Calling all Trolls: Osama Bin Laden Really Is Dead

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I am getting tired of the trolls who are running around the internet ( and the real world too) trying to make the facts fit their distorted picture of reality.  Personally, I am with Bill Maher on this one.  I wish all the conspiracy theorists and nut jobs would just calm down and get their stories straight. Here are a few of the nuttier scenarios floating around at the moment.

1. He's Not Really Dead  Osama Bin Laden really is dead.  He really was buried at sea and Obama was right not to release the pictures of his corpse.  There is no plot here so get over it.  The guy won't be showing up anywhere soon  and his being still alive is about as likely as September 11th was planned by the Bush family or Americans never walked on the moon.  If you believe this nonsense you might also believe that Bin Laden was killed in 2001 and the United States has had his body frozen since then and just staged the whole Pakistan thing..

2.The Government of Pakistan Colluded in Hiding Bin Laden Get a grip. I'm sure there were some payoffs and some folks who knew and were paid to keep their mouths shut or who kept the secret for ideological reasons or who just wanted to stay out of trouble--- but really, Pakistan has suffered more at the hands of Bin Laden than most countries. The government may be riddled with corruption, but there was clearly no offical desire to hide Bin Laden.  Remember who assassinated the last prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto?. Let's not be so quick to pass the buck.  We are the people who only had 36 special ops tracking Bin Laden in ToraBora back in 2001 and we are the folks who let him get away.

2A  Variations on this theme include, the big bad USA should not have invaded sovereign Pakistani territory to take out Bin Laden but should have left it to Pakistan.  yeah, sure, and  let the most corrupt intelligence service in the world blow the deal ? sure that would have been great.  Lets hand this off to the folks who spent at least five years not knowing Bin Laden was even there and who asserted over and over again that he was in a cave in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden didn't worry about invading the sovereign territory of the United States on 9/11, or that of Spain or England or Pakistan itself, for that matter, to mount terrorist operations-- and then of course there was Iraq. But let's not go there-- we were the invaders and the occupiers and perhaps a case could be made for Al Quaeda  bringing in all those foreign fighters.  The point is we are dealing with trans national terrorism not with nation states here.  We had a perfect right to go get Bin Laden where he was, and most of the world, including much of Pakistan, is glad the guy is gone.

3. Obama Is Taking Too Much Credit  There is a lot of teeth gnashing going on in right wing and teaparty circles. A narcissistic president with Socialist/Nazi/ Fascist leanings ( make up your minds, guys) is how these folks want to see Obama and since reality does not square with their vision, they need  to  rewrite history-- won't be the first time. These folks want to credit George Bush, the guy who parachuted onto an aircraft carrier and announced " Mission Accomplished" with the Bin Laden take down.   Huh? As Bill Maher says:

  

“How many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?”

Obama Cuts Government Waste

Last Thursday President Obama signed a bill which will eliminate $50 billion-- yes that is billion with a "B" of waste from entitlement programs. It is designed to stop all those dead people and jailbirds who are illegally receiving social security, disability, food stamps and other entitlements  from getting their monthly checks. Bad payments range from outright fraud to checks issued to the wrong person or for the wrong amount because of a typo

According to President Obama, an estimated  $110 billion  was wasted just last year through improper payments. To give some perspective, this figure is more than the budgets of the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration combined.  That is pretty mind blowing, isn't it?  The answer is not to eliminate entitlements, but to eliminate waste and fraud.

Stopping dead people from collecting Social Security seems like a no brainer. I think we should hear more about what the government IS doing and less about what it is NOT doing.

  It took eight years of Bush to get us into this mess.  Obama is getting us out as fast as he can.  Stay with him and don't give up. OK?

Look Back on 9/11 But Don't Stare

I am so totally on the same page with President Obama today on remembering and observing the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. It is fitting to remember the people of all faiths and nationalities who perished and to remember how shocked we all were by the first invasion of a foreign enemy on American soil since the British burned Washington in the War of 1812.

What is totally not OK, is to demonize a whole religion, including American muslims and to turn the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks into a xenophobic hatefest to unify the far right and build a political power base. I am appalled at the notion of burning Quarans and holding hate rallies like the protest scheduled for ground zero this afternoon.  It is dangerous and just plain wrong.

When you start demonizing people, you de- humanize them and make it ok to slaughter them or pop them into ovens and concentration camps. Scapegoating is a dangerous occupation which easily backfires. It has also been observed that what begins with the burning of books often ends with the burning of people.

Listen to what President Obama had to say in his press conference yesterday and think about it.  Come on America. Let's look back on 9/11 but not stare.

Autotuned Obama Kicks Ass

Kick-Ass Obama is playing hardball-- at least with the Autotune the News Guys. They've had fun with the President's interview with Matt Lauer Tuesday on The Today Show, where he talked about BP and the oil spill.

Sometimes you just need a laugh