Lesson of the Florida "bomber": They don't "x-ray" the mail at any point in the system to keep bombs out

Rush Limbaugh confidently misinformed millions of his listeners this week that the USPS scans suspicious packages in order to intercept them and keep them away from the public.

For his part, radio personality Michael Savage laughably spent most of the week wondering how all these "bombs" could be "hand-delivered" all over the place supposedly without entering the postal system, because he believed fake news to that effect. It must have been a conspiracy! The van was too clean after all that driving up and down the east coast and to California and back! The stickers on the windows were too recently affixed because they weren't yet faded!

What we learned once again, however, was that the USPS only isolates suspicious packages for scanning by outside authorities. The cost of installing such scanners in every postal sorting facility would cost billions of dollars the already bankrupt USPS doesn't have. In this instance, the USPS was alerted to the package M/O by the outside authorities after the fact, after some of the "bombs" had already been delivered. The USPS was told what to look for, not the other way around. 

This affair exposes the fact that the entire USPS system remains vulnerable to penetration by serious terrorists at any time, and that a person who really intended to harm others, say with bombs, could do so as long as the intended target isn't too famous. That's why the more serious threats are the poisoners, who can still reach their intended famous targets occasionally with letters, such as Vanessa Trump. The contents of mail are not "scanned", only the fronts and backs are imaged and the images stored. That's how the authorities, once alerted to the problem in Florida, "were reviewing mail streams in and out of Florida, attempting to pinpoint locations where the parcels may have originated", as reported in the USA Today story linked below.

A real bomber in this instance would have rigged his packages to blow up as they are opened by the designated target, as when a box lid lifted on its hinge triggers a circuit with a detonator. Of course, the difficulty of getting such a package into the actual hands of famous persons with staff protecting them from such an eventuality is a thought which cannot have escaped the mind of Cesar Sayoc.

A real bomber does not stuff active devices into padded envelope mailers as Sayoc did, where they could blow-up indiscriminately under normal, rough handling, including in his own hands. A real bomber does not leave finger prints behind on his mail bombs, especially if his fingerprints are already in the crime reporting system due to many prior arrests and convictions.

It's almost as if poor Cesar Sayoc, aged 56, suddenly homeless and forced to live in his van, intended to get caught so that he could finally escape all his problems and finally get a roof over his head and three square meals a day for the rest of his life after so many years of struggling with poverty.

CNN reported here:

Bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc had been kicked out by his parents, so he has living in the van that we have seen in pictures today, according to a law enforcement official. ... Sayoc was initially somewhat cooperative, the official said. He told investigators that the pipe bombs wouldn’t have hurt anyone and that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

USA Today reports here:

The total number of bombs reached at least 14 Friday after more suspicious packages were recovered: one in Florida addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, another in New York addressed to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a device recovered at Sen. Kamala Harris’ office in Sacramento, California, and another package that was intercepted at a mail facility in Burlingame, California, addressed to billionaire Tom Steyer.

Harris’ office says it was informed that the package was identified at a Sacramento mail facility. The FBI responded to the facility in a South Sacramento neighborhood that’s been blocked off by caution tape.

A package addressed to Clapper was recovered at a Manhattan postal facility. Like some of the previous packages, the one found in New York City on Friday had the office of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the return address, a photo obtained by CBS News showed. ...

The suspicious package intended for Clapper was spotted by a postal worker at the Radio City Station facility at around 8:15 a.m. The employee contacted U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and they contacted the NYPD and FBI.

NYPD Bomb Squad officers scanned the package and saw what appeared to be a pipe bomb, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said at a Manhattan news conference.

Hillary must be laughing to herself that Kavanaugh's accuser touts passing a lie detector test

Clinton is heard laughing as she describes how she succeeded at getting her client a lighter sentence, despite suggesting she knew he was guilty.

"He took a lie-detector test! I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs," Clinton said about her client on the tapes, which were initially recorded, but never used, in the early 1980s.

The rest of the ABC News story from 2014 is here. 

Bernie's Medicare For All to add 72% to current outlays

From the story here:

The Mercatus analysis estimated the 10-year cost of "Medicare for all" from 2022 to 2031 [at $32.6 trillion], after an initial phase-in. Its findings are similar to those of several independent studies of Sanders' 2016 plan. Those studies found increases in federal spending over 10 years that ranged from $24.7 trillion to $34.7 trillion.

Current outlays in fiscal 2018 are estimated to finish up at $4.137 trillion, to which add the average increase from BernieCare of $2.97 trillion, an increase of nearly 72% to outlays, and you've got nothing short of a draconian tax increase needed to pay for it all.

Security Theatre: TSA failure rate to detect weapons and explosives improves from 95% to 80%!

Way to go, Brownie! Or somebody.

From the story here:

When ABC News asked the source familiar with the report if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, “You are in the ballpark.” ... The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from DHS found that TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from covertly smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening.

Trump resurrects Bush's idiotic war on evil ideology

Trump, quoted here:

'This wicked ideology must be obliterated – and I mean completely obliterated – and the innocent life must be protected. All innocent lives. Life must be protected.'

"The long-term solution is to promote a better ideology, which is freedom. Freedom is universal," Bush said in 2011 after Osama bin Laden was assassinated by Obama.

How long is long term? 6 years? 10 years? 16 years in Afghanistan and Iraq? The better ideology isn't working too well, is it?

You don't defeat ideas. You defeat the people who have them, and keep them out of your society. You know, like a Muslim ban.

But no, we're "rights" absolutists and can't bring ourselves to infringe the rights of those who want to kill us.

That's the ideology that is killing us.

Living in the West should be viewed as a privilege, which then distributes the rights. Lose the privilege, and lose the rights.

Our real enemy is libertarians and liberals who think every man, woman and child in the world is entitled to come here, live here and enjoy the benefits previous generations bled and died to ensure for themselves.

The Manchester bomber is not equal to George Washington.

Hillary beats Trump in the shunning department 8-2 as 10 faithless Electoral College electors vote for somebody else

Ugh!

That's the story from ABC tonight here.

It's a stain on our election from both sides that the rules we agree to live by aren't being followed as they should be.

The two defectors from Trump voted for Rand Paul and John Kasich. Five from Hillary voted for Colin Powell, Bernie Sanders and an Injun. Three others were removed and replaced by alternates who ended up voting for Hillary as the people they replaced should have.

On net Trump wins 304-227 instead of 306-232.

But humorless liberal dipshits really do believe this claptrap that Trump is an ISIS recruiter

Here, last December.

Excuse me, 80% of New York counties didn't start the voting today until NOON, so spare me the outrage if some precincts weren't open on time

New York has 62 counties.

ABC News reports here:

This is because polling places in 50 of the state’s counties – outside the New York City area and Buffalo – opened at noon. People in those counties with day jobs can’t vote until after work, so they won’t be included in early exit poll results.

The number of Democrats crossing over to vote Republican yesterday in Wisconsin appears to have been relatively small, unmoved by Trump's trade stand

From Politico here:

While 65 percent of those voting in the Republican open primary identified as Republican, another 29 percent said they were independent and 6 percent said Democratic.

Turnout in the Republican primary in Wisconsin was enormous.

In 2008, barely 403,000 voted in the primary which picked McCain over Huckabee.

Yesterday, 1.06 million reportedly voted in the Republican contest won by Ted Cruz, with some votes still remaining to be counted.

Six percent of that is 64,000 Democrats.

In the Democrat contest won by Bernie Sanders, 993,000 votes were cast, about 120,000 fewer than in the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So only half of the no-shows might have gone Republican.

The voters worried about free-trade whom Donald Trump hoped to attract went instead to Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin:

Demonstrating Sanders’ unusual strength, he ran competitively with Clinton, 51-47 percent, in who’d be the best commander-in-chief. And he won by particularly wide margins among those very worried about the economy’s direction, those who expect life for the next generation of Americans to be worse than it is today and those who think trade with other countries takes away U.S. jobs. Finally, he won 78 percent of those who favor more liberal policies than Barack Obama’s; Clinton won those who want to continue Obama’s policies, but by less of a margin. ...

Trade was a potent issue for Sanders in his surprise win in Michigan and helped him make Missouri and Illinois agonizingly close, though, Clinton turned things around in Ohio. In Wisconsin, more than four in 10 think trade takes away more American jobs, while fewer than four in 10 think it creates more jobs.

Wisconsin Republicans are totally in the tank for a path to legalization, which is lyin' Ted Cruz' true position, also Gov. Walker's

From the exit polling, here:

More than six in 10 GOP voters in Wisconsin think undocumented immigrants should be offered a path to legal status, on track to be the highest of any state this year (it’s topped out at 59 percent in Virginia). Only a third support deporting undocumented immigrants, fewer than in previous primaries. Deportation voters have been a strong group for Trump in previous primaries; Cruz beat Trump in recent contests (North Carolina, Missouri and Illinois) among the larger group that favors a path to legal status, and Kasich won them in Ohio.

DHS missed San Bernardino terrorist's social media posts threatening attacks because it was official policy not to look

The fault lies with Obama and Jeh Johnson, total incompetents, or worse.

Of course our crack media at ABC here don't tell us when the policy not to look was implemented, but you can infer from the story that the Obama Administration made it official policy not to look in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations in the summer of 2013 in order to make the regime look respectful of privacy rights.

Too bad it's the privacy of foreigners Obama cares about instead of ours.

The guards of a tyrant are foreigners.

Tashfeen Malik, like lying American liberals, lied about the smallest detail, her home address

notice the poorly plucked eyebrows

Reported here:

'Malik came to the U.S. on what is known as a “fiancé” visa, which allows an American fiancé to petition for his or her partner’s temporary entry before marriage. For the visa application, the address she listed in her Pakistani hometown, ABC News discovered today, does not exist. Malik received a [sic] her Green Card this summer, U.S. officials said.'

A crack in the Trump facade

Donald Trump, quoted here:

“I’m a practical person,” Trump said. "If I see things aren’t going well, like for instance there are people right now in the Republican party who are not doing well I don’t think it’s going to change for many of them, at some point you have to get out. Right now, I’m leading every poll I get the biggest crowds by far. I had 20,000 in Dallas I had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama, you know so far it’s looking good…So I will go and if for some reason I think it’s not going to work, I’ll go back to my business.”

Chris Plante: Hunter Biden exposed in Ashley Madison hack

Reports Plante on the air just now:

The son of Joe Biden denies it, says Putin or somebody fabricated it, says he's dropped the email address. Hunter Biden has an unusual business interest in Ukraine.

Update:

ABC News helpfully reminded everyone in the story about the hack that Hunter had left the Navy in 2014 under a cloud for testing positive for cocaine in 2013.

Breitbart reported here that his Ashley Madison profile was set up on June 17, 2014, four months after his discharge.

CNN reported here last October (!) that Biden was discharged in February (!) 2014.

Desperate Hillary Clinton blames church violence on Donald Trump, must be really afraid of his candidacy

ABCNews' story is here.

Security Theatre still the rule at airports: DHS punks the TSA 95% of the time

Sneaking through explosives and weapons.

And forget about baggage screening.

From the story here:

"In addition, the review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time."

Suddenly it's important news to ABC that Republican superfunder Koch Brother isn't a conservative

Here from George Stephanopoulos:

“I’m basically a libertarian, and I’m a conservative on economic matters, and I’m a social liberal,” [David] Koch told ABC News’ Barbara Walters during an interview for her special “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2014″ that airs at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on ABC.

Koch, who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, said he isn’t concerned with candidates he supports who don’t share some of his views. He said his primary concern when choosing a candidate to support is their fiscal policies.

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Koch's political affiliation before 1984 was Libertarian Party, according to his Wikipedia entry, which means he's a hard-boiled libertarian. The man is 2014's ninth wealthiest in the world.

In this sudden attention to Koch's liberalism I smell a new political effort afoot by the liberal media to highlight the differences between libertarianism and conservatism to split the right in the interests of Democrat liberalism in 2016.

Remember, it was also George Stephanopoulos who brought us the war on women in 2012. George is getting ready early this time.

It's a sign of self-perceived weakness in the Democrat camp that they are already thinking they must begin to divide the right to win in 2016.

It's a lie that Liberians were denied ZMAPP: three got it and two of them survived Ebola

Reported by ABC here on August 26th, but race-baiters in this country never mention it:

MONROVIA, Liberia – Two African health workers who received doses of the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp are set to be discharged from the hospital later this week, a Liberian health official told ABC News today. Three African health workers — two African doctors and one physician’s assistant — received the drug after contracting the virus earlier this month, according to Dr. Moses Massaquoi, who heads Ebola case management at Liberia’s health ministry. Though they were all showing signs of improvement at first, one of the doctors died on Aug. 24. He also had diabetes and hypertension, Massaquoi said. The remaining two patients improved soon after receiving the first of three doses of ZMapp — a cocktail of three antibodies meant to attack the virus. They are expected to be discharged on Friday.

US Marine Helps Flagging 9-Year Old In 5k Finish Race: "Will You Run With Me?"

The United States Marines, America's finest.

Story here.

So When Will Obama Start Boasting He Just Delayed His Own Health Care Law Of The Land?

"I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message, ah, sort of, maybe in 2015"

After all, in 2010 Obama was boasting that health care reform was finally the law of the land:

"After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise," Obama said at an event after the signing ceremony at the Department of Interior. "It is the law of the land."

Funny how he doesn't like that law of the land enough now to let it go into effect come January 1, 2014.

Someone should make him eat a copy, all 418,779 words of it.