Fox News host Shepard Smith slammed President Donald Trump and White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday for his assertion that the media was ignoring terror attacks.
He said Trump appeared to be echoing “fringe media” like the publications InfoWars and Breitbart.
“In short, the president’s assertion is false,” Smith said. “The White House knows that it was false or could have learned that it was false with a quick Google check, but either did not do so or decided not to tell the truth.”
The Trump administration published a list of 78 terrorist attacks it claimed were under-reported by the media. But the Fox News host said that his network had covered every major terror attack.
“What they’re saying is not true, again,” he quipped, while introducing his guest. “Why bother?”
KellyAnne Conway: lies and more lies
Kellyanne Conway has taken “alternative facts” to a new level.
During a Thursday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the counselor to the president defended President Trump’s travel ban related to seven majority-Muslim countries. At one point, Conway made a reference to two Iraqi refugees whom she described as the masterminds behind “the Bowling Green massacre.”
“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said.
The Bowling Green massacre didn’t get covered because it didn’t happen. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Ky., carried out by Iraqi refugees or anyone else.
At what point is KellyAnne Conway going to stop lying? I knew Trump was a serial liar but it seems that KellyAnne is now proving that he has surrounded himself with people of the lie.
There was never a Bowling Green Massacre. Conway, Spicer and others who speak for the president just seem to continually spew crap to justify their boss’s incompetence and screw ups.
Is Bannon the Wizard of Oz? Is he the Rasputin behind the man who knows nothing?
9-11: The unthinkable 15 years ago today
It just seems trite to ask “what were you doing when you first became aware of the terrorist attacks on 9-11?”.
I clearly remember that I was in a new job assignment, frantically racing to a meeting that I had forgotten when someone told me a plane had hit the twin towers. At that stage of the game, it was thought to be a single engine plane by the media.
Little did we all know how wrong they were and how life-altering the terrorist attacks would be on our way of life. So much has been altered, it is almost impossible to enumerate the changes, from the obvious airport security, to how you get a drivers’ license, to the documentation you must have to rent a house or a car.
Nearly 3000 people died on 9-11. They were murdered. Just ordinary people going about their daily business. Then there have been those who died from the clean up, those killed in the wars that ensued, and those who suffered debilitating, life-altering injuries from those wars.
Our lives changed forever. We will never regain what we lost on that date. 9-11 will also be a date that lives in infamy. Post-9-11 seems to have no end. Perhaps more than even the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9-11 seems to have really been, in the words of Don Henley, “The End of the Innocence.”
Terrorist attack in Brussels 3/22/16
BRUSSELS — Apparently coordinated terrorist explosions rocked Brussels Airport and a metro station Tuesday, leaving at least 26 dead and raising fears that attackers carried out retaliatory strikes after the arrest of a key suspect in last year’s Paris massacres.
The full casualty count remained unclear hours after the attacks, but various Belgian reports and officials said it reached at least 26.
“We are talking about scores of dead,” said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel without giving clearer estimates after blasts brought down roof panels at the airport’s departure hall and an explosion on the Maelbeek metro platform shrouded it in smoke and littered it with debris.
The death toll is now at 26 with many others wounded. The Belgium terror alert has been raised to maximum level. Bad deja vu. The news continues and will continue throughout the day.
How does any country or locality prevent these kinds of attacks. You can’t be everywhere. In the wee hours of the morning when I first heard this news, I couldn’t make out where the terrorism had happened. I just knew somewhere. (I was too tired and lazy to give it my full attention.) It could have been anywhere. The story doesn’t change. Just the location. Terrorism seems to be spreading around Europe.
1 Oregon terrorist dead–stand-off not over
After an exchange of gunfire Tuesday that left one man dead and another injured, the two brothers who orchestrated the armed occupation of a remote central Oregon wildlife refuge were taken into custody while traveling outside the area, along with six of their followers.
Then, early Wednesday the government shut down the area, initiating what authorities called a “containment” with checkpoints and promising to arrest any unauthorized people attempting to travel into the refuge.
Bundy Boys go anarchist on us, again
An unpredictable new chapter in the wars over federal land use in the West unfolded Sunday after a group of armed activists split off from an earlier protest march and occupied a national wildlife refuge in remote southeastern Oregon.
The activists, led by rancher Ammon Bundy, set themselves up in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge 30 miles southeast of here, defying the organizers of a rally and march held Saturday in support of two local ranchers set to report to federal prison Monday to serve a sentence for arson.
Some of the occupiers said they planned to stay indefinitely. Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward said authorities from several law enforcement organizations were monitoring the situation.
Read More
All L. A. schools shut down over terrorist threat
All Los Angeles Unified School District schools have been ordered closed Tuesday due to a “credible threat” of violence to students at numerous schools in the sprawling district, and a schools official confirmed that it was a bomb threat to the school district.
Los Angeles Unified is the nation’s second-largest school district, with more than 900 campuses and more than 640,000 students. Ramon Cortines, the school system’s superintendent, said the threat was against students at multiple schools. LAUSD spokeswoman Monica Carazo confirmed that it was a bomb threat.
“It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, it was many schools, not specifically identified, but there were many schools,” Cortines said. “That’s the reason that I took the action that I did.”
This behavior could make for a long school year. If it works once and there is no threat, then what happens? Closing down a school system with 600,000 students must be the worst nightmare in the world. Do they do it every time a threat is called in?
My understanding is that the threat was electronically communicated to one school board member in particular. I think the story is changing. New York is also on high alert.
TV says the “threat is being analyzed,” whatever that means.
If you are too dangerous to fly….you are too dangerous to buy a gun
While campaigning, Clinton focused in part on barring people on the government’s no-fly list from being able to purchase weapons, as they can now.
“If you are too dangerous to fly in America, you are too dangerous to buy a gun in America,” she said.
But House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) cast it as a Second Amendment issue.
Read More
Terrorism: What is it really?
Syed Rizwan Farook was looking for a wife. On at least two online sites, he posted details for prospective brides. “Religious but modern,” he apparently wrote on one. He made a point of noting his American citizenship on another.
How he ultimately made contact with Pakistan-born Tashfeen Malik remains unclear. But family members said Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia, where Malik was living, and that they returned to Southern California as a couple and began a life in quiet Redlands, an area of ranch houses and once lush lawns now browned by drought.
Wednesday morning, they dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with Farook’s mother, according to family members. Sometime around midday, police say they donned masks and armed themselves with assault rifles and handguns before storming a holiday party hosted by the county health agency where Farook worked. At least 14 people died. Hours later, 28-year-old Farook and 27-year-old Malik were dead by police gunfire just two miles from the massacre site.
It certainly sounds like Farook was radicalized. That sure didn’t take long. He wanted a woman who was religious but modern. I struggle to understand why someone wants us dead because of Allah. It makes no sense.Read More
Fiery Rhetoric: The 800 pound gorilla in the room
Several Republican presidential candidates on Sunday condemned the attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs but stopped short of agreeing with liberal critics who say that fiery antiabortion rhetoric contributed to the shooting.
“It’s obviously a tragedy. Nothing justifies this,” former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Any protesters should always be peaceful. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or pro-life protesters.”
Calls to defund Planned Parenthood through congressional action have escalated in recent months amid a protracted national debate about the ethics of collecting fetal tissue for research.
Vive la France!
Vive la France!
Death to all terrorists. It’s really that basic. Multiple terrorist attacks in Paris will not crush the spirit of the French people.
We stand with you.
Never Forget: 9-11-2001
There doesn’t seem to be much on TV this year about 9-11. I suppose 14 years does make a difference. However, I want to see live footage. I want to feel the rage and the resolve I felt that day. I fear that if I don’t use this day, 9-11-15 and every 9-11 moving forward, I will grow complacent and sloppy.
I don’t want to get over it. I need my refresher course of outrage dished out yearly. I will never forget watching TV that night, after being sequestered away from TV that entire day, and thinking out loud, of all the gall! the nerve! the effrontery! Then a slow anger came over me that I don’t want to dissipate over the years.
9-11-2001 changed how Americans do business forever. Our travel will never be the same. Just getting a driver’s license is different. Our entire way of proving who we are will never go back to the way we did things on 9-10-2001. We are a nation now on our guard against terrorism in everything we do. I so resent that disturbance.
The day before yesterday our house mate came in and told me he saw a woman who was wearing a full burqa strolling her baby down the street. I didn’t see her but I was outraged over his sighting. I don’t like the lack of security–I want to know who is walking up and down my street. I don’t like people hiding their faces. I see no difference in wearing a burqa and wearing a stocking mask. If I saw someone walking down the street in a stocking mask, I would call the police. Why should my risk assessment be different in this case?
Please share your feelings. Mine aren’t particularly rational but they don’t have to be. 9-11 wasn’t a rational day and no, those of us alive on 9-11-2001 will never forget!
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gets the death penalty
From New York Times email:
A federal jury on Friday condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a failed college student, to death for setting off bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured hundreds more in the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
The jury of seven women and five men, which last month convicted Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, of all 30 charges against him, 17 of which carry the death penalty, took more than 14 hours to reach its decision.
I am not sure how I feel about this one. I think I would be more comfortable with life in prison with no chance of parole. I think his age has something to do with it. He is young. He would be around for a long time. I felt the same way about Malvo. I was glad he got life.
For the record: Generally speaking, I am not opposed to the death penalty as long as there is absolute certainty of guilt.
How do the readers feel?
Is there a little Tim McVeigh in us?
At 9:02 a.m., a rental truck packed with explosives detonated in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The powerful explosion blew off the building’s north wall. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later the death toll stood at 168 people, including 19 young children who were in the building’s day care center at the time of the blast. More than 650 other people were injured in the bombing, which damaged or destroyed more than 300 buildings in the immediate area.
A massive hunt for the bombing suspects ensued, and on April 21 an eyewitness description led authorities to charge Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001), a former U.S. Army soldier, in the case. As it turned out, McVeigh was already in jail, having been stopped a little more than an hour after the bombing for a traffic violation and then arrested for unlawfully carrying a handgun. Shortly before he was scheduled to be released from jail, he was identified as a prime suspect in the bombing and charged. That same day, Terry Nichols (1955-), an associate of McVeigh’s, surrendered in Herington, Kansas. Both men were found to be members of a radical right-wing survivalist group based in Michigan.
On August 8, Michael Fortier, who knew of McVeigh’s plan to bomb the federal building, agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two days later, McVeigh and Nichols were indicted on charges of murder and unlawful use of explosives.
What makes a person turn into a domestic terrorist? In the case of Timothy McVeigh, he joined the military, found his niche and then something happened. According to the McVeigh tapes, he got very disgusted and disillusioned over the wanton killing committed by his country.
Inventing your own demons when none exist
A 67-year-old Roswell man claimed he was only trying to be a “patriot” when he planted a bomb at a local park, according to a federal complaint against him.
Michael C. Sibley, 67, was arrested Saturday for allegedly leaving an explosive device at Vickory Creek Park in November, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
“The defendant allegedly placed a bag containing what appeared to be pipe bombs in Vickery Creek Park,” Horn said in an emailed statement. “This arrest should reassure the community that serious crimes like this will be investigated thoroughly and all leads followed to identify the perpetrator.”
Read More
