BOSTON MARATHON BLASTS CNN Coverage

[Gannon]

IIRC: After the Detroit marathon [[which was chilly) a lot of people were running around with those silver blankets. No idea what they are made of, but they are peculiar to say the least. Of course this has nothing to do with the topic at hand though.

Those silver sheets are made of mylar, which is a tremendously heat-reflective material. I've saved every one I've ever been handed at the end of a marathon. I can build a nice tent now...

[oladub]

This will add an interesting note to the immigration reform debate. the Gang of Eight's amnesty package was supposed to be voted on today or Monday. We already know what a larger supply of labor does to US workers, especially unskilled poorer educated US workers, and taxpayers. This event reminds us of lessons we should have learned from 9/11 about cultural differences. Political Correctness, as a national policy, is sometimes deadly.

[gnome]

Those silver sheets are made of mylar, which is a tremendously heat-reflective material. I've saved every one I've ever been handed at the end of a marathon. I can build a nice tent now...

A nice Mylar tent will compliment your aluminum foil beenie; although you could be exposing yourself to some sort of double negative vortex of polarized antimagnetic hum.

proceed with caution.

[Gannon]

A nice Mylar tent will compliment your aluminum foil beenie; although you could be exposing yourself to some sort of double negative vortex of polarized antimagnetic hum.

proceed with caution.

The beanie is MU metal, I keep tellin' you.

I crimped some double-aught copper to the big toes in a pair of retires Vibram shoes, and ran it to a new ground rod in the basement...which should shunt at least half of the negative vortex.

But yeah, always thought that Mylar might come in handy for somethin'...

[gnome]

Apparently some public school graduates are confused. Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya.

Pass it on.

[rb336]

Out of all the possible "experts," leave it to fox to call on that tool who went out of his way to frame a guilty man, Mark Fuhrman

[Zacha341]

^^^ Moreover, some college students cannot identify Russia or Australia on a map!

[Lowell]

I hope this doesn't seem insensitive, but does anyone else find the media frenzy over this story bordering on ridiculous and the local response [where everybody in Boston is supposed to hide in their house and the town is shut down while they try to chase down some kid] excessive? So much for Boston's tough guy reputation.

Talk about letting the terrorist win. Al Qaeda must be laughing their asses off. I'd bet terrorist are grabbing video footage right now for their next recruiting movies.

Oh but it's in Baaa-stun, it's east coast so the world must stop and give their undivided attention to their little affair. It is a tragedy, but on the scale of tragedies it is tiny and their little pimple is now a mountain.

Meanwhile the town of West, Texas was flattened by a fertilizer plant explosion that nobody really knows what happened at that far more inviting terrorist target. At least 14 people are dead, hundreds injured and homeless and they are still digging out. And we hear nothing about it.

Terrorist are going to hit us; they hit us every day in Detroit. We just don't amplify their crimes into terrorism. [Maybe we should. "TERROIST KILL OVER 300 IN DETROIT!!" - send federal money, bring in Obama for the memorial.] I guess that like West, Texas we just suck at marketing our tragedies.

Time to get over it, accept reality and figure out how to nail their asses without making them into the media celebrities that those attention whores seek to be.

[rb336]

Lowell, I agree completely. and let's not forget the ongoing tragedies in Syria, Palestine and other parts of the world where what happened Monday has become "life as usual"

[Downtown Lady]

I hope this doesn't seem insensitive...

OK, but it actually does seem insensitive.

[janesback]

OK, but it actually does seem insensitive.

I agree with Downtown lady as well........shame on you Lowell for your insensitivity.........I live here in Texas and there is more than enough information and televised reports coming from West, Texas
The mayor of West is not passing on information to the media and that is why they are uncertain of who is missing and who isnt
I guess the Boston FBI and MTP are trying to flush that idiot out so there wont be anymore needless deaths.............
The accident in West was just that, The killer in Boston is on the loose looking to kill even more people

Shame on you Lowell and you self righteous attitude................3 people died, another policeman was shot and killed and many are maimed and in the hospital.....Maybe you should consider that before you post such insensitive garbage...........Jane

[Jimaz]

I hope this doesn't seem insensitive, but does anyone else find the media frenzy over this story bordering on ridiculous and the local response [where everybody in Boston is supposed to hide in their house and the town is shut down while they try to chase down some kid] excessive? So much for Boston's tough guy reputation....

Land of the formerly free, home of the formerly brave.

I'd like to see an airline passenger poll asking whether they would prefer to skip airport security checks and take their chances or continue going through airport security checks and feel safer. I think the results might be surprising, especially as they change over time.

The problem with the security industry is, although a breach can indicate insufficient security, there is no such indicator of excessive security. If you invest in twice as much security as is truly necessary, you aren't likely to get fewer breaches. It just costs more.

Nice work if you can get it, Michael Chertoff.

[Lowell]

The circus is over. Now where's my bread?

[gnome]

Have you been drinking?

If not, maybe you should start; if yes, maybe you should stop.

[old guy]

You have to admit, CNN's coverage of this tragedy was less than stellar, as usual. The sensationalism was a little over the top. It was a major news story that was sold short on fact and long on fiction just to get the story out.

Tonight when they recanted the fact that the 7-11 robbery was carried out by the two perpetrators that were suspected of carrying out the bombings, I had to wonder what else they got wrong. There is a certain protocol that even reasonable journalists tend to follow. It isn't that hard to follow up on information you're posting for the entire world to read.

I think that maybe I've grown immune to this sort of coverage over the years. Not because I don't feel for the victims, but due more in part to the lack of good, investigative journalism. Reporting a story should be just that. Cut all the fluff and sensationalism and get the story right.

[gnome]

OG, agreed CNN will be looking for a new editorial staff before the blood dries on the sidewalk; however, Lowell made direct reference to Ancient Roman practice of staging gladiatorial battles and then giving away bread so as to calm the masses during times of strife.

He also conflated events making connections and correlations that do not exist.

let us look at the difference between the Texas explosion and the one in Boston.
One was intentional, one wasn't. One was event was being covered live by almost every news organization in the world, the other was caught by two guys on their cell phones.

Not enough differences for you? Oh how about the fact that as a major sporting event where thousands of people participate, the Boston marathon had doctors, nurses and emergency workers within feet of the explosion. The event in Texas killed mainly first responders who were there fighting a fire. There was no one to help them.

lowell could have cured his problem by shutting off the tv. Easy fix. Instead he tries to diminish the heroic efforts by the Boston police and fire but finding fault in the tv coverage.

And then to bring in Detroit's mainly self-inflicted wounds is completely off-point. By drawing the correlation he intimates that the reason Detroit's woes have not been covered as breathlessly is because of race. Are we to believe that Detroit's woes have not been covered to death by almost every news organization that has reporters? Isn't it a common complaint that Lowell helped pioneer the Ruin Porn business and that parachuting reporters default to worn tropes coloring the demise of a once great American city?

Isn't it a reality that whenever Detroiters travel to other cities folks comment on the state of the city? Do Detroiters get the same comments as those folks from Davenport or Des Moines?

[Gannon]

Gnome, Have you been drinking? If not, maybe you should start; if yes, maybe you should stop.


I spent the better part of my time AVOIDING the excessive news coverage. That DID get ridiculous.

I happened to be driving across town when the second dude was caught, switched from WDET to WCSX when it was clear they were going into droning-mode, where the same thing gets repeated ad nauseum and nothing else gets done except the rubber-necking and oogling.

JUST BECAUSE I DON'T WISH TO PARTICIPATE WITH Y'ALL in that sick behavior, doesn't mean I'm not sensitive to the actual victims.

When WCSX cut in with the news, I switched to Canadian radio. Then their DJ got something off the wire he felt compelled to share. It was pervasive.

We all celebrated his capture, but for those who can see past this one person...the pursuit event changed the character of law enforcement in this nation forever. 10,000 police had to GIVE UP searching for the guy...and once they did, he was found nearly immediately.

But nobody is questioning the use of military in this endeavor, nor the house-to-house searching...things changed over the past few days, or at least we all now know that we are that much closer to a full-on Police State than most would care to admit. Goodbye, Miranda rights requirement upon arrest, this'll save the bad guys lots of time and breath!

No cheers on this one. None whatsoever.

[canuck]

I think the police and other departments did a great job shutting the city down. You have to realize these two guys perpetrated a brazen and extremely violent series of acts against innocent people. The colleges in the city were also potential targets, transit stations were obvious targets also. What do you do?

They did an amazing job as far as I am concerned. The Miranda rights issue is not in play in something like this. I'm sure if you asked citizens concerned in Watertown, a great majority would say their lives were not cheapened by the extra measure of safety the "authorities deemed sufficient" on them. Besides, if the bombing at the marathon had not been taken as seriously as this, it would then become an incident in a series of incidents that would then lead to less freedom; which is sadly the case when we travel between Canada and the US now.

In any case you can almost predict a "conspiracy theory free-for-all" any time something like this happens. This saddens me. I think of the poor cop shot in his car, and all the suffering people, the fifteen or so officers wounded, etc...

Gannon, if you think about the kind of agenda these young guys defended, the obscure, niqaq-bound society, the shutting up of dissidence, the daily grind of platitudes they serve, I choose Brillo pads and McDonalds culture over their bullshit any day.

4 canadians from London Ontario were found responsible for a terrorist coup at a major gas plant in Algeria earlier this year, one of them a greek canadian muslim convert fucked-up by his pals' looneytoonyness. 4 canadians fighting for the jihad brought down by the algerian army. This is not to say that muslims are violent per se, but that there is an element of radical potential wrongdoers in muslim communities because of the polarized cultural difference.

I also have to say that the conspiracy theorists are quicker to judge than any court of justice would do in a third world dictatorship.

[Lowell]

Well thanks Gnome for taking over the role of being my spokesperson, attempting to put your words and anger into my mouth [...the reason Detroit's woes have not been covered as breathlessly is because of race...], writing my history, thinking you can read my mind and pondering my drinking habits.

Meanwhile these amateur terrorists won big in Boston. They totally succeeded in getting the media, the authorities and you to overreact thereby magnifying their violent acts totally out of proportion and elevating them into the pantheon of terrorist heroes.

These thugs leveraged a crime that was the equivalent of an average week's violence in the City of Detroit [less deaths but more causalities] into a media fire storm. They paralyzed a major city and turned it into a police state.

This is straight out of the Al Qaeda playbook and you, the authorities and the media took it hook, line and sinker.

Better yet they got people to shut up, tow the line and attack anyone who might be critical of the authority or media overreaction by accusing them as being sympathetic to the criminals and unfeeling toward the victims and the law enforcement officers at risk.

The circus is indeed over for now, other than arguments on how well the various media outlets covered it, and we were all given a cozy distraction from the daily terror that engulfs the rest of the world. And, as Bill Maher put it last night, "Bostonians finally got to hear the words they were waiting to hear. 'The bars are open again'."

[rb336]

You have to admit, CNN's coverage of this tragedy was less than stellar, as usual. The sensationalism was a little over the top.

Not just CNN, but across the board, starting with the "Terror in Boston" lead-in over a little minor scale music.

Where right-wing news/talk were bullshitting Americans that Obama told the FBI to let the guy escape as part of a plot to take our guns, the rest of the media hyped the sensational. The Fox News and their acolytes have a clear anti-Obama bias, the so-called "liberal media" only has the sensational bias.

Oh, and Lowell? the circus is NEVER over. They are just cleaning the elephant dung out of the center ring before the next act

[Whitehouse]

CNN, you done it again. You fucked it up.... again....

Since the topic was started using that station's name, I thought putting this bit in from Jon Stewart merits insertion of it in this topic.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...sted-name-news

[oladub]

Where right-wing news/talk were bullshitting Americans that Obama told the FBI to let the guy escape as part of a plot to take our guns, the rest of the media hyped the sensational.

I missed that. Please link to news articles claiming "that Obama told the FBI to let the guy escape as part of a plot to take our guns"? I do know that Axelrod, Salon, and other left voices were almost gleeful in their hope that this was the doings of a TeaParty type. I'll be glad to find links for you about those imaginings. Only libs would hope other Americans did it.
_______________________________________________

After watching this spectacle, I wound up with other questions about policing, cars, the Saudi, the other three arrests, and the Tsarnaev family time line. I don't have conclusions but I do wonder why so many things weren't addressed by the MSM. it was so bad that The Daily Show took CNN to task. I'll go along with these guys being the participants in the fire fight and almost certainly the bombers but it was background coverage, or lack thereof, I found interesting.

[Jimaz]

CNN, you done it again. You fucked it up.... again....

Since the topic was started using that station's name, I thought putting this bit in from Jon Stewart merits insertion of it in this topic.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...sted-name-news

Good one.

[Just in case it's true,] you heard it here, exclusively and first.

LOL!

[old guy]

So many questions, so little time before the next event. That's my perspective anyway. Things are rolling at a rapid pace these days.

Good post Whitehouse. I can't help but enjoy any J. Stewart clip I see. Hey, if it's 11:30 here, what time is it where you're at? i guess I could look it up, but... I'm old and tired. But I still look good.

[Pam]

Goodbye, Miranda rights requirement upon arrest, this'll save the bad guys lots of time and breath!

This bothered me too. What's the justification for it? They "forgot" in all the commotion? No matter what the suspect did, he is still a US citizen.