Also2, via Wonkette, contemplate the Kristolian cluelessness of Glenn Beck:
No American citizen blows up random people. That’s a Middle Eastern scene, that’s not an American scene — when our crazies go off, they target the government, not streets that are crowded with people.
Linda Featheringill
Hope that calf has health insurance so he can pay for a psychiatrist as he grows up. :-)
As to Mr. Beck, there are actually very few things that people do anywhere in the world that some denizen of the US doesn’t do here at home. Period. I don’t know about being a Blessed People, but holy we ain’t.
Suffern ACE
The Sikhs of Oak Creek are still wondering what government agency they are working for.
Tone in DC
This is the kind of journalism that makes me want to defenestrate my TV.
Sean
Actually, I think he’s correct.
Because in the minds of the far-right freaks who blow people up or shoot them en masse, it ain’t “random people” they think they’re killing or targeting.
It’s the godless un-American libruls. That ain’t random. It’s deliberate. The qualifying “random” is an important distinction, to him.
Beck chooses his words carefully, and his audience picks up on it, consciously or not.
chris
Never mind all the counterexamples, I like (if that’s the word for it) the inference that “the government” and “people” are two completely different things.
Apparently, there were no people in the Murrah Building, only soulless government automata.
Government is made of people, but not in the same way Soylent Green is.
Linda Featheringill
@chris:
“Government is people.”
Matt
@chris:
Or corporations, which are things made out of people that ALSO count as people, not like those mean ol’ gubmint robots.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: By extension then, does this mean that soylent green is government?
Dave
Don’t forget the white supremacist who tried to bomb the Spokane MLK parade in 2011. With a homemade bomb in a backpack laced with shrapnel. Gosh, that sounds nothing like what just happened.
Cassidy
@Dave: Don’t read into the similiarities. Gunpower bombs are easy to make. AAMOF, bombes and IED’s are so easy to make that making connections based on materials used is a wild goose hunt.
Patricia Kayden
White people are above killing random people in crowded streets, doncha know?
aimai
@Cassidy: I don’t think he’s saying its the same guy–but he is correctly pointing out that this specific kind of IED is quite easy to make with locally purchased materials and with easily aquired knowledge. You don’t have to be some mustachioed foreign villain with a degree in blowing things up to blow things up. I think that’s Dave’s point.
Raven
@Cassidy: You sure about that?
eta, I did think it was pretty funny that the CNN dude thnis morning said there were serial numbers on pressure cookers.
johnny aquitard
No true Scotsman…
Dave
@aimai: Exactly. And that it seems like the people who use these kinds of bombs on soft targets (like Eric Rudolph at Centennial Park or the guy in Spokane) tend to be domestic terrorists and not evil furriners.
Shortstop
@aimai: that was Dave’s point, yes.
debbie
@aimai:
NPR this morning pointed out that an article with instructions for building that device was published by Al Queda in their Inspire magazine. NPR then said that the Aryan Brotherhood web site had published a link to that article. All kinds of possibilities for speculation there.
Suffern ACE
@Raven: where? Now I have to go and drag mine out and look for it.
Michele C
@Sean: Though it’s harder to hear through the snark, I think that’s part of Wonkette’s point. Gubmint isn’t “random” people and, somehow, the fact that T. McVeigh killed a bunch of little kids in day care isn’t the important bit. Sick and wrong.
@Raven: Serial numbers??? That’s precious. You know where I often see pressure cookers? Thrift shops. Totally traceable.
Raven
@Suffern ACE: I just did, there ain’t none. Of course mine is FRENCH!
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Eek! Hair on fire speculation that AQ is working with the AB! We are all going to die!*
*I know you said nothing of the kind, but some idiot is going take those facts and go nuts with them.
Cassidy
I commented and it’s not here. I try to resubmit and it says duplicate comment. Fuck it.
@Dave: Gotcha. I thought you were implying same people, same org, etc.
@Raven: IED’s are easy to make, man. Hell, they teach us (Soldiers) to make them. Some of our HAZMAT Firefighters have gone to course taught by 3 letter agencies that involve bombmaking. I’m sure police attend as well. Those courses tend to teach more sophisticated stuff.
amk
Now I am convinced it is indeed a rwnj’s handiwork. beckster protesteth too much.
Punchy
I’m guessing the sale of pressure cookers is way, WAAAAAAAAAAAAY down these days. No one could stand the glare of all 27 store employees and the every customer in the building giving you the thrice-over (and likely photographing you surreptitiously), half of them dialing the FBI and the other half unlatching their holster…
Omnes Omnibus
@Punchy: Maybe they will go on sale now?
scav
part of the trick he’s pulling is based upon denying any purpose to the activities of those “Middle Easterners”. Heaven forfend they have legitimate issues and possibly even goals.
beltane
@Punchy: On the contrary. I can just picture all the Glenn Beck cultists stockpiling pressure cookers in preparation for the bean soup apocalypse.
Bulworth
Yeah, except for those times.
maya
Today they come for your pressure cookers. Tomorrow your crockpots.
Sayne
The GIF of the puppy in the mixing bowl is hilarious.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I think all it took was they had to change their name to ‘Aryan Qaeda’.
peach flavored shampoo
@maya: When they criminalize pressure cookers, only criminals can cook stew quickly.
Up next: the ban on autoclaves.
geg6
@maya:
They’ll have to pry my crockpot out of my cold, dead hands.
Cassidy
@geg6:
Dammit, you beat me to it. Yeah, if I can’t get my black eyed pea or chili fix, there’ll be a significant emotional event for all involved.
PaulW
…I didn’t see a listing for the OKC bombing.
maya
@Punchy:
Au contraire. The sales of the Presto Borschtmaster Predator 5000 has never been higher.
ottercliff
Who would know more about American “crazies” than this asshat?
Bulworth
and this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane_bomb
maya
@geg6:
Fixt
Bulworth
@PaulW: This would be a bombing directed at government, according to Beck’s logic, which apparently makes it understandable, or something.
The Other Bob
Beck, Collins and the rest of the right-wing idiots need to remember that the terrorist organization that killed the most Americans in history was the Klan and associated groups, who blew up children in churches and lynched 3,500 Americans.
Oh wait, those Americans had a distinguishing feature that made them not count.
J
Of course *shooting* random people with a gun is as American as apple pie, or something.
Stultiloquence
Just leaving this here as well (link to info on the 1927 Bath, Michigan school bombing below):
Stoned Stats
In all fairness to Beck, Betty, the UNAbomber didn’t select his targets at random.
Villago Delenda Est
Beck and the other wingtard crazies have a way of identifying “Americans” that excludes 73% of the population.
Coincidence? I think not!
scav
Terror in the US where? A mapping of events 1970-2011 (with underlying data) Those mythical beardy ones with a scene have been busy for a right long time.
Morzer
@Cassidy:
Not necessarily. You might be able to trace a connection between the bomb-makers or the source of the materials using forensic techniques.
Mike Lamb
I love the implication that people that work for the gov’t are not “random people”. Almost suggests that by working for the gov’t, they asked for it.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@geg6: Rats, beat me to it.
scav
@Mike Lamb: good point. Just being in a govt building is apparently non random enough.
J
But weren’t the streets and sidewalks of Boston built and maintained by evil government forces, using money raised by … taxes? Ought not any decent, freedom-loving Murkin boycott streets, roads, sidewalks, bridges, railroads, trails, parks, airports, piers, waterways, ferries…. and the like? Esp. on 15 April, when they should be at home wearing sackcloth and ashes. If on Beck’s logic people inside the federal building in Oklahoma (sorta) had it coming, why not people on streets at an event which undoubtedly at least involved government participation?
Snarki, child of Loki
Clearly, the only way to stop a bad man with a pressure-cooker bomb is a GOOD man with a pressure-cooker bomb.
That’s why the NRA is 100% against closing the cookware-show loophole.
No, realli! Iceland had a “Kitchenware Revolution”just a few years ago, which is more than the US gun-nutz ever did with their precious 2nd Amendment rights.
shortstop
@scav: They’re not like us — they’re opaque and inscrutable. Wait, that’s the Chinese.
Patricia Kayden
@The Other Bob: Thank you.
Cassidy
@Morzer: Gunpowder? The stuff you can buy in bulk at any big box firearms store. Nails? The stuff you can buy in bulk at hardware stores? Pressure cooker as casing? Any flea market or thrift shop.
Forensics tends to focus on the electrical components and detonators.
Interrobang
@maya: I laughed out loud at work at “Borschtmaster.” Well done.
Cermet
What a joke both these media types are and even our history books – as I pointed out in another post, this country used torture routinely and for many decades on end killing/injuring countless thousands when it came to the death-camp like prison system created for blacks in the south.
As for amerikans blowing up amerikans … lets see, we also had a civil war started by a select group of southern terrorist that killed over three hundred thousand amerikans. This country has some very sick people both today’s and in our past – lynching often involved burning the person alive as they were hung as whites had a picnic with children to enjoy the show. Yeah, we aren’t evil at all.
Morzer
@Cassidy:
Not true at all. Sorry, but you can diferentiate between different batches of the “same” material – and forensics specialists do so regularly. They won’t make your mistake of assuming that “generic” materials all have the same, identical composition. They certainly aren’t going to rule out any possible source of data by making the assumptions you’ve made.
At the absolute minimum, they’ll want to analyze the composition of the gunpowder to see if they can obtain matches on the skin/in the living space of any suspects. And no, you can’t just assume that the pressure cookers were sourced via a flea market and are therefore untraceable. Your approach would discard an enormous amount of possible data before the investigation ever got going.
Epicurus
Excuse me, is this the same Glenn Beck who raped and murdered a woman in Colorado in 1990?
ricky
What do you mean “our” crazies, Glenn? Don’t go getting pluralist on me, now. Take personal responsibility.
Cassidy
@Morzer: Okay, lol.
Morzer
@Cassidy:
Seriously, you don’t throw out data in the way you are suggesting before the investigation even begins. It’s hard enough to match and make connections with the full data set.
Think about it.
shortstop
@Cassidy: What does that mean? “Okay, you’re right,” or “Okay, I disagree but cannot enumerate why”?
Cassidy
@shortstop: It means “Okay, but I hope you know the guy in Bones who breaks everything down to soil components, what bugs are eating and shitting when and saves the day is a fictional character”. The artist chick is a fictional character too.
@Morzer: You completely misunderstood me, I’m assuming. People buy bulk gunpowder all the time. It’s not hard to get and even though different brands do have proprietary mixes, there is nothing special about it. I can get some today after work if I wanted and a lot of it. Hell, I can get it without any kind of paper trail whatsoever because I have acquaitances who reload and keep a stupid amount of gunpowder on hand in suburbia. Assholes if you ask me, but oh well. The point is not that these items don’t provide data, but that they’re not special. Of course, this is assuming that the individuals in question are smart enough to not use their credit card(s) online and buy super awesome such and such gunpowder, but instead walked into [local large gunstore] and said “I need some inexpensive gunpowder to make some reloads”. That’s why forensics relating to bomb components tends to focus on the detonators and other electrical components and they talk about a “signature”. When someone is building a bomb, once they know how thye tend to stick with that method; it’s not exactly a hobby where you try something new to see if it works. That’s how we were able to traingulate and find bombmakers in Iraq.
Secondly, unless this person(s) is a complete idiot, they didn’t go out and buy brand new pressure cookers and register them online with the manufacturer. You can get that kind of thing at any Goodwill and flea market and every city has several and you can pay cash. Again, I’m not saying discard the information, but the likelihood of it meaning anything is very low.
So, I have thought about it, been taught some classes in it, a few classes in site exploitation, etc. I’m not sure where you’re from, but in the South, it’s not uncommon for the local rednecks to build gunpowder bombs and go do something stupid out in the sticks. Occassionally the get a Darwin Award for it.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
I think what you’re discounting is that the individual items may not be special in and of themselves, but they can tell a story when you combine them together. A random guy who walked into any random gun shop and bought gunpowder might not be noticeable, but when you are able to combine all of the available information and pinpoint that he probably bought this otherwise unremarkable gunpowder in X town that has Y number of gun shops, suddenly that data point isn’t quite as useless as it was when it was isolated from everything else.
ETA: I’m thinking of the attempted bomber who tried to build one with hydrogen peroxide. You can buy hydrogen peroxide in any drugstore, but once they knew the geographical area where the guy was, they were able to track him down through those purchases of a completely unremarkable ingredient that’s far more anonymous than gunpowder.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
Here’s a little information about the hydrogen peroxide bombing attempt. Again, completely innocuous ingredient that’s available in any drugstore, but vital to tracking the guy down.
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne: From the article:
Bolded by me. That changes the perimeters a little.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
I think you’re underestimating how much gunpowder it takes to pack a pressure cooker. A medium-size one holds a gallon of liquid — that’s at least 8 pounds of gunpowder.
Of course, it fortunately sounds as though the bomber also underestimated how much gunpowder he needed and didn’t do as much damage as he probably hoped.
OmerosPeanut
“No true American sets off bombs” is what Beck is likely thinking. Just like how Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. If you define something to not have happened, lo and behold it will not happen!