Two questions about the AP's laughingly pathetic "Bin Ladin's Criticism of Obama a Sign He Is Worried" headline:

(1) Is the headline more or less obnoxious than their previous "Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisiveness" headline?

(2) Is the headline more or less embarrassing by virtue of how it's apparently a shameless transcription of months-old State Department boilerplate:

"We have heard it. I think that is just another propaganda effort", said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack on Wednesday... McCormack said Wednesday that Bin Laden's criticism of Muslim clerics, Israel, the United States, and president-elect Barrack Obama in his latest message reflects his "isolation" caused by the U.S.-led efforts to capture him.

Since this was a day before president-elect Obama became President Obama, maybe "Bin Laden is panicking" has always been State's official position. But that begs the question of why CNN's 2004 subheading "Bin Laden criticizes Bush" was followed by three paragraphs about My Pet Goat and a fourth paragraph on Bin Laden's "gold robe with a white headdress and white cloak."

It also doesn't answer why the Boston Globe choose to surround their "bin Laden criticizes Bush" section with statements like "reading calmly into the camera, looking older but relatively healthy, Bin Laden..." Or why the CBS had this extensive anti-Bush propaganda a few paragraphs above a description of how Kerry is committed to actually getting the terrorists:

The tape, released just a few days before the U.S. presidential election, showed bin Laden comparing the Bush administration to "corrupt" Arab governments... "We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden added. Bin Laden criticized Bush sharply, saying that the president is "still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened" on Sept. 11, 2001.

Incidentally, Google's new news timeline makes it easy to search for very specific phrases within very specific media. It's one thing to merely remember that the MSM spent half a decade trying kneecaping Bush. It's quite another to find them using the exact same phrases they were using in 2004, except now as homages to The One.

References and previously after the jump...