President Obama at the White House announcing that Osama bin Laden is dead (Photo -- The New York Times)
FIVE WORST STORIES OF 2011: REMEMBERING WHAT YOU HOPED TO FORGET
`
MAY 1: DING, DONG, THE WICKED WITCH IS DEAD.
Happy celebrations, from a triumphant “mission accomplished” White House appearance of President Obama to spontaneous dancing in the street, greet the news that Osama bin Laden, generally labeled as the force behind the 9/11/01 attacks in New York and Washington, is killed during a U.S. Navy Seals operation at his “hideout” next door to a military academy in Pakistan and his body is buried at sea before any extended forensic work has been done to establish the identity of the body or the cause of its demise.
`
OCTOBER 20: THE EXECUTION OF MUAMMAR GADDAFI: “MYSTERY SURROUNDS THE COUP DE GRACE.“
The U.K.’s Daily Mail Online reprises the welter of contradictory versions of how Libya’s former leader, captured in a rebel operation in his hometown of Sirte, was “brought to justice” in the tradition of hanging horse thieves and rapists to the nearest trees. The Mail reproduces a nauseating compendium of videos and still shots of the capture and execution but arrives at no clear answer to the question “who shot Gaddafi?” One of the more creative scenarios is the suggestion that one of Gaddafi’s own bodyguard shot him, to spare him “further humiliation.”
`
OBAMA’S “RACE TO THE TOP” EDUCATIONAL POLICY LOOKS A LOT LIKE BUSH’S “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND POLICY.“
With the current emphasis on local school district federal funding being based on the likes of standardized test performance and the development of charter schools, teachers’ unions complain that the vast majority of students in public schools are being “left behind” as resources are being re-allocated to elite public as well as private schools.
`
PLUTOCRACY NOW.
This phrase is a too-apt description of social conditions in America. Mother Jones uses this tag for a collection of graphs which tell the same story in a variety of ways. As business profits and the stock market rise, the country is experiencing a “jobless recovery”: unemployment rates hover around the double digit level and, perhaps more importantly, real wages for the masses of workers are stagnant or declining. Or, as MJ puts it succinctly, as a political slogan that the Occupy movement may adopt in upcoming elections, “it’s the inequality, stupid.”
`
DAY OF RECKONING ARRIVES FOR FLORIDA BUDGET MAKERS AS FEDERAL STIMULUS FUNDING COMES TO AN END.
Predicted disaster to the state’s “safety net” of social services has been averted largely through federal funding generosity, a source of funding in process of expiring, leaving these services to try to survive on revenues derived from a still-recessionary economy. With a state government which refuses to raise taxes and now loses its federal subsidies, look for a more austere time for social services in the year ahead, and maybe some more of those “fees” charged for everything from college tuition to fishing licenses as a budget-balancing alternative to tax increases.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
Quote of the day…
Manning’s current isolation emphasizes the bravest aspect of his protest: he did it on his own. He didn’t have a crowd wearing Guy Fawkes masks for support or an occupied square full of tents to call home. When the history of these unsettled times comes to be written, Manning’s lonely protest might well be seen as the most important of all.
Davon O’Dwyer, on Private Bradley Manning
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
Do you receive the daily headlines in the form of an early-morning e-mail? If you don’t and you would like to receive them, just send a note to sunstateactivist2@yahoo.com and you’ll be enrolled in the “Progressive breakfast club.”
More “worsts”…
The dictatorship of Scott Walker and the Kochs in Wisconsin, crushing public employees and running roughshod over democracy in a blatant power grab.
The systematic effort by Republicans to disenfranchise terns of millions of — mostly black and Hispanic — Americans by taking away their right to vote. This is the new Jim Crow.
The ongoing torture of Bradley Manning. This is the ultimate stain on our President barack Obama’s legacy.
As a liberal, I am finding this handwringing by other liberals over how Osama bin Laden’s death was carried out embarrassing and idiotic.
I guess you think we should have let him hang out in Pakistan, planning more attacks and killing more people since he wasn’t going to come out of that house willingly.
The analysis is flawed, the false equivalencies are absurd, the arguments reveal ignorance of the law, and the issue is hardly worth the time it takes to debate.
If OBL wanted a fair trial, perhaps he should have turned himself in and stopped murdering innocent people and making plans to murder more people. Clearly, he wasn’t interested, so in my view, he has only himself to blame.
What Really Happened in Pakistan? It’s so obvious that I can’t believe that even reliable media outlets like Fox haven’t picked up on it. Isn’t just a little suspicious that this happened right after the so-called “President” released his so-called “birth certificate”? The guy killed in Pakistan was the real Barack Hussein Obama who was born in Hawaii in 1961. The Kenyan had to have him taken out in order to continue perpetrating his scam. [Snark]
Not surprised The Killing Of Bin Laden as Top Worst Story of 2011 would raise the hackles of the SSA Lefties who adore President SolarShingles so.
But I have to admit, CatN makes a hell of a lot of sense.
That being said, it does raise a related interesting point: What’s the difference between Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad? You know, the “Architect of 9/11″, the guy who personally sawed off Daniel Pearle’s head for, I guess, being Jewish.
All you Lefties, and PSS, and Eric Holder cried salty tears over the mistreatment of poor Khalid Sheikh. You wanted to try him in Manhattan, in U.S. Courts, for God’s sakes. You condemned the evil Bush, and Cheney, waterboarding one of God’s precious creatures. It Made Us No Better Than Those We Were Fighting!!
But you don’t seem to mind that our armed forces hunted down poor Osama and killed him in cold blood in front of his family. You know he never tried to resist, would have waved a white flag if he had time to get one. You know his killers were given orders by President SolarShingles to kill him on sight, to keep him out of the hands of Holder who would have wanted to try him in Manhattan. I would be politically embarassing to read him his rights, or, God Forbid, send him to Guantanamo. Didn’t even give him the opportunity to give us valuable intelligence information that saved American lives, like we got with Khalid Sheikh.
So much easier to just kill him!
Really doesn’t make much sense.
Bin Laden’s “death” was the “worst” story of the year because it was the biggest LIE our government has told its citizens since we were led into Iraq.
For the Lord’s sweet sake. The man was on dialysis for renal failure in 2001 in the American Hospital in Dubai.
Bin Laden has been dead for years. The fake bin Ladens in the CIA videos that came out with such exquisite timing were a laughing matter everywhere in the world but in this country.
Think about it. How hard would it be to find someone who required dialysis to stay alive?
Isn’t anyone bothered by announcement of the miraculously speedy “DNA” test, or that our uncharacteristically modest warriors, with unseemly haste, found it necessary to dump the body in the sea?
Has the entire country and every media outlet in the world, suddenly lost the ability to reason?
fidel-io, I fear that the answer to your last question is dangerously close to being “yes.” The lack of ability to reason because people are basing their opinions and actions on their feelings, not their minds, is the very condition of popular mentality that allows the propagandists to get by with propagating versions of “reality” that a 3-year-old should recognize as fantasy. Feel good about your country or your candidate, feel badly about the opposition or another country. That’s the formula for the permanent infantilization of the public.