Our Sad City?

[volksdragon]

I suppose I'm disappointed that our city, Boston, out of the 10 cities nationwide where these goofy-ass Mooninite lite-brites were found, is the only one to lose its shit entirely.

They're in LA, they're in NYC, they're in Chicago, Seattle, etc, and yet even after Boston Officials knew what they were, as they continued to find them, still treated the entire area like a confirmed bomb site.

Mayor Menino talking tough isn't making Boston look too good to anyone except those people already so blinded by the Homeland Security song and dance that nothing would change their mind anyway. Having the first words out of your mouth be, "We're gonna Sue!" looks really really REALLY petty.

The statement by MBTA Police Lt. Sal Venturelli that, "this is an example of our passengers taking part in Homeland Security" is BULLSHIT, since the stupid device was in place for TWO WEEKS before the woman who called it in bothered to mention it to anyone. I'm pretty sure terrorists wouldn't wait two weeks to blow us up.

Granted, the placement of these devices was very very VERY poorly thought out by the two guys who put them there, and their handling of this whole thing seems a little juvenile. They're laughing it off, but probably the best idea, to keep our uber-paranoid government from locking them up as enemy combatants somewhere, is to make a very sincere apology, and get Turner Broadcasting to cough up a lot of money to cover the "$1 million" in overtime that managed to get itself spent yesterday. I sincerely hope Boston gets over itself soon, and decides against the circus that will be "Making an example of these men."

Comments

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the only people in this situation who don't end up looking embarrassingly stupid are the bomb squad themselves, who did exactly what they're supposed to do: got called about suspicious objects, and quickly and efficiently found, removed and disabled those objects, notwithstanding their looking relatively non-threatening. It's the bomb squad's job not to decide something's probably not a bomb because it's got a cute cartoon character on it, but to treat it as though it's a bomb until it's in pieces. They were 100% spot-on, but Turner needs to cough up the costs the city incurred plus a hefty fine, and fire the ad agency that came up with this idea, and Menino needs to stop blustering, and everyone else needs to just chill the fuck out. Also, dear everyone, stop saying "9/11 changed everything." Even if that were true, and it simply isn't, that flat assertion alone does not automatically justify everything.

Probably the worst thing here is there was also a real bomb hoax yesterday: two fake pipe bombs (http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=180349) were found near the New England Medical Center. But that story isn't getting any coverage.

homeland security

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Can you point me towards the article that mentions the woman?

My understanding is that when they were finally called in, they were called suspicious packages by the caller, and hence the bomb squad responded and do what they do. Maybe I'm missing something, but from what I read, they didn't get confirmation of what the devices were until 5PM, long after they'd removed the vast majority of them.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

What gets me is that during the very same day, in Boston, two pipe bombs were found, I think near MGH. Duds fortunately, but at least THAT actually was an attempt to cause some damage.

Did it show up in the news? No. Did the Mayor pitch about it? No way.

I wonder why. Maybe the answer starts with "We want to extort money.." and ends in "..out of companies rolling in cash."?