The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

In a press conference
that was not well-covered by the MSM, our ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker
told The
Daily Telegraph that if the West were to leave Afghanistan too early,
al-Qaeda would be able to increase its presence:

“Al-Qaeda is still
present in Afghanistan. If the West decides that 10 years in Afghanistan is too
long then they will be back, and the next time it will not be New York or
Washington, it will be another big Western city.”

Ambassador Crocker,
an Arabic speaker who took up his post in Kabul last year, having previously served as ambassador
to Iraq, said al-Qaeda remained a potent threat despite suffering setbacks. With the US preparing
to withdraw the majority of its combat forces from Afghanistan next year, Mr.
Crocker warned:

“We have killed all
the slow and stupid ones. But that means the ones that are left are totally dedicated.
We think we’ve won a campaign before our adversaries have even started to
fight. They have patience, and they know that we are short on that.”

Crocker claimed that
by killing many alleged al Qaeda militants, we have somehow made them stronger
by leaving their most dedicated fighters alive.

He continued:

“We think we’ve won a
campaign before our adversaries have even started to fight. They have patience,
and they know that we are short on that…If we decide we’re tired, they’ll be back.”

The
Christian Science Monitor also reported on Crocker’s thinking about the Strategic
Partnership Agreement that is under negotiation between the US and
Afghanistan, saying it will be:

“a powerful signal to
the Taliban that the international community will remain committed to
Afghanistan into the future.”

He
went on to say that the Taliban need to understand:

“this isn’t going to
be about holding out until 2014. It’s you getting killed, or dying of old age
and your sons facing the prospect of having to fight a war.”

So,
What’s Wrong?

This is
Ryan Crocker speaking, not that pilot who freaked out on the Jet Blue flight.

So begins
the effort to counter American public opinion, which
now thinks we should get out of Afghanistan. It is clear that Crocker is putting
forth the same fear mongering and
disinformation as so many of our current and former government officials have.

NATO believes that there
may be 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, based mainly in the Kunar and
Nuristan provinces near the border with Pakistan.

Of course, Ambassador
Crocker’s view is flawed given the fact that in reality, IF al-Qaeda is capable
of conducting another 9/11 style attack, they
could plan and initiate it from anywhere.

Does it
really matter that they might try to use Afghanistan a second time for this
purpose?

After
all, can’t they just as readily use Pakistan,
where they are today? Not to mention dozens of other places, including England,
France or Germany, or the US, to prepare such plots?

In reality, the
threat of domestic terrorism may
be more significant than potential
terror launched from Afghanistan, so
says this study by George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy
Institute. In September, 2011 the study indicated that there have been 52
homegrown plots since September 11, 2001. Despite the numbers, Homeland Security seems to be doing
a pretty good job of intercepting terrorist plots.

So, will spending
billions of incremental dollars and the attendant loss of life and limb on the
part of our military in Afghanistan prevent such threats? It will not.

Bush
invaded Afghanistan with the perfectly understandable motive of revenge for
9/11 and because we knew Bin Laden was there. Since then we have been treated
to a succession of increasingly ludicrous justifications as to why we must remain
there to the detriment of our young soldiers’ lives, our financial security and
our reputation in the third world.

It’s
over. The Taliban will return once we leave, whenever that is. All of our
technology, loss of lives and billions will have not been enough to make us
feel safe from terror.

To stay one day longer than the earliest we can leave is WRONG!

Can I interest you in a nice, shiny new war with Iran instead?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Gen.
John Allen, the top allied commander in Afghanistan told Congress on
Tuesday
that he would not recommend further American troop reductions until late this
year, after the departure of the current “surge” forces and the end of the
summer fighting season. Gen. Allen, a Marine four-star general, said that he
remained optimistic about eventual success but that it was too early to begin
shifting forces from battles in the south to the country’s turbulent eastern
provinces.

General
Allen’s testimony comes after a violent period in Afghanistan, beginning with
public protests and a series of murders of American troops by Afghan security
forces, after the burning of Korans by United States military personnel,
followed by a rampage attributed to an American soldier that left 16 Afghan
civilians dead.

He acknowledged
the current diplomatic crisis with Afghanistan, in which we will hand over
complete security control to Afghan forces, and stop the commando night raids, are
the subject of intense negotiation.

He
observed:

“Throughout
history, insurgencies have seldom been defeated by foreign forces,… Instead,
they have been ultimately beaten by indigenous forces. In the long run, our
goals can only be achieved and then secured by Afghan forces. Transition, then,
is the linchpin of our strategy, not merely the ‘way out.’ ”

We also hear
from Sens. McCain, Lieberman and Graham, or as the Wrongologist likes to call
them, the Mendacity Trio.

Today,they
have an Op-ed
in the Washington Post about staying the course in Afghanistan, informing
us that our efforts in Afghanistan have been successful to date, and that we
should listen closely to them in order to sustain that success:

 “To sustain this
fragile progress, it is critical that President Obama resist the shortsighted
calls for additional troop reductions, which would guarantee failure. Our
forces are slated to draw down to 68,000 by September — a faster pace than our
military commanders recommended, which has significantly increased the risks
for our mission…Two weeks ago, …our governments agreed on a timetable for
handing over detention operations. We are optimistic that a similar resolution
can be found soon regarding the gradual transfer of the lead for “night raids”
to Afghan forces. Already, Afghans increasingly lead these operations. The
success rate is overwhelming, and in most cases no shots are fired.”

So,
What’s Wrong?

Despite the happy
talk by Gen. Allen and the Mendacity Trio, there is a lot of bad news. Between
the Koran burning, corpse urinating and late night civilian killings by a rogue
soldier; our latest strategy of counterinsurgency
(COIN) plus surge is clearly failing. The COIN doctrine invokes the
imagery of an “ink blot”: Operations begin in a small area then spread
out to adjacent villages and districts, winning people over and detaching them
from the insurgents.

However,
in Afghanistan, routine contact with locals all too often breeds contempt.

 

 

The remarkable failure of COIN is demonstrated by the epidemic
of killings
of Coalition troops by the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the allies
we are supposed to train and work with in the transition described by Gen
Allen. Here are the data:

 

·   From
Sep. 2008 to May 2011, there were 21 incidents in which ANSF members killed 51 Coalition
personnel, with another 50 wounded

·  The
trend is worsening since mid-July 2010; 15 incidents led to 39 deaths of which
32 were US personnel

·  From
Nov. 2010 to May 2011, 16% of all
hostile deaths of our troops in Afghanistan were at the hands of ANSF
personnel

 These
sobering data come from a 70-page coalition report,
titled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility”. It is a damning
description of the current antipathy between the Afghans and the Coalition
forces. The report warns that the magnitude of the killings “may be unprecedented between
‘allies’ in modern history…and…could undermine the entire war effort.”

The report was
written by Jeffrey Bordin, PhD. a political and behavioral
scientist working for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Mr. Bordin and similar
researchers, are part of a so-called Red Team within the military, tasked with
finding weaknesses and shortcomings that the enemy may exploit. Their job is to
develop the worst-case scenario as part of planning for the future of the war.

 

They conducted 68
focus groups, surveying 613 Afghan soldiers and police officers, 215 American
soldiers and 30 Afghan interpreters who worked for the Americans.

While the
report focused on three areas of eastern Afghanistan, many of the Afghan
soldiers interviewed had served elsewhere in Afghanistan and the author
believes that they constitute a representative sample of attitudes elsewhere in
the country.

“There are pervasive feelings of animosity
and distrust that ANSF personnel have towards U.S. forces,” the report says,
using the military’s abbreviation for Afghan security forces. The list of
Afghan complaints against the Americans ran the gamut from the killing of
civilians to urinating in public and cursing.

The
findings for Afghan soldiers were divided into 4 tiers. The Top Tier groupings
were those which had led to a least
one serious altercation between US and Afghan forces. These were
mentioned by more than 33% of the ANSF members interviewed:

· US
shouldn’t conduct night raids

· US
soldiers do not respect Afghan women

· They
set up roadblocks and will not let us pass

·  If
attacked, they shoot indiscriminately

·  They
curse constantly

·  They
urinate in public even in front of women

Some comments
included: “U.S. soldiers don’t listen, they are too arrogant,” said one of the
Afghan soldiers surveyed, according to the report. “They get upset due to their
casualties, so they take it out on civilians during their searches,” said
another.

The
Americans were equally scathing. Because of the smaller cohort, their findings
were grouped into two tiers. The top tier included comments that were made by
50% or more of our troops:

· ANSF
are drug abusers (74%+ use hashish)

· They
are thieves

·  They
are traitorous

·  They
are unstable/dangerous

·   Incompetent
on a project/mission

·   They
have poor leadership

·   Unsafe
weapons handling

·   Gutless
in combat

·   Brutal
treatment of dogs

“U.S.
soldiers’ perceptions of ANSF members were extremely negative across
categories,” the report found. Those categories included “trustworthiness on
patrol,” “honesty and integrity,” and “drug abuse.” The Americans also voiced
suspicions about the Afghans being in league with the Taliban, a problem well
documented among the Afghan police.

“They are
stoned all the time; some even while on patrol with us,” one soldier was quoted
as saying. Another said, “They are pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of
the fighting.”

The report concludes that there is a dangerous “crisis of
trust” between Afghan forces and American soldiers that is being ignored
by top commanders. It
documents MANY occasions when Afghani
soldiers say that they have aimed weapons at US troops when there is a
conflict while on joint patrol.  Mr. Bordin goes on to
characterize the shootings of Americans by Afghan troops as “a severe and rapidly metastasizing
malignancy.”

In Conclusion:

Where does
the war go from here? Reading
the horror-inducing findings in this report must call into question the Obama
Administration’s exit strategy and the assumptions on which it is based. The huge challenge facing the country
and President Obama is that we can’t trust our allies.

And it is very doubtful that this
will change in the next 12 months if it hasn’t changed in the last 10 years.
Without trust, how can the Transition proceed?

At the hearing
with Gen Allen, Rep. Walter B. Jones, (R-NC), asked:

“Over the past 10
years, I have been hearing from the administration and those who were in your
position prior to you being in here today,” Mr. Jones said. “Everything is:
‘Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks. We are making progress,
but it’s — it’s fragile and reversible.’ ”

He paused,
and asked, “Why are we still there?”

Rep. Jones captures
the essence of the problem quite succinctly, if unintentionally:

Despite
today’s cheerleading by Sens. McCain, Lieberman and Graham, and Tuesday’s
cheerleading by Gen Allen; a member of the U.S. Congress with seventeen years
of service is asking the ranking General of the U.S. Armed Forces in
Afghanistan to justify to him the war we are fighting there.

Surely, it is the
other way around:
It is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress as representatives of all U.S.
citizens to provide us with cogent reasons for war. And if not to us, then to the
men and women who volunteer to serve in good faith, and if not to them, then at
least to themselves.

We built our strategy assuming at
its foundation that our two cultures could work toward a common goal in
Afghanistan. That the senior partners would turn over the job to the junior
partners as their capabilities grew.

We assumed that our troops and the
Afghan troops could work together.  

It is clear that these assumptions
and our entire strategy are WRONG!

What’s
Wrong Today:

This summer, health
insurance companies may have to pay more
than a billion dollars back to their own customers. The rebate
requirements were introduced as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and are
meant to benefit consumers.

It is known as the medical
loss ratio rule (MLR). According to Cheryl Clark of Health
Leaders Media, the health reform law requires insurance companies in the
individual and small group markets (less than 100 insured) to spend at least
80% of their premium dollars collected on medical care and quality
improvements. For companies in the large group market, the rate is 85%,

Under this provision, 80 to
85 cents of every dollar insurers collect in premiums must be spent on medical
care or activities that improve the quality of that care. If not, they must
send their customers a rebate for the difference. The goal, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services, is to limit the money insurers spend on administrative
costs and profit.

So, What’s Wrong?

An insurer-supported Senate
bill aims to roll back the rebates.

Last month, Sen. Mary
Landrieu, D-La., introduced a bill that would change what costs
companies can include in the 15 to 20 percent they are allotted for overhead,
salaries and marketing. The bill, similar to a House bill introduced in March
2011 that has 180
co-sponsors, but has yet to come up for a vote, focuses on protecting payments to insurance agents and brokers.

Traditionally, these
commissions are bundled into the administrative costs when making the final
calculation. But insurance regulators in 21 States, including Landrieu’s
Louisiana, have argued that fees paid to insurance agents and brokers
shouldn’t count.

If enacted into law, this change
could mean big savings for insurance companies — and much smaller rebates for
consumers.

This is the first year that
companies are required to send out rebates. According to a report by state
insurance commissioners, if rebates had been handed out last year, insurers would have had to pay
consumers almost $2 billion.
If broker fees were carved out, as proposed in the two current bills, consumers
would have gotten only about $800 million. While most insurance companies are
expected to hit the 80 to 85 percent target, those that do not may be required
to send out rebates this year.

Pro Publica quoted Sondra Roberto, a
spokesperson for Consumers Union, which also publishes Consumer Reports:

“[The bills] would
water down the standard to a point where it becomes ineffective…Some insurance
companies pay an inordinate amount, as much as 40 percent, on administration
and profit and not health care..”

Consumers Union has urged
members to oppose the bill.

The rebates have gotten
relatively little attention. Only 38
percent of the public
is even aware of the rule’s existence, according to a Kaiser poll.

Insurance companies have
supported both the House and Senate bills, claiming that the rebate rule will
cause them to lower broker commissions and stifle jobs. They also claim that it
drives up insurance premiums. A 2011 government report found that most
insurance companies were lowering broker commissions, while only one firm was in
fact, considering lowering their premiums to meet the requirements, as the
administration had hoped.

In all cases, the way the
ACA was written, insurance companies will be required to make all their costs
publicly available so consumers can see how their premium dollars are spent.

Let’s
get this straight: The insurance companies (through their regulators) are
moaning that the legislation will drive up premiums? Above the 25%-35% annual increases we have seen recently? Insurance brokers are saying that they may have to leave
the business if their commissions are reduced?

All of that seems doubtful.
So, what’s up with Mary Landrieu?

The Senator must owe
Louisiana’s insurance brokers.

Shows that the glad handing
is shrink-wrapped to ensure freshness.

And it is WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

Republican leaders in Congress seem to be reneging on the Sequester agreement they reached with the White House last summer.  “Sequester” is budget-speak for across-the-board cuts. 

The original August 2011 deal that resolved the debt ceiling impasse called for a $1 trillion limit on discretionary spending for fiscal 2013. House conservatives now want deeper cuts. House GOP leaders are offering a compromise that would include some cuts, but not enough for its Tea Party members, while Democrats say they will reject anything that breaks the original deal.

Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) signaled during an interview with Fox Business that he was open to reneging on the budget deal the GOP crafted with Democrats last year during the debacle over raising the debt ceiling. Though the parties agreed as part of that deal to a spending level for the 2013 budget, Boehner is being pushed by the more conservative members of his party to cut even deeper. And that pressure has paid off, as both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-OH) are ready to propose cuts below the level specified in the debt ceiling deal: House Republican aides said on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were pressing for a $19 billion reduction of discretionary spending caps in this year’s Republican budget plan.

So, What’s Wrong?

Tighten your seat belts folks; it’s going to be a very rough ride. We’re hurtling towards another government shutdown fight, in which the House GOP leadership will be trying to mollify its Tea Party wing while trying to get a few Democrats to support modest additional cuts.

The fight will not be about the size of the cuts, it will be about when is a deal a deal? And when can either party trust the other once a compromise is finally achieved?

If the GOP moves to re-litigate the budget cuts, that action will set a precedent that future Presidents and Congresses will remember and take into account when a protracted partisan fight forces them to strike deals in order to govern. Sen. McCain and others have been talking since last November about walking away from the agreed defense cuts that are a part of the sequester.

Republicans will justify breaking the deal by arguing that the original compromise only set a cap on spending, or, an upper limit, meaning there’s nothing preventing spending from being cut further. While Democrats and the White House will argue that even Mitch McConnell himself recently acknowledged that what was actually agreed upon were “discretionary spending levels.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said:

“I’m really disappointed that they’re considering…violating the budget agreement that is now the law of this country. This was designed to avoid another government shutdown or a threat of a shutdown…We had a deal last August on the budget numbers, and we expect them to live with that deal…”

The end result of this standoff could be yet another government shutdown, as the government’s current spending authority expires on September 30.

Why is the GOP risking so much for this fight? Because President Obama is doing better with the good news on job numbers, the recent stock market run up, and the continuing sideshow that is the debate on limiting insurance for contraception.  

Now, John of Orange and Eric the Thin are thinking they could be staring at life in 2013 from the deep political weeds.

This will be the defining election year fight on Capitol Hill — one that will test Democrats’ will to break the GOP’s anti-tax absolutism, which is a skirmish in the broader fight between the parties over the future of the social safety net.

The GOP made the sequester deal understanding the consequences. They agreed to the consequences and they probably thought that when the time was right, they could walk away from it. Despite making careers out of enforcing rules that can never be broken, the GOP now finds they can be flexible.  

An agreement was reached. It must be honored. To do otherwise is WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

A
new report from the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York shows that nearly one-third of all Americans with
outstanding student loans are over 40, while 4.2 % are over 60. While borrowers
in their 30’s had the highest average balance, at $28,500, those in their 40’s
were close behind, with an average balance of $26,000. Wanting to finally rid yourself of your debt, no matter what it’s from? You can go to debtconsolidationnearme.com or similar sites and see how they’re able to help you.

The outstanding student
loan balance now stands at about $870 billion, larger than both the total
credit card balance ($693 billion) and the total auto loan balance ($730
billion).

Here is the distribution of
student debt by age:

So, What’s Wrong?

• Student loan debt is treated differently
  than other kinds of consumer debt. Among the differences:  

• Student loan debt is
  not dissolved in bankruptcy

• Student loan debt
  cannot be refinanced (even if a new lender offers lower rates or better terms)

• Student loan lenders
  can garnish Social Security benefits without a court order

These “enhancements” were passed in successive
versions of the Higher Education Act over the past 15 years. The fact that the banking
industry lobbied for the ability to garnish SS benefits tells you they had very
low expectations regarding when these loans would be paid off. 
 
BTW, these are federally guaranteed loans!

Pretend you were in
congress when these changes to the law were being considered: Your task is to
help amend the laws about the collection of student debt in this country. What’s
the one thing you want to change about student debt that you don’t have for any
other type of debt, the one thing that radically shifts the relationship
between student loan creditors and debtors both practically and symbolically?

It would be this, from
the Debt
Collection Improvement Act of 1996:

“Notwithstanding
any other provision of law… all payments due to an individual under… the Social
Security Act… shall be subject to offset under this section.”

This means that when it
comes to collecting student loans, the government can take funds from your
Social Security check. There ARE limits to this: the first $750 a month can’t
be touched, and only 15 percent of benefits above that can be taken to pay back
student loans.

But this is still a radical
break in the social contract and it has no equivalent in private debt.

In the original text of the
Social
Security Act, you will see that Social Security payments were not
“subject to execution, levy, attachment, garnishment, or other legal process,
or to the operation of any bankruptcy or insolvency law.”

Yet
in the 1990’s, congress was willing to break the social contract for of all
things, loans people take out to educate themselves.

Also, student loan debt has
no statute of limitations as it regards social security payments, and the
law was upheld by the
Supreme Court in 2005
. This is one of the very few kinds of debt without such limitations.

Credit cards face a statue
of limitations. As this site
puts it, ”Creditors
have a limited time window in which to sue debtors for nonpayment of credit
card bills… In most states, the statute of limitations period on debts is between
three and 10 years.”

But for student loans,
the Department of Education notes,

”[b]y virtue of
section 484A(a) of the Higher Education Act, statute of limitations of no kind
now limits Department’s or the guaranty agency’s ability to file suit, enforce
judgments, initiate offsets, or other actions, to collect a defaulted student
loan.”

And student debt is
growing: According to the Project on
Student Debt, the
average debt load for graduating seniors in 1996 when the law was passed was
$12,750.  Now it is over $23,200. 

Student loan
debt
held by parents is growing even faster than
loans taken out by students. Parents’
loan debt has more than doubled over the last decade, now exceeding
$100 billion dollars or 10 percent of all outstanding student loan debt, as tuition costs and unemployment rates of
college grads both continue to rise. FinAid.org founder and publisher
Mark Kantrowitz says:  

“Parents of every income level are
increasingly borrowing for their children’s college education. It doesn’t
matter whether the parents are low income, middle income or upper income.
There’s been dramatic growth in the percentages of parents who’ve been borrowing,”

Some
parents who co-signed loans or borrowed money for their children’s education
now face the loss of their portions of their retirement nest eggs, home equity
and other assets. As student loan debt has topped U.S. credit card debt,
“America faces the very real possibility of another major threat on par
with the devastating home mortgage crisis,” according to a new study by
the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA).

Parents
have an average of about $34,000 in student loans and the payback figure rises
to $50,000, including interest, over a standard 10-year loan repayment period.

Looking at student loan
delinquencies by age, we find that 40% of past due balances are held by people
over 40, while 4.8% is with people over 60:

The
bad news on this chart is:
70 percent of people with past due loans are thirty years of age or older. So,
a lot of people who are well into midlife are apparently unable to meet their
student loan obligations.

No one should think that they
can escape payment of any properly arranged loan, but there should be rules to
help students out in either a high unemployment economy, or when their parents who
took out a loan to help their kids, retire.

For certain, we should not
have removed the social security benefits exemption from student debt
repayments.

To continue to garnish social
security benefits to make these payments is WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

White House Press Secretary
Jay Carney responded at Monday’s
White House press briefing about how we should react to the Qur’an
burning blowback with extended comments about how our goal in Afghanistan was
to defeat al Qaeda.

So, What’s Wrong?

Carney’s view of our strategy
would come as big news to our soldiers, who think they are fighting the
Taliban. BTW, THERE ARE NO AL QAEDA FIGHTERS IN AFGHANISTAN. None to speak of,
anyway.

But the Taliban are
apparently not the enemy. Carney said nothing about fighting them. Here are
some Carney excerpts:

“What the President
did when he reviewed U.S. policy in Afghanistan was insist that we focus our
attention on what our absolute goals in the country should be, and prioritize
them.  And he made clear that the number-one priority, the reason why U.S.
troops are in Afghanistan in the first place, is to disrupt, dismantle and
ultimately defeat al Qaeda.

We can’t forget
what the mission is, though, and the fact that the need to disrupt, dismantle
and defeat al Qaeda remains.

We will be unrelenting
in our pursuit of al Qaeda and unrelenting in our efforts to remove leaders of
al Qaeda from the battlefield.”

Displaying a remarkable
inability to process the meaning of current events in Afghanistan, White House
spokesman Jay Carney ventured dangerously close to “Baghdad
Bob” territory by declaring that there is no reason to change the strategy
or timetable for withdrawal in Afghanistan.  

Then ABC’s Jake Tapper
asked some good questions:

Q   
When I interviewed then-CIA director Leon Panetta a couple years ago, he said
there were fewer than 100 CIA — I mean, I’m sorry — he said there were fewer
than 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.  How many do we think are
there now?  About the same amount?

MR. CARNEY:  I
don’t have a specific number for you.

Q   
When is the last time U.S. troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with
al Qaeda?

MR. CARNEY: 
Well, I would refer you to ISAF and the Defense Department for that.  I
don’t have that information.

Here’s
More of What’s Wrong:
According to Carney, we are actually fighting someone to defeat someone else.
And the goal isn’t even to defeat the people we are fighting. And the people we
really want to defeat aren’t even fighting. Sort of through the looking glass,
isn’t it?

This has to be demoralizing
for U.S. troops who are being shot at by the people who the White House thinks are
not our enemies. The White House seems
to think:

Maybe we
can shoot at the Taliban, and if we miss, we’ll hit an al Qaeda operative
hiding in Pakistan.

The White House used to talk
about “breaking the Taliban’s momentum,” but now we’re not trying to do break anyone’s
momentum. If things weren’t so serious in Afghanistan, these statements by our
government’s spokesman would be merely comic.

But given the costs that we
are sustaining, these public statements and policies that underlie them are morally
repugnant.

We won in Iraq, but now
it’s fallen apart and will end up in a civil war. Afghanistan will be the same.
We engage in two wars where we never lose a battle, but we lose the wars.

The Administration knows better,
but we the people never learn.

Misstating our goal in
Afghanistan is reprehensible and WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

American Senators John
McCain and Lindsey Graham, in Afghanistan, proposed arming the Syrian rebels, while
saying they do not think that direct intervention by the United States is
necessary. McCain said at a press
conference in Kabul:

“I
believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United
States involvement,…People that are being massacred
deserve to have the ability to defend themselves,”

McCain insists that Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s army is relying on firepower being provided by Iran.  Sen. Graham suggested that an end to the
bloodshed would happen if the US and other nations could separate Syria from
Iran:

 “Breaking Syria apart from Iran could be as
important to containing a nuclear Iran as sanctions…If the Syrian regime is
replaced with another form of government that doesn’t tie its future to the
Iranians, the world is a better place.”

 The
Hill reported that McCain sent a letter last week to Armed Services
Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) calling for a hearing on military options in Syria: 

“All
options must now be on the table to stop the bloodletting in Syria…It is
incumbent on the committee to lead a frank and open debate about the merits of
the various options at our disposal.”

Separately, fellow traveler
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) also encouraged the US to arm Syrian rebels, insisting
on CNN that “I
think
it’s time to try to help the brave Syrian freedom fighters to carry out a fair
fight.”

So, What’s Wrong?

McCain and friends are beating the drum for
yet another hot, steaming pile of wrong:  First, the New
York Times reports that Russia is the primary arms provider to Syria, not Iran.
From 2007 to 2010, the value of Russian arms deals with Syria more than doubled
— to $4.7 billion from $2.1 billion. Second, McCain & Co have already picked
a winner in the fractured opposition in Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC).

Ok, here are some facts to
go along with McCain’s posturing: According to Stratfor,
there are two Syrian groups that the West might side with, the SNC and the National Coordination Committee (NCC),
which have incompatible views on how to oust the regime.

And
neither has the clear support of Syria’s protesters. Way to go McClown!

First, the SNC: It is based in Paris, and while
it is predominantly Sunni, its
membership also consists of Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood members, grassroots
activists and traditional Syrian opposition figures who have been exiled. In December
2011, the SNC’s leadership called for
the establishment of safe zones and humanitarian corridors in Syria and
echoed calls by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for a no-fly zone.

It
is the SNC that Sen. McCain said in a CBS interview, that
the US should back.

Next, the NCC: It is based in Damascus. It is largely comprised of leftist Syrian parties as well as other
traditional members of the Syrian opposition. The NCC does not have Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members in its
ranks. Unlike the SNC, the NCC
strongly opposes any foreign military intervention, and favors negotiating with the Assad regime.

These divergent views on how regime change should
be carried out make it highly unlikely that the two organizations will reach a
consensus to work together.

What about the Free Syrian Army (FSA)? The FSA claims to have roughly
15,000 fighters, but it is a loosely connected group, united mainly by their
anti-regime sentiments. Many have no relationship or communication with the FSA
leadership. The SNC and FSA however, have established a formal relationship and
the SNC also provides financing and guidance to the FSA.

Since it rejects militarization, the NCC does not have a relationship with the
FSA.

It
is the FSA that McCain wants to arm.

So, another middle-eastern country with a fractious
opposition that McCain wants to drive us into.  It is very unlikely that the SNC, NCC and FSA will
unite and stay united long enough to proclaim themselves a viable alternative
to the al Assad regime.

Yet,
we hear another dog whistle chorus: “Let’s support an underdog who wants to
be free from tyranny. Let’s use intermediaries to provide humanitarian support
and arms. Let’s bloody the nose of Iran along the way.”

Here’s the really important question: Who/what
are the Syrians fighting for? Is it democracy? Are they just religious sects fighting
to be in charge?

Tribalism runs throughout the social fabric
in the Middle East and usually trumps everything else.

The Wrongologist understands the human cost
in Syria today. We should not be against supporting a legitimate movement towards
democracy, if that’s what the Syrians are striving for. We should not retreat
into Fortress America.

On the other hand, should we be taking sides
in yet another ethnic conflict where one side may have legitimate grievances,
or they may simply be tired of the other side being in power? And they feel
like it’s their turn to be king for a generation or two? Should we act to prolong
another civil war in the Middle East?

Given what we know, the Wrongologist says: No!

This is typical behavior by Sens. McCain,
Graham and Lieberman:  They stood up and
led the chorus for invading Afghanistan and then didn’t want to leave. They piled
on about WMD’s to justify the war in Iraq, and then didn’t want to leave.

McCain is treating us to Bush-lite all over
again. Bush said, “Come up with a reason to invade Iraq because I want to”. In
2008, McCain said: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.

Now, he wants to triangle the US into a war
with Iran via arming the Syrians with no
concept of what the consequences will be.

He remains a shameless war monger and once
again, he is WRONG!

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

Mitt
Romney is touring Michigan, trolling for votes in the primary next Tuesday.
Among the clever things he continues to talk about is Obama’s epic fail in
bailing out the auto industry.   He had
an op-ed in the Detroit News last Tuesday in which he stated:

“Three years ago,
in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama
stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is
that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally
indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management
of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

Elsewhere, Romney has said:

“The president tells us that without his
intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his
intervention things there would be better.”

The
crux of Romney’s argument is: If Obama had not acted, private companies would
have stepped in and run a “managed bankruptcy.”  

So,
What’s Wrong?

Romney
ignores that in the fall of 2008,
before Obama was even sworn in, no one on
Wall Street or anywhere else was willing to lend anything to GM and Chrysler, let alone the $81
billion they and their financial arms eventually needed.

You
may remember that a competitor to Bain Capital, Cerberus, bought Chrysler from
Mercedes (at a bargain price) with a plan to do what private equity firms do
best: slash overheads, cut deals with employees and pound on vendors. They
failed.

So it’s tough for
Romney to acknowledge that the government ended up accomplishing what a private
equity firm like Romney’s couldn’t accomplish. What must be even more galling to him, when the government bailed out Chrysler, the government also indirectly bailed out his competitor
Cerberus.

We should
also remember his prior op-ed in November, 2008 in the New York Times:

“With it [the
bailout] , the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of
declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy,
product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround,
not a check.”

Romney’s
argument against the TARP bailout shows that he misunderstands what happened in the government bailout. The TARP bailout not only helped support
aggregate demand, it created an opportunity to adjust the cost structures for
GM and Chrysler in a way that private equity firms were not able to accomplish.
Workers and middle management trusted agreements made with the government in a
way that they could never trust a private equity firm.

So,
Mitt thinks he could have done even better. Better? Better than this?

Just two years after it was rescued and reconstituted
through bankruptcy and a government bailout, General Motors Co. cruised through
2011 to post the biggest profit in its history.

The 103-year-old company, leaner and
smarter under new management, cut costs by taking advantage of its size around
the globe. And its new products boosted sales so much that it has reclaimed the
title of world’s biggest automaker from Toyota. […]


…The
company’s performance in North America and Asia still helped it earn $7.6
billion for the year, beating the record of $6.7 billion set during the truck
boom in 1997.

Wait!
Maybe Mitt means better than this:

Detroit’s Big 3 all turn
profits in 2010, pulling out of long skid.
US automakers General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler LLC each reported a
profitable 2010 Tuesday, with combined unit sales of cars and light trucks
topping 5.6 million, a 19 percent increase from the previous year. The results
are expected to help push the automotive industry – domestic and foreign
manufacturers selling in the US – to its first profitable year since 2005.

Even
better than that? Really? Boy, Mitt must be a wizard! Especially since even after Obama took office, GM and Chrysler searched frantically for paths to
avoid bankruptcy, including possible mergers. Chrysler held a one-week garage
sale of its assets in February 2009, inviting anyone with enough money to bid
for parts of the company. And no one bit.

Posing
as an economics wunderkind is one of Romney’s fantasies. It’s gotta hurt when
he realizes that perhaps he really doesn’t have the magic business touch after all.

Romney
could be forgiven if he had simply gotten it wrong three years ago; after all,
plenty of people got it wrong. Even The Economist magazine got it wrong. The
difference is that The Economist recognized that they were simply wrong and
admitted they were wrong.

But
Romney continues denying reality and is doubling down. He continues to argue
that requiring GM and Chrysler to go through a managed bankruptcy and
restructuring through normal private lending channels was a viable
option.

It’s
not just that Romney was wrong in 2008/2009; but that he doesn’t seem to have learned anything. Romney could
have just admitted that things worked out okay, said Obama made the right
choice and then moved on with his carpet bombing strategy against Santorum and
Gingrich.

But,
slogging on in this way, he proves he has limited business chops

and
is simply WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

The Indiana House is considering House Bill 1210, introduced by Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner
(R), that will make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. But this isn’t the action
of one pro-life zealot, the Indiana Senate has already passed a similar bill, but it is awaiting similar action in the House.

The proposed bill is
typical of what is happening in Republican controlled state legislatures across
the country: It requires physicians to inform a pregnant woman seeking an
abortion that the fetus could feel pain and require patients to view an
ultrasound. A patient could get out of doing so only if she stated her refusal
in writing.

But the most
controversial portion of the bill is the part that would require doctors to
inform women about the risks of abortion, including “the possibility of
increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion and the natural
protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer.”

So What’s Wrong?

There is no increased risk of breast cancer associated
with induced abortion. In June 2009, the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Gynecologic Practice wrote,
“Early studies of the relationship between prior induced abortion and
breast cancer risk were methodologically flawed. More rigorous recent studies demonstrate no
causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent
increase in breast cancer risk.

The
American Cancer Society (ACS) and other major health organizations, have rejected this theory. In
February 2003, the U.S. National Cancer Institute brought together “more
than 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer
risk.” They found that neither induced nor spontaneous abortions lead to
an increase in breast cancer risk. In fact, the risk is actually increased for
a short period after a woman carries a pregnancy to full term. According to
ACS, these findings were considered “well established,” which is the
highest level for scientific evidence.

Indiana isn’t the only state to promote this theory. According to
the Guttmacher Institute, seven states — Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia — now inaccurately
describe a possible link between abortion and breast cancer in written
counseling materials.

Indiana Right to Life has hailed 13 measures introduced into the
state legislature this session, calling it the “largest array of pro-life
legislation in recent history.” The group’s website states, “The
flood of legislation is a direct result of the dramatic change in leadership at
the Statehouse following the November elections.”

The main
concern here is the idea that it could ever be right or ethical to misstate the truth between doctor and patient. The GOP is now actively getting in the
middle of the relationship between a patient and her doctor.

With the passage of this bill in
Indiana, they will be requiring doctors to provide
outright falsehoods. But since Indiana’s
unemployment rate is 9.5%, why don’t these legislators focus instead on adding
Indiana jobs?

Republicans
always say about national health care: “it is not the state’s right to tell
someone what they should do/not do with their bodies”, but the story flips when
it comes to being pro choice.

All of
a sudden there is a god-given right for government to do so!

And it that’s just WRONG!

 

“Welcome back to the fight. This time I
know our side will win.” (Victor Laszlo, Casablanca)

 

What’s Wrong Today:

On Tuesday, the PA House of
Representatives decided it made sense to declare 2012 the “Year of the
Bible”—and unanimously passed a resolution doing just that, 193-0.

The resolution, sponsored
by state Rep. Rick Saccone, of Allegheny and Washington Counties, is
about a page long.  Here’s an excerpt:

WHEREAS, Deeply
held religious convictions springing from the holy scriptures led to the early
settlement of our country; and

WHEREAS, Biblical
teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our
Declaration of Independence
 and
the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, Many of
our great national leaders, among them

President Washington, President Jackson, President Lincoln, President
Wilson and President Reagan, paid tribute to the influence of the Bible in our
country’s development, as exemplified by the words of President Jackson that
the Bible is “the rock on which our Republic rests”;  and

WHEREAS, The
history of our country clearly illustrates the

value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the scriptures in the lives of
individuals, families and societies; and…

You get the idea. It’s a
resolution. It holds no real power.  Rep.
Saccone thinks it’s just like recognizing Girl Scout Week, or honoring Jewish
chaplains…

So, What’s Wrong?

Way to go Pennsylvania! You are showing
America how to ignore the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the
Constitution of the United States.

AND nice job of wasting
time and taxpayer money on ancient myths instead of real problems! The
Wrongologist’s message to state and local politicians in Pennsylvania and elsewhere:
Get
off your knees and get to work! The economy is in shambles, many
Americans are jobless and homeless.

The
Freedom From Religion Foundation
is protesting the resolution, saying PA House Resolution 535 arrogantly exhorts
citizens to “study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures.” FFRF Co-Presidents, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie
Gaylor go on to say “The Pennsylvania Assembly is strictly prohibited by the
Pennsylvania Constitution from controlling or interfering with the limits of
conscience, or showing any preference by law to any religious establishments or
modes of worship. It is no more permissible for members of the Assembly to
‘bless’ the bible than it would be for them to endorse the Koran.”

 

“Our
constitution grants sovereignty not to a deity or a ‘holy book,’ but to ‘We,
the People.’ There is no reference to God, the bible, the Ten Commandments or
Jesus in the U.S. Constitution, just as there are no references to ‘consent of
the governed,’ ‘civil liberties’ or ‘democracy’ in the bible. Those who have
truly studied the bible realize that it is a moral quagmire, a behavioral grab
bag, which has been used to justify automatic rule, tyranny, slavery, the
degradation of women and gays, child abuse, war, atrocity and mayhem,”
noted the FFRF.

Once the government enters into the religion business, conferring endorsement
and preference for some religions over others, it strikes a blow at religious
liberty, forcing taxpayers of all faiths and of no religion to support a
particular religious view. 

Which is probably the worst
part about this: It’s more fodder to the idea that our state governments can
take their sweet time writing resolutions such as this one, instead of focusing
on rebuilding the economy.

This nothing new, many
state legislatures are being taken over by nut cases. Readers of the
Wrongologist know that he follows the New Hampshire legislature’s antics
closely. In recent weeks it has proposed legislation grounded in nothing but
hate and ignorance. Here are a few examples:

• A bill to allow businesses to deny services
  to gay people

• A bill to defund Planned Parenthood

• Bills to weaken Domestic Violence laws

• A bill to allow the teaching of the bible
  in public school

A
quote we like: “Politicians are people who, when
they see the light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy more tunnel.” –(John
Quinton)

State legislators everywhere have always had the
capacity to be a little ridiculous, but now, things are getting downright
dangerous.

And it’s simply WRONG!