Year: 2015

F#$@ Autocorrect

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I am sending a text to She Who Must be Obeyed about getting a dorm fridge to our daughter, and future Tony Award winning actress, Natalie.

She wanted to get it here, and then schlep it up.

I thought that we could find something cheaper in the greater New York City area, so while commuting, I did a web search, and found something quite competitive less than a mile from her school.

What’s more, the have free delivery.

It seemed like a winner to me, but when I attempted to text her that there was a better alternative in Manhattan, what I actually sent said, “Found cheaper fridges in lesbianism.”

Lesbianism?!?  Seriously?!?

I am SO ready for Babel Fish enabled cell phones.

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Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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Don’t Make Larry Wilmore Angry, You Wouldn’t Like It When He’s Angry

In Texas, it appears that if you are Muslim, and you bring a project to show your engineering teacher, they will cuff you and haul you off to jail:

Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.

As a result, a 14-year-old freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., who is partial to tinkering, technology and NASA T-shirts and wants to go to M.I.T., found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nation’s charged debates on Islam, immigration and ethnicity.

“Cool clock, Ahmed,” President Obama said on Twitter. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.” Mr. Obama’s staff invited Ahmed to the White House for Astronomy Night on Oct. 19, an event bringing together scientists, engineers, astronauts, teachers and students to spend a night stargazing from the South Lawn.

The president’s spokesman said the episode was a case study in unreasoned prejudice in an era when the country is fighting Islamic terrorism at home and in the Middle East.

“This episode is a good illustration of how pernicious stereotypes can prevent even good-hearted people who have dedicated their lives to educating young people from doing the good work that they set out to do,” said Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary.

These are not good-hearted people, and Irving is not a good-hearted place.

Their mayor, Beth Van Duyne, has successfully run on a platform of religious bigotry for years now, and I do not expect anything resembling an apology from her.

Of course, now it’s blown up into a major sh%$ storm with POTUS got into the game on Twitter:

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

I really hope that Irving will spend the next few years as the butt of “dumb hick” jokes on the late night shows.

I always knew that Irving was a center of evil, it was the Dallas Cowboys home field until 2008,* but this takes to a whole new (low) level.

If we cannot give all of Texas back to Mexico, can we give Irving back?

Please?

*They now play in Arlington, TX, the largest city in the US without a mass transit system.

The US Air Force is Desperate

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Because of the small number of ruinously expensive F-22’s, and the lack of performance of it’s equally ruinously expensive F-35, has the wild blue yonder brigade looking at extending the service life of the F-15 C until the 2040s:

The lack of an official retirement date for the U.S. Air Force’s F-15C is perhaps the strongest indication of a bright future for the platform.

This is not lost on the fighter’s manufacturer, Boeing, which is recasting its efforts to offer an upgrade plan for the air superiority aircraft after its earlier effort, dubbed the Silent Eagle, flopped.

 Most Air Force platforms have a retirement date on the books, even if just for planning. But the F-15C is in a peculiar position. It was to be replaced by a fleet of F-22s, but high costs prompted then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to end production for the stealthy, twin-engine aircraft in 2009 with only 187 jets produced. This is far fewer than the 350 hoped for. So the F-15C fleet is likely to stay on far longer than expected, at least until an F-22follow-on—dubbed the Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft—is designed and fielded.

 “They will not be producing another air superiority jet until the 2030s, and they will not be out there in sufficient numbers . . . until 2040 or beyond,” says Mike Gibbons, Boeing’s F-15 vice president

 Air Force officials will not go so far as to call it a “gap” in capability, but there clearly is a shortfall. This is exemplified by the shift in plans for the critical air-to-air mission. A decade ago, the service projected a “high-low” mix of F-22s handling all of the air superiority tasks, with the F-35 relegated to a multirole mission of suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses and close air support roles. The F-35 was equipped for limited air-to-air engagement, including for self protection, but not as a front-line air superiority fighter.

 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh says that now, however, the limited number of F-22s has pushed the service to look at a long-range plan for the F-15C as well as pressing the F-35 into that role. The F-35 “is not intended to be an air superiority fighter. That was not how it was designed,” he told reporters during a Sept. 15 press conference at the annual Air Force Association Air and Space Conference. “When the F-22 buy was curtailed . . . we [decided we] have to supplement it with something. Near-term it is going to be the F-15C . . . and then as the F-35 comes on board it is capable of supplementing the F-22, but then it will not be doing its primary job.”

 Gen. Herbert Carlisle, who heads Air Combat Command, acknowledges the conundrum. The F-15C will require costly upgrades to stay relevant in the fight. And the service is already stretched for resources. Durability testing thus far—with more to come—suggests new longerons, wing spars and wings could be required on at least some of the F-15Cs. This will result in a “pretty significant bill,” he told reporters at the conference, adding it will total billions of dollars.

………

 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh says that now, however, the limited number of F-22s has pushed the service to look at a long-range plan for the F-15C as well as pressing the F-35 into that role. The F-35 “is not intended to be an air superiority fighter. That was not how it was designed,” he told reporters during a Sept. 15 press conference at the annual Air Force Association Air and Space Conference. “When the F-22 buy was curtailed . . . we [decided we] have to supplement it with something. Near-term it is going to be the F-15C . . . and then as the F-35 comes on board it is capable of supplementing the F-22, but then it will not be doing its primary job.”

 Gen. Herbert Carlisle, who heads Air Combat Command, acknowledges the conundrum. The F-15C will require costly upgrades to stay relevant in the fight. And the service is already stretched for resources. Durability testing thus far—with more to come—suggests new longerons, wing spars and wings could be required on at least some of the F-15Cs. This will result in a “pretty significant bill,” he told reporters at the conference, adding it will total billions of dollars.

………

One of the 2040C loadout options would place four external air-to-air missiles on each of the CFTs. That doubles the loadout from the current eight to 16. Another option—available only if the Air Force opts to add fly-by-wire controls to the aircraft—would add more air-to-air missiles on the outboard stations as well. These options involve a new CFT design, though it would follow the existing CFT outer mold line, Gibbons says. The service does employ CFTs for the F-15E Strike Eagle fleet, but they are rarely used for the air superiority variant.

The goal of 16 air-to-air missiles is at the “upper end” of the need, based on a variety of scenarios being examined by the Air Force, Gibbons says. “It is very easy to envision that with our forces around the world enemy threats can get an advantage . . . because they have aircraft on station and aircraft at bases [close by]. It is just a matter of numbers. If you are anywhere near their country, they can launch a lot of jets pretty quickly.”

This is actually an area where the F-15 could outperform the F-22.

The F-22 will never fly with more than 4 AMRAAMS and 4 Sidewinders.

Pylons were never developed for the aircraft.

When flying against members of the Su-27 family, which can routinely carry  at least 10 AAM, and has the ability to carry larger missiles with superior kinematics, the F-15 might actually outperform the F-22.

Still, for the Air Force to admit this is a whole bunch of crow to eat.

The Fed Does the Right Thing for Reasons that Are Totally Opaque to Me

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For some reason, central bankers are always too quick to raise interest rates.

It’s some sort of bizarre monetary dick swinging.

Everyone predicted that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates, even though the workforce participation rate is the lowest that it has been since 1978.

It turns out that “everyone” was wrong:

One of the longest economic expansions in American history remains so fragile that the Federal Reserve said on Thursday it would postpone any retreat from its stimulus campaign.

Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, described the decision as a close call and said the central bank still expected to raise interest rates later this year. The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate close to zero since late 2008, when the nation’s economy was at the depths of crisis.

“The recovery from the Great Recession has advanced sufficiently far and domestic spending has been sufficiently robust that an argument can be made for a rise in interest rates at this time,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference.

But, she said, “heightened uncertainties abroad,” including the Chinese economy’s weakness, had persuaded the bank to wait at least a few more weeks for fresh data that might “bolster its confidence” in continued growth.

The Fed’s decision, announced after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, had been widely expected by investors in recent weeks.

I’d try to explain this,but I do not have a f%$#ing clue as to why this happened, and if I did try to figure this out, all that I would get is a headache.

This Is a Seriously Cool Person Who Knows Where Their Towel Is*

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An anonymous donor has agreed to foot the bill for the removal of four Confederate-related statues, the city announced in a letter this week to the New Orleans City Council.

It will cost an estimated $144,000 to remove and transport the statues of Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Jefferson Davis, as well as a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, according to the letter. The donor agreed to pay for the entire operation.

“These four statues stand in direct contradiction to the ideal of freedom enshrined in our Constitution and their presence in our city was meant to perpetuate a false history that literally puts the Confederacy on a pedestal,” Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin said in the Sept. 14 letter. “True remembrance is required, not blind reverence.”

 I would very much like to shake the hand of whoever is behind this.

*It is a reference from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Go read the book.

I Think That Obama Is Beginning to F%$# with Republicans for Sh%$S and Giggles

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White House officials have just met with Black Lives Matter officials:

Black Lives Matter activists, including select members of Campaign Zero, met with top White House officials on Wednesday, a senior administration official confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

Activists met with senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, as well as Roy Austin, the deputy assistant to the president for urban affairs, and a collection of White House officials. The meeting focused on law enforcement and community policing with an emphasis on how to increase public safety locally.

I can hear wingnut heads exploding right now.

The Good Guy’s Win

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A few days ago, I noted how law enforcement came down on a New Hampshire library for operating a TOR node.

Today, we earn that the West Lebanon library told the US state security apparatus to go pound sand:

The Kilton Public Library in West Lebanon will reactivate its piece of the anonymous internet browsing network Tor, despite law enforcement’s concerns that the network might be used for criminal activities.

The Lebanon Library Board of Trustees let stand its unanimous June decision to devote some of the library’s excess bandwidth to a node, or “relay,” for Tor, after a full room of about 50 residents and other interested members of the public expressed their support for Lebanon’s participation in the system at a meeting Tuesday night.

“With any freedom there is risk,” library board Chairman Francis Oscadal said. “It came to me that I could vote in favor of the good . . . or I could vote against the bad.

“I’d rather vote for the good because there is value to this.”

I haz a happy.

Quote of the Day

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“I’d rather go to Iraq than work for Carly Fiorina again,” said one high-level former campaign staffer, who asked not to be identified, citing disclosure restrictions in his contract.

Carly Fiorina, who’s net worth is something north of $50 million, stiffed her campaign workers in her 2010 Senate (Demon Sheep) campaign.

BTW, not getting paid by a political candidate is something that happens now and again, the amount of outright hatred expressed rivals that of long time Hewlett Packard employees.

It’s not about getting stiffed. She must have been absolute hell to work for.

Think about this: Donald f%$#ing Trump doesn’t have employees ratting him out like this, and neither does Hillary Clinton, and if any of her former employees were willing to right a tell all, they would get a seven figure advance. (Even more if they were willing to mention “Benghazi.” )

 It really is remarkable how people like her (I mean high powered executives, not Republicans in this case) keep failing up the business food chain.

H/t Digby at Salon for the quote.

And yet Another Element of the US State Security Apparatus Goes Rogue

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It appears that the DEA specifically targeted the Evo Morales government in Bolivia in what appears to be something very close to an attempted coup:

The United States has secretly indicted top officials connected to the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales for their alleged involvement in a cocaine trafficking scheme. The indictments, secured in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting called “Operation Naked King,” have not been previously reported.

Morales, a former leader of Bolivia’s coca growers union, has long been at loggerheads with the DEA. In 2008, Morales expelled the agency from the country and embarked on his own strategy of combatting drug trafficking, acknowledging the traditional uses of coca in Bolivian culture and working cooperatively with coca growers to regulate some legal activity and to promote alternative development elsewhere. Morales’ plan has been effective at reducing cultivation, according to the United Nations.

But that doesn’t mean the DEA accepted its eviction quietly. In fact, the agency went after members of Morales’ administration in an apparent effort to undermine his leadership.

The sealed indictments, revealed last week in a lawsuit filed by long-time DEA informant Carlos Toro, target Walter Álvarez, a top Bolivian air force official; the late Raul García, father of Vice President Álvaro García Linera; Faustino Giménez, an Argentine citizen and Bolivian resident who is said to be close to the vice president; and Katy Alcoreza, described as an intelligence agent for Morales. Toro said in the court document that he played an integral role in securing the indictments as part of the DEA’s undercover investigation into the alleged Bolivian cocaine trafficking ring, which the agency ran out of its office in Asuncion, Paraguay.

………

The U.S. government and the DEA made no secret of their displeasure when their longtime nemesis, Morales, was elected. “If radicals continue to hijack the indigenous movement, we could find ourselves faced with a narcostate that supports the uncontrolled cultivation of coca,” General James T. Hill, a U.S. army commander with the Southern Command, told the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004, referring to Morales’ movement.

“I don’t think there’s an attractive or viable future by becoming a narcostate,” John Walters, then the Bush administration’s drug czar, told The New York Times the next year, when it appeared Morales was on his way to victory.

Morales used the accusations to his political benefit. “They accuse me of everything,” Morales said at a campaign rally, according to the same Times article. “They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a narcoterrorist. They don’t know how to defend their position, so they attack us.”

………

By 2014, the Times was writing about Bolivia’s renaissance:

Tucked away in the shadow of its more populous and more prosperous neighbors, tiny, impoverished Bolivia, once a perennial economic basket case, has suddenly become a different kind of exception — this time in a good way.

Its economy grew an estimated 6.5 percent last year, among the strongest rates in the region. Inflation has been kept in check. The budget is balanced, and once-crippling government debt has been slashed. And the country has a rainy-day fund of foreign reserves so large for its relatively small economy that it could be the envy of nearly every other country in the world. The Times article notes that extreme poverty under Morales has plummeted, despite — or, more likely, because of — his refusal to follow the path the U.S. has urged.

………

In the face of U.S. denunciations that Bolivia would become a narcostate under Morales, the country has instead managed to reduce coca leaf cultivation, especially over the past five years. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total production of dried coca leaf fell 11 percent from 2013 to 2014, and has fallen by an average of nearly 10 percent each year since 2011. Interdiction efforts targeting coca cultivation have also dropped precipitously since the DEA’s dismissal in 2008, though confiscations of cocaine continued to rise until 2013, when they dropped off significantly. In 2014, confiscations of processed cocaine hydrochloride returned to previous levels, though interdiction of coca leaves and cocaine base remained low.

“[Drug trafficking] must be fought — we are convinced of that — and we are doing so more effectively and more wisely,” Morales told Al Jazeera in a 2014 interview. “When the United States was in control of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely geopolitical purposes …. The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for political control …. We have nationalised the fight against drug trafficking.”

In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s “fear mongering” in written testimony during her secretary of state confirmation hearings. Yet Morales’ fears, it turns out, weren’t rooted in mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.

The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders’ paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean Information Network based in Bolivia. “US authorities frequently dismiss Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on the ground — there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a violation of agreements with host countries,” she wrote in an email.

What is going on here is very simple: A coup attempt by the DEA, and they are trying to take this government down not because their policies are a failure, but because their policies are a success.

If other governments follow their example, bad things will happen:   the DEA will face a situation where their most important path to career advancement an visibility, f%$#ing around with other sovereign nations, will be curtailed.

At some point, lead to reductions in budget and manpower at the agency, so clearly Evo Morales must be overthrown, because, to quote Mel Brooks, “Holy underwear! Sheriff murdered! Innocent women and children blown to bits! We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!”

This is not surprising.  After all, one of the first major foreign initiatives of the Obama administration was to tacitly support a coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.

Haven’t we f%$#ed up Latin America enough since 1823?

Zombie Ideas

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The New York Times editorial board notices that Republicans are trying to privatize IRS tax collection yet again:

Buried in the Senate-passed version of the big highway bill is a provision that would require the Treasury secretary to use private debt collectors to collect unpaid back taxes.

The provision, added to the bill by Republican leaders, is ostensibly intended to help pay for highways. But it’s a bad idea that should be kept out of the House version of the bill and out of any final compromise version.

Private tax collection was tried in the 1990s and in the 2000s. Both times it lost money. It increases the cost of handling complaints and appeals at the Internal Revenue Service, and it is far less efficient than simply increasing the collection budget of the I.R.S.

Worse, it fosters taxpayer abuse. The debts involved are ones that the I.R.S. has not been able to collect, in part because the taxpayers are too hard-pressed to pay up. A private company is probably not going to have better luck unless it uses abusive tactics.

And yet, private tax collection is an idea that keeps resurfacing. Why? One reason is that it would be a cash cow for the four companies likely to win tax-collection contracts, two in New York, one in California and one in Iowa.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, has argued in the past that using federal money to pay private companies for tax collection would create jobs at those companies. But it would be better to increase the I.R.S. budget to create middle-class public-sector jobs in professional tax collection than to throw money at low-paying private-sector contractors who cannot do the job as well.

 Thank you Senator Schumer for whoring for your debt collector campaign contributors.

This sh%$ is just evil.

Deep Thought

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It can be annoying to have an ear worm, (a song that you cannot get out of your head) even when you like the song.

When the song in question is Peaches’ F&$@ the Pain Away, and you have to be sure that you are not absent mindedly singing the lyrics at work, it gets positively aggravating.

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Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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A small library in Lebanon, New Hampshire decided set up TOR on its network.

This was just shut down as a result of threats from the Department of Homeland Security:

Since Edward Snowden exposed the extent of online surveillance by the U.S. government, there has been a surge of initiatives to protect users’ privacy.

But it hasn’t taken long for one of these efforts — a project to equip local libraries with technology supporting anonymous Internet surfing — to run up against opposition from law enforcement.

In July, the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was the first library in the country to become part of the anonymous Web surfing service Tor. The library allowed Tor users around the world to bounce their Internet traffic through the library, thus masking users’ locations.

Soon after state authorities received an email about it from an agent at the Department of Homeland Security.

“The Department of Homeland Security got in touch with our Police Department,” said Sean Fleming, the library director of the Lebanon Public Libraries.

After a meeting at which local police and city officials discussed how Tor could be exploited by criminals, the library pulled the plug on the project.

“Right now we’re on pause,” said Fleming. “We really weren’t anticipating that there would be any controversy at all.”

………

After Macrina conducted a privacy training session at the Kilton library in May, she talked to the librarian about also setting up a Tor relay, the mechanism by which users across the Internet can hide their identity.

The library board of trustees unanimously approved the plan at its meeting in June, and the relay was set up in July. But after ArsTechnica wrote about the pilot project and Macrina’s plan to install Tor relays in libraries across the nation, law enforcement got involved.

A special agent in a Boston DHS office forwarded the article to the New Hampshire police, who forwarded it to a sergeant at the Lebanon Police Department.

DHS spokesman Shawn Neudauer said the agent was simply providing “visibility/situational awareness,” and did not have any direct contact with the Lebanon police or library. “The use of a Tor browser is not, in [or] of itself, illegal and there are legitimate purposes for its use,” Neudauer said, “However, the protections that Tor offers can be attractive to criminal enterprises or actors and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] will continue to pursue those individuals who seek to use the anonymizing technology to further their illicit activity.”

When the DHS inquiry was brought to his attention, Lt. Matthew Isham of the Lebanon Police Department was concerned. “For all the good that a Tor may allow as far as speech, there is also the criminal side that would take advantage of that as well,” Isham said. “We felt we needed to make the city aware of it.”

For those who don’t speak the language of law enforcement threats, “Needed to make the city aware of it,” means, “Threatening to link public officials to child porn.”

The action taken by the library is legal, and is very much in the tradition of libraries promoting the free exchange of information, but the US state security apparatus cannot tolerate this, even though the US government is the largest single funder of this network.

Corbyn Wins in UK, Hopefully, This Presages Bernie in US

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So, Jeremy Corbyn has won the election to lead the Labour Party, which means that after about 25 years, Labour will be an actually supporter of (small “L”) labor, as opposed to the Blairite policies which favor the wealthy in general, and the City of London (their Wall Street) in particular.

What is particularly significant is that he absolutely crushed the opposition, and he did so with a voter turnout that puts Tony Blair’s wins to shame:

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the British Labour party, in a stunning first-round victory that dwarfed even the mandate for Tony Blair in 1994.

 He won with nearly 59.5% of first-preference votes, beating rivals Andy Burnham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Cooper who received 17%. The “Blairite” candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

 Minutes after his victory, Corbyn said the message is that people are “fed up with the injustice and the inequality” of Britain.

 “The media and many of us, simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country. They were turned off by the way politics was being conducted. We have to and must change that. The fightback gathers speed and gathers pace,” he said.

 The north London MP is one of the most unexpected winners of the party leadership in its history, after persuading Labour members and supporters that the party needed to draw a line under the New Labour era of Blair and Gordon Brown.

 Attention will now turn to who serves in Corbyn’s top team, with MPs such as John McDonnell, Angela Eagle, Sadiq Khan, Ken Livingstone and possibly leadership rival Burnham tipped for key roles. Liam Byrne, Mary Creagh and John Healey have also indicated they would be willing to serve on his frontbench.

 ………

 Corbyn’s campaign has also been helped by a surge in new members and supporters who paid £3 to take part in the vote, leading to a near-tripling of those eligible to about 550,000 people. Throughout the campaign, he addressed packed rallies and halls, where he had to give speeches outside the buildings to crowds gathered in the street.

 While his supporters will be jubilant about Labour taking a turn to the left, his triumph will be deeply disappointing to the parliamentary party, which overwhelmingly backed other candidates by 210 to 20.

………

 In the campaign, he promised to give Labour members a much greater say in the party’s policymaking process, in a move that could sideline MPs. His key proposals include renationalisation of the railways, apologising for Labour’s role in the Iraq war, quantitative easing to fund infrastructure, opposing austerity, controlling rents and creating a national education service.

 He is also likely to prove an obstacle to David Cameron’s ambition to launch airstrikes on Syria, although some Labour MPs could defy the whip to vote with the government.

I would expect that a significant portion of the Labour Party, particularly in Parliament, will be dedicated to undermining him. (Shades of McGovern in 1972)

Of course, if they do so by voting with the Tories, and against Labour on war, I think that they will be buying into a severe, and well deserved, sh%$storm at the next elections.

And of course on the donor side, we are already seeing the rich donors who were so courted by “New Labour” now throwing tantrums:

Labour’s biggest private individual donor has pledged to stop giving money to the party now Jeremy Corbyn is leader and instead fund a group of MPs dubbed ‘The Resistance’.

 John Mills, who gave £1.65 million under Ed Miliband, told The Telegraph that Labour would become a “protest” party under the hard-Left MP and warned his economic policies were unworkable.

 He stands ready to “funnel” cash into Labour for the Common Good – the group set up by Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt – and think tanks looking to reinvigorate centrist thinking in the party.

 It comes as with senior moderates due to go public with their concerns about the party’s direction at a string of policy seminars being organised between now and Christmas.

We also have a large number of Labour “front benchers” indicating, at least for now, that they are uninterested in leadership roles under Jeremy Corbyn.

Clearly, they hope that the party will suffer in their absence, but it suffered in their presence, so make of this what you will.

In either case, it does appear that Corbyn has managed to populate his shadow cabinet:

Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader, is facing the first test of his ability to lead the parliamentary party after appointing his closest political ally, John McDonnell, as shadow chancellor. [of the Exchequer]


 The decision means that the five most senior positions will be filled by men, including Andy Burnham as shadow home secretary, Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary, and Tom Watson as elected deputy as well as Corbyn and McDonnell.

 Corbyn’s biggest problem may now be the fierce resistance within the parliamentary party and even among some union leaders to the appointment of McDonnell, with some asking Corbyn to appoint Angela Eagle as shadow chancellor, to balance the shadow cabinet politically and by gender. Eagle was instead given the business portfolio and will also become shadow first secretary of state, deputising for Corbyn in the Commons.

 McDonnell was Corbyn’s leadership campaign manager and has advocated nationalisation without compensation in the past as well as 60p tax rates. Among MPs, his appointment was seen as a disavowal of Corbyn’s commitment to create a political consensus.

Seeing as how the most recent “stand” by the Labour establishment was to abstain, as opposed to opposing, draconian cuts to the social safety net, because there were a few items in the bill that might have engendered mild support from some potential Labor voters.

For anyone who thinks that the political policies of the “New Labor”, are wrong, I would point them to Ian Welsh’s advice on this matter:

So, you voted for Corbyn. You’re a Labour party member, old or new. What MUST you do to have Corbyn’s back?

Because, be clear, he will fail without you. He will lose. He and a few allies within the Labour party cannot win this fight alone. He will be destroyed by lack of cooperation, scandals, and engineered crises. The vast majority of all media coverage will be negative, etc.

You must take over the locals—the branches and constituencies. Flood them. If the officers don’t act how you think they should, let them know. And by “let them know,” I mean, get in their faces.

Make sure your local MP, who probably doesn’t like Corbyn or support him, know that if he doesn’t get onside, he won’t be the nominee in the next election. Make his/her life personally unpleasant. If s/he votes against Corbyn, picket him. Mock her. Make sure there is a cost. Because on the other side, that MP will know that if they oppose Corbyn, they will be taken care of by the City and the other usual suspects.

You must prove there is a cost for opposing the democratic will of the majority of Labour party members. MPs and officials must know that if they try to sabotage Corbyn, their days in the party are numbered and will be extremely unpleasant.

The carrot is that if they get onside, they’re gold. They can keep their positions, they can feel like they’re part of a swelling horde.

This statement would be a good blue print for supporters of the “Democratic Wing” of the Democratic Party.

One of the Facts of Running a Local Government Is That Making Your Government “Business Friendly” Never Pays

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Of course, what I mean by “Business Friendly” is using tax abatements, creating dedicated infrastructure, or building stadiums.

When you pay companies to locate in your town, you always lose, and the latest case is the oil boom towns in North Dakota, which have discovered that by not making drillers pay their way, they raise costs for everyone else:

While the massive Bakken oil boom drew hordes of job seekers and international attention to the remote prairies of North Dakota and Montana in recent years, it’s turned into a money loser for most cities and counties in the region.

 Crime in Dunn County, N.D., in the heart of the nation’s oil boom, skyrocketed 60 percent in just three years, and the road maintenance budget soared from $1.5 million to $25 million.

 The local government couldn’t keep up, with demand for services outpacing the growth in tax revenue by as much as 40 percent. The problem continues as the drop in oil prices in the past year means increasingly less money for the county to spend on projects – while drilling, the truck traffic that eats up the roads, and demand for community services haven’t stopped.

 “The gap between revenues and needs is still fairly large,” Daryl Dukart, a Dunn County commissioner, said in an interview. “It will take many years to balance out.”

 Dunn County is far from alone. Analysis from researchers at Duke University found that “most local governments in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken region have experienced net negative fiscal effects” from the shale drilling boom.

The answer here is fairly simple: Make the newcomers pay their own way.

When thousands of very trucks tear up your local roads, charge tolls on them.

When their water demands require the construction of new sewer and water infrastructure, charge them for that too.

The oil is where the oil is. If drilling drops by 10% because the energy companies have to pay their own way, it’s a net plus.

The idea that in the long term it will sort itself out, a sentiment expressed by a Dickinson, North Dakota City Manager Shawn Kessel, is a pipe dream.

In the long term, the oil boom goes bust, and you still have to pay for the infrastructure that is now sitting unused, as well as the mountains of toxic waste that will start showing up.

I learned a little bit by being raised by a city planner, and one of the lessons that stuck is that if you subsidize industries to locate in your town, it will be a net tax loser.

The 2nd lesson is that most of the money in real estate is made through explicit and implicit subsidies that come from the local government in the form of tax abatements, zoning changes, and unpaid for infrastructure upgrades.

Natalie is Now at School………

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Click for slideshow

Looking to the future


Still looking to the future


But first, tie my shoe


Good to go

We dropped her off at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and got all of her stuff unloaded.

Me met her roommate, and her roommate’s family (her roomate’s dad is a fan of The Who as well), and got all the eyes dotted and tees crossed, so we are good go go.

Natalie is spending her first night as a college student.

Before I said goodbye, I told he that she was going to be magnificent.  (Daddy pep talk, don’t you know)

We are now back home, tired from the trip, and a little freaked about Natalie being all grown up.

I expect our cat Destructo (Natalie is his human) to bum out for a while.

(People who see this on Facebook, click through for the pictures)

Headline of the Day

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Liberals Push to Correct Inequality — Just Not If It Involves Opening Up Our Neighborhood Schools.

It’s a pity that the article that goes along with it, which I am not linking to, is a piece of crap generated by Campbell Brown’s corporate whoring AstroTurf “educational” organization, where the entire thing is a screed about how liberals really should support education by and for Wall Street Charter Schools, because it means that a few brown faces in those schools.

It’s an intellectually bankrupt piece, and willfully obtuse, as Matt Bruening (the link above) so ably notes:

You see, we know very well how to integrate schools along class and racial lines. It’s called busing and we used to do it. Yet, isn’t it weird that Williams never writes about busing? Isn’t it weird that you hardly hear a peep out of that entire gang about busing? Why don’t they advocate for explicit integration through busing instead of these charter schools which may or may not even have a desegregating effect (and even where it does, not nearly to the same degree as busing would). Isn’t it awfully convenient that these folks say they definitely care about school integration and inequality but refuse to advocate for the most effective solution for it?

When pressed on this, one of the responses you will hear is that they don’t see practically (speaking in political terms) how we can get busing. But why would people oppose busing, one has to wonder. Is it because they don’t want to send their kids to school with poors and blacks? But wait, isn’t that the same reason they don’t like charters? Isn’t the opposition the same to both things? Why advocate one thing that runs up against a brick wall due to racism and dislike of the poor but not another thing that runs up against the same brick wall?

There are two basic answers here.

The first is that the charters don’t promise integration (and in many cases brag about how segregated they are, e.g. KIPP gleaming about how uniformly poor and black their schools are). So the reformers sidestep the hurdle of the racist affluent white liberal by basically giving in entirely to their desire for segregation, which charters don’t threaten that much if at all.

The second is that practicality is defined here in terms of what you might call the Left Wing of the Fundable. You can get money to push for charter schools and privatization and breaking teacher/public unions (all things the education reformers push, including right now Students First pushing a SCOTUS case that aims to eliminate all public sector union security, not just for teachers). You can get a fellowship at a think tank to push for those types of things. They are thus practical in the sense that there are enough rich people and institutions with somewhat mixed interests that are willing to pony up the money necessary to push them through our hilariously undemocratic political system and to fund a healthy number of advocate jobs. The same money doesn’t exist for busing advocacy.

So who then is really the intrepid supporter for integration in all of this, I am left to ask. Is the education reformer who dare not say a peep about busing because it’s outside of the Left Wing of the Fundable and too radically integrationist the real no-nonsense advocate willing to say what needs to be said? I don’t think so.

The title has some real truth to it:  Far too many liberals call for problems to be fixed, and then recoil in horror when they discover that this involves the smallest sacrifice on their part (i.e. busing and cross district money transfers), but the rest of the article, which is so ably Fisked by Mr. Bruening, is bovine scatology.

This Business Will Get out of Control. It Will Get out of Control and We’ll Be Lucky to Live through It.

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It appears that Russia may be building a military base in Syria:

The anonymous officials say Russia has set up an air traffic control tower and transported prefabricated housing units for up to 1,000 personnel to an airfield serving the Syrian port city of Latakia.

 Russia has also requested the rights to fly over neighbouring countries with military cargo aircraft during September, according to the reports.

 The claims, which will raise fears that Russia is planning to expand its role in the country’s civil war, will ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington over the future of Syria and its brutal ruler.

 Mr Obama on Friday met King Salman of Saudi Arabia to repeat their demand that any lasting settlement in Syria would require an end to the Assad regime.

 It leaves the US and Russia implacably opposed in their visions for Syria.

I would argue that the vision expressed by Obama is being driven by the House of Saud and the rest of the antediluvian absolute monarchies that dot the Persian Gulf.

 They supported radical Islamic opponents to the Assad regime, because they want to replace a secular Arab regime with Sunni dominated theocracy, because, I guess, it worked so well in Syria.

 ………

 “We are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” he said during an economic forum in Vladivostok on Friday, according to the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.

 Until now, Russia’s backing has included financial support, intelligence, advisers, weapons and spare parts. Mr Putin insisted it was “premature” to talk of a direct intervention.

………

 Last week the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth cited Western diplomatic sources saying that Russia was on the verge of deploying “thousands” of troops to Syria to establish an airbase from which the Russian air force would fly combat sorties against Isil.

 Those details appear to be backed by satellite images of a Russian base under construction near Latakia, according to anonymous intelligence officials quoted by several American newspapers.

 “If they’re moving people in to help the Syrian government fight their own fight, that’s one thing,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “But if they’re moving in ground forces and dropping bombs on populated areas, that’s an entirely different matter.”

 Moscow increasingly justifies its support for the Assad regime by pointing to the rise of violent jihadists in Syria.

………

 Syria is already home to Russia’s only base outside the former Soviet Union – a naval station in Tartus.

 The reported build-up of military activity, centred on Latakia and Idlib province, is in areas dominated by the Alawite sect, which counts President Assad among its number.

The House of Saud, the other petty tyrants of the Persian Gulf, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (the increasingly authoritarian, and increasingly unstable President of Turkey) have been actively supporting both the civil war and the most extreme religious fanatics in the region.

This did was a disaster in Libya, and it will be a disaster in Syria.

Getting rid of Assad in Syria would be a good thing, if the alternative were not immeasurably worse.

Of note, it appears that there are indications that the Russians might be sending Russian manned MiG-31s to Syria:

Rumours, comments and half-truths are very common in fluid environments such as this. Various news-outlets are offering different theories regarding a large-scale Russian operation about to start in Syria. With information and evidence being often sketchy at best, it is most likely that various players in and outside the region are trying to push their agenda, either vis-à-vis Syria or vis-à-vis Russia. Trusting partisan and biased information, i.e. MSM accounts quoting “official sources“, would obviously be a mistake. That is why this piece offers a totally different read on the reasons and goals of the Russian move, just for the sake of argument.

Preventing a another Libya

Before getting to the core of the scenario that could explain events on the ground, it may be useful to recall the Libyan precedent: a “no fly zone” implemented by NATO under a UN-resolution was hijacked – in the Russians’ view – to support the anti-Gaddafi insurgents and give them close air support for several months, until the Libyan dictator was finally ousted from power.

Ever since the start of the civil war in Syria, the Russians have always made it clear that they would not tolerate another version of the Libyan precedent. In 2013 already, Russian officials made numerous statements formally objecting to a “no fly zone“. A few very strongly worded declarations by President Putin himself didn’t leave any doubt as to the Russians’ willingness to actively oppose such a development.

………

Based on the developments mentioned above, but also taking into account some of the recurrent background noise and chatter that can be heard way outside the beltway – remember Petreaus’ suggestion about “Jabhat al Nusra reconcilables” or Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent call for a “no fly zone” over Syria – it is pretty easy to figure out what some of the armchair strategists in DC had in mind.

Quite simple in its premises, their strategy is based on increasing the tempo of Coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State, particularly in Syria, thus winning over public opinion for such operations, and supporting Kurdish YPG militias all over the North. At the same time, efforts – quite unlucky and unsuccessful so far – to recruit and train parts of the FSA, and possibly the “reasonable fringe” of Jahbat al-Nusra, are continuing.

The aim is to arm these groups and turn them loose – officially – on the Islamic State, giving them the same air support YPG groups have been receiving, provided the main thrust is against ISIS held territory or disputed areas. Territory that is firmly in the Syrian government’s hands would be off limits in such a scenario, but given that these areas have become quite small in recent months, it is pretty safe to assume that about 75 % to 80 % of Syrian territory would be up for grabs.

In other words, the support of Kurdish peshmergas on the one hand, the help and training of “moderate” Syrian rebels on the other, would be combined with the benefits of a “no fly zone” or at least extensive air support. The official rationale for such a “no fly zone” would be solely the struggle against ISIS, of course, because that would be the easiest way – and actually the only one –to sell such a strategy to the US public.

………

Needless to say that if the Syrian air force was unable to support its ground troops not just in the North, but anywhere in Syria, the balance of power would inexorably shift towards the opposition groups and a de facto partition of Syria would be unavoidable. To the Russians, this is unacceptable. They may be willing to let Assad go, but not to abandon Syria as an ally and a Russian asset in the “grand game”.

Syria is still a sovereign country and there hasn’t been any UN-resolution that could bolster foreign intervention without the consent of the Syrian government. Furthermore, Syria has an extensive defense agreement with the Russian Federation and it would be perfectly within President Bashar al-Assad’s prerogatives to call in Russian military help in his fight against “terrorism” or foreign aggression.

………

What came out of these talks – or should we say negotiations ? – is only rumour, but this rumour has it that a deal was struck for the nomination of a new intelligence chief, if a ceasefire and transitional phase are indeed implemented. The man for that job is supposedly no other than General Mustafa Tlass, formerly a close associate of the al-Assad clan, who jumped ship in 2011 but never formally sided with the rebels. He has been living in France ever since he left Syria.

Now of course, such a settlement to which the US administration would not have been part to would have the potential to drive the Neo-Cons, R2Pers and other D.C. hawks absolutely mad. Not only would it mean that the Syrian regime would not be destroyed, but it would possibly keep a strong foothold in Syrian politics, even if the country was to be partitioned along areas of influence. The biggest downside to such a negotiated solution though would be, that fighting the Islamic State could not be used anymore as a pretence for supporting the actions of the anti-Assad rebels.

The Syrians – and the Russians – certainly realize that contingency plans are also a necessity for them, whether the alleged settlement initiative succeeds or fails. The recent announcement of a second and larger Russian base on the Syrian coast is certainly part of such contingency plans. Both a naval base and a logistics base, it could help stabilize the heartland of the Al-Assad clan and bolster the Alawi minority’s claim and dominance over these lands, cutting of any sea access to whatever Sunni/Jihadi political construct could be established further inland.

………

This is why the establishment of a “no fly zone” and increased operational tempo is so crucial to its most vocal proponents. Short of destroying the regime before any settlement is announced, Bashar al-Assad has to be weakened and his power base eroded to the point where even opposition groups currently willing to sign off on a negotiated peace might possibly change their mind.

This is the context in which Russian troop and equipment movements were recently spotted, allegedly. It all started on August 16th, when a Turkish News Agency (BGN) published a statement announcing that Russia had delivered 6 MIG-31s to Syria. Those planes’ specifications and weapons systems make them an unlikely candidate for close air support to Syrian ground forces, which makes the delivery all the more interesting.

Actually, the MIG-31s, possibly with a Russian crew aboard, are interceptors. They are designed to track, identify and destroy hostile aircraft. The fact they were stationed in Mezze airbase, with a large Russian security and logistics detail, implies the Russians meant business. What aircraft could these planes be possibly intercepting though ? Obviously, not the Coalition jets flying missions against the Islamic State. The Russians aren’t that mad … or dumb.

However, if a “no fly zone” was imposed over Syrian skies without any form of basis in international or UN-law, what would there be to prevent the Russians from answering a call for help from the sill legitimate Syrian government ? Now that would be a worrying development and it should be taken seriously ! However, should there be any truth to such a theoretical construct, the MIG-31s would probably target something totally different from Coalition fighter jets.

………

If you take Libya as the example of what the Russians want to avoid at all cost, it’s fairly easy to guess what their interceptors would be looking for. It’s not the Patriot missiles stationed in Turkey. They only have a limited reach, meaning they can destroy targets up to a distance of about 70 km, enough to interdict Syrian air force operations all along the border, but they are useless for any action deep in Syrian territory.

Furthermore, the Patriot’s radars don’t bring any added value when it comes to identifying enemy moves on the ground. The key component in both a “no fly zone” and in monitoring moves on and off the ground, all over Syrian territory, are AWACS warning and control aircraft.

The Coalition is currently using such aircraft. Several countries are equipped with such planes, notably the United States and Saudi Arabia, but also The United-Kingdom and France. As long as the areas of interest for possible coalition airstrikes are limited to territory close to an international border, AWACS planes can remain out of Syrian airspace.Their powerful radars can monitor anything that happens from a safe distance.

However, if the goal of the coalition was to extend “interdiction areas” or to create “safe areas” deep inside Syria, there would be only one way of doing this: AWACS planes would need to fly over Syrian territory, as any operation of that kind while remaining outside Syrian airspace would require a unreasonable number of planes to cover enough ground.

………

That is where the MIG-31s come in. Sending in these planes, their crews, as well as all the necessary logistics into Syria, could be a clear message intended at disrupting any idea the Coalition might have of establishing “safe zones”, “security perimeters” or “no fly zones”, whatever you want to call them, without actual backing from international law.

Based on current Syrian-Russian defence agreements, Russian – or Syrian – MIG31s would be fully justified in shooting down any aircraft deemed hostile over Syrian territory. The MIG-31s are well equipped for that kind of mission: they can take off and reach a flight altitude of over 30 000 feet in under three minutes, making them immune from any MANPADs the rebels might be armed with.

Coordinates of an AWACS plane – or any other aircraft for that matter – could be sent in from radar stations on the ground, and the signal could not be jammed nor intercepted. The MIG-31 is also equipped with multimode radar, allowing for onboard monitoring over long distances, and it is armed with BVR missiles that have a reach of up to 400 km. Due to the ballistic trajectory of these missiles, their interception also would be very difficult.

In other words, once they are in the air, the MIG-31s could fire their missiles and, at that point, nothing could stop them from reaching their target, whether that is an AWACS or possibly even a fighter jet preparing for close support mission of anti-government forces.

Now, of course, if an AWACS was shut down by a Russian jet, that could be the starting point to something like WW3. The Russians don’t want that, and neither do we. So what this means, is that their troop deployment is signalling us something: they know what we are up to and they are not willing to let go of it.

This aircraft, NATO Designation Foxhound, an update on the MiG-25 Foxbat is a single purpose aircraft designed as an interceptor.

It is designed to do one thing, get to high altitudes and high speeds quickly, and fire big missiles at long ranges to shoot down other aircraft, particularly large and highly visible aircraft, like AWACS,

We really need to tell the House of Saud that we will no longer support their moves for Sunni hegemony in the region, nor will we support the (over a thousand years old) “Great Game” between Sunni and Shia.

Doing the House of Saud’s bidding serves no one but the house of Saud.

While we are at it, perhaps it would be a good idea to drone the guy who founded ISIS, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who as head of the Saudi intelligence services, was instrumental in getting the group up and running.