terrorism – Bumbling Bees

Last Week(s) in Weird

29 May 2017 by Darien Sumner

Sequence break

It’s a true fact: this week’s column was meant to begin with my snotty Memorial Day entry, which you’ll find below. Then I was going to segue into Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride and go from there. It really just ate away at me, though, that I had the weirdest authentic Trump moment of all time and I was going to bury it halfway down the article. And with that image! That amazing, iconic, unedited, un-DC-Funk-Parade-foam-fingered image. So we’re doing things a little bit out of order, because, my friends, on this roller coaster that is life, the weird is in the driver’s seat, and all the rest of us are being pulled along remorselessly, with our hands and feet firmly secured inside the carriage at all times.

So what we see above is — and I swear I’m not making any of this up — president Trump, king Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, and president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt in a darkened room surrounded by fascinated onlookers, placing their hands on, um, a magical glowing devil orb as part of a ritual to end all terrorism forever.

No, that’s true.

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Last Week in Weird

10 April 2017 by Darien Sumner

Lights in the darkness

As we discussed a few days ago, April 6, 2017 was the day president Trump officially betrayed Trumpism, inserting the United States into yet another foolish regime change operation in the middle east, pushing the world yet closer to open war between the US and Russia, and dumping additional tens of millions of dollars down the defense contractor pit. Apparently, making America great again involves giving us Hillary Clinton’s policies dressed up with Sewer Urchin’s rhetorical style.

But you know about that already. In fact, if you’re a bit sharp, you most likely knew it was coming. Yes, the Trump reversal was whatever the opposite of "unexpected" is — a concept word scientists of the future will dub "expected." What was less expected, though — arguably much less expected — was the way many of Trump’s most stalwart supporters turned around on him just as ferociously. And I don’t just mean tiny, meaningless dudes with blogs and no audience.

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Last Week in Weird

27 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

The spirit of progress

The American left continues to spiral down into madness, unable to cope with the reality of life here in the grim darkness of the far future. Everything president Trump does or says sends them into paroxysms, which is great fun for those of us whose job it is to make fun of stupid things people said last week. Particularly fun is the president’s ongoing feud with the news media, which has recently reached such a pitch of hilarity that the president has actually begun banning the mainstream press from official White House news conferences, preferring to rely on so-called "alternative" news outlets and the endless stream of comedy that is his personal Twitter account.

The mainstream media being so thoroughly demonized and disgraced is rather a new experience, though it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of worthless petty tyrants. Why do I say that? Well, here’s MSNBC’s other resident hag, Mika Brzezinski, to explain for you.

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Dangerous Precedents

29 September 2016 by Darien Sumner

I’m sure you all remember what happened on 11 September 2001. How could you possibly forget? It was the seminal event upon which the modern American republic was founded. A quick recap, though, for those who overdosed on cocaine back in the 80s and have been in a coma ever since: a group of Saudi nationals, in the United States on Saudi passports, hijacked several aircraft and crashed them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocent people and also the ones at the Pentagon too. Now, fifteen years later, the United States government has finally conceded that Saudi Arabia was perhaps — perhaps! — involved, and congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act:

This bill amends the federal judicial code to narrow the scope of foreign sovereign immunity by authorizing U.S. courts to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of a tort, including an act of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.

It amends the federal criminal code to permit civil claims against a foreign state or official for injuries, death, or damages from an act of international terrorism. Additionally, the bill authorizes federal courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over and impose liability on a person who commits, or aids, abets, or conspires to commit, an act of international terrorism against a U.S. national.

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Last Week in Weird

20 June 2016 by Darien Sumner

Dude, where’s my jihad?

Thank God we have the federal government to keep us safe from terror. I can’t begin to imagine how terrified I’d be every waking moment without our noble public servants heroically interposing themselves between my stunted, childlike inability to deal with the terror and the terrifyingly harsh existential terror of international terror. In particular, it’s nice to hear that the government is keeping me safe from the terror of hipsters paying their buddies back for beer.

It turns out this poor sap went out drinking with a buddy at a bar in the West Village. Later in the evening, he attempted to reimburse his buddy for $42 worth of beer by sending the money via Venmo, which appears to be Paypal remade for the iPhone. In his drunken hipster daze, he decided it would be funny to note in the comments field that the money was for "ISIS beer funds!!!," in response to which the OFAC "detained" (read: stole) his money to keep it from going to another nefarious hipster beer terrorist.

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