Rear Admiral Brian Losey engaged in an illegal, and wide ranging campaign of retaliation in an attempt to punish whoever reported him for minor travel irregularities, but he still got his promotion.
This lack of accountability is pretty much an archetypal example of senior leadership acting in a manner in opposition to good order and discipline of the force, but that does not matter. General officers cover for each other:
The Navy is poised to promote the admiral in charge of its elite SEAL teams and other commando units even though Pentagon investigators determined that he illegally retaliated against staff members who he mistakenly suspected were whistleblowers. Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey was investigated five times by the Defense Department’s inspector general after subordinates complained that he had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them during a vengeful but fruitless hunt for the person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. After conducting separate, years-long investigations that involved more than 100 witnesses and 300,000 pages of e-mails, the inspector general upheld complaints from three of the five staff members. In each of those cases, it recommended that the Navy take action against Losey for violating whistleblower-protection laws, the documents show. The Navy, however, dismissed the findings this month and decided not to discipline Losey, a preeminent figure in the military’s secretive Special Operations forces who once commanded SEAL Team 6, the clandestine unit known for killing terrorist targets such as Osama bin Laden. He now leads the Naval Special Warfare Command and has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia and other conflict zones. Senior Navy leaders reviewed the inspector general’s investigations but “concluded that none of the allegations rose to the level of misconduct on Admiral Losey’s part,” Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, the Navy’s chief spokeswoman, said in a statement. She added that “no further action is contemplated.” ……… Critics say the previously undisclosed investigations into one of the Navy’s top SEALs underscore the weakness of the military’s whistleblower-protection law and how rarely violators are punished. Under the law, commanders or senior civilian officials are prohibited from taking punitive action against anyone who has reported wrongdoing in the armed forces to the inspector general or members of Congress. In comparison with other federal employees, whistleblowers working in the military or national security agencies must meet a higher burden of proof to win their cases. The odds are stacked against those who seek redress. ……… The complaints against Losey also illustrate the Pentagon’s long-standing reluctance to discipline top brass for wrongdoing and how the military typically conceals misconduct investigations from public view. The armed forces rarely disclose the existence of such cases except in response to public-records requests, which usually take months to process. ……… The turmoil began in July 2011, three weeks after Losey took charge of the military’s Special Operations Command for Africa, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Someone filed an anonymous complaint with the inspector general alleging that Losey had improperly sought a government-paid plane ticket for his adult daughter when his family relocated to Germany. In fact, Losey had paid for the plane ticket himself, and the complaint was soon dismissed. But enraged by what he saw as an act of disloyalty, the admiral became determined to find out who had reported him, according to the inspector general reports. ……… “I don’t understand why Brian did what he did. He went hard over stupid on it,” said a senior military official who knew Losey well and served at the time with the U.S. Africa Command, the parent command for Losey’s group. “He was concerned about disloyalty. But as I had another commander tell me, loyalty goes both ways,” said the military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the investigations. In the end, it turned out that Losey had the wrong people on his list of suspects. Investigators determined that none of the people he retaliated against had filed the original complaint about his daughter’s plane ticket. ……… The official said the Navy issued Losey a formal letter of counseling this month, advising him to be thoughtful and careful when handling such matters in the future but finding no wrongdoing on his part. Meanwhile, the inspector general also recommended that the armed forces take action against two colonels who served as senior aides to Losey. Investigators determined that they had punished suspected whistleblowers, effectively acting on behalf of the admiral.
This sort of crap is one of the reasons that our military has had a long run of failures since 2001.
The price inmates pay to call their friends and family is set to decrease after the Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to cap the rates. The vote was part of a years-long push to decrease the cost of prison and jail calls, which have been described as predatory and are dramatically higher than general rates for the public. “The truth is that each of us is paying a heavy price for what is now a predatory, scaled market regime,” said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, who has led the charge. “None of us here would ever consider paying $500 a month for a voice only service where calls are routinely dropped for no reason.” The FCC also implemented new rules it said would “discourage” advance payments [kickbacks to the jails] that the few dominate calling services give to prisons to win exclusive contracts, sometimes described as “kickbacks.” Advocates and even the phone companies themselves pushed the FCC to go further to end the payments altogether, which are technically called site commissions. But the FCC said its authority to do that is questionable. Clyburn encouraged states to reevaluate those payments and to cap rates at even lower levels at the local level, as a few states have already done. Most inmates’ calling rates will drop to 11 cents per minute, though rates will be capped at higher prices in smaller prisons and jails. Other transaction fees will be capped between $2 and $6. The cap is a more than 50 percent drop from previous limits, and those only applied to calls between states. The new cap will apply to all calls within a state and between states. Civil rights groups and others have pointed to the benefits of inmates being able to make calls affordably and how close contact with family can help reduce recidivism. Phone companies have been required to ensure that their rates for inmate calls are reasonable and fair. One way they have justified higher-than-normal prices in the past is by factoring in the upfront payments for contracts. The new order would allow these payments to go forward but would prevent phone companies from factoring them in when calculating phone rates.
I understand that a part of the corrections is punitive, but that is not an excuse to gouge prisoners and their families, particularly when the rest of us bear the cost of though increased recidivism and general misery.
The bad guys lose today, for a while at least.
I fully expect moves in congress to reverse this decision.
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has visited Moscow on his first overseas trip since the civil war broke out in his country in 2011. During the surprise visit, he had talks with President Vladimir Putin. Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month against the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups battling Mr Assad’s forces. Mr Assad said Russia’s involvement had stopped “terrorism” becoming “more widespread and harmful” in Syria. For his part, Mr Putin said Moscow’s hope, in providing a “positive dynamic in the fighting”, was that a “long term resolution can be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups”. The visit happened on Tuesday evening, but was not announced until Wednesday – after Mr Assad had returned to Damascus. ……… President Assad’s surprise visit to Moscow represents a sign of growing confidence by the embattled Syrian president. He feels it safe to leave Damascus for the first time since the civil war in Syria erupted. It is also a visible symbol of Russia’s confidence in the current Syrian regime. Having Mr Assad turn up in Moscow shows that there is little doubt that for now at least, President Putin is intent on shoring up Mr Assad’s position. But the trip may also mark a new stage in Russia’s efforts to roll out a diplomatic plan alongside its military intervention in Syria; an illustration that Russia deals with Mr Assad, and that for now at least Mr Assad has to be part of any interim solution.
Russia is looking for an end to the civil war that serves their broader foreign policy goals.
It is clear that the Russians are not wedded to Assad’s continued leadership of Syria, but neither is his removal an important goal.
Their goal is a stable state, or at least a stable rump state, that allows them to maintain their base in Tartus and influence in the region while short circuiting Jihadis who will go to kill school kids in Grozny or Moscow.
In comparison, the US is just looking to “lead” with no idea as to a final goal beyond removing Assad, preferably in a manner that demonstrates American hegemony, even if it means that we ware supporting al Qaeda factions.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi is alleged to be under “enormous pressure” from Shiite militiamen and hardliners to seek Russian airstrikes on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) targets. On Oct. 1, he had announced that such Russian intervention in his country would be welcome.
On Wednesday, the largest bloc in parliament, the Shiite Da’wa Party from which al-Abadi springs, sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking for Russian intervention.
He has established a joint intelligence center in Baghdad where reports are shared among Iraq, Iran, Russia and Syria.
But this week the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, visited Iraq and said he got assurances from PM al-Abadi that Russia would not fly missions against Daesh on Iraqi soil.
He said that there had been “angst” in the Pentagon when al-Abadi mentioned this possibility.
From the point of view of the Shiite militias and politicians, the US air strikes have been way too leisurely. For the most part they seem to aim at containment of Daesh rather than rollback. The Shiite militias have been watching the extensive air strikes by Russia on rebel targets, with increasing envy. They want that kind of action.
………
My guess is that the Obama administration hasn’t wanted to roll back Daesh quite yet, precisely because it would be the Badr Corps and similar hard line pro-Iran Shiite militias that would conduct the attack on Mosul. And that configuration would enrage the Sunni Iraqis further. The US is reaching out to Sunni tribal chieftains and wants to delay the taking of Mosul until there are enough such Sunnis and they can be positioned as the leading edge of the attack.
………
The US desire to keep Russia out is likely in part a declaration of an old 19th-century style “Sphere of Influence.” Spheres of influence are exclusive. ………
Our foreign policy is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and seems to have as its only goal the maintenance of American dominance.
It really does look like the end game of an empire, doesn’t it.
If there are two edicts I try to follow whenever I’m writing, they are, first, write what is true and, second, avoid cliche at all costs. I bring that up only as a preface before saying the following: the UK is walking down an Orwellian path. It’s nearly the cliche of cliches to say something like this, and yet it happens that the cliche is true. While there is most certainly a real thing known as a threat from Islamic terrorism, there is also such a thing as overreaction. What started as the British government’s attempt to ban extremist thought from social media and television (under the notion that some thoughts are too dangerous to enjoy the freedom that other thoughts deserve) then devolved into the conscripting of teachers that were to be on the lookout for children that might become radicalized. To assist them with this, the government helpfully provided spy-software to use against students. Spy-software which itself was found to be exploitable in the most laughably easy of ways. This employed two of the most horrifying aspects of Orwell’s Oceania: the concept of thought-crime and the employ of citizens to fearfully surveil one another. And now it seems the UK is going even further, adopting Oceania’s reputation for the swallowing up of citizens should they be found suspect of thought-crime by those watchful citizens. Specifically, the Family Division of the Judiciary has put out a memo declaring exactly how it will remove children from the homes of anyone it suspects might radicalize those children. Here’s a snippet. Recent months have seen increasing numbers of children cases coming before the Family Division and the Family Court where there are allegations or suspicions: that children, with their parents or on their own, are planning or attempting or being groomed with a view to travel to parts of Syria controlled by the so-called Islamic State; that children have been or are at risk of being radicalised; or that children have been or at are at risk of being involved in terrorist activities either in this country or abroad. Only a local authority can start care proceedings (see section 31(1) of the Children Act 1989 – the police powers are set out in section 46). However, any person with a proper interest in the welfare of a child can start proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or apply to make a child a ward of court.2 Usually, in cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above, it will be the local authority which starts proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or applies to make a child a ward of court, and the court would not expect the police (who have other priorities and responsibilities) to do so. There is, however, no reason why in a case where it seems to the police to be necessary to do so, the police should not start such proceedings for the purposes, for example, of making a child a ward of court, obtaining an injunction to prevent the child travelling abroad, obtaining a passport order, or obtaining a Tipstaff location or collection order. Given the complexities of these cases, I have decided that, for the time being at least, all cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above are to be heard by High Court Judges of the Family Division. In other words, the High Court Judges within the Family Division are now tasked with determining whether children will be made wards of the state based solely on suspicions of possible radicalization. Children torn from mothers and fathers in Muslim homes will be subject to the whims and inherently flawed watch of the larger citizenry. A citizenry, mind you, that has had its vigilance unduly ramped up by the government’s past actions and requests. It’s hard to imagine a better recipe for the unfair targeting of Muslim families than this. Unfortunately for all concerned, this same memo imagined just such a recipe, making things even worse. ……… Tax avoidance [Note: Tax avoidance uses legal, though frequently unethical, techniques to lower the tax burden. Tax evasion is a crime.] is a sore point in the United States, where the largest companies, including Apple, Amazon and many others, routinely try to minimize their bills. In Europe, the cases have hit a raw nerve in countries where citizens have been squeezed by years of austerity, and stoked friction among member states that are jockeying with one another for jobs and investment. ……… After asking Dutch tax authorities and Starbucks to provide details of their tax deals last year, the commission determined the company’s tax setup with the Netherlands had no realistic economic justification. The case zeroed in on Alki, the British-based entity at the center of Starbucks’ efforts to reduce its Dutch and European tax bills. In 2001, Starbucks installed its European corporate headquarters and a massive new coffee roasting plant in Amsterdam after conferring with Dutch tax authorities. The setup proved beneficial: Starbucks created several Dutch partnerships that were not subject to the country’s corporate tax, including one named Emerald City, a nickname for Seattle. Emerald City owned Alki, which was set up in London to house Starbucks’ intellectual property. The intellectual property included logos and the recipe for roasting coffee beans, which Starbucks subsidiaries pay Alki a royalty to license. Because of its structure, Alki was not subject to corporate tax in the Netherlands or Britain. ……… The recipe was basically the temperature for roasting beans, and appeared to be more like instructions than intellectual property. Yet counting it as such allowed Starbucks’ roasting unit to reallocate most of its profit to Alki in the form of royalties, the commission said, nearly wiping out the Dutch tax bill. No other Starbucks companies or roasters paid royalties for the same information, the commission said.
Crap like this happens, because we as a society have made a conscious decision to encourage rent of this sort behavior.
IP protections are there to incentivize creativity, and when we extend those incentives far beyond what is necessary for this, we create a cesspool of corruption and self-dealing.
It also one of the things that contributes to a less equal society, because the unearned proceeds create resources to lobby for even more rentier behavior.
If there are two edicts I try to follow whenever I’m writing, they are, first, write what is true and, second, avoid cliche at all costs. I bring that up only as a preface before saying the following: the UK is walking down an Orwellian path. It’s nearly the cliche of cliches to say something like this, and yet it happens that the cliche is true. While there is most certainly a real thing known as a threat from Islamic terrorism, there is also such a thing as overreaction. What started as the British government’s attempt to ban extremist thought from social media and television (under the notion that some thoughts are too dangerous to enjoy the freedom that other thoughts deserve) then devolved into the conscripting of teachers that were to be on the lookout for children that might become radicalized. To assist them with this, the government helpfully provided spy-software to use against students. Spy-software which itself was found to be exploitable in the most laughably easy of ways. This employed two of the most horrifying aspects of Orwell’s Oceania: the concept of thought-crime and the employ of citizens to fearfully surveil one another.
And now it seems the UK is going even further, adopting Oceania’s reputation for the swallowing up of citizens should they be found suspect of thought-crime by those watchful citizens. Specifically, the Family Division of the Judiciary has put out a memo declaring exactly how it will remove children from the homes of anyone it suspects might radicalize those children. Here’s a snippet. Recent months have seen increasing numbers of children cases coming before the Family Division and the Family Court where there are allegations or suspicions: that children, with their parents or on their own, are planning or attempting or being groomed with a view to travel to parts of Syria controlled by the so-called Islamic State; that children have been or are at risk of being radicalised; or that children have been or at are at risk of being involved in terrorist activities either in this country or abroad.
Only a local authority can start care proceedings (see section 31(1) of the Children Act 1989 – the police powers are set out in section 46). However, any person with a proper interest in the welfare of a child can start proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or apply to make a child a ward of court.2 Usually, in cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above, it will be the local authority which starts proceedings under the inherent jurisdiction or applies to make a child a ward of court, and the court would not expect the police (who have other priorities and responsibilities) to do so. There is, however, no reason why in a case where it seems to the police to be necessary to do so, the police should not start such proceedings for the purposes, for example, of making a child a ward of court, obtaining an injunction to prevent the child travelling abroad, obtaining a passport order, or obtaining a Tipstaff location or collection order. Given the complexities of these cases, I have decided that, for the time being at least, all cases falling within the description in paragraph 1 above are to be heard by High Court Judges of the Family Division.
In other words, the High Court Judges within the Family Division are now tasked with determining whether children will be made wards of the state based solely on suspicions of possible radicalization. Children torn from mothers and fathers in Muslim homes will be subject to the whims and inherently flawed watch of the larger citizenry. A citizenry, mind you, that has had its vigilance unduly ramped up by the government’s past actions and requests. It’s hard to imagine a better recipe for the unfair targeting of Muslim families than this. Unfortunately for all concerned, this same memo imagined just such a recipe, making things even worse.
The UK is beginning to resemble the movie “V”, and a that the local media seems transfixed and appalled by the fact Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t hate poor people for being poor.
There are worse things than having Donald Trump leading the polls, and David Cameron and his evil minions™ is one of them.
On Tuesday night, Rep. Paul Ryan announced that he’ll run for speaker of the House — if he gets the endorsement of every major Republican caucus by this Friday, and they agree to sign on to rules changes making it much harder for the far right to depose the speaker in the middle of a session. In a meeting with his House Republican colleagues, Ryan laid out several conditions that he’d want in exchange for taking the job. According to a statement issued by Ryan’s office, he said:
That the next speaker should be “visionary” and “needs to use the platform to create a clear policy choice for the country”
That rules should be changed to make it much more difficult to challenge the speaker’s leadership in the middle of a House term
That he wanted to spend “less time on the road” (meaning less than the three weekends a month Boehner spends fundraising)
And that the next speaker should be “a unifying figure across the conference”
The last of those is particularly important. The statement from Ryan’s office says he will only run “if he is a unity candidate — with the endorsement of all the conference’s major caucuses,” and that members should “make clear whether they support” him by Friday.
So I guess that we can add prima donna to his resume as well.
It’s kind of amusing, the Teabagger caucus finally gets Boehner’s scalp, and discovers that they are now at the point where no one is willing to take the job.
……… Comes now Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, who apparently will deign to become Speaker of the House, but only if the entire Republican caucus in the House supports him, and only if the more recalcitrant members of the caucus agree not to turn on him. This very much includes the 40 members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus,” the prion-addled Patient Zeroes of movement conservatism, and the people who defenestrated John Boehner and also ended Kevin McCarthy’s aspirations. So far, these folks seem reluctant to accept the conditions proposed by “Uncle Paul” Ryan.
Ryan’s conditions include rules changes that would make it more difficult to overthrow a sitting speaker – a provision that Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, a leader of the Freedom Caucus, said is a “non-starter.” “We have to remember everything in the House and everything in Congress is about checks and balances,” Labrador said. “We have two houses of Congress for that reason. We have three branches of government for that reason, and one of the reasons that every board has the freedom to vacate (the chair).” And fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mo Brooks said in addition to that concern, he takes issue with Ryan’s track record on immigration. “Paul Ryan’s support for amnesty and open borders, that is a significant factor,” the Alabama Republican said.
Plainly, Paul Ryan wants to be granted the authority and prerogatives of a being powerful Speaker without having to earn them through the process of persuasion that became a requirement of the office beginning with the breaking of [Despotic House Speaker from the turn of the last century] Joe Cannon. Now, having Paul Ryan two heartbeats from the presidency is a goddamn awful idea merely on its merits. But, beyond that, his demands seem to me to be based on a fundamental misreading of the current political landscape. For the past 30 years, through the deliberate development of the political identity that infected the party with the prion disease, no Republican politician ever will be allowed to be truly safe. The party handed the skunks the weapons, and the skunks learned how to use them. You’re their huckleberry now, sport.
This really is going to be the worst job in the world, and at the rate that this is going, I would expect half of the Republican Caucus to exhume the body of Ronald Reagan, and make him Speaker.
The folks at Cracked make the point that the Star Trek universe is actually a dystopian nightmare where affluence has snuffed out all creativity, and thus they send civilians on warships out into the far reaches of the galaxy to prevent boredom to turn into revolution:
This is a reference to the Pakistani intelligence service which has been accused of supporting terrorists in South Asia, and they are not amused:
In this month’s issue of FHM India, an international men’s magazine, Pakistani actress Veena Malik made worldwide headlines with a risqué nude photo shoot. While much of the attention has been on what Malik wasn’t wearing, one of the most powerful elements of her photo shoot was what she was sporting: a big, bold tattoo on her left arm, stating very simply, “ISI,” for Pakistani’s secretive Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The cover headline: “Pakistani W.M.D. Veena Malik Shows You How to Throw a Grenade!” Indeed, the cover has been explosive; PakAlertPress.com, for instance splashed a headline on its blog: “India and Pakistan Are Going Nuclear Over Provocative Political Tattoo.” And the photo has elicited a furious reaction in Pakistan’s media and in its living rooms. In one fell swoop, the enormous tattoo on a bare woman’s body managed to demystify, emasculate and parody the ISI — something most people have been afraid to do in public since the inception of the agency a year after the birth of the nation in 1947. Founded with a mission of coordinating intelligence in the country after Pakistan’s loss to India in the 1947 war in Kashmir, the agency has become a feared, though privately mocked, enterprise, its hands allegedly in every back-room Pakistani deal; rigging elections, training militants for battle in India and Afghanistan, and monitoring its own citizens. The tattoo’s location on Malik’s body takes on special meaning in light of retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s statement in September that the militant Haqqani Network, considered by most Western analysts and experts to be based in the tribal areas of Pakistan, is a “veritable arm” of the ISI. ……… Kabeer Sharma, editor of FHM India, says the ISI tattoo was meant to be a sardonic reflection of India’s own conspiracy theories about the intelligence agency. “In India, you say, ‘The milk has gone bad. The ISI did it,’ They blame all of their problems on ISI,” says Sharma. Sharma, the son of an Indian satirist and New Delhi bookstore owner, says that a dilemma on the subcontinent is that folks don’t laugh enough over the absurdities of politics. “The problem,” he says, “is that we all blame our problems on this imaginary force. Who is this ISI?” Meanwhile, on the Pakistan side, everything is blamed on RAW. “We collectively have no sense of humor. We have no sense of irony,” he says. ……… But this isn’t just a conspiracy hatched in India (though the magazine was produced there), feeding the siege mentality behind so much of the rhetoric in Pakistan. In a country where the “ghairat brigade,” or honor squad, of talking heads takes regularly to the airwaves to defend Pakistan’s honor against enemies — perceived and imagined — the photo shoot was a victory for a new movement that is emerging in Pakistan: the beghairat brigade, or the squad “without honor,” or more aptly the “shameless brigade.” To many, the beghairat brigade offers a counter to the conspiracy theories that so permeate debates in Pakistan. Josh White, a scholar on Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says, “I think the significance of the small but interesting beghairat movement is that it is trying to forge a way of being genuinely nationalistic without accepting the narrative that all of Pakistan’s problems are the result of someone else’s meddling.”
I am sure that there are some deeper sociological points here, but this tempest in a teapot also amusing as hell.
Beginning in FY 2014, policy changes introduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been driving Medicaid enrollment and spending growth. This report provides an overview of Medicaid enrollment and spending growth with a focus on state Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 and state Fiscal Year 2016. Findings are based on interviews and data provided by state Medicaid directors as part of the 15th annual survey of Medicaid directors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) and Health Management Associates (HMA). Information collected in the survey on policy actions taken during FY 2015 and FY 2016 can be found in the companion report. Key findings related to Medicaid enrollment and spending growth are described below. Medicaid enrollment and spending increased substantially in FY 2015, the first full year of implementation of the major ACA coverage expansions. Across all 50 states and DC, Medicaid enrollment increased on average by 13.8 percent in FY 2015, largely due to the ACA coverage expansions. Driven by growth in enrollment, total Medicaid spending increased by 13.9 percent on average in FY 2015. (ES – 1) Beyond enrollment, states reported that the other drivers of increases in spending were provider rate increases and the higher cost of health care, including prescription drugs. Improvements in the economy were a downward pressure on enrollment which affected spending, but downward pressure in enrollment and spending as a result of the improving economy were outweighed by the ACA coverage policy changes. ……… In FY 2015, Medicaid enrollment and total Medicaid spending growth in expansion states far exceeded growth in non-expansion states. Expansion states reported Medicaid enrollment and total spending growth nearly three times the rate of non-expansion states. (Figure 2) A total of 29 states were implementing the ACA Medicaid expansion in FY 2015, up from 26 states in the previous year (FY 2015 additions include: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Indiana). Across the 29 expansion states in FY 2015, enrollment increased on average by 18.0 percent and total spending increased by 17.7 percent; both enrollment and spending growth were driven by increases in enrollment among adults qualifying under the new expansion group. Of the 29 states expanding Medicaid in FY 2015, more than half (17 states) noted that enrollment initially increased faster than expected. Over two-thirds of expansion states reported that per member per month costs for the expansion population were at or below projections.1 Across the 22 states not implementing the Medicaid expansion in FY 2015,2 enrollment and total spending growth was 5.1 percent and 6.1 percent (respectively), much slower growth compared to the expansion states. Increased enrollment among previously eligible parents and children was the primary reason cited for enrollment growth in non-expansion states. (ES – 2)
This could not happen to a more deserving bunch of narcissistic nihilists.
Vice President Biden on Wednesday announced he is not running for president in 2016, forgoing a primary battle against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and likely signaling an end to a political career that has spanned four decades. Ending months of speculation about his plans, Biden said he could not see a path forward for his candidacy. The window of opportunity, he declared, “has closed.” “Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time — the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination.” The 72-year-old vice president made the announcement from the White House Rose Garden with his wife, Jill, and President Obama at his side.
I understand that this is an emotionally fraught decision, coming less than 6 months after the death of his son, but the general media freak-out over this has really gotten old.
I am so glad that we won’t have to be hearing pundits speculate over this crap any more.
British Columbia — Canada will see a major shift in defense policy with the election of a new Liberal Party government and its planned withdrawal from the Iraq coalition air campaign and the US-led F-35 program. Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau promised both during the election campaign leading up to Monday’s vote. Trudeau won a surprise landslide victory, forcing the ruling Conservative Party government into the opposition ranks of the House of Commons. Trudeau said Tuesday he talked to US President Obama about Canada’s changing role in Iraq and the battle against the Islamic State militant group. “I committed that we would continue to engage in a responsible way that understands how Canada has a role to play in the fight against ISIL,” Trudeau told journalists in a televised news conference from Ottawa, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group, also known as IS. “But (President Obama) understands the commitments I’ve made around ending the combat mission.” ……… Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper said if he was re-elected, he would approve a long-term commitment to the Iraq and Syrian wars. Although Trudeau intends to end Canada’s role in the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, he has promised to boost the number of soldiers available to train Iraqi troops. ……… Trudeau also has promised to move quickly on replacing Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighter aircraft and to pull out of the F-35 program. He said Canada does not need a stealth fighter for its defense needs and that the F-35 is too expensive. The Liberal Party released its 88-page election platform Oct. 5, which included some details about how it would proceed with replacing the CF-18s. “The primary mission of our fighter aircraft should remain the defence of North America, not stealth first-strike capability,” the platform said. “We will make investing in the Royal Canadian Navy a top priority. By purchasing more affordable alternatives to the F-35s, we will be able to invest in strengthening our Navy.” ……… Alan Williams, who signed the original memorandum that brought Canada into the F-35 program in 1997, said the planned withdrawal from the fighter jet project would be embarrassing for the US. But he said that Canada has to base its decisions on its own defense needs, and not only on the security and industrial concerns of its allies. ……… The other potential contenders to replace Canada’s CF-18s are the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, Boeing’s Super Hornet and Saab’s Gripen. Williams said holding an open competition for a CF-18 replacement would ensure Canadian aerospace firms have the best chance at obtaining work on such a project. Trudeau has suggested that the F-35 would not be considered in any competition.
There is an interesting comparison of capabilities at this page, and you will notice that, apart from low observability performance (stealth), the F-35 does not seem to be a particularly good deal:
Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II
Saab Gripen JAS 39E/F
Eurofighter Typhoon
Dassault Rafale
Boeing F/A-18E/F/G Super Hornet
Crew
1
1(E), 2(F)
1 or 2(Trainer)
1(C,M), 2(B)
1(E), 2 (F,G)
Engines
1
1
2
2
2
Power
28,000 (43,000 with afterburner)
13,000 (22,000 with afterburner)
26,000 (40,000 with afterburner)
22,500 (34,000 with afterburner)
26,000 (44,000 with afterburner)
Thrust-to-weight ratio (with 100% fuel and A2A weapons)
Can operate from unprepared runways, low operating cost.
Legendary air-to-air performance, twin engine.
Ground strike ability, naval version available, twin engine.
Naval airframe, easy transition, twin engine.
Problems:
Troubled development, questionable performance, high operating cost.
Smaller design, less payload.
Troubled history, high operating cost.
Proprietary systems and weapons.
Old design, unremarkable performance.
1Unofficially, the F-35 can supercruise at mach 1.2 for a distance of 241km. 2External fuel tanks are planned for the F-35, but none have been flight tested yet. 3The F-35 has only been tested to 43,000ft so far. 4Gripen C information, Gripen E data is unavailable
I would note here that the F-35 is more than 50% more costly than any of the competition, and has a direct operating cost more than that of an F-15, which was never known as an aircraft that was cheap to operate.
Further, it appears that the use of external tanks in a combat configuration will not be something that we will see in the near future, the Pentagon has its eggs in the stealth basket, and adding a combat tank would require its cooperation.
This means that its range in a typical combat configuration will typically be no better than its competitors.
In an air to air mode, the F-35 either needs to carry missiles externally, negating stealth, or to limit itself to just two missiles, placing the aircraft at a disadvantage.
Furthermore, much like Donald Trump’s hair, it’s fat, heavy and slow.
Finally, the F-35 is a roach motel: Data goes in, but it does not come out until it reaches Lockheed Martin in Ft. Worth, which means that there will be a heavy rent collected for developing new weapons, which will suppress the defense industries in partner nations.
The inability to access the source code of the aircraft also means that there will be some serious tactical issues, as data collected on new threats cannot even be examined by anyone but LM and the Pentagon, which could make for lots of flaming debris when an opponent deploys a heretofore unknown air defense system.
I do understand why Trudeau wants to drop the program: It is less a defense program than it is an industrial base preservation program centered on the US defense industry.
Y’all already all know that Texas is known for its slang. The state is home to a slew of Southern colloquialisms as well as totally unique sayings you won’t hear anywhere else. But did you know that the word “Texas” is in itself a slang word? According to Texas Monthly, Norwegians have long used the word “Texas” in lieu of the word “crazy.” Think that last statement is hogwash? Just look at this headline from a Norwegian sports website, VG Sporten:
………
To explain the language phenomenon, Texas Monthly cited a Tumblr which claimed that Norwegian slang word has a lot to do with its association to the wild west and Western shoot-em-up movies. Another web travelogue we found on the internet explained it this way: “In Norwegian, ‘texas’ means mayhem and chaos, as in cowboys punching each other and breaking chairs over each other’s heads.”
In a Reddit string entitled “Norwegians on Texas,” one Reddit user wrote that when he uses the expression “Det var helt Texas,” he pictures a “cowboy crashing a party and shooting two revolvers into the air.”
It’s certainly not the most current of cultural references and can certainly lead to negative connotations, but it might be worth noting that the idiom is a largely old one. Some speculate that the idiom has been in use since at least the 1970s.
Considering my failed attempt to raise the term Snollygoster in the public consciousness, maybe it is time for me to start using “Totally Texas” for batsh%$ insane.
Over at “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” they are writing about all those people in Washington who are eager to declare war on Syria and call it a no fly zone.
There is a small problem though, which is revealed on paragraph 3:
Hillary Rodham Clinton has split with President Obama, advocating a no-fly zone in an attempt to stop the bloodshed, reduce the flow of refugees and give the United States leverage against Russia.
Who knew that Hillary had joined the Republican Party?
On a slightly more serious note, when people are talking about a no-fly zone, they are taking about going to war against the government of Syria.
Enforcing a no fly zone requires that you suppress all air defenses, destroy infrastructure that might support air operations (like civilian power stations and the phone system), and bomb airfields.
I am so glad that I live in Maryland, where my vote for President does not count, because I am never voting again for frothing at the mouth war mongers like Clinton, because if Maryland is in play, then the election is already settled.
*Full disclosure, when I worked at Jarvis Products on meat packing equipment, inducing a tool that actually cut a new asshole on cow, chicken, and pig carcasses.
Former Virginia senator Jim Webb announced Tuesday afternoon that he would no longer pursue the Democratic presidential nomination, saying that he will instead gauge support in the coming weeks for a possible White House bid as an independent candidate. “More people in this country call themselves political independents than Republicans or Democrats. I happen to agree with them,” Webb told reporters at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington. “I am withdrawing from any consideration of being the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency,” he said. “This does not reduce in any way my concerns for the challenges facing the country … or my intentions to remain fully engaged in the debates that are facing us.”
You are out of the Democratic primary because people saw you in the debate, and they did not not like you.
What’s more, with the House of Representative resembling an open air insane asylum, this whole “but each side does it” pseudo-balance is getting old.
You have been running a non-campaign on the assumption that people will recognize your staggering brilliance, and no one is buying that baloney.
Credit where credit is due, this is well executed CAS
It just goes to show there’s only one man named Ash you should listen to, and he’s too busy chainsawing evil dead to talk nonsense like this.
— The War Nerd On why Ash Carters on the Russian intervention in Syria are 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag. (Paid Subscription usually required, but you can access it for the next 24 hours)
I stole that headline from an Ernest movie, Scared Stupid. Always loved that title. “Scared Straight”? I’ve never seen fear make anybody smarter. When people get scared, they get stupid. And at the moment, the Anglo media is all scared about the Russian air strikes in Syria. So they’ve started a counter-bombardment of their own, dumping tons of stupid on us helpless civilians. It’s not even a consistent brand of stupid. It’s all over the map: the Russian air strikes are bad because they’re helping Islamic State, or because they’re brutal, or because they’ve failed. That last claim, that the Russian campaign has already failed, is the most ridiculous of all. Take this headline from the Daily Telegraph: “Russia Reducing Air Strikes against Syrian Rebels as Intervention Fails.” “Fails,” huh? Already? After—well, lemme take my shoes off so I can count up the days since Russia started bombing Syria. Comes to 17 days, by my finger-and-toe reckoning. Who knew that an air bombardment campaign could be called a failure after slightly more than two weeks? Somebody should tell the USAF about this rule, because if memory serves, they’ve run a few bombing campaigns that went on a little longer than 17 days before getting their reckoning. Buried deep in that story is the Russian command’s actual statement: “The intensity of our military aviation operations decreased slightly in the last 24 hours….a result of active offensive operations by the Syrian armed forces, the front line/front-line [sic] with the terrorists is changing.” That’s a plausible account. The first rule of close air support is, “Don’t bomb your own people.” And that’s a tricky job when Russian-speaking pilots and air controllers are working with what’s left of the Syrian Arab Army, a disorganized lot at the best of times. So the Russian claim may be the simple truth. Or not; who knows? All you can say for sure is that claiming a dip in sorties on Day 17 means the air campaign has failed is laughable BS. US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter joined the chorus, predicting “the Russian campaign in Syria is doomed to fail.” Doomed, yet! And why, Mr. Carter, are those Russkies so doomed? Carter explained, “Fighting ISIL without pursuing a parallel political transition only risks escalating civil war in Syria… There is a logical contradiction in the Russian position and now its actions in Syria.” It just goes to show there’s only one man named Ash you should listen to, and he’s too busy chainsawing evil dead to talk nonsense like this. Actually, Russia’s campaign is much more simple and logical than the USAF’s messed-up mission in Syria. Russia is using its air force to try to blast out a viable territory for an Alawite/Shia state along the Syrian coastal hills. Assad’s people are longtime Russian clients and allies, and the Russian air force is helping them maintain their key turf against a much more numerous enemy. It may fail, but at least that’s a reasonable plan. ……… Maybe our Secretary of Defense knows something I don’t know—I mean beyond the best place for prime rib in Georgetown—but it seems to me that the Russian air campaign makes very straightforward military sense. If there’s an air force whose mission in Syria really does have “a logical contradiction at its core,” it’s a little group called the USAF. Not that it’s the USAF’s fault; they do their jobs very well. But what job, exactly, what mission, were they given? If you were to sum it up, it’d go something like this: “Hit Sunni targets east of the coastal hills, but ignore everything to the west; help the Kurds in the north, but grudgingly, as little as possible, for fear you’ll offend Turkey; and while you’re attacking Assad’s enemies, keep reassuring the Israelis that you’re just as anti-Assad as you are anti-Islamic State.” Sound stupid? It is. It’s a ridiculous compromise adopted to please the Israelis and Saudis, based on the dumb-ass notion that Sunni fighters in eastern Syria are evil sectarian bastards, but the Sunni fighters facing off against the SAA in the west are “moderates.” It’s true that Islamic State is uncommonly vile, but let’s not lie; the only faction in Syria that even tries to rise above sectarian hatred are the young Kurdish commies of YPG/J. Every other group is sectarian, and militias that start out sectarian only get meaner as they go, by the iron logic of primitive war, where massacre is the norm. And this sectarian taint isn’t new. Syria’s Sunni were chanting “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the graveyard” long before the fighting started. For once, Robert Fisk got it right, in an article called “Syria’s Moderates Have Disappeared, and There Are No Good Guys”: “The Russian air force in Syria has flown straight into the West’s fantasy air space. The Russians, we are now informed, are bombing the “moderates” in Syria – “moderates” whom even the Americans admitted two months ago, no longer existed.” The crazy US policy of ignoring Sunni militias in the west made for some fat, soft targets. No wonder the Russian air force jumped at the chance to intervene. They must’ve spent months drooling over drone and satellite photos from the west, between Homs and Aleppo—targets totally untouched by the USAF. ……… Then the Russians decided it was time to show, Gulf War style, that they had some fancy shock-and-awe munitions of their own. These belated colonial wars are, among other things, great sales videos for arms exporters like the US and Russia. To see a typical Russian sales video, check out this clip of a Russian attack on a defensive line, mixing bombers, CAS, and rocket launchers scattering cluster bombs. Watch it and see if it looks like a “failure.” Because me, I personally would not want to be anywhere within five km of the target zone. ……… Notice how the guy filming it keeps saying, “Allahu Akbar”? That seemed odd to me. It’s a Salafist battle cry as a rule. You never hear Alawites from the SAA shouting it in their battle videos. So I asked around, and apparently it marks the narrator as Sunni, a pretty slick, cinematic way of implying that the Russian/Iranian/Hezbollah/Alawite side has some Sunni allies. So…failure? No. Any advance will probably be slow; the lines don’t change much in Syria, because the level of combat power across the board is very low. These are forces who’d rather bombard each other than engage. Only Hezbollah has real combat power, and they’re spending it thriftily. But there are already signs the Russian air strikes are allowing some advances. That doesn’t mean the Russian campaign will succeed; like Gandalf used to say, “All courses may run ill.” But at least they have a sane, comprehensible, achievable goal, unlike the US in Syria. Now for the next accusation, that the Russian strikes are brutal. Well, yeah, they are. That’s the general idea. I don’t mean to be flippant here, but air strikes only look neat when you stay up there and watch from the pilot’s angle. On the ground, even the supposedly “surgical” strikes are nightmarish. Which, again, is the whole idea. And if we’re going to be honest about it, we can stop pretending there are any neat, clean surgical strikes. A new report just came out showing that nine out of ten people hit by those targeted drone assassinations are civilians who happen to be in the vicinity. As a rule, you can tell when the media approve of air strikes by the angle. If it’s all nice clean pilot’s-view of distant explosions, it’s a good strike. If they show you funerals, weeping relatives, blasted apartments, it’s a bad strike. So you can tell, just from the headline—“This Is What the Russian Air Strikes in Syria Look Like from the Ground”—that it’s a bad strike. For example, ground-angle stories on Israeli airstrikes only started hitting the US media in the past few years. Now they’re fairly common but for most of my lifetime you just didn’t see those weeping Palestinians. When the strike is done by our own airforce, you still don’t see them unless you go to foreign or marginal leftist sites. But boy do they start popping up when it’s the Russians playing their air-to-ground video games. ……… The Russians are bombing more or less the way all the other foreign air forces in Syria are bombing. They’re having a more powerful effect because they’re hitting targets that haven’t been hit by first-world CAS til now. That’s the only difference. ……… Truth is, Russia and Islamic State have different projects going in Syria, projects that don’t even overlap much. Syria is more full of bad projects than the ninth-grade Metal Shop class where they set my jacket on fire with a soldering iron (while I was wearing it). That place was full of projects thought up by adolescent psychopaths, all designed to kill or maim, and mostly ineffective. Which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of Syria at the moment. For a smallish country, Syria has more theaters of war going than a multiplex doing a Private Ryan marathon. The Kurds of YPG/PKK have their own project going in the north, along the Turkish border. The Alawites are trying to survive and carve a rump state for themselves in the coastal hills. The Christians have executed a simple plan: “get the Hell out of here while we can.” Hezbollah’s project could be summed up as, “Ugh, I guess we gotta help these weak-ass Alawites after all, damn it.” Israel’s project is “Attack Hezbollah nonstop, but never touch the Sunni militias because they’re not a real threat.” Jabhat-an-Nusra, Ahrar-as-Sham, and the other Sunni militias are competing for ownership of the inland Sunni state they hope will come out of this chaos. But Islamic State? Their project isn’t really about Syria at all. IS is an Iraqi outfit. Yeah, they have all these noisy foreign volunteers, the whole C-minus demographic of Birmingham, Dusseldorf, and Marseille, but that’s not their real power. IS inherited Saddam’s officer class, and their goal is to regain Baghdad. Syria is a side bet, one of the vacuums they’re so good at occupying. Eastern Syria—a flat dry place with few people except along the Euphrates—was mostly abandoned by both the Alawites and the other Sunni militias, who focused on trying to win the more valuable real estate to the West. That’s when Islamic State moved in from its Iraqi base and started a Syrian franchise. So the war Russia has joined isn’t even really the same war that Islamic State is fighting. IS wants to embiggen its Iraq-based “caliphate”; Russia wants to drive the other Sunni militias off that key highway, M5, so the Alawites can start a mini-state along the coast. Meanwhile, the “moderate” Sunni militias are getting hit hard for the first time. As that happens, IS will push from the east, and the SAA/Hezbollah/Revolutionary Guards from the west. At some point, Russia’s air power may meet IS head-on. But a lot of other dumb, bloodthirsty rival projects will have to get ground away in this multi-faction, multi-loon war before that happens.
I think that the Brecher is actually being a bit too sympathetic of the goals and strategy of the US here.
Basically, Obama, once again is trying to please everyone, so you have him trying to appease:
The delusional interventionists on the right (Richard Pearle) and the left (Samantha Power)
The US officer corps (particularly the wild blue yonder set) seeing this as another opportunity to further their careers
The House of Saud’s desire to prosecute their thousand plus year old great game against the Shia.
Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s delusional desire to extend Sunni hegemony over that part of the world while killing as many Kurds as possible.
And while he is doing all of that, Obama is cowering in fear that he will be accused of “losing” Syria in the same way that Truman was accused of “losing” China by Nixon.
Notwithstanding his running, and winning, on opposing “Stupid Wars” in the 2008 Presidential campaign, this war is even stupider than the invasion of Iraq.
Bush and his evil minions™ were completely delusional and willfully ignorant, but at least they had a goal, while Obama and his evil minions™ are intervening simply because they think that they can.
H/t to Naked Capitalism for unlocking this for a few days.
But lately, some of Silicon Valley’s big tech investors seem to be particularly upset that journalists are questioning some of the valley’s hottest startups.
There’s a fundamental difference in point of view here. The funders see first-hand how hard it is to build something and sympathize with the struggle. The journalists are supposed to be as objective and careful as possible and report what they find — even if some people don’t like it.
The latest example is Theranos, whose science was called into question by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was quick to defend her company, as you’d expect from a CEO.
But some VCs also seemed genuinely upset. Not at the substance of the allegations, but for not giving founders the benefit of the doubt when it comes to building something.
………
Startup founders have a really hard job. They are trying to do something new and drive society forward. The tech press doesn’t know all the facts so you should give them a break.
The first sentence is indisputably true — it’s hard (and lonesome) to found a tech startup.
………
The second sentence is where things get sticky.
A lot of tech founders are trying to do something new and drive society forward. But some of them are not.
………
The third sentence is where they completely miss the point.
Journalists don’t set out to write takedowns of companies. But when a journalist begins investigating a company and finds something is amiss, and the story is well vetted and fairly reported, the venture community should welcome that reporting.
I’m beginning to think that of all the problems facing the business culture of the United States , it is the Ayn Rand inspired corrosive narcissism which is worst of all.
If you look at Theranos, for example, the facts are fairly clear.
The company has misrepresented the scope of its technology, and there have been repeated reports that the at least some of the tests are significantly less accurate.
This technology may, or may not, be successful at a later date, but it is clear that its valuation, one which makes its CEO a billionaire is Silicon Valley “Unicorn” bullsh%$.
It really does amaze me that they reelected Stephen Harper 3 times.
He has always been very straightforward on the fact that he dislikes the idea of Canada as a modern western nation.
He vision of Canada appeared to be a white Christian Saudi Arabia. He makes Dick Cheney look like an environmentalist, and he was trying to starve the Canadian health system into oblivion.
The NDP has completely cratered, largely because after unprecedented electoral success in the last election, they were the official opposition (2nd place) for the first time ever, Jack Layton the party leader, up and got cancer, and was replaced by Tom Mulcair who tacked to the right, promising no deficits, which meant no austerity, and so ended up to the right of the historically more centrist Liberals.
One of the longstanding criticisms of the LDP is that they are seen as ineffective, and can be relied on to waffle* rather than have the courage of their convictions.
So they gave up their ideology this time around, and got clubbed like baby seals.†
It will be interesting to see how much the young Trudeau, the new PM to be, will be able to undo the damage that Harper has done.
My guess is that many of the changes that Harper has made will be very hard to roll back.
Iran has a new ballistic missile, the EMAD, and it appears that it will deploy a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MARV), which could potentially result in much higher accuracy and the possible ability to evade defenses:
Iran has successfully test fired a new, domestically produced, medium range ballistic missile, named Emad (pillar, in Farsi). “This is Iran’s first medium range missile that can be guided and controlled until hitting the target,” Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying. According to analyst estimates the new missile could be ready for service next year. The Islamic Republic of Iran already has surface-to-surface missiles with ranges of up to 2,000 kilometers that can hit Israel and US military bases in the region. The new missile seems to be a derivative of these liquid-propelled Ghadr and Shahab missiles. This Medium-Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) is also powered by liquid-fuel and; according to unconfirmed sources, it has a range of up to 1,700 km., (1,060 miles) carrying a payload of 750 kg (1,650 pounds). Its accuracy is estimated at 500 meters (1,650 ft), compared of 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) accuracy achieved by the current Shahab 3 missile.
Given that this saw deployment with the US in the late 1970s, and is currently being deployed by India, this is not, as this article implies, some sort of exotic super technology.
Instead, it is a rather mature technology, and as such, is doubtless accounted for in the software of most ABM systems.
One thing that I did notice, at least compared to the Pershing II and Agni II is that the control surfaces are much smaller, which would imply that it would produce smaller deviations from a ballistic flight path.
I think that this implies that its primary function is to increase accuracy of the missile, and not to evade interceptors like THAAD and Arrow, as terminal guidance would necessarily involve less control authority.
Given the range, 1700 km, the top speed would be in the 3.5 km/s range, which means that temperature of the nose cone might be low enough to allow for a terminal radar to improve accuracy, much as the Pershing II did. (Wiki lists the Pershing II CEP of 30m)
If the CEP could be kept to under 100m, this would greatly increase its utility when carrying a conventional warhead.
Every time we get a new bit of information about Obama’s drone policies, it just gets worse:
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that U.S. drone policy is insane. But one story told by the main drone whistleblowing reporter – Jeremy Scahill – shows just how insane it really is. Specifically, Scahill explained today that Americans target TALL people in Afghanistan and other countries … assuming that tall men must be Arabs or “foreign fighters.” In one instance, the U.S. targeted for drone assassination a man who they thought was unusually tall. In reality, he was a normal-size man … who happened to be surrounded by children.
Notwithstanding some domestic accomplishments, such as his half assed healthcare reform, Obama’s true legacy will be his immoral and counterproductive drone war.
Obama’s embrace of the contemptible and disasterous historical legacy of the Dulles brothers is complete.
