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At Every Turn, Things Were Spinning out of Control
Townhall.com ^ | April 22, 2013 | Michael Barone

Posted on 04/22/2013 4:39:18 AM PDT by Kaslin

Chaos. Things seemed to be spinning out of control on many fronts this week.

Starting, of course, with the Boston Marathon bombing Monday. The bombers chose a significantly festive time and place for their attack.

The marathon is held every year on Patriots Day, the Massachusetts state holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Even before the identity of the bombers became known, it seemed likely that they were enemies of America.

And their attack was a reminder that this free and open country remains a soft target. There is no way we can be entirely safe.

If the marathon bombings brought back memories of the Sept. 11 attacks, the news on Tuesday and Wednesday that letters containing the poison ricin were sent to Sen. Roger Wicker and President Obama brought back memories of the anthrax-laden letters discovered the week after 9/11.

It was a comfort to see how well bystanders and first responders reacted to the marathon bombings and how law enforcement personnel, led by the FBI, were careful to avoid premature announcements.

Comforting also were Barack Obama's appropriate remarks in Boston on Thursday and the release by the FBI, after his departure, of photos of the two suspects.

Law enforcement invited the public to supply information and identify the killers. This contrasted favorably with the way law enforcement quarantined information about the Beltway snipers in October 2002.

But in the meantime, other things spun out of control.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted down gun control proposals, with the closest vote coming on the background check provision sponsored by Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin.

In the Rose Garden, Obama spoke angrily and called the votes "pretty shameful." But they were an inevitable response to his cynical exploitation of the grief of parents of the Newtown victims to get votes for measures that would not have prevented that or other mass killings.

Obama made much of polls showing 90 percent support for background checks. But those polls didn't measure the response to arguments against those measures.

This was a test of Organizing for America, the offspring of the Obama presidential campaign. The idea is that OFA could pressure members of Congress just as it had turned out voters for Obama last fall.

But that ignored some relevant political numbers. The Obama campaign did motivate enough voters to carry 332 electoral votes. But those votes were heavily clustered in central cities and university towns

Obama carried only 26 states. They elect only 52 senators, well under the 60 votes he needed in the Senate on gun control. And he carried only 209 congressional districts, less than a majority of the House.

Wednesday also saw an extraordinary outburst in the Senate Finance Committee's hearings on Obamacare, as committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, "I just see a train wreck coming down."

HHS, he noted, is way behind schedule on issuing regulations implementing the health care law. Small businessmen in Montana, he said, don't know how they can comply.

"The administration's public information campaign on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act deserves a failing grade," he told Sebelius. "You haven't given me any data. You just give me concepts, frankly."

Liberals grumbled that Baucus was skittish about 2014, when he is up for re-election in a state that voted 55 to 42 percent for Mitt Romney, and threatened to run ads against him.

Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo pointed out that Baucus was one of the chief authors of the law whose implementation he was now criticizing. Nonetheless, Obamacare seemed to be spinning out of control.

Similar disarray was apparent on foreign policy in hearings Thursday, as noted by the American Interest's Walter Russell Mead.

Secretary of State John Kerry testified that we are working "very, very closely" with "the moderate legitimate opposition" to the Assad regime in Syria. But Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey testified that it was getting harder to "clearly identify the right people" in the opposition than it was six months ago.

George W. Bush and his party suffered at the polls in his second term after things seemed to be spinning out of control in New Orleans and Iraq.

Things aren't that far out of control, yet. But this hasn't been a good week for Obama or for America.


TOPICS: Editorial
KEYWORDS: badweek; boston; marathonbombing; massachusetts

1 posted on 04/22/2013 4:39:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
The marathon is held every year on Patriots Day, the Massachusetts state holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775.

There is the exact reason for the event chosen for the attack.

2 posted on 04/22/2013 4:41:12 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: Kaslin
Been a bad week for the Liberal, Progressives Democrats.

ObamaCare was designed to destroy our health care system and force all Americans into a single payer system. That is becoming obvious to everyone, including the politicians who voted it in. It is also becoming obvious that the government has not got the skill and capability to set up a single payer system so the system will just be destroyed with no alternative. Gonna be a lot of PO’ed voters when that happens, and even (especially) the entitlement peeps in the ‘Hood find they have not been given free health care, they have had the pretty good health care they previously destroyed.That is why Jay Roclefeller retired.

The Gosnell Trial has exposed abortion for the horror that it is.

The Boston Matathon has exposed the Obama Administration's feckless approach to terrorism and may actually expose some active ties or collaboration between terrorists and and this Administration

They lost on gun control because Americans have caught on to them and fear they may have to protect themselves from the consequences of the Obama Administration or from the Obama Administration itself.

This week could very be a turning point for this Administration

3 posted on 04/22/2013 4:59:21 AM PDT by rdcbn
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To: rdcbn
Been a bad week for the Liberal, Progressives Democrats.

One bad week out of decades of indoctrination in the public schools isn't so bad. Only a complete collapse of progressivism will save the U.S.

4 posted on 04/22/2013 5:01:32 AM PDT by raybbr (People who still support Obama are either a Marxist or a moron. No, they are both.)
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To: Kaslin
MEMO TO M. BARONE: I refuse to be cowed, or depressed, or upset. This is our F***ing country and if terrorists, or progressives, or occupiers or illegal immigrants doubt it and want a fight, they better consider what happens to the enemies of America when we have had enough.

Yes, we can be ugly. But we are not that way by nature. But the forces of "The Chaos" of Obama are beginning to try our patience

5 posted on 04/22/2013 5:03:09 AM PDT by Rapscallion
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To: Kaslin

Bump.


6 posted on 04/22/2013 5:15:49 AM PDT by EternalVigilance (If the oath-breaking politicians won't fear God, we can at least make them fear We the People.)
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To: Kaslin

I’m not spinning out of control, I’m pissed.

Once FBI had the pictures of the terrorists, you’ll remember they weren’t made public for 24hours, why not pull the drivers license picture of everyone the FBI has interviewed within 90 miles in the last ten years? Put everyone with dark hair on top of the list. They had thousands of feds/state police. They couldn’t assign ten people to review those pictures, maybe ten seconds each. That’s not hard to do at all...!!!! But, remember they had closed that/those files -is it arrogance? Did they not want to acknowledge the prospect that they may have interviewed one or both of the terrorists -is it CYA?


7 posted on 04/22/2013 5:18:43 AM PDT by Fitzy_888 ("ownership society")
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To: Kaslin

“Comforting also were Barack Obama’s appropriate remarks in Boston on Thursday and the release by the FBI, after his departure, of photos of the two suspects. “

hmmm, that might explain the puzzling delay in releasing the pics of the real perps.

the feds might have reasonably predicted that all hell would break loose once the real pics were released, and they needed to concentrate on security for the politicians.

so:
Rather than delay the political grandstanding, it was decided to let the terrorists ‘shelter in place’. What could go wrong?

btw, we need to outgrow the childish notion that a politician can, or should, be ‘comforting’ ...


8 posted on 04/22/2013 5:23:42 AM PDT by fnord (My life is like the movie Willard, except with hummingbirds)
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

The racist mask of the Liberal Progressives has been pulled away at last. Let this foreign ideology be cast out—It has no place in the Democratic party and none in the Republican. Let it be tossed into the dust bin of history!


9 posted on 04/22/2013 5:35:05 AM PDT by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll)
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