The morning muezzin

Cracked the blinds first thing this morning to see that we'd declared war on Shabab.

Not exactly war, as the New York Times put it, but a series of invasions the Obama administration justifies through the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or A.U.M.F. enacted by Congress after the September 11, 2001 attacks, giving the executive branch unprecedented leeway to our executive branch of government to attack foreign forces deemed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda and therefore a threat to our national security.

So if it isn't war--by the way, an American air strike killed 150 people in Somalia deemed to be "Low level Shabab fighters preparing to attack peacekeeping forces"--then what is it? Only the president and the Pentagon know for sure, and even the Pentagon expresses some ambiguity about the situation.

How do people like Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley and Mitch McConnell get elected? Not only elected once, but elected over and over and over. Who would follow Obama on Twitter and expect anything other than propaganda, entertaining perhaps but propaganda nonetheless?

I do not understand.