Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Obama administration attacks Boeing for planning a facility in a right-to-work state.

ECONOMY:

Professionals are being hit hard.

TAX AND SPEND:

Mark Steyn on federal debt.

US taxpayers pay subsidies to Brazilian cotton farmers.

REGULATION:

Regulations prohibit lemonade stands.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The political impact of inflation.

Inflation driving up gas prices.

HEALTH CARE:

Obama administration bullying drug companies.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Gas prices set to top $4.00 nationally. Most places around here are already $4.15.

Al Gore stuck his head up long enough to compare global warming skeptics to birthers.

Listing lizard as endangered could shut down oil and gas production in west Texas and New Mexico.

POLICE STATE:

Increasing security after bin Laden's death. Apparently killing him made us less safe, so it was counter-productive. Heads they win. Tails we lose.

WAR:

Judge Napolitano says the execution of Osama bin Laden is against the law. The president has no power to summarily execute anybody. Napolitano is also skeptical. The woman killed during the raid was not bin Laden's wife and he did not use her as a human shield. That original story was just propaganda to make executing him seem legitimate. Details of the DNA test are still murky. White House offers weak excuse for the execution of bin Laden, saying they didn't give an explicit kill order in contradiction to yesterday's Reuter's report. I don't believe them. Here's why:

"Capturing bin Laden alive would have presented numerous uncomfortable challenges, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. Where would he be held? Who would do the interrogation? Would the U.S. have to read him his rights?
Most counterterrorism experts did not view bin Laden as an exploitable source for intelligence, Orr reports. There was little chance he could substantively add to what the government knows about his organization. Beyond that, bin Laden, alive in captivity, would have added to his mythological standing among radical jihadis and would have presented an ongoing tool for radical recruitment."

They executed him because it was convenient, and they're just trying to cover their butts after the fact. Here's the story of the intelligence operation that located bin Laden.

"Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad."

So they didn't bother checking who lived there? You have to be kidding me.

"Officially, it was a kill-or-capture mission, since the U.S. doesn't kill unarmed people trying to surrender. But it was clear from the beginning that whoever was behind those walls had no intention of surrendering, two U.S. officials said."

They're trying to transfer the blame for the execution from Obama to bin Laden. Like these SEALs couldn't capture this old man. These sharpshooters could have wounded him instead of shooting him in the head. They probably could have saved him if they had only shot him in the body. The head shot was an execution.

"Bin Laden's body was immediately identifiable, but the U.S. also conducted DNA testing that identified him with near 100 percent certainty, senior administration officials said. Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation on site by a woman believed to be bin Laden's wife, who was wounded, and matching physical features such as bin Laden's height all helped confirm the identification. At the White House, there was no doubt."

Good for the White House. What about the rest of us? As I suspected, the shots that killed bin Laden were a double-tap. All the shooter had to do was not double-tap, and they could have captured bin Laden instead of killing him. Here's an article on SEAL team six.

"Several dozen JSOC operatives have died in Pakistan over the past several years. Their names are released by the Defense Department in the usual manner, but with a cover story -- generally, they were killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan. That's the code."

I didn't know that. We hear about training accidents all the time.

"But Sunday's operation provides strong evidence that the CIA and JSOC work well together. Sometimes intelligence needs to be developed rapidly, to get inside the enemy's operational loop. And sometimes it needs to be cultivated, grown as if it were delicate bacteria in a petri dish.In an interview at CIA headquarters two weeks ago, a senior intelligence official said the two proud groups of American secret warriors had been "deconflicted and basically integrated" -- finally -- 10 years after 9/11. "

This is not a good thing. The CIA should not be military.

"Under a variety of standing orders, JSOC is involved in more than 50 current operations spanning a dozen countries, and its units, supported by so-called "white," or acknowledged, special operations entities like Rangers, Special Forces battalions, SEAL teams, and Air Force special ops units from the larger Special Operations Command, are responsible for most of the "kinetic" action in Afghanistan."

So the US military is waging war in a dozen countries. That's nuts. Another version of the story. My conclusion yesterday was correct.

"Knowing there would be disbelievers, the U.S. says it used convincing means to confirm Osama bin Laden's identity during and after the firefight that killed him."

They knew there would be skeptics, but they chose not to capture him or even allow independent witnesses to see him, then they buried at sea so nobody could ever verify it was him. They intentionally kept us from being able to verify his identity knowing full well we'd want to. This makes me skeptical it was really bin Laden.

""We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden," John Brennan, President Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, said Monday. He said the U.S. will "share what we can because we want to make sure that not only the American people but the world understand exactly what happened.""

What a load of crap. If they wanted to convince us, they could have captured him like they did Saddam instead of assassinating him. If they wanted to convince us, they could have shown the body to the press like they did Saddam's sons before burying it at sea. If they wanted to convince us they could have already released pictures and video of the raid. This the most blatant cover-up ever- a cover-up in plane sight - and this guy acting like they're being transparent is a joke.

"The helicopter-borne raiding squad that swarmed the luxury compound identified bin Laden by appearance. A woman in the compound who was identified as his wife was said to have called out bin Laden's name in the melee.Officials produced a quick DNA match from his remains that they said established bin Laden's identity, even absent the other techniques, with 99.9 percent certainty. U.S. officials also said bin Laden was identified through photo comparisons and other methods."

That kind of certainty can only come if you're comparing his DNA to another sample of his DNA. You can't get that kind of certainty from comparing siblings or children.

"Tellingly, an al-Qaida spokesman, in vowing vengeance against America, called him a martyr, offering no challenge to the U.S. account of his death."

Assuming that's true, that might be the best evidence I've heard yet.

""I'm not ready to buy bin Laden was here," said Haris Rasheed, 22, who works in a fast food restaurant. "How come no one knew he was here and why did they bury him so quickly? This is all fake — a drama, and a crude one.""

I like the way that guy thinks.

"The act denied al-Qaida any sort of burial shrine for their slain leader. Once again, bin Laden had vanished, but this time at the hands of the United States and in a way that ensures he is gone forever."

I appreciate this argument, but it's a red-herring. They could have still shown his body to reporters to verify it was him and still buried him at sea. They could have captured him and tried him at an admiral's mast then executed him on board ship and buried him at sea. They had many options to prove they got the right guy while still keeping al Qaeda from turning his grave into a shrine. Instead they chose to hide his identity from everybody.

"Pakistan, for one, is a land of conspiracy theorists, and far-fetched rumors abound on the streets and in blogs throughout the Arab world. But that's not just a characteristic of the Islamic pipeline. Many ordinary Americans — and one billionaire — persistently questioned whether Obama was born in the U.S. despite lacking any evidence that he wasn't."

Wow. The press has drawn the link to Obama birth certificate and this event too. It's seems very odd that Obama releases his birth certificate after years just before he tells us to trust him, he really did get bin Laden. It's like he timed the release of the birth certificate to boost the people's trust in him to get us to trust him on bin Laden's assassination too.

"To be sure, even photos and video, subject to digital manipulation, may not provide the final word to everyone. "

And the government is taking its sweet time releasing them, isn't it? They could do a lot of editing in the time its taken to release them. Some guy on Foxnews just said that they got a treasure trove of info from the bin Laden raid, and they might be able to break the back of al Qaeda. That means bin Laden had valuable intelligence. This is more evidence that executing him instead of capturing and interrogating him was stupid. The decision to bury him at sea was made in advance, so it was definitely an assassination mission. Some government guy just said that bin Laden was not armed when he was shot. A woman who wasn't bin Laden's wife charged the SEALs, and they shot her in the leg. Then they executed bin Laden with a double-tap to the chest and head. Wounding him or capturing him without wounding him was an option, but that was clearly not their orders.

WikiLeaks had leaked a document naming the courier and the town in which bin Laden lived. That may have driven the timing of the raid. It also suggests they may have killed the right man.

POLITICS:

Claim that the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution demands that not only must the president be born in the US, his parents must be US citizens also. Obama's are not.

Three articles explain why Obama will not get re-elected. Obama surely knew these things too before he launched his plan to kill bin Laden and get rid of his body.

PBS journalist preemptively plays the race card for the 2012 election.

MEDIA:

The number of households with TVs dropped for the first time in history.