number on his cell phone that he had been duped by Federal Agents into believing would detonate a large bomb. He had been under close surveillance for some time.

This follows on the heels of the arrest of Denver resident Najibullah Zazi as part of another bomb conspiracy that had advance to the point of assembling the chemical components. Both of these plots were foiled by what seems to be good police work and not anything resulting from the massive powers given to the President by the infamous "Patriot Act."

It would be hard to justify the opinion that the 2001 attack was a one-shot deal not to be repeated and it's been a no brainer to predict that the next attack wouldn't involve hijacking airplanes. Although Zazi may have received training in Pakistan and Smadi claims to be a "soldier of bin Laden," these plots may have less to do with anything hatched at the top levels of some central organization than with the more diverse worldwide culture of anti-Western hatred. It's hard to say these attempts wouldn't have happened if Afghanistan had been cleansed of the Taliban orQaeda training camps. Of course the threat remains vanishingly small to any individual but it's important to note that Smadi wanted to blow up Wells Fargo as a blow to our banking system -- and it would have been.

But again, the FBI seems to have done its job and without waterboards or Transylvanian castle dungeons or reading the mail of the Quaker churches and without bombing any country back to the dark ages and this makes the idea that Obama has disabled our ability to deal with terrorists less of a credible talking point.

Minuteman -- what's in a name?

The right wing trolls have been parading their mock outrage recently about suggestions that the last 8 years have marked a new high ( or low, if you prefer) in Republican hate mongery -- unless, of course they're allowed to blame it either equally or entirely on "far-left Liberals," which group is comprised of anyone who criticized George W. Bush's presidency before the economy hit the fan.

Were the Doctor murderer and the museum shooter secret FLL's? is the question they're pretending to ask themselves in order to avoid the appearance of complicity, says Majikthise. Of course yesterday's arrests for home invasion and murder by leaders of one of the "minuteman" groups who pose as well-regulated militias doing what "the government refuses to do" will have to be integrated into the program of denial and blame passing. It's going to get more and more difficult, I predict, to discuss any question of responsibility.

Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen America Defense, aptly called MAD, is a graduate of San Diego terrorist Camp Vigilante. She's been arrested along with two other terrorist border patrol volunteer group members for having shot up a Hispanic family in their own home, leaving a father and his nine year old daughter dead. One of the other vigilantes is also a product of a Minuteman training camp, but of course the argument is being steered away from culpability and toward which of several groups get to use the Minuteman name, as the dance of denial and evasion begins.

Of course by suggesting that the rabid barking about Mexicans from Lou Dobbs on down to the self-appointed defenders of America's borders and undiluted bodily fluids has had any effect on the overall climate of murderous rage amongst the "conservatives," exposes me to accusations of playing the "Blame Game" and being ranked as another Far Left Liberal hate shouter in the false equivalence World Series and probably an America Blaming, crypto-terrorist, Fascist-Marxist follower of the false and foreign-born Messiah Obama as well.

Really, I should just go back to writing about Boats before my sense of guilt becomes overwhelming.

WHEN “PRO-LIFE” MEANS PRO DEATH

By (O)CT(O)PUS

The title of this post is borrowed from an article originally written in 1998 by Mary Lou Greenberg , who reports on assaults by pro-life extremists. She describes this bomb attack on the All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham Alabama that killed a security guard and severely injured a nurse:

“As I held in my hand the sharp slivers of glass that were now the only remains of the shattered windows, my eye was drawn to a metal object in the debris. It was a nail, a small, sharp spike two inches long (…) Just as this anti-personnel bomb at the clinic was intended to rip apart bodies, so too was it meant to penetrate people's minds and emotions with a chilling message: If you provide abortions, if you work at clinics or go to them as clients, you will be a target!”

This court case, Fargo Women's Health Organization v. Lambs of Christ, tells another aspect of the story. Established in 1981, the clinic offered routine gynecological services including first trimester abortions. For years, anti-abortion protestors held peaceful demonstrations in the vicinity of the clinic but conditions changed in 1991 when protestors stormed the clinic and occupied the building.

In the ensuing months, demonstrators jostled patients at the front door, struck and pushed escorts, confronted patients in the parking lot, vandalized cars, and blocked public roadway access. As a result, the clinic was effectively blockaded, preventing patients and staff from entering or leaving the building. Protestors called these blockades "rescues" and vowed to close the clinic outright.

Away from the clinic, the situation turned nastier when protestors followed staffers to their homes, to stores, even to the airport. For five months, protesters stalked a doctor at her home. Before dawn, “as many as 30 protesters” gathered on the front lawn, shouted, honked car horns, and blocked the driveway to prevent the doctor and her family from leaving. Protestors vandalized the doctor’s property and picketed the school where her daughter attended. Other staffers were similarly harassed; a car full of protestors stalked the daughter of a clinic volunteer.

Similar incidents spawned more litigation. In another noteworthy case, Bray V. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, several abortion clinics sued in District Court. In hindering women as a class from seeking an abortion, they argued, anti-abortion protesters had violated their equal protection rights. Although a District Court ruled in favor of the clinics, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling in a 5 to 4 decision that defied logic:

“Opposition to abortion cannot reasonably be presumed to reflect gender-based intent, Justice Scalia wrote [my bold], because there are common and respectable reasons for opposing abortion other than a derogatory view of women.”

In other words, a protestor’s right to free speech trumps a woman’s right to free and unfettered access to reproductive health services.  In Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo v. Williams, Joshua Wilson describes the "ideological dilemma" when two legal concepts come into conflict forcing both sides of the argument to decide which rights deserve priority over others. For pro-choice liberals, the strategy is to protect abortion rights by limiting disruptive demonstrations near reproductive health facilities. For pro-life conservatives, their strategy is the reverse: To obstruct access to abortions by expanding their traditionally narrow views regarding freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Depending upon on the issue, it seems, civil liberties are in the eyes of the beholder.

On January 13, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Bray V. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.  Two months later, on March 10, 1993 to be exact, Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist in Pensacola Florida :

David Gunn, 47, was shot three times in the back after he got out of his car at the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic, according to Pensacola police (…)

Last summer in Montgomery, Ala., an old-fashioned "wanted" poster of Gunn was distributed at a rally for Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry, AP said. The poster included a picture of Gunn, his home phone number and other identifying information.

Eight months later, on August 19, 1993, a pro-life extremist shot Dr. George Tiller in both arms. It was the first attempt on his life and the first of many threats throughout his career. Not only did Dr. Tiller survive the attack, he returned to the clinic the next day to administer to his patients.

In response to a pattern of arson, bombings, murder, and intimidation at abortion clinics, the U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) on May 26, 1994. More than a dozen states followed suit by imposing buffer zones around clinics and homes, prohibiting threats to personnel, banning telephone harassment, and imposing noise regulations. On March 17, 1997, the case of Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo v. Williams reached the U.S. Supreme Court. This time, the Justices voted 6-3 to uphold the buffer zones.

Despite legislative initiatives to date to stop the violence, there have been:

8 assassinations and over a dozen shootings,

180 arson and 37 bomb attacks,

100 butyric acid attacks including multiple attacks on the same clinic on the same day,

654 letters threatening anthrax attacks.

These are not the actions of a mere handful of lone extremists within the pro-life movement. These statistics imply the existence of a pervasive and organized network of accomplices working underground and nationwide. Scott Roeder, the man charged with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, agrees. From his jail cell last week, Roeder said: "I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal ..."

Meanwhile, what about our vaunted rights of free speech and free assembly? How can we claim these civil liberties as hallmarks of freedom when thousands of reproductive health professionals and their clients are forced to endure bullying, harassment, intimidation, and threats of personal injury every day? Which is worse: The threat of international terrorism from abroad, or the threat of pro-life terrorism at home that can strike at any moment.

Is it just me...

...or is holding a politically partisan and divisive protest in DC on the the weekend of 9/11 a really bad idea?

09.12.09 National Taxpayer Protest | The Tea Party Movement Goes to Capitol Hill

Those involved in planning and promoting this--and everyone who attends--should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the memories of those who were affected by the 9/11 attacks, for partisan gain.

The Riot Act

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"

-Ann Coulter-

We've been hearing about the dangers of song lyrics and video games for decades and of course there's some statistical correlation, according to some researchers, between constant exposure and violent behavior. Why is it then that we're not hearing about the effects of the unrelenting barrage of furious denunciations of the various straw men set ablaze by the religious right and the political right? Why aren't we concerned about the effect on Jim Adkisson?

Dubious denunciation has been around since the Biblical prophets, but we've certainly outgrown hand copied parchment scrolls as the medium. We have blogs, we have newspapers, newsletters, e-mail; we have radio broadcasts, we have 24 hour opinion shouting by people like Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and others. Anger, hate and bigotry can be spread faster than Smallpox and we have enough angry opinion to drown out reality. For some men like Adkisson, it's been enough to push him into domestic terrorism.

So when Jim Adkisson, an unemployed truck driver, killed two people and wounded six others with a homemade and illegal sawed off shotgun at a Tennessee church last summer, it was because he hated the "Liberals" he perceived as infesting the Unitarian Church. He still hates them so much that he smiled as he entered a guilty plea yesterday and was sentenced to life without parole.

So when Ann Coulter, for instance, proclaims a "Fathwa" against Liberals and blames everything from 9/11 to the current failure of Republican economic policy on "treasonous" Liberals in her hysterical and incessant way, when she advocates the poisoning of Federal Judges and armed assault on Islamic countries: when the American public sits mesmerized in front of Fox News and their endless fantasies about "terrorist fist bumps" and sneering, condescending and fictitious stories about "Liberals" conspiring against us all, perhaps it's time we remember the Riot Act. Perhaps it's time we saw these wealthy commercial hatemongers in the same light as we see the bearded Bogey men from Afghanistan who incite people to blow up infidels.

At least Jim Adkisson admitted his motives, even if he has no remorse.

PUTTIN’ ON AYERS

Ahh, the pleasures of a sunken wreck, where hidden crannies are made for sulking, and long-abandoned galleys are still stocked with un-salvaged wine to challenge the jar-opening skills of an octopus. There is nothing like a good shipwreck to soothe a savage cephalopod.

Your faithful mudsquiggle has returned!  No more self-flagellation (and don’t ask where the sucker-shaped hickeys come from).  I don’t care if my earlier posts were riddled with specious reasoning and ad hominid attacks on hopeless humanoids.  I tried to play fair … but the McHacks are back again … so I changed my mind.  According to rumor, Senator John McCain intends to raise the Ayers issue during the next and last presidential debate.

Here is what a conservative blah-blah-blogger is saying about the Obama-Ayers connection:

Obama is associated with Bill Ayers, a man whose terrorist group killed police officers and bombed the U.S. Capital …

But wasn’t Obama eight years old when this Ayers fellow started the Weather Underground?  If Obama spilled a glass of milk at age eight, not even General Ripper would give a rap about losing precious vital bodily fluids.  But Senator McCain does.  And who exactly is this Ayers fellow? According to the New York Times:

“Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform.   “He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues …  “This is 2008,” Mr. Daley said. “People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.”

And this is what Tom Hayden, the former 1960s activist, thinks about the Obama-Ayers connection:

[Hayden] said he saw attempts to link Mr. Obama with bombings and radicalism as “typical campaign shenanigans.”   “If Barack Obama says he’s willing to talk to foreign leaders without preconditions,” Mr. Hayden said, “I can imagine he’d be willing to talk to Bill Ayers about schools. But I think that’s about as far as their relationship goes.”

So Barack Obama and William Ayers crossed paths and served on the same education board, while swarming wingnuts are making a big buzz over little more than a casual association. More than a buzz, the McCain/Palin campaign is using the Ayers trope to turn political rallies into ugly mob scenes with chants of “terrorist,” "traitor,” "kill him” and “off with his head.”   In the year 2008, it is hard to believe there are still people acting like this:



Can you name even ONE wingnut who understands this as inciting mob violence? Can you name even ONE wingnut who has spoken out?

Of course, wingnuts conveniently ignore all evidence they find unsuitable to their cause, especially the language of hate when it benefits their candidate.  Incitements to violence may not bother them, but they bother me. Angry mob scenes remind me of witch burnings, lynchings, pogroms, and 1930s Germany.

Amazing. Wingnuts have even ignored the pleas of their own candidate. Here is McCain trying to undo the damage of his own campaign run amuck:



But here is the rub.  About the McCain supporter who called Obama an “Arab,” she was later interviewed via streaming cell phone by Noah Kunin from The UpTake, Adam Aigner of NBC News, and Dana Bash of CNN:



According to the transcript, the McCain supporter who called Obama an “Arab” got this information from a pamphlet supplied by her local McCain campaign office [my bold]. The implications are disturbing. When will candidate McCain fess up and take responsibility for the worst assault on civil discourse in American history? When will he finally admit to crossing the line and inciting mob violence? How does one equate “Country First” with outright lying?

In this world, there is hardly one politician untouched by six degrees of separation. Somewhere, there will always be a questionable association - whether real or imagined. While the McCain-Palin campaign points a finger at Barack Obama, there are more than enough skeletons in McCain's closet to delight Wes Craven. These include Randy Scheunemann, G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Keating, former Senator Phil Gramm, and dozens of lobbyists and other shady characters too numerous to mention.

But wingnuts will read only what they want to read, hear only what they want to hear, and believe only what they want to believe because their minds are tighter than clams, and they are incapable of acquiring new knowledge or considering other viewpoints.

I grow tired of this post now.  Maybe I'll talk about these shady characters some other time. Meanwhile, your faithful, blue-blooded octopus is hungry.  Is that a tasty McMorsal I see crawling furtive under anemones?

Terrible Sarah the terrorist

Most people who only know me casually are surprised that I'm interested in politics. I rarely talk about it in this coven of Republicans. That's changed recently. I've begun to tell off the people who forward me these e-mails claiming Obama was put through school by Muslim extremists from Malaysia, that Obama is "palling around with people who attacked America" and horror of horrors, was seen wearing a USMC T-shirt when he hadn't "earned" it.

It's hard to tell which GOP cesspool some of these things come from, but the business about Obama being best buddies with Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers comes from Sarah Palin - you know, the same Sarah who believes in witches and knows all about Russia because someone told her you could see an uninhabited rock from a tiny Alaskan island she's never been to.

She's been making the Slime Circuit, or cruising the Bullshit Belt if you prefer, telling the folks that Obama is a terrorist and a friend of terrorists. She cites a New York Times article as a source although, true to the Palin Practice, the article does not say anything of the sort and that's been affirmed by most of the mainstream media. Of course back when Ayers was raising hell trying to stop the Vietnam war by blowing things up, Obama was thousands of miles away and eight years old. They do, now that Ayers is a 63 year old professor at the University of Chicago, live in the same neighborhood and both once did sit on the board of the Annenberg Foundation, but that's as far as it goes. Close enough though for someone devoid of conscience, uncaring enough for responsibility and in utter contempt of truth like Sarah Palin.

Of course if having once said hello to a former radical makes one a terrorist, then the U of C, who employs Ayers as a professor must be an al Qaeda stronghold, but I'm rapidly running out of cynicism here. I'm just too damned angry.

Actually, if anyone is effectively participating in terrorizing Americans and interfering with the democratic process, it's Slimy Sarah and now we know why she was selected. It would have been damned hard to find anyone else low enough, un-American enough, deranged enough to believe her own lies. She allows McCain to wash his hands and pretend to be unsullied. She allows bigots and racists to pretend they have legitimate reasons for hating Obama.