President Biden on the new year’s events (NOLA attack and the Cybertruck explosion).
[ETA] It’s a description of the attack by an eyewitness, so keep that in mind before you click on it…
10 Likes
That eyewitness looks haunted.
7 Likes
17 Likes
He does, yeah… 
7 Likes
9 Likes
The person who rented the Tesla Cybertruck tha was used in an explosion outside the entrance of the Trump hotel in Las Vegas has been identified as an active-duty member of the U.S. Army’s elite special forces unit, two U.S. defense officials said.
15 Likes
So, maybe he was just going to go camping and blow up some fireworks while he was at it, until something went wrong? Or had come back from camping and what ruptured was his unused parphenalia?
12 Likes
What we do know is that Jabbar was a US Army veteran who served in the US military for 13 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan. He was reportedly going through a divorce and had expressed a desire to kill his entire family.
The Army is not training the best.
14 Likes
Grim news, delivered without self aggrandizing or jingoism. I can’t help but think “I’m going to miss that.” (Not that I want more such news at any time.) The reporter at the end who was shouting out “have you spoke to President Trump” really irritated me, though.
16 Likes
16 Likes
14 Likes
12 Likes
Interesting way to argue the point:
13 Likes
That, apparently, is only their “operating budget.” About $11 billion is “allocated” within NY City’s budget for the NYPD (this includes pensions and other things that aren’t part of the operating budget). And I’m pretty sure even that number doesn’t include privately raised money, which is substantial. The UAE government alone gave them a million dollars at one point… for who knows what in return.
The more I read about the NYPD, the weirder and more ridiculous I realize it is. They have their own anti-terrorism division that operates internationally, with offices in 14 other countries plus several other cities within the US, without oversight or coordination with federal law enforcement.They monitor and send undercover operatives into Muslim and activists groups throughout the US, without even informing local police. They show up at crime scenes in various countries, flash their badges and expect to be let in. You might think that would result in some conflict with federal, state, local and international law enforcement, and you’d be right - the FBI, CIA, various foreign and US police forces are all pissed at them.
17 Likes
Obviously it’s still early in the investigation, but a lot of the details around this act and the guy’s motivations just aren’t seeming to make sense so far. Even the ATF spokesman said in a briefing earlier that this was less sophisticated than he would have expected from someone with so much military experience:
If the suspect hadn’t (apparently) shot himself in the head I wonder if the initial explosion would have even killed him. (Obviously the subsequent fire would have. Not a good way to go, so maybe he knew that the explosion would be a smallish one and didn’t want to risk a slower and more painful death?)
11 Likes
Matt was a very skilled warrior, and he would be able to make — if it was him, and if he did this — he would’ve been able to make a more sophisticated explosive than using propane tanks and camping fuel.
I’m just not sure this is the flex that you think it is, dude. “He could have built a much better bomb” isn’t exactly exonerating him. Bragging that he could have done better than Timothy McVeigh is just bizarre.
12 Likes
Oh my gosh, she admits they had the barracades they needed that would have prevented the truck from driving through the crowd.
They deployed them for the football game.
The arcitcle confirms they had them 8 years ago.
Maybe time for a new head cop.
When asked about where the Archer barriers came from, Kirkpatrick told reporters: “Actually, we have them. I didn’t know about them, but we have them, and so we have been able now to put them out.”
17 Likes
Back in the other place, I posted an article about blast concussion brain damage. This might be it:
Between training and action, I wonder how much he was exposed to?
12 Likes
Last I heard, they were claiming the barricades were being repaired. Why TF didn’t they think to get the damned things fixed before NYE?!
8 Likes
New York City has huge chunks of rock and concrete all over the place.
2 Likes