Or maybe 'because of'?

Time for some new Apocalypse Dwarves

With America's Ex Mayor leading a new CNN poll for the vacant Republican lightweight title, it's getting time for some new Apocalypse Dwarves.  Hizzoner, of course, will retain position #4, whereas Dusky, being the reigning President, is forced to forfeit position #3. Hoary and Bitchy, neither of whom seem likely to run again, must also forfeit their positions (#1 and #2, respectively). That leaves a pretty open field*, and open only on the GOP side.

So the question is open: who are the Seven Dwarves of the Apocalypse? (names will be filled in as the winning commenters winningly commentate).


1. Moroni (Willard Mitt Romney)
2. Grizzly (Sarah Louise Palin nee Heath)
3. Chunky Spanky (Newton Leroy Gingrich nee McPherson)
4. Hizzoner (Rudolph William Louis Giuliani)
5.
6.
7.

* Dwarves 5-7 remained unnamed last time, as the lightest of the lightweights (the flyweights) dropped like flies too quickly for me to keep track**.
** Plus, I got bored with the concept. However, if I spread the pain over more months, it might be manageable this time. Plus, I probably only have to do 6.

Perfect House

Except it needs about a million trees around it. And a fireplace.

When did the President become black?

He wasn't that way when he elected him

WASHINGTON — House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, on Wednesday blamed most of President Barack Obama's political problems on racism...

"You know, I'm 70 years old," he said. "And I can tell you; people don't like to deal with it, but the fact of the matter is, the president's problems are in large measure because of the color of his skin."

I think the major factor in Clyburn's opinion is not Obama's blackness, but his own age. The Civil Rights Generation is the one generation that has not managed to almost wholly move past the racial hangups of the generation that came before it. Part of this, I suspect, is that not a few Civil Rights marchers are like the old guy everyone knew who told stories of D-Day at every family picnic; it was the one really meaningful thing in his life and he forever tried to re-live the glory*.  The rest, I suspect, is that race warriors like Clyburn have drawn a paycheck for 'fighting' racism for so long, they don't have a lot of interest in it going away.

But racism is also too easy an explanation for Obama's problems.  Clyburn thinks Obama has been "a good president, a great commander in chief." I think he's been a masterful combination of arrogance and obsequiousness, incompetence and droning cluelessness, and is always too ready to stick his nose in where it doesn't belong**, and the record supports my interpretation better than Clyburn's. In short, Obama is a progressive, surrounded by progressives. The fact that he's black just makes it easier for progressives to blame the inevitable problems on the perceived*** moral shortcomings of Obama's detractors: it's not that he's a pompous ass who wants the government to run everyone's life, it's that racists like you think he's an uppity negro.

By now the novelty of the first**** black President should have worn off, and has for everyone but progressives.  Half of his first term is over, everyone knows a black guy can do the job, we have now reached the point where Obama is just the President, judged not by his skin but by the content of his character. There was another civil rights marcher who dreamed we could reach this point. Who'd have thought those who marched alongside him would have the most trouble accepting the consequences of that? 

* And not only Black civil rights marchers. Even white Republicans embellish family stories about marching for civil rights.
** Beer summit, anyone?
*** or rather, furiously alleged.
**** second

That's not why I watch Rogue

Wrong, biatches

My Result: Brainwashed Pachyderm on quiz: The Conspiracy Quiz You are a registered Republican that voted in the last election. You are a member in good standing at the Free Republic, a regular commenter at Townhall.com, and you registered at anti-war.com once Obama became president. You believe that the regular supporters and followers of Barack Obama, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and Katie Couric are the reasons why so much is wrong with America today, and if only all those intolerant, politically correct, brainwashed SWPL limousine liberals would listen to Rush, watch FOXNews, and regularly read the WSJ, America could reach it's potential to become a capitalist, religiously devout utopia, free of homosexuality, crime, promiscuity, and violence. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your result

The Conspiracy Quiz » online quizzes

I don't think I've been so insulted in all my life. Sure, it's but a stereotype, but let's see how close it is:

You are a registered Republican [incorrect] that voted in the last election[correct]. You are a member in good standing at the Free Republic[incorrect], a regular commenter at Townhall.com[incorrect], and you registered at anti-war.com once Obama became president[incorrect]. You believe that the regular supporters and followers of Barack Obama, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and Katie Couric are the reasons why so much is wrong with America today[correct], and if only all those intolerant[correct], politically correct[correct], brainwashed [correct] SWPL [no clue what that means] limousine liberals [correct]would listen to Rush[incorrect], watch FOXNews[incorrect], and regularly read the WSJ[incorrect], America could reach it's [spelled incorrectly] potential to become a capitalist[correct], religiously devout [correct] utopia[incorrect], free of homosexuality[incorrect], crime[incorrect], promiscuity[incorrect], and violence[incorrect].

But hey, at least they didn't call me a Democrat.

Americans united

Doubling down

The Pied Piper of Oakland goes all in:

OAKLAND, Calif. – A California preacher who foretold of the world's end only to see the appointed day pass with no extraordinarily cataclysmic event has revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21...

Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.

As I have mentioned before, the Jehovah's witnesses made exactly the same prophetic mistake back in 1914 and suffered the same disappointment. They even came back with the same response: I was right, it was just spiritual instead of physical*. It's the last refuge of those who would slander God before they would publicly admit error. But it is really a nice touch that Camping's new date is so close - after two strikes, a lot of people would have wised up and pushed the day back a little more. On the other hand, he's 89; odds are climbing that his judgment day is the one at hand, and this will give everyone one more chance to pile on before he goes away for good.

But I have noted one angle to the stories today: "Oh, his poor followers. They spent squillions and now they have nothing."  While I'm sure they are being written from the 'bad Harold' perspective rather than out of genuine concern for the followers' financial well-being, let me be the first to say that compassion, at least for the money, is wholly unnecessary. They gave their money away, freely, and if they want more, they need to get a job**. That they gave it to a false prophet means they need to get wise and get a job. It's like the man who bets his house on a first five at the roulette wheel.  Sorry you lost, next time don't be stupid. And get a job.

As Peter noted, "There shall be false teachers among you...And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of." The atheist "rapture parties," the mocking of God, those are 'by reason' of the false prophets Peter mentions, men like Harold Camping.

But for those followers of Camping who gave your goods to spread his false message, now that you are undeceived***, you need to deal with your part in the evil that he did and, it appears, will continue to do. Once the false prophet is exposed, it is time to double down or repent. Harold Camping is doubling down. What are you going to do?

* I love the smell of bullshit in the morning. It smells like victory.
** When Jesus told the rich young ruler to give all he had to the poor, they both understood the latter would then be broke. It sort of goes with giving stuff away. Jesus did not consider that to be much of a problem.
*** Or at least have no excuse to remain deceived.

Here we go again

NOAA says more tornadoes on the way:

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center typically issues a high risk for severe t-storms only when a major severe weather outbreak is anticipated. This often includes a concentration of strong tornadoes.

Cities in "high risk": Wichita | Oklahoma City | Tulsa 

All things considered, I'd still rather live here than anyplace else*.

* Well, any place else that the lovely and gracious Rogue would also live. Which excludes Idaho and northwest Montana.

Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system

Help, help, I'm being repressed:

The co-CEO of the world’s largest bond fund has warned America that it faces a combination of higher inflation, austerity and financial repression over the coming years as policy makers grapple with the impact of the financial crisis and the subsequent policy response...

“Others are flashing orange, like the US, and already require future sacrifices, most likely through a combination of higher inflation, austerity and, importantly, financial repression,” said El-Erian, who classifies financial repression as seeking to impose negative real rates of returns on savers.

Higher inflation is in the cards, to be sure. Even though the "policy response" has not created it yet, the government can create it as easily as printing United States notes, pure paper money as opposed to Federal Reserve Notes, which transfer the wealth of the nation to the banking system.  When will they do it? I have no idea*, but that they will do it is inevitable.

The reason it's inevitable is two-fold. Firstly, though Mr. El-Erian is very intelligent and informed, he misoverestimates the principle of politicians.  Each nation that has attempted to implement 'austerity' has seen riots in the streets and, most recently, the implementing politicians tossed from office. Don't think politicians don't notice that sort of thing.  When the GOP and the Democrats are arguing over 4 or 5% of the deficit, real austerity is not in the cards, at least not as long as the US can borrow, and only until the return of the United States note.

But perhaps more importantly, the financial repression of savers is a non-starter, for the simple reason that we don't have any.  Well, we have a few I suppose, those folks who remember the hard lessons of the Depression or those who don't trust the government to provide for their old age. But 43% of workers have saved less than $10,000, and a full quarter have no savings at all**. In short, there's no 'there' there - Congress may impose negative rates, but real rates already are negative and are a huge factor in the fact that we as a nation have no savings to speak of***. Trying to squeeze a meaningful number of dollars from the remaining puddle of savers may repress them, but it certainly won't solve what's ailing us.

The ability of the US to borrow money will at some point come to an end, as it has in Greece, as it has in Spain, and we will be faced with a choice: cutting spending or printing money.  Which one is easier for politicians to implement?

* Actually, the correct answer is, 'thirty seconds after they decide to throw the bankers to the mob.' That decision is still quite a way off.
** You can bet non-workers have even less saved.
*** I suspect the savings rate might be different if instead of getting .5% on your savings account, you got 12% tax-free.

You don't see headlines like that very often

I wonder how long it will last.

Perhaps that should be feral ginger

Weighted voting

Paul Sterne suggests that youth is an asset in the voting booth:

One man /one vote is the ultimate sacred cow. But who has not had secret thoughts questioning the idea that everyone’s vote should get equal weight? Is everyone really equally qualified to pick our leaders?

Instead, America should implement age weighted voting to make voting more objective and fair, and give the young more power, because the consequences of political decisions will affect them the longest. Age weighted voting would restore power to twenty and thirty year olds, where it resided before the advent of medical science. With the aid of computers, it would be easy to give everyone a Voting Score, just like we all have a credit score...

I fully agree that "One Man, One Vote" is anachronistic*. It's also a wholesale creation of liberal jurisprudence - the decision, taken at face value, makes the senate itself unconstitutional. There is simply no way to argue that Constitution demands that every vote should have absolutely equal consequences, nor that every conceivable group of people have the right to vote.

Mr. Sterne's argument that age-weighting would make voting more 'objective and fair' is rubbish**, but there is no doubt that tilting the playing field in a certain direction has corresponding effects. In the case of weighting-towards-youth, the good thing that might arise from it would be the end of SocSec and Medicare as we know it. Young people aren't as excited about those intergenerational wealth transfers as are old people. And old people vote.

However, I would rather see us go a wholly different direction.  The main problem with Mr. Sterne's suggestion is that he presumes that voters are qualified to have an opinion worthy of being imposed on everyone else. That's a very, very bad assumption, as anyone who has watched daytime TV for more than an hour can attest***.  So rather than weighting the vote of anyone who bothers to show up, I would rather see us limit the vote to people whose opinions are, if still not worth listening to, at least better informed.

So for a person to be qualified to vote, they ought to have to:

1. Be a citizen, and show ID each time they vote. That this rule, passed in Kansas this session, is even controversial just blows my mind.  Yes, it does keep a lot of marginal people from voting Democrat.  But they act like that's a bad thing.

2. Be a net taxpayer. Those who pay for government ought to have a say in what it does, those who do not pay for it should not.  "Net Taxpayer" could be calculated in any number of ways, but the point is that people should not be able to use the government to loot their fellows.  If they do, then they give up the right to choose a government. And yes, this includes people who work for the government.

3. Pass a civics test, fairly administered. This is a tough one, as the 'literacy' tests of the New South were occasionally of the "How many beans are in this jar" variety, meant to exclude Blacks because they were black.  I fully mean to exclude the ignorant because I don't want to live with their choices.  If you do not know what the Insurance Commissioner does, then you have no business choosing one.

Of course, try to implement those things and liberals will go ballistic. It's not fair, it excludes people, and all that.  It's perfectly fair, as there is nothing in those rules that excludes anyone permanently; they just have to change their behavior if they wish to vote. It does exclude people, of course, but so does our current system (felons, infants, French expatriates living in New Zealand, etc.). The question is not "Are we going to exclude?"  The question is, "Are we going to ask the people most likely to have a good answer?"

* Of course, we might be better off if we took it literally rather than using it as a slogan.
** such a formula would not be 'objective' so much as it would be, in the end, merely the preference of five justices.
*** TMI, I know, but I when I had my vas 20 years ago, my doctor told me I had to sit in a chair all that day and just watch TV. That was the day I stopped believing in democracy.

Everything on the internet is true

Isn't anyone gonna help that poor man?

That's a sure way to get him killed:

A key senator has asked the Social Security Administration to investigate how people who live their lives role-playing as “adult babies” are able to get taxpayer-funded disability payments — after one of them was featured on a recent reality TV episode wearing diapers, feeding from a bottle and using an adult-sized crib he built...

In an email response to The Washington Times, Mr. Thornton threatened to kill himself if his Social Security payments are taken away, and said the television episode showing him doing woodwork oversold his abilities.

“You wanna test how damn serious I am about leaving this world, screw with my check that pays for this apartment and food. Try it. See how serious I am. I don’t care,” the California man said.

I guess the 'adult baby' and I have something in common, because I don't care if he kills himself, either*. But I do wonder how people who would rather play than work always manage to get on 'disability.' He's not old, and he's not blind.  Maybe fat is enough to get you a lifetime income courtesy of the taxpayers, I don't know.

But I do think the guy is a fraud, because he's only pretending to be an 'adult baby' for the cameras.  There is no way someone gets to 350 pounds eating strained carrots and drinking apple juice from a bottle. 

* Besides, at close to 400 pounds, he's most of the way there already

I'm not sure that's any better...

Crap! I missed the rapture*

again:

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Radio preacher Harold Camping says he's studied the Bible and done the math, so he's certain that Jesus Christ will return to judge the world on May 21, 2011...

Camping concedes he was wrong in previously expecting Judgment Day to occur in 1994, but he now insists that the 2011 date is "just as certain as any truth in the Bible. It's going to happen."

It gets rather tiresome to see modern "prophets" come and go**, especially in light of Jesus' declaration that no man will guess May 21, 2011 is the big day (Matt 24:36).  But it's nice to know we don't have to worry about all that Mayan stuff in 2012 anyway.

One can hardly do better than to quote the words of Sir Isaac Newton, he of the famous laws of motion***, in regards to prophecy.  Old Ike, when he was not watching apples, did a very thorough study of Daniel and Revelation - I have a mimeographed copy of Thomas Jefferson's personal copy of his work - and he concluded that the major problem with prophecy lay not with God but with those who think they have Him all figured out:

The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, he then manifested thereby to the world.

Ike makes two very good points. Firstly, as these modern-day mouthpieces of God are (inevitably) wrong, they bring disgrace not only on themselves but on God's word as well.  For God is assumed to be a liar when "men of God" fail and fail and fail to correctly guess that which God has already said they don't know.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, prophecy does not work "that way." Yes, God tells us to observe the times in which we live and to live wisely in that knowledge, but as Isaiah's Virgin Prophecy illustrates, prophecy is not justified by how it tells the future in some straightforward sense, but by how we can see God's providence in history.

I have no doubt that every promise of God will be fulfilled, that we will someday be able to look back on our world and say, "Aha! So that's what that meant!" But I have very little expectation that such enlightenment will arrive precisely in May of 2011.

Of that day and hour no man knows, not even the angels of heaven, but especially not radio preachers.

* A repost from Jan of last year for Tommy Lu, with whom I was discussing this last night.  If you seem to have read it before, that's because you've been here too long.
**Or in this case, not really go.  How does a preacher even stay on the radio after such a goof?
*** The least famous (but most apt) of which was his seventh: a mouth in motion tends to stay in motion, even after no one is listening.

Of course 'everything else' needs to be slashed as well

What happened to "I got better?"

This amphibian sure hasn't:

In the same interview Sunday, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Mr. Gingrich backed a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, complicating a Republican line of attack on President Barack Obama's health law.

I'm not sure who's writing Newt's talking points, but it does not seem that he's improving his standing with the proles by publicly defending what might be the single most unpopular aspect* of a very unpopular law.  Newt was a great Minority Whip, perhaps the best the Republicans have ever seen. That does not mean that today, 15 years and two marriages later, he does not have to re-introduce himself to those people who will pick the loser of next year's presidential campaign. An introduction that serves as an insult is liable to make Newt's run for the White house short, uneventful**, and for the most part, unnoted.

UPDATE: Yeah, I thought so.

(CNN) - Amid predictions from some within the GOP ranks that Newt Gingrich has fatally harmed his presidential chances, the former House Speaker issued a full-throated apology Tuesday for leveling criticisms at Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan...

Gingrich just can't help it; he's one of those guys born without a dufus filter. So it really doesn't matter if the whole GOP forgives him and everyone pretends he never said it. Given another week or month, he'll say something just as stupid again. And the worst part is, he probably won't mean that, either.

* It is also the very point upon which a dozen states are seeking to have the law overturned as an unconstitutional federal power grab.  The people behind those cases, almost all Republicans, are not going to take kindly to Newt's efforts in this regard.
** If a politician falls in the forest and no one is watching CNN, does he still get federal matching funds?

On those hysterical rape statistics, every time I hear some mindless feminista chanting "1 in 4" I re-read this.

We are experiencing technical difficulties

No, I don't know what happened to the post on the gold standard, but Steve Forbes is delusional, the gold standard is not coming back in 5 years, and it does not solve problems* as much as give us a separate set to deal with. If politicians would voluntarily choose to limit spending via golden shackles, we never would have ditched it in the first place.

* There is no perfect monetary system. The best we can do is choose the problems we wish, we cannot solve them all.

Buh-bye

Governor Sam gets serious:

The state's executive branch aggressively moved Tuesday to prepare for elimination of the Kansas Arts Commission by notifying all five employees their jobs would be eliminated in early June...

Good on him.  When Brownback tried to privatize the commission in January, the state senate put the kabosh to his plans.  However, the fact that he has a line-item veto, combined with the fact that the state house will not likely override, means that he can flat-out kill the commission by defunding it. The Arts Crowd would have been better off taking what was behind door number 1.

But the best thing about getting rid of the Arts Commission is not the $800k/yr the state will save*. As art advocates** rightly note, it's not very much money.  The best thing is the absolute conniption being thrown by Kansas liberals over it. They are already struggling mightily with self contradiction because it's difficult to pass as sophisticated*** when you are from Kansas. Now that Kansas might be the only state where we don't spend tax money on fingerpainting, half of them are catatonic while the rest are threatening to leave the state.

Hasta la vista. I hear California has a great Arts Commission.

* Along with another 150% of that in 'matching funds.' It's laughable to hear people argue that we have to spend $800k because if we don't, we'll 'lose' $1.2m in matching funds. In reality, taxpayers will save $2m.
** who coincidentally are the main recipients of this government largesse
*** The psycho-emotional draw of liberalism lies in the conviction that you are smarter, more enlightened, and more sophisticated than your neighbors. This was the essence of the Evolution Wars a few years ago. The problem for liberals was not that schools might not teach evolution so much, the problem was that Kansas would look foolish in the eyes of The New Yorker for not doing so.

Chump change

John Carney looks askance at gold:

Nearly all my instincts tell me to side with the gold bulls... So I'm wary about following my instincts when it comes to gold. My analysis tells me that much of the thinking behind the gold trade is wrong. 

There is a lot of good thinking between the ellipses. Carney gets the definition of 'inflation' correct. He understands that hyperinflation is a political event, not just a monetary one. But I think there's one thing he misses*, even though it does not change the conclusion: commodities, because they are politicized and volatile, demand guts. And most investors simply do not have them.

Nathan Rothchild famously quipped that the time to buy anything is when blood is running in the streets. Blood is running in the streets when gold is sub-$300, everyone is convinced that it will go to zero**, and miners can't get financed even under Mafiaesque terms. They are paved with gold when that commodity is twice the old high and sporting double-digit returns 9 years running. Now that buildings with huge capital letters proclaiming WE BUY GOLD are appearing beside highways, the time for the average person to buy gold, at least as an investment as opposed to financial-accident insurance, has probably passed.  It does not really matter if gold goes up from here in the short or long term: unless one expects it will go up 5x in the next decade like it has in the past one, then the real profits are already made. This is not contrarianism, it is simply a matter of demanding the best odds and potential payoff possible on a long bet.

The approach of the investor should not be to look at a particular commodity (if that's his new thing) now making the papers and argue himself into or out of buying it.  It's to look at all the commodities and decide which one is the most hated (it was not gold a decade ago, but silver****).  What is that hated - or even better, ignored - commodity today? Is there a commodity that everyone must have, which has future demand built in, has steep rises in the past, and which languishes along at or near its lows, month after month, with few paying it even the littlest mind?  Finding that commodity - and even more importantly, finding a way to a) ride its coming wave and b) survive long enough for it to arrive -  is where the investor ought to be applying his effort. 

But if he's afraid to buy that hypothetical commodity now - if he hates what everyone else hates - there's no sense in buying gold no matter the price unless he's a masochist or has no desire for sleep. If he buys it in the mere hope that it will go up he will forever second guess himself and he'll sell on the next 10% or 15% pullback. Fearful people***** should stick with cash in the bank - with deflation here anyway, that's probably going to turn out pretty well, all things considered.

* Other than apparently buying into the 'gold is an inflation hedge' fable. It's not; we had inflation all through the 80s and 90s and gold still lost 75% of its value from the top. Gold is a fear and uncertainty hedge.

** not literally, but functionally.  In the late 90's, when gold was between $260 and $280, and when gold bugs were convinced that every movement in gold was orchestrated by nefarious shorts, when I was writing stuff for The Book of Second Opinions, *that* was the time to buy gold. How many people today would like to buy gold at 80% off***?

*** None.  By which I mean that when it *does* go down 80%, no one will want it, just like last time.

**** I almost blogged about it last week - CNBC.com changed their GOLD tab to SILVER - and in doing so hit the very top of the market within a day or two. Silver is off 30% since, though still up 10x from the bottom.

***** Meaning those who are not a) experienced commodity-market traders, or b) gold bugs. Gold bugs believe fervently in the arguments Carney herein outlines, and while they fear, that belief counterbalances it. The person who is looking at commodities for the first time lacks the ideological ballast to survive what is likely to be a nightmare run, even if gold ends up on top in the end. Which it will.

Meanwhile, in the situation room

UPDATE: speaking of the iconic picture, this article made me throw up in my mouth a little: Religious paper cuts Clinton from iconic photo. It seems that she was given the control-V because her presence in the paper "could be considered sexually suggestive." In all fairness, that rule applies to all women. But still.

One would have to be alone on an island with Hillary for a very long time before that suggestion would arise.

Doubts?

The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.

Back to your regularly scheduled distraction

Apparently, we have time for other kinds of silliness:

In a letter to the NCAA on Wednesday, the Justice Department said it has opened an antitrust inquiry into the current Bowl Championship Series system, which excludes some athletic conferences from the formula for choosing schools to play in major bowl games.

Now that Osama bin Hidin is no more, it's time to get back to the really important work of government: making sure little pisant colleges no one has heard of can make it to the Sugar Bowl.

It was in all the papers

So basically we're holding parades because we managed to find and kill a guy whose 'army' uses pipe bombs and box knives to kill civilians? Look, I'm as glad that bin Ladin is dead as the next American*, but a little perspective may be in order. This is not Hitler. This is not Stalin. This is not even Ho Chi Minh or Kim Jong Il. And it took 10 years and a trillion dollars** to accomplish. And he was hiding among our allies.

Thinking those facts over in the midst of jubilation, balancing the amount of effort we had to expend for the little benefit*** we received, given the horrors that we committed in achieving victory****, ought to lead us to think good and hard about how we want to go about fighting our enemies in the future.

UPDATE: those (like Michael Moore) who think that the dear departed is going to bring Obama victory in the election 18 months from now badly overestimate the memory of the American people.  It is a symbolic win and an emotional flash in the pan. Six months from now people will think about OBL as much as they thought about him 6 months ago. Which is to say, not at all.   

* Not "Cheering U!S!A! in the streets" glad, just glad. I didn't cheer when they hanged Hussein or shot Tiller, either.
** A lot of people will say that The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism was not just to get bin Laden. Fair enough. But you'd better be able to justify it without reference to him then.
*** outside of the immediate, short-lived emotional rush. I suggest Jack Daniels is cheaper.
**** One dead Pakistani, Afghan, or Iraqi civilian is of just as much value to God as one American one. How many did we murder in getting justice for our 3000? And who will seek justice for them?