Month: November 2014

This is Not The Onion

No Comments

The head of Naval intelligence has unable to do his job because his clearance has been suspended:

The head of naval intelligence has not been able to view classified information for an entire year.

 Vice Adm. Ted Branch, the director of naval intelligence, had his security clearance suspended in November 2013 after being investigated for possible misconduct. In the year since, no charges have been filed and there is no sense of when they might be, leaving the Navy in an untenable situation.

 If classified information is being discussed at a meeting, the director of naval intelligence has to leave the room.

 If Branch drops by a subordinate’s office, the space must be sanitized of any secrets before he enters.

 Branch can’t attend morning intelligence briefs, or sit with the other services’ intel chiefs when they meet with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, said a naval intelligence source, who spoke on background because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

 This festering situation has sown resentment among some in naval intelligence, who feel they don’t have the pull in national security circles that comes with having a three-star at the table. Meanwhile, the Navy brass is hamstrung — with no idea when or if Branch will be charged or cleared.

Yes, the biggest concern is that they don’t have a 3-star to engage in dick swinging at the annual Intelligence Community Sock Hop.

You have a f%$#ing 3-Star who has had his security clearance pulled because concerns about his possibly being bribed with Lion King tickets: (seriously, not joking here)

Branch’s clearance was suspended along with that of a deputy, Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, the director of intelligence operations, for possible connections to Glenn Defense Marine Asia — the husbanding firm at the center of one of the Navy’s biggest bribery scandals in decades. Their clearances were pulled while the Justice Department investigated their connections to GDMA and its larger than life CEO, Leonard Glenn Francis, who is accused of bribing Navy officers to steer ships to ports where he allegedly overcharged the Navy in exchange for junkets, prostitutes, even “Lion King” tickets.

Why the f%$# is this guy still in charge there?

He clearly cannot do his f%$#ing Job, so either Naval Intelligence isn’t functioning, or it is completely redundant.

It appears that the Admiral’s 3-star status is linked to his current assignment, and he would revert to a 2-star and I guess that the General Officer coffee klatch is working full time here.

Today’s Must Read

No Comments

Mother Jones has an article describing the sordid history of the the Koch family’s involvement in politics, The Making of the Kochtopus.  (Also, they have a fairly complete list of their web of shell organizations here.)

These people have been a cancer on the American body politic for half a century:

The John Birch Society likes to point out that its members were tea partiers before the tea party existed. And indeed, some of today’s conservative fears—from a socialist president to a United Nations-driven “one-world government”—wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the early 1960s, when Birch Society leader Robert Welch commanded a right-wing movement that Republican establishmentarians viewed as a mortal threat.

The connective tissue linking the Birchers of the past to today’s tea partiers meanders through the libertarian movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and de

tours into the tobacco wars of the 1980s and the Hillarycare battle of the 1990s. At the nexus of this throughline is the Koch family, which for more than six decades has helped to finance and cultivate the ideological uprising that has now, at long last, established itself at the very heart of Republican power.

Patriarch Fred Koch—a leader of the successful effort to make Kansas a right-to-work state in the late 1950s—was a founding member of the John Birch Society. Fred was in the room the day in 1958 when Welch addressed a small group of prominent conservatives to plan a movement that would place its weight on “the political scales in this country as fast and as far” as possible. Charles Koch, a Birch Society member like his father, would later join a group of fellow Birchers committed to growing the Freedom School, a Colorado-based educational center founded by a controversial libertarian guru named Robert LeFevre.

Through the Freedom School—which taught free-market dogma and whose leader postulated that any rights the government conferred, it had first robbed you of—passed many of the luminaries who founded the modern libertarian movement, not least of them Charles and David Koch. Together, the brothers would go on to play a pivotal role in bringing the libertarian ideology (a “radical philosophy,” Charles readily admitted) to the masses.

 They have been very evil for a very long time.

Linkage

No Comments

Ben Stein demonstrates why he’s not a bag of sh%$, because a bag of sh%$ can serve a useful purpose. In this case, here he is accusing Barack Obama of being a racist because all Stein’s friends call him n***er:

Notice how he has honed the coded language for race that he first deployed as Richard Nixon’s speechwriter.

If This is True, We Made Them Do It

No Comments

It has been reported that the FCC will be reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, which will allow for real regulations to protect consumers and establish a competitive market:

The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a “hybrid approach” to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.

However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.

As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers’ pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

“People close to the chairman” say that Chairman Tom Wheeler is “close to settling on a hybrid approach,” the Journal wrote, continuing:

The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content. The FCC would then classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers.

 The emerging plan reflects proposals submitted by the Mozilla Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, though it departs from both in parts. The main advantage of the hybrid proposal, as opposed to full reclassification, is that it wouldn’t require the FCC to reverse earlier decisions to deregulate broadband providers, which were made in the hopes of encouraging the adoption and deployment of high-speed broadband. The authors of the new proposal believe that not having to justify reversing itself would put the FCC on firmer legal ground.

Let’s be clear about this: The FCC did not want to do this.

They were dragged into this kicking and screaming by the avalanche of public input, and unless I miss my guess, there will be some huge loopholes in this “hybrid” approach.

Remember, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler got his start as a cable lobbyist, so I am expecting a poison pill in all of this.

What a Surprise, the No Fly Zone over Ferguson was About Restricting Press Access

No Comments

It was patently obvious at the time, but now we have evidence on tape:

The federal government agreed in August to a request by the police to restrict about 37 square miles of airspace over Ferguson, Mo., for 12 days for what they said were safety concerns, but audio recordings show that the local authorities privately acknowledged that the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.

On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, the agency’s air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to allow commercial flights to operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and for police helicopters to fly through the area — while still prohibiting flights.

“They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” one administration manager said about the St. Louis County Police Department in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. “But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.”

At another point, referring to the temporary flight restriction, a manager at the administration’s center in Kansas City, Mo., said the police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this T.F.R. all day long. They didn’t want media in there.”

Seriously, this is America, and this is not acceptable.

Not only do we need to disband the Ferguson PD, we probably need to do it for the St. Louis County PD as well.

These are ineluctably corrupt organizations.

They cannot be fixed.  They need to be shut down.

This is the 2nd 911 Joke that I’ve Heard

No Comments

And I made the first one a few years back, and it wasn’t that good.

Well, Chris Rock hits it out of the park:

On the eve of the New York City Marathon, “Saturday Night Live” host Chris Rock opened his monologue with jokes about last year’s Boston Marathon bombings. Too soon? Well, the joke was pretty tame, all things considered. But that was just the warm-up for Rock’s main riff on the Freedom Tower, the new One World Trade Center building that’s now America’s tallest skyscraper. He went there — to the 9/11 joke.

“What were they thinking?” Rock demanded with trademark incredulity. “What kind of arrogant Floyd Mayweather crap is this?” then “Who’s the corporate sponsor, Target?

It’s really funny.

The Least Likely Democrat to Tell the Truth and to not Backtrack About it Is………

No Comments

That would be Mary Landrieu, who said that part of the hostility against Obama in the South had its roots in racism, that’s the truth bit, and now she has refused to apologize for speaking the truth:

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu made conservative heads explode by stating a truth, that the South has not always been the friendliest place go African-Americans and to women. Landrieu’s campaign put out a press release standing by her comments.

This is a level of guts and honesty that I would never have expected of her.

The World Just Got a bit Less Funny, and a Lot Less Weird

No Comments

Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today

Tom Magliozzi, the older, taller half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today at 77 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Tom and his brother Ray Magliozzi first broadcast their public radio call-in show Car Talk in 1977 from the studios of WBUR in Boston.

They offered advice on cars and life, but it was the duo’s sense of humor and Tom’s iconic laugh that made the show so memorable for millions of fans across the country.

NPR began distributing Car Talk nationally in 1987. More than 4 million people tuned in each week, making it one of public radio’s most successful shows ever.

I was actually was on Car Talk once, in 1997.

I asked them about the edibility of automotive fluids, which, come to think of it, may explain how my writing style developed.

Finally………

No Comments

Brazil has finally made its selection of the Saab Gripen for their air force:

Buying a new jet fighter can be a long-drawn-out process. Brazil, after many years of planning and procrastination, has finally signed a contract for its future combat aircraft.

Officials from the Brazilian Defense Ministry’s Aeronautics Command and the Swedish Saab Group put pen to paper recently, and the Brazilian air force is now set to receive 36 Gripen NG fighters.

The jets, worth a little over $5.4 billion, include 28 single-seat Gripen Es and eight twin-seat Gripen F aircraft. Deliveries will begin in 2019 and will be completed in 2024.

………

In late 2007, the government formally relaunched the new fighter project, and at the time excepted to acquire 36 multi-role jets at a cost of $2.2 billion. By July 2008 the F-X2 project had split into two phases. In the first, Brazil would get 36 new fighters, blowing the $2.2 billion budget.

………

By September 2009 it looked as if the twin-engined Rafale had cinched F-X2. Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the Rafale’s victory even before the competition was over. Saab and Boeing were both furious, and Lula instead declared that the government would delay the F-X2 decision until after a new president took office.

In January 2011, new president Dilma Rousseff deferred the decision to 2012 owing to budgetary problems. As the defense budget began to feel the cutbacks, the pricey Rafale started to lose its edge. At this stage, the program cost ballooned to $8 billion. Rousseff launched new comparative studies and called upon Embraer for its opinion.

The two cheapest options now became the front-runners. The Super Hornet offer—for 36 fighters—was for $7.5 billion, while the Gripen offer cost $6 billion. The Rafale offer exceeded $8 billion.

There are a number of ways to cost aircraft, and it can vary by a lot.

The numbers here run to about $150 million a plane, which I believe is the total weapons system cost, while the quotes that we normally see in the press for US systems are flyaway costs, which looks to run something like 50% of total system cost, so this is actually significantly cheaper than the F-35 JSF.

Still, $150 million a pop?

That’s a big jump from the less than $5 million that the F-4 Phantom in its heyday.

Eric Arthur Blair* Would be Appalled

No Comments

At the Guantanamo show trials, defense attorneys are being asked to respond to motions that they are not allowed to read:

Despite enormous logistical and legal hurdles, defense attorneys for high value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, say they press on for the judgment of history, if not for a fair turn before the embattled military commissions that substitute for trials in federal court.

 Attorneys for alleged 9/11 attack planners Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and alleged USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri described their challenges to an audience gathered by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in Manhattan on Wednesday night.

 Even though all the defense attorneys are vetted and cleared to access Top Secret documents, they agree that secrecy remains the root of most delays and dysfunction.

 “If you sat down to design a system and said, ‘I want to create a legal system where everything will move slowly, glacially,’ you would design this,” said Richard Kammen, who represents al-Nashiri. For example, if Kammen, who is based in Indianapolis, wants to read a classified court document, he must travel to a secure facility in Washington, D.C. to do so. Once, Kammen said, he was ordered to respond to motions he was not allowed to read.

 Even when the attorneys are at Guantanamo to meet in person with their clients, a detainee’s own words are considered secret.

 “We were told that anything that came out of client’s mouths were considered to be ‘presumptively classified,’” said Jason Wright, who represented KSM until this August. “This phrase ‘presumptive classification’ is something that has never existed before in the laws of the United States.”

 To make sure he understood, Wright, a former Army JAG, received a power point presentation at Guantanamo.

 “I had a briefer who told me, when you meet with your high value detainee, you have to treat everything that he says as presumptively classified – every word, every utterance, every gesture,” Wright recalled.

 “I said, ‘Hypothetically, what if he told me he liked peanut butter sandwiches? Is that classified?’”

 “Yes,” he was told.

(emphasis mine)

This is a blot on American jurisprudence and the rule of law.

It is lawless, uncivilized, and cowardly.

*George Orwell’s real name.

The Pentagon wants its War, and Now they are Waging a War of Leaks

No Comments

We now get leaks of the military complaining that the Obama administration is “micromanaging” operations in Iraq and Syria:

Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

………

Other gripes among the top Pentagon and military brass are about the White House’s decision not to work with what’s left of the existing Syrian moderate opposition on the ground, which prevents intelligence sharing on fighting ISIS and prevents the military from using trained fighters to build the new rebel army that President Obama has said is needed to push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into a political negotiation to end the conflict.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel himself is among the critics of Obama’s strategy in Syria. Hagel wrote a memo last week to Rice warning that Obama’s Syria strategy was unclear about U.S. intentions with respect to Assad, undermining the plan.

What is going on here is that the Pentagon, including Hegel want the US to move aggressively for regime change in Syria, because they feel that it is their God given right to wage war with, and overthrow, whoever they want.

We’ve seen what happens if they get their way, the clusterf%$#s that are commonly known as Iraq and Libya.

The fact that the adults in the White House (there is an expression I never thought that I would say) are telling the war mongers in the Pentagon that they cannot topple yet another government just because, they are leaking to the press.

Thank You Chelsea Handler

No Comments

Comedienne Chelsea Handler posted a parody of Putin’s shirtless horseback photo to Instagram, and was justifiably pissed off when they took the image down, (NSFW pic at link) and has dumped Instagram for Twitter in response.

I understand, and I agree with her basic point, but this is not why I am thanking her.

I am thanking her for showing us her breasts.

I believe that a woman voluntarily, and proudly, showing her breasts is an independent good. (No, I have not seen the stolen photographs of Jennifer Lawrence, etc., and I find the involuntary posting of these sorts of pics to be an unconscionable violation of privacy)

I consider it to be a very public gift, and so I am writing this note to thank her.