The Undies Bomber

Woman stabs man in heart
when arguing about playing
Kenny Rogers or Bob Dylan.

I never thought I would see something that would make me think the Keystone Kops were a highly organized and efficient force, but this underwear bomber business makes me think they were, at least when compared with our airport security people. I’m sure you have all heard about this already, and there is no way I could do better than Jon Stewart last night, but I can’t help a brief review of what I take to be one of the greatest comedy of errors ever. Think about it, a 23 year-old Nigerian man whose name surfaced in intelligence circles as early as August, a rumor going around the same circles that a Nigerian man was being prepared for a terrorist mission, a Nigerian man who had some kind of confusion in the U.K. about a visa, and whose father, a respected Nigerian banker, actually reported his son to the CIA as becoming “radicalized,” and a young man who arrived from either Somalia or Yemen, or at least had passed through those countries on the way, arrives at the airport for a flight to the United States. Now forget all that for the moment, and merely consider that this same young man, bought a ONE WAY TICKET TO THE UNITED STATES..…FOR MORE THAN $2300 IN CASH..…IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER..…to DETROIT, MICHIGAN….. WITH NO LUGGAGE….. and APPARENTLY NO COAT!!! They say President Obama is angry and upset. I wonder why?

Of course the usual suspects, Republicans all, have not been stingy with their criticism of Obama, accusing him of reacting too slowly, wanting to try the young man in a U.S. court of law (instead, I guess, of just shooting him on sight), and demanding that Guantanamo not be closed, and I don’t know what all else. But again, either they are too stupid to know, or too desperate to care, that this is the great age of communication and all their previous behavior has been recorded for posterity, which in this case means we all know that Bush/Cheney treated the shoe bomber and others in precisely the same way that Obama is treating this strange underwear bomber. Their hypocrisy glows brighter than even Rudolph’s nose, but they never seem to get it, or else they just think we are all such idiots we won’t pay attention to it.

I don’t know what they are feeding those politicians in Minnesota, or giving them to drink, but if Michele Bachman isn’t bad enough, a new one has emerged running for Congress. His platform seems to consist of his claim that the Obama administration is not really liberal, but is “radical” (I guess he means either socialist, communist, fascist, or some combination of things he obviously does not understand). He goes on to declare that defeating Democrats is more important than defeating terrorists. I doubt he will get far with his ideas about “radicals,” but I have no doubt he speaks Republican truths when he suggest their goal is defeating Democrats rather than protecting our nation. As far as I can tell that is the only goal the Republicans have, as they have not even bothered to offer any programs of their own, and merely want to cripple Obama and maintain the status quo until they can regain power and go back to their institutionalized and systematic theft from the taxpayers to once more reward the wealthy and powerful. Is Minnesota trying to vie with Oklahoma to see which state can produce the looniest members of Congress?

Apparently Democrats are going to try to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the Health Care Bill without input from Republicans. And of course Republicans are furious. Are they really so stupid they don’t realize that they have brought this on themselves? That is, if you announce that you are not going to cooperate on anything the Democrats want to do, and proudly announce you are going to be the party of “no,” how can you then complain that you are being left out? I confess I truly do not understand this. My opinion of Republicans is obviously not positive, and quite frankly, I believe the U.S. would be a better place by far without them, but this kind of behavior puzzles me as it is so obviously ridiculous. Having announced they will vote no on everything, and also having failed to produce any positive ideas about anything, they took the unprecedented step of completely opting out of government (I do not believe this has every happened quite like this before), but at the same time they complain they are not part of it? Even Lewis Carroll couldn’t top this irrationality.

LKBIQ:
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
Friedrich Nietzsche

TILT:
A tsunami in the Solomon Islands has left at least 1000 people homeless.