Posted on May 17, 2013 by Scott Johnson in Islam, Terrorism

MS. found in a boat

CBS News reports:

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a note claiming responsibility for the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon, reports CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.

Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It reads as part manifesto, part suicide note and part justification for the killing and maiming of innocent civilians.

The note — scrawled with a marker on the interior wall of the cabin — said the bombings were retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims “collateral damage” in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” Tsarnaev wrote.

Tsarnaev said he didn’t mourn older brother Tamerlan, the other suspect in the bombings, writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise — and that he expected to join him there soon.

As for joining his brother soon, if only. As for the rest, we can count on President Obama to explain to Tsarnaev how he misunderstands his faith.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Barack Obama, Hollywood, Obamacare

The Bulworth identity

Peter Baker reports on President Obama’s frustrations in the New York Times:

In private, [Obama] has talked longingly of “going Bulworth,” a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Mr. Beatty’s character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Mr. Obama’s desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.

“Probably every president says that from time to time,” said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Mr. Obama’s movie-inspired aspiration. “It’s probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.”

Baker somewhat cluelessly adds this comment:

The cinematic allusion seems striking given Mr. Obama’s rejection of Hollywood’s version of the White House, what one former aide calls “the Harry Potter theory of the presidency,” which suggests that he could wave a wand and make things happen. At the White House Correspondents Association dinner last month, he bristled at the idea that he should pattern himself after Michael Douglas’s assertive character in “The American President.”

Turning to Mr. Douglas, who was in the audience, he jokingly asked what his secret was. “Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy?” Mr. Obama asked. He added later, “I get frustrated sometimes.”

I say cluelessly because Obama’s presentation of himself as a world-historic, transformative figure is perfectly consistent with his current frustrations. Indeed, if he has any friends, they should try to cheer him up. He’s gone a long way toward the “fundamental transformation” of the United States he promised just before he trounced John Mccain in 2008.

In case you need some help with the Bulworth reference, IMDb has compiled quotes from the film. When Bulworth begins to say what he really thinks, he adopts a black persona and lays his shtick down in rap, as in his praise of socialized medicine:

Bulworth: Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain’t gonna work, no sir, not those / ‘Cause the thing that’s the same in every one of these / Is these mother******* there, the insurance companies!

Cheryl and Tanya: Insurance! Insurance!

Bulworth: Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word – SOCIALISM!

There is a reason Bulworth is little remembered. It falls into a long line of lame liberal satire. But Baker’s report is really interesting. One wishes Baker’s curiosity weren’t so constrained. Dig a little deeper, man! What deep truths is Obama longing to share with the American people?

He’s already told us he prefers “single-payer or Canadian way,” to take the Bulworthian example above. He hasn’t gone so far as to give a shout out to “that dirty word – SOCIALISM,” but we can connect the dots from Obamacare to the “single-payer or the Canadian” way by ourselves. From the glories of the Canadian way (as Obama sees them) to “SOCIALISM” only requires a little generalization from a big example.

Perhaps in the Bulworth mode Obama would tell us what fools we were to believe his fake opposition to gay marriage, or his fake support for Israel. He would tell us friendship with Bill Ayers and his support for late term abortion/infanticide.

He would explain the virtues of the Muslim Brotherhood. He would unburden himself of the shame he felt having to disown Jeremiah Wright. He would tell us at long last of his profound feelings for the wisdom of Rashid Khalidi!

He would have a few choice words about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, but he would also express his contempt for the Republican members of the Gang of Eight. He would express his deep gratitude to low information voters and the members of the media who kept them in that condition.

Whatever Obama would have to say in Bulworth mode might come as a slight surprise to low information voters, but for anyone who has been paying attention it would amount to an utterly superfluous postscript. The only thing close to humorous about it is Obama’s conceit that he has concealed his inner light.

Via Stanley Kurtz/NRO.

UPDATE: I had missed James Taranto’s inquiry: “What would Bulworth do?”

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Steven Hayward in Culture, Media

Kevin Williamson, Stud

I already thought National Review‘s Kevin Williamson, author of the fine new book The End Is Near And It’s Going to Be Awesome was a total stud, but after last night’s bravado performance in a New York theater, he’s a total heroic stud.  If you haven’t heard the story yet, check out how he dealt with cell phone rudeness during a performance:

The lady seated to my immediate right (very close quarters on bench seating) was fairly insistent about using her phone. I asked her to turn it off. She answered: “So don’t look.” I asked her whether I had missed something during the very pointed announcements to please turn off your phones, perhaps a special exemption granted for her. She suggested that I should mind my own business.

So I minded my own business by utilizing my famously feline agility to deftly snatch the phone out of her hand and toss it across the room, where it would do no more damage. She slapped me and stormed away to seek managerial succor.

Who hasn’t longed to do exactly this.  Williamson has made a strong opening bid to be the Howard Beale of our time.  Apparently there is talk of criminal charges.  Against Kevin.  Power Line will be happy to contribute to the #FreeKevin defense fund.

Kevin is trending huge on Twitter right now, as this story shows.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in IRS, Obamacare

Meet the new oppressor, same as the old oppressor

If this were April 1, I’d bet that the following headline from ABC News is a joke: “IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office.” But the joke is on us. Here’s the story:

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant has been pushed out the door. Today he announced that he would retire on June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office on May 8, a week ago.

But Ingram remains in her post. Perhaps the administration believes that Obamacare is too important to be entrusted to an honest, non-overtly partisan bureaucratic.

Rep. Rep. Marlin Stutzman nailed it when he said today: “Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups. Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”

If only the Supreme Court had put Obamacare out of our misery.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Immigration

The Hispanic vote in presidential elections

A reader provided me with several useful comments on my post regarding the Republican share of the Hispanic vote in presidential elections since 1980. First, he says that the figure I used for George W. Bush’s share in 2004 — 43 percent — is an outlier:

In 2004, NEP (National Exit Poll) reported 44% for Bush, the highest of all ten polls. That result was widely and immediately challenged. Pew Research and NBC News independently checked NEP’s calculations. [Both] independently agreed that NEP’s result should have been 40%. Of the other nine national polls, only [one] came in over 40%. . . .The other eight polls ranged between 32% and 38% for Bush.

Second, looking much further back than I did, our reader says that since 1960, the 2004 election is the ONLY time that Hispanics MIGHT have voted 40% for the GOP.

Third, he presents this distressing news:

Pew Hispanic Center published a remarkable – and completely unreported – research study in 2012. Pew’s conclusion? First generation Hispanics vote 80% for the Democrat Party. Fourth(!) generation Hispanics vote 60% for the Democrat Party.

Unskilled and low-skilled immigrants are, and always have been, natural constituents of the Democrats. And their more highly skilled, and even affluent, descendants tend to remain Democrats. Heck, fourth generation Jewish Americans vote even more heavily for Democrats than fourth generation Hispanics.

Republicans are deluding themselves when they attribute Hispanic voting patterns to the issue of immigration — the numbers don’t support that argument. They are also deluding themselves when they claim that the Hispanic population that has voted so overwhelmingly Democratic for decades can be won over in the foreseeable future by a Republican Party that favors limited government.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Liberals, Obama Administration Scandals

Trust Me! Or Else…

Yesterday, Scott suggested that President Obama’s commencement speech at Ohio State, which was essentially a paean to big government, may have represented the high tide of Obamaism. In hindsight, Obama’s words were chilling:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

As usual, Obama twists words to suit his purposes. When I say “self-rule,” I mean: I rule myself. When Obama says “self-rule,” he means: Obama rules me.

Michael Ramirez comments on Obama’s commencement speech in the light of recent scandals:

Paul has made the point that the significance of the Obama scandals goes far beyond the immediate corruption of the Obama administration. Rather, it highlights the folly of entrusting vast administrative power to an army of leftists. Others have made similar observations, including Paul Ryan on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show earlier this evening:

This isn’t just about incompetence, though. This is about an overreach. This is about a government that has gone beyond its scope, and this also speaks to the philosophy of government that’s at play here in Washington. And if you want to have a government that does everything for you, they’ve got to know everything about you. If you want to have a government that should be in the position of picking winners and losers, well then, they will pick winners and losers. And so it’s not a story just about incompetence. It’s about overreach. You know, big government is bad in theory, but it’s much worse in practice. And effective government, that is good government that’s limited, focuses in on our core duties. So this speaks to more than just, you know, did they do this to conservative groups before an election to try and give themselves an advantage? It also goes beyond that to, you know, bureaucrats are making decisions for us on behalf of government, not on behalf of the people.

It appears that, having made the astonishing mistake of re-electing Barack Obama, the American people will learn through bitter experience why the Founders feared demagogues and tried to establish a system of limited government.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Immigration

And Now, Back to Immigration

Let’s put aside the Obama administration’s scandals for a moment, and return to an issue that will have a great deal more to do with America’s future: immigration. The proposed Gang of Eight bill will result in somewhere between 30 million and 57 million new immigrants over the next ten years. This is, in a nutshell, why the bill is so bad. The impact of such a mass influx of immigrants, the vast majority unskilled, on America’s existing pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labor will be catastrophic.

Peter Kirsanow is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a former member of the National Labor Relations Board. Writing in the New Journal & Guide, he explains why the immigration bill will be a “disaster” for low-skilled workers, especially African-Americans:

[T]he employment picture for low-skilled workers is abysmal. The employment rate has been above 7.5 percent for more than four years and millions have dropped out of the workforce entirely. Among those without a high school diploma, the unemployment rate in April reached 11.4 percent, and for blacks without a high school diploma, it is more than 24 percent. The labor-force participation rate is at historic lows and long-term unemployment is the worst since the Great Depression. The workweek is shrinking, as well as wage rates. Barely one in two adult black males has a full time job. A record 47 million people are on food stamps.

The immigration reform bill has the potential to make things even worse. Not only will the bill grant amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, it will act as a magnet for future illegal immigration and substantially increase the number of legal immigrants. It is conservatively estimated that the bill will result in 30 – 33 million additional immigrants over the next 10 years.

The bill is structured so that most of the immigrants will be low-skilled. These immigrants will compete with Americans in the low-skilled labor markets. The competition is most fierce in some of the industries in which blacks historically have been highly concentrated, such as construction, agriculture and service. Since the supply of low-skilled workers already exceeds the demand, the massive influx in low-skilled immigrants bodes ill for all such workers, but particularly black males.

This is an issue, as Mr. Kirsanow points out, that has already been studied. The effects of mass, unskilled immigration on the existing labor pool are known:

Evidence adduced before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights shows that immigration accounts for 40 percent of the 18 point percentage decline in black employment rates over the last several decades – the bulk of the decline occurring among black males. That’s hundreds of thousands of blacks thrown out of work; hundreds of thousands that can’t support their families without taxpayer assistance.

The evidence adduced by the Commission shows that not only does illegal immigration depress the employment levels of low-skilled Americans, it drives down the wages for available jobs. For example, an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimated that as a result of the growth of undocumented workers, the annual earnings of actual documented workers in Georgia in 2007 were $960 lower than they were in 2000. In the leisure hospitality sectors of the economy, the wages were $1,520 lower.

Mr. Kirsanow concludes:

Before the federal government grants legal status to illegal immigrants, serious deliberation must be given to the effect such grant will have on the employment and earnings prospects of low-skilled Americans. History shows that granting such legal status is not without profound and substantial costs to American workers.

Does Congress care?

Well, Jeff Sessions certainly does. But hardly any Democrats in Congress–those same Democrats who insist that they are on the side of the working man–care how the immigration bill will impact existing low-wage workers. Unfortunately, the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t care, either. But it is the duty of Congress (unlike the Chamber of Commerce) to look out only for the interests of American citizens. We owe absolutely nothing to illegal immigrants, but we–Congressmen, that is–owe a duty of loyalty to American citizens who are already having a hard time making ends meet.