‘obama has shown the world why it fell in love with him’

Matthew Norman (The UK Independent): He is not the Messiah, but he deserves to sleep easy in his bed, and leave the 3am angst to malevolent midgets like Donald Trump who will never trouble him again

…Obama is said to be a strong player in the tight-aggressive style, which means that he doesn’t play a lot of hands or bluff much; but that when the potential return justifies the risk, he isn’t scared to push all his chips in … This is what he did in Abbottabad…

He bet the lot – his presidency, re-election chances, and place in history … had it gone wrong, Obama would by now have been measured up for the Jimmy Carter One Term Memorial Shroud…

It did not go wrong, and so he finally became the President of the United States of America, rather than President of That Chunk Of America That Doesn’t Regard A Black Man In The Oval Office As The Cleaner Or An Imposter.

… Obama did more than quell the screechings of the wingnuts, chat-show rabble-rousers, the Birthers and those we should term the Placentas (the After-Birthers who have now progressed to post-certificate conspiracy theories to question his legitimacy). He reminded the world why it fell in love with him in the first place.

…People have criticised him for being “professorial” as well as arrogant. They will do so no longer. He pondered for months, studied the research, weighed up the evidence, and reached the right conclusion. This is one cool, tough prof, and the lesson he has taught by example won’t quickly be unlearnt. In asymmetric warfare against a stateless enemy, invading sovereign states and slaughtering civilians is not the way to go. You don’t punish the guilty by killing the innocent. You do so by killing the guilty.

….Let no one hear attempts to share Obama’s credit with Dubya without revulsion. He failed pitifully in this, as in almost every thing else … Obama hasn’t honoured on every promise, nor will. He is not the Messiah, although if the Kool Aid truck has redelivered at last, make mine an octuple. For tempering vengeance with mercy, by refusing to reckon countless civilian lives a price worth paying to safeguard himself, hedeserves to sleep easy in his bed, and leave all the sweaty 3am angst to Donald Trump and the other malevolent midgets who will never trouble him again.

Full article here

night everyone

Sorry I didn’t get to reply to everyone’s emails today, will try tomorrow, promise 😉

President Barack Obama speaks with National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Energy Secretary Steven Chu following a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, May 3, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

commie denies waterboarding worked! oh, wait….

Keith Olbermann: The GOP spin machine, caught with its Abu Ghraib pants down, has come up with only two rickety memes with which to pull itself out of the deep end of the political pool. The first was the simplest: “Obama merely finished what Bush began.”

But the second was a little more robust: The Peter King (R-Stupidity) claim mirrored by a tweeter who asked me: “how does it feel knowing Bin Laden courier was discovered under Bush admin & info was obtained in Gitmo?”

King: “We obtained that information through waterboarding. So for those who say that waterboarding doesn’t work, who say it should be stopped and never used again, we got vital information, which directly led us to Bin Laden.”

Two problems with that. There is the unfortunate realization that if this information truly germinated during the Bush Administration, and truly came from waterboarding, that means The Bush Administration Had A Direct Link To Bin Laden Eight Years Ago And Either Didn’t Know It Or Didn’t Bother To Figure It Out.

Oops.

Wait, it gets worse. Guess who’s out tonight denying that waterboarding, or even “harsh treatment” led to the info that led to Bin Laden?

“It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

That was said by Don Rumsfeld.

I’ll stop writing now so you can spend a few minutes laughing through your mouth, nose, ears, feet, and eyeballs.

***

I don’t often (ever?) quote Olbermann, but this was utterly irresistible 😉

a “disturbing trend” indeed….

New York Post: David and Charles Koch, the conservative oil industrialists, are now feuding with the American Society of Magazine Editors.

The brothers are apparently still fuming over an article, “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging War Against Obama,” by Jane Mayer that ran in The New Yorker last August and is now up for a National Magazine Award in Reporting from ASME.

Koch Industries Senior Vice President Mark Holden said in a letter to ASME board members that it is “inappropriate” for Mayer’s piece to be considered for the award because her article is biased.

“Her article is ideologically slanted and a prime example of a disturbing trend in journalism, where agenda-driven advocacy masquerades as objective reporting,” Holden said in a letter sent to ASME CEO Sid Holt and several ASME board members. “Given these facts, it would be inappropriate for ASME to give Ms. Mayer’s article an award in reporting.”

Aside from family feuds and dirty laundry, Mayer’s article detailed how the brothers were backers of a wide network of conservative think tanks and groups that helped spawn the Tea Party revolution.

…David Remnick, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, rallied to his reporter’s defense. “Jane Mayer put together an accurate and honest piece of reporting. To watch them go around to try to undermine a superb piece of reportage is pathetic. . . I’m a little surprised to see a big-time operation behave like a bunch of Inspector Clouseaus”….

…The article was embroiled in controversy almost from the start. Apparently someone tried to leak disparaging material to The Daily Caller, a Web site run by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, claiming there were plagiarism issues in Mayer’s reporting.

When Media Ink, which had also received the anonymous allegations, began investigat ing, it found the plagia rism claims to be bogus. The Daily Caller ultimately spiked the story because it didn’t pan out. No one ever learned who was behind the dirty-trick operation to smear Mayer.

Full article here

Thank you to Fred for the link

truth

Okay, remember this photo from yesterday:

This was the caption: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011

Some headlines from today:

From the Mail: “President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.”

The truth?

New York Times: The president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan.

Independent (UK): ….It was on Sunday afternoon that the drama of at last netting “Geronimo” – the codename given to Bin Laden for the operation – began. Obama, Clinton, Gates, Donilon, Brennan and a few others huddled in the White House Situation Room. A video and audio link connected them to Leon Panetta, the CIA director in Langley, Virginia, who would talk them through what was going on in Pakistan in real time, beginning with the helicopters carrying the Seals clattering through the night sky and arriving above their target.

Jake Tapper on ABC Word News tonight: “The President and his top aides were not able to watch any real time action being shot by the Navy Seals themselves…”.

So, the President did not watch as “the terror chief was shot in the left eye”.

All those people (mainly professional left types) calling him ‘ghoulish!” today ….. be embarrassed 😉

****

Thank you Hachikō

:-)

let’s dance

Thank you Hachikō & Jessica 😉

ABC: It’s not every day that you see the First Lady of the United States doing “The Running Man” and “The Dougie.” But today, First Lady Michelle Obama well, busted a move.

While visiting the Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, Mrs. Obama watched students perform the dance routine choreographed by Beyonce for Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign…

“Beyoncé is one of my favorite performers on the planet. And when she agreed to remake her video and do this “Let’s Move” flash workout, I was so excited, because this is what we’ve been talking about – that exercise and moving can be fun,” Mrs. Obama said, “It’s about dancing, it’s about moving.”

The First Lady said she had not had time to learn the moves so “not to embarrass” herself she’d just watch from the sidelines as the students danced in front of her on the football field.

But once the music started Mrs. Obama couldn’t resist and she started mimicking the moves – including The Dougie, The Running Man, the Cha-Cha, and the Rumba among many other choreographed dance moves.

She called for a second playing of the song so she could join in, and she did so…rather animatedly the second time around.

First lady Michelle Obama dances with students at Alice Deal Middle School in northwest Washington, May 3, during a surprise visit for the school’s Let’s Move! event

equal credit?!

ThinkProgress: Politico reports that supporters of George W. Bush are “irked” that the former president isn’t getting more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, despite the droves of conservatives lawmakers and pundits who have been rushing to give Bush equal credit as Obama.

But this praise for Bush relies on rewriting history to obscure the fact Obama re-prioritized the hunt for Bin Laden after Bush had largely abandoned the effort to focus on Iraq.

…Asked about the hunt for Bin Laden at a March, 2002 press conference, Bush said, “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq.” “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you,” Bush added.

By 2006, the trail for Bin Laden had gone “stone cold” … That year, it was revealed that the administration had shuttered the CIA’s Bin Laden unit in late 2005…

…the Bush administration blew a critical opportunity to capture Bin Laden in 2001. Bin Laden was wounded and on the run, but top Bush national security officials rejected repeated pleas for reinforcements from commanders and intelligence officials fighting the terrorist leader in the caves of Tora Bora, despite the availability of resources…. decisions made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputies, and other top administration officials allowed Bin Laden to escape.

The consequence of this missed opportunity are tremendous. As Lt. Col. Reid Sawyer, the director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, told NPR yesterday, “if bin Laden had been killed in Afghanistan eight years ago in the caves of Tora Bora, al-Qaida might well have died with him. Now the organization is diversified enough it could weather bin Laden’s death – and hardly miss a beat.”….

Read full post here

Thank you Bobfr

***

Comment of the day! – LOL: So let me get this straight….Obama has to stop blaming Bush for the bad economy he inherited because it has been 2.5 yrs, BUT Obama has to give credit to Bush for capturing Bin Laden even though Bush hasn’t seen the inside of the Situation room in 2.5 yrs- yeah, I Must have forgotten (IOKIYAAR)- Its OK If You Are A Republican)

soft on terror?

ah, yes

2008

Thanks TeamObama