A long time ago at an anime convention far away (Anime Iowa in Cedar Rapids, IIRC), I took this pic of a fetching young cowgirl. Hope she’s doing well. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
“Ever seen that guy in the street carrying a sign that says THE END IS NEAR? Chances are he’s a PhilliesSenators fan.”
– Bill James, THIS TIME LET’S NOT EAT THE BONES, slightly modified
Actually, our opening series against Dom’s Royals at KC went well – we won two games in extra innings, because KC has no bullpen, and we probably would have won the third game in similar fashion if it hadn’t been rained out after the Royals scored four in the bottom of the fifth. Then we went to the frozen wasteland of Milwaukee and lost two out of three to Pete’s Brewers, following which we defrosted in San Francisco and lost two out of three to the Giants. So we’re 4-5 at the end of the first week, and our closer, Vicente Romo, is on the 10-day DL. The team doctor has advised us to start drinking heavily before our home opener against the Angels on Tuesday. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Teddy Baseball is not in his happy place. He’s spending a lot of time talking to Coach Herzog…
On Wednesday, March 13, there was an auto accident in Lower Paxton Township, Pennsylvania, involving a black Lexus with New York tags, driven by 16-year-old Kensly Alston. A check showed the vehicle was uninsured, and the police had it towed. Three days later — Saturday, March 16 — as the officer was writing his final report on the accident, he entered the car’s data into the computer and learned it had been reported stolen in New York City on March 14. The officer contacted NYPD and was told that the registered owner of the Lexus had been found dead in an apartment on March 14. Nadia Vitels, 52, had gone to the apartment — where her recently deceased mother had lived — on Tuesday, March 12:
According to authorities in New York, Vitels arrived at the apartment on March 12 to prepare it for a family friend. When she arrived, she found a man and a woman, believed to be Tejada and Alston, staying there without permission.
Authorities say a struggle ensued, and Vitels sustained a fatal injury after being slammed against a wall. She died of blunt force trauma to the head, authorities claim.
The suspects then stuffed her body in a duffel bag, stole her vehicle, and fled to Pennsylvania, authorities in New York believe.
Her body was found [March 14] by her son, who visited the apartment after not hearing from his mother for two days, reports out of New York state. As they were about to leave the apartment, the son opened the closet and discovered the duffel bag, with a foot sticking out.
As soon as police in Lower Paxton Township — more than 150 miles west of New York City — learned the car had been stolen from a murdered woman, they “immediately filed charges against both subjects for receiving stolen property, entered both subjects into NCIC [the National Crime Information Center database] and obtained felony criminal arrest warrants for each of them.” This Friday, U.S. Marshals caught up with Alston and Tejada about 30 miles away in York, Pennsylvania. They were extradited to face the charges in Lower Paxton Township, but have not yet been charged with the murder of Nadia Vitels.
Y’know, one hears from the advocates of “social justice” that it’s wrong to be concerned about mere property crimes like theft, burglary and trespassing. Such crimes are non-violent, we are told. If the people who break into your home and steal your car also decide to kill you? Well, then it’s OK to call the police, but you can’t send people to prison for mere property crimes, say the advocates of “social justice,” because that would result in mass incarceration. So until they kill somebody, criminals must be turned loose, and then one day there’s a car accident in Pennsylvania and the cops have no idea they’re dealing with two murderers, because the victim’s body hasn’t been found yet.
Please, liberals, tell me again why mass incarceration is a bad thing, because I’m not quite sure I understand the logic of your argument.
State media reported Saturday that Russian authorities detained 11 people — including four suspected gunmen — for their involvement in a deadly attack on a crowded concert hall near Moscow on Friday that has left at least 133 people dead.
The attack left hundreds more injured, Russian officials said.
The four suspects were stopped in the Bryansk region of western Russia, “not far from the border with Ukraine,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said. They planned to cross the border into Ukraine and “had contacts” there, state news agency Tass said, citing Russia’s FSB. The head of the FSB briefed President Vladimir Putin on the arrests on Saturday, according to Tass.
Videos circulated on Russian social media show pandemonium inside the large concert hall, which is connected to a shopping mall. Videos show people screaming and ducking for cover as gunmen fire volley after volley of automatic gunfire. Other clips show the gunmen firing, sometimes at point-blank range. The attackers also set the venue on fire, causing a partial collapse of the building’s roof.
“The shots were constant,” eyewitness Dave Primov told CBS News. “People panicked and started to run. Some fell down and were trampled on.” The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack. A U.S. official told CBS News that the U.S. has intelligence confirming the Islamic State’s claims of responsibility, and that they have no reason to doubt those claims. The U.S. Embassy in Russia had previously advised Americans to stay away from concert venues, citing the threat of a terrorist attack. The U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence to Russia about a potential attack under the intelligence community’s Duty to Warn requirement.
Wait, I thought we’d eliminated ISIS? It’s good that our intelligence was able to figure out that such an attack was coming, but I just got off the phone with a friend who was wondering, why Russia? Why now? Is this somehow related to the Russia/Chechnya conflict?
No doubt there will be plenty of conspiracy theories — “false flag”? — but the key takeaway, as far as I’m concerned, is that ISIS is still a danger, capable of mounting major terrorist attacks in distant countries, and we shouldn’t be too complacent about this threat.
UPDATE: Yup, it was definitely ISIS:
BREAKING:
The official ISIS outlet Al-Amaq releases the video recorded by the terrorists from the Moscow attack
It shows the slowly walking out of the place after killing 140+ people
In the video, 1 of them shouts Allahu Akbar & that they have punished the “kuffars” (infidels) pic.twitter.com/QQre7KhXfF
Do you remember the uproar in 2018 when Donald Trump reportedly referred to Haiti and certain African countries as fecal depositories? Of course, he was accused of using more blunt language than that, but the point is that he allegedly made this remark in a discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin about a “bipartisan compromise” involving so-called “Dreamers,” which would have involved ending the visa lottery. Trump asked what a lot of common-sense Americans would have asked, i.e., why are we taking in people from the most wretched places on the planet, rather than from, say, Norway? (Trump had recently met with the Norwegian prime minister before the discussion with Durbin.) Because Democrats have no answer for such an obvious question, they responded by denouncing Trump as a “RAAAAACIST“! Now that Joe Biden is in the White House, common-sense people have more questions:
Probably the answer is, when you just stop enforcing immigration law completely — as the Biden administration seems to have done — and throw the doors open to millions of foreigners without limit, a certain percentage of those arrivals will be, shall we say, problematic.
An illegal migrant, who was taken into custody following a barricade shooting incident in North Carolina, was allegedly found to be on a terrorist watch list and had been living in the area for six months.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 32-year-old Awet Hagos is a citizen of Eritrea, a small country on the coast of Northeast Africa.
Immigration officers said that Hagos entered the U.S. illegally after residing in Haiti and had been living in North Carolina for the last six months.
After running Hagos’ fingerprints, authorities allegedly found that he was on the terrorist watch list. Gates County Sheriff’s Office said that they were first alerted to Hagos when a barricade incident unfolded at a Quick Stop gas station.
Police said that on Monday, March 11, at approximately 6:40 p.m., deputies responded to reports of gunfire.
Local authorities, along with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, attempted to take Hagos into custody, but he became “extremely combative” and attempted to disarm a deputy of their firearm.
After the altercation, police said that Hagos fled into his home and led police on a four-hour standoff.
Hagos was eventually safely taken into custody and charged with three counts of assault on a government official, three counts of resisting a public officer, and one count of carrying a concealed weapon.
Hagos was placed under a $100,000 secured bond and transported to Albemarle District Jail.
Following reports that Hagos was an illegal migrant and on the terrorist watchlist, three Republicans, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for governor, Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden.
The leaders demanded that Biden provide more information about Hagos and details about his alleged terrorist activity.
“Our understanding is that this violent individual is originally from an area near Yemen, a known hot-bed of anti-American terrorist activity,” the letter said.
“Clearly, this is a grave concern, not only for the people of North Carolina but for our entire nation,” the letter said.
Some background: Gates County is a rural community with a little over 10,000 people, next to the Virginia border, about 50 miles southwest of Norfolk. The Quick Stop gas station where this incident occurred is in a place called Eure, which is just a wide spot in the road on U.S. 13.
Among the many questions raised by this incident is, how is it that the federal government, with its massive law enforcement resources, could not catch this foreign terrorist, but the sheriff’s department in tiny Gates County was able to apprehend him? But what the hell was this guy doing there in the first place? Do you remember, a few weeks ago, when a mob of Eritrean protesters shut down a highway in Charlotte, N.C.? It would seem that the Biden administration has chosen North Carolina as the designated dumping ground for Eritrean “refugees.” WAVY-TV in Norfolk reported that Hagos “had previously lived in Haiti and . . . had been brought into the area by the owner of the Carolina Quick Stop store, where the incident took place, according to the sheriff’s office.” According to the Raleigh News-Observer, Hagos was working at the store:
The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald and WAVY-TV, which first covered the police standoff about a week ago, reported that the sheriff said Hagos recently moved to Gates County from Oakland, California, and had been in the state for six months.
An ICE spokesperson told The News & Observer that Hagos “entered the United States as a nonimmigrant in 2016 and violated terms of admission.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection issues nonimmigrant visas to foreign nationals who want to enter the U.S. on a temporary basis, according to the agency, for “tourism, medical treatment, business, temporary work, study, or other similar reasons.”
One could easily think of a long list of questions about this — e.g., who is the Quick Stop owner and why did he hire this Eritrean to work there? — but the point is that (a) Eritrea is a fecal depository of a country and (b) we need to elect Donald Trump so he can put a stop to the Biden administration’s dangerous open-borders shenanigans.
