Big Dan's Big News Dec 29, 2009

Chris Floyd and Glenn Greenwald are not part of the corporate owned mainstream media, what shills like Rush Limbaugh call the "liberal media". They're not in the mainstream media because they're liberals, and the mainstream media isn't liberal. I know I keep repeating this: corporations aren't liberal, corporations OWN the mainstream media (the liberal media, it's called), the mainstream media isn't liberal but you're supposed to think it is, so you don't know who the real liberals are. The real liberals aren't in what is called the "liberal media". You see, if you believe that "liberal" is what Rush Limbaugh says it is, then you don't really know what "liberal" is. That's why they do this. Remember this: real liberals are ignored by the mainstream media. Real liberals don't call themselves "liberal". The mainstream and rightwing media then define a bunch of non-liberals as "liberals", like the Democrats for instance. Real conservatives are ignored by the mainstream media, too, and the mainstream and rightwing media (both controlled and owned by corporations) define a bunch of non-conservatives as "conservative". Real patriots don't call themselves "patriots", they don't dress in red, white, and blue, and wave flags, and they don't publish books with red, white and blue backgrounds.

Chris Floyd: Wow, that didn't take long at all. Scant days after the American war machine took the cloaking device off its direct military involvement in Yemen, we have an alleged attempted terrorist attack by an alleged attempted terrorist who, just scant hours after his capture, has allegedly confessed to getting his alleged attempted terrorist material from ... wait for it ... Yemen!

Chris Floyd: You want to stop the "radicalization" of young Muslims? It's simple: stop killing innocent Muslims in wars of domination all over the world. Stop running "covert ops" in every nation of the world -- murders, kidnappings, corruption and deception that make a howling mockery of the very "civilized values" these wars and ops purport to defend.

Glenn Greenwald: Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges. First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim -- anonymously -- that some big, bad, notorious, "top" Al Qaeda leader "may have been" or "likely was" killed in the strike, and this constitutes a "stinging" or "devastating" blow against the Terrorist group. These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of their "reporting" on the attack, drowning out every other issue.

Glenn Greenwald: As a result, and by design, there is never any debate or discussion over the propriety or wisdom of these strikes.

Glenn Greenwald: In the wake of the latest failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines, one can smell the excitement in the air -- that all-too-familiar, giddy, bipartisan climate that emerges in American media discourse whenever there's a new country we get to learn about so that we can explain why we're morally and strategically justified in bombing it some more. "Yemen" is suddenly on every Serious Person's lips.

Glenn Greenwald: Cause and effect in the "Terror War"

Al-Qaeda Wannabe Kept ‘Bomb’ on His Lap. Officials Say Nigerian Had No Apparent Connection to Terrorist Groups

The Lap Bomber Mystery - A case that just gets curiouser and curiouser

ABC: Photos of the Northwest Airlines Bomb. Accused Bomber Abdulmutallab's Underwear, Explosive Packet and Detonator

The Odds of Airborne Terror

Yemen: Pentagon's War On The Arabian Peninsula

YEMEN: U.S. Urged to Increase Aid and Involvement

US to expand drone attacks into Pakistani cities

The Drone War

“I stood up and walked a couple feet ahead to get a closer look, and that's when I saw the flames,” said Haskell, who sat about seven rows behind Mutallab. “It started to spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”

Jasper Schuringa Continues to Tell his Story

Kurt Sonnenfeld and unidentified search and rescue specialist in subterranean void beneath Ground Zero.

9/11 FEMA videographer at Ground Zero goes public



* DEEP THOUGHTS *
by Jack Handy

1. If they ever come up with a swashbuckling School, I think one of the courses should be Laughing, Then Jumping Off Something.
2. When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.
3. It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
4. At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw **** you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
5. One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
6. A good way to threaten somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you call the guy and hold the burning fuse up to the phone. "Hear that?" you say. "That's dynamite, baby."
7. Why do people in ship mutinies always ask for "better treatment"? I'd ask for a pinball machine, because with all that rocking back and forth you'd probably be able to get a lot of free games.
8. I'd like to be buried Indian-style, where they put you up on a high rack, above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.
9. If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
10. I bet when the neanderthal kids would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, "Don't forget the thick, heavy brows." Then they would all get embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and they'd get mad and eat the snowman.

…More deep thoughts by Jack Handey...