Political Blog—June 2010

June 1—Let them eat oil.

That BP CEO Tony Hayward is one giant douchebag. He tried to deny that the oil cleanup workers were sickening from the toxic substances they were dealing with. He said it was probably food poisoning. What in the fuck! What, are the workers eating oil? I hope he takes that back. I'm about sick of his ass covering. Speaking of Hayward's douchebaggery, he had the gall to add "I want my life back." What! You want your life back? What about the eleven people who lost their lives? What about those sick oil workers? What about the shrimpers? You want your life back? At this point you're lucky you've still got it, buster. Even if Hayward doesn't take back his earlier comment, you can bet money that other comment will follow him till he takes it back. I'm guessing twenty-four hours.

June 2—I was right.

Tony Hayward did indeed take back his comment about wanting his life back, saying it was thoughtless. No shit. Everything he says is thoughtless.

Anyway, related to the oil spill, the latest tactic at stopping the spill has hit a snag. They were using underwater robots with diamond saws to work on capping the well, and the blade got stuck. All I can say is, if robots with diamond saws can't fix it, God help us. They got the saw blade unstuck, but it's fairly obvious that it's still not going to be effective. And of course yesterday marked the beginning of hurricane season, so you know this can only get worse.

June 8—Blago . . . blah blah blah

That crook Blagojevich's trial starts today. I know, I know; innocent until proven guilty, but really. It's not like he's really actually going to serve any real time; famous people never do.

Meanwhile, BP says it's going to redo the cap on that well in a month. I'm more interested in what they're doing (or not doing) in the meantime.

June 13—Axelrod on Meet the Press

David Axelrod, on Meet the Press this morning, discussed Obama's response to the oil spill. Obama is reluctant to meet with Tony Hayward (who wouldn't be?) because he said he didn't want to meet with people who only tell him what he want to hear. Of course, any industry leader is bound to tell the president what he wants to hear, but this is a bit different. Hayward is not, as Axelrod pointed out, a sympathetic figure. He also said that the people in the Gulf whose livelihoods have been destroyed are the ones under pressure, not Obama or Hayward. Matt Lauer said it's time Obama kicked some ass.

David Gregory asked Axelrod about the economy; he suggested that more stimulus might be necessary, but that which had occurred already was a kind of phony, government fueled recovery. Axelrod pointed out that many factors affected our economy, including the current European crisis, so just working on this country wouldn't be enough.

Then Axelrod talked about the primaries and whom Obama might campaign for. David Gregory asked him about Alvin Greene, that random unemployed guy in South Carolina who somehow won the primary without any funds. From what I can tell, he's a creep and an idiot. Axelrod did not believe him a legitimate candidate and essentially agreed that he should drop out of the race. God help us if he wins.

June 20—Sooo . . . the oil's just staying there, then?

Meet the Press this morning focused largely on the absence of anything being done about the oil spill in the Gulf. David Gregory had to ask if Tony Hayward were even still on the job, what with his idiotic public comments and the fact that he was recently seen vacationing. Also, of course, an alarming lack of skimmers have shown up to, well, skim oil from the Gulf. There of course followed the inevitable comparisons of this catastrophe to Katrina. I wish people would stop comparing disasters; every one is different. Though, speaking of hurricanes, we're into hurricane season now, and the storms are starting to appear on the Gulf, lining up and getting ready to head this way.

Surprisingly, the most distressing and surprising thing in the whole broadcast was Senator Landrieu saying that she still supported deep water drilling. Incredible. Even Schwarzenegger changed his mind about it. Yes, I know the economy needs it, but there has got to be another way.

June 23—McChrystal is lucky not to be undergoing court martial, so shut the fuck up.

So, in case you haven't heard, today Obama accepted General Stan McChrystal's resignation. Obama said he regretted it but was certain it was the right thing for Afghanistan, the military, and the country. He said he didn't sack McChrystal as a personal insult, though many, I'm sure, feel that way. People, listen:

The military code of conduct makes what McCrystal said a court-martial offense. It is not protected under the first amendment.

Specifically, article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states

Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Obama pointed out that McChrystal had not followed the code of conduct, did not meet the standards of a general, and undermined the trust of the nation. He also announced that Petraeus would be taking command, which Obama said would maintain the momentum of our leadership.

I read Matthew Hastings' Rolling Stone interview online, and it was pretty appalling. It portrays McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama adiministration and who can't convince some of his own soldiers that his own strategy could win the war. McChrystal comes across as crude, uncultured, unwilling to deal with necessary evils of diplomacy, and uninterested in learning how to fix those things. Many servicemen are crude and uncultured—hence the term "swears like a sailor"—but surely one would learn some diplomatic skills with promotion. McChrystal and his staff mocked civilian government officials both at home and abroad. The worst part is that none of them had the sense to hold anything back from a fucking reporter. However, the journalist said he got the feeling that McChrystal and his staff seemed to be deliberately shaking things up, and there was no pushback from them during the fact checking, no "You can't publish that." So maybe McChrystal wanted out; maybe he wanted attention—either way, he certaily got what he wanted. Unless what he wanted was to make Obama and the rest look bad, in which case he's only right to those who already hate Obama and don't understand the military code of conduct.

June 27—Reviewing the Situation

On Meet the Press today, McCain said he approved of Obama firing McChrystal. Of course he did; McChrystal committed a court-martial offense. Anyway, McCain was right when he said that plenty of people in the military say things they probably shouldn't about their commanding officers, but not to that extent and definitely not to a reporter; it's just not appropriate. Also, he added, it was an important moment of leadership for Obama. Anyway, they continued the discussion of Afghanistan: David Gregory pointed out that the war in Afghanistan has now gone on longer than the one in Vietnam. He asked McCain about the withdrawal timetable for Iraq when we would be leaving Afghanistan, to which McCain unsurprisingly replied that he was against timetables. He said, "In wars, you declare when you're leaving after you've succeeded." Yes, but when is that? At what cost? How do we even define success? And by the way, why exactly are we in Afghanistan, still? The Taliban has moved. They're in Pakistan now. Yes, the Taliban ought to be demolished, but is it necessary to wage a war that accomplishes nothing? Gregory more or less asked that. He compared the ongoing war(s) to Vietnam, asking what the clear achievable objective was. McCain said the goal was that "Afghanistan . . . not return to a base for attacks on the United States and [its] allies."

Of course, I don't think either war is really accomplishing anything. As Thomas Friedman said this week,

What do we win if we win? At least in Iraq, if we eventually produce a decent democratizing government, we will, at enormous cost, have changed the politics in a great Arab capital in the heart of the Arab Muslim world. That can have wide resonance. Change Afghanistan at enormous cost and you've changed Afghanistan-period. Afghanistan does not resonate.

McCain said Friedman was wrong about us failing in Iraq. This was seconds after he--McCain--had criticized "the consequences of failure in Iraq," which he described as "significant." *rolls eyes*

Anyway, I'm concerned that we won't be out of the Middle East any time soon. Obama sounded suspiciously like he was backtracking when he discussed revising the withdrawal timetable earlier this week. I expect to hear a review later this year.

June 29—Hey, my phone is red. Kind of.

So, the next big news and scandal that nobody will pay attention to due to the crisis in the Gulf is straight out of a spy novel from the seventies: Russian spies. Yes, real ones. Only days after Obama joked about getting rid of the Cold War-era red telephones. Then. Then the Justice Department announced that they'd arrested ten alleged Russian spies, in four different states, with another suspect still at large. The suspects are accused of carrying out deep cover assignments for the Russian government, having been controlled and directed by Moscow, complete with fake Americanized names. Eight acted as married couples. All were assigned to get friendly with influential Americans and send intel back home. Last year, the FBI intercepted and decrypted a message from Moscow to two of the alleged spies that read, "You were sent to USA for along-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house, et cetera—all of these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties and policy making circles in U.S. and send intels to C."

That message sounds ludicrously fake, but so do the techniques used by the agents: brush-passes, short-wave radio operation, invisible writing, steganography, and codes and ciphers (including encrypted Morse code). Apparently at one point, one agent was on her laptop in a coffee shop exchanging information with a Russian government official outside the shop in his minivan. Wouldn't it have been simpler to meet inside the shop? I mean, he's already here. Probably would have attracted less attention than a kidnappers' van straight out of The Andromeda Strain or The Conversation or something.

Anyway. Now that the story has been in the news for a day or two, pictures of the agents are starting to surface, or at least of one of them, Anna Chapman. When the story first broke, the only article I could find with a picture was, inexplicably, a picture of a chocolate cake captioned with her name. Whatever. Suffice it to say that locating photographs of her has since become so easy it's not even worth it; she's now a Facebook sensation. She's doomed to be parodied in a porno now. "Behind Panty Lines" or something. Well done, Mr. Flynt.

June 30—A Cursory Note That Will Likely Be of High Consequence Later

Hurricane Alex made landfall in Mexico today with wind speeds exceeding ninety knots. I think that's over one hundred miles per hour. . . . Yes, one hundred five. To say the least, this does not bode well for the oil spill in the Gulf.