Here, let CBS just clarify it for you:

"Absolutely nothing [can detect these rectum bombs] other than to require people to strip naked at the airport," said Yates.

And al Qaeda says it will share its new technique via the Internet very soon. There is nothing that can stop that either.

There you have it: there is no stopping it. Just pray that it will be quick.

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Have you finished composing your "where I was" blog post or, god save us, your #whereiwas Tweet? Have you muted MSNBC's deplorable annual encore performance of the televised deaths of thousands? Have you remembered to never forget? Good. Fine.

Shortly after (or maybe during) that day, our president at the time, a little fuckhead no one liked, handed over the reins to the most psychotic elements of his administration. In the vast national wave of jingoism, paranoia, dread, and fear that followed, he and his friends led us into an unrelated war they'd been planning beforehand, allowed the CIA to wiretap and torture anyone they liked (and encouraged the CIA to wiretap and torture even more than they were comfortable with!), and regularly insisted that our memory of that day should not be sullied with critical thinking or expressions of anything other than still-palpable fear. This played better in the sorts of places that had nothing to fear from international terrorism, but plenty of formerly reasonable-acting people in the major targets did play along, both out of personal conviction and partisan duty.

In fact an entire cottage industry of dudes who were Changed Forever On That Day thrived on the internet. Bloggers, all of whom were self-professed Former Liberal Democrats, were suddenly freed to be racist, bloodthirsty warmongers. They were rewarded with traffic and mainstream legitimacy (even as they ritually attacked the MSM as terrorist-loving fifth columnists). Most are still treated as Serious People, even though their defining characteristic was a hysterical response to a crisis.

But we don't even need to feel bad about the Joe Kleins, Chris Hitchens, Andrew Sullivans, Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnsons, and Peter Beinarts of the media world. Because, whatever, they are as responsible in their own ways as Wolfowitz for the Iraq tragedy, but their magical ride on the patriotism express has ended.

Barack Obama is the president now. Regardless of what you think of him as a politician or a man, he admirably refuses to engage in 9/11 rhetoric. He does not operate from the cynical assumption that his audience believes that America Can Do No Wrong, that to criticize a war is to be a literal traitor, that to not worship the president is to spit on the graves of soldiers, that the correct response to a tragedy is to create a thousand more. He doesn't talk like that. And so, fucking finally, the anniversary belongs to the latte-sipping out-of-touch coastal elites who witnessed it.

On 9/12, people in New York (and DC) did not feel as "great" as Glenn Beck. They just felt like shit. They felt scared and confused and depressed. Many of them were drunk. And only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01. And eight years later, normal people, with brains and souls, have decided that some emotional distance from that disaster is healthier and wiser than trying to recapture the dread.

So thank fucking christ that the Commander in Chief is no longer subjecting the nation to death porn.

No, this year it's limited to a nutty little cult leader on basic cable who is encouraging his radicalized band of fanatical followers to invade the cities where the tragedy actually happened in order to shock the populace back into fear.

Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America.

There is an internet law about it and everything: as soon as you call someone a Nazi you have lost the argument. We won't quibble with that law's infallibility when it comes to, you know, overheated message board (or chat show) arguments. (Though to call it "the Vidal tactic" while skipping past the bit where Buckley responded by calling Vidal a queer and threatening to "sock [him] in the goddamn face" does give the reader the incorrect impression that Vidal was wrong to accuse Buckley of fascistic leanings.)

And Gerson does point out that the "Nazi" comparisons are being made by Republican senators, Rush Limbaugh, and protesters carrying signs calling Obama a Nazi, and he is certainly not happy with them. He is embarrassed by them, in fact!

But because this is a Washington Post editorial by a "reasonable" Republican no criticism of the conservative movement may be proffered without a "pox on both houses" attack on Democrats for doing the exact same thing, all the time, but worse.

Because Nancy Pelosi (D-Boogeyman) accused town hall disrupters of "carrying swastikas" (they were). And because unnamed "liberal antiwar protests" were chock-full of Hitler mustaches. Because Michael Moore said something dumb about the Patriot Act. And because Representative Brian Baird decried "Brownshirt tactics."

Here's the thing about that last one: the people intentionally disrupting town hall events and trying to turn them into anarchic carnivals of rage and possible violence are literally, actually guilty of "Brownshirt tactics."

Both the Nazis and Mussolini had Brownshirts and Blackshirts, their violent followers (many of whom were angry, disenfranchised-feeling war vets resentful of elites), attack socialists and union leaders, often on behalf of capitalists unhappy with leftist governments. Brownshirts marched through socialist strongholds in order to provoke attacks, and then they ginned up more support by holding up those who were attacked as martyrs. Does that sound familiar?

The well-publicized image of the SA-man with a bandaged head, a stirring reminder of his combat against the "Marxists" (along with other portrayals of muscular, oversized storm troopers), became standard in party propaganda. In the first eight months of 1932, the Nazis claimed that seventy "martyrs" had fallen in battle against the enemy. Such heroic depictions — set against the grim realities of chronic unemployment and underemployment for young people during the Weimar period — no doubt helped increase membership in the SA units, which expanded in Berlin from 450 men in 1926 to some 32,000 by January 1933.

Obviously that could never, ever happen here. No responsible American business-owners would ever goad the violent right-wing fringe to provoke their political enemies into street fights.

To point out "Brownshirt tactics" is not to accuse your opponents of wanting to kill all the Jews, and when people are actually engaging in them they should always be called out in the most forceful terms possible.

Instead of treating fascist movements as magical forces of incomprehensible evil we should probably try to remember that a lot of repeatable historical circumstances allowed them to gain power.

His name is Ahmed Ghailani and he's the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to be shipped out to stand trial here in the US. They brought him to NYC, the only place where all the residents and their elected representatives are not scared to death to have a jail-withered foreigner locked in their maximum-security prison cell, where he might spark another terrorist plot amongst his cellmates, if he had any.

Ghailani is charged with helping to build one of the bombs that blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and US officials say he was once Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard. Whether he's convicted or not, he should probably leave New York City as quickly as possible. He'll be okay if he can make it to a Red State, they're terrified of him there.
[Pic: AP]

The hedge-fund chief today answered a series of questions about his press on PE Hub, a website for the private-equity industry. Valleywag's coverage of Thiel figured prominently. Some choice quotes:

I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters. I don't understand the psychology of people who would kill themselves and blow up buildings, and I don't understand people who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy.

Awww, he thinks we're angry!

It's like terrorism in that you're trying to be gratuitously meaner and more sensational than the next person, like a terrorist who is trying to stand out and shock people.

It's odd that Thiel would equate provocative writing with terrorism when the arch libertarian seems so comfortable saying sensational things to get attention. Last month, he wrote that women's suffrage ruined democracy in the early 20th Century. At Stanford Law School, Thiel started a conservative newspaper and is said to have had some kind of noisy fight with campus liberal Rachel Maddow, now of MSNBC fame.

So it's surprising that Thiel is so tight-lipped after saying "what gets written is half right, and half entirely wrong." We'd love to hear specifics. Sadly, as in our past attempts to get comments from Thiel, none have been forthcoming.

Thiel is hardly alone in trying to turn tech blogs into a rah-rah chorus. There is now an entire media ecosystem dedicated to disseminating CEO and investor spin. Thanks to Thiel, anyone who questions the publicist-approved message can now be labeled a terrorist. Whatever: Valleywag will continue to be a place that prints the truths that others are too polite to say out loud.

And Peter, on this my first day as the Valleywag, you couldn't have picked a better welcome gift.

Caldera, Clinton's Secretary of the Army and Obama's director of the White House Military Office, has "resigned," before the "review" of the whole fuckup even finished!

All he did was have a 747 circle the financial district, trailed by fighter jets, for the sake of a photo-op, while knowing full well that that would cause a panic. And then he ordered everyone briefed on the flyover to keep it secret from the public, for fun! Oh, how New York laughed, that morning.

Hey, what time is it? It is late Friday afternoon! So we will probably even get the photo of not-Air Force One going all North by Northwest on Lady Liberty by, say, 5!

Update: Or by 4:25, either way! Here is the photo of Air Force One, on an ugly-looking day, flying over a brown river, with a background of beautiful Jersey City. Yeesh. You guys couldn't touch this up a bit? Make it look like the panic was worth it? Hah, no, because this was a stupid idea for a photo op to begin with.

[Photo: BMcCluskeyNYC]

The whole reason they decided to fly an Air Force One lookalike over the city was for some "publicity photos," but now they're all like "Uh, what publicity photos are you referring to? Do I need to call the FBI on your ass? I am operating on direct terrorist 'dry run' orders of Obama, so be quiet."

"We have no plans to release them," an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.

Which is total bullshit because at least if they released them we would get some more material out of this.

Air Scare!
[NYP]

Sure, 9/11 happened a thousand miles away from Albert Lea, Minnesota, and the town is in no danger of a terrorist attack, but fires and floods happen everywhere, and it is good to help children deal with them. It is even better to help the children with a dark and unintentionally hilarious pamphlet of misery and apocalyptic doom.

The vagueness of referring exclusively to an unspecified incident—"the disaster"—lends the proceedings an especially ominous tone. "Draw a picture of yourself before the disaster" is practically a late Leonard Cohen lyric. This book is the best. "You might think you made the disaster happen, but you didn't." Cormac McCarthy and P. D. Eastman entered a room and only this book came out.

This little tableau is called "The Mediated Life," or "An Evening At Dick Cheney's House."

Sadly some people (FEMA) didn't enjoy this book and it has been taken down from their website.

They just give those awards out to anyone these days.


Color your entire life as you know it washing away!



Color God's Wrath at Iowa's Supreme Court.

Not lying: we would buy a print of this page.

In the memo, a copy of which was obtained by WCBS-TV in New York, FAA official James Johnston acknowledged "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes." Instead of proposing a public-awareness campaign to salve New Yorkers' lingering 9/11 fears, however, Johnston threatened federal sanctions if the purpose of the flyover — staged to create a White House publicity photo of Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty — leaked out.

This just gets stupider and stupider and stupider, doesn't it?

(Photo by Christopher Talbot via WCBS-AM)

The clip, circulated via email, shows a crowd in Jersey (we think) screaming and running in just one of the many cases in which New Yorkers freaked out at what looked like a 9/11-style terror attack. Yes, it really was this bad — like something out of an apocalyptic action movie.

Louis Caldera is the director of the White House Military Office, and he is Clinton's old secretary of the Army. He is very sorry.

Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

That is one of those "I take responsibility" statements in which the person taking responsibility doesn't actually know what that term means. We really hate those! Either say "fuck, my bad" or just fucking castigate the people you really want to blame (these "state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey" maybe?).

It is sort of New York's fault, because apparently everyone did know about it, but they didn't tell anyone about it. But that is because the Defense Department made them promise not to!

The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. "The flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator," the Police Department said in a statement.

Obama was reportedly furious that everyone got all a-scared of his second airplane this morning. What a hilarious military/bureaucratic fuckup, unless you were one of those people who was shaking and crying, this morning, as you evacuated your building, baffled and scared. (Get over it, America!)

9/11 Reenactment Enthusiast Louis Caldera is currently on sabbatical from the University of New Mexico School of Law, and from 2000-2008 he served as a director at Dallas Morning News publisher A. H. Belo Corporation, where, obviously, he was a firm believer in keeping the public informed.

The FAA, man. First they don't want to tell us about how JFK is the Bird Strike Capital of the World, and now they are having a little exercise in scaring the shit out of New Yorkers.

They claim that the Air Force wanted an Air Force One lookalike to fly around New York for a photo op. And they were like "ok, sure, do it." But they didn't really warn anyone. So this happened:

"People came pouring out of the buildings, the American Express Building, all the buildings in the Financial District by the water," said Edward Acker, a photographer who was at the building, 3 World Financial Center. "And even the construction guys over by 100 North End Avenue area, they all got out of their buildings. Nobody knew about it. Finally some guy showed up with a little megaphone to tell everyone it was a test, but the people were not happy. The people who were here 9/11 were not happy."

No, they were not.

Here's some video.

(The Times also notes that the FAA's TERROR-PLANE might've made the markets dip, but we would like to blame that on the SWINE FLU. But don't worry! April Apocalyptic Paranoia brings May Post-Apocalyptic Giddiness.)

(Also: Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project has gone TOO FAR.)

[Photo: BMcCluskeyNYC]

The prosecutors call him "Hezbollah's man in New York City," because he offered this channel, which is apparently TERRORISM. He also sold porn, so you know he's basically an Islamic fundamentalist and an amoral big city commie.

This America-hater's punishment won't end after his prison term, of course!

Iqbal, who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, will most likely be deported once he has completed his prison sentence, Dratel said. Iqbal, a former car mechanic, is married with five children and a sixth child due in July.

You can screen al-Manar right here, in the comfort of your own home. And then you can GO TO JAIL FOR BEING A TERRORIST.

(Make your own "and yet it's no crime to broadcast ___" jokes we are too depressed.) (Hint: Glenn Beck.)

If nothing else, all this attention from Comedy Central's designated right-wing newswatcher marks Beck as, in his own very twisted way, a rising star. Sure, the front-page New York Times profile was nice, but who reads newspapers anymore? The old viewers Fox already has.

Colbert, though, will get Beck all over Twitter, dominated by the young whippersnappers the shouting head needs to truly "surround" his enemies. Not that the microblogging service's wired hipsters will join up, but, who knows, between Colbert and the buzz maybe Beck becomes Saturday Night Live worthy and gets to mainstream his creepy, creepy brand a little bit more.

The special "executive assassination ring" would go around the world, silently killing people for Cheney, without checking in with the local CIA goons, much less generals or ambassadors or whatever. The remnants of the program were killed off (ha!) last month when it became clear how many women and children had been offed by these guys.

In his lengthy interview with Cheney, King didn't see fit to bring the assassins up because he was too busy asking if Barack Obama "put the country more in danger" by being a huge, anti-torture pussy; if Obama was "overreaching his mandate" by spending money on health care and if Obama is "trying to brazenly deceive the American people?"

When will the president apologize for preventing Dick Cheney from being asked questions on his favorite topics; endless torture, death and war?

• Conveniently for internet list-generations purposes, there were precisely ten notable moments during this year's Oscars telecast. And the Slumdog kids won houses and rickshaws!
• Then we all Tweeted toward Bethlehem to be boring.
• Al Sharpton wrote an open letter to the New York Post, and God wrote an open letter to Martha Stewart's juvenile sense of humor.
• Heartwarming stories of the week: Rupert Murdoch inspiring devotion to his children. And Jeff Bezos is bringing laughter to the world! And, uh, bankers! They are like adorable lost kittens, the bankers.
• Annie Leibovitz was forced to pawn all her photos, and the internet was forced to pwn Annie Leibovitz.
• The media news was as depressing as ever. Octogenarian gossip columnist Liz Smith got canned, we made fun of alll the newly online-only ventures that will fail this year, NBC begged a second crappy past-his-prime comedian to save their network, Lily Allen stole our bit and trashed the Times, and, in the week's worst news, fucking Hosea—Hosea!—won Top Chef.
• Traditionally, use of the phrase "moral hazard" meant "I am a douchebag and I probably go out with one of these ladies." But now everyone says it, because of the economy.
• The governor of Louisiana embarrassed himself by talking like Kenneth the Page, and then Kenneth the Page embarrassed himself by appearing on a Jimmy Kimmel webisode. Meanwhile, everyone else in America did their Joaquin Phoenix impressions.
• There is some sort of scandal at noted up-and-up on-the-level business Adult Friend Finder! Tucker Carlson will be crushed.
• Jeremy Piven gave the performance of a lifetime, but, sadly, there were no cameras on hand to record it.
• Facebook ads are getting skeezier. Soon they will probably ask you to check out this video, lol.

Strained emotions are, after all, an increasingly inevitable side effect of the absurdist drama that is modern airport security. Airline cost-cutting only makes matters worse.

The hitch: The worse your tantrum, the more likely you are to be recorded on someone's cell phone cam and humiliated globally on YouTube. Just ask bus uncle.

UPDATE: A reader tells us everyone in the video is speaking Cantonese. "They're trying to console her, then she starts yelling at her husband (i think) that he should have checked in first, because he could have told them that one more person was on her way." Ha! Any further Cantonese tidbits (in English pls!) to tips@gawker.com.

UPDATE: Thanks to "Michael" for his wife's transaltion, pasted in the comments here.

Also: if he's kicked out of office (the Illinois House impeached him, the Senate is, as usual, taking its time) it is only because they secretly want to raise everone's taxes, not because he is a corrupt embarrassment. Here is some great news from Blago's recent radio interview, his first since his arrest:

The governor's radio appearance kicked off what's expected to be a media blitz that could include appearances on national news networks within the next several days. Blagojevich signaled he has no plans to show up in Springfield on Monday for the start of his impeachment trial if the rules don't change.

And, finally: "Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States." Hahaha that's so crazy and weird and insensitive. Also the real Pearl Harbor happened on December 7?

Toward the end of the interview, the governor discussed how President Teddy Roosevelt inspired him to take up boxing as a teen and likened his situation to something out of 21st Century Frank Capra movie.

"When the full-story comes out," he said earlier on, "I'm confident of vindication."

More here, including his apology for... using profanity. He will be Governor for Life, right?

Update: Ok, everyone, turn on Fox! Shep Smith is hosting a Blago presser any minute now! It ought to be great. It's already great.