According to Lord Foppington, John Fogerty is not the only one.
PJ Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that PJ Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. Please note that comments are reviewed by the editorial staff and may not be posted immediately. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pjmedia.com.
Creedence broke up in ’72?! OMG, I am old.
This is a little too close for comfort.
The barbarians are probably also probably taking up residence in Coalinga, Salinas and other sleepy towns north of Los Angeles. Right by me in Westood(L.A.’s Persian capital), the bad apples can blend in easily. However, in places like Lodi(my ex was from there) where Islamic fundamentalists should stick out rather easily people don’t suspect anything for the same reason many of you are so shocked by this news; i.e. “Why the hell would they be in Lodi?!!”
These people seem to have lost the plot,emigrate to America the land of opportunity.
“What do you want to be my son, a doctor,a lawyer?” ” No father I wnt to go back to the old country and train as a terrorist,come back and kill sick people in hospital.” “Allah be priased my son,your mother alway said you’d turn out bad.”
It is the poverty of ideas that is the most stunning aspect of this,even the mafia had more of a clue.
Kyda,
I work every day in a hospital that cares for patients from Lodi.
Peter,
“Poverty of imagination” (a psychiatrist might say “poverty of thought”) precisely nails the problem. Islamism is an illness.
Jamie Irons
Jamie,
What is the psychosis whereby someone can look at a hospital and instead of thinking “If I am ill they will look after me or,one day I will work there”,instead “One day I will destroy that place and all those in it”.
Now the left is having a breakdownhttp://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2005/06/hysteria-of-charles-rangel.html
Sorta OT (via Lucianne)
Thanks, Newsweek
The militant Islamic Jihad on Wednesday presented pictures of torn copies of the Islamic holy book, the Quran, claimed they were taken inside an Israeli prison and said soldiers were responsible for the desecration. Israel denied the charge and said the pictures were a fabrication.
The very last sentence in this AP belch:
The pictures transmitted Wednesday showed Qurans with several pages torn in the middle. It was impossible to tell from the pictures themselves where they were taken or when.
Thanks, AP
(Like we’re suppose to have sympathy for an organization that recruits retarded kids and young women facing honor-killing warrants for IJ suicide bombing attacks.)
Roger;
These men are citizens so they deserve a fair trial. It is possible that they are innocent. The fact that they have been charged is not proof that they are Al Queda. But the knee jerk defense of these men has already started in the MSM. I caught the opening of Keith Olhberman to check how he would cover the story. His opening seemed snide and doubtfull to me but it wasn’t obvious so I kept watching. He started by asking whether these men are terrorists or are they simply the men who worked at the grocery store and operated an ice cream truck. His tone sounded doubtfull but it was not obvious. Of course the fact that they held normal jobs means nothing. Al Queda is trained to take regular jobs and they don’t tell their fellow employee’s that they are p[lanning to blow up and or kill as many Americans as possible.His ignorance of how sleeper cells operate is obvious.
Then the clincher came. In a puff peice about 3 cubs that got loose and caused damage he, in the precious and snide way this smart ass has perfected, said the Bears were going to be charged with lying to federal agents. Of course these men are innocent and of course this is just the bumbling Federal Agents who fabricated the charge to help bail out the administration. Of course these are just innocent Muslims who are being victamized because of their faith by those born again crusaders in the White House. Because of course we know that there are no terrorists in America and this is just part of the campaign to keep us scared so we will vote Republican. This is the exact head in the sand attitude that brought us 9-11.
…even the mafia had more of a clue.
And the mafia has more honor. What a sad, sad commentary.
My local paper reports that there has been a Pakistani community in Lodi for a century. I had no idea. These ME and Muslim (including Nation of Islam) communities, I’m sorry to say for their law abiding residents, are most certainly the places that bare the most watching. My sister is an RN in a north NJ hospital. In its district is a large Palestinian community. On the night of 9-11, she witnessed the dancing in the streets, not 25 miles from Ground Zero.
Jamie–That’s one heck of a commute for somebody.
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I had a modicum of respect for Charlie Rangel.
Several months ago there was a media buzz about a Muslim woman leading prayer services in a Lower Manhattan mosque. The fundamentalists were not pleased.
One of the MSM broadcast networks had a camera somewhere in NYC, filming young student protestors wearing their traditional robes and beards. One of them found enough breath to approach the microphone and yell “This is blasphemy! And the penalty for blasphemy is DEATH!”. I pretty sure he was shaking his finger at the lens while he was speaking.
Why do such people chose to live in our country? Is there anything done in the US 24/7 that wouldn’t offend a Wahabbi scholar? Yet the 9/11 murderers kept under cover before the attacks, drinking alcohol, visiting strip joints, giving everyone the impression they were happy, happy, happy to be in the USA. On the morning of 9/11, they ritually bathed and shaved themselves, and wrote their farewell instructions. Then they calmly stepped into the doomed aircraft and proceeded to slaughter three thousand people.
mrp
Here are the pictures http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44664
Kyda,
Jamie–That’s one heck of a commute for somebody.
Vallejo Kaiser Hospital is (among other excellent qualities) the only rehab/physical medicine tertiary care facility for many miles around. I consult regularly on that ward, and all the others in the hospital, and the ER.
My commute is about forty minutes on a good day.
Jamie Irons
I almost posted about my night stuck in Lodi many years ago when it suddenly occurred to me that the car finally failed us altogether in Rio Vista. We’d been in Angels Camp to help with the fireworks and watch the frogs at a famous county fair and, not consulting with one another, had managed to spend just about every cent we had in a time when undergraduates didn’t, as a rule, possess a credit card and when there wasn’t yet an ATM to be found by the Bay, much less along the Delta.
Always liked the Rio Vista humor on a popular radio show that I realize I haven’t listened to since another altogether failure in Wendover after a meandering week or two in South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Wyoming again, and Utah on my journey back west in 2000.
Sometime back then I also read, among other things while catching up on my New Yorker reading, that the current President of the United States of America did best in anthropology and history while an undergraduate at Yale and thought that, when undergraduates, he and I had a lot in common.
My favorite Creedance song then and now:
Long as I remember the rain been comin’ down.
Clouds of myst’ry pourin’ confusion on the ground.
…and so it goes.
Creedence Clearwater Revival was my favorite band before Joe Strummer and Mick Jones got together. Would an editor have helped? Probably not.
This discovery of a possible al Qaeda cell in Lodi brings us to the heart of the matter of what is/might be happening inside America. Not just how many of ‘them’ are around, but also how many can be turned to support the jihadi cause?
What is the tipping point? What are the factors involved? How many can be shamed into it? How many can be blackmailed into it? How many can be incited into it by perceived wrongs or injustices?
How many are just bored with nothing else to fire their imaginations? Brings to mind an article I read a couple of years ago about young Saudi men who had money but no jobs and how many of them turn to the jihadi cause. Joe called it ‘terrorism as hobby’. Nothing to do with poverty for sure, or even oppression. Just something to do, something to get excited about.
Why is it that it’s mostly 2nd generation immigrants in Europe who turn to ‘the cause’? They may not have as much money as the Saudi youth, but they surely do seem to have time on their hands.
If my belief in human nature is correct, there will always be a percentage of any race, nation, or culture, succeptable to succumbing to extreme thought/behavior regardless of outside influence. But how much beyond that basic percentage, whatever it may be, does the jihadi movement go? How much easier is it due to the tenets of Islam to reach a tipping point for any individual?
This is an important question because it goes to the heart of the short term effects of Iraq. Long term we understand that freedom and democracy, and most importantly, capitalism and free markets, keep people too busy making a good living to worry about such existential matters. But short term the flypaper strategy is drawing jihadi’s to Iraq and as those are killed more are being created. But how many more? and for how long?
A definite problem for those such as Kaus who believe we are making more enemies through our actions. Put aside the questions of WMD and Saddam ties to terrorism and you have the real fear. But is the fear well-founded, or is it simply not placed in the context of long term goals?
(As an aside, we rant about the Saudi’s not really preventing their jihadis from going to Iraq. But if I were the Saudi’s I’d probably do the same thing, easy to get rid of the riffraff that way. Let them blow themselves up. No more worry to us. Well, that’s probably too cyncical, but you get the idea.)
In the last few weeks I’ve read two accounts of two different Syrians. The WaPo article on Abu Ibrahim:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/07/AR2005060702026_pf.html
and the blog of a Syrian about another Syrian, Karfan:
http://syriaexposed.blogspot.com/
Two totally different people from the same country/culture. One a jihadi, the other not.
I suspect, or rather I choose to believe, that the vast majority of these peoples just want to be left alone to live their lives. That as we enable more and more of them to do so, they will marginalize the fringes that are causing them so much trouble. Yes, I believe the jihadis are fringe. I just don’t know how large the fringe is.
But that’s there.
What is happening in the meantime inside America? What are the possibilities? We, too, just want to be left alone to live our lives.
Syl, it’s tornadic, the trying to ‘get’ it. I stay lost, too.
Patrick, “…and so it goes.”–a Vonnegut reader, are you?
…are most certainly the places that bare the most watching. Yes, and they also bear watching.
How much easier is it due to the tenets of Islam to reach a tipping point for any individual?
Much, I think. And the problems persist even long before that tipping point is reached. Remember the Muslim FBI agent who refused an assignment to suveil another Muslim because the Koran forbids it? The rules that govern such interaction, whether it’s Muslim:Muslim or Muslim:Infidel, are very strict.
The friends, relatives and neighbors of these birds in Lodi are all professing the usual shock. “Never a problem”, “always cordial”, “humorous fellow”, “nobody believes or understands what’s going on” (mightn’t the frequent trips to Pakistan raised a suspicion or two given that Daddy’s an ice cream man and all?). Now, it might very well be that the shock and awe expressed is genuine, but how do we ever know? I expect anyone with well founded suspicions of terrorism or related activites to share those suspicions with the authorities. I regard it a civic duty. But I don’t think we can count on the majority in our Muslim communities to feel the same.
How the same sort of problem was handled by one community, once upon a time.
Buddy—
Yes, but it has more to do with Lloyd Dobbins and the linked show
http://www.jumptheshark.com/w/weekend.htm
and then Overnight. I assume that Dobbins got it from Slaughterhouse-Five, but if he ever said so I don’t remember.
Another favorite: There Are No Words
Source: Homemade sign in the stands at Shea Stadium in 1969, also seen on the Los Angeles NBC affiliate.
Most Recent Siting: http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=15728_There_Are_No_Words&only=yes
Syl,
The real war will be here in the West. Between Americans and Europeans, between defenders of liberty and America-haters, between red staters and blue staters. I can easily see us breaking down into another civil war. All the fault lines are starting to buckle at once under the pressure. If we win the war here at home, we win. If we lose it, we lose.
In deciding to fight a war, we are agreeing to allow young men and women, our soldiers, to be killed; we are making a choice to sacrifice their lives and the lives of other innocent bystanders who happen to get caught in the crossfire. That’s the sad and unpleasant but necessary truth of war. It takes a certain hard-heartedness to make this decision, necessary though it may be. But I think we’re going to have to realize that our hearts may have to grow even harder, that further sacrifices may be required. Namely, it may be necessary for the terrorists to kill some more people and blow up some more things within the United States. The country is still asleep. Deeply asleep. Terrorists in America? Impossible. Just that foolish Bush trying to take away our rights again. I’m afraid that a sense of the reality of this conflict must be created or we shall lose. Are we brave enough to face this?
Presidents are always hated, or ridiculed. We resent their power over us, the lack of true democracy inherent in any governmental system. Democracy is a sham, government itself is a sham–it can never yield up its promise, it always involves the sacrifice of the self for the state, for the greater godd–and the President/king is required as in times of old to pay the ultimate price for this betrayal. Reagan was intensely hated, as was Clinton, but I do not believe there has been a time of such over-the-top screaming vituperative hatred since the days of Lincoln. What can account for this? Surely sublimated hatred of Islamists must play a role. It is entirely natural for the innocent citizens of a country who have been attacked and killed without warning to respond with hatred toward the attackers. Yet here we observe a hatred which dare not speak its name. We have had forty years of indoctrination that war is wrong, hatred is wrong, racism is wrong, all men are brothers, and yet here we have right before our eyes the necessity of hating our enemy–yet we dare not. So we hate Bush instead. Or Republicans, red staters, keyboard commandos, and the rest.
The Bush-hatred is amusing but sad. Bush should have known enough to prevent it; Bush is taking away our rights through his intrusive intelligence measures. Bush has sent too many soldiers in; Bush has sent too few soldiers in. Support the troops; the military is evil. Oil is not worth fighting for; just leave me alone to drive to the ski resort in my SUV. These are not the voices of reason. These are the remarks of frightened and impotent people who have been denied the very words with which to express their hatred and confusion.
I think it has become clear that Islam itself is part of the problem, not just “Islamists” or “Islamofascists”. The idea that there is only a fringe element with whom we must deal is a canard, a fig leaf, a hope against hope. It’s not that every one of those billions of people is a screaming mass murderer. But we have here a religion which officially sanctions and glorifies conversion and dominance over all people not in the religion. At the cost of murder, mayhem, and martyrdom if need be. This gives terrible meaning to the lives of millions. This is not a fringe sentiment but a mainstream belief. The sooner we recognize the reality of what we’re up against both at home and abroad, the better.
Kyda: “Remember the Muslim FBI agent who refused an assignment to suveil another Muslim because the Koran forbids it? The rules that govern such interaction, whether it’s Muslim:Muslim or Muslim:Infidel, are very strict.”
But, also remember the unnamed Muslims for whom this is not a problem and never will be. Do you really think, speaking of ‘over there’ again, that Omar would ever become a jihadi or use his religion as an excuse not to be pro-democracy? That’s a fair question to ask is it not?
Also isn’t it strictly forbidden not to kill another Muslim? The jihadis have gotten around that by renaming any Muslim who cooperates with the West as infidel. My point is that there are inconsistencies, no matter what they say, within Islam itself. If one hears competing fatwahs, what is one to do? All they have is the words in the Koran, which supposedly are words directly from Allah, yet they depend on clerics to interpret in a beneficial way? If some clerics can interpret one way, others can interpret another way. The jihadis have already broken the faith in the word.
WichitaBoy “The idea that there is only a fringe element with whom we must deal is a canard, a fig leaf, a hope against hope. It’s not that every one of those billions of people is a screaming mass murderer. But we have here a religion which officially sanctions and glorifies conversion and dominance over all people not in the religion.”
I hear you, but you’ve given up too soon. If Islam is worth saving, it will save itself. If it’s not, it will destroy itself through the actions of the fanatical true believers who are making a heap of trouble for the rest of the muslim world. And it won’t take centuries. Though I don’t know how much death and destruction will occur in the meantime.
Witchita, Syl, and others:
Oh boy. When I go down these lines of thought you guys have been highlighting I become about as close to deeply depressed as I am capable of.
My Fellow Citizens claim they don’t want to live in a dictatorship or a fascist nation but then piss and moan that the POTUS didn’t do something to stop the closing of the nearby auto assembly plant and then go off on a ranting tangent about how freedom of speech is being taken away by the fascist POTUS while pointing to a pile of best-selling books making that very claim and referencing magazines and radio programs in support of their claims.
They want a “Manhattan Project” to solve the nation’s “addiction to foreign oil” but don’t want to use what we learned from the first Manhattan Project, can’t abide government secrecy or “black programs”, don’t want the government controlling a large portion of the nation’s brightest minds, don’t have a clue how much of the nation’s budget and energy production the Manhattan Project consumed, don’t want “Big Corporate Greed” involved, and don’t want budget diverted from “social programs”. I guess what they want is for an organic soybean grower from a blue state enclave to magically figure out how to do cold fusion using nothing but dust mites or something.
They want “national security” without surveilance, investigation, or detention of anybody. They want some sort of Magical Malintent Detector that doesn’t observe or investigate anything, just sorta turns on at the right time.
They want the “immigration problem” solved without goring anyone’s oxe. Close the borders but make sure no women and children go thirsty or suffer heat stroke out there in the desert trying to work their way through the closed border. Get rid of illegal immigrants but don’t have any amnesties or roundups and be nice to the children – it isn’t their fault – and, BTW, leave “my Mexicans” alone ’cause it’s perfectly obvious they’re just hard working people trying to get a break and, besides, they do jobs we just can’t find anyone else to do in this brutal economy with the most lost jobs since Hoover and the Great Depression.
What they want is a loving Daddy who is also a Benevolent Dictator of the Whole Wide World and Always Asks Their Opinion And Is Really Good At Making Them Believe Their Vote Counts.
They want the things they are most fond of pissing and moaning about to be “solved” without any tradeoffs or inconveniences and no mistakes can be made along the way and nothing in their own lives should be be touched in any way.
What a bunch of spoiled, and stupid, brats we’ve become.
Just to correct my previous assertion re: what My Fellow Citizens want as a POTUS, it is:
A Loving Daddy Who Is Also a Benevolent Dictator of the Whole Wide World and Always Asks Their Opinion And Is Really Good At Making Them Believe Their Vote Counts and, Please God, Make Sure She Doesn’t Believe In Superstitious Twaddle Like Supreme Beings and Such.
Man, Knucklehead, did you and Terrye get married or something!? What a rant! Bravo! LOL
It’s not THAT bad. If we had total agreement in this country about how to do things and what it is we really have to do THEN I’d worry.
Three steps in one direction, two steps in the other. We get it right eventually, and most importantly, when we _must_ get it right we usually do.
I think most people are taking some comfort in complaining about ‘normal’ things these days. We haven’t gone back to sleep totally, one eye is always open. We can snap to at a moment’s notice if we have to.
In other words, I obviously feel more optimistic than you. For whatever that’s worth.
We get it right eventually, and most importantly, when we _must_ get it right we usually do.
I think most people are taking some comfort in complaining about ‘normal’ things these days.
Yes, Syl, but these aren’t or at least shouldn’t be politics-as-usual times, since we’re at war after being viciously attacked on our soil. We’re currently spilling American blood overseas to win this war, and Americans, both non-Muslim and Muslim who would impugn our history, our motives, our tactics, our national character and values are prolonging the multi-fronted fight by giving hope and propaganda to our enemy and by consuming needed energy and goodwill. In short, detractors and critics are contributing to more bloodshed, both of our troops and other innocents. I’m optimistic that we’ll prevail, as you are, but not so sanguine about citizens indulging in anti-war and anti-American “dissent” and second-guessing while we’re on a war-footing.
Syl,
I have days when the Tedium of the Idiots seems hopelessly crushing. I’ll get past it.
As disturbing as these recent arrests may be, there are some potential operational shifts of Al Qaeda tactics that can present even greater problems for us.
http://www.rightviews.com/article.php?id=312
We should act quickly to head off such a potential disaster.
That’s a fair question to ask is it not?
More than fair.
Are the Fadhil brothers the exception or the rule? I suspect, in Iraq at least, the latter, but time will certainly tell.
Is the situation in Iraq, where Muslims are blowing up their fellow Muslims right and left, different than here in the US where they are not? Markedly. The fears I hear expressed most often by Muslims here at home focus on the perceived abrogation of their civil rights by our government and the Islamophobia of non-Muslim Americans.
How often have we heard the phrase “I am Muslim first”? (I suppose if we boil it down to the absolute basics, I am Christian first, but my Christian religion instructs me on the differences between rendering to God and rendering to Caesar.) How much peer pressure is applied at the local level to remember that fact?
Martin Luther chose to interpret the Scriptures in a manner different than the Roman Church and the world changed. Is there a Martin Luther in Islam’s future (recall the recent pitifully attended DC rally of “moderate” Muslims)? To what extent is “interpretation” of the Koran even possible? Once again, time will tell, but in the meantime here at home, we better watch our backs.
Kyda:
You hit the nail on the head.The problem isn’t with the Muslim religion as a whole.It is with the segment,15% to 45%, that has not made it into the 21st century.The problem is that there is a large segment that has no problem with the way Christianity and the Muslim faith acted pre-Reformation. They have no problem with forced conversion and old fashion theocracy.
I am not talking about the pseudo theocracy that those on the left think President Bush has created. I am not talking about people of faith who participate in the democratic process and know that they will lose as often as they win and when they can’t convince the majority of the public to the wisdom of their political idea’s they peacefully accept that democracy is a blending of numerous definitions of faith and agnostic and atheist who are all allowed to participate in the process and they don’t resort to violence.You win some, you lose some, or you come to some sort of compromise.
This is far different to fight until you win and if you have to blow up innocent people to seize the reigns of power so be it. The Crusades have become the excuse to rationalize the actions of some Muslims by the left. Even for those who despise religion and the role it plays in American politics there is no rational argument to say that the Christian politcal goals are to get rid of our Democratic Republic and relace it with a religous dictatorship similar to the times when Popes and Kings ran the european world. There is a segment of the Muslim Community, a segment that has real power and is not just a bunch of lunatics hidding in the hills, that wants to bring back a stlye of government that is extremely close to to what we had centuries ago. Governments where the heads of religions are also the heads of the government also. Governments where you have to follow the correct religous format the the heads of the governmnets decide is right for you. Or die.
And the net widens… link
Kyda,
Umer Hayat “is being portrayed as a terrorist when all he has been charged with is making false statements to federal officials,” Griffin said.
Well, that was good enough to get Martha locked up, so it oughta be good enough for this guy. The real question is whether or not K-Marts will ever again be safe to enter or, I suppose, whether or not anyone cares.