BREAKING: At least 13 people were killed and dozens more wounded at the Brussels international airport on Tuesday after two explosions rocked the departure area,collapsing part of the ceiling and spreading chaos. The attack -- which Belgian authorities said was a suicide strike -- came at the same time as another bomb went off at the city’s Maelbeek subway station. Belgian officials are reporting 15 dead and 55 injured in the subway blast. All flights and train service in and out of the country have been cancelled.
The attacks come just days after the main suspect in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 was arrested in Brussels, FP’s Lara Jakes and Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer write. The arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam heightened fears of more terror attacks in the country, as European officials warned that many people who were involved in the Paris attacks people were still at large. No group has claimed responsibility for the Brussels strikes, but the Paris attackers were affiliated with the Islamic State.
Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw called all three explosions “terrorist attacks,” and Prime Minister Charles Michel said, "we were fearing terrorist attacks and that has now happened." Witnesses to the attack at the airport described a bloody scene where water pipes burst, mixing with the blood of the wounded and dead as dazed survivors staggered from the building. Security at airports and train stations around Europe has been heightened in the wake of the attack.Brussels is a batting-practice fastball right to Trump's wheelhouse. He is the only candidate who viscerally addresses the fear and loathing the masses feel towards the establishment in regards to the perpetual war on terror. Joe the Plumber and Brittany the Burger Flipper are more hip to how the game of global jihad works than the power elite and the mainstream press care to acknowledge. The masses might not be able to describe how Pakistan runs the Taliban with Saudi input or how Islamic State, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra are main players in Syria thanks to the generous support of the Gulf shiekhdoms, but they know the United States and our European cousins are getting played. Trump, all bluster and braggadocio, says it has to stop, that we need to bar all Muslims from entering the country until we can address the problem, and people listen. People listen because they are tired of the never-ending, ever-expanding war on terror.
So expect Trump to benefit in the near term and every time there is a bombing or gun battle in a Western city.
The FiveThirtyEight chat susses out the real estate mogul's chances of locking up the GOP nomination after the primary season ends June 7. The long and short of it depends on how he does in California. A native of the Golden State myself, I think Trump will do quite well.
An interesting exchange in the FiveThirtyEight chat has to do with Trump's potency among blacks in traditionally Democratic enclaves:
dave: Trump seems to be benefiting a great deal from the fact that there are many places where neither Cruz nor Kasich has much natural appeal. For example, Trump has won a lot of delegates in African-American-majority congressional districts in places like St. Louis and Chicago where there aren’t many evangelicals, wealthy whites — or for that matter, Republicans period. So I see Trump winning a lot of delegates in minority-majority districts in places like California and New York, and that’s a big problem for #NeverTrump right now.This was brought home to me by a clip on Democracy Now! of a black guy beating the shit out of a Hippie protester at a Trump rally in Tucson.
Hillary's overwhelming support among African Americans is due to her being a known, familiar figure. Well, black people feel like they know Trump too. As long the billionaire can keep the spotlight off the crackers who constitute the base of his support and keep it focused on a cartoon version of a bloodthirsty Muslim, he will win his fair share of African American votes.
What blacks and Bernie supporters need to come to grips with is that we will be consigned to the scrap heap by the end of spring. Lambert Strether lays it all out clearly. There will be no role for Bernie in the Hillary general election campaign and his supporters will not be catered to. The reasoning is well known to progressives and peaceniks. You got no place to go. Team Clinton will happily wave goodbye to all the Hippies and Punks who leave the Dem rez to vote for Jill Stein. The big-game hunt for Hillary is the mythical soccer mom ensconced in her exurb McMansion.
As Strether convincingly argues, Trump v. Clinton is going to be a horrendously negative, epically brutal, low turnout campaign. Hillary will pitch her message to moderate Republicans. By September Bernie Sanders will be a memory as distant as a Nader Super Rally in Y2K.
Bernie is not even mentioning Hillary, choosing instead to inveigh against Trump. He had an opportunity to score points when he was in Seattle over the weekend by mentioning that David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager who is part of Hillary's brain trust, is an Uber executive who spoke out against the company's drivers unionizing with the Teamsters. Top Dems now openly advocate union-busting knowing there will not be a peep from AFL-CIO headquarters. It is truly pathetic.
Bernie shit the bed last Tuesday by losing all five contests -- Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. He is running significantly behind in Arizona. The way I see it he has to win everything from here to California to prove he is something more than a progressive boutique candidate. Sanders has to beat Hillary in Arizona to take the narrative back.
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