Friday, May 13, 2011

Publius Minimus to Diogenes......."I ask you my friend,  don't you find it a bit ironic that with all the pressure the government is putting on big oil about their 7 cent a gallon profit,  politicians  never mention how much of the pump price of gas is actually the government's obscenely high tax on each and every gallon sold?
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Government Leaks Bin Laden Computer Info

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Victory Lap is Over.... Now What?

The death of Osama Bin Laden and recent intelligence treasures being found on Bin Laden's captured computer hard drives gives the appearance we've struck a major blow to al Qaeda and international terrorism. Let's hope that's true. But when taken as part of the totality of the Middle East we may be looking at a vastly different and much more dangerous landscape soon.

If what the government is telling us is true, al Qaeda has split in half on religious grounds with a more radical factions ignoring Bin Laden's leadership. It looks to me as consistent with what we've seen in Egypt and Libya where more radical factions have pushed for the removal of less strident or weaker leaders.  Whether international terrorist groups are leading the charge or going with the flow is immaterial. The real issue is the further radicalization of the Middle East and its impact on the war on terrorism. Dealing a severe  blow to al Qaeda, or at least a portion of it, is a good thing, but if we leave it at that we're setting ourselves up for failure yet again. A failure larger and more deadly then 9/11.

Our fearless leader can do as many victory laps as he wants, no one is really impressed with his arrogance. But he's already come out supporting the forces in Egypt and Libya, both of whom have clear ties to radical Islam. 



Doesn't it bother anyone else how quickly the Obama Administration sided with these more radical elements in North Africa? It's not like they have hidden their agenda or their hatred of America. Yet, we're content to give them cover and let them do the dirty work in getting rid of corrupt leaders we no longer "need" in power. If they succeed, something will have to fill the vacuum and I don't think it's going to be filled by Muslims who want Walmarts or Starbucks everywhere much less peacefully co-existence with the civilized West.


We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes, but the war on terrorism isn't over by that one act.  And if recent history and the enemy's perceived incompetence and weakness of our present leadership are any indication, there is a bigger storm on the horizon, and we're not ready for it.
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Monday, May 9, 2011

The Conscience of the Left Speaks:

....Howard Zinn was unavailable for comment.


Noam Chomsky: 
My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about. 
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Mr. Chomsky, in Classic Diogenes' Style...
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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Just a Note From the 9th Tee.....

Mr. President, for at least a little while I was prepared to believe you were on the verge of salvaging your Presidency. Then you made that obscenely self-serving speech announcing at your word,the demise of Osama Bin Laden.  And now you have the balls to take a Victory Lap at Ground Zero?

I don’t blame G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at all for not wanting to be seen with you at ground zero. Great opportunity for a photo-op and footage for the coming campaign video, eh Barry? BTW, where were you last two 911 memorials?

 But, your lapdogs in the media and the greater mass of people who voted for you that can't wipe their own ass without government provided step-by-step instructions, or without a government check to buy toilet paper, will hail you as the Great Obama, for a few days at least. And then they'll remember that even if Osama is dead they still can't find work, their country is bankrupt and you're a still an incompetent leader.

I do applaud you for giving the gutsy order to do what should have been done a long time ago, thumbing your nose at Pakistani sovereignty in order to bring the Islamic Pig to justice……. but it's a polite Golf Clap.

And this whole "we're not at war with Islam" stupidity doesn't buy you any friends over there in the sandbox. We may not be at War with Islam, but Islam is at War with us. Get that through your thick skull, Barry. The fact is that your administration, by playing to this nonsense about 'Islamic Sensibilities' like burying Bin Laden according to Islamic custom and not wanting to rub salt in the wound of radical Islam and their terrorist folk hero, and to return to the 'beg Islam to be nice to us' policy is doing itself, and us a major disservice.

The disservice is that without evidence, no one in the Islamic World is going to believe that Bin Laden is really dead. Without evidence, the same people who burned brain cells and wasted air over your birth certificate have new grist for the conspiracy theory mill. It seems as if your administration, true to form is attempting to decide what is and what is not secret depending on what the perceived political and propaganda needs of the Administration are at any particular moment, and in the process only reinforcing what so many already think.

But, having made the right decision to get UBL you are now screwing it all up by making, or allowing your minions to make, all the wrong ones. Having scored major points in an area which was one of your biggest weaknesses, being soft on the War on Terror, you've squandered that advantage and re-opened the floodgates of conspiracy theory and charges of incompetence. UBL is said to have valiantly resisted, and the next we’re told that he was unarmed. UBL was found in part because of what happens at Gitmo and then it was painstaking intelligence work done over a series of years, like someone doing a giant jigsaw puzzle in the dark and with one hand tied behind his back. The CIA says one thing, the Pentagon another. The State Department ,which on a good day might be able to find its own collective ass with both hands and a roadmap, says something else entirely and they all contradict and step all over each other in the process.

The disinformation may be deliberate, but from here it appears as if no one in the government is on the same page, and that always leads to the conclusion that no one in Washington can muster enough intellectual firepower to burn calories, and in this political climate that's rather dangerous for a sitting President .

UBL is dead. Great, I'm proud of you. Now prove it. Release video and pictures from the raid. 


FORE!
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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011

They Got Him..... Bin Laden is Dead!

5/01/2011 09:43 PM
"May his 72 virgins all look like Barney Frank in drag." - mkultra @IOTW
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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Arbor Day at O's House

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