I know I’m supposed to be shitting my pants and pledging my undying support for the GOP, but with every report I hear, see, or read about the “homegrown terrorists”, I just laugh harder and harder. I know I just posted about this, but I can’t help it. Whenever the report gets to this detail I just lose it :

Batiste gave the supposed al Qaeda representative a shopping list of materials he needed — boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.

Six days later, Batiste outlined his mission to wage war against the U.S. government from within using an army of his ‘’soldiers” to help destroy the Sears Tower. He also gave the informant a list of shoe sizes for his soldiers.

On Dec. 29, the informant delivered the military boots to Batiste, who expanded his shopping wish list to include radios, binoculars, bulletproof vests, firearms, vehicles and $50,000 in cash.

I can’t help but imagine the “terrorist” leader and his gang sitting around their headquarters (perhaps in an abandoned toy factory?) saying something like “Cmon, boys. I need to get everyone’s shoe sizes by the end of the week. Al Qaeda’s gonna get us some terrorist shoes!” After that, they probably sit around drinking root beer and figuring out what they want their codenames to be when they get to be real terrorists.

“My codename is going to be Thundaar and I’ll carry a giant battle-axe!”

“I’m gonna be called Gigabyte and I’ll fight the devils with my bionic arms.”

“My codename is Raptor and I’m gonna throw snakes at people.”

You know the Bush Administration has lost its mojo when they can’t even fake a terror alert well.

The seven men arrested in an alleged terrorist plot believed they were conspiring with al Qaeda ”to levy war against the United States” in attacks that would ”be just as good or greater than 9/11,” according to a federal indictment unsealed this morning.

The campaign, which never advanced beyond the discussion stage, would begin with the bombing of the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago, according to the indictment.
. . .
They apparently never had any contact with authentic representatives of al Qaeda. They were not able to obtain explosives, federal officials said.

”It was more aspirational than operational,” John Pistole, the FBI’s deputy director, said during the Washington news conference.

But the group asked the supposed al Qaeda representative to provide machine guns, boots, uniforms and vehicles, the indictment said.

So these guys had no money, no weapons, no contact with actual terrorists…hell, they didn’t even have uniforms. They’re nutcases who belong in jail, but they’re hardly the “homegrown terrorists” we’re hearing about.

”These homegrown terrorists might prove to be as dangerous as groups like al Qaeda,” Gonzales said.

At this point, those of us who lived in Oklahoma in the mid-90’s let out a collective “No shit, dumbass”. It’s nice for the head of the Justice Department to state this reality, but they’re the same ones who have been spent the last half-decade refusing the use the word “terrorist” to describe any American criminals who aren’t SUV-hating hippies. But even compared to the “eco-terrorists” (who have actually firebombed SUV dealerships), these guys were smaller than small-time. These arrests weren’t even the result of a law enforcement operation, they just got turned in by the neighborhood watch :

Pistole, the FBI official, said the case was broken through a tip from the public.

”They came to our attention through pepple who were alert in the community,” he said.

Other authorities emphasized that the public was not in danger and all activities — including today’s parade in honor of the Miami Heat’s NBA championship — should proceed without undue alarm.

I wish these “other authorities” were on CNN. Instead we’re stuck with anchors and “experts” talking about how these dorks considered themselves “soldiers”. Which might be scary if these guys weren’t so pathetic that they couldn’t even buy their own damn shoes :

Batiste gave the supposed al Qaeda representative a shopping list of materials he needed — boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.

Six days later, Batiste outlined his mission to wage war against the U.S. government from within using an army of his ‘’soldiers” to help destroy the Sears Tower. He also gave the informant a list of shoe sizes for his soldiers.

I knew a guy a few years ago who would dress up like a ninja and sneak around his college campus. He also would show up at poetry readings wearing a Cobra Commander mask and shout threats at the audience along the lines of “You will all face destruction! COBRAAAA!!!”. He wasn’t a terrorist, he was just crazy. Same goes with these seven morons in Miami.

It’s freezing in hell and if you look out the window, you might see some pigs flying. Why? Because if you watch this video over at Crooks & Liars, you’ll see Bill O’Reilly being the voice of reason. Seeing O’Reilly make a coherent argument without shouting anyone down is completely freaking me out. Did he go soft? Or is he just recalibrating his “no spin” persona in a McCain-like fashion? Maybe he’s just playing devil’s advocate, but he’s exactly right about immigration.

“Here’s why I want a compromise. Because I believe that part of the problem is the federal government’s problem. That these people came here illegally, yes, but we allowed them to. And we are at fault too. Because we bear some responsibility, we oughta cut them some slack while at the same time securing the borders so it never, ever happens again.”

Bill O’Reilly said that. Let me repeat that. Bill O’Reilly said “we oughta cut [illegal immigrants] some slack”. That’s far more liberal than anything Jack Cafferty or Lou Dobbs has said on immigration. What happened? Did O’Reilly run out of asshole pills or have I just stepped into Bizarro World?

The last time I cross-posted something at The Huffington Post, it was my pro-immigration rant “Hell Yeah, I Support ‘Amnesty.’ Why Don’t You?”. I figured that the post was pretty easy to understand, but after sixty comments about how clueless I am, I jumped into the lion’s den of the comments section and posted the following :

You know what would be awesome? If the posters here had bothered to actually read the words I wrote before writing negative comments. I expect this sort of thing from the wingnuts and the trolls (you can smell their condescending, Fox News attitude coming from a mile away), but I find it especially funny that I’m getting trashed from the left as well. I know I picked a provocative title, but read the damn post people. If you’re convinced that I just “don’t get it”, then at least respond to the argument that I was making rather than the argument you *think* I made. I never, ever argued for wide-open borders. The whole point of the post was to offer my ideas for how we should deal with the millions of illegal immigrants that are already here. I don’t support amnesty in the sense of giving automatic citizenship to millions of people, but I do think that someone who’s been working here for an extended period of time should be allowed to become citizens. I tend to choose my words carefully and there’s a reason I put the word “amnesty” in quotes in the post’s title.

Seriously, re-read the post before wasting your time debunking an argument that nobody’s making. It just makes you look like an idiot.

Needless to say, cross-posting last night’s immigration post “Let’s pretend for a moment…” hasn’t fared much better. Sigh.

The Associated Press has an unintentionally hilarious (to me, anyways) headline to an article about the governent’s possible responses to a North Korean missile test :

U.S. weighs shootdown of N. Korea missile

There’s a slight problem with that plan. After untold billions of dollars poured into the Star Wars program since the 80’s, we still don’t have the ability to shootdown a missile. In fact, as far as I know, even the article’s acknowlegement of this is too kind :

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say whether the unproven multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile defense system might be used in the event of a North Korean missile launch. That system, which includes a handful of missiles that could be fired from Alaska and California, has had a spotty record in tests.

Spotty? Has missile defense in any of its incarnations ever worked? If I remember correctly, the only successful tests have been rigged to include homing devices or omit decoys that could fool our still-not-ready-for-primetime system. Unless we can convince Kim Jong-il to shoot one of those “training wheels” missles at us, maybe our efforts would be better spent trying to prevent the North Koreans (or anyone, for that matter) from shooting a missle at us in the first place, rather than continuing the charade that we can pluck a missile out of the sky.

Immigration reform is dead for the time being because the Republicans in the House refuse to consider a bill that provides a path to citzenship for illegal immigrants (or even the President’s back of the bus “guest worker program”). Then again, my description of the House Republicans’ stance on the issue is a little misleading, since it implies that they actually give a shit about the issue. If they cared at all, they would have done something about it over the past five years. They haven’t, so now the issue is really just another pointless wedge issue that won’t get addressed at all after the election :

Some officials added that Republicans have begun discussing a pre-election strategy for seizing the political high ground on an issue that so far has served to highlight divisions within the party. Among the possibilities, these officials said, are holding votes in the House or Senate this fall on additional measures to secure the borders, or on legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving
Social Security payments or other government benefits.

“The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president,” said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

What’s especially funny about this whole thing is that the Bush Administration has worsened the problem they claim to be so concerned about solving :

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.
. . .
Statistics show that the numbers of fines and convictions dropped sharply after 1999, with fines all but phased out except for occasional small cases. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a 2003 memorandum issued by ICE required field offices to request approval before opening work-site cases not related to protecting “critical infrastructure,” such as nuclear plants. Agents focused on removing unauthorized workers, not punishing employers.

ICE also faced a $500 million budget shortfall, and resources were shifted from traditional enforcement to investigations related to national security. Farms, restaurants and the nation’s food supply chain “did not make the cut,” Reed said. “We were pushed away from doing enforcement.”

You should read the whole article because it describles some of the raids that were conducted in the 90’s and the hypocritical response from members of the House and Senate, concluding :

Members of Congress at first hostile to immigrants embraced “all the same people who were so repugnant to them before,” Reed said, “and they prevailed.” Operation Vanguard — which was designed to expand to four states in four months and nationwide the next year, eventually including the lodging, food and construction industries — was killed.

Congress “came to recognize that these people . . . had become a very important part of their community, churches, schools, sports, barbecues, families — and most importantly the economy,” Reed said. “You’ve got to be careful what you ask for.”

That’s why any real solution to this issue needs to have three prongs :

Tightened border security. Not just the physical borders, but any path through which someone might enter this country (ahem, airports)

Tougher penalties against employers and better tools for law enforcement to track down identity thieves, trace fake Social Security numbers, etc.

Path to citizenship (not “automatic citzenship” or “amnesty”) for immigrants who are already here. The President’s guest worker program (which ships immigrants out of the country after three years) doesn’t cut it.

Anyone who claims to care about immigration, but can’t provide for all three of these needs, is either unserious about the issue or doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

In the corporate world, there’s a tendency among many at the middle management level to be jumpy when it comes to the whims of the CEO. I’ve seen it happen at plenty of companies. The CEO says something in passing and it filters down to the peeon level as an urgent priority. This interruption almost always has the effect of disrupting any progress on existing projects.

This trend is even worse in a cases where the executive in question insists that their pet requests are more important than they really are. This isn’t just because the CEO is interrupting existing work, but because they’re often changing mangagement styles instantly. You can’t switch from a hands-off, delegate-to-your-underlings style of CEO to a classic micromanager without throwing a monkeywrench in your organization’s ability to succeed.

Having said all this, I think it’s important to realize that today’s big news (from Ron Suskind’s upcoming book “The One Percent Doctrine”) is a classic example of why our CEO President is a man who has failed so poorly in his job of leading the nation that he’s endagering our country’s safety :

One example out of many comes in Ron Suskind’s gripping narrative of what the White House has celebrated as one of the war’s major victories: the capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002. Described as al-Qaeda’s chief of operations even after U.S. and Pakistani forces kicked down his door in Faisalabad, the Saudi-born jihadist was the first al-Qaeda detainee to be shipped to a secret prison abroad. Suskind shatters the official story line here.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”
. . .
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

I’ll bet the President has no idea how disastrous his quest to keep from “losing face” has been. Or maybe he does and just doesn’t give a shit. At least, that’s the impression I get from this excerpt from the same article :

The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

I can’t help but wonder how much better off our country would be if we’d had a President who took his job seriously for the last six years.

Over the weekend, I went to the San Diego county fair. Alongside the dozens of deep-fried snacks was this all-too-familiar form of transportation :

Oh well, at least they get points for honesty.

There’s a ton of reasons for Connecticut residents to vote against Joe Lieberman in the state’s upcoming Senate primary. He’s a socially conservative hand-wringer who’s shows a willingness to play the “What about the children??” card. He frequently breaks ranks with his own party in order to bolster his reputation as a self-styled “centrist”. He’s one of the few remaining apologists for some the Bush Administration’s most egregious acts. And he’s a total douche.

But if I lived in Connecticut, I’d vote against Joementum because of this retarded campaign ad :



Here’s a little advice, Joe. Stay away from campaign ads that bear any resemblance to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. They just invite an unflattering comparison :