Archive for May 3rd, 2011

03
May
11

‘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

03
May
11

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)

03
May
11

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 ;-)

03
May
11

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




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