Alright, teabaggers. I’ll meet you half way. Let’s agree that he’s not a Nazi, but he is a socialist.
I can tell you when this country will get real health care reform. It will come when insurance premiums are so high, and when so many people die from lack of health care, and when so many people go bankrupt from paying medical bills, and when the rest of the system is so dysfunctional that when the tea partiers have a protest in Washington, only three people will show up. That’s when there will be real health care reform.
My biggest fear in life is that a lot of the cool inventions and advancements in technology prevalent in science fiction won’t happen in my life time. But it seems like and early version of food replicators may be in the works:
Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.
This would go well with a glass of synthehol.
In high school (and all of this is still the case), I never put on a tough guy facade (although I was, and still am, a metalhead), I never talked shit to anyone, and I never threatened anyone. I was always nice to people, I was easy to get along with, and in general, I was always sensitive to other people’s feelings.
And you know what? No one ever fucked with me and no one ever tried to beat me up. Actually, I’ve never been in a fight in my entire life. You know why? Because I’m not an asshole and I don’t piss people off. No one’s angry at me or has any desire to fuck with me.
This idea that we have to “act tough”, or terrorists will attack us, is just fucking stupid.
Politifact gives Gingrich’s statement that Executive Order 12425 could, “lead to a number of investigations by Interpol in the United States, potentially aimed at American officials” a rating of “Pants on Fire”:
The key problem with this notion is that Interpol couldn’t investigate CIA or American officials, because Interpol doesn’t do investigations. Although Interpol is often portrayed in movies as an international police force, solving crimes and arresting bad guys, its actual purposes are modest: It helps police organizations in different countries communicate and coordinate actions, provides databases of crime information (fingerprints, stolen artwork, names of suspected terrorists), training and other support services. It doesn’t arrest anyone, and doesn’t even have its own officers. Instead, police forces from around the world loan their officers to the organization. …
That’s exactly what Gingrich’s claims are: conspiracy theories, based on wild conjecture, not reality. For fanning the flames of paranoia, Gringrich’s claims earn a Pants on Fire.
Turns out, there are more facts about Chuck Norris than his ability to slam a revolving door or win a game of Connect Four in only three moves or touch MC Hammer. He’s now capable of making Glenn Beck look sane.
In a column for World Net Daily, Norris strings together conspiracy theory after conspiracy to speculate as to why President Obama signed an executive order granting certain immunities to INTERPOL. You know, the same immunities granted to all international organizations under the International Organizations Immunities Act that serve to protect foreign nations from having their classified records and data searched and seized by the US government. The same immunities that even Fox News panelists described as “benign”.
But let’s see what Chuck has to say:
Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order and that New York is the feds’ city of choice to place 9/11 terrorists on trial in federal court?
Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order and that, if for any reason the White House can’t give terrorist detainees U.S. constitutional privileges by being tried in civilian courts, they now have the close proximity of Interpol archives that are exempt from American legal or investigative discovery? …
Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order and that the feds want to try these 9/11 terrorists in civilian courts rather than military courts, and undoubtedly don’t want to lose the cases in public opinion by the dissemination of the trials’ details and evidence?
I’m not quite sure I follow, Chuck. It sounds like you’re criticizing Obama for trying terrorists in civilian courts rather than military courts, and then you speculate that he plans to use INTERPOL to keep details and evidence from these trials away from the public. That’s odd, since “civilian trials must be open to the public, while military tribunals can be held in secret”. But do go on.
Is it merely coincidental that Obama signed this executive Interpol order and that the following events are converging at this time in America’s history: the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the closure of Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility, Obama’s indifference and even defense of Islamic extremists like the Fort Hood shooter or Northwest flight 253’s attempted bomber, the feds’ decision to conduct jihadists trials in New York and the search and seizure exemption of Interpol in New York and throughout the U.S.?
You mind providing a link to these claims that Obama has defended “Islamic extremists like the Fort Hood shooter or Northwest flight 253’s attempted bomber”? I guess Chuck Norris doesn’t need to click on a link to get to a website. He just stares at the computer screen and the website comes to him.
I have no doubt that Interpol will become Obama’s secret vault for terrorists’ criminal records and evidence – and whatever else he and his Cabinet want to place in there.
Chuck Norris doesn’t need to hide things in a secret vault. They hide themselves because they fear Chuck Norris.
This is just the beginning of what Washington can and will do with this executive order that Obama signed. And it’s just one more example of the way your federal government has got the backs of those who are attacking our country, abandoning our Constitution and dissolving America’s sovereignty.
Chuck Norris has got the backs of those who are attacking our country … by giving them a roundhouse kick.
In the end, there appears to be one true advantage for the president’s executive order to exempt Interpol from search and seizure: There will always be a safe and tamper-proof place where Obama can store his original, long-form birth certificate.
Chuck Norris doesn’t need to see proof of birth. Chuck Norris simply decides who is allowed to be born and where.
This will provide Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert with a lot of great material.
In a commendable act of patriotism, “Muslims, Arab-Americans and Nigerian-Americans stood together Friday outside the federal courthouse [in Detroit] to speak out against terrorism and Islamic extremists…. The rally was held during the U.S. District Court arraignment of terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet bound for Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Christmas Day.”
If we are ever to completely eradicate the threat of Islamic terrorism in the U.S., the path of the protestors in Detroit has to become drastically more appealing to Muslims than the path of the Underpants Bomber. Racial profiling, which is not only unconstitutional and illegal (via the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment), would be extremely counterproductive to achieving this goal.
It’s important to understand that Al Qaeda exists in two forms: an organization and a movement. U.S. counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan serve to fight Al Qaeda in the first form. Fighting Al Qaeda the “movement” is a much more difficult battle. In his great overview of the structural problems with Al Qaeda, Thomas Rid describes the movement as:
… people who barely qualify as a group: young second- and third-generation Muslims in the diaspora who are engaged in a more amateurish but persistent holy war, fueled by their own complex personal discontents. Al Qaeda’s challenge is to encompass the jihadis who drift to the criminal and eccentric fringe while keeping alive its appeal to the Muslim mainstream and a rhetoric of high aspiration and promise.
To fight this movement, we need to make it less attractive to Muslim individuals who “drift to the criminal and eccentric fringe”. Abroad, this can be achieved through nation building and foreign policy. Domestically, the best strategy is to make American Muslims feel like Americans, and not like foreigners in their own country. Racially profiling Arabs clearly would not serve this goal. Instead it would drive a few deranged American Muslims to sympathize with, and possibly mimic, the actions of the Underpants Bomber rather than those of the protestors in Detroit.
The Strategy For 2010
Despite what anyone says, the result from the Massachusetts special election is not a repudiation on health care reform, President Obama, or Liberalism. Instead this was a perfect storm of 10% unemployment, opposition enthusiasm that always occurs in off-year elections, and a really shitty candidate in Martha Coakley. Regardless, the Democratic Party got caught napping, and we could use a good kick in the ass to wake us up.
I was all set to write a lengthy post laying out a plan for how we can rejuvenate the base and restore the enthusiasm we had in 2008. Turns out, Matthew Yglesias, a much smarter man than I, already wrote it, and you should read the whole thing.
I’d also like to add that by not compromising and “playing to lose”, the White House can make “Republican obstructionism” the narrative of 2010. In doing so, Obama will educate the public on the Republican party’s overuse of the filibuster and how that is what’s preventing us from achieving the “change” we all want. Additionally, by refusing to compromise, proposed legislation will have a shorter lifetime on the floor and be subject to less misinformation and hyperbolic demagoguery from the far right.