Remembrance

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) remember a selfless American hero at demagogue Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) unAmerican activities hearing:



Self-styled anti-terrorism crusader Peter King has been a terrorism supporter himself in the past -- he fully supported the IRA and denied they killed civilians.

Happy MLK Day

America's homegrown terrorism again:

An incendiary device found along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was "likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said today.

On the plus side, former Senate Majority Leader and physician, Dr. Bill Frist, is telling his fellow Republicans to accept health care reform as "the law of the land" and move on.

I found myself taking a fresh look at Dr. Frist a few years after he left public office, when he appeared on the Real Time with Bill Maher and was quite sane and humanitarian, something he and his party were not especially known for during the W. Bush years on GOP dominance. I especially liked when he gently, but firmly, rebutted Maher on anti-vaccination b.s., one of Maher's most misguided positions.

So credit where credit is due, to the FBI and Dr. Frist. Happy Day After MLK Day.

Thank Glenn

Byron Williams, a 45-year-old ex-felon, exploded onto the national stage in the early morning hours of July 18.

According to a police investigation, Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers who had stopped him on an Oakland freeway for driving erratically. For 12 frantic minutes, Williams traded shots with the police, employing three firearms and a small arsenal of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds fired from a .308-caliber rifle.

...

In an affidavit, an Oakland police investigator reported that during an interview at the hospital, Williams "stated that his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."

What or who could possibly drive a man to such evil?

"I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind." - Byron Williams

Yep - Beck targeted the Tides Foundation on his show.

Co-conspirator?

Case Closed

So for all the hand-wringing, naysaying and nabobbing by the rightwing pundits that somehow our civil judicial system is porous enough to allow terrorists to slip through, the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder secures a guilty plea from Times Square would-be-bomber, Faisal Shahzad. In fact, a number of guilty pleas:

“I want to plead guilty 100 times over,” said Mr. Shahzad, who faces life in prison.

Thanks to the U.S. justice system, if it's guilt you want, Faisal, it's guilt you shall have.

Silly rightwing rabbits, publishing their silly rant just five hours before facts once again proved them wrong.

Justice of for grown-ups.

Smart vs. Showboat

I'm sick of the Republican rightwingers getting away with smearing our Democratic President over terrorism in ways that they would howl should it have been said by the left about George W. Bush right after, say 9/11. Excuse me, showboat Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Obama "got lucky" that the terrorist in the Times Square bomb attempt talked? How about, the asshole was apprehended within 54 hours of the attempt, albeit with a near loss of the suspect, and thanks to our non-torture policy, he's talking.

Is this fact supposed to somehow prove the counterargument -- that torture works, showboat Charles Krauthammer? This is simply smart -- i.e. the Obama approach, which is to say the traditional American approach pre-Cheney/Bush Administration -- vs. showboat. And by showboat I mean acting tough with the goal of spreading intimidation, even when tough is stupid.

Maybe the silliest showboat of all is weakie Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) who claims that Obama is "naive" about the Middle East, although he does stop short of calling our President a "domestic enemy." If anything, it's Cantor whose naivete led to his losing the health care reform debate.

If only he'd lose his upcoming re-election bid in November.

Nutjobs

It looks like the woodwork is squeaking in the psycho corners of America...and out come the freaks:

"Six Michigan residents, along with two residents of Ohio and a resident of Indiana, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials, and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence," according to the government's press release, which you can read in full below.

...

The Hutaree members allegedly "planned to kill an unidentified member of local law enforcement and then attack the law enforcement officers who gather in Michigan for the funeral."

The indictment continues: "According to the plan, the Hutaree would attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession with Improvised Explosive Devices with Explosively Formed Projectiles, which, according to the indictment, constitute weapons of mass destruction."

That attack, in turn, would spark a more widespread Harper's Ferry-style uprising against the government, according to the "general concept of operations" described in the indictment.

Take look at these revolutionaries. See any Middle Eastern types?:



These "patriots" i.e. terrorists are of the Christian sort, at least that the religion they've twisted just as surely as Al Qaeda twists Islam to justify their violence. I can't say I feel the least bit sorry for the elders, neither the dad nor mom at the top or the gents at the other three corners, or kook #3 in the bottom row. I wonder about the two younger gents remaining, as they may not know the full extent of what they've gotten themselves into. There's another son of the psycho couple on the loose, but I imagine he'll be caught soon. Maybe burn down a barn first? I'm guessing the other son (top row, third from left) will start singing like a canary in return for favorable sentencing.

This is no "isolated incident," as a Tennessee man has just shown:

A Tennessee man authorities say is a white supremacist has pleaded guilty to plotting to kill then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and dozens of other black people in 2008.

...

Authorities have described the two as skinheads who planned a cross-country robbing and killing spree that would end with an attack on Obama.

I particularly like the swastika on the shoulder:



And there's even been an arrest made in a threat against a Republican. A Jewish Republican, to be sure, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA):

A 38-year-old Philadelphia man was charged today with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a profanity-strewn YouTube video that has since been pulled down.

In the video, Norman Leboon says Cantor will "receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads. You and your children are Lucifer's abominations."

With something so close to home maybe help Cantor to see the light and work hard to tone down his party's rhetoric?

After all, his fellow GOoPer, extremist superstar Sarah Palin, has put targets on Democrats, and lo, attempted violence to the Democratic headquarters in her home state:

After logging some threatening phone calls last week, staffers on Sunday found that someone attempted to shatter one of the floor-to-ceiling windows at their prominently labeled office.

"We are on heightened alert and will be taking extra precaution," Patti Higgins, chairwoman of the Alaska Democratic Party, told me in an interview today. "I'm not going to say I think it was tea partiers or Republicans, but I think the heightened rhetoric out there will encourage people will go out and think it's okay to 'send a message' and be angry."

Higgins said it seemed "coincidental" the incident happened over the weekend, as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was declaring that Republicans should be the party of "Hell no" at a political rally in Nevada. "These are violent words: 'Fire 'em all, take 'em out,' and put together they fit into a pretty cohesive running theme that is fairly violent," Higgins said.

I advise the right to follow the example of the Republican National Committee and take it easy. Sit back, relax and maybe enjoy some topless lesbian bondage simulation.

You know, family values.

Bingo

I guess Dick and Liz Cheney and all the other GOoPers who claim the Obama Administration is somehow dangerously misguided in their handling of captured terrorists are w-r-o-n-g:

The Afghan immigrant at the center of what the authorities described as one of the most serious threats to the United States since 9/11 pleaded guilty Monday to terrorism charges in what he said was a Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb in the New York subway.
...
Mr. Zazi, 25, pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Brooklyn to charges that included conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction and to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. He faces a possible life term when he is sentenced on June 25.
...
...The 10-page plea agreement was sealed by Judge Raymond J. Dearie, but the arrangement suggested that prosecutors believe Mr. Zazi can be a valuable source of information.

Great -- getting a nice long sentence while providing additional intelligence. Would Dick and Liz consider it a shame and a failure that he wasn't waterboarded?

Oh, and the Dems passed a big jobs bill today, with the help of five Republicans including the newest Senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts. Smart move, Scott.

And is Florida Governor Charlie Crist thinking of switching from Republican to Democrat, since he can't win the Senate nomination he's going in the GOP?

Funny what a little teabagging can do.

Crazy F**king Americans

What the fuck, America? Are you so high on self-righteous rage that you send Joe Stack of Austin Texas into an IRS building in his airplane, coming from setting his own house on fire?

In the California where Joe Stack started out as a fresh-from-college software engineer, fighting the tax man was, quite literally, a religion.


Back in the 1970s and '80s, California was not just the center of the "silicon revolution." The Golden State was also a teeming hive of anti-government activity, much of it aimed at the federal income tax code and the agency that enforced it — the Internal Revenue Service.

Tax protesters and self-styled patriots railed against exemptions granted to religious organizations, the Catholic Church in particular. They formed their own "churches" and invited others to join.

"It sounds like he went down that same path," said Dennis Riness, who did time in federal prison for running a church-styled tax shelter. "And ran into the same brick wall."

More like glass and metal, I imagine, but same idea. Meanwhile, psycho college professor Amy Bishop, who seems to have gotten off murdering her younger brother in an argument and sending a colleague a faulty pipe bomb, take out her self-righteous anger over not earning tenure (ironic, as she padded her resume to get the gig in the first place) by shooting up the faculty meeting. For instance:

In 2002, she was charged with assault after punching a woman in the head at an International House of Pancakes in Peabody, Mass. The woman had taken the last booster seat, and, according to the police report, Dr. Bishop demanded it for one of her children, shouting, “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!”
...

She yelled at playing children, neighbors said, and rarely kept her opinions to herself. She rejected criticism and fudged her résumé. Her scientific work was not as impressive as she made it seem, according to independent neurobiologists, some of whom said she would have been unlikely to even get the opportunity to try for tenure at major universities.

She was known to have cyclical “flip-outs,” as one former student described them, that pushed one graduate student after another out of her laboratory. On the day she shot and killed her brother, she ran out into the street with the shotgun and demanded a car at a local dealership.

I just saw Shutter Island last night and I get why some folks might be disappointed, but I think it's right on. We're a nation out of our heads. It's not the first time in American history, and it won't be the last.

And I'm wondering what we can do to stop it.

"...those, let's face it, across the aisle..."

Useless Republicans. Incapable of governing. Obama's been taking heat lately from left as well as right, and through it all (including his own admitted missteps) he's actually gotten some governing done. As opposed to either ruling or doing nothing, which was the behavior of the previous eight-year administration.

The stimulus is already a success in keeping the U.S. from spiraling down like 1929, and it's positive effects are still growing, per Obama's discussion of the substance of the Recovery Act, how it targets energy efficiency technology designed to give America a competitive advantage:



I love that he calls out the Republicans from the get-go. Here's a list of some who would not support the stimulus but are crowing to their own electorate of what they brought home.

Meanwhile, the public option is getting some unexpected momentum in the Senate, and Obama is arresting another key Taliban leader.

And Q2 2010 is still over a month away.

On It

So after a Sunday news show cycle dominated by former Co-President Richard Bruce Cheney denouncing President Obama as somehow weak on terror, news comes that the top military leader of the Taliban was captured several days ago:

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

It was unclear whether he was talking, but the officials said his capture had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials. Most immediately, they hope he will provide the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader.

Makes you wonder how quickly we'd have had Osama Bin Laden himself in custody had a Democrat -- say, Al Gore -- been in the White House at that time.

Then again, 9/11 might never have happened, assuming President Gore would not have ended the near-daily cabinet meetings that President Clinton instituted which thwarted earlier attacks, might have listened to top White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke, and might have paid attention to the memo revealed in a hearing by Condoleezza Rice, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S." that then-President Bush responded to by going off jogging on his ranch to celebrate his 55th birthday.

I look forward to hearing the outpouring of support for President Obama's terrorism-fighting approach from Fox News and their political arm, the Republican Party.

Rudy the Liar

Rudy Giuliani on the Today Show says that there were no terrorist attacks on American soil during the Bush Administration vs. the Obama Administration. Uh...Mr. 9/11, I don't think you're going senile yet.

At first the MSM, in the form of George Stephanopoulos, lets him get away with it:



Later George quite appropriately corrected himself for not having challenged Rudy's baldfaced lie. But Rudy can't even admit his mistake without yet another lie favoring the Administration that left Afghanistan dangling and allowed the man behind the 9/11 attack on America, Osama Bin Laden to get away in Tora Bora while heading to Iraq from whence we had not been attacked. Instead, Rudy drops incorrect information about the lame Bush response to the shoe bomber, when criticizing Obama for taking three days before addressing the public regarding the underwear bomber:

But this has been an extraordinarily long time given the magnitude of this kind of attack.

KING: President Bush took six days once in a similar incident.

GIULIANI: Well, six days is less than 10. And the reality is that President Bush was criticized for taking -- what was it, like 20 or 30 minutes in delaying his response to September 11th. And I believe that six days was before the September 11th attack.

No. It was after. And if Rudy doesn't really know that, he's not much of an expert, is he.

Typical Squawking

Love how the GOP are quick to turn any event partisan, somehow blaming Obama for the Nigerian bomber who flew in from Amsterdam -- where airport security is private rather than government run. Yet the lack of a leader at our own TSA is the direct fault of lead squawker Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who is blocking confirmation of President Obama's nominee as a wedge again TSA unionizing:

DeMint's objection creates a procedural hurdle that could take three days of debate and test votes to overcome, or could potentially be limited if Democrats offered DeMint a compromise. No one was taking conciliatory stance on Monday, however. Manley called DeMint's opposition "disgraceful."

What's more, Republicans cast the key votes against funding for protecting U.S. planes and lives:

Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process, a Democrat points out. A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Joe Wilson.

The conference bill included more than $4 billion for "screening operations," including $1.1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, with $778 million for buying and installing the systems.

Squawk squawk. As Mitchel Bard writes in HuffPo, the key story of the year should be how little the GOP care for the American people over their Party's own political fortunes:

It has been less than one year since President Obama was sworn in. When he sat behind the big desk in the Oval Office for the first time, he found himself responsible for a free-falling economy (and mounting staggering job losses), a massive deficit, the manpower and financial burden of hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq, a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, and a militant Islamic movement looking to inflict damage on America and American interests, all of which came as a direct result of the failed policies of his predecessor. Obama also had a host of other problems to address, from global warming to energy dependence to a corrupt and dangerous Iranian government struggling to hold onto power and capable of real danger, just to name a few.

The president didn't create any of these problems. Not one of them. And it is completely unrealistic to think that any person or party could solve these issues in less than a year.

...

What have the Republicans offered aside from "no"?

To me, that should be the real story of the first year of the Obama administration. The discussion should be about the utter disdain the Republicans have shown for the American people, as the party has put political games and protecting its corporate interests in the first position on every issue. That, and the out-and-out lies that have become the go-to strategy of the party (death panels anyone?).

Baird goes on to list some of the most egregious blocking actions, thwarting attempts, anti-President actions on foreign soil and lies that have taken the place of real statesmanship in the GOP '09. Good reminders in case you've missed or forgotten some of the worst.

I honestly don't see a change ahead for 2010. In fact, with healthcare reform not quite over the finish line, the GOP is already lining up repeal of the reform as their key party message.

Here's hoping the Dems stick to their guns on this one -- the only way to lose is to fold under the noise.

Squawk!

Boxers Day

So now that it has been revealed that the Xmas terrorist had the incendiary materials in his underwear, close to his genitals to avoid detection, essentially a six inch long envelope filled with powder and a syringe with some sort of fluid that, when mixed together, was supposed to make a bigger fire or boom than it did, will we be going the same way as post-shoe bomber and have to strip down to our underwear for TSA clearance to get on an airplane?

Will they make us put it in a grey bin, or just on the conveyor belt?

How many more ways will we allow the terrorists to win?

Cable Firehose

I spent the better part of an hour this afternoon in a small gym with three TVs, one of which had both the up and down channel buttons missing, which meant it was stuck on one channel, in this case CNN. While I certainly understand that today's attempted explosion of a Detroit-bound airplane is a newsworthy terrorist story, a big deal with what appears to be a happy ending - passengers and crew subduing the terrorist - I can't help but complain about the way I flipped CNN into worthless firehose mode.

What they ran without end was a shot of the plane in what I assume to be a remote corner of the Motor City airfield, hazmat guy or two lurching in an out like The Hurt Locker as reality show, some cops walking and talking near the wings, and on the other side of the split screen some CNN anchor or expert talking and taking calls from other experts, but none of them offering anything but firehose conjecture.

Is this really going to be the way it is forever on cable news?

Thank God and Santa for TCM, running Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles on the second TV in the gym.

My son had turned the third TV to Nick. And it wasn't Spongebob.

9/11 Trial NYC

I'm with Kristen Breitweiser:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Let him hang in civilian court. Despite the near-past eight years, we're at our strongest as a nation of laws.

Anything less, the terrorists have won. Besides, it's not like an L.A. trial, can't just be a show. New York has it's own brand of justice.

Welcome to the Big Apple, assholes.

Right Again

So I was one of those so-called rabid George W. Bush haters who thought the whole terrorism alert thing was a political lever for the Administration to use when they needed to shock the monkey, a.k.a. public opinion. While some called folks like me irrational, I felt it was based on previous experience, i.e. Karl Rove's long history of political trickery, Dick Cheney's contempt for any oversight of the Executive going back to his first White House stint for Richard Nixon, Bush's own use of fear regularly in his own post-9/11 rhetoric.

The truth, now coming out from the first ever Secretary of Homeland Security, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge:

Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Right again.

Dammit.

Hate Kings

Here's Paul Krugman calling out the discourse for what it is:

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

His examples feature devil Glenn Beck, who lied his ass off for hate violence again today, per Crooks and Liars:

Glenn Beck and his fellow wingnuts -- the ones who have been whipping up hysteria among their right-wing populist followers since Obama's election and before -- essentially announced they have no intention of reflecting on their roles in today's horrifying shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C.

They did this by doing what they always do whenever these situations arise: First call it all an "isolated incident" committed by a "lone nutcase" who just happens to be acting out beliefs emanating from their own quadrant. Then, when that fails, blame it on the Left.

Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:

Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.

And this devil, also not intended to reflect:

Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh too declared Von Brunn "has more in common with the marchers and protesters we see at left-wing rallies," according to video just aired on MSNBC.

Then there's this response from the devil apologist for last week's terrorist -- blame Obama for the right-wing killers:

This afternoon, anti-abortion activist and former Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry went ahead with his second press conference in as many weeks at the National Press Club, the first of which was held in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas. As promised, there were hot wings and Guinness. But there was also an ominous warning that the Obama administration may be making more violent attacks "inevitable."

Joining the discourse more prominently than usual, this self-described right-wing extremist devil is on the record:

Former Drudge alter ego Andrew Breitbart thinks James von Brunn was a "multiculturalist just like the black studies and the lesbian studies majors on college campuses." How do we know? He left us an enraged voicemail! Go ahead, listen. Breitbart is angry that anyone would call a neo-Nazi a "right-wing extremist."

"It's such a fucking slander on people like me. This guy's political philosophy is more akin to the drivel that you hear on a college campuses that delineates us by group and not by individuality.... It's deeply offensive that you would use this for political gain."

Nothing like a proud, card-carrying right-wing extremist -- especially if your card comes from Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell:



The same "Liberty" University that has a problem with non-Republican free speech.

Funny how that works.

Say hello to out-in-the-open, over-the-airwaves, American homegrown fascism. If you disagree, it's on you to speak up.

Before it metastasizes.

Here's Their Man

Scott Roeder was insane precisely because of how completely his whole existence became being against a woman's right to choose. As the guy who believed all of the Bill O'Reilly and Randall Terry hate speech, he was by definition insane:

Roeder's family life began unraveling more than a decade ago when he got involved with anti-government groups, and then became "very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way," his former wife, Lindsey Roeder, told The Associated Press.

"The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion," said Lindsey Roeder, who was married to Scott Roeder for 10 years but "strongly disagrees with his beliefs.

"That's all he cared about is anti-abortion," she said.

Those noble anti-tax teabaggers. Hotbed of crazy and violent.



Doctor killer Roeder had been building towards this for awhile, using the casual epithets of those enjoying the rapture of their totalitarian hatred:

Arriving for an early shift around sunrise, a nurse at the Kansas City clinic, Aid for Women, noticed the man trying to pour super glue into a lock on the back door, another clinic worker said. Spooked, the man fled, but not before the nurse noted his license plate number, which the authorities later linked to Mr. Roeder.

The man seemed strident, the clinic worker said, and repeated phrases like “baby killer.”

Baby killer. By his standards. Repeated, like the simpleminded. The desired endpoint of the repetition of that phrase by Terry and O'Reilly, which in the media always means deliberate branding. The brand worked, they got some action finally, sated for a moment, their message reached and filled up a murder vessel for Bill O'Reilly, with Terry's Operation Rescue in touch with Roeder on the ground.

Premeditated:

In the days before Dr. Tiller’s death, Mr. Roeder’s behavior seemed erratic in other ways. He invited his 22-year-old son to dinner and a movie on Friday night, something unusual for Mr. Roeder, according to his former wife, Lindsey Roeder. Ms. Roeder said he usually rested on the Sabbath beginning Friday at dusk, and that he rarely made outings of any sort with his son, with whom he saw “Star Trek.”

“He really wanted to prolong the evening with dinner and ice cream,” said Ms. Roeder, who lives in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. “Looking back, I think it was a way of saying goodbye to his son.”

Sorry Dr. Tiller didn't get that opportunity with his family.

Instead the anti-choice zealots left this outside Tiller's office -- on Monday, the day after one of theirs murdered him:


There's insensitive.

Then there's sick.

Murderers

I'm sure there's some nugget of truth in whatever grievance has led these murdering villains to go on a coordinated bloodthirsty rampage in Mumbai, India, but I'm with Gandhi on choosing non-violent protest. Not only does this kind of violence make whatever cause look wrong, but it leads me to believe that the killers carrying it out are simply an organized collection of psychopaths. To shoot random people in cold blood means a complete lack of human empathy, something missing from birth or amputated some time after. The hell with the politics -- psychopaths who are capable of inflicting such tragedy get off on it. See Elephant.

This map -- can you believe Google enables us to map mass slaughter? -- shows the eight civilian sites attacked and somehow deepens the horror and outrage. Whereas it might seem to add clinical detachment, I think this technology brings us closer to the crimes. Heaven forbid seeing a similar map with the familiar graphics of your town or mine having suffered such an attack.

If nothing else, it is confirmed that terrorism still exists even after our promising election. And our President-elect has responded properly in his statement. It surely must sober him, if he hasn't seemed sober enough, on the challenges, both expected and unexpected, facing him in the four-to-eight years ahead.

Al-Qaeda say what?

Look who's throwing around the racial stuff now:

In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—"house negroes."

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."

The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.

Could President-Elect Obama have received a kinder gift from the mother of all assholes?

I'm reminded of a few other moments when such language was used about Barack. There's Ralph Nader's career-curtaining "whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations" moment, gracious words following the election. Then there's Jesse Jackson's unfortunate, "I wanna cut his nuts off," for, in his view, "talking down to black people."

Who do they think they're insulting? Ask Hillary Clinton or John McCain -- his cool will make you panic, and your panic will be your undoing.

Richard Clarke on the al-Zawahri statement:

"Obama's election has taken the wind out of al Qaeda's sails in much of the Islamic world because it demonstrates America's renewed commitment to multiculturalism, human rights, and international law. It also proves to many that democracy can work and overcome ethnic, sectarian, or racial barriers.

"Obama's commitment to withdraw from Iraq also takes away an al Qaeda propaganda tenet: that the U.S. seeks to occupy oil rich Arab lands. His commitment to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan also challenges their plans. Most of all, by returning to American values the world admires, Obama sets al Qaeda back enormously in the battle of ideas, the ideological struggle which determines whether al Qaeda will continue to have significant support in the Islamic world."

Exactly. With posters of Obama reportedly replacing those of Osama on the Third World streets and America now the first white nation to elect a black Chief Executive, this is our "America, Fuck Yeah" moment. Per Joe Klein:

The Zawahiri letter is one of the first real indications we have of the new international state of affairs (the Ahmadinejad letter of congratulations may also have been a good sign, but was leavened by the author's lack of real power and the fact that he's running for reelection). The terrorists are now exposed as racists, on top of everything else. We have many miles to go in Afghanistan and the northern and western precincts of Pakistan, and more blood to shed--and innumerable ways to screw up, since no one has ever gotten Afghanistan right--but the wind seems to have shifted slightly and is now at our back.

The terrorists are exposed as racists. But of course. And I have no doubt that there will be a moment, possibly within his first year of office, where Obama strikes or counterstrikes, some sort of targeted violence, that establishes his military aptitude and willingness to use it as provoked, most likely with an exactitude missing from the misadventures and squanderings of the past eight years.

Many on the left will protest or despair, as if they never heard him say, "I'm not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars." But even a majority of liberals will think he made the right decision and executed as cleanly as possible.

And with that our enemies will be put on notice and he will glide back into the White House in 2012.