The Age of Hope and Shame

From Abe Greenwald, at Commentary:

The Obama years are the years of hope and shame. That’s what’s left once you’ve hollowed out the space traditionally occupied by informed debate. Liberals, led by the president, merely hope that gun laws and background checks will stem gun violence. There’s no debating the merits. So when people disagree, it can only be attributed to shameful intentions, not thoughtful misgivings about effectiveness. Liberals hope that expanding the welfare state will do more good for more people. The facts of Europe don’t apply. So when conservatives disagree it’s because they’re shamefully indifferent to human suffering, not concerned about an unsustainable initiative. Obama hopes we’re no longer in a war on terror but engaged in a cleaner-sounding war on al-Qaeda. If you think a recent string of terrorism attempts in America demonstrates otherwise, shame on you. Without self-righteousness liberals have no case.

Man, that's a freakin' great piece.

RTWT.

NPR's Dina Temple Raston Blamed #Boston Bombing on 'Right-Wing Individuals'

And still, some despicable leftists are already attempting to shove these inconvenient facts down the memory hole.

At AoSHQ, "After Four Days of Speculatively Blaming the Right and Anticipating What Poltical Solutions We Might Need To Address Their Growing Menace, Left Declares That the Time for Speculation and Political Wargaming Has Passed."

Because "right wing individuals" are all about Hitler's birthday, or some such shit.

Progressives are the biggest assholes. And losers.

Princeton Political Scientist Richard Falk Says #Boston Had It Coming

The scum of my profession, this Richard Falk.

Here's the dude's bio:

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

See Blazing Cat Fur, "U.N. Scumbag Says Boston Got What It Deserved."

And at FrontPage Magazine, "U.N. Human Rights Official Calls Boston Bombing “Blowback” and “Resistance”."

New York Times Interactive on Moment Runners Neared Finish Line at #Boston Marathon

Via Emily Stanitz on Twitter. Click through to watch:

Incredible NYT interactive on runners at the #BostonMarathon finish line the moment the first bomb exploded nyti.ms/10ugUdV
— Emily Stanitz (@emilystanitz) April 23, 2013

Obama's Gun Control Defeat Raises Questions About His Effectiveness

It's about time we're getting some critical reporting like this, at the New York Times even.

See, "In Gun Bill Defeat, a President Who Hesitates to Twist Arms":

WASHINGTON — Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska, asked President Obama’s administration for a little favor last month. Send your new interior secretary this spring to discuss a long-simmering dispute over construction of a road through a wildlife refuge, Mr. Begich asked in a letter. The administration said yes.

Four weeks later, Mr. Begich, who faces re-election next year, ignored Mr. Obama’s pleas on a landmark bill intended to reduce gun violence and instead voted against a measure to expand background checks. Mr. Obama denounced the defeat of gun control steps on Wednesday as “a shameful day.”

But Mr. Begich’s defiance and that of other Democrats who voted against Mr. Obama appear to have come with little cost. Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, is still planning a trip to Alaska — to let Mr. Begich show his constituents that he is pushing the government to approve the road.

The trip will also reinforce for Mr. Begich and his colleagues a truth about Mr. Obama: After more than four years in the Oval Office, the president has rarely demonstrated an appetite for ruthless politics that instills fear in lawmakers. That raises a broader question: If he cannot translate the support of 90 percent of the public for background checks into a victory on Capitol Hill, what can he expect to accomplish legislatively for his remaining three and a half years in office?

Robert Dallek, a historian and biographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson, said Mr. Obama seems “inclined to believe that sweet reason is what you need to use with people in high office.” That contrasts with Johnson’s belief that “what you need to do is to back people up against a wall,” Mr. Dallek said.

“Obama has this more reasoned temperament,” he said. “It may well be that it’s not the prescription for making gains. It raises questions about his powers of persuasion.”

Some supporters said the imperative of the moment requires more force from Mr. Obama. “He needs to turn up the heat every way he can and every chance he gets because it’s not political points or poll numbers that are at stake but lives,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who has sponsored a gun control bill in the House.

The White House on Monday defended the president’s efforts on the gun legislation, saying he had made a vigorous effort to lobby wavering senators. “He made numerous phone calls and had numerous meetings,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “And his entire team here engaged in this process completely and thoroughly.”

But the president has long struggled to master his relationship with Congress. During his first two and a half years in office, he favored what aides called an inside approach, working quietly in back rooms to convince lawmakers of the logic of his positions. That worked better when Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, and he passed legislation to expand health care, regulate Wall Street and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy.

Well, he's a shitty president who can't tell the difference between his ass and a homosexual rim-station.

But RTWT.

RELATED: "Public Support For Gun Control Ebbs."

And to think, the gun-grabbing Dems work the shame strategy for all it was worth. I'd say they "worked it to death," but that wouldn't be cool.

'Stereotypically White Americans'

At Big Journalism, "CNN'S ERIN BURNETT SURPRISED BOMBING SUSPECTS AREN'T 'STEREOTYPICAL' AMERICANS.

"Wait ... Let me make sure I understand. Sorry, I want to make you understand. So they're still looking into the possibility that even though these two kids look very, very stereotypically like they're from here that this may be linked to a foreign terror group?"

Of course. Stereotypical.

Reese Witherspoon Apologizes After Arrest for Disorderly Conduct

At London's Daily Mail, "'You're about to find out who I am': What Reese Witherspoon said to police after arrest for 'disorderly conduct'... as her and husband Jim Toth's mugshots are revealed."

Dream Angels Extended Cut

Lovely:

RELATED: "What makes a successful lingerie shoot? Victoria's Secret Angels reveal it's all down to the 'sexy heat' in behind the scenes clip."

College Enrollment Dips Amid Massive Debt Pile

At IBD, "College Enrollment Dips As Student Loan Debt Nears $1 Trillion":

For the first time since the recession started, the college enrollment rate among young people has slipped, possibly signaling slower growth in student debt amid soaring delinquency rates and poor employment prospects.

In October 2012, 32.7% of people 16 to 24 years old were enrolled in college, the Labor Department said Wednesday in its annual reading. That's down from 33.4% a year earlier. The last time there was a decline was in 2006.

The total number enrolled also dropped to 12.7 million from 12.8 million, despite a slight uptick in the number of fresh high school graduates entering college...

RTWT.

Glenn Reynolds wrote about this kind of thing: "The Higher Education Bubble."

The Truth About Islam, the World's Most Violent Religion

At Saberpoint, "Why the Boston Bombers Did It (Hint: It's In the Koran)":

Question: Does the Quran really contain dozens of verses promoting violence?

Summary Answer: The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter. Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran. Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's many calls to violence according to what their own moral preconceptions find justifiable. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology. Unfortunately, there are very few verses of tolerance and peace to abrogate or even balance out the many that call for nonbelievers to be fought and subdued until they either accept humiliation, convert to Islam, or are killed. Muhammad's own martial legacy - and that of his companions - along with the remarkable stress on violence found in the Quran have produced a trail of blood and tears across world history.

More at the link.

Karolina Kurkova Gun Dress Causes Sensation

It's a twofer: guns and gams (beautiful gams, which of course just makes the feminists that much more pissed).

At the Mellow Jihadi, "Karolina Kurkova Wears Gun Skirt, World Ends."

Latest Updates on #Boston Terrorist Attack

At the Wall Street Journal, "Fresh Bomb Details Revealed: Prosecutors Describe Suspect's 'Calm' Behavior; Charges Could Carry Death Penalty."

Tsarnaev has been charged as a non-combatant defendant. Legal Insurrection has the indictment, "Unsealed Complaint and Affidavit – U.S. v Dzhokhar Tsarnaev."

This morning's Wall Street Journal made the case for denying Miranda rights, and Paul Gigot elaborates at the clip. See, "Enemy Combatants in Boston."

Less compelling is Michael Mukasey's op-ed published this morning as well, "Make No Mistake, It Was Jihad." The arguments against providing Miranda are basically about preventing another attack, an obviously high-priority goal. The only problem is that this attack is looking more and more as if it could have been prevented. That earlier FBI interrogation of Tamerlan is a major intelligence fiasco. Not to throw up our hands here. Only to say, hey, when you've got them by the balls don't throw it all away. People are getting blown to bits.

More at the New York Times, "Boston Bombing Suspect's Bedside Hearing," and London's Dail Mail, "'You can rouse him now': Extraordinary scene of Boston Marathon bomber's bedside arraignment, as he's read his Miranda Rights and only manages to say one word" (via Memeorandum).

Suspicion Falls on Dead Terror Suspect's Widow

At the New York Post, "Wife of suspected Boston Marathon bomber faces FBI's heat."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Feds to question Boston bomber's widow as she says she was 'watching TV when she discovered husband was a suspect'."

Canada Terror Plot Thwarted

It's been feeling a lot like the days after September 11, 2001.

At Atlas Shrugs, "MAJOR JIHAD TERROR PLOT TO ATTACK NEW YORK-TORONTO RAILROAD THWARTED IN CANADA: 'IT WAS MEANT TO BE SPECTACULAR AND THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT OF CARNAGE'."

And check Blazing Cat Fur:

* "Canada: Muslims Fear Backlash Over Latest Thwarted Terror Plot - Linked to Amish Division of Al Qaeda."

* "Idiot Apologists: Cair Canada Demands Government Not Pass Combating Terrorism Act Same Day As Via Rail Muslim Terrorists Arrested."

* "Chiheb Esseghair web page disappears in a Hurry."

More at Telegraph UK, "Canadian police foil al Qaeda-backed plot to derail train."

CNN Stumbles in Boston Terrorism Coverage

From David Carr, at the New York Times, "The Pressure to Be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand":

Like a lot of Americans, when I woke up on Friday morning and found out there was a manhunt in the Boston area for the remaining suspect in Monday’s bombing at the marathon, I turned on CNN.

It’s a common impulse, although less common than it used to be. The news audience has been chopped up into ideological camps, and CNN’s middle way has been clobbered in the ratings. The legacy networks’ news divisions can still flex powerful muscles on big stories, and Twitter and other real-time social media sites have seduced a whole new cohort of news consumers.

But the biggest damage to CNN has been self-inflicted — never more so than in June, when in a rush to be first, it came running out of the Supreme Court saying that President Obama’s health care law had been overturned. It was a hugely embarrassing error.

Still, when big news breaks, we instinctively look to CNN. We want CNN to be good, to be worthy of its moment. That impulse took a beating last week. On Wednesday at 1:45 p.m., the correspondent John King reported that a suspect had been arrested. It was a big scoop that turned out to be false.

Mr. King, a good reporter in possession of a bad set of facts, was joined by The Associated Press, Fox News, The Boston Globe and others, but the stumble could not have come at a worse time for CNN. When viewers arrived in droves — the audience tripled to 1.05 million, from 365,000 the week before, according to Nielsen ratings supplied by Horizon Media — CNN failed in its core mission.

It was not the worst mistake of the week — The New York Post all but fingered two innocent men in a front-page picture — but it was a signature error for a live news channel.

Continue reading.

I didn't even turn on the TV during much of the breaking news. Twitter is where the action is.

Boston Terrorism Update: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Responding to Questions in Writing

At the Wall Street Journal, "Bombing Suspect In and Out of Consciousness." Also, "Prosecutors Plot Strategic Course."

Also, at the New York Times, "Officials Say Bomb Suspects Appeared Set to Attack Again."

Al Neuharth, 1924-2013

From the Los Angeles Times, "Al Neuharth dies at 89; newspaper mogul created USA Today":

USA Today was a different kind of newspaper, designed for a generation of readers raised on television who lacked the time and inclination to read lengthy stories. A bold retort to the gray pages of traditional newspapers, it had color photographs, eye-catching graphics and bite-sizestories with paragraphs set off by bullets. Organized into four distinct sections, it featured a brightly hued full-page weather map and catered to sports fans with a mass of game results and other statistics.

Neuharth, who aimed to capture an increasingly mobile generation of readers desiring an easy-to-digest format when they were at home or on the road, dubbed it "The Nation's Newspaper."

"Our audience will be the whole damned country, but we think we can attract a slice of 4 or 5 percent of the more affluent, better-educated people over most areas of the country," Neuharth predicted in a 1982 interview with the Miami Herald. "We won't compete locally. We will be a second buy."

Critics, however, derided the paper as gimmicky and "junk food journalism." "McPaper" became a favorite put-down by traditional journalists appalled by its emphasis on brief, breezy stories. Newsweek poked fun at its founder as "the man who shortened the attention spans of millions of Americans."

It lost money for the first five years. But by its fifth anniversary in 1987, revenues had begun to rise and critics began to change their tune, with stories in other newspapers describing USA Today as innovative, even revolutionary.

By the early 1990s, major dailies, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, were redesigning their pages to be more reader-friendly, adding color, snappy graphics and stories that read more quickly.

RTWT.

An interesting guy.

Sorry, Media, No White Tea Partiers Were Involved

From Investors Business Daily:

In 2002, about 40 armed Chechen separatists took more than 900 hostages at Moscow's Dubrovka Theatre, a siege that resulted in the deaths of 130 hostages and all of the Chechen terrorists.

The world also watched in horror in 2004 as armed Islamic separatist militants, some Chechen, occupied a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, and killed more than 380 people.
By all accounts, the Tsarnaev brothers were fully Americanized, permanent residents attending U.S. schools. But as such they were the perfect "sleepers," terrorists in waiting, ripe for recruiting, particularly considering their place of origin.

Leftists such as Sirota bemoan "profiling" and "stereotyping" while they engage in a variety all their own. Sirota complained that the likes of Timothy McVeigh are treated as lone wolves while Muslim terrorists are treated as existential threats, that "white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted" for their acts.

Islamofascist terrorists, and the regimes and groups that support them, do constitute an existential threat. There have not been many Swedish terrorists; and what Sirota calls profiling we would call a description of the suspects. We wonder what part of "death to America" Sirota and his colleagues do not understand.

More at that top link.

And see, "'Emotionally, it is very hard for me to consider such ilk as fellow Americans, let alone as decent human beings...'"

Katherine Russell, Widow of Marathon Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Converted to Islam, Wore Hijab, Was 'Brainwashed' by Extremist Husband

Such an ultimate bummer that this young lady got mixed up with that jihadi loser scum.

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE - How doctor's daughter became the Muslim convert widow of Boston bomber: Terrorist husband 'brainwashed' her and she gave up her dreams of college to have his baby at 21":

None who knew her as a child could have dreamed that this would be the face she would one day present to the world, nor that her life and those of so many Bostonians would be so violently caught up with two brothers from Chechnya and a cause as unclear as it was brutal.

As a girl growing up in Rhode Island Katherine was known to her friends as Katie. One school friend who asked not to be named recalled: ‘I saw her like a few months ago and she was just totally transformed. She was not the same person at all.’

Sunday Night Rule 5

Via Guns and Bikinis: