Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 117 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity, Our Failed Media Experiment
We almost let the Times Square non-bomber escape, if by “escape” you mean “sit on a plane for a few minutes”.
He almost blew up a bomb, if by “bomb” you mean “lashed together useless mixture of gas, propane and firecrackers”.
By that standard, I almost played lead guitar in this Sarah Harmer song, if by “played lead guitar”, you mean “wrote a blog post embedding it”.
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[…] Balloon-Juice dolt, continuing a long tradition of B-J moronocy, is unimpressed by how close the bomb came to killing or maiming hundreds and how close the guy on the taxiing airplane got to departing the United States. It’s weird. It’s almost like this guy’s cheering for the other team. Instructive to know he’s a fan of Canadian acoustic singer-songwriter/anti-gravel activist Sarah Harmer. […]
soonergrunt
Today, I’m almost going to build a multi-story building, if by almost, you mean that I will patch a hole in a concrete pad and peruse a catalog of pre-fab pergola designs.
eastriver
(Someone’s been reading the Rude Pundit. Not to point fingers.)
Brian J
Meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly clear Obama and Rahm let Osama escape because they didn’t carpet bomb every square inch of countries with Muslims in them. Because of this, Iran is now close to getting nuclear weapons, which it will share with, say, North Korea and China, and it is likely that Eastern Europe will fall under the spell of Islamofacism. Maybe if they didn’t half ass it with this “almost” crap and “cut the bullshit,” as Sen. McCain said, we’d have him in our custody.
If you can’t see how this is true, then you are clearly part of the problem, and I can’t help you.
fucen tarmal
i almost decided to go to work on my day off…just to get ahead on everything i could almost do from home, if i almost wanted to.
i almost won the lottery last night, i saw people in line and almost bought a ticket, when i heard how much the jackpot is.
Ash Can
It’s too bad W and Cheney didn’t “almost” let bin Laden escape. Or, better yet, that “significant lapses in the security response of the government and the airline” didn’t “almost” let those whackjobs carry out their plot on 9/11/01.
Randy P
Sorry, this one still gives me chills. Nor can I dismiss it, as I’ve seen in other blog comments, as an unimportant “junk” target. That area is thronged with tourists, day and night. I don’t go to Times Square a lot myself (mostly because it’s thronged with annoying tourists, day and night) but I would rather not have public safety hinging on the competence of the bomb-builder.
To me this is a little different from the kind of crackpot terrorist schemes that we saw the Bush people making big headlines about. Those never had a chance of executing. This bomb was actually planted. And it actually ignited. It just wasn’t built right.
JD Rhoades
Every now and then, someone walks into my office wanting to sue someone who “almost’ hit them. I politely send them on their way with advice to enjoy the day.
American dive bombers “almost” didn’t find the Japanese carrier group at the Battle of Midway.
Butler “almost” beat Duke.
I “almost” won the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 2005. (I had to slip a little BSP in there).
“Almost” doesn’t fucking count.
Brian J
@Ash Can:
What are you talking about? According to Dana Perino, there wasn’t a single significant terrorist attack on Bush’s watch. Are we are sure 9/11 doesn’t count as happening under the Clinton administration?
jwb
From the state of the media, you’d think that Obama “almost” beat President McCain.
DougJ
What’s with that funny-colored money the woman behind the cash register is counting? Is this a dystopic vision of what will happen to our money after a few more years of Obama? First they came for the $100, but I said nothing because my ATM only dispenses smaller denominations.
PaulW
Very OT: but if you find any Arizonan at a Tijuana Flats celebrating Cinco De Mayo today you have my permission to punch them repeatedly.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Today, I Almost Cut My hair
valdivia
@PaulW:
and mine. excellent notion. maybe we can make an internet action alert out of this?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Then there are all of those police chaces where the suspect almost gets away except for the helicopter and cop cars. To prevent this the police should be allowed to shoot anyone they think is suspicious.
beltane
This reminds me of George Carlin’s “Near miss” routine.
Yesterday, someone blew through a stop sign and nearly hit me as I was driving one of my kids to school. I forgot all about it a hour later, but I guess I am supposed to spend a few years obsessively dwelling on the “what if”.
The media likes to whip people up into such a frenzy of fear that they can no longer function properly.
Linda Featheringill
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Hair:
Yeah.
Brian J
@Randy P:
I don’t mean to seem like I am acting as if some casualties aren’t anything to worry about, but where is the evidence that this was a serious thread? A car blowing up with lots of crap in it is bound to hurt people standing nearby, but it wouldn’t, as The Times article says, have brought down a building. Would it have even been as strong as a bus blowing up?
Again, it’s as unacceptable as any other threat, in that innocent people could have died. But a little perspective is always needed.
PanAmerican
He should had pursued the explosives training via ARRA grant. Many of these for-profit trade schools are so totally fly by night.
“Non-explosive fertilizer” is my new favorite phrase. Try asking for that at the garden center. Presumably this means he failed to learn the basics of an ANFO mix, though it offers the possibility that he had a couple of bags of cow shit in the trunk.
kay
@Randy P:
My frustration with the commentary isn’t at attempt at dismissal, my question is what to do about that? He was here legally. He traveled legally. He worked, he bought a house. So, what’s the solution? Wiretap everyone? Search every automobile?
I just lose patience with an analysis that imagines public safety can be perfect. I don’t even agree with the media commentary that the system failed to keep him off the plane. The first round didn’t work but the second round did. This is supposed to go off flawlessly every single time? That seems unrealistic. That’s why there’s a second round.
I just think we have to accept a certain amount of risk.
I’d also appreciate an honest approach. It isn’t all about safety vs civil liberties. There’s the free flow of commerce in there, playing its usual starring role, and no one will admit it. People have to move around to make money, and every delay and security inconvenience has the potential to cost someone some money. I’d like to be treated like an adult and have that acknowledged, because it’s in there.
MikeJ
I would guess that even if the plane had taken off, they could get it turned around. Since it’s a 14 hour (roughly) flight, any time in the first seven hours would have been no problem. Take into account that they could land in Maine and you could give them another hour. Take into account the reserves all planes carry you could probably get another hour.
Two other options: land the airliner at a US military base overseas, or even ask our allies and good friends in Dubai to hand him over.
Cris
Just a thought: if federal authorities had this guy pegged soon enough to arrest him on the plane, isn’t it plausible that they allowed him to board the plane, because having him in an enclosed space reduces flight risk?
I’m just saying, I doubt this was an action movie sequence where the Feds were racing to beat the clock.
polyorchnid octopunch
Nothing to do with the bomber, but… Kingston represent! Heh.
john b
i assumed that was the case
JasonF
@MikeJ:
Or have the plane diverted to London or Paris or Rome or Athens or …
People are talking like the pilots were his accomplices, and if they had just gotten the plane in the air we would have never seen him again. Sure, if he had gotten to Pakistan or even Dubai, he probably would have vanished, but seated in seat 14D on a 747? We knew exactly where he was going to be for half a day.
slippy
@Brian J: Thing is, the car would never have blown up. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand how the materials he was using could work as a bomb, it’s that he didn’t understand that they never would.
I sure am tired of manufactured outrage. The guy WAS caught, the bomb DIDN’T go off, and can we PLEASE move on to things that matter now?
The amount of oil pouring into the Gulf, for example, which will cause MORE economic damage and by the way more ACTUAL death and misery than some Wile E. Coyote nonsense that never really worked ever would.
beltane
@MikeJ: The guy was literally a captive audience. He could have been taken into custody at any number of places. Law enforcement did it’s job. People who expect the real world to conform to a Hollywood script need to grow up and get out more. Life is not a movie.
demo woman
After reading Shahzad his miranda rights, he ALMOST didn’t talk. Now I understand how the Republican mind works.
MikeJ
OT: I like Weigel. I think he does a great job of reporting on the right without buying too much into their frames. However, this bit about yesterdays primaries in NC strickes me as really, really stupid:
Is that supposed to be any sort of meaningful metric?
Ash Can
@Brian J: Dana Perino? Piffle. Now, if Rudy Giuliani were to say it, I’d…oh, yeah. Right.
some other guy
…but still.
Bill E Pilgrim
Peak Wingnut may be a myth, but Wingnut pique is eternal.
mistermix
@polyorchnid octopunch: I guess they must like big platters of mystery meat in Kingston, judging from the pictures at the table.
beltane
@MikeJ: What does that even mean? In NC, more people voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary. The most hotly contested race was the primary to select a challenger to incumbent Richard Burr’s senate seat. Richard Burr is a Republican.
kay
@MikeJ:
I wonder. I think there were supposed to be upsets for incumbents or “establishment” candidates, and that didn’t happen. I wondered if media would stick to the narrative if the “upstarts” didn’t win, and it looks like they are.
Politico went with the same lead story they would have had with upsets.
“Turnout was low and there were no major upsets or shocking results — every House and Senate incumbent on the ballot in the three states won renomination — but there was no shortage of evidence of voter unrest.”
I think they have settled on a theme of this massively upset electorate, and when that didn’t actually happen, they went with it anyway. Once they adopt a narrative, they are loathe to drop it.
henqiguai
@PanAmerican (#18):
I interpreted that to mean the nitwit threw in a couple of bags of cured cow or horse manure from his local garden center or Home Depot. But then, I tend to be a tad literal in my thinking, sometimes.
ETA: Okay, started laughing before I could complete reading your comment. Same thought – a bag of cow manure in the trunk.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Brian J:
A most excellent typo.
I ask myself that here often.
flukebucket
@Brian J:
I’m not even going to read the article but if anybody is reporting that a handful of firecrackers and a couple of propane tanks is going to bring down a building they need to have their crayons taken from them.
Not only have we forgotten Bin Laden. We have also forgotten the great New York City steam explosion of 2007.
The crumbling infrastructure is more of a danger than terrorists.
beltane
@kay: Did Politico provide actual evidence of public unrest? Since there was no shortage of evidence, they should have had no problem presenting it. Interviews with Tea Party attendees does not count as evidence of unrest; it counts as evidence of unhinged minds.
Mike in NC
Today while driving to work I turned on the radio and a pair of insipid DJs were asking people to call in if they had cancelled plans to travel to NYC, or for that matter anyplace else, due to the non-incident in Times Square. Christ, what a nation of bedwetters we’ve become.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay:
To be fair, John Cole avoids undermining his narrative as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: I non-canceled my non-plans to go to New York because of the non-incident. I am, however, still flying to Europe next Tuesday for EuroTrip 2010.
Leelee for Obama
@Bill E Pilgrim: This should be a tag, I’m thinking.
Wingnut Pique for the win!
Ash Can
@henqiguai: Now you have me envisioning the car as essentially an oversized flaming bag of poo. Did the guy ring someone’s doorbell after he walked away from the car?
Ash Can
Has this started appearing in the rotating sub-heads yet?
LuciaMia
Just why do we bother withTSA anyway? Last year, Newark Int. Airport was shut down for six hours cause one guy snuck thru to give his girlfriend one last kiss. When they tried to view security tapes to identify him, they found half of them weren’t working.
Stories of a three year old being repeatedly stopped from boarding a plane cause his name is the same as someone on the no-fly list.
Those full body scanners that they say are fairly useless.
***********
Anyways. My chuckle for yesterday was hearing some conservative radio jock whining about ‘politicizing the Time Square incident.’ Apparently some Democratic senator gave a compliment to Obama. Pleeeez. Can you imagine if the unthinkable happened and that bomb went off? The screams from the wingnuts on how this was all Obama’s fault cause he’s enboldened the terrorists would last for weeks.
kay
@beltane:
I don’t know. The only race I’m familiar with is Ohio Senate primary, and Fisher (“establishment” candidate) won by ten points.
But, I didn’t even accept the initial narrative regarding that race. I think Jennifer Brunner is very well known (she’s Sec of State and high profile) so is also an “establishment” candidate.
So, it was a race between two well-known Democratic establishment Ohio candidates, and one beat the other by ten points. I don’t know that it means anything. More Ohioans were pulling a Democratic ballot in early primary voting, I saw the stats for that, and I know the state Party were happy with that, but there are about a million more Democrats in Ohio than Republicans in Ohio, so there should be more Democrats voting in a primary.
I think the whole Politico piece re: Ohio is bullshit, basically, short answer.
Brunner won my county, and Fisher worries me as a candidate, because I think he’s been lazy and over-confident so far. I think she would have been a harder worker, as a candidate. I actually have no doubt of that. I think she outworks everyone she’s up against. She’s a freaking machine. I voted for her for that reason.
But, it’s Fisher, so hopefully he won’t sit on his ass through the general.
sloan
From that first NYT link:
So the airline failed to check the no-fly list, but since a passenger list was sent to Customs we still caught the guy.
The NYT has it exactly backwards. The system worked. We caught the bastard. He is in custody as we speak. If we had relied solely on the airline he would have escaped, but Big Government does not trust the invisible hand of the free market to capture terror suspects, so they took a second look at the passenger list and found him.
THE SYSTEM WORKED.
SpotWeld
I still don’t understand the gun locker.
Aren’t those supposed to contain amunition explosions should your house catch on fire?
(Which wouldn’t contain a properly made explosive device, but a lot of the energy of the blast would be lost blowing open the safe.)
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you think so? One of the things I like about this place is I think he’s unpredictable. I don’t see him as having a “theme”. I never feel as if he’s pushing a narrative. I appreciate that. He seems singular, in the way that individual people are, in real life. It doesn’t feel professional or practiced.
I have many, many complaints, too numerous to list, really, but that’s not one of them :)
Cassidy
@PanAmerican: dirty bomb?
LarsThorwald
I wonder what will happen in this country if the Republicans take back the House.
Svensker
@Brian J:
It’s worse than that! Iran is about to develop a “nuke pulse bomb” which could leave 90% of Americans dead in just a few years!11
The story is behind a firewall, but there’s a capsule of it here
roshan
Meanwhile on HuffPo the search for a grand motive behind the car bomb attempt continues..
Is it really hard to understand that the foreign policies implemented by the US are the cause behind this?
4tehlulz
>http://messageboards.aol.com/…
There is no way in hell I am following that link.
MikeJ
@Svensker: LGM has done some on debunking the EMP scare.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: It came up yesterday; Paul L. accused Cole of ignoring things that undermine his narrative. People took it and ran with it for humor value. The helicopters aren’t laughing, you know.
PanAmerican
@Cassidy:
FTW
Ash Can
@kay: Actually, the “undermining the narrative” bit refers to a snarkfest that broke out in one of yesterday’s threads. Paul L made one of his usual laughably stupid posts and claimed it “undermined John’s narrative.” Hilarity ensued.
ETA: And, what Omnes said. :)
ChrisS
@roshan:
You can’t ask that.
The US is a city on a hill, a beacon of freedom.
Stop sympathizing with the terrorists.
Traitor.
Meanwhile, I finished my tax extension and finding all my receipts. No wonder someone would fly a plane into an IRS building. The nerve of those socialist bureaucrats.
jurassicpork
Top 10 Ways Gov. Jan Brewer Will Celebrate Cinco de Mayo.
ChrisS
I almost made it through without going into moderation hell.
theflax
Hells, TPM has splashed this story all over their site; they make it sound like we were a hair away from Armageddon because of the incompetence of the FBI. It’s a shame seeing Josh Marshall’s site turn into a mini-Politico, they used to do good work.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you. I had no idea.
celticdragonchick
Uhh…the fertilizer was useless. It is simply our very good luck that the fireworks, gasoline and propane (especially the propane) did not do something fairly nasty.
The fact you actually say: “…a useless mixture of gas, propane and firecrackers” is gobsmacking. It certainly wasn’t a block of Semtex, but if you want to put all that in the back of your car and crow about how useless it is while setting the firecrackers off, please let me know. I will arrange to be elsewhere.
celticdragonchick
@theflax:
Interesting, since it was very fast work on the part of the FBI that got him.
It had been only 8 hours since he had been put on the no fly list and the airline hadn’t even gotten the info yet. I’d say the FBI was on the ball, especially considering the guy had bought the ticket on the way to the airport.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@celticdragonchick: As others have pointed out, Mythbusters did an entire segment on trying to get propane tanks to blow up. The gist of it was that shooting them doesn’t do much, heating them up with the safety valve on didn’t work, and even if you disabled the safety, you tended to end up with a rocket, not a bomb.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: That’s what happens when you try to have a life outside the intertubes; you miss out on all sorts of idiocy. Of course, now that you are aware of this internet tradition, I expect that you will hew closely to the narrative.
Hob
@Randy P: Oh yeah, of course it’s scary! This one was a dud but it makes you think of worse things. That’s why they call it terrorism. But what is there about this that’s new or that there’s anything in particular to do about?
If you want to prevent car bombs in a city, you pretty much have to take all the cars out of the city. That’d be nice, but I don’t see it happening. Otherwise, short of constant surveillance on everyone, if someone really wants to set off a bomb in a crowded place then there’s some chance that they will. If there were any really good solution to this, it would’ve been discovered by now in, say, Belfast.
And this isn’t new to New York, either. The first car bomb there was horse-drawn, and it was pretty horrible — you can still see the marks in the buildings.
polyorchnid octopunch
@mistermix: Actually, I think that diner’s on Sherbrooke a block west of the Decarie in Montreal… just down the street from my sister’s place. I could be wrong though… lots of diners like that still extant in Mtl. Looking at the pics, you’ve got some pastas, salad plates, poutine, and the restaurant’s run by greeks, which fits with the place I’m thinking of.
The woman, of course, is a Kingstonian.
scudbucket
Conservatives don’t like libertarians
Is this good news for McCain?
scav
Could somebody please run a check under my bed? There may or may not be an imaginary monster under it. Worse, I don’t think he has his long-form immigration papers. And I smell poo.
OK, actually, those are the imaginary voices in my head talking. I think I’m wrestling with a neuronal infestation of tea-baggers. We may have to carpet-bomb my cortex.
MikeJ
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): And if you do ignite propane you usually get a very flash fireball that doesn’t do much real damage.
Not that it would have been completely harmless, but it would not have been what the idiot was dreaming of.
Had he been slightly smarter and had a better work ethic he would have broken into a construction site and stolen some dynamite.
kay
@theflax:
I don’t know anything about the FBI, but I can tell you conclusively that all local police investigations are like this. I think the difference might be the nuts and bolts aren’t revealed. If you’re not directly involved you see the indictment. You don’t see what led to it. That isn’t a slap on the FBI or local police. That’s how real life is.
Honestly, I think it’s childish to hang onto this notion that things run like clockwork, or that luck or happenstance isn’t involved, past 12 years old.
Look honestly at any of the high-profile investigations, McVeigh or the unibomber or the anti-abortion terrorist(s). This is what real life looks like, when you take it apart.
YellowJournalism
If the pilots were accomplices, so were the people on board the plane, as well as the nation of Dubai. They were all in on it by association.
You know what? Sex and the City 2 is set in Dubai, therefore Sarah Jessica Parker must be a terrorist!
Omnes Omnibus
@scudbucket: Your link doesn’t seem to work.
No one likes libertarians. Also, too.
celticdragonchick
@flukebucket: @Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The mythbusters episode as I recall focused on a large commercial propane tank that was being shot at with a 9mm to simulate a scene from a James Bond movie. The 9mm round was not powerful enough to penetrate the steel tank.
If you want to chuckle about how safe the tanks are and set one on fire in your neighborhood…well, please don’t.
Again, it is simple luck that we didn’t have a dozen or so people dead and more injured from this bit of murderous idiocy.
chopper
i almost went to harvard. all i needed to do was apply, get accepted and go to harvard.
Michael
It only took 7 years for the FBI to capture Eric Rudolph (the Olympic Park bomber). Sadly, during the Bush administration, once they realized where he was hiding, they didn’t waterboard the white Christian conspiracy of North Carolinians to determine his location.
Terrorism isn’t important when it is done by white folks.
scudbucket
Here’s the link again to conservatives don’t like libertarians
It’s from David Weigel’s blog at WaPo. Here’s the relevant paragraph:
celticdragonchick
@MikeJ:
Propane and other explosive gasses have been used for years to enhance blast effects in terrorist truck/car bombs, and the principle is used in Fuel/Air explosives and also thermobaric weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/02/1918233/pakistani-taliban-claims-nyc-car.html#ixzz0n4JUikeO
different church-lady
Let me guess: you’ve either been watching cable news or reading right-wing blogs?
different church-lady
@JD Rhoades: That was almost brilliant!
scudbucket
Two links and I’m in mod hell. Here’s the relevant paragraph from a David Weigel post at WaPo:
henqiguai
@Cassidy (#51):
Crappy bomb ? Sh!tty bomb ? That bomb’s the shezzle ? Sh!t man, that crap bombed ?
Sorry, vacation day due to lack of sleep. The idiocy flows more freely than usual this morning.
celticdragonchick
@different church-lady:
Who is that directed at?
WereBear
@kay: One thing about Rachel Maddow’s special about the OK City bombing, (which was really well done) is that it was obvious McVeigh wanted to be caught. And get the credit.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Hindrocket & pals almost fought in Iraq and defeated every terrorist on the planet if by almost you mean sat on their asses in the comfort of their homes and blogged about the joys of war and the greatness of Shrubya Bush’s xtra bulgee flight suit.
KRK
Well, mistermix, you may have fooled everyone here, but it looks like Crittenden has your number.
Mnemosyne
Somebody had better get Jules Crittenden some Depends. After all, he almost shit his pants by imagining what could have happened if life was a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
obviously, it’s time for us all to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside.
Mnemosyne
On a more serious note, I’m starting to worry about where this guy’s wife and two kids are. It’s not uncommon for a guy who does shit like this to kill his family first. Hopefully, what happened is that she left him and took the kids and not that the three of them are in a shallow grave somewhere.
Martian Buddy
Someone may have mentioned this already, but ThinkProgress pointed out another aspect of the story that’s gotten lost in all the “OMFG SCARY MUSLIM” panic attacks: the first person who noticed the bomb was a Senegalese Muslim immigrant.
Randy P
Well, I admit I’ve been in the camp that can work myself up worrying about what could have happened even though I’m well aware there’s not much we can do about prevention. Which raises the question about why there aren’t more incidents. There was some Schwarzenegger movie a few years back that showed one of the tunnels (the Holland Tunnel, I think) blowing up in the trailers. Again, that was a little too close to home due to the amount of time I spend in NYC. And it also made me wonder why nobody has ever tried that.
But talking myself down, here’s a little perspective. We were in Italy in the summer of 2002, and there was a little old lady in a yarn shop in Pisa that we stopped in (my wife is a mad crocheter). She was very chatty and when we mentioned we were Americans she started talking about 9/11. My Italian is fairly rudimentary but I gathered the gist of what she was saying was that you Americans are so silly getting all up in arms about a single terrorist attack, when the Communists have been blowing up people and buildings here in Italy since forever.
kay
@WereBear:
Well, this guy left his keys in the car, and that included the key for his personal car and his house key. He then confessed immediately. Seems as if he wanted to get caught too, doesn’t it?
My one and only question is to the person who sold him the car. News reports said “no formal paperwork” was exchanged. Does that mean no title? I have purchased maybe 5 cars from private sellers. I cannot imagine not insisting on a title, and I cannot imagine a seller who wouldn’t think not taking the title was odd.
“Nah. I don’t need that. You keep it”.
Maybe they’re talking about a receipt and not a title?
artem1s
@kay:
this is exactly my worry too. Brunner was not that well known and Fisher has been running (and losing) every high office position possible for the last 10 years so he has high name recognition. He’s the guy that the Dems trot out when they can’t find anyone else to run for a hopeless cause (OK they use Tim Hagan for this too). The more I see of his campaign the more obvious it is that they are going to paint him as a Voinovich lite. Nothing for ‘real conservatives’ to get worried about. His opponent, Portman and the GOP nomination for Governor, Kasich are going to have trouble in the fiscal responsibility arena. I’m assuming the DNC figured that they could avoid having to duke it out over social issues if they went with Fisher. Brunner is pretty outspoken on progressive issues and is not afraid to bring touchy issues forward. The state Dems were probably afraid of her and preferred Fisher because his is pretty milquetoast as a candidate goes. Just like Voinovich! bleh!
Martian Buddy
Remind me again why it was so important to not read him his rights. Also, let’s hope that the training program remains this effective.
Randy P
@Martian Buddy:
Hey, he was out the day they covered ANFO, OK? But ammonium nitrate = fertilizer and Home Depot cow manure is fertilizer, and FO = fuel oil and propane is fuel. Also on sale at Home Depot. Why wouldn’t it work? So cut him some slack.
andy
The miracle is the results Obama is getting with the bureaucracy he’s got. It’s been, what, going on a year and a half and still most of his appointments are waiting on the Senate. Think of all the garbage that has been accumulating in the machinery from 30 years of Republican administrations, with burrowed-in Bush appointees the shit smear on top. Think of the parasite drag of all that dead weight!
Also, Sarah harmer is awesome!
celticdragonchick
@Martian Buddy:
I agree.
kay
@artem1s:
Your analysis is better than mine. Mine is based on a gathering I hosted for local Democrats. Not a big deal, and not a fundraiser. A party, basically.
The ODP organizer came, a judicial candidate came, and a Congressional candidate came. A local Brunner supporter came, although I don’t know her, so didn’t invite her. She was great.
Not a word from Fisher, or any of his supporters. It’s anecdotal, but I got this sense of foreboding. It reminded me of the Clinton campaign, where they first contact I got was 5 days ahead of the Ohio primary, and the Obama campaign had already nailed down half the Democrats in the county.
The Clinton primary organizer called me with a set of instructions, and I had to interrupt him, and tell him I was an Obama delegate, and had been for months. I mean, the Clinton people were at the state delegate caucus. It’s sort of a long process. He just assumed I’d be working for Hillary, when I was actively on the other side.
Martian Buddy
@Randy P: Well, to be fair, he did cause many pairs of conservative shorts to be soiled–so I guess he really did successfully employ a fertilizer bomb.
WereBear
@kay: Good point, but he was expecting it to blow up, no?
McVeigh made his escape in a car missing plates.
jenniebee
The fact that he was allowed to buy a ticket is proof that the government can’t do anything right!
Wait, he bought the ticket because a private company that had received an alert about his addition to the no-fly list had a Voluntary Compliance Phail and let him buy the ticket anyway?
nvrmind
/wingnut
henqiguai
@Martian Buddy (#100):
Fertilizer; the concept is fertilizer. Ya gots to be careful to differentiate between horse sh!t, and “horse sh!t !“. Crucial difference.
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Didn’t Gaffney write the article? The whole thing is so preposterously childish that it seems impossible anyone could go along with it, but still…
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
That is weird. The article didn’t say anything about the whereabouts of the wife and kids, which is also odd.
TenguPhule
*Jules Cretin FAILS SCIENCE FOREVER!*
Hob
BTW, Mistermix, there’s one problem with your post: by your definition, you did play lead guitar on that song. There’s no “almost” about it– I see the embedded video right there! You’re too modest!
licensed to kill time
I almost wrote The Great American Novel today, but settled on this comment instead.
sparky
i almost did something useful but then i wrote this comment.
unbelievable, the bed-wetting.
time to trot out those damn facts again
via the MMWR, for 2006
–37,286 people died in the US from poisoning;
–43,664 people died from auto accidents;
–30,896 people died from firearm injuries.
looks like there’s a little ways to go before terrorism beats screwups.
MattR
Boy do I love the competency of the TSA
Original Lee
@Svensker: The only mention I’ve seen about the wife and kids was briefly in a Yahoo! article, and the reporter made it sound as if the whole family abandoned their house but only the husband was living in the downscale neighborhood. Maybe she split with the kids before that and was scooped into the witness protection program?
celticdragonchick
@Svensker:
Oh Gawd…
Frank Gaffney is one of the most hysterical right wing bed wetters out there.
EMP weapons are real…but how in the hell does Frankie propose that the Iranians are suddenly going to get a working intercontinental Shahab missile with range to hit us, and also get a working device (it would almost certainly have to be a nuke device to wreck the havoc he claims…and any nuke in suborbital space would EMP most of the continent anyway…so what’s the difference?) that can be fitted to the missile and go through the whole test regime and development anytime in the next decade?
I would be more worried about a small conventional EMP weapon set near an airport or maybe in downtown New York in the financial district. Popular Mechanics loosely detailed how to build one for less then 500 dollars back just before 9/11. (Thanks, guys…)
asiangrrlMN
@MattR: I heard this on MPR this morning, and my immediate reaction was, “Why don’t they check the email the minute they receive it?” Especially as there was some special alert included in this email (if I heard the reporter correctly). But then, I’m OCD like that.
twiffer
@asiangrrlMN: probably got deleted by the spam filter.
JenJen
This post is riding a first-class train to AwesomeTown, mistermix. Well done.