The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

The House
and the Senate have both passed farm bills in the last few weeks. The New
York Times reported that the 608-page farm bill the House passed
was the first since 1973 not to
include a food stamp program.

The
216-to-208 vote reversed an earlier House defeat
of a broader version of the bill last month, but it left the food stamp
program on the side of the road. That program normally makes up about 80%
percent of the farm bill. It costs nearly $75 billion a year, and has been a
constant target for House conservatives who say it has grown too large.

About 47
million Americans receive food stamps.

During a debate in
the House Agricultural Committee over food stamps and farm subsidies, reports Gail
Collins, Stephen Fincher’s (R-TN) hackles were raised when Juan Vargas
(D-CA) quoted the bible while asking why his Republican colleagues wanted to
cut $30 billion in aid to hungry children and the elderly over the next 10
years. After all:

Rep. Fincher reacted
badly to Vargas’ comments and told a Memphis audience, “Man, I really got bent
out of shape. ” He then gave Vargas a bible quote of his own:

Perhaps
Rep. Fincher should do a little research first and find out how many of those
on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ARE working or have
been recently working and how low their income is and how little additional income
they receive as SNAP assistance. Then look at the spike in assistance as a
direct result of the recession and the projections for future enrollment decline as the
slow recovery continues.

Those
data are freely provided
by the government he supposedly helps govern.

More from Fincher: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist)

Mr. Fincher might
want to consult another part of the Bible, the part that says that he who is
without sin shall cast the first stone: Fincher is a farmer AND the recipient of more than $3.5 million in
federal agricultural subsidies – wages of sin, as he might put it, from
a thieving government that “stole” from us to give to him.

From
Jonathan Chait in New
York Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Does it get
any clearer than that?

In
the Fox News version of America, food stamp spending is not higher than in the
past because more people are poor and hungry after Wall Street’s shenanigans
brought on the Great Recession. Rather, food stamp use is up because the Obama
European Socialist Machine is deliberately trying to build a bigger, stronger,
government-supporting coalition.

This is the sort of conspiracy-inspired
thinking that leads to the incredible position many conservatives have now
taken, as Chait says, that:

The Tea-Party fellow-traveler,
Heritage Action for America, has run ads saying the purpose of the farm bill
Republicans defeated last week was to “bankroll President Obama’s food-stamp
agenda.” Perhaps it is no longer surprising that conservative Republicans
have positioned themselves to Obama’s left only when domestic spending (like
farm subsidies) benefits their constituencies.

Says Chait:

Finally, the
House bill also included a provision by Rep. Dan Benishek, (R-MI) that requires
additional economic and scientific analyses before a sweeping 2010 law to
improve the food safety system goes into effect. Food safety advocates say the Benishek
provision effectively halts implementation of the law. Nice work Republicans!

In passing their
version of the bill, House Republicans made it easier for Republicans in red
states to vote for a big government program that benefits
mostly-Republican states and interest groups, knowing that they weren’t also
voting for something that pays out to the (mostly-Democratic) poor as well.

Conservatism has
become merely constituent services for
the most reliable parts of the Republican base. The Wrongologist is
uncertain about what kind of conservative opposition would best serve the common
good, but almost any alternative would be preferable to a Republican Party that
doesn’t seem to care about the common
good at all.

Splitting
the bills the way the House has does have some merit: It makes the corporate farmers
stand or sink on their own merits, and it makes politicians who support these
sorts of crony deals defend them on their merits.

And,
by the same token, we should let the food stamp bill stand or sink on its own
merits also.

Finally,
please
quit calling these agri-business corporations “farmers.” These businesses that
collect millions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare are not farmers.

They
are welfare queens.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

For
65 years, the US government was barred by law from acting as a news outlet inside
America. It was restricted to providing news overseas, through the Voice of
America, Radio Free Europe and other outlets operated by the Broadcasting Board
of Governors (BBG), an independent federal
agency supervising all US government-supported, civilian international media.

The
law that prevented this was the Smith-Mundt act of 1948. Smith-Mundt was amended
numerous times over the years.  In 1972, Senator
J. William Fulbright (D-AR) authored one of the most significant amendments. Fulbright
was no friend of Voice Of America and Radio Free Europe and moved to restrict them from being used domestically,
saying they:

In 1985, Senator
Edward Zorinsky’s (D-NE) amendment blocked taxpayer access to materials of the
US Information Agency (USIA),
even by requests under the Freedom of Information Act. (The USIA was replaced by the
BBG in 1999). Zorinsky compared the USIA to an organ of Soviet propaganda
saying it should be kept out of America to distinguish the US “from
the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government
activity.”

Zorinsky
and Fulbright sold their amendments using a sensible argument: American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding
propaganda directed at American audiences.

In
May of 2012, the Wrongologist warned that Congress was considering an
amendment to Smith-Mundt that would eliminate the ban on domestic
dissemination of propaganda materials produced by the State Department and
the Pentagon. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was passed as part of
the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect on July 2.  

Now, John
Hudson of Foreign Policy reports that the
result is an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded
radio and TV programs for domestic US consumption: 

It started
with BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the US. The agency is trying to
reach Diaspora communities, such as St. Paul Minnesota’s large Somali expat community.

But if
anyone needs a reason for the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, we just saw a reminder. The Washington Post exposed a counter propaganda program by the Pentagon that
recommended posting comments on a US website run by a Somali expat with readers
opposing al-Shabaab,
the Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliate. From WaPo:

There are issues here
for every citizen to consider:

• There will be no real oversight
  of the people in our government who will put out this information

• There will be limited
  checks and balances

• No one will know if the
  information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false

The BBG of
course, has an alternative view, that the reform has a transparency benefit as
well. Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with
their tax dollars – greater transparency is a win-win for all involved.  

Maybe.

Hudson
reported on meeting with BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil, who insists BBG is not a
propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA present fair and
accurate news:

So goes
the thought bubble: Now that the BBG’s materials can be broadcasted by local
radio stations and TV networks, they won’t be a complete mystery to Americans. And
what are the chances that America winds up saying: “Some of this stuff is
really good?”

Few events speak
more clearly to the creeping fascism in American politics than the assertion
by Congress and the BBG, that allowing DoD and the State Department to offer us
government propaganda as news, “provides transparency”, or “lets Americans know
where their tax dollars are going”.

A final
point: Last year Wired
Magazine
reported that the Defense Department was trying to seek out “persuasion
campaign structures and influence operations” using social media like Twitter,
Facebook and Tumblr. They established the Social Media in Strategic
Communication (SMISC) program to learn about and exploit social media
techniques. SMISC is designed to quickly flag rumors and emerging themes on
social media, figure out who’s behind it and counter the message.

You can be sure that with
the new, improved, modernized Smith-Mundt, there will be much more of the same
from your government: More “fair and balanced”, more propaganda for domestic
consumption by an America that can no longer see through to the truth.

Soon, there will be “suggestions” to the corporate media to run BBG “content”.
Between license renewals, environmental impact statements for new
studios or antenna installations, access to lawmakers and the President
and press junket invites, if the government wants
stations to run their content, you can bet that the media will do it. Given media consolidation, only a few big companies need to be influenced in order to get the latest from VOA into the nightly
news.

Did anyone in
Congress ever read a book on
the Soviet Union during the Stalin period?  

You are watching more of our basic freedoms drain
away, and no one in the Main Stream Media covered it.

 

“This country has come to feel the same when
Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” –Will Rogers

What’s
Wrong Today:

In January
2012, the Wrongologist wrote about MERS:

Instead of
individual banks or lenders registering with counties each time a loan was sold
or re-sold, MERS handled the initial registration and then became the
“nominal” note-holder. Then, each time the note was passed on, MERS
would record the transaction in its computers — but no matter who the actual owner of the note
was, MERS remained the legally registered assignee of the note with the county.
Without MERS, the mortgage bubble
would not have been physically possible. By using MERS,
lenders/buyers of mortgages no longer had to document their transactions with
county clerks, or pay the courthouse registration and processing fees. And MERS
holds the liens on behalf of all the players in the game.

The Wrongologist
concluded:

Well, here’s
what’s next. Dave Dayden reports:

Although
the MERS system has been subject to many lawsuits throughout the country, initially
for the “Robo-signing” mess, according to this bill’s text, any document
arising from this repository would be legal on its face, pre-empting state and federal laws on foreclosure.

Rep. Jeb
Hensarling (R-TX), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced
the bill, called the “Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH)
Act” on July 11th. It’s the House Republican response to a series of
bills and initiatives to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and set a course
for the future of mortgage finance. Most of the bill deals with that: in Hensarling’s
vision, Fannie and Freddie should be dismantled within five years, and
private financial services firms take up the slack with virtually no government
guarantee.

But Title III
of the proposed PATH Act directs the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide
a charter for the National Mortgage Market Utility (NMMU). The utility would
create standard practices for origination, servicing, pooling and
securitization of mortgages, and operate a platform for holding and bundling
mortgages just like MERS.

But, the
bill also allows the big banks to wrap up the documentation failures of the
bubble years under the cover of a new federal regulation. That should sound a
few alarms throughout America.

The bill
proposes that the National Mortgage Market Utility would exempt mortgage backed
securities from SEC oversight under the Securities Act of 1933. This would
allow the mortgage and derivatives bubble of 2007-2008 to come back with a vengeance.
From the proposed bill, the repository’s defined purpose is to: (emphasis by
the Wrongologist)

This is an
elegant solution for the Banks. It takes all the questions arising from whether
MERS has the legal right to foreclose, all the myriad problems with mortgage
documentation, and buries them with a brand-new private database that pre-empts
all those questions and concerns. All the losses
MERS has suffered in state courts? Gone. All those problems servicers are
having foreclosing in states like Nevada
and California
and elsewhere? Also gone.

States
have always controlled property law, but this Republican bill would remove state
control, putting it not in the hands of the federal government, but in a private entity. The banks would be able to
foreclose because a repository, in all likelihood owned by the banks, said they
had that legal right.

The PATH Act is unlikely to become law. But, it represents the
opening negotiating position of the banks regarding how they want to insulate
themselves from foreclosure fraud in the future: Just make it impossible to
challenge fraudulent documents by using one’s personal private property and due
process rights.

“Protecting
American Taxpayers and Homeowners (PATH) Act.” How Orwellian: No consumer will
be protected, this bill only protects the banks.

Why are
Republicans, who are so devoted to rugged individualism, states rights, the 10th
Amendment, and smaller government, so comfortable with grabbing this power from
individuals and the states?

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
situation on the ground in Afghanistan has become so uncertain that Afghan
diplomats no longer want to return to their homeland. Up to 100 foreign service
employees set for rotation back to Kabul from assignments abroad have now
defected or failed to report in back home.

From Der Spiegel: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Sources at
the Afghan Foreign Ministry told Der Spiegel that embassy staff members have said
they would apply for asylum in their respective host countries or at least
apply for an extension of their service abroad with Afghanistan until after the
presidential election in spring 2014:

The NYT said about Afghani diplomats:

Der
Spiegel reports that many Afghan diplomats are the sons and daughters of
high-ranking politicians. They also say that international foundations and
organizations that organize educational trips and conferences for Afghans
abroad have also become more cautious recently. They know that more and more
trip participants will disappear and that several Afghan teachers never
returned from a trip organized recently by the German government.

From Tinko
Weibezahl, the head of the Kabul office of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer
Foundation:

So it
seems that the story of the hopeful future of an Afghanistan that stands on its
own two feet, which is safe and peaceful and democratically governed, is just a story that the Obama
Administration is keeping out there for domestic consumption.

It seems
clear that many Afghans don’t believe it.

The NY Times reports that Omar Samad, a former
ambassador to Paris who is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation,
indicates that more than 60% of Afghan diplomats decide to remain abroad, and
the trend has been accelerating recently. Samad:

Mr. Samad said that
when he was ambassador to Canada, only two of the seven diplomats posted in
Ottawa returned between 2004 and 2009, and that in Toronto, even fewer did.
While he was in Paris, from 2009 to 2011, two-thirds returned, he said.

The Times reports that the practice often begins
at the top, with ambassadors who leave their posts and do not return. A former
ambassador to Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, joined a diplomacy project at
Harvard after his tenure ended in 2010 and then went to Johns Hopkins. Jawed
Ludin, a former ambassador to Canada, did return, to take up a post as deputy
foreign minister, but he resigned from the ministry this year to become an
executive for a Saudi firm, Anham, based in the United States.

Some Afghan
ambassadors have dual citizenship, making it easy for them to stay away — Mr.
Samad is also American, for example. Lower-level diplomatic staff members often
have to resort to going underground or applying for asylum, as many emigrants
from Afghanistan already do. The US State Department has started turning down
visa requests from Afghan diplomats to bring along their extended families,
like brothers, sisters and parents.

The diplomatic drain
parallels an effort by many Afghans to make sure they have a foothold abroad in
case things go badly after the Western military withdrawal, which is scheduled
to be completed
in 2014.

Western countries
have been barraged by visa applications from Afghans, and many who have been
stymied by the slow visa process, are resorting to seeking asylum. Since 2011,
according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more asylum seekers have left Afghanistan than any other
country, about 36,000 a year, and they have applied for permission to stay in
nearly all of the world’s industrialized countries. The previous time when Afghan asylum requests were that high was in
2001, when the Taliban were in power.

The push for visas in
Afghanistan has led many smaller embassies to close their visa operations in
Kabul entirely. Dutch officials said they were forced to do so last year after
the embassy officer in charge of visa processing, Mary Sarwary, an Afghan, went
on a professional visit to the Netherlands and did not come back.

It’s true everywhere and all the time that the 1% knows more than the rest of us,
even in Afghanistan.

The Afghan 1% knows
enough to get out while they can. Maybe they know a lot more than Mr. Obama, Mr.
Hagel and Mr. Karzai.

Or, could they just be
smarter?

It’s time to put our old Karzai up on blocks.

Hopefully, the young know we should feed the hungry:

Old MacBohener had Farm Stamps, but no Food Stamps:

Mr. Spitzer can count on a few votes:

GOP doesn’t believe in evolution either:

For all of our money, America is toothless:

 

Fly Safe, People:

What’s
Wrong Today:

When you
talk with ideologues, the worst and weakest way to persuade them of anything
is by using facts. They simply don’t care about facts…They own the Truth, so
facts just muddy the waters, because of their private pipeline to Truth.

A reporter from the
Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Express-News Capitol bureau recorded a Texas legislator
arguing that sex education gets previously chaste teens so “hot and bothered”
that they can’t even use contraception correctly. I highly doubt they were shown something like the material you find on tubev.sex, so this story seems overblown to say the least.

Check out the audio clip of the conversation among state Rep.
Steve Toth, (R-The Woodlands), state Rep. Bill Zedler, (R-Arlington), and state
Rep. Donna Howard, (D-Austin). The three were speaking just minutes after the
House State Affairs Committee approved
legislation with extreme abortion restrictions that could cause most of
the state’s clinics to close. Rep. Howard was explaining to her colleagues that
responsible sex education, including information on birth control, would lower
the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Instead of couples and sexual partners thinking contraception isn’t needed due to so many adult films on sites like nu-bay.com and many others that lack contraception methods.

Rep. Toth didn’t
agree: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you listen to the
rest of the clip, Rep. Howard then asks her colleagues to
move beyond absurd anecdotes and provide some real data to back up their
arguments.

Sadly, they do not.

Shouldn’t we be thankful
for good, God-fearing, patriotic Christian white males like Texas state Rep.
Steve Toth? After all, he’s willing to shoulder the heavy burden of protecting
Texas men from the evil of women’s lady parts. After all, he recognizes
the reality that women use their sexuality to manipulate and trap men into
having children and forcing them to marry. Once you understand that basic and
undeniable Truth, it stands to reason that someone needs to protect men from women and their scheming uteri.

It seems doubtful
that the collective brain power of the Texas Congressional delegation could
jump-start a Vespa.

When your roster
includes Steve Stockman, John Cornyn, Louie Gohmert, Joe Barton, and Ted Cruz
as your “rising stars”, you may be in trouble. Where else but Texas could a
Governor demonstrate his leadership by holding a statewide day of prayer
in a desperate attempt to end a drought…and be taken seriously by his constituents?

Texas politicians would
be humorous if they weren’t deadly serious about turning Texas into a functional dominionist theocracy,
a place where white conservative Christians rule and where women and minorities
are by law second-class citizens.

It is apparent that
there is some form of Texas Tourette’s syndrome that causes their governmental
institutions and individuals to think the unthinkable, say the unspeakable, and
take actions that are disconnected from accepted norms of, well, science and history.

The list of ignorance
and/or irrationality is stunning. Texas politics is a comedy gold mine. Consider some highlights:

• Rick Perry talks seriously about
  Texas seceding and no one objects
• Louie Gohmert believes there’s a straight line
  that connects bestiality and same-sex marriage to gun control
• John Cornyn compares same-sex marriage
  to copulating with turtles
• Ted Cruz is convinced that he’s
  the only thing stopping Barack Obama from becoming a Muslim dictator…right
  after he helps the UN abolish golf courses
• Ezekiel Gilbert was acquitted of murder (unusual for a
  state infamous for conducting about half of America’s death penalties), even
  though he killed a prostitute who took his $150 and then refused to service
  him
• Willie Moore got 50 years in prison for stealing a
  rack of ribs

(Yes, the lesson
really IS that barbecue has a higher value in Texas than the life of a woman).

BTW, which state has the highest incidence of repeat teen pregnancies? Texas –
where 22% of teens under 20 who give birth have already had at
least one child. No need for sex ed in Texas and that’s the Truth.

What makes Texas so grotesque? Perhaps it’s the wide open spaces. Or the heat,
or maybe the armadillos.

Whatever the reason, no
place combines ignorance, hyper-religiosity, intolerance, and misogyny
like Texas. Whether it’s politicians or dumber than dirt criminals, no place on
the planet does whack job as well as Texas.

Now that’s Truth to
be proud of.

What’s
Wrong Today:

From Mike
Allen and Jim Vandehei in Politico:

Republicans are talking
about passing a “border security only” bill as a prelude to doing anything on a
path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in this country. But a
“border security only” bill won’t pass the Senate, so immigration
reform is dead.

Could
it be that the Tea Party members in the House are actually more pro-American
worker than their Senate colleagues? After all, the Senate’s comprehensive
immigration bill (S.744) really betrays workers. How, you ask? The bill is more about globalization
and labor arbitrage for major US corporations than it is about a path to
citizenship.  Lobbyists and the Senate have simply used the plight of
illegal Hispanics as a rubric to pass their underlying agenda, which is to meet
the Corporatists’ demand for cheaper labor.  

In
the Senate bill, the undocumented actually get a raw deal.  It would take
at least 13 years to obtain citizenship and during that period, they would pay
taxes and social security but their status is as guest workers. It is estimated
that 1.6 million additional foreign guest
workers will be added to the labor force in the first year, assuming S.744
became law.  

That
is close to the total number of new
jobs created in the US each year.

More guest workers in
US jobs is driving corporate support for comprehensive immigration reform: Microsoft
and Facebook have demanded more H-1B Visas and other tech visas, even though
there is no
tech worker shortage. The Economic Populist blog analyzed
the National Science Foundation statistics and showed the US has way more
skilled workers now than can be employed. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a
detailed study also proving there is no tech worker
shortage.

From the EPI study:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)

EPI also found that in
computer and information science and in engineering, US colleges graduate 50% more students than are hired
into those fields each year.

EPI found after reviewing
studies of wages and employment in the STEM and IT industries, that over the
past decade IT employment has gradually increased, but it had only recovered to
its 2000–2001 peak level by the end of 2010 and that wages have remained flat,
with real wages hovering around their late 1990s levels.

Our politicians talk
about STEM jobs (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), as the holy
grail of high wage jobs. In any month since the start of the Great
Recession, there are about 3.6 million jobs available in the US. But our
multinational corporations continually talk about a talent shortage. They claim
the shortage may be as many as 6-7 million STEM jobs. How can there be a talent
shortage that is 2x the jobs available? If there was a STEM jobs shortage, wouldn’t wages rise?

Bloomberg reported that corporations got all of their cheap labor
agenda through the Senate. One interesting trick has already been named the Facebook
Loophole:  

In essence, this
loophole makes it perfectly legal to fire US workers and replace them with
foreign guest workers.  All corporations have to do is file a claim they
intend to sponsor their imported labor for green cards. The Senate bill raises the annual
cap to 115,000 from 65,000. It can rise over time to 180,000 as long as the
jobless rate in management and professional occupations is below 4.5%;
currently it’s 3.7%.

The Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) scored S.744 and the conclusions were that the bill will
lower per capita GNP. The
CBO’s work assumes that the population will rise by 10 million over the same
time period, while most estimates show an increase of 35 million workers over
10 years.

Relative to what
would occur under the current law, S. 744 would lower per capita GNP by 0.7% in
2023. CBO’s best case estimates also show that average wages for the entire
labor force would be 0.1% lower in 2023.

The bill isn’t
helping average wages, or our economy. So who is it helping?

Ironically,
the best hope for American workers now lies with Tea Party Republicans, who do not
have what we would normally call a labor friendly agenda. But, they hate Mr.
Obama and Hispanics enough to produce the unintended
consequence of saving jobs for Americans while meeting their goal of derailing
comprehensive immigration reform.

Strange isn’t it:
more immigrants from Mexico steal jobs from Americans but more immigrants
from India are necessary for our economy.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
front page of today’s New York Times carries an article about the possibility
of a full
troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: 

The Zero Option
means that the US would not leave any troops in Afghanistan after 2014. That
has not been the plan. We have been negotiating with Afghan officials about
leaving a small “residual force” in-country. The exact numbers had not been
fixed, but what was most often floated was between 10,000 and 14,000 troops. Currently,
the 63,000 American troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to be reduced to 34,000
by February 2014. In the past, the White House has said the vast majority of
troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The US
relationship with Mr. Karzai reached a new low after an effort by the US to
begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. In June, the Wrongologist reported
that the US might begin talks with the Taliban:

Mr. Karzai promptly
repudiated the talks with the Taliban and ended negotiations with the United
States over the long-term security deal that we require in order to keep
American forces in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai said the negotiations
would not resume until the Taliban met directly with the Afghan government,
essentially making the United States
responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the Afghan government.

Karzai’s
big issue in the long term security deal was his insistence that the US guarantee
Afghanistan’s security. These guarantees, if agreed, could compel the US to
attack Taliban havens in Pakistan after 2014, when the Obama administration has
said it hoped to dial back the CIA’s covert drone war there.

All of
this was bad enough, but what started Mr. Obama down the path of the Zero
Option was personal. From the NYT:

Mr.
Obama responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping
up Mr. Karzai’s government.

But according
to the NYT, there’s more:

You
don’t have to be a fan of Mr. Karzai to know that there is some truth in his
comments. The ambassadors didn’t welcome it, because the truth hurts.

There
are similarities between our experience in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. In both
cases, our partner was a government riddled with corruption. Both were the
longest wars in American history, testing the patience of the American people
even if more domestic attention was paid to Vietnam.

In
each case, peace talks were pursued but the end result was a slow extrication
resulting in more deaths and without prospects for changing the outcome.

So,
should we be glad to leave early or sad to leave early?

The
Wrongologist watched back-to-back episodes of “Operation Afghanistan” on NatGeo
last night. It was two hours depicting US troops walking around and through
barren plains and poppy fields of Helmand Province, looking for Taliban to kill.


Our troops are undoubtedly brave, but their mission, as depicted, serves as a
metaphor about all that is wrong about our presence there: Little or no interaction with Afghan civilians, a heavy reliance on
air and armored power to flush out enemy fighters and, at the end of the day
(or days) nothing that anyone could describe as progress. The best result was
that no American was killed or wounded.


The overwhelming takeaway from the program was that no matter how many Taliban
were killed, we would not control the province, or the country as a whole. It
was hard not to conclude that our mission is futile.

It
is beyond time to leave Afghanistan to its own devices. That may sound cold, hard
and cruel. And it is for those Afghanis who may have benefited from greater
freedoms, women, children and peace-loving men.

But
there are limits to what a great power can do for some and against others.

Afghanistan
is an ancient culture. One in which Afghani fathers still sell their maiden
daughters to buy TV sets or cars. It has seen centuries of war. Afghanistan
needs more centuries to emerge from its traumas and its dominant Islamic ways
under the best of conditions.

And
at that point, what will it look like?

Let’s
load the planes tomorrow.  Start the airlift out. And yes, let’s end the
shipment of caskets from Afghanistan to Dover over another war that should
never have been fought in the first place. THAT is an accomplishment we can all
be proud of, well maybe, except for Sen. John McCain.  

On
our way out the door, we should meet with the Taliban. We should make the following
point: Should you support radical, disruptive Islam inside or outside your
borders, you will see more drones than you see in your worst dreams, and we
will focus on killing only your leaders.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The essence of jazz is the same as
democracy: the greatest amount of individual freedom consistent with a healthy
community. Each musician is allowed extraordinary liberty during a solo and
then is expected to conscientiously back up the other musicians in turn. The
two most exciting moments in jazz are during flights of individual virtuosity
and when the entire musical group seems to become one. The genius of jazz (and
democracy) is that the same people are willing and able to do both. – Sam
Smith

Not true
in Congress today. From the National
Journal: House Republicans are drafting what members call a “menu” of
mandatory spending cuts to offer the White House in exchange for raising the country’s debt ceiling. Their
idea is to put the President in the position of picking from among difficult
options:

So
in October, we will again begin to hear the same disjointed, cacophonous music from
Republicans: They will demand
that Medicare be dismantled, or Social Security privatized, or SNAP (food
stamps) cut back further in order to get the House to go along with a debt
ceiling increase.  We had thought that we
would reach the debt ceiling in
April, but raising taxes on the rich, the continuing Sequester and the
improvement in the economy have pushed out any need to talk about the debt ceiling
until sometime in the 4th quarter. More from the National Journal:

This is another
example of poorly thought out Republican tactics. The Republicans already seem
confused in their response to immigration. They have produced nothing concrete
on their IRS and Benghazi investigations, their sequester, as short sighted as
it is, actually lowers the deficit and is pushing the debt ceiling debate
closer to the 2014 congressional election, giving the president and the
Democrats leverage they might not have expected to have.

Ironically, even in these suggested “deals,” the GOP is acknowledging
that there is no more discretionary spending to cut. That is the reason they now
say they must now go after mandatory spending including Social
Security, Medicaid and Medicare, along with food stamps. No mention of additional cuts in defense spending, though.

But the
president has said that he won’t negotiate on debt payments since the debt results
from spending already authorized by Congress. It is likely that Mr. Obama will say, as he has in the past, that
he would be willing to accept Chained CPI in the context of other reforms.  He will again offer that to the Republicans, giving
them a final chance to save face. Because he knows, as well as John Boehner and his
team on the Hill, that the Republican’s
big business base will not tolerate intransigence over the debt limit.

If Republicans were to fail to
increase the debt ceiling, it could be the third time that the House says no to big business’ interests, having failed to pass the Farm bill and their expected
failure on immigration.

If they agree to extend the debt ceiling for the rest of Mr. Obama’s term
in exchange for Chained CPI, they can say to their base that they got
something very big. Otherwise, they will be rolled over by Democrats in a very public humiliation.

The president and the Democrats will be
able make the case to the American people in 2014, blaming the
Republicans for once again trying to hold the global economy hostage in order
to force their ideas about Social Darwinism down the throats of the American
people.

It is unlikely that the most incompetent Speaker in recent history fails to see this one coming. It almost sounds
as though the Grand Old Party wants to take a suicide pill in front of the nation. A sacrifice on the altar of the Gods of Poverty.  

Why don’t they try a
different strategy–real, good faith negotiations? That could look and sound a
lot like a good jazz combo, it would be wonderful to experience for a change.

Sadly,
that won’t happen unless the 2014 congressional election changes the composition
of the House. Less Tea, more jazz please. 

 

Fourth
of July Quotes:

Where
liberty dwells, there is my country.
— Benjamin Franklin

All we have of
freedom, all we use or know –
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
–Rudyard Kipling

What
is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate
balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from”.

–Marilyn
vos Savant

Independence Day Party Animals:

You need the NSA when terrorists are everywhere:

Egyptian Army Launches New Government:

The Wrongologist
mentioned anti-Sharia laws in North Carolina here.
Last week, North Carolina’s GOP-controlled senate introduced an anti-Sharia law
bill. Their concern was that Sharia could trump our laws and maybe threaten our
constitution. Sharia, they feared, could blur the lines between church and
state…Women would be subjugated. And then, the state senate amended the bill
to restrict access to legal and
constitutionally-protected abortion. Why do that? Because of their
religious convictions:

Multiple Choice Test: