I Weep for the Tortoises

Notwithstanding a section of their constitution banning foreign military bases, Ecuador is allowing the US to set up a base in Galapagos:

Ecuador has agreed to allow US military planes to operate from an airport on the Galapagos Islands, reports say.

US aircraft will be able to use San Cristobal airport, Ecuador’s defence minister Oswaldo Jarrin has been quoted as saying.

They will “fight drug trafficking” under a deal with Ecuador’s government, Mr Jarrin said.

The reported deal has prompted concerns over the potential impact on the environment and Ecuador’s sovereignty.

………

Legislators in Ecuador’s parliament have called on Mr Jarrin and environment minister Marcelo Mata to explain the scope of co-operation with the US in the islands.

They have asked them to elaborate on proposals to extend the runway at San Cristobal airport, daily El Universo reports.

Lawmaker Marcela Cevallos said the plan would be alarming for conservationists, it reported.

Opposition congressman Carlos Viteri said the agreement with the US was “unacceptable” and should be prohibited if “it intends to cede an inch of Ecuadorian territory”.

Under Article 5 of Ecuador’s constitution, the country is “a territory of peace” and the “establishment of foreign military bases or foreign facilities for military purposes shall not be allowed”.

Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa also reacted angrily, tweeting (in Spanish) that the island was “not an aircraft carrier” for the Americans.

Mr Jarrin assured critics that “there will be no permanence of anyone” on the island.

He said any modifications to the airfield would be paid for by the US, Telesur reported.

So, the US will pay to modify airfield, potentially destroying hundreds of acres of habitat on San Cristobal, but it’s not a base.

This is manifest destiny Monroe Doctrine bullsh%$.

This is Not Going to End Well………

One of the problems with cyber-weaponry is that any time you use it, you are giving the detailed plans of that weapon, and the means to produce that weapon to use against you.

One needs only to look at the history of Stuxnet, where, once it was out in the wild, it was repeatedly repurposed in other attacks.

Needless to say, the permanent war crowd in the seems to think that whatever they do to someone else will never reflect back upon them.

So it comes as no surprise that we now have reports that the United States is launching attacks on the Russian power grid.

Not only are we giving the Russians these cyber weapons, but we have just validated attacks on our infrastructure every state and non-state actor so inclined:

The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.

In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.

Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue, after years of public warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. that Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States.

But it also carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.

Gee, you think?

………

But now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow.

The commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, has been outspoken about the need to “defend forward” deep in an adversary’s networks to demonstrate that the United States will respond to the barrage of online attacks aimed at it. 

Again, if your opponent discovers this, they have the same tech that you do, as well as the means to manufacture and deliver the payload.

This is shortsighted and dangerous.

But there is also something even scarier:

………

Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.

 Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

It appears that the only thing scarier than Trump being in charge is Trump NOT being in charge.

The idea that military and intelligence authorities could initiate attacks on a potential adversary without any sort of authorization from civilian authorities is profoundly terrifying

So, Not a Surprise

It turns out that the National Rifle Association is a poster child for corrupt self-dealing:

A former pro football player who serves on the National Rifle Association board was paid $400,000 by the group in recent years for public outreach and firearms training. Another board member, a writer in New Mexico, collected more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications. Yet another board member sold ammunition from his private company to the NRA for an undisclosed sum.

The NRA, which has been rocked by allegations of exorbitant spending by top executives, also directed money in recent years that went to board members — the very people tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.

In all, 18 members of the NRA’s 76-member board, who are not paid as directors, collected money from the group during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.

………

Among the revelations that have burst into public view: CEO Wayne LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, invoices show. Oliver North, forced out as president after trying to oust LaPierre, was set to collect millions of dollars in a deal with the NRA’s now-estranged public relations agency, Ackerman McQueen, according to LaPierre. And the NRA’s outside attorney reaped “extraordinary” legal fees that totaled millions of dollars in the past year, according to North.

………

State and federal laws allow members of nonprofit boards to do business with their organizations under certain guidelines. The Internal Revenue Service can impose penalties if top officials and their families receive economic benefits that exceed fair market value.

Tax experts said the numerous payments to certain NRA directors create potential conflicts of interest that could cloud the board’s independent monitoring of the organization’s finances.

“In 25 years of working in this field, I have never seen a pattern like this,” said Douglas Varley, a Washington attorney at Caplin & Drysdale who specializes in tax-exempt organizations and reviewed the NRA’s federal and state filings from 2016 through 2018 for The Washington Post. “The volume of transactions with insiders and affiliates of insiders is really astonishing.”

………

Letters from Ackerman’s chief financial officer to LaPierre, first reported by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Post, detailed large expenses billed by LaPierre, including nearly $275,000 in personal charges at a Beverly Hills men’s store and more than $253,000 in luxury travel to locations such as Italy, Budapest and the Bahamas. Bills also show $13,800 to rent an apartment for a summer intern. 

The juxtaposition of apocalyptic world and corruption seems to be very common, particularly when dealing with right wing political groups.

It amuses me that the average NRA member is being played for a chump, which reflects poorly on my character.

As if There Wasn’t Enough Political Sh%$ Going Down in Iowa

It also appears that the state is drowning in literal pig excrement as well:

It’s probably not an accomplishment state officials will want to boast about, but Iowa out-performs the rest of the country when it comes to producing sh%$. Not “sh%$” in any metaphorical sense, but literal fecal waste.

Chris Jones, a research engineer and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Iowa, IIHR (UI’s hydroscience and engineering center), has done the math, and published the results on his blog about water quality. Iowa, with a population of 3.2 million, produces more than twice the amount of fecal waste per square mile than California, which has almost 40 million people.

But what’s propelled Iowa to the top of the sh%$ list isn’t people, it’s pigs.

Last year, Iowa hit “peak pig,” with 23.6 million pigs, the most ever recorded in any state. When Iowa set that record in August, North Carolina, the state that ranks second in swine, only had 9.4 million. And pigs, Jones explained on his blog, produce much more waste than humans.

(%$ mine)

Between the chickensh%$ politics of the caucuses, and the real sh%$ of the pigs, I do not want to be downwind of the state.

Rather ironically, this actually mirrors a Will Rogers quip regarding the juxtaposition of the Chicago stockyards and the Democratic Convention made many years ago.

New York Realtors Has a Sad

Now that Republicans have, despite the best efforts of “Democrat” Andrew Cuomo, lost control of the New York State Senate, and with that, much of their political power.

They had used that power to restrict municipalities on things like rent control and eviction protections, and now some meaningful regulation looks set to pass, and they are upset.

F%$# them:

Less than a day after newly emboldened Democratic lawmakers announced bills that would significantly tighten tenant protections, prominent real estate developers got Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on the phone to make a last-ditch plea to persuade him to block the measures.

………

They and their counterparts in the real estate industry have donated millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Mr. Cuomo and other state politicians in recent decades.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo rebuffed the developers, telling them that “they should call their legislators if they want to do something about it,” said a person briefed on the call, which lasted about 15 minutes.

The phone call capped a humiliating moment for an industry that had long reigned in the state capital.

………

The bills announced on Tuesday night by the Democratic leaders of the State Senate and the Assembly would abolish rules that let building owners deregulate apartments and close loopholes that permit them to raise rents.

The legislation would directly impact almost one million rent-regulated apartments in New York City, which account for more than 40 percent of the city’s rental stock, and allow other municipalities statewide beyond New York City and its suburbs to adopt their own regulations.

Real estate industry groups said the bills would do serious damage to housing in the city by reducing incentives for landlords to renovate existing apartments and to build affordable new ones.

Existing rent laws expire on Saturday. The rent regulation package, which is expected to be approved before the end of the week, is perhaps the most resonant symbol of the change in power in Albany since Democrats took complete control in November.

Republicans had dominated the State Senate for most of the last century and formed a close alliance with the New York City real estate industry, which donated heavily to Republican senators.

The elections in November not only brought Democrats to power in the State Senate, but also saw the rise of progressive lawmakers who fiercely opposed real estate interests.

These guys have been profiting through their political connections pretty much since the Donald Trump was in diapers.

It’s time for a change.

Innovations in Criminality

Credit where is due.


The OSC Report

The Trump administration is expanding law breaking to more laws more aggressively than any administration in the history of the United States.

First, we had the Emoluments Clause, which had languished ignored in the Constitution for aver 200 years, and now we have the Office of Special Counsel saying that Kellyanne Conway should be fired for violating the Hatch Act. (Also called, “An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities.”)

I was aware of the act only because I worked a campaign with a federal employee who had to avoid public statements and the like because of the law.

It’s never really been something that you expect to see applied to senior White House officials, because no one has been quite so blatant about partisan politicking while acting in their official capacity before:

The Office of Special Counsel on Thursday recommended the removal of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work.

The report submitted to President Trump found that Conway violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.” The agency described her as a “repeat offender.”

The decision about whether to remove Conway is up to Trump. A senior White House official said Thursday the president is unlikely to punish Conway and instead will defend her. The White House counsel immediately issued a letter calling for the agency to withdraw its recommendation that Conway be removed — a request the Office of Special Counsel declined.

In an interview, Special Counsel Henry Kerner called his recommendation that a political appointee of Conway’s stature be fired “unprecedented.”

“You know what else is unprecedented?” said Kerner, a Trump appointee who has run the agency since December 2017. “Kellyanne Conway’s behavior.”

………

Jacobson said he could not recall a previous episode in which the agency recommended such drastic action against a White House appointee.

“How unique is this? I am not aware of any other time, to my mind, ever, where the Office of Special Counsel has recommended the removal of a White House presidential appointee,” Jacobson said.

………

The reprimands of Conway are among a series of Hatch Act violations by Trump administration officials.

In late 2018, the Office of Special Counsel found six White House officials in violation of the law for using their official Twitter accounts to send or display political messages supporting Trump.

Others sanctioned by the Office of Special Counsel for political messages include former interior secretary Ryan Zinke; Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman; Dan Scavino, former White House social media director; and Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

I’m wondering when they will expand their nefarious activities to things like publishing fake weather reports (18 U.S.C. Section 2074), harassing a golfer on public land (18 USC Section 1865), drunk skydiving (49 U.S.C. Section 46316), and hunting doves with automatic weapons (16 USC Section 707).

It Appears That There IS Such a Thing as Too Corrupt to Investigate

Among the more blatant bits of self-serving corruption in the Trump Administration, at least outside of Trumps close family, Elain Chao, Transportation Secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell stands out.

As the New York Times reported, Chao has repeatedly engaged in official actions calculated to boost her family’s shipping business and her husband’s political fortunes, up to, and including attempting to get the government pay for her representatives of her family’s business travel with her on an official visit to China. (also here)

Some Democrats want to look into this nexus of corruption, but others are afraid that Chao will cancel road projects in their districts in retaliation.

Seriously, this is akin to defending oneself against an accusation of witchcraft by threatening call upon her dark masters to turn the investigators into pious pink toads, (The Cerebus defense) and Chao doesn’t have to even allude to this, the congresscritters are terrified of her:

House Democrats are poised to launch an investigation into the Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao over allegations that she used her position to advance the interests of her family and her husband’s political career.

But even as some members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee say such a probe is inevitable, other Democratic lawmakers have expressed doubts about whether the current evidence is sufficient to warrant it, according to three lawmakers with direct knowledge of the conversations that have taken place over the last several days. And some lawmakers who spoke to The Daily Beast expressed unease—at this time—to call out the secretary for fear that doing so would affect their ability to advance infrastructure projects in their home districts.

Such hesitation reflects both the unique status Chao enjoys within the Trump administration—where she has heavy sway over federal funds that politicians of all stripes covet—and the wider conundrum that Democrats lawmakers face in going after the president’s team. With aggressive oversight efforts already launched into several other Trump Cabinet officials, senior Democratic aides say a sense of fatigue has set in among members, one that’s been exacerbated by the difficulty the party has had in making progress on already-launched investigative efforts.

I would argue that this calls for heightened scrutiny.

Given her position, secretary Chao must be as Caesar’s wife, above suspicion.

Kim Jong-un Isn’t Crazy, Just Evil

When allegations that DPRK leader Kim Jong-un had his half brother, Kim Jong-nam, murdered in a Malaysian airport, first surfaced, the general response was to assume that the Kims are just crazy.

After all, what possible reason could he have to whack his own flesh and blood?

Well, if said half-brother is a CIA asset,  which technically means that he is working with people trying to overthrow you, it’s a reason.

In fact killing an exiled relative who is trying to overthrow you has a lot of historical precedent.

It doesn’t meant that Kim Jong-un isn’t a nasty piece of work, but it does mean that he is sane, which is reassuring, because a rational adversary is more predictable.

Oh Snap

The White House and Congress are in a conflict over census documents.

Basically, it’s painfully obvious that the Trump administration wants to change the census to suppress the count of non-whites in America.

This embarrassing to admit, so they are refusing to turn over documents to Congressional oversight committees.

Congress has threatened Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross with contempt citations over that, and Bill Barr has threatened to request that Trump claim executive privilege if they are held in contempt.

In response, the House House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to hold them in comtempt.

I think that committee chairman Elijah Cummings has no f%$#s left to give:

President Trump lashed out Wednesday against a widening web of congressional probes that demonstrated the limits of his strategy to declare victory and try to move past the 22-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference that has consumed much of his presidency.

Yet Trump’s latest efforts to defend himself ran into new obstacles as a House panel moved to hold two Cabinet officials — Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — in contempt of Congress over the administration’s efforts to shield documents related to its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The committee vote came several hours after Trump asserted executive privilege over the material related to the 2020 Census.By day’s end, there was more potential bad news for the White House as Hope Hicks, the president’s longtime adviser who left last year, agreed to become the first former aide to testify next week for a House Judiciary Committee probe into whether the president sought to obstruct the Russia investigation.

………

The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee are essentially on the same trajectory as the department and the House Judiciary Committee were last month, when the Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt for failing to turn over materials related to Mueller’s probe.

Pass the popcorn.

Remember When VW Used Slave Labor and Killed Thousands?

It turns out that the unionization effort at the Chattanooga VW plant is largely by management trying to work their employees to death.

This does seem to be a tradition for the boys from Wolfsburg:

“I’m only 33 and I can’t see myself working here for another 10 years,” said Ashley Murray. “I would be disabled by then. We need a union because they are a multibillion-dollar company and they treat us like shit.”

Murray is a production employee at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, one of 18 hourly employees there I interviewed for this story. Comments like hers were almost universal.

According to these workers, on-the-job injuries are among the top issues at the sprawling plant nestled in the Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee. The union authorization election runs Wednesday through Friday this week; 1,700 workers are eligible to vote.

Many workers told variations of the same story. For the first time in their lives, they’re making good money—but they’re trapped in a job that’s chewing them up.

“My co-workers are getting hurt, I’ve been hurt, there is constant threat of injury, and if it doesn’t change, none of us will survive,” said one worker who’s been at Volkswagen for eight years but asked to remain anonymous for fear of management retaliation.

“I shouldn’t have to give Volkswagen my body in exchange for the house that I live in and the lifestyle I try to provide for my family.” Workers described a plant where high turnover and dangerous conditions lead to serious injuries, most commonly in the hands and shoulders. Some of the workers I met now suffer from lifelong disabilities.

Yeah, that whole, “Foreign workers in German factories,” thing?

Not good.

Listen to Admiral Ackbar

The Koch Brothers are looking at finding Democrats to support in 2010.

It’s not a surprise. Koch Brothers funding was crucial to founding of the right wing Democratic Leadership Council, so the the conservative wing of the Democratic party has been full of Koch suckers for decades.

Koch Brothers money, and Koch Brothers ideology, are toxic to both the nation and to the Democratic Party.

If a candidate takes their money, they are dead to me.

How Convenient

Yale law professor Amy Chua writes a glowing recommendation of Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh, and people suggested that her daughter would get a Supreme Court clerkship.

Well, guess who just got a job clerking with Kavanaugh?

That’s right, Sophia Chua-Rubenfel:

The daughter of Yale law professor Amy Chua has landed a clerkship in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s office. Last year, Chua—who became known as “Tiger Mom” after the release of her controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on her tough parenting style—wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal after Kavanaugh’s nomination praising the judge and calling him a “mentor to women.” The op-ed was published before Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades prior when they were both in high school. He has vehemently denied the allegations. Chua immediately faced criticism that her op-ed was intended to guarantee her daughter a Supreme Court clerkship. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld responded to the criticism of her mother on Twitter, saying she wouldn’t be applying for a Supreme Court clerkship “anytime soon” because she had to finish her ROTC obligation after graduating from Yale Law School. The court confirmed that Chua-Rubenfeld will serve as a law clerk to Kavanaugh for a year, beginning this summer.

This went exactly as predicted when Chua wrote that OP/ED.

Who am I to judge? If Brett Kavanaugh came to me and said: “Elie, I’m going to absolutely destroy the civil rights of low-income black children living in urban environments, but your boys, benefited as they are from the privilege you and your wife work tirelessly to provide them, will have a guaranteed Supreme Court clerkship and I will mentor them on how to deal with the white supremacy I support,” maybe I would write an op-ed praising Kavanaugh’s ability to “recognize talent” or some such nonesense. I can see the title now: “Kavanaugh Will Be A Good Massa For Black People!”

Oh wait, no I wouldn’t. BECAUSE I HAVE A F**KING MORAL CENTER.

One of the big reasons that Trump “won” in 2016 is the belief by a significant portion of the populace that the elites were uniformly self-serving and corrupt.

Unfortunately, they were correct about this.

Nostalgia

I remember the Summer of 1973, when John Dean was testifying before the Watergate committee.

At the time, I would rather have watch cartoons, or Ultraman, but we had one TV, and my mom was determined to follow the hearings, so I watched a lot of testimony, Dean, Halderman, Erlichman, Porter, etc.

Needless to say, John Dean’s testimony about Trump’s obstruction of justice was a trip down memory lane:

The star witness of Watergate took a turn as the star witness for House Democrats’ inquiries into President Trump on Monday. And in doing so, he laid out a compelling series of parallels between the two situations.

Former White House counsel John Dean acknowledged at the start of Monday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing that he wasn’t there as a “fact witness.” Instead, he noted in his opening statement several ways in which he sees the report of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III echoing Watergate.

Dean didn’t run through each of those verbally during his testimony, but his written statement lays his case out in detail.

The most obvious parallel Dean noted involved himself: It concerns the role of the White House counsel. Just as he was the most significant witness against Richard M. Nixon, former White House counsel Donald McGahn has emerged as the most significant witness in the Mueller investigation. McGahn didn’t technically flip on Trump, as Dean did when he pleaded guilty in Watergate, but as Dean pointed out, “McGahn is the only witness that the special counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn ‘a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House.’ “

I’m not sure that the outcome will be at all similar, Nancy Pelosi is no Carl Albert, after all.

Interesting Data Point

Elizabeth Warren seems to have a detailed plan for everything, with one exception she has no plan on healthcare, not even an explicit endorsement of a vague form of “Medicare for All”.

This is clearly an intentional omission, since her whole brand is about having a plan for EVERYTHING.

Considering that she has staked out a position just to the right of Bernie Sanders, I consider this to be an important tell: She will not fight for a truly universal healthcare system:

In a recent MSNBC town hall, Elizabeth Warren put her policy platform on full display. Through emotional, personal anecdotes and with a depth of understanding, Warren gave the impression of a candidate well-aware of the problems faced by working Americans and armed with the policies needed to solve them. She detailed her plans to achieve universal childcare, cancel the bulk of existing student debt, and create over a million green jobs by progressively taxing the richest Americans. She boldly criticized Joe Biden’s conservative record and decried the greed of large corporations.

The performance supported Warren’s reputation as a candidate with a “plan for everything” — a reputation emphasized repeatedly by MSNBC moderator Chris Hayes throughout the event. Taken as a whole, however, the town hall revealed an alarming gap in Warren’s policy repertoire, one that has gone mostly ignored to this point in the campaign: she has no plan for fixing the broken US health care system.

Warren had several opportunities in the town hall to address the health care crisis. Instead, she avoided the topic almost entirely. Even when discussing issues directly related to health care like repealing the Hyde Amendment and improving access to hearing aides, she neglected to propose a comprehensive policy solution.

Unfortunately, this was not a simple case of forgetfulness. In fact, it continues a disturbing trend with the Warren campaign. Check her website: in a long and thorough issues page full of bold plans to alleviate Americans’ suffering, Warren makes no mention of health care. View her campaign materials: Warren has yard signs dedicated to several of her major policy proposals, but not a single one about health care. Follow her campaign appearances: you’ll hear the usual platitudes (“health care is a human right;” “everyone deserves access to care”), but you won’t hear her endorse a specific policy.

………

Take for instance Warren’s March town hall on CNN. When asked directly whether she supports Medicare for All, Warren suggested that Medicare for All is merely a slogan for expanded public coverage, rather than a specific piece of single-payer legislation.

“When we talk about Medicare for All, there are a lot of different pathways,” she said, before listing a slew of incremental proposals without explicitly endorsing any of them, from lowering the age for Medicare eligibility to allowing employers to buy in to Medicare. “For me, what’s key is we get everyone to the table on this.”

Taking this answer at face value, it seems Warren sees herself pursuing an incremental approach that expands public coverage while preserving the private insurance industry should she be elected president. This would likely surprise many of her supporters, who might view her cosponsorship of Sanders’s Medicare for All bill as an endorsement of single-payer health care.

It’s fair to ask why Warren, who supports bold, progressive policies on a number of major issues, is avoiding the most important issue to voters. It could be a reluctance to attach herself to a rival candidate’s signature policy, or it could be a way to avoid conflict with the powerful health care corporations in her home state of Massachusetts.

Either way, it meshes well with a years-long effort by Democrats to blur the meaning of Medicare for All by gesturing goodwill toward single-payer advocates while attempting to redefine the phrase and apply it to public option proposals that preserve the private insurance industry. By following this playbook, Warren is actively supporting the corporate effort to kill the growing Medicare for All movement.

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but her reticence is unsettling.

Finding the Way (Again): Building the Air Force’s New Century Series

Mike Pietrucha thinks that the USAF needs to return its development and procurement programs to the mid 1950s, when it developed the 5 frontline Century Series fighters.

  1. Senior Staff (Major or higher) exempted from up or out.
  2. No rotation out until full production procurement, defined as 25% of the original order, is complete. 
  3. A prohibition on such staff working for defense contractors for 10 years after leaving the service. 

This would make decades long product development cycle a career killer, it would prevent program changes as management rotates in and out, and it would incentivize some alacrity, and time is (taxpayer) money.

Also, the perfect is the enemy of good enough:  It makes no sense to bankrupt ourselves in an attempt to completely overmatch any potential opponent.

We are spending more on defense than the next seven countries combined, and our roads are falling apart, our schools are underfunded, healthcare is unaffordable for much of the population, and life expectancy is falling in many regions.

We cannot afford our bloated military or our bloated weapons anymore.

    Tweet of the Day

    If you gave a billion dollars to the top 10 news companies, the chance of a dime being spent on news would be pretty slim. You might as well give a pound of hamburger to a shark and hope to get meat loaf.

    How many billions have passed through their hands in the last decade?

    — Steve Yelvington (@yelvington) June 10, 2019

    Remember this whenever the big media starts whining about how Google News is so unfair to make money from directing readers to their websites.

    These days, these organizations are run by finance types, and finance types don’t care about journalism.

    Finance and journalism mix like Ebola and French kissing.

    Ineluctable Evil

    Just when I thought that Trump and his Evil Minions™ could not get any more evil, they propose charging grocery stores for the privilege of accepting food stamps.

    It’s pretty clear what is going on here: They want to push SNAP out of food deserts, so as to reduce enrollment, so that they can eventually force people to starve.

    Impeach now:

    The White House proposal to overhaul the U.S. food stamp program — and the deep cuts it would make to benefits for the poorest households — has sparked public outrage on both sides of the aisle. But there’s another change tucked into the proposal that businesses say caught them off guard — and could wind up costing them more than $2 billion.

    That provision is a new fee that the White House wants to charge retailers that accept food stamps, which is now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

    ………

    Beyond the new fee, the Trump administration is proposing $191 billion in cuts over the next decade to the food stamp program. The U.S. budget office said the reductions would come from tightening the work requirement to qualify for the benefits, but said the details would be left up to individual states. The administration also expects states to make up some of the lost funding.

    These folks should have been drowned at birth.

    Nope, No Racism Here: Republicans in Maine Are pro Confederacy

    The great state of Maine has adopted a new state ballad, which I guess is in addition to the state song.*

    It honors the 20th Maine volunteer infantry regiment, which is best known for saving the Union at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.

    It appears that some Republicans in the state are objecting, because they feel that the song is insufficiently considerate of the sensitive feelings of the traitors on the other side:

    With Governor Janet Mills’ signature today, the “The Ballad of the 20th Maine” became Maine’s official state ballad.

    The stirring anthem recorded and performed by the band The Ghost of Paul Revere tells the story of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which fought for the Union Army under General Joshua Chamberlain in the American Civil War. The regiment is best known for its brave defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

    ………

    The bill to enshrine the ballad was sponsored by Rep. Scott Cuddy (D-Winterport) and passed without objection in both chambers. It did see some initial opposition in the legislature’s State and Local Government Committee, however, where two Republicans raised objections that the song’s unabashedly pro-Union message may be unfair to the South.

    “I find it a little bit, we are united states, we are not Union, we are united states. And I find it just a little bit – I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean – to say that we’re any better than the South was,” said Rep. Frances Head (R-Bethel) during a May 1st public hearing on the bill.

    “I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the civil war period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in,” said Rep. Roger Reed (R-Carmel), who specifically praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. “Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.”

    Let me translate:  “Great Christain men,” means let’s keep those n*****s from getting uppity.

    ………

    Reed eventually voted in favor of the ballad legislation. Head voted against it.

    They may represent a minority position, but the statements of these Republicans show just how far the Myth of the Lost Cause, a systematic effort to rehabilitate the racist legacy of the Confederacy, has spread. These objections were raised in Maine, which contributed a largest number of Union soldiers in proportion to its population of any state.

    The American Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery. That’s the “state right” that Confederates were seeking to defend. To ignore or elide that history doesn’t just denigrate the sacrifices of our ancestors, but bolsters the resurgent white supremacist movement we’re seeing across our union today.

    This is a feature, and not a bug of the modern Republican party and the myth of the lost cause serves their political agenda, even in Maine, where the 20th saved the Republic.

    F%$# their bigoted small minds.

    *Which is called, interestingly enough, State of Main Song.