No real details yet. A gunman walked into a mall in Utah and opened fire. Five people - so far - are dead with many others wounded. The shooter was killed.
SALT LAKE CITY - A gunman entered a shopping mall and began randomly opening fire on customers Monday night, killing five people and injuring many others before he was killed, police said.
More than three hours later, police were searching stores for shocked shoppers and employees who were hunkered down awaiting a safe escort from the Trolley Square mall.
(KUTV)SALT LAKE CITY A man in a trench coat pulled a 12 gauge shotgun and opened fire at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square on Monday evening, killing five people and injuring several more, police say. The gunman also died in the shooting.
Witnesses report that as many as 20 shots were fired inside the shopping center, which houses many stores and restaurants that are popular with families. (Official statement from Trolley Square)
"Bang, bang, bang, stop… bang, bang, stop." said one witness, who described a continuous barrage of gunshots inside the mall. "They were reloading… you could smell the gun powder."
Matt Lund, whose wife manages a clothing store, said he saw a woman's body face-down at the entrance to Pottery Barn Kids. He locked himself and four others inside a storage room for about 40 minutes, isolated but still able to hear the violence.
"We heard them say, 'Police! Drop your weapon!' Then we heard shotgun fire. Then there was a barrage of gunfire," Lund, 44, said. "It was hard to believe."
Yeah, I know, this isn't exactly Nostradamus-like powers. But you have to take credit when you can. Amanda Marcotte has resigned from the John "I own Both Americas" Edwards campaign.
"Blogmaster" Amanda Marcotte has resigned from the Edwards' campaign. Of course, it's all the right wing's and Catholic activists' fault (a blame-avoidance strategy I highlighted on The O'Reilly Factor tonight before news of Marcotte's resignation broke). Writes Marcotte this evening:
I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right. Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills, and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics (I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.
In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to “silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.
Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they accepted.
The Associated Press has a typically fair and balanced–not–headline:
Lovely how she claims complete victimhood here, isn't it? If she did not think she had done something unacceptable in the first place, why did she try so hard to make offending posts disappear?
Bob Owens hammers a post over at HuffnPost. It ain't pretty. But then, the author of the HuffnPost piece has one of the most severe cases I have ever seen.
Some of the deep thoughts of HuffPuffer Cenk Uygur, regarding the Iran weapons presentation released over the weekend:
Then the officials made the highly dubious claim that 170 US troops have been killed by these so-called Iranian weapons. Really? They CSI'ed the scene of all the troop deaths and found forensic evidence linking these weapons to exactly 170 deaths. I call bulls**t [edited]. During the demonstration they talked at length about these cylindrical pipes that shoot molten hot balls of copper through the armor of US vehicles. In all of the gruesome stories of our men and women dying in Iraq, I have never heard of this weapon before or any deaths being attributed to it.
Defensetech.org wrote about them being used by insurgents in Iraq on Aug 3, 2005. Other news organizations have written dozens of articles about them as well.
Perhaps Uygur has never heard of these weapons, but they're hardly new:
Explosively formed projectiles (EFP) have been used to defeat armored vehicles for more than 30 years.
What does the UK Telegraph have to say about EFPs? Quite a bit in this June 25, 2006 article alone:
The first picture of an Iraqi insurgent mine, believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers, has been obtained by The Sunday Telegraph. The device, which has been used by insurgents throughout Iraq since May last year, fires an armour-piercing "explosively formed projectile" or EFP, also known as a shaped charge, directly into an armoured vehicle, inflicting death or terrible injuries on troops inside.
The weapon can penetrate the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.
The device, described as an "off-route mine", was seized by British troops in Iraq earlier this year and brought back to Britain where it underwent detailed examination by scientists at Fort Halstead, the Government's forensic explosive laboratory in Kent.
The Ministry of Defence has attempted to play down the effectiveness of the weapons, suggesting that they are "crude" or "improvised" explosive devices which have killed British troops more out of luck than judgement.
However, this newspaper understands that Government scientists have established that the mines are precision-made weapons which have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.
Cenk appears not to know all that much, period. Wikipedia has this. My son has told me - repeatedly - about this weapon and I and a lot of others have posted about it. The media has also repeatedly issued articles about it. But, hey, like I said. Cenk has the worst case I've seen in a while.
The Police will reunite for a tour this year. They have confirmed all the rumors that have been running rampant for a while now.
The three-member band — British frontman Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland — will kick off their tour in Vancouver on May 28, playing across North American before heading to Europe later in the year.
Additional dates in Mexico, South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are expected to be added to the schedule.
The Police, one of the biggest groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s thanks to songs such as "Roxanne" and "Every Breath You Take" had performed at Sunday's Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
Sting, speaking after a rehearsal session to announce the comeback at Hollywood's famous Whisky A Go-Go club on Monday, said the idea of a reunion came to him late last year.
"I woke up one morning about three months ago and it was like a light bulb went off in my head 'I'm going to call Andy and Stewart,'" Sting said.
"What's happening is sort of very healing."
I'd be willing to bet this will be a very, very well attended tour. It's been a long, long time and they still have an enormous number of fans. Why, it will be like magic.
Pull the American troops out so the Iraqis can kill all the al Qaeda. Along, presumably, with every last man woman and child in the Sunni community. You actually have to look at the video Allah has posted to get the full, jaw-dropping insanity of Murtha at his worst. Oh, and John Howard, Jacko says screw you.
From the mind that brought you an over-the-horizon redeployment to Okinawa comes this latest exercise in magic and wonder, in which a Sunni population threatened with ethnic cleansing chooses to fight the Sunni jihadis in its midst instead of coopting them for battle against the Shiites. Or am I misunderstanding Murtha and what he really means is that the Shiites themselves will “get rid” of Al Qaeda in the course of massacring pretty much every last Sunni in the country?
Isn't it time for Murtha to take a flight somewhere?
It's interesting to watch the true believers flock here to try to "tip" me (that is downright funny, incidentally) or shout me down (and banned permanently) over the global warming issues I have been posting about. Their particular faith based initiative, that man has to be the cause of all that is bad in the world, is interesting to watch. So many of them are so very, very earnest. Others are mindlessly abusive. And so very many of them do not understand how badly they are being played.
The economic changes they are demanding of the West will strangle the economies of the countries they live in. China will happily move right on in and take up the opportunities that the West turn their backs on. (All the while happily echoing the true believer's words that it is all the West's fault and that the West must cut their collective economic throats to mitigate the problems. China, meanwhile will build more and more coal-fired power plants and demand per capita pollution rights).
They really don't even see the way the elitists - who have theirs, thank you very much - will cheerfully sacrifice the little people's futures. The true believers don't see that they, despite their beliefs, are very, very little indeed to those elites. The Al Gores of the world will fly in their private jets to lecture on carbon neutrality that they have absolutely no intention of living with themselves. They will buy the modern day indulgences that their faithful true believers force on the world. The true believers, meanwhile, will never be able to afford those indulgences.
Jay Reding puts it this way:
It’s typical hypocrisy — the very rich can afford to buy “carbon credits” while those of us for whom money is an object cannot afford to do the same. For all the talk about how the left abhors social stratification and pitting the haves and against the have-nots, that is precisely what this sort of thing does. It allows Al Gore to emit tons of pollutants directly into the upper atmosphere while preaching his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia message to the masses, then buy his way to a clean eco-conscience afterwards. Meanwhile, the rest of us are told that we have to make dramatic sacrifices to “save the planet.”
John Edwards is fond of saying that there are "Two Americas" while happily living in the largest house in the entire county. (It would be snarky to point out that Edwards owns a good portion of both of the Americas, wouldn't it? Good.) Well, there certainly will be if the true believers get their way. There will be the America (Or whatever other Western nation you care to name) that the elites live in. They'll buy carbon credits whenever they choose and will not alter their lifestyles one iota. Then there will be the America the rest of the people, including the vast majority of the true believers, live in.
And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Democrats. Jenny the donkey is playing extremely hard to get. She is refusing to date or to let people anywhere near her. She's driving the humans crazy.
Varricchio and Mary Gaeta decided to buy Jenny two months ago because they'd heard that having a donkey around the farm would ward off predators like fox, coyotes and raccoons that have been snatching 50 to 60 hens a year.
But this donkey had a mind of her own, fleeing the corral on Jan. 18, a couple of weeks after arriving at the farm, called "Mary's Gardens."
Varricchio said his son shot Jenny with a tranquilizer dart, but she ran away into the woods. Apparently it had no effect, because she was up and about when they located her two hours later, he said.
They tried putting tranquilizers in her food. That didn't work, either.
The latest effort, on Sunday, involved a horse whisperer.
"Some people call me a horse whisperer; some people call me an equine psychologist," Karina Lewis, of Benton, told the Morning Sentinel newspaper. "I like to call myself a problem-solver of people and horses." (Ed Note: They have donkey whisperers now?)
But she couldn't figure out Jenny, who she thinks is part donkey, part horse. Lewis and her partner rode horses in an attempt to corral Jenny. The donkey came close, but kept running away.
Note that the tranquilizers do not work at all on this donkey. Longtime readers will, of course, see the nefarious paws of the Animal Uprising™ in all of this. We here in the Crabitat have strong suspicions that Jenny has been genetically engineered to be tranquilizer-proof, similar to the Taser Proof pigs and cows the animals have been using. Now, when they get an animal that is immune to Tasers AND tranquilizers, all we'll have left is golf clubs.
The devil being in the details, of course. It appears as if a working agreement may have been reached to start disarming North Korea's nuclear weaponry.
BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. envoy to talks on North Korea's nuclear program said Tuesday that negotiators reached a tentative agreement on initial steps for the communist nation's disarmament.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the agreement outlined specific commitments for North Korea and would set up working groups to implement those goals to begin meeting in about a month. He declined to give other details.
The U.S. envoy to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, emerged in the early morning hours of Tuesday looking weary after a marathon 16-hour negotiating session and announced that a tentative deal had been struck at the latest round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program.
The draft agreement contained commitments on disarmament and energy assistance along with "initial actions" to be taken by certain deadlines, Hill said. Working groups will be set up, hopefully in a month, laying out a framework for dealing with regional tensions, he added.
He declined to give further details of the draft.
The agreement could herald the first step toward disarmament since the talks began in 2003. The process reached its lowest point in October when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test explosion, alarming the world and triggering U.N. sanctions.
In the last few days, the talks had appeared to be on the verge of foundering and envoys made clear that their frustration was increasing and their patience growing thin. The current round was to conclude on Monday but as they progressed toward a deal, negotiators extended it late into the night and then into the early hours of Tuesday.
Now they will have to make sure that the North Koreans actually carry through with their promises and not do what they did with the Carter negotiated deal while Clinton was in office. Which was basically take all the aid they could get and carry on their weapons work anyway.
The Animal Uprising™ models itself after a number of human enterprises whenever mimicking those organizations helps their nefarious cause. So certain human guerrilla movements provide models for the gorilla movements, so to speak. Also the use of real kangaroos to hold kangaroo courts over moose informants. They also use many of the techniques that the human mafia has perfected over the years. That's where they learned how to dispose of stool pigeons. Even if the stool pigeon is an ape.
SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. - A foot fished from a landfill was not the human variety. Cleaned and X-rayed, the appendage was determined to be apelike, authorities said Monday.
The discovery Saturday prompted a search through 127 tons of garbage, which ended following the medical analysis of the foot at the state forensics lab in Richmond.
"The good news is that we don't have a homicide," Spotsylvania Sheriff Howard Smith said.
About 35 fire, rescue and sheriff's employees had been looking through the garbage for about an hour Monday and all day Sunday.
No, you have an apeocide. And the animals disposed of him in the landfill.
The top American military officer, General Peter Pace, declined Monday to endorse the conclusions of U.S. military officers in Baghdad, who told reporters on Sunday that the Iranian government is providing high-powered roadside bombs to insurgents in Iraq. General Pace made his comments during a visit to Australia, and VOA's Al Pessin reports from Canberra.
General Pace said he was not aware of the Baghdad briefing, and that he could not, from his own knowledge, repeat the assertion made there that the elite Quds brigade of Iran's Republican Guard force is providing bomb-making kits to Iraqi Shiite insurgents.
"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran. What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se [specifically], knows about this," he said. "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."
Clue for the reporter or the headline writer here. Failing to confirm a report because you do not have personal knowledge of the same facts is not - in any way, shape or form - "disputing" the report. Pace is saying he does not have personal knowledge of the facts used to draw that conclusion. He is strongly confirming that the weapons are coming from Iran, however, isn't he? What he is declining to confirm is only the conclusion that the Iranian government knows about the matter. But Ahmadinejad refused to deny that Iran was involved just today to Diane Sawyer, didn't he? The AP is playing up other officials who are denying it, but Ahmadinejad refused to answer a direct question from Sawyer.
Clue for the reporter or the headline writer here. Failing to confirm a report because you do not have personal knowledge of the same facts is not - in any way, shape or form - "disputing" the report. Pace is saying he does not have personal knowledge of the facts used to draw that conclusion. He is strongly confirming that the weapons are coming from Iran, however, isn't he? What he is declining to confirm is only the conclusion that the Iranian government knows about the matter. But Ahmadinejad refused to deny that Iran was involved just today to Diane Sawyer, didn't he? The AP is playing up other officials who are denying it, but Ahmadinejad refused to answer a direct question from Sawyer.
Jules Crittenden has a post up about Bruce Crandall finally being awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor, forty years after the battle in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam that was written about in the book We were soldiers once…And Young by Lt. General Harold Moore.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2007 – More than 40 years after demonstrating the heroism immortalized in the bestselling book and movie, “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” retired Army Lt. Col. Bruce P. Crandall will receive the Medal of Honor, the White House announced yesterday.
Crandall will receive the nation’s highest military award for actions during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in November 1965. The battle, at Landing Zone X-Ray near the Ia Drang River, was the first major ground battle of the war.
During the incident, Crandall, then a major and commander of Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), dodged intense enemy fire as he repeatedly flew to a landing zone to rescue and resupply besieged 1st Cavalry Division ground troops.
The narrative for Crandall’s Medal of Honor credits him with displaying leadership by example and fearless courage as he “voluntarily flew his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire on flight after flight, delivering desperately needed ammunition, water and medical supplies into one of the most hotly contested landing zones of the war.”
Crandall led a flight of 16 helicopters in support of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, which was out of water, running dangerously low on ammunition and engaging about two regiments of North Vietnamese army infantry “determined to overrun and annihilate them,” the narrative reads.
When the enemy fire got so intense that the infantry commander closed the landing zone, Crandall volunteered for the mission. He and his wingman, Maj. Ed Freeman, are credited with saving more than 70 wounded soldiers by transporting them to safety.
Freeman received the Medal of Honor for his efforts in July 2001.
Several books about the battle recognize Crandall and Freeman’s contributions. Among the most well-known is the bestselling “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” coauthored by Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, commanding officer of infantry units in X-Ray, and Joseph Galloway, a combat reporter who was in the landing zone during the battle.
I'm actually surprised he did not receive one earlier than this. He saved a lot of soldiers that day.
The words of Allan Babcock of Redfield, New York. He was quoted in a report from the Associated Press about the as yet unofficial snowfall total of 12 feet, 2 inches in Redfield. With more on the way.
Unofficially, the squalls have dumped 12 feet, 2 inches of snow at Redfield. If accurate, that would break the state record of 10 feet, 7 inches of snow that fell in nearby Montague over seven days ending Jan. 1, 2002, said Steve McLaughlin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Buffalo.
A weather service representative was being sent to Redfield on Monday to verify the total.
Residents of this hardy upstate New York village seem unfazed. Redfield, whose economy thrives on snowmobilers and cross-country skiers, receives an annual average of 270 inches — more than 22 feet.
"It's snow. We get a lot of it. So what?" said Allan Babcock, a lifelong resident who owns Shar's Country Diner, a popular eatery in this village of 650 people.
The whole Tug Hill region (which is where Redfield is) has a booming tourism business going catering to snowmobilers. And they really are used to a lot of snow. This is still an awful lot in a very short time, though.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln was born on this date 198 years ago. The portrait was taken four days before his assassination. The Library of Congress has a large collection of Lincoln photographs and papers. You can spend an awful lot of time there browsing. Trust me.
Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, takes a look at the electoral chances of two dark horse candidates for the presidency, Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. Both men appear to be waiting in the wings for a possible run at the nomination, with ardent advocates among the party faithful.
Everyone and their grandmother, it seems, has decided to run for president in 2008. But conspicuous by their hesitation are Democrat Al Gore and Republican Newt Gingrich, who are holding back to see if they really do have a chance.
They should stop holding their breath. Their time in the limelight, and their opportunity for national office, has come and gone.
Simply put, neither man is very well thought of among the mass of voters who decide the November election. And, not to put too fine a point on it, Americans don't turn over the Oval Office to people they don't like.
Former Vice President Gore and former House Speaker Gingrich both have strong supporters among the core activists who carry great sway in their respective parties' nomination processes.
But the reality is that neither man has a serious chance to be elected president of the United States because they lack sufficient appeal outside those core activists.
And the idea that they can turn that view around is just not credible.
It is much easier for a politician to make a good impression on voters the first time than it is for someone who is very well known - as are both men — to convince people that their initial negative impression is wrong.
There have been repeated stories in the media of activists urging Gore to run, not quite as many talking about Gingrich. But the numbers that Quinnipiac has show an insurmountable obstacle for either man.
Hallelujah! Or whatever the opposite of hallelujah is. Because in New Jersey, that's what is happening.
"I was making a pot of coffee, and I turned around and there he was in the window looking at me," said Grossman. "For a minute I didn't realize there was a glass between him and me."
The scream Grossman let out was loud enough to startle the wandering bear, who turned tail and scurried some 40 feet up a tree.
More than 50 neighbors gathered to watch and the beast soon grew tired. As the bear gave a lazy yawn, the crowd cooed loudly in appreciation.
"He's really kind of cute," said Joanne Penaluna.
The bear remained wedged in a web of branches until it was shot with a tranquilizer dart Sunday. The bear hung on for 10 minutes before dropping neatly into a taut net set up below.
The bear was a scout for the Animal Uprising™, of course. That's why he was looking in the kitchen window. He was scoping out the available food inside. Which was the lady making coffee, incidentally.
Official statement from Trolley Square)
News | Gaius Monday, 12 February , 2007 | 
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