Good Week

You might not know it by the town hall ragers (and all their racial baggage) but last week was actually an excellent week for President Barack Obama and his Administration. There was a slowing in new unemployment (yes, not yet a recovery, but where it has to begin), the birthers/deathers/teabaggers are actually starting to boomerang in his favor, and he got his first Supreme Court Justice choice ever sworn in.

Best of all, he appears to have killed the Taliban chief of Pakistan, who was also their military leader:

Pakistan considered the al-Qaida-linked Mehsud its No. 1 internal threat. He was suspected in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and many other assaults. He claimed responsibility for some, including an audacious attack on a police academy in March that killed 12 people.

His death would be a victory for President Barack Obama and a nod to the Bush administration, both of whom have relied heavily on the CIA-controlled missile strikes to take out militants in Pakistan's wild northwest. The U.S. had a $5 million bounty on Mehsud, whom it considered a threat to the Afghan war effort.

Caught like a Somali pirate in the crosshairs of a CIA missile strike. And it appears that the ensuing power struggle to replace him is upping the body count:

According to sources, commanders Hakeemullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, the two leading contenders for the chief slot, exchanged hot words at the shura meeting in Sara Rogha over the choosing of a successor to Baitullah. A shootout followed, leading to the death of Hakeemullah while causing life-threatening injuries to Waliur Rehman. A government official in Peshawar said that both Hakeemullah and Waliur Rehman had been killed in the clash.

How crazy would it be if Obama's war strategy turned out to be the shining success of his Administration? Up next: Afghan drug lords:

The generals told Senate staff members that two credible sources and substantial additional evidence were required before a trafficker was placed on the list, and only those providing support to the insurgency would be made targets.

Currently, they said, there are about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.

“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff.

As another President once said, "Bring it on."