Donald Trump doubles down on his claim that President Obama is the founder of ISIS. "I’m a truth teller. All I do is tell the truth." Update!

Trump, asked if calling Pres. Obama the "founder of ISIS" is appropriate: "He is the founder of ISIS, absolutely." pic.twitter.com/VrtkDhvIgz

— CNBC (@CNBC) August 11, 2016

Courtesy of New York Magazine: 

On Thursday morning, Trump repeated his claim that Barack Obama is both the “founder of ISIS” and the terrorist organization’s “Most Valuable Player” (although Obama shares that prestigious award with Hillary Clinton). 

“Do you think it’s appropriate to call the sitting president of the United States the founder of a terrorist organization that wants to kill Americans?” Trump was asked on CNBC’s Squawk Box. 

“He was the founder of ISIS. Absolutely,” Trump replied. “Why is there something wrong with saying that? Why, are people complaining that I said he was the founder of ISIS?”

Trump was then asked how he thought such rhetoric would play in battleground states. 

“Whatever it is, it is,” Trump said. “I’m a truth teller. All I do is tell the truth. And if at the end of 90 days, I’ve fallen short … it’s OK. I go back to a very good way of life.” 

Trump reiterated this sentiment later in the interview, when he was asked how he planned to catch up with Clinton in the polls. 

“I just keep doing the same thing I’m doing right now,” Trump said. “And at the end, it’s either going to work or I’m going to have a very, very nice long vacation.”

Okay I think that it is now pretty clear that Donald Trump does not want to win this election.

That is the only explanation that I can come up for why he would continually make these inflammatory and bizarre statements.

Okay well there is one other possibility.

He is clinically insane.

Simple choice, self sabotage or insanity.

P.S. For those who are interested here is an article on the REAL founder of ISIS.

Guess who it is not about.

Update: Oh, so now it's sarcasm.

Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) "the founder" of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2016

Trump repeated this "founder" charge at least nine or ten times, and at no point did he explain that it was sarcasm until a full two days later. 

Donald Trump calls President Obama the "founder of ISIS."

Courtesy of Times Live:  

Addressing supporters at a rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the real estate tycoon said the jihadist group is "honoring President Obama." 

"He is the founder of ISIS," Trump said, using a term for IS. "He's the founder of ISIS, okay?" he added. 

"He's the founder! He founded ISIS." 

"And I would say, the co-founder would be 'Crooked Hillary Clinton'," Trump shouted, over cheers and applause from the crowd.

To be clear this is the Republican nominee for President accusing the sitting President and his Democratic opponent of founding a terrorist organization.

And this comes after he suggested that gun owners might assassinate his Democratic opponent if she were to be elected.

I think we all knew this campaign season was going to get ugly, but we have never experienced Donald Trump ugly before.

And hopefully we will never have to experience it again.

Several Republican delegates are planning to bring their firearms to the convention in Cleveland. You know to fight ISIS and totally not because they feel naked without them.

"Be honest, does this gun make my dick look big?"

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

As the Republican convention in Cleveland approaches, several delegates from Pennsylvania who support Donald Trump say they are planning on bringing their guns with them to the GOP gathering. Why? They say they are worried about possible violent protest and even an attack from ISIS. 

James Klein, a pro-Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, notes that guns won't be needed inside the convention hall and that delegates won't be allowed to bring in weapons. "But," he adds, "there's the hotels. There's going to be dinners." 

So Klein, an insurance executive and economist, has decided to come armed to Cleveland, and he has urged his fellow delegates to do the same. "We're talking about ISIS," he remarks, citing the recent shooting in Orlando and the bombings at the Istanbul airport. Referring to protesters outside Trump rallies, he adds, "We're talking about people who have shown a propensity for violence." 

"There are a whole bunch of things happening: You go to various events, receptions, whatever, outside the convention hall," says Ash Khare, a delegate from the northwest corner of the state who applied for a concealed carry permit in preparation for Cleveland. "And you walk on the streets and, you know, people know that you are a delegate, and who knows what the crazy people are going to do? So you've got to be vigilant about what's going on and prepare yourself."

Yeah I think it's a safe bet to predict that somebody is going to get shot at the GOP convention.

I just hope it is one of these gun toting morons and not just some innocent bystander minding their own business.

Brussels suffers terrorist attack.

Courtesy of the BBC: 

At least 26 people have been killed and many seriously injured in terrorist attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station. 

Twin blasts hit Zaventem airport at 07:00 GMT, killing 11 and injuring 81, Belgium's health minister said. 

Another explosion struck Maelbeek metro station an hour later. Brussels transport officials say 15 people were killed and 55 injured, 10 seriously. 

Belgium has now raised its terrorism threat to its highest level. 

The attacks come four days after Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks, was seized in Brussels.

Actually now I am hearing that the number of dead has now reached at least 31. And the number may grow as more information comes to light.

What a terrible thing to wake up to today.

And just another reminder of how important it is to choose a leader here in the US who understands the world as it is, as has a plan for how to deal with all of the challenges that we face moving forward.

Donald Trump for instance has the perfect solution to the problem, courtesy of Wonkette:

I would close up our borders until we figure out what is going on. Look at Brussels. Look at Paris. Look at so many cities that were great cities. Paris is almost as bad … Paris is no longer the beautiful City Of Lights. Paris has got a lot of problems … All you have to do is speak to the people who live there. […] We have to be smart in the United States. When people come in, we’re taking in people without real documentation, we don’t know where they’re coming from, we don’t know where they’re from, who they are. You look at it from any standpoint, they could be ISIS. They could be ISIS-related. And we just don’t learn. … Brussels is an amazing example. Brussels was an absolutely crime-free city, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And now you look at it, it’s a disaster. […] 

Frankly, those countries better get smart fast, because they’re just disintegrating. I have friends who live in Brussels, they say the place is literally disintegrating. 

In my opinion, this is just the beginning. It will get worse and worse because we are lax and we are foolish. … At this point, we cannot allow these people to come into the country. We are allowing thousands and thousands of people to come into our country, and we don’t even know where they come from and who they are. We have to be very careful. We’re not babies. We can’t do this anymore. We can’t have these attacks anymore. We can’t have World Trade Centers anymore and planes flying into the Pentagon. 

Wow there really is no problem for which Donald Trump does not think that racism and xenophobia are the solution.

And let me remind everybody that the very existence of ISIS, or Daesh if you prefer, is the direct result of another narrow minded idiot who declared war on Muslims without good reason.

Gee I think he was a Republican as well. What a coincidence.

That time when the policies of President Obama started to bankrupt ISIS and nobody even noticed.

How many times do I have to tell you I've got this?

Courtesy of Vox:  

Though the American media often portrays ISIS as an unstoppable, terrifying juggernaut, the truth is that the group is in real trouble, and is actually losing ground in its core Iraqi and Syrian holdings. A new leaked internal document suggests the pressure may be even worse than we thought. According to the document, ISIS is being forced to slash salaries for its fighters by half across its holdings. 

The document appears to be authentic. "[I] definitely think this is real," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group watching the conflict, has heard from its own sources that ISIS is slashing salaries.

So at this point you are probably asking, "How did that happen?"

Funny you should ask.

Most of ISIS's money comes from extortion: essentially taking money from its citizens at gunpoint. But there's only so much wealth for the group to steal in the territory it controls without economic growth, and ISIS has no plan for putting together a real economy. Its oil infrastructure, which used to be quite valuable, has been heavily bombed by the US-led coalition. 

"Their cash had already been drying up," Gartenstein-Ross explains. "The coalition bombing their trucks bringing oil to market further depletes their revenue by adding a premium to doing business with ISIS. Plus, taxing a population that has very little source of income isn't a sustainable revenue model." 

So in short: ISIS has lost 25 percent of its territory since mid-2014. Its cash resources are running low. It has no friends in the region and lots of powerful enemies.

Okay so I kind of understand the strategic reasons for not yelling this from the rooftops and giving Daesh the opportunity to recognize what is happening and taking steps to circumvent these strategies.

However when I hear these Republican candidates bitching about the President having no plan to deal with the terrorists, or when they call him "weak" or "ineffective," I just want Obama to walk up to a microphone somewhere and shut their asses down.

As far as I'm concerned when it comes to the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls there is not one among them qualified to wipe our President's ass much less take over his job.

Well it looks as if Hillary Clinton was right. Footage of Donald Trump IS being used as a recruiting tool by terrorist groups.

The new Shabab video featuring @realDonaldTrump appears clear evidence jihadists hope to use him to specifically solicit American recruits.

— Evan Kohlmann (@IntelTweet) January 1, 2016

Courtesy of CBS News:  

Terror group al-Shabab, al-Qaeda's Somalia-based affiliate, is using a clip from Donald Trump in a purported Islamist propaganda video -- and it's gaining traction among Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) online channels. 

The nearly hour-long video, produced by al-Shabab's media arm al-Kataib, uses a soundbite from the Republican front-runner's speech in December calling for the "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the country. 

Preceding the Trump clip, a bite from the now-deceased al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011, warns "Muslims of the West" to be cautious and "learn from the lessons of history." 

"There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon," al-Awlaki says in English. "Yesterday, America was a land of slavery, segregation, lynching, and Ku Klux Klan. And tomorrow it will be a land of religious discrimination and concentration camps. "

The video then cuts to footage of Trump during a South Carolina rally where he said this:  

"And so remember this. So listen. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the --- is going on."

Gee, I guess somebody owes Hillary Clinton an apology. 

Sarah Palin COULD see herself voting for an Atheist, but only if the other choice was an ISIS sympathizer. Sadly I think that might be progress for her.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

During an interview on CNN, host Michael Smerconish noted that Palin’s latest Christian devotional book was very political. 

“Real world stuff, yep,” Palin agreed. “It’s really important that people of faith, atheists, anybody who would be looking for answers today, the best place to go to look for answers that deal with personal problems and political problems that our world, certainly that our nation is facing, it’s already spelled out for us — the answers — in the Old and the New Testaments.”

I'm sorry. So people who do NOT believe in a god nor have faith in the Christian religion should look for the answers to "real world stuff" in the Bible?

Is it possible that Sarah Palin has no idea what defines an "Atheist?"

What am I saying, of course that's possible.

However that does not keep Palin from reviling us as revealed by her response to Smerconish's next question, "Could Sarah Palin vote for an Atheist?" 

“Oof, gosh,” Palin stuttered at the idea of voting for an atheist. “If it all came down to that versus someone who believed in a religion that was hell-bent on destroying those who didn’t agree with their religion, who would literally want to kill those, the infidels who would not say, ‘Okay, I would go along with you,’ then I would.” 

“Which means, anybody who is sympathetic to what’s going on today with Muslims terrorists, who would crucify children and behead women and stop at nothing to try to destroy us and Israel and our allies, I’d choose an atheist over that!”

Smerconish then boiled that down to, “Okay, you’re voting for an atheist over an ISIS supporter.”

To which Palin essentially agreed but expressed displeasure that he "made it too simple."

So Sarah Palin MIGHT vote for an Atheist IF their opponent were a Daesh member or sympathizer.

Now see THAT'S why she never gets invited to my Saturnalia parties.

It is really a challenge to find a more pathetic media outlet than Facebook, but Sarah Palin managed to find it. Welcome to Newsmax TV.

The first part of his "interview" just has Palin vomiting forth her opinion of the President and giving her advice on dealing with ISIS, which is so ignorant and ill informed that hearing it murders brain cells by the truckload.

After that Palin once again dances around the question of a possible return to politics, after which she gets to once again feign emotion and talk about sacrificing her life to save Down syndrome children from Daesh.

"Something came out today (This is clearly an older interview.) about ISIS declaring death to children with Down Syndrome. I read that and I kind of got choked up about it.  (Cue the phony clearing of the throat.) I said to myself something like that is over my dead body will ISIS ever be able to destroy the American way of life, which includes embracing children with special needs like Down Syndrome." 

Seriously how often can somebody milk this before the udders simply break off in your hand?

You know it dawned on me while watching this that if Palin is REALLY so concerned about special needs children then HOW can she possibly be an anti-government conservative?

Those two things simply do NOT go together.

I work with special needs kids as well, and virtually ALL of our funding comes from government programs like Medicaid.

And as everybody knows when folks like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz talk about doing away with "government handouts" THAT is exactly the kind of thing they are talking about.

If Palin's favorite politicians were actually able to take over the running of this country, kids like Trig and many other special needs children would find their necessary supports stripped away. (Oh sure unlike most special needs parents Palin could pay for them out of pocket, but would she?)

Without this money for services, their challenges would be virtually insurmountable, their quality of life would suffer dramatically, and let's face it even their life expectancy would be reduced by several years if not decades.

If that were to happen then Daesh would not have to murder children like Trig Palin, because the Sarah Palin endorsed small government policies would for all intents and purposes do it for them.

But somehow I think that never occurred to Snowdrift Snooki. 

President Obama's Address to the Nation in full.

Here are some of the highlights courtesy of Vox: 

And I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure. 

Well, here's what I want you to know. The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won't depend on tough talk or abandoning our values or giving into fear. That's what groups like ISIL are hoping for. Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart. 

The President then laid out a four step approach to stopping the terrorists.

These included going after terrorist plotters, providing training and equipment to those fighting Daesh on the ground, working with friends and allies to disrupt terrorist groups, and finding a resolution to the war in Syria.

Of course this address has already come under attack from those on the Right, who desperately want to start another war, or restart the ones the President is trying to end, but then again what would we expect from them at this point?

The President also said this which really agitated the conservatives:  

There are several steps that Congress should take right away. To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? This is a matter of national security. 

We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons like the ones that were used in San Bernardino. I know there are some who reject any gun safety measures, but the fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, no matter how effective they are, cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual was motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology. What we can do and must do is make it harder for them to kill.

For some reason. according to conservatives, the fact that the shooting in San Bernardino was done by Muslims means that it has NOTHING to do with guns, or access to guns.

Magically the fact that they are linked to a terrorist group outside of America, means that the methods by which they killed are simply no longer worthy of concern. Somehow I think that if they had blown their victims up, instead of shooting them, that this would not be the case.

And finally the President reminded us of this fact:  

We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want. ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers. Part of a cult of death. And they account for a tiny fraction of a more than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject their hateful ideology. 

Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim. If we're to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies rather than push them away through suspicion and hate.

Yeah, that didn't go over very well either.

Especially for the Republican presidential candidates who are relying on the fear by the American people, and the ability to manipulate that fear into voter turnout, that is now at the center of many of their campaign strategies.

THAT is why they are attacking this speech so aggressively.

The President is calling for calm, when the Republicans want anything but.

Female involved in San Bernardino shooting pledged her allegiance to ISIS. Update!

Courtesy of NBC News:

Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS just before she and her husband carried out the San Bernardino massacre, law enforcement sources told NBC News. 

Malik posted a statement of support for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook "just before the attack," one official familiar with the issue said. 

And now investigators are looking into whether the Pakistan-born Malik, who spent most of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, radicalized her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook.

You know if you could direct the sigh of relief from the Right Wing you could blow out a thousand birthday candles.

The FBI is still not saying that this attack was motivated by Islamic terrorism, and seem convinced that it was not part of an international terror plot, but at this point it really doesn't matter.

After all THIS is the kind of terrorism that Americans have been conditioned to accept, and respond to with panic and more calls for government intervention.

The shooters were brown skinned Muslims, with exotic sounding names, and that alone makes them the kind of "other" that allows white America to point the finger of accusation away from themselves.  

A point that was not lost on the New York Daily News.

Non-coincidentally the Planned Parenthood shooting has now been relegated to the bottom of the bird cage as this far more digestible terrorist attack soaks up all of the media attention.

Another thing which I am sure is helping the conservatives to breathe a lot easier. 

Update: They finally released a photo of the wife, Tashfeen Malik.

Lt. General reminds us who created Daesh. And no it was NOT President Obama.

Courtesy of Occupy Democrats:  

While the Republican presidential candidates use every bit of ideological gymnastics to somehow pin the rise of Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) on President Obama, the former commander of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lt. General Michael Flynn dropped an incredible bombshell in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel: that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was in a United States military prison in 2004 – and released because he was deemed “harmless.” 

Nothing more perfectly illustrates what a colossal failure the George W. Bush Administration was. While Bush was busy torturing Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards in a desperate and barbaric attempt to rectify his intelligence failures, the mastermind who would found the Islamic State was in their clutches the entire time. Flynn went on to describe how the Bush Administration’s knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and their catastrophic invasion of Iraq went on to create the colossal quagmire that is the Islamic State. 

“We were too dumb. We didn’t understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, ‘Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.’ Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction.” 

He then ripped the Republican war hawks for their relentless calls to invade Syria and provoke war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, rightly recognizing that this kind of foolish arrogance only serves to breed more terrorism and more violence, and got us here in the first place: 

“First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was based, then we went to Iraq. Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again. It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.”

It should also be mentioned that our policies around the world before 9-11 also contributed to the hatred toward the west, that evolved into acts of terrorism. 

Before we created Daesh, we created Al-Qaeda, and if we do not heed Lt. General Flynn's warnings we will continue to create our own demons far into the future.

Saudi Arabia threatens to sue any Twitter user who compares them to Daesh. Sounds a little terrorist like to me.

Courtesy of The Independent:

Saudi Arabia will sue any Twitter user who compares the Kingdom’s recent decision to execute a poet to punishments handed down by Isis. 

Ashraf Fayadh, a 35-year-old Palestinian poet, was sentenced to death for apostasy – renouncing one’s faith – by a court in Abha on 17 November, according to documents seen by Human Rights Watch.  

The sentence has provoked widespread condemnation, not only from international human rights organisations but also from legions of Twitter and other social media users. 

"The justice ministry will sue the person who described ... the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being `Isis-like'," a justice ministry source told newspaper Al-Riyadh.

So I guess that if somebody were to tweet or blog this chart that would open them up to a potential lawsuit?

Oops.

Here's an idea Saudi Arabia. If you don't like being compared to a terrorist organization that kills people indiscriminately, DON'T be just like a terrorist organization that kills people indiscriminately.

Just trying to help.

Muslim attacked because Texas man thought he was receiving instructions from ISIS through his headphones. You know because that's how that works.

Courtesy of KEYE: 

The imam at the Nueces Mosque near UT, Umer Esmail, says they want to make sure students are safe when they come to the mosque. 

"We need to provide security for them, that should be our top priority," Esmail said. 

This is after Esmail says a student was allegedly pushed to the ground on Guadalupe Street the day after the Paris attacks. 

"Because he had headphones on, the guy yelled at him saying are you taking instructions from ISIS," Esmail said. "This is like a wakeup call for us, we need to do something because we have students coming here." 

That alleged assault just a few blocks away from the mosque is one of the reasons Esmail says they're having Austin Police do a security survey on his mosque. He says APD will also be surveying other Austin mosques.

So what now only white Christians can wear headphones in America?  That is some racist shit right there.

And things are only going to get worse for the Islamic community in America with the GOP presidential candidates and Fox News spending virtually 24 hours a day trying to frighten them about terrorism, Syrian refugees, and now apparently headphones.

You wait, we can only be about a week or less away from the first shooting of a Muslim for simply being Muslim.

So much in common.

Donald Trump doubles down on Muslim database and suggests bringing back waterboarding.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

After pointing out that a majority of the Syrian refugees were, in fact, women and children, Stephanopoulos wondered if Trump would bring back waterboarding, which was banned by President Barack Obama. 

“We have to be strong,” the candidate insisted. “You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there, they use chopping off people’s heads, they use drowning people.” 

“I would bring it back, I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us,” he opined. “I would absolutely bring back interrogation and strong interrogation.”

Earlier in the exchange you can her Stephanopoulos pointedly asking Trump about the Muslim database, which he had walked back earlier, and he reiterates that he "definitely wants a database and other checks and balances."

So not only would Trump be willing to single out all Muslims and force them into a database, but he also likes the idea of perhaps doing a little waterboarding if there is any suspicion of terrorist proclivities.

Gee, you would think he had a side job as a recruiter for Daesh.

Most recent polls have Trump leading the rest of the pack by ten points or more.

President Obama and Vladimir Putin pledge to wipe out Daesh in wake of terrorists attacks in Paris.

Courtesy of the Mirror:

America and Russia have pledged to wipe out ISIS . 

Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin sat down at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, for crucial talks. 

The two world leaders were pictured huddled around a coffee table in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris .

And Obama and Putin are by no means alone in wanting to bring the fight to the terrorists.

Already France has launched a series of air attacks: 

France bombed the Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday night, its most aggressive strike against the Islamic State group it blames for killing 129 people in a string of terrorist attacks across Paris only two days before. 

President François Hollande, who vowed to be “unforgiving with the barbarians” of the Islamic State after the carnage in Paris, decided on the airstrikes in a meeting with his national security team on Saturday, officials said.

I totally support the idea of going after the terrorists, but I very much want people to keep in mind the lessons of the Iraq War and  remember that killing people in predominantly Muslim countries in retaliation for attacks conducted by Muslim extremists only exacerbates the problem and does nothing to keep us safe, but rather puts all of us in greater danger.

Sometimes the idea of killing them over there, before they kill us over here, only makes more of them over there want to kill us over here.

P.S. By the way for those confused as to who I am referring to in the title, "Daesh" is the name that ISIS does NOT want you to call them. So of course that will be the only name that should be used to refer to them.