Month: May 2011

Hello, I Like You from Mixtape Club on Vimeo.

When F5 commissioned us to do a short film conveying happiness, we thought what better way to express our happiness than to distill the essence of our craft, to serve up a creamy shot of artistic espresso? So with this film, we’ve gone back to the basics, the simplest of inanimate objects, and transformed them into a tapestry of playful, choreographed dance for your enjoyment. The musical accompaniment was composed as part of the filmmaking process by the lovely gentlemen of Huma Huma.

Think Progress starts tracking the new conspiracy theories on the far right. From the far left, Cindy Sheehan writes that "if you believe the newest death of OBL, you're stupid." Weigel shakes his head:

You do have to feel sorry, at some level, for Sheehan. Last night I met a military dad who felt that bin Laden's death meant that his late son, who'd fought in Iraq, had died for something. Sheehan may never have closure or satisfaction.

The White House says bin Laden used his wife as a human shield. Chait wonders "if this will help destroy whatever romantic allure bin Laden has left":

I don't know very much about Muslim cultures, but it's hard to imagine there's any culture in which hiding behind your wife, or any woman, rather than fighting for yourself is not considered about as shameful and cowardly as it gets.

A reader goes with the former:

I think Rush was dripping sarcasm throughout the first 30 minutes of his show.  It’s true that he started out sounding sincere, but he could not keep his vitriol at bay – he called the president “Osama” at least 5 times. And while it is just my opinion, I think his complimenting President Obama on coming up with the plan by himself was simply part of the narrative that Obama only speaks with the words I and Me.  Rush even provided a breakdown of the number of times the president used I and Me.

Another isn't sure:

In its transcribed form, this reads like sarcastic over-praise – as in “Really? Obama was the only one to suggest the Navy Seals?” – and as such seems the usual deployment of one of Rush’s favorite attack lines: the media’s over-praising of and over-focus on Obama.

But I have to say, after having watched the video of the same opening monologue, and hearing the lack of irony in Rush’s voice when he says "Thank God for President Obama," that the monologue sea-saws in a way that seems to indicate a rather poignant confusion within Rush himself.

Another goes with sincere:

As a former conservative and regular listener to Rush's show, I sat watching the clip and waiting for the punch line.  There was none.  Even Rush Limbaugh realizes the huge significance the killing of Bin-Laden has both historically and to the psyche of  the nation.  He may be a lot of things but he's not that stupid.

Another "listened to the entire passage":

What Limbaugh is attempting to do is posit the intelligence and the military apparatus as remnants of the Bush administration, which Obama wisely kept in place.  The sarcasm comes into play when describing Obama as “the only one in the world” who could have thought of using Seal Team 6 and Special Ops.  So, if you piece it all together, it was the Bushies who did the real work through torture at Gitmo (you are correct there is absolutely no support to this claim) and any imbecile could have stood by while the CIA and the Seals went about their work.  It's nuanced derision, and not the genuine praise you seem to think it is.

Another is still listening to Rush's show:

He is mocking the whole thing in the 3rd hour. He is an asshole.

Issandr El Amrani fleshes out his earlier remarks:

The trends that are winning out in recent years are the radical-resistance ideologies of Hizbullah (and to a lesser degree Hamas) and the radical-centrist view that fueled the uprisings. And in the longer-run, it is the latter rather than the former that have a vision of societies that are not constantly mobilized towards an external (or internal) enemy. The views of Hamas and Hizbullah address the problems of war and occupation, but not those of these societies beyond those problems. Bin Laden never really addressed either, his fight was for the glory of the impossible and in the hereafter.

Well, he is now in the hereafter. Enjoy the raisins.

Steve Coll's thoughts on the bin Laden killing:

Pakistan’s military and intelligence service takes risks that others would not dare take because Pakistan’s generals believe their nuclear deterrent keeps them safe from regime change of the sort underway in Libya, and because they have discovered over the years that the rest of the world sees them as too big to fail. Unfortunately, they probably are correct in their analysis; some countries, like some investment banks, do pose systemic risks so great that they are too big to fail, and Pakistan is currently the A.I.G. of nation-states. But that should not stop American prosecutors from following the law here as they would whenever any mass killer’s hideout is discovered.

The above image is from a military presentation on the bin Laden compound.

"CLAIM: Obama Is Losing His Mojo. Gonna be hard to sell today. Check back in a week or two and see if this lasts," – Glenn Reynolds. Keep hope alive, Glenn.

In case you missed it last night, Reynolds had an op-ed yesterday in the Washington Examiner on Obama's foreign policy skills. It's awesome and, for some reason, he doesn't give us a link to it on his page. So allow me:

Meanwhile, on foreign policy — another Carter weak point — Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as "reformers") took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.

It's rare when a tool for partisan propaganda is revealed with his underpants around his ankles. Which is why it is worth savoring. The smears – Obama is Carter! no, Alinsky! – rarely melt upon immediate inspection. (By the way, Alinsky's name keeps popping up in the Malkin comments thread.)

Some readers seem to think Limbaugh is being sarcastic. I didn't. Make your own mind up here.

Ezra Klein prepares the bill:

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, neither of which would’ve been launched without bin Laden’s provocation, will cost us a few trillion on their own, actually. … [W]e’re well into the trillions, and when you add in the cost of the oil shock and its potential contribution to the credit bubble, we’re talking about many trillions indeed. Has any single individual even come close to costing America that much? Adolph Hitler is probably one of the few candidates, but I’d argue that World War II was a lot less about him than 9/11 was about Osama bin Laden. And who else is even in the running here?

A reader writes:

Last night in one of your blog entries, you wrote:

“12.41 am. I have been sometimes at a loss to understand why president Obama would have escalated the war in Afghanistan as far as he did. Do you think it could because he was aiming for this all along?”

Yes – this is what he was aiming for all along.  I have strongly believed, from the beginning, that the reason President Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan, and why he put particular people (e.g., General McChrystal) in charge of some of the efforts over there, was because he wanted (of course) to weaken Al Qaeda, but most importantly because he wanted to find bin Laden and capture or kill him. In December 2009, after President Obama’s speech at the U.S. Military Academy, I spoke to my father, who is a retired military officer and who served in the Vietnam war when I was a baby.

My father was very distressed that President Obama was choosing to escalate the war in Afghanistan.  My dad saw too many parallels with Vietnam and couldn’t see us crafting a winning strategy in Afghanistan.  I knew this might not give my dad comfort, but I tried to explain to him what I thought was going on. President Obama, I told my dad, was doing this because he wanted to try to get bin Laden.   He wanted to give this our very best effort – to martial all of the resources he had available to try to accomplish this.  He wanted to finish the job that Bush never finished.  He said this repeatedly during the 2008 campaign, and his clarity of purpose about this was a major reason I supported him over other candidates.  The one candidate I could see who spoke unequivocally about wanting to find and apprehend bin Laden was Barack Obama.

He stated this many times – e.g., in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention: “When John McCain said we could just muddle through in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”

One of the reasons I have supported Barack Obama since he began his run for President is that if you listen carefully, he tells you clearly what he believes and what he’s going to do.  If you try to put aside the chatter from the news outlets and pundits, and you read his books and listen to his speeches, you can figure out what he believes and what his intentions and plans are.  This is a deeply conservative man, but also someone with empathy and kindness.  He believes in the United States of America, he has a deep understanding of our values and what we stand for, and he sees that is right to defend those values, and to defend our citizenry.

I wonder sometimes, what do people hear when they listen to him speak? I’m a liberal Democrat. And I supported President Obama in his campaign and since then in large part because he said he would do this. It needed to be done.

(Photo: Servicemen hang off a lamp post cheering in celebration as thousands of people celebrate in the streets at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Centre, waving American flags and honking horns to celebrate the death of al Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011 in New York City. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images.)