May 9, 2011: Osama Still Dead! Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due…

Not to mention 6 years of birthday greetings to all 26 of his children, all ending with 'And Death to America'

Well, a week later and no Osama doubles have shown up, which is probably a good thing. Pakistan has been alternating between blustery protests of “You shouldn’t have done that,” and hiding behind the egg on their faces. The people on Osama’s block have collectively said, “Really, they seemed so quiet, we just thought they were very religious.” Rush Limbaugh was forced to choke out credit to President Obama, but he recovered quickly. We also discovered that the only things we really knew about the mission is that it was in Pakistan and bin Laden was shot–everything we’d been told on the first night EXCEPT President Obama’s announcement turned out to be pure fantasy.

Now Obama offered former President Bush an invitation for them both to appear at “Ground Zero,” but George declined because, at least we were told, he didn’t think he was getting enough credit for his effort in trying to capture bin Laden. One commentator said, this was kind of like the guy who didn’t open the jar saying he loosened it when you opened the top. But this isn’t quite accurate. Bush is the guy who screwed it down too tight in the first place and THEN couldn’t open the jar and needed someone else’s help.

What can we credit Bush with? Ignoring Clinton’s outgoing advice that al-Qaeda was the biggest threat we were facing? Ignoring Richard Clarke’s warnings when he was head of Cybersecurity? Ignoring the CIA memo that bin Laden was intent on striking within the US and dismissing it as covering their asses? Flying around the country in a panic on 9/11 thinking the terrorists were after him after Ari Fleischer tried to convince us that we had “credible intelligence” that the White House was the other target within hours of our being caught flat-footed? Perhaps turning down the Taliban’s offer to hand Osama over (if we gave them the evidence of his involvement which we didn’t have until he kindly took credit for it a few years later) because they didn’t say “Mother, may I?” Giving up the search in Tora Bora yards from bin Laden’s hideout because it was time to invade Iraq and deal with the REAL threat (koff!) How about seven years of “not finding him” because it wasn’t particularly important and bin Laden had been marginalized, hiding out in some cave in the mountains of Afghanistan–when he was really living in a Pakistan suburb?

You’re right. I think President Bush deserves credit for all of those things.

Michael Moore and several others, on the other hand, have been complaining about the lack of due process and how we should have brought bin Laden to trial to show the world something or other about justice. Oh hogwash, Michael, it wasn’t a strictly legal mission to begin with. You know, something about not respecting Pakistan’s sovereign territory (like Shep Smith was ignored about). What would holding a trial have accomplished–shown the world that we can hold a kangaroo court as well as anyone else? I mean seriously, even if his defensive team included Abe Lincoln, Clarence Darrow, Johnny Cochran, F Lee Bailey AND Perry Mason, there was a snowball’s chance in hell that a jury could be convinced there was a reasonable doubt that he’d authorized the 9/11 attacks and isn’t that REALLY the purpose of a trial? Did he need a forum to present his side? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had nearly 9 years of issuing pronouncements that gave the justification for the attack. I agree, in the best of all possible worlds, it would have been a good idea to put him on trial and give al-Qaeda the present of a ceremonial execution or a living martyr in a US prison to inspire them. But we live in this one and a trial would have just been a theatre piece, a ritual piece of mumbo-jumbo to keep the bad mojo off our actions, an anticlimactic last reel that would only have made sense if bin Laden leaped up out of Silver Lake wearing a hockey mask.

Be thankful that this part is over. Now we can get back to the REAL problem–getting the hell out of two wars we shouldn’t have been in in the first place.

Oh, yes. Thanks, President Bush.

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Perhaps it was auto-erotic asphyxiation?

Arturo Gatti lies strangled as his wife, Amanda Rodrigues, tries to explain to a policeman how she did not notice he was dead for ten hours--after all, Americans didn't know the CIA was spying on them for eight years...

He always looks like this when he is drunk...

It does sound a little strange, doesn’t it? Arturo Gatti, welterweight champion, has a knock-down drag-out fight with his wife, pushing her to the floor and bruising her on the elbows and chin and then the next morning he’s got a purse strap around his neck and has turned blue. Word has it they were always fighting–in this instance about Amanda Rodrigues, Gatti’s wife, wearing clothes that were too revealing–is she the model? I can’t seem to get this straight–and other times over allegations of infidelity–probably both ways–and were, surprise, surprise, in the process of separation. A marriage not exactly made in heaven.
The police are charging Amanda with the murder–now, I can’t see how a boxing champion could manage to get strangled by his wife UNLESS he was already unconscious–and he was supposed to be very drunk that night. And the police think it’s fishy that she could be in the same house as he was and not notice that he was dead–but if she’d had this battle royale with him early in the evening, I could see her locking herself in a bedroom and not emerging till the next morning. However, the idea that someone would wander in and strangle him–with a PURSE STRAP–does make things rather interesting and makes you ask, if it wasn’t her, didn’t she HEAR something?
On the other hand–we have here the spectacle of Vice Presidential assassination squads and illegal surveillance on American citizens, which no one in Congress seems to have heard about despite the CIA saying that of COURSE they had been informed. It can be taken for granted that Cheney lied–but to be fair, Dick Cheney has demonstrated over and over again that he has no concept of objective reality, so you really can’t say he’s LYING when he doesn’t tell the truth because he’s brain-damaged–but the CIA are experts in prevarication. It would be easy for the CIA chief to report something to Congress in such a way that nobody really knows what he’s talking about. “Oh, we’ve also instituted surveillance on a number of terror suspects in the United States,” buried in a laundry list of actions of such mind-numbing detail that no one thinks to ask–what KIND of terror suspects? On the other hand, Congress had been reduced to a rubber stamp organization from Sept. 12, 2001 until January 1, 2007. This wasn’t simply because of the party of the Administration holding majorities in both houses, it was because the Democrats were at first as gung-ho as the President about kicking Islamic butt, whether it was the right butt or not, and later on, were cowed by their own acquiesence and scared by the apparent popularity of the President and his Iraq war. Only after Bush demonstrated how totally out of his depth he was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina did the Democrats acquire enough backbone to stand up to him–once in a while. Hell, Obama still doesn’t think that the alleged illegalities and abuses of power by Bush, Cheney & Co. should be investigated because the rules of the game say that you don’t go after the previous administration. I mean, it’s poor sportsmanship to complain about someone cheating after the game, even if you have videotape that shows they were offsides on every other play, right?
But we’re not talking about a football game here, are we? Ler’s hope Attorney General Holder has the backbone to at least appoint the special prosecutor he’s thinking about…

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Bizarro World: Cheney Demands Document Release, Obama Keeps Photos Secret

Bizarro Obama, claiming the need for secrecy, prepares to wrestle Bizarro Cheney, armed with customary shotgun, who demands document release.

The two Super Bizarros of the Right and Left prepare to battle

Harry Shearer in the Huffington post has called the new reality the Mirror World edition. Did somebody yell, “Simon Says: Everybody switch sides”? Screw it, Harry, I think it’s worse than that, we’ve formally entered BIZARRO World. We’ve been phasing in and out of Bizarro World ever since 9/11, when people were evacuating shopping malls in the midwest, convinced that Saddam Hussein was about to bomb them, but now with Cheney demanding the release of documents to show how effective our use of torture was and with Barack Obama, Mr. Transparency in Government, deciding to fight the release of torture photos, I think we’ve taken up permanent residence and Kal-El ain’t gunna come to rescue us. William Rivers Pitt thinks everyone is damn scared that the real dirt will come out and if Seymour Hersh is right, there’s some really horrible stuff we’re going to find out about how we conducted our “enhanced interrogations.”
Now, President Obama has decided to revive the military tribunals for Gitmo prisoners–you know, the ones he promised to end during the election campaign? And Republicans are dancing all over Nancy Pelosi for allegedly being untruthful about she knew about prisoner interrogations, in order to distract the country from the lies that President Bush told us about “We don’t torture.” Right is left, up is down, in is out…
In other news, after all that brouhaha about Obama addressing the Notre Dame commencement, a little over 2 dozen protestors showed up and Obama entered to a standing ovation and gave his speech to thunderous applause. The official White House transcript includes a protestor’s boo that Katharine Zaleski said showed his commitment to greater transparency. While being open about dissent is admirable, being transparent about the little things while maintaining secrecy about the big ones is backasswards…Bizarro World.

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Torture? Only Following Orders? Get Out Of Jail Free!

Obama bails out the banks, gives freedom from prosecution to torturers, but will only snicker at legalizing marijuana....

And when Oprah takes a vacation, Obama has offered to substitute for her.

Oh, that Obama! Just like Dorothy in The Wiz, he wants nothing more than to ease on down, ease on down the road! Right smack in the middle. Doesn’t matter if one side is better than the other–might get someone upset if I don’t stay right in between. Don’t look back, there’s a whole lotta road ahead of us. Let’s just ease on down, ease on down the road!
The problem is–sometimes you DO have to take sides. Sometimes, staying in the middle doesn’t give you the optimal position, but a NEGATIVE optimum. In other words, if there’s a valley in between the two sides instead of a hill. Take these torture memos that just were made public. Omigod, the Bush administration really did authorize torture, they were fully aware of what they were doing and all the steps they took were simply to look like they weren’t committing war crimes. What to do, what to do? I know–we’ll make the documents public, but then we’ll say that we won’t prosecute anyone for it. That ought to satisfy both sides.
Well, now the conservatives are mad because the documents WERE made public–after all, now Al-Qaeda will know what kind of tortures we performed and aren’t allowed to use anymore! Despite the fact that both according to international laws and OUR OWN LAWS, torture is forbidden. And the liberals are none too happy either, because we’re letting these war criminals from George Bush on down to Private Joe Blow off scot-free. After all, they thought they were doing their patriotic duty and besides, everyone below the administration level was just following orders. I guess all those Nazi war criminals we hanged can now demand re-trials.
I think Obama suffers from Oprah-itis. He wants everyone to love him. Whenever possible, he tries to take a middle course in order to make everyone happy. The financial crisis, the tortures of the prior eight years. After all, Solomon tried a middle course with that baby the two mothers claimed. But if you take a middle course between good and evil, you wind up being neither, and not being good is not a good thing for the man who ought to set our moral compass as a nation. Let us leave behind the pain and suffering. But Obama, we were the ones who caused the pain and suffering. We CAN’T forgive ourselves for something we did to SOMEONE ELSE. Only they can forgive us. We need to show we mean business about no longer accepting torture as one of our standard operations–and we must take a hardline and punish those who authorized it. Otherwise, there’s no justice. We’re like the major leagues, looking away when everyone is using steroids because the big home run hitters bring in the crowds. If you get caught cheating, well, naughty naughty, promise you won’t do it again.
Yes, let’s ease on down the road. But let’s not leave a pile of crap where we’ve been. We need to clean it up and if a few people won’t like you for it, Barack, tough tushies. Let’s have no more “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards given out to people who did wrong and knew it.
BTW, April 20 is National Pot Smoker’s Day. While I am not a pot smoker…ummmmm, these days…I did partake in my youth. Consequently, I find it appropriate to nooge our President on another subject, legalization. Yes, it may only save a few billion dollars and that isn’t going to solve anything, Mr. President. But it will free up jail space for criminals who actually deserve to be behind bars, free the police to pursue real criminals instead of some silly potheads, and take money away from the drug gangs, as well as opening up marijuana to be used for legitimate medical purposes. You smoked when you were young–don’t be a hypocrite. And don’t snicker about it just to please the right wing.
And that’s the news.

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