Scary Dark Skinned President

The wingers have to take a back seat to the most frightened of losing their constituency this week. al-Qaeda is even more afraid that good sense and good behavior by President Obama will rot the insides out of their appeal.

Fundamentalism has a lot to lose when our president succeeds; it shows all the weaknesses in their hate spiels.

A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.

A day earlier, the militant network's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama's 'polished words' when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.

For some, al Qaeda's concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.

"Zawahri is right to be worried," said Edwin Bakker, a senior research fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute in the Hague.

"Al Qaeda partly lives on anti-Americanism and the 'war on terror'. Now Bush has gone and been replaced by a guy who's second name is Hussein. And they fear his speech really is going to have a positive effect."

Success is a terrible thing to waste. Traveling to other countries, President Obama has given a great boost to the lagging image of this country. Pursuing policies that transfer out the cowboy movie irascibility, that bring on the capacity to understand and sympathize with other cultures, has threatened the right wing of this country and of the other enemies of our success.

Good job, keep it coming, Mr. President


(With thanks to Dan Froomkin, who points out that the president does have a lot of accumulated wingnut offenses to apologize for.)