Two Americans Confirmed Dead in Brussels Attacks

Oh, how awful. One of the missing sibling pairs.

Of course, in terrible times like these, we all mourn after our own fashion…

Who Needs The Anarchist’s Cookbook

…when you have the NYT giving you pointers on how to make explosives

Making TATP typically requires meticulous, time-consuming work, adding the catalyst, drop by drop, to a mixture that must be stirred and kept cool, often with a large quantity of ice.

Without specialized equipment, little can be rushed. Adding the catalyst too quickly can lead to aggressive bubbling and rising temperatures. If the reaction gets too hot, it can cause inadvertent explosions.

Even after TATP precursors are acquired, its manufacture can attract attention, because some of the chemicals often involved can generate strong odors.

Drying TATP at room temperature, a last step after rinsing and filtering, also requires a fairly large area, another American official said, unless a vacuum drying chamber is involved. At that point, the TATP would be stored in a relatively airtight container, but if pure, it could not be stored long. After a few weeks, it would be much less powerful.

The intelligence on the explosives suggested that the attack could have been more lethal, the first official said, because two improvised explosive devices constructed with TATP, ammonium nitrate, and a mix of metal bolts and nails were found in suitcases, undetonated, at the airport. A suicide belt was also recovered at the airport, and two more suitcases with bombs were later confiscated during a sweep of a residence used by the suspects.

…The officials noted that in the Paris attacks, TATP had been used as a main charge — packed into smaller, plate-like bundles that were sealed with tape and inserted in suicide vests. The tape was apparently intended to limit the explosive’s exposure to oxygen and slow its decay.

Now class, any questions?

UPDATE

Presbyterians seem to have a thing for AMERICAN Airlines.

Oh. And killing people:

BREAKING NEWS: At least 28 dead in two explosions after suicide bomber targets American Airlines check-in desk at Brussels Airport as SECOND attack hits Metro station near EU headquarters
·At least 13 people killed after two explosions struck near the American Airlines check-in desk at 8am (7am GMT)
·Reports of a firefight between police and attackers seconds before they shouted ‘in Arabic’ and detonated bombs
·Terrified passengers covered in blood ran for their lives after explosion sent ‘shockwaves’ through terminal building
·Another blast killed 15 at a Metro station near EU headquarters in Maelbeek area of central Brussels just after 9am
·Two suspects arrested a mile from train station at around 11am as hundreds of troops and police flood the streets
·Comes a day after Belgium minister warned of revenge strikes after arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam

The Guardian has a post-explosion video.

When our prizzy can take a moment from dancing with his compadre Raul, I wonder if the phrase “acceptable casualties” will come out of his mouth again, or if he only uses that for victims of Islamic madmen slaughtered here?

IRONY ALERT:

https://t.co/xt8QH8wl4v
Erdogan said.
##Bruxelles #BruxellesAttack #Brussels pic.twitter.com/XrNXJF9vWr

— cristina lombardi (@crislomb) March 22, 2016

Who Am I To Argue With Bill Clinton?

Even he says the current President is “awful”

Former President Bill Clinton asked Democratic voters to shrug off the “awful legacy” of President Obama’s years in office in a speech Monday to support Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“Now if you don’t believe we can all grow together again, if you don’t believe we’re ever going to grow again, if you believe it’s more important to re-litigate the past, there may be many reasons that you don’t want to support her,” Clinton told a Spokane, Wash., audience.

“But if you believe we can all rise together, if you believe we’ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the seven years before that where we were practicing trickle-down economics with no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her,” he added.

“Hold Off”? “HOLD OFF”?!?!?!

Is EVERYBODY and anyONE an ACCEPTABLE CASUALTY to this administration as long as you’re NOT IN THEIR WAY?!?

This Video is a Monument to the EVERLASTING SHAME

…of the MALE SAILORS on those Navy boats.

Footage of #US marines having Iranian #food while they were held in #Iran. #marines #navy #Pentagon pic.twitter.com/mtk2J0Yef9

— Abas Aslani (@abasinfo) January 13, 2016

Check out the place settings. Check out the movement IN THE CORNER when the boys are happily STUFFING THEIR FACES.

Guess who wasn’t ALLOWED to eat?

I also notice she’s changed out of her hijab and wrapped herself in a blanket of some sort. GOOD FOR HER.

‘Twould appear she’s the owner of the only set of BALLS in the entire crew.

That American servicemen would act in their own interest and abandon one of their own is DISGRACEFUL.

I hope she lit every jack one of them up royally when they got back to terra USA, and that she NEVER EVER lets the craven cowards off the hook.

DISGRACEFUL

I’d Call It a Smoking Gun, BUT

…those only seem to wind up laying next to the people working for her.

In 2011 email exchange, @HillaryClinton told aide to send talking points "nonsecure" "w no identifying heading" bc secure fax wasn't working

— Nancy Cordes (@nancycordes) January 8, 2016

Well I’m So Glad They Cleared THAT Up

Don’t call us “barbarians” dammit; we have rules for how we “treat” our sexual slaves!

Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.

The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State’s previous known utterances on the subject, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.

The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.

Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.”

And the article ends with this particular piece of odious propaganda:

“Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around,” he said. “Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it.”

Slavery has existed as long as humans have, and it was 19th century Jews and Christians who worked to stamp it out in the West; in Islamic Eastern Africa and the Middle East it continues to this day.

After Reading This Piteous Whining on Twitter This Morning…

…I wanted to methodically stomp on his desperate wish casting by asserting the simple creed 99.9% of Americans live their daily lives by: randomly attack neither Muslim nor Jedi nor Jew nor ANYONE ELSE, for that matter. EVER.

These cretins are pathetic.

Ace Perfectly Explains The New Sellout

And the cocooned assholes in the Republican Party wonder why some populist demagogue like Trump has such appeal

The New Gilded Age Is Better Than the Old Gilded Age Because Now We Have Homeland and Other Quality Premium Cable TV Offerings
If I have this right:

We needed to quadruple the number of H2B visas because we needed far more nonagricultural, low-skill, low-wage workers coming into the country. H2B visas are granted for jobs like “amusement park worker.”

As you know, amusement park workers, at, for example, large corporations like Disney, have been absolutely Raping their poor corporate paymasters with their insolent insistence that they be paid a dollar fifty more than minimum wage.

We need to import foreign workers to get that number down to a more acceptable dollar over minimum wage.

This makes our corporations More Globally Competitive (TM).

Now, the various American workers displaced by the foreign ones will go, of course, on welfare (after their unemployment insurance runs out, of course). Those costs will be borne by you, the American taxpayer.

Not only will those costs be borne by you, but so will all the knock-on costs. People stripped of their work are also stripped of their dignity. Work is a tangible connection, reinforced every hour of every day of every week, between present labor and good habits and future gain.

Read the whole thing. The GOP, especially after this latest Ryan debacle, deserves to disappear.

WHY Did We Not Know About the San Bernardino Killer’s FB Rantings?

Because immigration isn’t allowed to even peeky.

Secret US Policy Blocks Agents From Looking at Social Media of Visa Applicants, Former Official Says

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration

, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

IF you are in the US, a prospective employer has a right to demand YOUR Facebook posts/social media past, but Obama says we can’t ask foreigners who want to enter the US ‘Whud you say online that might be unhelpful to the US?“ I forgot. The guy thinks a little collateral damage (re: you and me shot to pieces/sliced to ribbons) is okay, as long as we don’t hurt any Muslim feelings and he gets to say his “plan” is working.

Whoever came up with this should be shamed far worse than anything Lurch wants to do to Climate Deniers.

“It’s Like This is a Bothersome Thing for Him…”

That’s the reaction of a San Bernardino resident to Obama’s Oval Office “terrorism” speech Sunday.

“…GWEN IFILL: The president did not announce a new strategy to defeat the Islamic State, but he did call for greater gun control measures. They would include not allowing people whose names appear on no-fly lists to buy firearms.

In San Bernardino, reactions at a makeshift memorial were lukewarm.

MAN: He has to walk a fine line, but it probably comes across as a little weak, but that is kind of Obama’s style.

WOMAN: It wasn’t strong enough.

It appears to me, every time that he talks on camera, that this is like a bothersome thing for him, that he really just does not want to have to deal with this.

She nailed it. He just can’t be bothered, so why can’t we all accept the collateral damage and leave him the hell alone.

Bill Hemmer

TRUTH BOMB.

So My Governor Has Joined the “NO” List

…adding Florida to the states refusing to accept Obama’s Syrian refugees.

But I’ve seen a whole butt load of screaming from Geller-type sites about the thousands that have already landed/are landing in New Orleans, and I’d like to shut that down right now.
HASN’T HAPPENED

There’s been, like, 14 people (three families) since January 1st.

…Despite blog posts and social media rumors indicating that thousands of Syrian refugees had already arrived in the New Orleans area, the U.S. State Department reported only 14 Syrian nationals have resettled in Louisiana since Jan. 1.

The State Department’s Refugee Processing Center handled three cases, settling seven refugees in Kenner, six in New Orleans and one in Baton Rouge, a spokesperson said.

You know, the truth is ugly enough without “our” side resorting to hyperbole and lies to whip up the base. The FACTS can do that all on their own. So PLEASE don’t pass along a blog post as if IT were Gospel, unless it has links to a reputable source.

That’s the only way we keep a handle on this madness and our integrity at the same time.

This Is As Gentle A Brutal Thrashing As You Will Ever See

Via HotAir, Neil Cavuto calmly, politely introduces a sincere young lady to Math, and, well, it’s painful

I do strongly disagree with whoever it was posted this on Youtube, though. He doesn’t “embarrass” her; he just shows her that her fantasy world is just that.

Help! Help! I’m Being Oppressed!

Mizzou’s Bobby Sands, like all true revolutionaries, is a True Man of The People

Jonathan Butler, a central figure in the protests at the University of Missouri, is an Omaha native and the son of a railroad vice president, the Omaha World-Herald reports.

Butler refused food last week in a move to force the university system’s president, Timothy M. Wolfe, from office. Wolfe resigned Monday and Butler ended his hunger strike.

…He is a member of a prominent Omaha family. The newspaper says that Butler’s father is Eric L. Butler, executive vice president for sales and marketing for the Union Pacific Railroad. His 2014 compensation was $8.4 million, according to regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This Is Scary Because It Is True

We are doomed.

(via Tim)

Note to Self: Religion…

…HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Campus stabber’s manifesto included ‘praise for Allah,’ plan for beheading

A handwritten manifesto carried by a California college student whose stabbing spree Wednesday left four wounded bore names of his targets, a vow “to cut someone’s head off” and as many as five reminders to “praise Allah,” law enforcement authorities told FoxNews.com, while insisting that neither terrorism nor religion appear to be motives in the attack.

Unlike Confederate flags and Sarah Palin, which have EVERYTHING to do with EVERYTHING.

Darkness At Noon

We are doomed. The Cultists in charge of The State shall not be questioned, and Heretics MUST be punished

Exxon Mobil Investigated for Possible Climate Change Lies by New York Attorney General
By JUSTIN GILLIS and CLIFFORD KRAUSS NOV. 5, 2015

The New York attorney general has begun an investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business.

According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.

The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research.

Good god.

Obama’s Released 66,000 Illegal Immigrants

Well, SURE there’s gonna be a few bad apples, right?

Sharyl Attkisson:

“The released illegal immigrants had 166,000 convictions: 30k DUI, 414 kidnapping, 11,000 sex assaults, 395 homicides”

The operative word in the sentence is CONVICTIONS. Can you imagine what charges hadn’t stuck?
The. Horror.

California Dreamin’

The Los Angeles Times (!) eviscerates Governor Moonbeam’s bullet train fantasy

The monumental task of building California’s bullet train will require punching 36 miles of tunnels through the geologically complex mountains north of Los Angeles.

Crews will have to cross the tectonic boundary that separates the North American and Pacific plates, boring through a jumble of fractured rock formations and a maze of earthquake faults, some of which are not mapped.

It will be the most ambitious tunneling project in the nation’s history.

State officials say the tunnels will be finished by 2022 — along with 300 miles of track, dozens of bridges or viaducts, high-voltage electrical systems, a maintenance plant and as many as six stations. Doing so will meet a commitment to begin carrying passengers between Burbank and Merced in the first phase of the $68-billion high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

However, a Times analysis of project documents, as well as interviews with scientists, engineers and construction experts, indicates that the deadline and budget targets will almost certainly be missed — and that the state has underestimated the challenges ahead, particularly completing the tunneling on time.

“It doesn’t strike me as realistic,” said James Monsees, one of the world’s top tunneling experts and an author of the federal manual on highway tunneling. “Faults are notorious for causing trouble.”

The California High-Speed Rail Authority hasn’t yet chosen an exact route through the mountains. It also is behind schedule on land acquisition, financing and permit approvals, among other crucial tasks, and is facing multiple lawsuits. The first construction began in Fresno in July, 21/2 years behind the target the rail authority had set in early 2012.

A confidential 2013 report by the state’s main project management contractor, New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, estimated that the cost of building the first phase from Burbank to Merced had risen 31% to $40 billion. And it projected that the cost of the entire project would rise at least 5%.

Parsons Brinckerhoff briefed state officials on the estimate in October 2013, according to the document obtained by The Times. But the state used a lower cost estimate when it issued its 2014 business plan four months later.

Read the whole thing, please. It is pretty damn, er, damning.

I especially liked this part, which really sums up so much that is wrong with our government these days from on all levels, from local up to federal:

The rail authority still has not identified sources for about $53 billion to complete the entire Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line.

State officials are moving ahead without firm financial commitments, contending that private investors will eventually help finance the system. This month, three dozen companies solicited by the state said they are not ready to invest.

They don’t have the money, they don’t have a realistic plan to get the money, but they are going to go ahead and put you into crushing debt anyway because, well, they can.

Let’s hope that this article ignites a rebellion against this ridiculous project, and others like it from top to bottom.

Germany Going “Under Water”

Gee, who could have seen this coming

The road to the reception camp in Hesepe has become something of a refugees’ avenue. Small groups of young men wander along the sidewalk. A family from Syria schleps a clutch of shopping bags towards the gate. A Sudanese man snakes along the road on his bicycle. Most people don’t speak a word of German, just a little fragmentary English, but when they see locals, they offer a friendly wave and call out, “Hello!”

The main road “is like a pedestrian shopping zone,” says one resident, “except without the stores.” Red-brick houses with pretty gardens line both sides of the street, and Kathrin and Ralf Meyer are standing outside theirs. “It’s gotten a bit too much for us,” says the 31-year-old mother of three. “Too much noise, too many refugees, too much garbage.”
Now the Meyers are planning to move out in November. They’re sick of seeing asylum-seekers sit on their garden wall or rummage through their garbage cans for anything they can use. Though “you do feel sorry for them,” says Ralf, who’s handed out some clothes that his children have grown out of. “But there are just too many of them here now.”

Hesepe, a village of 2,500 that comprises one district of the small town of Bramsche in the state of Lower Saxony, is now hosting some 4,000 asylum-seekers, making it a symbol of Germany’s refugee crisis.

…But what Germany lacks more than anything is a plan to make Merkel’s two most-pronounced statements on the crisis — “We can do it” and “We cannot close our borders” — fit together.

Read the whole thing, and remember this is not in Gateway Pundit or Infowars but Der Spiegel.

No Heretics Allowed

Thou Shalt Not Think On Thine Own

Every night, France’s chief weatherman has told the nation how much wind, sun or rain they can expect the following day.
Now Philippe Verdier, a household name for his nightly forecasts on France 2, has been taken off air after a more controversial announcement – criticising the world’s top climate change experts.
Mr Verdier claims in the book Climat Investigation (Climate Investigation) that leading climatologists and political leaders have “taken the world hostage” with misleading data.
In a promotional video, Mr Verdier said: “Every night I address five million French people to talk to you about the wind, the clouds and the sun. And yet there is something important, very important that I haven’t been able to tell you, because it’s neither the time nor the place to do so.”
He added: “We are hostage to a planetary scandal over climate change – a war machine whose aim is to keep us in fear.”
His outspoken views led France 2 to take him off the air starting this Monday. “I received a letter telling me not to come. I’m in shock,” he told RTL radio. “This is a direct extension of what I say in my book, namely that any contrary views must be eliminated.”

It is all about control.

It Had Nothing to Do With Being Insane

…or possibly shitty parenting, or any combination of the two, right? And it’s a well known fact that of crazy homicidal people can’t GET guns, they’ll never kill anyone.

Ian Mercer, Oregon shooter’s dad: ‘That’s what guns are, the killers’

The father of Oregon gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer argued Saturday that his son never would have killed nine people last week at Umpqua Community College if he wasn’t able to get his hands on a gun in the first place.

“How on earth could he compile 13 guns? How could that happen?” Ian Mercer asked in an interview outside his California home Saturday, CNN reported.

Shameful Demagogues and Lying Liars

Yet another reason we need to restore key protections of the Voting Rights Act. We're better than this. -H https://t.co/HYM1j2irkm

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 2, 2015

You know what the problem is? FREE voter IDs are available at EVERY SINGLE COUNTY REGISTRAR’S OFFICE IN THE STATE.

…Friday, Hillary Clinton joined a growing nationwide chorus criticizing Alabama for closing driver’s license offices in the state’s poorest, blackest, and most Democratic counties.

In a statement Clinton called it quote “a blast from the Jim Crow past.”

…Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis disagrees.

“In Alabama there are many different acceptable forms of photo ID,” said Davis.\

He says 90-percent of voters in Mobile County use a driver’s license but there are many other options.

“IDs issued by either the federal government or some agency of department of federal government, indian tribes, a public university or college, other government entities,” Davis said.

For those with none of the above, Alabama also issues a state voter ID card, and not through its driver’s license offices.

“The free voter ID card is actually issued through our boards of registrars,” said Albert Lipscomb who serves on the Baldwin County Board of Registrars. “And every county has a board of registrars.”

You never got them from the driver’s license office to begin with.

Not to mention the fact that the state accepts about 7+ different types of ID at the polls, besides the voter ID. Negating the whole meme.

But.

Jim Crow.