Why, yes, readers! That is in fact an op-ed piece in the Politico by… Chuck Norris.
Hooray! We Got Him!
We just killed another terrorist you and I have never heard of, and presumably this time we win:
A drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency killed Al Qaeda’s second-ranking figure in the mountains of Pakistan on Monday, American and Pakistani officials said Saturday, further damaging a terrorism network that appears significantly weakened since the death of Osama bin Laden in May.
An American official said that the drone strike killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who in the last year had taken over as Al Qaeda’s top operational planner. Mr. Rahman was in frequent contact with Bin Laden in the months before the terrorist leader was killed on May 2 by a Navy Seals team, intelligence officials have said.
American officials described Mr. Rahman’s death as particularly significant as compared with other high-ranking Qaeda operatives who have been killed, because he was one of a new generation of leaders that the network hoped would assume greater control after Bin Laden’s death.
Thousands of electronic files recovered at Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, revealed that Bin Laden communicated frequently with Mr. Rahman. They also showed that Bin Laden relied on Mr. Rahman to get messages to other Qaeda leaders and to ensure that Bin Laden’s recorded communications were broadcast widely.
After Bin Laden was killed, Mr. Rahman became Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader under Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Bin Laden.
Is it just me, or does Al Qaeda go through No. 2’s quicker than Dr. Evil? But don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere, and in a few months we will have another joyous announcement after we kill the new No. 2.
This Kind Of Thing Drives Me Crazy
Americans do love a show:
US President Barack Obama warned the US east coast was in for a “long 72 hours” as he led his government’s response to Hurricane Irene at a disaster command center in Washington.
Obama on Saturday chaired a meeting at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, which is marshaling federal and local hurricane-relief efforts.
“This is going to be a tough slog getting through this thing,” Obama said during a video teleconference including senior federal officials and local government agencies in the east coast path of Irene.
“It’s going to be a long 72 hours. Obviously a lot of families are going to be affected … the biggest concern I’m having right now has to do with flooding and power,” Obama said during the videoconference.
“(It) sounds like that’s going to be an enormous strain on a lot of states” that could last days, or even longer in some cases, he said.
Saturday evening Obama convened a conference call with members of his senior emergency response team including Vice President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among others.
This is an example of the kind of thing that drives me crazy about US politics. We have a large bureaucracy with experts designed to handle these things- why do Americans demand a show of the President hunkered down in a bunker “taking charge?” The problem with the Bush response to national disasters and Katrina was not insufficient photo ops in a bunker, it was that they had completely gutted FEMA, screwed up the entire chain of command with confusion related to what is and what is not the purview of Homeland Security, and on top of it all, put an incompetent nitwit lawyer most noted for his association with Arabian horses in charge of the disaster response.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not attacking Obama- I know why he is there, mainly because our idiot press would run with Republican narratives of Obama being detached or on vacation, etc. But he really shouldn’t need to be. All his work with natural disaster response should have been done months ago, when FEMA was properly staffed, funded, and trained. In a functional world, his real job right now should be to step back and let the experts handle this.
But you and I know the rules. He can’t. We need to see big daddy there “IN CHARGE” or we’ll be subjected to another round of Mark Knoller tweets discussing how many times Obama has golfed.
Sunday Morning Open Thread
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall was opened to the public (and general acclaim) last Monday, but today’s planned official dedication had to be rescheduled to “September or October” due to Hurricane Irene. So, in lieu of the usual Sunday morning political-horserace yammer, I give you Roland S. Martin, at CNN:
It’s only fitting that during the week we were to dedicate the memorial in Washington to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., an earthquake would hit the region and the entire East Coast would be bracing itself for a hurricane.
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When we think about the enormity of King’s work, in which he gave his life, as well as the many folks who also fought in the civil rights movement, we realize that their actions struck at this nation’s core with a ferocity never seen before…
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Across the tidal basin is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which honors the man who articulated the vision of America. To the left is the Washington Monument, which honors the man who led the nation in the fight to establish the United States of America. Behind the King monument is the Abraham Lincoln Memorial, dedicated to the man who kept America from tearing apart.
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But out of all of these men, it took a King to force America to live up to its ideals. Americans loved to recite the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, but for many, those were simply words…
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What should inspire all who see it is that no matter your station in life, you can make a difference. King was just 25 when he was drafted into the movement.
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If there is something in your community that needs to be addressed, do it. Don’t wait. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t pass the buck.
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Just be willing to serve, care and do it out of love and compassion.
The Root has a short history of the monument’s “complicated history” here.
My area (just north of Boston) isn’t predicted to get more than “tropical storm force winds” and some 2-4 inches of rain out of Hurricane Irene, later today. Hope everyone’s come through the storm with nothing worse than a few good stories — anybody want to share theirs?
Brooks & Dumb: Serious As A Case of Shingles
(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)
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… which won’t kill you, but might make you wish you were dead. For purposes of relief via moxicautery, a couple counter-irritants. Jonathan Chait at TNR wonders “Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome Candidate?”:
… Yes, it’s really time for somebody to start persuading moderate or mainstream Republicans that Rick Perry is dangerously unsuited to the presidency. If only Brooks knew of anybody who would be good at making a case like that…
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Wait. Maybe this is a job for conservatives who don’t have to put themselves before the voters. Like perhaps some kind of public intellectual. If only there was some kind of moderate conservative columnist, perhaps with a national reach at a newspaper like the New York Times.
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Hey — I’ve got it. Brooks surely knows Ross Douthat. Maybe he can ask him to write that column!
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And the invaluable Doghouse Riley, if only for the brillance of “With Luck, The Capitalists Will Innovate A New Knot To Hang Themselves With“:
IF there was anything to American Exceptionalism–other than the fact that we dominate a hemisphere, and came out of two European global wars physically unscathed and economically better off than when we went in–wouldn’t it show up in our politics? Wouldn’t we have the wisest counsel, the fullest debate, the most trenchant commentary?
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Would we have David Brooks at the New York Times?…
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I’d just like to point out, yet again, how the “moderation” in Brooks’ “moderate conservatism” works.
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Brooks is going to say essentially what I said the other day about Mitt Romney: that he now finds himself unable to jab his leading rival because the same clinical insanity that infects the public persona of Rick Perry infects 80% of the Republican electorate. Brooks, of course, substitutes “small government conservative” for “certifiably batshit”. It is the Times…
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[T]he thing I find curious is how “moderates” like Brooks, and “fiscal ‘conservatives'” like Mitch Daniels, act like the moderate conservative Reaganite in the White House is wearing an OSU sweatshirt in Ann Arbor. Look at what Brooks finally (in the last two paragraphs) gets around to saying about Perry: he’s slimy, he’s a panderer, if he’s a borderline crook we need to redefine our borders. He leaves out (despite his economist credentials) the massive sucking sound at the center of the Texas Miracle. What th’ hell’s so bad about Obama by comparison? Health care?
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Is he gonna say that? (Is Daniels?) Not and risk the franchise; you can’t be The Moderate Republican Liberals Love if they’ve thrown you out of the Republican party. Brooks “watches” (the polls) as “moderate ‘conservatism'” “disappears” from the Republican electorate. We hear barely a peep. That is, barely a third-hand sideswipe at Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin, or the Teabaggers both he and Douthat had kinda sorta identified as the problem with the Party, circa 2007. Go back and read ’em in early 2009, as they start looking for a door to hide behind, realize it’s no good, and so proclaim that the Teabaggers are really themselves. Just less refined.
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Th’ fuck’s wrong with these people?
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There may be more damning indictments of Republican “intellectualism” than the fact that these guys have spent the last thirty years inventing excuses for utter crackpotism, first with the idea of eternally harvesting its votes, now in the hopes that the ‘conservative’ welfare spigot will stay on, but you have to google “William F. Buckley” and “Civil Rights Movement” to find ’em.
Brooks & Dumb: Serious As A Case of ShinglesPost + Comments (69)
Open thread
This one goes out to ABL, John, and all the front-pagers who have gone Galt.
John Lewis is concerned, but I’m well past “troubled”
Great piece by John Lewis on voting:
Since January, a majority of state legislatures have passed or considered election-law changes that, taken together, constitute the most concerted effort to restrict the right to vote since before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act — also known as the Motor Voter Act — made it easier to register to vote, while the 2002 Help America Vote Act responded to the irregularities of the 2000 presidential race with improved election standards. Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth, was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri and nine other states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification.
Having fought for voting rights as a student, I am especially troubled that these laws disproportionately affect young voters. Students at state universities in Wisconsin cannot vote using their current IDs (because the new law requires the cards to have signatures, which those do not). South Carolina prohibits the use of student IDs altogether. Texas also rejects student IDs, but allows voting by those who have a license to carry a concealed handgun. These schemes are clearly crafted to affect not just how we vote, but who votes.
John Lewis, a Democrat, is a congressman from Georgia.
If we make it difficult for poor and young people to vote, or, in the case of “provisional” (second-class) ballots, make it difficult to have their votes counted, fewer poor and young people are going to vote and fewer poor and young people are going to have their votes counted.
One wrongfully disenfranchised voter is one too many, but in our country, in our cash-choked system, where moneyed interests already have a hugely outsize political voice relative to their actual numbers fewer poor and young people voting is a flat-out disaster.
So what’s it going to take before this becomes a top-tier issue for ordinary middle class democracy enthusiasts who may not (yet) be directly affected by these laws?
An attempt by conservatives to have portions of the Voting Rights Act declared unconstitutional? The same Voting Rights Act sections that were defended (successfully) by a majority in Congress as recently as 2006?
You got it. Last week, in Arizona.
John Lewis is concerned, but I’m well past “troubled”Post + Comments (105)