Is there a brain in the right wing?

Let me see if I've got this straight. We have a Nigerian man, the son of a rich industrialist (so we'll assume that he was reasonably well-educated), who gets on a plane, fucks up putting together his little bomb, and toasted his own taint.

(Well, to be honest, there's usually a different view point on everything - I believe it was the great philosopher D. Henley who pointed out "There's three sides to every story, babe/There's yours and there's mine and the cold, hard truth." I mean, I live in New Mexico, and I've had the odd bean burrito with red chili sauce that blew out my pants, too. Or I suppose that it's always possible that he was some kind of Nigerian sadomasochist who enjoyed the smell of burning scrotum. I'm not really willing to count on that, though.)

I could say that this incident has caused the right wing to completely lose their tiny little minds, but that's starting to get redundant. Let's be honest: the right wing's hair bursts into flame whenever a traffic light turns red, and they immediately start trying to figure out how they can blame it on Obama.

But once again, as they go completely bugfuck, the accusations about Obama start pouring out into the mainstream media, much like a pig-lagoon overflowing in a hurricane.

We have complete morons suggesting that racial profiling is the way to go: that all men who look Middle Eastern should be given a harder look before they board a plane.

Now, honestly, there are dozens of reasons why that suggestion is so brain-dead that a houseplant would be unwilling to suggest it. I'll get to one or two of those problems later. For the moment, let's just work with the most obvious one.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.



So, let's play a game. This kid looks ________. (Fill in the blank.)
1. Middle Eastern.
2. like a black man.
3. Ooh, look! Shiny thing!

How'd'ja do? Did you get it right?

And then we have retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney, suggesting that all Muslim males between the ages of 18 and 28 should be strip-searched. Which makes you glad that he's a retired general, since his ability to plan ahead is so mind-numbingly small (or his ability to gauge the intelligence of his enemy is so openly retarded) that he thinks that the average al Qaeda terrorist, faced with that policy, would willingly self-identify as Muslim.

Sweet Jesus Christ on a crutch, there would be more religious conversions to Christianity at the airport (at least on paper) than at any tent revival in the history of the world.

I'm going to be generous here, and make the assumption that McInerney is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers, because it's difficult to see how someone could climb up through the ranks of any branch of the military, and not have learned, at some remedial class he took along the way, that around 22% of the world's population is Muslim. It's the fastest-growing religion on the planet. Roughly one out of every five people you will ever meet, if you travel a little, will turn out to be Muslim. And that includes whites, blacks, Asians, and every shade in between.

But then we find out that a recent Rasmussen poll (and we won't even get into the fact that Rasmussen polls can be relied on to slant right harder than Fox "News") tells us that 58% of US voters want to waterboard our boy Umar. Well, that's fine. 58% of Americans probably want a pony, too.

Let's ignore the fact that Abdulmutallab was answering questions already. And then let's also ignore the fact that, really, do you want to get rid of the terrorist groups who are incompetent enough to teach their followers to blow up their own pants? (I mean, can we just concentrate on the talented terrorists for a while? Can't we just ignore the ones who chase roadrunners and order their supplies from the Acme Catalog?)

But the fact is, anybody who wants to torture prisoners wasn't properly socialized by their parents and aren't ready to live in a civilized society. I'd even be willing to point out the blatant stupidity and probable inbreeding of most of the parents involved.

The problem with torturing people to gain information is that, when someone is tortured, they'll say whatever they they think will make the torture stop. Whether it's true or not. That's why, in 1998, Qin Yanhong, a Chinese villager, confessed to the rape and murder of a woman he'd never met. Because he was tortured, and he wanted to make the torture stop.

But how to solve this problem? Well, GOP Representative J. Gresham Barrett from (where else?) South Carolina, seems to think that barring entry to all immigrants from a list of "terrorist" countries will do the trick. Mostly, of course, because Representative J. Gresham Barrett is so overwhelmingly stupid that when you stand next to him, you hear the ocean. Part of his statement includes the phrase "Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation."

Really, Congressman? You haven't thought this one out well, have you? Let me see if I can help you.

The State Department has indentified the following states as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Given recent reports of increased levels of terrorist activities in Yemen, Congressman Barrett has requested that its citizens not be allowed to enter the United States.

So, where did these last two Islamic terrorists come from? Well, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, MD (who was, by all appearances, a lone lunatic, but let's ignore that) was of Palestinian descent, but born in America. Neither Palestine nor America seem to be on that list, now, do they?

And Abdulmutallab? Did you catch that he was from Nigeria, Congressman? And to be honest, how many terrorist attacks have actually originated in Cuba? Or for that matter, Iran? And, you know, I hate to go over the same ground over and over, but remember those nineteen guys who did the plane thing on 9/11? One Egyptian, one Lebanese, two from the United Arab Emirates, and fifteen Saudi Arabians - would even one of them have been pulled aside if your ignorant little bill went through?

And looking at the origins of those hijackers, why isn't Saudi Arabia on that list, Congressman?

So, yeah. I think it's relatively obvious that Rep. Barrett is of such limited mental capacity that he probably craps himself regularly. And, considering his South Carolinian background, I'm willing to say that inbreeding is involved here, too.

And as for the likelihood that Barrett's ignorant little idea, or profiling in general, is likely to work, can I remind all of you of a little incident called the Lod Airport massacre? Japanese terrorists, working for Palestinians, went into an Israeli airport and killed Puerto Rican tourists. Try fitting that into your brain-dead profiling plans.

The last few weeks has given us the usual collection of idiots and liars, pushing the usual litany of bullshit. Dick Cheney and his Panting Puppies of Doom keep claiming this meme that Obama is weak on terror (a claim easily refuted), and we actually have congenital idiots like Mary Matalin and Rudy Giuliani (and, for that matter, Dana Perino) trying to say that there were no terror attacks under Bush... I mean, after 9/11... and if you don't look at the Shoe Bomber, or the anthrax attacks, or any of the dozens of other terrorist acts that occurred under Bush (Bob Cesca even has graphs for you, if you prefer the evidence presented visually).

So, in general, I think that the only thing that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded in doing was highlight the ignorance and dishonesty of the Republican party. Again.

Oh, and toast his scrotum.