Last Call For Obama's Syrian Endgame

So what's the goal in Syria?  We fire cruise missiles at the Assad regime and...then what?  TNR's John Judis has some thoughts on what would follow after John Kerry's testimony yesterday:

—The administration is not just contemplating a single punitive strike against Syria’s Bashar al Assad for using chemical weapons; it is planning a repeatable military campaign that would strike again if he were to use these weapons again.

—The military campaign would also have the “collateral” or “downstream” result of weakening Assad militarily and politically. It would cause defections and significantly weaken the Assad government.

—The goal of the military campaign, combined with aid to the opposition, would not be to defeat Assad. Instead, the war would be ended by an international negotiation in which Russians would play a very important role. Such a deal would eliminate any role in Syria’s future for jihadist elements, but it might include a role for allies of Assad, if not for Assad himself.

This all seems like three fundamentally incompatible goals.  The 60 or 90 day option for repeatable strikes does seem like a way to buy time for diplomacy, but only if diplomacy can actually settle this.  Weakening the Assad regime isn't exactly going to make them want to come to the table, not if they know they can wait it out and then resume the fighting.  And what about the rebels?  There are a number of pretty bad guys in there opposing Assad, but what will they do if Assad is sidelined?

And we're counting on diplomacy with the Russians?  OK.  I'm not holding out hope, but Putin isn't ruling out backing our strike now.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he has not ruled out backing a U.S.-led military operation in Syria if the Kremlin gets concrete proof than an alleged chemical attack on civilians was committed by Bashar Assad’s government.

“I don’t rule this out,” Putin said during a televised interview with First Channel, a Russian federal television network, and the Associated Press. “But I want to draw your attention to one absolutely principled issue: In accordance with the current international law, a sanction to use arms against a sovereign state can be given only by the U.N. Security Council.”

In other words, Russia may drop its blockade of UN Security Council action and back a coalition move on their timetable, which would granted, slow things down somewhat.  But, if that's what it takes, that's fine.

The question is can we get Russia and Putin on board before a strike is launched?  I think we should make every effort to try.

On the other hand, Joshua Foust sums up the Obama case for Syrian strikes thusly:

The logic for striking Syria is as bizarre as it is unconvincing:

• Assad used chemical weapons. This is bad.
• We should make chemical weapons use unacceptable and impose punishment.
• BUT, that punishment should not be regime change, because we don’t want Syria to “implode.”
• AND, that punishment should be narrowly focused only on chemical weapons.
• DESPITE our official policy of “Assad must go,” Assad will not be forced to go.
• THEREFORE, strikes will be limited enough to only attack his chembio weapons, but not his actual capabilities, nor his regime, nor is it calibrated to directly help the rebels apart from removing a single weapon that hasn’t killed 99% of all casualties in the conflict.

If this makes any sense to you — logically, tactically, strategically, or operationally — I’m sure there’s a bridge for sale somewhere. So what is the point of this? It is a terribly empty gesture that serves vanishingly small purpose. I don’t get it. Even our own senior intel officers say Syria is going to get worse whether Assad stays or go — so why aren’t we focusing on how to prevent, mitigate, or manage that rather than all this empty nonsense? It’s like the White House is determined to only accept blame but not help. It’s madness.

I don't know if I'm ready to go that far despite my continued misgivings about action in Syria.  There's still the very real concern of 100,000 dead, 2 million refugees fled, and another 5 million displaced within Syria's borders.  Doing nothing is still not going to improve anything.

But these are pretty crazy hoops to jump through just to get Russia to say "alright already" and agree to UN action on Syria, and this is still an abysmal situation we've gotten into in the first place.  Cleaning up the mess in Syria where there are no good guys?  That'll be loads of fun.

Candid Camera Clowns

Anti-choice activists appointed to the Iowa Board of Medicine by GOP Gov. Terry Branstad have eliminated the country's largest and safest telemedicine program helping low-income and rural women receive abortion medication because of "safety concerns".

Only one problem.  The doctors and medical experts who testified found no safety concerns and the anti-choicers crushed the program anyway.

On Friday, Iowa’s Board of Medicine voted to eliminate the largest telemedicine abortion program in the country. That means doctors in the state won’t be allowed to use video technology to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to rural and low-income women who don’t have the means to travel to the nearest clinic — even though they’ve been safely doing so for the past five years.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has been operating its telemedicine abortion program since 2008, and there’s no reason it should have come under any kind of particular scrutiny this summer. Studies have repeatedly found that it’s a safe method of delivering reproductive care, and patients are just as satisfied after speaking with a doctor over a video conference as they are after making an in-person trip to a clinic. Nonetheless, the Board of Medicine has been considering banning the practice for the past several months — and the Friday vote makes it official.

“This decision is a political attack aimed at restricting access to abortion in Iowa. Proponents of this rule aren’t against telemedicine technology; they are against safe, legal abortion and are unjustly targeting our system with no scientific information or evidence to back their claims,” Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s president, Jill June, said in a statement.

Indeed, the telemedicine program was in effect for five years, three years in Iowa alone, helping some 3,000 women get safe first tri-mester abortions in clinics.   When Gov. Branstad found out, he fired everyone on the Iowa Board of Medicine and replaced them with his own anti-choice cronies, including former state legislator and Republican anti-choicer Greg Hoversten as chairman. 

The Medical Board chairman, Dr. Greg Hoversten, of Sioux City, also raised an issue with the fact that Iowa was among the very first states in the country to provide telemedicine abortion on a wide scale.

“That really bothers me that Iowa women are the first ones to get this in this fashion. There’s something wrong there. It just doesn’t seem right,” Hoversten said.

Except for the fact that the procedure was performed medically safely thousands of times in Iowa.  The Iowa Medical Society called the ban "premature" and "that more analysis, more evaluation, more study , more discussion with the profession is important."

But it took all of three days for the anti-choicers on the Medical Board to kill a safe program they state legislation couldn't kill for years.  It's not political, and it's not about cutting abortion access.  Nope.

Never.

Government Abuse Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Republicans went bonkers over the IRS supposedly targeting conservative advocacy groups for extra scrutiny on tax-exempt status.  The fact that liberal groups were also included didn't register on the Republican radar, of course.  But when it comes to using the power of the government to harass people based on partisan politics, Republicans have no problem when it comes to doing the harassing.

Fifteen Republican members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), are requesting detailed responses and thousands of pages of documents from approximately 60 percent of Navigator-recipients across the country by Sep. 13.

The tactic is reminiscent of the kind of practices Republicans had condemned over the summer, after news broke that the IRS subjected certain groups applying for 501 C4 nonprofit tax status to long, intrusive, questionnaires about their filings. Upton personally called such tactics a “thuggish abuse of power” and “simply un-American.”

But according to the GOP-backed letter, groups scrambling to begin enrolling individuals in coverage on Oct. 1, will have just two weeks to provide detailed written descriptions of their employees and activities, interactions with the Department of Health and Human Services, and “all documentation and communication related to your grant.”

Which of course is far more pervasive than what the IRS was asking for, and then, groups had months to get this information in to the IRS.  Obamacare Navigators?  They have two weeks to turn over everything related to the Navigator grant, personal info, communications, everything.

Now, I wonder why the same lawmakers who screamed that the federal government had no business prying into the information of citizens are suddenly okay with this.  Maybe it's because they're a bunch of hypocritical jackasses?

But freedom, right?

StupidiNews!

• Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man convicted of kidnapping 3 women and keeping them in his home for years, was found dead in his cell Tuesday night of an apparent hanging suicide.
• After testimony by Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to make an initial vote on Syria today.
• The latest NSA leak that the spy agency is keeping an eye on Brazil may prompt Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff to cancel a state visit to the US next month.
• Japan is increasing research on its own stem cell program by over a billion dollars to try to find cures for diseases affecting the country's rapidly aging population.
• A controversial science paper proposes that RNA molecules may have gotten a better start on Mars than Earth, then made the jump to our planet.

Last Call For Not (Voting) In Kansas Anymore, Toto

Kansas's new Voter ID law is making things very difficult for thousands of Kansans trying to register to vote.  As part of the new law, anyone registering to vote after Jan 1 of this year must show proof of citizenship, either a passport of birth certificate.  If that sounds familiar, it's the same unconstitutional provision that was struck down by a federal court in Arizona's Voter ID law.

Lee Albee never thought signing up to vote would be so cumbersome.

Earlier this year, the Overland Park man registered to vote when he renewed his license at the motor vehicle office. It was supposed to be easy. It wasn’t.

Weeks later, the Johnson County election office notified Albee he needed to prove citizenship — with a birth certificate or a passport — if he wanted to register.

As it turned out, no one had asked him for those documents at the DMV office. Now he doesn’t have the time to follow up.

“They’re making it incredibly difficult,” Albee said. “It’s a pain in the tush.”

Albee is among 15,622 Kansans who had their voter registrations set aside until they can prove their citizenship under a new Kansas law that started this year. About 30 percent of those suspended registrations were in Johnson, Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties.

Most of the hiccups occur at the state’s motor vehicle offices, where drivers complain they aren’t being asked for citizenship documents when they register to vote. Almost nine in 10 of the voters who had their registrations suspended signed up to vote at the DMV.

If Kansas Republicans are trying to make things as difficult a possible for new voters to register, well, that's the entire point.  New voters -- young Americans just turning 18, new legal immigrants, people moving into the suburbs of Kansas City (like say, relatively blue Johnson, Wyandotte, and Leavenworth counties) -- tend to vote for Democrats.

As with Arizona, the ACLU is going right after the law.

The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to challenge the law, saying it’s essentially identical to an Arizona law that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional.

“What this law has done has made it very difficult for ordinary citizens to get registered to vote even though they’re citizens,” said Doug Bonney, chief legal counsel for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri.

Meanwhile, Kobach is fighting back, filing his own lawsuit aimed at bringing the Kansas law into compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision.

Kobach said the law was written to ensure that it wouldn’t hinder people from registering to vote.

“There’s nothing difficult at all,” he said, “about proving your citizenship if you are a U.S. citizen.”

Except you know the cost for documents and the time to get them.   The hope is that new voters will give up, and grandfathered in Kansas Republicans will continue to vote Republican.  Can't have the state turning blue, you know.

Once again, Republicans seem to think the fewer people who vote, the better.  As long as the people voting are, of course, Republican voters.

United By Hatred

This Jonathan Martin NY Times article is a waste of page space, frankly:

The Congressional vote on whether to strike Syria will offer the best insight yet on which wing of the Republican Party — the traditional hawks, or a growing bloc of noninterventionists — has the advantage in the fierce internal debates over foreign policy that have been taking place all year.

Republican divisions on national security have flared over the use of drones, aid to Egypt and the surveillance practices of the National Security Agency, and the tensions have played out publicly in battles between Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian-leaning freshman. Mr. McCain memorably called Mr. Paul and his compatriots “wacko birds,” and Mr. Paul suggested that hawks like Mr. McCain were “moss covered.”

 

But those intermittent spats could pale in comparison with the fight over whether to attack Syria, an issue on which Mr. McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, and Mr. Paul, a possible contender in 2016, will almost certainly be the leading spokesmen for their party’s two wings. 

No, Jon, just like every other time there's a "division" in the GOP, the question is always settled over question: "Which position hurts President Obama the most?"  That's all that matters to today's GOP.  There will be a very large effort to work with anti-war Democrats (some of which don't have much of a problem with the whole "hurt President Obama" thing either) to get a majority to kill this in the House.

Unless you somehow think Orange Julius is up to the task of putting together enough Republican votes for an Obama win, in which case you really, really haven't been paying attention.

It may pass the Senate.  It will go down in flames in the House.

Count on it.

Meanwhile In Egypt...

The whole Syria thing doesn't mean that Egypt's problems are on hiatus or anything, folks.  The military is still happily cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood with ruthless efficiency on military and political fronts too.

A judicial panel set up by Egypt's military-backed government supported a legal challenge to the status of the Muslim Brotherhood on Monday, compounding a drive to crush the movement behind the elected president deposed by the army in July.

While short of a formal ban on the Brotherhood, which worked underground for decades under Egypt's previous military-backed rulers, the panel's advice to a court to remove its non-governmental organization status threatens the million-member movement's future in politics.

What better way to eliminate the MB as a political force then to revoke their status as a political party, especially when everyone's concentrating on Syria?  It's a rapid return to the bad old days in Egypt and it's looking like they'll get away with it, too.

I mean, what's the US going to do at this point?  Anything?  Should they?

We've got bigger problems now.

StupidiNews!

• At age 64, endurance swimmer Diana Nyad has finally completed her quest to become the first person to swim from Havana to Key West without a protective cage.
• After years of delays and cost overruns, the $6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened ahead of schedule last night.
• Despite two weeks of growing protests across Mexico, President Enrique Pena Nieto is vowing to carry out structural and political reforms and combat narco-terrorism.
• Microsoft will buy Nokia's mobile handset division for $7.2 billion to make its own Windows phone hardware as Sweden's one-time mobile giant officially exits the smartphone arena.
• E-book consumers could see refunds as much as $3.06 per book as part of the recent industry price-fixing settlement, expected to be finalized in December.

Last Call For Regime Change

So nice of the NY Times to give an op-ed page to the historically under-represented batshit crazy neocon perpetual war point of view of Vali Nasr and friends.

It is in America’s strategic interest, then, to take decisive action to mortally wound the Assad regime. Ensuring that Syria does not become a haven for Al Qaeda — a legitimate fear — would have to immediately follow.

Mr. Assad may be right to think the Obama administration does not want involvement in Syria, but the horrors of this war have effectively forced America into it. The risks of intervention are great, and success is uncertain, but doing nothing would be, at this point, far worse.

America should act decisively and in a timely manner, and based on a strategic vision that includes a way out of this war. That would impress American allies and adversaries alike. That is what the world needs and what Mr. Obama should focus on.

If "regime change over WMD" followed by "preventing the country from then becoming a terrorist stronghold" sounds familiar to you, it was the exact plan for our "success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Doesn't another decade-long war sound great to you? It does to the NY Times.  Why these jackasses are still getting play in the media I can't tell you, but here we are pretending like Iraq and Afghanistan never happened, or worse, that they were awesome and great and cool and we need to do it again.

Frankly such nonsense is unconscionable, but here it is anyway.

That's A Funny Way Of "Protecting People", Rand

So tell me, we still standing with Rand after statements like this?

The link between American interests and Syria is not clear, Sen. Rand Paul said on Sunday.

"I think the war may escalate out of control, and then we have to ask ourselves, 'Who is on America's side over there?'" host the Kentucky Republican asked David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I don't see American interests involved on either side of this Syrian war. I see [Bashar] Assad, who has protected Christians for a number of decades, and Islamic rebels on the other side who have been attacking Christians," Paul said.

In other words, A) Assad is the good guy here because he's killing Muslims, B) why would we want to stop him from killing Muslims?

Oh it gets better.

“I think the failure of the Obama administration has been we haven’t engaged the Russians enough or the Chinese enough on this,” the Kentucky Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“The Russians have every reason to want to keep their influence in Syria, and I think the only way they do is if there’s a change in government where Assad is gone” but other current members remain, Paul said. “That would also be good for the Christians.” He noted earlier that Assad has protected Christians “for decades.”

The senator went on to say that a failure to do so could result in an Islamic state that could persecute Christians in the country. And Russia, he said, could have an influence on the country if they told the government “no more weapons.”

To recap, Captain Isolationist here is upset we haven't given the Russians and Chinese enough swag, and really as long as Christians in Syria are protected, the savage brown miasma of Muslim scum can all just eat sarin and die.

Scratch Rand Paul's surface and you'll always find an Islamophobic racist warmonger Republican.  Period.

StupidiNews, Labor Day Edition!

• Egyptian state TV is reporting that former President Morsi will stand trial for the deaths of protesters in clashes with police last December.
• Casts of artwork taken at Angkor Wat in Cambodia in the early 20th century has been rediscovered and will be put on display in Paris.
• Yemeni PM Mohammed Basindowa escaped an assassination attempt Saturday evening as his armored car came under gunfire in the streets of the capital, Sanaa.
• Nelson Mandela has been released from a Pretoria hospital to receive care in his own home, but is still listed in critical condition.
• With Samsung releasing details of a smartwatch this week, and a rumored Apple "iWatch" later this month, Google has been working on their own model for over a year now.

Last Call For Rising Core Temperature

Meanwhile, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster site, things aren't going real well with the whole "containment" thing two years later.

Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.

Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground.

It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.

The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour.

However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.

The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.

The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.

In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour.

Yeah, this seems like a bad thing.  Fukushima is leaking, containment has completely failed, and radioactive material has been getting into the ocean for two years now.  There doesn't seem to be any way to slow it down. either.  This stuff could burn for decades, guys.  By then, the damage to the Pacific rim is going to be devastating, not to mention to Japan itself.

The plant is just as lethal now as it was in 2011.  That's horrifying, but not shocking.  We'll keep up with this story as we have for the last 30 months.

Podcast Vs. The Stupid: Syria-s As A Heart Attack

Bon and I get back into the swing of things with a 30-minute PVTS show on Syria, President Obama, the GOP "response" and the passing of Sir David Frost.

Listen To Politics Progressive Internet Radio Stations with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

You can download the episode here or look for it on iTunes.

A Necessary Touch Of Frost

British broadcasting legend Sir David Frost has died this weekend at the age of 74, according to his long-time home, BBC News.

Veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost has died at the age of 74 after a suspected heart attack while on board a cruise ship. 

A family statement said he had been giving a speech aboard the Queen Elizabeth on Saturday night. 

Sir David's career spanned journalism, comedy writing and daytime television presenting, including The Frost Report. 

Internationally, he will be remembered for his revealing interviews with former US President Richard Nixon. 

A statement said: "His family are devastated and ask for privacy at this difficult time. A family funeral will be held in the near future and details of a memorial service will be announced in due course."

Best remembered for his interviews 35 years ago with Nixon, Frost had a huge career with the BBC spanning five decades, a giant in his field, and a true gentleman.  Those interviews in 1977 were turned into a very good Ron Howard movie, Frost/Nixon.



Also, here's a clip of the first part of Frost's actual interview with Nixon.



It was television that gripped the world then, and is still fascinating to watch now.  Godspeed, Sir David.

President Obama Calls The GOP's Bluff On Syria

Republicans were all set to have the best of both worlds:  still getting a bloody-minded attack on Syria, and having 100% of the fallout be on President Obama's shoulders, while claiming everything up to and including an "impeachable offense" by his attacking Syria without the approval of Congress.

So this afternoon, President Obama called their bluff and said he will do what the American people and Congress want:  debate and vote on the measure on Capitol Hill.

In an afternoon appearance in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama said he had decided that the United States should use force but would wait for a vote from lawmakers, who are not due to return to town until Sept. 9. Mr. Obama said he believed he had the authority to act on his own, but he did not say whether he would if Congress rejects his plan. 

“I’m prepared to give that order,” Mr. Obama said. “But having made my decision as commander in chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interest, I’m also mindful that I’m president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.” 

Going to war with the support of the people’s representatives, he added, “I know the country will be stronger.” 

The president’s announcement effectively dared Congress to either stand by him or, as he put it, allow President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to get away with murdering children. By asking lawmakers to weigh in, he is trying to break out of his box of isolation of the last week, in the face of deep skepticism at home and around the world about the strike. His decision indicates he does not want to go forward without Congress and the American public. 

So now  this becomes Congress's problem, more specifically the GOP's problem.  They will have to go on record on Syria and bear responsibility for its future, which is exactly what they were attempting to avoid.

President Obama has outsmarted them yet again...and he's listening to the American people, who want debate before any military action.  Now he looks like the reasonable grown-up in the room.

Your move, Republicans.