Here We Go Again

I wake up this morning to see that 2016 is starting off where 2015 left off: the armed Gunmerica crowd and our old friend the Bundy Ranch crew are using force to accomplish goals.  You know, domestic terrorism by armed traitors.

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns for years.

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.

In phone interviews from inside the occupied building Saturday night, Ammon Bundy and his brother, Ryan Bundy, said they are not looking to hurt anyone. But they would not rule out violence if police tried to remove them, they said.

"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Ammon Bundy said.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

This ended badly 23 years ago in Waco.  How will it end this time?

Neither man would say how many people are in the building or whether they are armed. Ryan Bundy said there were no hostages, but the group is demanding that the Hammonds be released and the federal government relinquish control of the Malheur National Forest.

He said many would be willing to fight — and die, if necessary — to defend what they see as constitutionally protected rights for states, counties and individuals to manage local lands.

"The best possible outcome is that the ranchers that have been kicked out of the area, then they will come back and reclaim their land, and the wildlife refuge will be shut down forever and the federal government will relinquish such control," he said. "What we're doing is not rebellious. What we're doing is in accordance with the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land."

So how is this not a terrorist attack on US soil versus the US government?  Oh yeah, these guys are white, so that makes them "armed protesters" or something, right?  With guns.  Who have taken over a federal building and are demanding the government give up land?

C'mon.  Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protesters who are unarmed get rounded up and tear gassed by cops in SWAT and military gear.  In Oregon?  "Well, gosh, maybe we should leave them alone."

Amazing.

Everyone Was Wrong In 2015

Was there a worse year for the Village punditry in recent memory than 2015?  They were wrong about virtually everything in politics last year, as Politico reminds us.

Forecasting political trends is almost an American pastime. So is getting those forecasts woefully wrong. Politico Magazine has published an annual worst political predictions list twice before, but we’ve never had quite the fodder that we did this year. In the 2016 presidential race, one presumed front-runner after another fell to the bottom of the polls; a reality TV star is currently as admired as the pope; and a socialist and a retired neurosurgeon gained massive followings. In Washington, a man who once wanted to give his “undivided attention” to the Ways and Means Committee is now speaker of the House; and a president about to enter his final year and facing a hostile Congress reached deals on climate change, Iran’s nuclear program and international trade. Of course, we can’t blame political pundits for being wrong in a year so full of surprises; but that won’t stop us from having some fun calling them out. Herewith, the political predictions gone wrong in 2015.

Among the stinkers: That Joe Biden, Liz Warren, and Mitt Romney would join the 2016 race, and that Trump would drop out, and that Scott Walker was going to win the nomination.  These were major predictions that pretty much all the big names in politics got wrong in 2015.

These same voices are telling us now that the GOP will come down to a Cruz-Rubio fight, and the victor will easily beat Hillary.

Oh, and let's not forget the dismal state of political polling in general in 2015, too.  The pollsters were so badly wrong here in Kentucky about Jack Conway's five point lead (that was only wrong by 14 points!) that they fired the polling outfit...the same one that predicted the 2014 Mitch McConnell-Alison Grimes race would be close instead of a 16-point blowout.

The one thing that remains constant is how terribly wrong the Beltway types are, and yet people continue to listen to them.

He's Got A Cannon For An Arm

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott's response to President Obama's meager suggestion that people who sell guns as a business actually be subject to existing gun dealer rules?

Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response.#? COME & TAKE IT @NRA #tcot #PJNET https://t.co/RUPbcev5jY pic.twitter.com/8VNwisj966

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) January 1, 2016

"Durr hurr whatcha gonna do stoopid libturd?"

After all, Texas is now the among the gun-friendliest states in the nation.

Texas is so gun-friendly that it is easier to get into the Capitol in Austin with a firearm than without one — licensed, gun-carrying lawmakers and members of the public have their own no-wait security lane, and the unarmed masses have to stand in line and slog through the metal detectors.

But on Friday, gun rights throughout the state expanded still more, as a new law took effect that allows certain Texans to wear their handguns in holsters on their hips — or in shoulder holsters, Dirty Harry-style — openly displaying the fact that they are armed as they work, shop, dine and go about their day.

The so-called open-carry law has set off a long-simmering debate over the limits of the Texas gun culture and has given gun rights advocates a hard-fought victory after they pushed for the expansion for years. Members of the pro-gun group Open Carry Texas were to gather at noon Friday on the south steps of the Capitol for a gun-on-their-hips celebration before walking down Congress Avenue. Other groups plan to display their weaponry at events in Houston, Dallas and other cities.

“I think most people can expect Friday to be just like Thursday,” said C. J. Grisham, 41, a retired Army sergeant who formed Open Carry Texas in 2013. He says he plans to carry two semiautomatic pistols at the Capitol rally, and gave his 13-year-old daughter a pink .22-caliber rifle for her 12th birthday. “I think everybody is overreacting.”

 Right now that's 4% of Texas's population with open carry privileges.  No doubt the goal is more.

Well, more of certain people, anyway.

Open-carry supporters say more public weapons will help deter would-be criminals. Opponents say that police officers will have a hard time separating the good guys from the bad, and that there is no evidence that open-carry states are safer.

The change directly affects only a small fraction of Texans — 925,000 men and women with active state-issued licenses to carry a concealed firearm, close to 4 percent of the state’s 27.4 million residents. Only those with a concealed-handgun permit are allowed to open carry, and all of them must submit their fingerprints and pass a criminal background check.

Texans do not need a state license to buy a handgun but must meet the federal qualifications. If Texas gun owners want to carry their handguns outside their home, they must apply for a license through the Texas Department of Public Safety, be at least 21 and complete training courses and a written examination.

Cops may be concerned, but Texas makes 45 states with open handgun carry.  And yet for some reason that doesn't include large numbers of African-American or Latino folks.

Twenty years after the Brady Bill passed, America is awash in more guns than people.

That's all you need to know about the state of gun control in America.

Both Sides Do It, 2016 Version

Boy, that didn't take long, did it?  NY Times econ writer Neil Irwin:

Suppose it is dinnertime, and the phone rings. It is a polite survey taker with a simple question for you: How is the economy doing? 

You might answer the question based upon the news stories you’ve seen recently about the latest unemployment rate, or perhaps based on anecdotal observations, such as whether your long-jobless cousin has had any luck finding work. 

But a wide range of academic work suggests a different factor that is likely to shape your answer: whether the current occupant of the White House is of your preferred political party.

With you so far.

Did unemployment get better or worse during Ronald Reagan’s presidency? In a 1988 survey, some 80 percent of dedicated Republicans accurately said it had improved, compared with 30 percent of loyal Democrats. In the 1990s, the pattern reversed on a range of factual questions about economic and fiscal issues. In a 1997 survey, for example, Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to acknowledge that the budget deficit had declined during the Bill Clinton administration.

OK, sure, "facts don't matter" has been with us for some time now.

As an economics writer, I see the same thing anecdotally. When I wrote articles recently about the unemployment rate’s dip to 5 percent, I received vehement responses from conservatives convinced that the Obama administration was cooking the numbers. They were not so different from responses I received from liberals when the jobless rate was at that level in 2005, during the George W. Bush administration.

I see.

So the part where we discovered that the Bush administration and Alan Greenspan really were cooking the books on that 5% unemployment, the economy collapsed, and Obama inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression never happened, because Both Sides Do It.

We're actively comparing a near global economic collapse of the Bush economy to the recovery of the Obama years, hamstrung as it was by Republicans who wanted the economy to stay bad so they could win the White House back.

OK, sure Neil.  Both sides, right?

The Next One Out Of The Clown Car-son

With Pataki (who?) gone, looks like the next Republican voted off the island will be Dr. Godwin as his campaign is coming apart at the seams.

Ben Carson’s top aides have resigned, casting the retired neurosurgeon’s campaign into chaos just a month before the Iowa caucuses.


Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts announced Thursday they will leave the team.

In an exit interview with The Hill, Bennett blamed Carson’s close friend and adviser Armstrong Williams for a handful of political missteps and accused him of railroading the retired neurosurgeon’s White House bid.“I called Ben this morning…and explained to him the root of the problem is that you told me Armstrong is not involved in the campaign but he clearly is,” Bennett said. “My frustration level is boiling over so I told him I think it’s best that I leave."

Bennett said he believes “a lot more” staffers will follow him out the door and predicted the campaign team will be “decimated.”

Williams does not have an official role with the campaign, but he’s a longtime friend of Carson’s and has his ear on everything from politics to business deals to life.

Williams, who often sets up media interviews for Carson without the campaign’s knowledge, and the top advisers have been on a collision course for some time.

Things came to a head last week when Williams arranged for several media outlets to interview Carson at his Maryland home, and Carson openly mused about a staff shake-up.

The interviews caught the campaign off guard and infuriated Carson’s top aides.

“I’ve been in politics 30 years and don’t know anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to have your candidate go on national TV and announce they’re taking charge of the campaign,” said Bennett. “That’s the most obscure idea I've ever heard.”

No, the most obscure idea would be "The Pyramids of Giza were built to store grain".

Anyhow, with Carson self-destructing in the polls, on the airwaves and on the ground, 2016 looks to be starting off with a "meh" for Team Ben.

Happy 2016, doc.  Now go back to hawking your crappy book, please.

Zandar's 2016 Predictions

Welp, prognostication time again.  Let's see if I can stay above 60% two years running.

1) No beating around the...well...Bush.  Hillary Clinton will be elected President of the United States in 2016.  I'll take the half-point if it's Bernie somehow, but if a Republican wins?  We all lose.

2) 2016 in economics?  Unemployment under 5.5%, oil under $50, and the Dow Jones will close above 16k.  Yes, 2015 was the first negative year in the markets since 2008 and the Fed raised rates, but we were due, and I think the country will stay on track.

3) Movies, I see a good year for both Marvel with Captain America: Civil War and DC with Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.  Both will break $200 million domestically.  How will Deadpool, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange and X-Men Apocalypse do?  Less sure about those, but they'll all do $100 million a piece.  I'll take the split if I get at least 3 right.

4) Half-a-dozen massive Supreme Court cases in 2016 could change everything.  I'll call it 5-4 that SCOTUS will side with the Obama administration on Texas's abortion laws being too strict...

5) ...but you can kiss Affirmative Action goodbye.  Kennedy has repeatedly sided against it, as have the court's other four conservatives.

6) As with 2014's Sochi Winter Games, I predict the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics will be an absolute disaster.  There is no way Brazil is going to be ready for this, and I expect the games will be a nasty, disjointed affair with barely functional venues.

7) I think it's a safe bet that turnout in the 2016 election will be under 50%.  The last time that happened was in 1996 (49%) when Bill Clinton was re-elected and 8 million angry Americans turned to Ross Perot, ironically proving a major third-party candidate reduces turnout.

8) The Oculus Rift and other virtual reality headset systems will bomb.  We're talking "Google Glass" level of bomb here.  Ironically, the rebranded, industrial/commercial version of Google Glass will return in 2016 and probably do better.

9) The 2016 GOP nominee will not be Trump.  Somehow, the voters will nominate either Cruz or Rubio instead, I don't know how but...hey, we shouldn't have gone down this far anyway. I'll hedge my bet and say that I hope he is.

10) ZVTS will still be here going into 2017.  Here's hoping we make it through.

Have a safe and happy 2016, folks. 

Zandar's 2015 Scorecard

So how did I do in 2015?  Let's run the numbers:

1) Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush will make it all official in 2015.  All of them will be in the race for the White House.  How far they get, well, that's for this time next year, isn't it?

RIGHT:  All four are running for President.

2) Obama will have 25 or more presidential vetoes by the end of 2015.  Figure that's two a month, plus one for good measure.  Do not be surprised if it's less than this.  Mitch is not going to be able to get passed what he wants in the Senate.

WRONG: President Obama vetoed a GOP defense spending bill in October and a GOP bill to kill Obamacare in December.  Two is, you know, not 25.

3) The Supreme Court will strike down Obamacare subsidies in federal exchange states.  I'm not a lawyer by any stretch, but I know vindictive political backstabbing when I see it coming.  King v. Burwell is going to sorely test the GOP however.

WRONG: And I'm very glad that I was.  6-3 decision in favor of the Obama Administration here as Chief Justice Roberts gave us a solid decision sparing Obamacare once again.

4) Having said that, SCOTUS will also rule in favor of national same-sex marriage.  Hedge here that the decision may not come in 2015, but they'll take up a case to decide it before 2016. I just think Justice Kennedy wants this to be what he's remembered for.

RIGHT: Justice Kennedy for the win, 5-4.  And he will always be remembered for this decision, certainly.

5) Oil will close 2015 at under $60 a barrel.  Pretty huge hedge too, it'll probably be a lot lower.

RIGHT: Boy, was I right here.  Oil went from $55 a barrel in December 2014 to $35 a barrel in December 2015.  A major slowdown in Chinese demand cratered the oil market along with multiple other commodities,

6) Still feeling good about Marvel movies, so I'll say Ant-Man and Avengers: Age of Ultron will break $200 million. 

SPLIT:  The second Avengers movie easily topped that mark, but Ant-Man came up about $20 million short domestically.  Both crushed the $500 million mark worldwide, however, prompting a planned Ant-Man and The Wasp sequel. 

7) Google Glass will officially get the plug pulled.  At least on the home version.  Watch for the business model to stay viable, however.

RIGHT: Hell, this actually happened in back in January.

8) Apple iWatch will be huge.  Morgan Stanley says it could do anywhere from 30 million to 60 million, I'll peg my guess at 40 million worldwide in 2015.

WRONG:  Not even close!  At best, Apple moved only 7 million watches.  It doesn't mean the device is a failure, not when you sell seven million of the the things at $349 or more a piece...but I was definitely stupid to believe the hyped predictions on this one.

9) My off the wall projection:  A US embassy in Havana will be in place, with ambassador, before the end of 2015.  It'll also be the end of Marco Rubio, but hey.

RIGHT:  Pleasantly surprised at this one, with the embassy made official between President Obama and President Raul Castro in July, and Republicans were unable to block the promotion of diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis from Chief of Mission to interim Ambassador.  Wisely, President Obama hasn't picked a fight yet by naming a permanent Ambassador, meaning unless he did, I really wasn't going to lose this one.  Thanks Obama!

10) ZVTS will be here for another year.  Haven't lost on this one yet...

RIGHT:  Here I am.  Again.

6-3 and 1 is a pretty good record, frankly.  I'll take that any year.

Money Can't Buy Everything

If Jeb! (more like Jeb?) can't buy a win in Iowa with all his hundreds of millions in Super PAC cash, then exactly what can he win?

Jeb Bush's campaign is canceling its Iowa television advertising buy and shifting money to double staff on the ground in January, the final month before the high-stakes Iowa caucuses.

The news will raise questions about whether the former Florida governor might pull out of Iowa given his fifth-place status here, with just 6 percent support of likely GOP caucusgoers.

That's not the case, Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz told The Des Moines Register.

The number of Iowa paid staffers who make personal contact with voters will be boosted from 11 to more than 20, including its Hispanic outreach director, he said.

Bush returns to campaign here Jan. 11-13 with stops in Iowa City, Grinnell, Des Moines and Ankeny.

The larger context is that Team Bush is making similar shifts from TV ads to its ground game in other early states, too. In January, they'll deploy 60 staffers from the Miami headquarters to the early states, including about 10 to Iowa.

And Bush's presence will still be prominent on voters' TV screens: A pro-Bush super PAC has reserved more than $19 million in ads across the first three states in coming days.

The Bush campaign itself has spent tens of millions on television ads to date, yet his candidacy has failed to catch on, something rival Donald Trump has mocked him for.

Diaz said the campaign is removing $3 million in previously reserved TV time: an Iowa buy of about $1 million and a January buy in South Carolina of about $2 million. It's instead increasing direct voter contact with a total of 60 additional staffers.

My question is this: why is Jeb? unable to do both?  The answer is that more and more, this is now the party of Trump and Cruz, of mean, inchoate rage against the dying of the, well, white.

Bush's aides acknowledged that Iowa can be a very tough state for mainstream GOP candidates. The three Republicans who have consistently led polls here since late summer, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, are outsider tea party candidates.

You don't say.

Operation Payback

GOP operative Frank Luntz crunches the numbers on Trump and finds that the chief motivating factor of Trump supporters is -- surprise! -- Raging hatred of Barack Obama and everyone who voted for him. Rich Barry at The Moderate Voice:

Unfortunately, the Financial Times is behind a paywall and I don’t have access, but this snippet below provided by Politico is interesting.

Republican pollster, and political consultant Frank Lutz writes that Trump voters “want revenge.”

Trump’s bile is a healing balm for spurned Americans”: “The phenomenon of ‘The Donald’ is rooted in a psyche far deeper and more consequential than next November’s presidential election. … These individuals do not like being told by Washington or Wall Street what is best for them, … and disdain President Barack Obama and his (perceived) circle of self-righteous, tone-deaf governing partisans. Trump voters are not just angry — they want revenge.”

Gosh, you mean that that there's millions of aggrieved, mostly white voters who want to see everyone who helped put Barack Obama in the White House to be smashed, broken, and obliterated?

Hoocuddanode. Rich Barry again:

Directing public anger is a very dicey thing, but so far Trump has proven very good at it. Consider the name calling and the gutter politics that has characterized so much if his run to date. His appeal to baser instincts is truly breathtaking.

Still, public anger is a difficult beast to ride and things can go badly in a hurry. Assuming Trump does not win the nomination, will there ever be a time when he embraces the eventual nominee and his supporters choose to be okay with that? Perhaps that could work with Sen. Cruz, but for Sen. Rubio or Gov. Christie? Maybe not.

Luntz is probably right. There is a lot of anger out there and it could have outsized consequences in November and beyond. Does the rage dissipate, or are we seeing the start of a political movement that will make the Tea Party movement look like, well, a tea party?

You mean a movement that decides that "by ballet or by bullet" is an actual plan?  The folks who have been stockpiling weapons and ammunition so that they can terrorize the rest of us?  The folks who see Democrats and the people who voted for them as not only anti-American, but not even human?

You mean these people might actually be dangerous and their rhetoric mat become something far bloodier and far worse?

Well holy crap, welcome to America.  Where the hell have you guys been?

Bernie Goes After The Don

At face value, this is a solid move by the Sanders camp.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, faulted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for converting voters' legitimate concerns into hatred and said he can win over some of those voters with his message about improving the economy. 

"Many of Trump's supporters are working-class people and they're angry, and they're angry because they're working longer hours for lower wages, they're angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries, they're angry because they can't afford to send their kids to college so they can't retire with dignity," Sanders said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." 

"What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears which are legitimate and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims, and in my view that is not the way we're going to address the major problems facing our country," he said. 

He suggested there was a certain irony about the fact that Trump does not want to raise the minimum wage, and is looking at ways to give millions in tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country. 

"I think for his working class and middle class supporters, I think we can make the case that if we really want to address the issues that people are concerned about...we need policies that bring us together that take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of corporate America, and create a middle class that works for all of us rather than an economy that works just for a few," Sanders said.

The problem with taking this at face value is that Trump supporters aren't the least interested in working to solve the problems of the country, they are looking out for themselves and blaming Muslims, Mexicans, black people, anyone who isn't white, male, and Christian is a lot easier and in the short run a lot more effective.

The question is whether or not Bernie Sanders believes his own reasoning.

If he does, he's far too naive to be in politics.  Considering he's been in politics for four decades, I'm discounting that right off the bat.

That leaves why he's feeding people a line about Trump supporters when the sole motivation for Trump is outright racism.  Trump. Supporters. Are. Racist. Assholes.  Period.  Sanders doesn't believe the line.

So why does he think other Democrats, or even Trump supporters, will?  There's one reason, and that it's a nice excuse to provide cover for bigotry.

Bottom line, why does Bernie want Trump supporters, and why does he think he can win them?

My suspicions are pretty cynical if not ugly.

Jobapalooza Reminder

From the Kroog:



Is it any wonder why the right is trying to scream THE CHARTS ARE LYING OBAMA FAILED US as loudly as possible?

What To Do With Garbage

Martin BooMan Longman reminds us exactly what we should do with all the excremental existential whining from the "I won't support Hillary if she's the nominee" dudebro crowd thinkpieces, which is ignore them and the people who write them looking for attention.

I’m not sure whether it’s more accurate to call it clickbait or troll bait, but there’s a genre of political writing that’s good at getting everyone’s blood pressure up despite being almost completely worthless. Basically, these pieces are debates on take-my-ball-and-go-homism. The latest is by Ben Spielberg and can be read at theHuffington Post.

Mr. Spielberg assures us that he is well aware that any Democratic president would be preferable to any Republican president, but he wants us to know that he will not be voting for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee. If you care, you can go check out his reasoning, but I’m not interested in his reasoning.

I’m only interested in the timing.

And Spielberg isn't alone,  Salon's Walker Bragman is as bad or worse.  They have two things in common: one, only Bernie can save the country, and two, if he's not the nominee, they will stay home.  Martin points out the idiocy in that logic in December, 11 months before the election:

In his mind, at least, Mr. Spielberg’s solitary vote is something candidates will bargain for. If he threatens to withhold his vote, it will increase his influence.

This is absurd, of course. Literally no one gives a crap whether Ben Spielberg votes or doesn’t vote. For his decision to have any meaning at all, he must persuade people of the merits of his case. He must universalize it. If everyone used his logic, then progressives would have more leverage over the Democratic nominees. In this way, he can satisfy himself that his threat of non-participation satisfies the Golden Rule.

But, here’s the key, only if he’s being dishonest about not voting. If everyone threatens to not vote, they increase their power and can get some positive change (maybe), but if people actually follow through, stay home, and enable the Republicans to win, they’ll have done real damage to their cause.

That’s why Spielberg pays lip service to the idea that losing in 2016 is worth it so that the left doesn’t lose in 2020. But that’s a throw-away line. No one intelligent actually believes that you can do better by losing the presidency than by winning it. That may sometimes be the result, but it’s too speculative and low-percentage to ever be a rational strategy.

So, when you read these take-my-ball-and-go-homism pieces, remember, they’re so stupid and dishonest that you don’t need to respond to them.

If this were October 2016, that kind of rhetoric might merit a rebuttal. In December of 2015, it’s not worth worrying about.

Agreed.

The Return Of The Wicked Webb

Silly me.  I've been grousing that maybe Bernie would do something colossally stupid and pull a 3rd party Ralph Nader stunt, when all this time I should have been keeping an eye on former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb as the agent of rodent fornication.

When Jim Webb quit the Democratic presidential race on Oct. 20 amid low poll numbers and a minimal debate presence, the former Virginia senator left open the possibility he'd return for a White House run in a different political guise. Now he appears to be edging closer to making good on it.

On Saturday morning, Webb used Twitter and his Facebook page to attack Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for her handling of Libya during her time as secretary of state.

The lengthy condemnation on Facebook, which said, among other things that "Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya," came just days before the end of the year, which his team had previously told CNN would be reasonable time for them to make a decision about an independent bid.

Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag.

A run by Webb, who often manages his own social media accounts and has also used them recently to promote a petition in favor of his run and to deliver kudos to Bernie Sanders in his battles with the Democratic National Committee ("nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign," Webb tweeted), could further complicate the already unpredictable 2016 election.

While observers typically have analyzed the prospect of a third-party or independent run by Republican front-runner Donald Trump — or even one from Sanders — Webb could still alter the dynamics of the race even with his smaller profile.

A recent CNN poll, for instance, forecast tight races between Clinton and several Republican contenders in hypothetical match-ups for the general election. Webb's campaign has told Bloomberg it would concentrate on mobilizing voters in the ideological middle, along with people who have become dissatisfied with politics.

In a tight race, even a small base of support could make him a factor. Ralph Nader, for instance, famously won only small percentages of the vote in many states in the 2000 presidential election, yet that arguably helped tip the Electoral College vote to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, denying Democratic Vice President Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote, the presidency.

Unlike Trump's whining about going third party, Webb is already out of the race.  For him to start attacking Clinton like this after departing the field is bad from, but to do so while using assaults lifted from the GOP playbook makes it clear he's trying to hand the country over to the Republicans and that he expects something in return.

No, this is truly odious, and it's too bad Jim Webb is ending his career like this.

Sunday Long Read: Tom Clancy's The Syrian Connection

Sy Hersh is at it again in this week's Sunday Long Read, where after "exposing" the Obama administration's "coverup" of supposedly knowing exactly where Osama Bin Laden was for years and having that debunked at light speed, he's back for another helping of garbage, this time claiming the same Pentagon that supposedly helped Obama cover for Pakistan at the cost of thousands of US troops recently engineered a coup to keep Bashar al-Assad in power by giving Turkey all our intel on Syria.

Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.

The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists. 

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’

In other words, instead of saying "Hey, we don't have a solution to who would follow Assad if he was deposed", the Pentagon's reaction was then to commit the largest and most egregious example of military espionage-based treason in recent world history and give our intelligence on Syria's rebels and ISIS to Assad so he could fight both, stay in power, and hopefully hurt the Islamic State.

This is what Sy Hersh is claiming.

It gets worse.

In July 2013, the Joint Chiefs found a more direct way of demonstrating to Assad how serious they were about helping him. By then the CIA-sponsored secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey, had been underway for more than a year (it started sometime after Gaddafi’s death on 20 October 2011).​＊ The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence. On 11 September 2012 the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed during an anti-American demonstration that led to the burning down of the US consulate in Benghazi; reporters for the Washington Post found copies of the ambassador’s schedule in the building’s ruins. It showed that on 10 September Stevens had met with the chief of the CIA’s annex operation. The next day, shortly before he died, he met a representative from Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services, a Tripoli-based company which, the JCS adviser said, was known by the Joint Staff to be handling the weapons shipments. 

By the late summer of 2013, the DIA’s assessment had been circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad’s army. Gaddafi’s stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. ‘There was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president,’ the JCS adviser said. ‘The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook. The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride.’ But it wasn’t only the CIA that benefited. ‘We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdoğan,’ the adviser said, ‘and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”’ 

The flow of US intelligence to the Syrian army, and the downgrading of the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels, came at a critical juncture. The Syrian army had suffered heavy losses in the spring of 2013 in fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups as it failed to hold the provincial capital of Raqqa. Sporadic Syrian army and air-force raids continued in the area for months, with little success, until it was decided to withdraw from Raqqa and other hard to defend, lightly populated areas in the north and west and focus instead on consolidating the government’s hold on Damascus and the heavily populated areas linking the capital to Latakia in the north-east. But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs’ support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, which by the end of 2013 had made enormous gains on both sides of the Syria/Iraq border. The remaining non-fundamentalist rebels found themselves fighting – and losing – pitched battles against the extremists. In January 2014, IS took complete control of Raqqa and the tribal areas around it from al-Nusra and established the city as its base. Assad still controlled 80 per cent of the Syrian population, but he had lost a vast amount of territory.

And we did this all because apparently President Obama was too stupid to realize he was being played in Syria by the Saudis and Erdogan, and that our generals had no choice but to save him from himself.

It's amazing stuff, Hersh has three-quarters of a Tom Clancy novel here, and I don't believe a word of it. Understand that Hersh is flat out saying that the Joint Chiefs knowingly went behind President Obama's back and worked with a foreign power in direct contravention of the Commander-in-Chief.

Again, this is treason, actual, literal and legal treason and not the screamy figurative stuff here.

It's insane and if true, it's a massive military scandal and people need to go to prison for a very, very long time.

But again, only if true, and Hersh's recent track record leaves much to be desired in the realm of credibility.  I'm sorry.

Year End Stuff: We're The Kids Of America

On vacation until 2016, so I have a couple of pieces to put up for the next week or so, nothing major.

Year end predictions and scorecard are coming on the 31st as usual.

For today, news that the kids are not all right.

Fortune reports that Generation Y Americans (those born after 1980) lag behind their overseas peers in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Researchers at the Princeton-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), who conducted the study, administered a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, to measure the job skills of adults in 23 countries.

Here's how we fared, according to ABC Chicago:


Top 5 scores in literacy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Netherlands
4) Australia
5) Sweden

The United States placed at #17 out of 23.

Top 5 scores in numeracy:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Flanders (Belgium)
4) Netherlands
5) Sweden

The United States placed at #21 out of 23.

Top 5 scores in PS-TRE:
1) Japan
2) Finland
3) Australia
4) Sweden
5) Norway

The United States placed #18 out of 20.

The results were shocking to researchers as American millennials were found to be the most educated generation ever, according to the study.

"We really thought [U.S.] Millennials would do better than the general adult population, either compared to older coworkers in the U.S. or to the same age group in other countries," Madeline Goodman, an ETS researcher who worked on the study, told Fortune. "But they didn’t. In fact, their scores were abysmal."

The study concludes that a more expensive and expansive education "may not hold all the answers."

You mean the rest of the world has passed us by in education?

You don't say.