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Time, God and a billion in the bank: Why Obama’s prospects aren’t so bad

Weldon Berger — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 23:52:46 +0000

Barack Obama has two huge disadvantages going into the 2012 election: The economy and the economy. He also has two huge advantages: The Republicans and the Republicans. Despite the administration’s addiction to neoliberal crack, economic conditions could, possibly, in a perfect world, by accident, improve before the election; the Republicans can’t, and they’re what’s driving the Obama fundraising machine so far.

Make that three advantages: Few of his potential supporters seem to care much about his militarism—imagine the infuriated cries of liberals had George Bush been the president who decided to exclude the (no doubt furiously protested) bombing of Libya, and hence future air campaigns against whichever states are pissing him off, from Congressional oversight the way Obama did—or his national security excesses, or his refusal to prosecute even publicly confessed war criminals, or that he claims the right to execute Americans without due process. Turns out Democrats aren’t much different than Republicans when it comes to forgiving the hypocrisies and sins of their own. So all is well on that front.

Democratic fundraisers will clear between $300 million and $400 million by the end of the year in combined donations to Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. First quarter contributions to the campaign were good, although not great—the campaign started fundraising in April, so their first quarter is the calendar’s second quarter—but much of that money came in before Republicans started talking up the virtues of defaulting on the national debt. You can bet administration backers have been burning up the hot line to Wall Street since then, asking, “Do you really want those yahoos running your economy?” Some big money men will say, “Sure, they’re just kidding anyway,” but many others will say, “Better the yahoo we know …”

As they did in 2007-2008, Obama campaign officials are bragging about their principled refusal to take money from lobbyists or political action committees. And as in 2007-2008, they’re happy to take money from people who use lobbyists, or who are married to them, or who run the firms that provide them, or who work at those firms in capacities other than lobbying.

Despite the incessant whinging from banksters and Wall Street types about Obama’s harsh words toward their ilk, financial industry bundlers—fund raisers who collect at least $50,000 in individual contributions and write a single check to the campaign—raised $11 million for Obama, just shy of a third of his $35 million in bundled contributions. Nearly two thirds of the $11 million came from securities and investment firms. They may not all especially like Obama, but they see that big old butter-laden knife in his hands; witness the administration’s current attempt to geld New York attorney general Eric Scheiderman, whose determination to thoroughly investigate the behavior of criminal banking institutions got him kicked out of the White House-led group charged with negotiating a relative wrist slap for the big banks.

Heavyweights like Jon Corzine—former Goldman Sachs CEO, former US Senator and current CEO of derivatives monger WF Global—and Robert Rubin—former Goldman Sachs and Citigroup CEO, former US treasury secretary, and always and forever one of the most dramatically incendiary assholes behind the deregulatory frenzy that helped wreck the economy—both raised more than $500,000 each, as did 25 more bundlers from the financial and other vaporware sectors euphemistically described as industries. (Corzine recently hit the news through a gob-smacking arrangement his company made with investors: If he gets a job from Obama, the investors earn more interest on WF Global bonds.)

There is, then, plenty of money to be had from the usual suspects.

The Republican primaries are shaping up to offer more than the usual hilarity, along with myriad other Obama fundraising opportunities. Texas governor Rick Perry has more or less accused Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of treason and has threatened him with physical harm should Bernanke show his face in Texas. (Perry has previously declared his state’s right to secede from the United States, but that apparently isn’t treason.) Both he and Michelle Bachmann are more or less openly copulating with wealthy Christian theocrats. Those are the sorts of things that inspire potential Obama contributors, even wholly disillusioned ones, to pony up, and they’re the sorts of things that bored politics reporters will eventually get around to reporting. Possibly.

The specter of Rick Perry running in the general election has struck down Bush family factotum Karl Rove with the vapors. Rove describes Perry as an idiot and is publicly longing for someone who is neither obviously crazed nor a Mormon nor Ron Paul nor a theocrat to enter the race. Although time is running out, Rove may yet end up buying such a candidate’s participation with promises of indirect money from his “American Crossroads” corporate slush fund.

That would mean diverting some of the group’s money to fund issue ads and organizing efforts aimed at undermining other Republicans during the primaries in addition to attacking Obama particularly and Democrats generally, but Rove and other squeamish Republican kneecappers may think it necessary to get a real shot at toppling the president.

Calling George Pataki? Now there’s a scintillating candidate.

Obama campaign officials deny reports that their fundraising target for the campaign is a billion dollars. Reaching that amount seems feasible, though; what Obama has lost by way of frustration among Democrats, he has gained back by way of Republican performance art. An incumbent president with a billion dollar bankroll will be tough to beat even in next year’s prospectively dreadful environment, and even up against the hundreds of millions that the mouthy corporate citizens on the right will be throwing at him. The decisive factor will probably be whether he decides to campaign as a Democrat or the ruthlessly post-partisan independent he apparently believes himself to be.

Democrats won’t have all that much to celebrate should Obama prevail. Their party will be effectively leaderless; the president will escalate his push toward International Monetary Fund-style austerity, including cuts to social insurance programs. Encouraged by his success in defenestrating the War Powers Act, and by the relatively small tab for installing the Gadaffi government, minus Gadaffi, in Libya, the president will probably find other opportunities for war by presidential fiat. And absent a victory in the House of Brobdingnagian proportions, most congressional Democrats will continue to view themselves as constrained from openly opposing him. Comme ci comme ça.

Nevertheless, we leave you with the Tammany Hall war cry: Vote early, and vote often.

What Max Boot learned about Libya from Afghanistan and Iraq

Weldon Berger — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 03:55:43 +0000

“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
– Max Boot

Max Boot is my favorite neoconservative. He is completely unfamiliar with the concept of shame and like the rest of his clan he won’t ever flinch when it comes time to put somebody else’s life on the line. Anyone whose conscience survives initiation into that club soon gets voted out.

Where Max really shines is as a polemicist. He’s a good writer. He can turn a juicy phrase like few others. That one above, his juiciest ever—and I know writers, I know he looked at it and thought to himself, “damn, I am good …”—went into a piece he wrote for the Weekly Standard not long after September 11.

“The Case for American Empire” was, well, the case for American empire.

Many have suggested that the September 11 attack on America was payback for U.S. imperialism. If only we had not gone around sticking our noses where they did not belong, perhaps we would not now be contemplating a crater in lower Manhattan. The solution is obvious: The United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan’s phrase, “a republic, not an empire.” In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation … [t]he question is whether, having now been attacked, we will act as a great power should.

Boot isn’t exactly the kind of man Stephen Colbert applauded in his tribute to George W. Bush—he’s not a man who “believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.” He’s flexible. When he looks at Libya today, Boot doesn’t think that the US should do the same thing there as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday; he thinks we should do the same thing better.

[W]e must not limit our war aims to simply toppling Gadhafi. We made that mistake in Iraq and Afghanistan. By not paying attention to what comes after the deposal of a dictator, we inadvertently created conditions for a long-term insurgency. In Libya it is imperative that the U.S. and our allies make plans now to insert a stabilization force after Gadhafi’s downfall to help the National Transitional Council gain control of the country.

There’s nothing in the piece to top “jodhpurs and pith helmets.” How could there be? Boot is in the awful predicament of a man who knows that he long ago wrote the most memorable thing he’ll ever have written. But the gall of it is right up there with anything he said in connection with those other invasions even though he’s given up on empire and the heartache shows.

Needless to say, no one wants to see U.S. troops in another ground war – especially at a time of shrinking budgets and declining force size. The bulk of any such force in Libya should be provided by the Europeans since Libya is on their doorstep. But we can’t simply wash our hands of the place. The sooner we defeat Gadhafi’s forces and stabilize the country, the sooner we can achieve our objectives.

Er … yes. If one’s objective is to defeat Gadhafi and stabilize the country, then the sooner one does that the sooner it will have been done, and the sooner we can apply the lessons of Libya to whatever troubled land cries out to us next.

Naturally, Boot’s unblemished record of well-spoken idiocy has earned him a series of generous sinecures from varied and prestigious Institutions and Councils.

Immaculate destruction: Barack Obama’s miracle bombs

Weldon Berger — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:38:50 +0000

For the third straight war in a row, the United States has avoided killing a single civilian during massive US bombing raids and missile strikes.

Oh, wait: US authorities appear to be hedging a bit. “The truth of the matter is we have trouble coming up with proof of any civilian casualties that we have been responsible for,” says US Secretary of War Robert Gates. Yes, there are some civilian casualties and the Secretary doesn’t actually say the US

Civilian victim of US wars

hasn’t any proof that they were killed by US bombs and missiles—just that proving it has been difficult, because we’re in the sky and they’re on the ground and we don’t much care anyway—but he does say that “we do have a lot of intelligence reporting about Qaddafi taking the bodies of the people he’s killed and putting them at the sites where we’ve attacked.”

He has the strength of ten men times ten, has Qaddafi. And we do know that US intelligence has got everything right, numerously, during three consecutive and coincident wars and the 50 years preceding them. So while it might, possibly, be just a little bit true that the US may have killed just a pinch of civilians in Libya, it is certainly true that Qaddafi has been dragging the bodies of Libyan innocents to places where the US has been dropping bombs.

But it didn’t happen. And if it did happen it wasn’t us. But it didn’t happen. But if it did happen, the rules of war allow us to kill civilians on accident. It’s okay, because we send lawyers to collect forms signed by civilians in targeted areas waiving their right to life.

For real. You can check. The waivers fill rows upon rows of Pentagon file cabinets. It’s like those certificates porn producers keep on file to prove all their actors are 18 or older.

Except civilian porn producers are notoriously more honest than the ones in the Pentagon.
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Civilian victim of US wars

The dead civilian contest continues: US outscores Al Qaeda 100:1

Weldon Berger — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:29:01 +0000

Al Qaeda hasn’t killed all that many Americans during the past 10 years or so—leaving that work mostly to those who resist the US in the countries we invaded and occupied and are otherwise bedeviling—and most of them have been military or intelligence targets. Americans haven’t killed all that many al Qaeda people during the past 10 years either; most of them have been al Qaeda in one-place-or-another number two’s. Maybe there’s some sort of hands-off thing going on.

On the civilian front, al Qaeda’s US toll continues to stand at just shy of 3,000, while the best estimate of the US toll of dead civilians in Iraq continues to be the 2006 Lancet survey that estimated 186,000 civilian casualties directly attributable to US actions.

That was four years ago, and the figure doesn’t include deaths indirectly attributable to US violence, so the actual number is without question much higher by now. Of course the study was almost universally condemned in the US because we simply don’t kill that many people who don’t explicitly deserve it. QED, commies.

Afghanistan? Who knows? I don’t. Tens of thousands, anyway. Pakistan? Yemen? Somalia? Whatever. Hardly worth counting.

Anyway, for those keeping score at home, American values and technology triumph. We are clearly far, far superior to al Qaeda where the indiscriminate killing of civilians is concerned, and we live in comfort while we do it. No caves here, dudes.

So there.

Things I learned from the government today

Weldon Berger — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:29:23 +0000

A joint Pentagon/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency satellite system is so far behind schedule that the government’s capacity to track and research weather and climate may be diminished rather than improved.

In the 8 years since a contract was awarded, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)—a tri-agency program managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)—has experienced escalating costs, schedule delays, and ineffective interagency management. The launch date for a demonstration satellite has been delayed by over 5 years and the cost estimate for the program has more than doubled—to about $15 billion. In February 2010, a Presidential task force decided to disband NPOESS and, instead, have the agencies undertake separate acquisitions.

Moving forward, the agencies face key risks in transitioning from NPOESS to their separate programs. These risks include the loss of key staff and capabilities, delays in negotiating contract changes and establishing new program offices, the loss of support for the other agency’s requirements, and insufficient oversight of new program management. Until these risks are effectively mitigated, it is likely that the satellite programs’ costs will continue to grow and launch dates will continue to be delayed, which could lead to gaps in the continuity of critical satellite data.

That doesn’t sound good. It’s from the Government Accountability Office (PDF document). The people who work there generally characterize their findings in much less strident terms; when they say something is likely to happen unless the government acts quickly, the news is dire.

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The Pentagon is doubling the number of troops deployed to Guam, and, together with Japan, is spending a relative pittance—about a billion dollars—on civilian infrastructure improvements, including about $100 million for improvements to the civilian port. And, of course, they’re building a live-fire training range in about the worst possible place outside of a schoolyard.

One of the sources of concern for some of Guam’s residents has centered on the location of a Marine firing range in Pagat, a culturally significant site for Guam.

A small-arms training range is vital to the realignment of Marines here, and the environmental impact statement has identified Pagat as the preferred location, Lynn said.

Still, “There are important cultural equities here, and we need to protect, in this case in particular, an important site to the Chamorro culture in a way that’s acceptable to the people,” he said in a media roundtable today. “I think it’s still possible to find a way to do that.”

Maybe Guam could build a rifle range on the National Mall.

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Pentagon to Africa: We have only your best interests at heart.

U.S. AFRICOM was established in October 2007 to “add value” to African nations by improving their military capacities and to help nations achieve their short- and long-term goals, Army General William E. “Kip” Ward said during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He discussed progress and challenges and explained the strategic importance of the continent to global security.

Many African nations struggle with democratic processes, political reform, civil conflict and reconstruction issues, Ward noted. Despite those challenges, Africa presents tremendous opportunity, he said.

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Even if I didn’t know whose government this is, I would know it isn’t ours.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned the blockade of the Gaza Strip, describing the territory as a “prison camp”.

Israel and Egypt enforce a blockade on Gaza which restricts goods and people from coming in or out freely.

“Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp,” Mr Cameron said.

“People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison,” he said.

He’ll be having a bit of a rough spell starting in a moment, and lasting the rest of his life.