Saturday, January 12, 2013

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Jan. 12 & 13, 2013


Welcome to Weekend Newsbites, friends!

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4 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324581504578235893292795864.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

President Barack Obama said he would speed up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, signaling his intention to accelerate the end of America's longest war.

* GOOD! AND FOR THIS I APPLAUD HIM!

* WHAT I DON'T APPLAUD HIM FOR IS HIS FIRST TERM RECORD AS REGARDS AFGHANISTAN. I BELIEVE HIS DECISIONS WERE POLITICAL IN NATURE AND THAT HE KNOWINGLY SACRAFICED AMERICAN LIVES, LIMBS, AND TREASURE IN AFGHANISTAN SO AS TO AVOID TAKING THE HIT - IN HIS FIRST TERM... PRIOR TO A RE-ELECTION BATTLE - FOR FOLLOWING HIS HEART AND GETTING US OUT OF THEIR MUCH EARLIER.

After White House meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday, Mr. Obama said the U.S. is moving up the schedules for pulling American forces out of Afghan villages and for ending most unilateral combat operations. That is possible, he said, thanks to what he described as recent gains by U.S. troops and progress in training Afghan security forces to take the combat lead.

* THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT AND I BELIEVE EVEN MOST PRO-OBAMA READERS REALIZE IT. KARZAI IS A CORRUPT WARLORD AND THERE IS NO TRUE UNIFIED AFGHANISTAN BUT RATHER THE SAME TRIBAL POWER CENTERS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY THAT THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.

"The reason we went to war in the first place is now within reach: ensuring that al Qaeda can never again use Afghanistan to launch attacks against our country," Mr. Obama said.

* OH, PLEASE! WE ACHIEVED THAT GOAL WITHIN WHAT... SIX WEEKS OF PUTTING BOOTS ON THE GROUND? SO NOW AL QAEDA CAN USE OTHER REAL ESTATE FOR TRAINING PURPOSES AND BASING PURPOSES. WE'RE PLAYING WACK-A-MOLE AND UNFORTUNATELY WE ALWAYS WILL BE. THAT'S THE NATURE OF THIS "WAR ON TERROR."

"Starting this spring, our troops will have a different mission—training, advising, assisting Afghan forces," he added. "This sets the stage for the further reduction of coalition forces."

* WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THESE "TRAINED" AFGHANS DO YOU SUPPOSE WOULD BE WILLING TO USE THEIR TRAINING AGAINST US AND OUR INTERESTS ONE DAY...? 20%...? 30%...? 40%...? GEEZUS... WHAT A CLUSTER FUCK!

Some defense officials expect the White House to set a goal of cutting the force down to roughly 30,000 by the end of 2013, .

The Pentagon has presented White House staff with three options that would leave roughly 3,000, 6,000 or 9,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014.

* HOW'BOUT LESS... MANY LESS... AS IN LET'S HAVE THE NORMAL CONTINGENT OF MARINES AT THE EMBASSY. SAME FOR IF THERE'S TO BE A CONSULATE AS WELL.

* SUBTITLE THIS POST "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER."

January 12, 2013 at 10:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337490/obamacare-s-other-shoe-mark-steyn

* BY MARK STEYN (AND THEREFORE WORTH READING!)

If you had buttonholed me in the Senate men’s room circa 2003 and told me that a decade hence Joe Biden would be America’s vice president, John Kerry secretary of state, and Chuck Hagel secretary of defense, I’d have laughed and waited for the punch line: The Leahy administration? President Lautenberg? Celebrate lack of diversity!

But even in the republic’s descent into a Blowhardocracy staffed by a Zombie House of Lords, there are distinctions to be drawn.

Senator Kerry having been reliably wrong on every foreign-policy issue of the last 40 years, it would seem likely that at this stage in his life he will be content merely to be in office, jetting hither and yon boring the pants off whichever presidents and prime ministers are foolish enough to grant him an audience.

Beyond the photo-ops, the world will drift on toward the post-American era: Beijing will carry on gobbling up resources around the planet, Czar Putin will flex his moobs across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Arab Spring “democracies” will see impressive growth in the critical clitoridectomy sector of the economy, Iran will go nuclear, and John Kerry will go to black-tie banquets in Europe.

* TELL ME IF THAT DOESN'T SOUND JUST ABOUT RIGHT TO ANY OF YOU READING THIS... (*SHRUG*)

But Chuck Hagel is a different kettle of senatorial huffenpuffer. And not because of what appears to be a certain antipathy toward Jews and gays. That would be awkward at the Tony Awards, but at the Arab League the post-summit locker-room schmoozing should be a breeze. Since his celebrated “evolution” on marriage last year, President Obama is famously partial to one of those constituencies, so presumably he didn’t nominate an obscure forgotten senator because of his fascinating insights into the appropriate level of “obviousness” the differently oriented should adopt. So why Hagel? Why now?

My comrade Jonah Goldberg says this nomination is a “petty pick” made by Obama “out of spite.”

I’m not so sure.

If the signature accomplishment of the president’s first term was ObamaCare (I’m using “signature accomplishment” in the Washington sense of “ruinously expensive bureaucratic sinkhole”), what would he be looking to pull off in his second (aside from the repeal of the 22nd Amendment)?

Hagel isn’t being nominated to the Department of Zionist and Homosexual Regulatory Oversight but to the Department of Defense. Which he calls “bloated.”

* AND IT IS BLOATED! THERE'S NO FRIGGIN' DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT IT'S BLOATED! THE PROBLEM... WHILE I WOULD REDUCED COMMITMENTS AND THEN REDUCE SPENDING IN LINE WITH THE NEW REALITY, I FEAR OBAMA AND HAGEL WILL DO IT THE OPPOSITE WAY - DECREASE SPENDING WHILE (IF ANYTHING) INCREASING COMMITMENTS (TO MULTI-NATIONAL ACTIONS FOR EXAMPLE).

“The Pentagon,” he said a year ago, “needs to be pared down.” Unlike the current secretary, Leon Panetta, who’s strongly opposed to the mandated “sequestration” cuts to the defense budget, Hagel thinks they’re merely a good start.

* AND I AGREE!

That’s why Obama’s offered him the gig. Because ObamaCare at home leads inevitably to Obamacuts abroad.

* OK... (IF ONLY!)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

January 13, 2013 at 10:43 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

In 2004 John Kerry demanded to know why we were building firehouses in Iraq but closing them in America (the municipal fire department apparently falling, like everything else, under the federal government).

* PUTTING STEYNE'S POINT ASIDE... KERRY DOES ASK A REASONABLE QUESTION! (AGAIN, FOLKS... THIS BLOG ISN'T PARTISAN PER SE. WHEN A DEM MAKES A GOOD POINT I ACKNOWLEDGE IT!)

Barack Obama prefers to say that it’s time for the United States to do some nation-building at home — the pilot program in Afghanistan having worked out so well.

(*SNORT*)

Either line will do, and, like Britain’s inverted budget priorities, both implicitly acknowledge that a military-industrial complex and a dependency-bureaucrat complex are incompatible. And that’s before you factor in Washington-size borrowing, under which, within this decade, the interest payments on the debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese military. America can fund the Pentagon or the People’s Liberation Army, but not both, not for long. Having gotten the citizenry to accept a supersized welfare bureaucracy, Obama reasonably enough figures he can just as easily get them used to a shrunken American presence in the wider world.

* I WANT TO SHRINK BOTH! (OBAMA IS LOOKING TO GROW THE DEPENDENCY-BUREAUCRAT COMPLEX HOWEVER...)

According to the Washington Post, Obama picked Hagel to “bridge the partisan divide.” Even for the court eunuchs of the palace media, that must be hard to type with a straight face: He seems to be all but entirely loathed by his own party. Nevertheless, he is technically a Republican, not to mention a bona fide war hero. Only Nixon can go to China, and only a pro-life, pro-gun, climate-denialist, homophobic, Strom Thurmond–loving, medal-draped Republican can go to the Pentagon and tell them to start clearing out their desks.

* AGAIN... OUR MILITARY MUST SHRINK. STEYN AND I APPARENTLY DON'T SEE EYE TO EYE ON THIS. (WHICH MEANS... STEYN'S WRONG!)

Obama has picked a guy whose rhetoric is more anti-Pentagon than his own, and who, unlike most of the cabinet senators, has a record of executive experience that suggests he may well live up to it. If he pulls it off, it’ll be a big part of Obama’s legacy. And, if he doesn’t, I’m sure the media will be happy to remind everyone that, "oh well, Hagel was a Republican."

But beyond the politics is a real question. He’s not wrong to raise the question of Pentagon “bloat.” The United States has the most lavishly funded military on the planet, and what does it buy you? In the Hindu Kush, we’re taking twelve years to lose to goatherds with fertilizer.

* PERHAPS STEYN'S NOT A LOST CAUSE AFTER ALL ON THIS...

Something is wrong with this picture. Indeed, something is badly wrong with the American way of war. And no one could seriously argue that, in the latest in the grim two-thirds-of-a-century roll call of America’s un-won wars, the problem is a lack of money or resources. Given its track record, why shouldn’t the Pentagon get a top-to-toe overhaul — or at least a cost-benefit analysis?

(*APPLAUSE*)

Just to be clear: I disagree with Hagel on Israel, on Iran, and on most everything else. But my colleagues on the right are in denial if they don’t think there are some very basic questions that need to be asked about the too-big-to-fail Department of Defense. Obama would like the U.S. military to do less. Some of us would like it to do more with less — more nimbly, more artfully. But, if the national-security establishment won’t acknowledge there’s even a problem, they’re unlikely to like the solutions imposed by others.

* SEE, FOLKS... LIKE I SAID UP ABOVE... STEYN IS ALWAYS WORTH READING...

January 13, 2013 at 10:43 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578229412912307992.html?mod=hp_opinion

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2012 was the hottest year on record in the "contiguous United States," trust the media to transcribe the statement accurately.

* LITERALLY...

Said the New York Times climate blog, in an assertion that was echoed throughout the media: "The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but 2012 blew away the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit."

Really?

If that were true, then hair-on-fire news should have been the fact that 2012 was 2.13 degrees hotter than 2011. That's a far more dramatic change, and in a single year.

* FOLKS... DO YOU SEE WHAT THE AUTHOR IS GETTING AT...? RE-READ IF NECESSARY. NOTE... THE COMPARISON THE TIMES IS HANGING IT'S HAT ON IS 2012 vs. 1998... WHY....??? WHY NOT 2012 vs. 2011 vs. 2010 vs. 2009 AND SO ON AND SO FORTH TO PUT THE INFERRED "TREND" INTO PROPER CONTEXT? (READ ON AND YOU'LL SEE WHY NOT!)

Nor was it mentioned that 2008, in the contiguous U.S., was two degrees cooler than 2006.

(*SNORT*)

Or that 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 were all cooler than 1998 by a larger margin than 2012 was hotter than 1998.

(*SNICKER*)

Are you getting the picture?

None of this was mentioned because it makes a mockery of using trends in the Lower 48 as a proxy for global warming - the misguided intent that permeated media coverage of the NOAA revelation.

(*SHRUG*)

The contiguous United States isn't the globe. It isn't even the United States, omitting Alaska and Hawaii. The Lower 48 represent just 1.58% of the total surface area of the Earth. The law of large numbers is at work here: The smaller the sample, the more volatile its patterns compared to a larger sample. And the fact remains, in all the authoritative studies, the warmest year on record globally is still 1998 and no trend has been apparent globally since then.

* 1998 WAS... er... 15 YEARS AGO...

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

Until this week, the media's previous favorite way to evade this reality was to report, as a joint CBS/New York Times broadcast did on a recent Sunday morning, that the past decade was the "hottest decade ever recorded."

Uh huh.

Because year-to-year changes in global (as opposed to contiguous U.S.) temperature are indeed teensy, it would be astonishing if the decade following the warmest year on record were not the warmest decade on record. But the appeal of this formulation is that it allows the media to talk about global warming in our time without mentioning that, ahem, global warming has ceased in our time.

(*GUFFAW*)

Is climate warming getting ready to resume? Possibly.

Is man's contribution to climate change significant and worth worrying about? Possibly.

* BUT DOUBTFUL... (MAINLY IT'S SUNSPOT ACTIVITY THAT CORRELATES MOST STRONGLY TO GLOBAL HEATING/COOLING TRENDS.)

* FOLKS... THERE WERE HEATING AND COOLING TRENDS BOTH BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL AGE AND AFTER... IF IT WERE AS SIMPLY AS "MAN IS RESPONSIBLE" THEN FROM THE 19TH CENTURY ON THE TREND WOULD HAVE BEEN STRAIGHT UP AND BEFORE THAT... NO TREND WHATSOEVER. (BUT THAT'S NOT THE REALITY - IS IT? NO! NO IT'S NOT!)

January 13, 2013 at 11:16 AM

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