Tonal Crow - September 30, 2010 | 4:25 pm · Link

Everyone knows that the real terror threat comes from climate “scientists”, Al Gore, Howard Dean, and George Soros.

Amirite?

David Hunt - September 30, 2010 | 4:28 pm · Link

@Tonal Crow:

You’ve almost got it right. Think about it. Have you ever seen Osama bin Laden and Howard Dean in the same place at the same time?

Tonal Crow - September 30, 2010 | 4:30 pm · Link

@David Hunt: My GOP! You’re RIGHT!

Tonal Crow - September 30, 2010 | 4:30 pm · Link

@Jewish Steel: They’re too busy teabagging the “Tea Party”.

Zifnab - September 30, 2010 | 4:31 pm · Link

Maybe all the high pumbas are on vacation. Maybe FOX is just sitting on it until they can spin the whole thing as “Obama Determined to Attack America”.

C Nelson Reilly - September 30, 2010 | 4:33 pm · Link

October Surprise!

zattarra - September 30, 2010 | 4:34 pm · Link

It’s simple. They are actually preventing something from happening and not ignoring a threat. Reporting this would therefore destroy the meme that Obama is soft on terrorism or is incompentant. This cannot be allowed to be said on our “liberal” media.

Also, if we talk about Osama Bin Laden planning something it will draw attention to why we are still fighting in Afghanistan and on the Paksitani border – can’t allow that either or the stories of that being Obama’s Vietnam and us floundering there for no reason might get questioned also.

There is no ratings in the msm addressing where things might be going right, they can’t frame that into how Dems are blowing the elections. If it doesn’t link back to politics and what does this mean in terms of electoral politics and power in Washington than the msm won’t care until there is a failure so they can then blame Democrats and tell us how this will hurt them in the elections.

ThatLeftTurnInABQ - September 30, 2010 | 4:40 pm · Link

What everybody else said.

The MSM has one mission right now – destroy the Dems in Congress and provoke a civil war between the Obama admin and GOPerville. Everything else is a distraction from the main goal of drawing the maximum number of eyeballs, which in an era of collapsing ad revenue is not just everything, it is the only thing. Eyes on the prize, ladies and gentlemen, eyes on the prize.

And yes, I do think that we’ve reached the point where our news media are openly and frankly treasonous and would gladly destroy the country if they could get epic ratings covering the collapse. Why do you ask?

Jewish Steel - September 30, 2010 | 4:43 pm · Link

Or maybe it’s a little too “on the nose” for the jaded coastal elites.

You know, explosions, bearded foreign villains, fanaticism, “never forget.” Puh-leez!

slag - September 30, 2010 | 4:44 pm · Link

Osama bin Laden is involved

Every time I read about this guy, it just galls me that he’s still alive and not in jail. It’s the same feeling I get every time I read about Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales. No justice.

David - September 30, 2010 | 4:46 pm · Link

They mentioned it many times on the BBC but not as much as I thought they would. Perhaps it’s a good thing that it’s not all over the news.

Bulworth - September 30, 2010 | 4:48 pm · Link

Did we get to torture, I mean enhancely interrogate, the terrorists to find out?

Captain Haddock - September 30, 2010 | 4:49 pm · Link

Well, Jesus man, you can’t expect the networks to cover terrorism when there are Dancing with the Stars updates!

Sasha - September 30, 2010 | 4:50 pm · Link

[cynic] Because suddenly scared populaces tend to support the party in power. But the Dems are in power now, it’s just before a critical election, and Fox and the “liberal media” don’t want a resurgent Democratic party. [/cynic]

joe from Lowell - September 30, 2010 | 4:52 pm · Link

I’d like to think this was a result of our media growing up and realizing that hyping terrorism only helps the terrorists, but that would be way too optimistic.

It’s almost certainly what zattarra said in #13.

MikeJ - September 30, 2010 | 4:55 pm · Link

@slag:

Every time I read about this guy, it just galls me that he’s still alive and not in jail.

Turns out a president can’t order an assassination. Until they get a warrant from a court and then send police into the hinterlands of Pakistan to arrest him, sadly our hands are tied.

Or so I’m led to believe.

freelancer - September 30, 2010 | 5:00 pm · Link

OT - I keep expecting the next TPM headline in my RSS feed to be “Christine O’Donnell discovered to not actually be Christine O’Donnell”.

What a freak.

Omnes Omnibus - September 30, 2010 | 5:03 pm · Link

@David Hunt: And if you have, isn’t that suspicious?

Comrade Colette Collaboratrice - September 30, 2010 | 5:05 pm · Link

It’s getting plenty of attention in the French press. (I don’t read German, so I don’t know about that.)

@zattarra: You’ve put your finger on it. It doesn’t fit the dominant narrative.

Binzinerator - September 30, 2010 | 5:10 pm · Link

Because the greatest danger to this country is the kenyan lau tribesman sociaIist antichrist blackety-black-black foreign-born moozlim magic negro lurking in the white house.

That is all.

Omnes Omnibus - September 30, 2010 | 5:13 pm · Link

@freelancer: I went to the the Universities of Amsterdam and Maastricht this summer. That is, while I was in those cities, I went to the physical sites of the universities and looked around. Maybe that is what Christine meant.

Omnes Omnibus - September 30, 2010 | 5:17 pm · Link

@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:

It’s getting plenty of attention in the French press.

If you are going to talk about coffee, shouldn’t you label your comment as OT?

Karen - September 30, 2010 | 5:25 pm · Link

Oh it’s easy why the msm isn’t really covering this.

Osama was Bush’s fault, not Obama’s. There is no way they can blame Obama for this so there’s no interest on their end.

joe from Lowell - September 30, 2010 | 5:30 pm · Link

@Svensker:

What did the French ever do to OBL?

Won at Tours. OBL is like those Serbian fanatics who are still obsessed with the Turks vandalizing a church 1000 years ago, except even moreso.

This certainly wouldn’t be the first al Qaeda attack attempted on the French. Contrary to Condi’s “nobody could have predicted,” there was a plot uncovered in, I think, 1999 to hijack a plane and crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

Binzinerator - September 30, 2010 | 5:32 pm · Link

@Binzinerator: Ya know, the sad irony is during 2001-2009 the greatest danger and the most harm done to this country was from the guy in the White House.

Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim) - September 30, 2010 | 5:34 pm · Link

Oh please…OBL has been dead for years.

He is being kept “alive” as a bogey man, and apparently it works with a lot of people.

This is yet another thing that pisses me off about Obama. If OBL is dead, then it follows that Obama knows that, and is actively promoting the fiction that he’s still alive.

I know, I know, CONSPIRACY THEORIST!! ZOMG!

But it’s probably true.

Bob L - September 30, 2010 | 5:48 pm · Link

@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

The MSM has one mission right now – destroy the Dems in Congress and provoke a civil war between the Obama admin and GOPerville. Everything else is a distraction from the main goal of drawing the maximum number of eyeballs, which in an era of collapsing ad revenue is not just everything, it is the only thing. Eyes on the prize, ladies and gentlemen, eyes on the prize.

And that is about it.

Bob Loblaw - September 30, 2010 | 5:50 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

No, it’s pretty much exclusively because the threat wasn’t America.

How many Americans even remember the 2005 terrorist attack in Britain? 20%, maybe 30%?

How many Americans have even heard of Mumbai, even now?

R-Jud - September 30, 2010 | 6:00 pm · Link

@Omnes Omnibus:

I went to the the Universities of Amsterdam and Maastricht this summer. That is, while I was in those cities, I went to the physical sites of the universities and looked around. Maybe that is what Christine meant.

Heh. I saw a Modern Toss cartoon like that in Private Eye last week:

Interviewer: “It says here you went to Cambridge.”
Interviewee: “Yeah, I had to drop something off, I was back by six.”

mclaren - September 30, 2010 | 6:20 pm · Link

Remember – capturing Osama bin Laden is our number one priority.

Three-nineteen - September 30, 2010 | 6:35 pm · Link

@MikeJ #30: Well, we’ve indicted bin Laden, which means that a court or grand jury has seen evidence and determined that there is plausible evidence he committed a crime. So that means we do have a warrant for him.

Wile E. Quixote - September 30, 2010 | 6:41 pm · Link

@mclaren:

Remember – capturing Osama bin Laden is our number one priority.

And you can judge our success by the number of times we’ve killed or captured the number two man in Al Qaeda. As an aside I have to wonder whether or not number two man in Al Qaeda is a better or worse job than “red-shirted crewman” or “assistant crack-whore”.

joe from Lowell - September 30, 2010 | 7:21 pm · Link

@Wile E. Quixote:

And you can judge our success by the number of times we’ve killed or captured the number two man in Al Qaeda.

It’s the number 3 guy we keep killing.

Apparently, the al Qaeda charter creates three constitutional offices: Mastermind, Vice-Mastermind, and Keeper of the GPS Beacon.

General Stuck - September 30, 2010 | 7:29 pm · Link

@mclaren:

Remember – capturing Osama bin Laden is our number one priority.

I thought it was rooting out the Obot devils.

Arclite - September 30, 2010 | 7:38 pm · Link

The targets are dirty hippie Europeans, so who cares?

Now if the targets were New York, Chicago, and L.A., we’d be hearing about it 24/7.

Kyle - September 30, 2010 | 7:51 pm · Link

If OBL is dead, then it follows that Obama knows that

Not necessarily. There is a long history of the spooks hiding stuff and deceiving the President, and not just with aggressive dumbfucks like Bush or paranoid drunks like Nixon who need to be kept in the dark for the good of the country.

El Cid - September 30, 2010 | 7:52 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell: The thing is, being promoted to #3 in Al Qa’ida is a punishment.

‘You know, Abdul, um, that operation, you know, in France you were doing. We know it didn’t work and the bomb guy was caught. But, you know, we appreciate a good effort. In fact, we’re promoting you to…’

‘Oh no…’

‘Al Qa’ida #3! And here’s your red shirt to go with it!’

El Cid - September 30, 2010 | 8:06 pm · Link

Time magazine seems to notice another threat to the Republic, and it’s actually not Mooozlims.

The Secret World of Extreme Militias

By Barton Gellman

...This August weekend of grueling mock combat, which left some of the men prostrate and bloody-booted, capped a yearlong training regimen of the Ohio Defense Force, a private militia that claims 300 active members statewide. The fighters shot blanks, the better to learn to maneuver in squads, but they buy live ammunition in bulk. Their training — no game, they stress — expends thousands of rounds a year from a bring-your-own armory of deer rifles, assault weapons and, when the owner turns up, a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. The militia trains for ambushes, sniper missions, close-quarters battle and other infantry staples.

What distinguishes groups like this one from a shooting club or re-enactment society is the prospect of actual bloodshed, which many Ohio Defense Force members see as real. Their unit seal depicts a man with a musket and tricorn hat, over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” The symbol invites a question, Who are today’s redcoats? On that point, the group takes no official position, but many of those interviewed over two days of recent training in and around the abandoned Roseville State Prison near Zanesville voiced grim suspicions about President Obama and the federal government in general. (See Obama’s troubled first year.)

“I don’t know who the redcoats are,” says Brian Vandersall, 37, who designed the exercise and tried to tamp down talk of politics among the men. “It could be U.N. troops. It could be federal troops. It could be Blackwater, which was used in Katrina. It could be Mexican troops who are crossing the border.” ...

...Within a complex web of ideologies, most of today’s armed radicals are linked by self-described Patriot beliefs, which emphasize resistance to tyranny by force of arms and reject the idea that elections can fix what ails the country. Among the most common convictions is that the Second Amendment — the right to keep and bear arms — is the Constitution’s cornerstone, because only a well-armed populace can enforce its rights. Any form of gun regulation, therefore, is a sure sign of intent to crush other freedoms. The federal government is often said in militia circles to have made wholesale seizures of power, at times by subterfuge. A leading grievance holds that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, was ratified through fraud.
In a reversal of casting, the armed antigovernment movement describes itself as heir to the founders. As they see it, the union that the founders created is now a foreign tyrant.

“It’s like waking up behind enemy lines,” says Terrell. He says he smelled a setup when the FBI arrested nine members of Michigan’s Hutaree militia in March and charged them with plotting to kill police. (Their trial is set to begin in February.) Terrell and other leaders put their forces on alert, anticipating a roundup. “There was a lot of citizens out there in the bushes, locked and loaded,” he says. “It’s only due to miracles I do not understand that civil war did not break out right there.”

Some groups, though not many overtly, embrace the white-supremacist legacy of the Posse Comitatus, which invented the modern militia movement in the 1970s. Some are fueled by a violent stream of millennial Christianity. Some believe Washington is a secondary foe, the agent of a dystopian new world order…

None of these movements are entirely new, but most were in sharp decline by the late 1990s. Their resurgence now is widely seen among government and academic experts as a reaction to the tectonic shifts in American politics that allowed a black man with a foreign-sounding name and a Muslim-born father to reach the White House…

One answer comes from former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh, who wrote an essay that is among the most widely republished on antigovernment extremist sites today. In “What Good Is a Handgun Against an Army?” Vanderboegh says the tactical question is easy: Kill the enemy one soldier at a time.

A patriot needs only a “cheap little pistol and the guts to use it,” he writes, to shoot a soldier in the head and take his rifle; with a friend, such a man will soon have “a truck full of arms and ammunition.” Vanderboegh is hardly a man of action himself, living these days on government disability checks. Even so, when he wrote a blog post in March urging followers to protest the health care bill by breaking windows at Democratic Party offices, they did so across the country. (Read “The War Over Patriotism.”)

Another answer comes from Richard Mack, who is holding constitutional seminars for county sheriffs from coast to coast, urging them to resist what he describes as federal tyranny by force.

In his presentations, he shows movie clips to illustrate his point, like a scene from The Patriot in which Mel Gibson says, with fire in his eyes, “You will obey my command, or I will have you shot.”

You see, the Republic only needs the services of a militia steeped in fascist and white supremacist beliefs when there’s a Democratic President.

“[M]ost were in sharp decline by the late 1990s…”

Yeah. After one of them blew up a federal building with a day care center, they came under a bit more scrutiny.

STOP THE FEDRUL UNCONSTUSHULL TYRANNY AND KEEP GIVIN’ ME MY DAMN DISABILITY!

Maybe Jon Stewart can point out that, you see, we need to get a hold of the extremism on both sides, where one side is gearing up for a paramilitary war to shoot soldiers in order to overthrow the Constitution whenever a Democrat is President, and sometimes there are rallies where people carry a sign with a hammer and sickle or say nice things about Hamas. See? Both sides!

Maybe they could hook up with the various Islamic extremist would-be terrorists who want to shoot up highly populated buildings, and exchange notes on how to use small arms for the widest terror effect.

HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist - September 30, 2010 | 8:29 pm · Link

I was shocked to hear the word “chatter” on the news the other night. Brought me right back to the GWB days.

dopey-o - September 30, 2010 | 11:23 pm · Link

question 1: how do we know that OBL is even alive?

question 2: OBL sent couriers. how do the president’s new internet-tapping powers help stop couriers?

question 3: can we be sure that AQ’s new strategery isn’t just sending out random missives to random cells, in the hope that a few of them get caught, spill the beans, and rachet up fear in the west? isn’t that basically their mission statement, to induce fear in us?

question 4: could AQ’s commando-style attacks kill nearly as many Americans as cuts to Social Security will?