Police just shut down the post-curfew protest at Capitol Hill. Protesters shouted ‘pigs’ at police, called them ‘traitors’ and said ‘you’ll get the noose too’
Protester to police: ‘Traitors get the rope, traitors get the fucking rope. Wait til we come back with rifles, motherfucker. You think that’s an idle threat?’
We saw this guy with the gray helmet a little earlier
‘Wait til we come back with rifles,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you from 600 yards’
Not everyone has left yet.
Bullhorn guy to cops: ‘It’s time for the police and military to bite the hand that’s been feeding them’
Can’t put the camera on these folks without it being obvious, but I hope you can at least hear the conversation they’re having
The folks who are left are either complaining about being portrayed as ‘violent Trump mobs’ or are having some very interesting theological arguments
It’s 8:09 p.m. and I think if you multiplied the number of protesters here by the number of reporters, you’d get the number of cops on-site
Heading back to the bureau. Goodnight
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The videos I shot last night got more attention that I expected. I’ll post more from earlier in the day now, and in chronological order
1:27pm: crowd is leaving the Washington Monument following the president’s address. They’re all headed towards the Capitol. Lots of street preachers and buskers, like this guy, among them
2:02pm: I passed by these on Constitution Ave. Someone went to the trouble of printing actual fake news and left bundles on the street free for people to read
Some quick math on #BeirutBlast: though it's difficult to precisely measure the explosive yield of 2,750 tons of AN due to age/deterioration, the publications I have say in a worst-case scenario it could have had as high as 42% the power of TNT nytimes.com/2020/08/05/wor…
That would mean the explosion could have had the force of 2.3M lbs or 1,155 tons of TNT. You can then use U.S. military publications to determine the resultant blast overpressure in pounds per square inch (psi) at various ranges
The pubs I used as an EOD Tech rely on something called "k-factors," which give you a number to plug into a simple equation:
d = k (NEW)^(1/3)
d = distance
k = k-factor
NEW = net explosive weight, as measured in TNT
Remember the video of a guy getting beat on by feds in Portland and responding with double-birds? He's Chris David, a 6'2" 280-lb 53 yr old fmr SeaBee and varsity wrestler from USNA '88 nytimes.com/2020/07/19/us/…
“I’m appalled and disappointed at the feds’ behavior — that whoever led them and trained them allowed them to become this way,” Mr. David said. “This is a failure of leadership more than it is a failure of their own individual behavior towards me.”
He wasn't paying close attention to the protests until he saw the video of feds in cammies grabbing protesters off the street and tossing them in rented minivans. That made him get on the bus and head down to the protests himself last night
Kate Wilder passed every test at the Special Forces Officer School in 1980 but was prevented from graduating. An investigation determined she had been discriminated against and she was awarded a backdated diploma nytimes.com/2020/02/28/mag…
Years later, when the SF tab was created, she rated one. “I was the real McCoy,” Wilder told me. “I was not the Ladies Auxiliary Special Forces”
Wilder, a military intelligence officer, eventually transferred to the reserves. She retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2003, after 28 years of service. She wore her SF tab proudly
On the night of Dec. 2, 2005, three HH-60G Pave Hawks lifted off from Balad for a routine CSAR training op at Camp Taji. They touched down on the north side of Taji, with the birds "light on the wheels" at full military power -- causing a massive brown-out nytimes.com/2019/06/26/mag…
The powerful rotor wash blew sand, grit, and topsoil everywhere. The port and starboard side doors on all three birds were open, per SOP. Airmen breathed in the mess and were covered by it. The team quickly inserted a 9-man PJ team and shot back into the air, orbiting overhead
This is Tech. Sgt. Ronnie Walker. He watched the PJ team moving on foot through the green light of his night-vision goggles. He saw the lead figure double over, vomit, and fall to one knee. It was then that he noticed all of his exposed skin felt like it was on fire
A small company in Huntsville, Ala. has sold 2,000x GBU-69 Small Glide Munitions to SOCOM. With a 20nm range, 36 lb warhead, GPS/laser-guidance, impact and airburst fuzing, this new glide bomb quickly went from concept to killer in Somalia nytimes.com/2019/03/27/mag…
Its wing provides lift, and allows it to fly quietly to its target. Three latticed "grid fins" provide guidance. Look familiar? Same company made the grid fins for GBU-43 MOAB and the GBU-57 MOP
The GBU-69 can only be deployed from something called the Common Launch Tube, made by Systima Technologies. The 4 ft long, 7" dia. CLT has been turning previously unarmed aircraft into attack platforms