Random Politics & Religion #19

Not enough murders happening in Houston lately (shock!) so they got to do something, right?

It's what I've always said about NPR. In general it's tolerable, but it has the dumbest guest interviews imaginable.

I helped an old lady cross the street once. She didn't want to cross the street, but that wasn't my problem.

What about other crimes? Is there not even one international drug lord in town that they can roundhouse kick?

The trick in life is not to do something to help solve a problem yourself, it's to put the burden on "society" and then yell at anyone who doesn't like it.

3 pages and no Simpsons references what the hell is going on here ?

I ***you not *

Her problem was that she was an old lady !

or at least the person pretending to be Hillary Clinton would...

the real HRC died diuring the campaign and they "Weekend at Bernie's" her the last nine months...

On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway referred to "the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre" in an MSNBC appearance. As you probably know if you're reading this post, there never was a Bowling Green massacre; what Conway was (sort of referring) to was the 2011 arrest in Bowling Green, Kentucky, of two Iraqi men who were caught in an FBI sting operation trying to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq, the group that became ISIS. Both men admitted to having used IEDs against U.S. troops in Iraq before they were admitted to the U.S. as refugees. They were both sentenced to long prison terms.

Conway subsequently said she had "misspoke[n] one word" and meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists." A few problems with that:

1. "The masterminds behind the Bowling Green terrorists" wouldn't have made sense.

2. Reports Monday show that Conway had actually referred to "the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers" in a Jan. 29 TMZ interview and to "the Bowling Green massacre" in a Cosmopolitan interview conducted the same day.

Said Conway to TMZ: "There were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined ISIS, and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers.” She told Cosmopolitan that "two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers' lives away."

Conway now has a few more problems:

1. Obviously the "Bowling Green massacre" was a (fake) data point that Conway was rolling out in a premeditated way, not an innocent slip of the tongue.

2. The U.S. government has never suggested that the men who were convicted traveled to the Middle East for training after having arrived here, and there does not appear to be evidence that they did so.

The somewhat mystifying thing is that what actually happened—two Iraqi refugees admitting they'd conducted terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers before moving to the U.S. and attempting to support further attacks—was a failure of the refugee vetting process, even if the latter attacks were never in danger of coming to fruition because they were invented for the purposes of a sting.

Of course, the story of two refugees becoming radicalized, popping over to the Middle East for some meetings with ISIS, and then re-entering the United States to plan and successfully carry out an attack against U.S. troops would have been a much bigger failure of the vetting process. So that's what Conway went with.

That was by far the BEST bit of anti clinton "facts I don't like" there was this season.

The only thing that even came remotely close to be THAT entertaining was the spirit cooking / devil worship episode at the end.

Now about that "Bowling Green Massacre misstatement"...

Conway Had Mentioned Imaginary Bowling Green Attack Twice Before She “Misspoke” About It on MSNBC
Slate, so our loyal trumpettes can ignore it

The Navy SEAL raid in Yemen last week had a secret objective — the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who survived and is now taunting President Donald Trump in an audio message.

Military and intelligence officials told NBC News the goal of the massive operation was to capture or kill Qassim al-Rimi, considered the third most dangerous terrorist in the world and a master recruiter.

But while one SEAL, 14 al Qaeda fighters and civilians including an 8-year-old girl were killed during a firefight, al-Rimi is still alive and in Yemen, multiple military officials said.
On Sunday, al-Rimi — who landed on the U.S. most-wanted terrorist list after taking over al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate in 2015 — released an audio recording that military sources said is authentic.

"The fool of the White House got slapped at the beginning of his road in your lands," he said in an apparent reference to the Jan. 29 raid.

It's not clear if al-Rimi was at the al Qaeda camp but escaped when SEAL Team 6 and Emirati commandos descended, if he happened to be elsewhere, or even if he was tipped off

The White House — which had declared the raid "a successful operation by all standards" — had no comment Monday on his escape from death. The Pentagon also declined to comment.

Juan Zarate, a national security adviser in the Bush administration and an NBC News analyst, said that even though the raid did not neutralize al-Rimi, it could still yield smaller victories.

"Certainly if the goal is to capture the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that didn't happen. It wasn't successful in that regard," he said.

"On the other hand, a number of al Qaeda leaders were killed, and al Qaeda was disrupted, at least in terms of that cell. They understand that the U.S. is willing to lean forward and perhaps they're being deterred or disrupted in their activities.

"And we may have collected incredibly valuable intelligence that will lead to further disruptions and further counterterrorism activities down the road."

Military officials told NBC News that it was the prospect of taking out al-Rimi that convinced the U.S. chain of command that the mission was worth the risk.

Preparation spanned two administrations. After the election, the Pentagon presented the Obama team with a broad plan to accelerate U.S. counter-terrorism operations in Yemen, and the Obama administration referred the proposal to the incoming Trump team.

After two months of military preparation increasingly focused on the opportunity to capture al-Rimi, Trump was told by Defense Secretary James Mattis and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that his capture would be a "game changer," according to a senior White House official with direct knowledge of the discussions.

The so-called "package" for the mission was larger than any counterterrorism strike since the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden: two dozen SEALs, backed up by 30 to 40 other Americans on the ground and in the air. A half-dozen Yemeni soldiers and a dozen commandos from the United Arabs Emirates who had developed the intelligence leading to the target were also involved, and a Marine Corps Quick Reaction Force was waiting off shore, multiple officials say.

A senior U.S. intelligence official has told NBC News that "almost everything went wrong" once the raid got underway. Occupants of the target house were alerted by something — possibly a barking dog, a drone crash or a walkie-talkie chatter, U.S. officials said.

The raiding force on the ground came under fire and fighting erupted around houses where women and children were staying, with some armed women firing on the U.S. and Emirati forces, senior military official told NBC News.

Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens of SEAL Team 6 was mortally wounded, and an MV-22 Osprey called in as backup had a hard landing and was rendered useless. A pair of Harrier jets and a pair of helicopter gunships arrived and attacked the encampment and destroyed the Osprey, the military official said.

The Pentagon later acknowledged that civilians were killed, possibly including children. The dead included the 8-year-old Nawr al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen through her father American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a 2011 airstrike in Yemen.

After the raid, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it had been "a successful operation by all standards" and the Pentagon released a statement that said U.S. forces had captured "materials and information that is yielding valuable intelligence."

Taunting the Donald? Sounds like al-Rimi might also be employeed by the Washington Post or New York Times.

Stop compensating for the fact you cant read more than 140 character posts with meme'd responses.

#amidoingitrite?