The great Ron Fournier. Karl Rove’s quivering pen pal. Who publicly and proudly transformed the Associated Press from a neutral to a partisan observer (Everybody Likes Fox News!). The man who shoved the Washington bureau into his own McCain pressure-cooker during the ’08 election, blanching the outlet and its reputation.

New Journalism Ron Fournier. No longer with the AP. Now dimming another outlet:

Why Boston Bombings Might Be Scarier Than 9/11
April 16, 2013 | National Journal

Call it “terrorism” if a label helps you make sense of this madness. Find who did it and squash him—or them—with what President Obama called “the full weight of justice.” But in the broad scheme of things, such loose ends matter less than this: Life in America changed with the Boston Marathon bombings—again, and as with past attacks, for the much worse.

What a breezy paragraph. Call it “terrorism”? It is terrorism, so I’ll call it that. If it makes “sense”? The truth makes sense, to me. “Squash him”? He will not be a bug but a killer on the run — who writes like this? And about the “loose ends”: solving the crime, capturing the terrorists, and dispensing American justice, which all prevent future terrorism. Whatever. Good Morning Mr. Featherweight. Tell the Kardashians I love whatever show it is that they do, on the television.

Just when we need it least, we have apparently come across the equivalent of an Op/Ed reality episode. Where a performer features his insubstantial self for the purpose of entertaining you. You weren’t in the mood, I know, but you’re not the only American with wants and wishes. Ron’s got a thing, too. What was that again? “Life in America changed with the Boston Marathon bombings—again, and as with past attacks, for the much worse.”

Oh bullshit you twerp. You think we can’t see what you’re trying to pull? Anyone can play doomsayer after the brutality: WE’LL NEVER BE THE SAME. You could say the same after going to the dentist. Cut it with the Nostradamus masquerade, it’s cheap.

There’s a bottom line: Three people are dead, not 3,000. And Ron Fournier is a coward. Which places him in stark contrast with, oh, everyone else in the country right about now, terrorists excluded.

This was too good to pass up. The op-ed professionals at the Washington Examiner had to weigh in on the embassy violence. It wouldn’t be patriotic of them to remain silent while the rest of us were piling up dead bodies. Picking through smoking rubble. DNA testing the remains.

It’s the sequel. “9/11: Muslims Never Sleep.” Vote Rudy Giuliani in 2016.

Not sure how exactly we got here. But, then, here we are:

Monday, December 12, 2011
My Tim Tebow Problem
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman | Jewish Week Online Columnist

In this country, nothing, not even God, is more popular than football. Even in the wake of a summer long labor dispute, 23 of the 25 most watched TV programs this fall have been NFL games. When you combine the religion that is football with the religion that is religion, the mix can be dangerously flammable . .

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants . .

With this:

December 13, 2011
Tim Tebow Sparks New Round of Non-Existent Hate Crime
Gateway Guest Blogger | Gateway Pundit

. . But remember this: This many years into the War on Terror, the only anti-Muslim violence in the US has been a few sponsors pulling out from All-American Muslim, because it was a third-rate reality show. We’re a tolerant people. We welcome people who want to be here. That should include welcoming pretty darned good quarterbacks who are also Christians.

Could I weep any more for the American pariah? Aren’t we daunted by Timmy’s Job-like trials? No, and yes. I recall his being badly trapped inside the academic-free football orgy called ‘University of Florida.’ Frequent favorites to win the national championship, the rag-tag Gator felons and poor Tim won the country’s college Super Bowl. It was impossible, but then Timmy had a heart o’ Jesus.

On the other hand, Muslims live on flying carpets. And when they deign to stand on the Earth, they’re ensconced in palaces of the finest gold, behind whirling registers of debit-card magic, fronted by mysterious doors that open and close before you can say ‘Ali Baba.’ And drunken louts like Gateway Asshole shove sixers of Miller at the Kings of America, muttering obscenities everyone can hear, and I should mention he’s a Sikh, dumbfuck:

Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down on Sept. 15, 2001 in Mesa, Arizona. The turban-wearing Sikh was killed outside his gas station. Sodhi’s killer spent the hours before the murder in a bar, bragging of his intention to “kill the ragheads responsible for September 11.” He has been convicted and sits on death row.

Waqar Hasan of Dallas, Texas was also murdered on Sept. 15, 2001. The 46-year-old Pakistani, was shot to death in a convenience store he owned. Hasan was murdered by Mark Stroman, who was convicted of also murdering Vasudev Patel days later in nearby Mesquite, Texas.

Cordell noted that Stroman admitted to authorities to blinding a third victim, a Bangladeshi, in between the murders of Hasan and Patel. After his arrest Stroman bragged, “I did what every American wanted to do after Sept. 11th but didn’t have the nerve.”

They owe us some smashmouth football.

A quick reminder to Rudy Giuliani and others like him who feel the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are their property: You are absolutely right. Thanks for lending it to us tomorrow for a couple hours, we’ll gas it up before we return it.

A 9/11 memorial planned for Marietta College in Ohio nearly got derailed by a clash between the planner and the college’s “Student Life” committee. Junior Sarah Snow sought to plant 3,000 American flags across the grounds of the school on Sunday to honor the tragedy’s victims. Until the liberal administration elitists interfered.

Seeing as how each flag was meant to represent one of those murdered on that terrible day, and that Marietta College has an international enrollment (wimps), Student Life asked that Sarah plant appropriate non-American flags for the non-American victims. That sort of non-American bullshit was too much for the real thing: American Sarah Snow, the president of the campus’ College Republicans. Jason Mattera at Human Events picked up the story in a post that got hundreds of angry responses.

College Threatens to Nix 9/11 Tribute As Too American
Jason Mattera | 09/09/2011

. . “He [Robert Pastoor] insisted we add the international flags for the reason that it was a ‘global perspective’ school,” Snow told HUMAN EVENTS in explaining Pastoor’s basis for interfering with the College Republicans’ memorial. He continued, she noted, by saying, “Other nationalities were killed in the twin towers as well” and that Marietta must “consider how the Muslim and Chinese students will feel about the [American flag] display.”

Pastoor did not return a call and an e-mail requesting comment.

He’s busy masturbating the Muslim students. After reading the post a couple times, it doesn’t appear to me anyone tried to scotch the memorial. Nonetheless, treason is still treason.

“Instead of embracing the remembrance of the thousands of innocents who were murdered on 9/11, many college administrators—insensitive to the families and friends of those who died on 9/11—are more interested in creating political correctness tests than coming together to honor the victims of the jihadist attacks,” said Ron Robinson, president of Young America’s Foundation . .

Insensitive liberals. Attacking jihadists. Cheese and crackers.

On August 30th, the Director of Student Activities wrote the following to Snow: “… are you planning to include other countries flags? There were more than just Americans that lost their lives on 9/11. I will send you a list of the other countries so that you can add these flags to the presentation.” And in a follow-up email, that same director gave a “list of the countries that will need to have flags as part of the 9/11 remembrance,” which included Australia, Bermuda, Canada, China, El Salvador, Germany, Grenada, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

See? Leftists don’t give a damn about the victims. Or the people who died on 9/11. Commenter David:

True enough, there were foreign nationals of all different religions that were killed that fateful day. But, there was only one attack on a country and it was on American soil. Those American flags need to fly and the students need to tell this Robert Pastoor if doesn’t like it, he can shove it.

You’re not in charge of my Student Life, Bob. I’m planting 3,000 American flags at your stupid college, and that’s that. Cue the orchestra and wind machine. Another:

Isn’t it terrible that you spend your whole life working to save enough money to send your kids to college; and then you run the risk that they wind-up at a disgusting, anti-American viper’s nest like this?

These go on for a while.

September 10th, 2011. Everybody’s a little nervous about tomorrow, the 10th anniversary of 9/11. As well we should, given Al Qaeda’s preference for big headlines over common terrorist acts.

Intelligence from the Bin Laden strike underscores the wisdom of being wary:

So what is cable television’s leading news network reporting today?

A possible Al Qaeda plot to launch an attack during the 10th anniversary weekend of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is “looking more and more like a goose chase,” a senior U.S. official told Fox News on Saturday. “The threat is looking less and less credible,” the official said, adding that the entire plot as outlined by the source “doesn’t seem feasible” . .

Federal authorities have been questioning all day the credibility of a tip from a previously reliable source that that Al Qaeda had planned to attack Washington or New York, putting though both cities on high alert . .

There’s no way that Fox News would be touting this “scoop” if Bush were president. They would think such a headline reckless and dangerous. With a Republican as president, if Fox even considered printing this, it would end up as something very different: “Officials Still Seeking to Confirm 9/11 Threat.” But with Barack the Democrat running the show, it’s Fox’s job to point out how stupid all this running around is.

And calling the attempt to capture terrorists and defend people a “goose chase”? A single source. One person. Fox tries to bury their partisan bullshit by referring to “Federal authorities,” but they’re flat out lying. See for yourself.

This is Fox News at its worst. If nothing happens tomorrow, then Obama’s an annoying, headless chicken. If, horribly, an attack does materialize, then Obama’s lethally incompetent. It’s a win-win for Roger Ailes, and that’s the actual news, friends.

Why aren’t Conservatives funny? Why don’t they ‘get’ comedy? Why are their attempts at it so bizarre? Comedy Autism. It’s the dread disease that afflicts those who support Sarah Palin, swear Barack Obama was born in Nairobi, or think George W. Bush is really smart. It’s a serious thing, but it causes them no pain. And it fascinates us.

So, here we go. Here’s our latest review of examples of Comedy Autism. We look at the political cartoons of right-wing professionals and we scratch our heads: why the spastic likening, the mixed metaphor, the backfiring irony? Why can’t you guys draw Barack Obama? It is a deep mystery.

As usual, we start with Eric Allie.

There she is, seeing Weinergate online. And there Weiner is, in front of her, also. And there’s a guy with a notepad. Why? Because autism is mysterious. Nice Jew-nose, incidentally. Moving along . .

Here, Allie pokes great fun at Obama’s controversial immigration legislation. Do you, by any chance, know what it is? Me neither. But Latinos would hate it, I bet. Speaking of burning issues . .

. . there’s this. Damned National Labor Relations Board. And that other thing. Totally! Good job re-purposing a tragedy that killed hundreds of people, btw.

Brian Farrington:

There’s no alternative to waterboarding. That’s why we lost World War II.

Ok, switch to Ken Catalino. This guy’s so bad, I did an entire edition on him.

Statue of Liberty. We put that 15-foot masterpiece where again — downtown Cleveland?

Continue Reading »

Now this is a compelling political story.

A smart, talented, highly motivated guy, albeit one given to romanticizing himself, commits a war crime, and then he joins the Tea Party. Wow.

I could easily write a couple thousand words on this guy, but I’ll keep it short, for today: he’s the Tea Party candidate in North Carolina’s 7th district. He beat fellow Republican William Breazeale in the primary and takes on incumbent Democrat Mike McIntyre for the congressional seat. Polls have him trailing McIntyre by up to 12 points for the traditionally Democratic spot.

After serving in the first Gulf War, he returned to the states and began to put together a career, working at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere. Putting down roots, getting married, having kids.

After 9/11, the desire to go back into the service overcame him, and he joined the Marines, went to officer candidate’s school. He shipped off to Iraq and was serving as a Second Lieutenant when the Iraqi insurgency began.

On April 15th, 2004, Lt. Pantano led his platoon to an area near Mahmuhdiyah, outside of Fallujah. While the rest of his men went through a compound suspected of holding insurgents, Pantano and two of his men detained a car containing two men that had exited the compound. They pulled the men out, cuffed them with zip ties, and went through the car, finding some suspicious looking wires. The Marines who ransacked the compound found AKs, mortar stakes and more wires.

Pantano ordered the men un-cuffed. He ordered his own two men to stand watch at the front and rear of the car, which they did, turning their backs to the scene. He ordered the two detainees to kneel inside the open front and back doors of the car, to pull the interior apart again to prove to Pantano they weren’t secreting anything else, which they did. When they began to talk to each other, he told them in Arabic to be quiet.

And then Pantano began shooting. After emptying one magazine into the two detainees, he pulled a second magazine and loaded it, and then emptied that magazine as well. 60 bullets in all.

After the shooting, he fashioned a placard with his favorite Marine motto: “NO BETTER FRIEND, NO WORSE ENEMY”. He left the placard against the window of the car.

Eventually, word of the shooting got around to Marine authorities, and he was brought up in court martial. He was charged with pre-meditated murder, among six other charges, and faced a possible death sentence.

But one of the two men at the scene was a bad witness (and probably a spotty Marine), and the charges were dropped. Pantano’s career essentially over, he was honorably discharged and returned to the U.S.

And now, years later, he’s a Tea Party guy. This is no surprise. In reading about Ilario Pantano and his history (see this New York Magazine article — also: Time Magazine, The Guardian, Raw Story), one thing becomes clear: he can romanticize himself at any time.

. . as a child, Pantano dreamed about rescuers. He wanted to be Lancelot, knight of the Round Table. “He thought it was such an important job,” his aunt recalls. Then he wanted to be a samurai, practicing for hours with a sword. “There was something that was so powerful to me about being a protector of others,” Pantano says. It was a way, as he put it, “to order the chaos.”

That is Pantano. After 9/11, when his father told him that, at 30 and with a family already, he didn’t have to join the Marines, he said:

“No, Daddy,” Pantano told his father. “I want to be a Marine.” He explained, “The Marine Corps was the closest I could get to a knight.”

So, after returning stateside, when word got round of his exploits, or his crimes (depending on your mindset), you understand why he found no reason to resist writing his autobiography once asked. It is “Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” (Amazon).

The far-right are absolutely gaga over this guy. Michael Savage thinks he’s a god. Others, too:

–North Carolina Third District Representative Walter B. Jones introduced House Resolution 167 which expressed the support of the House of Representatives for Pantano. On February 25, Congressman Jones wrote a letter to President Bush asking for his support for Pantano.

–On April 14, 2005, the Association for Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs sent a letter to then President Bush endorsing House Resolution 167 in support of Ilario Pantano.

On The Congressional Record:
–House Resolution 167 in support of 2LT Ilario Pantano, March 17, 2005.
–LA Deputy Sheriff’s endorsement of HR 167, April 14, 2005.
–Congressman Walter Jones’ public statement of support, May 5, 2005.
–Congressman Walter Jones’ endorsement of Pantano’s memoir, June 6, 2006.

But certainly not everybody. Iraq War veterans included, like the Republican candidate Pantano beat in the primary:

Will Breazeale, a former lieutenant colonel who served in both Iraq wars, says Pantano has “no excuse for what he did.”

“To shoot two unarmed prisoners 60 times and put a sign over their dead bodies is inexcusable,” Breazeale told The Daily Beast. “And once people know the real story, he has no chance of winning in November. I know people think it’s sour grapes, but I have nothing to gain by opposing him except clearing my conscience and fighting for good government.”

I don’t blame Breazeale. With everything that I’ve read about the shooting incident, there’s no indication that the ‘threatening’ Iraqis ever managed so much as to get up on their feet. Many, if not most, of the bullets were fired into their backs. But the case has long since been adjudicated, it’s over.

So this is your North Carolina Tea Partier, Ilario Pantano. If nothing else, I’m confident I can say this about him: he’s the most talented, most accomplished person the Tea Party has ever had. He’s probably the most dangerous, too.

General Hugh Shelton, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 through the events of 9/11, has written a memoir which details what was happening behind the scenes in the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks. Titled ‘Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior’, reviewed by Thomas E. Ricks and excerpted at RawStory, it levels harsh criticism at Bush’s neo-cons and, especially, Donald Rumsfeld:

The US had no reason to invade Iraq in 2003, and only did so because of “a series of lies” told to the American people by the Bush administration, says Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served for four years as the US’s top military officer . .

“President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect Americans from Saddam’s evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security,” Shelton writes in his memoir.

Runsfeld gets described as being bent on taking America to war, as an arrogant and reckless Secretary of Defense uninterested in the advice or opinions of anybody but himself:

According to Ricks, Shelton states that, in order to get the war going, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “elbowed aside Gen. Richard Myers and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also intimidated and flattered Gen. Tommy R. Franks while working directly with him, and so basically went to war without getting the advice of his top military advisors.”

As a result, Shelton says of Rumsfeld’s tenure: “the worst style of leadership I witnessed in 38 years of service.”

When Rumsfeld was proven wrong in a meeting, Shelton says, he wouldn’t admit it, but rather would press on and do “his best to stay afloat amid the bullshit he was shoveling out.”

At one point, Rumsfeld utterly rejected a plan for how to deal with Iraqi attacks on U.S. warplanes in the old “no-fly zones.” Shelton liked the plan how it was, so when ordered to revamp it, he let it sit on his desk for a couple of weeks, and then sent it back to the defense secretary with a new label on it: “Rumsfeld Auto-Response Matrix.” “He loved every word of it,” Shelton reports with unconcealed contempt.

These descriptions of Rumsfeld as a conniving, narcissistic bureucrat jibe with previous descriptions of him. Here, he pasted Biblical quotes on the covers of Department of Defense reports to gain favor with his born-again boss. Here, he and his ‘snowflake’ memos attempted to micro-manage every aspect of the war, including the psyches of the American people.

Heavens — wake the nursing staff and tell them to bring up some smelling salts. Have the au pairs escort little Jodie and Vance out the side door, to the guest house — we wouldn’t want them to countenance Mummy and Daddy in such a state, no.

A psychic jolt just struck a few of the safe and well-to-do. A comprehensive and righteous agitation seized them, and they’re no longer happy, for a minute.

A big-mouthed liberal said something which wasn’t complimentary of former Vice President Richard Cheney. Or his callous daughter. Mike Malloy responded to Liz Cheney’s accusation that President Obama intentionally leaves Americans vulnerable to terrorism this way:

I don’t know why I give this psychopathic misdirected woman — you ought to be there planning your father’s funeral, Liz, because I’m sure all the nation’s bigwigs, especially the Republicans are going to fall all over themselves to worship in front of his coffin. That’s what you ought to be doing instead of making your filthy, insane, gratuitous statements about what the American people expects their president or an administration to do to protect us from terrorist attack. Shame on you, Liz Cheney. Go plan your father’s funeral. Just do that. Do at least one thing in your useless life that will have some meaning. Go plan his funeral.

Well. Why was it, do you think, that Mike got so mad? This?

He died. And this:

I imagine the boy died, too. They weren’t the only ones.

Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people died. Why? Because Dick Cheney had enough post-9/11 political power to drive America into invading the boogeyman nation of Iraq.

Mike’s actually talking about that: Dick’s Exercise of Conservative Philosophy that eviscerated Iraq, Iraqis and his fellow Americans. A seven year nightmare that will give thousands of good Americans nightmares for decades to come. An unspeakable horror for which Dick remains proud and free. Someone deserves to be severely punished for the blood-gushing and dismemberment of 4,200 Americans, now deceased, for 30,000 Americans wounded, and for the cadavers of at least 100,000 Iraqis, many of them once women and children.

Any American who slaughters that many people, he deserves justice. And he deserves it more surely than any routine criminal. Otherwise, can you imagine prosecuting people for, say, vehicular manslaughter while letting Charles Manson go free? Because we were scared of him, or because he was popular? Manson did have his fans. But Manson will die in jail, and that’s appropriate. Dick Cheney deserves to be hanged from the neck until he’s dead. I don’t believe an execution is a civilized response, but, in Dick’s case, it’s warranted.

Mike Malloy, by contrast, deserves . . what? After all, he just talks. And all Mike said to Liz was “Do at least one thing in your useless life that will have some meaning. Go plan his funeral.” Goodness.

But this was Conservative ‘News Buster’ Noel Sheppard’s reaction:

What the hell is happening to this nation?

Oh me. Thousands of Americans must have heard Mike’s comment.

. . I’m speechless and need desperately to go take a shower hoping with all my heart I can scrub this filth from my memory.

You go do that. And forget Cheney’s Policy Assault Force who daily washed the Iraqis’, or their own, or their buddies’ blood, bone and brain matter from their skin. My, aren’t those words of Mike’s dirty? Don’t they stain?

Dear me, Noel — what has the radio liberal done to America? It’s unclear. What has Dick Cheney done to America? That’s obvious, with all the funerals and all the good people trying to walk around without the legs they were born with.

So, Liz? Some advice to you: forget Mike’s telling you to do something useful for yourself, you can do better. Do something useful for America. I guarantee you that the prosecution of your dad for his pet-project war will make us a better nation. No American with that much political power will ever look at invading a country the same again. There will be real and personal consequences for the unjustified use of violence, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Hand him over to a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and then go plan your father’s funeral.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls Sept 11 “big fabrication“

(Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a “big fabrication” that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported . .

He added: “The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan.” He did not elaborate.

Who wasn’t waiting to invade Afghanistan? What with all their oil gold plutonium weaponry strategic ports visible towns roomy buildings alluring geishas fern bars fancy chocolates wrist watches clean paper plywood weather . .