"Walkers For Warnock" Announce Atlanta Events

Walkers For Warnock, a newly formed organization of potential step brothers and sisters who know or suspect that Herschel Walker is their biological father, has announced plans to support Raphael Warnock in the runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat. The Atlanta based group announced it will hold "Walks For Warnock" each Saturday until the election.

The rapidly expanding group plans to walk 2.4 miles from the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both MLK and Warnock preached, to Planned Parenthood's East Atlanta Health Center, one of several locations patronized by women impregnated by Walker, the former football star and GOP candidate. 

A spokesperson for Walkers For Warnock says their goal is to rally support for Warnock and abortion rights, but at the same time, "it's an opportunity to celebrate our lives, bond with our newly discovered step siblings, and pay tribute to those that might have been."

Walkers For Warnock has step brother/sister affiliates in Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia, cities where Walker lived during his football career. Each has plans to announce their own Walk For Warnock event. The sheer number of members in those areas exceeds those in Georgia, but they cannot vote in the election. However, they are eager to raise funds for the reelection  of the Democratic candidate, Raphael Warnock. 

Facing accusations from the Walker campaign that Walkers For Warnock members are simply angling to reclaim unpaid child support, a Dallas-based member shrugged it off. 

"That's ridiculous. He don't have enough money. There are too many of us. Like I'm gonna spend my weekends walking across town for what, like $8? He run off on us. Now, we're gonna run off on him."

WALKER: Fake-Ass Ranger

 I can't vote in Georgia, but I can do this, my first meme attempt:

It is rare to ever have an original idea on the internet, but I have yet to see this, so I'm temporarily reviving my blog after a 7-year hiatus. The hat is courtesy of Chuck Norris. Maybe the badge is too? The image is free to whoever wants to use it. Go viral, my pretty!

Deceptive half truths from Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is supposed to be an organization you can trust. They are routinely cited on NPR. They are a non-profit. They claim to be non-partisan. As cynical as I am, I never had reason to distrust them...until now.

Drew DeSilver, a senior writer at Pew, writes a story titled, "High-income Americans pay most income taxes, but enough to be 'fair'?". Given the title, readers might expect the author to actually answer that question, but DeSilver doesn't even try.

He starts out with a nice chart showing the composition of government revenue since 1934. It's interesting, but with regard to income tax revenue as a percentage of government revenue, not much has changed post WWII. However, please note that this does not mean that income tax rates haven't changed over that time period--more on that later.

After a bit about corporate taxation, which is tangential to the question posed in the title, he presents his second chart, "Who Pays Income Taxes? The Rich, Mostly". What a surprise! The people with the most income pay the most income tax!

DeSilver then diverges into a discussion of payroll taxes, which again is tangential to the income tax queston posed in the title, and then concludes that "the U.S. tax system as a whole is progressive." As to whether the overall tax system is fair, something at least close to the question proposed in the title, he waffles with a milquetoast some-say-yes and some-say-no.

As a reader, what the hell am I supposed to make of this? What I make of it is that DeSilver wants to slap the "progressive" label on our tax system to imply that the status quo is acceptable, or at least not "unfair".

The problem is DeSilver does not address the question in proper historical context, and I think he does this deliberately. Consider a few things omitted from his article:

1. A chart of effective income tax rates over time for varying levels of income. Top tax rates used to be far higher than they are today. 
2. A chart showing income over time in deciles. The rich keep getting richer.
3. A chart showing the income tax composition (earned income and unearned income) over time for varying levels of income. The poor generally have no unearned income, while it now makes makes up a majority for the wealthy.
4. A chart showing tax rates over time for earned income (wages) and unearned income (interest, dividends, and capital gains). Tax rates are historically low on unearned income, which favors the rich.

I claim DeSilver deliberately omits this information, because he doesn't seem to be a bad writer. If ten journalism students were asked to do a report on income taxes in America, it seems highly unlikely that even one of them would simultaneously omit all four of these points. I also expect that DeSilver has an editor who signed off on this, which indicts the Pew Research Center. They may not be publishing outright lies, but they're not publishing the outright truth either.

A question for Senator Ron Wyden

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) was an outspoken critic of secret CIA and NSA domestic spying programs. However, he is the leading Democratic proponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. TPP is being negotiated behind closed doors by multi-national corporations, and leaked documents show that the details of TPP are to be kept secret for four years after TPP is implemented.

A simple question for Ron Wyden:

Why is government secrecy bad when it comes to domestic surveillance programs, but just fine when it comes to trade agreements?

Not a rhetorical question.

Double standards on torture

McClatchy recently published a story about a suspected Pinochet-era torturer who had been working for the US government as recently as 2014. Clearly, the angle being pushed is that Americans should be outraged that a foreigner who might have been a torturer 40 years ago in Chile was working for the US government.

If that's the case, McClatchy might be interested in some more recent history. Not so long ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that documents torture conducted by Americans and our foreign agents during the ongoing war on terror. Other than Lyndie England (of Abu Ghraib dog leash fame) and her ex-fiance, no one is in jail. A few people higher up the chain were demoted, but didn't lose their jobs. The few that did lose their jobs (Dick Cheney and John Woo for example), only lost them due to the change in administrations.

It seems safe to say that there are hundreds of people currently working in the US government that were complicit in torture. Not just the torturers themselves, but the officials who sanctioned it, the medical staff that consulted, and everyone else that tried to keep it a secret. Maybe McClatchy can get to work on that story, unless torture is only an issue when foreigners do it.

Credit where credit is due

On December 14th, Krugman had this to say about TPP:

Dean Baker takes me to task over the Trans Pacific trade deal, arguing that it’s not really about trade — that the important (and harmful) stuff involves regulation and intellectual property rights.

I’m sympathetic to this argument; this was true, for example, of DR-CAFTA, the free trade agreement with Central America, which ended up being largely about pharma patents. Is TPP equally bad? I’ll do some homework and get back to you.

On March 11th, Krugman finished his homework, got back to us, and announced he was thumbs down on TPP. He went into greater detail, but what he didn't do was acknowledge Dean Baker's role in nudging him down the correct path.

This seemed a bit out of character for Krugman. Afterall, he cited Baker three months ago, so why not now? Through Krugman's comment section, I requested that Krugman acknowledge Baker's work against the TPP, but my comment was rejected by the NY Times moderator. Baker, surprisingly, didn't react to Krugman's change of heart on TPP or his lack of professionalism.

A week later, this was still bugging me. Economic researchers live and die by being first. Giving and taking credit is part of the game, and Krugman plays it all the time. Here are some examples from the first page of Krugman's blog on March 18th.

Way back — before Lehman fell! — I argued that there was a distinction between modern and postmodern recessions.

That’s actually why I was predicting a sluggish recovery well in advance, and in fact well before the Reinhart-Rogoff aftermath paper came out.

And a number of economists, myself included, independently developed models of leverage, currency mismatch, and balance sheet effects to make sense of the Asian crisis.

I think I was the first to quote St. Augustine here: “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Krugman obviously wants credit when he's first, but he needs to reciprocate. 

By the way, it appears that I'm the first and only one on the internet making this point.

My Current Assessment of Obama

UPDATED 24 March 2015 to include comments on ISIS/ISIL and to point the use of sarcasm regarding the killing of Bin Laden. 

A long lost email from a friend about a sturgeonmouth post on the power of the presidency, inspired me to put this together--my first post in over a year!

Here's my current assessment of Obama on various topics--whether he met my expectations, exceeded my expectations, or fell short of my expectations.

HEALTHCARE

In my view, PPACA is Obama's biggest achievement. It's far from perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. That said, PPACA, without the public option, is the minimum that any Democratic president would have achieved with Democratic control of both the house and senate. Obama didn't perform a magic act here.

Furthermore, Obama campaigned on the public option, only to trade it away for votes that never materialized. Many changes have been made to PPACA since passage, but adding the public option has not been championed by Obama. At this point, I think Obama only embraced the public option in the primaries as a way to differentiate his health care plan from Clinton's. It's Obama's failure to support a public option that causes him to fall short of my expectations for health care reform -- an expectation that he set! 

ECONOMY

STIMULUS

Obama had to deal with a monster economic meltdown due to policies promoted for decades by previous administrations. While he didn't entirely screw up in his response, his stimulus proposal was far too modest, as many of his own advisors, as well as outside economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz said from the start.

Obama had a lot of power at this time. People on both sides of the aisle were in a panic. He could've have taken the opportunity to push for more, not only more stimulus, but stimulus that targeted infrastructure over tax cuts. He could have pushed for stimulus that was contingent on tighter regulations of the financial industry. He could have argued for bailing out underwater homeowners instead of underwater banks. Instead, he tried to make nice with the Republicans, who didn't reciprocate. Therefore, we ended up with an insufficient stimulus that actually undermined the Democratic case for Keynesian economics (government spending replacing private spending during periods of low demand).

Obama also undermines Keynesian economics by repeating right-wing talking points about how the government needs to tighten it's belt, just like the American family is forced to tighten it's belt. This is asinine. The government, unlike the American people, is immortal, and can print legitimate money at will. Rather than using his position to educate Americans about this significant difference between the government budget and household budgets, he contributes to American ignorance.

FINANCIAL REGULATION

While Obama has slightly increased taxes for the rich, he has not been a strong advocate for financial regulation, or for prosecution of those responsible for the meltdown.

When Obama took office, none of us had probably even heard of Elizabeth Warren. I think she provides the perfect case study for the argument I was making in the post that inspired my friend's email. Presidents have enormous power to shape public opinion, much more than a Harvard professor or a first-term senator. Yet, it's Elizabeth Warren, not Barrack Obama, that is fueling a grassroots movement for increased financial regulation and a more equitable economic system.

I think where a person spends their time, energy, and resources is a good indicator of their values (in fact, it would be weird if it wasn't). In this case, it's clear to me that Warren shares my progressive values, and Obama does not.

TRADE

Obama is currently pushing hard for congress to give him fast-track authority on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This so-called free trade agreement has little to do with free trade and everything to do with corporate control. Elizabeth Warren complained last week that TPP would give international trade courts authority over American courts. In her example, foreign companies could sue the US in trade courts if US law forbids imports of item containing toxic chemicals as a violation of free trade. Already, based on similar provisions in earlier trade deals, tobacco companies are suing small countries for putting warning labels on cigarette packages, claiming this is a free trade violation! As if that's not enough, TPP pushes our intellectual property laws onto other countries, forcing them to buy expensive drugs from Big Pharma, rather than produce cheap generics domestically. Dean Baker is a must read on this topic (and for economics in general).

Obviously, Obama did not meet my expectations on the economy. I'm not ready to claim that he is corrupt (exchanging favors for money), but time will tell. It will be very interesting to see what Obama does post-presidency. If he ends up somewhere financed by Wall street, or if a disproportionate amount of his speaking fees come from Wall Street, I'll concede that he was corrupt.

FOREIGN POLICY

CUBA

I'll start with an easy win for Obama. He did the right thing by normalizing trade relations with Cuba. This issue has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. It's a small issue, it was long overdue, and apparently it was pushed more by Hillary than Obama, but whatever, it's progress. It makes American foreign policy slightly less inconsistent, and it will benefit the people of Cuba.

LIBYA

This is where things get weird. Back in 2007, at my local Democratic primary, I stood on a chair in the middle of a noisy room to plead with members of my precinct to vote for Obama over Clinton. It wasn't because Obama supported the public option and Clinton did not. It was because Obama was against the pre-emptive regime-changing war in Iraq and Clinton was not. It was this issue that brought Obama to national prominence, and it's largely credited for his victory over Clinton, and subsequently McCain.

So, four years later, it's safe to say I was pretty disappointed to see Obama sign on for a pre-emptive regime-changing war in Libya. Just like Iraq in the aftermath of the war Obama opposed, Libya in the aftermath of the war Obama supported, is now an unmitigated disaster. What a surprise!

SYRIA   

Here, Obama had the opportunity to show who he really is, the man who opposed the pre-emptive regime-changing war in Iraq, or the man who supported the pre-emptive regime-changing war in Libya. Unfortunately, he supported a pre-emptive regime-changing war in Syria. Strongly. Fortunately, this war didn't happen, but only because Britain's parliament voted against it, and John Kerry's infamous, last-minute, accidental diplomacy.

[sidenote] I wrote extensively about this issue here at sturgeonmouth, and I think it's the best writing/analysis I've ever done, mostly because no one else was making the same argument. I still contend there's a Pulitzer Prize available for a real journalist who can dig into the details. This was a massive intelligence failure that nearly launched yet another American war in the middle east, right on the heels of the massive intelligence failure and debacle in Iraq. At the very least, if Hillary runs for 2016, someone needs to ask her if the Clinton State Department shared the view of the subsequent Kerry State Department that Assad would never give up his chemical weapons.

YEMEN

Obama's drone war in Yemen, like much of the war on terror, is only creating more terrorists.

IRAN

Kudos here. Given Obama siding with the warmongers on Libya and Syria, I'm not sure why he is opposing them on Iran. Maybe he's learning that pre-emptive regime-changing war isn't all it's cracked up to be. Who could've known? In any case, negotiating with Iran over their nuclear program is a good thing.

ISRAEL

Like American presidents before him, Obama seems committed to supporting the Israel policy of a vocal minority over a quiet majority. I am optimistic that this will change in our lifetimes...if we all agree not to die for at least 10, probably more like 20 years.

RUSSIA

Despite McCain's tireless efforts to make things worse, Obama's doing OK here. He should continue to resist calls to send arms to Ukraine. I highly recommend Daniel Larison for more on this and all other foreign policy issues.

OSAMA BIN LADEN

Geez, I almost forgot Obama's most celebrated foreign policy achievement. I suppose I have to say something about his heroic killing of Osama bin Laden. After all, this had a monumental historic effect. It's what finally ended the war on terror, right? [SARCASM]

ISIS/ISIL

To me, ISIS is just the latest in the parade of never-ending boogeyman that are supposed to have us cowering in fear and begging our politicians to do whatever it takes. Soon enough, they'll be replaced by some other group, and in ten years, Americans won't know ISIS from icicles.

Overall, Obama didn't come close to meeting my expectations on foreign policy. If we were all asked in 2008 how many pre-emptive regime-changing wars we expected Obama to start, we all would've adamantly said ZERO! Sadly, we were wrong, and for me, that trumps everything else.

CIVIL RIGHTS

GUANTANAMO

I'll start with Guantanamo because Obama explicitly made the closure of Guantanamo part of his 2008 campaign. His failure here is a major stain on his presidency. His early attempt to merely move Guantanamo to US soil, while maintaining the underlying concept of indefinite detention without charges or trials, was shameful. Many of the Guantanamo prisoners were known to be innocent, but were kept imprisoned because they'd be in danger if sent back to their home countries. Had Obama wanted to make the case, these examples could have been effective in changing public perception about Guantanamo. But, remember what I said about where a person spends their time, energy, and resources?

TORTURE

After years of saying "we don't torture", the senate report forced Obama to admit "we tortured some folks". Granted, he was talking about the Bush era, but that's little comfort to me. I thought his use of the word "folks" seemed to trivialize the issue, as did his admonishment that we shouldn't get too self-righteous about the torturers because they were under a lot of stress at the time. Torture is never OK, and stress is not an excuse (nor a legal defense at The Hague). Obama's decision to "look forward instead of backward" with regard to torture prosecutions was cowardly and abrogates our international obligation to investigate alleged war crimes. By letting the perpetrators off the hook, Obama has set the stage for more torture every time something "scary" happens.

DOMESTIC SPYING

Obama betrayed us pretty quickly when he granted immunity to the telecoms for Bush-era spying. Who knew that would be just the tip of the iceberg? Please watch Citizenfour. This is a great, entertaining, and disturbing synopsis of what Edward Snowden revealed about domestic spying. I love Oregon Senator Ron Wyden's reaction when Director of National Intelligence Director James Clapper lies to his face! Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander have repeatedly lied to congress. Their boss, Barrack Obama, has not fired them. That tells you everything you need to know about Obama's view on this subject, but if you must know more, read up on how his administration has gone after those who expose these abuses. Glenn Greenwald's archives at Salon and Marcy Wheeler's blog will overwhelm you with the details.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
Obama campaigned in 2007 as marriage being between a man and a woman. It wasn't until the tide of public opinion turned, and the number of states legalizing same-sex marriage exploded, that Obama, the constitutional scholar, decided that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. This was not leadership. This was Obama opportunistically jumping in front of a growing parade that had been marching for years.

Furthermore, I'm far from alone in suspecting that Obama was lying about his opposition to same-sex marriage during the 2007 campaign as a political tactic. I think this was both bad politics and cowardly. What constituency was Obama going to alienate that wasn't already planning to vote for McCain, especially when both sides assumed he was being insincere?

Obviously, on the issue of civil rights, Obama's performance is way below my expectations.

EDUCATION

Obama has jumped on the bandwagon that says college for everyone is the answer to income inequality. This argument is so stupid it pains me. It sounds good, but if you think about it, it is stupid. What would change if suddenly everyone had a college degree? Society would still need people to collect garbage, roof houses, pick fruit, etc. The real answer is that everyone, college degree or not, needs to be paid a living wage for their contribution to society.  

I can't say Obama fell short of my expectations on the issue of education because I didn't have any. I think any President's role is limited, and that the real action on educations happens at the state level. Admittedly, education policy is not one of my passions, but if anyone has a go-to source on this issue, please point me that way.   

NET NEUTRALITY

I don't know what category to put this in, so I'll let it stand on it's own. Obama vigorously supported net neutrality, and the FCC recently adopted a strong net neutrality policy. Hooray for Obama, right!? Well, not so fast. Look at the chronology. Obama only started arguing strongly for net neutrality after John Oliver mobilized hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Americans to bombard, and ultimately shut down, the FCC website in support of net neutrality.

This goes back to the point I was trying to make in the blog post to which my friend responded. I don't think that a British comedian with a weekly show on HBO inherently has more sway with the American public than the President of the United States. Obama either didn't care about the issue, or like same-sex marriage, wasn't willing to take a strong stand until others built a winning coalition. It's opportunistic politics, but it's not leadership.  

IMMIGRATION

While I expected more on immigration, I'll blame the Republicans, not Obama. I thought the Chamber of Commerce types would've been able to force a Republican compromise. While it was a little late, I think Obama handled this perfectly. America hates congress far more than it has ever hated Obama. This gave him tremendous leverage to say, in effect, "hey, since congress is too dysfunctional to send me a bill, I'm going to issue an executive order. If congress ever gets it's act together and sends me a comprehensive immigration reform bill, I'll rescind the executive order, and sign the bill." Brilliant. More of this please.

ENVIRONMENT

Like immigration, Obama is finally making progress by using executive orders instead of tilting at congressional windmills. Expectations low, but met.

SOCIAL SECURITY

Below expectations. I didn't expect a Democratic President to be the one to put Social Security cuts on the table (repeatedly) in the form of chained-CPI (cutting benefits by redefining the inflation index). Elizabeth Warren is on the right path, talking about strengthening Social Security by raising the ceiling on contributions.

CONCLUSION

Even though I acknowledge the Republican obstruction in congress, Obama has not met my expectations. Sadly, despite that, I'd vote for a third Obama term in a heartbeat over Hillary Clinton. There is not a single issue where I think she'd be better, yet I'll probably have to vote for her.

Cobra CPI 480 Review: 0/5 POS

After two years on the road, our generic Shop Force inverter bit the dust. We replaced it in Panama at our favorite store, Machetazo. We had the choice between two inverters, a generic one that looked just like the Shop Force for $40, or a slightly smaller one with USB output made by Cobra for $52. We decided to spend the extra $12 for the name brand, hoping you get what you pay for.

Well, you don't. The Cobra CPI 480 just might be the biggest piece of shit we've ever spent money on. It failed after one month, when all it was used for, other than one short session with the Dremel tool, was charging a laptop. When I measured zero ohms across the input terminals, I knew it was toast. We took it to a repair shop in the small town of Villa de Leyva, Colombia. The repair shop was only the size of a double wide toll booth, yet there was already another Cobra CPI 480 on the shelf, waiting to be repaired.

It had the same problem as mine, a blown transistor. Lucky for me, these inverters use a pair of these transistors. The repair guy pulled the good one from the other inverter and soldered it into mine. Of course, it's obvious that Cobra has a class problem, so who knows how long these transistors will last. The repair guy recommended some better transistors that I could use when these fail, but he didn't have any in stock, so we'll be on the look out.

When we got back to the truck, I googled "Cobra CPI 480 review". PC Magazine gave it 2.5 instead of 3.5 stars because 2 out of 3 test units failed. The first one failed after 2 days, and the second failed a week later. WTF? Failure of 2 out of 3 test units should earn you 0.0 stars. PC Magazine also claimed that the Cobra was made of black plastic and aluminum. Uhh, no. It's all plastic. The middle part is just painted to look like an aluminum heat sink. In reality, it's a thick plastic thermal blanket, the opposite of a heat sink.

From the start, the Cobra irritated us because the fan constantly cycles on and off. Cobra's documentation says this is to prolong the life of the fan, which it might do, but not really important if the transistors fail because they aren't getting properly cooled! Since we have a backup fan that I pulled from our old inverter, I rewired the Cobra to run the fan all the time. I also drilled multiple vent holes and slots in the plastic housing to improve cooling.

Looks like aluminum, but it's not. Holes and slots added to top and side.

If we still have this piece of shit a year from now, it will be because the repairman's transistor recommendations and/or my cooling modifications triumphed over Cobra's dumb ass engineering. I'm hopeful, but not optimistic. That's some powerful stupidity.

Empathy...get some

A former co-worker, let's call her Ellen, recently friended my wife on Facebook. My wife unfriended her after a few weeks. She turned out to be one of those people.

Ellen is on a crusade against Obamacare. She posted a link to The Heritage Foundation data on insurance costs under Obamacare. My wife replied that Heritage is not a source of reliable data, given that it's headed by Jim-we'll make ACA Obama's Waterloo-DeMint. Ellen responded that back in 2009, Obama said some stuff that wasn't true, "specifically about Obamacare". Of course, Ellen didn't specifically say what she was specifically talking about.

In the comments, Ellen continued to rant about all her friends who were going to end up paying more for their insurance. She didn't specifically say what her friends' income levels are, or whether they were paying more for better insurance. Also, no mention of how she could attribute the increase specifically to Obamacare. After all, insurance costs have been going up at an alarming rate every year for decades. That's sort of the whole fucking point of health care reform.

But this is what really pisses me off. Ellen has worked at the same giant corporation for  almost 20 years. She is surely making six figures. Ellen recently went through a two year battle with cancer. She is taking care of her mother who has Alzheimer's. Ellen is scheduled for oral surgery this week. All of this was disclosed on Facebook. Clearly, Ellen has lots of experience with the health care system. Ellen's employer-provided health care is subsidized by the government. Her mother's health care is likely provided entirely by the government in the form of Medicare or Medicaid.

I could be a dick and bitch and moan about that. You know what really drives up insurance costs? Sick people! People who get cancer and Alzheimer's and need oral surgery!

Instead, I have empathy. I'm glad that I don't have cancer. I'm glad that my mother doesn't have Alzheimer's. I'm glad that I don't need a root canal. I'm glad that Ellen and her mother are getting the care they need. However, I want the same for all people and their mothers, not just those that have the luxury of a well paid job with lavish government-subsidized employer-provided health insurance. If that means Ellen and her well-off friends pay a bit more, they should be thankful to be in such a fortunate position.

It's Obama, Stupid!

A trusted adviser pointed out that I'm missing the obvious. The boss only fires or asks for an employee's resignation when the boss is unhappy with the employee's performance. Before Kerry's accidental diplomacy, neither he nor Obama demonstrated much interest in a diplomatic solution to Syria's chemical weapons, so maybe Obama doesn't mind Kerry's apparent failure to seriously pursue diplomacy.

That would explain why Kerry hasn't actually been fired or forced to resign, but it doesn't explain why members of congress or the media aren't calling for his resignation, or at least asking for evidence of Kerry's diplomatic efforts.

Some in congress, like John McCain and Lindsay Graham, always prefer war, but what about those that tend to prefer diplomacy over military action, like Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul? Why aren't they calling for an investigation or Kerry's resignation? Maybe former membership also has it's privileges.

In the media, I don't expect the big boys to rise up and challenge the administration on this issue. They are always willing to hype the next war, and they want to maintain their access to those in power, but what about the little guys? Where are the independent bloggers and the real investigative journalists?

My trusted adviser again suggests the obvious...why don't I ask them? Good idea. Let's see if they'll respond.

UPDATED 10/30/2013: It's been over a month and I haven't read or heard back from anyone on this. The subject quickly changed to the shutdown, the debt ceiling, the Obamacare rollout, and now the NSA spying abuse. I think the details of our near-war with Syria will be lost to history. 

War Mongering Media, Inc. -- This is CNN

I just checked into a hotel in Cartagena, Columbia. While unpacking, I had the TV on CNN. They had a ~10 minute segment on Vladimir Putin. Here were the take-aways:

• Putin knows how to leverage diplomatic mistakes made by others to Russia's advantage because he was a judo master.

• Putin proven ability to influence events in Syria will enable him to influence events elsewhere. Where will he strike next!?

• Putin, if re-elected will match Stalin as Russia's longest serving president. Stalin!

The implication is that Putin/Russia "won" and Obama/USA "lost" in the Syrian agreement to turn over it's chemical weapons to the UN. The only way that framing makes sense is if America never really cared about Syria's chemical weapons, but just wanted to involve ourselves in another mid-east war. That might be the preference of the bogeyman makers and war mongers at CNN, but it's not the preference of the American people. America doesn't lose when other countries agree to deliver what we want.

Someone is wrong on the internet

Is it me? I've been thinking about this old cartoon all week.

In my case, I'm worried that the someone might be me. None of the bloggers I read regularly share my opinion that John Kerry should resign as Secretary of State. I've even waded into the cesspool of their comments sections. None of their readers are calling for his resignation, and those people are crazy. I guess that should be somewhat reassuring, but still, no one sane or insane is supporting my view, and I can't find any new information that forces me to reconsider.

A few days later, I find that the Wall Street Journal has a story titled, "Inside White House, a Head-Spinning Reversal on Chemical Weapons: How the U.S. Stumbled Into an International Crisis and Then Stumbled Out of It" with this teaser:

This account of an extraordinary 24 days in international diplomacy, capped by a deal this past weekend to dismantle Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile, is based on more than two dozen interviews with senior White House, State Department, Pentagon and congressional officials and many of their counterparts in Europe and the Middle East. The events shed light on what could prove a pivotal moment for America's role in the world.

I was excited. This might be the detailed accounting of Kerry's diplomatic efforts I was looking for. Unfortunately, the article was blocked by a pay wall. Unwilling to give a dime to the WSJ, I checked back every day, figuring they'd eventually offer free access to an old story. In the meantime, I was intrigued by the potential irony that not only might I be proved wrong, but proved wrong by the WSJ, which I had just blasted for not disclosing O'Bagy's conflict of interest, as well as their long record of being wrong about everything.

I gave them too much credit. They eventually provided free access to their story, but despite "more than two dozen interviews with senior White House, State Department, Pentagon and congressional officials and many of their counterparts in Europe and the Middle East", the WSJ managed to shed zero light on the history of US negotiations with Syria or Russia. However, they did provide some important details about what congressional leaders were doing when Obama called to inform them that he was going to seek their support:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was preparing a turkey sandwich in his Louisville, Ky., home when he took the call.

Wow. Now that's the kind of hard hitting reporting I've come to count on from the WSJ. But, with over 24 interviews, how did they miss the obvious follow-up questions: White or whole wheat? Toasted? Mustard, mayo or Miracle Whip?

My next step was to simply google "John Kerry should resign". The #1 link is to John Bolton, George W's neocon UN ambassador. My post is #7! That's disturbing. Bolton, in addition to claiming that Obama is the weakest president since Buchanon, says on Fox News (of course) that Kerry should resign out of principle. Bolton explains that Kerry has been pushing attacks on Syria so hard that Obama's pursuit of a diplomatic solution is such a slap in the face that Kerry should quit in disgust. OK, that's what I expect from the man behind the mustache that is John Bolton, which is not at all the argument I was making.

In between John Bolton and me, one guy is calling for Kerry to resign because he is a Free-Masonic Zionist member of Yale's secret Skull & Bones society. Again, not my argument. The New York Sun relives the Swiftboat campaign, calling for Kerry to resign because his blunder led to "appeasement", claiming that "his whole public life has been a long arc of retreat." Not my argument either. National Freedom Forum thinks Kerry "should resign rather than have his good name attached to this weak and incompetent President," and should jump ship before "Socialist President Obama" makes him the fall guy. Not my argument, and by the way, it's not an accident that I'm not providing links to any of this crap.

There was one guy who called for Kerry's resignation back in June when chemical weapons were first used in Syria. His argument was similar to mine, noting that any Secretary of State should not be the head cheerleader for war. No word on what he thinks about the current situation. Maybe he was silenced by Kerry's Free-Masonic Zionist Skull & Bones allies.

So, it looks like I'm alone here, but without more information about American diplomatic efforts with regard to Syria's chemical weapons, I'm standing by my original response. Kerry should resign or be fired. It's an indictment of both congress and the media that they are not demanding this information. Following his recent distortion of intelligence on Syria, no one owes him the benefit of doubt.

Questioning myself, questioning Kerry

I seem to be the only one on the internet who thinks Kerry should resign or be fired. Are my usual allies so relieved that we stumbled upon an alternative to bombs that they forgive the stumble? It's kind of cool being the lone voice, but also kind of disturbing. Disturbing enough that I'm trying to figure out how I might be wrong. In doing so, I see this via NPR:

Obama also added that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had talked about the plan now on the table both during the recent G-20 meeting in Russia and during another meeting last year in Mexico. 

In other words, the proposal is a true diplomatic breakthrough long in the making. 

So, I'm supposed to believe that bombing Syria was not avoided by Kerry's gaffe, but by a "true diplomatic breakthrough"? Hmm... To help get my head around this, I created a timeline:

8/21 Chemical weapons attack in Syria
8/30 British parliament votes against military action
9/5-6 Meetings between Obama and Putin at G20
9/9 Kerry's infamous gaffe

OK. If the plan on the table was discussed last year at the G20 in Mexico and at the recent G20 in Russia, what exactly happened in the 3-4 days after the G20 that caused Russia, and perhaps Syria, to reverse course? Were they just seizing an opportunity to embarrass Kerry and Obama? Were the US and Russia talking to each other with neither actually talking to Syria? The latter seems very likely to me, as Syria is not a member of the G20.

Either way, I find it very disturbing that the two (two!) cited diplomatic efforts regarding Syria's chemical weapons happened at economic summits that did not include Syria! At the Russian G20, Obama and Putin only met privately for 20 minutes. That does not strike me as a serious diplomatic effort.

Furthermore, both G20 discussions were between Obama and Putin. What exactly has Kerry done with regard to Syria since he became Secretary of State? I want to know with whom he talked, when, and for how long. The fact that this information is not being desperately shoved at the media, as well as Kerry's demonstrated willingness to distort intelligence in favor of military action, makes me skeptical that Kerry has made any attempt at diplomacy.

If I was a member of Congress, if not asking for Kerry's resignation, I would at least be demanding answers for how he got caught completely off guard once again with regards to war in the middle east.

O'Bagy really is the new Chalabi

That 26-year-old Syria expert really is the new Ahmed Chalabi. Today, she was fired by the Institute for the Study or War for falsely claiming she has a Ph.D

Still waiting for Kerry's resignation. I suspect John McCain and Lindsey Graham will eventually start demanding it if it turns out Kerry's off the cuff remark really does stop them from getting their new war. Also, I'm still waiting for someone/anyone else to call for Kerry's resignation. Am I a lone voice here? Do other people not think that Kerry failed to execute THE central responsibility of the office of Secretary of State?

John Kerry should resign...

...or be fired. A few days ago, I criticized Secretary of State John Kerry  because he quoted unsubstantiated figures from a 26-year-old Syrian revolutionary over those of our national security agencies. That was an embarrassment, but now, it's much worse.

Responding to a British reporter questioning whether there was anything Syria could do at this point to avoid an American attack, Kerry said this:

Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week…without delay and allow the full and total accounting for that, but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done, obviously.

What he didn't anticipate was that the Syrian foreign minister would agree, with the support of Vladimir Putin, to transfer chemical weapons to the UN. There are details to work out, and maybe this option will fall through, but happy ending or not, Kerry should still resign or be fired.

John Kerry is not the Secretary of Defense. He is the Secretary of State. If Chuck Hagel had made this comment, I would not be calling for his resignation. As Secretary of Defense, Hagel's job is to provide and execute military options. As Secretary of State, Kerry's job is to provide and execute diplomatic options. He has obviously failed at that task.

Ten years ago, he voted to authorize war in Iraq without doing due diligence on Bush's intelligence claims. Now, Kerry has revealed that he is once again ready to go to war without doing due diligence and without exhausting diplomatic options. He still doesn't take the prospect of war seriously. He has learned nothing. He is an embarrassment, he is a failure, and he should resign or be fired (and I say that as someone who voted for him in 2004).

To anyone that thinks Obama and/or the USA would look bad if Kerry resigns or is fired, what exactly does it look like if he stays?

John Kerry has learned nothing from Iraq

This is depressing. First, via the excellent Marcy Wheeler, John Kerry claims that he and Chuck Hagel were against the Iraq War, even though they both voted for it. That's not news. Kerry, like other Dems who voted for the Iraq AUMF, has been weaselly about this since things started going badly. This part, though, is news:

According to Homeland Security Chair Mike McCaul, Kerry’s claims that only 15 to 25% of the rebels are extremists do not match what the intelligence community has briefed him (they’ve said over half of the fighters are extremists).  

Update: Meanwhile, the source Kerry cites for his estimates on numbers of extremists is a consultant for the rebels. 

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged members of the House of Representatives to read a Wall Street Journal op-ed by 26-year-old Elizabeth O’Bagy — an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War — who asserted that concerns about extremists dominating among the Syrian rebels are unfounded. 

“Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote for the Journal on Aug. 30. “Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces,” she wrote. 

But in addition to her work for the Institute for the Study of War, O’Bagy is also the political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that advocates within the United States for Syria’s rebels — a fact that the Journal did not disclose in O’Bagy’s piece.

This is unbelievable. The Wall Street Journal is a horrible newspaper. Their editorialists in particular have an uncanny record of being wrong about nearly everything. I certainly don't approve of their omission of O'Bagy's conflict of interest, but I'm certainly not surprised by it.

I am surprised that the Secretary of State--in a country that spends more on defense and intelligence than the rest of the world combined--ignores his own intelligence agency in favor of an editorial by the new 26-year old "Ahmed Chalabi" in a newspaper that is routinely hostile to his own party. It's an embarrassment, and yet another warning sign that going to war in Syria is a very bad idea.

My thoughts on Syria

It's hard for me to believe that we now have a Democrat in the White House--who got there in part by being against preemptive war--who is forcing UN inspectors to leave yet another mid-east country so that we can start bombing.

Arguing that we must attack because chemical weapons violate international norms is pretty rich. We gave Saddam Hussein his chemical weapons and helped him use them against Iran. Using atomic weapons violates international norms, but we're the only country who's done that. Preemptively bombing and invading other countries violates international norms, but we've done that. Torture violates international norms, but we've done that. Using cluster bombs and land mines violates international norms, but we refuse to sign on to treaties banning their use. We also refuse to sign up for the International Criminal Court because we want immunity from our war crimes. This is not exactly the ideal resume for international norm enforcer.

The best synopsis of the situation in Syria that I have read is from William Polk via James Fallows. I can't add much to what he says, but it's reassuring to know there are level-headed people that demand rigor when contemplating war. It's also good to see that the British people, Parliament, the American people, and perhaps even Congress, have learned something over the last decade about scrutinizing lame-ass excuses for going to war.

The one thought I can add is the potential political impact of attacking Syria. Military action there will go wrong--per the situations today in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It will be the height of irony if Obama and Congressional Democrats rally the American people to a young upstart anti-war Senator named Rand Paul in 2016, but it's possible, especially against pro-war Hillary Clinton. Of course, it's also possible that she could once again lose the primary to an anti-war opponent, though sadly, I'm not sure who that might be.

Reporting on Snowden

Mainstream American media sucks. I've come to terms with that. But, it's frustrating when even the usually-non-sucky media sucks. For instance, Dana Milbank, who usually doesn't suck (even though he works for The Washington Post, which does), writes this about Edward Snowden.

Snowden undermines his own cause in the U.S. At the start, Snowden's revelations to the Guardian and The Post promised to put him in the distinguished company of Daniel Ellsberg and others who exposed government wrongdoing. But rather than come home and face trial -- giving the nation the debate he claimed to seek about assaults on Americans' privacy -- he has allowed the story to become all about his life as a fugitive.” [all bold mine :c]

Get that? Snowden has "undermined his own cause" and "allowed" the story to become all about him. Yes, clearly that's what's happening here because Snowden has the power to control the story now that he has replaced Dana Milbank as a columnist at The Washington Post. Oh, wait, that hasn't happened? Then, I have no idea what the hell Milbank is talking about.

If anyone is undermining Snowden's cause, it's people like Milbank, who write things like this:

I still believe that Snowden was justified in leaking information about the NSA’s snooping. The administration’s collusion with the congressional intelligence committees had denied Americans the public debate they deserved about the trade-offs between security and privacy.

Milbank says this, yet he chooses to write about Snowden undermining his cause instead of digging into "the administration’s collusion with the congressional intelligence committees." By doing so, Milbank himself continues to deny "Americans the public debate they deserved about the trade-offs between security and privacy."

It's a well worn path. McClatchy, which usually doesn't suck too much -- they did some great reporting on Iraq -- also chooses to write about Snowden the cartoon character, rather than the secrets he revealed, because keeping up with "many thousands of words" would be "difficult". Seriously.

With many thousands of words written about Snowden from all over the world, it’s difficult to keep up with his own ever-changing story, much less keep track of his piecemeal disclosures of a sweeping U.S. surveillance program.

Wow. This is a major American newspaper admitting that it's just too difficult to wade through all the documents, so they're just going to cover Snowden's travel plans. If McClatchy really wants to "keep track of his piecemeal disclosures of a sweeping U.S. surveillance program," they might want to hire, or at least read Marcy Wheeler. She is single handedly doing the difficult work that The Washington Post, McClatchy, and the rest of the mainstream media can't or won't.

Is Josh Jealous?

Damnit. I didn't plan on this being bash-Josh-Marshall week, but minutes after my last post, I see his introduction to another solid piece by Brian Buetler:

We’ve written at length about how the rules of the congressional intelligence committees make it difficult to do real oversight of the intelligence community, but at a more fundamental level, they stymie efforts to legislate on intelligence matters. 

Who exactly is the "we" he refers to? It was Marshall who first stated that he'd prefer surveillance info be revealed by elected officials instead of unauthorized leakers. It was not Marshall, but one of his reporters, Brian Buetler, that showed why that was a dumb thing to say. Now, rather than admit he was wrong, Marshall wants to pretend that he's been right all along.

Furthermore, Marshall seems to suggest that his company has been at the forefront of this issue, which is not the case. Buetler has written a couple of solid articles since the Snowden leaks, but others, specifically Glenn Greenwald, have been talking about excessive government secrecy and the potential for domestic spying for years.

Which gets me to thinking...

Josh Marshall is not the only blogger/reporter who has surprised me with his negative reaction to Edward Snowden and/or Glen Greenwald. It seems to run counter to his usual tendencies--enough that I wonder if what I'm seeing isn't just professional jealosy. It is disappointing, but I think Marshall's initial reaction would have been very different if Snowden had contacted him at TPM instead of Greenwald at The Guardian.

Is Josh Learning?

Maybe. Two days later, Josh Marshall echoes the exact point I was making when he said he'd prefer disclosures of domestic spying be revealed by elected representatives instead of leakers like Edward Snowden.

Our report on why congressional oversight of the intelligence community doesn’t work very well and maybe isn’t supposed to. Fascinating piece.

In that report, TPM reporter Brian Buetler says:

...reports and briefings are only as accurate and thorough as briefers are forthright and comprehensive [bold mine :c] — a variable that has hampered oversight efforts for years, according to members, aides and former aides who spoke with TPM. Likewise the sometimes arbitrary and legally dubious restrictions on what senior congressional aides with top-secret clearance are given access to, and what and to whom elected officials are allowed to tell even each other, can hobble the legislative branch’s efforts to understand what our spy agencies are really up to, let alone fulfill the government’s statutory obligation to fully and currently inform the Congress.

I found the piece to be more of a confirmation of the obvious rather than fascinating, and it disappoints me that someone in Marshall's position was apparently oblivious to this dynamic until his own reporter pointed it out, but hey, baby steps.