Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 18, 2015
During my involuntary hiatus, I couldn’t even read Balloon Juice — I was checking Google cache on the regular, but that was spotty & I couldn’t manage to read entire comment strings. So you’ll have to forgive me if this got written up already, but I thought Philip Bump’s Washington Post explainer on the ‘terrorist training camps’ conspiracy theory was too interesting to miss.
Can’t work the auto-links function, so here’s the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/18/donald-trump-and-the-terrorist-training-camps-conspiracy-theory-explained/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b
… “We have a problem in this country: It’s called Muslims,” the questioner began, going on to state that President Obama was himself Muslim. “We have training camps, growing, where they want to kill us. That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”
Trump’s response met with immediate backlash. He didn’t correct the questioner’s incorrect assertion about Obama’s religion and, further, suggested that his administration was “going to look at that.” Trump’s campaign insisted that the “that” they’d be looking at wasn’t getting rid of Muslims — but rather, those alleged training camps.
Which is itself a weird proposition.
The idea that there are 22 (or, in some iterations, 35) terrorist training camps in the United States appears to stem largely from a 2005 report from the National White Collar Crime Center (https://www.nw3c.org/), a nonprofit organization that receives federal funding. The report, “Identifying the Links between White-Collar Crime and Terrorism,” (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/209520.pdf) focused on a group called Jamaat Ul Fuqra and the ways in which it used white-collar crime to fund its activities. An appendix to the report indicates a number of places where Fuqra had conducted activities or had training compounds across the country…
Other conservative sites have zeroed in on particular compounds. There’s Islamberg, along the eastern New York-Pennsylvania border, usually described as the “national headquarters” of Muslims of America — which the sites link to Fuqra — in the United States. There’s Mahmoudberg, near Sweeny, Tex., which has received a lot of attention thanks to an accidental shooting in 2002 that resulted in an FBI report (http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/exclusive-clarion-project-discovers-texas-terror-enclave#popup-1) on the compound. And there’s Islamville, in South Carolina, home of a holy shrine (http://www.holyislamville.net/). A Web site focused on Islamic terror called “Clarion Project” released footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoykqCSruY&feature=youtu.be) that it claims shows weapons training in Islamberg…
A lot of the Fuqra’s nefarious activity occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. The point of the White Collar Crime Center report, after all, was that Fuqra was involved in white-collar crime, like workers-compensation fraud. That’s tough to pair with spooky music…
So why the conspiracy theories? Because that’s how conspiracy theories work. Conspiracy Web sites often point out how close to New York City Islamberg is — even though it’s really not very close at all. It’s far enough away that Brooklynites see it as a refuge from the city’s noise and activity… In a response to Trump’s comments, a commenter at FreeRepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3338327/posts) points to the 2006 arrest of Muslims near Virginia — right near “the Virginia Muslim cemetery [where] the Chechen who bombed Boston was buried.” We’re through the looking glass here, people…
So, there’s “reasons” why those numbers keep getting passed around. The looking glass is warped and cracked, but there are weird images from which the Wingnut Wurlitzer ink-blots a new nutball “explanation” for every purpose…
If Trump planted that guy to shift the conversation from Carly to "oh man crazy Trump!" he is a genius.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) September 18, 2015
Morzer
I feel your pain.
redshirt
There are Somalis downtown EVEN AS I TYPE THESE WORDS….
mai naem mobile
Welcome back AL. They talked about this on Mornin Ho this AM. Ho was outraged that HRC was being critical of Trumpy because HRC started it all in ’08. Apparently the GOP just took her lead.
Morzer
Before anyone buys into Kasich as a moderate, they should read this:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/law-john-kasich-wrote-now-keeping-food-stamps-minorities-ohio
Timurid
This Jamaat Ul Fuqra outfit sounds like a bunch of prototypical Evangelical grifters.
The Republicans should get along with them just fine… unless they’re scared of the competition.
srv
Really? What more does anyone need, a Mosque at Ground Zero?
FlyingToaster
@redshirt: And I’m supposed to care about this why? There have been Somalis in Lewiston, Maine for as long as I can remember…
***
This evening we (the collective here at Chez Toaster) came to the conclusion that people are just fucking evil. I won’t point you to any of the Hub news stories (trust me, they’re all depressing) that inspired this conclusion. How the hell can electing a Democrat make things better when the citizenry has a permanent 27% that are untreated lunatics?
Mike J
@efgoldman: You want satire? A Carley apologist said: “No, instead she’s talking about reducing the size of the federal government to save it, just like she did HP.”
FlyingToaster
@FlyingToaster: And yes, I spent most of my day recovering from the WIFI access frying like an egg. Found a replacement at 1, got the replacement configured at 6pm. Just in time to read the news.
Morzer
@Mike J:
Carly heroically saved Lucent by drowning it in a bathtub when others had failed to do so.
It’s ironic, in many ways, that Trump and Fakerina get on so badly, because they’d make a perfect team of self-obsessed, preening frauds.
Sloegin
Anyone catch the NYT article on Turing pharmaceuticals?
And some people say evil doesn’t really exist in the world.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sloegin: Ummm….
srv
@Mike J: I don’t like that woman, but if you want to get people off the welfare dole, that would be an argument that she would be a better Secretary of Health & Human Services than someone like Carson.
A country can’t be healthy when so many engage in sick behavior.
redshirt
@FlyingToaster: There are still good people in Lewiston, ME.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
She “saved” HP? I guess, in the manner of shooting somebody then calling 911. “Oh, do hurry!” (muffled, due to wiping fingerprints from phone).
trollhattan
@srv:
A rottweiler would be a better SecDef than a box of Count Chocula. Okay, I think I follow your logic.
trollhattan
@redshirt:
NAME THEM. They must be rounded up for the reeducation camps.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman: I over-engineered the piñata; every kid got 2 solid whacks at it, knocked off all of the circles (ex-easter-egg-halves), and then HerrDoctor and her older cousins pulled it apart. The JellyBelly packets were collected :)
The Tardis cake was a hit; the bow-tie napkins were a riot (kids were collecting spares and putting them into the Tardis favor bags); a number of parents grilled me, HerrDoctor, my SIL and BIL on what this Doctor Who thing was, and the 17 kids (plus WarriorGirl) had a blast running around the park and through the unexpectedly turned on sprinklers.
It’s impossible to get DoctorWho favors in the US for any reasonable price. Barnes&Noble has bookmarks for $2.95 apiece (steep, but I only had 7 boys to worry about), but otherwise, you’re off to Etsy for the people who have laid out all the printables for you.
I put printed sticker sheets (Avery 15-label) in each bag, along with various random and My Little Pony things. We got ahold of a Doctor Whooves figure so he guarded the cake, next to a Funko Pop 12th Doctor.
The parents I saw this morning were still going, “that was a fun party”, so I think it worked :) Unlike my WiFi this am.
Sloegin
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the reply; been in hyper Derp mode all day.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlyingToaster:
Would you prefer just curling up in a ball and weeping?
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
That really should be a rotating tag. It sums this place up perfectly.
redshirt
@trollhattan: Well, I’ll give you Claude LeFleur 112 Rogers St.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: That dude doesn’t recycle. Next?
Ruckus
@Morzer:
Exactly why they don’t get along. Only room for one gigantic asshole at a time.
trollhattan
@Morzer:
GMTA. I laughed. “It was classy, rugged and YOUUUGE, and I made Mexico pay for it!”
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Cameron rule #1: People are more easily suckered by crap with numbers in it than by garden-variety crap.
Rule named for Paul Cameron, whose made-up “statistics” about LGBT people still get taken seriously by far-right groups.
trollhattan
@redshirt:
Claude!!! [makes p-tooie sound]
Morzer
@Ruckus:
There can be only one Sauron Reagan.
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d prefer to divert my tax money from ongoing military adventures into hiring 100,000 mental health professionals for deployment in the US.
I can name two zip codes in KCMO, and at least 20 in Florida, where they can start. And I promise look up the ones in Louisville KY and Nashville TN.
And save a few for greater Boston; I can point them to a guy up the hill who needs intravenous Xanax, or its generic equivalent.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Literally throws away Poland Springs bottles.
Poland Springs is a real place, by the way. There’s a golf course.
Morzer
@trollhattan:
I can just imagine Cole stumbling around with the mop, muttering to himself “I overengineered the piñata AGAIN!”
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus: My actual comment may appear if rescued from moderation, but sure, I’m pretty much in the rant and lose-it frame of mind right now.
Fortunately (as the guy selling me the WAP told me), I wasn’t upgrading a Windoze box. Or I might have been jumping under a subway.
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
I look forward to reading your memoir of life as a subterranean kangaroo.
Gin & Tonic
@redshirt: I thought Lewiston was down for the count even before Liston.
FlyingToaster
@Morzer: I don’t claim copyright. Everyone is welcome to it.
Semi-pro-tip: If someone tells you to use shipping tape for the piñata, only use it to hold the bottom on. Use masking tape everywhere else.
One of my nephews stole the half-plunger; I suspect there are further Daleks in our future.
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
Are you sure it wasn’t Cole in disguise? He’s been suspiciously decorous recently and I think an outbreak of domestic haplessness comedy is overdue.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: Lewiston is looking pretty good these days! Like a lot of other Northeast cities, it has successfully converted the previously abandoned mills into businesses and housing, such that there’s a newly resurgent vibe to the downtown area. Bates is an expanding influence as well.
FlyingToaster
@Morzer: Been to Australia (pre-WarriorGirl); walking amongst the kangaroos at Taronga Zoo was quite the experience.
The subway thing was one of the (many) local depressing news stories of the day.
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
Every time people mention subways, I keep thinking of Jared Fogle, which is…unhelpful.
Mike J
Everybody Knows it’s Leonard Cohen’s birthday.
redshirt
@Morzer: He went to Jared!
FlyingToaster
@Morzer: My nephew is too short, too dark (looked eerily like Matt Smith yesterday), and too middle-schooly for JC.
If Cole wants a Dollar Tree plunger, with half the handle sawed off, I’ll get him one. But I don’t know why he’d want it…
FlyingToaster
@Morzer: Ewwwwwww.
NotMax
@Flying Toaster
Better than over engineering the cake
If you’d had to bake a second one, it would be a reTardis.
(No brickbats to the face, please.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: This is one of my favorite “recent” Cohen songs. By which I mean to say happy birthday Mr. Cohen.
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
With Cole and domestic apparatus, who can say why he wants what he wants and does what he does? He’s a regular Bermuda Triangle.
NotMax
Repeating for the late night crowd.
The bestest Jimmy Olsen dead at 87.
FlyingToaster
@NotMax: Heh.
I pay someone else for the cake. I’ve tried baking sheet cakes over the years, and have discovered numerous failure modes. And not one solitary success mode.
I can do round cakes. I can do cupcakes (I made a dozen gluten-free ones for the girl with celiac, who didn’t attend due to vomiting).
So when I’m buying for 40, I pay for a professional with a commercial oven to make a cake without random holes, collapses, crumpled corners, etc; and decorate it per the picture I print out and give them.
RK
Short clip of Kim Davis’ interview on GMA tomorrow. Woman is ridiculous.
divF
@Omnes Omnibus:
Happy Birthday to Mr. Cohen – may he continue singing.
NotMax
@Flying Toaster
At one time worked at a very large resort hotel complex to pass some time and pick up some extra scratch while it was off-season at my main job..
The main kitchen included a huge walk-in oven with rotating shelves on a spindle, specifically for the head baker, who came in at like 3:30 a.m. to start his shift.
Several times saw near fisticuffs break out when he discovered the high mucky-muck meat chef had unilaterally elected to use that oven for roasts and haunches the evening before.
Morzer
@RK:
There’s enough self-pitying dishonesty there to last the GOP for a couple of electoral cycles.
David Koch
This is nothing. Who could forget six months ago when Obama fired the Joint Chiefs over his plans to drop a hydrogen bomb on Charleston.
Gian
@Morzer:
next you’ll tell me that white people in Ohio get to vote with a short wait, while those with a darker skin tone might wait for hours, sometimes in the rain, just to vote.
that couldn’t be on purpose?
Ruckus
@Morzer:
Kasich has never been a moderate. On his best day he was about 15,000 miles to the right of moderate. He does however try to play one occasionally. But he does it so bad that he only fools people who are asleep, dead or 25,000 miles or more to the right of moderate. Which means the only way he gets the nomination is if moves to the right at warp speed or the other 13 all come down with a deadly disease at the next club house brawl they throw.
David Koch
The New York Times is …. Shocked! Shocked! …. to discover the gop is racist.
Welcome to reality to 51 years after Goldwater.
Ruckus
@Gian:
It was the last time I voted in OH in 2004 and it wasn’t just black people who waited, bluish areas did as well. Of course some of the bluish areas like where I lived were well integrated. I waited for, if I recall 3-4 hrs, in the rain. 5-6 large precincts 4 machines. People were pissed.
Ruckus
@David Koch:
That’s 51 yrs for the stew to be seasoned, cooked and served. And now we get to see/smell the gas and diarrhea that results.
RK
@Morzer:
I think the woman is somewhat unstable.
Morzer
@RK:
Let’s be fair – the only evidence of that is three failed marriages and membership of a fringe cult.
RK
@Morzer:
You mean Christianity?
seaboogie
@Omnes Omnibus: I sent Mr. Cohen a fond message a few weeks back, inspired by hearing the song Halleluja, and some memories and experiences of other songs – via his agent – who assured me that he would see it. I may have said (I did) that “you are getting to be kind of an old fellow now, and I just want you to know that you have done a few perfect things.” Really glad that I did that, and that it is in his hands.
Punchy
Involuntary hiatus for what?
Morzer
@Punchy:
Verizon.
mclaren
Really?
Specifics, please.
What kind of “problem” do Muslims represent? Facts? Figures? Dates? Names? Numbers?
The real problem in America, as far as I can tell, is white people. We’re now up to an average of one mass shooting per day here in the United Snakes of Amnesia in the year 2015. And all committed by white people.
“…Research shows that mass shootings are primarily committed by white males—the most privileged class in society.”
Source: “Why are so many mass shooting committed by young white men?” Vice.com, 23 June 2015.
If you want to be scared of anyone, be afraid of white males. Those are the ones grabbing AK-47s and gunning down twenty or thirty people in movie theaters. Not Muslims. White males.
RK
@seaboogie:
Wikipedia
Villago Delenda Est
These people are NOT SANE. They need to be confined to padded cells.
mclaren
@Sloegin:
There. Fixed that for you.
Don’t blame the symptom (greedy pharma CEOs), blame the disease (for-profit health care), practiced nowhere else in the developed world…except shithole America.
BethanyAnne
Sweeny? My family lived there after I moved off to Houston. They used to describe it as 3600 people and 50 churches. Several Boy Scout troops locally camping in spare cow pastures, and rednecks driving 4 wheelers through all the woods around there. Hide a training camp? Pfft, not a chance.
RK
@mclaren: Good point.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Ah, Paul Cameron. His son was my debate partner in high school. Met the great man(in his own mind) once, was a bit of a prick.
C.V. Danes
Jeez…the only terrorist compound I knew of before this was the one hosted by Cliven Bundy.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
It was. But Auburn’s another story altogether. And Minot – oh my!
SFAW
@David Koch:
Moran! What REEELLY happened was that B. Hussein Obama wanted to nuke Charleston, and the Joint Chiefs resigned en masse.
I know this, because Alex Jones’s voice is beamed directly into my head.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Just make sure you make enough batter – you shouldn’t go half-reTardis, only full reTardis.
SFAW
@Mike J:
Ignoring the idea that she’d reduce the size of the Government in order to fucking DESTROY it, as do all the other Rethugs.
But reading that line from her apologist, all I could think of was:
What does the framed motto in her Carleton Sneed Fiorina’s office say? “Me Lie”? Or My Lai? Maybe both?
Frankensteinbeck
Bullshit. The context the questioner gave was clear. Muslims are the problem, and terrorist training camps are an inevitable symptom of that evil. Note that the conspiracy theories cite any center of Islam as a source of terrorism. We saw the same attitude in the New York Mosque ‘controversy’.
@FlyingToaster:
I played with a pinata only once, and it did not go well. Nobody told me that I was supposed to let the birthday boy win. I had a decent sense of direction and passable understanding of physics (swing top down so you don’t lose impact by bouncing.) I cracked that sucker open, and got a whole lot of dirty looks from the kid’s family.
@Ruckus:
I disagree. Policies and legislation that overwhelmingly target minorities to make their lives miserable and ensure poverty, but which can be represented as responsible to whites who don’t want to accuse anyone of racism if there’s any other possible explanation, is moderate Republicanism. It was Reagan’s gift to America, the whole ‘making whites comfortable with their bigotry again’, and they’ve been selling it for more than three decades. See: The War On Drugs.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
It is a long-established wingnut belief that the government mostly consists of ‘faceless bureaucrats’ who contribute nothing useful. These bureaucrats either spend their time shuffling paper to each other so they can enjoy work-free sinecures, or hunt down good, normal (white) people to enforce asinine regulations. Stuff like ‘you can’t sell moonshine spiked with methanol’ or ‘you can’t drive without a license’ or especially ‘you have to pay taxes.’ It started with hillbillies who long ago were too isolated to be within reach of the law. It’s pretty much the plot of the Dukes of Hazard.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
Since when do politicians answer the question asked. Or was every question to Rudy Giuliani (for example) something which required a noun-verb-“9/11” response.
The Rethugs have their list of talking points that they want to keep flogging; a question that’s actually related to any of those talking points is a nice (for them) helping-hand, but they don’t need it to keep parroting the list.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
Partially true. The people that send them their Wingnut Welfare checks (so to speak) are A-OK.
It’s all them others – what help those undeserving browns and poors etc. – that gotta go.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck:
And Snuffy Smith / Barney Google.
And those trucker movies from the 1970s.
And the origins of NASCAR.
All the peaks of American civilization!
Patrick
@Frankensteinbeck:
They don’t seem to realize that our military is a big piece of the government, just like they thought the Iraq war was free.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
First of all I didn’t say moderate Republican, only the word moderate as in the entire political spectrum. And even if you add that word it doesn’t change anything.
So what is it that you are disagreeing with? That Kasich is far to the right while maybe not all the way to the right and but still very dangerous? That over all moderate/centrist is OK? Or not?
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
I am saying that this particular act is ‘moderate’ as Republicans have been graded since Reagan. Not only is it not a sign that he is unusually bad now, it is not a sign that he is unusually bad three decades ago, when Republicans were supposedly sane. I agree that Kasich is especially bad, but if this particular nasty bit of racism is brought up, it’s incorrect to frame it as if this is anything except Republican SOP.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
A) In terms of what Trump agreed to, he said he was looking into ways to get rid of Muslims. That he would walk that back later is no surprise, but it’s bullshit. Yeah, he was talking about all Muslims.
B) Feeding his audience hardcore racism and ignoring standard Republican (Reduce taxes on job creators!) talking points is Trump’s schtick.
boatboy_srq
@David Koch: NYT is the rational version of David Brooks: the idea that the GOTea has gone b#tsh!t-crazy is still hard for them to assimilate.
FlyingToaster
@NotMax:
And the chef lived after violating that space?
I once worked in the deli at Kroger, and the catering crew was not allowed to touch the ovens until after 4:30 am. And we had two people scheduled for an hour of cleaning off/out the oven at 3pm so that the bakers weren’t contaminated by meat cooties.
The fun job was Thanksgiving; the bakers were there all night, and our crowd came on at 3 am to put the turkeys into roasting pans and line them up for our turn at 4:30. The store was open 6am to noon, and was non-stop handing out turkeys and deli platters and half-sheet trays of rolls. It was similar on Christmas Eve and Easter (hams).
FlyingToaster
@Frankensteinbeck:
That is SO not the rule. What kind of parents let their kids win after their third birthday? How is a kid going to know whether or not his wins are real if they “let” him “win”?
gene108
Trump’s handling of the crazy guy is on bar with every other Republican’s handling of Birther’s and other conspiracy nuts.
Why Trump is getting singled out, when almost no Republican will go on record about where Obama was born or if he’s a Muslim or Christian, for the past six to seven years is sad.
If only the media focused this sort of attention on guys like Boehner or McConnell and demanded they smack down the crazies and shut them up, maybe we’d have a better country right now.
boatboy_srq
@SFAW: Mustn’t forget the ones that work for all those agencies that keep people from doing what they want with their own real estate (because somebody in the area or downstream might get sick or die from the effects) or who want to keep some people from obtaining public lands so they can do what they want with it. EPA, BLM, et al fall in that category.
cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah… if you and the birthday boy were around the same age, then all bets were off. If you were, say, 15 and he was 6…
jayjaybear
@boatboy_srq: “Has gone”?