The Boston Marathon Bombing
- Thread starter Tiassa
- Start date
Now that that's over...
Does anyone else think the city of Boston completely overreacted? Shutting down the city not only gained them nothing, but it clearly impeded progress and showed would-be terrorists that a few small bombs--or even the threat of bombs--will bring an entire city to a halt. We can't let that happen again, it's too much incentive.
Does anyone else think the city of Boston completely overreacted? Shutting down the city not only gained them nothing, but it clearly impeded progress and showed would-be terrorists that a few small bombs--or even the threat of bombs--will bring an entire city to a halt. We can't let that happen again, it's too much incentive.
It's an avoidance. An actual answer would be "No. He's not being deported." Or "Yes, but it's for ___ instead of Boston."
Just because you don't like these suspicions doesn't mean they're invalid. The possibility has been suggested and should be explored - unless there is there some reason not to? I'll reserve judgement for now.
A Brief Personal Reflection
A Brief Personal Reflection
As one watching this drama unfold from afar, today was an exceptionally curious page to turn in the Boston saga.
I first learned of the bombing less than an hour after it happened, when I flipped on the television while waiting for a guest to arrive. All day, Monday, the question of how the proximity via my daughter's school principal would change her world, and mine by proxy, obsessed me. And then I dropped out for three days, helping my father move and only keeping contact via a mobile phone.
Today we finished, and I was in between Purdy and Gig Harbor, Washington, at a gas station, listening to the evening press conference from Boston, the now infamous "all clear" that never was, anyway. That's where I bade my father farewell and started the unfortunate trek home through the beginning of Tacoma's rush hour and the heart of Seattle's.
Of course, it was only a few minutes later that the news broke about gunshots in Watertown, with the result that a good number of witness accounts you'll be hearing in the news are the ones I heard on NPR, played over and over as I writhed through the minute-by-minute drama of trying to get the growing ache out of my right hip and buttock; damn it, my knee was supposed to be what hurt.
And perhaps I might disparage the minute-by-minute cycle, interrupted only briefly when I stopped to pick up pizza and beer at a grocery store near my house, but literally ineffable is the timing. As I drove up the hill from the store, I listened to a streetside citizen account, live, that Dina Temple-Raston interrupted to confirm: "Did you say cheering?"
At first, it sounded like the citizen was describing cheering that cops might offer when the big guns finally arrive; there was some delay in getting tactical and demolition teams to the scene.
But as I waited in the center lane to make the left turn through an unending river of traffic, they checked in with a NPR reporter on the ground who confirmed the cheering, and related that one of the neighbors had asked, "Is he alive?" and the law enforcement officer appeared to acknowledge affirmatively.
In between making the turn and pulling into my driveway, it was confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been taken alive.
I managed to get inside and look at the television news in time to catch the lag. It took less than two minutes, but what I had been hearing on the radio broke on television before my eyes. And they were even able to add a detail, that he might yet fail to live long enough to tell his tale; I haven't actually caught up on that, having paused for a much-needed shower, a welcome pizza, and beer, glorious beer.
(Lagunitas IPA, for the record.)
But yes, as strange as it sounds, the entire drama of this story played out exactly in the time between leaving my father and arriving home. Very nearly unreal, but then, this whole chapter of the human drama has seemed very abstract.
A Brief Personal Reflection
As one watching this drama unfold from afar, today was an exceptionally curious page to turn in the Boston saga.
I first learned of the bombing less than an hour after it happened, when I flipped on the television while waiting for a guest to arrive. All day, Monday, the question of how the proximity via my daughter's school principal would change her world, and mine by proxy, obsessed me. And then I dropped out for three days, helping my father move and only keeping contact via a mobile phone.
Today we finished, and I was in between Purdy and Gig Harbor, Washington, at a gas station, listening to the evening press conference from Boston, the now infamous "all clear" that never was, anyway. That's where I bade my father farewell and started the unfortunate trek home through the beginning of Tacoma's rush hour and the heart of Seattle's.
Of course, it was only a few minutes later that the news broke about gunshots in Watertown, with the result that a good number of witness accounts you'll be hearing in the news are the ones I heard on NPR, played over and over as I writhed through the minute-by-minute drama of trying to get the growing ache out of my right hip and buttock; damn it, my knee was supposed to be what hurt.
And perhaps I might disparage the minute-by-minute cycle, interrupted only briefly when I stopped to pick up pizza and beer at a grocery store near my house, but literally ineffable is the timing. As I drove up the hill from the store, I listened to a streetside citizen account, live, that Dina Temple-Raston interrupted to confirm: "Did you say cheering?"
At first, it sounded like the citizen was describing cheering that cops might offer when the big guns finally arrive; there was some delay in getting tactical and demolition teams to the scene.
But as I waited in the center lane to make the left turn through an unending river of traffic, they checked in with a NPR reporter on the ground who confirmed the cheering, and related that one of the neighbors had asked, "Is he alive?" and the law enforcement officer appeared to acknowledge affirmatively.
In between making the turn and pulling into my driveway, it was confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been taken alive.
I managed to get inside and look at the television news in time to catch the lag. It took less than two minutes, but what I had been hearing on the radio broke on television before my eyes. And they were even able to add a detail, that he might yet fail to live long enough to tell his tale; I haven't actually caught up on that, having paused for a much-needed shower, a welcome pizza, and beer, glorious beer.
(Lagunitas IPA, for the record.)
But yes, as strange as it sounds, the entire drama of this story played out exactly in the time between leaving my father and arriving home. Very nearly unreal, but then, this whole chapter of the human drama has seemed very abstract.
How on earth is this...
...an avoidance?
I can tell what happened here. You were all up in a lather following Captain Conspiracy's intentionally out-of-context snippit from The Washington Times which made it appear as if the question being posed in the post was not answered. But the truth is, it was. She responded, "If I might, I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston.” Then the representative insisted that someone was being deported, then launched into a ridiculously misleading question:
Rep Jeff Douchebag said:
That's like me saying to you, "You beat your wife, GeoffP. Now wouldn't you agree that it is cruel for you, as a husband, to beat someone who is physically weaker than you and has placed their trust in you?" What would your answer to that be? I bet it would be something like this:
Janet Napolitano said:
It's been suggested by loons and jerkoffs. Do you often give credence to the suggestions of loons and jerkoffs?
Obviously. But the difference is my claim is based on reasonable, credible information from reasonable and credible people. Yours is based on half-assed journalism done by morons and right-wing douchebags.
Oh bullshit. You've already decided she's avoiding the question, even though she gave a direct answer. You're not fooling anyone.
How many hours was she viciously interrogated for?
By my watch, she clocked a rigorous 0.0167 of an hour, or 1 minute in your hu-man reckoning, responding to the question. The sheer drudgery of civil service. How do they survive it, these people? Tcuh.
Well, more than a minute seems fair. How do we judge them as cranks on this issue, though? Does it spring from our well-placed and unquestioning faith in the appointed political apparatus of a succession of first-past-the-post soft-money junkies? Oh, madman, I.
This element of the discussion exacerbates you? To use an old phrase of Tiassa's: Really? No, really? (Repeat several times.) Balerion and SG asked why I thought he'd been deported. My clarification was that even the 'cranks' don't seem to be arguing that. They suggest that he's in process of. Such was my answer. Let us move on.
Then their crankery should be easily refutable, beyond crying out "You crank!" Typically, one forms questions and probes until one gets an answer beyond "Ah calls it a sling blade, mmm-hmm." I certainly don't agree with everything emanating from Pamela Geller, but I doubt she's always wrong either. So thanks for the bold text: now how about some bold inquiry? I am Geoff's patient persistence.
I think you might want to be careful about such a bet - I suspect it was Shoebat - but even if it were false: then what? How badly could a novice translation misinterpret the points they raise? Even in this scenario, it's a complete unknown. Thus, I have no reason to credit or discredit it outright a priori.
I don't know quite what to make of it. It's a possibility, certainly: this is how corruption works. American/Arabian corruption pedaling, if you'll excuse the movie reference, goes together like "bullets and guns". This is petro-politics, Bells. Anything is possible. And, actually, the worst you can imagine is likely to be not quite horrible enough. I am Geoff's well-founded pessimism.
As for columinst sources: hell, how can anyone take anything from any source seriously all the time? They all play one angle or another. Beck and Geller aren't always right or always wrong; nor Glenn Greenwald, Christopher Hitchens, Jayson Blair, Paul Krugman. The sole restriction appears, forgive me, to be a carbon-based lifeform, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. I'll keep an open, skeptical mind and continue to check for corroboration, relying on analysis, linkage and even intuition, to a degree.
Then clearly you are one ahead of me. But now is not the time for regrets.
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Save it. A direct answer would have served. It was not given. Sorry about that. Write your congressman.
"I am unaware of any physically weaker wife of mine that has placed their trust in me and been beaten by me in Boston"? I think I'd confine myself to something like "No, I don't beat my wife."
Without going into the credibility of politicians and their appointees, the right-wing douchebags aren't wrong all the time. Even if they only parrot the better opinions of others, they aren't necessarily wrong. Now: that journalism in this case is stated so categorically as not to be "half-assed" if wrong, but rather overtly fraudulent. So if they're lying, they're lying. I would hope for their prosecution, at the very least. This is a serious accusation.
How unfortunate she couldn't have just answered it with a "Noooo...". It's fewer syllables even than being viciously raked over the coals for almost a full sixty seconds.
:yawn: Stop bitching because not everyone hops on your banner without a second glance. What is it I'm meant to be fooling them about, exactly? That I don't believe she gave a real answer there? How carefully I've concealed that position of mine in this thread, where I've already mentioned it several times. Yet you have pierced the veil of my deceit. Mea culpa.
Now, is this going to verge off on the personal? My Geoffy-sense is tingling.
Bells
Staff member
Oh no, she said she did not know of anyone being deported in connection to what happened in Boston and she used only a few words to say it...
She answered the question.
By your own link:
"An ICE official refuted TheBlaze's report, calling it "categorically false.""
President Obama in regards to the Saudi:
President Obama said there were no suspects in custody as the intensive investigation went into its second day.
It's a fair bet to say that if he was connected, he would not have been set free when he was in hospital recovering from the wounds he received when the bomb exploded near where he was standing. 200 people were injured, it is not unfathomable that he may have gone to watch the end of the race, along with the massive crowd and was, as the FBI have stated, 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'.
What more do you want?
When does the woowoo end?
What exacerbates me is when I see perfectly intelligent people falling into a conspiracy trap and making a bit of a fool of themselves in the process.
To repeat:Then their crankery should be easily refutable, beyond crying out "You crank!" Typically, one forms questions and probes until one gets an answer beyond "Ah calls it a sling blade, mmm-hmm." I certainly don't agree with everything emanating from Pamela Geller, but I doubt she's always wrong either. So thanks for the bold text: now how about some bold inquiry? I am Geoff's patient persistence.
By your own link:
"An ICE official refuted TheBlaze's report, calling it "categorically false.""
President Obama in regards to the Saudi:
President Obama said there were no suspects in custody as the intensive investigation went into its second day.
Do you require sky writing?
Yes, because Shoebat is not a crank....
What astounds me in all of this is you have two suspects. Two Chechnya born males, who have lived in the US for over 10 years. And instead of focusing on that, the anti-Muslim cranks prefer to wonder about the brown skinned Saudi.
Now you are sounding like Alex Jones.
Then again..
Is that what you call it?
Everyone who knows has said no, instead you decide to believe 'sources' who are unnamed, and known crank sites who are the bottom feeders because they have their own agenda to push onto the populace and do nothing but spread hate.
Can you frown?
Bells
Staff member
Perspective..
[source]
Murphy, a documentarian from Boston, was filming in Kabul when bombs shook her hometown marathon, killing three and wounding hundreds.
On Monday, Murphy thought she was rereading one of her own texts reassuring family checking in a week earlier after one of the deadliest insurgent attacks in a decade swept Afghanistan. But the text was from her husband in Boston: “We’re ok. And everyone we know is safe.”
Murphy couldn’t shake “the sick irony of waking up here with that going on there.” Her response was to "send love home," by photographing herself with a simple message.
Her first subject was Frozan Rahmani, a project officer for the global non-profit CARE International. Rahmani, an Afghan native, gave Murphy insight into why citizens of war-racked regions would grieve violence elsewhere (Murphy recorded the words):
When Rahmani expressed that she wished she could do something for Bostonites, Murphy asked if she would be the face of her message home. As Murphy encountered more people through the day who wanted to talk about the bombing, she gathered more pictures.
There was, however, one point that drew a conflicted response, Murphy said. “When they asked, ‘How many people were killed?’ and I answered, ‘Three,’ I could see them trying to digest it. They wouldn’t say anything -- they were too kind -- but I could see it on their faces. Like, ‘Oh, only three.’”
Frozan Rahmani
On Monday, Murphy thought she was rereading one of her own texts reassuring family checking in a week earlier after one of the deadliest insurgent attacks in a decade swept Afghanistan. But the text was from her husband in Boston: “We’re ok. And everyone we know is safe.”
Murphy couldn’t shake “the sick irony of waking up here with that going on there.” Her response was to "send love home," by photographing herself with a simple message.
Her first subject was Frozan Rahmani, a project officer for the global non-profit CARE International. Rahmani, an Afghan native, gave Murphy insight into why citizens of war-racked regions would grieve violence elsewhere (Murphy recorded the words):
“Every time I hear about attacks happening, whether it’s in the United States, Pakistan, England or here, I became too sad. All those people had hopes and dreams for their futures. Their parents had hopes and dreams for their futures. It doesn’t matter that we experience this more often here. No one should experience any of it ever. It’s always the innocent who suffer.”
When Rahmani expressed that she wished she could do something for Bostonites, Murphy asked if she would be the face of her message home. As Murphy encountered more people through the day who wanted to talk about the bombing, she gathered more pictures.
There was, however, one point that drew a conflicted response, Murphy said. “When they asked, ‘How many people were killed?’ and I answered, ‘Three,’ I could see them trying to digest it. They wouldn’t say anything -- they were too kind -- but I could see it on their faces. Like, ‘Oh, only three.’”
Frozan Rahmani
[source]
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev', the killer who shut down Boston found in Boat.
Boston Police Department tweeted:
CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.
https://twitter.com/Boston_Police
Nothing on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's tweet account yet.
Boston Police Department tweeted:
CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.
https://twitter.com/Boston_Police
Nothing on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's tweet account yet.
Obviously it wouldn't have served, because she gave one, and others have even given you the categorical "No" you've demanded, and you're acting as if Washington is silent on the issue.
Unless you were answering for an entire nation of husbands, much in the same way Napolitano was answering for the entire justice system. In that case, "I am unaware of ___" would suffice, given that there are husbands operation outside of your knowledge and influence. To give a categorical "No" would be misleading, since you can't know it to be true.
This is a straw man. I've never claimed right-wing douchebags are always wrong. I've simply said that when they are the source of information, they are not to be trusted. I figured you would agree with me on this point, since you went out of your way to rant about the untrustworthiness of "rich bastards" and "officials--elected or otherwise." This lack of trust only goes in one direction, however, as you're taking Duncan's word as gospel, and dismissing Napolitano's answer as "an evasion."
That's a silly thing to say. You can't prosecute someone for making false news reports. If you could, Alex Jones would be working the mess line at GITMO as we speak, alongside every tabloid reporter in the country.
I'm sure if she had knowledge enough to give a categorical no, she would have. Instead, she answered to the best of her knowledge.
Nice non-sequitur. The "banner" you're failing to "hop on" is not mine. It's one of rational thought and reason. You know, the one you're usually waving when there isn't some juicy conspiracy theory afoot?
You're not fooling anyone about reserving your judgment regarding this allegedly-deported (or in the process of being deported) Saudi national. In fact, prior to the claim that you'd be reserving your judgment, you said this:
Unless you simply meant you were reserving judgment on which brand of French Onion dip to bring to the woo convention?
It depends. Are you going to continue mischaracterizing me and others, or are you going to show some integrity?
"Who gets to shoot the boat?"
"You shot the chair. I should get to shoot the boat"
@Balerion.
Do you never sleep?
Don't bother answering. I can't see anything you write.
"Who gets to shoot the boat?"
"You shot the chair. I should get to shoot the boat"
Are you sure a national tragedy is the best time to exercise your butterknife-sharp wit? I don't know, maybe if you were actually being funny it wouldn't come off so poorly. Then again, if you actually were funny, you wouldn't have to try so hard.
Nonsense. You can't get enough of me, obviously. Unless I'm defeating one of your points, anyway. In that case, you run and hide behind the nearest skirt.
Well then she wasn't being ruthlessly bombarded with questions about it for hours and hours, prompting an acerbic response.
Then I guess we'll see some accusations of fraud. If they're lying, they should be prosecuted.
Actually, that's not what we're talking about. We're discussing whether this guy is being deported or not.
:shrugs: Maybe. But you have to understand, this is the US we're talking about here, and this is a Saudi rich boy. Rich boys have rich parents who get them out of trouble. Some people have reported that there are fishy elements to this story. I'm curious as to whether those are true or not. And that's it.
See above.
Heh. Because I've gone in on this all the way, have I, rather than keeping some perspective?
You're not really going to inject racism as a motivation, are you? Come on, enough already. This is going down those 'other roads' in our discussions.
I tell you what: keep praying for that, keep making it as a mindful prayer in your heart, or whatever the current crack-mantra is these days, and who knows? maybe I will start to sound like that. But until that day, calm down.
That's a sad oblique. All the sources are unnamed, Bells. Come on. Instead of throwing a nut that I don't buy into any take uncritically, calm down and take a breath.
What are you talking about? Enough, already. Move on.
Yeah, but my knowledge of American politics - well, a lot of countries' politics, frankly - is that it leaves a lot of room for 'about that denial...' later on.
As gospel? What crack are you smoking, exactly? Are you pretending I've jumped whole-hog on one side of this issue, or do you really think that?
Yes, let's have a look at that damning statement.
GeoffP said:
I suspect he is being deported. Suspect. So that clearly means in your lexicon that I am not reserving judgement. Clearly, that must mean that I am certain he is being deported. Again, you've detected my fanaticism.
This was too goddamn funny. And how have I mischaracterized you? I guess I could ask how it is I haven't shown any integrity in this process, but that would mean your opinion was worth something. Didn't like that comment? Well, show some integrity then.
Yes, I know, being challenged on your ridiculous personal definition of "evasion" is probably quite annoying. I'd want out too, if I were you.
Your cynicism regarding American politics has jaded you to the point where a standard answer is not actually an answer unless it is unequivocal, more like.
C'mon, Geoff. You've disappointed everyone who thought you were better than this.
Not just in my lexicon, Geoff. What, exactly, do you think "suspect" means? It means you believe something to be true. You can't reserve judgment and believe that something is true. If you believe it, you've already made your judgment.
Are we playing this game now? Sigh. Obviously you mischaracterized me when you strawmanned my argument earlier. And therein lies the lack of integrity, as well as the foolish attempt to hold on to a position that you arrived at thanks to a quote provided out of context by the thread's resident crank, CK. Rather than simply admitting, "Oh, I didn't see that she had actually answered the question," you stuck to your guns when presented with the actual quote and pretended that it was what you were referring to all along. I say again, you're not fooling anyone with this.
Fraud? Really? Since when does getting the news wrong amount to fraud?
Classic overreaction. You got bamboozled, so now heads must roll.