Terrorist Attacks Strike Brussels

A series of bomb attacks across Brussels has left at least 26 dead, and dozens more injured.

Brussels Airport

A series of explosions believed to be the result of terror attacks has left more than two dozen people dead, and dozens more wounded, in the capital of Belgium just days after the arrest of a major suspect in last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris:

BRUSSELS — A series of deadly terrorist attacks struck Brussels on Tuesday, with two explosions at the city’s main international airport, and a third in a subway station at the heart of the city.

According to news agencies, 13 people were killed at the airport, and 15 in the subway bombing, while 30 others were wounded. Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said there were “numerous” dead. “We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened,” he said. At least one of the two explosions at the airport appeared to have been set off by a suicide bomber, officials said.

The attacks, a vivid illustration of the continued threat to Europe, occurred four days after the capture on Friday of Europe’s most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam. Mr. Abdeslam is believed to be the sole survivor of the 10 men who were directly involved in the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13.

Mr. Michel issued an extraordinary appeal to the population to “avoid all movement,” as the authorities braced for possible further attacks.

The French government ordered 1,600 extra police officers to patrol the nation’s borders, including at train stations, airports and ports. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain called an emergency meeting of ministers.

The attacks put the Belgian capital in a state of virtual lockdown. All flights were canceled for the day. All subway, tram and bus travel was shut down. Eurostar canceled its trains connecting Brussels with Paris and London. Thalys, which runs high-speed trains linking dozens of cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, suspended service. Cellphone lines were jammed as panicked travelers and Belgians tried to make calls.

The events on Tuesday began with a pair of explosions at a departure hall atBrussels Airport, in the town of Zaventem, about seven miles northeast of the city center, just before 8 a.m.

“We were going to check in around 7:30 a.m.,” said one traveler, Ilaria Ruggiano. “There were seven of us. We were a bit late. We heard a big noise and saw a big flash. My mother went to the floor — she was hit. I just dropped my luggage and went to the floor. A kid came out, bleeding a lot. I tried to help him with a tissue, but it was not enough. There were two bombs.”

Another passenger, Jérôme Delanois, said he was at an Internet cafe near the Delta Air Lines counter when he heard a thunderous noise. “There were two explosions — one big one and one little one,” he said. “The first one blew all the walls and everything. There were burning flames. The first one was bigger. It blew out all the windows.”

Belinda How, a traveler from Malaysia who was in Brussels for a vacation, said she had been lining up to check in for an Etihad Airways flight when she heard the blast. “I was the last passenger queuing up,” she said. “I was very close to the first blast. Everybody was screaming.”

She added: “I said to my son — he is a Down syndrome special-needs child — ‘You have to run.’ He said, ‘My leg hurts.’ I think he was panicked. I left my luggage, dragged him and ran. Before I ran out, there was another bomb.”

Alan Merbaum, who had flown in from Washington, said he had narrowly avoided the blast.

“I heard what sounded like a thud a minute or so before 8 a.m.,” he said. “It sounded like it could have been something dropped off the back of a truck. Ten to 20 seconds later, I heard a loud explosion and I immediately knew what it was. I saw smoke coming out of the front entrance of the airport.”

Photographs posted online showed passengers covered in blood and soot, looking stunned but conscious. Some passengers were seen being taken away on luggage carts.

Other images posted on social media showed smoke rising from a departure hall, where the windows had been blown out, and people running away from the building. Hundreds were herded outside.

Around 9:10 a.m., another blast shook the Maelbeek subway station in downtown Brussels, not far from the area that houses most of the European Union’s core institutions, according to the Belgian broadcaster RTBF. The Brussels transport authority said on Twitter that all subway stations were closing.

“We felt a boom, we felt the building tremble,” said Henk Stuten, 50, who works for the European Commission in an office above the station. “We saw through the windows that people were rushing out of the metro exit.”

About 10 to 15 minutes later, the office was evacuated, Mr. Stuten said. Some people were “very calm,” others were “very emotional,” he added.

He said most of the wounded were on Rue de la Loi, outside the station.

“There were colleagues who just five minutes before were in the metro,” he said. “You realize how close these things can come to you.”

Christian De Coninck, a spokesman for the Brussels police, told reporters near the Maelbeek subway station that several people had been killed, but he did not have a number.

Mr. De Coninck was unable to say how many blasts had taken place at the station. He appealed to everyone in the area to stay indoors to avoid getting in the way of the emergency services.

Earlier in the morning, police officers taped off the numerous streets leading to the subway station as emergency vehicles raced to the blast sites.

Ambulances were clustered around the entrance, next to the normally busy Rue de la Loi, which runs through the heart of the so-called European quarter.

A police helicopter patrolled above the station.

“For the moment, what we know is that there was at least one, possibly two explosions; we are still investigating,” said Sandra Eyschen, a spokeswoman for the Belgian federal police. “There are several injured, we don’t have any exact numbers, and, unfortunately, it appears there are some dead, at least one person.”

Belgium quickly raised its threat status to the maximum level, The Associated Press reported, citing the interior minister, Jan Jambon.

More from The Washington Post:

BRUSSELS — Apparently coordinated terrorist explosions rocked Brussels Airport and a metro station Tuesday, leaving at least 26 dead and raising fears that attackers carried out retaliatory strikes after the arrest of a key suspect in last year’s Paris massacres.

The full casualty count remained unclear hours after the attacks, but various Belgian reports and officials said it reached at least 26.

“We are talking about scores of dead,” said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel without giving clearer estimates after blasts brought down roof panels at the airport’s departure hall and an explosion on the Maelbeek metro platform shrouded it in smoke and littered it with debris.

The Belgian prosecutor’s office described at least one of the airport blasts as part of a suicide attack — the latest apparent terrorist bloodshed in Europe and another sign that militant networks remain able to strike despite widespread crackdowns and investigations across the continent.

Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the city had come under “terrorist attacks.”

Brussels’s public transportation agency said the subway blast alone left at least 15 dead and 55 injured “so far.”

The Belgian Health Ministry said that 11 people were killed and 81 were wounded in the attack at the airport, Belgium’s Le Soir newspaper reported.

“What we had feared has happened,” Michel said. “This is a black moment for our country.”

The Belgian capital was ordered locked down and was put on a maximum terror alert, with all of the city’s public transportation shut down. The fallout immediately spread beyond Belgium’s borders, displaying the increased worries and security cooperation since November’s Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that an additional 1,600 people were deployed in France and that security was boosted at border posts and major transportation hubs.

“Through the attacks in Brussels, all of Europe is hit,” French President François Hollande wrote on Twitter. On social media, an image soon appeared: A figure draped in the colors of the French flag embracing another tearful figure in the black, yellow and red of Belgium’s banner.

London and other cities, including New York and Washington, also put additional police on the streets.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who was in Jordan meeting with the country’s foreign minister, choked back tears at a news conference after learning of the Brussels attacks.

“We are experiencing the darkest day in the history of our country since the Second World War,” said Bart de Wever, mayor of Antwerp and the leader of Belgium’s largest political party, the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang, the broadcaster VTM reported.

At the Brussels Airport, located in the suburb of Zaventem, the blasts collapsed ceilings in the departure hall, sent passengers fleeing, and left pools of blood amid splintered signs and abandoned luggage.

The metro station was clogged with smoke as panicked people streamed onto the streets and rescue workers raced toward the mayhem.

The casualty figures could not be immediately confirmed, but some media reports placed the tally higher than 26, suggesting the full count was still unclear hours after the 8 a.m. bloodshed.

Amateur video taken immediately after the airport attack showed streams of panicked passengers running out of the airport. Large clouds of smoke bellowed from the blown-out windows of a terminal building.

The airport was closed, as well as the major roadway leading to the airport. Flights were diverted to Liege Airport, about 50 miles east of Brussels Airport, radio reports said.

The bombing comes just four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the last known living participant in the November attacks on Paris. Abdeslam, 26, was arrested in Brussels’s Molenbeek neighborhood.

About 75 minutes after the blasts at the airport, another explosion ripped through the Maelbeek metro station, Belgian media reported. That station, near the heart of the European Union, serves a busy stretch of E.U. office buildings, embassies and international organizations. The explosion happened near the end of the morning rush hour, when many subway trains are packed with commuters.

Though not quite as broad ranging as the attacks in Paris, today’s attacks share several traits in common with the attacks three months ago, and demonstrate once again that ISIS has a presence in Europe that is going to be a problem for some time going forward. As with the Paris attacks, we see an ability to carry out multi-pronged attacks against multiple targets using distinct means of attack. In Paris, it was a combination of suicide bombers and people armed with automatic weapons. In Brussels, it appears to be a combination of suicide bombers and explosive devices that were likely planted in public places and designed to cause maximum damage. Additionally, these attacks come just days after the arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, one of the prime remaining suspects in the Paris attacks who had not been accounted for in the wake of the November 13th attacks in that city. In the days since the arrest, Belgian and French police involved in the raid and arrest reported that a treasure trove of weapons had been found in the apartment where Abdelam was found and that there were strong indications that he may have been aware of, and involved in the planning of, future terror attacks in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. The fact that an attack like this occurred just three days after Abdeslam’s arrest suggests both that these attacks had been in the works for some time and that the cell that pulled them off was seemingly able to accelerate its timetable quickly enough to get the attack pulled off before authorities could get Abdeslam to break under questioning.  This suggests a level of organization and coordination that would seem to indicate a sophisticated, well-hidden, terror network that could very easily pull off additional attacks in the future.

In addition to putting the ISIS threat back on center stage, this attack also once again brings up the unique role that Brussels seems to be playing in the threats that face Europe at this time. The city ended up becoming a focus in the wake up both the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015 and the November attacks in Paris due to the fact that it appeared to be something of a safe zone for the people involved in the attacks, as well as a source for the weapons and explosives that they used in both attacks. Abdeslam, who many authorities believed had escaped all the way to Syria, turns out to have spent the last three months in hiding in the city’s Molenbeek neighborhood, which seems to have become a haven for jihadist elements in recent years. In the days after the Paris attack, Brussels was placed on a high level of alert over fears of a terror attack that were serious enough for the city to effectively shut down over the course of several days. Whether these attacks were connected to that earlier alert, or to an entirely different threat is unclear, but what is clear is that the situation in Europe remains highly dangerous three months after Paris and that the risk of future attacks is quite high.

FILED UNDER: National Security, Terrorism, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. grumpy realist says:

    Some people don’t deserve access to civilization.

  2. Jack says:

    But hey, don’t let this stop us from importing as many “refugees” as we can possibly get our hands on.

  3. CSK says:

    BBC says 31 dead.

  4. James Pearce says:

    @Jack:

    But hey, don’t let this stop us from importing as many “refugees” as we can possibly get our hands on.

    Salah Abdeslam was born in Brussels, and it’s likely the perpetrators of today’s attack were as well.

    Keep hammering on that refugee issue, though.

  5. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Jack:

    Jack, off the top of your head, how many Belgian refugees are waiting to enter the U.S.?

  6. Pch101 says:

    This suggests a level of organization and coordination that would seem to indicate a sophisticated, well-hidden, terror network that could very easily pull off additional attacks in the future.

    It doesn’t take much to set off some bombs and shoot at people.

    If these guys were that powerful and monolithic, then there would be an attack every week. As was the case with al-Qaeda, ISIS has become a brand; a few locals can set up a franchise and offer occasional moments of McTerrorism that will happily be promoted by politicians who want to use our fears against us.

  7. Jack says:

    @James Pearce: @Neil Hudelson: When ISIS finally starts blowing themselves up here, please put yourselves as close to the bomb as possible.

    Europe has been accepting Muslim immigrants for years, so much so that Sweden has become the rape capital of the world. Monday, footage aired of a 60 minutes Australia news crew in Sweden being attacked in one of 55 “no go zones”, which people of your similar ideology refuse to believe exist, 1 minute after the crew arrived on site.

    So please, tell me again why we should continue to open our borders to a people that long for the 8th century and would likely kill you as you slept because your ideology is what they hate the most.

  8. Pch101 says:

    @Jack:

    Just as I don’t presume that all white guys are drooling moronic bigots just because you are, I don’t presume that all Muslims terrorists.

  9. Jack says:

    @Pch101: I don’t presume all Muslims are terrorists, there does seem to be a trend over the last 15 years that would indicate people of a certain faith, certain 8th century ideology, certain blood lust, are intent on wiping out everyone that does not share those beliefs. They’ve said so, openly. 50% of all Muslims want Sharia Law. 20-25% of those are willing to use force to implement Sharia Law. 20-25% of 1.6 billion is a large number.

    Just maybe, we should limit our exposure to new Muslim immigrants until we are able to determine if they are fit to live in polite, civilized society before we put them on a plane and offer them free accommodations at US taxpayer expense.

  10. Jack says:

    @Pch101:

    Just as I don’t presume that all white guys are drooling moronic bigots just because you are, I don’t presume that all Muslims terrorists.

    And yet, you do presume everyone that owns and carries a gun is a potential mass shooter.

  11. Davebo says:

    @Jack:

    Well, to be honest, everyone that carries a gun is a potential mass shooter. Just as everyone that owns a car is a potential drunk driver.

    The difference is it’s very difficult to function in many parts of the country without a car. But there is also a similarity. A lot of people buy a certain kind of car to prop of their ego just as a lot of people feel the need to open carry or conceal carry for the same reason.

  12. James Pearce says:

    @Jack:

    would likely kill you as you slept because your ideology is what they hate the most.

    Sounds like you have something in common with the terrorists, dude. Pick a side.

  13. gVOR08 says:

    Donald Trump shooting himself in his foot in his mouth on how many Muslims are terrorists.

  14. Jack says:

    @Davebo: My gun enables me to be a murderer the same way your vagina enables you to be a prostitute. Yes, honey, your statement is that stupid.

  15. Jack says:

    @James Pearce: You obviously have me mixed up with someone else. I use words. Terrorists use bombs. I am willing to discuss. Terrorists don’t allow you to convince them because BOMBS! I simply stop communicating with people after I cannot sway their opinions. Terrorists kill you, your family, and your dog.

    Do you understand now, or do you need a refresher?

  16. grumpy realist says:

    @Jack: So how are you going to check? Are you going to shove a questionnaire in their faces? “Check Box 1 if you have certain faith, certain 8th century ideology, certain blood lust, and are intent on wiping out everyone that does not share those beliefs.”

    Or are you just going to waterboard them until they tell you what you want to hear?

  17. Ebenezer_Arvigenius says:

    Yes, honey, your statement is that stupid.

    And yet it’s the argument you made about Muslims.

  18. Jack says:

    @grumpy realist: I would prevent them from arriving on our borders until this war has ended.

  19. Jack says:

    @Ebenezer_Arvigenius: There is a difference between .00000001 percent of gun owners and 20-25% of Muslims. Should I send you to a math class to better understand?

  20. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Jack:

    Europe has been accepting Muslim immigrants for years, so much so that Sweden has become the rape capital of the world.

    As far as I can find, Sweden’s rape statistics have been largely static for the past decade, although they are indeed high, at 66 rapes per 100,000. Are you saying the evil mooslims invaded Sweden over a decade ago, setting up their static rate? Also, Sweden rape: 66/100,000. South Africa: 115/100,000. Interesting definition of “rape capital.”

    Monday, footage aired of a 60 minutes Australia news crew in Sweden being attacked in one of 55 “no go zones”,

    It sounds like you have an issue with Swedish laws. What does this have to do with the U.S.? I’ve greatly enjoyed walking anywhere I please in Dearborn, LA, and New York – the three highest concentrations of muslims in the U.S.

    So I guess I’m asking, what the hell is your point?

  21. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Jack:

    They’ve said so, openly. 50% of all Muslims want Sharia Law. 20-25% of those are willing to use force to implement Sharia Law. 20-25% of 1.6 billion is a large number.

    Since you fail to source these, let me provide you with some other statistics:

    35% of people named Jack want to inappropriately touch their siblings. They’ve said so. 15% of Jacks listen to Nickelback, openly. 10% of Jacks use mayonnaise on their french fries, and are willing to use force to accomplish this goal.

  22. KM says:

    @Jack:

    vagina enables you to be a prostitute

    So does your @sshole, honey or your mouth and hands. How sexist and illogical to assume guys can’t and won’t sell themselves because they lack a particular body part. Anybody can do it provided the right circumstances/audience therefore everyone has the potential to do it – so Davebo’s point about potential and your rather selective view of it stands.

    Your analogy is just that stupid as well. Then again, you do seem to like to drop it to the lowest common denominator.

  23. Jack says:

    @Neil Hudelson: My apologies. Rape capital of Europe.
    66 rapes per 100,000 is three times higher than the number of cases in the same year in Sweden’s next-door neighbor, Norway, and twice the rate in the United States and the UK.

    The problem I have, is once Muslims become a certain percent of the population, laws no longer matter–in Sweden, in the UK, in the US. Meanwhile ISIS is threatening every Western nation and purposely inflicting mass casualties on civilian population to cause terror.

    Yet you and your ilk seem to not care. Sure, let’s import even more of them…they will vote democrat.

  24. Davebo says:

    @Jack:

    There is a difference between .00000001 percent of gun owners and 20-25% of Muslims.

    78% of all statistics used on internet message boards are made up on the fly.

    Which is why you are still alive dear Jack. Trust me. If 300 million muslims wanted you dead, you’d be dead.

    That aren’t nearly as impotent as you are.

  25. Jack says:

    @KM: Awww, cupcake. Did I offend you. Too fwcking bad. Grow up and feel the reality that is slapping the faces of Belgians today.

  26. grumpy realist says:

    @Jack: And HOW do you do that? Are you going to have a nice little “check your religion off, plz!” form that goes along with the landing card? Test them by force-feeding them bacon? How do you identify an Nasty Ebil Muzzie as opposed to a Pure Upright Godly Christian?

    (The bacon thingie means a heck of a lot of practicing Jews won’t be let in either, by the way…)

  27. James Pearce says:

    @Jack:

    Sure, let’s import even more of them…they will vote democrat.

    Jack, there’s bigger issues involved here than who votes Democrat.

    Might I suggest to the rest of the thread that we ignore Jack today and his partisan bleating?

  28. KM says:

    @Jack:

    When ISIS finally starts blowing themselves up here

    will be because some Americans decided to join the Dark Side, not because some refugee went postal. What we are seeing is native citizens, people born to the country they turn on, becoming radicalized. It’s not who was let in, it’s who was already here. Angry people, desperate people, disaffected people, weak-minded people in search of a greater force to direct their lives and take away the need to think.

    Fanatics in search of a cause are freaking EVERYWHERE in this world, Jack. They can be anyone. What are you going to do if the first attacker’s a blue-eyed blonde cheerleader from Iowa who decided to rebel but didn’t wear a hajib because it would ruin her perm? Homegrown is the order of the day. Worry about the ideology because that’s what’s crossing borders with impunity.

  29. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Jack:

    The problem I have, is once Muslims become a certain percent of the population, laws no longer matter–in Sweden, in the UK, in the US.

    Funny. I go to muslim communities in the U.S., and I see no law breaking.

    Christians, on the other hand, believe laws do not apply if they just believe hard enough.

    Heck, they will try to force their beliefs on you via every corrupt way possible and are even willing to use women and children as human shields.

  30. Neil Hudelson says:

    Please release my comment from the spam queue. I know, too many links.

  31. Mu says:

    I see we’re having a nice rational discussion on the topic of Islamic terrorism again.
    While I have no idea of Swedish rape statistics it has been widely reported in the European press that the Swedish government has issued an order to the police to sanitize all crime reports of hints pointing to a potential foreign origin of the perpetrators.
    Similar action has been reported from Germany but seems to have been mostly based on local overreach by officials in police and state-run media (vorauseilender Gehorsam) ; there the Cologne New Year’s excesses haven at least partially opened the discussion. So it turned out most of Germany’s issues stem from a very small fraction of the refugees, mostly from Northern Africa, and mostly in the form of petty theft.
    The terrorism part seems to be mostly home grown in the EU either from French-Algerian or Balkan origin.

  32. EddieInCA says:

    @Jack:

    I would prevent them from arriving on our borders until this war has ended.

    Who exactly is “them”? And how would you know who, exactly, is “them?”

    Details. Give me the details of how you, or Trump, prevents “them” from entering this country.

  33. Pch101 says:

    Citing rape statistics in a vacuum is just another indication that conservatism is now a fraternity for the stupid.

    Rape statistics are determined in part by (a) how rape is defined and (b) the willingness of victims to report it. As the definition is broadened and the social stigma against reporting it declines, the number of reported cases increases. That does not necessarily mean that there was an increase in the number of incidents.

  34. Andre Kenji says:

    The issue of immigrants(Not Muslims) is extremely complicated in Europe because most European countries do a very poor job assimilating their non-white immigrant population. Not only Arabs, but Caribbean Blacks and other Asian groups lives in segregated areas in the suburbs of large cities. These areas generally have high unemployment and high crime.

    Segregated areas with low social indicators will have high crime. That´s true for many Black suburbs of London(And these are Caribbean Blacks, not Muslims). That´s true for Brazilian Favelas, for cities like Ferguson and East Saint Louis in the United States. These terrorist incidents are coming from people born and raised in these immigrant suburbs of European cities, not from Syrian refugees.

    I´ve been hearing about the problem of the Tri-State border in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil literally for decades. But even considering the large number of Muslims living there I´ve not saw a single terrorist incident coming from people living there.

  35. JKB says:

    Oh, I think we can tell the truth can’t we. Terrorists, most likely Islamic, strike at the heart of the EU.

  36. Jack says:

    @KM:

    Worry about the ideology because that’s what’s crossing borders with impunity.

    And yet, you will allow radical Imams to freely join our society to spew this ideology.

  37. Neil Hudelson says:

    @JKB:

    Why, it’s almost as if you read both the headline and the content of this blog post.

    Who isn’t telling this “truth?”

  38. Jack says:

    @James Pearce:

    Might I suggest to the rest of the thread that we ignore Jack today and his partisan bleating?

    Yes, because only LIBERAL bleating will be allowed.

  39. CSK says:

    The Guardian says 34 have now died. ISIS has claimed responsibility.

  40. Jack says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    Yes, yes, yes. Islam is a peaceful religion because most Muslims live peacefully and only a “tiny minority of extremists” practice violence. That’s like saying that White supremacy must be perfectly fine since only a tiny minority of racists ever hurt anyone. Neither does it explain why religious violence is largely endemic to Islam, despite the tremendous persecution of religious minorities in Muslim countries.

    You son, are in denial.

  41. grumpy realist says:

    @Jack: It’s because you’re acting like an ass, that’s why.

    Don’t forget–anything that legally gets done to your enemy “THEM” can be turned around and done to you as well as soon as you, too, get accused of having links to terrorism.

    You want to give a government that power? I don’t.

  42. KM says:

    @Jack:

    And yet, you will allow radical Imams to freely join our society to spew this ideology.

    Why snookums, look at you! Advocating for restrictions on Amendment rights! Why, it seems like only yesterday you were adamant the 2nd couldn’t be touched/reinterpreted/violated and now you graduated to taking umbrage with the 1st.

    And if they are already here, son? Are you going to restrict their speech and set a precedent that can be used against you and yours? To paraphrase the new Star Wars : Careful, Jack, that your personal interests don’t get in the way of GOP’s orders. Religious liberty is not to be infringed upon.

  43. CSK says:

    Two nuclear power plants in Belgium have been evacuated of all personnel except for a skeleton staff. This does not sound good.

  44. MikeSJ says:

    The problem is a small number of muslins can carry out terror attacks quite easily. Look at the nutcase who killed the children at Sandy Hook. One gun, one nut and carnage.

    I don’t see how to stop that in any realistic way.

    My concern at this point is seeing the Far Right in Europe steadily increase market share. Every attack like this and they’ll gain more and more followers. Now we have a buffoon like Trump making the rounds but can you imagine someone like Bloomberg instead? Someone who isn’t a clown but a very serious player leading the Far Right?

    I think the European leadership is playing with gasoline here.

  45. Scott says:

    The sad thing is, is that the right wing and neocons are utterly delighted by these terrorist attacks. They don’t really want to complete a risk/reward analysis on the best way to prepare and respond; they just want to pump up the fear.

  46. Jack says:

    @grumpy realist:

    You want to give a government that power? I don’t.

    Our government first priority is the protection of its citizens.

  47. Jack says:

    @KM:

    Religious liberty is not to be infringed upon.

    I am not suggestion we infringe upon religious liberty. I am suggesting we infringe upon anyone that is threatening mass violence in support of its religion. You cannot hide behind religion and espouse violence. Nor can you hide behind the freedom of speech and espouse violence.

    You wouldn’t be suggesting Islam does not exist without violence are you?

  48. Jack says:

    @MikeSJ:

    Bloomberg instead? Someone who isn’t a clown but a very serious player leading the Far Right?

    Oh. My. Lord. You actually believe Bloomy is on the right?

    I have some real estate between Manhattan and Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

  49. Jack says:

    @Scott:

    The sad thing is, is that the right wing and neocons are utterly delighted by these terrorist attacks. They don’t really want to complete a risk/reward analysis on the best way to prepare and respond; they just want to pump up the fear.

    Yeah, next thing you know they’ll start dropping bombs on Libya or something. Oh, wait….

  50. KM says:

    @Scott :

    complete a risk/reward analysis on the best way to prepare and respond;

    Because it means a change in how we live our lives. Look at the whining airport security brings. There’s far more effective ways to do it but the public would balk. Look at how angry the public gets at bag searches and metal detectors in sports arenas and theme parks. We still think of the enemy as a monolithic unit. Modern society runs on the concepts of individual freedoms and mobility but defaults action to groups. We do not think a single person can change the world, not really – they must be part of a larger group or philosophy that gets the credit. We don’t look for the lone wolf but for the pack.

    One of my duties in a previous job was to get past security, test for holes. Do you have any idea how many times I got into secure areas without a key card because someone held the door for me? Was in restricted areas for hours before someone noticed the unfamiliar face? Read information I had no right to because someone left it out or I simply asked a distracted person for a file? Constant vigilance takes effort and people are lazy. Easier to rail against rare attacks then make fundamental societal changes.

  51. grumpy realist says:

    @Jack: So you’d be perfectly happy with the FBI coming and scooping you up and waterboarding you because your name was found in some “radical Muslim'” notebook?

    Security, doncha know….

    (Seriously, the possibilities for ratfvcking given this sort of knee-jerk reaction by the authorities is not something to be ignored.)

  52. Ebenezer_Arvigenius says:

    There is a difference between .00000001 percent of gun owners and 20-25% of Muslims. Should I send you to a math class to better understand?

    You’re surprisingly arrogant for someone who usually fails at both maths and logic cupcake.

    Just for starters you are comparing apples and oranges. Even if we accept you bogus (and, as usually, unsourced) statistic you are comparing people who claim to be willing to “use force” (whatever that means) with people who have committed violence. Even you should be able to see the difference.

    (As an aside your numbers seem to be off by magnitudes. A quick on the back of the envelope calculation would come out to about 0,01% of gun owners, not 0,00000001%)

  53. Tillman says:

    “Keen, a 50+ comment thread, let’s see-oh, it’s Jack.”

  54. Jack says:

    @grumpy realist:

    So you’d be perfectly happy with the FBI coming and scooping you up and waterboarding you because your name was found in some “radical Muslim’” notebook?

    Of course not. I believe you know my position better than that. Nor would I support them scooping up Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira based upon such flimsy evidence. They should however pick up the Imam that is radicalizing Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira. They should however pick up the guy that is supplying illegal weapons to Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira. They should however pick up the guy making suicide belts for Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira. And finally, after evidence shows that Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira have been radicalized, given weapons and or suicide belts, then pick up Abdullah, Ibrahim, or Aamira.

  55. grumpy realist says:

    @KM: We just had that with a break-in at our condo. So now we’re all running around in a tizzy and warning each other to not let people we don’t know into the building. Part of the problem is so few of us attend any of the condo board meetings so we have no idea who the legitimate owners are as opposed to people trying to get in. And I’ve started using my deadbolt, finally. .

  56. Jack says:

    @Ebenezer_Arvigenius:

    As an aside your numbers seem to be off by magnitudes. A quick on the back of the envelope calculation would come out to about 0,01% of gun owners, not 0,00000001%

    .02% is based upon concealed carry permit owners that commit crimes and have their permit revoked. All crimes, to include drunk driving, domestic violence, etc., not gun crimes. .00000001% is based upon concealed carry permit holders that commit gun crimes. And yes, that statistic is much, much less than police officers who commit gun crimes.

    The comparison I am making is there a 20-25% of 1.6 billion willing to use force to get what they want Namely, Sharia Law. Not just in their country, but in every country. Do you not understand that when a person says they would be willing to use force to get something that means people are likely to be injured or killed in the process??

  57. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    I don’t presume all Muslims are terrorists

    Apparently you do as you are tagging all Syrian refugees with this attack based on zero evidence that a Syrian was involved.
    Actions speak louder than words…and yours are the actions of a bigot.

  58. C. Clavin says:

    @grumpy realist:

    So you’d be perfectly happy with the FBI coming and scooping you up and waterboarding you because your name was found in some “radical Muslim’” notebook?

    No…because Jack is an entitled white male. Forget that more white Christians have committed terrorist attacks here since 9/11 than Muslims. Jack is still a white Christian, and is thus entitled.

  59. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    Forget that more white Christians have committed terrorist attacks here since 9/11 than Muslims.

    Odd that you exclude 9/11. Then again, hypocrisy is your middle name.

  60. C. Clavin says:

    In the late 30’s a steamer with 908 Jewish refugees, was turned away from ports in Cuba, the United States, and Canada — eventually returning to Europe where more than a quarter of its passengers were killed in the Holocaust.
    Three months before that congressional leaders killed a plan to allow 20,000 more Jewish children to immigrate from Germany. Instead, in 1940, the State Department cut refugee migration by 75 percent.
    That’s the isolationist world Republicans and their dupes, like Jack, envision.
    Remember…Jack wanted to close the borders because a couple people had Ebola.
    Cowards should never be allowed to dictate anything.

  61. James Pearce says:

    @C. Clavin:

    Actions speak louder than words…and yours are the actions of a bigot.

    Failing to distinguish one group from another isn’t bigotry. It’s stupidity.

  62. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    Apparently you do as you are tagging all Syrian refugees with this attack based on zero evidence that a Syrian was involved.
    Actions speak louder than words…and yours are the actions of a bigot.

    ISIS has stated they would mingle with the refugee population to infiltrate the US.

    I guess we shouldn’t have listened to the Nazis espouse the Arian race either. They were not persecuting or killing Jews. They just had a mass dinner party and a few of them met an unfortunate end due to food poisoning.

  63. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    That’s the isolationist world Republicans and their dupes, like Jack, envision.
    Remember…Jack wanted to close the borders because a couple people had Ebola.
    Cowards should never be allowed to dictate anything.

    ISIS, an ISLAMIC entity, is committing genocide against Christians. If you are suggesting we bring in some of those Christian refugees. Sure, I’m good with that.

  64. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:
    Apparently among the many things you do not know is the meaning of hypocrisy.

  65. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    ISIS, an ISLAMIC entity, is committing genocide against Christians. If you are suggesting we bring in some of those Christian refugees. Sure, I’m good with that.

    So you are OK with Christians, but not Muslims. But you are not bigoted in your own mind???
    You realize Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in a terrorist bombing, was a white Christian, right?
    What a piece of work you are.
    Self-awareness, much?

  66. KM says:

    @grumpy realist:
    Tell me about it. I scold people when I see this at work constantly. We’re having a new addition built and there’s been work crews coming in and out for months. The security doors are being propped open willy-nilly and random men are wandering around outside the server room…. which on a floor without construction. It wasn’t until the CFO noticed a rather suspicious-looking young man in the boardroom, helping himself to the good coffee that anything was done. Now people are pissed they have to remember their keyfob or they are locked out of the building.

    For many people, if you look the part, that’s all they need. Your average citizen has not been socially trained to be wary of strangers in situations outside personal safety. Add in how unobservant most people are and it’s a recipe for easy marks. Security systems only work if you turn them on, locks work if actually locked. The keyfob is necessary, not just there to annoy you and make it hard to get inside when your hands are full. Good security fundamentals prevent more attacks then you’d think.

  67. C. Clavin says:

    Ted Cruz is just as afraid of people who look different from him as Jack is.

    We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.

    Apparently being of Cuban decent and being born in Canada doesn’t give you any better view of the world than if you had never left Bum-Fuck Texas.

  68. C. Clavin says:

    Ted Cruz is just as afraid of people who look different from him as Jack is.

    We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.

    Apparently being of Cuban decent and being born in Canada doesn’t give you any better view of the world than if you had never left Houston, the armpit of Texas.

  69. Ebenezer_Arvigenius says:

    Seriously cupcake? You realize that you’re not on Breitbart here and that the readers have brains to evaluate your claims?

    So let me iterate through this:

    1. Your claim is (presumably) that the US should ban all travel by Muslims
    2. It is pointed out that it is not possible to discern between good and bad apples and that such a ban would impact lots of innocents
    3. A counter-example for good vs. bad apples is offered: gun owners
    4. In defence you cite a survey by the conspiracy think tank CSP headed by “The US government is secretly controlled by Muslims” Frank Gaffney, Jr.
    5. I’ll not even get into the methodology of that poll as it hurts bodily, but let’s just say that “willing to use force to get what they want Namely, Sharia Law. Not just in their country, but in every country.” is not in there.
    6. To compare that bogus data about claimed willingness for violence you compare it with an extremely limited subset of actual gun violence, namely the “concealed carry permit owners” (not all gun owners) AND who commit gun crimes (instead of all of those who actually kill/hurt people).

    Do I really have to point out how many logical errors there are in that supposed argument?

    And with that I’m out. You’re either wilfully ignorant or dishonest in debating this issue. In either case discussing it further with you is a waste of time.

  70. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    You realize Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in a terrorist bombing, was a white Christian, right?

    Timothy McVeigh didn’t bomb the federal building because his religion told him so. McVeigh sought revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco siege. His religion was peripheral to his terrorism, not the cause of it. He had a distrust for and dislike of the government. If you don’t know the difference, you cannot be helped.

  71. PJ says:

    @Jack:

    66 rapes per 100,000 is three times higher than the number of cases in the same year in Sweden’s next-door neighbor, Norway, and twice the rate in the United States and the UK.

    You’re either a lying sack of sh*t, stupid, or both.

    Sweden’s rape rate under the spotlight:

    But that is a misconception, according to Klara Selin, a sociologist at the National Council for Crime Prevention in Stockholm. She says you cannot compare countries’ records, because police procedures and legal definitions vary widely.

    “In Sweden there has been this ambition explicitly to record every case of sexual violence separately, to make it visible in the statistics,” she says.

    “So, for instance, when a woman comes to the police and she says my husband or my fiance raped me almost every day during the last year, the police have to record each of these events, which might be more than 300 events. In many other countries it would just be one record – one victim, one type of crime, one record.”

    The thing is, the number of reported rapes has been going up in Sweden – it’s almost trebled in just the last seven years. In 2003, about 2,200 offences were reported by the police, compared to nearly 6,000 in 2010.

    So something’s going on.

    But Klara Selin says the statistics don’t represent a major crime epidemic, rather a shift in attitudes. The public debate about this sort of crime in Sweden over the past two decades has had the effect of raising awareness, she says, and encouraging women to go to the police if they have been attacked.

    So, Sweden has only twice the number of rapes per capita compared to the US, _despite_ the huge difference when it comes to how rapes are being reported.

  72. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    He had a distrust for and dislike of the government

    And you don’t think that is a form of religion? Republican fundamentalism is every bit a religion.

  73. Jack says:

    @Ebenezer_Arvigenius:

    instead of all of those who actually kill/hurt people

    By your logic…The gang banger down the street that got a gat out of the trunk of a car, is a law abiding gun owner. Meanwhile, every member of ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc., is a member of the “Peaceful Religion of Islam”.

  74. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin: And, now it’s time for your medicine. If anyone is extremist in today’s political society it’s Democrats. You need only look at the nutcases protesting and causing violence at, around, near, towards, Trump rallies.

    If any of this crap was happening at Obama rallies the left would have had a conniption. Republicans do not chain themselves to cars so people can’t get to Obama rallies. Republicans don’t cover themselves in “blood” at Obama rallies. Republicans don’t try to charge the stage at Obama rallies.

    Yeah, you need to look for the nuts in you own clan, Libtard.

  75. gVOR08 says:

    @Jack: Speaking of math class, let’s put some numbers on the table.

    Roughly 22% of American adults owns one or more guns(1). There are something like 240 million adults, so 53 million gun owners. There are roughly 30,000 people shot dead every year and presumably a comparable number of wounded, so something like 60,000 people get shot every year. So 60,000 gun owners shoot themselves, shoot someone else, or allow their gun to be used for shooting someone every year. That’s .11% of gun owners.

    Let’s look at that a little differently. That says on average a given gun owner has 1 chance in a thousand, 0.1%, of being involved in a shooting EACH YEAR. Let’s make a reasonable round number assumption that an average gun owner owns guns over a fifty year period. On average, each year as a gun owner you have that .1% chance of being involved in a shooting. That’s a 5% chance over your lifetime as a gun owner. You have a 1 in 20 chance of shooting yourself, or someone else, maybe me, or of someone else shooting someone, quite possibly you, with one of your guns.

    It’s not .0000…, whatever you said, % of gun owners, it’s something like 5%. Cupcake. Look around you. TODDLERS shoot about one person a week in this country.

  76. Jack says:

    @gVOR08:

    So 60,000 gun owners shoot themselves, shoot someone else, or allow their gun to be used for shooting someone every year. That’s .11% of gun owners.

    Beyond the fact you are making incorrect suppositions…you still got it all wrong.

    It’s not 60k gun owners. There are roughly 30k deaths, of which 21k are suicides. That’s not suicides of gun owners that’s suicides. There is no documentation as to if the suicide victim is in fact the gun owner. A large majority of these suicides are 25 year old and less, so it tells me they are likely the children of gun owners, not the gun owners themselves.

    Also, of the 9k remaining, about 6k are gang related. Your average gang member is NOT a gun owner just because they managed to get their hand on a gun. Finally, of the 3k remaining, about 2k are self defense/police shooting. This is the number you should focus on.
    Are you suggesting verified self defense and police shootings should be added into the number of “shootings” you toss around?

    2k of gun owners do not contribute to 60k shooting ever year.

  77. Pch101 says:

    @Ebenezer_Arvigenius:

    It certainly is a breathtaking list of stupid.

    As noted, conservatism has become a movement for the low functioning. Expecting them to have a basic grasp of facts and statistical knowledge is just asking too much.

  78. KM says:

    @Jack:

    causing violence at, around, near, towards, Trump rallies.

    That would be the idiots actually engaging in the violence. You know, the Trump supporters. Why is it nobody’s punching out protesters at Hillary’s or Sanders’ rallies? Or Cruz’s for that matter? Hillary or Sanders have both had people charge the stage – don’t remember BLM getting sucker-punched by an elderly man there, do you? This appears to be a Trump Exclusive (TM)

    And there is no Obama rallies because he’s not running for President. Try again, strawman.

  79. Jack says:

    That darn global warming/climate change is a fault yet again. Is there nothing it can’t do?

    Those peaceful Muslims simply wanted to get out of the heat and get a job, but Global warming/climate change was keeping them down, preventing them from providing for their families. If only we stopped burning all that fossil fuel, the Muslims would be able to get jobs and provide for their family.

    STOP FOSSIL FUELS NOW!

    Only you can prevent Muslim terrorism.

  80. Jack says:

    @KM:

    Why is it nobody’s punching out protesters at Hillary’s or Sanders’ rallies?

    Because no one is protesting Hillary, Bernie, or even Cruz. The protesters are causing the violence and the protestors are liberals. You only need to watch a single interview to determine that. The guy who rushed Trump on stage in Ohio was a Bernie supporter.

  81. Jack says:

    @gVOR08:

    53 million gun owners

    Trust me, if 53 million gun owners wanted to cause a problem…you’d know it.

  82. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    And, now it’s time for your medicine.

    So you have something against protesting and the first amendment, now?
    It’s the Trumpinistas causing the violence, cupcake.
    Jesus, you are delusional.

  83. Just "nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @Tillman: Yes, I see I haven’t missed anything since I left 50 comments and 3 hours ago.

  84. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    STOP FOSSIL FUELS NOW!
    Only you can prevent Muslim terrorism.

    The only smart thing you’ve ever said…and you don’t mean it…you are trying to be sarcastic.
    Amazing.

  85. JKB says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    It’s important because the NY Times is already running an article with former heads of the French external intelligence agency calling Belgium the wealthiest failed state. They can’t attack the EU directly, but do so by proxy.

    The country of just 11.2 million people faces widening derision as being the world’s wealthiest failed state — a worrying mix of deeply rooted terrorist networks, a government weakened by divisions among French, Dutch and German speakers, and an overwhelmed intelligence service in seemingly chronic disarray….

  86. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    It’s the Trumpinistas causing the violence, cupcake.
    Jesus, you are delusional.

    The Trumpinistas did not charge the stage. The Trumpinistas are not smearing themselves with blood. Trumpinistas are not chaining themselves to cars and stopping traffic. Trumpinistas are not walking around in KKK outfits while obscuring their black skin.

  87. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    The only smart thing you’ve ever said…and you don’t mean it…you are trying to be sarcastic.
    Amazing.

    Because me driving an SUV causes terrorism. You are truly delusional.

  88. James Pearce says:

    @Jack: Do you think there’s another forum where you can express all your grievances? Like on your Facebook wall or something?

  89. Jc says:

    Crazy Jack preaching from Chair Force One again…so much for the comment thread on this tragedy.

  90. Gustopher says:

    @Jack:

    Trumpinistas are not walking around in KKK outfits while obscuring their black skin.

    This is true, yes. The Trumpinistas in KKK outfits have white skin. And some, like David Duke, have taken off their robes.

  91. Jack says:

    @Gustopher: The people in KKK outfits at the New England Trump rally had black skin. Obviously they were not real KKK members as I believe that organization frowns on black members.

    http://www.youngcons.com/kkk-members-in-viral-picture-supporting-trump-are-actually-black/

  92. Jack says:

    @Gustopher:

    This is true, yes. The Trumpinistas in KKK outfits have white skin. And some, like David Duke, have taken off their robes.

    And some, like Robert Byrd, were leading members of the Democrat Party and held in high esteem by Obama and Hillary.

  93. Jack says:

    @James Pearce:

    Do you think there’s another forum where you can express all your grievances? Like on your Facebook wall or something?

    Yeah, because your opinions are far more superior. Wrong, but superior.

  94. Gustopher says:

    Fear is a perfectly reasonable response to terrorism, but is shouldn’t be the only response, or dominate our response, as it does with our friend Jack above.

    Terrorists are like insects — they can do a tiny bit of damage, and be a nuisance, but they don’t have the power to really hurt us. 30-40 people are, statistically, nothing. I watched the World Trade Center fall on 9/11 — and like everyone in the city, I was afraid. NYC changed after that, but it wasn’t because of the 3,000-5,000 dead, or the destruction of some really ugly buildings, or even the massive hole in the ground, it changed because of the police state that moved in and never went away.

    It changed because people who wanted a police state were waiting, eager to implement it at any provocation on the pretext of keeping everyone safe. And, because people were scared and let their fear take over, believing it was just temporary. Honestly, for the first few weeks, seeing more police and national guard in the subways was reassuring, and the American flags that appears on every subway car invoked pride. But, it never went away.

    And so, when I see people saying that we cannot accept refugees because we don’t know who they might be, and we have to watch those dirty Moslems closely because they might be up to something, and we should never let them in… I wonder whether this is because they are afraid, and they think this is a temporary thing, or whether they have just been waiting for the excuse to say these things and try to make them law.

    And when the major proponents have white supremacist fellow travelers, I wonder more.

  95. Jack says:

    @Gustopher:

    And when the major proponents have white supremacist fellow travelers, I wonder more.

    Ahhh, yes. Because the BLM movement is so much better.

    I know. let’s ask Ambassador Stevens’ opinion. How about Daniel Pearl? I wonder what James Foley and Steven Sotloff think on the subject. Oh, that’s right, we can’t ask them. Because they’re fwcking DEAD! Dead at the hands on Muslims and their “religion of peace.”

    This is not a white, black, red, or green issue. This is a ideology issue and Muslims, or if you prefer Muslim Jihadists, do not know how, nor want to live in a peaceful, civilized society.

  96. grumpy realist says:

    @Gustopher: especially considering you have a higher chance of dying from an overdose of medicine you’re taking than of being killed by a terrorist.

    I find it ridiculous that Jack just blows off the 30K people who kill themselves each year with guns. They’re still dead, aren’t they?

  97. Jack says:

    @grumpy realist:

    I find it ridiculous that Jack just blows off the 30K people who kill themselves each year with guns. They’re still dead, aren’t they?

    The correct figure is ~21k. And yes. They chose to do it to themselves. I wouldn’t deprive them of that anymore than I would deprive a person that is in pain and facing a life of torment of doctor assisted suicide. Why should I care one way or another?

    You blow off the ~3,315 potential lives that are aborted in the US each year. They mean nothing to you. Yet, you want to shame me for the 21k that commit suicide with a gun. Not gonna happen, cupcake.

  98. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    You blow off the ~3,315 potential lives that are aborted in the US each year. They mean nothing to you.

    Now we are onto POTENTIAL lives???
    Seriously???
    Put me in jail…I jerked off this morning and killed a POTENTIAL person.
    No wonder the Republican party is so fwcked up…if this is what the base is made of. No wonder fools like Trump and Cruz can excel given a constituency as un-thinking and lacking this much self-awareness.

  99. Pch101 says:

    You blow off the ~3,315 potential lives that are aborted in the US each year

    Cheer up. You should be pleased that some of them weren’t white.

  100. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    Put me in jail…I jerked off this morning and killed a POTENTIAL person.

    And you say conservatives don’t believe is science. You really are demented.

  101. Jack says:

    @Pch101:

    Cheer up. You should be pleased that some of them weren’t white.

    I could care less what color they are. I, unlike liberals, don’t care about the color of a person’s skin. I care about the content of their character.

    But you wouldn’t know anything about that. If liberals didn’t make everything about race, racism might actually cease to exist.

  102. KM says:

    @Gustopher :

    It changed because people who wanted a police state were waiting, eager to implement it at any provocation on the pretext of keeping everyone safe. And, because people were scared and let their fear take over, believing it was just temporary. Honestly, for the first few weeks, seeing more police and national guard in the subways was reassuring, and the American flags that appears on every subway car invoked pride. But, it never went away.

    This, so very very much. There’s a whole generation reaching adulthood who’ve never known what it’s like to not have to worry about whether the TSA will consider their shampoo too many oz. Who’ve always thought we were in a War on Terror . Who for the vast majority of their lives we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. That the government has a right to hack your iPhone and violate your privacy for Safety!!

    “Temporary” never is in the government. 15 years ago this year a terrified public signed away whatever they needed to feel secure and regretted it ever since. It didn’t get better, it didn’t make the problem go away and its fallout created some of the horrors we fight today. There’s a difference between reasonable precautions and outright fear-mongering – hopefully there’s enough objecting voices this time to help avoid the mistakes of the past.

  103. James Pearce says:

    @Jack:

    Yeah, because your opinions are far more superior. Wrong, but superior.

    Well, Jack, maybe we don’t really need to know your opinion on every unrelated topic you’ve brought up in this thread. You’re all over the place, dude.

    Calm down.

  104. Pch101 says:

    @Jack:

    “I could care less what color they are” means that you care about their color, since it is possible to have less concern than you do.

    But I know that you meant to say that you really care about them all…until the end of the trimester. After they’re born, not so much.

  105. C. Clavin says:

    @Jack:

    I could care less what color they are.

    There you go again…saying things that your actions disprove.
    By the way…are you still beating your Mexican wife?

  106. bill says:

    @grumpy realist: let me fix that for you.

    Some people don’t deserve access to civilization America.

    there, much better
    i know most of y’all are upset that your poor, downtrodden members of “the religion of peace” have once again peed in the pool and made the rest of them look bad. so what was belgiums big issue with them now- i mean aside from letting them live with them and providing a stable, peaceful environment that they could not find in the muslim run world?
    and then ask why a good chunk of Americans are done even trying-if you really got that far.

  107. Jack says:

    @Pch101:

    “I could care less what color they are” means that you care about their color, since it is possible to have less concern than you do.

    No. That is not what that statement means. No more than verbal assault means someone was assaulted. That’s the problem with liberals, they want to change the language.

    I don’t care what color the people are that are aborted, that are killed in mass shootings, that commit suicide, that are in jail, that own homes, that own vehicles, or any other stratification you would like to apply. I simply don’t care. Skin color is not something that is high on my list.

    To say that because I say that I don’t care means I care is twisted logic.

  108. Jack says:

    @C. Clavin:

    are you still beating your Mexican wife?

    Are you still humping you dog?

  109. Pch101 says:

    @Jack:

    The point remains that you have a lot of hostility for humans when those humans aren’t white.

    (No, you’re not smart enough to hide it.)

  110. Jack says:

    @Pch101: When did Muslim become a race?

  111. Pch101 says:

    @Jack

    That’s the kind of dumb remark that I would expect from the likes of you.

    If you can’t figure out that ethnicity and religious faith are often related, then you’re even more dumb than I had thought. (And trust me, my expectations for you are already exceedingly low.)

  112. Andre Kenji says:

    @Jack: Most Muslims are not White.

  113. C. Clavin says:

    @bill:
    Where are you when the white Christian terrorists strike and pee in the pool and make all you white Christians look bad? Look the other way when it’s your own kind. Which tells me you don’t care about terrorism…just brown people.

  114. bill says:

    @C. Clavin: um, where is that stuff happening?! i mean really, a bunch of white,chistians are blowing up muslims or some other religious peoples in some parallel universe or something?
    are muslims all “brown” now too?! you’re “logic” is as bad as most of your posts…..
    i’d say you shouldn’t post when angry but then you’d never post. not like most would miss your erratic ramblings on inane subjects-but hey, it’s a free country still.

  115. Pch101 says:

    It’s as if some people have never heard of Northern Ireland or Mexican drug cartels or, for that matter, of who started the last war in Iraq.

  116. grumpy realist says:

    @bill: Actually, suicide bombing as a tactic was first used by the Tamil Tigers, in Sri Lanka.

    I do think sometimes that the best thing would be to drop an asteroid on the Mideast. The Saudis have been pushing money out for YEARS getting their brand of Wahabism (i.e. “can’t play together nicely with others”) into the minds of a bunch of bored young men looking for a Cause to associate themselves with, and now they’re surprised? Israel is lurching more and more towards the right and is gradually being taken over by the Ultra-Orthodox (those who want to do nothing but sit on their hands and study Torah, while everyone else does the work and the fighting.)

    Heck, the Iranians seem the sanest of the lot.

  117. Tyrell says:

    @EddieInCA:Where is the president at in all of this ?

    ” If the President keeps making all those lines in the sand, he’s going to need a John Deere tractor !” (am radio talk show)

  118. Gustopher says:

    @Jack:

    And when the major proponents have white supremacist fellow travelers, I wonder more.

    Ahhh, yes. Because the BLM movement is so much better.

    What has BLM done to offend you so? Do they burn crosses in white folks yards? Do they hang white folks from trees?

    I am happy to accept BLM as fellow travelers. I don’t endorse them wholeheartedly, but I think they have their hearts in the right place, and speaking out against police violence and institutionalized racism is generally a good thing.

    When people have such vitriol for BLM, and advocate greater restrictions on other minorities, I really do question their motivation. I’m not saying you are a racist, but I’ve met racists who sound an awful lot like you.

    You take pinpricks and magnify them out of proportion to justify your views. Benghazi? There are car crashes every day that kill more. 30,000 people a year die from guns, that’s about 7,500 Benghazis annually in America.

    About 30,000 die in car crashes every year — where’s the outrage? You could keep people safer by reducing that number with stricter crash safety regulations than by worrying about scary Moslems.

    If Moslems were as violent as you think they are, many of us would be dead already. Just look at the number of Moslems innthis country, think about how they live for nothing more than to kill all the Christians and be martyrs with their 72 virgins… Are they all waiting for something, some secret signal that will make them set down their pens at work, pick up their machetes and behead their coworkers? Or, are you just wrong about them?

  119. Gustopher says:

    @Jack: yes, Byrd was a racist. No doubt about it, a young Robert Byrd was something of a scumbag. He got less racist as time went on, and was more or less respectable by the end.

    Are you saying David Duke has had a similar transformation?

    The bulk of the white supremacists favor Trump, and have favored Republicans for years. it’s just true.

  120. An Interested Party says:

    i know most of y’all are upset that your poor, downtrodden members of “the religion of peace” have once again peed in the pool and made the rest of them look bad.

    That’s no worse then when you type racist statements and pee in another pool…but we don’t think that makes all white people look bad…on the contrary, it just makes you look bad…

  121. ddennis says:

    @Jack:

    Hey, Jack? Take a break! You don’t have to be a prick every day of your life, you know …

  122. bill says:

    @grumpy realist: the japs did that stuff in ww2, it wasn’t actually “terrorism” as they were in a war that they were losing- ironically! but then again, terrorism only works if if get’s the kind of press that the media gives it. isis is more than likely i it’s death throes, but the “people” committing these acts are more of the “home grown” variety.
    the “bored, young men” thing is pretty accurate,- another reason to throw able bodied men off “the dole” asap. it’s hard to do in the oil sheikdoms as they need to buy the love of the populace, and these kids aren’t going to do anything like “labor” when it can be imported cheaply!

  123. Tyrell says:

    Look at this: President dances tango in Argentina while Europe mourns.