Month: December 2015

 “If there’s not going to be retribution, you’re never going to stop terrorism”

by digby

I’m no longer reluctant to use the word fascist to describe Trump. He clearly is fascistic and it’s absurd to pretend otherwise.

Just this week he has said this:

“I would knock the hell out of them [the Isis militants],” he told viewers on the right-wing talk show, presented by Elizabeth Hasslebeck, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmaede.

President Barack Obama “doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Mr Trump claimed, before adding he would do his “best” to defeat the militants.

“But we’re fighting a very politically correct war. And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he claimed.

“They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”

And this:

Do you think the wives and the families knew exactly what was going to happen with September 11th?” Mr. Trump said in an interview that aired Thursday on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” 

Host Bill O’Reilly said he didn’t know, and Mr. Trump said: “Well I do, and I think they did.”

“We have to be much more vigilant, and we have to be much tougher,” Mr. Trump said. “We can’t allow this to happen: They take the wives, they put ‘em on planes, they send ‘em home. ‘Let’s go home and let’s watch Daddy tonight on television knock down the World Trade Center’ — there has to be retribution. And if there’s not going to be retribution, you’re never going to stop terrorism.”

Mr. Trump said on “Fox and Friends” this week that while he would do his best to avoid civilian casualties in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, “you have to take out” terrorists’ families.

He told Mr. O’Reilly that “take out” means that “you have to wipe out their homes where they came from.”

“You have to absolutely wipe ‘em out,” he said. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop terrorism. You have all these cells all over the place.”

Asked if he would kill the family members of terrorists, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to be so bold.”

“I want to tell you they would suffer,” he said. “They know what was going on. If you look at what happened with these terrorists, they put their wives on the planes — those wives knew exactly what was happening, the children, everybody knew.”

Asked how he knows that, Mr. Trump said: “Because I know. Because that’s the way life is. Because I’m a realist. That’s the way life works. The wives knew what the husbands were going to do.”

He’s not just a fascist, he’s a dangerous psychopath. He’s talking about targeting children.

And more and more of the Republican base is responding to this. The latest polling has him at 36% with Cruz coming on strong with equally fascistic comments like this one:

“You don’t stop bad guys by taking away our guns. You stop bad guys by using our guns,” Cruz thundered to a roomful of Second Amendment activists. The Republican senator from Texas vowed that after he is elected president, any “lunatic” or “jihadist” who attempts to harm innocent Americans will “encounter the business end of firearms.”

And this:

.@TedCruz says he’ll carpet-bomb ISIS into oblivion. “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we are going to find out.” #iacaucus

— Kathie Obradovich (@KObradovich) December 5, 2015

How about alleged Christian minister, Jerry Falwell Jr of Liberty University:

“It just blows my mind that the president of the United States [says] that the answer to circumstances like that is more gun control,” he said to applause.

“If some of those people in that community center had what I have in my back pocket right now…,” he said while being interrupted by louder cheers and clapping. “Is it illegal to pull it out? I don’t know,” he said, chuckling.

“I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” he says, the rest of his sentence drowned out by loud applause while he said, “and killed them.”

“I just wanted to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to get your permit. We offer a free course,” he said. “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.”

I guess the scenario in his mind is if he had been at the Christmas Party he would have pulled out his gun and shot the semi-automatic “long guns” out of the hands of the attackers before they had a chance to open fire. Because he’s a real man. Who would “end Muslims.”

This is the Trump fantasy:

On the stump last week-end, Donald Trump entertained his followers in the wake of the massacre in Oregon with colorful fantasies of him walking down the street, pulling a gun on a would-be assailant and taking him out right there on the sidewalk. He said, “I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Somebody attacks me, they’re gonna be shocked,” at which point he mimes a quick draw:

As the crowd applauds and cheers, he goes on to say “somebody attacks me, oh they’re gonna be shocked. Can you imagine? Somebody says, oh there’s Trump, he’s easy pickins…” And then he pantomimes the quick draw again:

Everybody laughs. And then Trump talks about an old Charles Bronson vigilante movie and they all chanted the name “Death Wish” together. Keep in mind that this sophomoric nonsense took place just two days after a disturbed man went into a classroom and shot 17 people.

Now, Trump is saying we should “take out” people’s families, particularly their wives, waterboard “and more”, to huge cheers from his followers.

The New York Times listened to every word Donald Trump said over the past week — 95,000 of them — and analyzed the meaning of his rhetoric in this fascinating piece. Here’s a bit of it:

The most striking hallmark was Mr. Trump’s constant repetition of divisive phrases, harsh words and violent imagery that American presidents rarely use, based on a quantitative comparison of his remarks and the news conferences of recent presidents, Democratic and Republican. He has a particular habit of saying “you” and “we” as he inveighs against a dangerous “them” or unnamed other — usually outsiders like illegal immigrants (“they’re pouring in”), Syrian migrants (“young, strong men”) and Mexicans, but also leaders of both political parties.

At an event in Raleigh, N.C., on Friday evening, his voice scratchy and hoarse, Mr. Trump was asked by a 12-year-old girl from Virginia, “I’m scared — what are you going to do to protect this country?”

“You know what, darling? You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared. You’re not going to be scared,” Mr. Trump said, before describing the Sept. 11 terrorists as “animals” who sent their families back to the Middle East. “We never went after them. We never did anything. We have to attack much stronger. We have to be more vigilant. We have to be much tougher. We have to be much smarter, or it’s never, ever going to end.”

While many candidates appeal to the passions and patriotism of their crowds, Mr. Trump appears unrivaled in his ability to forge bonds with a sizable segment of Americans over anxieties about a changing nation, economic insecurities, ferocious enemies and emboldened minorities (like the first black president, whose heritage and intelligence he has all but encouraged supporters to malign).

“ ‘We vs. them’ creates a threatening dynamic, where ‘they’ are evil or crazy or ignorant and ‘we’ need a candidate who sees the threat and can alleviate it,” said Matt Motyl, a political psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who is studying how the 2016 presidential candidates speak. “He appeals to the masses and makes them feel powerful again: ‘We’ need to build a wall on the Mexican border — not ‘I,’ but ‘we.’ ”

In another pattern, Mr. Trump tends to attack a person rather than an idea or a situation, like calling political opponents “stupid” (at least 30 times), “horrible” (14 times), “weak” (13 times) and other names, and criticizing foreign leaders, journalists and so-called anchor babies. He bragged on Thursday about psyching out Jeb Bush by repeatedly calling him “low-energy,” but he spends far less time contrasting Mr. Bush’s policies with his own proposals, which are scant.

And on Friday night in Raleigh, he mocked people who reportedly did not contact the authorities with concerns about the California shooting suspects for fear of racial profiling.

“Can anybody be that dumb?” Mr. Trump said. “We have become so politically correct that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. We don’t know what we’re doing.”

The specter of violence looms over much of his speech, which is infused with words like kill, destroy and fight. For a man who speaks off the cuff, he always remembers to bring up the Islamic State “chopping off heads.” And he has expressed enthusiasm for torturing enemies beyond waterboarding. Last month, after several men hit a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies, Mr. Trump said, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

“Such statements and accusations make him seem like a guy who can and will cut through all the b.s. and do what in your heart you know is right — and necessary,” said Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, echoing the slogan that Barry Goldwater used in his 1964 presidential campaign.

There’s much more. I urge you to read it. This companion piece points out the ways in which Trump’s rhetoric differs from the past five presidents:

The voice of a president is typically dignified, measured, even solemn at times. If elected, Donald J. Trump could change all that. 

Mr. Trump’s word choices differ markedly from those of America’s past five presidents, according to a review of his public utterances over the past week.

Mr. Trump’s language is darker, more violent and more prone to insults and aggrandizing.

He Sees Stupidity Everywhere

How often have you heard a president of the United States call something – let alone somebody — stupid? It is extremely rare.

“Maddeningly stupid” was how Bill Clinton described some of Saddam Hussein’s actions in 1997. President Obama said the Cambridge, Mass., police had acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home in 2009.

But Mr. Trump? Over the past week, he called his political opponents “stupid” at least 30 times in public.

“We are being run by stupid people,” he said. “I used to say incompetent. But stupid is really, you know, is the next stage.”

On another occasion he cast the blame widely. “We’re stupid people, we’re being led by stupid people, and we’re stupid because we allow these people to get into office.”

Me, Myself and I

Mr. Trump talks about himself a lot, using first-person singular pronouns like “I” and “me” more often than the recent presidents did.

He uses these words about as often as George Bush, and more than President Obama. The claim that Mr. Obama talks about himself especially often — that is, uses first-person singular pronouns – is a popular meme, but it isn’t true.

A Lot of Problems

Mr. Trump’s language is pessimistic. He uses the word “problem” often — at least 87 times in the past week. “I want to make this country so great again, it’s got such problems,” he said.

There is also much, in Mr. Trump’s view, that is terrible – a word he uttered 20 times. “We got this one guy, he’s terrible, he’s the worst debater I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Trump said of Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, another contender for the Republican nomination. “He’s terrible. He’s terrible,” he added seconds later.

Make Everything ‘Great’ (Again)

To Mr. Trump, things are merely good (114 times) less often than they are great (168), even excluding his frequent campaign pledges to make America again.

What is great, in Mr. Trump’s view? His hotels. His memory. His temperament. The people he will put in charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The city of Sarasota, Fla. His respect for the people of Mexico. And, of course, the wall he wants to build on the border with that country.

He is a fascist demagogue. And to a whole lot of Americans what he’s saying is music to their ears.

Other right wing leaders, like Ted Cruz and Jerry Falwell Jr (an alleged Christian minister) are right there with him.

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The billionaires get nervous. But what can they do?

by digby

From Miami:

One of Florida’s biggest conservative Republican moneymen — and a billionaire backer of Jeb Bush — is so disgusted by Donald Trump’s candidacy that if he has to, he’ll do the unthinkable:

“If I have a choice — and you can put it in bold — if I have a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I’m choosing Hillary,” Miami healthcare magnate Mike Fernandez told the Miami Herald on Friday. “She’s the lesser of two evils.”

Outraged by Trump’s unimpeded ascent, Fernandez is taking on the GOP frontrunner himself. He purchased a full-page ad in the upcoming Sunday edition of the Herald calling Trump a “narcissistic BULLYionaire with a hunger to be adored.” He also likened him to some of history’s bloodiest demagogues.

“You have no idea how furious I am with my friends in the Republican Party who have embraced this guy,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez, who also plans to run the ads in Des Moines and Las Vegas newspapers on Dec. 14, said he didn’t notify the Bush campaign of his plans. Fernandez was the single highest donor to the political committee backing Bush, Right to Rise USA, as of the last financial disclosure report at the end of June. His contribution: more than $3 million.

“My frustration is really with that sector of Republican voters that are so blinded by the demagoguery” of Trump, Fernandez said. “I know the campaign — or any other campaign — is not going to say it…. This is not about Jeb. This is about us. This is about the voter.”

He’s right, of course. It’s the voters. I hate to tell him this, but that’s the natural result of years and years of talk radio and Fox News. This is the Wingnut Nation he’s been financing all this time. Did he think it was a joke?

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You think all this lying is new? Think again

by digby

Here’s a treat for you as you do your workout or clean the house or whatever you do when you listen to podcasts: Rick Perlstein talking about “A RECENT HISTORY OF POLITICAL LIES”

You can download it here.

Perlstein’s been writing great stuff at the Washington Spectator, by the way.

Spreading the gun epidemic

by digby

Following up on the New York Times editorial below, I thought it would be helpful to re-publish Wayne LaPierre’s speech at CPAC from a year ago by way of contrast:

It’s great to be here today, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your warm welcome.

There must be some NRA members out there! To each of you, I thank you for being here with me and for your support and vigilance in defending our freedom. You and NRA members all over the country have made a real difference in making this nation and our freedoms safer.

A little over a year ago, the NRA offered a simple, honest and effective proposal to make our schools safer. The political and media elites responded by calling me just about every nasty name in the book. You remember.

But Americans responded differently. In city after county after school board after statehouse, teachers, parents, police and legislators agreed with us and put armed security safeguards in place.

History has proven again the truth that President Obama and anti-freedom activists everywhere deny and try to suppress — the truth that firearms in the hands of good people save lives.

The political elites can’t escape and the darlings of the liberal media can’t change the God-given right of good people to protect themselves. For that fundamental human right, the NRA stands unflinching and unapologetic. And in defense of our freedom,

NRA’s 5 million members and America’s 100 million gun owners will not back down — not now, not ever!

Freedom has never needed our defense more than now. Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong.

You feel it in your heart, you know it in your gut. Something has gone wrong. The core values we believe in, the things we care about most, are changing. Eroding.

Our right to speak. Our right to gather. Our right to privacy. The freedom to work, and practice our religion, and raise and protect our families the way we see fit.

Those aren’t old values. They aren’t new values. They are core freedoms. The core values that have always defined us as a nation and we feel them — we feel them — slipping away.

All across America, everywhere I go, people come up to me and say, “Wayne, I’ve never been worried about this country … until now.”

Not with anger, but with sadness in their eyes. “I’ve never been worried about this country … until now.”

We’re worried about the economic crisis choking our budgets and shrinking our retirement. We’re worried about providing decent health care and a college education for our children. We fear for the safety of our families — it’s why neighborhood streets that were once filled with bicycles and skateboards, laughter in the air, now sit empty and silent.

In virtually every way, for the things we care about most, we feel profound loss. We are sad not because we fear something IS going wrong, but because we know something already HAS gone wrong.

It’s why more and more Americans are buying firearms and ammunition — not to cause trouble, but because we sense that America is already IN trouble.

We know that, sooner or later, reckless government actions and policies have consequences. That when government corrupts the truth and breaks faith with the American people, the entire fabric of our society — everything we believe in and count on — is in jeopardy.

Political dishonesty and media dishonesty have linked together, joined forces, to misinform and deceive the American public. Let’s be straight about it — the political and media elites are lying to us.

They lie bills into law. They pass legislation they haven’t even read, yet eagerly defend on television. Health care policies, economic policies, foreign affairs all seem repeatedly reckless.

The IRS is now a weapon. A weapon to punish anyone who disagrees with them, and that means every one of you.

They try to regulate our religion. They collect our cell phone and email data. They give us Solyndra, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Obamacare,

massive unemployment, a debt that will choke our grandchildren and one executive order on top of another.

Rather than expose government dishonesty and scandal — like they used to — the media elites whitewash it. Move on, they tell us, there’s nothing to see here.

Yet, one of America’s greatest threats is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field for the truth. Now it’s all entertainment, ratings and personal celebrity. The next sensational story and the deliberate spinning and purposeful use of words and language — truth be damned — to advance their own agenda.

Here’s how you know the media is lying. They still call themselves “journalists.”

They’ve never been honest about the NRA. They hate us, just for saying out loud and sticking up for what we believe, as if we have no right.

So they try to ridicule us into oblivion or shame us into submission. But their moral indignation should be directed into their own make-up
mirrors. The media’s intentional corruption of the truth is an abomination and NRA members will never — and I mean never — submit or surrender to the national media!

People have become so weary of all the government and media dishonesty, the all-too-commonplace lying, that most Americans have stopped listening.

It’s why the president’s State of the Union Address was largely ignored by the public. It’s why, according to a recent poll, 90 percent of Americans disapprove of Washington.

It’s why a majority of Americans, in poll after poll, say we don’t trust the White House, we don’t trust Congress, we don’t much trust either national political party, and we sure as heck don’t trust the national news media!

We don’t trust government, because government itself has proven unworthy of our trust. We trust ourselves and we trust what we know in our hearts to be right.

We trust our freedom. In this uncertain world, surrounded by lies and corruption, there is no greater freedom than the right to survive, to protect our families with all the rifles, shotguns and handguns we want.

We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.

I ask you. Do you trust this government to protect you?

I sure don’t trust psychos like Wayne LaPierre to do it, that’s for sure.

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Want to fight terrorists? Stop arming them.
by Tom Sullivan

In what is billed as its first front-page editorial in 100 years, the New York Times has had about enough of inaction and false piety from elected leaders who promise that if elected, they will not serve. Neither will they protect.

Here's tomorrow's Page One pic.twitter.com/N34WjyDIeh— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 5, 2015

The Times editorial board writes:

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

Esquire’s Charlie Pierce put the insanity bluntly Thursday night on All In with Chris Hayes: “We’re fighting a war on drugs, but we can’t keep from arming the drug dealers. We’re fighting a war on terror, but we can keep guys off airplanes but we can’t keep them from buying an assault weapon.”

America is awash with guns. So much so that weeks ago police uncovered a cache of thousands, perhaps the largest seizure ever (many of them stolen), purchased by a gun hoarder in South Carolina. At least he kept them off the streets. That the couple behind the San Bernadino killings got their weapons legally and used them illegally is of little comfort to the dead and wounded and their families. They were easily and readily available.

Don’t hold your breath, but perhaps this week the spell gun shamans have cast over this country is beginning to weaken. If reports are accurate, the weapons used in the San Bernadino mass murder were legally obtained. And readily available. Political fearmongers expect us to pee ourselves and demand protection whenever they invoke the terrorist bogie man. Yet they remain staunchly impotent to reduce the supply of weapons the way they work to reduce the supply of drugs. Meanwhile, terrorists use the ready availability of weapons in America as a selling point for going out and killing Americans, saying, “So what are you waiting for?”

The Times has had enough of the carnage and the political eunuchs. An imperfect solution is better than not even trying, the Times suggests. But all-or-nothing thinking is characteristic of our facile gundamentalist compatriots. Their answer to a less-than-perfect solution is not even trying.

In his famous dissent in Terminiello v. City of Chicago (1949), Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson disagreed with the majority that overturned the disorderly conduct conviction of a priest whose rantings at a rally had incited a riot. The Court found that the ordinance violated the First Amendment. Too doctrinaire, Jackson thought. He concluded his dissenting opinion:

The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

The majority held that 1st Amendment rights were inviolable in this instance, as 2nd Amendment advocates argue when it comes to guns of any shape or size. Yet “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” is cited regularly whenever national security is at issue, except when the issue is touching the 2nd Amendment. The pretzel logic of gundamentalists is that their favorite amendment is sacrosanct, and that the 2nd Amendment writes the option for national suicide into the Constitution. That is, that the Founders wrote into the Bill of Rights the right to overthrow the very government the Founders just worked so assiduously to create. And so the carnage must continue, because freedom.

Enough.

Because we all need this

by digby

It’s been an awful week. This may help a little bit.

Bring on the crusade

by digby

I’m sure you’ve been dying to know what’s happening in the fever swamp in the wake of San Bernardino. This comes from Richard Viguerie’s shop:

As the details emerge about the backgrounds of the perpetrators of the jihadi attack on the Inland Regional Center, a facility for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California, two things are crystal clear – the assault was carried out by three Muslims who have family backgrounds from Muslim majority countries – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The lead attacker, Syed Rizwan Farook, was described by his own father as “very religious” (so much for the George W. Bush myth that Islam is a religion of peace) although the relative level of devotion to Islam of his accomplices Tashfeen Malik and Tayyeep bin Ardogan are at this point unknown, the notion that outward signs of Muslim religious devotion are indicative of a propensity toward violence is shallow to say the least.

The key to understanding the California attack and the other jihadi assaults on America and the West, such as the recent attacks in Paris, is the concept of Islamic supremacy embodied in Shariah – Islamic law.

If you are a Shariah compliant Muslim, as our friend Daniel Horowitz has observed, you’re a member of the global jihadist movement, and this, as we’ve noted many times is not a “religion” as those raised in the Western Enlightenment understand the term.

Islam, as it is practiced by millions of Muslims around the world, is a totalitarian political system that regulates the lives of adherents in the minutest detail and whose goal is a worldwide Islamic Caliphate bestowing absolute power on its leaders.

It is virtually the polar opposite of the American system of constitutional liberty.

Islam, as it is practiced by millions of adherents around the globe is, in the words of Daniel Pipes, “transformed from a personal faith into a ruling system that knows no constraints.”

Yet, our political leaders, such as Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and President Barack Obama refuse to acknowledge this reality.

UPDATE: In a truly astonishing comment regarding the jihadi attack in San Bernardino Speaker Ryan told CBS News: “[W]hat we have seen in a common theme among many of these mass shootings is the theme of mental illness… And we need to fix our mental illness laws, our policies. They’re outdated. And that is something that we are working on right now.”

UPDATE #2: U.S. investigators are evaluating evidence that Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani native who had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, two U.S. officials told Reuters. CNN reported on Friday that one U.S. official said Malik had pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi in a posting on Facebook made on Wednesday, the day of the attack, under an account that used a different name.

While fundamentalist Islam differs in its details from other utopian ideologies, said Pipes, it closely resembles them in scope and ambition. Like communism and fascism, it offers a vanguard ideology; a complete program to improve man and create a new society; complete control over that society; and cadres ready, even eager, to spill blood.

At the height of the Cold War, would we have admitted thousands of communists into America as refugees?

No, we actually passed laws against Communists entering America and becoming a fifth column in our existential battle with Soviet-inspired World Communism.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the McCarran–Walter Act) allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also allowed the barring of suspected subversives from entering the country. And apropos the issue of Muslim immigration, it was used to bar members and former members and “fellow travelers” of the Communist Party from entry into the United States.

When the bill first passed President Harry Truman vetoed it, using much the same language and arguments used by today’s establishment politicians against heightened scrutiny of Muslim immigration:

We do not need to be protected against immigrants from these countries–on the contrary we want to stretch out a helping hand, to save those who have managed to flee into Western Europe, to succor those who are brave enough to escape from barbarism, to welcome and restore them against the day when their countries will, as we hope, be free again….These are only a few examples of the absurdity, the cruelty of carrying over into this year of 1952 the isolationist limitations of our 1924 law.

In no other realm of our national life are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration.

Senator McCarron’s retort is equally representative of the views of today’s country class citizens who oppose the enemies of constitutional government being brought here at taxpayer expense to undermine their liberties:

I believe that this nation is the last hope of Western civilization and if this oasis of the world shall be overrun, perverted, contaminated or destroyed, then the last flickering light of humanity will be extinguished. I take no issue with those who would praise the contributions which have been made to our society by people of many races, of varied creeds and colors. … However, we have in the United States today hard-core, indigestible blocs which have not become integrated into the American way of life, but which, on the contrary are its deadly enemies. Today, as never before, untold millions are storming our gates for admission and those gates are cracking under the strain. The solution of the problems of Europe and Asia will not come through a transplanting of those problems en masse to the United States. … I do not intend to become prophetic, but if the enemies of this legislation succeed in riddling it to pieces, or in amending it beyond recognition, they will have contributed more to promote this nation’s downfall than any other group since we achieved our independence as a nation.

Daniel Pipes, in an essay published in 1995 quoted Ahmad Nawfal, a Muslim Brother from Jordan, who said that “If we have a choice between democracy and dictatorship, we choose democracy. But if it’s between Islam and democracy, we choose Islam.” Pipes also noted Hadi Hawang of PAS in Malaysia made the same point more bluntly: “I am not interested in democracy, Islam is not democracy, Islam is Islam.” Or, in the famous (if not completely verified) words of ‘Ali Belhadj, a leader of Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), “When we are in power, there will be no more elections because God will be ruling.”

Islam, as it is today practiced by millions of Muslims across the globe, is inimical to the separation of church and state and government based on constitutional liberty. We are in a war of ideas, not just with radical Islamists, but with concepts deeply embedded in Muslim culture. And as long as mass legal (and illegal) immigration from Muslim countries continues unabated we are losing that war.

It is time to stop voluntarily bringing the enemies of constitutional liberty into our country. Our government has the constitutional authority and the precedent; now is the time, before the enemy reaches critical mass, to ban most Muslim immigration to America. 

Terrorism isn’t really in the eye of the beholder

by digby

If one defines terrorism as violence for political or ideological reasons against civilians then it looks like the San Bernardino attack was an act of terrorism. So was Colorado Springs.

Here’s a poll on how people see the latter:

I think the Republicans believe that only a Muslim can commit terrorism. Or that all terrorism is committed by Muslims.

I would guess they’d be willing to stretch the definition to include other foreigners and Americans with names or skin color that don’t sound and look like their own, though.

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“So tell me Mickey, any regrets?”


by digby

I’m sure that most of you have heard about the bizarre happenings on cable news this morning in which MSNBC (among others) gathered outside the apartment of the San Bernardino attackers, helped the landlord pry off the plywood on the door and raced in live to rummage through everything in there. They even showed the license and social security card of the shooter’s mother in close-up on live TV. They speculated about what every item might have meant and showed pictures of unknown people to the entire country. We have no idea who they are.

This was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen a network broadcast live.

C&L has video if you didn’t get a chance to see it. 

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“At the end of the day, the work of amateurs”

by digby

Some actual real analysis and info from Richard Engle at MSNBC:

Tashfeen Malik’s international background, she had spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia from a Pakistani family, moved to Saudi Arabia when she was about 2 years old, And then about five or sice years ago went back to pakistan to study to become a pharmacist and then met her husband and moved to the United States with him and went through all the security checks required to get that finace visa which is a rigorous process.

So there is not an indication that this is a sleeper cell, that this someone who was planted by ISIS, that was years in the making. More likely it was someone in the United States, unhappy with the way they were living, unhappy with the way they were seen, became radicalized there and founded, was part of a cell in the United States.

This is exactly the scenario that intelligence and law enforcement have been warning about. And they’ve warned specifically that the United States has a unique danger because of the easy access to weapons to firearms. It’s not like a country where it’s hard to get guns to carry out an attack as devastating as this one on their own.

It is still, at the end of the day, the work of amateurs. If you compare this to Paris there is an enormous difference. In Paris you had teams of skilled assassins who were operating with a coordinated plan with a mastermind, with ISIS clearly involved from the get go and these were trained killers who had a plan and operated according to plan. This couple didn’t seem to know what they were doing. They had a bomb that didn’t go off, they left most of their ammunition at home. They attacked one target and were perhaps going to another target but if you compare it to Paris it was clearly a much less professional kind of operation.

Kate Snow passing on the breathless reporting we’ve been seeing all morning:

Just to check one other thing there are reports that ISIS, now that this Facebook post has come out that perhaps an ISIS supportive media outlet is claiming at least some responsibility, not responsibility but claiming “yes, that was one of ours.”

Engle, looking frustrated, replied:

Not exactly. And it’s a clear distinction. After Paris, moments after Paris, ISIS starts claiming responsibility. “We did it, that was out operation.” And then after a few days, it seems like every ISIS member in Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria, who could speak French put out a video and they were bragging about it and threatening and putting out videos celebrating this.

This case, ISIS has been very far behind. They’ve been following media reports. Initially the reports from ISIS supporters talked about three attackers, because if you’ll remember very early when this news broke there was talk about three shooters and now they are saying two and that they’re “one of us” and ISIS supporters are just saying this seems to be the act of “ISIS supporters” which has also been reported in the news media so it could be just circular reporting. But very different from Paris when immediately you had slick videos and everyone in OSIS back home in Syria beating their chests telling the world what a great job they had done.

Everyone is getting very, very excited over the idea that this was some kind of Manchurian candidate scenario with Tashfeen Malik groomed for years to marry an American Muslim so she could come into the US, seduce her husband into becoming a radical and carry out a terrorist attack. Lindsey Graham pretty much said so on TV this morning.

But ask yourself an important question: if this was a sophisticated plot, years in the making, does targeting a Christmas party full of county bureaucrats in San Bernardino really make a lot of sense? If this “sleeper” had been trained and groomed for this job, you’d think she would have come up with something with a little bit more political impact.

No, this is probably exactly what Engle says, an amateur pair of Lone Wolf killers in a land where they can easily get their hands on as much firepower as they want who carried out their own little jihad. It’s no less devastating to the victims of their insanity, of course. But everyone needs to take a breath and recognize that this is likely no different than all the other mass shootings we’ve had this year.

And that is bad enough.

Oh, and by the way, the Republicans in congress once again voted down any restrictions on gun rights for suspected terrorists. Yesterday.

*And yes, I know the “watch list” is an abomination with no due process. But if it’s ok to use it to bar someone from getting on an airplane it makes little sense that you can’t use it to bar someone from buying a gun. I know the founders didn’t put a “right to travel” in the Bill of Rights but I have a feeling that if they could weigh in they’d think that being free to fly on airplane was more important than a right to own an AR-15. In any case, they’re dead and we aren’t and it makes no sense that this “right to bear arms” is so sacrosanct that tens of thousands of people must die every year.

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