…this might have something to do with the fact that there’s not a whole lot of upset about the failure of the gun bill.
Nothing concentrates the mind on the subject so much as a spectacle in which America watches as a violent homicidal terrorist runs loose in a city, and citizens are told to remain in their homes. A gun can go at least part of the way to ward off that feeling of helplessness.
Commentary is almost superfluous.
…is now about as popular as Obama
Or perhaps I should say that Obama is about as popular as Bush.
Just with different people, I’d wager.
Liar liar pants on fire:
Usually I do not post on blogs, but I desire to say that this article very forced me to!
Dzhohkar Tsarnaev knows exactly how to appeal to the left. Get ready to watch him work quite a few variations on the theme.
Some interesting disclosures in the affidavit, including the fact that the bombers may have used cell phones to detonate their deadly cargo. For example, a little while after Bomber 2’s (Dzhohkar’s) backpack is placed on the ground, and about 30 seconds before the first explosion, he puts his cell phone to his ear for eighteen seconds, and shortly afterward people are seen reacting to first bomb.
Virtually every head turns toward the east (towards the finish line) and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm. Bomber Two, virtually alone among the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm.
Dzhohkar then walks away, leaving his backpack behind where he had placed it earlier. Approximately ten seconds later an explosion occurs in that spot.
Think about it. Ten seconds.
As for the carjacking, one of the bombers tapped on the window of the victim’s car to get him to roll down the window, at which point the bomber reached in and opened the door, climbed aboard, and pointed a gun at him. It was at that point that he identified himself as the marathon bomber, showed the victim the gun was loaded, and added “I’m serious.” This may possibly clear up the mystery as to why the victim was told who the carjackers were. They apparently wanted him to understand they were dangerous, and that therefore he should do what they say. Their focus seemed to be on getting the car, and on coercing him to get them some money from an ATM, rather than how they would ultimately dispose of him.
There were security cameras at the ATM that showed the bombers, as well as cameras at the gas station where they stopped (and where the victim escaped). They seem to have either been unaware of the ubiquity of cameras, or not to care. The same is true of the original crime; it seems they had to have known that the Boston marathon is one of the most photographed events on earth, and yet acted as though they’d never be caught (or didn’t care if they were caught) by (in Dzhohkar’s case, anyway) not disguising themselves very well, and not even attempting to escape the Boston area afterward. They either had contempt for law enforcement’s investigative capacities, or in some sense didn’t mind if they were caught.
I vote for the latter. What good is it being one of the Boston bombers if nobody knows what a badass guy you are?
It was a foregone conclusion that almost as soon as the bombing occurred and evidence began to churn out—and especially after the photos of the young and somewhat telegenic Dzhohkar were flashed around—a certain segment of people would begin (along with the Tsarnaev brothers’ parents, who at least have the excuse of being their parents) proclaiming the brothers’ innocence.
Sure! The Tsarnaevs were framed. Patsies! And all those people in the crowd with all those photos were part of the plot. As for the cop killing and the final shootout and all that—well, after all, wouldn’t anybody act that way?
All we lack to complete the picture is for a Jack Ruby to step forward and shoot Dzhokhar in his hospital bed, inciting spinoff conspiracy theories.
I predict that there will soon be a market for T-shirts with Dzhohkar’s picture on them a la Che, if it’s not already happening.
Oh. I see that it’s already happening.
Did you know that Israel appears poised to become a massive exporter of natural gas and oil? Seems that way:
Israel became energy independent on March 30, when the Tamar offshore gas field began pumping natural gas to Israel. In two to three years, when the Leviathan gas field comes online, Israel will become one of the most important producers of natural gas in the world. Moreover, in 2017, Israel will likely begin extracting commercial quantities of oil from its massive oil shale deposits in the Shfela Basin near Beit Shemesh.
Geologists assess that the field alone contains some 250 billion barrels of oil, giving Israel oil parity with Saudi Arabia. Chinese, Russian and Australian firms are lining up to sign contracts with Israeli energy companies. International analysts assess that Israel’s emergence as an energy power will have a stabilizing impact on the global economy and international security. Israel can end Asia’s oil and gas hunger. It can reduce European dependence on Russia. It will remove OPEC’s ability to dictate world oil prices through supply manipulation.
Two other brothers connected to the Boston bombing.
I speculated some time ago that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might kill himself before capture. And in fact, I was very surprised later to learn that he’d been taken alive. It turns out, though, that there’s a very good chance he made a serious attempt at suicide and failed, succeeding only in robbing himself of speech (perhaps permanently) because of injuries from a gunshot wound to his tongue and throat.
A few days ago I also wondered why the bombers released the guy whose car they hijacked. Now there are reports that they didn’t release him, but that he escaped at a gas station when the two left the car to buy snacks. I can’t say that makes a whole lot more sense to me, since it would seem to be an obvious rule of thumb that two perps shouldn’t both leave the car together if they want the victim to stay put. Perhaps the report is in error, or perhaps they were so rattled (or so hungry?) they forgot the most elementary rule that any moviegoer would know.
Since the FBI had already been alerted to older brother Tamerlane as a potential terrorist, why didn’t his 6-month visit to Dagestan and his attendance at a militant mosque there raise some very large red flags? Did he, perhaps, travel under an alias? And why, even after the photos were released, did the FBI seemingly fail “to cross-reference the photograph with a man whose picture they already had on file”? the kindest interpretation might be that his sunglasses may have obscured enough of his face to make the photos hard to match.
Here’s an article about Tamerlane Tsarnaev’s American-born wife, who met him and converted to Islam. She will certainly be asked a lot of questions by the authorities, but my guess is that her husband didn’t confide in her very much about his plans to blow up a crowd of people.
Nor does the article shed all that much light on her own transformation from all-American college student to dropout and Muslim wife. (And just as an aside: I had no idea there were leopard-print hijabs.)
Some of these inconsistencies are probably due to bad reporting. Some are purposeful obfuscation by the authorities, perhaps to hide their methods and knowledge. Some are probably the result of the fog of terrorism, and as more facts emerge they may come clearer. And those of a conspiracist bent will no doubt have a field day with it all.
[ADDENDUM: Re Tamerlane Tsarnaev’s recent travel going undetected, Lindsay Graham says it was because his name was misspelled by the airline. This is pretty shocking; doesn’t the FBI have capacities like Google, to alert to alternate spellings? If not, it should. Or at the very least we shouldn’t be relying just on airlines for this, since a passport had to be involved as well.]
Once a population has been welfarized, can a nation go back?
Countries in Europe are facing problems as they start to run out of what Margaret Thatcher called “other people’s money.” So Denmark is trying, at least a little bitty bit, to rethink the welfare system, and finding it tough going:
“In the past, people never asked for help unless they needed it,” said Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, who has been outspoken on the subject. “My grandmother was offered a pension and she was offended. She did not need it.
“But now people do not have that mentality. They think of these benefits as their rights. The rights have just expanded and expanded. And it has brought us a good quality of life. But now we need to go back to the rights and the duties. We all have to contribute.”
Good luck with that.
[NOTE: I thought I’d coined the term “welfarized” for this post. But apparently not.]
Sunday is usually my day of blogrest. But so much has been happening lately that I thought I’d try an Instapundit turn.
You’d do well to read Stuart Schneiderman on the left’s “poor pitiful bombers” narrative (hat tip: “sharpie”).
And Schneiderman directs us to this portrait of the bombers’ mother and the Tsarnaevs’ family life, written by a young woman who used to go to the family residence where the mother gave her facials. Yes, facials.
If the younger Tsarnaev survives, perhaps he has a future as a Columbia professor. John M. Murtagh, who was nine years old when his home was firebombed by Kathy Boudin and company, reflects on new bombers vs. old (hat tip: Ace).
Historians unworthy of the name. I made a similar observation here a while back.
The situation in Watertown a couple of days ago made a lot of non-gunowners think twice.
If this scene were in a movie you’d think it farfetched.
At 12:43 A.M. on Wednesday the 17th of April, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted: “I’m a stress free kind of guy.”
David Henneberry’s gonna get a new boat.