Prairie Weather

Sporadic appearances of truth (for good or ill)

"The debate is over. The economy is obviously still struggling, but the stimulus did what it was supposed to do, and has made a real, positive difference.  Conservatives were wrong about Reagan's tax increases. They were wrong about Clinton's tax increases. They were wrong about Bush's tax cuts. And now, they're wrong again now."  Steve Benen has the goods.

"Thanks to the lobby, the simplest, most robust ways of reforming Wall Street were never even on the table in the first place, and the reform bills now grinding their way through Congress are already complex enough that most bankers will have little trouble eventually figuring out a way to worm their way around them."  Kevin Drum

"Obama’s China Trip Failed Everywhere But China."  Mahablog

"A Republican operative tells us that if the Republican National Committee ends up passing the so-called 'purity' resolution - which would cut off party support for candidates that violate three or or more out of ten key conservative policy positions -- it's unlikely that party campaign committees will actually abide by it."  Talking Points Memo

"So I think it is entirely possible that Obama will be 0 for 2 if he escalates in Afghanistan. And it is extremely dangerous for him to go on alienating his base, which wants peace and prosperity, with policies that make rightwing Republicans happy-- coddling bankers in a jobless recovery and an escalation of an eight-year-old, increasingly unpopular war."  Juan Cole

War tax: Who pays. How much.

Several top Democratic lawmakers, including David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for imposing a “war tax” to pay for a troop increase. According to Politico, the tax they are considering to help pay for the war would mean that families earning under $150,000 a year would be taxed at 1 percent of their tax rates. The tax would be higher for those in the $150,000-to-$250,000 range and those making $250,000 or more. ... The Caucus

Some highlights of the Prairie Weather War Tax include:  95% on the gross income of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the years 2001-2008.  95% on the gross income of lobbyists for the defense industry during the same period. 50% on the same as it applies to members of Congress who voted for the war during that period.  50% on the gross profits from defense industry for the same period.  (Should be 95%, but we don't want to give them an excuse to cut jobs.)  A sliding scale of taxes on 2009 income for all Americans, excluding those individuals and families with a family member who has served in the war(s). 

Reagan thrown out of Republican party

John Nichols measures Reagan's presidency according to the most recent litmus tests of the Republican party. 

You know the one -- a ten point "test" for Republicans that includes things like no amnesty for illegal immigrants, the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, and lower deficits. 

Nichols reports that Reagan would have flunked at least eight of the ten test sections.  At least.

(1) Deficit spending soared during Reagan's presidency. Strike one.

(2) As governor of California, Reagan oversaw the development of Medi-Cal, the nation's largest Medicaid program – expanding it to cover long-term care and developed massive new managed care systems. Strike two.

(3) As governor of California, Reagan established the Air Resources Board to battle California's smog problems and supported aggressive government intervention where the market had failed to protect the environment. As president, Reagan signed more wilderness protections laws – which restrict private-sector exploitation of natural resources – than any president in history. Strike three.

(4) Reagan was a former union president who campaigned against the Taft-Hartley Act and other restrictions of the right of unions to organize. Strike four.

(5) Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to most undocumented workers who could prove they had been in the country continuously for the previous five years. After he finished his presidency, Reagan continues to speak out forcefully for immigration rights. Strike five.

(6) After the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut, Reagan was urged by some to surge more troops into the region. Instead, he ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. Strike six.

(7) Reagan acknowledged that during his presidency the U.S. sold weapons to Iran. Strike seven.

(8) Reagan was the first president to invite an openly gay couple to spend the night in the White House and he famously argued that gays and lesbians should not be discriminated against in a 1978 television advertising campaign. Strike eight.

(9) Shortly after his inauguration as governor of California, Reagan signed into law the most liberal abortion statute of its day". Strike nine.

(10) Here's Reagan, in 1991, on gun control: "I support the Brady Bill, and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay." Strike ten.

Yum!

Potato and eggplant salad
White House rocket with onion seed vinaigrette
2008 Sauvignon blanc, Modus Op[e]r[a]ndi, Napa Valley, California

Red lentil soup with fresh cheese
2008 Riesling, Brooks “Ara” Wi[l]lamette Valley, Oregon

Roasted potato dumplings with tomato dumplings, chick peas and okra
or
Green curry prawns, caramelised salsify with smoked collard greens and coconut aged basmati
2007 Grenache, Beckman Vineyard, Santa Ynez, California

Pumpkin pie tart
Pear tatin, whipped cream and caramel sauce
Sparkling Chardonnay, Thibaut Janisson Brut, Monticello, Virginia

Petits fours and coffee
Cashew brittle
Pecan pralines
Passion fruit and vanilla gelées
Chocolate dipped fruit

_____

(Hold that music,please, Marvin.)

Blackwater's assassination gang now in Pakistan

And we thought they'd been virtually outlawed after their killings in Baghdad.  Not so.  They're working for US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Pakistan.  Jeremy Scahill has been investigating Blackwater for years.  He's back with a new investigation based on a source in Pakistan. Some excerpts:

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus. ...

The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence. ...

The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan. In 2006, the United States and Pakistan struck a deal that authorized JSOC to enter Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission. Officially, the United States is not supposed to have any active military operations in the country....

Blackwater now has a subcontract with a company in Islamabad for special ops with Pakistan military.

This arrangement, the former executive said, allows the Pakistani government to utilize former US Special Operations forces who now work for Blackwater while denying an official US military presence in the country. He also confirmed that Blackwater has a facility in Karachi and has personnel deployed elsewhere in Pakistan. ...

The joint program has been going on now -- in Pakistan -- for two years. 

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have "conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up," he said, adding, "They have a sizable force in Pakistan--not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way--but to support a legitimate contract that's classified for JSOC." Blackwater's Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said.  ...

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, "that's not entirely accurate."

There's more -- much more.

Scott Horton comments:  "It seems unlikely to me that we’re anywhere near the end of unwinding the Blackwater relationship with the Bush Administration. Scahill’s latest article points to a complex, far-flung relationship with JSOC, and earlier reporting gives the company a similarly dominant contracting position with the CIA and State Department. In each of these cases, the roles of client and service-provider seem reversed. The rules that normally apply to contractors never seem to apply to Blackwater, a company that provided a revolving door for senior figures in the intelligence community looking for employment in the private world."

Endgame in Afghanistan. That's the message.

Administration officials say the speech will outline a modest endgame for Afghanistan that would allow U.S. forces to leave and set a general time frame for achieving that result. The remarks will last about 40 minutes, officials said, roughly twice as long as then-President George W. Bush took to outline his Iraq "surge" strategy nearly three years ago. ...Much of Obama's deliberation, according to White House advisers involved in the process, has been focused not only on ensuring that enough forces reach the battlefield but also on discouraging future troop requests if the security situation deteriorates. ...WaPo

In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end.  ...NYT

President Barack Obama Tuesday vowed that he'll "finish the job" of stabilizing the country and destroying the al Qaida terror network.  " . . . It is in our strategic interest, in our national security interest to make sure that al Qaida and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively in those areas," Obama said. "We are going to dismantle and degrade their capabilities and ultimately dismantle and destroy their networks.""After eight years — some of those years in which we did not have . . . either the resources or the strategy to get the job done — it is my intention to finish the job..." ... McClatchy

Obama, who Monday night held his ninth and final meeting on an Afghanistan strategy in the situation room, said the new course will include “civilian and diplomatic efforts” and will “make sure that Al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot operate effectively” in the region. ...Politico

Building on foundation of past mistakes.

Bad move.

We didn't get Bin Laden when we should have, and we invaded Iraq when we shouldn't. Had the United States not made those two blunders, we wouldn't have been fighting costly counterinsurgencies and we wouldn't be contemplating a far-reaching revision of U.S. defense priorities and military doctrine. ... Stephen Walt

Will 36,000 more troops erase earlier mistakes?  Or is this a repeat of Pentagon-think all over again?  No, and yes. 

A cui bono?  Depends.  Got some defense industry stock?

Hot under the collar in Alaska

Sarah Palin won't be quite as welcome in Alaska as she once seemed.  Turns out she used her book to dump on way too many colleagues.

Her bad blood with top legislators of both parties began not long after she took office. By last spring, relationships with many lawmakers from both parties had soured to the point that feuds with the governor overshadowed much of the other legislative business. ... McClatchy

Palin sticks faithfully to her party's political philosophy -- blame everyone else.

Probably 34,000

As it now stands, the plan calls for the deployment over a nine-month period beginning in March of three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and a Marine brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.

In addition, a 7,000-strong division headquarters would be sent to take command of U.S.-led NATO forces in southern Afghanistan — to which the U.S. has long been committed — and 4,000 U.S. military trainers would be dispatched to help accelerate an expansion of the Afghan army and police. ...

... The plan adopted by Obama would fall well short of the 80,000 troops McChrystal suggested in August as a "low-risk option" that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan. It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a "high-risk" approach that called for 20,000 additional troops and a "medium-risk" option that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.

The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that often played out in dueling leaks to news organizations. ...McClatchy

Health reform and society's health

Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.

We all have to decide what we want at this moment in history, vitality or security. We can debate this or that provision, but where we come down will depend on that moral preference. Don’t get stupefied by technical details. This debate is about values. ...David Brooks

David Brooks is right in spirit but dead wrong about what he calls "vibrancy" in America. 

Anyone who has lived outside the US in another genuinely "vibrant" country returns to a nation which is more often characterized as childish and brutal, obsessed with violence and wallowing in narcissism.  We set up bloody contests in colosseums like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most of all, we aren't our own masters anymore:  we are hemmed in on every side by a politically powerful corporate sector, from financial institutions to communications giants.   Anything which turns our attention to fair treatment of others and which puts cartels (media, insurance) on notice is a good thing.  Health care reform is only the first step.