Senator Corker: Syria's Obama's Fault

One thing you can say for Republicans, they are shameless; they got chutzpah.

It's all Obama's fault. Certainly Congress is blameless.

This morning, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker, of Tennessee,  claimed if President Obama had only done some unnamed thing right back in 2013, we would never have had Assad dropping those chemical weapons on those villagers in Syria today.


As Alisyn Camerota pointed out, when Obama made noises about taking military action, the Senate and House told him their constituents had no appetite for spending more America lives or treasure in defense of Syrians and Obama had to settle for getting Russia to get Assad to agree to get rid of his chemical weapons, which, apparently he either did not do or he simply made new chemical weapons.

Doesn't he look good in that uniform?

Back in 2013, Corker was all for taking some sort of military action against Assad, because, as he said this morning, he had been to the Syrian refugee camps, and seen the suffering, but even today he could not really say exactly what military action he wanted Obama to take. If only Obama hadn't been so irresolute. If only he had drawn that red line in the sand and done something, (!) well, then Assad would have taken America seriously. It's all about sending the message. Whatever that may be.


As Richard Russell told Lyndon Johnson, when Johnson asked what he ought to do about Vietnam--Russell said, "You know, you don't really want to be in Vietnam."
LBJ replied, "Well, that's for damn sure."
Russell, "Well, them Viet Cong.  They know that, too."


Every time I hear some simpleton Congressman or neighbor say, "Oh, Obama was so stupid, telling them when we are going to leave! Trump is right. You don't tell them."
Well, Einstein, the point is, they can listen to the news. They know President Obama, President Trump, not a single American President wants to be in their dusty, God forsaken pitiful excuse for a country country. We are going to get out and they will still be  there. We do not need or want their oil. We sure as hell don't have any interest in hanging out at their bazaars watching them stone women to death or chop off hands and heads.  So whether we announce a date or not, they know all they have to do is stay there and they'll outlast us. Memo to American morons: We are not fooling them by refusing to announce a departure date. They do not need a date.


As for Syria, I suppose we could have simply assassinated Assad and left Syria to find a new strongman. Would we then have had another failed Middle Eastern state like Iraq? Whatever, we don't want to be there shoring up Syria as we are failing to do in Iraq.


Well, today, a new Syrian leader  looks more appetizing than having a functional Syria headed by a monster, but then you get ISIS popping up like whack a moles.

So now the Republicans have got out their playbooks and Trump and the Congressional Republicans are all singing, "It's Obama's fault."


I guess those voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio are all nodding in agreement.
I would recommend to all of these heartland, rust belt voters the movie "Born on the Fourth of July" or maybe, "The Deerhunter."  It's fine to be low information voters and ignorant and simple, but look what happens to your sons and daughters when the sleaze balls they vote for get into office.

President Trump Says It's Obama's Fault.

You're lucky if you come home in a flag draped coffin. The unlucky ones are quadraplegics in their wheel chairs with their colostomy bags.

Of course, what never gets asked when some lame brain like Senator Corker starts talking is this:  Senator, every few months we see some horrible images on TV of kids gassed, a toddler face down in the sand on a beach after his refugee boat overturned and he drowned, a kid in a hospital with his arm blow off and we get all sympathetic to the suffering of babies and kids and women who are caught in the crossfire of wars.  And we say, "We've got to DO something!" It's terrible watching such suffering.  But the question is: What can we do?  And which of these people on this conveyor belt of death and dismemberment do we decide to step in and help by whacking their attackers?  Syria today?  Boco Harum tomorrow?  The Taliban in Afghanistan the next day?  ISIS in Iraq? Radical somebodies in Libya? Nasties in Somalia or Sudan? 


Beyond sputtering and fuming, do we have anybody who actually has brains enough to say:  let's think about this and do something effective when we can and realize when we cannot.

They Still Don't Get It: CNN and The Message

Aliyson Camerota is just the sort of news woman I want to love: She's liberal; she's articulate and she's pissed off.

She wants us to send a message

But she's not, truth be told, bright enough.
She's very smart, I'm sure in many ways, but she is not smart enough in one way: She has not learned. She clings to concepts without examining them.
And one of the most agonizing, frustrating experiences on earth is to see someone from your team floundering miserably attacking a common enemy.


This morning she had two "experts" on the Middle East to discuss the report that the President of Syria had dropped bombs delivering poison nerve gas against his target village and then he bombed the hospital where the victims were taken.

Send this guy a message.

Ms. Camerota asked each expert to say what they had been brought on set to say: This "sends the wrong message" to "the Middle East."


Ms. Camerota then informed us that:
1. The President of Syria is a monster.
2. The Russians like him.
3. The Iranians like him.
4. The United States should stand up against him, because we are the only potential force for good in Syria and the Middle East.
5. Trump has waved off any role for the United States in opposing, undoing or dethroning the President of Syria. Qui Tacit Consentit.


Ms. Camerota apparently was not listening when Bernie Sanders said the Middle East is a quagmire within a quagmire.

Is he programed to receive?

Pray tell:  what exactly does it mean "to send a message?"
If the President of Syria hears the United States Secretary of State or the President of the United States say that anyone who uses poison gas on his people is a bad man, or should not be in power, how does that change anything?


Just, specifically, what would Ms. Camerota have the United States do about all those monsters who are not in Syria?  Like, for example, Somalia, or Libya or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Niger or anywhere Boco Haram is, or those kidnappers in the cartels of Mexico or in Guatemala or Honduras or Haiti or Bolivia? 

Send him a message? Was he listening?

This could be a summer course at the university: What is the role of a "great power" in the face of evil empires scattered across the face of planet earth? Should we mobilize a fleet of drones to drop bombs on bad guys? Should we send in the Marines? Should we institute a draft and send out our armies of the American way? Should we send some other  mothers' sons in Special Ops units to kill bad guys with our snipers?

Or should we simply invite on our TV set some guy in an authentic Middle East get up and a goatee to say that we are, in our silence, "sending the wrong message?"

I think they're trying to send a message.

"Homeland" Makes the US Senate More Real

Had I not seen "Homeland," now in it's 6th season, last night I would not have comprehended what the witnesses testifying before the Senate Committee on Intelligence were talking about this morning.

Clinton Watts: Follow the Bodies

The panel answering questions included a  Georgetown professor Godson and a live wire named Clinton Weeks, a former FBI agent now cyber security/terrorist consultant, who provided a punchy, quotable counter part to the more lugubrious professor ,who actually had some real wisdom to impart but the Senators kept cutting him off because he is about 70 years old and has not learned how to express complex thoughts in 140 characters.
Watts, on the other hand, is younger and apparently doesn't care what the Senators think of him, and he suggested at one point, when asked how we might come to an understanding about what the Russians are up to, "Well, just follow the dead bodies." 
There are all sorts of Russian, who have had something to do with disinformation schemes turning up dead on the streets of Moscow, London, Kiev and who knows where else?

I've been asking all my friends for months: What difference does it make whether Russia tried to influence the 2016 American election?  Everyone was trying to influence that election from the FBI, to the DNC to the RNC to the UK to advertising agencies in the employ of various PAC's , to--you name it. They still had to persuade American voters.

This is where "Homeland" comes in.  Max stumbles into a trollstation, run by a deliciously nasty, oily, smarmy Steve Bannon/ Rush Limbaugh/Fox News type called Brett O'Keefe,  who makes his fat living on conspiracy theories and Breitbart fake news.  He has obtained the helmet cam from the last mission showing the death of the President elect's son, which he edits in such a way to make it look like the son was fleeing from the enemy when, in fact, he was rushing forward to rescue one of his fellow soldiers.  This is run with a tag, "Cowardice runs in the family."

The seamy underside of this troll station is shown on Homeland visually,  but the testimony at the Senate fleshed out how trolls actually can do their damage.
Watts described how Russian trolls got voter registrations in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and targeted fake news stories to specific voters in those states with nuggets like Hillary was running a child sex ring out of a pizza joint in Washington, how she was dying of AIDS and other juicy bits which could then be re tweeted across Facebook and other sites. If you can just find where the crazies, borderline personalities, unhinged live, then you can push their buttons big time. Then these alarmed patriots do their 21st century version of Paul Revere's ride and alert everyone on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and who knows what?

Counties which voted for Obama and Trump: Trolls Did Their Work Well

Of course, all this depends on the gullibility and stupidity and lack of critical capacity of a public which also devours National Enquirer space alien stories, but when Watts described how methodically you could seek out the Kool Aid drinkers in these critical states, you could see just how they could have manipulated the election.

Citizens United is irrelevant if all that affects is TV advertising. Who even notices TV ads any more, when you've got a story about Hillary cashing in insurance policies from the dead foreign service officers of Benghazi?

I saw it on Breitbart and Fox: It Must Be True

As Watts noted, when you've got a fat target for your fake news in the commander-in-chief, that's all you really need. If you can count that pushing his button will immediately get the response you want, aren't you sitting pretty? All they have to do is feed Mr. Trump a story and it's gone viral at 5AM the next morning.  Obama tapped the White House, 3 million fraudulent ballots, the FBI killed Vince Foster on Hillary's orders and Obama was born on Kenya, the son of space aliens.

Angus King observed Vladimir Putin was dealt a really poor hand, but he played it superbly. He could not match the US in expenditures for aircraft carriers and warplanes, but he could invest a paltry few million in cyber warriors and get the results he wanted in the election.

Watts added that Putin did not even have to depend on Trump winning. If Trump won, terrific. But if Putin could stain and damage Hillary Clinton enough, even if she won, she would come to office wounded, damaged goods.

Why did the US not match Russian trolls and cyber manipulations?   Because spending money on hardware, airplanes and ships is so much more appealing than investing in software and human beings.  As Watts  noted wryly, while the Russians were recruiting and training cyber warriors who were exploiting voting sectors in Wisconsin, the US was rejecting good potential hackers and trolls because "they'd smoked weed at some geek party ten years ago."

Obadiah Youngblood, Red House

Even the stone faced woman sitting behind Mr. Watts had to smile at that.

Playing President on TV

You know that TV commercial, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."
The implication being, oh, well, that's all you really need to be regarded as a real doctor, because what's on TV is real. It's a fact.

Mr. Trump, seems to me, is just a fake President, but he plays one on TV.

Worst thing for a bad product: Good Advertising

Thing is, likely that's good enough for 40 million Americans, maybe 60 million.
They keep interviewing Trump voters and nary a one seems to have any second thoughts about their votes.

Obadiah Youngblood, Goonie Bird Pink Lake

Fantasy League Candidate

What this state (New Hampshire) needs is the perfect candidate for Senate, who can then go on to become President.
Trouble is, opinions differ on what constitutes perfect.
My ideal candidate would be totally unelectable, but I like him and this is my fantasy, so.

We will start with his positions, then get to his personal attributes.
Just try not to think of Josiah Bartlet. For one thing, he had multiple sclerosis, and for another he was too short. And, having been a governor, he was too often willing to compromise and do what political leaders have to do, like allow those astronauts to die somewhere above the earth when all he was giving away was a secret government program which could be used to put nuclear weapons on satellites--which the Russians must have suspected anyway.


But back to my perfect composite candidate. I will use "He" but you can substitute "She" as you like.


Here's how he answers policy questions:
1/ Abortion: He would say he would allow abortions but not infanticide and he would quickly add drawing that line has always been where the rub is. He would say he does not believe a two cell conceptus is a human being with all the rights of a human being, and he would place IUD's for free into any female over the age of 12 who wants one no matter what her parents think. But then he would offend the other side by saying he thinks while Roe vs Wade drew the line about right at 21 weeks gestation, the Court did that in view of the age of "viability" at the time in 1972, and that might have to be lowered, possibly as low as 18 weeks.  This might pose problems because amniocentesis can't be done until 17 weeks. But you might say for certain genetic defects the procedure could be done as late as even 22 weeks.

2/ Transgender rights:  He would say he believes there is too little public understanding of what a transgender person is and the first step to assuring transgender rights would be to put a discussion of the biology and psychology of sexual differentiation and sexual preference and gender identity into public schools receiving federal funds, no matter where those schools are--Alabama or Alaska.  Having said that, he believes there is a significant difference between transgenders and homosexuals, although they do share the common burden of being mistreated for something they cannot readily control about themselves.  As for "bathroom" laws, that is the wrong battlefield to choose as even public bathrooms can be made private enough. Locker rooms are another matter. For that we need an anthropologic discussion about why we have public nudity laws, and why we segregate the sexes in locker rooms and toilets and for that matter, in athletic competition.

3/ Healthcare:  He would say he is in favor of a public/private system, on the model of the British system, or possibly, the Finns or the Swiss, in which a basic health insurance would be offered as a Medicare for All, but if you have a Cadillac plan through your job, the government would do nothing to impede that. We also have to understand health insurance is not healthcare any more than auto insurance is an auto mechanic.  The government's role in training physicians, in paying for medical research at university hospitals and elsewhere should be examined and likely enhanced.  The Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Disease Control, not to mention the VA healthcare system should all be improved by dollars and by critical examination.  Take money away from the military budget and give it to the hospitals.

4/ Military spending: We have to think what we want from our military. Do we want to get the next warplane to fight the Russians or do we want, for the same money, a division of marines or SEALS or Rangers who we can transport to Iraq or Afghanistan to try to blow away the Taliban or ISIS in a brief battle and then disappear into the night?  I would vote against the warplanes. We've got enough sabers to rattle at the Russians. We now need a military we can use as a quick strike force and get the hell out. That means getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria yesterday.  The War on Terrorism is not a war any more than the war on crime. We need a military which can be used surgically and then returned home, not a military capable of becoming an occupation force.  We should not send Americans into cultures they do not understand to negotiate with mullahs or village chieftains about how much opium they are going to grow.  If the Navy needs an aircraft carrier group to launch strikes and then disappear, we can do that, but drones might be cheaper.


5/ Homeland Security: This requires extensive intelligence but the FBI has become too political. Jim Comey ought to be fired and replaced by a Director who serves a four year term to be drawn from the intelligence/police community much as Supreme Court justices are judges and lawyers drawn from a community of expertise. Same with the CIA and the NSA.

6/ Environment:  We should go whole hog encouraging wind and solar. We need the Dept of Energy to act like the National Institutes of Health, in providing funding for research and development and then you can let private companies compete to make solar panels and windmills cheaply and sell them widely. A solar panel on every roof is my motto.  Fracking has made us energy independent by releasing natural gas, but we have to look at what it does to earthquakes.  There is no such thing as clean coal. Shut down those coal mines and send those miners to plants making solar panels. They may be old and think they can't learn a new job, but I bet if you pay them, they can learn solar panel construction.

7/ The Economy: Stop worrying about deficits and debt and start spending government money to stimulate the economy bigtime. No more trickle down from the upper 1%. Screw the upper 1%. Tax them at 50% and make them pay for the winner's share, just the way we do with lottery winners.  Invest all the trillions we need to rebuild roads, bridges, tunnels and throw in fast rail and bike trails and internet connectivity right out to the farmers.

8/ Immigration:  We are all immigrants, but prior waves of immigrants--Irish, Italians, Scandinavians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Asians--for the most part arrived legally, with jobs and families or friends waiting to sponsor them. The difference with Hispanic illegal immigrants is they are the only group which can simply walk across the Southern border.  I'm not sure how many we can absorb comfortably, but we ought to make plans to absorb as many as we can comfortably and then we have to deny the rest.  That means, in tactical terms, no wall will prevent the flow. A wall can, at best slow it down or divert it, but the flood will simply flow around the wall.

One tactic might be to grant immediate citizenship to well behaved illegals already here who have demonstrated they are productive law abiding people. Illegal immigrants who have raped or murdered or become a threat can be locked up just as you would lock up any violent felon. You don't have to deport them.

Once the 11 million have become official citizens, we can expect them to help identify new illegals. If they become a problem by sheltering cousins and relatives who sneak in illegally, the whole family gets deported to whatever country we can find for them.
We have to realize none of these tactics might work. When you can immigrate by foot, there may be nothing we can do to stop you.

9/ Police:  We have to recognize while most police may be doing the job we want them to do, a portion of police have entered the police because it gives them license to exercise their sadistic impulses. These guys are simply criminals with badges. If we are going to license police to kill, we have to be sure, just as we do with doctors, they do not abuse the privileges we give them. When a policeman is seen murdering a citizen on video, he goes to jail just like any other felon.  Trust but verify. Use statistics but be critical of what those statistics mean, and get police back to walking beats, knowing the people in their communities and becoming friends not an occupying force.

10/ Trade and the Economy:  I don't know enough about trade deals to be dogmatic, but from what I can see the reasons manufacturing jobs have declined, factories closed, towns which were company towns declined are not because of nefarious trade deals and globalization.  You can reopen a factory plant and the 3,000 jobs there will be done by 2,000 robots and 100 workers.  Technology has cost those manufacturing jobs, not NAFTA.  People say they don't want jobs sitting in front of computer monitors. Tough luck. You can build solar panels, but you'll likely find yourself punching a computer keyboard in the process, although you will still need to lay hands on the panels.


So that's my guy.


What's he going to look, sound and be like?


If he's a male:
He needs to be sufficiently tall, have a good, preferably low voice, star quality hair, project aggressiveness. Maybe he was a high school wrestler or linebacker who went to college (state school) and majored in engineering or computers, or physics or biology and then to grad school in something technical. Then he worked in academia for a few years, on to industry, maybe a stint in some relevant governmental agency.

If she's a woman:
She has to be able to project aggressiveness without flaunting it. So she has to have video as a college basketball player, maybe at the  University of Connecticut or a soccer player, something which shows her trading punches or kicks. Maybe a swimmer, but at a high level.  Then grad school in engineering or medicine. I like medicine best. Maybe cardiology. Not pediatrics. Not obstetrics. Something where she treated males and brought them to their knees. Cardiology, invasive cardiology.  Or she could be a surgeon.  She's succeeded in a man's world and she cannot be intimidated but she doesn't have to prove it.


That's all folks.

What is a "Fact?" Fact Free Zones and The Truth About Trump

One of the best classes I ever had in college occurred without warning during a literature class with Professor Rosenblum, a tweedy, humble man who was listening to a student's response and asked, rather innocently, "But what is a fact?"

Eyes rolled all around the room, but I was fascinated.
Eventually, the usual things got rolled out: "Well 2 +2 =4."
"Oh, that's a definition. Math is all about convention. Actually, 2+4 =4 in a base 10 system, but not in others."
"I am sitting in this class," another student offered.
"Well, yes, we can agree on that," Professor Rosenblum added, "But how we apprehend your presence may differ, and while you may be physically perceived to be here, you may be a million miles away in some ways, or, in your mind, you may be back in your dorm room with a girlfriend."


As the years went by, I thought of all sorts of unassailable facts, like, "The heart pumps blood to the brain." These are "facts" of mechanics, which we can see and there is so much every day empirical observation and experience, they are beyond much dispute.

Nevertheless, it all comes down to evidence, definition and perception.


When I watch Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo, they struggle with their exasperation with President Trump for his fact free tweets and comments, or for his denying "facts" which they know to be true facts.


But much of what they assert are true facts is open to interpretation. Take Trump's claim crime is up in America, that inner cities are rife with and riven by crime. They play a clip of Newt Gingrich defending Trump's assertion about high crime rates and what he says is the experience of the inner city citizen makes him think crime is up, emotionally, even if crime statistics suggest otherwise. The murder rate is down. Rapes are down. Armed robberies and assault are down, according to police and FBI statistics and yet Trump says crime is up.

But what Gingrich is saying is, if you are the victim, it doesn't feel like crime is down to you.
And as anyone who has watched "The Wire" will know, crime statistics in particular are often "massaged" to make police departments look better.


Murder rates are more intransigent, because when you have a dead body, one would think, it's hard to deny there's been a murder. Unless...the dead body is ruled by the medical examiner to have died from natural causes, and again, as Wire viewers know, police may argue with the ME to classify a death as natural causes because they do not want to be saddled with a murder they cannot solve. Makes their statistics look bad.
Trump claimed his inauguration crowds broke all records, but the Washington Post published the "fact" that the crowd was smaller than for Obama. They published photos to substantiate this "fact." But crowd estimates are notoriously inaccurate and who knows when the Trump crowd photos were taken? Were they shot after he finished speaking or well before?


In medicine, we are dealing with "facts" in every New England Journal of Medicine article: People eating a high fiber diet are found to have, despite previous claims, no reduction in colon cancer. But for how long were they eating the diet? Was it long enough to affect the development of colon cancer, which may take years? What did they consider a "high fiber diet?"  How were the colon cancers detected? Is it possible some were missed?  The statement of facts often generate long debates over analysis. 


The thing about a statement like: "Hispanics love me," or "Women love me," is they are statements of emotion, not subject to measurement. Surely, some Hispanics love Trump, and you are not meant to think all Hispanics love me. That is understood. Same for women.
Trump, in a sense, deals in the unassailable because he strives to reach a data free zone.

She is so crooked. Well, how crooked is so crooked? And what exactly is crooked? If she takes a fee for a speech to Wall Street while she is Senator and she may govern some legislation which regulates Wall Street is that crooked?


Trump is also well attuned to indemnifying himself against fact checkers. He'll say, "Well eighty percent of those immigrants are rapists. Or something like that. I don't know but a lot of them. A lot. Really incredible. Just too many."


So, he'll back off, immediately, saying, essentially: "Don't hold me to a number. Whatever the true number is, it's too high."


Then there is the area which is simply untestable, which Trump seeks out: So 6 million votes, the number he lost the popular vote by, were all "fraudulent" votes, cast by phantom fraudulent voters.  And President Obama wired tapped Trump Tower. How do you prove President Obama did NOT wire tap Trump Tower? Just because nobody has located those wires...Just because nobody FOUND those weapons of mass destruction doesn't mean they weren't there. Just because Obama's birth certificate was presented to the press, well documents can be forged. Oh, you'd be surprised what Trump's men were finding about Mr. Obama's birth.


What is frustrating Camerota and Cuomo is that Trump won't play their game and argue about what the "evidence" says is actually happening.
Another problem they have is they have no real news many days, so they talk about the latest Gallup poll, as if the Gallup poll on the President's approval rating means anything.


The truth is, news media people like Camerota and Cuomo, who I like, are simply not all that well educated, in the liberal arts sense. So they get emotional about "facts" and they are not capable of analyzing what really frustrates them with Trump.


You'd think CNN would have people to help them with this.


Personally, I'd like to respond in kind:
1/ Mr. Trump's hair is fake hair. He is more than a comb over; he is bald.
2/ Mr. Trump has erectile dysfunction, which may explain his over compensation with respect to women.
and all like that.

President Trump: Max Headroom Comes to Life

The Donald is the ultimate entertainment-as-reality creature.

Then there is the advertisement in which the actor admits he is not really a surgeon but he plays one on T.V., so he should be taken seriously. That's The Donald.


Max Headroom was a British TV character who was created to look like a computer simulation of a real person, but not a real person. He was the creation of corporate greed and the public's hunger for an anti establishment figure who denigrated the idea of expertise and respectability. He was only ever a head and shoulders figure, created in a time just before computer technology had its big bang.


He was born around 1984 and disappeared soon thereafter, but he has returned  to life, like some latter day Frankenstein, as Donald John the Trump, President of the United States.

The Brits around this time also created "Spitting Image" puppets who looked like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Reagan would be awakened at night, in a state of confusion and would inevitably push the bedside button unleashing nuclear holocaust.


We have got to stop taking Mr. Trump seriously. He is an entertainment figure, a reality show star of unreality.


If we are ever to bring him down, it will be with the instruments and devices of his own creation:  Comedy.


You could not kill a Toon, as well learned in Roger Rabbit, with ordinary weapons--bullets, axes, bombs would not touch them.


You needed a special dip to kill a Toon.

To undo and erase Mr. Trump, we need a media solution as well.