‘Emotional Abuse and Cruel Punishment’: Woman Reported Lesbian Couple in 2013

 

More background on the story of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, the lesbian couple who adopted six black children and died when they drove their SUV off an oceanside cliff in California last week:

A woman said Tuesday that she told Oregon child welfare officials in 2013 that Jennifer and Sarah Hart — who plunged off a California cliff with their children last month in an SUV — had been depriving the kids of food as punishment.
In a statement provided to the Associated Press, Alexandra Argyropoulos, a former friend of the Harts, said she “witnessed what I felt to be controlling emotional abuse and cruel punishment” toward the six children.
Argyropoulos said she was told the children had been interviewed by officials but there was nothing more the Oregon Department of Human Services could do because there was not enough evidence to make a case. . . .
Authorities have said social service officials in Oregon contacted the West Linn Police Department about the family in 2013 while they were living in the area. Police referred media questions to the Oregon Department of Human Services, which cited privacy laws in refusing to say whether the agency was involved.
After reporting her concerns in 2013, Argyropoulos said, she was told the Hart children had been interviewed by officials from the Oregon department; it was apparent that each child had been coached by their mothers on what to say; and nothing more could be done.
Argyropoulos said she was unaware of a 2011 domestic assault conviction against Sarah Hart. She said the couple broke off contact with her after she went to Oregon officials.
“My heart is completely broken. The current system failed to protect these children from their abusers,” Argyropoulos said. . . .
On Sunday, authorities disclosed that data from the vehicle’s software suggested the crash was deliberate. They said the SUV had stopped at a pull-off area before speeding straight off the cliff.

All six children were adopted from Texas. Three were found near the crash site, and the other three are missing and presumed dead. Jennifer and Sarah Hart had a history of abuse complaints:

The parents of Devonte Hart removed him and his five siblings from public schools in Minnesota the day after one of his mothers resolved a child-abuse court case, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.
Sarah Hart reached a probation agreement April 14, 2011, a week after she pleaded guilty to physically abusing one of her daughters, who was then 6 years old.
The next day, all six of their adopted children were taken out of public schools in Alexandria, where the family lived before moving to Oregon. They would never attend public school again. . . .
An Alexandria police report obtained Tuesday also shows a different daughter told authorities in 2008 one of her mothers bruised her with a belt.
Asked by police about the beating, Jennifer and Sarah Hart said the girl had fallen down the stairs days before, the report shows. . . .
All eight Harts left their home in Woodland, Washington, sometime after no one answered the door March 23 for a visit by child protective services, according to neighbors and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. . . .
Court records in Minnesota show Sarah Hart in 2011 received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and a year of probation after daughter Abigail arrived at Woodland Elementary School with bruises on her stomach and back.
The girl’s teacher contacted social services and police.
Abigail told authorities her mother struck her repeatedly with a closed fist, submerged her head under cold water and withheld meals from her for misbehaving, according to report by police in Alexandria, a small town northwest of Minneapolis where the family lived.
Though the girl said Jennifer Hart was the one who hit her, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty April 7, 2011, to misdemeanor domestic assault.
Previously, Abigail’s older sister Hannah said in September 2008 it was her mother Jennifer who struck her with a belt, causing a bruise on her arm that attracted notice — and a call to authorities, according to the newly obtained Alexandria police report.
In an interview, both mothers told a police sergeant and social worker they had no idea how Hannah, who was 6 at the time, got the bruise but said she had recently fallen down the stairs in their home. . . .
Records show the Hart children enrolled in Alexandria public schools Sept. 8, 2009 — seven months after Jennifer and Sarah finalized their adoption of siblings Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra in Harris County, Texas. The women had previously adopted siblings Markis, Abigail and Hannah from Colorado County, Texas, in September 2006. . . .
Bruce and Dana DeKalb, who lived next door in Washington, said Devonte had come to their home a dozen times to ask for food, saying his parents had withheld it as a form of punishment.
The DeKalbs also recounted that three months after the family moved into a home on 2 acres last May, one of the girls rang their doorbell in the middle of the night.
The girl, who they later learned was Hannah, “was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her,” Bruce DeKalb said. “She said that they were abusing her.”

This was an avoidable tragedy. Did political correctness discourage authorities from intervening to save the lives of these children?




 

A Jihad in Minnesota

Tnuza Jamal Hassan is charged with first-degree arson.

An Islamic terrorist has attacked a university in St. Paul:

A former St. Catherine University student charged with setting fires on the college’s St. Paul campus told police she did it because she’d “been reading about the U.S. military destroying schools in Iraq or Afghanistan and she felt that she should do exactly the same thing,” according to a criminal complaint filed Friday.
“You guys are lucky that l don’t know how to build a bomb because l would have done that,” Tnuza Jamal Hassan, 19, of Minneapolis allegedly told investigators after being arrested Wednesday afternoon in a campus dorm lounge.
Hassan was charged in Ramsey County District Court with a single count of first-degree arson. No injuries or major damage were reported in the fires, all of which occurred in the middle of the day Wednesday.
Ramsey County prosecutor Margaret Galvin said in court Friday that Hassan had “substantial ties” to the local community and added that authorities were investigating whether she had any international ties as well.
A spokesman for the FBI’s Minneapolis office said he could not comment on whether federal authorities also were investigating the incident. A call to the United States District Attorney’s Minnesota Office to inquire about whether Hassan might face federal charges was not returned. . . .
Hassan, appearing in court in a black and white hijab, gave only brief, one-word answers to questions from the judge.
According to the complaint, she told investigators she set six fires on the private Catholic university’s campus, though university and fire officials said there were eight.
The most serious fire started in Saint Mary Hall, a residential dormitory that also houses a day care. Police said there were 33 children and eight adults in the building when a chair was set ablaze — triggering the building’s sprinkler system, which prevented it from spreading. . . .
Hassan told investigators she was a student at St. Catherine but dropped out last fall because she and her family were planning a vacation to Ethiopia.
She told them, according to the complaint, that “her fire-starting was not as successful as she had wanted,” and “she wanted the school to burn to the ground and that her intent was to hurt people.
“Hassan said this was the same thing that happened in ‘Muslim land’ and nobody cares if they get hurt, so why not do this?” the complaint added.
Hassan told investigators she wrote a letter to her roommates about “bringing back the Caliphate,” an Islamic state. The letter scared Hassan’s roommates, who turned it over to campus security, the complaint stated.

This is radical Islamic terrorism. We ought to ask why St. Catherine University, an allegedly Catholic school, has failed at its institutional mission. Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch asks other questions:

Where did Tnuza Hassan learn Islam? Where does she attend mosque? What does that mosque teach about violence against unbelievers? Is that mosque being investigated? Why not? Is it being assumed that Tnuza J. Hassan was “radicalized on the Internet”? If so, why was the supposedly twisted, hijacked, violent version of Islam she supposedly learned on the Internet so easily able to overcome the supposedly peaceful, benign, tolerant version that everyone assumes that she learned at home and at her local mosque?

(Via Memeorandum, with more at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Powerline and Gateway Pundit.)



 

Anti-White Radicals Terrorize Republican Students at the University of Minnesota

‘Antifa’ radicals terrorized Madison Faupel at the University of Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the least “diverse” states in America — 85% white, with single-digit percentages of minorities: 6% black, 5% Hispanic, 4% Asian. You probably wouldn’t expect too much from Minnesota in the way of militant racial activism, except that it’s a bastion of liberalism. Both of the state’s U.S. Senators are Democrats, as are six of its eight U.S. Representatives. Bernie Sanders won the Democrat caucuses in Minnesota last year, and Hillary Clinton won the state in November. In the Trump Age, therefore, racial strife is to be expected in Minnesota and especially in the identity-politics bastions of academia:

[Madison Faupel is] the president of the University of Minnesota’s College Republican chapter. Her group sparked controversy last fall when it reserved space and painted a mural on the Washington Avenue Bridge to promote their student group.
Her group settled on three slogans: “College Republicans, The Best Party on Campus,” “Trump Pence 2016,” and “Build the Wall.”
Within an hour, the panels had been vandalized, and protesters had surrounded the panels. Some of the vandalism included the following statements: “STOP WHITE SUPREMACY NOW” and “Hate Speech is not Free Speech.” . . .
As the protests grew, so did violent threats against the College Republicans and Madison, in particular. The group’s members were scared for their safety on campus. Madison and the rest of the executive board didn’t go out at night and tried to never be alone on campus. Many used campus security to walk home. . . .
The University of Minnesota did call for a “Campus Climate” conversation about the recent controversial events, but this, too, devolved into chaos. About 15 minutes into the event, more than 200 protesters came into the room chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, racism has got to go,” surrounding those students who had come to the event to engage in a civil conversation.
The protesters took over the stage as the student body president stood at the front of the room with her fist in the air, leading the chants. Students took turns lamenting how their feelings were hurt, how writing “Build the Wall” amounts to hate speech, and how they want to be included in conversations on campus. At the end of the event, one of the protesters stood on stage and asked the crowd if any College Republicans had attended. Madison stood up and raised her hand.
When the “event” ended, she was swarmed by the mob. “They were completely surrounding me; I was unable to leave the event. They were screaming in my face calling me racist, xenophobic, and other unmentionable names. They were aggressive, and I just wanted to get out safely,” said Madison. “One girl was holding another girl back saying, ‘She’s not worth it. Don’t hit her.’” . . .
Members of the loosely organized far-left militant group Antifa targeted [Faupel] for promoting capitalism on campus, posting online her address, phone number, parent’s address, parent’s phone number, a photo of her, and a reference to her as an alt-right Nazi.
“I endured a lot of violent threats throughout the year, but Antifa’s attack was the scariest,” said Madison. “When I was out in public I received messages that they were watching me, that they would continue to come after me until I stopped my ‘leadership of bigotry and hate,’ and that they were ‘on my ass.’ I was very scared to be home because they knew where I lived, but I was also scared to be in public because they claimed they were watching me.”

The university’s student body president, Abeer Syedah, is a self-described “brown queer angry feminist” who hates capitalism, Christianity, heterosexuals and white people, not necessarily in that order.

Abeer Syedah promotes hatred at University of Minnesota.

When an ISIS jihadi attacked a gay nightclub in Orlando, Syedah took to Facebook and falsely blamed her enemies for the atrocity:

“[The LGBT] community is the target of horrific hate crime, a massacre, in a space that’s supposed to be safe for the queer community during a month that’s supposed to be about the queer community, in a society that remains violently cisnormative and heteronormative . . .
“[The Muslim] community exhausted spending this month practicing patience and gratitude, is prepared to defend their peaceful lifestyle and beliefs in justice, love, and equality, from the scapegoating and fearmongering of a largely Christian-normative and white supremacist base that pretends it’s not hateful while picking the xenophobic, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, ableist, queerphobic, Islamophobic, whiny bully of the decade as their desired nominee for President.

Did anyone at the University of Minnesota discipline Abeer Syedah for these hateful, libelous accusations? Of course not. The university’s administrators are all Democrats who support her radical agenda.

Abeer Syedah describes herself as a ‘brown queer angry feminist.’

The totalitarians in charge of our nation’s universities promote “diversity,” as long as it doesn’t include Republicans. As Matt Lewis’s article makes clear, the Democrat faculty and administration at the University of Minnesota encouraged the radical hate-mongers who terrorized Madison Faupel and other Republican students.

Maybe the taxpayers in Minnesota are OK with funding universities that have become indoctrination centers for extremism. Or maybe Minnesota taxpayers have never been asked to contemplate the consequences of paying professors to teach hatred in the name of “social justice.”



 

 

Sex Trouble: Feminist Androgyny and the Polymorphous Perversity of ‘Queer’

@KayleeSeranada‘s future homecoming reunion?

“Genderqueer, as it is, refers to a person who uses various gendered techniques from across partitions in order to either express themselves, prove a political point, or both.
“A genderqueer person can have any gender identity, but the mixture and way of combining of that, their gender performance/expression, and their bodily sex is queered to the point that the only way they can be definitely described is by saying that they’re ‘not cisheteronormative.'”

— Kaylee Jakubowski, “Too Queer for Your Binary: Everything You Need to Know and More About Non-Binary Identities,” EverydayFeminism.com, March 4

Have I ever mentioned that, while feminists are usually both crazy and wrong, sometimes the crazy ones — the man-hating radical lesbians — are surprisingly right? Indeed, in 21st-century feminism, it seems the only feminists who are ever really right about anything are “extremists” like Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, Cathy Brennan and Julie Bindel.

For example, Bindel was one of the first and most vocal feminists to raise the alarm about the Asian rape gangs whose prostitution rings targeted troubled girls from Britain’s white underclass. (See “The Rotherham Horror,”  Aug. 27). Meanwhile, radicals like Raymond and Jeffreys have long criticized the trend toward the medicalization and commodification of womanhood, whereby our society treats female reproductive capacity as either a market commodity or a disease in need of treatment. Wealthy gay men buying eggs and hiring surrogate rent-a-wombs to make designer babies? The radicals are dubious. IVF, cloning and other “Frankenbaby” experiments? The radicals are skeptical.

Given a choice between two groups of crazy man-haters, my preference is always for the honest lesbian radicals over the intellectually bankrupt liars of so-called “pro-sex” liberal feminists.

It’s the difference between Nikita Kruschev and Alger Hiss.

OK, so now it is time to meet Kaylee Jakubowski, gender freak:

Kaylee Jakubowski is a Contributing Writer and Online Community Manager for Everyday Feminism. She is a trans, queer feminist who prides herself on being an educator on issues of queerness and gender. She is in her last semester at Winona State University in Minnesota pursuing a B.S. in Statistics with a minor in Women’s & Gender Studies. She is also in the process of writing a book that will formally organize and explain gender philosophies within the trans community.

Which is to say, “she” either (a) has a penis or (b) once had a penis, but it is probably a transphobic microaggression to point this out.

Where do they come from, these trans-weirdos professing their “issues of queerness and gender”? How exactly do the psychiatric woes of the freaky few create a “community” in need of organizers?

If you are a college-educated adult, think back to your undergraduate days. While I was partying my way through Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, Class of 1983, the student body included no small number of drunks, dopeheads and demented degenerates, none of whom were crazier than me. Yet the administration saw no need to incorporate our weird, decadent and/or illegal habits into the curriculum. We could not major in Tequila Studies, “Introduction to Hallucinogenic Mushrooms” and “Principles of Strip Poker” were not listed in the course catalog, and there was no campus Center for Banging Coeds.

Were we oppressed and marginalized by this lack of official recognition?

Oh, hell, no. We were have a blast!

Times change, and not for the better. Visitors to the home page of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Winona State University are greeted by this impressive vision:

Let’s take a look at the program’s full-time faculty:

  • Dr. Tamara Berg, Director
    Tamara graduated from Indiana University with a PhD in English Literature and a PhD minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has taught at WSU since 1997, and she has presented and published on service learning and women’s and gender studies issues. In her current faculty position, she directs the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at WSU. . . .
  • Dr. Linda d’Amico
    Linda D’Amico is a cultural anthropologist interested in gender, ethnic, and environmental issues. She has been doing fieldwork in Ecuador and Mexico for over 30 years. Her recent book, Otavalan Women, Ethnicity and Globalization, focuses on transnational and gender issues within an indigenous community in Ecuador.
  • Dr. Mary Jo Klinker
    Mary Jo Klinker graduated from Washington State University with a PhD in American Studies, where she taught in the Departments of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies and English prior to teaching at Winona State University.
    Engaging activism in the classroom is central to Mary Jo’s pedagogy and also fuels her research, which focuses on the relation of queer activism and theory to feminist antimilitarist organizing and anti-imperialist critique. Her research utilizes ethnographic and participatory action methodologies to examine the impacts of neoliberalism on contemporary social movements. Her teaching interests include LGBT/Queer politics and history, transnational feminism, contemporary masculinities, and postfeminist media studies.

Well, I guess the  8,254 undergraduate students at Winona State enjoy learning about the problems of indigenous Ecuadorans, queer activism and anti-imperialist critique, but why Minnesota taxpayers are footing the bill for this is an interesting question. Somehow I doubt Minnesota taxpayers have any idea what the hell is being taught at Winona State. Do they have a substantial population of Ecuadoran queers? Is there much “feminist antimilitarist organizing” in Winona? The local representative in the Minnesota legislature is Republican Steve Drazkowski, whose family are Catholic farmers. Are his constituents OK with the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Winona State University?

You see that Minnesota taxpayers have subsidized Kaylee Jakubowski’s “education” at Winona State, and “she” was kind enough to share with “her” 116 Twitter followers the helpful “reminder that Thanksgiving isn’t a celebration of peace — it’s one of genocide.”

Well, happy holidays to you, too, Kaylee. And thanks also for sharing with your 116 Twitter followers this chart about gender:

You may click on the image to enlarge it, in which case you’ll notice how this Venn diagram portrays “Individuals who are ‘reproductively viable’,” “who exhibit the secondary sex characteristics typically associated with” male or female and who were “likely to have been classified . . . at birth” as such, as if these normal biological categories of human sexual dimorphism did not encompass the vast majority of people in Winona, Minnesota, or anywhere else.  You can verify this with the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA):

“If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births.”

Which is to say, between 99.93% and 99.95% of humans are born without any genital defect. It’s possible that among the 8,000 or so students at Winona State, four or five were born with “ambiguous genitalia,” and maybe Kaylee is one of them. More likely, however, Kaylee is afflicted with a mental illness known as “gender dysphoria.” Fortunately, advances in Feminist Logic™ have enabled intellectuals to cure this disorder by reclassifying it as “genderqueer,” which is not a psychiatric illness,  but a “community” in need of organizing.

Magical thinking — a belief that merely thinking about an event in the external world can cause it to occur. It is regarded as a form of regression to an early phase of development. It may . . . reach delusional proportions when the individual maintains a firm conviction about the belief, despite evidence to the contrary. It may be seen in schizophrenia. (Segen’s Medical Dictionary 2012)

There are many kinds of crazy in the world, you see, but random nutjobs can’t claim that their craziness deserves an entire department at the local state university, where the professors tell them it’s perfectly sane for a male to be called “her.” The lunatics aren’t just running the asylum, they’ve turned the asylum into an influential institution that tells sane people we are suffering from an irrational “phobia” because we insist on calling insanity by its proper name.

You need a Ph.D. in Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to understand 21st-century feminist gender theory, and Kaylee is well on “her” way.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the reader wonders. “What about sex? What kind of sex do these genderqueers have?” So glad you asked!

Pansexuality 101: It’s More Than ‘Just Another Letter’
For some, the LGBPTTQQIIAA+ acronym (better known in some circles as “Queer alphabet soup”) can be intimidating in its all-inclusivity — “how on Earth am I supposed to not only memorize every identity in this nebula, but learn to respect them in my everyday life as well?”
Well worry not, kind feminist! . . .
So let’s explore one specific identity in this acronym today — pansexuality. . . .
This word “pansexual” was originally coined by Sigmund Freud within his theories on psychoanalysis in the early-to-mid 1900s, but was instead defined as how sexual energy and desire is the basis for all human interaction in life.
However the modern usage of “pansexual” has very little to do with Freud’s definition or his psycho-sexuality theories.
Instead, the modern usage (which I am exclusively referring to in this article) likely started gaining ground in the early-to-mid 1990s.
While it’s hard to pin the exact moment when its use began, it is almost certainly tied to the growing activism and awareness of non-binary and genderqueer people since pansexuality would not exist without these identities. . . .

So the non-binary genderqueer is pansexual. Please continue, Kaylee:

Like with any identity on the rainbow, individuals can (and will—and should!) define the identity in a way that’s more tailored to themselves. While the aforementioned definition is (technically) accurate, some pansexual people have a slightly different way of defining their identity.
For instance, the folks at Pansexuality is Perfect define it as a person who is “not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or activity.”
Other individuals have also described their identity by saying that “they just don’t focus on gender or sex identity, but focus more on the person instead.” . . .
While all of these ways of being pansexual are slightly different, they are all legitimate and they all help define pansexuality as the diverse, all-inclusive sexual identity that it is.
So someone who identifies as pansexual, no matter what their gender or sex is, can potentially be attracted to cis men, intersex men, trans men, agender people, genderqueer people or any other non-binary person, trans women, intersex women, cis women, or any other combination of sex, gender, and gender performance.

The adjectives “weird,” “desperate” and “creepy” could also apply, but there I go with the transphobic microaggressions again.

What Kaylee Jakubowski is actually describing, of course, is the infantile condition of polymorphous perversity:

Polymorphous perversity is a psychoanalytic concept proposing the human ability to gain sexual gratification outside socially normative sexual behaviors. Sigmund Freud used this term to describe the normal sexual disposition of humans from infancy to about age five. . . .
Freud theorized that humans are born with unfocused sexual libidinal drives, deriving sexual pleasure from any part of the body. The objects and modes of sexual satisfaction are multifarious, directed at every object that might provide pleasure. Polymorphous perverse sexuality continues from infancy through about age five . . . Only in subsequent developmental stages do children learn to constrain sexual drives to socially accepted norms, culminating in adult heterosexual behavior . . .
Freud taught that during this stage of undifferentiated impulse for sexual pleasure, incestuous and bisexual urges are normal. Lacking knowledge that certain modes of gratification are forbidden, the polymorphously perverse child seeks sexual gratification wherever it occurs.

Normal psychological development requires that the child learn to behave in accordance with “socially accepted norms,” but what happens when society so completely breaks down that there are no longer any “norms” and everything becomes acceptable?

[Canadian psychologist Hubert] Van Gjiseghem says what he and his colleagues mean by sexual orientation is a person’s inborn and unalterable sexual preference, irrespective of whether that preference is harmful to others or not. Currently, there is no significant longitudinal evidence that pedophiles can be made to not be attracted to children, and thus it can be defined as their orientation. And if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that also means it’s futile to send pedophiles to prison in an effort to alter their attractions. . . .
Dr. James Cantor is the Head of Research in the Sexual Behaviours Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental health and teaching hospital. He’s also an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto’s school of medicine. He’s been working on better understanding pedophiles for about 12 years now using a variety of methods.

Common sense connects the dots: Winona State teaches that we must accept the pansexual genderqueer; meanwhile in Canada, a leading psychiatrist shrugs and says jailing child molesters is “futile.” This is what Matt Barber has called “Sexual Anarchy.”

Polymorphous perversity isn’t merely the New Normal, it’s federal law!

A federal judge [in August 2012] ordered state prison officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate serving life in prison for murder.
U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled in the case of Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison. Robert Kosilek was convicted of murder in the killing of his wife in 1990.

Kill your wife, go to prison and demand that taxpayers fund your sex-change surgery. Rape a child, and it’s “futile” to put you in jail. Professors teach weirdos that “the growing activism and awareness of non-binary and genderqueer people” is necessary to obtain social justice on behalf of oppressed victims who can only “be definitely described is by saying that they’re ‘not cisheteronormative.'”

Obviously, I didn’t do enough psilocybin back in the day. If I had, I might be crazy enough to understand why the only people protesting about this “genderqueer” business are radical lesbians. 

Republicans in Minnesota? They don’t give a damn

Sanity is increasingly rare in the 21st century, but it’s not illegal, yet.

 

Gas Leak Suspected Cause of Minneapolis ‘Little Mogadishu’ Explosion, Fire

Lee Stranahan pointed out that the Minneapolis neighborhood where there was an explosion and fire Wednesday is known as “Little Mogadishu” because of its largely Somali population. The building where the blast happened is next door to a mosque. Concern about a possible terror connection seems logical, but officials tell the Minneapolis Star-Tribune they believe the explosion was an accident:

Investigators believe that the fire that tore through a three-story apartment building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on New Year’s Day was caused by a natural gas leak, according to sources familiar with the probe.
While no final determination has been made, a source close to the law enforcement investigation said that it is believed that the initial explosion occurred at the ground level of the building.
Homeland Security personnel were on the scene in the aftermath of the fire that sent 14 people to hospitals, six in critical condition.
They were there to determine if there was anything suspicious about the explosion. But investigators believe that the description of a fireball and early evidence at the scene match what typically happens in a gas explosion, investigators believe, the source said.

(The involvement of DHS investigators shows how obvious it was to suspect this might have been a terror-related incident.)

In addition to trying to determine the cause, authorities searched the late-1800s building for the handful of residents still unaccounted for a day later. . . .
At least 14 people were injured, six critically in the explosion and fire about 8:15 a.m. Wednesday that destroyed an immigrant-owned grocery store and the 10 apartments above it in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. . . .
Family members and friends reported that three or four others known to have lived in the apartments have not been located and were feared dead. . . .
The building housed the Otanga grocery store. The apartments above it were apparently all occupied by single men, most of them East African immigrants, a resident said.

So far, then, this seems to be merely an accident.

 


Mark October 30 on Your Calendar: Democrat Panic Hits Pandemic Stage

COLUMBUS, Ohio
This will be seen in retrospect as the day liberals began to realize that Obama was going to lose the election, the day The Great Wall of Denial (erected by Nate Silver and the Democrat Graveyard Whistling Choir) proved itself too weak to withstand an encounter with reality.

Yesterday, Jim Messina called the Romney super-PAC’s ad buy in Pennsylvania “desperate.”

Today? Yeah, Obama’s buying ads in Pennsylvania.

Does this mean Romney is going to win Pennsylvania? No, but it does mean that it’s close enough that Team Obama couldn’t afford to let Romney air ads unopposed in Pennsylvania. And this news, coming just four days after it was reported that Team Obama is buying ads in Minnesota, is the best indication that Democrat insiders know that the president’s re-election is seriously endangered.

Liberals may be stupid, but they’re not so stupid they can’t understand what John Nolte’s headline means:

GALLUP: Romney Up 52-45% Among Early Voters

Dude. If Romney’s leading by SEVEN FREAKING POINTS in the early vote — and also leading by six points among voters who tell Gallup they plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6 — there is no way that Nate Silver can continue gazing at his Magic Forecasting Model™ and seeing a 72.9% chance of Obama being re-elected. He may continue telling that to his readers, but Nate cannot actually believe that.

 

UPDATE: Who’s been telling you about the “War on Coal“? Yeah, and here’s the Romney ad in Pennsylvania:

Here’s Mark Halperin on MSNBC, grudgingly admitting what the situation in Pennsylvania really means:

If Obama was winning, he could afford to ignore the Romney play in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. But . . . Obama isn’t winning.

 




 

 

RECENTLY:


Separated At Birth: Kerry Gauthier / Gerry Connolly Edition

by Smitty

You be the judge:

Likes young men
Likes young men
Likes ObamaCare

Kerry Gauthier really owes his constituents a thorough explanation. Not that I care fig #1 what Kerry and consenting adults get up to, insofar as laws are unbroken. Yet this post, besides a free swipe at the risible Gerry Connolly (go, Chris Perkins!), is intended to raise awareness to the media effort to smear Todd Akin and draw attention from a public figure who:

Authorities have said Gauthier, 56, admitted having a liason with the boy. They say he won’t be charged in the July incident because the boy was older than 16, the legal age of consent, and no money was exchanged.

See also Andrew J. Patrick.

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

VP Tea Leaves: Is Mitt’s Short List Now Down to Pawlenty, Portman or Ryan?

There are signals — both in terms of actual evidence and what might be called “absence of evidence” — that Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choices have now come down to three Midwesterners: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

It appears that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been eliminated from consideration and, most importantly, that talk of Tea Party favoirite Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as Romney’s running mate is just talk. Neither Jindal nor Rubio have taken the steps that would indicate they are finalists for the VP slot. Jindal, for example, has accepted an invitation to appear at an event during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, an acceptance he would not be able to make if he were indeed obligated to keep his schedule clear as the potential running mate.

Meanwhile, at the Weekly Standard — where Bill Kristol and Steve Hayes previously offered either Rubio or Ryan as the “bold” conservative choices for VP — the balance appears to have tipped toward Ryan, indicating that Kristol and Hayes have indications that Rubio is not among the finalists for the spot. (There has been widespread talk among GOP insiders that despite Rubio’s popularity, “vetting” proved problematic for the Florida senator.)

This week’s trial-balloon suggestions about other possible running mates — including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Gen. David Petraus — are regarded as irrelevant distractions by well-informed observers, who now believe the “veepstakes” to have been narrowed to the trio of Midwesterners. Pawlenty and Portman are viewed as the “safe” picks, while talk about a “bold” Republican choice now focuses exclusively on Ryan, the conservative chairman of the House Budget Committee. Tuesday, Robert Costa of National Review cited “sources close to the Romney campaign” as saying that Ryan had risen from “dark horse” to “contender” for the running-mate pick.

Conservatives pushing Romney to go “bold” have a key ally in Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a Wisconsinite who is said to be quietly exercising home-state influence on Ryan’s behalf. Meanwhile, there may be bad blood brewing between the two “safe” alternatives: Some supporters of Portman blame the Pawlenty camp for pushing reports that Portman once worked as a lobbyist for notorious Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier. (ABC News debunked that claim last month.)

How much longer will the GOP veepstakes speculation continue? Probably not too long. Some say Romney’s pick could be announced as early as Wednesday, but the Weekly Standard points to Thursday as the likely day, while Republican strategist Karl Rove says not to expect a selection before Friday.

UPDATE: Alex Moe of NBC News reported today that Paul Ryan’s planning a “vacation.” Just a coincidence?