Normally I’d be writing something like, “I hope y’all got your taxes done yesterday,” but of course with yesterday’s events in Boston, I guess explosions will be the talk of the day (and for many days to come, I expect). I didn’t pay all that much attention to it yesterday, because, other than the initial reports, the media tends to just keep regurgitating the few facts that are known, and a whole lot of speculation. Over and over and over. After checking in today, it appears that things could have been worse, as two more devices were found unexploded (or not, depending on what news account you read. I don’t think there’ll be any quick answers on this).
Since I know as little as anybody else, I figure I might as well speculate as to who did it. Given that it was done on April 15 and in Boston (and nobody’s claimed responsibility yet, which seems pretty un-terrorist like), I’m going to guess that it was some teabagger “tax patriot” group in protest of taxes, illegal immigrants, Obama, and the federal government in general. But I guess we’ll see.
Looks like my decision not to run the Marathon this year was a good one. I guess I can rule out NYC, too.
Whoever did it, I hope somebody catches them and locks them up. This is when it’s nice to live in a small town. We’re not exactly a high value target.
I was listening to a story on NPR a couple of weeks ago about how they were adjusting the traffic lights in LA to try to keep the traffic moving, and they were asking people to call in and tell them if their area had done any projects like this. I was tempted to call in and say, “well, we just got the one red light in town, but there’s a blinker up the hill a piece,” but I was in the car without my bluetooth thingie.
If you weren’t in Boston, yesterday was quite a nice day. It was sunny (most of the time) and it actually got up to 70° here. Since I was working from home, the dogs got to spend most of the day outside (lucky them). And since it’s warm again, I just pulled the first tick of the season off one of them. It wasn’t embedded – just crawling around on his head. Hopefully this is because of the flea and tick stuff I just reapplied to them a few days ago. I hate those nasty little things (the ticks, not the dogs – though I wish they’d quit digging up the lawn, the little bastids).
It’s not supposed to be quite as warm today, and even cooler tomorrow before temperatures rebound on Thursday and Friday (and then it’s gonna get cold again for the weekend because, well, because it’s the weekend). But I won’t worry about that now, because from a Tuesday point of view, it’s a long way ’til Saturday.
Since I sit a the ‘puter most of the day streaming a cable news network, I saw a lot of the coverage yesterday. Yesterday I was doing my taxes and barely noticed they had cut away to Boston and why. When I put it all together I remembered my friend with whom I moved to SF was an occasional marathoner now living in Boston and could have easily been on scene. Now I know everyone and their pets jump on the phone at a time like this so I was reluctant to try to call. My first shot came up with absolutely nothing, a totally dead sound although I think the call connected to something, probably that big grey concrete building downtown where everything goes. I think they shut down cell service for a while in case cell phones were being used as detonators. Later I got the ‘can’t be completed as dialed’ recording so I gave up until last night when I finally got through. I am sure there were more important calls that needed an open channel.
The first thing I see this morning is Tom Ridge on MoJoke actually doing a slight mea culpa. As I gather it earlier in the show Mika made a comment about over speculation about the attacks which apparently Mr. Ridge had been doing. I wasn’t listening too carefully after that but apparently he then proceeded to engage in more ‘hypothetical’ spec so I guess that’s OK. I also noticed last night that since he couldn’t yet find any better reason to exploit this event to attack Obama, O’Really was ‘angry’ because BHO called this a ‘tragedy’. I am sure that will be a placeholder for a wave of RW outrage today after they regroup over at Fux and the rest of the echo chamber.
This one seems to be way under the radar with almost no clues making me think pj may be right about it being something domestic and right wing. That some RW loonies are already going full bore on Mooslems makes me think that even more. That means it will take even longer to uncover which will lead to the expected criticisms of ‘dithering’ or incompetence’. We are in that time of the year of tax day and Ruby Ridge and Waco and OKC… And we haven’t even reached the 19th yet.
Makes you wonder about why some people are so adamant about preventing a ‘gun registry’. Not to mention they can point to this and say that none of the proposed gun safety measures would have prevented it.
My guess is the cameras will yield the initial leads that may break the case.
Meanwhile, 7.9 earthquake hit Iran near Pakistan a little while ago.
Now the governor says there were only the two devices. I forgot to mention that I would not surprised to find there could be a 2nd Amendment defender element to this although that is probably just part of the Obama/federal gubment aspect.
Today is the 6th anniversary of the VaTech massacre. 🙁 :gate:
We were out yesterday and so I didn’t hear about Boston until about 7PM, which was when I realized that there was very little known about what happened. That did not stop the “news”, including MSNBC, from repeating what little was known and repeating what little was know and…you get the idea. Of course it brought memories of 9/11 and Mayor Ghouliani running around trying to be a hero but never mentioning what we should do. Leave the city? Stock up on food and water? Help evacuate folks? By that evening we decided to go to Shelter Island which was not a likely target of further mayhem and, now that we live here, the more I appreciate that fact, though I miss the city a lot.
Terrible things happened to people, yesterday. I hope they can find a way to deal with it. I can’t imagine what would motivate anyone to do such a thing or what they would hope to achieve by it.
On a lighter note, MoJerk had Little Miami Steven Van Zandt on yesterday to talk about his Broadway show reuniting the (Young) Rascals. Steve got a little shot in at The Scar about Tom Morello.