Year: 2016

Vatican Cans Nuncio Who Set Up the Pope

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who set up a meeting between anti-gay (and non-Catholic) town clerk Kim Davis without informing the Pope of the context is being removed as the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the United States:

The Vatican is replacing its controversial ambassador to the U.S., who arranged the meeting between Pope Francis and antigay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis last fall.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò will leave the position of apostolic nuncio, the equivalent of an ambassador, and will be replaced by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, a French-born clergyman who is currently the nuncio to Mexico, Catholic magazine America reports, citing Sandro Magister, a blogger who covers the Vatican.

The Vatican is not expected to confirm the news until the Obama administration has agreed to the new nuncio’s appointment, the magazine notes, but it adds that “reliable sources” expect an official announcement before Easter, which falls on March 27 this year. Because of his experience in Mexico, Pierre may well emphasize immigration issues, The Washington Post reports

.………

During the pope’s visit to the U.S. last year, Viganò arranged for him to meet with Davis, the Rowan County clerk, who shut down all marriage operations in her office to avoid serving same-sex couples after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. After she was sued and disobeyed a federal judge’s order to resume marriage operations, she went to jail for contempt of court before agreeing that her office would serve all eligible couples.

There are any number of player in and around the Vatican who have been trying to Ratf%$# pope Francis, and this is a brush back pitch.

There are a lot of rocks to be turned over in the Vatican, and I really hope that the Pope is around long enough to clean house.

Corrupt Prosecutors Lose Primaries

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The prosecutors who did their utmost to cover up the police murders of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice have been turfed out in the primaries:

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to treat police shootings as serious crimes is a significant milestone in the movement against unjustified police shootings of black Americans.

Last July, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez explained why she chose to charge police officer Dante Servin with involuntary manslaughter instead of murder for firing his gun into a crowd of people and killing 22-year old Rekia Boyd. Servin was inside a car, and fired the gun over his shoulder, claiming that he fired because he saw a man approaching him with a gun.

“He intentionally fired his weapon, yes. But is there intent to kill? I don’t think he went out intending to kill anyone,” Alvarez told the Chicago Tribune. “He was reckless, shooting off his shoulder into a crowd of people.” Servin was set free after the judge angrily said that the entire case had been wrongfully charged.

How someone could fire a gun into a crowd of people and not intend to kill anyone is as much of a mystery as why it took Alvarez nearly two years to charge Servin. Similarly, Alvarez took more than a year to charge officer Jason Van Dyke for the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and only then after the government was forced to release video of the shooting that showed Van Dyke firing his weapon into McDonald’s body while he was lying on the ground. According to the Daily Beast, Alvarez declined to file charges against police involved in fatal shootings more than 68 times in the last seven years.

Alvarez lost her job Tuesday night. So did Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor who told the grand jury looking into the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old holding a toy gun, that they shouldn’t press charges against the officers who killed him because Rice’s death was merely tragic and not criminal. Though a video showed that Rice had been shot by police moments after they arrived, with no opportunity to even follow their commands, McGinty, by his own admission, encouraged the grand jury not to indict.

“Justice would not be achieved by bringing charges that would violate the ethical canons of our profession,” McGinty said last December, “because we know these charges could not be sustained under the law in our Constitution.” The local judge who ruled there was probable cause to bring charges against the officers described McGinty’s approach to the matter as “unusual.”

………

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to charge police with crimes for fatal shootings of unarmed black men may be the best sustainable strategy of changing that national culture of impunity, where police need only say they were afraid to justify ending someone’s life. If prosecutors know they will pay a price for letting cops slide, they will be less likely to do so.

These are deeply evil people, and I would hope that folks in the legal profession in Illinois and Missouri are looking at referrals to the state bar for discipline.

These folks lack the moral character to practice law.

Perhaps some other district attorneys out there who are starting to realize that they have more to fear from people thirsting for justice than they do from the PBA (cop union).

Bummer

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Not a good night for Bernie.

Right now, it looks like he might have win either Missouri or Illinois by a narrow margin, but Clinton will likely pick up something near twice as many delegates.

On the Republican side, Marco “The Lightweight” Rubio, lost Florida, and he is now out, and Trump appears to be about half way to the nomination, with lots of winner take all primaries on the Republican side coming up.

She’s Fundraising with Theranos? Seriously?!?!?

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For a while, I have been talking about the smoke and mirrors show that is the lab test company Theranos.

The short version is that they have a multibillion dollar valuation for a technology that allows one to make blood tests from a drop of blood from a finger tip.

Unfortunately, they have not been able to make the technology work, and so they have been doing conventional tests to generate some revenue.

But they are f%$#ing this up too, having been cited by the FDA.

And now the Clinton campaign is having this den of fraud hold a fund raiser for them.

I guess that Enron was busy:

Theranos is a unicorn that may soon be sent to the glue factory. The biotech start-up was once the toast of Silicon Valley. Its signature technology — a blood-testing machine so sensitive it requires a mere pinprick of blood to make accurate diagnoses — attracted a $9 billion valuation. ……… And then, last October, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the company’s breakthrough technology doesn’t actually work.

In recent days, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that the company’s lab in Newark, California, was in violation of five federal regulations, thereby posing “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” Last week, the release of that investigation’s full report revealed that “quality control issues” may have compromised the blood-test results of 81 patients.

……… But for god knows what reason, it hasn’t cost the company the chance to host a fund-raiser for the Democratic front-runner. Next week, Chelsea Clinton will join Holmes at Theranos’s Palo Alto headquarters to help raise money for her mother’s campaign. According to an email obtained by Re/code, the event will be held next Monday night and will cost most attendees $2,700 a head.

One of Clinton’s primary liabilities in her race against Bernie Sanders is the perception that she is overly friendly with corrupt corporate interests. So it’s pretty bizarre that she has decided to have a (reportedly) corrupt corporation host her next big fund-raiser. And it’s only one of several unforced errors the campaign has made since last Friday. 

Someone in the Clinton sure picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

On the bright side for the Campaign, at least this time Hillary was not caught on camera doing it, so she can blame some lowly staffer.

This really is a complete cock up.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Needs to Be Fired ……… Out of a Cannon ……… Into the Sun ……… Part Gazillion

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As I have mentioned before, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has a primary challenger, who I have endorsed, Tim Canova.

Well, it appears that our lady of the unmanageable hair is spooked, because she has changed DNC policies to protect her own sorry political career:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s reputation as DNC chair has plummeted to the point where she is being challenged in the Democratic Primary for her congressional seat for the first time ever. Her poor leadership of the DNC contributed to significant losses in the 2014 midterm elections for Democrats, and the way she has handled the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries has irked both Bernie Sanders’ and Hillary Clinton’s supporters, as well as many of her colleagues. Just a few weeks ago, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, one of five DNC vice chairs, resigned from her position to support Mr. Sanders.

To help save her public image, Ms. Wasserman Schultz has authored desperate Op-Eds for various news outlets in attempts to come off as relatable. “Having a perspective of a working mother has helped in the role as a legislator,” the Florida congresswoman wrote (poorly) for US News. Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s explanation of how being a mother in government poses challenges fails to mention her privileged financial status. Most working mothers do not have the salary of a U.S. congresswoman plus a husband’s banker income to pay for things like childcare.

And now, to help rig her own election in the Democratic primaries, Ms. Wasserman Schultz is blocking any challenger to a Democratic incumbent from accessing the voter file database—a vital campaign tool for any election.

“Last week, I called the Florida Democratic Party to request access to the voter file database and software known as VAN that is routinely used by Democratic candidates across the country,” wrote Tim Canova, Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s primary challenger, in an article on Medium. “I was told that our campaign would be denied access to this database because I am running against an incumbent Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I was also told that any Democratic candidate running against an incumbent Democrat would be denied access — even a lifelong progressive challenging an out-of-touch incumbent.”

Actually, it’s especially for an out of touch incumbent hack.

BTW, the DNC is not supposed to choose sides in a contested primary.

Seriously.  She  ……… Needs  ……… To  ……… Be  ……… Fired, both from the DNC, and from Congress.

She shouldn’t be elected dog catcher.

She Said What?!?!?!?!

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I am beginning to think that Hillary Clinton has another bleeder in her brain:

Hillary Clinton on Monday defended the intervention in Libya that she championed as secretary of state, telling MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that the United States “didn’t lose a single person.“

Didn’t lose a single person?

Seriously?

She then followed up with, “Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

“Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person. We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO,” the former secretary of state said during an MSNBC town hall on Monday night.

Clinton may have been referring strictly to the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, which indeed saw no loss of American lives and cost just around $1 billion. But her comments ignore the 2012 attacks at the U.S. mission and CIA outpost in Benghazi, which killed four people including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Ousting Qaddafi was worth it, Clinton said.

“Now, is Libya perfect? It isn’t. But did they have two elections that were free and fair where they voted for moderates. Yes, they did. So you know, changing from a dictator who has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state and even hopefully more of a democratic one doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “And we’ve got to continue to support the Libyan people, to give them a chance, because otherwise you see what has happened in Syria, with the consequences of millions of people flooding out of Syria, with more than 250,000 people killed, with terrorist groups like ISIS taking up almost — huge blocks of territory, as big as some of the states in that area.”

Isis is in Libya now.

It wasn’t before we destroyed the country.

They had a sophisticated irrigation system that allowed them to feed themselves.

We blew it up.

Free healthcare for everyone. Gone.

Free education. Gone

A right to decent shelter. Gone.

We also have a genocide of black Libyans in the north of the country.

We destroyed the country.

And we also helped Saudi Arabia and Turkey create the Syrian civil war under her watch.

And that coup that we fomented in the Ukraine? It’s going swimmingly.

Arguably, the most important issue for the President is war and peace, it is the one that they have the most control over, and as I’ve said before, Hillary is nearly as bellicose as Dick Cheney.

The Term for this is Unforced Political Error

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I understand that one needs to have a sense of decorum at a funeral.

It is not a place where one should prosecute political differences.

That being said, when you are in a primary contest, and among the complaints against you is that you are:

  • Mindlessly bellicose and willing to engage in regime change for its own sake.
  • A member of a corrupt and incompetent ruling elite.

This picture from Nancy Reagan’s funeral is a disaster, showing her palling around with Shrub, is a complete clusterf%$#, as the ensuing Twitter sh%$ storm shows:

This may be the best photo from Mrs. Reagan’s funeral. pic.twitter.com/kX1WZP9mwi

— David Chalian (@DavidChalian) March 14, 2016

The fail is strong in this one.

H/t naked capitalism.

Speaking of Unprosecuted Banksters

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It turns out that former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, was referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: (FCIC)

In late 2010, in the waning months of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel responsible for determining who and what caused the financial meltdown that lead to the worst recession in decades voted to refer Robert Rubin to the Department of Justice for investigation. The panel stated it believed Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary who has held top roles at Goldman Sachs gs and later Citigroup c , “may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to the financial crisis.” Rubin, the commission alleged, along with some other members of Citi’s top management, may have been “culpable” for misleading Citi’s investors and the market by hiding the extent of the bank’s subprime exposure, stating at one point that it was 76% lower than what it actually was.

No government action was ever brought against Rubin. And there is no evidence that Department of Justice acted on the crisis commission’s recommendations. A source close to Rubin says the former Wall Street executive was never contacted by the Justice Department in relation to the commission’s allegations. Nonetheless, the fact that Rubin was among a relatively small group of top bankers who the crisis commission referred to the Justice Department for potential wrong-doing, and the fact that is appears nothing happened, sheds new light on the financial crisis, and the government’s effort to pursue those who may have broken the law.

Seven years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the fact that no major Wall Street figure was ever prosecuted for crimes related to the financial crisis remains an sticking point for many. It is regularly brought up by presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its 662-page report nearly five years ago, members of the commission said they had formerly referred evidence of possible misconduct of a number of individuals to the Department of Justice. But it declined to say who. Brooksley Born, a member of the commission and a former regulator, said at the time, “Our mandate was to refer to the attorney general any individual that our investigation found may have violated US laws. We did make several such referrals, but we are not going to talk about any of those.”

………

In the run up to the financial crisis, Citigroup aggressively expanded into the mortgage market and subprime lending. Despite warnings that a bubble was forming in housing and that lending standards had gotten to loose, CEO Prince in mid-2007 famously told the Financial Times that as long as the music is still going he would keep dancing. Rubin at the time was the chairman of the executive committee of Citi’s board. Rubin reportedly blessed the increased risk taking at Citi in the mid-2000s.

By late summer 2007, Citi’s direct exposure to subprime bonds was $55 billion, according to the crisis commission. The staff notes of the commission say that “based on FCIC interviews and documents obtained during our investigation, it is clear that CEO Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin . . . knew this information.” It says the two top officials were made aware of the extent of Citi’s exposure “no later than September 9, 2007.”

Yet, according to the commission, on October 15, Citi executives told analysts on a call that the bank’s total exposure to subprime was just $13 billion, or 76% less than it actually was. Two weeks later as pressure began to build on Citi, and values in the mortgage market fell, Citi told the market that its actual subprime exposure was $55 billion, and that its losses from mortgage-related assets could already be as big as $11 billion. Prince also announced he was resigning.

The staff notes say that “the representations made in the October 15, 2007 analysts call appear to have violated SEC Rule 10b-5,” and that Prince and Rubin, along with “members of the board” may have been “culpable” for “failing to disclose” the bank’s true subprime exposure.

Rubin should have gone to jail, and he should have been banned from the finance industry for life.

Rubin isn’t alone in this.

This wasn’t just some sort of black swan.  It was aggressive, deliberate, and systemic fraud, but there were no prosecutions.

To mind, this comes down to crass tribalism, where the regulators, and prosecutors, were, or were managed by, people who went to the same schools, and started their careers at the same firms, and so there are no prosecutions.

It’s why we are seeing the rise of populism on the right and left right now.

The corrupt elites maintained their grip on power, and so we are likely to see another financial crack-up.

Hillary Clinton is Ditching Rahm Emanuel

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Not a surprise.

The mayor of Chicago is less popular than a case of the clap:

Bernie Sanders has tried to make the presidential primary vote in and around Chicago into a referendum on Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but Hillary Clinton won’t be giving him more ammunition when she visits the city on Monday.

 The Democratic presidential candidate and the former Clinton and Obama White House aide aren’t expected to see each other while she’s in town, Emanuel’s office said Sunday. Clinton often meets with, or is introduced by, mayors or other elected officials who have endorsed her as she campaigns across the country.

Adam Collins, a spokesman for Emanuel, said the mayor’s “focus remains on the job voters hired him to do last year, create opportunities for people across the city and tackle the challenges Chicago faces.” While Emanuel and Clinton won’t be meeting because “their respective schedules [won’t] make it possible,” Collins said, “the mayor’s support for President Clinton and Secretary Clinton is well known.”

………

Emanuel, who served as a senior adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House, has been under pressure as his police department faces a federal investigation into the alleged cover-up of a video of the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. His approval rating was at a record low of 27 percent in a poll conducted for the Chicago Tribune in January, and four in 10 Chicagoans want Emanuel to resign. Half of the black and Latino voters surveyed said they want Emanuel to step down.

Aware of Emanuel’s vulnerabilities, Sanders has hammered the mayor in the run-up to Tuesday’s Illinois presidential primary, hoping to make him a Clinton liability.

“Hillary Clinton proudly lists Mayor Rahm Emanuel as one of her leading mayoral endorsers,” he said at a Saturday press conference. “Well, let me be as clear as I can be: based on his disastrous record as mayor of the city of Chicago, I do not want Mayor Emanuel’s endorsement if I win the Democratic nomination.”

It sucks to be Rahm right now.

Experience My Ass!

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One of the claims made by the Clinton campaign is that she has experience, and knows how to get things done.

I’m not quite sure how this makes sense.

She has no experience in an executive elected position, and Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington for 8 years.

She was in Congress for 8 years, Bernie for 25 years.

What’s more, all through his legislative career, he has managed to make significant legislative accomplishments despite his status as a party outsider:

As Democrats cobbled together a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration law three years ago, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York was clear about one thing: His party could not suffer a single defection.

But one naysayer remained — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had opposed a similar effort in 2007 and once again did not like provisions in the new bill that he thought would displace American workers. And he had a price, a $1.5 billion youth jobs program.

Through wheeling and dealing, shaming and cajoling, Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, got his wish, and his favored provision was grafted incongruously onto a tough-minded Republican border security amendment and paid for by higher visa fees for some foreign travelers.

………

Yet in spite of persistent carping that Mr. Sanders is nothing but a quixotic crusader — during their first debate, Hillary Clinton cracked, “I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done” — he has often been an effective, albeit modest, legislator. He has enacted his agenda piece by piece, in politically digestible chunks with few sweeping legislative achievements in a quarter-century in Congress.

Over one 12-year stretch in the House, Mr. Sanders passed more amendments by roll call vote than any other member of Congress. In the Senate, he secured money for dairy farmers and community health centers, blocked banks from hiring foreign workers and reined in the Federal Reserve, all through measures attached to larger bills.

………

His congressional relationships with Democrats and Republicans have been largely legislative and not loving. A backscratcher he is not. Mr. Sanders is far more likely to be found alone in his apartment watching cable news than out for Chinese food with other members of Congress.

“He is not Ted Kennedy, who managed to have these personal relationships that come from the day in and day out working the halls,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, who replaced Mr. Sanders in the House. “The way he works is consistent with his temperament and his skills.”

Counter to his reputation as a far-left gadfly, Mr. Sanders has done much of his work with Republican partners, generally people with whom he has little, but sometimes just enough, in common.

And Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments?

Voting for the Iraq invasion, destroying Libya, installing a failed puppet regime in the Ukraine, and supporting every other ill conceived American imperial adventure over the past 15 years.

What experience is there to see?

Nepotism is not experience, see Bush, George Walker and Bush, Jeb.

More Clinton Speeches to Banksters

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Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs Group have drawn criticism on the campaign trail, but they’re not the only talks she’s given to big banks.

Bank of America has also paid the Democratic presidential candidate and her husband more than $1 million combined to deliver talks to the Charlotte-based bank and its Merrill Lynch unit.

The Clintons collected the combined figure from Bank of America over four appearances from 2011 to 2014, according to financial disclosures posted by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Former President Bill Clinton was the speaker on three of those occasions, once taking in $500,000 for a 2014 gathering in London.

The large fees raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest and are likely to remain a hot topic on the campaign trail, said Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at UNC Charlotte.

“Taking fees like this, particularly from banks that have been bailed out by the taxpayers, it’s certainly hard to argue to the public that you’re not acting in a self-serving way,” Heberlig said.

My point is not that Hillary Clinton is bought and paid for by the banks.

I do not think that she is.

Instead, I am suggesting that she, and Bill, are peas in a pod with the corrupt financial class (see Rubin, Robert), and the speaking fees are a reward for being a member of the tribe.

This is not someone who is going to go after Wall Street any harder than Barack Obama, and as mind boggling as it sounds, the George W. Bush administration prosecuted more financial criminals than Obama has.

Russia Begins Pullout, Declares Syrian Goals Achieved

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When was the last time that the US military declared a victory that actually involved removing troops from a theater>

I’m thinking that it was 1918, because, we are still in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc.

The only place where we’ve actually gotten all the way out in my lifetime is Southeast Asia, and that weren’t no victory.

The Russians had limited goals in Syrian, and the announcement of this move appears to be a part of achieving its goals, maintaining a stable ally in the region, and preventing the return of South Caucuses Jihadis to Russia:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday ordered the withdrawal of the “main part” of Russian forces in Syria, a surprise move that reflected what he called the Kremlin’s achievement of nearly all its objectives in the war-torn country.

The news upended expectations in Western capitals and among ordinary Syrians, setting off fevered speculation about Russia’s intentions, much as Mr. Putin’s unexpected military plunge into the Syrian battlefield five months ago changed the course of the war.

Perhaps the most urgent questions were how the move would affect the war’s outcome and what it meant for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose rule had been increasingly threatened by a string of military losses before Russian forces backed him up.

The Russian decision could signal a new confidence in Mr. Assad’s stability or an effort to pressure him to negotiate with his political adversaries — or both.

Mr. Putin has made his move at a particularly critical moment, as the upheaval in Syria enters its sixth year and a United Nations mediator in Geneva tries to revive peace talks to stop the war, which has displaced millions and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

A Russian military pullback will not leave Mr. Assad’s forces completely alone, because he also has support from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon. And the Kremlin made clear it was keeping its new air base in the coastal Mediterranean province of Latakia, in addition to the naval refueling station it has kept nearby in Tartus since Soviet times.

And we are still hip deep in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and creating more terrorists around the world by our aggressive, and not particularly discriminant, drone war.

Another Reason to Like Bernie Sanders

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In an article outlining he rather fraught relationship between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Politico drops this fascinating anecdote:

It’s an illustration of the extent to which the two political outsiders, once allies, have parted ways. Nader has known Sanders for decades and the Vermont socialist once referred to him as “a good friend” during a committee hearing, but he said Sanders hasn’t returned his phone calls for the past 15 years. During his time in Washington, as Sanders has fostered congenial relations with Clinton, said Nader, “He’s totally cut people like me out.”

Gee, what did Ralph Nader do about 15 years ago?

What has he never offered the most perfunctory expression of regret for?

It appears that Sanders hasn’t forgiven Ralph Nader for his exercise in narcissistic nihilism that was his 2000 campaign, which was calculated to provide maximize the benefit to George W. Bush, because, as Alfred Pennyworth says, “Some men just want to see the world burn.”

Good on Sanders for recognizing what Nader has become.

Why Trump Might Become President

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For all of his bombast, Thomas Franks notes that Donald Trump has a serious and real position on trade that is unique amongst his Republican compatriots, specifically he is the only one who talks against the current regime of free trade fetishism that is the Washington Consensus.

Over the past 50 years, there has been a trajectory towards greater trade liberalization, along with a massive expansion in property rights and rents.

Ordinary Americans note that this has made their lives, and the lives of their children, measurably worse.

The Very Serious People (VSPs) among our elites argue that in the long run we will benefit, but it’s been over 2 generations with poor results, and as John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

The VSPs maintain that it is all racism.  It’s something more significant than that:

………

Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

Trump embellished this vision with another favorite leftwing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry”. (“We don’t competitively bid!” he marveled – another true fact, a legendary boondoggle brought to you by the George W Bush administration.) Trump extended the critique to the military-industrial complex, describing how the government is forced to buy lousy but expensive airplanes thanks to the power of industry lobbyists.

Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called leftwing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

Trump embellished this vision with another favorite leftwing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry”. (“We don’t competitively bid!” he marveled – another true fact, a legendary boondoggle brought to you by the George W Bush administration.) Trump extended the critique to the military-industrial complex, describing how the government is forced to buy lousy but expensive airplanes thanks to the power of industry lobbyists.

The most frightening thing about Donald Trump is that he is the best Republican on the issues, not his demagoguery.

How Utterly Proper

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Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump for Presisent, and capped it off by suggesting that it’s all an act:

Ben Carson, the former pediatric neurosurgeon who dropped out of the Republican presidential race last week, endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, praising his “guts” and “energy.”

“There are two different Donald Trumps,” Carson said at the billionaire’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “There’s the one you see on the stage and there’s the one who is very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully. You can have a very good conversation with him. That’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to start seeing more and more of.”

Trump agreed with that assessment.

“I probably do agree. There’s the public version … it seems to have worked over my lifetime,” he said. “I think it’s different than the personal one.”

Moments later, though, Trump seemed to reject that idea.

“I don’t think there are two Donald Trumps. I think there’s one Donald Trump,” he said.

This is aa whole world of mental dysfunction, as would be anticipated by putting Donald Trump and Ben Carson together.

The frightening thing is that one of them is the odds on favorite for the Republican nomination.

This Reads Like Something from Joseph Heller’s Most Famous Novel*

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It appears that whistleblower protection legislation cannot apply to the FBI because there would be too many whistleblowers:

The Department of Justice is undercutting Chuck Grassley’s efforts to provide FBI employees whistleblower protection. That became clear in an exchange (2:42) on Wednesday.

The exchange disclosed two objections DOJ has raised to Grassley’s FBI Whistleblower Protect Act. First, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed, DOJ is worried that permitting FBI Agents to report crimes or waste through their chain of command would risk exposing intelligence programs.

What I would say is that as we work through this issue, please know that, again, any concerns that the Department raises are not out of a disagreement with the point of view of the protection of whistleblowers but again, just making sure that the FBI’s intelligence are also protected at the same time

I suspect (though am looking for guidance) that the problem may be that the bill permits whistleblowers to go to any member of Congress, rather than just ones on the Intelligence Committees. It’s also possible that DOJ worries whistleblowers will be able to go to someone senior to them, but not read into a given program.

Still, coming from an agency that doesn’t adequately report things like its National Security Letter usage to Congress, which has changed its reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board so as to exempt more activities, and can’t even count its usage of other intelligence programs, it seems like a tremendous problem that DOJ doesn’t want FBI whistleblowers to have protection because it might expose what FBI is doing on intelligence.

That’s sort of the point!

Especially given Grassley’s other point: apparently, DOJ is opposed to the bill because it will elicit too many complaints.

One of the issues that your department has raised is that allowing FBI employees to report wrong-doing to their chain of command could lead to too many complaints. You know? What’s wrong with too many complaints? … Seems to me you’d invite every wrong doing to get reported to somebody so it could get corrected.


Apparently, DOJ knows there are so many problems FBI employees would like to complain about that things would grind to a halt if they were actually permitted to complain.

We cannot protect whistleblowers, because they might whistleblow.

This does seem to be rather Helleresque, doesn’t it?

*Catch-22

Gee, You Think?

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The director of the F-35 (aka the Joint Strike Fighter) program, General Christopher Bogden, has admitted that the “Jointness” part of the program was a mistake:

Perhaps the only thing U.S. military leaders know about their next fighter jet is this: they want the program to go better than the F-35’s did.

The sixth-generation fighter effort is still in its infancy; the aircraft it produces may not fly for decades. The Pentagon hasn’t even decided whether to build separate planes for the Navy and Air Force. But the services’ leaders are already cooperating to figure out how the futuristic fighter will fit into the battlefield of the future — and how they can avoid another tactical aircraft program that winds up so late, over budget, and short of its goals.

Ask the F-35 program’s current director for advice, and you’ll get this gentle warning: joint programs are hard.

“I’m not saying they’re bad. I’m not saying they’re good. I’m just saying they’re hard,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said Thursday. “You ought to think really hard about what you really need out of the sixth-generation fighter and how much overlap is there between what the Navy and the Air Force really need.”

When the F-35 was conceived in the 1990s, the goal was to buy a common plane for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and even America’s allies. The Air Force version would fly from traditional runways, the Navy version would operate from aircraft carriers, and the Marine version would be built to take off from short runways and land vertically. The goal was to have all three have 70 percent of their parts in common, which was meant to save billions of dollars in development and logistics costs.

But engineering changes have produced three variants that have only 20 percent of their parts in common, Bogdan said at a conference sponsored by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

………

“We will have some different requirements for what we need based on the different things we are expected to provide for the joint force,” Lt. Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, Air Force deputy chief of staff for plans and requirements, told reporters last month. “We will use common technologies and maybe some common things, but at this point we think it will be a different enough mission that it won’t be the same airplane.”

The only joint US Navy/US Air Force fighter that ever achieved a modicum of defense was the F-4 Phantom, and that was developed exclusively for naval use.

Bogden also ignores the elephant in the room, which is that the jointness that most seriously compromised the program has been the jointness with the US Marine Corps.

The STOVL version has added about 2000 lbs to the weight of just the engine, led to poor rear visibility from the cockpit, made the wings smaller than they should have been for either the Air Force of Naval variants to save weight, and the volume occupied by the lift fan restricted the placement and the utility of the inner weapons bays.

This is not the only reason that the JSF is shaping up as a clusterf%$#, but it is a lot of the problem.