Scary looking, aren't they? Notice the riot police in the background ready to repel these hateful reactionaries."I realized that there were lot of parallels between the early '90s and now, both in the feeling of economic dislocation, the level of uncertainty people felt, the rise of kind of identity politics, the rise of the militia movements and right-wing talk radio, with a lot of what's going on in the blogosphere now, and in the right-wing media," (Bill) Clinton said.
"A lot of the things that have been said, they create a climate in which people who are vulnerable to violence because they're disoriented, like Timothy McVeigh was, are more likely to act," he added.
Joining Clinton in warning of the violence potential of antigovernment protesters are liberal media types like Frank Rich, Joe Klein, and Paul Krugman.
Strangely, they voice no such concerns over the possibility of left wing political violence, such as that which occurred during this year's May Day festivities.
In Santa Cruz, California for instance.
Downtown business owners spent Sunday repairing shattered windows and doors after a May Day rally Saturday night turned into a riot with approximately 250 people marching along Pacific Avenue, some carrying makeshift torches, throwing large rocks and paint bombs, and spray-painting walls with graffiti.
At least 18 businesses suffered damage during the rally in honor of international workers that began at 9 p.m. and escalated into mayhem around 10:30 p.m., police said. Investigators estimated damage at $100,000, though some business owners said it could be more. No injuries were reported.
On Sunday, sea green-colored glass littered sidewalks where windows and glass doors had been smashed. Maintenance workers, many getting called in the middle of the night, boarded up windows with plywood until new sheets of glass could be installed.
The vandalized businesses included Urban Outfitters, Peet’s Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Velvet Underground and Dell Williams Jewelers. The unoccupied Rittenhouse building also was damaged. A police car was vandalized with rocks and paint, department spokesman Zach Friend said.
And Asheville, North Carolina.
Last night around 10:45 p.m., vandals shattered glass at several businesses around the Battery Park Avenue area, including the Eye Center, Bella's, the Asheville Citizen-Times, the entrance to the Grove Arcade, Cucina 24, an RBC Centura ATM and the glass etching landmark across the street from the Arcade. Several cars in the area were also damaged. Reports at the time described around 20 people wearing dark clothing, breaking windows.
"The subjects were wearing masks and face coverings and are estimated to have damaged at least eight vehicles and five businesses," an announcement from the Asheville Police Department reads. "Officers from all districts responded, as well as a K-9 unit and Forensics staff."
So far, 11 people have been arrested by the APD.
The article goes on to mention that two of those arrested are anarchists, affiliated with known radical left-wing groups.
And of course, not to be outdone, there was New York City, as an eyewitness recounts.
About an hour later we were heading to a concert on the NYU campus, and started walking down Broadway toward Astor Place. We started hearing lots of police sirens all at once, and then looked straight ahead. There were young guys with baseball bats and Che signs pinned to their backpacks running down the street smashing store windows, all on the west side of Broadway. We stopped dead on a corner, because there were police cars coming from so many different directions the street lights were rendered meaningless. As soon as we stopped, about 6 NYPD units pulled up to our exact corner and the cops jumped out and tackled two of the vandals literally TWO FEET in front of me. Some other officers arrived, jumped out of their cars, and started a crazy foot pursuit of another guy who started running in zig-zags down the middle of Broadway. They tackled him as well, in the middle of the freakin’ street, as cars kept almost hitting everyone involved. It happened incredibly quickly. There were tons of eyewitnesses, and I even saw a few people videotaping, but of course I can’t find mention of this incident anywhere online or in the media. We had about five minutes to get to the concert, so stopping and gawking wasn’t an option. We just kept walking, tried to get away from the whole mess. But we could see and hear police interviewing plenty of witnesses, and heard people say “they just kept breaking windows”, and saw the perps with their faces in the pavement for ourselves.
Meanwhile, as they focus on conservative dissent as a potential source of violence, liberals continue to downplay the very real threat from radical Islam. This elicits some unintentionally funny speculation.
The NYC mayor on the attempted Times Square car bombing.
“There is no credible evidence so far that this attack was more than at least one person, the driver,” said Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “After that there is no evidence that anyone else was involved. It may be, but we can’t say that it is.”…
“If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that,” Bloomberg said. “Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”
Like someone mad about New York's public smoking ban. Or its war on trans fat.
Less wacky, but still the stuff of fantasy were these two remarks.
New York’s Democratic Senator Charles Schumer suggested, early on, “The odds are quite high that this was a lone wolf.”
Janet Napolitano, appeared on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” and said, “You know, at this point I have no information that it’s anything other than a one-off.”
A one-off? Hard to decide which is more fitting. Incompetano or Nincompoopitano.
Mark Steyn comments.
Whenever something goofy happens — bomb in Times Square, mass shootings at a US military base, etc. — there seem to be two kinds of reactions:
a) Some people go, "Hmm. I wonder if this involves some guy with a name like Mohammed who has e-mails from Yemen."
b) Other people go, "Don't worry, there's no connection to terrorism, and anyway, even if there is, it's all very amateurish, and besides he's most likely an isolated extremist or lone wolf."
Unfortunately, everyone in category (b) seems to work for the government.
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