Harry Reid says he might be:
Was Osama bin Laden killed in last month’s earthquake in Pakistan? So said Senate minority leader Harry Reid to a Nevada TV station (video here).
I hope he is enjoying his three score + raisins.
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The Disenfranchised Voter
Oh get with it John! This is old news.
Though notice how you typed that Reid said “he might be dead” whereas PJM claimed Reid said “he is dead”.
PJM is a joke really. I only stumbled upon them b/c of the whole fiasco with them. They will pander to the Republican base and that is about it.
don surber
Yea I like that the spin is that Reid sieved. Reid’s an idiot but news is news. I don’t see what the big deal secret is.
Power Line and Red State should get off his back. He’s a great Ameri —
OK, I cannot finish that lie. But thanks for the rumor, Reid
Pb
As I’ve said… Osama’s been dead for quite some time now. And he’ll continue to be dead until another video tape surfaces just before the next set of US elections.
Lines
Is don surber getting stranger with each comment posted? Its like a window into his ever worsening mental illness.
Besides, we don’t care about Osama anymore, we have more important things in Iraq, like chasing down Cobra Commander and his evil henchmen.
Steve S
Shouldn’t the title of this be: “Rightwing nuts at open sores media go off on a Senator calling him names.”
John Cole
Jesus- that Reid thinks Osama is dead is news to me.
How did I miss this?
And lay off PJ. If you have constructive criticism, go for it. Otherwise, I have better things to do than read your whining.
Shannon Pressby
Newspapers in India and Pakistan covbered the story of the quake in Pakistan where most of the world thought OBL was hiding, and in most of the stories the first thought/speculation was whether OBL was dead. These reports are available on-line and pre-date Reid interview with the LV television station. If you Yahoo or Google Osama plus Pakistan earthquake you get hundreds of hiys. If speculation about OBL was a secret, its a secret that half the world knew. I first heard about at a church lunch. It was reported on by Associated Press and Reuters. This is from belief.net
“Is the affected population overwhelmingly Muslim?
Yes, it’s almost entirely Muslim and people are asking me, is it possible that in this earthquake, Osama bin Laden has been killed? That complicates the Western reaction [to the earthquake victims] because a lot of commentators felt maybe there were some Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or Osama bin Laden himself living in that region. That tempers the compassion.”
I think John Fund at GOP,in particular is just making himself look silly.
Pb
John Cole,
Are you talking to me?
Constructive criticism: not all of the Osama tapes have been authenticated or were authentic. Also, bin Laden’s funeral was in December 2001. FYI. In case you didn’t already know. Seeing as how this is all news to you.
don surber
Hey Lines, thanks for being my psychiatrist. There’s this thing called skip. OK? See the name Don Surber, just skip the comment. Pretty easy :)
Steve
The PJM link is the real prize here. How hilarious for the Right to try and make an offhanded comment about a rumor into some major security breach. Hey, wasn’t Osama just a desk jockey, or somesuch?
Vlad
“If you have constructive criticism, go for it.”
Having never looked at the site before, here’s my initial reaction:
1) If they changed the name back to Pajamas Media, why isn’t their content at pajamasmedia.com? It’s confusing. At a minimum, the content from pajamasmedia.com should be ported over, with that domain redirecting to the new site.
2) Their classification system sucks. For instance, why is this story filed under “Sport”? I see sales targets and race relations and even a digression about an astronaut, but nothing at all to do with sports.
3) It’d be nice if their front page layout included info on more than a dozen stories, and if the section containing their links were more prominent.
4) The reportage seems very shallow: In the front-page story on Reid’s statement, there’s just a lot of charges and counter-charges, with no actual evidence as to whether OBL’s status was classified or not. The most prominent thing on their site, and it consists of one graf that boils down to “Some people upset, others not” and a bunch of quotes.
The heavy reliance on wire stories is also kind of lame, but understandable given that they’re still starting things up. If there isn’t more original content in a month, though, they’re in trouble.
yet another jeff
Does anyone truly believe that Osama is alive? His TV show went off the air in December, 2001…
Steve S
I’d long believed the guy was probably dead.
Although I must admit surprise with the Osama, just prior to the election video. But like PJ noted, that could very well have been orchestrated by Karl Rove. It’s so very 1984 of him.
yet another jeff
Yeah, that pre-election video remains an Unexplained Mystery…missing a lot of the poetic hyperbole of his previous videos.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Pb, I think john was talking to me. Yea, I want to give “constructive criticism” to a group that consists mostly of Bush-loving hacks. I’ll just stick with good old fashion criticism.
And I, for one, think Bin Laden is still alive.
P.S. Reid didn’t say Bin Laden is dead or he thinks he is dead, he said he might be dead.
How is this even news? Of course Bin Laden might be dead. I believe he is alive but he might be dead. He may have even died in the earthquake.
BIRDZILLA
Is scary ahrry reid sure ? has there been any positive ID yet?
Perry Como
Osama isn’t dead. He’s still making videos.
Lines
If you stick Bin Laden in a box with a radioactive isotope with a short half life and a poison vial triggered by looking in the box, is he alive or dead at any particular moment before opening the box?
Quantum-Laden Physics
Steve
I do enjoy the fact that there is a scenario where Osama is dead, our government knows it, and yet they keep the information classified from the rest of us – and the entire right-wing blogosphere is perfectly fine with it!
I really find it an implausible scenario but I’m pretty shocked that people would glibly deem it acceptable.
Phillip J. Birmingham
I’d say that he’s probably alive, as the canonical Schroedinger’s Terrorist gedanken requires that the vial of poison be released by the decay of the one radioactive atom that is also in the box, not by the box’s opening.
Geek, Esq.
This can only mean that a video tape will soon appear.
Lines
Oh yeah, I left off that part, didn’t I? Thanks for the correction :)
Mike S
He should keep his mouth shut. The GOP needsOBL alive to keep scaring the public. Reid should know better than to take the bogey man away from the GOP.
M. Scott Eiland
He must have read about OBL’s death in a nonexistent Clarence Thomas opinion.
Steve S
Yeah because those close to Osama don’t know he’s dead yet! It’s like Weekend at Bernies, only without Andrew McCarthy.
Good point though. Besides the insults, the mere suggestion that somehow his death should remain a secret, because, well, it’s a national security risk… proves the right-wing has clearly distanced themselves from any grounding in reality.
Mr.Ortiz
How about the scenario in which a prominent public official announces to the media that Public Enemy #1, the one we can all agree on, has been killed, and Pajamas Media are the only ones who notice? I like that one, too.
Mr.Ortiz
And furthermore… if they really think this was classified intel and a threat to national security, shouldn’t they NOT be propagating it, the same way they expect the New York Times not to report bad news from Iraq, lest it hurt troop morale and embolden the enemy?
nittacci
“If you have constructive criticism, go for it.”
Don’t we have enough media outlets fronting for political parties, but pretending to be “fair and balanced”?
I’d have a little more respect for Pajamas if they’d just come out and admit that part of their business plan is to support a neocon agenda. It would represent a refreshing bit of truth from the parties involved.
Jim Allen
Can anyone help me out on the “three score + raisins” reference?
Jaybird
“Raisins.”
As you may have heard, it is said that when a martyr dies, he receives 72 virgins in paradise.
There was a report a while back that this was a mistranslation and that the martyr will really receive 72 *RAISINS*.
This brings us to many jokes about suicide bombers waking up and asking where the chicks are.
scs
“three score + raisins”
Geez John get out your calculator and don’t be lazy. 72 raisins/14 per score is easily at least “five plus score”.
Jim Allen
Uh, scs — that would be 72 raisins/*20* per score, making it “three plus score” (3.6 score, for the precision-minded).
The “score” part I got — it was the “raisins” reference that threw me.
scs
My bad. I confused ‘score’ with ‘fortnight’ there.
Jim Allen
Hm. Does that mean you “score” only once a “fortnight”?