Tweet
After that news about bin Laden’s guys buying a lot of Coke and Pepsi for the compound, I really don’t want to see next year’s Super Bowl ads.
• Cliff Stearns becomes the first House Republican post-bin Laden to question our continued presence in Afghanistan. But the White House insists their plans haven’t changed. Not like Congress has anything to do with war powers, amirite?
• I’m not going to tell anyone how to feel or whether to cheer about bin Laden, just as I think nobody should tell Rashard Mendenhall how to feel, either. But I do think that Mona Eltahawy is right in at least one respect: the Arab uprising made bin Laden irrelevant, and to the extent that we celebrate anything, it should be that activist struggle. For a more provocative take, read Courtland Milloy on what the hit on bin Laden teaches kids in at-risk environments.
• Obama’s due at Ground Zero on Thursday, and the day before he’ll tape an interview for 60 Minutes, which will be aired on Sunday. The ratings bounce looks to be high single digits.
• Stephen Harper and the Tories took the majority in the Canadian elections, but the left-wing NDP became the official minority party, as the Liberals under Iraq war supporter and former New Republic writer Michael Ignatieff slipped into irrelevance. Ignatieff, who lost his own riding, quit as leader today. There’s a lesson here: never send a writer for the New Republic in to do anything politically related. As for the NDP, four of their new members of Parliament are college students. If they can solidify the left in Canada, they have a bright future.
• I don’t know if this is confirmed, but the story of the immigrant who joined the Navy SEAL team that shot bin Laden makes for good reading. I thought their identities were kept secret, however.
• Terror-related arrests in Britain close to a nuclear site.
• Read Marcy on the ISI raiding the compound in Abbottabad while it was being built back in 2003.
• John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a lone voice defending foreign aid to Pakistan. The Kerry-Lugar bill which increased aid to Pakistan was his baby, so no surprise here.
• Kent Conrad doesn’t plan to go straight to the Senate floor with his budget plan, will give the Budget Committee the opportunity to mark it up. He also has a budget in reserve in case the Gang of Six fails to reach agreement.
• Forgot to mention the Deutsche Bank mortgage fraud suit today. The case revolves around Deutsche lying about their loans in order to get FHA insurance. $1 billion is a pretty big number for a suit like this. More from Shahien.
• The Obama Administration wants to stop states from winnowing their Medicaid programs down to nothing, by proposing a rule to maintain reimbursement rates to providers.
• Is China going soft on their own currency?
• Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey called for Moammar Gadhafi to step down. I don’t know why this is such big news, isn’t Turkey part of NATO?
• Radley Balko on the civil liberties aftermath of bin Ladenism. And most of the risks we respond to with these policies are ephemeral.
• The Justice Department will join a lawsuit against for-profit colleges. In general, the Administration has been pretty solid on these scam artists. This particular lawsuit concerns a kickback scheme for recruiters.
• Portugal gets their bailout, valued at $116 billion
• Disgusting: “There are 2,953 homeless students attending Orange County (FL) Public Schools, up from 1,463 in 2008.”
• Pundits are less accurate than a coin toss on average, and the top prognosticator is… Paul Krugman. And an embrace of liberalism, and a lack of a law degree, will make your predictions significantly more accurate. Those are the findings of a study from Hamilton College.
• The F-35 second engine is back. You just can’t kill this thing.
• Did anyone even notice John Ensign’s farewell speech? Talk about bad timing! It actually was a fascinating speech, given that he admitted arrogance and basically apologized for his conduct.
• Politicians discriminate against their minority constituents based on their names.
• Forecasters expect 10.1 billion people on the planet by the end of the century.
• Another reason why we don’t want torture in America: because it leads to torture around the world, which is incredibly destabilizing and dangerous.
• Dennis Kucinich may move to Washington State to run for Congress after Ohio redistricts him out of his seat.
19 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
“Dennis Kucinich may move to Washington State to run for Congress after Ohio redistricts him out of his seat.”
I believe the technical term is “carpetbagger.”
absolutely hellish times ahead for the inhabitants of this planet.
• I thought dialysis patients aren’t supposed to drink Coke or Pepsi. {{insert sinister music here}}
• ISI couldn’t have raided the Abbottabad compound in 2003, because it didn’t exist in 2003. {{insert more sinister music}}
• A few articles discussing the legality of assassination are starting to appear. The AUMF states:
So if you accept that the AUMF is constitutional, which I’ll stipulate for the sake of argument, then bin Laden’s assassination was justified. Where it gets tricky is in cases like Anwar al-Awlaki, who has denied being a member of al-Qaeda and there is no public proof to the contrary.
• There’s already a rule that state Medicaid programs must pay providers enough to maintain access, but access remains a problem and the federal government looks the other way. What the administration wants to do now is to formalize the documentation process, which will give providers ammunition when they take states to court to try to increase payments. But if payments to Medicaid providers increase substantially, all projections of the cost of HCR go out the window.
Detroit Free Press on the undermining of education in this country, local example:
18 companies apply to DPS to convert Detroit schools into charters LINK.
Psssst.
For you Fatster: Let your voice be heard
But ,as you can see from the number of comments, most FDL readers don’t give shit. Wouldn’t surprise me that most of them are still putting their money with the banksters.
Oh well, one does what one can do(lead the horse to water,etc.).
In other topics, Maureen Dowd as accurate a prognosticator as Krugman? Huh.
Dipshit little cave-in prick deserves to be out of Congress for fucking us on the PO. Good riddance you piece of shit.
Hey, good on you! Thanks ever so much for letting us know how to let our voices be heard.
So now Feinstein is the sensible one on torture?
Let’s recall that DiFi as senior member of the intelligence committee knew or should have known the interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, and flip-flopped on whether waterboarding is torture. Her oversight has been abysmal and when confronted blames others for giving her bad information.
ICYMI — There was a good explanation by Matt Taibbi about why he doesn’t support Ron Paul.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mailbag-why-i-cant-vote-for-ron-paul-20110502
Fascinating, isn’t it? Wonder who put that bee in her bonnet and why. Really curious, particularly after all she’s done and said prior to this.
Koch brothers pick a fight with The New Yorker
It’s over Jane Mayer’s “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging War Against Obama.”
“Now, a representative for the Koch brothers has written a letter to the ASME [American Association of Magazine Editors] board, protesting the nomination of Mayer’s piece.”
LINK.
Remember this? Start about the 10th paragraph down.
She’s a Republican. She may cast some token Democratic votes because she’s from a blue state, but there’s no mistaking where her allegiance lies. That she could have a two hour “conversation” with Shrub reinforces my belief that she’s also demented.
according to Marcy and the underlying story ISI raided the compound while it was being built. I also read that it was an ISI safehouse.
As for assassination, I think the AUMF covers it unless OBL surrendered, which we’ll probably never know.
That would be her upcoming election in 2012. You should have heard her red meat speech at the CA Dem convention over the weekend.
They are all lying pieces of shit. As with Saddam, OBL death silences facts the world will never know. We learned from the WWII’s war crimes trials that “fabrications,” justifying the Invasions of Poland, where just that. Fabrications orchestrated to justify military intervention and occupations, usually motivated by “corporate’s economic interests, cheap labor and resources.
Now that the “reason” for America’s military use is dead, (OBL) what else will the lying fucking cocksuckers use to perpetuate this corporate’s bullshit and squandering of trillions of taxpayers dollars on war? To protect the business interests of oil whores who then fuck US? Fucken cocksuckers period!
Oh gee, the Koch bullies don’t like it when someone tells the truth about them and their operations…tough shit, guys!
But she never campaigns, she just appears on the ballot and gets elected. So, either she’s up to something else, somebody lit a little fire under her for some reason, or maybe she’s got a new speech writer.