My New Robot Guest-Blogger

I went to one of those fancy, new "rock and roll" shows last night, so no morning post. Instead, a quick station note. You might've noticed a post at Griper News titled "Twitter Headlines." This is a robot post from Diigo. Every link I twitter (and sometimes then some), I also bookmark with Diigo. Anyhoo, Diigo has a robo-post option, so I figured I could do a daily "tab dump" automatically. So that's what that is. I meant for it to post later in the day, but I guess my math was off.

The "Stories to Watch" are still going to be posted every weekday, but we got started on the show earlier than expected so I had to skip it. Didn't want you to think it was being replaced by a robot -- just bad timing. Basically, this is all an attempt to get all things bloggy on both the Tumblr blog and Griper News.

No back to our regularly scheduled surfing.

Ryan Plan Flops, Republicans Dither

The Paul Ryan budget plan has so far been a disaster for Republicans. Polling shows that the central idea (what pundits and talking heads call "brave" and "serious") to end Medicaid and Medicare through privatization is extremely unpopular. An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 78% oppose privatizing Medicare (with 65% "strongly" opposed) and 59% feel the same about Medicaid. Worse for the GOP, a vast majority of Americans back what Republicans see as sacrilege -- 72% back increasing taxes on households making $250,000 or more annually.

So, with Republicans being your typical finger-in-the-wind types and the prevailing wind direction being so obvious, the solution should be clear, right? Find which way the crowd is marching, then grab a flag and march in front of them. That's "leadership."

Except there's one little problem. According to the report, "Support for raising taxes on the wealthy falls below a majority in only a few groups, e.g., people who call themselves 'very' conservative, conservative Republicans and strong supporters of the Tea Party political movement."

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Mobile Sites Up

Finally got the mobile sites up. I had to go to "Blogger in Draft" (read "Blogger in perpetual Beta") to do it. Seems to work pretty well. I ran them on an iPhone emulator and it seemed to work OK. Let me know if you have issues. They should go mobile automatically if you dial in on a mobile device, but if not, just look for the mobile icon at the top of the right sidebar. The URL's directly to the mobile sites are:

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/?m=1

http://gripernews.blogspot.com/?m=1

Update your bookmarks accordingly. If you're just browsing from a regular old computer, ignore this whole thing. Nothing else has changed.

The Right's Increasing Desperation to Take Credit for Bin Laden's Downfall

It's a case of hearing what you want to hear. The right is so intent on giving Bush all the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden that they're trying (and, perhaps, succeeding) on reopening the debate about torture. And, in doing so, they're practicing selective listening.

The Daily Caller:

CIA Director Leon Panetta stomped on the White House's political script when he told Tuesday night's broadcast of NBC Nightly News that the waterboarding of jihadi detainees contributed information that led to the location and killing of Osama bin Laden.

"We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation… clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees," he told NBC anchor Brian Williams.

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Fighting Terrorism the Right Way, Not the Easy Way

I often say that there are two ways of doing anything; the easy way and the right way. Sometimes, the easy way is good enough. In others, the details are as important as the central job. The more important the job, the more important it is to do it the right way -- zip through mowing the lawn, but take your time seeding it.

In taking down Osama bin Laden, President Obama avoided doing things the easy way.

The Telegraph:

At first, a drone attack was considered, but President Obama decided against it, partly to avoid civilian casualties and partly because: "He wanted proof. He didn't want to just leave a pile of rubble." Between March 14 and April 28 Mr. Obama chaired five National Security Council meetings to discuss the raid.

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Right Thanks Bush for Killing Bin Laden

George W. Bush, who is perfect in every way, finally killed Osama Bin Laden. You'd think that the killing of America's most wanted terrorist under the supervision of President Obama -- who the farthest right would have you believe is a terrorist mastermind himself -- would present a bit of a problem for wingnuts. I know I did, but I underestimated their creativity.

The comment above comes from Jim Hoft's unfortunate Gateway Pundit blog, which announced the death of Bin Laden with as little mention of President Obama as possible. "How long till Obama takes credit...5, 4,3,2,..." asks another commenter. "I think it took a week to confirm and for Obama to stop crying that his homey is dead."

Not to be outdone, rightwing nutjob Hugh Hewitt manages to report the death of Osama Bin Laden without mentioning that Obama guy at all, other than a reference to the "White House" in a blockquote from the New York Times. GWB makes an appearance, though.

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