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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 29, 2010 5:45 AM. The previous post in this blog was Week of the Terriers. The next post in this blog is Why downtown Portland is failing. Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

To keep from crying

Amidst the media frenzy surrounding the downtown Portland Christmas tree bomb plot, the ensuing histrionics in the blogosphere, and the ugly backlash, perhaps some gallows humor is in order. We'll try to prime the pump with these:

1. Since his name is Mohamed Mohamud, does that means he should get consecutive sentences?

2. The mayor says he's not insulted that he was not part of the federal sting. "It's no big deal," he said. "I get bombed every Friday night, with or without the FBI."

3. Portland was never in any danger. The feds made sure the kid couldn't set off the explosives. They gave him a cell phone from AT&T.

4. This never would have happened if Paul Allen had let Lars Larson put up the crucifix in the square.

5. Yesterday I saw Dwight Holton at the Home Depot return counter with the bomb parts.

Readers, as you can see, I'm running out of steam. Please take it from here.

Comments (21)

Mohamud has spent the past three nights at the Justice Center Jail in downtown Portland, where he was provided with halal meals, the only food permitted under Islamic guidelines. You think if I tried this in Iran I would get Hot Dogs and Apple Pie for Lunch?

The kid should have become very suspicious when he was able to find a parking space.

After living in Corvallis I don't blame him for taking steps toward meeting some real virgins.

I apologize in advance.

Gibbs

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that when his Al Qaeda handlers realized just how dumb this guy was they decided to tip him off to the FBI themselves, so they could at least generate lots of press coverage.

Things could always be worse. He could have given out free Dagoba chocolate and caused some real damage.

Surely, let's go laughing all the way to the tanks.


(Source: News.BBC.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/europe/2001/collapse_of_ussr/photofile/7.stm)

I {heart} ROTFLOL reading this satirical send-up:
Fame is fleeting – and so are your rights, © 2010 Brian M Downing, The Agonist

(Julius Caesar’s letter to the citizens/subjects regarding frontier checkpoints)

Salutations, esteemed fellow Romans!

I write you from Gaul, site of another of our many legions’ encampments around the world. The auguries tell me that there are growing objections, both in the Forum and Senate, to the system of searches upon travelers coming into our territories from barbarian regions along our expansive periphery, especially southern Arabia and Mesopotamia.

Securitas Republicae, a part of Rome’s government akin to our legions, has ordered these searches to better safeguard our freedoms from those who hate us for those freedoms. This, I’m sure you will agree, will improve the safety and wellbeing of the citizens of our Republic, ignorant and churlish and ungrateful though they be. [Strike that last part? -JC]

In recent weeks these security measures have been stepped up as barbarian threats have become more pronounced. Accordingly, at many checkpoints along the Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Jordan, Nile, Niger, Tigris, Euphrates, and Potomac [check that last one -JC] we are requiring travelers to lift their togas or in some cases to allow one of my shorter legionaries to look up their togas – a procedure I have named the Veni Vidi. [I can’t think of a third “V” word just now -JC]

In certain casi we will be performing the Circumspectus Caviti – again for your protection. Naturally my legionaries are well-trained professionals who ....

Or, there's always Jonathan Swift's 'Modest Proposal': "let's eat the children."

But seriously, folks, if there is time in this workday for only one diversion reading an undiscovered website, (and that ain't funny), perhaps it should be about events of the Thanksgiving JFK was murdered. And if I had discovered it last week, I'd have posted it in Jack's 'JFK memories' thread ... who could have known then it would foreshadow the weekend's 'deep politics' media-manipulation (just in time for advertisers' big spending splash anti-BuyNothingDay) to stir hatred against 'terrorism-ers' (called 'communists' in JFK's time) and stir psychomass mob mentality to torch a mosque down in the Valley?
The National Security State and the Assassination of JFK - The CIA, the Pentagon, and the `Peace President`, by Andrew Gavin Marshall, GlobalResearch.ca, November 23, 2010

Just 47 years ago, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. This marked ... the moment its growing power was threatened by the civilian leadership in America, the apparatus of empire came home to roost.


The National Security State

The apparatus of the National Security State, largely established in the National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundations for the extension of American hegemony around the globe. In short, the Act laid the foundations for the apparatus of the American Empire. The National Security Act created the National Security Council (NSC) and position of National Security Adviser, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) as the Pentagon high command of military leaders, and of course, the CIA.

Who knew?

For all PDX cityhall's political correctness (sanctuary city status even), geez isn't it surprising certain cultures still hate you. Not really. It's called appeasement; a bad movie often repeated, by gosh, such good intentioned folks.

Tenskatawa,

would you please devote your considerable energies to digging up some really juicy stuff out of the latest wiki-leaks haystack?

I already read someplace that, oooooooh, SHOCKER, it appears that some rich Saudis are still bankrolling Al Qaeda!!!

What can one expect from citizens of a country where it is state policy to let 10-year old girls be married to their 80 year old first cousins?

What can one expect from citizens of a country where it is state policy to venerate a man whose favorite wife was six years old when they married? (Union not fully consummated until she reached age 9, tho. Apparently there is a codified Islamic solution to achieving sexual satisfaction with a child bride who hasn't menstruated yet. The husband is instructed to just rub himself on her. This was quoted in a sermon by Ayatolla Khomeini himself.)

What can one expect from citizens of a country where it is state policy to venerate a slaveholder, who once "married" a Jewish princess, in a serious hurry, within hours of his men had capturing her city and beheading her husband, father, and brothers? union consummated that very night. So romantic. This sort of thing has a name. It's called rape. But there's another Islamic solution to that too! A women can't claim rape unless she has four MALES willing to testify that it happened!! Good times!!!

I know! Let's just sell SIXTY BILLION dollars worth of high tech military goods to this country! Let's elect a president who tells us the prettiest sounds he ever heard were the calls to prayer from a mosque! Let's then watch while this bozo bows down deeply, in an act flagrantly at odds with every one of his predecessors in office, to the King of Saudi Arabia!
ON VIDEOTAPE FOR ALL THE WORLD TO SEE.

Kumbayaaaaaaaaa.......

This never would have happened if they had given grandma a cavity search.

The poor kid was off his nut, and will spend the rest of his life surrounded by headshrinkers, lawyers and prison guards.

Don't be distracted! Keep your eye on the ball:

Bankers Rigging Municipal Contract Bids Admit to Lying to Cover Up Tracks
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-24/bankers-rigging-municipal-contract-bids-admit-to-lying-to-cover-up-tracks.html

Notable excerpt:

“I had conversations prior to the bid with the broker about who the bidders were going to be and who was going to win or lose,” Campbell, slim with sandy-blond hair, told U.S. District Judge William Pauley.

Taxpayers were the victims because, by fixing the bids, Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, paid municipalities less than it would have had there been honest auctions. In his Sept. 9 court confession, Campbell, 45, repeatedly told the judge that his illegal actions came at the expense of the public.

“Kind of a common theme here,” the banker said.

They're going to for the death penalty. He parked the van in a Zipcar space.

Re: "Surely, let's go laughing all the way to the tanks."

Tenskwatawa, who are you calling "Surely?"

They're going to for the death penalty. He parked the van in a Zipcar space.

Death by lethal invection, I suppose.

I thought that van got turned in during the Cash for Clunkers program.

He could have parked that van on fourth and Jefferson, you know, to "shake-up" City Hall!

He just wanted to be part of a Christmas Tradition.

What's the deal? I always go to pieces when Thomas Lauderdale plays.

Careful there, Tenskwatawa (we know who you are and where you live).

Now Tensk, I need you to push away from your desk, slowly reach into the drawer-I said slowly Tensk!-and take out the ruler.

Now, I want you to rap your knuckles-hard-five times.

I said hard, Tensk, hard!

That's it.

Good-let this be a warning:next time we won't let you off so easily!

Mojo, we have this to which to look forward:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-next-wikileaks-will-be-about-a-major-bank-2010-11#ixzz16iOFFpyI

Speculation is that JPM is not large enough even after its consumption of BS and WaMu. C is one likely subject of revelation, GS another.

Latest from desk of Janet Napolitano - We will immediately need a full search of any automobile entering downtown (wipes smile of glee off face as downtown finally gets its death knell. Now homeless will need alternative neighborhood.)

Mojo, Robt Mackey, in a NYT blog today, suggests that BAC may be the too-big-to-fail in WikiLeaks' crosshairs:

"To follow up on our 12:35 p.m. update, about the upcoming 'megaleak' of documents from an American bank, our colleagues at the DealBook blog reported this afternoon that Julian Assange said last year that he had obtained data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive. Interviewed at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in October 2009, Mr. Assange told IDG News Service:

'At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives.... Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it.'"


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