Or rather, the microfilmed plans for the Jewish Space Lasers, which are more easily concealed within a piece of statuary you might purchase at an auction and then put on an airplane to carry over to The Other Side.
When I was a kid my dad got hold of a pack of microfilm card records from the DMV. I had a cheap microscope handy, and I spent a not-insignificant amount of time examining the cards under the microscope, reading out names and license plate numbers. I was a weird kid.
And this was all years before anybody had heard of doxxing! I can't remember where my Dad got them, I think he had a friend at the DMV and they were just throwing away last year's and my dad asked for a handful for his weird science-geek son.
One John B. Welles, a resident of the Conspiracysphere, has been pushing, heavily, the Deep State/Oligarchs used those lasers (not sure if they are actually kosher, but I'm sure there's a Rabbi in Upstate NY...)to light the fires in Maui....
Local news and national sports shows yesterday kept talking about "Honoring 9-11" which seems fucked up to me. You could honor say, the heroes of 9/11 or the victims of 9-11. Just honoring " 9-11" -
As what? "Not just effective, but cost effective! Spectacularly executed! Must see TV !"
We "honor" 9-11 the same way we honor most things in America. Cheap and tawdry ceremonies meant to showcase the politicians of the present. Refusing to provide money to victims' compensation funds. Looking at the 9-11 Commission's most urgent recommendations (like cross-compatible radio systems) and deciding that might cost money so, no. Glorifying the actual victims and heroes while refusing to help the survivors.<br>
My guess is that within the next 20 years, the day will have devolved into an excuse for picnics and fireworks.
Awww, c'mon! Those bears have really cleaned up with that act. Before Charmin came along, they were just dragging their asses. But now they've come from behind and they're enjoying the sweet smell of success.
Yes, DK offered punters the opportunity to bet on outcomes of New York sportsball teams on the day...specifically:
"On Sunday, DraftKings advertised its “Never Forget” parlay, in which people could bet on the Jets, Mets and Yankees to win against the Buffalo Bills, Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox, respectively. The online bookmaker gave bettors +651 odds, meaning that a gambler would win $6.51 for every $1 wagered, so long as all three teams won."
When you put it like that, it makes us sound shallow and contemptible. [pause] Oh well, pass the potato salad and turn up the Lee Greenwood song on endless loop!
Nine-eleven: the most heinous atrocity ever visited upon a virtuous and blameless nation in all of human history! Never mind that measured against the deaths from the skies visited by this country’s forces upon civilian noncombatants over the past eighty years, the butcher’s bill from 2001 isn’t even a rounding error. The dead of 9/11 didn’t have it coming, but the USA as a whole kinda did.
A dozen years ago Jeffrey Goldberg, who now edits 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘵𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤, posted a piece there on “The Real Meaning of 9/11.” Money quote:
“Imagine, for a moment, you are Marwan al-Shehhi, the lead hijacker of Flight 175. You see Christine Hanson among the passengers on the plane you had just hijacked — a two-year-old child, seated on her father's lap — 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘛𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘺.”
A photograph of the precious lisping little toddler was appended to drive home Goldberg’s point about the depravity of the foe. For some reason he didn’t go on to contrast the conduct of the wicked al-Shehhi with that of Peter Pureheart, a GS-9 who ran Predator drones out of Langley on the nightshift and took out half a dozen wedding parties in the Korangal Valley without, however, once laying eyes on any of the children eviscerated in the strikes. Cool with that, were we, Jeffrey?
To the side with the cruise missiles, asymmetric warfare will ever seem an unsportsmanlike proposition.
Unless, of course, it's al-Jazeera, and they're BYE-ASSED, unlike our glorious independent objective Fourth Estate, getting their analysis not from reporters but from ex-generals who are SO much more knowledgeable about war and the noble sacrifices that must be made. By someone else.
i dunno man, there's a difference between accidentally blowing up a wedding party of 50 people in a war zone through careless mistake, and seeing a 2-year-old up close and deciding to go ahead with your surprise attack anyway -- in order to murder thousands of civilians on purpose, and the first responders who rush to help, and blow up an architectural wonder that should have stood for centuries and was therefore in a sense the property of the whole human race like the Pyramids and Notre Dame and Taj Mahal. Fuck those guys. Don't make excuses for them.
I’m not making excuses for the hijackers, and am not in sympathy with their views on any subject that comes to mind, including architectural criticism. I observe merely that the wedding party “in a war zone”—but that would have been the whole damn country at the time, yes? Are you saying they had no business holding a wedding in a “war zone?”—is just as dead whether the drone operator ever saw their faces or not. Simply saying “sorry, nothing personal,” or “oops, our bad, we thought you were a staff meeting of Al-Qaeda higher-ups, not a baby shower” doesn’t strike me as exculpatory, particularly when these episodes kept happening.
Does the US warmaking apparatus target civilian noncombatants? Because if it does not, there have certainly been some hundreds of thousands of these since the end of WW II who have perished of our “careless mistakes.” God, at least it was honest malice and murder on the hijackers’ part, and not dressed up, as we do in our invasions, as a favor to the victims. Theirs was, as Lincoln might have put it, terrorism taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
I don't see the hijackers gaining moral superiority to the US military in any way through their carefully rehearsed plan to murder 3000+ civilians. "At least they're not hypocrites" is not persuasive to me.
I am regretting what might feel like a pointed tone directed at a fellow commenter, when I think we're all friends here, so to mitigate I will explain my view: We did not "have it coming," and we responded very reasonably to Afghanistan. Remember, before any violence, we requested the Afghan leaders hand over the mass murderers. Bush fucked up everything else but he got that right, and I was proud of it: We gave them a clear and easy choice. They chose to be invaded. War brings chaos. Chaos means some weddings will get blown to bits even if you try not to. That is not pleasant to say, but as Sherman put it, War is hell and you cannot refine it. They picked war; we tried to avoid it.
(“weddings will get blown to bits even if you try not to”—I don’t know, from the evidence, that we were trying all that hard. Damn wogs 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 persist in getting married while we’re attempting to bestow upon them, from the air, the blessings of Jeffersonian democracy, amirite?)
No offense is taken. The exact difference between levels of moral culpability attaching to the pilot of a 757 over New York in 2001 and, say, a B-52 pilot over Hanoi in 1972, both of whom were targeting civilian noncombatants, is a matter on which reasonable people may reasonably disagree. Still, it’s rather rich for a country that has dealt so much indiscriminate death from the air the world over to piss and moan when its enemies give a vanishingly little of that back employing the available tools, and I do weary of the annual waving of the bloody shirt.
I wonder whether the response on this end would have been any different had al-Qaeda employed cruise missiles, like civilized people, to take its targets down. Somehow I doubt it.
Boy, we sure loved us some 9/11 First Responders, at least until they started requesting assistance for their medical bills. Never mind all the regular people who live/lived in Lower Manhattan who were told everything's fine as they breathed in smoke and soot.
Too funny. Like a bowlful of gems, to mix metaphors. Too many great lines to pull out.
Great way to start the day, start the week, and, of course, to observe today’s sacred day (by which I mean the sarcasm there’s directed to, and only to, the right wing obsession and use of the event to wallow in Islaphobia ‘cause haters gotta hate; I’m heartless but not *that* heartless).
Considering conservatives rewrote the history of J6 literally within a few months, the only reason they haven’t done the same for 9/11 is because a Republican was President, the attackers were brown and Muslim rather than someone’s evangelical PawPaw, and the internet moved a lot slower in the aughts.
Excellent column Roy, or as Vivek would say, “hysterical, especially for those ladies reading this.”
I reiterated some of the lines and then ad-libbed a few of my own into the conversation.
HALEY: Saudi Arabia is an American ally. And they share our values. You don’t see drag queens story hour and trans people on the streets of Riyadh, I can tell you that.
“Yes, we have many shared values with the kingdom. Like beheading liberals and homosexuals; stoning women to death who get abortions or use contraceptives. Torturing and imprisoning women who want to drive. And they definitely don’t teach CRT in their classrooms.” And we have a Christian version of Sharia Law enshrined in our Constitution as well.
AUDIENCE: Hooray!
RAMASWAMY: It’s not about values, it’s about all you people [points to all the candidates], all of you being part of the Saudi Soros Deep State McGillicuddy.
“Of course it’s not about values, it’s about Global Warming policies that are destroying the American way of life.....Drill baby drill!”
RON DeSANTIS: I agree 100% about the Saudis and their values. And I’ll tell you something else. Whatever you want to say about Saddam Hussein, he knew how to deal with homosexual activists and CRT.
“Apparently so does DeSatan, he just tries to legislate their existence into oblivion. It’s a kindler, gentler form of banishment. And of course, imprisoning them so they are no longer a blight on polite society. By polite, I mean the true Americans : white Christian’s who tamed all the savages.
On this solemn day, let us all pause to reflect on the likely response if a leading Democratic candidate for President came within a mile of 9/11 trutherism.
Kamala Harris said ONE SENTENCE about how she worried the Trump administration might be rushing the vaccine for political purposes and we will NEVER hear the end of it.
“If Reagan hadn’t killed the traffic controllers union, 9/11 never would have happened.” This is why we don’t have stupid liberal conspiracy theories. Try saying that with a straight face.
I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I'd like to have one of those feverish rooms or walls. Mine would be about a musical composition. Definitely not the camgirl.
I think we all know that 9/11 was an insidious plot to juice “My Pet Goat” sales. Then Cheney hijacked it for his own murderous, very poorly conceived, plans and now “My Pet Goat” is just a dismal one-liner on a Wikipedia page…
I do remember back in the day a vigorous debate between the LIHOP people ("Bush Let it Happen On Purpose") and the "There were explosives hidden in the towers" guys. None of those folks were liberals, though.
I finally managed this year, after almost two decades, to talk down a nine-eleven Truther (“I’m not saying there were necessarily shaped charges in place, but there’s no way the towers could have collapsed that way just because they were struck by commercial aircraft”). He self-identifies as a liberal/leftist, although he struggles against the instincts inculcated by his Texas upbringing.
I was always puzzled that the idea that Bush and Cheney knew the attack was coming but did nothing because they wanted a war (what I refer to as LIHOP above) never caught on with the conspiracy-theory crowd, who preferred the far more implausible "explosives planted in the towers" theory instead.
Now I think I understand that better: People who are drawn to conspiracy theories don't want something that any normal person might be persuaded to believe, what they want is something exotic that relatively few people can be persuaded to believe, because it's all driven by a desire to be part of a small and special group who are in-the-know about something that nobody else knows.
As I’ve said to other Truthers when the subject came up, “what, you think if the towers hadn’t actually pancaked, the mere fact that they’d been struck by hijacked jets would not have constituted a 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪 sufficient unto Cheney’s purpose?”
IKR? Sure, the burnt-out husks of the towers left standing as a constant reminder of the attack would have not been at all useful to Bush and Cheney as they agitated for a war.
But this goes back to my original point: Given a choice between "plane struck the Pentagon" and "missile struck the Pentagon" they choose "missile". Given a choice between "plane crashes in a field in Pennsylvania" and "Plane lands safely at a secret location, passengers and crew held forever in a secret government prison" they choose the latter. Why? Because it's essential to separate yourself from the non-crazy population, otherwise, what makes you special?
Someone once did a study of math cranks, guys who think they've proved Fermat's Last Theorem or some other famous unproved (or even unprovable) question in math. It's the same deal, wanting to believe you know something nobody else knows, so much that you're willing to believe things that aren't true just to get that feeling of superiority (because most of the actually-true stuff has already been proven, or to produce an actually-true proof of a famous unsolved problem requires Andrew Wiles' brain, which you ain't got.)
Dear Sir: How dare you attempt levity on this, the day conservative Republicans solemnly and enthusiastically celebrate 9/11. You sully the memory of the victims they wish to exploit! For shame! [waves flag; blows noisemaker]
That reminds me, what's Trump tweeting? Solemn stuff, I'm sure.
(Everybody is gonna keep calling them tweets forever, not Truths or whatever Musk calls a tweet. And X will always be the Site Formerly Known As Twitter, except Musk isn't a demigod like Prince, hallowed be his name.)
I'ma break out my broad brush to note that Saudis* can't do anything, like work or make or build. They just spend and hire. Famously couldn't drill their oil w/o the aid of an infidel. Too rich to wipe their own asses. Oodles of time on their soft bejeweled hands to harass Bangladeshi wage slaves; gays; and broads.
You know who envies that life. Trump's put-upon little guys (and gals) from the dollar store dipshits to the American gentry. Trump embodies it, plus he's a better asshole than any Saudi can be in public.
*If my stereotyping is too much, insert "THE" Saudis. It hits differently for some reason.
Depends on the debate setting. Beer cans for The Heartland, single malt for the Wall Street crowd, and for other places you might have meth or a jug of corn squeezins.
Quick question: Can anyone remember what Rudy Giuliani actually did on 9/11 to make him a national hero, other than not visibly pooping his pants on-camera?
Deep State McGillicuddy is a Steep Date!
Also – "spent cartridges"
2 marks!
The Jewish Space Lasers are a Deep State MacGuffin!
Or rather, the microfilmed plans for the Jewish Space Lasers, which are more easily concealed within a piece of statuary you might purchase at an auction and then put on an airplane to carry over to The Other Side.
Microfilm seems cool until you need to look at it
When I was a kid my dad got hold of a pack of microfilm card records from the DMV. I had a cheap microscope handy, and I spent a not-insignificant amount of time examining the cards under the microscope, reading out names and license plate numbers. I was a weird kid.
Weird and shady! The records are valuable if you want to find someone, say.
And this was all years before anybody had heard of doxxing! I can't remember where my Dad got them, I think he had a friend at the DMV and they were just throwing away last year's and my dad asked for a handful for his weird science-geek son.
I know right? It's like _too_ small, y'know? Think they'd let you know that...
Microfiche all the way!
Like a Tetra?
Oof
"A problem solved at a great height. . . over water."
Oof.
And YEARS before Pinochet came along!
Oy...
One John B. Welles, a resident of the Conspiracysphere, has been pushing, heavily, the Deep State/Oligarchs used those lasers (not sure if they are actually kosher, but I'm sure there's a Rabbi in Upstate NY...)to light the fires in Maui....
"I'm sure there's a Rabbi in Upstate NY..."
2 marks! It's the 3 dots that kiss the chef...
Hebrew National Space Lasers
Nathan's Famous Lasers
Nathan's Lame-ass Phasers
I had a Deep State McGillicuddy at the bar the other night. I like mine with an edge so I asked them to double up the absinthe. So refreshing!
Is your heart subsequently fonder?
"AUDIENCE: [Laughs]"
Nicely done!
Local news and national sports shows yesterday kept talking about "Honoring 9-11" which seems fucked up to me. You could honor say, the heroes of 9/11 or the victims of 9-11. Just honoring " 9-11" -
As what? "Not just effective, but cost effective! Spectacularly executed! Must see TV !"
We "honor" 9-11 the same way we honor most things in America. Cheap and tawdry ceremonies meant to showcase the politicians of the present. Refusing to provide money to victims' compensation funds. Looking at the 9-11 Commission's most urgent recommendations (like cross-compatible radio systems) and deciding that might cost money so, no. Glorifying the actual victims and heroes while refusing to help the survivors.<br>
My guess is that within the next 20 years, the day will have devolved into an excuse for picnics and fireworks.
They will honor it on the Third Monday in September.
Picnics and fireworks? Maybe. But only after we load up at the sales! Sales! SALES!
Let's Roll™!
Thanks for the idea, Charmin will soon be replacing Enjoy The Go™ with this.
I'm actually kinda surprised you didn't say "Sorted 9-11: -2" but far be it from me...
Edit to add: "Shorter" self-corrected to "Sorted". I decided "What the hell, could be..."
Negative numbers are the Work of the Devil.
Honor CMXI
Oh, hey, another reason for me to hate those goddamn poop bears.
Do the poop bears have a fan base? They're still being deployed.
Awww, c'mon! Those bears have really cleaned up with that act. Before Charmin came along, they were just dragging their asses. But now they've come from behind and they're enjoying the sweet smell of success.
Deals Hotter Than Flaming Jet Fuel! Savings Bigger Than Two Skyscrapers!
MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY!!!!!!
Deals so hot they can melt steel!
I think it‘s been tried a few times on the local level. If Late Capitalism is anything, it‘s shameless
Oy:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/11/draftkings-911-never-forget-promo/
Yes, DK offered punters the opportunity to bet on outcomes of New York sportsball teams on the day...specifically:
"On Sunday, DraftKings advertised its “Never Forget” parlay, in which people could bet on the Jets, Mets and Yankees to win against the Buffalo Bills, Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox, respectively. The online bookmaker gave bettors +651 odds, meaning that a gambler would win $6.51 for every $1 wagered, so long as all three teams won."
651 is the new 911
Always a good time to sell 9-11 commemorative prepper gear.
I should have read further on before commenting. You and I often seem to have similar ideas. You know what they say about great minds!
When you put it like that, it makes us sound shallow and contemptible. [pause] Oh well, pass the potato salad and turn up the Lee Greenwood song on endless loop!
And merchandise sales - some kind of 9/11 back-to-school sale, with ads starting <s>August 1</s> right after July 4.
"We're knocking down high prices!"
\Perhaps we were honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Chilean coup we abetted
"Mommy, do they have 9-11 in France?"
The commemorative cakes will be lit.
Freedom Fried!
They celebrate with a General Strike, AKA Monday.
Nine-eleven: the most heinous atrocity ever visited upon a virtuous and blameless nation in all of human history! Never mind that measured against the deaths from the skies visited by this country’s forces upon civilian noncombatants over the past eighty years, the butcher’s bill from 2001 isn’t even a rounding error. The dead of 9/11 didn’t have it coming, but the USA as a whole kinda did.
A dozen years ago Jeffrey Goldberg, who now edits 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘵𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤, posted a piece there on “The Real Meaning of 9/11.” Money quote:
“Imagine, for a moment, you are Marwan al-Shehhi, the lead hijacker of Flight 175. You see Christine Hanson among the passengers on the plane you had just hijacked — a two-year-old child, seated on her father's lap — 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘛𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘺.”
A photograph of the precious lisping little toddler was appended to drive home Goldberg’s point about the depravity of the foe. For some reason he didn’t go on to contrast the conduct of the wicked al-Shehhi with that of Peter Pureheart, a GS-9 who ran Predator drones out of Langley on the nightshift and took out half a dozen wedding parties in the Korangal Valley without, however, once laying eyes on any of the children eviscerated in the strikes. Cool with that, were we, Jeffrey?
To the side with the cruise missiles, asymmetric warfare will ever seem an unsportsmanlike proposition.
We never see the results of OUR attacks.
Unless, of course, it's al-Jazeera, and they're BYE-ASSED, unlike our glorious independent objective Fourth Estate, getting their analysis not from reporters but from ex-generals who are SO much more knowledgeable about war and the noble sacrifices that must be made. By someone else.
Joe Jervis, of joemygod.com, says
"Sept. 11 was a Faith Based Initiative. "
i dunno man, there's a difference between accidentally blowing up a wedding party of 50 people in a war zone through careless mistake, and seeing a 2-year-old up close and deciding to go ahead with your surprise attack anyway -- in order to murder thousands of civilians on purpose, and the first responders who rush to help, and blow up an architectural wonder that should have stood for centuries and was therefore in a sense the property of the whole human race like the Pyramids and Notre Dame and Taj Mahal. Fuck those guys. Don't make excuses for them.
I’m not making excuses for the hijackers, and am not in sympathy with their views on any subject that comes to mind, including architectural criticism. I observe merely that the wedding party “in a war zone”—but that would have been the whole damn country at the time, yes? Are you saying they had no business holding a wedding in a “war zone?”—is just as dead whether the drone operator ever saw their faces or not. Simply saying “sorry, nothing personal,” or “oops, our bad, we thought you were a staff meeting of Al-Qaeda higher-ups, not a baby shower” doesn’t strike me as exculpatory, particularly when these episodes kept happening.
Does the US warmaking apparatus target civilian noncombatants? Because if it does not, there have certainly been some hundreds of thousands of these since the end of WW II who have perished of our “careless mistakes.” God, at least it was honest malice and murder on the hijackers’ part, and not dressed up, as we do in our invasions, as a favor to the victims. Theirs was, as Lincoln might have put it, terrorism taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
I don't see the hijackers gaining moral superiority to the US military in any way through their carefully rehearsed plan to murder 3000+ civilians. "At least they're not hypocrites" is not persuasive to me.
I am regretting what might feel like a pointed tone directed at a fellow commenter, when I think we're all friends here, so to mitigate I will explain my view: We did not "have it coming," and we responded very reasonably to Afghanistan. Remember, before any violence, we requested the Afghan leaders hand over the mass murderers. Bush fucked up everything else but he got that right, and I was proud of it: We gave them a clear and easy choice. They chose to be invaded. War brings chaos. Chaos means some weddings will get blown to bits even if you try not to. That is not pleasant to say, but as Sherman put it, War is hell and you cannot refine it. They picked war; we tried to avoid it.
(“weddings will get blown to bits even if you try not to”—I don’t know, from the evidence, that we were trying all that hard. Damn wogs 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 persist in getting married while we’re attempting to bestow upon them, from the air, the blessings of Jeffersonian democracy, amirite?)
No offense is taken. The exact difference between levels of moral culpability attaching to the pilot of a 757 over New York in 2001 and, say, a B-52 pilot over Hanoi in 1972, both of whom were targeting civilian noncombatants, is a matter on which reasonable people may reasonably disagree. Still, it’s rather rich for a country that has dealt so much indiscriminate death from the air the world over to piss and moan when its enemies give a vanishingly little of that back employing the available tools, and I do weary of the annual waving of the bloody shirt.
I wonder whether the response on this end would have been any different had al-Qaeda employed cruise missiles, like civilized people, to take its targets down. Somehow I doubt it.
You do remember that Bush turned down the Talibans offer to turn Osama over to den Haague for trial, as Osama would not get a fair trial in America
Boy, we sure loved us some 9/11 First Responders, at least until they started requesting assistance for their medical bills. Never mind all the regular people who live/lived in Lower Manhattan who were told everything's fine as they breathed in smoke and soot.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Too funny. Like a bowlful of gems, to mix metaphors. Too many great lines to pull out.
Great way to start the day, start the week, and, of course, to observe today’s sacred day (by which I mean the sarcasm there’s directed to, and only to, the right wing obsession and use of the event to wallow in Islaphobia ‘cause haters gotta hate; I’m heartless but not *that* heartless).
Eat a Bowl of Gems
Considering conservatives rewrote the history of J6 literally within a few months, the only reason they haven’t done the same for 9/11 is because a Republican was President, the attackers were brown and Muslim rather than someone’s evangelical PawPaw, and the internet moved a lot slower in the aughts.
Yeah, it's all going too slowly, 22 years and we still haven't left the "Just Asking Questions" phase.
Excellent column Roy, or as Vivek would say, “hysterical, especially for those ladies reading this.”
I reiterated some of the lines and then ad-libbed a few of my own into the conversation.
HALEY: Saudi Arabia is an American ally. And they share our values. You don’t see drag queens story hour and trans people on the streets of Riyadh, I can tell you that.
“Yes, we have many shared values with the kingdom. Like beheading liberals and homosexuals; stoning women to death who get abortions or use contraceptives. Torturing and imprisoning women who want to drive. And they definitely don’t teach CRT in their classrooms.” And we have a Christian version of Sharia Law enshrined in our Constitution as well.
AUDIENCE: Hooray!
RAMASWAMY: It’s not about values, it’s about all you people [points to all the candidates], all of you being part of the Saudi Soros Deep State McGillicuddy.
“Of course it’s not about values, it’s about Global Warming policies that are destroying the American way of life.....Drill baby drill!”
RON DeSANTIS: I agree 100% about the Saudis and their values. And I’ll tell you something else. Whatever you want to say about Saddam Hussein, he knew how to deal with homosexual activists and CRT.
“Apparently so does DeSatan, he just tries to legislate their existence into oblivion. It’s a kindler, gentler form of banishment. And of course, imprisoning them so they are no longer a blight on polite society. By polite, I mean the true Americans : white Christian’s who tamed all the savages.
There, fixed it....:)
We could learn a thing or two about hunting down women of child-bearing age from our Saudi friends, amirite?
I’m sure the American Taliban could reach the Saudi’s a thing or two!......:)
Y'all be crucifyin' wrong!
How so?
Yer robes aren't bad, but you need to get the matching hoods, and eventually ya gotta set fire to the whole thang!
I’m not following? I’m I the guy in a hood that needs to be set on fire?
You know what's funny, is when someone wants to depict a crucifixion, but it seems too icky, so the guy's arms are just tied to the crosspiece
Also about proper journalist-disassembly procedures.
Some instructions would be helpful, like the Saudi version of an unboxing video.
Trolling for oofs, are we?
Well, jeez, you just put some plastic tarps down to protect the carpet, then start up the chainsaws.
Stihl must have wondered about that order from Saudi Arabia, given the country's notable lack of trees.
Those falconers aren't just for show...
On this solemn day, let us all pause to reflect on the likely response if a leading Democratic candidate for President came within a mile of 9/11 trutherism.
Kamala Harris said ONE SENTENCE about how she worried the Trump administration might be rushing the vaccine for political purposes and we will NEVER hear the end of it.
“If Reagan hadn’t killed the traffic controllers union, 9/11 never would have happened.” This is why we don’t have stupid liberal conspiracy theories. Try saying that with a straight face.
Hmmm. NOW who's got a cork-covered wallfull of string and post-its?
I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I'd like to have one of those feverish rooms or walls. Mine would be about a musical composition. Definitely not the camgirl.
I think we all know that 9/11 was an insidious plot to juice “My Pet Goat” sales. Then Cheney hijacked it for his own murderous, very poorly conceived, plans and now “My Pet Goat” is just a dismal one-liner on a Wikipedia page…
I do remember back in the day a vigorous debate between the LIHOP people ("Bush Let it Happen On Purpose") and the "There were explosives hidden in the towers" guys. None of those folks were liberals, though.
I finally managed this year, after almost two decades, to talk down a nine-eleven Truther (“I’m not saying there were necessarily shaped charges in place, but there’s no way the towers could have collapsed that way just because they were struck by commercial aircraft”). He self-identifies as a liberal/leftist, although he struggles against the instincts inculcated by his Texas upbringing.
I was always puzzled that the idea that Bush and Cheney knew the attack was coming but did nothing because they wanted a war (what I refer to as LIHOP above) never caught on with the conspiracy-theory crowd, who preferred the far more implausible "explosives planted in the towers" theory instead.
Now I think I understand that better: People who are drawn to conspiracy theories don't want something that any normal person might be persuaded to believe, what they want is something exotic that relatively few people can be persuaded to believe, because it's all driven by a desire to be part of a small and special group who are in-the-know about something that nobody else knows.
As I’ve said to other Truthers when the subject came up, “what, you think if the towers hadn’t actually pancaked, the mere fact that they’d been struck by hijacked jets would not have constituted a 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪 sufficient unto Cheney’s purpose?”
IKR? Sure, the burnt-out husks of the towers left standing as a constant reminder of the attack would have not been at all useful to Bush and Cheney as they agitated for a war.
But this goes back to my original point: Given a choice between "plane struck the Pentagon" and "missile struck the Pentagon" they choose "missile". Given a choice between "plane crashes in a field in Pennsylvania" and "Plane lands safely at a secret location, passengers and crew held forever in a secret government prison" they choose the latter. Why? Because it's essential to separate yourself from the non-crazy population, otherwise, what makes you special?
Yes. Gnosticism for the political poseur.
Someone once did a study of math cranks, guys who think they've proved Fermat's Last Theorem or some other famous unproved (or even unprovable) question in math. It's the same deal, wanting to believe you know something nobody else knows, so much that you're willing to believe things that aren't true just to get that feeling of superiority (because most of the actually-true stuff has already been proven, or to produce an actually-true proof of a famous unsolved problem requires Andrew Wiles' brain, which you ain't got.)
None of those attributes seem relevant to his analysis.
Dear Sir: How dare you attempt levity on this, the day conservative Republicans solemnly and enthusiastically celebrate 9/11. You sully the memory of the victims they wish to exploit! For shame! [waves flag; blows noisemaker]
That reminds me, what's Trump tweeting? Solemn stuff, I'm sure.
(Everybody is gonna keep calling them tweets forever, not Truths or whatever Musk calls a tweet. And X will always be the Site Formerly Known As Twitter, except Musk isn't a demigod like Prince, hallowed be his name.)
"The business that formerly was not bankrupt" is next.
Perhaps on Xitter one dumps Xitts.
Better'n blowing the flag and waving the noisemaker.
Depends on if you're the flag, would you rather be blown or waved?
I'ma break out my broad brush to note that Saudis* can't do anything, like work or make or build. They just spend and hire. Famously couldn't drill their oil w/o the aid of an infidel. Too rich to wipe their own asses. Oodles of time on their soft bejeweled hands to harass Bangladeshi wage slaves; gays; and broads.
You know who envies that life. Trump's put-upon little guys (and gals) from the dollar store dipshits to the American gentry. Trump embodies it, plus he's a better asshole than any Saudi can be in public.
*If my stereotyping is too much, insert "THE" Saudis. It hits differently for some reason.
I would ask why there's beer cans at a Presidential debate, but then I remember it's a Republican debate and it makes sense.
Depends on the debate setting. Beer cans for The Heartland, single malt for the Wall Street crowd, and for other places you might have meth or a jug of corn squeezins.
I think we can all agree that nobody should be directly exposed to Republicans without some sort of chemical buffer.
“No—𝘉𝘶𝘥 Light!”
Remember to wear yer sandals if'n yer planning on squeezin' yer corns in public.
Feeling kinda manic this a.m. Off to an A.A. meeting, have fun.
If I were Vivek, I would lay low today lest someone mistake him for a hijacker.
He's the talkative one who tries to sell the stewardess a time-share in Florida before heading into the cockpit to kill the pilot.
Quick question: Can anyone remember what Rudy Giuliani actually did on 9/11 to make him a national hero, other than not visibly pooping his pants on-camera?
That's it!
And yet he's not been able to maintain even that very low standard over the years.