Suck it, birthers

I got this as an audio file from old school pal Paul in Hawaii and made this quick 'n dirty vid to share it with you. Artist is Frank DeLima (his site), whom I had never heard of before. Watch it quick in case there's some music biz bullshit and it has to go!

First photo of bin Laden funeral

A tip o' the Brain to my old school pal Paul.

Gurkhin' Around...

As we know, Queen Elizabeth II has Gurkhas for security. Their fierce warrior tradition is the bare prerequisite for maintaining peace and decorum when the Fixers are aboard.

Here some of them practice for the latest cruise:

Thanks to WorldFrontlineMedia, UK.

Apparently the Gurkhas draw mess duty aboard ship just like I did on my Med cruise. Here they practice their buffet techniques. May God have mercy on the Prime Rib:

Thanks to yourshepway, UK.

Post-cruise, a couple of the surviving Gurkhas speak:

Not a helluva lotta thanks to the Beeb YouTube channel which is not available in this country. Yeesh.

Mexican Narco-Trafficker’s Revelation Exposes Drug War’s Duplicity

Who knows what to believe and what not to? This extensive post at the Narcosphere is interesting in any case.

The revelation that Zambada Niebla claims to have been a U.S. government asset, working with its sanction, is a shocking development in the so-called drug war and has gone largely un-reported by the U.S. media. The claim, if true, adds credence to theories long in play that the Mexican and U.S. governments are essentially showing favor toward the Sinaloa drug organization and its leadership, including El Mayo and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Lorea, as part of a broader strategy to weaken and ultimately eliminate rival narco organizations. U.S. and Mexican government officials, of course, have consistently denied that any such arrangement is in place.

To understand the threads that connect those cases, it is necessary to revisit the mysterious crash of a Gulfstream II corporate jet on Sept. 24, 2007, in Mexico’s Yucatan region. Onboard that jet was an estimated four tons of cocaine, which appears to have been loaded onto the jet in Colombia.

The Gulfstream II sported a tail number, N987SA, linked by European investigators to past CIA rendition operations.

Narco News has previously reported that the bill of sale for the Gulfstream jet — which was sold only weeks before its crash landing — lists an individual named Greg Smith, whose name also shows up in public documents that indicate he worked as a pilot in the past for an operation involving the FBI, DEA and CIA that targeted narco-traffickers in Colombia.

Damy’s case also is tied intricately to another U.S. govermment legal action against banking giant Wachovia (now a subsidiary of Wells Fargo), which was implicated in the Damy money-laundering operation. The Sinaloa organization operative allegedly used the bank as part of his scheme.

U.S./CIA/bank involvement? Naaaah. Oh wait, there's money and power and the control of foreign countries involved...

Hey, it worked with bananas 75 years ago. Why not with drugs now?

The crux of the biscuit:

Assuming that rendition of the facts is accurate, it sure makes it hard to tell the crooks from the cops in this drug war.

Yeah, no shit and ¿quien sabe? One thing's for sure - any facts relating to nefarious US government shenanigans got renditioned a long time ago and are languishing in an undisclosed location.

Ol' Gimlet Eye got it right. He still is:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

We operate on more than three these days, Smedley.

Pakistan army knew about operation against Osama bin Laden

Global Post

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani officials have told GlobalPost that the Pakistani army had full knowledge of the U.S. raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden and that it played a larger role in the operation than previously acknowledged.

One senior military official, who asked not to be named because he is not permitted to speak to the press, said that Pakistani army troops were in fact providing backup support when the United States began its operations inside the compound where bin Laden had been staying, including sealing off the neighborhood where the compound was located.

Residents in the area confirmed that the Pakistan army appeared to have at least some knowledge of the operation well before it began. Several residents said that two hours before the United States launched its attack, Pakistani army personnel ordered them to switch off their lights inside and outside their homes and remain indoors until further notice.

“The army personnel cordoned off the entire area long before we heard the sounds of helicopters hovering over the area,” said Zulfikar Ahmed, who lives in the Abbottabad neighborhood of Bilal Town, where bin Laden’s compound is located. Locals interviewed by the BBC and several other local and international media outlets made similar statements (Good link - G).

This stuff is interesting to me. The important thing about who knew what and when they knew it is that we managed to keep it from the guy who was supposed to tip bin Laden off in time for him to beat feet.

bin Laden’s American Legacy

A Tomgram you should read.

It was our misfortune and Osama bin Laden’s good luck that Washington’s dreams were not those of a global policeman intent on bringing a criminal operation to justice, but of an imperial power whose leaders wanted to lock the oil heartlands of the planet into a Pax Americana for decades to come. So if you’re writing bin Laden's obituary right now, describe him as a wizard who used the 9/11 attacks to magnify his meager powers many times over.

After all, while he only had the ability to launch major operations every couple of years, Washington -- with almost unlimited amounts of money, weapons, and troops at its command -- was capable of launching operations every day. In a sense, after 9/11, Bin Laden commanded Washington by taking possession of its deepest fears and desires, the way a bot takes over a computer, and turning them to his own ends.

It was he, thanks to 9/11, who insured that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan would be put into motion. It was he, thanks to 9/11, who also insured that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be launched. It was he, thanks to 9/11, who brought America's Afghan war to Pakistan, and American aircraft, bombs, and missiles to Somalia and Yemen to fight that Global War on Terror. And for the last near-decade, he did all this the way a Tai Chi master fights: using not his own minimal strength, but our massive destructive power to create the sort of mayhem in which he undoubtedly imagined that an organization like his could thrive.

For all the print devoted to the operation that took him out, all the talking heads chattering away, all the hosannas being lavished on American special ops forces, the president, his planners, and various intelligence outfits, this is hardly a glorious American moment. If anything, we should probably be in mourning for what we buried long before we had bin Laden’s body, for what we allowed him (and our own imperial greed) to goad us into doing to ourselves, and what, in the course of that, we did, in the name of fighting him, to others.

9/11 was a well-delivered sucker punch, but bin Laden didn't take us down. Bush and Cheney did.

Bin Laden won by picking exactly the right time and the worst possible administration during which to deliver his blow, and his stated goal of making us impoverish ourselves continues apace.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Johnny Hallyday Rencontre avec Emmylou Harris à Nashville en 1984

Thanks to AnthonyPussini, France.

Whisky Power

The Guardian (UK)

Scotland toasts new whisky-powered bioenergy plant

Up to 9,000 homes to be powered with energy produced by burning waste matter from the whisky-making process

Waste products from around 16 of the area's 50 distilleries will be used at the site, including well-known brands such as Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, Macallan, and Famous Grouse.

Good brands! Rumor has it* that real estate values downwind from the plant have tripled. The thrifty Scots will save a lot of money formerly spent in bars merely by relaxing in lawn chairs on the roof. No more the image of the drunken Scotsman crawling home. They'll just fall down the stairs.

I hope they never figure out how to make economical sustainable power from dog shit...

*I know because I started it.

Bryan Bowers ~ The Scotsman

Thanks to domasi01.

Now What?

William Rivers Pitt in a post about The Godawful Bush Years and their ongoing aftermath:

I wanted to celebrate the death of bin Laden, and in my own way, I did. I didn't dance in the streets or wave a flag or shout "USA! USA! USA!" But I definitely smiled, and I don't apologize for it. There an old joke about a man who would buy a newspaper every day from a paperboy, scan the front page, and then throw the paper away in disgust. After a while, the paperboy asked him why he kept throwing the paper away. "I'm looking for someone in the obituaries," the man replied. "But, sir," said the paperboy, "the obituaries aren't on the front page." The man looked at him and said, "When the son of a bitch I'm looking for dies, he'll be on the front page."

Fuckin' A, and there's more than one.

Headlines of the Day

Pakistan arrests dozens in connection with bin Laden compound

Mostly the Xe (formerly Blackwater) security guards contracted to protect him...?

Related and worth a read:

Pakistan’s bin Laden Scapegoat

In the same vein:

How Did bin Laden Live Undetected in Pakistan for Years? Someone Has Got Some Explainin' to Do.
...

With regard to the spectacular killing

Of Osama bin Laden last Sunday

Authorities there should all insist they

Had plans to kill him last Monday.

Yeah, the next time he ordered in, they were gonna send a squad of commandos disguised as the pizza delivery guy. Yeesh.

John Yoo, Still A War Criminal

Andy Sullivan, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, follows up on my post, more links at site:

Here's a great quote:

"Former government lawyer John Yoo taking credit on behalf of the Bush administration for Sunday's strike against Osama bin Laden is like Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, taking credit for the results of the 1998 Academy Awards," - Andrew Cohen.

Any Titanic reference I can work in ... Heh.

So let us be very clear. The war criminal Dick Cheney presided over the worst lapse in national security since Pearl Harbor, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people. This rank incompetent failed to get bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then dragged the US on false pretenses into a war in Iraq, empowering Iran's dictatorship, and killing another 5,000 more Americans on a wild goose chase. He presided over the deaths of more than 8,000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis during his criminally incompetent years in office.

On the other hand, the man who abolished torture as soon as he took office, Barack Obama, captured and killed Osama bin Laden, and captured a massive trove of intelligence, more than two years later. No Americans died in the operation.

What on earth are we debating? How have these delusional maniacs managed to even get us onto this turf? Because they have to. Because when the full truth of these past years are fully in focus, they will be revealed as some of the greatest criminals ever to have wielded power in America.

Amen.

Headline of the Day II

Trump Bumped out of Indy 500 Pace Car

Good. The Indy 500 is a 100-year-old iconic American institution, while Trump belongs in some other American institution.

Thoughts on the OBL 'Death Photo'

What could possibly inflame the Muslim world over a little photo? Could it be their dislike of graven images?

Or could it be the group photo of SEAL Team 6 with the dead Osama sitting upright front and center, wearing a boonie hat and smoking a joint with a beer in his hand? Maybe it's the Ace of Spades pinned to his forehead with a 7.62 round?

Or maybe it's the grinning trigger man wearing OBL's ears on a string around his neck? Hell, he got him and they're his trophy after all.

Note to Vets of a certain age: Sorry 'bout that, Chief...

In all seriousness, I know SEALs are a lot more professional than pissed-off teenage grunts of times gone by with memories of their buddies skinned and tied to a tree with their balls in their mouths and would never do that, but we've all seen those photos and worse. I'm just sayin'...

Note to those who think I displayed utter tastelessness in this post: Hey, I cleaned it up big time. I left out the horny goat in the photo doing unspeakable-yet-funny things to the corpse-of-honor's orifices.

Headline of the Day

Dubya Won't Join Obama at Ground Zero Observance: From Megaphone George to Afraid of Being Booed

Rightly so, and it's a first.

Torture Enabler John Yoo Tries Again to Justify His Awful Existence

I've got a double-dip of loathing for that bastard, not only for enabling torture but for teaching law, fer chrissakes, at what used to be a prestigious University of California system which I've lost a lot of respect for because of their hiring of him. If I was Jerry Brown I'd run him outta town on a rail after he served his prison sentence. Or drop him off in Oakland with hunnert dollar bills sticking outta every pocket.

The Rude Pundit

In other words, John Yoo is a motherfucker. The dude who crafted the legal justification for the CIA to use waterboarding and other charming "enhanced interrogation techniques" has been out in the right-wing nutzoidosphere frantically re-re-re-arguing that the killing of Osama bin Laden has given his pathetic life meaning. Here he is in today's Wall Street Journal (motto: "Rupert Murdoch's asshole smells of wallaby meat"): "Sunday's success also vindicates the Bush administration...The United States located al Qaeda's leader by learning the identity of a trusted courier from the tough interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi." Except, you know, chances are that Mohammed didn't give up the real info until after the torture ended.

Then Yoo disappears into fantasyland, where a pussy Barack Obama can't tie his own shoes, let alone deal with terrorists: "Imagine what would have happened if the Obama administration had been running things immediately following 9/11. After their 'arrest,' we would have read KSM and al-Libi their Miranda rights, provided them legal counsel, sent them to the U.S. for detention, and granted them all the rights provided a U.S. citizen in criminal proceedings." He faults Obama for not capturing bin Laden alive and then torturing him (no, really). He concludes by calling on the President to restart the interrogation techniques.

Goddamnit, you gotta give Yoo points for consistency. This motherfucker has been making his pro-torture case for years now. He is out there constantly, making sure that his legacy, long after his foul tenure ended, is something more than "that creepy cocksucker who degraded America." No, he's gotta make it that he is responsible in some small way for getting to bin Laden, when, in reality, all he did was piss on the Constitution because, he said, the ink needed a good cleaning.

The Bush maladministration spent an awful lot of effort to defeat and shred the Constitution, that "goddam piece of paper". Torture is still illegal and still a war crime that we've hanged people for. And should again.

Of course, the people we hanged mostly lost wars to us. Our officials that have done it see themselves as big brave heroes for doing it when they're really cowards and bullies and war criminals. I'd like to see how brave and heroic they are standing on the trapdoor with the noose around their necks. I bet it'd smell real bad.

Groaner of the Day

Yesterday was Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you.

The Last ...

The last living veteran of World War 1 has died. It was supposed to be the "War To End All Wars" but it only put us on a course to the place we are now. Rest easy, old timer:

... Just over three years before the centenary of the 1914-18 war, the last known veteran who saw action in that war has died.

Claude Choules has died in a Perth nursing home. He'd reached the remarkable age of 110.

Claude Choules served in Britain's Royal Navy in the so-called Great War.

He also served in the Royal Australian Navy during the Second World War.

Two years ago, he became the world's oldest first-time published author with his memoir, The Last Of The Last ...

Justice ...

In America. It's for those who can't afford it.

Goldman Sachs finds itself under investigation once again but, at this point, as our pal Montag says, we know how that's gonna turn out:

...

As I noted in the beginning, normally Goldmine Sachs would find itself in deep shit. In these times the DoJ under AG Holder prefers to go after medical marijuana users and online pokers players. The idea of applying the law and taking down one or more of the Masters Of The Criminal Universe is alien to his job description.

If you or I swindled our neighbors for $10,000, we'd be sitting in a federal prison for a few years. These guys will be running the Treasury and the Federal Reserve in a few years.

Nothing to see here ...

Move along.

You know, with all the hubbub around the killing of one man, the big, bad terrorist with super powers, we happily lose sight of the fact that 90% of the terror attacks in this country come from far right wingnut country.

Thankfully, this character's trace has been purged from the gene pool:

FAIRVIEW — A man killed in a shoot-out with FBI agents and other law enforcement officers Wednesday afternoon was wanted in connection with the 2010 bombing of a Florida mosque, according to the FBI.

...

He was wanted in connection with the May 10, 2010, bombing of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville. The attack occurred at night prior to evening prayers. No one was injured in that explosion.

...

And remember when Homeland Security pointed this out? The whining and crying of the big tough Republicans was deafening. "We're being persecuted!" Wait until some teabagger decides to blow one of them up because he wasn't "conservative enough". You'll see checkpoints at every street corner.

Thanks to They Gave Us A Republic for the link.

The State of Texas ...

Is like your weird uncle who still lives with your grandmother. You know, the guy no one talks about and always annoys everybody at parties:

A Texas high school teacher has been placed on administrative leave following an incident where he allegedly told a 9th grade Muslim girl in his algebra class "I bet that you're grieving" on Monday following the death of Osama bin Laden.

According to one parent at Clear Brook High School in Houston who spoke about the incident to a local ABC affiliate, the teacher also said, "I heard about your uncle's death."

The parent said the student "understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her."

...

At the least, the coward could have said it to the kid's father, but then he'd run the chance of having his ass handed to him. The kid shoulda kicked him in the nuts.

King ain't the only one

Following up on Fixer's post:

5 Republicans who still insist torture led to bin Laden

Several of the usual suspects plus Rumsfeld.

Prosecution for war crimes is called for and at least a few of these bastards are doing a ditch-on-the-way-to-the-last-ditch attempt trying to stave it off. They're probably safe but they're thinking about what might happen if this country comes to its senses.

Loose Lips Didn't Sink Ship This Time

Raw Story

Al-Qaeda leader and elusive terrorist Osama bin Laden was prepared to flee his Abbottabad hideout on a second's notice, new information shows. Bin Laden had 500 Euros cash (equal to about $740 U.S.) and two telephone numbers sewn into the clothes he was wearing when he was killed in the U.S. military raid on his compound this weekend.

CIA Director Leon Panetta told members of Congress this information in a briefing Tuesday, in response to a question of why there weren't more security personnel guarding bin Laden, according to Politico. Bin Laden had reason to believe he'd be tipped off about any U.S. attempt to capture him with plenty of time to escape, they were told.

No comment necessary.

Video of the Day

Will Ferrell spoofs Bush reaction to bin Laden’s death

Indeed he does!

Headline of the Day

DOJ plan to arrest state licensers, tax dispensaries could doom medical marijuana industry

Apparently Big Pharma has had a moment of prayer with AG Holder.

In my town there is a brand new Smoke Shop (530 587-PUFF). A far cry from the head shops of old, it's a head shop, an idea whose time has come again with the camel's nose under the tent of medical marijuana. I was in there for the first time yesterday, and folks, it's Bong Central. They don't write or fill scrips (I asked), so let's just say they can fully accessorize stress relief.

Of interest to some may be the bong that looks like or is made out of a Newcastle Brown Ale Draught Keg. Heh.

It's a nice place with nice folks and I hope the DOJ hammer doesn't hurt it.

Osama bin Laden saves America

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

I'm hereby delighted to report that many on the hard right, that fantastically insane cluster of hyperclenched beerchuggers who fully believe that Obama is a not only a Muslim, but also a Nazi commie socialist Mexican immigrant robot with lasers for eyes and molten pacifism for blood, do not actually believe Osama bin Laden is dead.

Parse it as you will, but it's not every day the global symbol of all that is vile and wrong with the human animal gets taken out by the global symbol of all that is decent and right with American-style democracy.

An oversimplification? Probably. But it all points to a possible radical rethinking for (and of) Obama himself, a grand opportunity to regain both momentum and message lost. It's also a perfect occasion to reignite the entire "Change We Can Believe In" mantra for a newly electrified populace.

I think his conclusion is a little too rainbows-and-unicorny, but he's always worth a read.

Exactly ...

The Mrs. and I have been as turned off by the "Kill Osama Celebrations" as this lady:

I could hear the cheers as I got out of the taxi, two blocks away. I could hear them from right in front of Park 51, the site of a planned Islamic community centre and mosque that met ferocious opposition last year for being too close to the "hallowed ground" of Ground Zero. It was minutes after President Obama's announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed, and I was heeding a friend's suggestion that we – both Muslims – take candles and stand in vigil where the World Trade Centre stood before Bin Laden's footsoldiers took it down.

So it was a shock to find hundreds of others had turned that hallowed ground into the scene of a home crowd celebrating an away victory they hadn't attended, the roots of which they were probably not there to experience or were too young to remember.

There was always something sickening about tourists taking pictures of themselves posing in front of that big gaping hole called Ground Zero. "Me at site of mass slaughter, NYC" as holiday photo caption is wrong in every language, surely. It didn't take 10 minutes for the frat party atmosphere to sicken me. Olympic-style chants of "USA! USA!" I could just about take as a freshly minted American, as of Friday. But "Fuck Osama! Ole ole ole!" crushed any ambitiohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn of dignity for the thousands killed, many of whom had jumped hundreds of storeys to their deaths, their bodies shattered to pieces close to where we stood.

...

It's been disgusting here the last few days. As I said below, it's as if nothing else has gone on in NY since. Yes, Osama's dead, and it's a good thing his trace is wiped from the gene pool. It's certainly no excuse to party, not after what happened to this nation after 11 September. We should be mourning, not Osama bin Laden, but the fact we wasted 10 years and how many thousands of lives in an effort to get him. We should be mourning the fact, even now that he's dead, nothing is going to change.

Great thanks to Watertiger for the link.

And then we have ...

Our own local idiot.

FOX News, right wing operatives and grandstanding politicians like Rep. Peter King have been whipping up the idea that torture was used to get the vital bit of Intel that eventually helped lead the US to Bin Laden.

...

Between him and Rudy on my TV all the time since Monday, you'd think nothing else was going on in the NY Metro Area.

And just a little reminder. Remember when I said this:

That I have (this is through friends in dark places) is that [Raymond Davis] found an al-Qaeda installation of some sort (or proof the Inter-Services Intelligence group [Pak] was helping al-Qaeda) and the Paks wanted to shut him up (the Paks on the m/c he killed were ISI, not muggers). What I also heard is the "cleaners" who rushed from the embassy to pick him up (subsequently running over and killing an innocent [maybe] Pak) left the country on John Kerry's plane when he did, even though the Paks wanted to interview them as well. [my em]

...

I love it when all the pieces fall into place. Heh ...

No free lunch ...

For Secaucus Fats:

The next stop for New Jersey in its debt collection fight with the federal government may be federal court.

On Friday, the Transportation Department flatly rejected the state’s arguments for refusing to repay $271 million that was spent on a project, canceled last year, to build a pair of rail tunnels under the Hudson River. The message to Gov. Chris Christie was blunt: Repay now or we will collect the debt the hard way. Plus interest.

...

They've already got big holes dug and all the construction infrastructure set up. Somebody's gotta pay for it and it ain't gonna be me. Sorry, my Jersey friends, but you elected this asshole and he wasted a quarter-billion American dollars (as opposed to New Jersey dollars), this is on you.

“It took Obama to catch Osama"

Following up on Fixer's post:

Think Progress

Less than 24 hours after the killing Osama bin Laden, commemorative t-shirts were already being sold online and in the streets of Washington, D.C., including one popular one reading, “It took Obama to catch Osama.”

Fixer's right - The Obama campaign better pass these out to everybody! Along with coffee mugs, hats, keychains, tattoos, billboards, etc.

10 Political Messages Beamed Through “Star Trek”

Oh, absolutely! Those messages are one of the big reasons us godless commies like stuff like Star Trek and Avatar. The funny part is that this piece was written by some Bull Goose Loony Teabagger who went to an awful lot of trouble to reinforce our position.

Lay in coordinates for this post, Number One. Engage...

Live-Tweeting From Abbottabad

This is terrific! Bin Laden's next-door neighbor seems to have had no idea what was going on. He is apparently not affiliated with the Pakistani intelligence service.

From the IndiaRealtime section of the WSJ:

A man in Abbottabad, the town where Osama bin Laden was killed by the U.S. on Monday, inadvertently live-tweeted the attack as it started.

The man, who uses the Twitter handle “ReallyVirtual”, identifies himself as Sohaib Athar, “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops.”

Yo, Sohaib, how's that workin' out? Heh.

He retweeted a tweet from Munzir Naqvi: “I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected.”

Lights on in yer head?

Mr. Athar was clearly unhappy.

“I guess Abbottabad is going to get as crowded as the Lahore that I left behind for some peace and quiet. *sigh*”

Shortly thereafter, another Twitter user confirmed the news. Mr. Athar tweeted “RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/””

Ya can't make this shit up, folks!

Update:

More from Raw Story:

Little did he know it, but he was the only real-time reporter to the US military finally getting their man, the world's most wanted terrorist -- Osama bin Laden.
...

"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."
...

"Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now," he wrote on Twitter after the story went around the world.

You can sleep after your fifteen minutes is up, pal. Sleep lightly. The next knock on yer door might be ISI. Wouldn't wanta keep 'em waiting.

Right Wing Noise Machine Spins Up

We knew it would and it's ludicrous.

Hillbilly Report

With the news that America had finally brought terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to justice one thing could be easily predicted. Despite the fact that George W. Bush failed for so long in doing just that you knew that every right-wing blowhard in America would be somehow calling this a vindication of his failed policies and misled agenda. Well, welcome to right-wing fantasy land. Today the right-wing lunatics at the Heritage Foundation are crediting George W. Bush and the Patriot Act for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

First, the notion that George W. Bush somehow deserves any credit for this is simply ludicrous. Instead of doing his duty to the American people and bringing this man to justice long ago, he abandoned the attempt to bring him to justice allowing him to run free until last night. His "counterterrorism tools" were simply one thing. A vicious attempt to conceal his own incompetence while stealing away real Constitutional rights from Americans. Protections the right-wing have long tried to vanquish.

They did pretty good at it too.

It will be funny to watch the rest of their spin in the coming days. However this time I believe most of America will see the fact of the matter. That fact is that Conservative leadership completely dropped the ball in the months after 9-11. Instead of seeking justice they used it as a propoganda campaign to get a war in Iraq and the stealing of Constitutional protections from Americans. Their only success was doing that and bringing huge war profits to a very few at the cost of us all.

So while some of President Obama's middle-east strategy has disappointed me it is not hard to successfully follow a legacy of failure and idiocy.

Say what they will about the Bush maladministration, as any mechanic can tell you about crapcans, you can't make chicken salad outta chicken shit.

A Few More Random Observations Regarding the Death of a Rich Terrorist

The Rude One has two posts about bin Deaden. From the first one, possibly the most serious thing he's said lately:

One last note: the Rude Pundit finds it sadly funny that, after a trillion plus dollars spent on the wars, after thousands of soldiers killed, that what it took to get Osama bin Laden was a criminal investigation and an intelligence operation followed by a quick strike. As we ponder our dead, all our dead, as we remember and make silly statements about "closure," let us wonder what might have been for the United States had that been our approach all along.

There's The Cowboy Way, which is good, and the Wannabe Phony Cowboy Way, which is not. Wrong President, wrong choice. Choices have consequences and we will be paying for that choice for a generation or more.

From the second:

2. The Rude Pundit doesn't give a fuck about conspiracies on the left and right that say that bin Laden's been dead for years and they're just now bringing out the body (if so, the timing sucks - the White House could have at least waited until next summer) or that bin Laden's not really dead. If you've got some evidence, pony it up. Otherwise, let's just say the fucker's dead and died the other day. You can come up with all kinds of suspicions (the same date that the U.S. was informed that Hitler was dead? The same date as Bush's "Mission Accomplished" debacle? During Celebrity Apprentice?) but considering the number of Bush administration officials who are going along with the story, it'd have to be a huge fucking conspiracy. Let's just go with the easiest answer.

6. Man, bin Laden was just a pampered pussy. Like every con artist TV preacher, he just lived in a huge house while his followers groveled in the dirt, releasing tapes about jihad and battle while he stayed close to his dialysis machine and his private chef, getting his balls washed daily by his servants. If nothing else crushes the remnants of al-Qaeda, the image of Osama bin Laden sitting on a toilet in his climate-controlled bathroom ought to destroy the spirit of even the most hardened Muslim extremist. Well, that and the fact that all that bin Laden cash just dried up real fast.

7. It's kind of pathetic to see Republicans sputtering, "But, but, Bush...no, Bush good." You know what? Obama sealed the deal. It's like when a lover tells you that you're the best fuck she's ever had. Other lovers laid the groundwork, sure, through their fumbling fucks and their decent fucks. But why should she thank them when you're the one who got her off so damn good?

Because there must be something wrong with it if Obama did it. Or something that can be made up to be wrong with it that the Dead End Quarter will fall for in a hot second. The Repugs could conjure up something bad to say about God making it rain hunnert dollah bills during the reign of The Other.

If the Dems don't use this ...

As a campaign slogan, they deserve to lose. Overheard in conversation when I went to pick up the pups yesterday:

"Obama got Osama!"

They'd better shove that up the Republicans' ass at every opportunity.

Trump's lunacy reveals core truth about the Republicans

This is great! Today's 'must read'! Means nothing, but it's fun.

The Independent (UK)

Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has proved that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. It has long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals – and it turns out it was on to something. Every six months, the party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.

That wasn't enough. I half-expected the next contender to be a lung-fish draped in the Stars and Stripes. But it wasn't anything so sophisticated. Enter stage (far) right Donald Trump, the bewigged billionaire who has filled America with phallic symbols and plastered his name across more surfaces than the average Central Asian dictator. [...]

The second trend is towards dog-whistle prejudice – pitched just high enough for frightened white Republicans to hear it. [...]

The Republican Party today isn't even dominated by market fundamentalism. This is a crude Nietzscheanism, dedicated to exalting the rich as an overclass and dismissing the rest. So who should be the Republican nominee? I hear the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were considering running – but they are facing primary challenges from the Tea Party for being way too mild-mannered.

Do not miss this!

Headline of the Day

Fox News congratulates Bush for bin Laden

Well of course they did. Yeesh.

And, following President Obama's announcement of the Al-Qaida leader's death, an anchor for New York-based Fox 5 said "President Obama is in fact dead" before correcting himself after some prompting.

Un-fucking-believable. Correction, all too fucking believable.

Update:

Right Rushes To Praise Bush For Obama’s Order To Kill Bin Laden

I give up. Who could have known Bush's brilliant plan to catch bin Laden involved a) getting a brotha in the White House, and b) ten years?

Also, we have a new group called 'deathers' (guess who!) and wingnuts who think Obama's base didn't want OBL caught. Yeesh some more. Hey, Joe, when did Obama ever do anything his 'base' wanted?

The shit is flyin' hot and heavy from the wingnut soreheads today. Hilarious and pathetic.

Obama, Meyers roast Trump at Correspondents Dinner

Funny. The Donald was not amused.

So, Osama walks into this bar...

Greg Palast posted this 'recommended read' yesterday before the "we got his ass" news broke.

Last ¶:

Oh, hey, you never got the punch line. So Osama walks into this bar, see, and George Bush says, “Whad’l’ya have, pardner?” and Osama says, “Well, George, what are you serving today?” and Bush says, “Fear,” and Osama says, “Fear for everybody!” and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, “Hey, who’s buying?” Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. “They are,” he says — and the two of them share a quiet laugh.

On us.

"Nine Toes Nucks" is on a roll

Just go read this tragic story of gainful employment. Heh.

Update:

Nucks freaked out everybody involved with this, so DHS or somebody threatened him with Gitmo and he took it down. Too bad.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

BIN LADEN DEAD
Trump takes credit.

Oklahoma House Votes “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” Official State Gospel Song
Official State Education Song: “Don’t Know Much About History.”

Majority of Internet Users Never Click on Ads
Most say they're afraid to be sucked into a hellish nightmare by a computer worm that steals their identity, robs them blind and leaves them begging for food through the barred windows of a debtor's prison.

7 in 10 Feel Country Headed In Wrong Direction
But no two of those seven can agree on right direction.

REMINDER
Wear a cheap suit for the Rapture.

Puh. I don't even own a suit and I ain't goin' nowhere anyway.

Since ...

There's no other news but the flogging of Osama's corpse, I got my post up from Vigo, Spain. Gotta do some laundry and pay the ransom pick up the dogs in a little while. I'll try to have some pics up from Lizzie later on.

Update:

Can't get the monsters until noon so I finished my post from the ship.

And for those of you who follow football/soccer like I do and want a place to argue and talk the game, I started a blog where I can vent. Nothing but football. I might be biased but I like the blog format better than arguing with people on the team Facebook pages.

Bin Laden is dead

Good. Bush wasn't there this time to stop our SpecOps guys when they got close. He needed him as the face of terror and an excuse to shred the Constitution. Obama didn't.

Can our guys and gals come home now? Don't hold your breath.

Update:

Whether you believe this or not, and I don't, I bet we'll hear it in the next few days:

They had to kill bin Laden instead of taking him alive because he might have implicated Bush. Not necessarily for 9/11, but something.

No wonder they patted Fixer down at Heathrow...

...after they suspected him as the perpetrator of this:

Thanks to jatsson, Hong Kong.

Why America's Anglophiles Are Missing the Point of the Royal Wedding

Anglophilia, like pornography, is one of those things that are hard to describe but you know when you see them. With the marriage of the vague, amorphous Prince William and the seemingly unemployable Kate Middleton, Anglophilia is on full display all over the world, particularly in the U.S. As two diabolically bland human beings plight their troth, or whatever one does with a troth, Anglophiles from Chappaqua, N.Y., to Redondo Beach, Calif., have a thrilling opportunity to drop to their knees, moisten their tongues, pucker up their lips and grovel before the British upper classes.

Anglophilia is an obsession not with the English per se but with that stratum of them best described as positively smashing. It is characterized by a fixation on the royal family, a fascination with vintage porcelain and a tendency to confuse a drawing-room accent with actual intelligence. [...]

I thought Joe Queenan was missing the point in this essay in Time magazine. His definition of 'Anglophile' was a little too narrow. I'm an unabashed Anglophile for way different reasons than their antediluvian Royal and class system. I like their motorcycles*, which were the world standard at one time. They got popular here after the WWII GIs were exposed to bikes that had great power, cornered like a weasel in a drainpipe, weighed about 300 pounds less than the Harley-Davidsons and Indians they were used to, and they could shift gears without taking one hand off the bars and one foot off the boards, an instability-inducing requirement that can come exactly when you don't need it. Their bikes were drawn with an exceedingly sharp pencil as opposed to a piece of charcoal out of the cave fire like ours. Sadly, they never sharpened the pencil after great initial success.

*My big thrill of the month came just now when I changed the picture on my Classic Triumph Calendar from a 1937 Speed Twin to a 1967 T100C Sports Tiger. Ohhhh...

A final word on Triumph motorcycles: I will never forgive Hitler for one of his greatest atrocities, that of bombing the Coventry Triumph factory flat in November 1940. He destroyed the prototype alternator-equipped machine and stuck us with those goddam generators for another 20 years, the heartless bastard.

The absolute best book about what happened to the Brits in general is What Ever Happened To The British Motorcycle Industry?. Shorter: The inability to read the handwriting on the wall if it wasn't in English, and to pooh-pooh it as jealousy if it was.

To sum up, anyone who can come up with a cockamamie idea like The Great Panjandrum, build it, and actually think it might work is OK with me. The Brits are great engineers but it has been said that they can't build most of what they can draw. But I digress.

Queenan came up with a line that sums the Brits up perfectly:

You have only to be in a room or a marriage with an English person to understand how the English conquered the world; nothing deters them, and you cross them at your peril.

Nothing deters them. No shit. Ignorance, lack of common sense, reality, nothing. We have people like that here too, but the most dangerous man (or woman) in the world at one time was an English cartographer with a ruler and pencil. The stuff those guys arbitrarily/politically committed to paper in the last century is fucking things up all over the world still.

I could go on and on about the Brits, but suffice it to say that the average Joe Six Pint gets along with a lot less of everything than we do and we could learn from that if we weren't spoiled me-first brats.

Queenan irrevocably redeemed himself with the last paragraph of his tongue-in-cheek piece:

My wife had an uncle who was a wing commander in the RAF. He was named after Gordon of Khartoum, who lost his life battling Islamic fundamentalists in the Sudan in 1885. Uncle Gordon, who had helped ease the Nazis off the stage, lost his legs when he was in his 70s. He never complained that life had treated him unfairly; he had the very stiffest of upper lips. Hoping that some of this will rub off on our son, we named him Gordon, after the kind of Englishman that made England great. You won't see many of them at the royal wedding.

Bloody fookin' right, mate! 'Gordon', a truly proud name for distinguished heroes, is an old Gaelic name meaning "he who will be carried home on his shield". I couldn't actually find that reference on any origin-of-name sites, but what do they know anyway?

Who Covereth the Heaven With Clouds, Who Prepareth Rain For the Earth, Who Hasn'teth A Clue

Common Dreams, links and a music video beseeching the FSM to let it rain.

Fear not the extreme weather threatening us all, the tornados in the South, the drought and fire ravaging Texas. GOP Gov. Rick Perry - he who has called climate change “one contrived phony mess" and whose state is the biggest carbon polluter in the country - will save us with prayer. Also some help from the feds, though he wants to secede. Also a prayerful Facebook page and song. It only has eight words; I guess they ran out. But hear ye: Fear not climate change. Hallelulah.

I'll believe he's serious when I see him hire some blanketasses to do a rain dance.

Home ...

Well, we finally got in the house at 11:00 last night. Once again I got jacked up leaving somewhere, subjected to a "random search" at Heathrow before getting on the aircraft (happened to me in Frankfurt once too). Thing is, when the Germans did it, it was by official federal border guards who were professional and respectful. This time, by some rent-a-cop security agents who were entirely unprofessional. My quote to them was "if I didn't have to be on this flight, I'd have you get your supervisor and then punch the lot of you out". Assholes.

Collecting the luggage at JFK was also a huge clusterfuck.

That said, we got in, unpacked the toothbrushes, and then went directly to sleep. I did manage to smuggle a hunk of cured Spanish ham and a wheel of the local goat cheese without getting jacked up at Kennedy. Heh ...

Couple things: As I mentioned yesterday, we had some lively debates aboard ship. Thing is, it was a pleasure to have discussions with people who didn't necessarily share points of view but could make their point intelligently and respectfully, unlike the things that qualify as "debate" here.

Aboard Lizzie, as well as the other two Cunard ships, is a dedicated smoking room called "Churchill's". It was there, every night after dinner, a group of about 25 of us (aside from the Brits and Americans - me and the Mrs. and a couple from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn - there was an Israeli woman and a couple Germans) would gather over drinks and talk about the world and its problems into the wee hours. It was truly enjoyable and friendly. The "Bloody Fooking Yank" remarks were made in humor and were taken as such.

Churchill's, aboard Queen Elizabeth - Click to embiggen.

Gonna start unpacking after I finish my coffee and then I'll put up my post from Vigo, Spain, along with more views of Lizzie's interior.