Just Another Day

West Virginia man dressed in bra
and panties, high on bath salts,
kills neighbor’s pygmy goat.

If you thought the only things inevitable were death and taxes you must have forgot Republicans predictable and apparently inevitable attempts to denigrate President Obama. Surprisingly, Obama did receive a standing ovation at a bipartisan meeting of politicians, and perhaps equally surprising he received praises from John McCain. But others went out of their way to either ignore or denigrate Obama’s triumph over Osama bin Laden. The strident fishwife from Alaska, Sarah Palin, who fancies herself Presidential material, with her usual lack of even rudimentary noblesse oblige, actually thanked George W. Bush for bin Laden’s death. Governor Pawlenty did offer some minor thanks to Obama, but only after thanking Bush first. Romney gave credit to “the President” but did not actually mention him by name. Huckabee managed to avoid having to mention Obama by “welcoming bin Laden to hell,” that, I guess, his religion probably believes is an actual place reserved for sinners (and probably, I suppose, Muslims). There are others who shamelessly thanked Bush in one way or another even though he is on record of saying he was no longer even interested in Osama bin Laden. So much for history or reality.

Among the more extreme Obama haters there are other themes. Andrew Breitbart seems to think bin Laden was not really killed, someone named Alex Jones I guess has a blog where he claims bin Laden’s body has been frozen for months, and some other ultra right-winger claims the whole incident was planned as part of Obama’s re-election strategy. Of course it should be clear by now to everyone that some will never accept Obama as President no matter what he does.

Among other Republican actions here and there, in spite of their multi-billion dollar profits in just three months, Pawlenty says it would be “ludicrous to cut oil subsidies.” The Governor of Pennsylvania wants to cut 2 billion from the education budget and suggests the schools can make it up by allowing the oil companies to drill under their schools. The Texas legislature, facing enormous budget shortfalls, are considering a bill that would give tax breaks to those who buy yachts worth more than $250,000. And, of course the Republicans have not given up on their attempt to subvert Roe vs Wade by changing the definition of rape, doing away with unions and Medicare, Social Security, public schools, and unemployment insurance. Dick the Slimy is still trying to claim that torture worked, contrary to the evidence and reports by the experts. Quite frankly, I do not understand how Republicans get anyone to vote for them, except, of course, the basic hard-core loonies that seem to be about their only remaining base. Perhaps Obama’s wonderful success in finding and killing Osama bin Laden will make a difference, if they don’t roviate him successfully in the next few months as they did John Kerry. Put nothing past these contemporary Republicans as they have demonstrated in the past twenty years they will literally stop at nothing to get their way, democracy, nation, and truth be damned.

Unhappily, questions about what really happened when Osama bin Laden was killed seem to multiply daily. First he is standing (hiding, depending on who you read) behind his wife, then it is not his wife but another woman, he is unarmed but resists so he gets shot. This seems to me a somewhat questionable assertion as I’m not sure what significant resistance an unarmed man standing behind a woman can put up. One reporter said the command was to kill bin Laden, another says capturing him was a possibility, if he did not resist. If he did not raise his arms and lie down on the ground was he resisting? Apparently his wife was shot in the leg and another woman, so far unidentified, was killed. While the killing of bin Laden is welcome news, the reporting of it has been atrocious. I don’t know how much of this is the fault of the White House and how much the fault of the news media, but surely it could have been reported in a much more detailed and straightforward manner (perhaps not, given the dismal state of our news media). It is not clear whether they will release any photos of the corpse but even if they do, don’t bet it will put all the questions at rest.

LKBIQ:
A suspicious mind always looks on the black side of things.
Publilius Syrus

TILT:
There is still a risk of catastrophic disaster at Fukushima nuclear plant.