Congress – Page 56 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 11, 2015

The Freedom (!) Caucus wants things its way. They didn’t want Boehner as Speaker, and Rep. McCarthy either jumped, or was pushed off the platform when his turn to be Speaker arrived.

The Freedom (!) Caucus intends to block both an increase in the debt ceiling and virtually all fiscal appropriations as a way of reigning in the power of our mad usurper, Barack Obama. But, they are nominally Republicans and Republicans are in the majority in the House and Senate. The most important responsibility of the majority in Congress is to raise the money we need to operate the government, and to then figure out how to spend that money.

This is the appropriations process.

One of the advantages of controlling the appropriations process is that you get to add money to the budget to keep the A-10 aircraft, or rebuild a crumbling bridge, or to subtract money from programs you think are immoral, like Planned Parenthood.

But, with today’s fractious Republican Party, no one will get elected Speaker without doing one of two things: Either they promise NOT to pass the appropriations bills, or raise the debt ceiling; or they have to ask for the Democrats’ help in getting the votes they need to avoid a government shutdown.

Whenever John Boehner tried to pass spending bills using just Republican votes, he failed. So he then went to Nancy Pelosi and asked her to get some Democrats to vote to keep the government open, and the Democrats supplied the votes. But, the Freedom (!) Caucus is done with Republicans who do not demonstrate the right level of ideological purity, so they will search for a Speaker who will make a show of not passing appropriations bills, while they wait (and hope) that the Democrats cave in to their demands, like defunding Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act.

The Nobel Prize for small particles was awarded, but the GOP is still experimenting:

This week was the first time a Nobel Peace Prize Winner (Obama) bombed another Noble Peace Prize Winner, Medcin Sans Frontières. And you thought it would be Kissinger!

A week with three more mass shootings. How much longer America?

And the mess in Syria gets messier:

The Editorial in the NY Times on Saturday hit the nail on the head:

The Obama administration’s $500 million initiative to train and arm so-called moderate rebels to take on the Islamic State never seemed promising when it was rolled out last year. Having acknowledged that this plan has failed — largely because Syrian opposition groups are more interested in taking on President Bashar al-Assad — the White House on Friday unveiled a plan that is even more incoherent and fraught with risk.

The Pentagon will stop putting rebel fighters through training in neighboring countries, a program that was designed to ensure that fighters were properly vetted before they could get their hands on American weapons and ammunition. The new plan will simply funnel weapons through rebel leaders who are already in the fight and appear to be making some headway.

The initial plan was dubious. The new one is hallucinatory, and it is being rolled out as the war enters a more perilous phase now that Russia has significantly stepped up its military support of Mr. Assad’s forces.

We have no strategy for Syria, and never have had one. Obama was hoodwinked by the Saudis, the Gulf States and our domestic neo-cons into supporting the Free Syrian Army option, followed by the “moderate” Islamist option.

Now, the strategy is to just flood the zone with arms. This by a guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Pathetic.

Hillary?

An important survey by Pew released this week says that Republicans are looking for “New Ideas”: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Since March, the share of all registered voters who say it is more important for a presidential candidate to have “new ideas and a different approach” has surged – with virtually all of the increase coming among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Today, by more than two-to-one (65% to 29%), Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say it is more important that a candidate have new ideas than “experience and a proven record.”

(The survey was conducted on Sept. 22-27 among 1,502 adults, including 1,136 registered voters.)

Pew reports that Democrats have less interest in new ideas: 50% say it is more important for a candidate to have experience and a proven record, while 42% view new ideas and a different approach as more important. This is little changed from March (46% experience, 49% new ideas).

And Pew reports that Hillary has a bigger lead over Sanders than other polls show. Their poll includes Biden:

This is a very different result from other polls which tend to show Sanders just a few points behind Clinton, (at least in New Hampshire) and which say that Biden hurts Clinton enough to open a path to the nomination for Sanders, should Biden enter the race.

But despite the Pew results, many Democrats think 2016 looks grim. Here is the Denver Post reporting that Colorado’s Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper used those exact words:

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday became the latest Hillary Clinton supporter to express doubt about her candidacy for president, telling a Denver audience that the 2016 election is ‘kind of grim, to be blunt’.

The Denver Post also quoted former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm, who (speaking about the email issue) said he believes:

There’s a one in three chance that if something worse does happen, that will cost her the nomination.

From 30,000 feet, the presidential race includes Hillary, a person many people don’t trust, who seems to lack the vision thing, and Bernie Sanders, who self-describes as a democratic socialist when he’s merely an FDR Democrat.

It just shows how ingrained the memes of the right are in our society, when a New Deal Democrat honestly believes that he is a Democratic Socialist.

Bernie should call himself an FDR Democrat, since he has to deal with corporate media in order to win. The Democratic Socialist label easily morphs into socialist, and then on to Marxist by our media elite. This means that intellectually lazy voters will misunderstand what Sanders is really about. Better for him to conflate his candidacy with a period of American economic recovery than for him to get twisted by the media echo chamber into a second coming of Lenin, or a Jewish Fidel.

And right now, Pew says that the Republican voters are more engaged in the process:

This shows that Dems are about as engaged as they were when Barak Obama was running against Hillary for the nomination, but Republican engagement has increased steadily since 2007.

Considering that the Democratic base seems mostly on auto pilot, it could be a lot worse, particularly since the Democratic National Committee is headed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who gave us a Republican House and Senate.

The key question is which candidate can keep the Obama coalition together. Today, it seems to be Hillary:

• If Bernie is the candidate, money is going to be a huge problem and not just for him. How does the DNC raise money? How do other Democratic candidates raise money with Bernie running against the big money donors? It’s all well and good to rail against the campaign financing laws, but Senate and Congressional candidates have to raise money too.
• Can the Dems win the White House AND the Senate on $30 individual donations?

If Hillary is the candidate, the issue will be Hillary making the case that she won’t preside over a third Obama term. Or, the central issue in Hillary’s candidacy could be her husband Bill, and a third Clinton term.

The assumption by Democrats in the primary contests should be that Republicans will still control the House. Even with a Democratic win, neither Hillary nor Sanders would be able to get much of a domestic agenda passed.

Either way, 2016 will be a repeat, more or less, of 2012, with the significant addition of Iran, Russia, and ISIS on the foreign policy front. That may make 2016 more of a balanced issue election.

All Dems can reasonably expect from a presidential win in 2016 is Supreme Court nominations, holding on to the Obama gains, and pushing the country to return towards more economic equality than in the years since 2008.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 4, 2015

Quite the week. Another mass shooting, Kim Davis said she met the Pope, Russia drops bombs in Syria, and we dodge another government shut-down.

The shooting in Oregon was a huge tragedy, but the Right says the shooter was a member of a “well-regulated militia”, so there is nothing we can do:

When He heard about the Kim Davis meeting, God tweeted:

Despite the hype by Ms. Davis’ camp, the Vatican said:

The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects…

We avoided the shut-down, but expect to see it again in December:

Can cooler heads prevail in the GOP? That’s a no-Boehner:

The foreign policy conversation in the US remains fixed on the idea that we can dictate terms to whomever we want, where ever we want, on whatever timetable we want. And we love, love the idea of regime change:

With the Planned Parenthood hearings, the GOP made its real position clear:

The “System” of Prisons

Politicians throw the term “reform” around all the time, and it usually means nothing. One problem that most agree requires reform is the US prison system. VICE did a fantastic job with their report, “Fixing the System,” which aired on HBO, about America’s broken criminal justice system. You can see it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTL_3WL5gfw

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.

In July, VICE followed Mr. Obama to the El Reno Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, and recorded the first time a presently serving president sat down with a bunch of inmates at a prison. He talked about their families, how they got into crime, why they copped a plea, what kind of businesses they’d like to start, how they might get financing to start those businesses, what kind of responsibilities they have as parents and to their communities, the reasons for and against the War on Drugs, and the impact of the cycle of mass incarceration on communities of color.

Perhaps a little background. The US has 2.2 million prison inmates. China is second with 1.5 million, and Russia third with 874,000. According to PrisonPolicy.org, The US incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country. And Vox reports that 16 US states have more people in prisons than in college housing!

The HBO show says that this era of mass incarceration came about due to the war on drugs which focused on crack cocaine, meaning that many nonviolent people of color wound up in prison. Next, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-the-key culture, with long, destructive prison terms.

Well, leave it to David Brooks to take exception yesterday to the common view that prison reform would be a net positive for American society:

The drug war is not even close to being the primary driver behind the sharp rise in incarceration. About 90% of America’s prisoners are held in state institutions. Only 17% of these inmates are in for a drug-related offense, or less than one in five.

See what he did there? Brooks reframed the discussion to state prisons. Sadly, on the federal level, 48% were in prison for drug crimes, according to Department of Justice statistics. Brooks also misunderstands that the Federal sentencing minimums do not necessarily apply in state courts. He is incorrect that states hold 90% of prisoners. They hold 64%, or 1.4 million of the 2.2 million prisoners. They do hold the vast majority of violent offenders, with 725,000 (53%) jailed for violent offenses. Brooks wanders around and at the end, lands in his typically happy place:

Lifting the spirits of inmates, as described in the outstanding Atlantic online video “Angola for Life,” can also help. But the fundamental situation won’t be altered without a comprehensive surge, unless we flood the zone with economic, familial, psychological and social repair.

Well, Mr. Brooks, if you wanted to make sure that nothing changed, you would recommend waiting for an entire cluster of problems to be addressed, not one of which is remotely likely to happen. He doesn’t support any solutions. And he studiously avoids the stacked deck that makes the prison population so black.

He also missed the other elephant in the room. You can’t escape the parallel between mass incarceration and the growth of for-profit prisons. These corporations have contracts that require that cities and states provide them sufficient prisoners to meet an agreed number, or pay the prison in cash.

This incentivizes putting people behind bars, and should have nothing to do with free market capitalism. This is a policy error that must be corrected.

Two final points:

• Crime flourishes in areas where economic abandonment has produced poor schools and poor prospects. Yet Brooks has argued in the past that the minimum wage should not be raised, that welfare is wasted on moochers, and that the social safety net is too expensive to maintain.
• The plea-bargain system is another culprit. Somewhere in the 1970s, prosecutors figured out an easier way. Threaten an accused with massive charges and punishments, and then propose a plea bargain to a lesser charge. Because people are risk-averse, and/or do not have the money to hire the lawyers to fight the worst charges, they accept the plea bargain and end up in jail, without a trial. This is why it’s always important (if you can do so) to get in contact with a firm such as Mark Rees Law and similar alternatives to ensure you get a fair trial when it comes to your court date.

Conservatives like to cite the number of one-parent households and how the lack of both parents around makes it more likely that a child from a poor area will become a criminal. Mr. Brooks seems to think that releasing non-violent drug offenders from prison will not have much effect on society. But many prisoners are parents.

How many children could have a parent back with them, and maybe avoid incarceration themselves?

See the documentary. Reform the system!

Monday Wake Up Call – September 28, 2015

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right were in South Hero VT for the weekend. Here is a pic just after sunset, looking west towards Plattsburg NY. There is little fall color in Northern Vermont yet:

A few thoughts about Boehner’s resignation. Boehner faced a choice between a coup and a shutdown. That led him to make a deal with the Teahadists: If he stepped down as Speaker, they would vote for a “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR) and avoid a government shutdown. Several members of the Freedom Caucus, the conservative group that led the revolt against Boehner’s leadership, said they will now support the spending bill without demands that it include language to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. Alex Pareene summed up the Boehner era:

It was not a distinguished tenure. His meager accomplishments came in spite of himself and to the great consternation of his Republican colleagues. He pinballed from one pathetic humiliation, usually at the hands of his own caucus, to the next. The only reason Boehner remained speaker for as long as he did—to his eternal regret, it is clear—is because his bitterest opponents were too stupid to figure out how to oust him, and his likeliest replacements never wanted the job.

So, at least as of the time this is written, the corporate wing of the GOP will get their clean funding bill (and retain a shot at the Presidency next year), at the same time, the Teahadists are allowed a “victory” by getting rid of Boehner. The corporate wing will insert another one of their guys in the Speaker position and a year down the road, Boehner is out from under the lobbyist rules, and goes on to a job paying 10 times of his current salary.

But we’ve got unfinished business, like the transportation bill, the Debt Ceiling and the Omnibus Spending Bill to keep government functioning into next year. These will be left for the next Speaker.

The GOP establishment looks to be fragmenting into two parts. They have the majority, but they have lost Eric Cantor, their rain-maker. Boehner, another rainmaker and cat-herder, is now gone. McConnell has now lost the air support he used to enjoy from the House. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ), a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may need to be the next head on the chopping block, particularly for his unwillingness to get rid of the Senate filibuster. From Salmon:

We made a lot of promises to the American people, that if we took the Senate, that we would do certain things and those things have not been accomplished…A lot of the problems we are engaged in is because the Senate doesn’t take any action on anything and there’s nothing that any presidential candidate on our side says that will ever be realized as long as the modern-day filibuster is enacted in the way it is today.

The firebrands in the House say that Sen. Ted Cruz is the defacto leader of the party. The Presidential primaries might determine a different leader, but the establishment wing of the GOP doesn’t have the control it used to have.

But, all is good in the cesspool. So, let’s try to wake up both John Boehner and the Freedom Caucus. Here are The Rolling Stones with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, recorded live at the Max in October 1990 and released in 1991:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 20, 2015

Pope Francis, Russia’s President Putin and China’s President Xi walk into a bar…Well, it won’t be that type of week exactly, but all will be in the US over the next few days. There will be summits and mini-summits, and a few hallway meetings between them and individually, with Mr. Obama. But the game-changer is likely to be Pope Francis, who is bringing his message about Mr. Market, and how Mr. Market isn’t working for the average Joe. In fact, many Republicans are suspicious of the Pope:

Rep. Paul Gosar, (R-AZ) says he’s boycotting Pope Francis’ appearance before Congress. He said:

If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so on his personal time.

Rep. Gosar, who has received campaign contributions of $12,500 from oil and gas companies and $28,850 from electric utilities, doesn’t believe in climate change. Apparently, he would rather the Pope devotes his speech to abortion, Planned Parenthood, and to the threatened religious liberties of County Clerks.

This Pope’s message causes discomfort for people on both sides of the aisle. Conservative Catholics used to welcome Francis’ predecessors ecstatically, and with open arms, but that was in the old days, when Popes were Popes:

Even when in the Reagan Library, today’s GOP candidates can’t duplicate St. Ronnie’s message:

The GOP debate brought the smell of roasted pig:

Views now differ on Paradise:

Union-Busting at Pantex

Never heard of Pantex? It is the nation’s only nuclear weapons plant. The full name of the company is Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Pantex. CNS is a combination of a who’s who of major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Booz Allen Hamilton. CNS took over Pantex in March, 2014.

The company assembles, disassembles, and tests nuclear weapon components for the US military. They also manage the storage and surveillance of plutonium pits. (Plutonium Pits? In Texas?)

Pantex is a union shop, and on August 29, more than 1,100 workers went on strike over CNS Pantex’ demand for health care concessions. CNS is also seeking the elimination of defined benefit pensions for new union members. In a statement, Council President Clarence Rashada said:

Wages are not the issue. Benefits, sick leave, medical coverage, prescription drugs, those are the issues.

Since work at Pantex involves exposure to dangerous chemicals and substances, the union is pushing back hard against CNS who is also seeking to shift greater health care costs onto its retirees.

The strike is the first in 45 years at Pantex, and it comes 18 months after CNS took over.

Let’s remember that Texas is a right-to-work state, so the union left one entry gate to Pantex free of picketers to allow managers and other employees to enter the plant without any commotion.

This is right up Scott Walker’s alley. The union-busting Republican governor of Wisconsin is on the campaign trail talking about preventing federal workers from collectively bargaining, creating a national right-to-work law and eliminating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

And the Pantex union-busting is abetted by the Department of Energy (DOE). The union blames the DOE, arguing that a DOE rule capping worker benefits has put CNS and Pantex employees in untenable positions. By rule, CNS can’t offer employee benefits that would exceed the industry average by 5%. However, the industry baseline also includes manufacturers of cell phones and car parts, so the DOE is comparing labor costs on consumer goods and nuclear weapons, probably an Apple™ to warheads comparison.

Effectively shutting down Pantex over a labor rule that only affects 10% of DOE contractors also speaks volumes about leadership and priorities at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which supervises Pantex and CNS.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reports that in the run-up to the government’s award of the Pantex contract to CNS, CNS claimed it could save taxpayers over $3 billion by cutting redundancies and consolidating management, but NNSA never validated the claim. POGO quotes from a GAO report about the NNSA’s evaluation of the CNS bid:

Did not clearly or completely describe expected benefits and costs…lacked key analyses and assumptions for cost savings estimates…[and] was also missing a description of the unquantified benefits CNS management might or might not offer.

So, maybe it’s a matter of “screw the government” by contractors big and experienced enough to know better. POGO says a series of recent reports have found that NNSA is skimping on upkeep for old buildings, using obsolete fire safety equipment at weapons sites, and relying on broken security sensors to protect uranium stockpiles.

CNS also runs the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge TN, former home of the Manhattan Project. Y-12’s primary mission today is providing secure storage of nuclear material for both the US and other governments. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls Y-12 a “Poster child for a dysfunctional nuclear weapons complex”, noting that although Y-12 has not produced weapons for 25 years, its annual budgets have increased by nearly 50% since 1997, to more than $1 billion a year.

POGO reported that the NNSA spent $50 million on new security systems at Y-12 but couldn’t find a way to get security guards and security sensors working in sync. The overhaul was a result of a July 2012 incident in which a then-82-year-old nun and two others broke into Y-12 to protest the production of nuclear weapons. They made it into the building where most of the US stockpile of highly enriched uranium is stored. The DOE Inspector General found:

Troubling displays of ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical security equipment, over reliance on compensatory measures, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management.

Follow-on security tests found that the guard force at Y-12 was cheating on evaluations.

You would think that if there’s one place where this cutting corners on safety and security would not be tolerated, it’s with nuclear weapons. CNS has demonstrated in its Y-12 and Pantex situations that competent nuclear weapons handling and security at nuclear weapons facilities should be governmental functions.

They are far too important to be left to a private contractor’s business decision.

9-11-2001

It is now 14 years since this happened:

South Tower falls: 9:59am September 11, 2001

And 14 years on, what have we learned? In Islam, there is an idea that you should deal with your local problems first, and not worry about the far enemy. But, bin Laden believed that in his world, you could not do that. Revolution at home was almost impossible because of the far enemy, the US. As long as the US was the superpower, Islamic revolutionary success would be limited because the US could cripple your economy via sanctions, and it had the military might to attack you with overwhelming force.

Bin Laden’s argument was that the US had to be defeated, at least as regards its ability to project power in the ME. He thought that the evils being done by local regimes (such as Iraq’s Hussein, or Egypt’s Mubarak) could not be ended by simply fighting the local regime, but that the far regime that was their protector, must also be defeated.

Whatever you think of bin Laden, his most powerful point to those in the ME was that the US was responsible both for the suffering the US caused directly through sanctions, and the suffering caused indirectly, by keeping Middle Eastern dictators in power.

To that, bin Laden added a decisive idea: Attack the US.

Fourteen years later, we remain in a quagmire. Thanks a heap, Osama bin Laden. With a small number of supporters, less than $500,000, and 19 suicidal hijackers, most of them Saudis, you pulled off your geopolitical magic trick. On this 14th anniversary, Tom Englehardt asks a few questions:

• Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that the US military has been unable to extricate itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, its two major wars of this century?
• Fourteen years later, don’t you find it improbable that Washington’s post-9/11 policies in the Middle East helped lead to the establishment of the Islamic State’s “Caliphate” in parts of Iraq and Syria and to a movement of almost unparalleled extremism that has successfully “franchised” itself out from Libya to Nigeria to Afghanistan?
• If, on September 12, 2001, you had predicted such a possibility, who wouldn’t have thought you mad?

This brings us to the 2016 presidential election. Sarah Palin on CNN last Sunday, said she’d “rather have a tough president than one who can win at trivial pursuit.” As Ed Kilgore wrote:

By saying that she prefers a “tough” president like Donald Trump, Palin is endorsing his bullying Alpha-male routine against all those emasculated men who know stuff.

So, more of the same from the GOP.

To be fair, “knowing stuff” is a necessary, but insufficient criterion. Obviously, Trump doesn’t seem to have the “necessary” part down just yet. Republicans try to convince us that the challenges we face in the world are simple, and we must be realists, and aggressively go after what we want. It all comes down to “good vs evil.” For Reagan, it was the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. And for George W. Bush, it was the “axis of evil” made up of Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Sadly, we live in an extremely complex world, and ignorance of its complexity is dangerous. Remember in 2006, there were reports that George W. Bush was unaware of the difference between Shia and Sunni as late as two months before the Iraq invasion. Combine that with Cheney’s Exceptionalist ideology, (which remained on display this week), and we all paid a huge price for that ignorance.

The reality is that if tough talk is divorced from knowledge, you do dumb things…like start dumb wars that diminish our standing in the world – and that cost us terribly in lives and money.

The GOP considers diplomacy, compromise, or nonviolent remedies to be weak and ineffective. It never occurs to them that knowledge, perspective and persistence are also forms of strength.

We should be very clear that the presidency is no place for bullies. And rather than signifying weakness, traits like compassion, thoughtfulness and collaboration are exactly the kind of thing we need in our leader.

We need to re-learn how to exist in in an ambiguous world without shutting down, or being ineffectual. Lately when things get tough, we strut, shorten our attention spans, prefer form over substance and pray to god that it all works out…we have all become George W. Bush!

Let’s remember the 9/11 heroes and victims.

But let’s stop listening to those who pander to our fears.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 30, 2015

That light from the city on the hill isn’t a beacon. It’s the flash of gun fire.

The snuff video of two TV journalists this week got everyone talking about gun ownership and gun control for the umpteenth time. Phys.org pointed out that despite the fact the US ranks in the middle among other industrialized countries in virtually every form of crime, and only has 5% of the world’s population, we have had 31% of the mass shootings since 1966.

By cutting off federal funding for research and stymieing data collection and sharing, the NRA has tried to do to the study of gun violence what climate deniers have done to the science of global warming. Mother Jones had a chart for you to consider:

Gun ownership is a part of our culture. We could have a conversation about why Americans need so many guns, but the current level of gun ownership is not going away. And there is a large disconnect between the current gun control proposals and the facts in the Virginia case. The TV killer wouldn’t have failed any test, either now in place, or contemplated under the new proposals.

A simple solution to the problem of gun deaths would be to require gun owners to have liability insurance for any gun that they buy. Mr. Market (beloved by the right) would then come up with solutions to keep that liability insurance costs low enough that people could own their guns, but fewer third-party deaths and injuries would occur, and there would be compensation for victims. You could still carry guns, but you would have to be able to produce proof of insurance. Like driving a car.

On to cartoons. The gun culture has a new Caliph:

New media and old media loved talking about the killings, live on your TV:

Hillary’s week didn’t improve, so she got help:

I’m you from 2015, Hillary. I’ve come back to help you set up your e-mail.

Biden called in a few favors:

Trump’s week was fine. Republicans? Not so much:

China’s stock market fell:

Monday Wake Up Call – August 24, 2015

There was a curious story in the NYT on Saturday. They quote former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak in a new biography revealing that Israel came close to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The biographers spoke on Israeli television, saying that despite Barak’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s desire to do so, the Israeli military refused.

Recorded interview excerpts between Barak and the biographers were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Mr. Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Mr. Barak later confirmed that the recordings were authentic, but said he had provided the information on background to Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, “Barak: The Wars of My Life,” came out this week in Hebrew.

The interviews confirmed a longstanding view that Israel’s security chiefs held back the political leadership, particularly in 2010. In 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint US-Israel military exercise and visit by Leon Panetta, US defense secretary. Barak said he recalled “demanding” to postpone the joint military exercise. The NYT quotes Barak:

You ask, you demand that America respect your sovereignty to make a decision that you want to do that, even if America is opposed to that and it is against its interests…

The news is that the civilian leadership really wanted to start a war with Iran but first, the military leaders demurred, and then so did the Obama Administration. This confirms that the past 7 years have not been all Israeli bluster intended to play bad cop to our good cop. The bad news is that the administration has known for years that Netanyahu and his administration are off their collective rockers, yet Congress continues to send Israel weapons and billions of dollars every year.

The sad part is that there isn’t anything really new here. It has been well documented previously. Juan Cole reported in 2011 that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Netanyahu appears to have forced out Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli spying agency Mossad… Dagan went on to accuse Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, of grossly exaggerating the threat from Iran, calling a [potential] strike on that country “stupid idea that offers no advantage.”

In 2012, apparently Obama stood firm in opposition to an Iran strike, since Israel didn’t have the capability to really damage Iran’s nuclear facilities and needed support from USAF in the form of B-52s and bunker buster bombs. Mr. Obama later compensated Israel for standing down by providing them with the bunker busters.

Here’s a thought worth polishing and spreading: That the unspoken concern of the US and the world is not so much that a nuclear armed Iran might someday attack Israel and further destabilize the ME, but that a nuclear armed Israel is now ready, able, and rehearsing their plans to attack Iran. Imagine for a moment the hysteria in Congress if the headline of this story was reversed: “Khomeini was on the verge of attacking Israel 3 times”.

It’s time to cut Israel loose, to eliminate the undue influence this nation has on American foreign policy.

So, wake up Congress Critters, modeling Netanyahu’s foreign policy behaviors will lead America to failure. To help with the wake-up, here is a photo that shows those in Congress just another example of life in the food chain:

(H/T Naked Capitalism)

Your Monday Hot Links:

This is how Bernie Sanders could win. OK it’s a long shot, but FiveThirtyEight says that if Hillary implodes, Sanders vs. Biden could be highly competitive. Clinton won’t drop out before the primaries and a Biden run could split the establishment vote, giving Sanders an opening.

Billionaires keep flocking to architect Robert A.M. Stern’s newest limestone creation at 220 Central Park South. Next is billionaire hedge funder Ken Griffin, who we mentioned yesterday. Griffin’s new pad could cost him anywhere between $30 million and $160 million, which is really just chump change for the hedge funder who reportedly nets $2.2 million a day, and that’s after taxes!

In a related story in the Onion, a study finds it is easier than ever for American dollars to join the 1%.

First wolf pack found in California in nearly a century. On Aug. 9, the cameras photographed two separate black-furred wolves, believed to be adults. Five black wolf pups were photographed in the same spot. It was clearly a pack.

Doctors may have found a way to override the body’s evolutionary habit of storing fat with a discovery of a master switch for the body’s metabolism. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School discovered a new genetic pathway that controls human metabolism by prompting fat cells to store or burn away fat.

Grading Carly Fiorina’s tenure at HP. By a Silicon Valley journalist.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Congress