Author: luimbe

Kerry appointment doesn’t necessarily mean Sen. Scott Brown, but it may

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Kerry appointment doesn’t necessarily mean Sen. Scott Brown, but it may.

If it does then the Democratic party has some real problems if it structurally can’t build a political climate to rigorously recruit, primary it’s way to successful Senate candidates in a special election in blue Massachusetts. If a President-elect Romney nominated a Republican from a South Eastern state, chances are Republicans could hold and get another Republican in. If any Democratic state party should be ready, it should be Massachusetts. Time to buck up and get it done. First Warren, now another. Two the hard way.

With a Tea Party/Bircher Republican party controlling our government’s effectiveness through the House of Representatives, one less Democratic senator in DC can be a regressive outcome.

NRA’s executive VP Wayne LaPierre desires a police state

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If you are afraid of video games, music videos and movies, you can and will be scared of almost anything. His solution to protect us is advocating a police state. Mind you, that’s what he is talking about when he says: “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is good guy with a gun”.

He is advocating that 1. guns be allowed everywhere and 2. everywhere guns are allowed an armed security, paramilitary or police professional should be present.

That’s a police state folks.

Over before it ends

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Garrett Reid was on the Philadelphia Eagles strength and conditioning staff.

When he died of an apparent drug overdose with a bunch of syringes and vials of an unnamed drug in his room, a bunch of people guessed steroids. Well they were right. The amounts Reid had in the room was the amount that when possessed would make you a pusher in the eyes of many state laws.

This sad decline marks the end of the Reid era with the Eagles.

One who believes they are preparing for Doomsday

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The reason Nancy Lanza had so many guns was that she was a “Doomsday Prepper”. I think that revelations that Nancy Lanza knew her son was worsening and believed that Doomsday could be prepared for more than counterbalances the assertion by friends that Nancy Lanza was a “responsible gun owner”.

“I am Adam Lanza’s Mother” at Gawker is a great personal accounting of being mom of a kid with increasingly unmanageable mental health issues, but in reality, I would guess it was submitted before it was widely known that Nancy Lanza believed Doomsday was around the corner and that it could be prepared for by heavily arming herself and her emotionally withdrawn son. That’s what she felt responsible for. Preparing her family to fight some looming war so they could survive the end of this world on this world.

I stand corrected

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From Chait via Ballon Juice from Daily Beast/Newsweek’s Megan McCardle comes to this conclusion after Newton:

I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

Previously I said video games, music and movies can’t increase gun violence. I stand corrected. Movies and video games do affect gun violence because a Ms. McCardle, elementary school teacher would hear gun shots, kneel down and tell 8 students: your time to step up little ones.

I imagine Megan McArdle sat down, watched GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, or some other stupid gun violence movie thought if Channing Tatum’s friend Snake Eyes can do it on the side of a mountain, then surely pre-teens sitting in their classrooms when a gunman opens fire in their school hallways. That’s right, she wants kids to respond to gun violence like movie action heroes might. Or maybe, these kids need to first taught the “The Secret” and then “boys and girls, ages 8 through 12”, they’ll be “able to do anything”. See that’s the thing, after reading her blog post twice, I am not sure how McCardle, the libertarian public policy correspondent, would suggest we begin to teach kids to be suicide soldiers whenever some violent heavily armed adult storms the school.

The shocking thing about McArdle’s insanity is that it’s the craziest thing I have ever read. At least NRA gun nuts would say each one of these kids should have a sidearm in school and that then they should strike back against attackers. McArdle is proposing after we teach kids where fire exits are from their homeroom, and how to get the lunch room and school nurse, we should then teach them body bum rush drills. I guess first two rows in every homeroom are human shields.

And it’s the craziest thing until…today where she advocates teaching teachers and teenage kids to behave more like street thugs or professional paramilitary police forces. Either way, I was wrong. The folks that think like McArdle obviously are watching violent movies, listening to gangsta rap and playing Call of Duty and are fashioning deadly public policy ideas from them.

Gun Laws of all kinds work

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Violent crime overall is down, a lot of that is due to gun laws.

Stand your ground laws and open carry laws result in higher levels of gun violence.

We know gun laws work. One way or the other. All this “we have to do something” is b.s.

The states as laboratories for these laws have been running for years. We see what gun limits in the UK and Canada have done. We know what’s what. When people say “we don’t know” or “we have to do something”, they know or can easily find empirical data on costs and effect on public safety and health.

Nothing is knee jerk about it.

“Nancy was a responsible gun owner”

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More on Nancy Lanza, guns and Adam Lanza:

Less than a week before her son would launch his horrifying attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun-loving mom Nancy Lanza knew “she was losing him” and that “he was getting worse.”

A drinking buddy of Lanza’s told the Daily News that her son Adam had long been troubled and rarely came up in conversation.

“She just looked down at the glass and said, ‘I don’t know. I’m worried I’m losing him,’” said the bar pal, who asked not to be named, of the ominous conversation at the watering hole My Place in Newtown, Conn.

“She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him.”
[…]

“Nancy was a responsible gun owner,” the friend said. “It was important that she teach her son how to responsibly use a firearm.”

Her son, who she trained to be more deadly with assault and hunting weapons, was becoming more violent and detached. Her son still had access to these guns. Is there a way she could be a responsible gun owner and have guns in a house with her son?

What’s a good start?

Washington Post - World Gun Violence Map
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Washington Post - World Gun Violence Map

We should challenge this issue by tying the profit of gun sellers and the fortunes of gun owners to the stewardship of those weapons. If the issue becomes taking guns away, fine. Keep track of the guns you own.

A good start would be to tie civil liability for gun crimes to the registered owner of the gun. If a gun is stolen, and not reported in say 24 hours then that’s on the registered owner of the gun.

Also let’s consider Chicago and Philadelphia in the gun violence debate in addition to Newton, CT.

And f*ck this video game, music and movie talk. They have Call of Duty, Gangsta Rap, and Terminator in Canada and Europe. What they don’t have is gun laws dominated by people who believe we should not vary from the legal structure laid out by the country’s founders in 1776 even when considering 2012 weapons.

Dick Cheney’s blunt style never cost him an appointment

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From the “Paper of Record”: “Rice’s Blunt Style Endeared Her to President, but Not All”:

Mr. Obama rarely lets his annoyance with foreign leaders show in public; Ms. Rice rarely hides hers. There are moments, one of Ms. Rice’s longtime friends said, “where she says what he’s thinking, but can’t say.” A former White House aide added: “She suffers from the same thing the president suffers from in D.C., which is that she doesn’t want to go around and pat everyone’s back.”

She suffers from not being a “back patter”. Contrast that with stories about George W Bush’s UN Ambassador recess appointment John Bolton who believed the UN was a joke and need not exist. Dick Cheney’s blunt style never cost him an appointment. Also this:

For all the talk of tax increases and debt-cutting, President Obama‘s biggest and most- revealing decision this year may be which candidate he chooses to be his new secretary of state. It will tell us whether the president allows comfort to trump qualification.

Qualifications are sufficient conditions. Rice is a foreign policy scholar, experienced diplomat and strategist. Rice is (as is John Kerry) uniquely qualified to serve as Secretary of State.

Ms. Rice earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford and a master’s degree and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

She spent eight years at the White House and the State Department under President Clinton. Ms. Rice was a member of the National Security Council staff, first as director for international organizations and peacekeeping, and then as a special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs. A protégé of Madeleine K. Albright when Ms. Albright was secretary of state during the Clinton years, Ms. Rice catapulted over more veteran officials in 1997 when she was given the job as assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She has special expertise in the problems posed by weak and failed states, global poverty and transnational security threats.

Ms. Rice also has had experience with Al Qaeda — she was the top diplomat for African issues during the 1998 terrorist bombings of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

After working in the Clinton administration, Ms. Rice was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and was also a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

In addition, Obama is very comfortable with John Kerry as a foreign policy. His diplomatic profile, on behalf of the administration has been outsized compared to other Senate Foreign Relation Committee Chairs, Obama used Kerry for debate prep in 2012 and Kerry endorsed Obama in January 2008 over the then “inevitable” Senator Hillary Clinton. All of this may have started with Kerry’s team picking then State Representative Obama to speak at the 2004 DNC.

Any analysis of qualifications has to note that really, what you want to note is the nature of their qualifications as they relate to today’s international political challenges and the President’s agenda.

There has to be someone besides Chuck Hagel around

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Important to remember, that although he may have been reasonable to work with, he is still a Republican when it comes to his beliefs:

  • Pay attention to 2B people in poverty, or terrorists will. (Mar 2007)
  • Voted NO on cutting $221M in benefits to Filipinos who served in WWII US Army. (Apr 2008)
  • Voted NO on requiring FISA court warrant to monitor US-to-foreign calls. (Feb 2008)
  • Voted YES on removing need for FISA warrant for wiretapping abroad. (Aug 2007)
  • Voted YES on limiting soldiers’ deployment to 12 months. (Jul 2007)
  • Voted NO on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. (Mar 2007)
  • Voted NO on preserving habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees. (Sep 2006)
  • Voted NO on requiring CIA reports on detainees & interrogation methods. (Sep 2006)
  • Voted YES on reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. (Mar 2006)
  • Voted NO on extending the PATRIOT Act’s wiretap provision. (Dec 2005)
  • Voted NO on restricting business with entities linked to terrorism. (Jul 2005)
  • Voted NO on restoring $565M for states’ and ports’ first responders. (Mar 2005)
  • Voted NO on adopting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (Oct 1999)
  • Voted YES on allowing another round of military base closures. (May 1999)
  • Voted YES on cutting nuclear weapons below START levels. (May 1999)
  • Voted YES on deploying National Missile Defense ASAP. (Mar 1999)
  • Voted YES on military pay raise of 4.8%. (Feb 1999)
  • Voted NO on prohibiting same-sex basic training. (Jun 1998)
  • Voted YES on favoring 36 vetoed military projects. (Oct 1997)
  • Voted YES on banning chemical weapons. (Apr 1997)
  • Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record. (Dec 2003)
  • Hiding sources made post-9-11 analysis impossible. (Jul 2004)
  • CIA depends too heavily on defectors & not enough on HUMINT. (Jul 2004)
  • Administration did not pressure CIA on WMD conclusions. (Jul 2004)
  • Sponsored bill for Iraq budget to be part of defense budget. (Jun 2006)

Always a swift boat around the bend: Susan Rice withdraws from Sec. Of State consideration

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Susan Rice withdraws her name from Secretary of State:

We know John McCain will be on Sunday shows as an important voice on foreign policy, even though he is mostly wrong all the time. Susan Rice, although she was simply representing intelligence information provided to her by Petraeus for release, is now a no go for Secretary of State and has withdrawn her name. (Note: Petraeus gave her a bunch of garbage to lay out all Sunday because it really didn’t help us understand Benghazi nor did it allow the Department of State to get ahead of the information coming out of that incident)

It’s important to remember why Libya:

Power’s piece is a fascinating study in how and why the U.S. is slow to react to atrocities abroad. It also includes one passage that casts Susan Rice in a damning light:

At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?” Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. “We could believe that people would wonder that,” he says, “but not that they would actually voice it.” Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, “If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant.”

I suspect the passage didn’t endear Power to Rice. But as Massimo notes in his piece, Rice also told Power that, “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.”In Libya, Rice made good on her words–a position that put her in alliance with Power, with whom she is now said to have a strong relationship. Whether she might go “down in flames” as a result remains to be seen.

Remember, convincing Secretary of State Clinton to push the President to pursue action in Libya came from Rice and Power contra the Pentagon led by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Intelligence heads. In addition, Clinton and Rice actually moved a lot of political actors to get Libya done:

Though Defense Secretary Robert Gates was joined by the national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon and the counter-terrorism chief John O. Brennan in arguing against American military action, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overrode their objections. Samantha Power of the National Security Council (left) and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice (right) had been arguing for the deployment of military force. According to Brian Katulis, a national security expert, “Hillary and Susan Rice were key parts of this story because Hillary got the Arab buy-in and Susan worked the U.N. to get a 10-to-5 vote, which is no easy thing.”

This is the type of capacity Rice has already served so far: a competent diplomatic representative of the state. John McCain says something and the beltway journalists jump, so there’s that. People forget, in touting the new found democracy in Libya, McCain, Graham and Ayotte deign to acknowledge her key role in brokering the coalition for intervention into Libya. An intervention that cost us 4 American lives total vs. Iraq and Afghanistan which McCain supported at all times in all phases. No one asks McCain about his pow wow in favor of arming Libya’s despot Gaddafi. She’s qualified and she has served at a high level. John McCain argues for intervention on behalf of people rebelling , but Susan Rice helped actually devise a successful limited engagement that resulted in a democracy. This all the while senators continued to not do their duty in holding the office of the president to the war powers act’s limits. So McCain is actually knee capping a diplomat responsible for the muscular, successful foreign policy he advocates but he himself never divine.

I think John Kerry will be a good nominee if nominated, but also remember, McCain and Kerry were supposedly friends before 2008, but then swift boats part II happened, and John Kerry was very surprised. So even though you hear a lot of “we would tots be cool with John Kerry” now, in reality, sh*t may not be so sweet when his name is actually put forward for Secretary of State. I don’t trust them, and Democrats should be prepared not to trust them either. The obstructive, disrespectful, sexist, xenophobic rules of order are still in effect:

“Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years,” Norquist said. “He’s not going to have any fun at all; he may just have to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.”

They are all back in line. The White House needs to learn to coordinate support, both with the voters and Democrats in the senate, for every nominee and every initiative outside of it’s walls before they undertake them in this second term. Play politics folks. You’re politicians.

Responsible stewards of private information are not elected

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The government should never be considered responsible stewards of private information without due process.

recite. rinse. repeat every time you hear about the creeping surveillance state:

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.

Not everyone was on board. “This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public,” Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
[…]

The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.

[…]

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of “persons, houses, papers and effects” shouldn’t be conducted without “probable cause” that a crime has been committed. But that doesn’t cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.

Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren’t “compatible” with the reason the data were originally collected.

So over the last twelve years warrantless wiretapping, under cover torture, and special domestic powers for wars fought on foreign soil result in this. Once authorities hear anything crazy from one person’s phone line, they want to look through all of our underwear drawers.

Yet we were all told: nothing to worry about if you haven’t done anything. That’s only true if you are a C level bankster or run BP. Then your cool.

The Boo Radley Threshold.
The WSJ writer accepts the false debate presented to them by government officials speaking on condition of public anonymity: efficiency vs. safety. Amassing unprecedented and unprocurable levels of new data per suspicious activity by a citizen is neither efficient nor safe. Surprise Party planning, getting a sleeve of tattoos, surprise engagements, playing hooky from work or school, and adultery are all legal and suspicious to someone. Suspicious behavior is not a good threshold for government surveillance.

It’s about whether government has a right to investigate a citizen with no official investigation established against them. And before you tut-tut about me or anyone bitching about this, think about Gen John Allen, who was getting a f*cking promotion until his boss Petraeus got caught f*cking his promotion. The “sexy, legal inbox non-gate” gate put his promotion on hold because he sent e-mails that were circumstantially related to Petraeus’ e-mail to the same social circle or something.

Basically, every teenager and almost all your co-workers are terrorism suspects to someone.

Think about it that way and tell me if that is really helping us “fight the terrorists over there before they get here”.