The language from the Clyburn statement makes for a nice base in creating the message for the public that Brad has asked for. May I humbly suggest that if the Democratic leadership is slow (yet again) in putting out a coherent and affirmative message (as opposed to a bet-hedging, politically-neutered, defensive message), that we put out that message ourselves? Seriously. There are plenty of good writers among both the Sadly No Gold Cast and the Faithful Commenters. Sharp minds, good with the word thing . . . Howzabout we each sit down over the next 24 hours and put 2 or 3 hours into writing guest editorials for our local newspapers? Start with Clyburn’s reasonable observations about the Bush response to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations and go on from there, pointing out that five years ago al Qaeda was deeply unappy with the U.S. and now a whole lot more of the world is unhappy with the U.S. (and Britain) and explaining, clearly and rationally, why that is. Can we do that?

Seriously. There are plenty of good writers among both the Sadly No Gold Cast and the Faithful Commenters. Sharp minds, good with the word thing . . . Howzabout we each sit down over the next 24 hours and put 2 or 3 hours into writing guest editorials for our local newspapers?

I’m all for it. But first we need some facts from some experts. Unlike Gary Ruppert, we don’t want to write nonsensical talking points 😉

But yeah, the Dems’ message machine is weak. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that, will post on it tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is, under Clinton our greatest terrorist threat was right-wing Republicans.

Well . . . but . . . it still is.

So . . . I guess that means, ipso facto, that things haven’t gotten any worse?

that’s a pretty decent message. I dig it.

~but writig two meny wurdz getz hard~

I’ve found a bit of nonsense can be quite useful, as long as it’s not made up.

I guess Tucker has given us an insight into what he considers ‘horrific suffering’.

Obviously he wore that bow tie a little too tightly for too many years.

3 minutes of Tucker Carlson is its own form of terrorism.

“It’s also time to assess how much progress we’ve made in the war on terrorism. With resources diverted to an ongoing civil war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden still at large, a nuclear arms race in Iran and North Korea, the Taliban regaining strength in Afghanistan and escalating violence in the Middle East, are we safer than we were five years ago?â€?

ERG. This is one of the major things that is wrong with Democratic messaging. It’s not time to “assess” shit, dumbasses. Try again:

“America’s foreign policy is a disaster and it is a direct result of Republican rule. We have diverted our resources into an unnecessary war of choice. As a result, we have created a major terrorist breeding ground where before there was none and we have stretched our military too thin to pose a credible deterrent to proven threats like North Korea and Iran. The Taliban are taking back Afganistan and the middle east is in flames. Republicans have proven themselves completely incapable of competently carrying on a foreign policy worthy of America’s historical values or our international stature.”

THAT is how you talk is you have any balls: you don’t use your opponent’s BS “War on Terror(tm)” meme and you don’t ask rhetorical questions. You state how things are in your own terms and you do so forcefully. Asshats.

Cs, your statement is way better, no doubt. Harry Reid and Ned Lamont’s statements today were along those lines, if not quite as forceful.

I have CNN on in the background, and I just glanced up and saw Rudy Giuliani on the screen. And right on cue, he used the words “terror” and “9/11” in the first sentence I heard him speak. Does this guy know any other words? God, what an asshole.

It’s a good start, I’ll give you that. But I have a problem with the whole “Proven threats in NoKor and Iran”. These are imaginary threats created by this administration. Boogie men. They do not have the ability to project power beyond that which we grant them. I know, the less peaceful peeps want to hear how we, as the leadership, would deploy our military might, but if Iraq proved any fucking thing at all, it proved that you cannot solve these problems militarily. How much do we have to be like them to beat them?

mikey

This political correctness fetish is proving to be the death of us. The current red alert flight security measures are completely useless. Worrying about shampoo, shaving cream, baby formula, medicines and making everyone wait 5 hours or more doesn’t do a thing to prevent dedicated Islamic terrorists from smuggling explosives components on board planes. They’ll simply secrete them in body cavities, etc.

There is one simple countermeasure which is fast and 100% effective. Make anybody boarding a flight spit on a picture of Mohammed.

Believe it or not, Ole Tuck voiced exactly what my coworkers and I were laughing ourselves silly about today at the office. In fact we suggested that the terrorists may have accomplished their goals by default by totally annoying the pretentious, harried, uptight soccer moms and cell-phone-wielding businessmen trying to get to Cancun for their vacation or Chicago for a VeryImportantMeeting. After all, the airlines are forcing newborns’ mothers to actually test-drink their baby formula pre-boarding to prove it’s not a liquid explosive. That is terror.

…This is NOT the dumbest quote of the day.

…The current Administration anad the TSA is doing the job of terrorising that Osama can’t do from his cave. Shoe searches on 85 year old Japanese ladies, no nail clippers, three hour waits for what?

…When we treat our own citizens like this the quote is apt. When we are doing the terrorizing of ourselves, Osama and Qaida have won.

I have been saying since at least 1994 that we Democrats have to stop taking the high road with these pricks. They say, “Well, that’s your opinion, you tax-loving baby-killing communist bastard” and we reply, “Gosh, Newt, you don’t have to be so mean. Can’t we sit down and discuss this rationally….”

No! They aren’t interested in facts, logic, or good manners. And it’s absolutely time that we started kicking ass.

Mikey – this is stale by now, but w/r/t North Korea and Iran:

We don’t have to be like them, but it’s silly to throw away readymade boogeymen. If nothing else, the last five years have proven that a lot of America loves to HATE and if there isn’t anyone handy, they’ll make shit up just to provide some moral clarity in a confused world. The gov’ts of NoKo and Iran use the US in precisely the same manner – we’re the devil that makes their moral landscape coherent.
The trick is and has always been to keep our boogeymen strictly rhetorical, allowing everybody to take part in the slap fight and making sure nobody loses an eye. And this works so long as no one mistakes their descriptions of foreign policy for their actual practice of international relations. But the asshats in power can’t differentiate between metaphor and reality: they actually think they can fight a war on terror, they actually think there is an EVIL stalking the world – it’s like watching a baby try to pick up the ball in the picture in front of them.

BTW – Blue Shark, go see the aftermath of an actual terrorist attack and them tell me that waiting in line at the airport is the same thing. Your sense of entitlement is appalling.

From Sherrod Brown (hopefully my next Senator): “Today’s failed attacks underscore the need to refocus our resources on fighting the war on terror. Iraq has diverted billions of dollars from our defense budget and drained our military’s capacity. Our success in the war on terror depends on having the available manpower and resources to hunt down terrorist networks around the world. As we continue to follow the Republican’s stay-the-course strategy in Iraq, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden remain on the loose.”
Not a singularly balls-out blast, but not bad in the way of spineless Dems.

Not bad, but I think no Dem should use the “War or Terror” (C)GOP2001 meme. There’s no way to win a war on terror, which suits the GOP because they want the American people to sit terrified in their own urine in front of the TV indefinitely and let the powerful entitled people get on with the hard business of lazily swimming around in gigantic pools of pilfered tax dollars.
But I’m tired of that endless war story now, and there’s no way to tell another one unless you use different words. Talk about foreign policy in words that make sense, for a change – talk about conflicts of interest, and about particular groups with sepcific goals. Otherwise, the GOP wins every time – we don’t want endless war and aren’t willing to fight it, whereas they do and they are.

“There is one simple countermeasure which is fast and 100% effective. Make anybody boarding a flight spit on a picture of Mohammed. ”

Oh, horseshit, you anonymous asshole.

Do you think that people who would blow themselves up and blow up a plane full of people would stop at that? Do you know that the 9/11 guys exhibited behavior that was contrary to Muslim teaching while they were in the US before the attack?

This isn’t about Islam, you stupid fuck. Do you think that these guys are vampires, maybe they’d shrink in horror with some holy water and the sign of the cross? Do you think that Christian terrorists and brutal killers of civilians, like the IRA, the Serbs, the Shining Path, the Guatemalan death-squads would have been foiled if they’d had to spit on a bible or a picture of the Virgin? What about the Hutu priests and nuns who helped the killers of Tutsis — did the fact that they were in a church deter them?

People who are going to kill other people come in all religions and cultures, and the one thing that is consistent across all religions and cultures is the abilty to be vicious and heartless.

Someone, like you, who tries to peg it to one group of people, is only trying to justify their desire to visit the same destruction on someone else.

Brad, you were wrong. Anonymous has delivered the most dumb-quote of the day, if not of all time.

Make that “dumb-ass.”

It may not be the dumbest, but here’s the most annoying quote of the day:

It was not clear how long the restrictions would remain in effect. One lawmaker, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said the situation “eliminates the days of carry-on baggage.”

Well, that’s just fucking great. No more laptops, PSPs, iPods on planes. I’d rather take the .00000000001 percent chance that somebody blows the fucking thing up.

Why not just ban air travel altogether? Let’s see them blow up a plane then.

Let’s present those IslamoFascist bastards with some hard targets for a change. I’m going downstairs to huddle in my bomb shelter in the dark eating canned food ’til I die.

I did love all those photos of TSA screeners instructing people to dump out their potentially-explosive liquids in large trash cans. All together in a nice liquid stew.

Clueless isn’t the word. Actually, no: it is.

Actually, if one is worried about terrorists attacking using a bomb assembled on a plane from parts brought on separately, it’s not such a bad idea: dilute the volatile chemicals with a huge amount of water and they won’t blow up. As a short term measure in response to a specific, known threat, I’m sure it probably makes sense.
The problem is that making everybody dump their milk n’ cheetos before getting on the plane (and banning carryons) is a huge inconvenience to put up with for the possibility of preventing an incredibly rare threat. All this theatre isn’t as effective as just allocating the proper funds to figuring out who is going to try to blow up a plane and stopping them before they do it – you, know, like having more than 50 people in the entire US intelligence apparatus who speak Arabic, Farsi, or any of the other languages appropriate for that task.

I haven’t read the comments or the post really but

I’ve been hearing a lot about how this was some sort of high tech insane terrorist plot, a lot like when the president and then NSA Rice said that no one could have imagined terrorists would have crashed planes into buildings.

Ugh.

In the 1970’s the CIA had plans to use airliners as weapons (a plan put in the scrapbin) but also used the idea of this to warn the higher executive powers that smaller powers could use this idea to assymetrically attack the United States (largely ignored because the Soviets were the problem but enought to throw fighters behind all hijacked aircraft to protect against a half sneakattack by the Soviets).

Anyway, the idea that a low level binary explosive scattered between 2 or 3 guys on a plane is something that “caught us offguard” is so fucking ridiculous. If the intelligence services, along with the domestic law enforcement agencies, with the billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of manhours given by PHDs and career spooks didn’t figure out false bottoms and binary compounds then FUCK IT

These aren’t new ideas, I really don’t understand how anyone can say this is something amazing. These are all the same tactics the the CIA and KGB put together 30 years ago. AGH, I can’t handle this.

http://ace.mu.nu/

Ace of Spades HQ

August 10, 2006

Shiites Press For Partition Of Iran
– Ace

***************************************

[ I couldn’t let this moment of genius pass
without acknowledgement.]

It’s glaringly obvious that the War on Terror isn’t producing the desired results, if any. We need to hammer on BushCo and the Republicans – their ideas don’t work! It’s time for someone who thinks outside their bank account to step in and keep America safe.

Tax breaks for Big Oil don’t keep America safe.
Protecting the flag doesn’t keep America safe.
Tax cuts for the Hilton crowd don’t keep America safe.
Etc, ad infinitum…

As a bonus, none of those items feed the poor, educate our children, secure our seniors’ well-being, keep our citizens healthy, keep our water and air clean or address the issue of dwindling resources.

Republican plans only benefit wealthy Republicans.

hahaha. TSA. WWhoooodoggies.
There is litterally no other part of the Government that I hate more.
Hell, even the IRS does stuff that’s usefull.
The TSA constantly fails scanning tests. A few months back, inspectors were able to smuggle in every part they would need to build a bomb beyond the security posts. They even went back and tried to make it easier for the TSA scanners to spot them, and they STILL didn’t catch anything.

Maybe we should try to make trasportation security that isn’t as effective as a cotton condom before we wiretap American phones? You know. Stuff that’s sensible and legal.

Sorry to interrupt with inane speculation but…

I think I can see where Tucker’s coming from here. I think he means “A three-hour wait at the airport is its own form of terrorismâ€? in the same way that some people say things like “bloggers are fighting the war on terror”.

I know I’m doing my part in the fight against Islamofascism – just yesterday I spent fifty quid on stuff I don’t need, and I’ve got a holiday booked for the end of next month. Forward, hermanos!

Look, waiting in line in the airport is only a form of terror if
a. you’re sense of entitlement is so outsized as to be inexcusable (and you should get to see the next terror attack close-up and learn when it’s best to just shut the fuck up)
or
b. you’re Tucker Carlson and are afraid of being recognized and torn limb from limb for having made a carreer out of being such an aforementioned entitled fuck. Seriously, if I saw Tucker Carlson in an airport, I’d shit in his luggage. (Or his mouth, if he happened to be asleep or otherwise unconscious.)

Not to mention what I’d do to Tucker if I happened to be a TSA screener…

Viewing Tucker’s crispy chest hairs is also a form of terrorism.

Bring back the bow-tie, Tucker!

“There is one simple countermeasure which is fast and 100% effective. Make anybody boarding a flight spit on a picture of Mohammed. �

The reason this is the stupidest comment of all time is because there are no pictures of Mohammed. Islam prohibits artistic renditions of the human form as a form of idolatry; a portrait of Mohammed would be considered idolatry to the n-th degree.

The reason this is the stupidest comment of all time is because there are no pictures of Mohammed. Islam prohibits artistic renditions of the human form as a form of idolatry; a portrait of Mohammed would be considered idolatry to the n-th degree.

hmm

“There is one simple countermeasure which is fast and 100% effective. Make anybody boarding a flight spit on a picture of Mohammed. �

Yeah, because anyone who is planning to blow himself and 200 innocent people to bit doesn’t the balls to spit on a picture of Mohammed…

…especially since the Koran specifically allows Muslims to disavow their faith if they are threatened or under duress (need to look up the specifics), because Allah knows you don’t really mean it.

I don’t think that a three-hour wait or having to leave your iPod home is a form of terrorism, and I don’t think that the kind screeners from the TSA are terrorists. I think that it’s a bit of an inconvenience, and life is often inconvenient, so people need to suck it up and leave their mousse in their damn carryon, David Hasselhoff.

However, if we’re using “terrorism” to mean “inflicting terror on other people for the purpose of manipulating and controlling them,” it could be argued that the government’s rainbow of threat levels and tendency to try and shake everybody up as soon as approval rating drop might just qualify.

man, 12 hour flights across the pacific without toys to distract.

there are going to be some vastly deranged people getting off those flights.

not least of whom will be the flight attendants.

and all the folks they’ve “arrested” in mid-air for being antsy and troublesome.

Frankly, I would not want to spit on a picture of Mohammed, and I am nowhere near being a Muslim. Nor would I spit on an image of Christ on the cross to prove I wasn’t a Christian fundamentalist terrorist, if that were the boogeyman du jour. It’s a fucking stupid concept.

Now, about the Tucker quote: On its face, it is stupid, but there may be a kind of logic to it. If the BushCo Misadministration can convince people that it’s OK to spy on citizens’ phone calls, arrest and detain people indefinitely without trial, torture people and generally abrogate the Bill of Rights in the name of “protection,” then quite literally the terrorists have won: they have effected a massive shift in our way of life and an abandonment of the principles that made America the beacon of freedom worldwide, through the use of fear and fear-mongering tactics. Of course, they had lots of support and direct aid, from their buddies the neocons.

And TSA scare regulations that lead to three-hour waits in airport lines are just one more way that terror has changed our lives. So while I don’t think Tucker Bowtie was thinking along these lines — I’m pretty sure he was just pissed about being inconvenienced — I think he was unintentionally correct.

They’ll simply secrete them in body cavities, etc

Apparently, the terrorists are vampires. God help us. God help us all.

I think Democrats could use 2 lessons

1) throw the chair

and

2) Not. One. Inch.

I can’t believe anyone took the “fast and 100% effective,” Muhammad-spitting airport security measure suggestion as anything other than a joke! When we stop giving one another credit for having a sense of humor, the terrorists have…. well, you know.

I think it is safe to say that only people supporting al Qaeda would suggest that airline screening devices designed to detect hair gel and nail polish and identify those with such products on their person as terrorists could be a bad idea.

Either way, this is the end of punk bands touring.

Given the problematic stability of nitroglycerin, perhaps we should just have the TSA lackeys engage in their usual skilled “frisking” techniques–like sticking their hands so far down in the pockets of your jeans that you’d fear for the safety of your ‘nads. Sure, a few of them would be blown to smithereens; but most of them are contractors who can easily be replaced.

Conspicuously absent from the list of banned products are packs of cigarettes. While they won’t hold liquid, you can stuff them with enough plastique to blow the fuselage off a Boeing. Somehow shampoo and mouthwash seem to be more of a threat.

Teens gone wild….

Nude teens gone wild. Teens gone wild….