2016 May 19^th

There is little political news today. I watched Fox this morning until their resident retired General McInerney was asked what he thought our Secretary of State, who was already in Egypt, might do to help with that air disaster. The General, true to form, went into a rant about how such disasters were all our fault because we hadn’t eliminated ISIS; that absurdity led me to send an email to “Fox and Friends” to tell them what I thought of General McInerney. Then I found out more about him; we can be thankful that he has retired…or maybe has been retired!

Here are some gems from the General’s “thinking” courtesy of Rachel Maddow.

It begins when a Lt. Colonel, a physician, claims that his order to go overseas is not legitimate because the President has no right to be President. He has no right because he isn’t an American citizen; that’s the old birther argument and if Colonel boy pushes it he could be spending time in much worse places than overseas hospitals.

General McInerney believes the Colonel has a good point and congratulates him on having the courage to pursue this insanity. Rachel Maddow takes up the issue and tells us some of this General’s other favorite beliefs:

–He suggested that the alleged WMD that lead to the Iraq war and never found were “spirited away” just prior to the US invasion by Russia, China and France.

–He suggested the reason why the U.S. had not seen terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 by asking “Why attack here when you have leftists in America who have aided and abetted the enemy more than Tokyo Rose did in World War II?”

–He suggested that to prevent another terrorist attack on an American airline the following “If you are an 18 to 28-year-old Muslim man, you should be strip-searched.”

Yes, the retired Lt. Gen made those suggestions, and if you are a regular viewer of Rachel Maddow, that is rather stunning evidence of crazy McInerney. However, there are probably just as many people who don’t watch Maddow that likely see those as examples as smart and reasonable approaches to stop terrorism. Maddow sums up the segment: “Ultimately, the story here is not that somebody’s trying to get out of the army because of some crazy birther conspiracy theory.  Ultimately, the story here is not even that a three- star general has joined the quixotic request. The real story, it seems to me, is that a guy this nuts gets paid to comment on foreign policy and wars. The birther general is on FOX News’ payroll. He’s the go-to guy for high-minded reporting on Muslim strip- searching, French people stealing WMDs, assurances of how easy it would be to wage war on Iran, and now, maybe the president’s birth certificate helps their guy. We report, you freak out. ”

One more of the General’s thoughts that Rachel didn’t mention.  The General is convinced the Malaysia flight 370 really flew to Pakistan. There he believes that it will be equipped with a bomb and flown back here to devastate some city or other.

Then we have Lt. General Boykin who is certain that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all levels of the government. He is a hotshot at the Family Research Council, although whether he has a spot yet on Fox News I don’t know. I’m sure Fox would love to have him; in time they’ll vacuum him up.