And quite possibly 2008. Captain Ed, faced with another outburst of right-wing domestic terrorism today after he spents weeks ridiculing the DHS report, gets the honors:
To that, I’d respond that our criticism was that the DHS report didn’t focus on known, specific threats, instead making generalized threats about abortion opponents and other vague and broad generalizations about conservative issues. In fact, it never mentioned Holocaust denial at all, nor did it mention anti-semitism at all, either; those terms don’t appear at all in the report. And despite being well-known as a threat since the 1980s, the DHS never bothered to identify von Brunn or his organization as a specific threat in the report — which, again, was the heart of our criticism.
Bolding is Ed’s.
Anyone want to explain some of the many reasons why they might not have released the names of people under investigation by various federal agencies in an openly published DHS report (notwithstanding the central fact that identifying specific threats was not the intent of the damned thing in the first place)?
*** Update ***
Ed still is not getting it, insisting that because several known terrorist groups were listed in the report on left-wing cybercrime, this report did not name specific names and thus was overly general. What Ed was asking of the report, however, is not what it was designed to do. It was not designed to identify von Brunn (Ed’s words), it was to give generalized information on what to look out for in the upcoming years.
For example, the DHS could issue a generic report for people to watch out for unattended packages or bags in airports.
Ed would then spend the next two weeks screaming that the DHS is stigmatizing anyone carrying a package or bag in an airport.
Then a bomb goes off. And considering we have had the shootings in Pittsburgh, the Tiller murder, and the shooting today, we could say several bombs have gone off.
People then point at Ed and say- “Gee. Maybe the DHS report was on to something.”
And Ed’s pithy reply? “Yeah, but they never said what exact moment and where the packages would be left, and who would leave them. So there. Wolverines!”
It’s that damned stupid. And the most frustrating thing about it is that Ed isn’t that damned stupid. He just plays the part for Hot Air.
taodon
Teh stoopid – it hurts.
Xanthippas
I’d say that ranks up there with him also wetting his pants today over the possibility of Uighurs ending up in Palau. Being thin-skinned, he responds to being called out by Greenwald with this:
My math informs me that the number of Americans who have been spied on by illegal surveillance programs > number of Americans killed by Uighur separatists.
4tehlulz
Defensive wingnut is deeeeeeeeefeeeeeeeeeeeensiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.
aimai
“This is central to my point” is the phrase that hangs over this quote, like the grin of the cheshire cat. So the right wing howled about the DHS report because it *failed to call out each and every potential right wing killer by name?* So noted. Now that hell has frozen over I’m hopeful that Ed and I can see eye to eye on my proposal to run a search engine using the words “nazi, jew, holocaust, baby, abortion, and doctor” and “bush supporter” and surgically implant a restraining taser style chip in each one of these motherfuckers of ill repute.
aimai
Cat Lady
Shep Smith is getting it over on Fox. It was just a matter of time. I just wish he would take Beck’s balls and stuff them in Beck’s mouth, live on teevee.
Bokonon
Nice to see these guys backing and filling.
But it will be a cold day in hell before they ever apologize for the necktie party they held for Napolitano, or admit that they were actually WRONG. Or that their little political games have consequences.
demkat620
Isn’t Ed’s post really another example of “The fact that I was wrong about every thing just goes to prove my point”?
Or did we go with the term rebunking?
Luke
We’re not the right-wing crazies you’re looking for …..
CapMidnight
It is just like that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S.” report!
The headline never said “Osama”!
There are lots of people named “Bin Laden”!
MattF
The countdown to a wingnut admission of error: “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3, -4,…”
cleek
stupid lazy DHS!
they should’ve titled the report “
Bin Ladenvon Brunn Determined To Strike In The US” !(@Doh!)
r€nato
@CapMidnight: heh, indeed. Exactly my thought.
kid bitzer
man, can you imagine the freak-out if that report *had* named names?
“before the obamunists took over the country, americans were innocent until proven guilty! now we live under stalinism, and that other thing that triggers spam filters!”
r€nato
@cleek: …with a rifle, along with the exact date and time.
Otherwise… who could have predicted this? Also. Too.
jaime
If you happen to wade in the right wing fever swamp blogosphere, you’ll notice the “von Brunn is actually a liberal” threads starting to pop up. Geniuses all.
geg6
Talk about a self-defensive crouch by a morally defective and ethically challenged piece of shit. How many dead just in the last year or so at the hands of these scum that he and his ilk fire up and now runs away from as fast as they can? A minister, a doctor, several cops in several states, and a security guard, just off the top of my head. This is terrorism, pure and simple. Aided and abetted by people like Captain Ed and his ilk. William Ayers, my fucking ass. I better never hear that name referenced by another Pub wingnut ever again.
The Grand Panjandrum
The myth of rightwing virility goes to pieces the more you read these pigfuckers. These people have no balls. They’ve been gibbed–like cats.
SpotWeld
I guess the best part of being a fightin’ keyboarder is that your well defended basement bunker lets you keep your head down so all those important key points of context and relvant contant just go sailing over your head.
Third Eye Open
With regards to “Conservatives”: Irony is a dead art form
I find it chuckle-worthy that the luminaries at RS are all reading from the same talking points about lone whack-jobs not being associated with them. Then you look at the top of their recommended diaries to see, “Like I’ve said a hundred times, it’s war.” where they go on to basically say liberals are treasonous and that they need to bring out the metaphorical big-guns to avoid a sharp decline of America by Barack “The Islamic Shock” Obama.
I particularly like the line about the shooter having ideological ties to the left-wing since he didn’t like joos or neo-cons, or the commenter that states, I swear these guys are plants…I have never met a Republican who was a white supremecist….
Johnny B. Guud
@Cat Lady: I just saw the clip via Sullivan’s blog
Smith comes across as a generally good and sane person, and you can see he’s really getting heated reading these viewer emails. Talk about creepy. The viewers are berating Shep for not questioning Obama’s legitimacy because of his birth certificate.
I really can’t get a handle on the truthers. If you’re a right-winger, there are more legitimate issues you can take up with Obama.
But the truthers boggle the mind. The rationale seems to be “he’s black, he spent time growing up in a foreign country, he’s obviously a socialist or something and therefore is illegitmate”
These people are actually insane. The DHS should issue a report specifically on them
someguy
Some people would argue that the government has no right to investigate based on ideology, and has to have some evidence of some sort of crime, but I’m perfectly comfortable with prosecutors asking courts in criminal trials to define some ideologies as per se violent (such as the womb bigots attempt to quash fundamental rights) and making the espousing of those beliefs grounds for investigation. How many dead bodies are we going to tolerate? The constitution isn’t a suicide pact.
Comrade Stuck
Ed, Malkin and some others are also pointing towards the fact that Von Brun was also a truther, meaning he was just as much a leftist. I could be wrong, but were not most of those people Ron Paul supporters, like Brun?
SpotWeld
I gotta grippe more. THe DHS reporst (both of them) were intended to be general guidlines for the intial stages of threat identifaction. It was never inteded to be a “threat list”.
It was meant to be a starting point for people who will be actually getting things done as far as dealing with homegrown terrorists.
You do not artifically limit such officers with a distinct list. You give them loose guidlines and general “lessons learned” for them to build on a adapt to the current and evolving situation.
What Cpt. Ed. is demanding is a “bullet list” usually given by people who report after the fact. He’s demanding that the DHS be reactive, not proactive. *facepalm*
JGabriel
88 years old?
What, did he figure he needed to get something big on his resume before meeting Satan in Hell?
.
South of I-10
@Third Eye Open: Well, thanks for that link. I can’t even read this crap anymore, it just makes my head hurt. There are some seriously twisted people posting on these sites, and they seem to have reached a level of wingnuttery previously though unattainable. Off to find Advil . . .
Adam
Whoa. It’s always been obvious that these bedwetters would rather be safe than free, but I’ve never heard one actually come out and admit it.
Marc
No one could have predicted that right-wing extremists would resort to violence
/Bush admin’d
Rosali
Gee, Ed is in favor of outing people for their opinions. Maybe someone should ask Ed if he would supply the government with the IP addresses of the fringe crazies who post dangerous, hate-filled comments on the right wing websites. Just asking.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@JGabriel:
88 is a very significant number to white supremacists.
geg6
We don’t need new laws or any abridgement of constitutioal guarantees. There are laws on the books and they need to be enforced. Our government has every right to investigate and keep watch on those who have threatened violent political action. And there are plenty of laws that would allow law enforcement to investigate who these people associate with and who encourages, provides material or operational support, and funds them. And the links and such that exist between these lone gunmen and these rightwing organizations can be shown to be as conspiratorial as anything the Mob pulled off. I don’t, for the life of me, understand why such investigations aren’t undertaken. Oh, wait. That’s what the DHS report, in part, was about.
Scott H
May we begin documenting dumb things said? From Reuters:
Cracking walnuts with the butt of a .45 is an inappropriate use of a gun. This other thing? Murder.
blogenfreude
This guy had a piece by him republished over at Free Republic. The piece, of course, has been scrubbed. But thank the FSM for Google cache.
RSA
Or possibly, on p. 7:
Stupid incompetents.
Legalize
Annnnnnnd here they come:
cleek
you don’t have to be a leftist to be a truther – you just can’t be a Republican. because if you’re a Republican, your love of Party prohibits you from thinking ill of Bush.
Charon
Slightly OT:
As long as were talking about right-wing idiocy regarding terrorism, could some explain to me exactly what contortions of logic the wingnuts went through to connect a group of reactionary religious fundamentalists (Al-Qaeda) to the American Left? Is it as simple as the fact that they’re mostly brown?
The Grand Panjandrum
From the DHS report:
Sound familiar?
.
And finally this:
Shorter DHS report: It’s gonna be a long four years.
Zuzu's Petals
Edit: Never mind. Grand P got there first.
gg
Ed wrote: “In fact, it never mentioned Holocaust denial at all, nor did it mention anti-semitism at all, either; those terms don’t appear at all in the report.”
Current headline at Huffpost:
“DHS Report Warned Against Anti-Semitic Violence”
One really needs to fact-check EVERYTHING these right-wingers say. Maybe that should be in the next DHS report…
Update: Damn, scooped by #34 and #33… :)
NonyNony
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Do you really need an answer to this?
Edit: As it turns out, I guess not.
Comrade Dread
Great.
And I really hope you enjoy it when the next Republican administration decides to label one of your ideologies as dangerous.
Constitutional guarantees are there to protect all of us. You might not like them at times, but there is usually a good reason for them. (i.e. men are untrustworthy when it comes to the exercise of power.)
AhabTRuler
I think this comment was meant to emphasize the overturning of the DC gun ban. As mayor of DC, Feinty has plenty of gunshot victims in his constituency already.
Furthermore, anything a mayor ever says has to be viewed as local politics.
InflatableCommenter
The thing about what Ed said is, it’s a lie. What he said is a lie.
Lies are lies, and until people start calling things what they are, and stop clucking around these things like little old ladies at a tea party, then the crazy level is going to be ramped up.
The criticisms leveled at the DHS things were lies, and the birther stuff is lies, and the notion that Obama is a muslim is a lie, or that it would seriously matter if he were, a lie, and the idea that jews are ruining the country is a lie. These things are lies and need to be treated as lies.
For example, when BOB posts his birther crap, his stealth racist crap, it’s lies, and needs to be treated as lies that ought not to be told. Not opinion. Not free speech. Lies.
If calling lies lies is not the end game here, then …. I don’t know what the point is.
Matt
This will surprise absolutely no one here, but The Corner has yet to say one word about it. But we did get a post about how Sotomayor cannot use a comma.
Fucking. Assholes.
LV-426
@InflatableCommenter:
It’s a lie up to the point where someone not on the right* takes offense, then it’s true.
*’not on the right’ !=’on the left’ except in the wingnut mind.
To clarify, pointing out the lies does not stop the right from believing the lies, it enforces their belief the crap is true. It’s a perfect system they can say whatever they want. If someone on the right disputes what is said he’s labeled a RINO. If someone not on the right disputes what is said no one on the right really cares or they see it as verification. Mockery is all you can do. Or hope that more people come to the light like I did on thier own.
Charon
@Matt:
Not surprised at all. In fact, I was somehow comforted to notice that in spite of his (narrow) apology Whelan is going on being a complete dick about the Sotomayor nomination. Surrounded by a renewed onslaught of domestic terrorism it’s nice to know that somethings are constant regardless of the tumult surrounding them.
Rosali
I think this is rhetorical but here’s the logic in a nutshell. The left believes in criminal prosecutions while the right wants to do away with the namby-pamby constitutional safeguards and proceed directly to torture.
Mnemosyne
I wouldn’t have believed you that anyone could scoff at the mere notion that abortion opponents could be violent less than a week after one of them murdered Dr. Tiller, but I’ve noticed that a short attention span is one of the requirements for being a conservative. They have a little problem with how time works, which is why Dr. Tiller’s murder by an abortion opponent is already old news while Neville Chamberlain is evergreen.
kay
@Charon:
Because they’re insanely black and white.
Former President Bush was fighting Islamic fundamentalism. Many liberals opposed President Bush.
You’re with us or against us. Easy! Liberals = Islamic terrorists. What’s the diff?
It’s helpful to remember this when pondering why they might be having trouble assembling a 51% electoral coalition. They don’t see distinctions. Hard to assemble a group of hard-right Republicans and any of those other people, “the enemies of Republicans”.
Maus
Of course they are. Truthers at the beginning were skewed a bit more leftist, however the racist militia fringe also were extensively represented, and as birtherism and the “clinton deathcount” teabaggers gained popular support, the liberal truthers are WAY less of the truther populace at this point. The neocons also consider Ron Paul “liberal”, which is pretty laughable.
El Cid
They were just angry that the DHS report didn’t have enough pictures and activity sections.
God I hate these disgusting fucking morons.
InflatableCommenter
@LV-426:
I agree, and I would add, I am not out to reform the right.
I am out to shame it, and to marginalize it.
Deborah
A worthy question I found posed somewhere on the internets today. To paraphrase:
Hey, right wing pundits, when the DHS warned against the threat of violence from radical right wing groups, why did you assume it meant you, rather than the radical assassins of the past two weeks?
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: I’m with El Cid on this.
No fucking false equivalency here. If there is an act of terrorism in this country, I will guarantee that that person is not agreeing with Olbermann, Maddow, and well, Cole on a daily basis. Fuck that shit. It’s like the rightwingnutters who say, “Well, you liberals wanted W. to fail.” No. Not true. I knew he would fail; I desperately wanted him not to fail. There is a difference. Enough of FOX’s alternative reality.
Oh, and fuck Ed Morissey and his sniveling defensiveness.
Comrade Stuck
Why do you hate America Mister Cole?
Gregory
@asiangrrlMN: Seconded.
Joe Max
Linky? I have a $1 bet to win with my wife.
I bet her that they’d be calling this scum a “liberal” before the day was out. She didn’t believe the heights of Peak Wingnut could go that high.
pablo
Wanna get specific?
How about CAPTAIN ED!
This has been a moment of “Name a Threat to America”
Thank you
Krista
@Joe Max:
I said this on an earlier thread, but felt like saying it again:
They just play the same song-and-dance over and over, though. Any time one of their loonies does something over-the-top, it’s just a Big Liberal Plot™, performed by a left-wing plant, for the sole and utter purpose of making those poor innocent conservatives look bad.
Yes, you heard it right. They honest-to-goodness think that the liberals are so organized and so evil, that we would actually go and arrange a giant conspiracy to murder innocent people, solely to have ammunition with which to frame our political opposition.
It says something about their mindset that a) they’re in this much denial, and b) that something this insane would even occur to them. let alone seem feasible enough to mention in a public forum.
gex
What’s sad is we are only 5 months into the Obama administration and already we are losing track of the right wing violence eruptions. You forgot the shooting at the immigration offices. Or was that just a nutter, not a right winger?
@Joe Max: I’m beginning to wonder if the universe is big enough for us to even find a limit to the heights of peak wingnut.
Tom
I was just having a good time reading in HA’s comment section about how racism is a “left-wing” thing.
AhabTRuler
Perhaps we have discovered that wingnut is dark matter.
bdc
I have never read the DHS report on right wing domestic threats so I don’t really know what’s in it…
Oh wait, it’s available online… in searchable pdf…
or
Yes, nothing to do with this case.
I am a little surprised that Holocaust denial doesn’t get more attention, but this is a pretty broad overview. They may not be looking at the sub-strains of the fringe
.
Mike P
@r€nato:
It’s become like a wingnut version of Clue: if the report didn’t say, “The next attack will be carried out by white supremacist James W. von Brunn in the Holocaust Musuem with a shotgun”, then it can obviously be set aside as it’s not specific enough.
WMass
Has anyone wondered how this fuckwit got a gun? Last time I checked, he was convicted of at least one violent felony. I thought felons couldn’t own guns in any state, or is Maryland different? In a lot of ways we don’t need new gun laws, how about just enforcing the ones we already have.
OK, I admit that I would like an assault weapons ban. While AK47s are undeniably cool, we really shouldn’t be able to own them, particularly as it’s so easy to convert them back to full auto.
Maus
Congrats! If you check out Freep, you can even find them justifying why a “Democrat” would have Bush bumper stickers and vote Republican over the last few decades.
D-Chance.
@Matt:
Steve Spuriel (sp?) posted a two-line comment. Other than that, silence. Come to look at it, the right has been rather silent about the story… guess they’ll have to wait until Limbaugh dictates the talking points on his show tomorrow.
But there are SEVERAL posts bragging about all the fools shoveling forth the wingnut welfare in K-Lo’s direction…
Either way, I’m in sad agreement with Dan Riehl’s (now scrubbed) commenter… this is only the beginning. I honestly believe that we will witness another “blood in the streets, nationwide” civil war. Unless we have a rigid clampdown on many, many groups and individuals who are actively ginning up the anger and outrage, including many prominent bloggers and radio hosts, this will only increase in frequency. Fairness doctrine? Fuck it. We need a Censor doctrine, where the incitement results in immediate shutdown. Television… radio… internet… all forms of communication. No one should have the soapbox to egg on domestic terrorism.
Ked
Well…
Yeah, the stupid hurts, but it’s typical right-wing wookie victimhood. “Stop blaming me, because KITTENS!” I would distinguish this from a proper wingularity in that it’s just on-the-fly excuse-making rather than a tangle of impenetrable mythologies. On the other hand, it’s a bunch of words entirely disconnected from reality.
I give it an angry 7-foot 0.8 wingularity masses
Ash Can
John, either he IS that damned stupid, or he’s that damned dishonest. I’ll leave it up to you which is worse.
someguy
Ed’s just upset because he sees the direct link between people like himself and Malkin, and today’s shooter. His philosophy, his arguments, and his making excuses for people like Brunn make people like Brunn possible. If the government had balls, there’d be a big RICO action underway with a lot of the right’s prominent figures as named defendants. The left does indeed occasionally suffer from a criminal conspiracy here or there. In contrast, the right is a criminal conspiracy.
demimondian
No, John. Ed isn’t stupid — he’s evil. He’s not speaking without thinking or knowing; he’s speaking in spite of thinking and knowing. He’s not bumbling.
He’s lying.
And by lying, he’s getting his message out, and getting it repeated. Because we have a job to do, to call him out, and we don’t want to be cruel.
But he’s still lying.
Mentis Fugit
@cleek:
There’s more than one breed of truther, no? Von Brunn will doubtless be of the “Teh Joos Dun It” school rather than the “Dubya Dun It” school.
Mentis Fugit
@Ash Can:
75% stupid + 75% dishonest = 150% wrong
Refute my math.
steve s
Maybe Ed, Schlussel, and several others like them aren’t that damned stupid, but looked at Limbaugh’s plane and Coulter’s new house and Glenn Beck’s chauffeur, and said, “You know, I could say really stupid shit for $10 million.”
steve s
I mean, I would. I’d stay awake into the wee hours of the morn, coming up with new wingnut shit, if I could get those paychecks. I’d pull out all the stops. By the end I’d be blaming Beel Hussein Cleenton for the Civil War and Eskimo tooth decay. But I figure there’s too much competition, the odds of success are too low.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Yup, the ‘connect the dots’ part wasn’t enough for them. ;)
SpotWeld
Ed is no long operating in a community where being smart or intelligent is a metric for being “good” at his job.
Zuzu's Petals
I dunno, he posted some incredibly lame stuff in his Cap’n Ed days.
Will
As if Ed’s whole problem with the report originally was that he found it ineffective.
Zuzu's Petals
@bdc:
Well Holocaust denial in itself isn’t a violent philosophy; adherents tend to do a lot of arguing in print etc. Think of the European “academics” and Mel Gibson’s dad.
I doubt Ed has considered the distinction.
Ceri B.
@steve s: “By the end I’d be blaming Beel Hussein Cleenton for the Civil War and Eskimo tooth decay. ” There’s a genuine lack of quality ranting about the sinister forces behind bad dentistry for minorities. Hard to do in a conservative vein because of the temptation to suggest that a public service could help and/or that dark-skinned people deserve anything, but if you could pull it off, I’d subscribe.
DaBomb
Sorry, that I am late to post. Judging by the overall comments, I would have to say the Ed is completely intellectually dishonest. Any report published to the public of that magnitude will have generic information. He’s just suffering from the one of the calamity of being a wingnut. I think he is on step # 5, denial.
pylon
It is just like that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S.” report!
The headline never said “Osama”!
There are lots of people named “Bin Laden”!
Yeah, in fairness, he might have thought he was one of Poppy’s buddies.
But I recall pretty much this exact argument being made by wingers (and the BA) – that the report didn’t say “World Trade Centre on 9-11”.
brantl
I still like wankenwrongenfreude, but I came up with it, late to the game.
brantl
Anybody notice that BoB hasn’t seen fit to write anything stupid on this thread?
JohnR
“..Ed isn’t that damned stupid.”
So “stupid is as stupid does” doesn’t apply?