Today’s somewhat-reported story is the one coming out of Cleveland. Five men have been arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and will be appearing in court in Cleveland today, Tuesday, May 1, 2012.
A few things seem to have not been declared in the reporting so far. For instance, according to the FBI’s press release, the men were arrested on the evening of April 30 after setting remote-control “dummy” charges that the men thought were legitimate explosives on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge.
The bridge in question is a four-lane structure. I don’t claim to have any engineering experience whatsoever, but two C-4 bombs do not seem like sufficient explosive force to take down a bridge that large. The explosions would have shut the bridge down, probably for days, as every square inch would have had to have been checked for more explosives. But the idea that the bridge would have come tumbling down seems a lot like police press conference hype. As is usually the case, the authorities have captured the dullest knives in the drawer (Blowing up a bridge? You’ve been watching too many episodes of Hogan’s Heroes).
A look at these men’s arrest photos reveals a group that, really, does not look all that bright. I know, looks are deceiving. But I don’t think that smart people would have come up with such a lame-brain plot in the first place. This brings me to anther thing that hasn’t been mentioned, even in the stories where the men’s photos are not shown: they all look white, and they all have white-sounding names: Connor C. Stevens, Brandon L. Baxter, Joshua S. Stafford, Douglas L. Wright, and Anthony Hayne. List of terrorist suspects or the next five appointments for a dentist in Manhattan?
I see at least a thousand people like those five every day in New York, either riding the subway, walking on the sidewalk, sitting at the coffee shop, eating an ice cream from Mister Softee, or shopping in a grocery store. It was the same thought I had when Tim McVeigh’s picture was plastered across everything: these guys look a little rough around the edges (a booking photo is rarely a time that you get a chance to look your best), but still, indistinguishable from the teeming masses.
The issue of home-grown terrorists is one the media avoids with a single-minded intensity. Why? Because any article about how, golly gee, all the terrorists lately seem to be distinctly not Middle Eastern, would have to address why a batch of good old American boys would be plotting to blow up bridges. And that’s one conversation the media doesn’t want to honestly address because doing so would certainly ruin the reporters’ chances of getting invited to the next White House Press Corps Dinner.
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While the New York Times Pravda Newspaper often writes as an Obamabot, today they had an op-ed about how the US government uses entrapment: Federal agents aggressively suggest to a Muslim that Islam requires a suicide bombing, refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer, and get a suspected terrorist-leaning Muslim to agree to ‘help’ in some way with a totally fake terrorist attack, then arresting the ‘terrorist’ and handing him over to Bush, Jr then Obama courts who have given all of these so-called terrorists at least 25 years (if not longer)The US, post 911, has rejected as ‘ancient’ any recourse to ‘proof’ or ‘evidence’ or ‘innocent until proven guilty’. The post-911 law is that the US president has the duty and obligation to kill every Enemy of the US anywhere at any time, and on the basis of evidence that can never be revealed to the American voters.And, as most American voters agree, the new strip search authority is essential to keep the US safe from terrorists. So bohica.
What a sales job. The FBI looks like one of Mark Twain’s characters. (Was it Huck Finn?)
Imagine convincing someone to pay you to paint your fence because it looked like such a wonderfully fun thing to do. Imagine getting up every morning looking for the poor dope most likely to be convinced that blowing up a bridge is a good idea to further some imaginary end only the FBI could dream up and sell.
Almost as much fun as convincing some idiot to lick a metal fence post in the middle of a deep freeze. Fun, that is, for a certain type of primitive mind. Morons of this type deserve each other.
What makes this worthy of notice, much less a paycheck, for providing security, ostensibly, in some weird sense of the word?
Obama has taken and expanded every single power Bush used, democrats bitched about it under Bush. Republicans have bitched about it under Obama, and as a result neither side has any room to say anything. It’s like when a football team cheats to win, when its your guys its part of the game… lol change, the myth.
To patron002:
The Republicans certainly have bitched about Obama but NOT on the important issues by which he has continued or expanded on the worst policies of Bush/Cheney.
The GOP was, at the very least a co-creator, of the NDAA provisions that grant (“codify”) presidential power to indefinitely detain US citizens on US soil without the due process of court review. I’ve seen no Repub bitching about Obama’s signing this into law – despite his earlier veto threat. Do you have examples to the contrary?
And please refer me to ANY Repub bitching about Obama’s self-appointed power to identify a US citizen as a terrorist for the purposes of assassinating that person on foreign soil.
Following is the link to an article on the public justification of said power by Eric “Yoo-Hoo” Holder:
http://tinyurl.com/7zd4n7u