Speaking as someone who lives in the Metro Detroit area and visits Dearborn on a regular basis, I can state for a certainty that this guy is more full of shit than an overflowing septic tank.
April 15, 2015 at 4:04 PM
Horace Boothroyd III said...
Islamophobia runs rampant, creating the queerest of bedfellows. The New Atheists at the Daily Kos are snuggling up with the Jeff Jacobys and the PNAC crowd to lob stinkbombs at President Obama, in today's installment on account of how Yemen is in such bad shape. The Byzantine nature of the politics dictates that no one is an unambiguous Good Guy, and after all these weeks the US has not been able to cobble together a rescue mission to pick up the stranded citizens, so why not just elect a Republican president and let him sort it out? Golly, that worked really well in 2000. The scary stupid discouraging thing is that by 2006 we had learned our lessons and figured out the politics and we were doing a great job in getting our people elected. Then a whole bunch of whiners and complainers signed up for the easy victory in 2008, and they have been nothing but a pain in the Glutes ever since. If only we had had the good sense to smack their hands away and sneer "fuck off! We don't need any help from you losers, we're going to win this our way." Let us remember this lesson for the next iteration.
April 15, 2015 at 5:32 PM
Scopedog said...
"Then a whole bunch of whiners and complainers signed up for the easy victory in 2008, and they have been nothing but a pain in the Glutes ever since."
Yep. Of course, they offer nothing of substance in terms of a workable solution, or see any practical solution offered by President Obama as having some evil backdoor trap (see, for instance, the comments on Truthout or Common Dreams when it comes to the President's historic outreach to Cuba. They are all dripping with cynicism and whining about how the President really wants to "subvert" Cuba and support the "bourgeois class". While conveniently ignoring Raul Castro's state that he felt that Obama is an honest man).
As for the New Atheists at Kos (and everywhere else--here's looking at Luciano of the Daily Banter) all I can do is tune them out. As you remarked previously, atheism is not a bad thing and in fact many of them are willing to--and have--join forces with liberal religious to oppose the Religious Right and fundamentalism and keep the US as a secular nation that nonetheless accepts all beliefs. They are aware that not every religious person is a knuckle-dragging, drooling, gimlet-eyed fool. And yet....here come the NAs, torching all sides and not giving a damn all with some belief in a magical utopia after religion is tossed into the dustbin of history. "Everyone must think like us!!" seems to be the name of the game, even though such a thing is impossible.
April 15, 2015 at 5:45 PM
Horace Boothroyd III said...
Truthout: the world's most spectacular circus of magical thinking and wish fulfillment fantasy.
The Stupid, against which Zandar and we versus in vain, is that I actually agree with them on a lot of the core Leftist issues - but then they take a flying lawnmower liftoff into neverland. Which, likewise, is the problem with the New Atheists. They trend well educated, as they trend white and prosperous and testosterone addled, so in general they are capable of being interesting people. Yet, in their steely eyed crusade against the magical thinking of the fundies the failed to notice the growth of cataracts that blind them to their own forms magical thinking. And really, people are people and the problems they cause are the problems of people. We have saints and gibbermonkies in every generation: a bullet to the head of every Christian would crash the population without doing one whit to fix the problems of stupidity and selfishness.
April 15, 2015 at 9:58 PM
RepubAnon said...
The sad thing isn't that grifters lie - one expects that. The sad thing is how even a wildly unbelievable lie sells product...
April 15, 2015 at 10:54 PM
RonB said...
When are these dumb fucks going to realize that Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
April 16, 2015 at 1:36 PM
Scopedog said...
Probably never, I'm afraid.
April 16, 2015 at 4:55 PM
Horace Boothroyd III said...
Take care: in some parts of the country you risk being shot for voicing that idea out loud.
April 16, 2015 at 5:52 PM
Horace Boothroyd III said...
It's the will to believe that counts. People believe all kinds of nonsense, so long as they want it to be true. When they don't, all of a sudden everyone's an epistemologist and a graduate of CSI Google.
Author Steve Tarani said during a presentation in Nashville on Sunday that he has witnessed the alleged “no-go zones” — areas where police cannot enter — while shadowing a friend who serves on the Detroit Metro SWAT Police on a drive in Dearborn, MI. He described pulling up to one of the alleged Muslim-controlled areas:
The street signs suddenly went from English to Arabic. There wasn’t a single English word on any shop or any street sign. And in fact, these little yellow signs were posted all along the edges. Jeremy said to me, ‘this is it. We don’t go past this line.’ And I said to Jeremy, ‘what do you mean? You guys are Detroit Metro. You’re the SWAT team. You can go anywhere you want. What if you get a call over there?’ He said ‘this is it, it’s hazardous for our team if we go past this line.’ I have seen it with my own eyes, witnessed it in the backseat of a car and it is for real. No-go zones exist in the United States. Dearborn, Michigan is not the only place that these settlements exist. They are spread out over the country in various cities. There’s an estimate of over 5,000 known terrorist cells in the United States. However our most persistent and significant threat, right now, to us here today this morning, is the homegrown violent extremists.
Only one problem. Tarani's a liar and a lunatic.
There is no factual basis to allegations that parts of the U.S. have turned into no-go zones that Muslim extremists had supposedly conquered — a myth that was spread by Fox News reports earlier this year.
Tarani’s comments were part of an hour-long seminar in which he discussed what he claims are the threats Americans face on a daily basis. The frequency and intensity of “mass murders, beheadings and suicide bombings” are increasing, he said. After detailing the events of a number of mass shootings and terrorist plots by an “endless supply” of militant groups around the world, Tarani told the audience they should be prepared to respond to all kinds of threats.
Threats. You know, like people worshiping the wrong deity. But that paranoia sells guns and ammo and books, yes?
9 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formSpeaking as someone who lives in the Metro Detroit area and visits Dearborn on a regular basis, I can state for a certainty that this guy is more full of shit than an overflowing septic tank.
April 15, 2015 at 4:04 PM
Islamophobia runs rampant, creating the queerest of bedfellows. The New Atheists at the Daily Kos are snuggling up with the Jeff Jacobys and the PNAC crowd to lob stinkbombs at President Obama, in today's installment on account of how Yemen is in such bad shape. The Byzantine nature of the politics dictates that no one is an unambiguous Good Guy, and after all these weeks the US has not been able to cobble together a rescue mission to pick up the stranded citizens, so why not just elect a Republican president and let him sort it out? Golly, that worked really well in 2000. The scary stupid discouraging thing is that by 2006 we had learned our lessons and figured out the politics and we were doing a great job in getting our people elected. Then a whole bunch of whiners and complainers signed up for the easy victory in 2008, and they have been nothing but a pain in the Glutes ever since. If only we had had the good sense to smack their hands away and sneer "fuck off! We don't need any help from you losers, we're going to win this our way." Let us remember this lesson for the next iteration.
April 15, 2015 at 5:32 PM
"Then a whole bunch of whiners and complainers signed up for the easy
victory in 2008, and they have been nothing but a pain in the Glutes
ever since."
Yep. Of course, they offer nothing of substance in terms of a workable solution, or see any practical solution offered by President Obama as having some evil backdoor trap (see, for instance, the comments on Truthout or Common Dreams when it comes to the President's historic outreach to Cuba. They are all dripping with cynicism and whining about how the President really wants to "subvert" Cuba and support the "bourgeois class". While conveniently ignoring Raul Castro's state that he felt that Obama is an honest man).
As for the New Atheists at Kos (and everywhere else--here's looking at Luciano of the Daily Banter) all I can do is tune them out. As you remarked previously, atheism is not a bad thing and in fact many of them are willing to--and have--join forces with liberal religious to oppose the Religious Right and fundamentalism and keep the US as a secular nation that nonetheless accepts all beliefs. They are aware that not every religious person is a knuckle-dragging, drooling, gimlet-eyed fool. And yet....here come the NAs, torching all sides and not giving a damn all with some belief in a magical utopia after religion is tossed into the dustbin of history. "Everyone must think like us!!" seems to be the name of the game, even though such a thing is impossible.
April 15, 2015 at 5:45 PM
Truthout: the world's most spectacular circus of magical thinking and wish fulfillment fantasy.
The Stupid, against which Zandar and we versus in vain, is that I actually agree with them on a lot of the core Leftist issues - but then they take a flying lawnmower liftoff into neverland. Which, likewise, is the problem with the New Atheists. They trend well educated, as they trend white and prosperous and testosterone addled, so in general they are capable of being interesting people. Yet, in their steely eyed crusade against the magical thinking of the fundies the failed to notice the growth of cataracts that blind them to their own forms magical thinking. And really, people are people and the problems they cause are the problems of people. We have saints and gibbermonkies in every generation: a bullet to the head of every Christian would crash the population without doing one whit to fix the problems of stupidity and selfishness.
April 15, 2015 at 9:58 PM
The sad thing isn't that grifters lie - one expects that. The sad thing is how even a wildly unbelievable lie sells product...
April 15, 2015 at 10:54 PM
When are these dumb fucks going to realize that Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
April 16, 2015 at 1:36 PM
Probably never, I'm afraid.
April 16, 2015 at 4:55 PM
Take care: in some parts of the country you risk being shot for voicing that idea out loud.
April 16, 2015 at 5:52 PM
It's the will to believe that counts. People believe all kinds of nonsense, so long as they want it to be true. When they don't, all of a sudden everyone's an epistemologist and a graduate of CSI Google.
April 16, 2015 at 5:54 PM