Tag Archives: office

Your Lesson for the Day: If You Decline to Use Military Force, You’ve "Kind of Lost Your Way"

by HarlanPrentice Posted on October 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today the Washington Post summarizes a new book by Leon Panetta, former CIA director and secretary of defense in the Obama administration, as well as an interview Panetta gave to Susan Page of USA Today:

By not pressing the Iraqi government to leave more U.S. troops in the country, he “created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed,” Panetta told USA Today, referring to the group also known as the Islamic State.

….The USA Today interview was the first of what inevitably will be a series as he promotes his book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” which is sharply critical of Obama’s handling of the troop withdrawal from Iraq, Syria and the advance of the Islamic State. “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that will also sweep in conflicts in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and Libya, he told the paper.

My first thought when I read this was puzzlement: Just what does Panetta think those US troops would have accomplished if they’d stayed in Iraq? Nobody ever seems to have a very concrete idea on that score. There’s always just a bit of vague hand waving about how of course they would have done….something….something….something…..and stopped the spread of ISIS. But what?

My second thought was the same as Joe Biden’s: would it kill guys like Panetta to at least wait until Obama is out of office before airing all their complaints? Do they have even a smidgen of loyalty to their ex-boss? But I suppose that ship sailed long ago, so there’s not much point in griping about it.

In the end, what really gets me is this, where Panetta talks about Obama’s foreign policy legacy:

“We are at a point where I think the jury is still out,” Panetta says. “For the first four years, and the time I spent there, I thought he was a strong leader on security issues. … But these last two years I think he kind of lost his way. You know, it’s been a mixed message, a little ambivalence in trying to approach these issues and try to clarify what the role of this country is all about.

“He may have found himself again with regards to this ISIS crisis. I hope that’s the case. And if he’s willing to roll up his sleeves and engage with Congress in taking on some of these other issues, as I said I think he can establish a very strong legacy as president. I think these next 2 1/2 years will tell us an awful lot about what history has to say about the Obama administration.”

Think about this. Panetta isn’t even a super hawkish Democrat. Just moderately hawkish. But his basic worldview is simple: as long as Obama is launching lots of drone attacks and surging lots of troops and bombing plenty of Middle Eastern countries—then he’s a “strong leader on security issues.” But when Obama starts to think that maybe reflexive military action hasn’t acquitted itself too well over the past few years—in that case he’s “kind of lost his way.”

That’s the default view of practically everyone in Washington: Using military force shows strong leadership. Declining to use military force shows weakness. But most folks inside the Beltway don’t even seem to realize they feel this way. It’s just part of the air they breathe: never really noticed, always taken for granted, and invariably the difficult but sadly necessary answer for whichever new and supposedly unique problem we’re addressing right now. This is what Obama is up against.

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Your Lesson for the Day: If You Decline to Use Military Force, You’ve "Kind of Lost Your Way"

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5 Percent of Religious Americans Routinely Try to Fool God

by IleneHainqgu Posted on October 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Speaking of phone surveys, surely a survey conducted by LifeWay, a Christian retailer based in Nashville, TN, should be one that we can rely on. So what was LifeWay curious about? Prayer. In particular: how often you pray; what you pray for; and whether your prayers are answered. The chart on the right, perhaps one of my all time favorites, shows what people said they prayed for.

Some of these are unexceptionable. Praying for your enemies is supposedly a Christian sort of thing to do (assuming you’re praying for their redemption, of course). Praying to win the lottery is pretty standard stuff. And despite mountains of evidence that God doesn’t really care who wins the Super Bowl, there’s always been plenty of praying for that too.

But finding a good parking spot? Seriously? There’s also a fair amount of Old Testament vengeance on display here. But my favorite is the 5 percent of respondents who prayed for success in something they knew wouldn’t please God.

This is great. Apparently these folks are more willing to be honest with a telephone pollster than with God despite the fact that God already knows. If it displeases Him, then that’s that. You aren’t going to fool Him into making it happen anyway. I’m also intrigued by the 20 percent who prayed for success in something they “put almost no effort in.” That’s fabulous! Not that they did it, mind you. That’s just human nature. But that they were willing to fess up to this to a telephone pollster. Is there anything people aren’t willing to confide to telephone pollsters?

Anyway, another chart tells us that 25 percent of those who pray say their prayers are answered all the time. All the time! This is terrific, and I want to meet one of these people. God has not been noticeably receptive to me lately, and I could use some help from someone with a 100 percent batting average.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, is it really possible that virtually none of these folks ever prayed for their health to improve? Or is that too risky to admit, since usually it’s fairly obvious when it doesn’t work?

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5 Percent of Religious Americans Routinely Try to Fool God

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

by Gina72Ebzwtxbe Posted on October 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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We have names! They have not, ahem, been met with universal acclaim, but we’re sticking with them. Our little gray-and-white girl is:

Hopper aka Gracie aka The Admiral

And our little black-and-white boy is:

Hilbert aka Davie aka The Professor aka The 24th Problem

For those of you too lazy to google things, Hopper is named after Admiral Grace Hopper, “the mother of COBOL.” Hilbert is named after David Hilbert, a famous German mathematician who has some personal resonance for me and also happens to have a name that begins with H, which makes him a nicely alliterative companion for Hopper. Among other things, Hilbert is famous for a speech in 1900 in which he laid out 23 fundamental mathematical problems, some of which remain unsolved to this day.

It turns out, by the way, that the fastest way to get Hilbert’s attention is to pay attention to Hopper. All we have to do is scratch Hopper’s chin and Hilbert, somehow, becomes aware of it and comes bounding into the room demanding that we scratch his chin. It’s really quite remarkable. He not only has a jealous streak, he apparently has ESP too.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 October 2014

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Gov. Susana Martinez’s Emails Have Mysteriously Disappeared

by RenatoRosenberg Posted on September 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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One of the central themes in my April cover story about New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a rising star in the Republican Party touted as a potential vice presidential candidate, was the paranoia displayed by Martinez’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. Here’s one of the juiciest nuggets illustrating this behavior:

Martinez’s 2010 crew saw enemies everywhere. A former staffer recalls the campaign on multiple occasions sending the license plate numbers of cars believed to be used by opposition trackers to an investigator in Martinez’s DA office who had access to law enforcement databases. In one instance, a campaign aide took a photo of a license plate on a car with an anti-Martinez bumper sticker and emailed it to the investigator. “Cool I will see who it belongs to!!” the investigator replied.

After my story went live and the Santa Fe Reporter published its own report on the license plate controversy, the Democratic Party of New Mexico filed an open-records request with the state’s Third Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which Martinez ran as DA before becoming governor in 2011. The Democrats asked for emails spanning August to December 2010 written by Martinez; Amy Orlando, a close friend who was Martinez’s chief deputy DA and then briefly succeeded her as DA; and a senior investigator in the DA’s office. The Democrats also asked for all correspondence to and from employees of Martinez’s DA office relating to her 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and any correspondence from August to December 2010 mentioning the words “Diane Denish,” “Denish,” and “license plate.” (Diane Denish was Martinez’s 2010 Democratic opponent.)

On Tuesday, Mark D’Antonio, the current DA in New Mexico’s Third Judicial District, released the findings of an internal investigation that concluded that large amounts of emails—potentially including those sought by the Democrats—had been “deleted and/or removed” during the period when the office was briefly run by Orlando, Martinez’s onetime deputy. Two of the four hard drives used by Orlando’s administration—hard drives that might have contained the requested emails—were missing. And investigators noted that all emails in the DA’s office were supposed to be backed up by a “special tape drive” in the office, but the back-up tapes were “blank and appear to have been erased.”

The report also noted that, under Orlando, the DA’s office misled a reporter who’d made his own request for similar records. The DA’s office told the reporter that the records he wanted didn’t exist because the office’s server “is routinely cleaned.” But after interviewing IT staffers, investigators concluded this statement “was inaccurate because IT personnel stated that servers were not routinely ‘cleaned’ and that the data should exist on a server.”

Orlando, who is now general counsel at the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, did not respond to a request for comment. She told the Albuquerque Journal that the report was an “amateurish political stunt on the eve of an election” filled with “baseless innuendos.” Martinez’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The investigative report was not a criminal investigation, and none of its claims constitute criminal wrongdoing.

The report also turned up evidence of troubling behavior by Orlando. Of the few emails dug up by investigators, one exchange showed Orlando trying to thwart D’Antonio, who replaced her as DA starting in 2013, from applying for and receiving several hundred thousand dollars in grant funding for DA operations. “Don’t leave ANY notes about how to do it!! Please,” Orlando wrote to a colleague in the DA’s office. Investigators call this “a conspiracy to actively deny Dona Ana County and related law enforcement agencies with much needed grant money.”

In a September 2010 email, Orlando asked the tech staff in the DA’s office to change the access level to her calendar and to obfuscate the reason why. “I need the people that have access to my calendar changed. But I need it done quietly. Please get with senior investigator Kip Scarborough and he will explain. And we will need to say that a virus or something happened.”

In an August 2010 email addressed to Orlando, a staffer in the DA’s office appears to admit to forging then-DA Martinez’s name on an affidavit relating to a hotel bill. “I had to fill out an affidavit that SM had to sign (forgery), and fax to the Hyatt to get her hotel bill.”

And in a November 2010 email, Orlando makes a snide remark about the planning for Martinez’s upcoming inaugural ball (she was then the governor-elect). Apparently relaying Martinez’s wishes about the theme of the ball, Orlando wrote to a party planner (whose name is redacted): “She wants it blk and white w a hint of Susan Komen color pink!”

Orlando added: “No mexican affair!!”

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Gov. Susana Martinez’s Emails Have Mysteriously Disappeared

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Obama Signs Order to Take Away Your Antibiotics

by LeesaClinton Posted on September 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest from the White House:

The Obama administration on Thursday announced measures to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, outlining a national strategy that includes incentives for the development of new drugs, tighter stewardship of existing ones, and improvements in tracking the use of antibiotics and the microbes that are resistant to them.

….John P. Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters that the new strategy — established by an executive order that President Obama signed on Thursday — was intended to jolt the federal government into action to combat a health crisis that many experts say it has been slow to recognize.

I guess we can all see where this is going, right? It’ll start with Alex Jones, maybe, and then Glenn Beck will catch the infection. Drudge will get it next, then Limbaugh, and finally the entire crew of Fox News will come down with it. The tyrant Obama is taking our amoxicillin away from us! Think of the children and their earaches!

Sadly, there’s no treatment for this airborne virus. We just have to let it burn itself out. Maybe someday scientists will find a cure for vox bardus.

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Obama Signs Order to Take Away Your Antibiotics

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Grisly New Details Emerge in Probe of Botched Oklahoma Execution

by DemetriaDLW Posted on September 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has famously referred to execution by lethal injection as an “enviable…quiet death.” Clayton Lockett’s death was anything but quiet.

In April, Lockett’s execution in Oklahoma was badly botched and brought new scrutiny to the problems with lethal injection. The state’s Republican governor, Mary Fallin, ordered the Oklahoma Office of Public Safety (OPS) to conduct an internal inquiry into the execution. A summary was released Thursday.

The investigation, conducted largely by a bunch of investigators working for the state highway patrol, didn’t produce much new information. The report mostly absolves the state of responsibility, even as it further documents the torture inflicted on Lockett before he died. It sheds no light on the effectiveness of the new, controversial, and experimental drugs used to kill Lockett—drugs that had been predicted to cause a torturous death.

But buried in the report are some of the rarely seen minutiae involved in the machinery of death, the small absurdities of a government-sanctioned killing—the pre-execution shower, the mental-health consultations, and suicide prevention efforts—all directed at someone about to die. And inside the report is the story of a real dead man walking who clearly didn’t view lethal injection as the enviable death Scalia thinks it is.

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Grisly New Details Emerge in Probe of Botched Oklahoma Execution

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Top Immigration Court Hands Huge Win to Battered Women Seeking Asylum. Conservatives Freak Out.

by BrandenYarbro Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the country’s top immigration court ruled that some migrants escaping domestic violence may qualify for asylum in the United States. The decision, from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), is a landmark: It’s the first time that this court has recognized a protected group that primarily includes women. The ruling offers a glimmer of hope to asylum-seekers who have fled horrific abuse. The decision has also infuriated conservatives, who claim that the ruling is a veritable invitation to undocumented immigrants and marks a vast expansion of citizenship opportunities for foreigners.

The case involved a Guatemalan woman who ran away from her abusive husband. “This abuse included weekly beatings,” the court wrote in its summary of her circumstances. “He threw paint thinner on her, which burned her breast. He raped her.” The police refused to intervene, and on Christmas 2005, she and her three children illegally entered the United States.

Before Tuesday’s decision, immigration judges routinely denied asylum to domestic violence victims because US asylum law does not protect people who are persecuted on account of their gender. The law only shields people who are persecuted because they are members of a certain race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group. Tuesday’s ruling, however, recognized “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” as a unique social group—giving the Guatemalan woman standing to make an asylum claim.

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Top Immigration Court Hands Huge Win to Battered Women Seeking Asylum. Conservatives Freak Out.

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In Wake of Arizona Uzi Killing, NRA Tweets About Kids Having Fun With Guns

by AndyMcQuade Posted on August 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s no shortage of grim gun news in the United States, including numerous killings involving children, but there was something particularly disturbing about an incident on Monday in which a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot her instructor to death with an Uzi. The tragedy unfolded at an Arizona gun range catering to tourists called Bullets and Burgers. How on earth was such a child allowed to fire such a powerful weapon on fully automatic, by a person who knows enough about firearms to have served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan? See video of the incident below via the New York Times; the clip doesn’t show the actual moment of tragedy, but it’s plenty chilling nonetheless.

Reactions to the news, as you might expect, have ranged from somber to mystified to angry. But with the story making the rounds on social media, only those latter two applied to a tweet posted on Wednesday afternoon by NRA Women, which is part of the National Rifle Association’s Women’s Programs and is sponsored by gun manufacturing giant Smith & Wesson. “7 Ways Children Can Have Fun at the Shooting Range” the tweet announced, linking to a recent story that details how kids can get bored with target practice if not properly entertained. NRA Women posted the tweet at 1:51 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday; by about 3 p.m. it had been removed, but not before I and others took a screen shot of it:

The list of options in the article included firing at animal, zombie, and even exploding targets, but surely there was a better time to promote them. Historically the NRA is known for its disciplined and effective messaging. But more recently, as it has branched out to cater to children and women and minorities, America’s top gun lobbying group seems to be misfiring, again and again.

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In Wake of Arizona Uzi Killing, NRA Tweets About Kids Having Fun With Guns

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Chart of the Day: The Federal Deficit Is In Pretty Good Shape These Days

by PercyBarbosa Posted on August 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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You already know this—don’t you?—but just to refresh your memories, here’s the latest projection of the federal deficit from the Congressional Budget Office. As you can see, for the entire next decade CBO figures that the deficit will be running at a very manageable 3 percent of GDP, right in line with historical averages. Be sure to show this to all your friends who are consumed with deficit hysteria. There’s really not much reason to panic about this.

Now, CBO’s forecast doesn’t take into account future booms or busts in the economy, since they can’t predict those. And as the chart makes crystal clear, that’s what causes big changes in the deficit. It’s the economy, stupid, not runaway spending. When times are good, the deficit shrinks. When times are bad, it gets worse. If you really want to avoid big deficits in the future, stop obsessing about cutting spending on the poor, and instead spend some time obsessing about economic policies that will help grow the economy.

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Chart of the Day: The Federal Deficit Is In Pretty Good Shape These Days

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Who Should Run Against Hillary?

by CedricBoyland Posted on August 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Andy Sabl surveys the Democratic field today and concludes that, sure enough, Hillary Clinton is the prohibitive frontrunner. Who could challenge her?

Any Democratic candidate jumping in at this point will have to have already demonstrated party loyalty, actual or likely executive skills, and the ability to win a majority of votes in both a party primary and a general election. Moreover, it would help if that candidate had a record of early and loud opposition to doing “stupid stuff” in the Middle East…It would help if the candidate had vast personal wealth….as well as strong and deep connections to Silicon Valley, the only serious rival to Wall Street (Clinton’s base) as a source of campaign cash.

So who could this be? Sabl is obviously describing Al Gore, and admits there’s zero evidence that Gore has any intention of running. “But if he did, and if he ran as the anti-war and populist—yet impeccably mainstream—candidate that Hillary clearly is not and has no desire to be, things would suddenly get interesting.”

I guess so. But that raises a question: Who would you like to see challenge Hillary? I’m not asking who you think is likely to run, just which plausible candidate you’d most like to see in the race.

I suppose my choice would be Sherrod Brown. He’s a serious guy who’s been in Washington for a long time. He opposed the Iraq War; he’s got good populist anti-Wall Street credentials; and he’s a solid labor supporter. He’s a pretty good talker, and never comes across as threateningly radical. As far as I know, he doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet serious enough to disqualify him. (Aside from the fact that he says he has no interest in running, of course.)

Who’s your choice? Plausible candidates only. Not Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich. It’s surprisingly hard, isn’t it? The Democratic bench is actually pretty thin these days.

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Who Should Run Against Hillary?

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