Category: Stupid

The Clown Show Abides

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The scary kind of clown, of course.


opHthalmologist


Edutation


These people are German stock images


It appears that only one Jew supports Rand Paul

Yesterday, Ron Paul announced that he was running for president.

The roll-out did not go smoothly:

It is hard to words good on the internet! You have to measure twice and cut once, which in internet-land, is better described as reading the thing three times to make sure you didn’t accidentally paste a thing telling people to “shop Aldi for 39 cent Fine Feline Entrée cat food” right in the middle of writing about how you are Mad About A Thing. Rand Paul’s peeps did not do that, oops. In the product description for the eye chart in Paul’s sexy funtimes lingerie shop and online falafel cart, it originally explained that “Rand Paul is an opthalmologist.” Yes, that is a hard word, and Paul may not know how to spell it (“opHthalmologist”) since he might not even be one, but c’mon, guys.

 ………

 We could forgive that spelling error, if it weren’t for this other one, where his website informed us that Paul “opposes a one-size-fits-all approach to eductation.” Apparently he likes a more creative solution, one that encourages Teaching The Controversy over whether correct spelling is even a thing. (In actuality, the HuffPost points out that Paul wants to get rid of the Department Of Education entirely, which would probably level the playing field for his staffers and website writers.)

 ………

 Both of the problems have been fixed, presumably because tacky mean liberals on the internet pointed them out.

 ………

 When running for president, it’s a good idea to give folks the impression that there is already a horde of people just clamoring to pick you as their Dear Leader. Rand Paul doesn’t really have that, so he picked the next best thing — nameless German stock photo characters!

 ………

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign Tuesday complete with a page to endorse the new presidential candidate.

 The endorsements are then presented on a map of the United States.

 The people on the endorsement map, however, appear to be stock images from a Italian photographer Andrea Piacquadio who goes by the name Olly or Ollyy on stock image sites, and according to his Shutterstock page, is based in Germany.

DOY! BuzzFeed tracked down some of the models featured on the page, and all led directly back to the Germany-based stock photo guy. This might seem like a big BuzzFeed SCOOP!, except that they failed to actually ask the stock photos if they were indeed supporting Paul for USA President. They might have been, YOU DON’T KNOW.

 There’s also a section of Paul’s website where you can pick out a special social media avatar that says what kind of US American you are, and that you support Rand Paul. There are all the normal ones — Christian for Rand, Conservative for Rand, etc. — but the one that sticks out at us is the sure to be wildly popular Jew For Rand avatar! That one guy is gonna have a field day changing his Facebook and Twitter pictures, knowing that Rand Paul made it just for him:

 ………

 Those photos have disappeared, just like the spelling errors, but the Lonely Jew avatar remains. May we also suggest Furry For Rand? Something tells us he might get some traction there.

Additionally, the YouTube of his announcement was blocked for copyright infringement.

But that was yesterday, and today is today.

Specifically, he threw a hissy fit at a reporter who wanted specifics on his abortion position:

It’s Day Two of Rand Paul’s Excellent Presidential Adventure, and he is having a bad day. Again. He started his morning picking a fight with the “Today” show’s Savannah Guthrie because she didn’t ask him questions the way he thinks she should, and he followed that up with a quick explanation to the New York Times that when reporters ask him questions he doesn’t like, “That isn’t journalism.” (Side note: Waging war against reporters when you are running for president is a FANTASTIC strategy, and we encourage Paul to stick with that for sure.)

And then it just got worse. For Rand Paul, that is:

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Paul would not say where, in his view, a pregnant woman’s rights begin and those of the fetus end.

“The thing is about abortion — and about a lot of things — is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you’re this or this or that, or you’re hard and fast (on) one thing or the other,” Paul said.


That Dr. Paul did not care for questions about abortion is no problem, because Republicans hate talking about that. Except for how it is one of their very most favoritest things to talk about, and you cannot run for office as a Republican unless you say every sperm is sacred at least 154 times in every speech, or else the ’bortion-haters will say you love killing babies, and you are not even a Republican at all, and they will not vote for you, no sir. But Paul did NOT want that mean AP reporter asking him about that: ………

And on a more substantive level, it appears that the bulk of Rand Paul’s senior campaign staff are implicated in the bribery scandal of his father’s last presidential campaign. (They bribed an Iowa pol for an endorsement.)

The late night hosts have to be licking their chops over this.

In the Annals of Foreign Policy Cock-Ups, This Ranks Up With Invading Iraq

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It looks like the Obama administration is considering formally placing Saudi Arabia under the US nuclear umbrella:

Obama administration officials are promising a major strengthening of U.S. defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, possibly including a nuclear commitment to their security, in an intensifying effort to win their support for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.

 Officials say they hope to reassure nervous gulf Arab states by providing more military aid and training to their defense forces, and by making more explicit commitments to help them repel external attacks.

 The administration is studying whether to make any nuclear assurances, though officials emphasize no decision has been made.

 ………

 The administration’s goal, officials said Tuesday, is to convince the Arab monarchies that U.S. security guarantees will make them safer than if they buy sensitive technology or a nuclear weapon from Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim ally, as the Saudis have privately threatened to do.

Here’s a thought: make it clear to the Pakistanis that if they sell nuclear technology, and to the House of Saud that if they attempt to buy nuclear technology, that they will never see another American spare part for anything.

The Saudis, specifically Prince Bandar bin Sultan, created ISIS, and we want to offer them nuclear guarantee to their regime?

And then there is this bit of insanity:

“We’re going to be there for our [Persian Gulf] friends,” Obama told columnist Thomas Friedman. “I want to see how we can formalize that a little bit more than we currently have, and also help build their capacity so that they feel more confident about their ability to protect themselves from external aggression.”

He’s attempting to create coherence in foreign policy by talking to Thomas “The Mustache of Imbicility” Friedman?

To quote the Matt Taibbi in the Thomas Friedman Pr0n Title Contest, “This ain’t yogurt.”

This has failure written all over it.

Headline of the Day

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President Obama Declares the Threat to Crappy Sony Movies a National Emergency

—Marcy “Emptywheel” Wheeler

A response to Obama’s new executive order, which is vague enough to allow sanctions against pretty much anyone who publishes the data or provides privacy tools..

It is overarching, irresponsible, and fundamentally anti-democratic, which makes it a typical security policy of Obama and His Evil Minions™.

But it gets worse. The EO targets not just the hackers themselves, but also those who benefit from or materially support hacks. The targeting of those who are “responsible for or complicit in … the receipt or use for commercial or competitive advantage … by a commercial entity, outside the United States of trade secrets misappropriated through cyber-enabled means, … where the misappropriation of such trade secrets is reasonably likely to result in, or has materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States” could be used to target journalism abroad. Does WikiLeaks’ publication of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations qualify? Does Guardian’s publication of contractors’ involvement in NSA hacking?

 And the EO creates a “material support” category similar to the one that, in the terrorism context, has been ripe for abuse. Its targets include those who have “provided … material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of” such significant hacks. Does that include encryption providers? Does it include other privacy protections?

 Finally, I’m generally concerned about this EO because of the way National Emergencies have served as the justification for a lot of secret spying decisions. Just about every application to the FISC for some crazy interpretation of surveillance laws in the name of counterterrorism founds their justification neither in the September 17, 2001 Finding authorizing covert actions against al Qaeda nor the September 18, 2001 AUMF, but instead in President Bush’s declaration of a National Emergency on September 14, 2001. I’m not sure precisely why, but that’s what the Executive has long used to convince FISC that it should rubber stamp expansive interpretations of surveillance law. So I assume this declaration could be too.

 In other words, the sanctions regime may well be the least of this EO.

Just lovely.

Preach It, Andrew Bacevich!!!!

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He observes the absolute uselessness our foreign policy, and juxtaposes the effects of tribalism in the United States, an which might be the best headline in MoJo this year, Ivy League Eggheads Have Led Us Into a String of Disastrous Wars. It’s Time For Something New:.

Policy intellectuals—eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office—are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance—well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch—belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.

………

 Then came World War II, followed in short order by the onset of the Cold War. These events brought to Washington a second wave of deep thinkers, their agenda now focused on “national security.” This eminently elastic concept—more properly, “national insecurity”—encompassed just about anything related to preparing for, fighting, or surviving wars, including economics, technology, weapons design, decision-making, the structure of the armed forces, and other matters said to be of vital importance to the nation’s survival. National insecurity became, and remains today, the policy world’s equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving.

People who specialized in thinking about national insecurity came to be known as “defense intellectuals.” Pioneers in this endeavor back in the 1950s were as likely to collect their paychecks from think tanks like the prototypical RAND Corporation as from more traditional academic institutions. Their ranks included creepy figures like Herman Kahn, who took pride in “thinking about the unthinkable,” and Albert Wohlstetter, who tutored Washington in the complexities of maintaining “the delicate balance of terror.”

………

Over the previous century-and-a-half, the United States had gone to war for many reasons, including greed, fear, panic, righteous anger, and legitimate self-defense. On various occasions, each of these, alone or in combination, had prompted Americans to fight. Vietnam marked the first time that the United States went to war, at least in considerable part, in response to a bunch of really dumb ideas floated by ostensibly smart people occupying positions of influence. More surprising still, action intellectuals persisted in waging that war well past the point where it had become self-evident, even to members of Congress, that the cause was a misbegotten one doomed to end in failure.

The modern national insecurity intellectuals subscribe to what Matthew Yglesias derided as, “The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics.”

Basically, like the DC comic book character, the US can do anything, and the only way that it can fail is through a failure of the will.

It is historically and empirically wrong.

It is also batsh%$ insane, and it is the standard wisdom inside the Beltway.
It’s why you frequently hear military leaders repeat the myth that US forces lost no battles in the Vietnam War:  (we lost over 70 battles) The lesson that the military learned was that the press needed to be muzzled so as not to lose popular support.

The fact is that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong beat us, but the military, in a stunning display of human nature, blames the American public and the press instead.

In his fine new book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, Christian Appy, a historian who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, reminds us of just how dumb those ideas were.

………

 These questions are by no means of mere historical interest. They are no less relevant when applied to the handiwork of the twenty-first-century version of policy intellectuals, specializing in national insecurity, whose bullsh%$ underpins policies hardly more coherent than those used to justify and prosecute the Vietnam War.

………


 At least since September 11, 2001, and arguably for at least two decades prior to that date, US policymakers have taken these propositions for granted. They have done so at least in part because few of the policy intellectuals specializing in national insecurity have bothered to question them.

Indeed, those specialists insulate the state from having to address such questions. Think of them as intellectuals devoted to averting genuine intellectual activity. More or less like Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter (or Dr. Strangelove), their function is to perpetuate the ongoing enterprise.

………

What prompts these observations is Ashton Carter’s return to the Pentagon as President Obama’s fourth secretary of defense. Carter himself is an action intellectual in the Bundy, Rostow, Huntington mold, having made a career of rotating between positions at Harvard and in “the Building.” He, too, is a Yalie and a Rhodes scholar, with a PhD. from Oxford. “Ash”—in Washington, a first-name-only identifier (“Henry,” “Zbig,” “Hillary”) signifies that you have truly arrived—is the author of books and articles galore, including one op-ed co-written with former Secretary of Defense William Perry back in 2006 calling for preventive war against North Korea. Military action “undoubtedly carries risk,” he bravely acknowledged at the time. “But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea’s race to threaten this country would be greater”—just the sort of logic periodically trotted out by the likes of Herman Kahn and Albert Wohlstetter.

………

Let me propose an experiment. Put them on furlough. Not permanently—just until the last of the winter snow finally melts in New England. Send them back to Yale for reeducation. Let’s see if we are able to make do without them even for a month or two.

In the meantime, invite Iraq and Afghanistan War vets to consider how best to deal with ISIS. Turn the op-ed pages of major newspapers over to high school social studies teachers. Book English majors from the Big Ten on the Sunday talk shows. Who knows what tidbits of wisdom might turn up?

We are a tribal society, and the tribe of the Ivy League has run our country for a very long time, the last 4 Presidents were Ivy Leaguers, and they have proven themselves to be incapable of recognizing reality.

Our F%$#ed Up Drug Policy, Colorado Edition

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Though sales of recreational marijuana are increasing swiftly, medical marijuana sales in Colorado fell during 2014, GreenWave Advisors calculated, along with the number of new medical cardholders, CNBC reported. Many medical users in the state have begun to purchase on the recreational side despite a lower tax rate.

………

“As long as Medpot is illegal on the federal level no one wants to register for a pot card for fear the feds now know who and where they are, knowing fully the feds could and would come bust them on a federal charge,” wrote Jeffrey Moab in a comment attached to the CNBC story. “People are willing to pay extra bucks to remain invisible to the feds.”

We need to take pot off the schedule 1 registry.

How the Creators of Bitcoin Blew It, Part LXIX

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The good folks come up with yet another problem with Bitcoin, this one deriving from a complete lack of understanding of hundreds of jurisprudence.

This could mean that if a Bitcoin holder has a claim against them, and makes a purchase or a money transfer with Bitcoin, whoever received the funds may be legally required to return the money, even if the person is many transfers down the chain of custody:

At cryptocurrency and fintech conferences, FT Alphaville often hears Bitcoin enthusiasts make the assertion that Bitcoin is superior to fiat currency because it eliminates debt from the monetary system.

But this, of course, is a fallacy.

Bitcoin may have the potential to create a fully-funded reserve system, but it certainly doesn’t eliminate debt from any system.

At best, Bitcoin’s public ledger records a transfer of digital access rights in the eyes of the clearing network. It does not, however, record or see the terms and conditions of that transfer.

Indeed, as far as the clearing network is concerned all it knows is that a transfer has occurred. Party A’s wallet has been debited while party B’s wallet has been credited.

This is something akin to witnessing a physical coin being passed from one hand to the other. Yet what the process doesn’t do is log the conditionality of the transfer — which is still the subject of private agreement and contract law.

……… [snipped a Soprano’s based loan sharking example]

As far as contract law is concerned, even if Satoshi Dice received the bitcoin in good faith from Soprano’s debtor, Soprano himself (despite his unorthodox shake-down tactics) retains a right to seize his property back. And if they passed it on, he can pursue the next party. And so on. Especially since the bitcoin network makes it so easy to follow the trail due to the public nature of the ledger. Eventually, if the coin ends up with a high-value investor or institutional account whose identity is known to the system a formal claim can be made by means of the judicial system.

It’s these sorts of preceding property claims that the bitcoin system not only fails to eliminate, but arguably empowers by making the paper trail so incredibly transparent. But to what degree is the law really on Tony Soprano’s side when it comes to his claim? (And we’re not referring to his violent retrieval methods, which obviously remain illegal.)

George K Fogg at law firm Perkins Coie has been thinking about the problem of past claims (or liens) on bitcoins for nearly 14 months now.

His conclusion: under the United States’ UCC code (uniform commercial code) as long as bitcoins are treated as general intangibles, no high value investor can be sure that an angry Tony Soprano won’t show up one day to claim that the bitcoins they thought they received in a completely unencumbered manner are actually his. In fact, it’s only if and when Tony Soprano publicly renounces his claim to the underlying bitcoin collateral he is owed that the bitcoins stand a chance of being treated as unencumbered. Until then, a hot potato claim risk exists for every future acquirer of Soprano’s bitcoin.

Indeed, given the high volume of fraud and default in the bitcoin network, chances are most bitcoins have competing claims over them by now. Put another way, there are probably more people with legitimate claims over bitcoins than there are bitcoins. And if they can prove the trail, they can make a legal case for reclamation.

………

The irony of all this for anti-government minded Bitcoin investors is that it’s only by transferring bitcoins into the established financial system that they can be sure to be protected from outstanding Tony Soprano claims on their bitcoin.

As Fogg notes:

My libertarian friends have a belief they have created something that is outside of any statutory governance, and my response is you have created something novel that can help in transferring value across borders but you can’t pretend that the UCC doesn’t exist and because it does exist it affects bitcoin. Bitcoin is governed by the UCC. You can be an ostrich and pretend that it’s not covered by it, or you can address that it is in fact covered by the statute and find a way to solve the problem.

What a surprise.

A security is created by some libertarian idiot who thought that it could be used to leave our society for Galt’s Gulch.

Not so much.

This Business Will get out of Control. It Will get out of Control and we’ll be Lucky to Live Through It.

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The military dick waving in Europe is getting out of control.

First, the US engages in show of force in the Atlantic Resolve exercise, and Russia responded with its own maneuvers, first with 40,000 troops, and a few days later another 40,000:

Russia said Thursday it had doubled the number of troops taking part in mass drills ordered by President Vladimir Putin this week to 80,000 in a major show of strength amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

 Putin on Monday ordered drills for more than 40,000 troops in regions spanning the country, from the Arctic to the far east to the volatile southern Caucasus, and ordered nuclear bomber jets to be deployed in Crimea a year after its annexation by Moscow.

 Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Thursday that the “number of troops taking part in the exercises has gone up to 80,000, and the number of aircraft has increased to 220,” quoted by RIA Novosti state news agency.

 Troops in the western and central regions and military aircraft were scrambled for exercises, Gerasimov said.

 The drills are the latest in a succession of large-scale military maneuvers that Moscow has ordered as relations with the West have plunged to a post-Cold War low over the crisis in Ukraine.

Note that Atlantic Resolve deployed something on the order of 3000 troops, and on short notice, the Russians deployed nearly 30 times that, and included a much wider variety of forces.

BTW, western military analysts were very impressed with the speed and competence of the Russian deployment:

“It’s helped us further develop our understanding of freedom of movement in Eastern Europe,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the Army’s most senior commander in Europe, in an interview with Defense News and Army Times reporters and editors.

 ………

 “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin exercises freedom of movement all the time” within Russia, Hodges said, and the US plans to demonstrate how it converges people and vehicles, a “tremendous opportunity” to practice and reassure allies in the face of Russian aggression. To pull it off, the Army is navigating diplomatic requirements and assessing infrastructure among Eastern European allies.

 “This is what the US Army does, we can move a lot of capability a long distance,” Hodges said. “I’ve been watching the Russian exercises … what I cared about is they can get 30,000 people and 1,000 tanks in a place really fast. Damn, that was impressive.”

 The remarks coincide with the one-year anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, condemned by Kiev and the West as an illegal land grab but heralded by many Russians as correcting a historic injustice.

 Aside from the Russian military’s ability to converge quickly, Hodges noted Russia’s modernized jamming and signal direction-finding capabilities, stressing the importance of US troops using secure communications.

And our military is determined to continue to engage in dick swinging against country with the 2nd largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

As I stated earlier today, this is not the sort of stuff that should only be done when there are specific orders authorizing the action by civilian authorities.

I will add that if this was a decision by civilian authorities, that person needs to be fired.

H/t Information Dissemination.

Moar War!!!!

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Remember how Barack Obama was going to pull out Afghanistan?

Not so Much:

The Obama administration is nearing a decision to keep more troops in Afghanistan next year than it had intended, effectively upending its drawdown plans in response to roiling violence in the country and another false start in the effort to open peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

As recently as last month, American officials had hoped that a renewed push to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table would yield the beginnings of a peace process and allow the United States to stick with its plan to drop the number of troops in Afghanistan from just under 10,000 to about 5,600 by the end of the year.

But those hopes have been dashed by signs that the Taliban remain deeply divided over whether to engage in talks, as they have been for years, and that the remaining Qaeda presence in the region is proving more resilient than officials had anticipated.

………

Keeping the number of troops closer to 10,000 would also allow the American-led coalition to maintain two large bases in Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan, and in Jalalabad, the biggest city in the country’s east. The base in Jalalabad is a hub for the collection of intelligence on Qaeda operations; it was, for instance, the base from which American forces launched the raid in 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Despite the formal end of the American-led combat mission in Afghanistan, coalition forces are still regularly launching airstrikes to support Afghan soldiers and police, and American Special Operations troops are still raiding remote villages and mountainside redoubts that shelter both Taliban fighters and operatives from Al Qaeda and other foreign extremist groups.

The continuity between the Bush and the Obama administration has become more and more striking over the years.

Same as it ever was!

It’s one thing to listen to your generals, who come from a culture that thinks that the problem with the whole Vietnam war wasn’t the 58,000 American dead, or the 1½-3½ million Vietnamese, but instead was that we lacked sufficient will to win, and it’s another to swallow this perverted world view as gospel.

The Pentagon in general, and the uniformed military in particular, is structured with the singular goal of prosecuting a war.  They spectacularly ill-equipped to determine whether and when we should go to war, and only misery and defeat can come from letting them take this roll.

It’s one of the reasons that civilian control of the military is enshrined in the constitution.

Clearly, We Need to Have a Full Congressional Investigation Over This………

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It appears that the White House and its head florist have parted ways, and some reporter who really needs to get a life demands to know why:

When White House chief pastry chef Bill Yosses left the executive mansion last summer, the president publicly mourned the loss of “the crust master’s” mysteriously addictive pies. And when the first family’s personal chef and pal, Sam Kass, left in December, Michelle Obama heaped praise on Kass’s “extraordinary legacy of progress” in an official White House statement.

 But the recent exit of head florist Laura Dowling, who’d been in the job since 2009, has been a much quieter affair. So hush hush, in fact, that most outside of 1600 Penn knew nothing about it. There’s still no official comment on why Dowling is no longer at the White House, but according to a source with close ties to current residence staffers, she was escorted from the building on Friday, Feb. 13.
The East Wing initially confirmed via a very brief e-mail that “Laura left her position earlier this year” but provided no further details. Later, the first lady’s office (not quoting the first lady specifically, mind you) sent this enhanced statement:

“As Chief Florist, Laura Dowling and her team treated guests of the White House to their beautiful floral arrangements. Ms. Dowling’s creations were always lively and colorful, reflecting not only the season but the unique and historic rooms which they graced. No two arrangements were ever the same and each one left guests with a lasting impression of the elegance and history of the People’s House. We are grateful for her contribution over the years and wish her well”

………

 Hours after we put in a call to Dowling’s Alexandria floral design shop, Intérieurs et Fleurs, she issued a statement via the law firm Sidley Austin.

“After almost 6 years as Chief Floral Designer at the White House, I have resigned in order to pursue exciting new opportunities and explore my passion for floral artistry and design. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be launching a new platform for my work as an author, speaker, instructor and design consultant that builds on the creative ideas and partnerships I’ve formed during my tenure there. It’s been such an honor to work at the White House and I will always be grateful for this incredible opportunity.”

There is then a followup article, which seems to indicate that it was that Michelle Obama wanted to move the White House aesthetics in a new direction, with an equally breathless tone:

………

In this town, matters of taste — much like positions on marriage equality — can “evolve” over time. Just ask Dowling, who left because her “fussy style” was not in line with the first lady’s emerging modern and clean aesthetics, several sources said.

 Laura’s work “is just different. I’m not sure if it was right for the White House,” said one top floral designer in the area who has done freelance florist work for splashy big events at 1600 Penn. This designer, like many we talked to, spoke on the condition of anonymity because “the floral community is very small, and nobody wants to put down anybody’s work.”

I understand that this needs to be covered, and I understand that the author, Helena Andrews, is, “The co-author of The Reliable Source,” the Washington Post‘s Society/Gossip column, but the breathless tone is a bit over the top.

Truth be told, I do not blame her.  I blame her editors.

The editors should have told her to walk back the tone a bit.

By the Way, the Germans Think that the US Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs are Bat-Sh%$ Insane

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I mean seriously nuts, as in Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper raving about how fluoridation is destroying our, “Purity of essence,” in Dr. Strangelove.

You remember that movie.  The world ends in the finale.

The headline in Der Speigel is, “Germany Concerned about Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine:

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel’s efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach. And NATO’s top commander in Europe hasn’t been helping either.

 It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn’t holding perfectly, but it was holding.

 On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine — with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” having been sent to the Donbass. “What is clear,” Breedlove said, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”

 German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

 The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove’s numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America’s NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

 The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove’s comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

 The ‘Super Hawk’

But Breedlove hasn’t been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel’s diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove’s bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the “super hawk,” whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America’s more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

 ………

 But it is the tone of Breedlove’s announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.

A “Top German Official” just said that Breedlove is lying, and implied strongly that he is doing so to sabotage the negotiations.

………

 At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was “incredibly concerning.” But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

 The experts contradicted Breedlove’s view in almost every respect. There weren’t 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

 Breedlove, though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements. On Nov. 18, 2014, he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were “regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine.” One day later, he told the website of the German newsmagazine Stern that they weren’t fighting units, but “mostly trainers and advisors.”

 ………

 Breedlove sees no reason to revise his approach. “I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis,” he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO’s intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn’t always match assessments made by individual nations. “It is normal that not everyone agrees with the assessments that I provide,” he wrote.

 He says that NATO’s strategy is to “release clear, accurate and timely information regarding ongoing events.” He also wrote that: “As an alliance based on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy, our response to propaganda cannot be more propaganda. It can only be the truth.” (Read Breedlove’s full statement here.)

Seriously.  His response is nuts.

What’s more is shows that Obama is willing to let people under his own command to “freelance” and sabotage diplomatic efforts.

………

 The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove’s statements could harm the West’s credibility. The West can’t counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, “rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state.” Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove’s controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

(emphasis mine)

It’s not just me.  The Germans, i.e. “German Sources”, are coming as close as they can to saying that General Breedlove is deliberately sabotaging the negotiations.

Later in the article, a German MP says, ON THE RECORD, “I would prefer that Breedlove’s comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved.” (emphasis mine)

Not, “Intelligent and reserved?”  It does not sound like General Breedlove has the confidence of our NATO Allies.

………

 Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. “We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically,” Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor’s early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as “Merkel’s Moscow stuff.” No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. “We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations,” said one Berlin official.

 ………

 Nuland has also been open — at least internally — about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said “F%$# the EU” during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

 When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe’s resistance to arming Ukraine.

And someone in that delegation was alarmed enough by this that they leaked this to the German press, suggesting that some of Breedlove’s or Nuland’s are appalled at their behavior.

In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one — and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow’s influence in the region and destabilize Putin’s power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

Yes, there are a lot of people in the US foreign policy and military establishments who are continuing to wage war on Russia.

These people are insane.  Russia has 2500-3000 active nuclear weapons.

No wonder you have Mikhail Gorbachev saying that the US war on Russia never ended.

The reason that the Russians see NATO as a belligerent power is because, largely under US prodding, it continues to be a belligerent power with regards to Russia.

I Bet Jon Stewart is Having 2nd Thoughts About Retiring Now

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This really is TedCruz.com

Ted “Tailgunner” Cruz, has become the first candidate to formally announce that he is running for President:

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced on Monday morning that he would run for president in 2016, becoming the first Republican candidate to declare himself officially in the race.

 Linking the determination of his immigrant father with the resolve of the founding fathers and his own faith in “the promise of America,” Mr. Cruz spoke at length about his family and his faith as he laid out a case for his candidacy.

 “God’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn’t done with America yet,” Mr. Cruz said before thousands of cheering students here at Liberty University. “I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to re-ignite the promise of America.”

 “Today, I am announcing that I am running for president of the United States,” Mr. Cruz added. “It is a time for truth, it is a time for liberty, it is a time to reclaim the Constitution of the United States.”

First, there is the internet hilarity, with tedcruz.com being registered by a liberal, and his website, tedcruz.org, is using a Nigerian Prince SSL token on its donation page:

This morning, as Senator Ted Cruz launched his bid to become president of the United States, some people who visited his site thought he might also want to become a Nigerian prince. At least, that’s what his site’s certificate said.

It turns out that Cruz’ campaign had registered to use CloudFlare as the content delivery network for its WordPress-based tedcruz.org site, anticipating a flood of traffic from would be supporters. But because the Cruz campaign hadn’t yet uploaded a certificate to identify the site for secure visits, CloudFlare’s systems automatically assigned the site one of its own certificates, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince told Ars. “The Cruz campaign didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “It was an automated process on CloudFlare’s part.” The certificate that the Cruz campaign’s site got assigned to was also assigned to nigerian-prince.com.

But it gets better:


The certificate, however, is probably the least of the Cruz campaign’s Internet problems. The domain tedcruz.com is currently hosting a site that urges people to support President Obama and immigration reform. And while the tedcruz.org site is intended to take donation information, it doesn’t use SSL by default—so donors’ credit card data could potentially be exposed.

And Donald Trump jumped on the Republican presidential clown car, forming an explaroatory committee for the 2016 campaign, and then “The Donald” went full birther on the Canadian born Cruz:*

Real estate tycoon Donald Trump cast doubt Monday on whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) can run for president, because Cruz was born in Canada.

“It’s a hurdle; somebody could certainly look at it very seriously,” Trump said during a phone interview Monday on My Fox New York.“He was born in Canada. If you know and when we all studied our history lessons, you are supposed to be born in this country, so I just don’t know how the courts will rule on this.”

Trump, who says he is exploring a bid for president in 2016, was part of the “birther” movement that questioned President Obama’s birth place, as well as the veracity of his birth certificate. He recently took credit for getting Obama to release his birth certificate while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

After flirting with a 2012 presidential bid, Trump has announced an exploratory committee for 2016 and says he will not renew his contract for his TV show, “The Apprentice” on NBC.

Anyone who writes topical comedy has to be rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

*The consensus amongst Constitutional scholars is that natural born US citizen is one who was a citizen at birth, even if they are born in a foreign nation, so Cruz qualifies.

Exactly the Wrong Idea

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JCS Chairman Ray Odierno says that the problem with US defense procurement is that the Uniformed military has insufficient authority, and the civilians have too much authority:

The U.S. Army’s top officer said service chiefs rather than civilians should play a bigger role in deciding what kinds of weapons the military buys.

Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno this week called on lawmakers to consider the move while debating ways to reform the Defense Department’s acquisition process.

“There’s a message that gets sent throughout the acquisition force that they don’t work for the uniformed military, they work for the civilians,” he said on Wednesday during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That’s a dangerous message because I think our experience in support of the process is very important.”

He added, “We should play a bigger role in approving where we’re going, milestones, how the requirements meet with what’s being done by the acquisition. I think an oversight by the military would be more important and could add some potential positive energy towards building better acquisition programs.”

While the service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh, offered mild support for the idea, saying it “makes some sense,” it’s unclear whether lawmakers would back the proposal. The Army, arguably more than any other service, has a long and troubled history of procurement efforts gone awry.

A government report released in 2011 concluded that since 1996, the Army spent more than $1 billion annually on programs that were ultimately canceled — and that since 2004, the figure climbed to between $3.3 billion and $3.8 billion a year.

While the Army has since implemented a slew of the report’s recommendations, it continues to spend billions of dollars on systems that never enter production. In recent years, for example, the service canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle, or GCV, designed to replace a portion of the fleet of Bradley fighting vehicles, and the Armed Aerial Scout, meant to replace the OH-58 Kiowa helicopter.

The GCV, or more accurately, the FCS, a family of manned and unmanned vehicles, was arguably the most expensive clusterf%$# yet canceled by the military.

The biggest problem was the uniformed military.

A new military program manager would rotate in every 3 years or so, the priorities were changed, and the program suffered more delays and cost growth.

What’s more, as a matter of policy, the army, the lead service on the program, had (and perhaps has) a policy of not stating what they want.  They will only say when they don’t like something.

So we had interminable meetings about dominated about questions from senior army officers talking about how how disappointed they were that the the colors of models produced by various divisions of BAE and GD did not match up.  (I am not kidding here)

If anything, the evidence is that the uniformed military needs to be further removed from the procurement process.

Astonishingly Chickensh%$

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Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico reported on Tuesday.

………

“Today, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of the United States House of Representatives effective March 31,” Schock said in a statement to Politico. “I do this with a heavy heart. Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. I have given them my all over the last six years. I have traveled to all corners of the District to meet with the people I’ve been fortunate to be able to call my friends and neighbors.”

………

Schock’s fall from grace began with a seemingly harmless report in the Washington Post that his office on Capitol Hill was decorated in the likeness of a room in the PBS drama Downton Abbey.

But when Schock refused to answer questions about the office, questions quickly surfaced over whether he had violated congressional ethics rules.

………

The final blow appeared to occur on Monday, when details surfaced of a sweetheart property deal Schock purportedly received from a group of his campaign donors. The report claimed that a shell company linked to Schock paid $300,000 to a political donor for a warehouse in Peoria, Illinois, and subsequently took out a $600,000 mortgage on the property from a local bank also run by Schock donors.

His downfall was dropping 40 grand on an Edwardian interior decorating?

Seriously. You cannot make this up.

The Stupid, It Burns Us!!!!

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Too True

Tehran Tom took his case directly to the Iranian government
— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) March 10, 2015

Thank you Congressman Polis. You have described Tom Cotton perfectly.


Geography 101: Tehran is the capital of Iran

The Iranian response

In an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation,. “Tehran” Tom Cotton said that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted because, they already control Tehran: (Vid at link)

SCHIEFFER: What do you want to happen here? What is your alternative here? Let’s say that the deal falls through. Then what?

 COTTON: Well, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said, the alternative to a bad deal is a better deal.

 The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. But Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions. Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance. They already control Tehran. Increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad, and now Sanaa as well.
They do all that without a nuclear weapon. Imagine what they would do with a nuclear weapon.

Seriously?!?!?!?

The distinguished gentleman from Arkansas is suggested that theIranians have seized control of Tehran?

Next, he will say that the British have seized control of London, or that Mexico controls Mexico City, or that Arkansas has cornered the market on blithering idiots.

OK, that last one is true: In electing Tom Cotton to the Senate, the voters of Arkansas have clearly cornered the market on blithering idiots, as evidenced by their election of “Tehran” Tom Cotton to the Senate.

Rudolph Giuliani: Making Donald Trump Look Good

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Have you heard Rudy’s latest? He is saying that Barack Obama should be more like Bill Cosby.

He then followed this statement with a noun, a verb, and “9-11”:

Bill Cosby may stand accused of drugging and raping dozens of women, but Rudy Giuliani thinks President Obama could learn a thing or two from the disgraced comedian.

Speaking with talk radio host John Gambling of AM 970 The Answer on Thursday, the former New York City mayor charged that Obama was ignoring “enormous amount of crime” committed by black Americans, citing a recent highly-publicized scuffle at Brooklyn McDonald’s and the shooting of two Ferguson, Missouri police officers early Thursday.

Referring to Cosby’s history of scolding remarks inveighing against black culture, Giuliani said, “I hate to mention it because of what happened afterwards, but [he should be saying] the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say.”

Seriously. This is not The Onion, this is real.

Rudolph Giuliani has based his entire political career on hating on Black people and other minorities.

Can we call him a bigoted nut-job yet?

Tech Headline of the Day

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Nine reasons only a tool would buy the Apple Watch.

While Apple has had its share of failures, the Newton comes to mind, but the Apple Watch is the first time I’ve seen an Apple product reviled as lame pander to “Trustifarian” rich kids.

Since the original MacIntosh, Apple has always sold its products on its chic elegance and its tightly controlled (and intuitive) interface, but it has always had a subtext of Apple producing “The Computer for the rest of us.”

This is not “The Computer for the rest of us”.

What has attracted the most attention is the $17,000 (£13,500) solid gold version, and it casts the entire watch product line as a bloated Veblin good.*

People like status objects, but they do not like to be made fools of, and this product screams, “More money than brains.”

*Named after economist Thorstein Veblin, who in his seminal work The Theory of the Leisure Class, coined the term “Conspicuous consumption”, and detailed how some items, like a solid gold Apple Watch, serve no purpose beyond status markers.

Not This Sh%$ Again

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Once again, we have a Hitler of the week selected by the US state security apparatus.

This week, it is Venezuela:

The United States declared Venezuela a national security threat on Monday and ordered sanctions against seven officials from the oil-rich country in the worst bilateral diplomatic dispute since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.

 U.S. President Barack Obama signed and issued the executive order, which senior administration officials said did not target Venezuela’s energy sector or broader economy. But the move stokes tensions between Washington and Caracas just as U.S. relations with Cuba, a longtime U.S. foe in Latin America and key ally to Venezuela, are set to be normalized.

 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced the sanctions as an attempt to topple his government. At the end of a thundering two-hour speech, Maduro said he would seek decree powers to counter the “imperialist” threat, and appointed one of the sanctioned officials as the new interior minister.

 Declaring any country a threat to national security is the first step in starting a U.S. sanctions program. The same process has been followed with countries such as Iran and Syria, U.S. officials said.

 The White House said the order targeted people whose actions undermined democratic processes or institutions, had committed acts of violence or abuse of human rights, were involved in prohibiting or penalizing freedom of expression, or were government officials involved in public corruption.

 “Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement.

A security threat?!?!!?  Seriously?

Venezuela is a mess, and the “Bolivarian Revolution” is arguably the 2nd worst possible potential rulers for the oil rich nation, but they are no more a security threat to the United States than is my cat Meatball.

This Monroe Doctrinesque bullsh%$, where the US seems to see meddling in regime change in the Western Hemisphere to be a God given birthright, needs to stop.

I think that it is clear that the Maduro government won’t be around for a particularly long time, they do not appear to be able to manage their way a paper bag, unless pressure by the State Department, CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, etc. for regime change serves to reinforce their grip on power as it has in Cuba.

And When the Democrats Get Back into Power, They Won’t Reverse This

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Koch sucking Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, just signed so called right to work legislation:

For decades, states across the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains enacted policies that prevented organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or fees. But the industrial Midwest resisted.

Those days are gone. After a wave of Republican victories across the region in 2010, Indiana and then Michigan enacted so-called right-to-work laws that supporters said strengthened those states economically, but that labor leaders asserted left behind a trail of weakened unions.

Now it is Wisconsin’s turn. On Monday, Gov. Scott Walker — who in 2011 succeeded in slashing collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers — signed a bill that makes his state the 25th to adopt the policy and has given new momentum to the business-led movement, its supporters say.
“This freedom-to-work legislation will give workers the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a union, and employers another compelling reason to consider expanding or moving their business to Wisconsin,” Mr. Walker said.

Seeing as how well Walker’s Koch Brothers inspired agenda has worked in Wisconsin (Hint: not at all, compare it to Minnesota, which has taken pretty much the opposite policies), we should not expect to see much job growth in Wisconsin relative to its neighbors.

The obvious question here though is what happens when the Democrats take control of the state house and governor’s mansion again?

If the past is precis, there will be no repeal.

In both the recall campaign, and in Walker’s reelection campaign, the Democratic candidates eschewed calling for a repeal of his law stripping state workers of union rights, so, at least until the pathetic Wisconsin state Democratic party establishment can be put out of its misery, I would expect that both these laws will stay in place.

Basically, Wisconsin Democrats continue to believe that portraying themselves as non or post partisan is a winning electoral strategy, even though it is clear that the modern Republican party has, to quote Digby, “Gone insane and that every incentive and structural political edifice out there made it impossible for them not to be insane.”

Running on PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick) is the same as running on nothing, and the voters will almost always choose a bad something over nothing.

Sedition Anyone?

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A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran’s leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

 Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber’s entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

 “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Foreign policy scholar Daniel Dresner notes that this goes well past what is garden variety trolling by political partisans: (And yes, he uses the world “troll”)

Now, on the one hand, I get what Senate Republicans are trying to do here. They don’t like the contours of the deal that’s being negotiated, and they really don’t like Barack Obama’s enthusiasm for bypassing a truculent Congress via executive actions on Iran. So if the Senate GOP can signal to Iranians that an executive agreement isn’t that much of a credible commitment device, maybe they can scuttle a deal they dislike with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. It’s certainly a better gambit than, say, this ad.

That said, there are still a few confusing aspects about this. First, there’s the question of the law. I don’t think an open letter from members of the legislative branch quite rises to Logan Act violations, but if there’s ever a trolling amendment to the Logan Act, this would qualify.

For those of you who are not up on obscure federal legislation, the Logan Act was passed in 1799(!) and makes it a felony for private citizens to “freelance” in American diplomatic relations:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

So, Nixon queering the peace talks with Vietnam in 1968 would qualify as well, but let’s be clear, no one is going to be prosecuted over this, any more than someone would be prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition acts, which were passed in 1798.   (Most of them have expired, anyway)

They also got schooled by the Iranian FM over the finer points of international law:

Iranian foreign minister and the country’s Chief nuclear negotiator said the recent open letter by a group of Republican senators about Iran’s nuclear talks has no legal value and is just a propaganda ploy.

Asked about the open letter of 47 US Senators to Iranian leaders, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, said, “In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history. This indicates that like Netanyahu, who considers peace as an existential threat, some are opposed to any agreement, regardless of its content.”

Zarif expressed astonishment that some members of US Congress find it appropriate to write to leaders of another country against their own President and administration. He pointed out that from reading the open letter, it seems that the authors not only do not understand international law, but are not fully cognizant of the nuances of their own Constitution when it comes to presidential powers in the conduct of foreign policy.

Foreign Minister Zarif added, “I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

The Iranian Foreign Minister added that “change of administration does not in any way relieve the next administration from international obligations undertaken by its predecessor in a possible agreement about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

“I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with ‘the stroke of a pen,’ as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law.”

He emphasized that if the current negotiation with P5+1 result in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.

Zarif expressed the hope that his comments “may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not ‘modify the terms of the agreement at any time’ as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of US obligations.”

It’s one thing to suggest that an agreement is not valid without Congressional approval,* it’s another to directly conduct the other side in a diplomatic dispute and explicitly state the the word of the US government is meaningless.

47 members of the US Senate, particularly freshman Senator Tom Cotton have one off the f%$#ing deep end.

Welcome to today’s Republican Party, I guess.

*In this case, it appears to have been conducted under the auspices of the UN Security Council, and it appears that it will be approved by the UN Security Council, so there is room for disagreement there, which would suggest that a Security Council vote would be required to amend or abrogate the deal, and not Congress.†
†Yes, I understand how many of the black helicopter one world government nutjobs in Congress would find this objectionable, but f%$# then.  They are stupid and bat sh%$ insane.

Emmanueldämmerung* in Progress

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We have always know that Rahm Emanuel is a bully, who kisses up to his superiors and kicks down at his subordinates, or for that matter anyone he sees as unimportant, but this report seems to indicate that the long time Obama ally is seriously losing his sh%$:

They say old Rahm Emanuel came out last night—or maybe it was the real one hiding in plain sight all the time: a sneering, aggressive pol who went “nose-to-nose” with a mental-health advocate demanding, “You’re gonna respect me!”

The alleged exchange took place off-camera between Chicago’s mayor and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a member of Mental Health Movement, a group that has been fighting the mayor over the closure of six mental health clinics across the city. Behind a door that separated the mayor from a roomful of constituents at a campaign stop in the Wicker Park neighborhood, Ginsberg-Jaeckle says, he got Rahmbo’d.

 “This is the Real Rahm,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle wrote on Facebook. “Calm and collected in public, raging angry and self-defensive behind closed doors.”

 But Emanuel’s campaign, while not directly refuting the mayor’s alleged call for respect, said the exchange was more cordial than Ginsberg-Jaeckle’s version of events. The mayor’s office has reached out Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado to address their concerns, campaign spokesman Steve Mayberry said in a statement.

“The mayor was eager to get to the substance of the residents’ concerns,” Mayberry said via email. “After respectfully listening to the residents, he asked that they respectfully listen to his point of view. As a result, the meeting ended cordially and the mayor is working with health officials to address the residents’ needs.”


Debbie Delgado, another member of the group, interrupted Emanuel, prompting the behind-closed-doors altercation.

“She told of losing her son to gun violence,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle wrote. “She told [Emanuel] how her other son was holding him as he died. She told about how the city’s Northwest Mental Health Clinic in Logan Square saved their lives, helped her and her son deal with the PTSD and depression. Then she asked why he took that clinic away from her.”

 Rahm said he would speak with the pair, and Ginsberg-Jaeckle said they then left the room for a private conversation. That’s when Emanuel allegedly shouted: “You’re gonna respect me!”

 The mayor’s office wouldn’t address the supposed angry exchange.

 “Since it was a non-city event there were no city people there to witness it,” said Chloe Rasmas, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

 Rahm said he would speak with the pair, and Ginsberg-Jaeckle said they then left the room for a private conversation. That’s when Emanuel allegedly shouted: “You’re gonna respect me!”

 ………

 “We delivered 10,000 letters to the mayor’s office in October 2012. They didn’t respond. So, we started sending one email a week. No response. We held forums and protests. The day before a vote on the budget we did a sit-in outside the mayor’s office, and they forced us out by cutting off any access bathrooms,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle said, running down years’ worth of attempts to talk with the mayor.

 “I could go play by play, but long story short we could not get through to this man. Finally, the extreme we reached was crashing his events.”

 That’s what they did Wednesday night, not expecting much other than to be escorted out. Locke said Rahm told police to hold off when Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado rose from their front-row chairs to confront the mayor. It was all cordial, until the trio left the room.

Demanding respect at the top of his voice.

Respect should not be demanded, it should be earned.

Why do I get the sense that Rahm Emanuel is suffering from a really bad case of “Middle Child Syndrome”?

In either case, I hope that the people of Chicago realize that they are dealing with a guy for whom a difficult reelection campaign is likely to make him an even worse mayor than he already is.

I would also one of his supporters, Republican Senator Mark Kirk, is blowing the racist dog whistle by invoking Detroit, while Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is leaning on begging 3rd place mayoral candidate Willie Wilson to endorse Rahm as well.

They wouldn’t be endorsing who is tied in the minds of their base to the “Kenyan Muslim Atheist Radical” Barack Obama unless they were pretty firmly on the same side, and they were worried about his chances.

I am so hoping that he loses the April 7 contest.

*I cannot claim credit for this bon mot. It was coined by Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism.