Vicious murder on the NY subway
A migrant from Guatemala has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the New York’s top cop called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”
The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”
There’s much much more at the link. But one thing I don’t see is whether there were witnesses, and what they did or didn’t do. After the Daniel Penny arrest and trial, it would be hard to fault them for holding back.
The alleged perp was identified through photos and three high-schoolers called police because they saw him and recognized him on another subway. Also:
Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. He was detained by border patrol agents in Arizona in June of that year, sources said. His legal status wasn’t immediately clear Sunday night.
He received a transit summons in May 2023, but his criminal record in New York City was largely clean otherwise, sources said. He was living at a shelter on Randall’s Island at the time of the infraction.
Take your pick: psychopath, drugs, psychotic, or some combination of the three?
More on those exploding pagers and Hezbollah
One of the goals of the exploding pagers planted by Israel’s Mossad on Hezbollah operatives was to cultivate fear. I think that goal was met. The exploding pagers have seemed like a turning point from more conventional urban warfare against terrorists to something previously unheard-of in its creativity and audacity.
Two anonymous and disguised ex-Mossad agents were recently featured on 60 Minutes, describing some of the details. We have no way of knowing how much they said was true, but it certainly should send a shiver through every terrorist bent on harming Israel. For example:
One of them said the psychological effect the attack had on Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who he asserted saw pagers blow up operatives right next to him, was a “tipping point of the war.”
That agrees with my perception that it was a turning point.
More:
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn’t realize it was buying from Israel, which it has sworn to destroy.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, began in 2022 after Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said. …
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad. …
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.” …
“We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors, and the world is our stage.”
If you saw this in a movie you would not believe it. Except, now you would.
More:
He asserted that the veteran Hezbollah leader saw pagers exploding and injuring people who were right next to him in his bunker. Asked how he knows that, Gabriel said, “It’s a strong rumor.”
Two days after the attack, Nasrallah gave a speech.
“If you look at his eyes, he was defeated,” Gabriel said. “He already lose the war. And his soldier look at him during that speech. And they saw a broken leader.”
And Israel doesn’t want terrorists to think that anything they do or anything they touch is safe:
“We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”
Hezbollah’s recruiting probably isn’t going all that well these days.
Not long after 10/7, when the war in Gaza began, I recall reading that, hard as the Gazan campaign was, the inevitable future war against Hezbollah in Lebanon would be far more difficult. Hezbollah had more weapons and more forces, and were thought to be a far more formidable enemy. That’s why it was so stunning to see how quickly the tables were turned, and with what shocking innovation in the tactics of waging war against terrorists. Not only that, but it was astounding to realize that this plan had been hatched ten years ago and expanded on two years ago, and yet the Israelis had been patiently biding their time and waiting till they needed to execute the scheme.
Extraordinary.
It’s lebkuchen time again
[NOTE: Regulars here may remember that most years I put up a family Christmas recipe. And here it is again.]
This recipe was brought over from Germany sometime in the mid-1800s, and was my favorite of all the wonderful treats cooked by my great-aunt, a baker of rare gifts. She and my great-uncle were not only exceptionally wonderful people, but to my childish and wondering eyes they looked very much like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.
The name of the treat is lebkuchen. But it’s quite a different one from the traditional recipe, which I don’t much care for. This is sweet and dense, can be made ahead, and keeps very well when stored in tins.
Flora’s Lebkuchen:
(preheat the oven to 375 degrees)
1 pound dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 oz. chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. lemon juice
Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon).
Beat the eggs and brown sugar together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms the ribbon. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, and extracts to it.
Add the dry mixture to it, a little at a time, stirring.
Add the raisins, dates, and walnuts.
Grease and flour two 8 X 8 cake pans [NOTE: In previous years I sometimes said 9 X 9, but 8 X 8 is actually much better and makes for a far moister product.] Put batter in pans and bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester at 21 or 22 minutes to see if it’s done yet). You don’t want it to get too dark and dry on the edges, but the middle can’t still be wet when tested.
Meanwhile, make the frosting.
Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, and 1 Tbs. almond extract. Add enough confectioner’s sugar to make a frosting of spreading consistency (the recipe says “2 cups,” but I’ve always noticed that’s not exactly correct). You can make even more frosting if you like a lot of frosting.
Let cake cool to at least lukewarm, and spread generously with the frosting. Then cut into small pieces and store (or eat!).
Enjoy!
O’Reilly called it before the polls closed
I never was a Bill O’Reilly fan, but then I’m generally not a fan of news or opinion TV. Back in the days when O’Reilly worked for Fox, I’d watch him now and then but not often.
But now, in his dotage and free of Fox and on his own as far as I can tell, he doesn’t seem to suffer fools gladly. I came across this video last night of O’Reilly talking on Election Day before the polls closed. It’s very entertaining as well as insightful; O’Reilly doesn’t pull his punches. Watch Cuomo’s face when O’Reilly says the word “gibberish”:
Open thread 12/23/2024
The wild and wacky world of car rental
I recently rented a car for three weeks on the west coast. That’s a long time, and car rentals have become very very expensive. Indeed, the prices I originally got for this 3-week car rental ranged from about $1200 to $2000, all for a mid-sized car for the same duration.
I’d paid that much before, too, for rentals during the past few years. The explanation I’d read was that car rental companies had overbought electric cars, which just about no one wanted, and also that during the COVID travel slowdown they had to unload a lot of cars that were just lying around on their lots unused.
For this recent rental, I then tried renting the car through hotels.com, which I often use for hotel reservations but had never used for cars. I’m some sort of member, which gives a small extra reduction. But when I checked the same car rental for the same duration through the hotels.com site, I discovered to my shock that the car would cost $315 for the three weeks.
Yes, you read that right: about three hundred dollars total. From a reputable rental company. Same size and type of car.
It seemed too good to be true, and on the flight over I was nervous about whether that car would be waiting for me. That nervousness was compounded when I got some sort of message that the reservation was not found. But you know what? The car was right there, waiting for me, at the quoted price.
Can someone explain this? I’m not complaining. I’m just flabbergasted. And happy.
Gaslighting the public about Biden: you have to want to be gaslighted
There have been a host of recent “now it can be told” articles “revealing” that President Biden has been cognitively challenged for his entire presidency, although it’s gotten worse in recent months.
But it was obvious even during the 2020 campaign that Biden had declined compared to his level of functioning during his vice presidency only four years earlier. It wasn’t rocket science to figure it out; all one had to do was look and listen. The only question was how bad he was; my position was that he had definitely lost a great deal but that he was still functioning enough to have some opinions and some input into policy decisions that were made. Some – actually, many – bore the mark of his lifelong terrible judgment, especially in foreign affairs. A good example was the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But anyone could tell that Biden was cognitively messed up right from the start. The evidence was glaring – for example, his lapses in extemporaneous remarks and even in reading the teleprompter, and his often seeming lost in terms of which direction to walk. There was no denying he wasn’t playing with a full deck; the only question was how many cards remained. And the debate with Trump last June made it glaringly obvious that his decline was steeper, and even the Democrats who had previously tried to gaslight the public had to admit he had to go if they were to have any chance of beating Trump.
Those who continued to claim otherwise sounded ludicrous. And yet they were caught in a dilemma, and that includes Kamala Harris: admit the truth and you were admitting to a nefarious coverup; deny the truth and it was obvious you were still lying.
Oh what a tangled web we weave. And the Democrats got caught in their own web.
But here’s the question: how could anyone have bought the story that Biden was fine until last June? And of course, that he’s fine enough now to stay president till January 20, 2025? Are people that gullible, or that unobservant, or that willing to believe what they want to believe, or all of the above?
Roundup
(1) Here’s the spending bill that was passed in the House.
(2) Trump wants NATO countries to pay more:
Now he’s prompting the rest of NATO to bump their defense spending to five percent of GDP.
Probably won’t happen, though.
(3) Democrats try to troll Trump by referring to “President Musk” during the CR negotiations.
Trolls only work if they hit home, and this is pretty absurd IMHO, for two reasons. The first is that Trump is obviously in charge – and has taken charge of so many things very very quickly, even though he’s not president yet – and has put Musk in charge of cutting government waste. The second is that the same people attempting this trolling of Trump were remarkably silent and incurious about who was really in charge when President Biden was snoozing at the wheel.
(4) A closer look at Biden’s most outrageous pardons:
Hard to figure this one out: the Magdeburg perp
The toll in the Magdeburg Christmas market car-ramming has risen to four dead and over 200 injured. And some facts about the alleged perp have come out that seem to make little sense.
Yes, he’s a Saudi national and doctor who’s been in Germany for 18 years, as previously stated. But his social media accounts indicate that he’s a former Muslim who is actually anti-Islam. So why would such a person plow into a crowd attending a Christmas market? As a 50-year-old, it’s unlikely he had a schizophrenic break. And although it’s possible that his anti-Islam stance was some sort of elaborate ruse, it’s hard to know or to understand what’s going on.
What’s more, he’s a “specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.” And also a supporter of the anti-immigrant AfD party.
So, what gives?
Open thread 12/21/2024
Dad seems to be the better dancer:
Terror attack at German Christmas market
Germany is very big on celebrating Christmas, and the annual Christmas markets take place in many parts of the country. However, they’ve become a magnet for jihadi terrorist attacks.
Therefore, terrible events such as this come as no surprise:
A festive Christmas market in Eastern Germany erupted into chaos after a car was driven into a group of people in the city of Magdeburg on Friday in a suspected terrorist attack.
Between 60 and 80 people have been injured, according to a spokesperson for the local rescue service, as reported by AFP as officials continue to investigate the incident.
Several of the injured are said to be in critical condition, and multiple reports citing the German public broadcaster MDR, that said at least two people had been killed.
At first the news and government reports were hesitant to label the perp or the motive – as usual. But very recently we see this:
“We have arrested the perpetrator, it is a man from Saudi Arabia… a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006,” state premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff told reporters at the scene. “From what we currently know he was a lone attacker so we don’t think there is any further danger for the city.”
This report says one of the dead was a toddler, and adds the following:
Authorities believe he acted alone and used a rental car, he added, and German media described him as 50 years old and previously unknown to security services.
My guess is that he just couldn’t resist that anti-Christmas spirit.