1. Or so, President Obama has decided, it would be convenient for him that we should believe. At any rate, the president’s “left” speech, an actual gesture, a genuine rhetorical bone for us peaceniks to gnaw on, is more than we’ve gotten for the last four years. It’s better than murder, isn’t it?

    The basic idea is that the drone war is slowly going to fade away, like the Iraqi War and the Afghan War. That is to say, fade away but not disappear. And Guantanamo will close as well—which, of course, does not mean that any of the innocent, abused inmates will actually be given their freedom any time soon, or, really, any time ever. We Democrats have to leave something for the Republicans to do, right?

    The Republicans, naturally, are howling about surrender. No more war? That’s insane! What would we do without it?*

    Well, hypocrisy is the grease of government. While the President talks of peace, his best bud Attorney General Eric Holder gets a search warrant on the grounds that being a reporter is a crime. Let’s hope that it proves politically feasible—and even profitable—for the president to lurch a step or two fitfully towards “the left” and even stay there for awhile.
    *Half a kudo to John McCain for agreeing that Guantanamo should be closed, and two negative kudos for saying that the president’s statement that Al Qaeda has been largely defeated shows “a degree of unreality that to me is really incredible.” Let’s all please forget the fact that the Bush Administration lost all interest in Al Qaeda, except as a bogyman, as soon as they invaded Iraq.
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    Labels: President Obama

  2. I am often not a fan of the Washington Post, but, well, May 22nd was an unusual day, a day on which Post reporters Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung lowered the boom on David “Lover Boy” Petraeus, explaining how Dave’s “toot your horn/cover your ass” approach to congressional relations helped create a monumental PR headache for the not too innocent Obama Administration. Read the whole thing here. Please!

    The trouble started when Maryland Democrat Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence asked Petraeus to provide the committee members with talking points on Benghazi so that they didn’t say too much. The Post quotes Ruppersberger as saying “We didn’t want to jeopardize sources and methods, and we didn’t want to tip off the bad guys. That’s all.”

    Then the Post says
    What Petraeus decided to do with that request is the pivotal moment in the controversy over the administration’s Benghazi talking points. It was from his initial input that all else flowed, resulting in 48 hours of intensive editing that congressional Republicans cite as evidence of a White House coverup.

    A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.

    Petraeus concealed the fact that the Benghazi “consulate” was in fact largely a front for a CIA operation contained in an “annex,” which makes one wonder why the CIA rather than the State Department should be getting all the blame for inadequate security. Petraeus was the source of the artful, “controversial” first sentence that implied but did not state absolutely that the installation was the site of a demonstration protesting the infamous “Muslims suck” video that did provoke demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere. Petraeus filled the draft talking points with information about all the stuff the CIA knew, without acknowledging the one thing the CIA didn’t know, that the Benghazi installation was going to be the target of a terrorist attack. As Wilson and DeYoung tell it, senior officials at the CIA pushed to delete much of the information that Petraeus pushed to put in.

    Both the White House and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state claimed that all the editing of the talking points was done by “intelligence agencies,” which wasn’t quite true, since the State Department was active, with the intent of avoiding criticism, in “suggesting” changes. But the White House’s hands are much cleaner than the howling Republicans would have it and those of their beloved Gen. Petraeus, much less.

    Afterwords
    I am one of those who believe that half of the reason that President Obama insisted on getting into Afghanistan just as he was getting out of Iraq was to keep the General “inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in,” to quote the immortal Lyndon. The care and feeding of that mighty ego has cost the U.S. plenty.
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    Labels: Washington Post General Petraeus

  3. Thomas E. Ricks, a guy whom I don't think I know, has a blog on "Foreign Policy" magazine. I was reading another, better, article on FP, and at the bottom was a list of additional articles, including one with the snappy title "Paula Broadwell smokes J. Stewart in PT." Well, I thought it said "Paula Broadwell smokes J. Stewart in FP," implying that Paula had recently been on the show and had aced poor Jon on some arcane foreign policy issue. Well, no. It was a link to an item referring to Paula's 2012 appearance, which Stewart rather famously made fun of when news of her affair with DP came out, as proof of his own reportorial ineptness. So, anyway, here's what Tommy Boy said about the 2012 show (in full):
    Paula Broadwell smokes J. Stewart in PT
    Friend of the blog Paula Broadwell was on the Daily Show, I think last night, and challenged poor Jon Stewart to a push-up contest. He lost. Her new book on General Petraeus is out now.

    It is indeed, Tom.
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    Labels: Paula Broadwell

  4. President Obama, if he isn’t looking mortal, is at least looking awkward these days. The current “triple scandal” will, I think, end up costing the President little, but it does give the Republicans something to yell about, and yelling to no effect is what the current crop of Republicans does best.

    The Administration’s handling of the four murders at Benghazi has been scandalous, and Republicans would have plenty to talk about if they wanted to talk about the facts, but they don’t. They have a massive aversion to substance, and simply want to harangue Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton.

    As for Tea Party vs. IRS, the leadership at the IRS clearly failed to give the direction that it should have given. The entire non-profit deal is kind of a bad deal. How many black ministers endorsed Obama and previous Democratic candidates from their pulpits and kept their non-profit status? Quite a few, I’m sure. Does the Catholic Church sometimes function as an ally of the Republican Party while still maintaining its non-profit status? The answer to that one is not no. It is the unofficial but very real will of Congress that the IRS should err very far on the side of caution in these matters—except, of course, when it’s the other side who’s breaking the law. Then they should crack down. The senior IRS management should have seen this coming, and they didn’t. Instead, the odds are that they let a bunch of earnest mid-level managers, who I’m sure earnestly believed that only a complete idiot could believe the things the Tea Party says it believes, make all the decisions.

    But, again, the Republicans aren’t interested in the facts. They just want to howl. Unlovely George Will was happy to compare “Cincinnati-gate” to Watergate—one of the grounds for impeaching Nixon was abuse of the IRS, wasn’t it? It’s the same thing all over again! Except that there’s no evidence that Obama had any involvement in what the Cincinnati office did, and that making it difficult to set up a non-profit is not quite the same thing as subjecting someone to a tax audit. But who needs facts? They just slow you down!

    When it comes to the Administration’s war on the press, however, I only wish the Republicans were tougher. I would love to see Attorney General Holder take a hike. It has somehow become a tradition in the U.S., going back as least as far as Bobby Kennedy, that attorneys general see themselves as above the law, and Mr. Holder has definitely done his best to maintain it. Let’s hope that the press itself will finally realize that President Obama, with his obsessive fear of embarrassment, is a greater threat to our civil liberties than Muslim terrorists could ever be.
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    Labels: Republican idiots Obama follies


  5. Yoni Zelnik , acoustic bass, Anne Paceo, drums, and Romain Pilon, guitar. Via the Paris Jazz Underground.
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    Labels: jazz


  6. Legal humor here.

    “Because he ate the damn parrot, that’s why. Got any more dumb-ass questions?”

    “That’s right, no more ‘Pieces of Eight! Pieces of Eight!’ in my ear 24/7. You won’t hear me complaining.”

    “I know you don’t, but the chicks do. And this bad boy is all about the ladies.”

    “Times change, me heartie, and Cap’n Blood, he changes with ’em.”

    “Don’t tell anyone, but he’s got a treasure map tattooed on his ass.”

    “I’ve got lapin à la cocotte on my mind, on my mind. I’ve got lapin à la cocotte on my mind.”

    “Shut up and bring me a nice riesling.”

    “Don’t look so surprised. We’ll have a thousand more on board by morning.”

    “I’ll have no skeptics on the Jolly Roger, Mr. Smee. You’ll lie down with bunnies or you’ll lie down with Davy Jones. Now which shall it be?”
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    Labels: cartoon

  7. Page 2 of the Glenn Thrush source-greaser I sneered at yesterday contains the following regarding Susan Rice:
    Rice — who reportedly holds no grudges against Clinton [who supposedly did not do the Sunday talk shows following the murder of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi because she “hates” them]— walked into her fateful Sunday trial with eyes wide open and bent on discussing issues other than the Libya crisis, according to a senior administration official.

    The ambassador, who is said to be in the running for the NSA job when Donilon [National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, apparently too shy to do talk shows] steps aide, was alarmed at violent anti-American protests the previous Friday in Tunis, Khartoum and Pakistan.

    That was one of the reasons why Rice was so focused on the impact of the video. She believed — and still believes — it was responsible for feeding a larger reservoir of anti-U.S. hatred that ultimately leads to incidents like Benghazi, the official said.

    I have no idea who this faceless but talkative “senior administrative official” is—possibly Rice herself—but if her/his take is accurate, I hope that Rice does not get the NSA job. First of all, if Rice believes that world events are actually determined by wacky videos, I guess she would plan on spending a lot of her time monitoring YouTube, which would not be a good idea. Rice might notice the ability of the Muslim world to fly into a rage over just about any “insult” to the Prophet, which I guess is what we call Mohammed these days, even though by my lights he’s just one of many. The notion that we could have stable relations with Muslim countries in the Middle East by kow-towing to Muslim sensitivities/obsessions regarding their religion is both risible and depressing.

    If Rice would bother to pay attention, she would notice the highly selective nature of Muslim outrage, which explodes over cartoons and grotesque videos, but seemingly ignores anything of substance. The real source of much of this Muslim rage is simply confusion over the place of Islam in the modern world—a massive culture clash that often leads frustrated Muslims to define themselves as “not the West,” redefining and reshaping Islamic traditions, often in a deeply reactionary manner—the obsessive subjection of women is a classic example, not to mention the continuous outpouring of anti-Semitic bigotry and hatred.

    There is nothing we can do to resolve this. If Muslims wanted to, they could riot over Dante’s portrayal of Mohammed in The Divine Comedy, his damned spirit wandering in one of the deepest circles of Hell, his body physically split in half from head to navel—mutilation being the punishment for having encouraged division in the Christian faith. They would probably object with even greater fervor to Gibbon’s meticulous depiction of the Prophet’s massive sexual appetite—when his many wives (he had more than seven) objected to his taking yet another wife, he told them that Allah had told him in a dream that they would all go to Hell if they didn’t shut up. Does Rice think that we need to rewrite history to make us safe?

    We can’t change history, but we can change our current conduct. We can stop subsidizing Israel’s unending settlements. We can stop our massively destructive sanctions against Iran, which we conduct for domestic political reasons rather than anything to do with foreign policy. We can stop our remote-control murders, which have killed hundreds of innocent people. We can’t stop people from making dumb videos, or from drawing funny cartoons, or from telling the truth about the history of Islam. But we can stop killing the innocent just because it pays off on election day.
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    Labels: Susan Rice Obama war crimes

  8. The guy who gets it right: Ron Paul, denouncing Republicans for denouncing Obama for the wrong reasons. Republicans denounce Obama for not being aggressive enough, when, as Paul points out, our problems arise from the fact that Obama was too aggressive, waging an unnecessary, unconstitutional war in Libya, a war in which the Republican Party entirely acquiesced.

    A guy who, trying to help, doesn’t: David Brooks, offering the time-honored, Washington insider perspective, claiming that anyone who’s a personal friend of his—in this case, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland—can’t have done anything wrong. In fact, Brooks makes a good point—Benghazi was really a CIA operation, something the Agency has managed to obfuscate with remarkable success, so that a good share of the blame for the disaster should go to the agency rather than Hillary Clinton. However, Brooks does a little obfuscating of his own, covering up the fact that his friend wanted information excluded from the talking points—about the involvement of “extremists” linked with Al Qaeda—because it might lead to questions that the Administration wouldn’t want to discuss. Finally, Brooks remarks that “in the absence of a clear narrative, the talking points gravitated toward the least politically problematic story, blaming the anti-Muslim video and the Cairo demonstrations.” Because when four Americans are murdered overseas, you want to give the most politically convenient explanation, even if it isn’t true.

    Two guys who, trying to help, don’t: The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, a self-proclaimed liberal, provides an inside account of the development of the Benghazi talking points via an email provided by Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for the National Security Council. Tommy sounds like a guy who wears a plaid coat, who slaps you on the back and hands you a booze while he’s stealing your wallet. He answers questions that weren’t asked and ignores the ones that were. Here’s how Vietor deals with Jay Carney’s notorious claim that the Administration only changed one word of the massively edited talking points: “I think it’s fair to say that we could’ve been clearer that we were referring to this final CIA version of the talking points when we said we made one edit, but the fact that the government edited these points isn’t surprising or at all nefarious—it’s routine.” Tommy should selling used cars, not sitting in on National Security Council meetings.

    The silent spooks: I’ve already mentioned the CIA’s remarkable success in keeping a low profile, despite the fact that Benghazi was essentially their show. In its original talking points, the CIA patted itself on the back for providing warnings about the dangerous situation in Benghazi, but failed to note that it failed to provide warning of the attack on the American installation itself, which is the kind of thing we pay them to do. “Empty Wheel” raises a lot of the issues about what the CIA might have been doing in Bengahzi to attract an attack, issues that Republicans left entirely unexplored.

    Source greaser of the week: Politico’s Glenn Thrush allows anonymous aides to “explain” why then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t do the talk show circuit after the murders in Benghazi, leaving the job to Susan Rice. Because she hates doing talk shows! She really does! She really really does! But doesn’t being Secretary of State mean that sometimes you have to do things you “hate”? Apparently not.* What about National Security Adviser Tom Donilon? Couldn’t he have done the job? Well, Glenn explains, not even bothering to call an “aide,” Tom’s really shy and “prefers to stay in the background.” What about Gen. Petraeus, then head of the CIA? According to Thrush, Petaeus didn’t like the talking points. “He was especially annoyed that a paragraph referring to social-media calls for an attack on the Cairo embassy had been scrubbed.” Which had what to do with the attack on Benghazi?
    *And if Hillary starts doing the talk shows prior to her run for the presidency in 2016, don’t be too surprised. And don’t be too surprised if Glenn hasn’t forgotten all about this.
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    Labels: Benghazi


  9. To return to the topic of whether Keynesian economics should be avoided because Keynes liked boys and ballet better than girls and football, let me point out that Adam Smith, the King of Laissez Faire,* never married, and was suspiciously fond of his mother, kind of like Liberace, without all the furs.

    As Jeet Heer points out in his excellent article in the American Prospect, the attempt to deconstruct and discredit Keynes’ economic theories by attacking his private life has been going on for a long time:
    The accusation was first made by the brilliant Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter, who in a 1946 obituary complained that Keynes “was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy.” The words of Schumpeter—still remembered for his contention that capitalism rests on “creative destruction,” and a conservative who thought intellectuals such as Keynes were undermining the moral foundation of the free market—have been echoed by many other thinkers, including George Will, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greg Mankiw, Mark Steyn, and V.S. Naipaul. (Himmelfarb argues that Keynes’s famous statement “In the long run we are all dead” has “an obvious connection with his homosexuality,” while Mark Steyn described the economist as a “childless homosexual” and “libertine.” Harvard economist Greg Mankiw also used the word “childless” to describe Keynes, raising the question, what’s wrong with Harvard?)

    All of these “thinkers” detest deconstruction when it comes from the Left. But they’re so desperate, and so defenseless, in the fight against Keynes and his thought that they make recourse to backstabbing of the most puerile kind.

    Afterwords
    Both Brad DeLong and The Washington Monthly’s Kathleen Geier do yeoman’s work in showing the massive hypocrisy and stupidity of the Right over the years in attempting to refute Keynes on the basis of the fact that, like most popes, he had no kids.
    *Of course I'm kidding. Smith was a brilliant, brilliant writer, and the Wealth of Nations is an incredible read,full of wonderful Eighteenth Century sunshine.
    Posted by
    Labels: pretentious right-wing idiots Adam Smith John Maynard Keynes


  10. Nick Sanders, piano, Henry Fraser, bass, and Jordon Rose, drums. Posted by Jordan.

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    Labels: jazz
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