Monday, May 02, 2011

The post-bin Laden Wrangle

So Obama had a pretty good week ...

1. Here's my long-form COLB, now STFU.
2. Here's some in your face, Trump (and booyah, Seth).
3. Let's go with Panetta at Defense and Petraeus at CIA. Huge news all by itself if it happened any other week.
4. Oh, and BTW, that OBL dude? Not taking in oxygen any more, as of a few hours ago. Nope, you don't get to see his body, either. Just the fish at the bottom of the sea do.

Visiting tornado-ravaged Alabama, in the crowd to watch a space shuttle launch that had to be postponed, and the attack on Gadhafi's compound that missed him but got several of his offspring don't even make this list.

Two cautionary notes for the president, however:

1. It's STILL the economystupid (yes, one word), and he better get cracking on creating some jobs, or else it will be Herbert Walker he gets compared to instead of Jimmy Carter; and...

2. All this wild celebrating of someone's demise -- the cheering, chanting USAUSA, climbing lightpoles to wave American flags, etc. -- strikes me as unseemly, no matter how evil the dude was. It always seems to be the most radical, Muslim and Christian, who tend to overgloat about retribution. Which sets up the next round.

Here's the blog round-up from the Texas Progressive Alliance.

Marxists, CFL light bulbs, and Paul Tsongas? These topics and more were discussed during Congressman Michael Burgess' recent town hall meeting in Frisco, covered by the Texas Cloverleaf.

We have a new map for the State House. Off the Kuff has a first look at it.

At TexasKaos, liberaltexan explains the Republican Path to Plutocracy. Are you listening, Paul Ryan?

Former Texas Lt. Governor Bill Hobby served in the office longer than anybody else. So when he sounded the alarm on the Great State's lack of leadership, in a poem he wrote entitled "The Perverted Village," Letters From Texas figured people better listen up.

Texas state comptroller Susan Combs is under intense fire for allowing the personal data of 3.5 million Texans to be left unsecured online for more than a year. Calls for her resignation and various lawsuits aren't being quelled by her belated apologies and offers to pay for credit monitoring services for those affected. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs sees a political career crashing in flames, and a scrum among the GOP sharks in the tank to eventually replace her.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts that it's finally here ... Texas Democrats have the opportunity they've been waiting for.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that republicans are going gangbusters killing public education and other institutions.

This week, McBlogger asks David Stockman to STOP THE DEFICIT MADNESS!

Neil at Texas Liberal noted that former Texas Lt. Governor Bill Hobby -- very much an establishment figure -- is wondering if the Republican intent in the ongoing legislative session is to ruin Texas.

When the end came

... for Bin Laden, he was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a massive compound about an hour’s drive north from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. He was hiding in the medium-sized city of Abbottabad, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy of the Pakistani Army.

The house at the end of a narrow dirt road was roughly eight times larger than other homes in the area, but had no telephone or Internet connections. When American operatives converged on the house on Sunday, Bin Laden “resisted the assault force” and was killed in the middle of an intense gun battle, a senior administration official said, but details were still sketchy early Monday morning.

The official said that military and intelligence officials first learned last summer that a “high-value target” was being protected in the compound and began working on a plan for going in to get him. Beginning in March, Mr. Obama presided over five national security meetings at the White House to go over plans for the operation and on Friday morning, just before leaving Washington to tour tornado damage in Alabama, gave the final order for special forces and C.I.A. operatives to strike.

Mr. Obama called it a “targeted operation,” although officials said one helicopter was lost because of a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed to keep it from falling into hostile hands.

In addition to Bin Laden, three men were killed during the 40-minute raid, one believed to be his son and the other two his couriers, according to an American official who briefed reporters under White House ground rules forbidding further identification. A woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, the official said, and two others wounded.

“No Americans were harmed,” Mr. Obama said. “They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” Muslim tradition requires burial within 24 hours, but by doing it at sea, American authorities presumably were trying to avoid creating a shrine for his followers.

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda second-in-command, was unclear Sunday night.

The terse announcement came just after 9:45 p.m. Sunday from Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10:30 PM Eastern Time,” he wrote on Twitter, sharing the same message that had just been transmitted to the White House press corps.

According to Brian Williams, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor, some journalists received a three-word e-mail that simply read, “Get to work.”

The nation’s television anchors and newspaper editors did not know, at first, that President Obama would be announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, an extraordinary development in the nearly 10-year-long war against terrorism waged by the United States and its allies. But reporters in Washington suspected almost immediately that the announcement could be about bin Laden.

That speculation was not aired out on television immediately, but it did erupt on Twitter and other social networking sites. Wishful thinking about bin Laden’s death ricocheted across the Web — and then, at 10:25 p.m., while Mr. Obama was writing his speech, one particular tweet seemed to confirm it. Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrote at that time, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

Sunday, May 01, 2011

May Day March today


HOUSTON, April 21 (2008) —“I’m going to bring my wife and kids to march May Day this year, that’s going to be my protest of these raids,” a Latino worker who lives across the street from a Shipley Do-Nuts warehouse and company housing compound told the Militant. Twenty Shipley’s workers were arrested in an April 16 raid by federal immigration police.

“I looked down the street and I see all these cop cars in front of the trailers,” the worker, who asked that his name not be printed, said. “I know these people, they’ve never caused any problems, they just worked hard like everybody in this neighborhood—and working for Shipley they don’t make much either. This is completely unjust.”

“That’s just people trying to work, they come into the country to try and feed their family,” Derek Shumake, who also lives across the street, told the Houston Chronicle. “They work hard, and they do jobs most people won’t.”

May Day Funnies


And just in case you missed it ...