HALF-FULL REPORT 04/19/13

Salon. columnist David Sirota hoped the guy who planted two IEDs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday was a "white American" like Timothy McVeigh.

Though they didn’t express it so explicitly, so did others in the MSM. The "extreme right" could be responsible, they speculated, because the bombing took place in April, on Patriot’s Day in Boston, and because income taxes are due April 15.

Their hopes have been dashed.  The culprits are Muslims, recent immigrants from Chechnya, brothers.  One was killed in a shootout early Friday morning.  Boston was shut down during the massive manhunt for the other.

"We believe this to be a terrorist," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis of the brother still at large. "We believe this to be a man who came here to kill people."

That was the way to bet all along.  In 6 of the 9 incidents since 9/11/2001 the U.S. government classifies as "acts of terror," the perps were Muslims, I noted in a column Tuesday.  Authorities have thwarted 53 other terror plots, all by Muslims, according to this count by the Heritage Foundation.

The IEDs were "pressure cooker" bombs, which are popular with Islamic terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan,  India and Chechnya because they are lethal, but easy to make. Al Qaida recommended jihadis use pressure cooker bombs, and provided instruction in how to build one in a 2010 article in its propaganda magazine "Inspire."  The instructions were updated in an al Qaida manual published a few months ago. 

This didn’t keep CNN from claiming they’d been told by a "senior counterterrorism expert" that pressure cooker bombs have also been a "signature" of "extreme right wing individuals" in the United States.  CNN didn’t identify who that "senior counterterrorism expert" was – perhaps because his Wed search found "not one solitary mention of American right-wing use of these devices," said Breitbart’s Lee Stranahan.

A leading al Qaida propagandist recommended "targets such as crowded sports arenas, annual social events, large international exhibitions, crowded market-places, skyscrapers, crowded buildings" in order to "inflict maximum human losses."

As these signs mounted, liberal journalists who on Monday and Tuesday were making baseless accusations against the right wing began to caution us against "overreacting" to the horror of the Boston bombing – which I doubt they’d do if they thought they could pin the blame on the Tea Party.

We should respond to the Boston massacre by acting like it didn’t happen, said New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. "Let’s repair the sidewalk immediately, fix the windows, fill the holes and leave no trace – no shrines, no flowers, no statues, no plaques – and return life to normal there as fast as possible."

If we were to respond more, er, robustly, the terrorists win, said Mr. Friedman, who thinks "we probably overreacted" on 9/11/2001.

"It is inconceivable to me that Tom Friedman or his editors would ever run a column telling the Sandy Hook parents that it was time to move on or else Adam Lanza wins," said Tom Maguire.  "So how the Times let pass this exhortation to the newly legless to just get over it is beyond me."

Liberals often have expressed fear the Great Unwashed, frightened and angered by a horrific act of terror, would string up Muslims from lampposts. Jonathan Tobin finds it curious that  "so many of the people who are so insistent that Boston should not lead to a disproportionate government response to terrorism are often the same ones who have been asking to use Newtown as an excuse to enact far-reaching gun legislation."

The "backlash" exists only in their feverish imaginations.  Ordinary Americans distinguish between Muslims generally, and the subset among them who commit acts of terror.  It’s liberals – like those at the Associated Press – who don’t.

Ordinary Americans have responded to the Boston massacre – as they did after 9/11/2001 – in exemplary fashion.  No opprobrium should be attached to those who ran away from the blasts.  But we should be very proud of the many who ran toward the carnage, to see what they could do to help, or who went directly from the race to local hospitals to donate blood.

Bad behavior has pretty much been restricted to Democrat politicians and liberal journalists, who regard tragedies as just another opportunity to score cheap political points. 

*The NRA is responsible for the sluggishness of the FBI investigation, said MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell.

*Senate Republicans are to blame for what happened in Boston, tweeted New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, because they’ve held up the nomination of the man President Obama wants to head the ATF. 

*Republicans are to blame, said House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md, because they permitted the budget sequester.

* * * *

In another instance of déjà vu all over again, suspicious packages have been mailed to senators, and to the White House.  But the chief suspect appears to be an Elvis impersonator.  He’s no Islamist, but he is a Democrat activist.

* * * *

The Toomey-Manchin proposal to expand background checks failed to get enough votes in the Senate Wednesday to shut off debate.  After Sen. Diane Feinstein’s bill to reinstate the "assault" weapons bill went down in flames, Dingy Harry Reid surrendered.

This was an "unmitigated disaster" for President Obama, which puts his entire second term agenda in jeopardy, said a distraught Ron Fournier of the National Journal. "Never before had President Barack Obama put the moral force and political muscle of his presidency behind an issue quite this big – and lost quite this badly," said Politico.

The president did not take defeat well. Neither did the New York Times and MSNBC, who chided Fox News for cutting away from his tantrum to cover the explosion in a fertilizer factory near Waco, Texas in which 35-40 people were killed, more than 150 injured.

What had to be especially galling for Zero and his media allies is that defeat came in the Senate, at the hands of Red State Democrats – more of whom voted against Toomey-Manchin (5) than Republicans voted for it (4) – which means he cannot plausibly use gun control as a wedge issue next year against those nasty Republicans in the House.

FWIW, terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev  appears to support gun control.  And, apparently, he’s an Obama supporter. I suppose that if you plan to kill people with bombs, you don’t want others to have guns, because if they do, they might frustrate your plans.

* * * *

The incivil, irrational, over the top reaction of the president and his allies to their gun control defeat seems really petty in the wake of what’s happened in Boston.  Their selective moral outrage, which I addressed in a column yesterday and Victor Davis Hanson addresses here, is made more apparent, and seems more repugnant.

Some events make big changes in the political landscape.  The Boston Massacre won’t have anything near the impact of 9/11/2012, but as the nation was galvanized by the manhunt Friday, we can be sure its effects will ripple in many places.

*Efforts to maintain – much less to build – outrage over the gun control vote are doomed. The victims of Boston are foremost on our minds, not the victims of Newtown.  When we are reminded so vividly there are people who are trying to kill us – who may strike anywhere, anytime – it’s hard to maintain a hate on the NRA.  Worse for Zero, his whole agenda now seems trivial. 

*Americans may wonder why a president who has spent so much on just about everything else has cut spending for domestic bomb protection by 45 percent.

*The architects of the Boston Massacre were legal immigrants who were showered with benefits by the liberals of Greater Boston.  This raises questions about, and damages prospects for the immigration reform bill the "Gang of Eight" introduced in the Senate this week.  The Obama administration’s lackadaisical attitude toward border enforcement could come under greater scrutiny.

*Americans may wonder why they’ve heard so little from the news media about the 53 earlier Islamist terror plots I mentioned above.

*Renewed focus on Islamic terror makes these developments about Benghazi more dangerous for the administration, because it will not be dismissed by most Americans as old news.  If this report is true, the Obamunists have been caught in an explicit lie.

*A renewed focus on Islamic terror also is likely to raise awareness of and alarm about the failures of Obama’s foreign policy with regard to Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya-Mali, and elsewhere.  It will dawn on more Americans than it has so far that Zero’s secretary of state and his secretary of defense are dufuses.

* * * *

The Boston Massacre and his defeat on gun control were more than enough to make this the worst week of Barack Obama’s presidency since the 2010 midterm elections, but it wasn’t the end of the bad news.

*Obamacare implementation is a "huge train wreck coming down," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.  The train wreck is in large part Baucus’ fault, since he helped write the Obamacare law, said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan. But he has to run for re-election next year.  The train wreck has already begun, says Matt Continetti.

The United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers, which had pressed for passage of Obamacare, called for its repeal.  That’s a small union, but soon there could be more, said Megan McArdle.

*There were more signs this week that the economy is weakening, here and abroad.  A weakening economy will increase fractures in a "fragile" Democrat coalition, especially between union members who want jobs, and wealthy environmentalists whose policies are they chief reason they don’t have them, and between Democrat mayors in cash strapped cities and public employee unions.

* * * *

If you thought testimony in the Gosnell trial couldn’t get more grisly, you were mistaken.

* * * *

Just before the special election to fill the House seat vacated by Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, disgraced former governor Mark Sanford has reminded voters he is one strange dude.  The NRCC has given up on him. Dems will crow about this, but they shouldn’t, because an even bigger slimeball of theirs is gaining ground in the race for mayor of New York City.

* * * *

TTPers don’t need additional proof that Democrats are douchebags, but they keep providing it, most recently in their churlish behavior following the death of Margaret Thatcher. Sen. Robert Menendez, Churl-NJ, held up and tried to weaken a resolution in the Senate honoring her.

The churl-in-chief didn’t send an envoy to her funeral in London Wednesday.  Charles Cooke notes that when they passed on, the prime minister of Ethiopia and the president of Ghana got more attention.  So did Hugo Chavez.

* * * *

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, who deserves one, has a primary challenger.

* * * *

The "Gang of Eight" has filed an 844-page "comprehensive" immigration reform bill in the Senate. Key provisions are:

Enforcement.  DHS is directed to police 100 percent of the border with Mexico, intercept at least 90 percent of illegal crossers within 5 years.

Interior Enforcement.  Business owners would be required to check the immigration status of new employees.  DHS would be required to monitor each time all immigrants enter or leave the country.

Path to Citizenship.  Illegals who got here before 31 Dec 2011 can apply for temporary legal status.  After 10 years, most would be eligible for a green card.  Three years after that, if they’ve kept their noses clean, they could apply for citizenship.

Visas.  Reduces the number of visas given to relatives of U.S. citizens; increases visas for immigrants with scientific and technical skills.

Big majorities of Republicans as well as of Americans support what the bill’s sponsors say it will do.  But will it?  Democrats have no intention of keeping the promises they made to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, to get him on board, said National Review Editor Rich Lowry.

I doubt an 844-page bill is a good idea, no matter what’s in it, but I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve studied its provisions. Before Wednesday, I wouldn’t have bothered.  Immigration reform was going nowhere, I said in the HFR two weeks ago, because Obama would rather have the issue, and his Big Labor buddies don’t want more low wage competition.

Zero’s humiliating defeat on gun control may have changed the calculus for him. He desperately needs now a "win" on a substantive issue, lest he become a lame duck far earlier than any president before him. It can come only on immigration reform.

Which means Rubio’s already substantial clout has increased by leaps and bounds.  Zero can get his "win" essentially only if he yields to Rubio’s terms.  Which gives us an opportunity to turn this debate to our advantage.  I’ll have a lot more to say about this next week.

* * * *

In no week in which so many Americans have died violently can the glass be said to be more than half full.  But in a week in which so many liberal pundits expressed angst that the Obama presidency was nearing collapse, the glass can’t be said to half empty, either.  If you didn’t read this Matt Continetti article I linked to in last week’s HFR, you owe it to yourself to read it now.