This is a fresh thread.

Before I go to sleep, I'll sum up what I know. Update: Now that I hear reports, turns out I didn't know what I thought I did.

Although the name "Sunil Tripathi" was said on the police scanner as a name of a suspect...

Pete Williams of NBC is saying that's wrong. BuzzFeed is also now knocking this theory.

In fact, the guy doesn't really look like Sunil. If the recent rumors (these seem to be rumors too) are true, that these guys are full-on trained jihadis from overseas, then I guess it's not Sunil Tripathi.

I'm leaving the post up, by and large, but note that it's possible a cop mentioned the name "Sunil Tripathi" while being mistaken about who he thought he was pursuing.

....

The actual terrorists (not Sunil, wrongly accused) carjacked a civilian's car at some point. On the scanner I heard they were escaping in a Police SUV -- so I think (but don't know) they did take a cop's car at some point.

During the chase, they fired on the police, and also threw hand grenades or other explosives at them.

Black Hat was critically injured in the shootout and died at some point during his medical treatment.

White Hat slipped away is currently on the run. There is a massive, massive manhunt in the Watertown area now. By the time you read this, he may be captured. Or, I think, he'll be found dead by his own hand, because he's a coward, and he'll join his murder-friend in hell.

As you can imagine, he's a tea partier, just as Chris Matthews and NPR said he would be.

Police are currently attempting to draw him out of his hiding place by playing Brad Paisely music over their speakers. They have also constructed an elaborate snare-trap, baited with ribs, high-end fishing equipment, and Bibles.

In case the situation should escalate, they've deputized a civilian to act as a Hostage Crisis Negotiator. That civilian? You guessed it, Jeff Foxworthy.

Obviously we're going to have to have a national conversation, lecturing one side about their celebration of and propensity for political violence. But alas it will not be the side which makes unrepentant terrorist murders university professors.

And the conversation will not be directed at the side that keeps producing terrorists and murderers.

No, it will be directed at us.

Of course. As it always is.

See the last thread for what went down this night.

Update: There are now reports these guys may have had overseas military training -- full-on jihadis, in other words.

Or perhaps by "overseas" they mean "in Texas," where they were taught their Texas Teabag Terrorism craft.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 AM | Comments (542)
Post contains 502 words, total size 3 kb.

BOSTON GLOBE CLAIMS MARATHON BOMBER IS IN CUSTODY

(click link for front page of Globe)

WARNING: SUSPECT CONSIDERED ARMED AND CONSERVATIVE:

...

Meanwhile, the FBI has released two very good pictures of the Bombers.

Look, I am just throwing stuff up. Take all of this with skepticism.

Click on that for picture.

Right Now (12:55 AM): Live Police Scanner Feed of chase.

Alternate Scanner Link. Here.

Live TV: From Boston station WCVB.

Finally on CNN.

Finally on Fox.

A Local Resident is Tweeting Pictures. Here.

Of course everyone's thinking "What if it's the bombers?," though I think it's just a complete coincidence in a week of awfulness.

BREAKING: Undetonated ordinance in the streets; residents advised not to go outside - @intelwirehttps://twitter.com/NewsBreaker

Cops just asked if use of the radios would detonate the unexploded ordinance.

A robot's being deployed.

I believe a description of the suspect was "blond, white male, in pajamas." Though I'm not sure that was the suspect.

More/Background: here.

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 PM | Comments (1066)
Post contains 329 words, total size 4 kb.

Happy Friday. Today is the eighteenth anniversary of the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the deaths of 168 people, including 19 children. Three unborn babies were also murdered.

This year, as every year, but especially given the past week, I give thanks for the first responders and for first responders everywhere. Several years ago I recounted my own confusion related to first responders that day.

An amazing story out of Boston broke last night. It turns out that Jeff Bauman, one of the victims, a guy who lost both legs, helped the FBI spot the bombers. Bauman's brother told Bloomberg News: "He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw the guy, looked right at me.’”

In related news, you may have heard the conspiracy theory that a Saudi suspect or witness or person of interest or whatever you want to call him was being deported because "this is the way things are done with Saudi Arabia. You donÂ’t arrest their citizens. You deport them, because they donÂ’t want them to be embarrassed." DHS says that's "one hundred percent false."

AP is claiming that a source says the suspects are from Chechnya and have been in the U.S. for one year. Ace has the rest of the overnight news on this (read it all.) The summary:

In special election news, Mark Sanford could still pull it out, but he's going to have to do it alone. I told you that the NRCC pulled out yesterday. In the afternoon, South Carolina's congressional delegation looked like it was cutting him loose too. Rep. Trey Gowdy told reporters yesterday, “I’ll talk to you about whatever you want to talk about — but not Mark Sanford. Anything else — not that.” Rep. Jeff Duncan, when asked about Sanford, refused to answer. Rep. Joe Wilson said, "At least 10 to 12 of the people would have been terrific candidates. . . . I’m concerned about how the primary worked out. It was just so unfortunate." Sen. Tim Scott, the man whom Sanford seeks to replace, just laughed and walked away. Oh, and Sanford is getting outspent on TV 3 to 1. He could still win; it is a red district.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (602)
Post contains 386 words, total size 3 kb.

Why the OMG!! 1.6 Billion Round DHS Ammo Purchase is All Bullshit

Pretty much everything you've been told about this is wrong - and possibly deliberately so by certain click and link-whoring websites.

Andrew Tuohy who writes for the Military Times has experience with government proposals and contracts and bothered to do what no else seems to have done: actually read the RFQ (Request for Quote).

And here puts us some knowledge on what it really means. Basically it's just asking for a price quote for up to a certain amount of ammo with absolutely no commitment to purchase.

Before we begin, it's important to understand that an RFQ (request for quote) or solicitation is not a purchase. When Infowars says something like "the Department of Homeland Security is planning to buy a further 750 million rounds of ammo in addition to the 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets already purchased earlier this year," or "Following controversy over its purchase of around 1.2 billion bullets in the last six months alone, the Department of Homeland Security has put out a new solicitation for over 200 million more rounds of ammunition," the reader is led to assume, naturally, that DHS has actually purchased that amount of ammunition. That is simply not the case. A solicitation is the equivalent of a want-to-buy ad on Craigslist, writ large. It's not an actual purchase.

The actual amount in the RFQ is 63 million rounds over 5 years - not 1.2 billion. But isn't this still a gigantic amount? No - not really:

Put simply, there's no way that FLETC [Federal Law Enforcement Training Center] is going to actually buy 750 million rounds of ammunition. Given the historical use of ammo at FLETC of approximately 15 million rounds per year or less, it's probably going to be pretty close to the line items in the PDF linked above which, again, total 63 million rounds over a 5 year time frame.

But isn't a total which might approach 90 or 100 million rounds per year excessive?

DHS is a massive umbrella agency, with over 100,000 armed law enforcement personnel according to a DHS spokesperson. If we divide 90 million by 100,000, that means each agent gets 900 rounds per year to shoot. That isn't a whole lot, considering that civilians going through handgun training courses sometimes shoot twice as many rounds - in a single weekend.

Furthermore, federal agents, including those under DHS, generally use the same ammunition for duty and practice. Currently, it's a .40 S&W jacketed hollow point made by Federal, commonly known as the HST. Most of DHS's evil, banned-for-war, elderly-and-baby-killing hollow points end up going through paper targets and into dirt berms. Each CBP (Customs and Border Protection) agent is currently given 250 rounds per quarter, or 1000 rounds per year. While things may differ from agency to agency, that lines up fairly nicely with the above math for the 450 million round contract.

In other words, that 5-year, up-to-450 million round ammo purchase is just what the agencies need to sustain proficiency for the next 5 years.

And the whole DHS getting 2700 MRAPs thing - mostly just a way for the Army to get rid of some of vehicles it doesn't need any more while still retaining the ability to call them back if necessary while making the DHS pay for the maintenance. And the maintenance is not trivial. Also the actual number of MRAPS the DHS has is only 16 and they aren't likely to get that many more either. So the 2700 is another bogus number trotted out.

The sad fact is that a lot of websites on the right don't bother with even minimal fact checking and/or just outright lie and mislead. They lie to you because it gets them hits and they know you'll believe the lies. And sadly it works.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:39 PM | Comments (788)
Post contains 809 words, total size 7 kb.

I don't know the full story, obviously.

But let's just say I'd like this Quckie Deportation held up a bit so we can untangle a few things here.

Maybe this is just a case of two guys with the same names being confused.

Maybe not.

Let's slow some shit down and make sure Congress is actually informed of the full and accurate facts before this goes through.

Posted by: Ace at 05:48 PM | Comments (267)
Post contains 103 words, total size 1 kb.

Filthy.

The media here documents its own sick-making bias and arrogance but instead of understanding their own words -- we ignored the destruction of an entire town to focus only on the minor heartburn suffered by our Liberal Messiah -- they use it as a bludgeon for criticizing Fox.

See, Fox did wrong by thinking the lives in West, Texas mattered.

MSNBC, on the other hand, played it perfectly.

Posted by: Ace at 05:18 PM | Comments (159)
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

Actually they don't specify precisely where he lives, which makes me think he only lives sorta nearby. Or else they'd say, "And his house was only 3 miles from the explosion."

They get cutesy-vague about that.

They do claim he witnessed the explosion, though. But that could be on TV.

Can you tell I just don't believe any of the bullshit the media feeds us anymore?

Anyway that's their story.

Posted by: Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (135)
Post contains 96 words, total size 1 kb.

Bumped. With all the rapid-fire stuff this week, @slublog's excellent essay only got like 45 minutes at the top.

...

Charles C.W. Cooke is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers at NRO. See here, here and here for some reasons why. On twitter, he displays a similar talent for making coherent responses to lefty tweets. Such as this one, earlier today.

The tweet from Caldwell illustrates part of the reason I don't trust the left when it comes to issues related to the second amendment - most of their arguments are based in a combination of emotionalism and ignorance. I don't mean ignorance in the insulting sense, but the descriptive. They are ignorant about how guns work. They don't know the history or meaning of the second amendment. They have no idea how gun sales work, whether in a store or at a show. They do not understand why people would want to own a gun, and have no understanding of what it's like to live in rural America, where the police aren't just minutes away.

What makes it worse is that they don't seem to want to know. They are perfectly content in their little bubble of ignorance, speaking to each other in the language of cliche and falsehood. They use phrases like "gun show loophole," "assault weapon," and make utterly laughable statements about what weapons are legal and which are not and they believe their parade of nonsense justifies the limit of a freedom guaranteed by the constitution. They are eager to ban something they don't understand and have no intention of learning anything about.

This has been linked before, but for a thorough and excellent overview of guns and gun control, read this post by author, firearms instructor and former gun dealer Larry Correia. In it, he lays out the reasons why the left calls for gun control, then eviscerates those arguments with facts and reason.

Much has been written about the president's press conference/temper tantrum last night. In his statement, Obama showed why the left seems to have no interest in understanding guns, gun owners and gun culture. The reason is pretty simple: they hate us.

Go watch Obama's statement again - the utter contempt he displayed for those who have the audacity to claim a right protected by the constitution is breathtaking in its nakedness. It's tempting to believe liberal lawmakers don't like us having the ability to own guns because they don't think we can be trusted with them. That is part of it, but based on what we saw yesterday, that might be giving them too much credit.

When the left talks about gun owners, one of their favorite tactics is to make them seem like a strange species - an 'other.' Well, Obama 'otherized' the hell out of gun owners and second amendment advocates yesterday, refusing to even acknowledge their ability to make an argument in good faith and sneering at members of Congress for the earnest belief in the second amendment that influenced their votes against the gun control amendments.

Still, the president wasn't just angry because he lost. He was angry because he lost to people who hold an opinion he's unable and unwilling to understand and who he seems to regard as beneath him. Last night, Obama showed us the anger that lurks under the no-drama exterior and revealed what we on the right have known for years - he's thoroughly a man of the left, and shares the left's contempt for those who believe that the second amendment is not a collective right, but an individual right for a collective purpose - ultimately, the preservation of a "free state." Our belief in individual liberty makes us inconvenient, and our refusal to acquiesce to the Benevolent and All-Knowing, All Providing Nanny State makes us barriers to the goals of the left.

Posted by: Slublog at 02:05 PM | Comments (595)
Post contains 655 words, total size 5 kb.

Senator Wicker Hired Suspected Ricin Mailer as Elvis Impersonator for Party.

Solid picture of Suspect Number Two (???) Pop it up to maximum size and look at the far left, near the brick buidling's corner, in the white hat.

NPR: It's likely that bombs planted by rightwingers, because we all celebrate Hitler's birthday and such.

New York Times rescinds previous decision, decides not to send a reporter to cover Gosnell afterall. They'll cover "highlights" they get from other leftwing media.

More video of the Texas fertilizer explosion.

Chris Matthews offers you his extensive knowledge on Youth Casual Fashion.

Rocker Jon Odrasik putting on benefit concert for West, Texas.

Posted by: Ace at 04:19 PM | Comments (108)
Post contains 142 words, total size 2 kb.

How can this be? Did someone drop dime in just an hour and a half?

Well, anyway, there you go.

Posted by: Ace at 02:51 PM | Comments (552)
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.