Afterbirthers,Deathers and Wingnuts

It must be Halloween! You just can't keep up with the loonies. Speaking of the looney, Stephen Harper won a majority in the Canadian elections, the NDP became the major second party and Mike Ignatieff resigned as Liberal Party head after his party was smashed. Harper's strategy of asking for Liberal votes paid off handsomely.

Now back to the stateside mayhem. The biggest gripe from the rightwing is that President Obama used the "I" word in referring to having ordered the operation against Bin Laden. The complaint is that this showed his egomaniacal tendency when everyone knows that the military killed him and President Obama was just bragging. 75% of Americans say that Obama deserves credit for getting bin Laden but nearly 40% of Republicans believe he shouldn't.

In freeperland, there is a riff that this was really a coup against Obama. The military came up with the operation but the Commander in Chief vetoed it. Then he was told it would happen anyway and the mysterious "they" over-ruled him and went about their business anyway.

The birthers claim that Barack Obama released his long form birth certificate, knowing it was a fake, because he knew that everyone would overlook it because of the bin Laden operation. Brilliant!

Another freeper said that Donald Trump had so badly burned the President that Obama had to up the stakes and interrupt Celebrity Apprentice by announcing the death of bin Laden so as to embarrass Trump, who poses a real political threat to Obama's re-election.

A rightwing e-mail that has gone viral attacks President Obama was taking credit for the end of Bin Laden while it was solely the work of our dedicated men and woman in uniform and the intelligence community. It was America's victory, not that of President Obama's.

But, so what? Alex Jones, the leading 9/11er, claims that bin Laden has been frozen for years. Cindy Sheehan says the whole thing was a fake. The Pakistani Taliban are also saying that it never happened. And now there is a Facebook Group Osama bin Laden Not Dead.

If you wonder how extensive lunacy in the States is, over 60 million Americans believe that the United States Government was involved in 9/11.

I wondered what the Christian Right would say. We know Pat Robertson's network said that President Obama didn't portray the necessary joy in reporting the death of bin Laden. But we now have Chuck Pierce claiming that God himself told him personally that bin Laden would be gone sometime around Purim. Bryan Fisher's AFA broadcasts ran a roundtable that criticized President Obama for taking credit but being cowed by the terrorist that the Administration honored Muslim traditions by burying him within 24 hours. This shows how cowardly Barack Obama really is.

But Bryan Fisher of the American Family Association said that President Obama has created an enormous PR problem for himself. Fischer said that Obama has blamed everything on the Bush Administration and gone around the world apologizing for the United States and trying to mend fences with Muslim countries. But ,NOW, he's stepped in it. President Obama takes "unilateral credit" for killing bin Laden and now he owns it and his fellow Muslims will never forgive him.

Your Honor, I would like to mention that the reason candidate Barack Obama had the earliest Secret Service protection in the 2008 election was because of extensive threats against his person by radical Islamists, not the racist whites who have emerged in such force.

Frothy Mix Santorum--after the death of bin Laden--claimed that President Obama had weakened the United States by his policies throughout the Middle East and his policies against terrorism.

Sister Sarah Palin gave a talk with General Boynkin at a Colorado Christian College and claimed that President Bush was the one who deserves credit for bin Laden's demise. The president didn't even make it into his speech.

While the Washington Post/ Pew poll registered a bump to a 56% approval rating for Obama, his highest since June 2009 when he had 61%, Rasmussen has been lobbying against a bounce. The statement from his shop is very peculiar, trying to minimize the importance of the bin Laden event. Maybe Scott will be right but his press release is devoid of facts or neutral explanation like Gallup.

I guess the Bad Moon Is A'Risin. I guess there is a strange backlash against President Obama for succeeding where Bush so dreadfully failed.