I don't want to get this thread filled with bomb-making stuff and locked, BUT...

[CC27]

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Robb Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Wed May-05-10 08:40 AM
Original message
I don't want to get this thread filled with bomb-making stuff and locked, BUT....
   
...This "oh, the Times Square bomb was never dangerous" meme is absurd. I know it makes everyone feel smug and superior that they could've built a better bomb, but it's not particularly realistic.

"It didn't explode, so Faisal Shahzad is teh stupid!11!"
- It didn't go off as planned. Great. Half the bombs set in history that weren't stamped "US Military" on them didn't. Ask anyone who's lived around bombers, Peshawar, Bagdhad, Bogota, or Belfast.

"OMG he used the wrong kind of fertilizer!!11"
- We have no idea why the fertilizer was in there. There are lots of non-explosive reasons to have it around, besides growing potatoes.

"Propane? I saw on Mythbusters it won't blow up! Hank Hilll!!!"
- Not if you shoot at it, probably not. But put it next to a big enough incendiary explosion and you've got something.

"Pff. It said he used firecrackers. Firecrackers can't hurt me."
- Yes, he did. According to FBI deputy director John Pistole he put more than 110 kg of M-80s into a pressure cooker. That's 250 pounds of explosives, in 'Murkin dollars. That's a nice big bomb.

Yes, we can pooh-pooh this guy in retrospect. But he still drove a bomb into a busy street and tried to set it off. Somewhere between the timing device and the pressure cooker he mucked it up, but that's no reason to be self-congratulatory here.

We got lucky, nothing more, nothing less

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8276264

[littlelamb]

Thank God people were observant or a lot of lives would have been lost

[debk]

Wow....someone on the DUmp with some sensible logic!!


We were having this discussion last night in my house. Has anyone thought that if it hadn't for the man who called 911, this might have had a different result?

Just because those in charge, said it was a "defective" bomb....does that mean it really was? or did the bomb squad guys just get to it before it went "boom!"? Do we really think they are tellling the truth? or perhaps those in charge, haven't told the public that it was a viable bomb so as to not "strike terror in the streets"?

Maybe I've just become so suspicious of this administration's motives that I see deception behind everything....but this whole thing has made me go "hmmmmmm..........."

[Mike220]

Is that pizza I smell?

[tuolumnejim]

Statistical (1000+ posts)      Wed May-05-10 09:46 AM
Response to Reply #14
16. LOL. Obey the law. Nobody obeys the tax code in Greece. I mean NOBODY!
 Edited on Wed May-05-10 09:59 AM by Statistical
I am not talking about legally avoided taxes. We are talking about simply NOT PAYING taxes and giving the govt the middle finger.

Greece income tax system is based on stated income. Works about as good as those "liar loans" for mortgages. So if you make $50,000 a year you simply state your income is $25,000 or $20,000 or $12,000. The burden of proof is on the govt and tax enforcement is notoriously lax. Everyone (I mean 100% of the population) cheats. The only question is by how much. Some cheat 20% some cheat 90%. Roughly 30% of Greece economy is "shadow economy" to avoid VAT. To put that into perspective about 4% of US economy is "shadow economy" and that is more because it involves illegal stuff rather than any attempt to avoid taxation.

Even if Greece debt was magically gone it has an 8.5% direct deficit (spending excluding interest > revenue by 8.5%).

So even if the debt fairy erased all Greece past mistakes and their national debt went to $0.00 they WOULD STILL need to either
a) cut spending 8.5%
b) raise taxes 8.5%
c) some combination of raising taxes & cutting spending by 8.5%

You can't keep spending other peoples money forever.

This guy is so getting his pizza for that. 

[Randy]

242 lbs of M-80's stuffed into a pressure cooker makes for a goodly (OK big actually) sized pipe bomb. Add the gas and propane and he had a pipe bomb with a big fireball planned. People would have died. If he'd used the right fertilizer he could have taken down some facades and made a decent sized crater. Either way if it had gone BOOM he'd have made his point.

[The Village Idiot]

This guy is so getting his pizza for that. 

OMG... he certainly will if they notice him amid the clutter.

[jukin]

Having incompetence, and shear dumb luck is no way to run a Home Defense Department.

Janet "Bruno" Incompetano, unavailable for comment.

[dandi]

bridgit  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Wed May-05-10 11:50 AM

28. "unexploded ordnance"? I know I feel better when its laying in green grass, however...
   
Whether here whether there whether boom-boom or no it represents the kinds of ideas that tend to retain their inertia

Fertilizer? Farm peeps I know like chicken-shit http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa205 cause its high in nitrogen from pecking up all that seed off the ground like scratch that someone tossed there so maybe RW chicken-hawk chicken-shit is the very best cause GOP chicken-hawk chicken-shits peck the earth like no others; but I have to mention that when Sam Noble is able to tie the price of nitrogen to natural gas

http://www.noble.org/Ag/Soils/NitrogenPrices/Index.htm You know right there there's more going on than the smell and the fact that high nitrous chicken-shit can blow the pit right out of your cherry

Propane? No, no, no...propane go BOOM! It says right there on the can, see?


Firecrackers? Wellll, so go buy one, hold it tight in the palm of your hand and light the fuse, but basically? We'll talk more when you're feeling a bit better

We got lucky no doubt. In a world where some contend that there are no accidents: does 'luck' favor the prepared? You bet it does!

And it has been all day yesterday the bush/Cheney RW/GOP neocon Chicken-Hawk Chicken-Shit-Talking Hate & Birthers have continued to assert the folly of preparation as memorized in g.w. bush's and his BS 'no fly watch list' that failed to catch this guy due to a foolish, RW update parameter that equaled little more than window dressing

Janet Napolitano held in hand (And no! Its not Limbaugh's "This guy was a registered Democrat! He was a Democrat!!!" or Sullivan's Beck's or Palin's business its America's business) a list far more actionable that *caused* the airlines to update his already suspected-ass and FBI tracked/tracking activities *onto* that plane *in time* to see him smiling from a window seat (Dubai would have sent him back anyway but clearly American cohesion is not the GOP tactic - it is calamity, chaos & unfocused dis-union). A list that caused a further stripping away of any RW claim to national security as represented in all things GOP and the bush/Cheney/Halliburton admin more specifically

The GOP will have to answer for this one themselves. Dems are busy identifying the institutionalized dross of the bush/Cheney-GOP and the ASAP capture of all these scampering spiders & worms these BS RW chicken-hawk chicken-shits have dumped all over the floor

A no-prize to anyone who can decipher that mish-mash of teh crazee.

[tuolumnejim]

A no-prize to anyone who can decipher that mish-mash of teh crazee.

Did you like how she mistook a can of white gas for propane? 

[DumbAss Tanker]

A no-prize to anyone who can decipher that mish-mash of teh crazee.

Sounds like vesta has a mole over there!

 

[AllosaursRus]

Did you like how she mistook a can of white gas for propane? 

Well they did pull 2 five gallon tanks of propane outa the back. Don't know, but she might have been talking about them.

[Airwolf]

One would have thought they could have at least got Bill Ayers to help them make a decent bomb or give a good lesson plan on how to build one over at the DUmp.