Newshoggers.com

Put Up or Shut Up

By John Ballard

The time has come for those standing in the way of health care and insurance reform to put up or shut up.
I'm not the only one getting tired of obfuscation.
Literally thousands of people on all sides of the issue have invested too much effort getting to where we are and it's a nutty idea to suggest that all that effort be tossed.

The Kaiser Family Foundation (and others) have done an excellent job of compiling a twenty-four page, easy to understand summary of the Senate and House bills now being crafted into some final form for the president's approval or veto.

Constitution-loving patriots take note. That's how the system works and at this point it is still working.
There is no Constitutional mandate to Reset or Start Over. 

The legislative language is opaque to the point of muddy, but the Kaiser summary is not.
Complaints about thousands of pages are nothing more than smoke.
Claiming the bills are too long is not only a delaying tactic but an admission of ignorance as well.

The time has come for opponents to be clear and specific about what they like and do not like.
This can be accomplished very easily by putting the Senate and House summaries side-by-side with a third blank column for those endorsements and/or complaints.

Here are the specific categories.
Go to the link and read what the Senate and House bills say.
Then watch and listen to see what is being offered for the third column, now blank.

Please choose one or more topics for comparison:

• Overall approach to expanding access to coverage
• Individual mandate
• Employer requirements
• Expansion of public programs
• Premium and cost-sharing subsidies to individuals
• Premium subsidies to employers
• Tax changes related to health insurance and to financing health reform
• Creation of insurance pooling mechanisms
• Benefit design
• Changes to private insurance
• State role
• Cost containment
• Improving quality/health system performance
• Long-term Care
• Prevention/Wellness
• Other investments
• Financing

We don't need a road map.
We already have one and this is it.
Those who don't like it simply because they say it is the "Democrats" proposal need to get over it.
I don't like it any more than you do because it is what happens when corporate interests outweigh those of ordinary citizens, several millions of whom are now without health care.
But whether I or anyone else "likes" it is beside the point. It's nasty medicine no matter how anyone sees it. Without it we will only get sicker in more ways than one.
Will someone kindly show this easy to read list to the complainers with instructions to read it, check out the link, then put up or shut up.

IAEA Inspectors Monitoring Iran 20 Percent Enrichment Attempt

By Steve Hynd

You're not going to see this in the mainstream U.S. media, which is currently partying like it's 2002 and they know an attack on a Middle-East nation is forthcoming.

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz today checking the startup of production of highly-enriched uranium.

Iran says it has begun enriching uranium to 20 percent in 164 centrifuges, a laboratory rather than industrial scale of output for, it claims, research purposes in its reactor in Tehran.

Got that? 164 centrifuges, and the product will be under IAEA seal so it can't be diverted for weapons use without the balloon going up.

So can the many war-hypers in the Obama administration, Congress, neocon rags and the mainstream media now please STFU?

Marja -- Fallujah Redux ?

By John Ballard

Marja.
Remember that name.

U.S. and allied commanders in Afghanistan are preparing for the biggest battle of the eight-year war, knowing that its outcome will reveal the chances of success for President Obama's revamped Afghan strategy. About 20,000 U.S., British and Afghan troops will soon storm Marja, the Taliban's final redoubt in the southern province of Helmand. A town of 80,000, Marja has for years been a den of narcotics traffickers and insurgents, serving as a launching pad for roadside bombs and suicide attacks. If the U.S. and its allies succeed in driving out the Taliban — and, perhaps more importantly, bring a measure of security to Marja — U.S. officials believe it will mark a turning point in the war.

They're calling it Operation Moshtarak. The word means "together" in Dari, a local language.

...While last year's offensive was largely a U.S.-led affair, this time Afghan forces will account for about half of the troops involved. OperationMoshtarak — "Together" in the Afghan Dari language — is meant to signal growing cooperation between Afghan and foreign forces, and the Afghans' ability to shoulder more of the burden of defending their country. "The Afghan forces all have Marine haircuts right now," McChrystal noted of the local troops preparing to storm the town alongside U.S. Marines.

Haircuts.
Uniforms, haircuts... and a paycheck.
The new hearts and minds, you know.
LA Times story here.

In July, when Marine battalions swooped into the Helmand River Valley, the Afghan contingent accompanying them was less than one-seventh the size of the U.S. deployment -- about 600 Afghan police and soldiers to about 4,500 Marines. Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson complained publicly about the lopsided numbers, saying more Afghan soldiers were needed.

As the Marines seized a swath of the valley, tensions emerged with their Afghan allies. Some of the Afghans fought bravely, but others hung back, reluctant to move to the front lines. Once the Marines had established a foothold in a string of villages, field commanders were frustrated by their inability -- because so few Afghan counterparts were on hand -- to communicate with the villagers they were trying to win over.

This time around in Marja, commanders indicate, a greater proportion of the troops will be Afghan. The size of the American assault force has not been disclosed, but Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, told reporters that there would be more than 1,000 Afghan police officers and thousands of Afghan army soldiers.

Operation Moshtarak is not a surprise.
It has been planned for some time.
And with or without your permission it has your name written on it.
The word we read in the paper and hear on the news is "coalition." but make no mistake about it. This military strike has "MADE IN USA" written all over it.

Marines Advertise Looming Offensive on Marja
Marines Hope Warning of Coming Attack Convinces Some Taliban to Leave

...Until now U.S. and Afghan military officials believed they didn't have the forces to effect the sort of change they were hoping for in the central Helmand town. Now with the addition of forces ordered up by President Obama, the confidence in their mission and ability to carry it out is palpable.

"We are coming," said Nicholson. "Deal with it. Could be easy or could be hard, but we are coming." Given the goals of counter-insurgency operations to bloody and weaken one's enemies while protecting civilian populations, Marines would rather establish control of Marja and raise the Afghan flag at it's town hall without ever firing a shot.

The full throttle approach raises concerns about the possibility for civilian casualties. The area Marines will be operating in is home to as many as 125,000 people. It is densely populated and urban.

Major Gen. Nick Carter, commander of Regional Command South, says civilians will be fine if they just stay inside. "What we hope to see happen here is that population, metaphorically speaking, shuts their front doors, stays put until the forces of the government have control over the areas that have got to be controlled."

...Since Marines now enjoy such overwhelming force in Helmand they can afford to secure a town and allow the nacsent local, district, provincial and national government structures to grow. Insurgents would be in the unenviable position of having to fight their way back into the city, a much harder task.

When the fight for this small but strategically important area of central Helmand Province kicks off is still subject to debate, but Marines here give every indication they'll take Marja sooner than later. It's a promise Marines have made before in places like Now Zad, Garmsir and Nawa. So far they've kept all their promises.

Metaphorically speaking indeed.

Before the reader gets all pumped with a testosterone high, take a deep breath and read this excellent commentary, Fallujah, New Orleans and Marja, by Derrick Crowe, one of our contributors.

The media is buzzing in anticipation of the impending launch of Operation Moshtarak in Marja, Afghanistan. It will be the biggest military operation of the war so far, and, in many ways, the first fruit of President Obama’s repeated choices to add more troops and firepower to the mess that is the Afghanistan war. Marja is fairly densely populated area in Afghanistan: 85,000 in Marja proper and about 45,000 in the surrounding region. Missteps or neglegence on the part of the military could be tragic, to say the least. U.S. commanders are talking out of both sides of their mouths, promising the revelation of the oft-promised humane war while promising to rain death on our enemies.

What’s got me the most worried is the spadework being done for some sickeningly familiar hand-washing. One could announce one is about to attack a given location to reduce civilian casualties. One can also give said announcement if one plans on taking the gloves off–that way when innocent people die, you can say, “They were warned. They should have left when they had the chance.” The most vulnerable victims can fall into your trap of moral exculpation.

Marja. Fallujah. New Orleans.

[...]
The country is one of the ten poorest in the world. GDP per capita is about $425 per year, and more than a third of that meager sum is consumed by corrupt officials demanding bribes, to say nothing of the illicit taxes the Taliban levy on goods. The adult literacy rate is just over 28 percent. We like to say Afghanistan is a “tribal” society, but in reality it is an atomized society, with geographically isolated social networks having been pulverized by decades of war. If many in New Orleans found it hard to evacuate, the residents of Marja will find it doubly so.

...Oh, and “leaflets have been dropped in the Marja district, urging residents to get out of the area.” In a country with 28 percent literacy rates.

Read the whole post. 

◄000►

Forget about trying to do it different. Too many components are past the point of no return. It would be like stopping a California mudslide.
Or an earthquake in Haiti.
All that remains is figuring out how best to live with the results.
And whatever remains of an American conscience which, last I checked, works okay only some of the time.

We Each Have a Nuclear Story of Our Own

By Russ Wellen

THE DEPROLIFERATOR --

"Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details. … almost everyone seems to feel adequately informed by reading one book about nuclear war." -- Paul Brians, chronicler of nuclear imagery in literature and pop culture

Some of us are oblivious to the threat of nuclear war; others shrink from it in fear. Many operate under the assumption that there's no longer anything to worry about because we survived the Cold War intact. Besides, there's always deterrence. Like a trusty old shotgun in the corner, we try to reassure ourselves, it's served us well for 50 years.

To the rest of us, the Bomb has been taken down a peg from its status as the existential threat to sharing that title with climate change and the economy, both of which have grown increasingly combustible. In fact, the United States may be closer to divesting itself of its nuclear arsenal (thanks, in no small part, to our current president) than restoring our economy and the environment to health.

Whoever thought ridding the world of nuclear weapons might be the easiest -- the least impossible, anyway -- of the three?

But just because total disarmament seems like an idea whose time has finally come doesn't mean it's a foregone conclusion. It's true that the days when three quarters of a million people would descend on New York's Central Park chanting "No nukes," as they did in June of 1982, are long gone. How then, aside from signing petitions or calling our representatives, can we move the threat of nuclear war to the front lines of our national consciousness?

For starters, we can make nuclear weapons personal. Why not encourage each other to summon up memories and emotions -- ideally, our earliest and most primal -- that the subject of nuclear weapons invokes in us?

For those of us who confine our attention to family or community, as opposed to the nation or the world, our personal responses to nuclear weapons may not be apparent to us. But listening to others' nuclear narratives might call up our own. For the first nuclear generation, it may be private doubts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki; for Baby Boomers, memories of "duck and cover" and the Cuban Missile Crisis; for those who came of age in the eighties, Reagan's first bellicose term; for the youngest among us, the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Also, there's that old standby -- appealing to fears about our children. Let's ask each other to imagine a future in which our children are subject to the same risk of incineration in a nuclear conflagration as we grew up with. (Though it must be admitted that appeals to consider the fate of future generations don't seem to have persuaded most of us that the economy requires fundamental reform or that climate change needs immediate attention.)

Sharing personal stories is more likely to incite sympathy for disarmament than the issuing of edicts by its advocates and the importuning of peace workers. In fact, assembled into a film, such stories have the potential to form the third leg of a tripod of impactful nuclear movies along with Dr. Strangelove and The Day After.

Sure, a nuclear-free world may still be at least a generation away. But, with disarmament only months removed from the state of inertia it was in during the previous administration, we must ensure that its newfound momentum continues and pin policymakers down to a long-term course of action. Why not put the difficult early days of the process behind us as soon as we can? After all, it takes a decade or more to decommission enrichment and reprocessing plants.

Finally, if telling our nuclear stories contributes in some small way to committing the world to disarmament, it will embolden us. In turn, we can replicate that success in realms where we're now mired in impotence, such as the environmental and the economic.

First posted at the Faster Times.

Impact of Murtha's death

By Dave Anderson:

As everyone already knows, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA-12) died this afternoon.  I was not a big fan of him as he was a self-dealer who at the very least was hanging out with people who reeked of corruption if not corrupt in a potentially legal manner himself.  I advocated primarying him for good governance purposes last year, and I stand by that analysis that he and a few other long-term Dems' corruption or appearance of corruption had significant negative externalities. 

So what does this mean politically.  Instantly it puts another Democratic seat into the likely November loss column.  His district had been a core Democratic district for generations, but Central and Western Pennsylvania as a whole has been trending hard to the right over the past fifteen years.  The PVI for the district became mildly Republican after the 2008 election as McCain won a squeaker.  The Democratic bench in the region is not particularly thick while the GOP bench is very strong.  The district is white, aging, working class and dependent upon defense pork, and resource extraction.  

In the short term, the seat will remain vacant, and the House Dems will have to find another HCR vote from a previous NO vote.  Gov. Rendell has to set a special election date within the next week and a half.  That date could be anytime from mid-April to May 18th when the state has its regular primary.  It is quite possible we could see a repeat of the TX-22 situation from 2006 when a special election and a regular election primary produced two different winners so there is a lame duck incumbent on the first day in office. 

Scary Nuke Stories From The A.P.

By Steve Hynd

Aaaaaargh. Is it too much to ask war hypers like George Jahn of Associated Press to at least inform their readers of the basics. His first two graphs today read like a 2002 scary story on Iraq's WMD programs. Under the headline "Iran moves closer to nuke warhead capacity" he writes:

Iran moved closer to being able to produce nuclear warheads Monday with formal notification that it will enrich uranium to higher levels, even while insisting that the move was meant only to provide fuel for its research reactor.

Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told The Associated Press that he informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of the decision to enrich at least some of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to 20 percent, considered the threshold value for highly enriched uranium.

I'll quote from "URANIUM ENRICHMENT: Just Plain Facts to Fuel an Informed Debate on Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Power" (PDF) by the Insitute for Environmental and Energy Research and the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. It's on page one if you Google "minimum enrichment for a uranium bomb".

Uranium must have a minimum of 20 percent U-235 in it in order to be useful in making a nuclear bomb. However, a bomb made with uranium at this minimum level of enrichment would be too huge to deliver, requiring huge amounts of uranium and even larger amounts of conventional explosives in order to compress it into a supercritical mass. In practice, uranium containing at least 90 percent U-235 has been used to make nuclear weapons.

The Hiroshima bomb had a core which was enriched to 97% which weighed 60kg. Modern missile-deliverable weapons enrich to 99% because that's the only way to keep the core's weight down to weights a missile can throw any distance.

Jahn gets there, but only halfway down his piece.

Although material for the fissile core of a nuclear warhead must be enriched to a level of 90 percent or more, just getting its stockpile to the 20 percent mark would be a major step for the country's nuclear program. While enriching to 20 percent would take about one year, using up to 2,000 centrifuges at Tehran's underground Natanz facility, any next step — moving from 20 to 90 percent — would take only half a year and between 500-1,000 centrifuges.

Achieving the 20-percent level "would be going most of the rest of the way to weapon-grade uranium," said David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspected proliferators.

Aha! So it all still depends on a political decision to kick out the IAEA's inspectors and do that further enrichment, build a viable nuke, then mate that viable warhead design to a viable missile delivery system - all while the rest of the world knows there's only one reason for kicking out the IAEA's inspectors.

Well why didn't you say so, Mr Jahn? I'll refer you to the US' latest Annual Threat Assessment:

We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that bring it closer to being able to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.

And to the many, many intelligence community statements that say Iran has not yet made that fateful decision and is showing no signs of wanting to do so.

In fact, some analysts describe Iran's currently known and definite plans to be "laughably ambitious", never mind building a nuke within 6 months without getting attacked themselves.

I tell you, it's starting to feel more and more like Iraq 2002 all over again as the Western media and hawkish politicos go to town on the Iran scare.

The echoes of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq are unmistakable. Just as in 2002-3, we are told that a dictatorial Middle Eastern state is secretly ­developing weapons of mass destruction, defying UN resolutions, obstructing inspections, threatening its neighbours and supporting terrorism.

As in the case of Iraq, no evidence has been produced to back up the WMD claims, though bogus leaks about secret programmes are regularly reproduced in the mainstream press. Most recently, a former CIA official reported that US intelligence believed documents, published in the Times, purporting to show Iran planning to experiment on a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, had been forged. Shades of Iraq's non-existent attempts to buy uranium in Niger.

In case anyone missed the parallels, Tony Blair hammered them home at the Iraq inquiry last Friday. Far from showing remorse about the bloodshed he helped unleash on the Iraqi people, the former prime minister was allowed to turn what was supposed to be a grilling into a platform for war against Iran.

In a timely demonstration that ­neoconservatism is alive and well and living in London, Blair attempted to use the fact that Iraq had no ­WMD as part of a case for ­taking the same approach against Iran. Perceived intention and potential ­capability were enough to justify war, it turned out. Mentioning Iran 58 times, he explained that the need to "deal" with Iran raised "very similar issues to the ones we are discussing".

You might think that the views of a man that 37% of British people now believe should be put on trial for war crimes would be treated with contempt. But Blair remains the Middle East envoy of the Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia – even as he pockets £1m a year from a UAE investment fund currently negotiating a slice of the profits from the exploitation of Iraqi oil reserves.

The bi-partisan "Real Men go to Tehran" crowd have been lusting after war with Iran since 1979 and they're showing no signs of giving up.

The Economics of Empire II

Commentary By Ron Beasley

As I noted here it's economics that bring an end to empires not military defeats.  In Wars Sending US into Ruin Eric Margolis supplies some details.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.

Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.

Margolis notes that the overt US military budget is $1 trillion - half of the worlds military spending.

Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion - more than Germany's total defence budget.

No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity" budget.

Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.

The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.

And here is the empire we can't afford:

There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.

Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - funded by borrowing - cost each American family more than $25,000.

Budget Fraud:

Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental authorizations ­- putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.

This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.

America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.

If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.

America needs a fair, honest war tax.

In site of Eisenhower's warning in 1961 the military industrial complex is in charge.

It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America's runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street's money lenders to put America into thrall.

Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe - what neocons call "full spectrum dominance."

If Obama really were serious about restoring America's economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation's giant Frankenbanks.

Paul Krugman and others want to blame our current decline on the dysfunctional Senate.

Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

I fear that's a simplification.  I see nothing that would lead me to believe that a Senate that actually did function would not be enslaved to the military industrial complex.

Note:

Thanks to our friends at Rethink Afghanistan for picking up this post.

Fareed Zakaria Interviews King Abdullah II of Jordan

By John Ballard

Yesterday's appearance of Jordan's King Abdullah II was one of this year's most impressive examples of outstanding television journalism.

The part that sticks in my mind begins at about 6:30 when the the king spells out clearly that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is THE central issue, not only of the region but the world beyond. Listen as he describes how if that question can be resolved many other thorny problems will begin to unwind. That conflict is the inspirational wedge argument behind the recruitment of many young terrorists.

(I stopped watching when John Yoo appeared. The sight of him annoys me. Zakaria has a stronger stomach.)

A Tale of Two "Climate gates"

by anderson

Since US media coverage of all things Sarah Palin pales all else*, more than a few may not have noticed that the CRU "Climate gate" charade is playing out heavily in the British press.

Without further commentary, the tale is summarily and succinctly told by the front pages of two UK dailies, Sunday, February 7, 2010 editions.  Any editorial bias and/or hidden corporate agendas,  either apparent or inferred, are purely coincidental.

Of the two, I suspect you will find the latter story the more interesting.

Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers

Yes.  Yes, they do.  And have been for years.  Naturally, recipients of oil revenue largess scoff at the notion of a conspiracy -- "I'm a grim and mirthless bastard!  fiercely independent!  No one has co-opted me!  Any coincidence between ExxonMobil's agenda and my own is purely that: coincidence."

It seems that the letter The Royal Society sent to Exxon some years ago failed to have the desired effect.

* Is anyone else sickened by what has happened to memeorandum?

Jobs Picture

By John Ballard

Unemployment is expected to show flat or grow for the rest of the year despite more jobs coming back.
Why?
Seems like "discouraged workers" not being included lately will return to the market, joining those still looking. Business Week...

An exodus of discouraged workers from the job market kept the U.S. unemployment rate from climbing above 10 percent in December, economists said.

Had the labor force not decreased by 661,000 last month, the jobless rate would have been 10.4 percent, according to economists including David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff & Associates in Toronto and Harm Bandholz at UniCredit Research in New York.
[...]
The participation rate, or the share of the population in the labor force, fell to 64.6 percent in December, the lowest level since 1985, from 64.9 percent.

The labor force will probably grow this year as the economy continues to expand and Americans believe jobs will be easier to get. That will mean the unemployment rate will head higher because there won’t be enough jobs available to satisfy the demand for work.

“The exodus from the labor force can’t contain the unemployment rate indefinitely,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “We expect unemployment to resume rising over the next few months, peaking near 10.5 percent in the third quarter.”

This is what the president explained to the GOP at their meeting in Baltimore. He should have followed the Grayson model and brought along a couple of charts and an easel. The audience seems to have missed plain language.

Note the dates.
Barack Obama's administration came into office near the ugly tip of that chart. Here's another chart that looks very much the same.

Tim Geitner is getting to be as unpopular as Rahm Emanuel, but when he said "We came into office with the economy falling off a cliff" this is what he meant.
Something turned it around.
I don't think it was magic.