Marathon Bombing Suspect Dead; MIT Officer Killed in Shootout

Watertown has been shut down by the cops.

Damn disgruntled Ivy League Students.

Sigh. What the fuck possessed them to want to do this?

@ManchuCandidate: That was picked up over police scanners and plastered all over Twitter.

The missing Brown student is not a suspect. NBC — yeah, sources — says both dudes may have foreign military experience, and arrived in the U.S. a year ago.

Harvard, MIT, BU closed. Public transportation shut down. Some streets literally dangerous, with IEDs scattered about. Good morning, Boston!

@nojo:
Oh great…

@ManchuCandidate: Conflicting signals: Dudes knocked over a 7-11 and carjacked getaway wheels.

Oh, and then shot up the neighborhood and threw bombs out the window.

And Dead Dude had a bomb strapped to his chest.

Amateurs? Or wacky professionals?

The NBC report comes from Pete Williams — who didn’t join Tuesday’s carnival of errors, so he’s earned some cred. But it’s still sourced, not official.

I’m really trying to go to bed. Got a nice boost from Joe & Mika, who just chased me away from MSNBC.

Meanwhile over at Comedy News Network (™ Jon Stewart) some idiot decided to use the term “Islamic terrorist” for the Chechnyan brothers and is getting the verbal beatdown for it. Oy vey.

Also: Why did they need to go all GTA and steal a car AND hold up a 7-11?

@matador1015: I heard their uncle interviewed. The brothers are from Kyrgystan.

@matador1015: Personally, I find that reassuring. It means they’re not part of some well-funded terror cell which could afford to spirit them away after the attack. They’re just some guys who had barely enough money and know-how to make a couple of bombs.

@mellbell: I heard some analyst guy on CNN say that the bombs showed some sophistication but the getaway plan was a joke.

WBUR: “traditional Islamic family …” – wingnut freakout in 3, 2, 1 …

@Dodgerblue: What getaway plan, they didn’t even leave town!

@blogenfreude: Pam’s all over it, of course, but since they’re literally Caucasian, we don’t have to worry about racial profiling.

@nojo: Meanwhile, Coulter hasn’t wasted any time in tying it to immigration reform. Stay classy, Ann.

The uncle — second uncle, better English — is awesome.

@mellbell: Yes, should have been able to screen that 8 year old kid a decade ago – I would say more than ten years in the States make them a home-grown act, not foreign.

@nojo: I don’t think the wingnuts will understand that there can be “white” Muslims – although you don’t get more Caucasian than someone from Chechnya…

@nojo: That was my first thought upon hearing about these fucktards – Pammycakes must be wet as a sheepdog in a vat of baby oil over this whole thing, even if it wasn’t a brown muzzie.

Atlantic Wire rounds up all the teabagger anti-Mooslem head-explosions so you don’t have to.

@SanFranLefty: Philosophy friend of mine came to the U.S. in 1979 or so — Russian Jews, joined the SF expat community. He would have been a little older at the time than Dzhokar, but like Dzhokar (as reported by high school friends), he had been thoroughly Americanized — slight accent, that’s about it.

The kid was apparently second-year pre-med at UMass Dartmouth, just like my friend would have been if he followed in the path of his dentist parents. And so far, I’m just not seeing anything that explains his behavior.

Except the older, now dead, brother — who arrived here at 16-ish, and despite his boxing activities, may have had more difficulty fitting in. Or maybe he was just, as Awesome Uncle said, a Loser.

It’s really sounding like Family Tragedy right now. Even considering older brother’s jihadist YouTube collection, I’m not yet hearing conventional radicalization.

@SanFranLefty: And then there are the NRA shills who were triumphantly tweeting that Boston residents were craving assault rifles last night…

But the idiocy can wait, since it ain’t going away. Right now we don’t have the full picture, and what we have doesn’t make sense. Even if Older Brother took a crash course in terrorism during his six months abroad last year, that still doesn’t explain why a Chechen Muslim would give a shit.

That won’t matter to the folks rushing to politicize things, but I’d rather understand what happened before jumping to knee-jerk conclusions.

Andrea Mitchell, quoting source: “Younger brother was a puppydog who followed the older brother.”

Still premature, but that part of the picture is emerging.

Older brother sounds like a very extreme version of my Black Sheep cousin.

The Onion nails it.

@nojo: Didn’t Chechens do the movie theater thing in Moscow? Flippin knows that part of the world far better than I, but there is a nationalist/crazee strain running pretty deep.

And if Djoker was only along for the ride, he made it a rather bumpy one going GTA over his bro’s wounded body. This is sick.

@Beggars Biscuit: Chechens did the attack on the movie theatre and one on a school–both horrific. But I was unaware that they had it in for anyone but the Russians.

@Beggars Biscuit: Yeah, the whole Chechen-Russkie thing is really nasty on both sides.

And I’m not saying that by this week, Little Bro wasn’t a Practicing Terrorist. But after listening to Pissed Uncle and reading accounts from school friends, it sounds like Little Bro placed too much faith in Big Bro’s judgment. Unfortunately, his responsibility is his own.

Off topic, but does anyone get why Harry Reid voted against the background check amendment? Nate Silver says that it was “for procedural reasons,” but I don’t quite understand what that means.

@mellbell: Standard parliamentary move. By voting against it, Reid reserves the right to introduce it again. Credit to Weigel for incessantly reminding everybody of that.

@nojo: Got it.

Little Bro not found, curfew lifted, public transport resumes. Long days ahead.

So, they didn’t knock over the 7-11 after all. They were there — and on the tape — but some other idiot held up the joint.

Little bro’s purported Twitter account reads like, well, a 19-year-old boy. Only in retrospect do a couple of remarks seem ominous — and truth be told, some tweets are quite clever.

@nojo: It still underscores how amateurish they were. If they were planning to get out of town and needed food or whatever, they should have picked a small mom-and-pop rather than a national chain convenience store, which would be virtually certain to have security cameras (and good ones at that).

@mellbell: Yeah, I’ve been hearing comparisons to Mohamed Atta today, and it’s not quite matching up. Perhaps the cultural comparisons, but not the highly planned flight-training part.

Little Bro partied on campus Wednesday night. Just like his high school friends, college pals — contemporary pals — are totally shocked.

“Closet Jihadist” would accurately describe what we (think we) know so far, and it’s easy enough to imagine living such a hermetic double life. But where Big Bro appeared to wear his ideology on his sleeve, Little Bro is starting to look like a devious little shit.

CNN LIVE: SUSPECT CORNERED.

@nojo:
Shouldn’t it be CNN SUSPECT, CORNERED, LIVE

@ManchuCandidate: CNN HAS A SITUATION.

MSNBC: Suspect spotted after everybody finally allowed outside for a breath of fresh air.

Wolf is getting excited.

@Dodgerblue: I had to switch away. Can’t stand Wolf framing everything for five-year-olds.

@ManchuCandidate: Socialist.

Breaking news: I pruned the hydrangeas.

@nojo: Twitters are reporting that the kid is holed up in a boat in somebody’s back yard.

@Dodgerblue: Atrios: “apparently the police have found the little man in the boat”

I’m totally ashamed I didn’t get there first.

Breaking news: It’s still raining.

Breaking news: AC360 has used “kinetic”, “tactical” and “flash bang” now three times each.

@Beggars Biscuit: CNN Bingo!

@nojo: Looks like the endgame for this kid.

Depressing comment on the state of stupidity in America: Ambassador from the Czech Republic had to release a statement explaining that his country is not the same thing as Chechnya, and please don’t attack us.

@Dodgerblue: “Blood on the Boat” is one of Dylan’s lesser-known alternate tracks.

And yeah, that’s crossed my mind, listening to the round of gunfire that opened this segment. Kid might already be dead.

@Mistress Cynica: Also not Chechnya: Chex, Checkers.

And, scene!

@nojo: He’ll play the “my brother made me do it” card and write a book with Oprah.

@Dodgerblue: Burned that card when he partied Wednesday night. If he feared his brother, he had chances to escape.

And now, the Victory Parade! USA! USA!

@matador1015: Exactly.

Time for retaliation! Who’s next on our hit list? Iran?

Meanwhile, Obama’s back on the TV. Pity his poor speechwriters; they’ve had to work so hard this past week. Who thinks of the speechwriters?

@matador1015: It’s strange when the most boring news of the week is someone trying to poison the president.