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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / The Other Message from the Pope This Christmas

The Other Message from the Pope This Christmas

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By now you have heard there was an incident on a plane headed to Detroit. I’m not going to speculate about what happened because the reports are all over the place, and I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it, but I will state that I think we all know the kind of media freak-out we are about to have over this event. Peter King and the usual suspects are already running over people to get in front of cameras. With that in mind, I’d like to bring you the other message from the Vatican this holiday:

The Vatican will review its security procedures after a woman jumped a barrier and rushed at Pope Benedict XVI for the second time in two years.

But the Vatican’s top spokesman warned that it was impossible to guarantee 100% security around the pontiff. This time the woman managed to knock the Pope down before being pulled away by guards.

***

Vatican press chief the Rev Federico Lombardi said it was unrealistic to think the Vatican could ensure 100% security for the Pope, considering he was regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people for his weekly audiences, Masses, papal greetings and other events. “It seems that they intervened at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which ‘zero risk’ cannot be achieved,” he said.

There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope, and there are none for you, either. I hope our elected leaders keep that in mind.

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    I’m just wondering what we’ll have to take off next to get on a plane.
    Belt, jacket, shoes. Panties?

  2. 2.

    Max

    I did appreciate that Ed Henry said that Obama and Homeland Security would be taking specific measures for airline security, rather than just “some color code”. (h/t Gotta Laff)

    In all seriousness, I manage a “high risk” facility and it’s amazing the things we have to look out for and the extra training and interaction with PD, DHS, etc. we have had to put in place since 9/11.

    I spend a large part of everyday thinking about the safety of the 14 million people a year that cross my threshold.

  3. 3.

    Incertus

    There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope, and there are none for you, either. I hope our elected leaders keep that in mind.

    They won’t. We’ll be at war with Eastasia before that happens.

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    Plus, Kelly Hu is freakin’ fine.

  14. 14.

    Anya

    Is it too naive to hope that the media will act in a sane manner instead of the usual freak-out.

    I am grateful that I do not have t.v., and will be spared watching Peter King, Liz Cheney and all the other assholes exploit this incident. I am also grateful that McCain is not president. We would have been mired in war with Iran and/or maybe Russia over Georgia by now.

  16. 16.

    calipygian

    @Anya:

    We would have been mired in war with Iran and/or maybe Russia over Georgia by now.

    That McCain was willing to trade Chicago for Tbilisi in a potential nuclear exchange with the Russians over a couple of Caucaus Mountain shitholes should have been enough for him to withdraw from the Presidential race.

  17. 17.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    OT but my DH wanted a new surround sound system for Christmas, so we got him one. He hooked it up today. And he chose for a movie to check it out, some damn thing in which there was a thunderstorm from hell (oh yes Jurassic Park), can I say candidly that in a house with three dogs who are afraid of thunderstorms that playing a fucking thunderstorm through five fucking surround sound speakers is fucking retarded! Harumph! Thank you. We now return you to your regular programming.

  18. 18.

    Colleen

    Hmmm, watching our local news here in Detroit and they are pumping it up for all it’s worth. I just got done reading an AP report that had a passenger saying, “it sounded like a firecracker going off in a pillow case.” Fox 2 news describes this as an explosion. The suspect was taken to U of M which is known for it’s burn unit. According to AP his legs were burned and our local news has reports from passengers that his hands were wrapped in bandages. Our local news is also reporting he was on the no fly list. Just glad whatever he had on him didn’t work. If any one has ever seen that one episode of family guy where the news reporters were talking about what could have happened if the plane hit a school, or what could have happened if the plane hit a school full of bunnies…..yeah, our local news report was just like that. Here we go.

  20. 20.

    calipygian

    Funny. If the IRA had bombed a British Airways flight from New York to London, I’m sure Peter King would have cheered the IRA on, saying that people going to London on an English flight had it coming.

  21. 21.

    Bruce (formerly Steve S.)

    There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope, and there are none for you, either. I hope our elected leaders keep that in mind.

    Only took Rep. Hoekstra about 15 seconds to show that our elected leaders don’t keep much in mind at all.

  22. 22.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Grrrrrrr he is now watching “The Mummy 3” which also involves a great deal of explosions that sound like Thunderstorms. I swear to the FSM that sometimes my DH has the intelligence level of pond weed. (Personally given the option I would outlaw home theatre systems, outright, being a hazard to the public health that they are). Someone help me please.

  24. 24.

    Anya

    @calipygian: Here’s Bill Burton playing coy with the pool:

    Q Do you have anything for us — reports are that Anwar al-Awlaki was taken down, he was suspected of having contact with Hannan. Do you have anything for us on that?

    MR. BURTON: I’m not going to comment on the specific reports. As we’ve said previously, the President supports the government of Yemen and their efforts to take out terrorist elements in their country and we’ll continue to support those efforts.

    Q Does the United States have any knowledge that this was going to happen before it did?

    MR. BURTON: Like I said, I’m not going to comment on the reports.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Colleen: I may have to watch, say, the Saturday edition of the Today Show tmoorow morning just to count the number of times the anchors, hosts, newscasters, pundits, terrorism experts, and Folks Who Were On The Plane, speculate about what *could* have happened and how disastrous it *might* have been.

    To quote an old favourite Anna Russell satire song: “Things would be so different / If they were not as they are.”

  26. 26.

    Chat Noir

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.):

    Hoekstra hadn’t yet been briefed on the incident but said he is already calling or the Obama administration to meet with Intelligence Committee members to fully inform them about the alleged terrorism attempt at the Detroit airport.

    You would think nitwits like Hoekstra could at least get the facts before running their mouths to the media. Wotta moron.

  27. 27.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @calipygian:

    Oh but the IRA were righteously fighting for freedom don’t cha know, different thing entirely. So they tell me, those people who put all those dollars in those jars in pubs in New York and Boston, to buy arms, to kill my friends and neighbors, but its all for the cause of freedom don’t cha know, so its different from Al Quaida somehow. Well just cause it is so shut up. (channelling my inner wingnut).

  31. 31.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Chat Noir:

    You would think nitwits like Hoekstra could at least get the facts before running their mouths to the media. Wotta moron.

    But how can his mouth wait for his brain to gather facts when it’s always so eager to spit out its bootychatter?

  32. 32.

    Colleen

    I swear, they had a “terrorism expert” on and she said, (no, not Debbie Schlusslewhatnot), that the terrorist would only blow up a plane over US land and not the ocean because blowing up one of our planes over the ocean would not receive the media coverage that a blow up over land would get. This is why I cannot watch the news. I’d post a link but it wouldn’t be embedded so you’ll have to google the news report. It’s fox 2 news in Detroit and I didn’t think to catch her name. I couldn’t believe she said what she said. Give it a few minutes though, the news started at 10:00 est so it may take them until the broadcast is over at 11 to post on line.

  33. 33.

    Leelee for Obama

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Yeah, I really get my back up when people say things like that. As an Irish-American who got lots of requests for money from such fund-raisers, I have to say I’m still proud of the way I told them to bite me. Not a way to make friends, true, but I didn’t need that kind of friends. No one should go after innocent people, for any reason. And whether the other side was doing wrong or not, blowing up any people is not the way to solve the problem.

    Just FYI though, Peter King is 16 different kinds of an asshole, and Hoekstra will likely look good with the egg he winds up with on his face.

  34. 34.

    demkat620

    Welp, this will knock HCR off the front page. But in addition to putting Hoekstra and King front and center we’ll get the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate:

    The delightful Senator from CT, Joe Lieberman. Yippee.

  37. 37.

    Leelee for Obama

    OT- Anyone else have issues with verrrrry slow page loads today. I feel like I’m back on dial-up. Used Firefox and IE and both slow, but Firefox much slower. It’s been driving me crazy. I even shut her down and restarted and nuthin’! Just did a clean-up and virus and spy ware scan so I’m confuzzled.

  38. 38.

    cleek

    Welp, this will knock HCR off the front page.

    $10 says there are at least 10 wingnut blogs (and at least 3 Hamster blogs) asserting right now that Obama planned this, for that very reason.

  40. 40.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Leelee for Obama:

    You know what horrified me? I mean really horrified me? It was when the fundraising people in the US were fine when it was only people who were killed, you know boy scouts and the like, but when they blew up the horses! OMG, that is when the IRA crossed the line, they blew up the horses. I suppose boy scouts are lesser beings or something. It made me utterly sick. (and I am an animal lover)

  41. 41.

    slippy

    @Chat Noir: You know if we had some ham we could have ham and eggs, if we only had some eggs.

    In other news, who cares what the minority party whose Big Leader failed to prevent 9/11 because he was on vacation when he got the memo that it was about to happen thinks about a failed terrorist attack?

    After all, it can be said that:

    At the time of the most devestating foreign attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, a Republican President failed to anticipate or stop said attack though the information warning him of that attack was dropped into his fucking lap over a month before it happend, and furthermore completely failed to even try to capture the individual responsible.

    Like, 1,000,000,000,00000000000000000000000000 times. I’d like to attach that legend to a giant brass stamp and repeatedly jam it into every Republican’s face for all eternity just to make sure they understood what massive, gigantic FAILURES they and their governing philosophy are.

  42. 42.

    demkat620

    @cleek: Exactly.

    Nigeria is in Africa right? You know what else is in Africa? Kenya.

    I bet this guy is missing his long form birth certificate too.

    OMG!

  43. 43.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Incertus:

    Well duh! Because you and I well know that saying “no” would have resulted in weeks and weeks of pouting and sulking and “if only I had a new surround sound system” ad infinitum. I mean to be honest I thought the surround systems we had was fine ($99 Big Lots), but apparently it wasn;t good enough, anyway now we have a JVC system that will probably result in the sheet rock falling off the walls pretty soon and the foundation cracking if my DH insists on watching the movies which involve 60 minutes of explosions and gun fire. Oh well.

  45. 45.

    Colleen

    I just checked the fox2news page and they have 2 videos up but no “terrorism expert” and a search of their home page brings up nothing, natch. They have updated the story and the suspect is in custody and one of the passengers has gone to U of M to the burn unit.

  47. 47.

    wilfred

    @calipygian:

    @calipygian:

    Ah.

    “If the American government helped in attacking one of [its own] citizens, this is illegal,” the father said, his voice cracking. “Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and he’s going to get a trial. My son has killed nobody. He should face trial if he’s done something wrong.” “If Obama wants to kill my son, this is wrong,” he said, adding that despite his son’s ideology, the younger Aulaqi had no links to al-Qaeda.

    Obama, fuck yeah!

  48. 48.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    In better news Cueball is delighted with all of his new toys (that means every toy every animal was given this Christmas, seeing as in Cueball’s world EVERY toy is Cueball’s toy) he has been wandering around the house with all of the new squeaky toys, with all of the new jingly bell meeces (the cats toys), the boxes they came in, and the plastic wrap they were wrapped in. Meanwhile Judy has been doing a stellar job of stealing ALL of the dog treat bags from the stockings above the fireplace, I have no clue how but I find her on the love seat with the bags and the remnants of the treats.

  50. 50.

    Leelee for Obama

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Well, as bad as the Michael Vick dog-fighting mess was and remains, I was disgusted by the fury over it when we have human beings dying everyday because they don’t have health care insurance. It’s just so amazing that the cognitive dissonance is so wide-spread.

    Also. I was home alone today, so I watched quite a few programs in my DVR, and one of them was the Q & A interview with T. R. Reid, the guy who did the PBS Frontline about health-care in other countries, and then parted ways with them on the American version, because he disagreed with their final cut. Good info, but I think I got an inkling as to why it’s always been such a fight. Other modern countries decided it was the moral thing to do to cover all their citizens and then figured out how to do it. They, for the most part, had or still have a national identity that we, the nation of immigrants, don’t have. Could it be that the originalists convinced themselves that keeping health care through employment settings allowed them to keep undesirables from forgetting their place? I know, I sound bitter and such, but, it jumped out at me while Reid was talking and I thought I’d ask for opinions! It also kind of jelled with me that T. Roosevelt believed in immigrants BECOMING American, and also was the first President to call for Universal Health Care here. Coincidnce?

    Hope John doesn’t get pissed at me!

  53. 53.

    wasabi gasp

    Intervene at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which ‘zero risk’ cannot be achieved.

    Wrap that rascal in Lambskin of God brand condoms.

  54. 54.

    Boston Yankee

    Cheney is now safe in a secure location. Not so safe is this panic stricken country. What will it take to calm this country? We already consume most of the world’s illegal drugs. We also do well with alcohol. The wingnuts wish for the end of times, while at the same time being petrified by those terrible terrorists. We did away with the draft so that the youth of the ruling class would be safe from harm. They now use private jets, while the masses trudge shoeless through checkpoints.

    I know, 9-11 changed everything. It unbalanced the budget, we’ve been at war ever since, taxes for the wealthy went down, jobs went to China, banks went to hell, and we still have these terrorists. And now a Nigerian has the audacity to try to set himself on fire to bring an airliner down. How can we get a handle on every psycho on the planet to guarantee the complete safety of every petrified American?

    What is the answer?

  55. 55.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @Leelee for Obama:

    Have you tried resetting the modem? Or, unplugging it and waiting a few minutes then plug back in. Sometimes when mine slows down, that works. That’s all I can think of.

  57. 57.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Leelee for Obama:

    Ditto, apparently no one is concerned that 47,000 people a year die in the US as a result of no health insurance, they scream bloody murder over the amount of aborted fetuses, and yet they seem to have absolutely no problem with fully formed, living, breathing human beings dying from a lack of health insurance. As I have said before Republicans care for your existance until the precise moment that you exit the womb, at which point they could not give a shit what happens to you. Never, ever forget that.

  58. 58.

    Jennifer

    Ummmm…perhaps the best thing to do is to point out the obvious.

    The flight did not originate within the U.S.

    So anyone with even two brain cells to rub together should be at a loss as to how someone getting onto a flight in another country would be a reflection on U.S. security or regulations, much less the U.S. president.

    This is way too “forest for the trees” for our media to grasp, however, when option B is TERRA TERRA TERRA!!! On the baby Jesus’ birthday, no less.

  63. 63.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    @Midnight Marauder:

    I’m sure Cheney was busy just choked oning down a Xmas pie baby.

    There… fixed-fixed.

  64. 64.

    Leelee for Obama

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    As I have said before Republicans care for your existance until the precise moment that you exit the womb, at which point they could not give a shit what happens to you. Never, ever forget that.

    This is precisely why I am, always have been and always will be a Democrat. The Dems drive me crazy, I castigate them incessantly and pray for and support more and better Dems, but even the worst of them is better than the Republicans.

  66. 66.

    gocart mozart

    @Ash:

    Tequila and arugula.

    You forgot the diijon mustard. The proper way to guarantee complete safety is to put diijon mustard between your thumb and forfinger, lick it off, drink the shot of tequila, and then chew on the arugala leaf. Science has not found a better way yet.

  70. 70.

    gocart mozart

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Republicans care for your existance until the precise moment that you exit the womb, at which point they could not give a shit what happens to you.

    Even this is giving them to much credit because they don’t give a shit about prenatal care.

  71. 71.

    burnspbesq

    @Chat Noir:

    You would think nitwits like Hoekstra could at least get the facts before running their mouths to the media. Wotta moron.

    Not sure why you would think that. IYAAR, facts don’t matter. All that matters is to be able to get in front of a microphone and howl at the moon.

  72. 72.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @gocart mozart:

    well that is not true, they care about pre-natal care for white wimmin who are married to good christians who are pumping out babies at one every 18 months or so… cause you know to quote Braveheart, “If we can’t fight them out we will breed them out” and that is exactly what they are doing in case you haven’t noticed.

  73. 73.

    BeccaM

    Yeah… a ‘sophisticated’ device the media outlets are breathlessly bleating.

    The stupid criminal terrorist wannabe set his crotch on fire. And was immediately put down and restrained by passengers who know, all over the world, that they should not cooperate or hang back from anyone threatening the integrity or safety of the plane in flight.

    But yeah — some overstuffed high office blowbags will take it upon themselves that they must simply do SOMETHING. So on flights very soon, look for them to be confiscating some other innocuous commonly carried item (or maybe lots of them) and subjecting prospective passengers to even greater indignities and restrictions.

    Meanwhile, the cargo going into the bellies of those same planes often gets only cursory off-site ‘certified’ inspection…

    Why the disparity? Individual passengers are just people, and in our increasingly authoritarian society they can be trained to put up with it. But cargo though — that’s business, with serious money involved.

    I’m kind of glad my wife and I are more or less done with our regular globe-trotting.

  74. 74.

    Comrade Luke

    I spent Christmas dinner sitting next to my cousin, who wanted to debate me regarding Obama’s birth certificate (“Oh, I don’t believe he’s from Kenya. I believe the certificate says ‘Father: Unknown’. It’s weird that they’re preventing people from seeing it, don’t you think?”) and Sarah Palin’s qualifications (“I voted for her in the hope that McCain would die and she would take over. Obama voted “present” for two years in the Senate; how is he more qualified?”).

    Only had one quick helping; great way to keep your weight down over the holidays.

    And to think he just got his Masters and is pursuing his PhD…in psychology.

  75. 75.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Believe me, it’s nothing you haven’t heard before or probably thought. The callousness of people and casual disregard for their fellow human beings has continued to astonish me. For those proclaiming the ways of Jeebuz, they certainly don’t have much love or compassion in them. It’s all about fear and making sure that other people don’t have an iota more than you do (or even equal). Fucking disgusting.

    @Comrade Luke: Your anecdote just depressed the hell out of me–not that I was in a good mood, anyway.

    Anyone have anything happy to report?

  76. 76.

    gocart mozart

    @Litlebritdifrnt:
    Too bad for them that most of the good Christians “who are pumping out babies” today are Hispanic. It leaves them in a “moral” quandry. Buchanan and his ilk lament that this country is becoming less Christian and simultaneously oppose the immigration of the most devoutly Catholic group of people on the planet. His racism trumps his relegion. I find this funny.

  79. 79.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Yeah Cueball is wandering around the house with half a dozen squeaky toys in his mouth, as well as half a dozen meeces with bells in his mouth, cause every single toy on the planet belongs to Cueball, and to be honest it is fun, it really is, there is not at toy in the house that doesn’t
    “belong” to Cueball and it is just funny, to be honest,

  81. 81.

    Anne Laurie

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    …can I say candidly that in a house with three dogs who are afraid of thunderstorms that playing a fucking thunderstorm through five fucking surround sound speakers is fucking retarded! Harumph!

    LOL! And I’ll bet when you threatened to make him clean up the resulting floor stains, he pulled the “stagger back to my sickbed of pain” routine, too. Poor you!

  82. 82.

    Anya

    @Comrade Luke: My boyfriend’s family are a bit wingnutty, specially his mother. She is always sending us emails about how Obama is a secret communist and his father was not Kenyan but actually a supper communist named Frank Marshal Davis. The tragedy of it all is that she’s actually a school teacher. Mind you Frank Marshall Davis seems like a cool father to have – she could never explain why would Obama denny that he is his father.

  83. 83.

    Comrade Luke

    @Anya:

    Thing is, I’d welcome a debate with a conservative. I just haven’t met any righty that’s not a full-blown wingnut in years.

  84. 84.

    Anne Laurie

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.):

    Here is Pete Hoekstra’s Twitter page. You’d think he would have something better to do on Christmas.

    I guess neither Hoekstra’s family nor the Baby Jeebus wants to spend much time with the miserable schmuck. Can you blame them?

  85. 85.

    Anya

    @Comrade Luke: I think nutty believes are mainstream conservatism now. My boyfriend’s parents are nuts but the kids are reasonable. His older sister is Republican but she’s socially liberal. They make me hope that we are at least winning the under 30.

  87. 87.

    KCinDC

    So anyone with even two brain cells to rub together should be at a loss as to how someone getting onto a flight in another country would be a reflection on U.S. security or regulations, much less the U.S. president.

    Obviously you have too many brain cells to reason properly. TSA must have its infallible agents at security at every gateway in every country that we allows planes in from. All other countries are subservient to the US, after all. If any country demurs, a few well-placed bombs courtesy of the US Air Force should show them who’s boss. Obama failed to do that, so he’s clearly at best a wimp but more likely an Al Qaeda mole.

    But for now we have no choice but to shut down air travel completely and hide under out beds.

  88. 88.

    eemom

    “There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope….”

    oh, good heavens, do I have to explain EVERYTHING?

    The attack on the Pope was clearly visited upon him by the Lord as a warning of the divine Wrath that will ensue if the Conference of Catholic Bishops permits the final HCR bill to pass the House without the Stupidpak amendment.

    God is already fed up with this weak willed pussified Pope that He elected to fulfill His antiabortion agenda, but who has turned out to be nothing but a craven corporate sellout and triangulator for failing to force the Bishops to push through an overturning of Roe v. Wade. The watered-down Stupidpak amendment was compromise enough. If they dump that, that’s it — God’s signing up with the Kill Billers and sending a letter to Eric Holder. Because that, ye Popebots, is how to get shit DONE.

  89. 89.

    fraught

    Send me to hell now, but I laughed out loud every time I saw the pope get boinked. I watched it ten times at least and each time it seemed funnier and I didn’t know if he was hurt or not. I simply reacted as if were staged slap-stick. The most pompous, pretentious, persnickety, old womanish public figure in the world today, with his Prada pumps and his starched lace frocks, hitting the floor, his pointy hat flying, his gold thingys flapping around. It’s vaudeville. And I don’t encourage it at all by anyone in the future, ever again. But since it happened, Oh, the spit takes I can do. And ok, just send me the fuck to hell, if you’re big enough.

  90. 90.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Shoot me now. Please. He is such a nit-twit.

    I demand a pitchforking. I shall settle for nothing less.

    Hi hon. Had a pretty happy story on the other thread since I’m gonna let them y’know INVESTIGATE this before I make any final judgments.

  92. 92.

    Arlene Machiavelli

    DirecTV wins the competitive bidding process and then signs an extension ($4 billion for 5 years) with the NFL to broadcast Sunday Ticket … so what’s the problem? that people don’t have directv?

  93. 93.

    Mike G

    Thing is, I’d welcome a debate with a conservative. I just haven’t met any righty that’s not a full-blown wingnut in years.

    Close relatives of mine send out a Christmas letter every year. This year their opening paragraph mentioned a generalized wish that with new political leadership in the US the future was perhaps more hopeful.

    Wingnut cousin’s email response, quoted verbatim —

    “I think maybe you would like to know that I am a conservative actives and very much against the Satist,your liberal socialism and Karl Marx. I am appalled that a christian would vote for Obama. Be careful how you start your christmas letter.”

  94. 94.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    Pope Tipping, the new winter sport. I wonder if someone will start accepting bets…lol!

    Controversial people get ‘pie faced’ and such by others that they piss off or in some ways make themselves a target for. Usually the person attacked is someone who is reprehensible in some way to some person(s) and/or group(s) for something they advocate or cause to happen.

    The Pope is such a target. At one time in the past the person who did this would have been tortured and more than likely put to death for this.

    At the order of the Pope, of course. Good thing he ain’t in charge anymore.

  96. 96.

    Yutsano

    Stille Nacht,
    Heilige Nacht,
    Alles schläft einsam wacht

    (commenting on the slowness, did the egg nog critter get y’all?)

  97. 97.

    bago

    @Ailuridae: Step one, run all of your utilities from systeminternals.com

    Seriously, these guys know windows better than the people that work in building 27. That’s why they were bought by Microsoft.

    Step two, find out which process is eating your CPU. If it is a browser eating your CPU you have a rogue script. If not, you may have been infected with a parasite that hijacks your CPU and then prompts your browser to buy the cure.

    I worked once on a case for the FBI documenting this particular scam. You can thank Adobe for that one.

  98. 98.

    Xenos

    Feh. I had to deal with an old friend who not only thinks Obama is a soshalist, but that he is almost as much of a soshalist as Hillary Clinton. And that soshalism is bad because it is unamerican, because if we go soshalist like the rest of the developed world that means we are no longer so special and magical and rightfully the leaders of the West and all creation, too.

    Why does soshalism kill the magic righteousness of the great Hegemon? Because it discourages charity and the lower orders no longer weep with gratitude for a few crumbs off the table of the wealthy. People will then stop worshipping the great, charitable Republican in the Sky, and that pissy Republican in the Sky will cut his uppity kids out of his will, and we will be taken over by the Cubans or whatever. None of it makes sense, 90% of it is counter factual, and appeals to the moral vanity, authoritarianism, and prejudice in even well educated and intelligent people. It is the effect of 20 years of consuming propaganda – otherwise intelligent, good people who can not recognize reality right in front of their faces.

  99. 99.

    bob h

    In Israel there is the maturity that you just have to learn to live with incidents like this. So the message is get used to it, and have a look at airline security in Nigeria and other hellholes where these flights can originate.

  102. 102.

    R-Jud

    Oh great, another transatlantic flight incident, this time with a mix of powder and liquids. You know what else is a mix of powder and liquids? Baby formula.

    We just bought tickets to the US for July 4th last week. I will have to wean the kid off formula and onto something more acceptable, like scotch, before then. And I’ll make some hand puppets to demonstrate to her how it works with the metal detectors and the pat-down. I suppose I should also prepare her for the cavity search, which will probably be standard practice this time next year.

  103. 103.

    JD Rhoades

    @Bruce (formerly Steve S.):

    Hoekstra: Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned.

    By that logic, there were several “terrorist attacks” during the Bush years. So much for the talking point that GWB “kept us safe,” then.

  105. 105.

    valdivia

    Leelee for Obama–re internet slowness. I had this problem about a month ago and followed all the advice of the good folks here, but as many advised, the problem was my cable company. I called they helped me on the phone then decided to send a technician. When he came he told me my modem was old (I had had it for almost 4 years) and that it was incompatible with their new system which updates itself and that once the update was sent out my modem could not function properly. they updated the thing and now it works like charm. Call the company if you are still having problems.

  106. 106.

    Svensker

    @JD Rhoades:

    Hoekstra: Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned.
    By that logic,

    Do you see the problem in that construction? Hoekstra, logic… Nah.

  107. 107.

    Leelee for Obama

    @valdivia: Thanks, valdivia. It seems that may be it, because it is sometimes better, but never as fast as it was. I will call them today.

  108. 108.

    Maude

    LeeLee, there’s a script that hangs on this site. I do have dial up and I use K-Meleon browser. It’s faster. FF is slow these days.

  109. 109.

    joe from Lowell

    The really surprising part was when the woman said, “Yo, Pope, I’m a let you finish, but I just wanted to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the best Christian primate of the year.”

  110. 110.

    henqiguai

    @valdivia (#104):

    When he came he told me my modem was old … and that it was incompatible with their new system which updates itself and that once the update was sent out my modem could not function properly. they updated the thing and now it works like charm. Call the company if you are still having problems.

    Yep. Though I don’t have cable internet (Comcast cable tv is as far as I’m willing to go), they essentially told me the same thing about the tv settop box, as well as the signal splitter to hook up two televisions.

  111. 111.

    asiangrrlMN

    @eemom: I demand to know how many plus you were when you wrote this brilliant piece of satire.

    @Yutsano: You are right. If anyone deserves a pitchforking, it’s Hoekstra. Read your story. Very nice. Glad idiot brother was mostly harmless.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. […] John Cole nails it.  Connecting this incident with the crazy woman who has now twice managed to get to Pope Benedict — who has as good a personal security apparatus of any man on the planet — he observes, “There are no zero risk situations in life for the Pope, and there are none for you, either. I hope our elected leaders keep that in mind.” […]