“Clearly, some observers fear ordinary Americans more than they do terrorists; they fret more over how dangerously unintelligent and hateful Yanks will respond to bombings than they do over the bombings themselves. But where is this Islamophobic mob? Where are these marauding Muslim-haters undergoing a post-Boston freakout? They are a figment of liberal observers’ imaginations.”
Finally catching up on work Andrew Breitbart and Lee Stranahan were doing three years ago, The New York Times finally discovered that there was massive fraud in the Pigford “black farmer settlement, namely hundred of millions of dollars going to people who had never farmed in their life for “discrimination” by the Department of Agriculture.
Walter Russell Mead on the Wreck of the Euro. “Meanwhile everything in Europe gets worse. As we’ve said before, with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s. Politicians in Europe thought they were living in a post-historical period in which mistakes didn’t really matter all that much. They were horribly wrong, and the wreck of the euro is blighting lives and embittering spirits on a truly staggering scale.” Quibble: $500,000 won’t just buy you “a pretty nice house;” in most of the country, it will buy you mansion.
Denmark rethinks welfare. “Denmark’s long-term outlook is troubling. The population is aging, and in many regions of the country people without jobs now outnumber those with them.”
“If Maureen Dowd’s evisceration manqué of President Obama’s gun control strategy in the New York Times is any indication, Ms. Dowd is in the wrong line of work. She doesn’t understand American politics. She doesn’t know how votes are gained and lost, she doesn’t know what presidents do or understand what powers they have, and above all she doesn’t understand how politicians think.” On the plus side, Dowd did say that Obama “still has not learned how to govern.”
Max Baucus to retire. “Mr. Baucus is the sixth Democrat since the start of the year to opt not to run for re-election in 2014, following Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.”
Funny what 4+ years of Obama has done for Bush43’s image. “Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent.”
“Kerry possesses neither principle nor expertise, and so the odds of him saying something both daft and morally bankrupt are always high.”
Mother of the Boston bombers: “If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care is my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!” Media: Just what is she trying to say? I don’t understand! It’s like she’s speaking in code!
Mark Steyn: “As is now traditional in these stories, we’re now being told that the Brothers Tsarnaev are merely the latest card-carrying members of Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves.”
Kurt Schlichter: “’Extraordinary’ is the natural condition of Americans.”
Naturally, clueless apologists set up a #FreeJahar tag on Twitter. As Aaron Gardner noted: “If twitter had been around in the time of Jesus there would have been a #FreeBarabbas tag.” And just imagine the reality show potential! “It’s down to two! No one will want to miss the stunning climax of Survivor: Golgatha!”
To me, Free Jahar sounds like a heartwarming, direct-to-DVD Disney film about a boy and his magic genie trying to free an Islamic whale.
Via Michael Totten comes Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wish list. Hard to tell from that whether he wanted to become a terrorist, a singer or a Mafia wiseguy…
I’m seeing a report that the Boston Bomber Brothers are members of a Wahabist terrorist cell Problem: That report comes from DEBKA, a site that has a track record only slightly better than Infowars, so take it with a shaker full of salt.
Just in case you weren’t breathlessly watching coverage of being unable to see a suspect hiding under a tarp in a boat that wasn’t on fire you couldn’t see in a trailer behind a house you couldn’t see, the second Boston bombing suspect has been apprehended alive.
A few random interesting bits about the Boston Bombing suspects/events/coverage:
I’ve seen people say “Al Qaeda couldn’t have done this because it’s too small-scale and sloppy.” Too which i would like to point out that: 1.) Al Qaeda has bungled plenty of attacks, and 2.) As the Ft. Hood and UNC attacks showed, there’s no shortage of freelance Jihadis willing to kill Americans.
As for it possibly being “tax protestors” (it being April 15 an all), maybe. Suspected Plano pipeline bomber Anson Chi fit under that description. (Of course, he was also a pro-organic food, pro-WTO, pro-Occupy, anti-GMO type, so he doesn’t fit neatly in any left-right schema.)
Mary Steyn on Margaret Thatcher: “A generation on, the Thatcher era seems more and more like a magnificent but temporary interlude in a great nation’s bizarre, remorseless self-dissolution. She was right and they were wrong, and because of that they will never forgive her.”
The top story today (despite MSM attempts to avoid covering it) is the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell for murdering babies. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.” I guess doctors murdering black babies just isn’t a big deal for many white liberal journalists. Hell, Margaret Sanger encouraged it. Just contrast their reluctance to report on it compared to how they would have exploded if a guy walked into a hospital and shot seven infants in the head…
Man in Massachusetts arrested for shooting a bear that was trying to eat him.
America doesn’t need an official eugenics program when it has the Ivy league.
Head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents union calls out Sen. Marco Rubio for supporting amnesty.
Government spending on bailouts, subsidies, grants, salaries and entitlements commands a much larger share of these economies than it did just a few years ago. European austerity has been focused on the private sector — namely, taxpayers with high incomes.
That is the second thing the PIIGGS have in common. The highest income tax rate was recently increased in every one of the troubled PIIGGS except Italy (where it was already too high at 43%). The top tax rate was hiked from 40 to 46.5% in Portugal, from 41 to 48% in Ireland, from 40 to 45% in Greece, from 40 to 50% in Great Britain, and from 48 to 52% in Spain.
Female Princeton grad tells current Princeton women that maybe they should consider getting married in college. Naturally the Ivy league/feminist/MSM complex threw a fit. (Pro-tip: There are few surer signs of leftwing PC think than the word “hetronormative.”)
Dwight brings up another case of journalistic malpractice. “Meet the Sniper Who Killed 2,200 People in Iraq.” As Dwight notes, anyone with even passing knowledge of snipers should know that this claim is ludicrous from the git go. In sports terms, it’s like someone claiming they threw 20 Major League no hitters, or ran a two minute mile. It reminds me of Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s smears about troops in Iraq in The New Republic. (If you remember the Beauchamp affair, it turns out that he was engaged to Elspeeth Reeve, who just happened to be a TNR fact-checker. Somebody should make them read Stolen Valor.)
175 days after it started, there’s still no resolution to the Iowahawk hostage crises, with the web pundit still held in captivity by the leftwing Al-Bama Dignity Brigade terrorist group.
“No more shall the infidel insult our prophet (peace be upon him) or make fun our sacred texts!”
Al-Bama has held Iowahawk captive “somewhere in the greater Des Moines area” since October 9, 2012, when a daring midnight raid snatched him from his fortified garage compound. Since then nothing has been heard from the beloved pundit except occasional tweets and pictures of hot rods.
The terrorist group has repeatedly threatened to kill the pundit, sending various media outlets severed piston rods from a 1931 Ford Model A to prove their seriousness.
Police promises to find the pundit (“Yeah, we’ll get right on that,” said a spokesman who asked not to be identified or disturbed while the NCAA basketball tournament was on) have thus far been fruitless.
Al-Bama’s initial demands were for the immediate imposition of comprehensive gun control, universal socialized medicine, $10 million in ransom, and the public flogging of radio personality Rush Limbaugh. When these demands were not met, Al-Bama gradually reduced them. Their most recent demands were for $325, a public apology from Bill O’Riley “for living,” and 12 cases of Olde Main beer.
Those with information on Iowahawk’s current whereabouts are urged to contact the National Bloggers Club.
You would think even Nanny State advocates might have learned from the example of Prohibition, but obviously not. It’s like Bloomberg watched The Untouchables and went “Hey, Al Capone! I bet I can boost that guy’s profits through the roof!” That is, when the smuggling isn’t funding jihad.
If Bloomberg is successful in getting this enacted, cigarette vendors in New Jersey should send him a nice thank you basket…
