More nails...

BHO is busy putting more nails in the lid of the future of his adminstration.

Today he has Kerry in Moscow seeking to "jawbone" Putin into abandoning his Syrian client.  Putin has no reason to do that and the effort will fail.  This will weaken the BHO Administration.

DoD released a report today that shows that reported sexual assaults in the armed forces rose by a third in number since 2010.  BHO's reaction was visible anger and threats of various kind.  I am in favor of maximum action against people who perpetrate such crimes, but BHO's confidence in his fixed idea that human behavior is easily modified by government fiat is misplaced.  The armed forces reflect society. US society today is much more loose about personal conduct than it was a generation ago.   Gender roles and rules are scorned as a basis for organizing society.  Gays are a protected minority.  All rules concerning sex are falling by the side of the road in the military as in the larger society.  It will be saidby some that these problems are like those of the Blacks in the US military in the long ago.  Well, maybe so, but it took a hell of a long time to make a reality of the changes made by Truman in 1952.  BHO is a social engineer.  This is a difficult engineering problem.

Immigration "reform" will probably fail in the legislative process.   The left, the right and the Latino activists are united in one thing.  They don't like the proposed law. More failure.

The anti-gunners are busy convincing themselves that if Harry Reid will put Manchin-Toomey up for a vote one more time....  "After all.  It is just common sense."  Obama wants that vote.  

Good Luck  pl 

 

Comments

[twv]

Thank God that Obama and his academic minions are so incompetent.
Imagine how much damage they could do if they had a modicum of ability.

[mbrenner]

Re. the anti-abuse czar Krusinsky.

The hang-ups that so many supposedly mature people have with sexuality is a fascinating pathology - especially in this day and age when more 'natural' attitudes and behavior are socially aceptable. Yet I see nothing written about it - admittedly, I would see it only be happenstance. I suspect some connection in 2 respects. First, heigthened awareness by people with 'hang-ups' of what others are doing and thereby heigthened awareness of their own abnormality. Second, the drastic lowering of constraints on manifesting their problem in aberrant behavior of all kinds. In the military, that is more difficult. There is a certain logic, though, for a deformed person seeking a position whereby he gets as close to 'it' as possible. An instinctive sense that there was something odd with this guy could have been apparent to the superior officers who appointed him to this super-sensitive position. They might have consulted an army psychologist, for example, as part of the selection process. I suspect that they didn't take the position and the commitment very seriously and just grabbed a convenient guy.(Who really has done anything meaningful about the 7,000 or 28,000 or whatever number of women in the services who allege abuse?) Stupid? Of course, but so is sending 160,000 people (+ mercenaries) to Iraq without supplying them with as much as they little blue pamphlet they prepared in 1942. But so is employing a whacko like Raymong Davis in Lahore. It is not just people with stunted or deformed sexual personalities who aren't held accountable for their actions these days. Look at the White House.

As for the plural gender military, isn't it illogical to gender integrate to the nth degree while imposing a strict code enjoining them not to touch eachother? All this in an extremely hierarchical organization which creates multiple opportunities for abuse. What do they expect but trouble.

Back to this guy Krusinski, it wouldn't surprise me that he sought out the job out of some psychological compulsion. It's like those evangelical ministers who inveigh against sin endlessly and then wind up caught in sexual scandal of some base kind. Follow the obsession.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

President Obama is at the service of money makers and war pushers. He is visibly aging as he is shoved into starting a regional religious war between Shiites and Sunni Muslims by intervening in Syria. Once the Jihad starts anything is possible including WWIII.

American politicians are using cultural issues; sex and guns, together with propaganda to keep in power. The 48% increase in suicide rate for people 55 to 59 or youth unemployment at 22% is unaddressed. The politicians simply don’t care that millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. Eventually, the economy and the unending wars will blow back against the 21st Century Neo-Autocratic rule here and in Europe.

[Robert C]

Per NPR...."Putin kept Kerry waiting for three hours.."........speaks volumes.

[Fred]

I wonder how the NYT will spin this gun fact:
Firearms related homicides drop 39% since mid-90's.
http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/05/firearm-related_homicides_drop.html

[steve]

Most people who are observant and have some moral/intellecutal consistency would agree that the Obama administration has been a failed presidency.

Though I might disagree with you somewhat on the mentioned particulars, there is enough failure on most issues--mine are healthcare and neoliberal economics--for most to agree on his failure.

Then again, his support for those issues combined with his very successful public relations campaign machine which snookers the public into believing the opposite, might classify Obama as one of the very successful pols, a paradigm for the future.

[robt willmann]

Also announced today was the appointment of the new director of the national clandestine service by CIA director John Brennan. The woman who was acting director and who was floated as possibly becoming the director was not given the job. She had been in charge of one of the "black sites", located in Thailand, where interrogation, a/k/a torture, was said to have occurred, and she signed off on the destruction of the videotapes of torture sessions when she was chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez when he was head of the national clandestine service; Rodriguez is the other known person who signed off on the order to destroy the tapes. At least some of the destroyed tapes were taken at the Thailand black site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-selects-new-head-of-clandestine-service-passing-over-female-officer-tied-to-interrogation-program/2013/05/07/c43e5f94-b727-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-director-faces-a-quandary-over-clandestine-service-appointment/2013/03/26/5d93cb10-9645-11e2-9e23-09dce87f75a1_story.html

According to the recent Washington Post article, the female CIA officer who was passed over "is expected to resume her prior role as deputy of the clandestine service".

The names of the new director of the clandestine service and the woman are being concealed because they are still "undercover". This is not only improper, but also absurd. Is the CIA now an artificial front for the CIA such that the director and deputy director of the clandestine service are undercover in an artificial front? These are significant jobs and in a democratic republic, which we allegedly have, all such people are to be identified to the public.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/press-release-archive-2005/pr10132005.html

The CIA press release says that the director of the NCS will have two deputy directors: one will lead the daily activities of the clandestine service and one will focus on human intelligence activities across the intelligence community. No mention is made in the Washington Post article as to which deputy the female officer will likely become, though it will probably be the one who will "lead the daily activities of the clandestine service".

If so, Brennan is leaving the female officer mostly in charge, despite her prior actions, and has mollified Sen. Diane Feinstein and the Senate by making someone else the actual director, or, in the alternative, he has conspired with Sen. Feinstein to snooker the public so Feinstein "looks good" while the female CIA officer retains significant authority in the clandestine service by being the deputy who will "lead the daily activities" of the NCS.

[Matthew]

Col: At a recent speech here, Vali Nasr had a simple diagnosis of Obama's incoherence: The president mistakenly believes that foreign policy is an extension of domestic politics.

IMHO, the groups that have the most influence on foreign policy (e.g., the Israel Lobby) do not consider--nor care--what effect their demands have on America in the world.

Obama's trip to Israel, for example, accomplished nothing internationally. However, it did quiet the daily attacks by the Israel Firsters in the US. Obama probably has not considered the price the country will pay for this "victory."

[Matthew]

Why are we supposed. Putin's secretary must have said, "The guy who's trying to strip you of your only Mediterranean naval base demands that you see him now."

[twv]

History is written by liberal Democrat academics.
Obama's long-term rating was secured the day he was elected.

[Bill H]

Good point.

[Fred]

PBS did a short segment on the impact of the sequester on people in a trio of states. As one of the PBS (from a local affiliate) news staff said, the rich and middle class are unaffected as the cuts are impacting things that help the poor and unemployed. I would call that Obama's "war on the poor". I am surprised that true religous conservatives don't take the Democrats to task in the next mid-term or 2016 for just this issue.

[Charles I]

Watching Kerry squirm out a platitude on a future conference with Russia to further delineate his pontificating impotence was painful to watch.

Fiasco coming fast.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I do not think his has been a failed presidency. May be you ould say that it has not been a very strong presidency like Truman's.

[Fred]

Just what is going on in the USAF under Obama?:
17 Air Force officers stripped of authority to launch nuclear missiles

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/08/us/nuclear-launch-officers/?hpt=hp_t2

"Bring to my attention immediately any officer who bad mouths a senior officer."

Why are they not up for courts-martial for insubordination?

[Jane]

The larger society is doing better with the rules concerning sex:

"According to a March 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1995 to 2010, the estimated annual rate of female rape or sexual assault declined 58%, from 5.0 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older to 2.1 per 1,000. Assaults on young woman aged 12-17 declined from 11.3 per 1,000 in 1994-1998 to 4.1 per 1,000 in 2005-2010; assaults on women aged 18-34 also declined over the same period, from 7.0 per 1,000 to 3.7.[8][9]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States

Self reported victimization of women shows a similar decline.

[Jane]

Here you go:

"The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times. "

Turns out that the increase in gun purchases has largely been driven by some individuals buying a lot more guns not by more individuals buying guns.

[turcopolier]

jane

keep hoping. pl

[Fred]

Jane,

It figures that the editorial board would choose to forget that ownership of a firearm, knife or even a hammer is not the causation of committing homicide; second in 1970 the US population was 205 million. It is now 312 million. I'm sure the times can do the math. Lastly math is not the determinant of one's constitutional rights to won firearms. Somehow all those points are lost on the NYT.

[William R. Cumming]

Events will determine the President's mark on US and world history!

From time to time will post my thoughts on his legacy. First follows:

Leaving Iraq to vicious sectarian violence after a decade of effort not really in any way a US "victory"!

So like his predecessor Iraq is problematic endeavour for two President's and their supporters, including the Congress.

Employment of US hard power and treasure in Iraq clearly one in which the costs exceeded the benefits.

[Tyler]

Also forgetting the fact that if someone calls me up out of the blue, claiming to be with a 'national survey' and wanting to know if I own guns, a lot of people are going to answer in the negative.

[Jane]

I thought that the NRA position was that the higher the percentage of gun owners the less crime. The NYT is simply pointing out that there is now a lower percentage of households (and presumptively of persons) owning guns yet gun crime is going down.

Having a gun handy can change an impulsive assault from grievous bodily harm to manslaughter in a second. Causation can remain the same but the murder rates for households with guns will go up.

This implies nothing about Constitutional rights. This is an inquiry about what happens when households choose to own gun and when they choose not to own guns.

[Jane]

I try not to unskew the available data.

[twv]

All of which is irrelevant.
As long as I can legally own a gun, what I do with it, what kind of gun, how many guns.....
is NOBODY'S business.

[turcopolier]

Jane

So, your struggle is with the NRA rather than 100 million plus gun owners in the US? pl