The Situation

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President Slow Jam

The night Willard Mitt Romney "clinches" the GOP nomination, Barack Hussein Obama goes on TV with a message about pending student loan interest rate legislation:

It's interesting that this appearance with Jimmy Fallon reminded me so much of when President Barack Obama announced the assassination of Osama bin Laden, particularly his walk back from the podium (now with grunge guitar):

Cool is cool.

Hard to imagine Willard Mitt doing either appearance as well.

Uncool.

He Just Can't Quit It

Hilarious responses to Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry's instant-classic gaybaiting ad, essentially a storm of "Dislikes" on YouTube (heading towards 300,000 Dislikes vs. 6,000 Likes as I write this) and also inspiring a bit of research that is too good to be believed:

I guess he may not want gay soldiers to serve openly and honestly in the military, but gets his fashion cues from Brokeback Mountain.

As Will Truman wrote this week, the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination process has entered an entirely new realm never seen before: satire. You couldn't write a clown show like this:

It occurred to me the other day as I was leaving a comment elsewhere: if someone had written a TV show and the plot followed the current Republican primary, I would have some serious problems with it. Namely, I would pan the show as unrealistic. A joke. Liberal Hollywood’s parody of what the Republican Party is. Herman Cain? Who the hell acts like that. There is no way that a party would seriously give a serial-adulturing, ideologically muddled, lobbying-compromised former House Leader a shot at the nomination. Hollywood couldn’t devise a more repugnant figure as the potential head of a party that they want noting to do with. The comparisons between Rick Perry and Rob Ritchie have, of course, frequently been made. But in some sense, Ritchie would seem downright normal compared to a lot of the candidates. And though the connection hasn’t been made, I see some similarities between Mitt Romney and Bob Russell, the simply unpalatable (to many) candidate who doesn’t belong there but is there because he’s there and his biography doesn’t entirely discount his presence.

Meanwhile, in the real world, a reporter who asks a stupid question echoing the GOP (especially Romney) canard that President Obama is somehow an appeaser of America's enemies, gotta love the smackdown from Mac Daddy Barack:

Yeah, ask Bin Laden. At the bottom of the deep blue sea. My prediction holds: the 2012 Obama landslide will best his 2008 win.

You read it here first.

McCain: Torture Played No Part in Getting bin Laden

Credit where credit is due:

Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were not a factor in tracking down Osama bin Laden, a leading Republican senator insisted Thursday.

Sen. John McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, also rejected the argument that any form of torture is critical to U.S. success in the fight against terrorism.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who back those tactics were wrong to claim that waterboarding al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided information that led to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

...

"Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information," McCain said. He called on Mukasey and others to correct their misstatements.

Payback, perhaps, from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to the President for bombing Libya as McCain wanted? In any case, nice to have John off the crazy train again and standing up for truth in torture.

Default Credit Swap

The GOP is going haywire, desperate to (a) at least share credit with President Obama for his leadership on eliminating bin Laden and, by extension, (b) desperately claim that this success means that torture works.

Neither is true. President George W. Bush, led by Vice President Richard Bruce ("Dick") Cheney overturned terrorism intelligence review policies put in place by President Bill Clinton, cockily ignored memos like "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within U.S." and managed to get away with relatively little criticism for allowing the largest attack on U.S. soil in American history under their watch. Just imagine how they would have led a firestorm of criticism against a Democratic President had it happened under Clinton or Obama.

Then the Bush/Cheney Administration, after allowing bin Laden to escape in Tora Bora, admitted that they had stopped thinking about him, eventually dismantling the unit tasked with finding Most Wanted Terrorist #1. Not exactly leadership that contributed to President Obama's success in this area -- since Obama reinstated the mission of tracking down bin Laden once in office, eventually leading to the tip, eventually leading to the gutsy decision that could have ended his Presidency one week ago.

To wit:



And now:



The fact is that President Obama is a very different type of leader than George W. Bush. The most telling example is former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card, one of the "geniuses" behind the Mission: Accomplished chest-thumping debacle that began with his boss, W., landing in a flight suit, calling out President Obama for supposedly having "pounded his chest" over killing bin Laden. Really, Andrew? After you put up the banner and, it has been revealed, made secret plans for a bin Laden-killing celebration by the Bush Administration? How fucking hypocritical do you think you can be? Or are you just blinded by partisanship?

In fact, by not releasing the photo of bin Laden's corpse, by giving credit to the Navy SEALS, by refocusing on American unity, by swiftly countering false stories of bin Laden using his wife as a human shield, Obama's treatment of this success has been marked by a lack of swagger and lack of lies typical of the Bush/Cheney approach to war stories. Surely this is due to the fundamental insecurity of the previous Administration. Obama doesn't have to gloat -- he's a real great leader, not a fake one.

As for torture, not only does former CIA head Gen. Michael Hayden indicate that the intelligence that lead to bin Laden did not come from "enhanced interrogation," but Andrew Sullivan has a great post on how the Cheneys (Dick and Liz) are back in a desperate attempt to make torture the hero in their false narrative:

There is no evidence that torture was integral to capturing bin Laden. Of three tortured prisoners among the countless leads and tips and interviewees, one was deemed "quite cooperative" before being tortured, thereby leaving open the question of whether the shred of information he provided could have been gotten by non-barbaric methods; and two denied any knowledge of the courier under the torture technique called "waterboarding." So in order to defend torture, Cheney has to say that it's a success when the tortured tell lies. Heads he wins, tails we lose. Moreover, in the last two years or so, torture has been forbidden - although its legacy remains with war criminals protected by the US government, in violation of Geneva - and it was after those two years of a return to decency that bin Laden was found and killed. As for the Bush administration's over-arching goal - democratization of the Middle East - it was only under Obama that we got the Green Revolution in Iran, the successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and the power-struggles now happening in Syria and Libya.

When these fanatics are presented with clear evidence that Obama has been far more successful against terror and its causes than they ever were, they return to their precious, their torture program, and claim ludicrously that, without it, bin Laden would not have been captured. Rumsfeld joined in the chorus of mass distraction this weekend on the same basis. All this really tells you is that these people realize that if their torture regime is found to have been counter-productive, if bin Laden was caught two years after the torture program was ended and with no evidence it helped, then their barbaric policy is exposed once again as unnecessary and a violation of core human values.

Bottom line comes from Bill Maher on his HBO show this week, in his final "New Rule" - why vote Republican for any reason:



Neither fiscally conservative, nor strong on defense. What gives?

Graphics Violence

Maybe President Obama is too much of an adult to let loose images of Osama bin Holes-in-Head on the world, which seems to be a new bloodthirsty meme, but his new benchmark success has inspired a slew of celebratory images. While they are generally crimes against Photoshop, they're pretty funny.

And our President now has his best-ever branding. After all, if our President is a hard-rocking, cool as a cucumber, super-calculating risk-taking badass, and he represents us the most in the world...doesn't that make all of us in the USA a little badass this week as well?

Here you go, America, starting with the instant classic that hit within the first couple hours after his announcement speech:









And will this most gruesome of mock-ups provide solace to the dead-head-photo-yearning crowd:



As for me, I'm kinda liking this last "man for all seasons" one:



And he's our badass.

Motherfuckers.