20 [Update: 50] Dead In Orlando Gay Club Shooting; Possible Terrorism
USA TODAY: A heavily armed assailant opened fire in a packed Orlando nightclub early Sunday in a bloody massacre that left about 20 people dead and prompted a terrorism investigation, authorities said. Police Chief John Mina said the tragedy began at 2:02 a.m., when three police officers engaged in a gun battle with a suspect outside Pulse Orlando, a gay … Read More
Testy Trump Gets Testy When Press Holds Him Accountable
Not long ago, in late January, Trump skipped a GOP debate in Wisconsin. Instead, he held an event in Des Moines which, he claimed, raised $6 million for military veterans. Trump, not used to being called out on his lies, had a bit of a problem. The press, as time went on, started reporting that the $6 million was untrue, … Read More
Trump’s Foreign Policy: Bad, Incoherent But Not Novel
Trump gave a rambling, incoherent and contradictory speech on Wednesday on foreign policy, that was notable because it was a prepared speech which he read off the teleprompter. That means he actually thought about what he was going to say, and it still came out horribly. And almost everyone agrees. Here’s Lindsey Graham’s tweets: Trump’s theme was “America First”, a slogan which … Read More
What’s The Panama Papers All About?
The leak amounts to 2.6 terabytes of information — perhaps the largest whistleblower leak in history. Also, it might topple a country or too. So it might be interesting to learn what the Panama Papers leak is all about. It starts with a company called Mossack Fonesca. That’s a Panamanian law firm that has long been well-known to the global financial … Read More
Is ISIS On The Ropes?
Don’t look to the Republican presidential candidates for an honest answer to that question. They want ISIS to be flourishing because it gives them a plank to campaign on. But if you look at my tweets, you’ll see that Paris and Belgium are sweeping out the network with arrests, and that the Number 2 ISIS guy was killed, US officials believe. … Read More
Brussels Attacks: Silver Lining Edition
The death toll stands at 31 from yesterday’s coordinated ISIS-terrorist attacks in Brussels. We’re getting some details from the Belgian prosecutor. There were three explosions. Two explosions hit the Zaventem airport in Brussels around 8 am local time (3 am Eastern) in the departure area. One was in the entryway and the other near the American Airlines ticket counter. Both were suicide … Read More
Quote Of The Day
“Good God, they’re probably cutting videos of this right now. . . Donald Trump right now is validating the cartoonish view that they tell their operatives…that America is a racist nation, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and that that’s why you must carry out terrorist attacks against them…It’s irresponsible and it needs to stop.” – terrorism expert Malcolm Nance, the head of the Terrorism … Read More
The Brussels Attacks
35 dead (at last count) and over 200 wounded. The attacks took place during morning rush hour in Brussels, as three ISIS or-ISIS-related gunmen opened fire at the airport in Brussels and then self-detonated via an explosive belt. An hour later came an explosion in a Brussels subway station — Maalbeek. The bloodshed came just four days after the dramatic … Read More
Hate Is The New Black
Whole Lot of Hatin’ Going On: The number of hate groups on the American radical right expanded from 784 in 2014 to 892 in 2015 – a 14 per cent increase, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC released the statistics Wednesday in a new report, The Year in Hate and Extremism. With the increase in hate … Read More
Unedited Video Of the Oregon Standoff and Arrest and Showdown
There have been conflicting stories about how militant LaVoy Finicum. Occupants of Finicum’s car say he was “executed” with his hands up. Law enforcement accounts say that he was reaching into his left jacket pocket and not keeping his hands up (and a loaded gun was found in that pocket later). To me, in this video, a couple of things are … Read More
Oregon Standoff Loosing Steam
Kudos to law enforcement. Looks like their tactic worked. A lot of lefties, including me, thought they were ignoring the armed occupiers when this thing began, but the feds knew what they were doing: It’s a pretty safe bet that by seizing the opportunity to decapitate the leadership of the Oregon occupiers, federal authorities were hoping the remainder of the … Read More
The Mass Shooting You Didn’t Hear About
The FBI doesn’t take victory laps, but I think maybe it should. These stories happen all the time and they never get the same media attention as the stories in which people bleed. And that’s why so many Americans live in (and vote out of) fear. We’re doing okay against the bad guys — better than you might think. This … Read More
North Korea’s Got One Too (Just To Use On You Know Who)
There was a 5.1 magnitude earthquake yesterday in North Korea. Except it wasn’t an earthquake. North Korea announced that it had detonated a sophisticated hydrogen bomb. North Korea’s three previous nuclear tests since 2006 have been met with international condemnation, including resolutions and sanctions from the Security Council. But North Korea has ignored the U.N. on this. The good news is … Read More
Domestic Terrorism Update
Busy day today, so I have little commentary. I recommend an article in The New Yorker for a slightly different, but valuable, perspective than mine: American vigilantism is never racially innocent. Its two parents are self-mobilization on the frontier, usually against Native Americans at a time when homesteading was reserved to whites, and the racial terror of the Ku Klux … Read More