Oh, you didn't think I was finished, did you?

POSTED BY JHW22

I am quite proud of the Navy Seals who went in and cleanly killed Osama Bin Laden. I am filled with relief and joy that not one of them came out in a body bag. It sounds, for now anyway, that they overcame challenges well and accomplished the mission with minimal problems. Kudos.

They deserve kudos. They deserve to be cheered.

And so does their Commander in Chief.

Their Commander in Chief made the ultimate call to send in a small, focused group of Seals so that we could get Bin Laden with little collateral damage, have a body to identify and even gather better intelligence than any intelligence any interrogator with a bucket of water could ever get.

Kudos, also, to Leon Panetta. As the head of the CIA, tasked by the Commander in Chief with developing a plan to get Bin Laden -- something Bush decided wasn't such a big deal after all -- Panetta delivered. I am seriously looking forward to seeing the changes in the Department of Defense after what we learned about this administration this weekend. As much as I appreciate and respect Secretary Gates, I think he's exhausted and Panetta will step in with a new vision -- one I think Gates would be proud to manage if he had the energy left.

But I digress in my kudos.

What I really came here to say is: as much as the Seals are to be respected, what if each one had FUBARed? What if one fired on a fellow Seal by mistake? What if one slipped and let Bin Laden escape? What if one forgot to load his weapon? If each one made stupid, human error that could not be blamed on anyone but each one of them, only one person would have taken all the blame: Barack Obama.

Yep, the man who many can't seem to bring themselves to thank, would have been their gleeful target of blame.

And that, as one of many reasons, is why they SHOULD suck it up and thank the man for doing what the previous two Presidents couldn't. Obama didn't just get Bin Laden. He got him, he got him fast. He got him clean. He got him without taking 150,000 into the wrong country to do it. Give him your thanks. And then suck it!

Gallows Politics - UPDATED

Boom! goes the dynamite!

"I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

-- CIA Director Leon Panetta, in an interview with the New Yorker, on former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticisms of the Obama administration.

UPDATE (6/18/09): Since posting this on Sunday, Ed Schultz has had a run-in with Joe Scarborough regarding this issue. Schultz agrees with the assessment. Scarborough is shocked, shocked I tell you!, that anyone would think Cheney would want "Americans to die" (Scarborough's words, not Panetta's) so he could say he was right.

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Scarborough tries to discredit Schultz by equating the support Schultz says he's receiving to the 9/11 Truthers, but Schultz isn't buying it. And then of course comes the obligatory book plug at the end of the segment.

The Leon Panetta Thing (The post where I tell Diane Feinstein and Harry Reid to shut the fuck up.) - UPDATED

It seems that Senator Diane Feinstein (D[INO]-CA) must have been travelling to a different country to get some kind of stem cell procedure done in order to grow the spine she was missing these last few years. Why else would she say something like this about Obama's choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA?

"My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

Really, Senator Feinstein? Then why say this back in 2004 after George W. Bush nominated Porter Goss for the same position?

"I believe the President should have the prerogative to appoint who he wants to be the DCI..."

Oh, right. It's because the President was a Republican, wasn't it? And we all know that Democrats in Congress are so used to bending over and taking it in the ass that it was only natural that you say something like that.

And you dared let your ego get the better of you and have a hissy fit. When Bush nominated Porter Goss for the same position you thought Goss' credentials were fine. Then Goss himself said he wasn't qualified for the position. (Why he accepted is another story.) So why should you really be kept in the loop as to who is nominated? You've proven that sometimes credentials don't make someone good at their job.

Jay McDonough: Both Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller had ranking positions on the Senate Intelligence Committee and were completely ineffectual at stemming the abuses of the Bush Administration and, in fact, in most cases sided with the Administration on key policy issues. It was just a week ago that Vice President Cheney confided they had shared information about the Administration's illegal surveillance programs with key Democrats (this, most certainly, included Sen. Rockefeller) and those Democrats advised Mr. Cheney the programs should continue and the Congress needn't be involved.

Well, I'm weally sorry you got your wittle feewings hurt by not being informed initially, but get the fuck over it. Take your hurt feelings, and your Donna Reed motherfuckin' hairdo and your fucking FISA vote and get the fuck outta here. You too Jay Rockefeller, you fat fuck.

We've all been worried about obstructionist Republicans, but it looks like the real problem might actually be Democrats who feel they can't be pushed around anymore... by a new Democratic president who has vowed for more transparency than ever before. Does this make any fucking sense?!

Now Majority Capitulater Harry Reid is all of a sudden become Captain Opposite Man, insisting that there was no way in hell he was going to seat Roland Burris to Obama's vacant Senate seat... unless of course Reid copped out and would seat him if he had the proper credentials; and he didn't bother trying to seat Al Franken for fear of a Republican block. And yet, he says this about his relationship with the President-elect:

Reid stated, "I don't believe in the executive power trumping everything... I believe in our Constitution, three separate but equal branches of government."
"If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him. ... I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him," he said.

'Atta boy, Harry. Good thing you followed you own rules for the last two years when you blocked every move Bush made and called him out when overstepping his bounds; stopped him in his tracks when he thought he was above the law with all those signing statements and.... oh, wait. Nevermind. You didn't do any of that did you? You caved, didn't you? And now we can expect six more years of caving to the Republican minority... well, a minority at least until the Democrats blow it again and Republicans regain control of Congress.

Fuck cloture votes. Until Reid makes the Republicans actually filibuster something they're opposed to and not pee in his pants with just the threat of a filibuster, I'll apologize and take it all back. Until then, Harry Reid can shut the fuck up too, that worthless shit.


UPDATE (1/8/09 10:25am):

Politico: The Majority Leader thinks former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens shouldn't face jail time for his seven-count federal conviction last year, telling our Manu Raju, who was also in the room, "My personal feeling, you guys, I don't know what good that [would do]... He was a real war hero too, you know. He's been punished enough."

Punished enough? Please explain the punishment, Senator Reid. Please explain how Stevens didn't understand the procedure when he was recorded saying that the worst that can happen to him is a fine and a little jail time. Please explain how he didn't understand the rules changes. He's a goddamn Senator, for fuck's sake! If he doesn't know the rules, then he shouldn't fucking be there. I was always taught that ignorance of the law is not an excuse. I guess that is unless you're a member of the US Congress, of course.

And by the way, I think that it's a pretty big fuck up to get your home renovated for free. He didn't know there was something wrong with that? And what a fucking disgrace that the US Senate thought it appropriate to give a convicted felon a standing ovation on his last day there. That was a goddamn embarrassment.

Yeah, like I said, Reid needs to SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

(H/T Bob Cesca)