¿El Spanglish Del Alcalde Bloomberg Es Muy Cómico, No?

Yeah, that's pretty bad. The first New York politician I can remember speaking Spanish was Nelson Rockefeller, who used to shout out greetings "to all my Puertoricanous amigos." Transparently ridiculous pandering, but, at least Rocky really did speak Spanish.



The inevitable parody Twitter account is @ElBloombito, where the not-so-fluent Alcalde puts out public service announcements like this one:

Alerto: If usted see el somethingador por favor to say somethingador. Los terroristeros estan mucho malo! Que vigilance!

Funny thing is, when I lived in Puerto Rico I often overheard people speaking almost exactly like that. This was how a Puerto Rican U.S. Army sergeant informed another Puerto Rican that the rear gate of Fort Buchanan is closed on weekends: "el rear gate esta cerrado por los weekends."



El Bloombito might not be so much of a parody after all.

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Obama's Uncle Omar Arrested; Next Step, Amnesty Or Asylum?

Another of President Obama's Kenyan relatives has been arrested in Massachusetts after living there illegally for decades. First it was Obama's Aunt Zeituni, who defied multiple deportation orders for several years until Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro granted her asylum and legal residency in May 2010. Now, it's Obama's Uncle Omar, who got busted for drunk driving in Framingham last week and is being held without bail on an old federal immigration warrant.

An illegal immigrant from Kenya busted for drunken driving after nearly striking a cop car in Framingham is the uncle of President Obama, the Herald has learned.



Obama Onyango told cops he wanted to “call the White House” after he was nabbed for OUI Aug. 24 after nearly plowing his SUV into a police cruiser. He was arraigned Thursday and was ordered held without bail because he was wanted on a federal immigration warrant, officials said.



Mike Rogers, a spokesman for Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, who is representing Onyango, confirmed that the 67-year-old is the president’s uncle. Wong is the same lawyer who represented the president’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, in her fight to win asylum last year.



Reached at her apartment in a South Boston public housing complex today, Zeituni Onyango said of her brother’s arrest: “Why don’t you go to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washingon, D.C. and ask your president? Not me.” She then hung up on a reporter.

[TSB note: That is an excellent idea. I will wait for the White House press corps to ask the President's spokesman about Uncle Omar.]

The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.



Zeituni and Obama Onyango are brother and sister, Rogers told the Herald today.



The two are the children of the president’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, and his third wife, Sarah, according to the London Times.



The Times also reported that Obama Onyango is the man referred to as “Uncle Omar” in the president’s 1995 book, “Dreams from My Father.” In the book, President Obama writes about his Uncle Omar as “the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and had never come back.”



Sarah Obama is called “granny” by the president because she raised his father, Barack Obama Sr., whose mother was Hussein Obama’s second wife, Akumu, the Times reported.

Somehow, I don't feel up to doing the mental math involved in understanding that family tree. First, second, and third wives ... aunts and uncles however many times removed ... half (quarter?) brothers and sisters ... who knows about the cousins? It's more than a simple monogamist like me can comprehend.



But one thing I do understand. There is no chance, no chance at all, that Uncle Omar will ever come back from America.

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Libya: "What If It Turned Out Good?"

I second The War Nerd in his summing up of the Libyan revolt:

Well, that was a quick takedown. One of the strange things about Libya was the pacing. It needed a good editor, because it started fast, then bogged down, and then just when everybody’d given up and gone to get some caramel corn, the credits started rolling.



--snip --



So I’m gonna say here: Just maybe, the whole thing ended pretty well. Not that expensive, money or lives; gotta be better for the Libyans if anybody actually cares about them; can’t see any risk for the big picture—only 6 million Libyans to start with, for God’s sake, and I don’t see the Berber going on a global jihad any time soon. Jeez, what a thought: What if it turned out good?

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Your Tax Dollars At Work In Waziristan

Al-Qaeda's new Number 2 leader, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been struck off the AQ organization chart as the result of a drone strike in Northwest Pakistan, the WaPo reports.

Rahman was seen as a high-priority target in the CIA drone campaign at a time when U.S. officials have described al-Qaeda as near collapse and have said that a small set of successive blows could all but extinguish the organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.



Last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said a strategic defeat of al-Qaeda was “within reach” and called for continued efforts to hammer the group’s weakened leadership with a series of attacks.

So, we've now killed AQ's Number 1, and its Number 2, and - of course - a great many of its Number 3s. When does the organization collapse?



Maybe it doesn't collapse. Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, thinks AQ has already been institutionalized to such a degree that it will survive leadership changes. See his essay on just that question, which was published in The National Interest three days ago:

Being a highly talented combination of seventh-century believer and twenty-first-century CEO, bin Laden built, in al-Qaeda, an absolutely unique Muslim organization: multiethnic, multilingual, organizationally sound and resilient, religiously tolerant and militarily effective. We will see in the next few years if bin Laden was the indispensable glue that kept al-Qaeda together or if his skill, his leadership and its nearly twenty-five years of being institutionalized as an organization created a survivable entity ... My own bet is that al-Qaeda will survive, as it did after near economic ruin in Sudan (1994–96); after the pounding it took from the U.S.-NATO-Pakistan coalition (2001–02); and after the U.S. military helpfully killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq (2006), whose indiscriminate targeting of Muslims almost pushed al-Qaeda to the brink of defeat.

There are plenty more AQ leaders where al-Rahman came from. And, really, what are a few drone strikes compared to all that AQ has already survived?

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Turning Full Circle

The rebel leader has just issued an inspiring Communique Number One over Libyan radio:

"People of Libya! In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration and your longing to strive towards these ends; listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all." -- 1 September 1969.

H/T to Opinio Juris, where you can find the full text of Qaddafi's first communique.



Years from now, someone will probably be ransacking National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil's compound and taking his gold-plated AKs as souvenirs.

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Qaddafi's Misty Watercolor Memories Of The Way They Were

I knew that Qaddafi was hopelessly smitten with ex-SecState Condoleezza Rice. See this post from 2009. He gave her presents, and gushed to Al Jazeera about his infatuation with her:

"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

Okay, we all loved Leezza. But that wasn't going to happen for him, so you would think that Qaddafi would forget her and move on. But, no.



Now that rebels have sacked Qaddafi's home and pawed through his photo albums, it turns out the poor fool has been carrying a torch for his Leezza, Leezza, Leezza all this time. Talk about misguided affection.



The thought of a lovestruck dictator mooning over photos of an old would-be girlfriend is simply embarassing.



As the Godfather would advise Qaddafi, "you can act like a man! (Slap!) Whatsa matter with you?"

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Best Campaign Attack Ad Of 2012, Available Now

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.” -- July 3, 2008, at a campaign event in Fargo, N.D.



President #44 has added a further $4 trillion in debt so far during his 2+ years in office.

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