My father called to tell me before it was on the news. My brother's girlfriend bartends in Times Square, and she called him.

i was in times square when this happened, on 46th street and broadway. nobody knew what was going on at the time.... the police were evacuating the area, and hordes of tourists were cluster****ing a little more than usual as barricades were put up. i just figured it was a shooting or something equally obnoxious.

i'm surprised someone doesn't try to blow up times square every day.

total amateur hour in NYC. Real terrorists would have used legitimate explosives.

Oklahoma is one of the most right wing states in America. Neo Nazi radical militia groups have built certifiable "compounds" in northeastern and southwestern parts of the state. Arkansas isn't exactly open minded either.

This country is heading back towards the instability of the 1960s I think. 1928-1941 and 1965-1975 were time periods where the American view of life was genuinely on trial and there was a real chance of America suffering an outright social collapse.

apparently a pretty ghetto and unorganized chapter of pakistani al-queda is claiming responsibility for this car bomb, as a retaliation to al-queda deaths in iraq.

BBC News - US studies bomb evidence from New York's Times Square

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i am so vain. and yet, so masochistic. how can the two coexist?
-francesca woodman

Its probably some random Muslim convert who got the wrong end of the stick and some bomb building instructions off the internet. We had one in Exeter a few years ago:

BBC NEWS | UK | Man admits restaurant bomb attack