Quote of the Day

"The idea that this can be written out of history, that it was on Cheney and Bush's watch that the biggest domestic attack of our lifetime happened and that somehow that's off the ledger -- we'll just begin the accounting on September 12th, 2011 -- It's so preposterous and it's amazing to me the extent to which in sort of normal public discourse they kind of get away with it."

-- Frank Rich on the Rachel Maddow Show last night, commenting on Dick Cheney's positively laughable criticism of the Obama Administration's performance during the Benghazi attack, which happened on September 11th of last year

Here was Cheney's exact quote, if you haven't seen it yet: "When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary."

For the record, when Cesca brought this up yesterday on the podcast, it was the only time I've ever expressed such utter, audible frustration that it actually made Bob laugh. It's fucking incomprehensible that, as Rich says, these idiots can continue to arrogantly strut and make the ludicrous claim that they "kept us safe" when the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history happened while they were in office. At the risk of violating Godwin's Law, by the logic they consistently use you could easily argue that Hitler was a pretty good guy to the Jews as long as you don't count that nasty Holocaust thing.

This isn't a matter of politics. This is objective fact and an insult to your, my, and all of our intelligence. The idea that we're expected to ignore the original 9/11 when we consider the Bush Administration's record of keeping Americans safe requires a kind of suspension of disbelief on our part -- and chutzpah on theirs -- that normal, non-sociopathic human beings are simply incapable of.

By the way, Maddow's entire takedown of the Republican conspiracy machine on her show last night was one for the ages.

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Fault Lines

Not to go all local on anyone, but yesterday there was a series of arrests in Miami -- where I happen to be at the moment -- that the feds say breaks up a money-funneling operation that was directly funding the Pakistani Taliban. It should probably go without saying at this point that any time you hear the name Taliban attached to a group -- irrespective of what locator, modifier or title precedes it -- you can be pretty sure it's not something the U.S. government wants to see you wiring a lot of money to. Well, two Miami-area Imams were indicted along with their sons for supposedly doing just that.

Are they guilty? That obviously hasn't been proven yet. But what's worth mentioning is that during the press availability immediately following the arrests, the U.S. attorney overseeing the case went out of his way to -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- unequivocally stress that the actions taken by federal agents should in no way be perceived as an indictment of Islam as a whole, a religion whose adherents are, he insists, overwhelmingly, decent, lawful and peace-loving people. A large part of me understands why such a distinction should be made in situations like this one: a potential backlash against Muslims throughout the U.S. would be entirely unfair and therefore whatever can be done to assuage the concerns of America's dumb-ass knee-jerk contingent benefits justice and the spirit of the law. But I'm not sure that's the real rationale behind the government's very clumsy qualifier. The real reason -- and I don't think anyone can argue this anymore -- is that we're terrified of pissing off Muslims. And it should be obvious that being afraid of the Islamic faith to the point where you handle the subject of it with kid gloves -- and treat its followers as if they're always one poorly chosen word or inadvertent offense away from strapping on a vest full of Semtex and walking into a shopping mall -- is a much bigger insult than simply not bringing it up at all.

There's of course an argument to be made that anyone who believes in ancient superstition -- especially to the point of violently defending it -- doesn't deserve to be treated as reasonable. I've actually made that argument many times, so I won't bother retreading a well-worn path. But my point is this: Imagine for a moment the FBI hauling in six black guys as part of the bust of an interstate car-theft ring, then standing up there during the resulting news conference and saying, "By the way, these arrests shouldn't reflect on African-Americans as a whole; I mean, they're not all car thieves," or taking down a drug-running operation along the U.S./Mexico border and saying, "We want to make clear that we really love Taco Bell and think George Lopez is a funny guy who by the way doesn't do drugs." Logically, if you're going to add disclaimers every time you indict an American Muslim on terrorism charges you can easily take that kind of absurd and pointless political correctness one, two or three steps further until the feds spend more time apologizing than they do arresting people.

I get why the President of the United States feels the need to occasionally remind everyone that we're not "at war with Islam"; in addition to that being the truth, he's addressing the world, not simply the people two counties over. But at some point we -- meaning those of us who happen not to be followers of Islam -- have to stop coddling the sensitivities of Muslims as a default position and truly do what we now only claim to do: treat them the same as everybody else. You know -- no different than any of the millions of other people in this country who believe similarly ludicrous fairy tales about the universe and how it came to be.

But if we feel like we can't do that, then what we're not willing to say about Islam and about ourselves, in fact, speaks volumes.

Fight or Flight 2: The Reckoning

Remember that story I told a couple of days ago about the surly, smart-ass comment from a TSA agent as I tried to take Inara through airport security last weekend?

Well if this had happened, I wouldn't even have made it onto the flight. In fact, I'd probably be facing federal charges right now.

CBS News: Six-Year-Old Girl's TSA Pat-Down at Airport Sparks Outrage/4.13.11

My favorite part about this is that, of course, that arrogant tool John Pistole -- the head of the TSA -- says the pat-down was justified and according to procedure. Sorry, asshole, but if groping a six-year-old-girl is something done in adherence with policy, there's something really fucking wrong with the policy -- to say nothing of you and the overreactive, pants-wetting babies who came up with the policy. When little kids are being legally felt up at our nation's airports, that's when that police state we've all been warned about is finally here.

By the way, a couple of people wrote because I didn't bother to put in a link the other day explaining why a sudden ban on printing toner cartridges on planes proves that potential terrorists are still dictating the rules of the game and the idiots charged with protecting us are merely playing catch-up.

Well, for those with short memories, here.

And now, for the hell of it and as a means of elaborating on my argument, let's bring back my last diatribe against the inefficacy of the current TSA model.

"The Unfriendly Skies" (Originally Published, 12.26.09)

Thank you for flying Knee-Jerk Airlines, where the illusion of safety is always our top priority.

Remember back when authorities in Great Britain foiled a plot to detonate liquid explosives on-board ten airliners bound for the U.S. and Canada? Whether you know the specific details of the 2006 arrests or the terrorist plans, you're damn sure familiar with the fallout from that threat: Since then you've been forced by the TSA to adhere to a set of byzantine, seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what liquids you can and can't stow in carry-on luggage -- how many ounces are acceptable and in what kind of clear plastic bag they have to be contained -- each time you fly. While those restrictions have relaxed somewhat over the past couple of years -- often dependent on how generous the particular security juggernaut you face at the airport is feeling on the day you happen to be flying -- they're still very much in place. The last time I flew north to pick up Inara, the humorless TSA employee manning the scanner took a tube of Crest toothpaste from my bag and held it up in front of me as if to signal to me that I should've known better than to try to get it past him. I wanted to grab it out of his hand and squeeze the whole fucking thing into my mouth, but thought the better of it.

Well, if you thought that that reaction was ridiculously overcompensatory and likely did almost nothing to make you safer in the skies other than maybe forcing you to rethink flying altogether, get ready -- shit's about to get a whole lot worse. In response to yesterday's arrest of a Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Delta/Northwest flight as it landed in Detroit, transportation officials and Homeland Security are announcing new restrictions on passenger behavior while flying within the continental United States. New rules will forbid airline passengers from getting up from their seats, accessing their carry-on luggage or having personal belongings on their laps during the final hour of flight before landing. This kind of thing has been in place at Reagan Airport in D.C. since the 9/11 attacks; now it'll be implemented nationwide.

Will this make anyone safer? Probably not -- but that's not really the point.

What makes these new restrictions so laughably outrageous is this: They're a reaction to a suddenly perceived threat that's technically been there all along. Like the liquid ban, which was a response to an attempted attack that had already taken place, this is a case of America's ostensibly sharpest minds in the realm of national security responding to a situation rather than planning for it in advance and thereby heading it off at the pass. Did we never realize that it was possible for terrorists to bring liquid explosives onto planes? If so, then why the hell were liquids of a certain volume ever allowed onto flights; if not, then for fuck's sake why not? Likewise, did no one ever consider the possibility that someone could blow up a plane as it prepared to land? And isn't a threat while landing completely arbitrary anyway -- and our reaction to it, to restrict the movement of passengers during landing, just as arbitrary and worthless?

The only way to truly keep us truly safe while flying a commercial airliner would be to put us all through body scanners then have us fly in our underwear, forcing every passenger to check his or her bags and carry nothing on. And even then, I'd bet my life -- literally, because there's no other option -- that those who want to kill us would just find some other way to accomplish their goals.

And then the geniuses at the TSA would simply wind up having to impose a knee-jerk crackdown on something else as a response to that "new threat." If and when that happens, the newer, harsher security measures will be exactly what they are now: a floor show, and nothing more.

They're Digging in the Wrong Place

I had read this somewhere before, and wasn't the least bit surprised by it, but today ThinkProgress has run down the numbers which reveal that there have been more non-Muslim terrorism cases investigated since 9/11 than cases involving Muslims.

It's worth taking a look at and it casts a very nice little pall over the true rationale behind Peter King's Capitol Hill dog-and-pony show.

Bottom line: King's doing it because he's shit-pants terrified of those brown people and their weird god and so are his constituents, so why not cynically exploit that fear?

ThinkProgress: Almost Twice as Many Plots Since 9/11 from Non-Muslims/3.10.11

By the way, you know why you'd be inclined to believe that twitchy Muslims are the bigger threat when it comes to terrorism? It's a matter of perception. The math breaks down like this:

Brown, vaguely Arabic Muslim guy tries to kill innocent people to make a political statement = Terrorist

White, Christian guy tries to kill innocent people to make a political statement = Mentally unbalanced lone wolf

All I Want for Christmas Is a Large Black Woman's Hand on My Junk

In honor of yet another holiday season plagued by fears of imminent death at the hands of terrorists, I bring back a yearly DXM tradition.

"And Now, a Very Special Holiday Message from al Qaeda" (Originally Published, 12.20.06)

In the name of Almighty Allah, and all praise is due to Allah, and may peace and prayers be on the Messenger of Allah, and on his family, companions and allies. Muslim brothers everywhere, peace be upon you and may you know the mercy of Almighty Allah and his blessings.

The rest of you can burn in hell.

Hah, hah -- No -- I kid, I kid.

It's me again, Ayman al-Zawahiri. You might recognize me as the co-star of the hit TV series Death to America, which airs monthly on al-Jazeera. I also had a big part on Extreme Makeover: New York and DC Edition a few years back, and -- well -- between you and me, I even tried my hand at doing a couple of music videos. Yeah, I edited a bunch of scenes together that really highlight the relationship between Meredith and Dr. McDreamy and set it to some of my favorite Goo Goo Dolls songs. They're on al-Qaeda's MySpace site now. Feel free to take a look -- I'm very proud.

But hey, enough about me, right? It's the holiday season for most of the non-Muslim world, or as we in al-Qaeda like to call it -- the Muslim world. So just to show you that we're not all streets-running-red-with-the-blood-of-the-infidels, we wanted to personally offer you all a special holiday message.

Why would we do something like this you ask?

Well look, it's been a pretty good year for us overall. Thanks to your dimwitted Imperious Leader, we've been able to swarm all over Iraq like teen pregnancy on a Birmingham trailer park. We now have more recruits to our cause than we know what to do with -- so many in fact that we're thinking about starting a new chapter of al-Qaeda. We're still trying to come up with a name for it, but so far al-Qaeda 2: The New Class seems to be pretty popular around the camel. We figure we might even be able to get Screech to do a commercial for us, seeing as how that guy will do anything for money these days.

Then of course we'd have to kill him because he's a Jew, praise be to Allah.

Getting back to what I was saying, it really doesn't matter to us that you good folks finally came to your senses and realized that the drunken idiot you sent to the White House twice is completely out of control. It's certainly a step in the right direction for you, but hey -- what's done is done over here. You can't put the genie back in the bottle -- ya know?

Get it?

Genie?

Bottle?

Sorry -- just a little Persian humor for you. Hussein the Hilarious, circa 1438. You should always respect the classics.

Anyway, lately we understand that the whole Iraq thing has taken a backseat to something truly Earth-shattering that's happened in America. Something which has dominated your headlines and held the attention of your entire nation, paralyzing every man, woman and child with anticipation and an unquenchable desire to have one question answered -- quite simply the most important question America has ever faced:

What will Donald Trump do with Miss USA, Tara Conner?

Look, forgive me if I laugh a little about this, but is this the freedom you people are supposedly "protecting" abroad -- the one your sons and daughters are dying for in Iraq?

The right to continue to worry about stupid, trivial shit like this?

That's what this is all about?

I live in a cave, for Allah's sake, and even I could've told you what an asshole like Trump was gonna do. He was gonna do whatever he had to do to make sure that the 20-year-old beauty queen from Kentucky never told anybody that he'd been boning her for the past six months. Still, come on. Rehab? Isn't that place getting a little crowded over there? How'd you manage to slip her in between Mark Foley and Ted Haggard?

No, seriously -- how'd you manage to slip her in between Mark Foley and Ted Haggard?

Holy shit, that Lindsay Lohan girl is never sober, never wears underwear and never lacks for a place to put down a rail of cocaine the size of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- and yet you people put her on the front cover of Vogue. This kid does what any kid would do if you swept her up from a debutante ball outside Lexington and dropped her simple ass on top of Chamillionaire in the TRL studios in New York and you decide that she needs rehab?

Wow, are you people hypocrites. And you wonder why we keep our women under sheets and hit them with rocks until they're dead when they misbehave, Allah be praised.

I've got a much better idea for you. Why not just have Trump build Skynet and send the Terminator back through time to kill this girl. Wait, that was Sarah Connor? Shit. What do you want from me? I live in a cave. Satellite reception's awful and our movie package only includes Starz! and Encore. You try making pop culture jokes when the most recent movie you've seen is Grumpier Old Men, or as we like to call it -- Two Old Jews Now Put Asunder by Almighty Allah, His Name Be Praised.

In the coming New Year -- 2007 on your calendar, 1373 on ours, again -- we in al-Qaeda expect to continue our campaign of terror against you for your continued insult and humiliation of our Muslim faith, the one true God, Allah, and his prophet Muhammed. I just figured I'd go ahead and be up-front about that. But that being said, we concede that there is one line in the Koran about being tolerant of "People of the Book," and as far as we can tell -- that means you Christians. So, with it being your Christmas season and all, we wanted to at least pay a little lip-service to the conciliatory spirit by wishing you all a healthy and safe holiday -- seeing as how, if we get our way, it will probably be your last.

And for our Jewish friends, Happy Hanu -- Channuk -- Chahn -- oh fuck it, just drive yourselves into the sea already.

I've gotta run now. I'm trying to figure out how to put my dick in a box as a gift for Osama.

Yes, you infidels, we have YouTube -- Allah be praised.

Zawahiri out.

"Al Qaeda in TGIFriday's has Claimed Responsibility"

Well, if you're looking to strike a serious blow at the heart of Israel in America -- attack an early bird salad bar.

CNNi: Al Qaeda Group Contemplated Poisoning Food at U.S. Restaurants/12.22.10

Picture of the Week

Via Cesca: "I'm a Mac. And I'm a suspected terrorist."

Don't Panic

More proof that, unfortunately, it's only a matter of time.

The Huffington Post: Car Bomb Shuts Down Times Square/5.2.10

On a lighter note, anything that takes out The Lion King...

Panic Attract

Two columns that are completely on-the-mark in their assessment of the unnecessary pants-peeing terror hype we've seen in this country in the wake of the failed "underwear bombing," and how the drama-addicted media, as usual, are largely to blame:

"We're doing these things even though this particular plot was chosen precisely because we weren't screening for it; future al Qaeda attacks rarely look like past attacks; and the terrorist threat is far broader than attacks against airplanes.
We're doing these things even though airplane terrorism is incredibly rare, the risk is no greater today than it was in previous decades, the taxi to the airport is still more dangerous than the flight, and ten times as many Americans are killed by lightning as by terrorists...

The Underwear Bomber is precisely the sort of story we humans tend to overreact to. Our brains aren't very good at probability and risk analysis, especially when it comes to rare events. Our brains are much better at processing the simple risks we've had to deal with throughout most of our species' existence, and much poorer at evaluating the complex risks modern society forces us to face. We exaggerate spectacular rare events, and downplay familiar and common ones...

I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying."

CNN.com: "Stop the Panic on Airline Security" by Bruce Schneier/1.7.10

"Islamic extremists can't invade the United States or cripple its armed forces, can't heavily damage the nation's infrastructure or productive capacity, can't impair the nation's functioning nor undermine its government. All they're capable of -- and the Flight 253 episode shows them not terribly good at that -- are mass murder atrocities, the purpose of which is to terrify Americans into doing stupid things that sap our morale and damage ourselves.

Things like invading Iraq, resorting to using torture, abandoning the rule of law and demanding authoritarian solutions that provide a false sense of security to people quivering with media-amplified fear."

Salon: "Terrorized by the Media" by Gene Lyons/1.6.10

The Unfriendly Skies

Thank you for flying Knee-Jerk Airlines, where the illusion of safety is always our top priority.

Remember back when authorities in Great Britain foiled a plot to detonate liquid explosives on-board ten airliners bound for the U.S. and Canada? Whether you know the specific details of the 2006 arrests or the terrorist plans, you're damn sure familiar with the fallout from that threat: Since then you've been forced by the TSA to adhere to a set of byzantine, seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what liquids you can and can't stow in carry-on luggage -- how many ounces are acceptable and in what kind of clear plastic bag they have to be contained -- each time you fly. While those restrictions have relaxed somewhat over the past couple of years -- often dependent on how generous the particular security juggernaut you face at the airport is feeling on the day you happen to be flying -- they're still very much in place. The last time I flew north to pick up Inara, the humorless TSA employee manning the scanner took a tube of Crest toothpaste from my bag and held it up in front of me as if to signal to me that I should've known better than to try to get it past him. I wanted to grab it out of his hand and squeeze the whole fucking thing into my mouth, but thought the better of it.

Well, if you thought that that reaction was ridiculously overcompensatory and likely did almost nothing to make you safer in the skies other than maybe forcing you to rethink flying altogether, get ready -- shit's about to get a whole lot worse. In response to yesterday's arrest of a Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Delta/Northwest flight as it landed in Detroit, transportation officials and Homeland Security are announcing new restrictions on passenger behavior while flying within the continental United States. New rules will forbid airline passengers from getting up from their seats, accessing their carry-on luggage or having personal belongings on their laps during the final hour of flight before landing. This kind of thing has been in place at Reagan Airport in D.C. since the 9/11 attacks; now it'll be implemented nationwide.

Will this make anyone safer? Probably not -- but that's not really the point.

What makes these new restrictions so laughably outrageous is this: They're a reaction to a suddenly perceived threat that's technically been there all along. Like the liquid ban, which was a response to an attempted attack that had already taken place, this is a case of America's ostensibly sharpest minds in the realm of national security responding to a situation rather than planning for it in advance and thereby heading it off at the pass. Did we never realize that it was possible for terrorists to bring liquid explosives onto planes? If so, then why the hell were liquids of a certain volume ever allowed onto flights; if not, then for fuck's sake why not? Likewise, did no one ever consider the possibility that someone could blow up a plane as it prepared to land? And isn't a threat while landing completely arbitrary anyway -- and our reaction to it, to restrict the movement of passengers during landing, just as arbitrary and worthless?

The only way to truly keep us truly safe while flying a commercial airliner would be to put us all through body scanners then have us fly in our underwear, forcing every passenger to check his or her bags and carry nothing on. And even then, I'd bet my life -- literally, because there's no other option -- that those who want to kill us would just find some other way to accomplish their goals.

And then the geniuses at the TSA would simply wind up having to impose a knee-jerk crackdown on something else as a response to that "new threat." If and when that happens, the newer, harsher security measures will be exactly what they are now: a floor show, and nothing more.