Looking more and more like the work of a devious liberal plant (via The Commander Guy):
The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.
“They haven’t seen anything like this in this country,” the official said. “This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I’ve ever seen.”
[….]The Spokane region and adjacent northern Idaho have had numerous incidents of anti-government and white supremacist activity during the past three decades.
Svensker
The first comment on that link implies it was a liberal plant to discredit Spokane.
Maude
Has to be an Obot.
This is scary and I hope it doesn’t escalate.
The site slowed down. must be a lot of peeps on here.
MikeJ
Still haven’t heard anything about the package they blew up on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle last night.
Milmont Glapper (formerly Brisbane Belff (formerly G. Nelson Buttnergle (formerly Mumphrey (formerly Renfrew Squeevil (formerly Mumphrey Oddison Yamm (formerly Mumphrey O. Yamm (formerly Mumphrey)))))))
Well, applying Occam’s Razor to this attempted atrocity will show that the only–the only— explanation is that it was some deranged liberal plant trying to make Sarah Palin look bad. Nothing more than another blood libel.
Mark S.
Don’t the New Black Panthers operate out of northern Idaho?
Calouste
So worse apparently than the 1996 Olympics bomb that killed 2 and injured 111. And that bomb was 40 pounds of dynamite.
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Link?
Barb (formerly Gex)
I’m getting the impression that maybe someone brought Iraqi style IED knowledge home. Probably hippies.
MikeJ
@Svensker: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2013980263_police_destroy_suspicious_pack.html
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
In fairness, he said it was the worst he had ever seen. If he’s working in Spokane, he probably didn’t see the Olympic park bomb- or the Oklahoma City bomb- to compare it to.
BombIranForChrist
See, no one was actually killed, so it doesn’t count.
If someone was killed, or if the device somehow kidnapped a young blonde girl with a three word name, then it would be news.
Besides, both sides do it.
Davis X. Machina
Blowback, but of a new kind.
A lot of people are getting good OJT re bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and coming here angry. But they’re not Afghans or Iraqis.
pharniel
Yha, ied comes home was my first thought
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Barb (formerly Gex): Bush was a stealth liberal. Bush started the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq. Ergo, it must be a liberal soldier. DADT repeal so shower stalking f^gs also, too.
Q.E.D.
Nutella
@BombIranForChrist:
Or if a brown-skinned and/or Muslim person could be blamed for it. THAT would be news like the Times Square failed bomb.
Lancelot Link
Fanatical atheists. No other possibility.
sukabi
@Mark S.: yeah, they disguise themselves with white sheets, swastikas and whiteface.
dogwood
Spokane is my neck of the woods. There’s quite a bit of white supremacism and militia activity that festers in the rural areas near Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which is about 30 miles from Spokane. I grew up in this area and would characterize Spokane as a conservative small city. But conservative in that it is staid, and a bit static. I’ve never thought of it as a wacky wingnut place. Coeur d’Alene, is much smaller. A resort town on one of the world’s most beautiful lakes. Fifty years ago working class people and small business owners like my uncle had summer homes on the lake. But big money came to town, building opulent resorts, golf courses and the like. The locals got priced out. Thus, Coeur d’Alene became a hotbed for resentment and anger from the miners and loggers and merchants who saw property taxes rise as outsiders came in and bought up all the available lakeshore lots. I grew up in a working class home not far from Coeur d’Alene, and as a kid I always assumed that I would have a home on the lake someday. Situations like this breed kooks. But all that aside, Coeur d’Alene is still one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around some.
sukabi
@Svensker: this is the only thing I’ve found on that Queen Anne package…
basically they blew it up and don’t know what was in it..
Odie Hugh Manatee
This was an IED of sorts so it has to be some brown skinned turrist who did this to make Sarah Palin look bad.
That or a liebrul.
Good, clean, wholesome white people would never do something like this. They hate abortion so it’s clear that someone is trying to make them look bad.
/winger ‘logic’
freelancer
God I fucking hate when KO has a comedian on to end his show. Frank Coniff is a nice guy, TV’s Frank from MST3K, but he just has this rotating door of comics willing to come on and tell hackneyed political jokes. FWIW, I also don’t find Kent Jones on TRMS that amusing, but his presence is at least as a member of the staff, aka the comic relief, you don’t see Rachel booking Emo Phillips or Yakov Smirnoff or any nostalgic comedian to throw softballs for them to strikeout on. It’s just embarrassing for these guys and moreso for Keith.
Barb (formerly Gex)
Guys – I’m beginning to suspect that “both sides do it” is false. Because it’s either liberals, or liberal plants. So only one side does it. #WingerLogicHurtsMyHead
DougJ DougJson
@dogwood:
That is interesting. Thanks for the background.
Linda Featheringill
I am as judgmental as the next guy, or maybe more so. But I don’t think the Republicans are responsible for the Spokane parade thing.
It was probably the work of one or more white supremacists and I don’t think the Repubs have much if any influence on those guys. I think they listen to their own voices.
So I don’t think it was a Left versus Right thing.
White versus Black? Definitely.
David Brooks (not that one)
The comment on the Commander Guy blog reads like snark to me.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@dogwood:
That used to be my stomping grounds too and you are right about the white supremacists and militia nuts around there, especially in the Idaho panhandle area. I grew up on the west side (west of the courthouse area, very poor there), northside (Fairwood/Whitworth area), southside (E. 16th, Division/ 33rd) and the Valley (Millwood, Pines and Argonne areas). We moved a lot…lol
We got the hell outta there when some nut was going around and pulling little girls out of their homes at night, raping them and leaving them blocks/miles from home. Tricna Dawn Cloy lived about a mile and a half from us and I’ll never forget what happened to her. My wife and I hate going back there and would never do it again if not for the family we have there.
The police force is incompetent, same with the sheriffs. One narc cop stole drugs from the property room, got caught, fired and sued the city, winning over $160,000 because he blamed his addiction on his job. One sheriff was busted for having sex in the back of his patrol car, got canned and later reinstated. It seems that he could have pulled his pants up and not been late for an emergency so they had no reason to fire him.
I won’t even get into the ‘gypsy’ bust where they raided a house, videotaped the raid and later had the whole case thrown out when the video showed that they did the raid before they had the warrant in hand. Unfortunately they couldn’t return all of the property the took since some of it mysteriously disappeared from the property room.
I could go on and on with examples of their incompetence. Suffice it to say that if your skin was anything but white or you had long hair, they were all over you the minute they saw you.
I’m glad to have said good bye to that shithole long ago. Now if the rest of our families would only do so.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Linda Featheringill: Lee Atwater, Ken Melman, and Michael Steele all explicitly admitted that the GOP used coded racism to woo voters. As far as I’m concerned, they are on the same side.
Likewise the Iraq war, a GOP project, required a lowering of standards to make recruitment goals. White supremacists were some of the groups that were allowed in.
It’s not exclusively a GOP thing. But that’s only because not all the Dixiecrats migrated to the GOP.
Barb (formerly Gex)
I mean, do we really have to pretend that the right and white supremacist groups don’t have an unsavory, if ill-defined, relationship?
sukabi
@Odie Hugh Manatee: that doesn’t sound like incompetence, it sounds like a criminal enterprise.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@sukabi:
Of course the police/sheriffs would tell you that they do an excellent job but yes, you are right.
Many of them are criminals with badges. That’s why I am glad the FBI is heading this investigation. They might actually solve it and not blow it.
Linda Featheringill
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Well, I did read that several white supremacist groups were courting Tea Party activists last summer. And they probably know a kindred spirit when they see one.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Linda Featheringill: Exactly. The union of those two sets would be the Birchers. I can see the Venn diagram in my mind.
gmknobl
They aren’t insane people by the legal definition. They aren’t insane if Palin and most of the House isn’t insane. But I bet you could follow the money or inverse of their intelligence right to the same people that own those same non-insane members of the House.
There you go; you have your assignment now.
dogwood
@DougJ DougJson: Hey, thanks for listening. There is something about this section of the Pacific Northwest from Missoula, Montana in the east through the panhandle of Idaho to Spokane in the west, that makes it so unknown to the rest of the country. I don’t know what it is other than it seems to be a place that no national news reporter has ever visited. Thus, when something happens there, it gets little national attention. I grew up in the Coeur d’Alene mining district, one of the richest and most important in the world, yet little is known about it. One single mine in Kellogg, Idaho, the Sunshine, produced more silver than all the silver mines in Nevada combined. The history of this area is fascinating. Read Gregg Olson’s The Deep Dark, the story of the Sunshine mining disaster of 1972. One of the worst mining disasters in our nation’s history, yet it got very little attention even at the time. Great read. I knew people who died in that mine.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@dogwood: I suspect it is that exact remoteness that attracts the white supremacist/militia types. Too bad.
Like Doug, I find your input on this fascinating.
MikeJ
@dogwood: It’s not Spokane in the west. There’s a yearly meeting Dec. 8 on Whidby Island (that’s in Puget sound for the non-locals).
dogwood
@MikeJ: I’m not sure what you mean by a “yearly meeting. . .on Whidby Island” I probably wasn’t too clear, but I was talking about a specific area between Missoula and Spokane which includes the panhandle of northern Idaho. Northern Idaho, eastern Washington, and western Montana really is a region with a distinct identity in many ways different from the identities of the 3 respective states.
dogwood
@Barb (formerly Gex): Thanks. The funny thing is if you visited this area it wouldn’t seem all that remote to you. No more so than any other scenic part of America. Like many parts of the West there is a libertarian streak here that allows a kind of live and let live ethos that the off-the-grid militia types are attracted to. And like many rural areas, there is some suspicion of outsiders. The attitude is best described in a line from A River Runs Through It – “The world is full of bastards, the number increasing the further you get from Missoula, Montana.
dogwood
Oh, and by the way, Sarah Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. A resort town on Lake Pend Orielle just north of Coeur d’Alene. Like CDA it is a stunning place. The town is composed of liberal artsy intellectual types and redneck logger types. I think we can safely assume which side of the divide produced Ms. Palin.
Blogreeder
@David Brooks (not that one): That’s how I read it too. Plus, the guy watches Fox News.
MikeJ
@dogwood: I was just pointing out that there are white supremacists all over the PNW, not just in eastern WA/Idaho. I would love to think all the bad stuff was on the other side of the pass, be we have whackos over here too. Out in the open, brazen, insane people.
dogwood
@MikeJ: I never suggested that white supremacists were exclusive to the area I was discussing. Hell, there are white supremacists in liberal eastern cities.
Karen
I get the feeling that all these things are tests. Not that everyone is doing it together, not a consipiracy theory. Just that everyone is watching to see what works, what doesn’t. What’s considered to be “a pity” and what’s a tragedy.
Call me cynical but if a nine year old white girl and other innocent people hadn’t been killed and the only one harmed was Congresswoman Giffords, it would have gone from a tragedy to a pity. So the next time, they’ll just target the victim when they’re alone. They saw that people actually care that a MLK parade had a explosive device was there. So they’ll try a parade that is meaningless to the media but important to a minority they hate (basically any minority). It’s all a waiting game for these sociopathic psychopaths.
I guess we can be lucky that we have a Democrat as President because we all know that if Sarah Palin was President there would be no investigation for it. No funding for the state police to investigate. The FBI would be giving lip service but nothing would be happening. At least with Obama as President, we don’t have someone in the office who wants all these people dead but gets others to do her dirty work.
El Cid
All you people who are noticing similarities between this sort of thing which is all a liberal plant and the militia / patriot / shortwave right of the 1990s and the rage of the Founding Father inspired yeoman heroes known as the Tea Party are wrong, irresponsible, and calling for the death of Sarah Palin, and maybe Trig as well.
El Cid
@Karen:
They don’t have to be coordinated in any way or even among people who know each other.
These events are tests in and of themselves. One attack is attempted or carried out, and lots of others of these types look to see what happens.
One of the motivations for Timothy McVeigh to carry out a large scale attack on a federal building in order to trigger the martial law crackdown which would finally lead to Americans fighting in the streets to rid themselves of the oppressive government was that none of the prior instances of government repression or anti-government organizing or attacks did anything.
‘What did he get away with?’
‘How well did it work?’
‘Did it scare those hippie negro-lover communists enough?’
‘Were our fellow crazies impressed by our effort?’
‘If caught, will I be an inspiring enough martyr and heroic resister for our cause?’
tBone
@dogwood:
Visited family there a few years back, and you’re right, it’s incredibly gorgeous. Crossed it off my “places to live” list when they gave us a rundown on the kooks-per-square-mile ratio, though.
lol
The reason the bomb didn’t go off in Spokane was that it was apparently rigged to go off when a black person walked past.
lol
Reminds me an Almost Live! sketch where John Keester notes that the Pacific Northwest is notable for producing Nikes, Nukes and Nazis.