Obama's Flip-Flop

President Obama has changed his mind and decided to oppose the release of photos showing alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the reasons why the Administration had agreed to release them is that their lawyers had concluded that there was no good legal grounds on which to contest the release.

So, for now, the pictures will stay out of sight, but we all know that the Bush Administration encouraged people to commit illegal and horrible atrocities. Hiding the photographs does not change that. The mantra of the Obama Administration seems to be "we believe in full disclosure, except when it is inconvenient to do so."

In that way, there is no difference between the Obama and the Bush Administrations, other than quibbling about where the line is drawn.

I Am Shocked, Shocked, To Learn That Gambling Was Going On In the Casino

[N]ew details are emerging about how long federal officials were aware of the company's recent bonus payments to its executives and of how inflammatory the payments could be.

Documents show that senior officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York received details about the bonuses more than five months before the firestorm erupted and were deeply engaged with AIG as well as outside lawyers, auditors and public relations firms about the potential controversy. But the New York Fed did not raise the alarm with the Obama administration until the end of February.

Of course the NY Fed didn't raise any alarm. Why would they? They swum in the same sea as those people and they were well aware of the fact that huge-ass bonuses are regularly given out in the financial industry. That was normal business, to them, and it probably was inconceivable that there would be anything wrong with paying people bonuses in the million-dollar range after taking over a hundred billion dollars in bailout money from the government.

The NY Fed guys probably don't know anyone who makes less than seven or more figures a year. To them, everybody else has a middle name of "the" and a last name of their job. (Karen the Secretary, Joe the Doorman, Vinnie the Plumber, and so on) They had no idea how badly the bonuses would go over with the American people, many of whom are struggling to keep their homes and many of whom have already lost that struggle.

That the NY Fed had no clue what sort of shitstorm they were about to trigger is not really rocket science.

Left Handed Movie Ads

Critics and audiences agree: "Angels and Demons" is better than "The Da Vinci Code".

At least that is what the current TV ad claims. From what I've heard of the movie of The Da Vinci Code, that is sort of like saying that something is more pleasant than being punched in the throat.

By the way, does anyone have a comment on the new Star Trek movie?

Rowing Down The Crimea River

New MBA graduates are finding it hard to find jobs:

Unfortunately, the economy stinks right now, so newly minted MBAs find themselves in the same boat as many of their non-MBA counterparts. They're sending tons of resumes that go unanswered and rethinking their career goals and aspirations because the money and job opportunities just aren’t what they were even last year.

MBAs (such as Mitt Romney and George Bush, who were classmates at Hahvahd Bidness Skool) and the other finance guys (like Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan) are the very people who broke our economy.

We need more MBAs in this country like we need more cases of the Black Death.

Change of Command in Afghanistan

Secretary of Defense Bill Gates fired the commander in Afghanistan, General McKiernan and brought in General McChrystal.

But, as linked to by Abu Muqawama, McChrystal has his own skeletons, including the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death and the operation of black camps where prisoners were tortured. Note that what was going on under McChrystal's command was so brutal that even the CIA refused to take part, in the same way and for the same reasons that the FBI refused to take part in what the CIA was doing.

When what is going on was so brutal that even the torturers were squeamish, something was going on that requires some serious investigations. McChrystal may be a terrific general. Yet if he was indeed one of the officers who were in the ring of torturers, his appointment may be a propaganda windfall for the enemy.

Springbored also points out that General Petraeus now owns the Afghan War. He also suggests that one of the reasons McKiernan was fired was because of logistical failures, which is rather amusing, given that in the last administration, the excuse for logistical failures was a snarky "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you need."

Cat Blogging

It has been fun.

Since Operation Shavedown. George has been treating me to the Turds of Disapproval. I've not stepped in any, but that's not been for his lack of trying.

Gracie had a bit of an upset stomach. She barfed up a too-small hairball and her dinner last night, then followed that up with another barf at 5AM. She wasn't very interested in breakfast, but she did eat dinner.

She also was not happy because she was subjected to the Unholy Torment of the Ass Shampoo.

At least there has been no drama from Jake. He's about as easy-going as they come, as long as it doesn't involve riding in a cat carrier. He can yowl, at varying levels of volume, every four to five seconds for three hours.

It'll be an early night for me. And yes, I love them all.

The Pro-Torture Crowd's Mistake

The pro-torture people are, to my mind, making a serious mistake. To a large extent (and you saw this with the murky "what did Pelosi know" stories last week), they seem to be operating on the assumption that what is driving the rule-of-law advocates is just politics. In large measure, the traditional media (especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with the broadcast news guys) seem to be buying into this.

That is a bad assumption and one that betrays an inside-the Beltway mindset. If they think that that saying "Pelosi knew" and "Bill Clinton renditioned people" is going to slow down the push to investigate and clean up the torture operation, they are seriously in error.

There may be some who are indeed using the GOP support for torture as a political weapon. But they seem to be a tiny minority. Those who want to investigate the Bush Administration's flagrant disregard for the rule of law have no problem with the idea that some prominent Democrats also might be at risk for being investigated, if not prosecuted for war crimes. If it can be shown that the Clinton Administration handed over prisoners to other countries' security services with the full knowledge that those prisoners would be tortured, then those people involved in the process, especially those who approved of it, should be tried.

As far as I know, there is no statute of limitations on trying torturers or those who approved the use of torture. If that means that Bill Clinton gets put on trial for something more serious than lying about getting a blowjob from an intern, then so be it.

Dick Cheney isn't making the rounds of the talk shows to protect the legacy of the Bush Administration. He is doing that to try to save his own neck. He is, in reality, working to condemn himself. By speaking out, as he has been doing, he ensures that this issue stays int he public eye. Add to that the fact that Dick Cheney's about as popular as Lyme Disease and it is a safe bet that Cheney's pro-torture advocacy is doing more to ultimately hurt him than anything else. He is making it easier to release the evidence of the horrors of the Bush Administration.

Cheney is, in essence, building his own gallows.

Well, Isn't This Interesting

Why is the Navy promoting AEGIS BMD based on ballistic missile threats to our ships in Congress when the new anti-ship ballistic missile capability being developed by China cannot be stopped by the Lockheed Martin AEGIS BMD capability of the DDG-51. Oh, you didn't know the DDG-51 not only can't, but will never be able to meet that threat? The Navy knows this, so does Lockheed Martin, and so do the people pushing the DDG-51 for BMD purposes.

Why, indeed.

Galrahn makes some very good points in his post (and in his blog). But it is going to take a president with huge reservoirs of political capital in order to fix the procurement system. In every military service, the people who grew up doing project management have learned to play the politicians like a cheap guitar. They know that they need to salt parts of each program in different congressional districts in order to maximize political support for their pet programs. The contractors also play this game, playing to each congressman and senator about how many constituent jobs will be lost if the project to make the G-22 WhizBang is cut back or canceled.

I don't see it changing anytime soon. The military procurement system is inherently inefficient, tied up in parochialism and bureaucracy and corrupt at its core. Inefficiency is why it took the Air Force over 20 years to bring the F-22 from "let's build this thing" to delivery to operational squadrons (and the same thing is true for the Marines' V-22). Inefficiency and bureaucratic inertia are why our soldiers were wearing inferior body armor for several years into Bush's Wars. Parochialism and bureaucratic inertia rules, with "not invented here" being spoken more like "if it were a good idea, we'd have thought of it."

Corruption is why it is almost impossible to kill any procurement program, even if the gizmo doesn't work or barely works or sort of works for triple the original projected cost. Corruption is why the DoD continues to buy things it doesn't need or want. Corruption is why contractors low-ball bids and then rape the Treasury by vastly overpricing change orders and spare parts. Our elected officials are complicit in all this, for besides the jobs issue, they get a lot of contributions from contractors and the companies doing business with them.

Secretary Gates may be able to fire a general now and then, but it is hard to see how the procurement system can ever be fixed. Too many people have a reason to obstruct any serious reform.

"Cheaper Than Dirt"-- Only If the Dirt is Made of Gold Dust

I visited a gunshop on Saturday. They had American Eagle 9mm ball in stock for $19.95 a box, limit 1 box per customer. I didn't need it and I can't tell you how much it gripes my ass to think about paying three times as much for a box of 9mm as it cost only a few years ago.

Today I got a catalog from Cheaper Than Dirt. They want $29.95 for the same ammunition. Thirty bucks for a box of generic 9mm seems somewhere between "mighty steep" and "fucking outrageous".

I think I'm done buying stuff from them.

One Reason Newspapers Are In Trouble

Because some idiots decided awhile back that it was a really good idea to give away their content on-line for free. You have to pay fifty cents to two bucks for most papers if you want to pick up a dead-tree version at a newsstand, maybe half of that for home delivery, but you can read the stories on-line for free with only a few annoying advertisements, most of which can be blocked if you tinker with a script-blocker.

Giving away content for free. That was a really smart business decision.

The horse has left the barn on this; there are now too many places to get news for free. The New York Times pulled the plug on their pay service, "TimesSelect". The Wall Street Journal seems to be able to keep their pay-to-view operation going and there are some industry specific pay sites, but for the most part, the news industry has slit their own throats on this.