Tall Tales TrashedÂ
From the wilds of academe comes the shattering of yet another right wing Barack Obama trope, his frequently complained about tendency to first-person pronounce himself into every occasion.
Except he doesn’t.
So we learn in Ben Zimmer’s New York Times review of social psychologist James W. Pennebaker’s  “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.†In fact, “Obama has distinguished himself as the lowest I-word user of any of the modern presidents.â€
Actual facts haven’t stopped past trafficers in Obama fashion faux-pas, teleprompter dependence, and furniture abuse tall tales, but although fastener complaints burgeon, we live in hope.
As America marked the 10th anniversary at ground zero with solemn ceremony, and Paul Simon, word comes of an exciting new cashing in on The 9/11 Experience®
Your Barack Obama action figure, standing over the bleeding corpse of Osama Bin Laden.
 Make My Presidents Day  |
 
   Kind of makes Bush’s pistol plaque seem somehow inadequate, doesn’t it? Â
Family Matters 
In dog that didn’t bark news, we’ve had no sightings of an Obama administration Rodham brother equivalent.
Or a Neil Bush lookalike.
But such is the volume of loose cash sloshing about the world that some of it is still, still available to the dimmest bulb of an out of power family.
When former President George W. Bush celebrates his finest hour this September 11, thoughts will naturally turn to other members of the Bush clan in exile.
Shifty Uncle Prescott has passed, Jeb Bush remains out of reach, brother Martin remains in the obscurity of the DC suburbs*, but good old Neil Bush is still out there, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.  National treasure Ken Silverstein has a great roundup of Neil’s post-Keating hustles on Salon.
Silverstein offers some hope that the arc of history does bend towards justice, or at least shrinking margins for evil. He reports Bush’s compensation for doing not much may be declining over time.
“It’s getting tougher to be a fixer who can’t fix much.“
[For more Neil delights see also here, here, here, and here.]
*For a slightly 911-trutherish tour of  Marvin’s picaresque business career see here.
….in that, like Reagan, his apologists will now rush to credit him with something that didn’t happen on his watch.
The “Who Got  bin Laden” myth-making has already begun, with Republican House leaders reluctantly adding Obama to the Bush victory parade. 
Osama bin Laden:Â
Your Washington Post reluctantly conceded that bin Laden died during Barack Obama’s presidency.   Homeland Security Committee Chair Peter King [Provisional IRA, New York] sees Bush’s empty bluster as the foundation of victory:  “President Bush deserves great credit for putting action behind those words.“And what words they were!
  “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! 
 The Twitter-sphere is awash in bizarre statements like  “Obama gets to enjoy the feeling of a (prior) cic’s victory.”
   Forgotten in the wave of Bush Revisionism are Bush’s frenzied efforts to dot this particular “I” before leaving office.
 And Obama’s weekend topping of the Gipper’s record by killing both a child and three of the strongman’s grandchildren.  Reagan only got one.*
*Subject to controversy as of August 2011
Action Jackson, Generally Disreputable  Â
A future President’s lynching of two Britons for aiding slave escapes is the latest defense offered for the ill-starred Guantanamo military tribunals.
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  In a since withdrawn legal argument, prosecutors pointed to Bloody Andrew Jackson’s energetic response to Georgia slaves escaping to the Seminole Indians in then Spanish Florida.Â
 
  The Seminole tribe objected to being compared with al Qaeda, and escaped slave descendants might have something to say as well.
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   Defending the military tribunerals’ ever shape-shifting “procedures” was a challenge even before the Pentagon took to enlisting slave catchers as freedom’s legions.
