Ed Koch

You might remember Ed Koch as the mayor of New York or as the judge on People’s Court but now he seems to be a not so wise pundit on Fox News.

‘Hundreds of Millions’ of Muslims are Terrorists

Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Thursday that “hundreds of millions” of Muslims are terrorists.

Taking up the now-standard conservative political talking point, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, that political correctness prevents the US from identifying Muslim terrorists as such, Koch said:

We’re afraid of calling them Muslim, Islamist terrorists. We’ll call them anything but. Because we don’t want to alienate Muslim countries. That’s ridiculous. Of course the vast majority of Muslims — there are a billion, four hundred million — are not terrorists, but there are hundreds of millions who are. They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table.

Host Neil Cavuto did not attempt to correct or even question Koch’s claim.

Joshua Holland at AlertNet gives Koch “the benefit of the doubt” and assumes Koch meant to say “hundreds of thousands” of Muslim terrorists. Even so, Holland argues, that suggests Muslim terrorists aren’t doing their job very well.

“Given that there were a total of around 9,000 fatalities worldwide resulting from Islamic terrorism in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available), those hundreds of thousands must have been pretty damn incompetent,” he quips.

Koch was a Democratic member of Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the Democratic mayor of New York for much of the 1980s. But in recent years he has taken to endorsing Republican candidates, including endorsing George W. Bush for president in 2004, although he endorsed Barack Obama in the general election in 2008. In his interview with Cavuto, Koch said he would fire National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter over the Christmas Day bomb attempt.

The following video was broadcast on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, January 7, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by user therightscoop.

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert says all young Muslims should be given a colonoscopy.

David Edwards and John Byrne
Raw Story
Wednesday, January 6, 2010

In a desultory rant Tuesday night, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert jabbed conservatives who are promoting racial profiling and more radical techniques after the failed Christmas bomb plot against a commercial jetliner.

“Every time a young Muslim man arrives at the airport, the TSA should respectfully take him aside and give him an involuntary colonoscopy,” Colbert quipped. “This cannot fail. Everyone knows that terrorists are all young, poor, disenfranchised Arab Muslims. Well, except the Christmas bomber, who is a middle-class well-educated Nigerian. Which, frankly, I don’t think is fair.

“We elected a black guy. What more do Nigerians want? I mean, ever since we elected JFK, the Irish haven’t terrorized us… So i guess we have to profile anyone who looks like a Nigerian too. Basically, all black people.

“And, I’m not saying all black people look alike,” Colbert continued. “I’m saying I can’t tell them apart. I mean, which of these guys is Kenyan? Of course, there was the dirty bomber Jose Padilla, so we’ll have to go after Hispanics too. Then there’s shoe bomber Richard Reid. God only knows what he is. Belgian? Patchouli? To be safe, let’s profile anyone named ‘Reid.’”

“Ben Franklin did say, ‘Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither,’” Colbert added wryly. “Then again, Franklin said a lot of things.”

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, broadcast Jan. 5, 2010

Thomas McInerney, a retired US Lieutenant was on Fox News advocating that Muslim men between the ages of 18-28 be strip searched. The Fox host Julia Banderas surprisingly takes him on, which leads the the lieutenant to contradict himself in the worst way.

He goes from saying that “we should use profiling, and I mean we have to be very serious and harsh about the profiling, if you are an 18-28 year old Muslim man then you should be strip searched” to saying “I don’t want to racial profile, I want to profile on that group that we have enough evidence, from 9/11 and other cases, Moussoui, etc. that we know what we’re looking at.” He doesn’t make any sense, but that isn’t anything new for Fox pundits.

Retired US general wants Muslim men strip searched at airports

Retired Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney wants to get young Muslim men naked in the worst way.

Awkward as that sentence sounds, it is an accurate description of the former US Air Force general’s comments during a recent Fox News broadcast.

“We’ve got to go to more than just the normal process that they’re talking about now,” he opined on Saturday. “We have got to go to very, very strict screening and we’ve got to use profiling. And I mean, be very, very serious about the profiling. If you are an 18-28-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip searched. If we don’t do that, there’s a very high probability that we’re gonna lose an airliner.”

McInerney said that “in the next 30-100 days,” there is “very high probability a US airliner will come down.”

When the Fox host blandly objected that racial profiling would not go over in the United States, he replied, “I agree, that’s the problem.”

The general’s comment comes one day before that the Transportation Security Administration announced new, “enhanced screening” tactics at U.S. airports, with a renewed focus on foreign travelers.

All passengers flying into the United States from abroad will be subject to random screening or so-called “threat-based” screens, the TSA said Sunday.

It further mandated that “every individual flying into the US from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening” that includes a thorough inspection of luggage and pat-down searches.

“If you lose 300 Americans, and then people are gonna say ‘Why didn’t we do this?’” the general insisted.

McInerney, who has been a Fox News military analyst for years, was Director of the Defense Performance Review during the Clinton administration and reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. He is currently chairman of the Iran Policy Committee’s advisory council and co-author ofthe book “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror”.

In his book, the general advocates a scenario of nearly endless war, urging the conditional invasions of Syria, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. He also argues that deceased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein hid his weapons of mass destruction in Syria; a primary reason he calls for their destruction.

“The authors’ ambitious schedule of ultimatums and conquests leads them to focus almost exclusively on the U.S. military, for which they recommend the Rumsfeld doctrine of light, mobile forces, supplemented by additional weapons spending,” reads a Publishers Weekly review of “Endgame”. “Homeland security gets scant attention beyond vague proposals for a Terrorist Security Department and Special Terrorist Courts involving substantial infringements on due process.”

“Broad-based ethnic profiling creates in turn panic and the false sense of security that airlines are actually preventing terrorist attacks,” wrote Earl Ofari Hutchinson in a commentary for New Media America. “It also causes law enforcement resources to be squandered chasing the wrong targets. Worse, it’s a witch hunt against a group based solely on their religion and ethnicity. This fuels even greater racial division, fear and hysteria.”

To her credit, Fox News host Julie Banderas pushed back against the former general, insisting that racial and religious profiling at airports is “not going to go over — not in this country, anyway.”

“The sound of the latex glove snapping shut against a hairy wrist — that’s the sound of Freedom itself, ringing out in tile-walled rooms with the abrupt harshness of a fluorescent light and the unforgiving tightness of arm restraints,” mocked the Inside-Out the Beltway blog. “God Bless America.”

This video was broadcast by Fox News on Jan. 2, 2009, as snipped by Mediaite.

The paranoid calls to profile Muslims on airplanes have become louder in recent days.  Here’s a story from 2008 that ought to make us think twice about such an un-American response (hat tip: KevinMD.com):

Doctor Flying Southwest Tries To Go To Bathroom, Ends Up In Jail

By Chris Walters on September 24, 2008

A 65-year-old urologist, born in India but living in the United States for 38 years now, was flying from his home in Missouri to a medical convention in Las Vegas on June 26th, 2008. Did you notice that “born in India” detail? Apparently his attempts to go to the bathroom angered and frightened a flight attendant, who wouldn’t tell Dr. Sivaprasad Madduri why he couldn’t use the lavatory (the pilot was using it) and who wouldn’t listen to Dr. Madduri’s explanation that he was taking a medicine that acts as a diuretic. When the plane landed he was arrested, spent the night in jail, and was told the next day to plead guilty and pay $2500 if he wanted a quick resolution.

Southwest has since told Dr. Madduri, “We don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future,” and they’ve offered him a $100 voucher. It turns out the “apology” was meant for the other passengers, and was in fact about Dr. Madduri.

From Rediff:

Ironically, even before he filed his complaint with the Southwest Airlines officials, he got a letter from Frederick Taylor Jr, senior manager at the airline’s customer service communications, offering a $100 voucher for a future flight.

“Sometimes, an explanation for the reason why things happen is not always possible, and the bizarre behaviour of the individual during your June 26 flight to Las Vegas supports this point,” Taylor said in a letter accompanying the voucher. “While I am unable to explain the circumstances surrounding the disruption, I think it is important to offer my heartfelt apologies for any concerns you may have had as a result of this event”.

“Naturally, we don’t want this experience to affect your feelings about flying with us in the future, or for it to be your last recollection of traveling with our company. In fact we would consider it a privilege if you gave us another opportunity to provide you with better memories.”

Here’s Dr. Madduri’s story in his own words:

[I am] a physician from India who immigrated to the United States 38 years ago and [has] been in private practice in South East Missouri for more than a quarter century.

On June 26, 2008, I traveled from St Louis to Las Vegas to attend AAPI annual convention by Southwest flight 1226. Two hours into the flight, I tried to go to the bathroom ( I take a blood pressure medicine with diuretic that makes one ‘go’ more often). As I was sitting in row six, I walked to the front lavatory. The flight attendant, named Lora Lee Minton, abruptly stopped me and essentially shouted at me, “Go back! This bath room is occupied, and you cannot stand here.”

Shocked and dumbfounded at this unfriendly behavior, I went back and sat in my seat. Two minutes later, I saw the lavatory door opening and I got up and walked towards the bath room again. The same flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) screamed at me, “I told you not to go to that bathroom,” and started pushing me into my seat. I was totally confused at this erratic behavior, and told her that I had been taking medicine and I had to go to the toilet. I even tried to walk past Ms.Minton as I was very uncomfortable.

“I told you not to go,” she pushed me into my seat! I was lost. I flew many times but had never experienced a rude and unfriendly behavior like this. Confused and not knowing what to do, I went back and sat in my seat. I saw the pilot came out of the lavatory, walked into the cockpit and closed the door behind him. Later I could use the bathroom.

The sequence of events that followed were more frightening and beyond the scope of any one’s imagination. As the plane landed in Las Vegas , I was escorted by two police officers and was handed over to the FBI. The FBI interrogated me at length and for the first time, I was told that the flight attendant, Ms.Lora Lee Minton, reported that I was causing ‘disturbance’ during the flight. I was also told that when the pilot is out of the cockpit, no one is supposed get up from their seat, till the pilot goes back to his seat. This apparently is a federal law being enforced since 9/11 and no one ever told me, nor was it announced during the flight.

That night I was taken through federal centers for further investigation. I was hand-cuffed, finger printed and was ‘processed’ as a common criminal. I was told repeatedly that my background was checked and I had no criminal record. Even after checking my back ground and even after confirming it by calling my family members (Our two children that live in St Louis and Houston, Texas ) and my professional partner (urologist from Poplar Bluff, Missouri ), I still had to go through the harassment. I was dragged through Federal court buildings that night with hand and ankle cuffs, left in cells for hours before I was interrogated and was threatened repeatedly with abusive language: ‘Shut up,’ ‘I am going to kick your ass,’ to name a few. Finally I was taken to a federal detention center in Las Vegas and was ushered into a large jail cell! I spent the night in jail with 43 prisoners - most of them drug dealers and picked up at street fights!

The next day I went through processing in a federal court building and presented in front of a Federal Judge. The public defender told me that my ‘case’ was decided and I would be released if I pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $2,500. He also told me that I could refuse to plead guilty, contest the judgment and even could win, but could be taking a long time, cost more and might result in multiple trips to Las Vegas.

Exhausted, depressed and completely deflated, I agreed to what ever the public defender suggested and got out after 24 hours of ‘living hell’.

I endured the most horrifying and traumatic 24-hours of my life for a crime I sincerely believe I did not commit. A simple statement by the flight attendant (Lora Lee Minton) in normal tone of voice that I was not supposed to wait in front of the toilet when it was occupied by the pilot, would have saved the ghastly ordeal.

I was told repeatedly by the prison guards, some of the FBI officials (not all of them were rude), the prison inmates who heard my story that the reason I was targeted was because of my skin color (brown) and ethnic background (South Asian, Indian).

When I returned home, I did not feel like lying flat and take the abuse, more so the incident involved not only me but an entire race and ethnic group. I sent my story to local, state and national news papers including all the major Indian news publications. The response was overwhelming: the news papers were very receptive; I received numerous e-mails, letters, phone-calls, sympathy and supportive cards; every one wanted me to ‘fight-it-out’ and ‘not to keep quite and do nothing.’

I did send my story to ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Missouri and Nevada , yet I haven’t heard from them yet, though I was told that my experience had merit. I contacted attorneys locally as well as in St Louis and was told that they were looking for proper attorneys that specialize in civil liberties cases; I was told by some that I should not have pleaded guilty and should find eye-witnesses that would testify in my favor.

During 30 years of my stay in America , I never felt so threatened nor my rights so violated as I did that fateful night. ‘You are not guilty until proven otherwise’, the anthem we are made to believe all the time was turned out to be not true; I was guilty until prove my self innocent. I was treated like a guilty person and was never given a chance even to tell my side of the story. Even after the incidence, I am finding it difficult to prove my innocence. I want Southwest Air Lines to realize their mistake and drop charges against me. I did contact Southwest airlines and was informed that they were standing by their stewardess and the issue had no racial profile or bias.

The Young Turks

Many of us here at LoonWatch.com are fans of The Young Turks, so we decided to post some of their videos on the Ft. Hood Shooting along with some commentary:

Crazy Conservative Bloggers on Fort Hood

My comments: There were two Muslim American soldiers who shot their fellow soldiers, compared to tens of thousands of Muslim Americans who serve in the military, and millions of Muslim Americans who live in the country.  But surely two of them define them all, right?

Fox “News” Un-American Take on the Fort Hood Shooter

My comments: At about four minutes into the video, the Fox “News” lady host argues that “political correctness” is the problem: the U.S. military knew about his radical postings online and didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to be PC about it.  Of course conservatives love to be politically incorrect–or rather, pathetically incorrect–and this is one of their favorite talking points.  They use the euphemism of “I’m going to be politically incorrect” instead of just saying “I’m going to be bigoted.”  Anyways, the entire theory is bogus because his military command already said that they didn’t know about his radical postings online.

Also, at the very end of the video, Cenk mentions the most important point: so many right wingers unfortunately think that they are “allowing” Muslims to be Americans.  We’ve had a few similar comments on LW, where a few posters would say something along the lines of “if Muslims want to be treated as Americans…”, not knowing that Muslims in this country are already Americans!  You didn’t “gift” that Americanness to them, and they are just as American as you are.  And your entire attitude of thinking that you get to decide who is and who is not a real American is the most un-American of all.

America was a country founded upon immigration, a melting pot by definition.  Unless you’re Native American, your ancestors were also immigrants to this country, and what difference does it make that they were from a European country as opposed to an Asian or African one?  Why is it that a third generation Arab American is treated as being a foreigner/immigrant, whereas an immigrant who just moved from Italy to the United States some three years ago is considered more American?  It’s absurd.  Get this through your thick skulls: you will treat every single American as a fellow American regardless of his race, religion, or ethnicity.  And if you don’t believe that, then you should be treated as being un-American.

Should Ft. Hood Shooter Been Racially Profiled?

My comments:  Cenk, I think you missed the point here.  There was absolutely no need for racial or religious profiling here at all.  The fact is that if anyone had said the things Major Nidal Hasan had said–be it his radical postings online or his rantings in person–then that’s a red flag no matter what race or religion he is.  So that’s not racial or religious profiling if you pull a guy aside for saying those things.

Let me clarify: if there is a guy going through airport security and he says something like “I love Al-Qaeda,” then you can and should pull him aside for saying that.  This is regardless of his race or religion.  On the other hand, if you simply pull aside those who are of a certain race or religion, then that’s racial profiling.  Nobody on earth would have a problem with the former, but the latter is racist and 100% un-American.

The thing that is being missed here, with the Ft. Hood Shooting, is that there was no reason to racially profile this guy!  He could have been caught and stopped if people had just paid attention to the numerous red flags.  Major Hasan was saying crazy things, and doing crazy things (giving absurd and out of place presentations at work)…It was just a matter of picking up on those numerous cues and then looking into that.

If you start racially or religiously profiling people, then you alienate the same community within which the problem exists.  It’s counter-productive.  Instead of wasting time trying to screen tens of thousands of Muslim Americans, why not just investigate those people that are saying and doing things that are questionable?  And that’s the American thing to do: judge people based on their words and actions, not their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.  It’s about judging people for the content of their character.

Crazy Conservatives on Ft. Hood

My comments: Of course, any sane person knows that it’s a lie that Muslims believe they must “kill all infidels.”  Pious Muslim Americans believe that they must obey the U.S. laws, and are thus not a threat.

The Islamophobe says “this is not Islamophobia, it’s Islamo-realism.”  That’s exactly what bigoted people say.  Cenk of TYT interviewed a racist guy earlier on his show, and that guy would call himself a “racial realist” instead of “racist.”

Anyways, the key point that Cenk raises is at 4:00 when he talks about how truly un-American these guys are, and how they really and truly don’t understand the ethics and purpose of this country.

UPDATE:

Pat Roberson: Islam is Not a Religion

My comments:  A bit over the top?  I don’t know.  But yes, I do agree that these right wingers shouldn’t throw stones when they live in glass houses.

Alright, that’s it for now.  Thanks a lot, TYT Nation!  Keep up the good work.