Boston bombing

The media is going ape-shit over the bombings at the Boston Marathon.  Wall-to-wall, curb-to-curb coverage, and the unspoken message is to be afraid.  Be scared.  Suspect your neighbors.  Report anything!  

The best response to terrorism is to simply go on with your life.  Defy the cowardly bastards.  The fact that the bombings happened on Tax Day (April 15) and Patriot's Day in Massachusetts tells me that domestic terrorists are responsible; so-called "Patriots" who think they are striking a blow for freedom or some such bullshit.  Of course, right-wing paranoids see the same coincidences and suggest that it proves it's a "false-flag" operation, meaning that Obama is behind it (naturally) to scare people so he can take away all of your guns.  (sigh)  

The police so far say that there have been no claims of responsibility.  Bullshit!  You get nutcases calling in to claim responsibility for a frikkin' car crash.  I'm sure they have SOME claims of responsibility, but they've discounted them, or they simply are choosing not to tell us about them yet.

I also have no doubt that some Republicans will use this bombing to accuse Obama of "not keeping us safe". One went so far as to say recently that these kinds of things never happened under Bush!  Talk about revisionist history!  Ever heard of the September 11 attacks in 2001, asshole?

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas, naturally), who recently took over as the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held a brief press conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday, telling reporters, "We've been quite fortunate that this type of attack has not happened before in the U.S." 

What the ... ?!  Let's review:   

• the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center;
• the Unabomber in 1994;  
• the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995;  
• the pipe bombs at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996;  
• the bomb at an Alabama abortion clinic in 1998;  
• the arson attack at a Syracuse temple in 2000;  
• the 18 pipe bombs planted in mailboxes in five states in 2002;  
• the 2008 bomb planted in front of a military recruiting center in Times Square;  
• the bomb at a San Diego courthouse also in 2008;  
• the fire bombs targeting researchers in 2008 at UC Santa Cruz;  
• and in 2011, there was an attempted bombing of an MLK parade in Spokane.

And that's just in the last 20 years.  

If we go back further, let's not forget the series of anarchist bombings in 1919 and 1920, including the wagon bomb that killed 38 people on Wall Street, which were terribly deadly.

Other nations have lived and survived through multiple bombings.  There is no need to cower under your covers.  There is also no need to surrender even more freedoms in the name of safety, security, or the National Security State.

The best thing we can do is to go on with our lives, and try to help those that are injured in these cowardly attacks.