Hey Abbott-abad*

*stolen from header to a post by the leftwingnoisemachine

Maureen Dowd, who hasn't always been an Obama enthusiast, write a fun column in the New York Times today entitled "Cool Hand Barack" about the President's notorious cool under pressure. Bill Maher called him the "multi-tasking ninja." And Dana Millbank puts in another perspective about the prospects on bipartisan cooperation saying that the Pax bin Laden is over, quoting Jim DeMint yesterday saying that the president acted like a third world dictator when it came to the economy. House Republicans held a news conference where they said that the bin Laden stuff was fine but what is President Obama doing about the $5 a gallon gas.

Rasmussen reports that Obama has not gotten a bounce out of killing bin Laden. Gallup has him up to 50% with a three point gain, NYT/CBS poll has him at 57%, while Washington Post has him at 56% approval. A more interesting poll was the Newsweek/Daily Beast poll--which gauged Obama two days before and two days after bin Laden. The approval rating stayed at 48% before and after. It only had 40% say he should be re-elected and said that Bush by 45-31 was better on terrorism than Obama. However, 55% said that Obama was a strong leader but only 5% said that this would make them more inclined to vote for the President.

Leading Islamophobe Pamela Geller of Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero fame reported in her blog that all the national security team demanded the operation go ahead but Obama balked at the advice of--get this--Valerie Jarrett, who isn't around the White House anymore, and Leon Panetta had to overrule him. She writes that it was a coup against President Obama but she quickly followed up with a post saying that there was nothing illegal or unconstitutional about it.

Brent Bozell of Media Research Center complained that President Obama played subtle and undignified games with the whole event and claimed total credit for the operation and even failed to mention George W. Bush at the Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. He even didn't thank President Bush at the bipartisan dinner Monday night. Brent protests that our media didn't even wonder if Obama was rude and no one seemed in a hurry to credit President Bush. "My one regret is that Bush 434 didn't get his scalp. he deserved it more than anyone."

The Tea Party Nation, the Koch-funded group, thought President Obama "managed totally to FUBAR the situation." Judson Phillips accused President Obama of only going after bin Laden to help his re-election bid, attacked him for announcing bin Laden's death during Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice slammed the administration for not having bin Laden's body "wrapped in pig fat before burial."

Teabagger Amy Jo Rice of the Maine ReFounders sent out an email to all teabaggers that bin Laden's death was simply a plot by Obama to distract America from its economic problems as he needs to find a way "to improve his record of leadership and running this country." She says a successful mission causes more problems that it solved because "we entered another country without their knowledge and carried out a military operation, and was a foriegn policy failure.

She continues on:"Bringing one terrorist to justice is not the makings of a great President, nor does it make him a hero. I am sure our Campaigner-in-Chief will ride out the glory in his attempt to be re-elected. nothing has really changed in his lack of leadership to turn our nation around and be on the road to prosperity,instead of the road that we are on that very soon ends at the edge of a cliff."

Teabagger Judson Phillips blasted the "Obama regime". "they have managed to take what should have been a celebration of victory and make it almost anything but. Americans celebrated the death of an archenemy. Obama looked ike he was seriously inconvenienced. Did he even smile one time when he was making the speech?"

At least Condi Rice added some levity when she said that George W. Bush's bullhorn speech on top of the rubble of the Twin Towers was "One of the most important moments in American History."

Bill Maher today snidely said that since the Republicans aren't good at national security or economic policy, what do they bring to the table?

For all you fans of the ticking time bomb scenario, which Republican Peter King is resurrecting to justify torture, how do you explain bin Laden living in the same compound for six years, the bulding haven't been started in 2004, if waterboarding produced the key evidence?

The people really angry over the resurrection of the torture issue are the professional intelligence people and interrogators, who feel slighted for their awesome, sophisticated multi-dimensional way bin Laden was eventually tracked down. They point that after tracking the courier through Paksitan,they followed him 24/7 until he came to the compound. The compound was built exactly the same as bin Laden's prior haunts in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. The interrogators claim that if torture worked this information should be acquired within two to three days of an Al Qaeda detainee. Instead,those waterboarded denied knowing the man and only after a militant was captured did they get the information ultimately used to actually identify him. And then we were off on a several year hunt that used virtually every aspect of intelligence gathering known to the United States.

But of course, maybe we should have taked to the grocer who sold the compound Coke and Pepsi or the baker who said bin Laden loved his native style bread. Or maybe inquired whether anyone at Pakistan's West Point noticed him.

I find it ironic that people in Pakistan refer to Abbottabad as "the closest to England you can get without being there."

The Guardian reports today that the preliminary assessments of the hard drives and other materials taken from the raid show that bin Laden did continue to direct Al Qaeda operations throughout the world and in Somalia, Yemen and Africa. It will be interesting in the months ahead to see how much the United States rolls up.

But the real bummer to Al Qaeda is not the elimination of their charismatic leader but the emergence of Al-Zawihiri as the successor. An Egyptian, who is widely disliked by the Al Qaeda rank-and-file, he has an uncanny knack of getting everyone to hate him. You may have heard his broadcasts during the Egyptian Revolution, where he criticized the Egyptian people for not following an Islamic way of life. The Muslim brotherhood has been in a long-standing way with Zawihiri because he ratted their militants out when he was in prison. Only a few years ago, their theologians went after Al Qaeda for its false teachings. Their target was the Egyptian. It will be interesting to see the internecine struggles bin Laden's death provokes.

The Economist said that President Obama now has "bullet-proof national security credentials." The most famous Irish bookmakers now have Obama as a 71% favorite to win re-election and Intratrade had him at 59.5% before the bin Laden murder. Intratrade actually was more accurate than the polls in 2008.

Several columnists have pointed out the irony that President Obama would have the foreign policy/ national security advantage, while the Republicans would be perceived as having the economic policy advantage going into 2012--the reverse of our usual politics.