"Al Qaeda/AP" is my attempt at short-hand for this Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula cult. I know most just say "AQAP" or something, but I haven't written that yet, so... there's my transition to it.

We were of course sternly lectured that this was an isolated incident and was not "terrorism" because there was no connection to a foreign terror-sponsoring organization. Even if that were true, it's jackass, because the real model of true jihadism is millions of self-starting lone jihadist killers who don't need any organization to tell them to kill. They just need a bit of online proselytizing and to feel the call to serve the God of Murder.

So yes, that too is "terrorism." It is an attempt to terrorize in service of a political/criminal movement, if not at the behest of that movement.

No one in the GOP or conservative movement actually tells me what to write or what to cover. Does that mean I'm not acting in service of the GOP or conservative movement? Give me a break. No one would claim I have no connection to these groups. Obviously I am in their service. I'm just not in their organizational chart.

Funny how the One Abortion Clinic Bomber Everyone Loves to Talk About is a terrorist, despite not having some sort of organization directing his actions, but none of these guys pass muster.

But, even if one subscribes to that conveniently-cramped definition of terrorism, it appears now that initial assurances by our law enforcement/intelligence community were wrong.

In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting “a Jihadi Attack” in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops. ....

It remains unclear whether Mr. Muhammad really has ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula .... But if evidence emerges that his claim is true, it will give the June 1, 2009, shooting in Little Rock new significance at a time when Yemen is being more closely scrutinized as a source of terrorist plots against the United States.

Mr. Muhammad, 24, a Muslim convert from Memphis, spent about 16 months in Yemen starting in the fall of 2007, ostensibly teaching English and learning Arabic. During that time, he married a woman from south Yemen. But he was also imprisoned for several months because he overstayed his visa and was holding a fraudulent Somali passport, the Yemen government said.

Under pressure from the United States government, Yemen deported Mr. Muhammad in late January 2009. But just four months after his return, Mr. Muhammad used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down two soldiers — Pvt. William A. Long and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula — while they were standing outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, killing Private Long and wounding Private Ezeagwula.

Conservatives sometimes react too quickly to such stories, immediately branding them terrorism.

But there's a reason we (I) do this: It's because I know damn well my government is lying to me. I have seen this time and time again, where the first statement, provided mere hours after an incident, when people are still in triage and there has been not enough time to even begin an investigation, let alone conclude one, is the rote repetition of the claim that it's not terrorism, there is no foreign connection, etc.

And if they're saying that out of the box, then we know for a fact they are actively avoiding lines of questioning that would contradict that claim, because that is what human beings do. Once a person has committed himself to a position, he does not wish to disturb it or reverse himself, and will see only evidence that supports his first half-assed guess, and ignore evidence that contradicts it.

I am tired of this bullshit. No one knows in the initial hours after a jihadist assault whether it's a self-starter or whether the guy was under orders (or the middle case where he's not acting under orders per se, but got training and ideological reinforcement from jihadist groups), and yet the government always tells me, immediately, it wasn't terrorism.

I read, somewhere, the most brilliantly cynical analysis of this tendency, which I think is 100% accurate:

If a terrorist attack succeeds, it's not terrorism, because the government will not acknowledge successful terrorist attacks.

The government only likes acknowledging foiled terrorism attacks, because if they've foiled it, they've protected us against terrorism, and they want us all to know that.

Every FBI sting where jihadists get rounded up for planting fake bombs or buying crippled missile launchers is promoted as a terrorist-bust.

But when these guy actually murder people -- oh no, that wasn't terrorism at all, that was just some lone nut with a gun. (And a Koran.)

Enough of the bullshit. If we're to have genuine confidence in our government at all (is that still a goal they aspire to?), they need to be straight with us, stop giving us PR nonsense, and admit their failings alongside their trumpeting of their successes.

If they keep claiming that every successful terrorist attack is not terrorism, we have every right to suspect they are not taking this seriously, and that they are covering up their failures, and that they are, of course, not dealing with the lapses that caused the failures, and that more of us will be killed just so they can go up in front of the microphones and make pissing-on-our-backs claims like "There is no evidence this was a terrorist attack."

What scares the hell out of me isn't that terrorism is being treated as a law enforcement issue. If only. That may not be the best possible response to terrorism, but at least it would be barely-adequate response.

What scares me more than that is that terrorism is being treated solely as a public relations issue. The only thing that seems to matter is spin and "winning the media cycle."

Guys? Allow yourselves to lose the media cycle once in a while so you can win the terrorism cycle, okay?

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 06:37 AM | Comments (69)
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Posted by: Ace at 05:43 AM | Comments (115)
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Oh no! No no no! I can't bear the sight of this lascivious female flesh!

Little Miss Attila wonders why it's only the socially-liberal libertine HuffPo and DU that are getting the vapors over the sight of a woman's filthy ankles:

So. Whassup?—Democratic optimism about hoping to see a promising politician who’s nominally on the other side go down in flames? Or rank stereotyping about anyone even vaguely related to the Republican party being a hardcore SoCon?

IÂ’m thinking a bit of both, but TreacherÂ’s right: this is pretty freakinÂ’ funny. I didnÂ’t read more than a few comments at HuffPo, but I like the ones who are genuinely angry that there are a few physically attractive Republicans out there, like Brown, Romney and Palin. I wonder if these are the same people who were pissed off about Rush Limbaugh being severely overweight in the 1990s. Or who loved to make fun of the way Katherine Harris (mis) applied her makeup back in the day. Or Newt GingrichÂ’s less-than-photogenic appearance.

Also making the rounds is this photo of Brown and his hot daughters, in, presumably, his $10,000.01-$20,000.00 Aruba time-share.

My friend Boston Irish sent this to me with the heading "I guess I voted the right way."

But it's making the rounds on the left, and they're just shocked, shocked to see girl-parts on display.

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Posted by: Ace at 05:40 AM | Comments (176)
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It's clear what the Democratic line of attack is going to be this year: all populism all the time. Wall Street, banks, corporations, and disfavored industries like health insurers, petroleum are going to get a hell of a battering while Democrats founder trying to buy votes by pretending to be the best palls of Middle America.

Yesterday's decision in Citizens United, though it was sorely needed, has been seized like a lifebuoy. The President— who must have been the worst constitutional law professor ever—has ordered his lawyers to find a way to legislate away the Supreme Court's constitutional determination that people in groups have just as much a right to political participation as individuals alone.

That's the core of Citizens United: you have a right to speech, you have a right to associate with others, and you don't give up your right to speech when you choose to associate. The Constitution does not give to Congress the power to pick favored speakers and disfavored speakers. In fact, the First Amendment specifically prohibits such anti-democratic laws.

Democrats, however, place more importance on speech bans than countering speech they don't like. The democratic (small 'd') response to speech you disagree with is more speech. For Democrats, more political speech is to be avoided. For Democrats, too much political participation is bad for democracy. For Democrats, a lone man or woman speaking up for themselves is fine, but a group speaking up for itself is "corruption."

The Democratic Congress will hold hearings on this "dangerous" ruling that restores to Americans the speech rights that they hold by virtue of birth. If you happen to be discussing Citizens United with your coworkers, do me a favor and point out to them that the purpose of these hearings will be how to shut Americans up in the name of "the public interest."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:36 AM | Comments (39)
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It's amazing how he perfectly repeats the stupidest, most puerile, most ignorant talking points about American politics, all obviously gleaned from The Guardian's more unhinged columnists, and just deadpans them as if he not only means them, but as if he's doing us a service by repeating stupidity in an arrogant, faux-intellectual manner.

Also check out the sardonic brilliance as he laughs at "his" tritely ignorant observations as if they're gems of comedy.

Perfect. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:31 AM | Comments (73)
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FRIDAY!! Woooooooo!

Oh: And go here.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:12 AM | Comments (92)
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Just another theme-less Thursday ONT with the usual random sub-moron stuff.

He's Dead Jim!
Here's a classic Star Trek compilation. That Dr. McCoy sure was a master at identifying dead people.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:36 PM | Comments (647)
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Guess it's not old. Despite what she said earlier, Pelosi will not be denied.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells National Review Online that House Democrats are planning to use the budget-reconciliation process in order to pass Obamacare. “They’re meeting with each other this weekend to pursue it,” says Ryan. “I’ve spoken with many Democrats and the message is this: They’re not ready to give up. They’ve waited their entire adult lives for this moment and they aren’t ready to let 100,000 pesky votes in Massachusetts get in the way of fulfilling their destiny. They’ll look at every option and spend the next four or five days figuring it out.”

Right?

(h/t: Rich Lowry's Twitter feed.)

Posted by: Slublog at 02:40 PM | Comments (458)
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Files Chap 7 bankruptcy, ends broadcast operations, today.

Expect more. Money talks, that other thing walks.

via @geraghty on Twitter

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 01:17 PM | Comments (287)
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(I believe open blog was declared and I am a man sitting in a dark apartment wiyh with nothing to do so...)

The actual story is that today’s proposal is totally new, far more radical than anything Obama and his top officials, mainly chief economic adviser Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, have proposed in the past. Indeed, they’ve been actively avoiding it for the better part of their first year in office. The president was gracious enough today to credit the man responsible for it—“we’re calling it the Volcker rule after the tall guy behind me,” he said—but what Obama didn’t say was that, until now, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has been virtually ignored by his administration.

...

If adopted, along with another proposal to limit the consolidation of the financial sector into giant firms—essentially what’s happened over the past two decades—Obama’s new plan would dramatically change Wall Street as we know it. It would have an effect not unlike that of the Glass-Steagall law of 1933, which forced big banks like J.P. Morgan to spin off their investment-banking sides into new firms (in that case, Morgan Stanley).

Why did Obama decide to pursue this break-up-the-bank plan? According to the senior administration officials, he grew increasingly outraged by Wall Street’s brazenness in going back to business as usual in the year since the crisis. “As we have come out of the crisis and seen major financial institutions make significant profits on their proprietary trading and using the [federal] safety net to do that,” said one official, “it persuaded the president it was worth looking into this.”

What he didnÂ’t say was that ObamaÂ’s been losing altitude in the polls fast, and one of his problems is a perceived softness on Wall Street in the face of public outrage.

source

I would guess that the other thing that wasn't said was a great big F**k You to the GOP for having the temerity to contest a safe Dem seat and win. Even though it's false (look at contribution records) the perception is that Wall Street is in bed with the GOP, so here's a little bit of payback. I wouldn't be surprised if today's decision by the Supreme Court didn't figure into this a bit also. In any case it's a temper tantrum that is going to hurt us all.

Originally posted at Doubleplusundead

Posted by: Open Blog at 12:23 PM | Comments (329)
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