Lutherans, No Doubt

Or maybe Episcopalians.

Eight have been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square bombing attempt.

They were probably upset about health care.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Mark Steyn:

To the traditional who-ya-gonna-believe-me-or-your-lyin’-eyes cliches, Mayor Bloomberg has now added the inspired line that the amateurish loner with no connection to terrorism “didn’t like the health care bill”. I do hope they ask Faisal Shahzad his views on the individual mandate.

Any moment now, Janet Napolitano will announce that effective immediately it will be illegal to remove your sweat shirt in a public place.

By the way, there are so many of these isolated extremists and lone wolves, they surely belong to the United Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists. So their cadillac health care plan probably has an Obamacare opt-out anyway. Very odd.

Why do public officials so reflexively dissemble and misdirect every time? In the end, all they’re doing is undermining confidence in the integrity of their own institutions. That doesn’t seem a smart move.

It could be because they’re not very smart. Apparently that’s not a criterion for becoming the mayor of a major city, or a federal official.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The bomber had to have had help:

While officials called the bomb itself “crude” and “amateurish”, they now privately acknowledge that the preparation, advanced espionage and meticulous orchestration of events required to insert a Sport Utility Vehicle into a curbside parking space anywhere in New York City reflects a high-level of intellectual and technical sophistication.”

“You don’t just drive into New York and park your car,” the source said. “Without a real-time satellite video feed and agents on the ground in constant communication with the driver, that kind of operation can take hours on a good day. Even with all of those resources, the perps still had to count on a certain degree of luck.”

More evidence that it was sophisticated white guys. And they only have to be lucky once…

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s the Jihad, stupid.

11 thoughts on “Lutherans, No Doubt”

  1. I remember the first headline I saw on this story, which was that there was no evidence the Pakistanis had anything to do with the Times Square car bomb.

    The story then went on to say that the Pakistani Taliban had taken credit for the bomb.

    Words fail me…

  2. “…meticulous orchestration of events required to insert a Sport Utility Vehicle into a curbside parking space anywhere in New York City…”

    Say, that’s an odd coincidence. I’ve said that same thing, almost word for word, about getting TWO spots in front of the Federal Building in OK City.

    We arrested just TWO people, when, IMHO, it took at least THREE to carry out that bombing.

    I’ve talked to a bud of mine who is a retired NYC policeman. He was of this opinion Saturday night. I’m sure Bloomie heard it from his current police types early and repeatedly. So there was only ONE reason for him to say what he did. Well, two actually.

    First, he was attempting to feed the “Tea Party = A Terrorist Org” fires.

    Second, he’s an unprincipled jerk who cares about himself first, his money second and at the very bottom of a long list, truth and reality.

    But Bloomberg is just one of many liberal boobs whom I heard say this same thing, or something similar, over the last 36 hours. And, it was, the usual suspects. The PMSNBC crowd, CNN’s entire pantheon of moronicons and of course, Katie Cutiepie just HAD to look all serious and nod in agreement with Mayor Bloomie.

    Idiots.

  3. Definitely not the Episcopalians. The national leadership spends more time evangelizing about the UN Millenium Development Goals than the Gospel.

  4. Well MfK, we don’t know if the Pakistani Taliban (or now the guy they picked up) who admitted to the deed weren’t coerced into pleading guilty by the use of inhumane torture techniques like putting a microphone in front of them or giving them a cellphone with the NYT editorial desk saved in it. Until it can be proven in court, and by court, I mean civilian criminal court and not military court, then you don’t really know.

    And by the way, you do recall that the administration just arrested abunch of right wing wackos (who typically vote for Democrats) intent on killing government employees. I mean these people are dangerous, just listen to what they had to say! Um wait… let me check my notes… THEY SAID… oh wait… well… they didn’t like the dog barking at the postman and THEY HAD GUNS!!eleventy!!!! So you know they are guilty and should be held indefinitely until a kangaroo trial can be established.

  5. Limbaugh pointed out the irony in the NYTimes lede ‘graf:

    An investigation into a failed car bombing in Times Square widened rapidly on two continents on Tuesday as Pakistani authorities arrested several people, just hours after a jet bound for Dubai was called back from the runway at Kennedy Airport and boarded by federal officers, who seized a Connecticut man accused of carrying out the attempted attack.

    A CONNECTICUT MAN? Well, geez, no wonder… enough is enough, I say, we have to start strip-searching these CONNECTICUT men….

    And, contrary to your not-so-veiled racism, the article doesn’t even MENTION Islam or Muslims and certainly not jihad. Obviously, the purveyors of “all the news that’s fit to print” would have mentioned if anyone to the left of Conan the Librarian seriously thought Islamic radicalism was involved….

  6. It’s annoying to see that the media are falling over themselves not to mention anything that might lead people to believe perpetrators might be jihadist terrorists. At the same time there is no reason to assume every attack is a terrorist attack. Sometimes a nut is just a nut.

    Today is National Remembrance Day in the Netherlands and at 20:00 we observe two minutes silence to remember the dead of WWII and those of subsequent wars and peacekeeping missions. Halfway through there was a sudden panic in the crowd and a lot of people got hurt. The royal party was quickly escorted away, but returned a few minutes later when it was announced that someone had collapsed, toppled a barrier and everybody else had panicked.

    Peoples’ initial reactions were logical enough, both in general and especially in the light of a previous incident. Almost exactly a year ago a nut case had crashed his car into the royal parade on Queen’s Day, killing several people and himself. Everbody immediately suspected jihadist terrorism, but it turned out it was a lone nut. Later it emerged he was a disgruntled former royal security guard who had been dismissed by the crown prince.

    Today’s ceremony continued after the disturbance and calm returned very quickly. Nevertheless it later emerged that the incident was started by a man who had been screaming during the two minutes silence. He and an apparent accomplice had been arrested. It is as yet unclear whether the announcement that the incident was caused by a person collapsing was due to miscommunication or due to a desire to restore calm.

    Now, everyone will quickly wonder whether the culprits in this case were Lutherans, or perhaps people of some different denomination. The police won’t say because “we don’t care what they look like, we just want to know who they are”. Can you guess what they looked like? Rumours say one of the men was dressed in orthodox Jewish garb. That’s what you were expecting, right? Well, me neither.

    Now, while there is a jihad against western culture going on there isn’t an orthodox Jewish struggle against western civilisation, not to mention that western civilisation has some of its roots in Judaism. It makes no sense to believe this is part of a Jewish plot. But further than that, at this point we just don’t know. Maybe the man was just a nut, dressed as a Jew. Or maybe he was both a nut and a Jew. Or maybe he was a provocateur, an jihadist provocateur even. Or maybe the rumours are false and the guy was just a nut with a beard who just happened to be wearing a long black coat and a hat. Two nuts actually, so that suggest something more sinister, but it’s just too early to tell.

    Similarly, just because a guy is a Muslim doesn’t mean he can’t be a nut as well. The man in New York may well be a terrorist, and there are courts to find out. In the mean time it would be a good thing if the media simply reported the relevant facts, including any clues as to motive. Religion and ethnicity are such clues. A previous history of mental illness or lack of it would be another.

  7. Similarly, just because a guy is a Muslim doesn’t mean he can’t be a nut as well.

    That may be so, but the narrative we were being told to swallow from the get-go was a) lone nut, b) middle-aged white man, c) not Islamic terrorism and d) maybe the bomber was unhappy with healthcare. It sure sounded like they were trying to steer the blame, even if only blame by association, toward the Tea Party. So maybe the guy of Pakistani decent who recently learned how to make IEDs in a Pakistani terrorist training camp wasn’t motivated by religious anti-Western hatred, but why go the other way and create this specific story about a white, middle-aged, anti-healthcare lone nut bomber?

  8. Well, we kind of assume everything is Islamic-extremism induced terror anymore since the Media refuses to tell us. We heve to find out for sure otherwise. It is a pretty safe bet anymore though.

    The media are simply too clever by half.

  9. Update: the suspected accomplice was just an innocent bystander who dropped his briefcase in all the confusion, perhaps leading others to believe it contained a bomb. The screaming man turned out to be a local bum with a long criminal record who does indeed wear orthodox Jewish garb and is known as ‘the Rabbi’ because of it, but isn’t Jewish at all. He was probably drunk at the time and upset because he had been ‘evicted’ from his favourite bench. Sometimes a nut really is just a nut.

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