How Did I Miss This Craziness?

 3/21/1977 Time:

The heart of the capital was under siege. Everywhere, it seemed, was the wail of sirens, snarled traffic, milling crowds, police marksmen poised on rooftops, swarms of reporters interviewing one another in the glare of floodlights. Extra guards were posted at Government buildings; on the Hill each member of Congress was offered an armed police escort. The Washington Monument was temporarily closed to visitors: it was within the range of snipers. Affairs of state moved forward—cautiously. At the end of his visit with President Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin left quietly with no farewell ceremony; incoming British Prime Minister James Callaghan did not receive the traditional 19-gun salute, for fear it might trigger a slaughter. All this was the work of a mere dozen men who held 132 hostages in three Washington buildings for a chilling 38 hours. The terrorists made dramatically clear what has become all too obvious: anybody with a cause and a gun, be he mad or madcap, fanatic or eccentric, can seize and hold national attention by kidnaping and threatening to kill innocent victims.

The Washington assault was the culminating event of a spate of terrorist acts that have bedeviled the country. It proved again how vulnerable the society is to such attacks. Given the circumstances, it was wondrous that the drama ended with so little blood spilled: one dead and four wounded by gunfire, a dozen others cut and beaten. That the toll was not higher was in part a tribute to the primary tactic U.S. law enforcement officials are now using to thwart terrorists—patience (see box). But most of all, perhaps, it was due to the courageous intervention of three Muslim ambassadors, Egypt’s Ashraf Ghorbal. Pakistan’s Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan and Iran’s Ardeshir Zahedi.

The Washington siege was an explosive mixture of gangsterism, revenge, racial hostility and religious bickering elevated, as the participants proclaimed, to the level of a holy war. The terrorists were members of a sliver-sized religious organization called the Hanafi—a rival of the much larger Black Muslims, a group that has been plagued with violence over the years but has recently become more subdued (TIME, March 14).

Crimes That Have a Long Time Line

Harrison Township, O. (1973)

01/13/1973: At first, the babysitter, 17, reported a triple murder. Then police charged her with the murders of the mother and her two children. A trial eventually exonerated her. The gun used to murder the mother was later linked to another murder that took place while the babysitter was in jail. Motive remains uncertain, but the mother was naked, and the other person murdered with that gun was also female. In 1979, police hypothesized that these deaths, as well as four others, were the work of “a multipersonality person.” It remains an open case to this day.

Category: family non-resident

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: knife, firearm[1]

---

[1] "Woman, Children Slain," [Springfield, O.] Springfield News-Sun, Jan. 14, 1973 14; “Girl, 17, Held in Triple Murder,” [Washington Court House, O.] Record Herald, Jan. 24, 1973, 2; “Buck Slayings Remain No. 1 Case a Year Later,” Dayton Daily News, Jan. 13, 1974 , 2; “.Two Six-Year-Old Slayings Get New Probes,:” Dayton Daily News, Oct. 21, 1979, A-16; Unsolved Homicides: Gloria Buck,” https://ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Law-Enforcement/Investigator/Cold-Case/Homicides/Buck-1.

Not Even a Prince

 9/9/26 City Journal recounts how a Nigerian tribal chief has earned $30 million from Medicaid, bought mansions in California, while submitting inadequate documentation to California:

That business, CHHA, dates back at least to 2013, when Agnes submitted its first publicly listed utilization report. She appears to have filed that mandatory form for every year through 2019. California’s Health Care Access and Information department told City Journal that since then, it has not received a report from CHHA “despite continued requests.”

In the years that followed, CHHA’s Medicaid revenues exploded. In 2018, the agency received just $89,570. In 2022, CHHA pulled in nearly $4 million. Across the following two years, the company garnered over $17 million and $13 million, respectively.

The Tragedy

Chevrolet decided the base Corvette did not have enough power. They fixed that. I love my CT5, but if i did not live somewhere with snow and ice, I might have bought the less practical Corvette. 

Wait a minute: one of my garage bays is long enough for both. If you are a progun Chevy dealer with a spare Corvette you cannot sell, there is a spot open for it!

What a Radical Idea: Focus on the Thugs With the Guns, Not the Guns

 9/9/26 KIRO:

SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee voted Tuesday to advance a new gun violence reduction strategy, two days after three people were killed in three separate shootings across the Belltown neighborhood.

The resolution, sponsored by Councilmember Maritza Rivera, passed 3-0 with Councilmember Eddie Lin abstaining. It calls for a two-year, $418,000 partnership with the National Network for Safe Communities, a group Rivera said has helped cities including Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia reduce gun violence by up to 60%.

Uh-oh. What is this strategy?

Vice Chair Rob Saka urged Wilson to include funding for the partnership in her upcoming budget proposal.

“The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results,” Saka said. “We need to try something different here when it comes to gun violence.”

The resolution is nonbinding but signals the council’s intent to pursue the focused deterrence model, which targets the small number of individuals responsible for the majority of shootings in a given city. 

Dumb Phisherman

I am Mr. Darrin Giglio from NAI Private Investigators, based in New York. I am reaching out to inform you that my firm has been temporarily contracted by a Law Firm in New York to conduct a private investigation related to a court-ordered inheritance claim in which you are a potential beneficiary.

Kindly contact me immediately for further information and details, please contact me directly via my email address at darr20@atomicmail.io. Please note I will not respond from this email address Bikash.Chaurasia@hsrw.org due to the terms established by parties involved in the e-mail. You must contact me via darr20@atomicmail.io, this is very important.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter. I look forward to your prompt response.

Best regards,

Bikash Chaurasia (Corresponding Informant)

 The reply-to is of a real organization: A German Hochschule. I suspect someone is attempting to bring in some extra cash for keggers.

My Shop

Is currently a low-budget version of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark: lots of boxes in need of opening. Machine tools, hand tools, a collection of fasteners to make most hardware stores feel inadequate, telescopes, mounts, telescope accessories, amateur telescope making parts.

I suspect the previous owners never used it except as storage for the solar pool cover.  I bug bombed it a couple days go. That there are no fresh spiderweb tells me that no one survived and no one got in. Spiders are amazingly fast at rebuilding here. My daughter removes them in room corners one day and finds replacements in  couple of days.

I have vacuumed up the webs, spider eggs sacs, sawdust, and dirt. I started wiping all the interior window frames this evening with Simple Green. Once this is done, I will wipe all horizontal surfaces; move boxes out of the way and mop the floor with Simple Green.