For this Memorial Day, I have stumbled upon a seventy-four year-old video document, a protest gathering for the Republic Steel strike in Chicago, Memorial Day, 1937, which was attacked by the Chicago police department with firearms and clubs.  Find it in the above YouTube video, commencing at the 11:00 mark and continuing to the 12:30 mark.  After 3 PM local time, on a boiling, 88-degree day, about 1000 strikers started marching from Sam's Place (HQ of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, SWOC) and across the prairie to the Republic Steel main entrance, chanting "CIO, CIO!"  They were met by 400 Chicago police officers waiting in double file.

Narrator Robert Ryan reports 600 arrested, 60 wounded, 10 dead, "shot in the back." (Later records show 90 wounded, some prevented by the police from reaching the hospital afterward.)  The original video film was made by Paramount Pictures for its "Paramount News"" at the scene -- a proto-iPhone record.  According to Truthout, Paramount decided against including the video in the newsreels. Eventually, this clip and more were shown to a U.S. Senate investigation headed by Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr.. The video production above, "History of Unions," is reported on YouTube to have been produced in 1964 by Harold Mayer Productions for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.  The segment available here of the Memorial Day violence is a record of dumbfounding lawlessness by the Chicago police and Illinois authorites.  It is also a warrant for the general surmise that the second term of the FDR administration was either deaf or too disorganized to answer and adjudicate clear outrages by the State of Illinois and Cook County.  Perhaps the FDR administration colluded; perhaps it was overwhelmed; perhaps the nature of the states at the time, four years after the collapse of the economy and experiencing a second deflationary dip in 1937, was that law and order were for the men with guns.   The useful question again for the Executive and Congress: what did they know, and when did they know it?

Comparing this Chicago incident to the reports at the time of lawlessness in Europe (chiefly Germany, where the Hitlerites were planning war for Lebensraum) and in Russia (where Stalin's apparatus was continuing the purges of the military and Party), it is tempting to conclude that justice and truth were in chains.  British Empire PM Neville Chamberlain, I learn from David Faber's stunning Munich 1938, presented himself as the PM who could "deal with" (appease) the dictators (above), by which they meant Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin.  In London, FDR was regarded as all talk, no action.  The facts of the Republic Steel strike support a measure that FDR was ready to deploy the tiny and ill-equipped U.S. Army to intimidate union workers and protect the steel oligarchs.  In sum, what happened in 1937 was another low point in the 20th century -- and there was a crater to follow in 1942-1946.  When America tolerates the depravity in this short glimpse of 1937 -- in full view of the Chicago press and the national newsreel makers (and perhaps it is a measure of the fear of the time that Paramount chose not to show it to the nation, though it would have been sensational news) -- then what is not possible for depravity in nations where there is no Constitution or law (Germany, Russia, Italy)?

 

Traditions evolve, and since the Civil War, and especially since the First War, Arlington National Cemetery -- Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate -- has been the center of American tribute to the veterans of foreign wars, especially the combat veterans. My first and only trip to Arlington was in the spring of 2007 with my brothers and mother to watch the U.S. chaplain and an honor detail walk my father, First Lt. Calvin R. Batchelor (U.S. Army Reserves, 1942-1953) through the fields and pay farewell to his remains, now in the Columbarium. I will likely return again eventually for the same ceremony for my WAC veteran mother, Master Sergeant Jeanne S. Nader (U.S. Army Reserves, 1942-1945), who will join father.  My measure of attending the ceremony on a soft spring, after these years of thinking about it, is that it is a discrete and profound piece of American history, where all the passionate stories of the last one hundred fifty years come together in a grassy, rolling field on the Potomac.  The Maltese Falcon author Dashiell Hammett (below), veteran of both the First and Second Wars, is buried at Arlington (left: 12/508); also four Chief Justices are buried, Taft, Warren, Burger and Rehnquist, alongside two presidents, Taft and Kennedy; and they once were able to make room for Revolutionary War veterans.

There is no particular guideline of who is buried at Arlington and who is buried overseas or at home near their people over the last century and a half: it is an always-changing tradition; and in this, it moves with the nation and how we think about ourselves as William Bradford's vision of "the citty on a hill."

The melodrama of DSK, the disgraced French economist now caged in a gilded Tribeca rental at Franklin and Varick Streets, is a useful window on the facts of the matter that emerge from the latest weekly economic metrics. In the US, jobs, housing and consumer spending remain weak and look to be weakening, or just drifting, the New Normal spotted with doubt, gloom, stoicism, a sense of bad weather coming.  In China, food and fuel inflation are ripping through the working class and exposing the facts that the Communist Party is weak, fractured, meaningless, hollow, leaderless and without a dream.  In Europe, where DSK used to signify, the eurozone cannot withstand the higher oil/gasoline prices without slowing.  David Leonhardt, NYT, writes, "...an economy that is growing this slowly will not add jobs quickly..."  Goldman Sachs analyst Andrew Tilton writes of the slowdown causes, "....the most obvious is the oil prices..."  Calculated Risk writes, "The savings rate has declined even as growth for real personal consumption expenditures has slowed.  Part of this is due to higher overall inflation and higher oil/gasoline prices."  What shows in all this blame-shifting and doubt is that the price of oil is a measure of the uncertainty.  The dollar decline, the competition for energy from BRICs, the gloom of the oilfield revolts and standoffs (Libya, Egypt, Arabia), all converge above $100 a barrel.  The G8 finger-pointing toward Libya and the West Bank is lazy misdirection.  The worry is the oil barrel and what it means about growth.  The new missing piece is that the nuke plants after Fukushima are politically unstable; and the Tehran drama with Bushehr makes all nuke plants a double-edge.  Am asked about POTUS re-elect fate.  My answer is in the price of an oil barrel on Memorial Day 2012.  Fate of DSK?  Easy: indifference in Tribeca.  Speak Joseph Brusuelas, Bloomberg, re the apparent drift in the economy, especially the rise of unemployment claims well above 400,000 again for a four-week moving average of 438,500, where it was last November near the start of QE2.  Also mention ,(below from Calculated Risk) that the Real Personal Income Less Transfer (government bailout/handout/assistance) remains well below peak of last eight recession recoveries dating back 50 years to JFK, when DSK was the wonder that was a wee frog in Gaullist transfer heaven.

The Egyptian prosecutor's decision to prosecute Hosni Mubarak and his sons, Gamal and Alaa, for murder and corruption is a logical continuation of the darkening atmosphere in Egypt that points to major trouble with Israel and the region.  POTUS speech on the Arab Spring was late and half-baked.  Spoke Bret Stephens, WSJ, who regards POTUS as deliberately ill-informed and self-righteous with regard to the region: Bret Stephens calls POTUS "anti-Israel." The suspicion that the big Friends of Israel checks would hesitate this cycle is confirmed by a Commentary statement by the major Democratic donor Saban.  POTUS is now presiding over the transformation of Egypt into a hostile power to Israel's south, while POTUS continues to communicate with the Assads and the hostile power of Syria to the north of Israel.  Moving into a landscape of the fog of war.  Spoke John Bolton, who believes that Congress must step up and speak sharply to POTUS for his "1967 borders" ploy.  And that the US must focus its energy on Iran as the genuine threat to peace in the region.  And that the Arab Spring is an interlude leading to darkness.  POTUS was in London to agree to David Cameron that Qadhafi must go; however, Tripoli is not a threat.  Cairo is a threat in the hands of the Ikhwan and their prosecutorial stooges.  Mubarak misruled for at least a decade; and his reported palace and grounds at Sharm-el-Sheikh (below) are an illustration of his isolation and deafness: he believed the Cairo apparatus would let him live out his days on the seaside like a retired Mafioso.  What comes next will be an Arab Storm -- a show trial followed by a certain tyranny of prohibition, punishment, righteous predation.  The Place de la Guillotine is in sight.

  

Bibi Netanyahu's commanding success with the Joint Session of Congress is the end of POTUS's puzzling gambit to finesse the Jewish vote in America by casting the Israelis and the Palestinians as equal entities that only he, POTUS from Chicago (sort of), can bring together in peace.  Strange illusion, almost adolescent daydreaming in its scale.  Does POTUS believe this presumption?  Whom does he talk to?   Since there is no answer, it is best to speculate on how POTUS imagines his "1967 borders" folly of last week to work with Democratic donors from the Hollywood Left Jewish potentates and the New York Jewish Democrat potentates?  Not well, is my conclusion.  Does POTUS know this?  Odd, isn't it?  POTUS received 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008.  POTUS may receive 70% or more next year.  So why does POTUS risk the big check his campaign needs for a gesture of no possible meaning?  The Palestinian Authority is a sham that has merged with the Hamas gangsters of Gaza, who themselves are a splinter of the ruthless Ikhwan of Cairo.  Does POTUS know that Hamas cannot climb down from its self-destructive ways?  Netanyahu knows.  Mystery.  POTUS is now in the EU, where he claims he will present his "1967 borders" notion to various foreign ministers.  To what end?  There is no Palestinian entity to speak to in a rational manner.  Why did POTUS make it a struggle for his fundraisers by picking an unwinnable and futile and even theoretical-only tussle with a confident PM from the only democracy East of Greece and West of India?  Unknown.  The end.

  

Spoke John Avlon, Taegan Goddard, Jessica Taylor, Salena Zito, Major Garrett in re the NY-26 special election these hours, and the consensus is that the Democrat upstart Kathy Hochul will defeat the Republican Jane Corwin in a heavily (plus 30K) GOP district that belonged to Jack Kemp once upon a time. The is a reversal of fortune in the CD that Chris Lee abandoned with his silly, shirtless photographs in craigslist. The Hochul success was built on the Mediscare that worked in 1995 against Newt Gingrich's House: the GOP wants to take away your Medicare so it can give tax breaks to its rich friends the bankers and plutocrats. The Democrats have thrown in all their guns, Chuck Schumer (in person), Nancy Pelosi (a fund-raiser in Manhattan), Bill Clinton (robo-calls), and Andrew Cumo on an ad that will run in the Web because all the TV time is gone. John Boehner traveled to NY-26 for a funder for Corwin; and Corwin uses $2 million of her own money.  The Tea Party spoiler (and former Democrat/Republican) Jack Davis has pulled support from both candidates and made the election close, leaning to Hochul.  Both parties will overinterpret the result and adjust the 2012 message accordingly.  Paul Ryan is the big loser if Corwin loses, because his Medicare reform talk is what Hochul used to reignite her flagging campaign.  Boehner is the second big loser if Corwin loses, because this begins the sad story of how Boehner squandered the 2010 election on nuance and misdirection.  Does this help Pawlenty or Romney or the rest of the fledgling and frail field?  Not in the interpretation that the Party must go darker and angrier about the Democrats's parlor game tricks.

Mitch Daniels the Drop-Out looks to have blindsided the WSJ editorial -- Paul Gigot says he's surprised -- and left the Rovian Crossroads GPS establishment of major donors, toney ops and bigfoot media barons scrambling for a consensus candidate. What remains of the field is the defensive and Romneycare-wounded Mitt Romney, the so-far uninspired Tim Pawlenty, the self-destructed Newt Gingrich, the suspect and unusually ambitious Jon Huntsman, the unknown and Trump-like Herman Cain, and the unnamed possibilities to follow.  Huntsman is said to be sitting down with George H. W. Bush for a preliminary interview.  The GOP graybeards are unhappy, untethered, uncool, even defeatist.  The GOP has no Young Turk Club to take over from the scepter-wielding archons of yore and the loosey-goosey back-slappers who hang out with the Club for Growth.  Prepare the escape cruiser for the biggest checks in the party.  John McCain looks like a reliable loser compared to the IED of a Romney or Pawlenty or Huntsman campaign in the Red States of the South.  Can the headless, bootless, feckless GOP keep it under 200 Electoral College votes for another cycle?  Perhaps the GOP wants to take the cycle off?  Just forfeit the game to POTUS and work on a couple of Senate seats.  Beware the NY 26th on Tuesday 24.   Soothsayers will call for sacrifices if the Democrats take NY 26 on Mediscare.  Blame Boehner and Ryan?

 

POTUS Obama's heralded new Mideast peace speech introduced no new ideas and very little concrete policy (none? 0); however, POTUS did gain attention by mentioning something called the "1967 borders," which do not exist, never did exist, and are not a rational source of debate for what even the notion of  "1967 borders" does to the streets of the Old City.  In sum, the speech was much travelogue of the Arab Spring, a statement that the US opposes violence and proposes democracy, a dollop of would't it be nice if peace and love broke out for the young people of the ummah -- and then it was the agitprop of the "1967 borders" fantasy world.  POTUS speaks like a man with no facts on the ground.  Spoke Ari Flesicher, of the Bush Administration, who says POTUS remains the Chicago local pol aiming to be the fabled honest broker who gains respect from his lessers by not favoring Israel and listening to the demands of the Palestinians.  Spoke Malcolm Hoenlein, who restrains his opinion until after the PM Netanyahu meeting with POTUS, until after the AIPAC speech on Sunday 22; however, Malcolm remarks that there was nothing in the speech to suggest that POTUS has a fresh notion of how to deal with the facts of the PA, now merged with Hamas.  POTUS calls for a nuclear-free planet.  Huzzah.  POTUS calls for a democratic institution in Cairo.  Huzzah.  POTUS calls for 1967 borders.  Huzzah.  All trite; all contrived; all wasted breath.  POTUS speech was so unoriginal it wasn't even wrong: it is disconnected from the game.

POTUS uses a routine fundraiser in Blue Massachusetts to roll Mitt Romney's healthcare into the achievement of Obamacare.  POTUS also lists the Bin Laden kill and immigration reform as campaign talking points.  POTUS uses the "keep moving forward" line as a throwaway to the base.  Puzzling.  A re-election campaign is a referendum on the incumbent.  The presumption is that POTUS will win.  However it is the economy, and jobs, and costs, and gasoline prices, that will determine the POTUS re-elect.  POTUS avoids the first two years of Obama administration policies that did not result in a vigrorous recovery.  POTUS needs to talk policy off the point of the economy, because there is no economy talking point now available.  Is this a credible stump speech?  Does being for or against healthcare mean you are undecided about POTUS?  Unknown.  POTUS also spoke sentimentally of his election night:

 

Spoke John Fund, WSJ, and Larry Kudlow, CNBS, re the GOP field. Trump's exit is three words, said Fund, "Full financial disclosure."  Newt Gingrich has a more complicated explanation: he set himself on fire with his big mouth bashing the Paul Ryan planning as "right-wing social engineering," and now climbs down by calling Ryan to apologize.  The likely end of Newt, who now joins Mike Huckabee as the fastest candidate exit.  Mitt Romney remains on the field, joined by fellow Mormon Jon Hunstman.  Does the GOP have room for two men from no particular Republican policy, just whatever works at the time?  Larry Kudlow mentions Tim Pawlenty favorably and yet also mentions that Pawlenty did not perform well in the South Carolina debate and that Pawlenty is slow to learn a growth message.  John Fund says that Mitch Daniels will get in the race, and Larry Kudlow opines that Daniels has the smarts and talent to organize an effective campaign.  The hesitation is that Daniels is not obviously excited to run, because of his family.  My information is that the George W. Bush team backs Daniels, and that Reagan White House alumni back Daniels; and that Daniels will "Hang Out the Stars in Indiana," croons Al Bowlly, "...so light my way back home to you."

 

Little about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal makes sense except that it happened and the details are alarming and irrational. The 62-year-old (and looking much older) head of the glamorous IMF takes a $3000-a-day suite at the NY Sofitel and then, when a chambermaid, a 32-year-old Guinean mother of two, enters the room to clean, Strauss-Kahn emerges naked from the bathroom and chases her and assaults her. What is wrong with this picture? Strauss-Kahn must be a predator of the most peculiar sort. This could not be an isolated event. For these facts, the man must have a long-standing major problem. Jailtime is the least of it. This is self-destruction. The fact pattern also says that after she escapes, the attacker flees the Sofitel without his mobile phone and gets all the way into first class on Air France before the NYPD arrest him for suspicion of attempted rape, sexual assault, and so forth. France is waking up to this mess. Nicholas Sarkozy, who is no stranger to melodrama, just won re-election with this hammer blow to his most significant rival, D. Strauss-Kahn -- who remains innocent until proven guilty. The IMF is rattled to its bones. How many times did the IMF or the authorities look away from Strauss-Kahn's behavior? This looks to be the story of the week. The Greek crisis was already a real and present danger, and Greece was already dependent on IMF rules and cash. The German banks who lent all that money to the Greeks (money that cannot be repaid) are now fretting over possible IMF paralysis.  More details needed to make this story logical.  (The French are already speculating about a sting, a honey-trap, a mistaken identity, all possible far-fetched possible explanations.)  Strauss-Kahn must have a long, long record of self-destructive behavior (and lots of women may be ready to talk now that he is exposed as a pervert and sadist.)  His mother did name him Dominique.  The scene on Air France in first class must have been a doozy.  I have raely been in first class.  Only rich people hang out in first class.  How many famous rich people saw the arrest?  Maybe Rob Lowe or Bernard Henri-Levy, too?  Will they talk?

The trouble with the re-election plans is the price of gasoline; and all the king's horses, men, gaggles, talking heads, editorials, photo-ops, cannot get the problem solved. It is driving season in two weeks, and with gasoline above $4 a gallon, the White House can see its approval numbers headed toward 40 -- while the POTUS economic-approval numbers are already below 40 and headed into the 20s.  POTUS is frozen in a political quandary.  POTUS knows that jobs are not coming back because the new normal is to pay for energy and food by caution, productivity and wage stagnation; that is, No Hiring.  My correspondent Joe Brusuelas remarks that the Fed (Bernanke) sees that a little bit of stagflation is useful.  Bernanke is not helping POTUS.  Bernanke thinks he is fighting off deflation just because wages are stagnant to retreating while inflation inches up.  Bernanke does not and will not speak to the underlying pain for the consumer (voting) class, which is higher food and fuel prices while wages do not keep up or get ahead. Then there is the not-small matter of how much of the consumer class is living and surviving on transfer payments (i.e., the dole).  

In sum, POTUS can flap about tinkering with drilling permits -- and he does not flap much, just marginal remarks about off-shore licensing and non-ANWR Alaska bits, none of which will get past the Democrats in the Senate and House -- but he cannot get at the problem of stagflation that is already here.  Why this malaise?  My informants, from Steve Moore to Mary Kissel to David Weidner, all point to the crony capitalism of maintaining the banks too big to fail and the car companies too big to fail and all the other nationalized posse of failed business models (depending on cheap mortgage money and the mania of a consumer class that was spending itself underwater) that would have been reawakened by failing, reorganizing, and starting anew.  The Obama administration is so fearful of Big Failure that it has sentenced us to long-term Small Failure.  Energy is part of the problem.  The price of oil is (1) competition with the BRICS, (2) premium from the Arab Spring and risk to Saudi Arabia, and (3) the cheapening dollar against all commodities, including oil.  The thinking is that a stronger dollar starts to solve energy and food pricing.  It will also lead to a reckoning with crony capitalism.  Bank of America and Deutsche Bank and Citi will fail, and sooner is better than later.

Tell me the price of gasoline on Memorial Day 2012, and I will tell you POTUS Obama's re-elect numbers -- with the caveat that the GOP not put up a nontransparent kiss-up or a bobble-headed Dukakis doll. You want to be a potent challenger to "The Man Who Shot Bin Laden"?  Aim to become Mr. "North to Alaska"!  Fabian and Capucine together with John Wayne, Ernie Kovacs and Stewart Granger!

Mike Huckabee was not a major candidate for the nomination in 2008, and in 2011 Mike Huckabee is a marginal celebrity on a cable channel that serves as the GOP video blog.  Huckabee was not ever close to becoming a candidate again.  Huckabee has told his financiers overseas for some time that he is not a candidate and will not become a candidate.  Much of what Huckabee does is harmless, meaningless, aimless pleasantry.  Huckabee's utility in 2008 was to maintain an equilibrium on camera.  In his TV program, Huckabee maintains a playful, earnest, unusually aimless style in pursuit of what looks like information.  As a politician, Huckabee was minor and vague.  As a candidate, Huckabee was cheerful and uncreative.  My sources tell me that when dealing with Huckabee, it was dealing with the adult with the least amount of common knowledge they have ever met.  In sum, a lightweight smile and handshake.  Goodbye.  Given that Newt Gingrich has blown himself up with his silly global warming Nancy Pelosi loveseat video for Al Gore some three years ago; and that Mitt Romney is a stubborn, prideful, foolish, deaf candidate; and that Rick Santorum is as self-infatuated as Donald Trump and Michelle Bachman; and that Ron Paul is an acquired taste for anti-Washington voters: this leaves the Republican field to Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty and the unknown. 

 

Spoke Mary Kissel, Joe Rago, of the WSJ, and Matt Vizer, Boston Globe, in re the Mitt Romney defense of Romneycare passed some five years ago in Massachusetts. The speech in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was defensive, whiney, argumentative, legalistic, too clever, dry, angry, arrogant, wasted. Romney repeated his self-justfications for passing Romneycare, despite the clear fact that Romneycare is unacceptable to the GOP. A stubborn streak like his father, Michigan Governor George Romney? No matter now. The speech today looks like the end of the boom. Mary Kissel observes that Florida voters will not be wowed by Romney's obfuscation about state-mandated healthcare. Spoke Matt Vizer that Romney was Dr. Frankenstein; and Romney claims that the Monster for his state of Mass is okay, just an experiment; but that loosing the Monster on the whole nation is wrong-headed. Gee. Three gone in one week. Romney because he is arrogant and deaf. Newt Gingrich because he is arrogant and deaf. Rick Santorum because he is arrogant and deaf. The man who falls the farthest is Mitt Romney. Fork time in the toast?

Spoke Matt Bai, NYT, in re the entry of Newt Gingrich into the Republican race. Matt Bai regards the Speaker as gifted, energetic, resilient, philosophical, even charismatic. Does Gingrich, at 68, have appeal to the younger partisans? Does Gingrich, a non-stop chatterbox and palaver genius, have the patience to listen to advisers and petitioners and voters? Why is Gingrich in the race unless he thinks he can win? Or is it that if he doesn't get in, and spend several million of other people's money, that he will be admitting that his day is done, that he speaks of 1995 as an old codger, not as a player?  Michael Tomasky asserts that the Gingrich candidacy is "comic relief."  Measure it more as a last hurrah with a twist -- Gingrich will outlast the last of his own career and keep on coming back until he loses grip on the Earth.

 

Spoke Larry Kudlow, CNBC, and Jodi Schneider, Bloomberg, re Speaker John Boehner's remarks to the Economic Club of New York last news cycle, and learn that Boehner does not have the formula to deliver 218 Republican votes for the debt ceiling vote by July or August and at the same time block tax increases and deliver sizable reductions in the Federal budget process, including entitlements.  The 218 votes are not there no matter how Boehner talks to the Democrats: there will be no Democratic votes against the debt celing, none.  Boehner is arguing that the rush to vote is articificial, contrived, cooked, a pretense.  Shrug.  It is the battleground.  The Democrats are beating the GOP on the brainpan with the Paul Ryan Medicare reform gambit.  Ryan will retreat, Jodi Schneider opines; and Kudlow worries what the retreat will look like. 

Spoke Joe Rago, WSJ, and David Gratzer, Manhattan Institute, re the Romneycare experiment in Massachusetts, re the Canadian National Healthcare, and learn that both systems are ridden with shortages, rationing, lengthy waiting times, and routinely outraged citizens.  Forty-eight days for an internist in Massachusetts.  Four million people cannot find a personal physician in Canada.   And worse: with costs always climbing.  Mitt Romney will defend his Romneycare in Michigan on Thursday 12.  Is this the end of Mitt Romney?   Boehner and Romney both struggle with the burden of past promises that are present delusions.

The killing of Bin Laden in a Pakistan safehouse on a military reservation entirely under the control of the ISI and the Pakistan elite is less a problem for Islamabad than it is for Washington. How will John Kerry get Pakistan out of the hole it is in? How will the Obama White House go in front of the American people with a few weasel words of an explanation that there is no "evidence" of Pakistani duplicity and avoid laughter?  Is Bin Laden in Abbottabad not evidence of bad road ahead and behind?  What does the Congress do with the timeline of the events?  Larry Johnson reports that the August 2010 information was a "walk-in" from ISI.  This could well point to many more walk-ins over the next many years.  Or it could point to a break-down right now.  A nuke-armed state, in the hands of dealers and liars, preyed upon by extremist suicides, in the grip of a fear of the US cutting off aid, and in the hire of the Saudis and the Chinese.  The formula is worst-case scenario.  How does POTUS convince the public that he has a way out of the Mordor he has just jumped into with the Bin Laden killing? Does this sound convincing enough for the campaign trail:

POTUS is all campaign, all the time, and the Ft. Campbell event was electioneering at its most basic. Spoke Bill McGurn, WSJ, who argues that it will be difficult for the GOP to refute "The Man Who Shot Bin Laden" with the same dog-eared pages of claiming that POTUS is not worthy to lead.  There will be twists in the road ahead, however ti is certain that the Bin Laden killing will be the some of the most useful minutes in American campaign history --  competing with the failed Desert 1 rescue in Iran that cost Jimmy Carter his moment for the 1980 election.  Are there problems with the narrative just now?  Yes. Larry Johnson, No Quarter, reports that Panetta, HRC and Gates forced the attack, that the first window was February and POTUS cancelled at the behest of his shadow Val Jarrett.  Concern about Moslem reaction.  Also, Larry Johnson also reports source speaking that Bin Laden's body was flown to Afghanistan, either Bagram at Kabul or the air base at Jallalabad, perhaps along with that of his son.  That the DNA testing was not possibly completed in time to dispose of the body in the timeline provided.  That Bin Laden's body was not flown to the Carl Vinson but rather was disposed over the Hindu Kush.  None of this is confirmed.  I do have another source who says that the detail about the body over the Hindu Kush is a report as of Wednesday 4 that is not confirmed.  The timeline of the Bin Laden episode from last August, 2010, will require time and precision.  The White House must deal with the inconsistencies.  For example, Senator Saxby Chambliss reports that he was told on Sunday that the Seals took the first shot at Bin Laden as he ducked out of a room, and that it missed.  The Seals pursued him into the room for the kill shots.  This is a new detail of that first missed shot.  And about the White House narrative that Bin Laden was taken to the Carl Vinson.  There is no detail of where the body was taken from Abbottabad.  Unlikely they flew 500 miles across Pakistan airspace.How did they reach Carl Vinson?  Via Afghanistan?  What is the timeline?  The Bin Laden killing needs to stand up to all inquiries for the next 18 months.  The game is afoot.

The overwhelming video evidence is that Bin Laden was killed inside his two-room apartment with no chance of escape or self-defense, and that he was killed purposefully at close range by shooters who were tasked with the duty. The two rooms are small, messy, modest, rudimentary. There were at least three women present, the wife, the doctor, the daughter; and possibly other servants. Bin Laden had been sleeping and was unarmed. The discovery of weapons in the rooms is not determinative and may not be accurate, since the weapons have not been displayed and may not come from the same rooms. Bin Laden was shot twice, once in the head and once in the chest, with what is described as special bullets that do not penetrate, therefore limit the risk of collateral damage in close quarters.  Capturing and abducting Bin Laden does not look to have been impossible or even difficult.  Bin Laden was not a strong or quick man, and his family's presence clearly limited his ability to fight.  Why not capture him?  Infamous war criminals make for epochal landmark war crimes prosecution (the delusional, depraved, stupid Martin Borman, left: and surely the Nuremberg gang was far more frightening than Bin Laden).  Why fear these jihad clowns?  They are not even slightly substantial threats in comparison to ten years of battling the Arab gangs of Iraq, Somalia, and the Pashtun gangs of Afghanistan, Pakistan.  Why not capture Bin Laden as the sad-sack loser and scaredy-cat old man that he was -- hiding with women in children in a concrete block hovel in deeply rural but not especially harsh Pakistan?  What is scary about a narcissistic, gloating, cowardly, stupid mass-murderer in U.S. custody?   Let him talk and talk: all of it rambling irrelevance that would be most useful to refute as it emerged from the GITMO tribunal.  Execute him by hanging him high in Cuba.  The Iraqis gained considerable weight in the Arab world by hanging the loser Hussein. I do not have an answer why the decision was made to destroy the major piece of evidence  of war crimes called Bin Laden without following through on the outstanding federal indictment for crimes dating from 1998.  Charged, tried, convicted by tribunal, executed by military rope: all in good order.  Two bullets in the night in front of children is better?  For whom?  Nor do I have an answer why POTUS reversed the Leon Panetta intention to release the photographic evidence of the execution and burial.  In all this, the instant thriller idea suggests itself: "Trial and Execution of Osama Bin Laden."  I could write it, if I hadn't already; and I lived this story for ten years, and likely will another, on air, in a wired room, relentlessly telling the tale of sound and fury that started 9-11.

Is Bin Laden dead? Yes. Everything else about the White House version of the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan is in flux. How did the Special Operations Command that launched Sea Team Six, know for certain that Bin Laden was at home that night? The White House says they were mostly certain. A fresh explanation, with confirmation, is that the US had visual confirmation of Bin Laden in and out of the house for several months. What happened to the more than a dozen people captured in the compound including Bin Laden's wounded wife? The White House doesn't have a clear explanation. A fresh explanation, with confirmation, is that they were turned over to the ISI for safe-keeping but not interrogation. What happened to Bin Laden's body? The White House explanation is that Bin Laden was buried at sea. A fresh explanation from two sources, neither with confirmation, is that there is a version that says Bin Laden was jettisoned over the Hindu Kush Mountains. 

POTUS continues to find details to agitate his opponents, a style that is suggestively purposeful. At the very last moment, POTUS decides that photos of the dead Bin Laden are overmuch for us.  "We don't need to spike the football."  Unusual metaphor; strange arrogation of decision-making.  Who is "we?" Odd twist to a candidate who promised transparency.  What is wrong with this picture?  Didn't the American people earn the picture?  Isn't it ours?  A dead devil is not supposed to look attractive or inspiring.  Gruesome?  All the better for what Bin Laden started ten years ago.  We all saw those human beings jumping from the Towers to escape the flames?  Too gruesome to see?  Except that we saw it, and Bin Laden dead in a violent fashion is most welcome to close the mission.  Until then, the devil Bin Laden will enjoy those wifty live shots with his faux spiritual blank face. Waiting on Wikileaks to break the scoop.

Mention that the Daily News David Hinckley published generous remarks about JBS in Krakow during the Bin Laden raid news night of May 1: including my wait for the news, from 1030 to 11, when POTUS was in his Oval Office going over the text (below) and I speculated it must be major, such as the death of Quadhafi.   A little before 11, I saw a flash that Bin Laden was dead.  I think it was a CBS site hearing from a House Intelligence Committee member.  I moved the story on air, emphasizing that it was fog of war, not confirmed until POTUS spoke (at approximately 1130).    I have a note form a listener in New Jersey who says she first hear the news from me at "a little before 11."  I have the recording.  May be able to work out the time I spoke.  The rest of the evening was a blur or the moving story, with the whole of the US waking to the news, with carrying POTUS remarks live, with reaction from Thaddeus McCotter, Devin Nunes, Larry Johnson, Bill Roggio, Arif Rafiq, Karman Bokhari, Jeff Bliss, and my co-host in Krakow, Malcolm Hoenlein.

The politics of killing an unarmed Bin Laden begin in earnest. POTUS takes the shot, and the pattern is established that POTUS Obama would rather kill than capture. This avoids the Gitmo problem. It also introduces the theme of extra-judicial killings, a/k/a targeted assassinations. The White House will be cornered if it continues to bash the IDF for its targeted assassinations in Gaza, its strike-backs on the Hamas.  POTUS heads for big "Mission Accomplished?" event at Ground Zero.  Let the opera begin.  POTUS bags Public Enemy #1.  Good for him and his administration.  Was watching this unfold from Poland, 'way outside the reach of US partisan warfare; it was clear that Bin Laden is a minor figure to the Eastern Europeans.  They still live with the plague of devils like Stalin and the Hitlerites. Bin Laden made himself an American outlaw, and he died with American cowboy version of frontier justice.

Greetings from Krakow: Arrival 30 April to attend the annual March of the Living that commemorates the Holocaust and the liquidation of the Krakow Jews.  We walked through Plac Nowy in the Old City: this was the center of the Jewish ghetto from the early 19th century. Where the Nazis forced the Jews (Kazimierz, from Latin and Yiddish) to work as slaves in 1942-45 before they were abducted to Auschwitz for destruction, forty miles to the west. Krakow is a medieval museum piece on the broad and long Vistula River. Am heading to the site of the Krakow-Plascow slave camp: where Schindler's List is sited. Also visiting Schindler's factory here in town. Nothing said to be left of the camp but plaques. My driver worked for the Spielberg movie company in the spring of 1992. His name is Richard, and he remembers Spielberg affectionately as "crazy guy." Later today out to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a ceremony with Malcolm Hoenlein and the March of the Living officials. The march is tomorrow, May 2. Also, today Krakow is celebrating the beatification of the former Archbishop of Krakow: John Paul II. Old city is hopping with events. Heard a Bach/Beethoven choral concert in the 14th Century brick Gothic St. Mary's Basilica. Broadcasting Sunday night and Monday night from the banks of the Vistula opposite thousand-year-old Wawel Castle and its dragon bones.  History does not cease in its ironies: The Nazi devils who massacred the Krakow Jews were then smashed back by the Soviet devils who followed the liberation of Krakow with another slave state ruled from Stalin's insane desk and fifty years of the Politburo thugocracy; and then the Kremlin failed state was cancelled by the courage of the Poles who rose up around the celebrated figure of the Archbishop of Krakow, who became John Paul II, who is beatified today.  German and Russian and Czech tourists most enjoy Krakow.  Faraway USA, from here, looks to be the wonder of the "citty on the hill" that keeps the new devils (Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Beijing) at bay.  Modern history (the Romans till now) is a warren of contests that so far has repeated the happy lesson that love will out and the availability of a strong-armed lover of liberty is now and again most practical.