Stewart and Colbert return to TERROR!

Jon Stewart on UndieBomber


Colbert knocks conservatives over racial profiling:


Stewart plays Sad Libs to educate us on Yemen

The Story of Stuff

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Unfortunately, the short-sighted authors have disabled embedding, but you can click here to watch at YouTube, or here to see it at their site.

Terror attacks by president

(Bob Cesca)

I compiled a pair of graphs to illustrate incidents of terrorism during each of the last three presidents, including President Obama, as a means of locking down what happened and when.

In terms of methodology, I covered the following types of terrorist attacks against American personnel, civilians and interests:

1) Domestic (Abortion-related attacks, Oklahoma City, Unabomber, Anthrax)

2) Domestic Islamic (9/11, WTC 1993, Beltway Snipers, Chapel Hill)

3) Overseas Islamic (Iraq, Afghanistan, USS Cole, Embassy Bombings)

4) Known Failed Attempts (Shoe Bomber, Underpants Bomber)

5) Overseas Attacks Against U.S. Allies (London, Madrid).

These categories should cover the basic forms of terrorist attacks against Americans whether abroad or on our soil.

Attacks by president (details and methodology here)

CLINTON
(Not including abortion clinic attacks)
1) World Trade Center 1993 (Domestic Islamic) - 6 fatalities
2) Oklahoma City (Domestic) - 168 fatalities
3) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Overseas Islamic) - 5 fatalities
4) Khobar Towers (Overseas Islamic) - 19 fatalities
5) U.S. Embassy Bombings (Overseas Islamic) - 224 fatalities
6) USS Cole (Overseas Islamic) - 17 fatalities
7) Unabomber (Domestic) - 3 fatalities
8) Atlanta Olympics (Domestic) - 2 fatalities
BUSH
(Not including Iraq and Aghanistan attacks, and abortion attacks)
1) September 11 (Domestic Islamic) - 2,992 fatalities
2) Karachi (Overseas Islamic) - 12 fatalities
3) Riyadh (Overseas Islamic) - 34 fatalities
4) Riyadh #2 (Overseas Islamic) - 22 fatalities
5) Riyadh #3 (Overseas Islamic) - 4 fatalities
6) Jeddah (Overseas Islamic) - 4 fatalities
7) Amman (Overseas Islamic) - 57 fatalities
8) Damascus (Overseas Islamic) - No fatalities
9) Athens (Overseas Islamic) - No fatalities
10) Algeria (Overseas Islamic) - 60 fatalities
11) LAX Shooting (Domestic Islamic) - 2 fatalities
12) Beltway Snipers (Domestic Islamic) - 10 fatalities
13) Anthrax (Domestic?) - 5 fatalities
14) Madrid (Overseas Islamic Allies) - 191 fatalities
15) London (Overseas Islamic Allies) - 56 fatalities
16) Chapel Hill SUV attack (Domestic Islamic) - No fatalities
17) Yemen (Overseas Islamic) - 16 fatalities
18) Mumbai, India (Overseas Islamic) - 190 fatalities

Guiliani: "no domestic terror attacks under Bush", Stephanopoulos: "ummm, OK"; Maddow: "Wrong"; Matthews: "except that one big day"

On "Good Morning America" Friday, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos, the former New York mayor declared,

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama."

Really? 9/11 ring a bell? Richard Reid? Anthrax?

Snufalufagus then blogs the following. Admirable, but still wrong.

Through his spokesman, Rudy Giuliani has clarified the remarks he made this morning on GMA regarding terrorist attacks on the United States under Presidents Bush and Obama.

The Mayor's spokesman says that the remark "didn't come across as it was intended" and that Giuliani was "clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil."

Whatever the Mayor meant, it's not what he said. All of you who have pointed out that I should have pressed him on that misstatement in the moment are right. My mistake, my responsibility.

Rudy then went on TV claiming that the anthrax attacks weren't terrorism because they weren't Islamic in nature.

Questions:
1) So the only terrorism is Islamic?

2) Why are these guys so afraid of taking Republicans to task over their terror failures and subsequent lies about it?

Rachel isn't.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Chris Matthews reverted to the old (good) Chris Matthews this week, in a debate with Todd Harris over the "no attacks" mythology:

Matthews suggested one answer, which Harris latched onto. "The Bush administration kept the country safe," said the guest.

"Except the one big day," the host shot back.

"YouTube is watching," he told Harris. "You're the Republican consultant. One of the best in the country. Tell me what the Republican party has done for this country in the last ten to 20 years."

Harris stayed silent.

"Thank you," Matthews said to his recurring GOP guest as he closed the segment. "We'll have you back with the answer."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fox News: Faith and Balanced

(Media Matters)

(F)or Fox News, religion is easy: Christianity is right and good and must be defended from its relentless persecutors, and other faiths are dangerous, inadequate, or funny.

Viewers of this past weekend's Fox News Sunday were treated to an especially stark example of the network's affection for Christendom when Fox News analyst and putative paragon of "straight news" Brit Hume counseled Tiger Woods to ditch Buddhism in favor of Christianity as his best hope for a "total recovery" from the scandal surrounding his marital infidelities. According to Hume: "I don't think that faith [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith." Hume appeared on The O'Reilly Factor the next day to deny that he was "proselytizing," explaining that Woods "needs something that Christianity especially provides and gives and offers, and that is redemption and forgiveness."

More...

Uh-oh:

2010 IS NOT A NEW DECADE

I posted a link to Jon Stewart's Decade in Review below. I love Jon. And this isn't aimed solely at Jon. He's a comedian. But when I see "serious news sources" wrapping up the decade a full year early, I get a little..... crazy.

2009 WAS NOT THE END OF THE FUCKING DECADE!

Decades, and centuries, and millenia, run from 1 to 0. ONE TO FUCKING ZERO.

Don't believe me?

Walk up to a kid and ask them to count the first ten numbers. Do they say: "Zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine"?

No, they do not. NO THEY DO GODDAMN NOT!

They start at one. JUST LIKE YEARS!

There was no Year Zero. It starts at Year One. Therefore the first decade was year 1 to year 10. It ended ON YEAR TEN!

This decade ends at the end of TWO THOUSAND TEN!

Jeez.

Jon Stewart's Decade in Review

On politics, terror, fear and the illusions of safety

This starts with a piece from the incredible Bob Cesca

Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney U.S. Air Force (Retired) thinks that we should strip search all 18-28 year old Muslim males at the airport.



Shameful. And how does he intend to discover who's Muslim and who's not? They don't wear special shirts that say "I'm a Muslim!"

What would happen is that anyone who's the slightest bit swarthy, black or middle eastern looking -- be they Italians, Spanish, Jews, non-Muslim Arabs, North Africans, or blacks -- will be summarily detained and strip searched at airports. And for how long does this continue? When does it end? Who will be wrongfully detained? But rewind a second here. The Underpants Bomber was an average-looking black man. McInerney is basically suggesting that all blacks in that age range be strip searched. All of them.

Adding... It goes without saying that the #tcot and teabagger crowds -- the Glenn Beck disciples who have been complaining all year about how the Obama administration is "attacking the Constitution" are all in favor of this kind of profiling. Suddenly they're not so interested in the Constitution. Cowards.

This is the problem. Where do we stop? My shoes? OK. Bodyscanners? OK. No blankets? OK. Sit for the last hour? OK. No GPS-enabled devices, like your cell phone? OK. Take off all your clothes if you fit a profile? Umm... maybe? Search the homes of anyone flying 72 hours before they depart? What? Wait.... they wouldn't do that.

Wouldn't they? Where does it stop? can you imagine 10 years ago what the outcry would have been if the government wanted to see you naked before you stepped on a plane? What would the reaction to bodyscanning have been then?

And yet... are we really unsafe when it comes to terrorism?


4 quotes:

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over" - Joseph Goebbels

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion." - Joseph Goebbels

voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. - Joseph Goebbels

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither -Benjamin Franklin

********************UPDATE*************************

Cesca with (another) excellent point.

I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong with government officials profiling and strip searching anyone who looks like this:



Obviously we know his affiliations now, but by the looks of him this could be a Christian man, an atheist man, a college student, a musician, a kid traveling home to see his family, a future president, a future scientist, a future doctor who cures cancer -- he could be an innocent American man with rights and liberties guaranteed under the Constitution.

But General McInerney wants the government to categorically label anyone who looks like this as a potential Muslim terrorist. And with such a measure, all progress on civil rights and civil liberties are summarily destroyed.

I wonder if the general ever suggested that we profile people who look like this:

About those GOP promises: is this what you want to go back to?

Maybe wartime taxcuts for the rich and deregulation of the banking industry and business sectors AREN'T so good. However, I'm sure Mary Matalin and the excuses crowd will find a way to blame this on Clinton or Obama.

This piece from the Washington Post lays much of the blame on the housing bubble, which was partly a result of Bush's Ownership Society plans.

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

...
"The problem is that we mismanaged the macroeconomy, and that got us in big trouble," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. "The big bad thing that happened was that, in the U.S. and parts of Europe, we let housing bubbles get out of control. That came back to haunt us big-time."

...
The first decade of the new century was an experiment in what happens when an economy comes to rely heavily on borrowed money.

"A big part of what happened this decade was that people engaged in excessively risky behavior without realizing the risks associated," said Karen Dynan, co-director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. "It's true not just among consumers but among regulators, financial institutions, lenders, everyone."

The world's most important 6-sec drum loop, the Amen Break

This is incredibly fascinating. Thanks to Rainn Wilson

Mobius32

This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.

2009: the year in freaky, disturbing sex

Sex with a vacuum. The vacuum was asking for it. They always are.

Sex with a horse. Again.

Sex with a car. The great Deadspin has informed me that he is called a "dragon"