Same Old, Same Old

A few weeks ago Jonathan Easleyy of The Hill reported

First lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) suffers from adulthood obesity and is an example of why her "Let’s Move" campaign is such an important initiative.

Speaking Wednesday on the "Today" show, the first lady was asked to comment on reports that Christie secretly underwent a medical operation in February to help him lose weight.

“The one thing I will say is that there are millions of people like the governor who struggle with adulthood obesity, and that’s one of the reasons why 'Let’s Move' is so important,” she said. “Because we want to start working with kids when they’re young so that they don’t have these challenges when they get older.”

The first lady initially tempered her comments by calling it a private family decision.


Of course she did- because, as Easley added, "The New Jersey governor is one of the most popular political figures in the country, and many consider him to be in the top-tier of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates."   And no one may criticize Chris Christie.

Especially, it would seem, in front of his BFF, Barack Obama.   In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, in late October the President toured Atlantic City, N.J. with Christie and appeared at a press conference in a photo-op valuable to both men.  Atlantic City mayor Lorenzo Langford, who has feuded with the NJ Governor was notably absent, presumably because he might have imperiled the comity between the two Republicans- uh, er, the Republican and the Democrat.

Several conservative opinon-makers were Incensed that one of the party's governors would be campaigning with the Democratic president a few days before a close election.  Predictably, MSNBC bloggers were contemptuous of the right, one praising Christie for allegedly "abandoning partisanship in favor of responding to a natural disaster-induced crisis," another slamming "the right-wing's growing rapid hatred of bipartisanship."

But Christie's favor to the President has been returned.   As Matt Katz (unofficial stenographer to the Governor) effused Tuesday

The boys of October are back, just in time for summer.

"Jersey, you still got a lot of road ahead, but when you look out on this beach here, it looks good!" President Obama told the Jersey Shore this afternoon.

Invoking the phrase officials have adopted as part of the Jersey Shore tourism campaign, Obama said: "You are stronger than the storm."

"After all you've dealt with and after all you've been through, the Jersey Shore is back and it's open for business."

Obama and Gov. Christie, the bipartisan duo that worked closely in the aftermath of Sandy -- and in the process triggered controversy of seismic levels in the lead-up to Election Day -- are hanging out today on the Jersey Shore. Beyond the political implications, the event is intended to let America know that the state's main tourist destination is largely up and running, ready to welcome tourists.

Ah, yes," just in time for the summer", two guys from the neighborhood just "hanging out," knocking back a couple.   In his next, the fifth, paragraph, Katz got around to telling us where on the "Jersey" ("New Jersey" is just, oh, so formal) shore the two buds were.

The President's support for Christie, campaigning for re-election to the Statehouse, is apiece with one of the President's most curious habits.    Republican SenatorLincoln Chafee, who became an Independent and was elected Governor of New Hampshire, has now switched his party identication to Democrat in his bid to be re-elected.   Chairperson Peter Shumlin of the Democratic Governor's Association says the organization will support "whomever emerges as the Democratic nominee."  Nonetheless

In an encouraging sign for Chafee, the White House publicly embraced him as a soon-to-be-minted Democrat on Wednesday, issuing a statement from Obama praising Chafee as “an independent thinker and leader” who hasn’t been constrained by party labels

.

“I enjoyed working with Linc when he was a Republican in the United States Senate, and I look forward to continuing that collaboration on the issues that matter not just to the Democratic Party, but to every American,” Obama said. “I’m thrilled to welcome Linc to the party of Jefferson and Jackson, Roosevelt and Kennedy – and I look forward to working with him in the years ahead.”

It’s no surprise that Chafee would win a warm reception from Obama: The ex-Republican campaigned for the president in 2008 and 2012 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last summer.

Obama has returned the favor: he declined to endorse a Democrat for governor in 2010, when Chafee was running as an independent in a three-way race. And when Chafee ran TV ads featuring archival footage of the president praising him, Obama and his aides did not object.

In fact, despite being officially neutral in 2010, Obama was perceived as so Chafee-friendly that the Democratic nominee that year, Frank Caprio, told Rhode Island radio station WPRO that the president could “take his endorsement and really shove it.”

Chafee ultimately won with 36 percent of the vote, while Caprio fell into third place.

Blogging at Hullabaloo, David Atkins notes that the state Democratic establishment is displeased that what he accurately dubs "the Neoliberal-in-Chief" has endorsed Chafee.  The Governor's whose switch of party is particularly opportunistic, his only chance to avoid what otherwise would be near-certain defeat for the unpopular governor in this reliably Democratic State.  Atkins explains

Lincoln Chafee has finally decided to switch parties and become a Democrat. The short and simple analysis is that Chafee faced an uncomfortable three-way battle in which many Democrats declined to endorse their own fellow Democrat Frank Caprio in order to assure that a Republican didn't sneak into the Rhode Island governorship. Chafee's switch to the Democratic Party means that he can potentially avoid that situation if he runs for re-election.

A lazy progressive take on Chafee's switch is that Republicans have become so extreme that they've driven the likes of Chafee out of their party, that more sensible Republicans should switch away also, that the GOP is facing death throes as the Bachmanns are laughed out of Congress while the Chafees become Democrats. Yada yada. But I'm not going to do that, because it would be whistling past the graveyard.

The reality is that while Chafee is reliably liberal on social issues, he largely remains an economic conservative. That makes him wholly inadequate as a Democrat.

Now, if Rhode Island were a tough red state in which Chafee was a reliable winner against a bevy of hyperconservatives, that would be different. Ben Nelson, for instance, will always get a pass in Nebraska because there aren't good alternatives. But Rhode Island is not that. Good progressive Democrats with real progressive economic values can and should win in Rhode Island. Lincoln Chafee is not the best of a bad bargain. He's the worst of a good bargain.

Chairperson of the Ventura County (CA.) Democratic Central Committe, Atkins concludes

As Democrats, we can do better than Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, particularly now that he's saddled with bad approval ratings. We must do better.

And it must be the state party leadership in Rhode Island that stands up to the President and makes it clear that they expect and demand a real Democrat run for and win the governorship of the Ocean State.

Congressional Democrats, liberal pundits, and others must support the President as he is saddled with the largely trumped-up Benghazi and IRS scandals. (The AP/Justice Department scrum is a different matter.)  But if (though unlikely) Obama's troubles grow and the possiblity of  impeachment looms, House Democrats might remember that a defining characteristic of Barack Obama's political career has been that, when faced with competing interests of party and self, he never has wavered.

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Teflon General, Still

Spencer Ackerman at least realizes he was bamboozled or, in contemporary terms, "punked."  He notes what should be obvious, that the affair conducted by General David Petraeus with the latter's adoring biographer, Paula Broadwell, "had nothing to do with his military leadership or achievements."

Perception of those achievements, Ackerman courageously admits, was enhanced as "Like many in the press, nearly every national politician, and lots of members of Petraeus' brain trust over the years, I played a role in the creation of the legend around David Petraeus."   Nevertheless, now that Petraeus has been brought down, one would expect soul-searching, or at least an objective evaluation of the General's leadership.  One would be wrong.

Broadwell wrote All In with with Vernon Loeb, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, who composed, as he puts it, "a real-time narrative from the torrent of e-mails, documents, and interview transcripts Broadwell sent my way" about Petraeus' year commanding the Afghanistan war.    Apparently a sheepish over his failure to recognize the relationship between Petraeus and Broadwell, Loeb nonetheless now writes, with no hint of self-reflection

The only contact I had with Petraeus during my work on the book came in 2011 during one of his trips back to Washington while he was still in command of the war. He invited me to go running with him along the Potomac in a gesture that was vintage Petraeus.

No one cultivated e-mail relationships with journalists better than he did; no one could be more personable on a kind of superficial level that nonetheless made people feel good about their interaction with him....

We drove six miles out along the Potomac, were dropped off, and ran back along the dirt tow path. The commander of the war in Afghanistan and I ran side by side, talking about great world events. I could scarcely believe I suddenly had this kind of access.

That tingling feeling may have ensued because "As Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, I had briefly embedded with the 101st Airborne Division under Petraeus' command in northern Iraq in the fall of 2003, and found the general - and what he'd accomplished - impressive and inspiring. Mosul, and much of his sector in the north, were largely pacified."

Similarly, Loeb's newspaper yesterday editorialized 

The resignation of David Petraeus as CIA director is a serious blow to the nation’s national security leadership, and it comes at an unfortunate moment. With the expected departure of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a possible reshuffling of senior officials at the National Security Council, President Obama could have benefited particularly from Mr. Petraeus’s knowledge and seasoning as he begins to grapple with second-term challenges in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Mr. Petraeus understands those issues as well as any American, and his record of service as a military commander is without equal in his generation...

The editors conclude "the loss of Mr. Petraeus' service" is "a harm brought about by his own actions, for which he has taken responsibility. But it will hurt the country no less."

The usually sober editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer claim

After only 14 months at the CIA, Petraeus can be replaced, which is not the same as saying his leadership won't be missed. He is an exceptional commander, as demonstrated by his successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq and results-oriented tour of duty in Afghanistan. In time, he was expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA.

Fortunately, with his nearly inevitable resignation, Mr. Petraeus no longer will be "expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA."  Journalist Juan Cole, who (unlike this blogger) opposed the escalation of American troops in Afghanistan, explains

What I had been concerned about, despite my admiration for Petraeus, is that he wasn't the right person to head the CIA when among its major tasks was to evaluate the counter=insurgency effort in Afghanistan. Since Petraeus authored that strategy and oversaw a stage of that war as commander, it actually was not fair to have him head the evaluative effort, and he shouldn't have been put in that position.

Counter-insurgency as Petraeus defined it involves a four-stage process. The army has to taketerritory away from a guerrilla movement. It has to clear that territory of the enemy. It has to hold that territory for long enough to reassure the local population that the guerrillas are not coming back and won't punish them as collaborators if they have something to do with the US. It has to build, i.e. build up local institutions such as police, so as to provide security and prosperity in the long run. Counter-insurgency is long and slow and requires winning over local hearts and minds.

Petraeus and other officers boxed Obama in in late 2009 and more or less imposed a counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan on him. They only gave him this one plan, when he asked for 3 to choose from.

The counter-insurgency idea derived from the view of some in the officer corps that they had had a victory of sort because of the troop escalation or "surge" in Iraq late in the Bush period. As far as I can tell, however, violence in Iraq fell through 2007 not mainly because of US GI's but because a Shiite ethnic cleansing campaign chased most Sunnis from mixed neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had convinced Petraeus to begin with the Sunni armed groups, and to disarm them. Once they were helpless, the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army went in and ethnically cleansed the remaining ones.

Through 2007 forward, as mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods became more solidly Shiite, the death toll began declining. Angry Shiites who wanted to kill a Sunni would have had to get in their cars and drive for a while to find one.

Petraeus knew about the ethnic cleansing campaign. He was aware that it was creating a new wave of Sunni refugees. But he saw the troop escalation or ‘surge' as the primary reason for the fall in violence.

Based on this misunderstanding of what had happened in Iraq, Petraeus hoped to do in Afghanistan what he thought he did with Baghdad. Hence the mantra, take clear hold build.

But this kind of counter-insurgency would have required hundreds of thousands of fresh troops. Petraeus didn't have them. It was a huge endeavor.

It has largely failed, though US politicians and journalists seem reluctant to say so.

That failure of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is dangerous and poses special dangers for our troops. It is dangerous for the future, since it cries out for clearsightedness lest we plunge into more such mistakes.

As coverage of the issue plays out, the emphasis on l'affaire Petraeus will demonstrate greater interest of the corporate media in matters sexual than in the conduct of foreign policy and national intelligence.     Little attention will be given to the massive human suffering which American policy, though in Afghanistan well-meaning, has helped bring about in the two Asian nations.   Still, the apparent disinterest in deaths of soldiers and civilians alike pale in comparison to the obliviousness, not so well-intentioned, of the American media to the causes and implications of both wars, and to the role played by the sainted General David Petraeus.






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Philadelphia Flyers Campaign For McCain-Palin

The Philadelphia Inquirer notes today that Governor Earmark will be dropping the ceremonial first puck at the opening game of the regular season of the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers. The Inquirer reports

Last month, after Palin spoke in her acceptance speech about being a hockey mom, the Flyers launched a search for the area's "ultimate hockey mom." The winner will be on the ice with Palin for the faceoff.

Ed Snider, who as Comcast-Spectacor chairman runs the Flyers, said this appearance at the Wachovia Center "has nothing to do with politics. This is to have some fun with the fabulous statement she made."

You might think the characterization of Palin's remark as "the fabulous statement" might betray a partisan preference on the part of the multimillionaire Snider. Especially if you kew that Snider attended a reception for Palin in Philadelphia on the night of the first debate between the two presidential nominees and has contributed a total of $25,000 to the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Unfortunately, the Alaska governor probably will receive a "fabulous" reception from the overwhelmingly white, predominately conservative, fans. And although Palin's beneficial , such as it is, impact upon the McCain campaign is largely limited to the Repub base, there no doubt is another demographic the GOP hopes to reach in Pennsylvania, which tends to go Democratic- narrowly- in presidential races. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has argued recently that "undecided" voters in the greater Pittsburgh area (and points in Pennsylvania south of there) may be balking at voting for Obama because of race. Although that is outside of the Philadelphia media market (and partial to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the rare moments they are not obsessed with the NFL's Steelers), a similar phenomenon may be occurring in a lesser scale in Philadelphia. Ben Smith of Politico writes (albeit anecdotally) on October 6:

An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I've heard a lot in recent weeks.
"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."

All polls of Pennsylvania show the Democratic nominee leading John McCain, most with the margin having grown in recent weeks. Still, this is a state which Obama lost decisively (by 9.4%) in the primary, and apparently one which bolsters the hypothesis that resistance among white voters to voting for Obama is greater in states in which "turf" is an issue and whose economy and state have been growing little, if at all, the last several years. Victory in Pennsylvania is not essential given Barack Obama's opportunity to capture states lost by John Kerry in 2004, but a loss there would be a major setback.

The NRA And Criminals: Perfect Together

I'm not making this up.

Amy Worden of the Philadelphia Inquirer's Harrisburg bureau reports today (3/18/08) of an effort to attach amendment A6178, requiring handgun owners to report lost or stolen weapons, to crime-code bill S.B.1845. Handgun owners would have three days to report guns that are lost or stolen and would not be prosecuted if the weapon were not connected to a crime or if the owner did not know the gun had been lost or stolen.

Where is the NRA, you ask? The National Rifle Association's chief lobbyist in Pennsylvania, John Hohenwarter, charged "it's setting up a system that criminalizes victims of crime." Even if the amendment were to pass, and "it was unclear whether proponents had the 102 votes needed to pass" it, there is no problem if the gun owner chooses not to report a lost or stolen gun, facing a penalty only if he/she knew it was gone and it was used in a crime.

Isn't stealing a gun a criminal offense, and wouldn't a law-abiding citizen report it? The NRA apparently doesn't think so. The National Rifle Association: preserving the rights of criminals to own handguns.

Bush Fib- no. 4

In his September 13, 2007 speech on Iraq, President Bush said "now, because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home."

There have been various efforts, by CNN and others, to determine as accurately as possible the number of soldiers whom the President will be ordering withdrawn from Iraq. In any case, it appears to be no more than the number of soldiers constituting the escalation- er, the "surge"- 30,000. Although her prescription for ending the war, I believe, is off-base, Trudy Rubin in today's Philadelphia Inquirer correctly states:

What Bush failed to tell you is where things really stand in Iraq and what must be done to avoid future disasters. The president didn't mention that the force reductions he announced are not "a return on success," as he claims. They are happening because the military has run out of troops.

Ever since the surge began, top military commanders made clear that the 30,000 extra soldiers were dangerously overstretching the Army and Marines. When I was in Baghdad in June, every senior officer I spoke to said those troops would have to start leaving by March or April of 2008. Otherwise, the military could not maintain its already onerous rotation schedule.

There is heavy and open debate among top military brass about maintaining even post-surge levels. So the president insults the public by pretending the cuts are due to military success.

And commenting on MSNBC, retired General Jack Jacobs- hardly a dove- stated that the decision to cut troop level already had been made because the U.S.A. "can't sustain this level of military deployment."

Thus, the decision to remove soldiers has been, notwithstanding the President's remark, not made "because of the measure of success we're seeing in Iraq." And that's assuming we believe that Mr. Bush would determine that the best time to remove soldiers is when those soldiers are demonstrating success, a strange tactical policy.

Iraq: Administration Was Warned

The largest headline in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, arguably one of the best newspapers in the nation: "Harrah's unveils its new Pool." Accompanied by a large photograph including gawking spectators ("In the pool, casino managers and bikini-clad servers cut a ribbon"), the article appeared on the front page.

Not worthy of page 1 coverage? That would be "'03 files warned of risks in Iraq war," describing newly declassified documents which were circulated within the U.S. government shortly before the invasion of Iraq. In this article, Katherine Schrader of the Associated Press asserted the analysts found (among other things) "establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a long, steep and probably turbulent challenge (and) Al-Qaeda would see the invasion as a chance to accelerate its attacks and the lines between al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups 'could become blurred.'" Not surprisingly, Keith Olberman covered this story at the top in yesterday's Countdown, but I haven't had a chance yet to see how the mainstream media generally is addressing this. I would appreciate hearing what others have seen, read, or heard of this story. And by the way, this is one of the benefits (oversight) of having a Democratic Congress, with the Senate Intelligence Committee voting- eight Democratics and two Republicans, Nebraska's Hagel and Maine's Snowe- by 10-5 to release the documents.