Archives for 2009

Goldman And Palin In The Zeitgeist

2009/07/15 By Dr Leo Strauss 10 Comments

Hard to argue that Goldman has preternatural luck. Oh, Matt Taibbi and that lot point to personal favors amounting to hundreds of billions due to some ‘old boys network.’

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

Like you wouldn’t help a friend out in a jam?

But Peter Daou is definitely wrong when he blames Palin-mania as distraction for Goldman’s most recent larceny. Daou is pretty bright – when blogs were first rolling out in 2003/04 he twigged onto how the Movement uses institutions, fronts and meme distributors better than almost any Democrat/Progressive. (Compare his insight with a hilarious meeting we had with Reid’s senior staffers (off the record) at about the same time trying to explain the same to them. The looks of incomprehension are still worth a chuckle). Daou got it.

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Now It Can Be Told (revised)

2009/07/12 By Dr Leo Strauss 10 Comments

Of course, Dear Reader, most of the ‘leaks’ from ‘informed sources’ about the latest congressional intelligence [sic] oversight [sic] pas de deux are kin to ‘news’ leaks from Michael Jackson’s parrot. Ferrets are more likely to launch out of Wolf Blitzer’s beard determined to beat down John King into a frenzied pulp. And then gang together to shred King’s refrigerator-sized Wintel magic computer thing-a-majig. But if one plays the odds . . .

_________press to start__________

A couple summary points:

(a) CIA, the Rotary Club, the Walt Whitman and Mclean High School Marching Bands have all been trying to kill Al Qaeda senior leaders even before 9/11. That’s the point of Clinton’s half-assed cruise missile attack the wingnuts claimed was to er, wag his ‘dog.’ Many underscore all this today rightly as a reality check against mindless gossip trafficking that this 2009 disclosure was ‘targeting Al Qaeda leaders for assassination’. (Update: Yet, reports continue that this apparently is exactly what panicked Panetta. One must sometimes just shake one’s head. And you watch out, John King!).

(b) Congressional oversight needs to be re-invented. Congress has no one to blame but itself. They cravenly abandoned their hard won rights. Forget oversight 2001-2009. They couldn’t even get authorizations together. And pity the desk drawer that took all that abuse from Rockefeller as he (we are sure) manly slammed his unsent letters to Cheney. Those posturing now on the Hill (Dem and Repub alike) are guilty of gross dereliction of duty and step up only now amid the institutional dead. Treason of a kind.

We’ve had structural congressional oversight only for 29 years, 8 of them a trivial formality (2001-2009). So a third of the 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act’s lifetime is a bitter joke. The mechanisms and framework created in 1980 relied on political compromise, ‘comity’ (with a ‘t’) and a willingness to use ‘checks (cheques) and balances’ rather than ‘separation of power’ legal formalisms. Congress knew oversight was always a few missteps from institutional capture or worse. This broader understanding of how intelligence oversight would function between the branches is a major reason for the different ‘notice’ regimes for certain special activities, collection, etc. In the end, the creators of the 1980 Oversight Act knew that ‘law’ would never settle matters – but ‘cheques’.

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Final Version: Les Grossman Holds The Moscow Summit (NSFW) (Updated Post Summit)

2009/07/06 By Dr Leo Strauss 10 Comments

Not Safe For Work Or Kids

Long time readers know we’ve spent years and years immersed in U.S.-Soviet/Russian strategic issues, both through the traditional lense of American policy and academics as well as more, shall we say, hands on means. And it is certainly true that summit meetings used to be the professional equivalent of Live Aid. All scrambling to convey, discover to promote a ‘meaning’ discerned from conversations on Olympus. We just couldn’t summon the interest or energy to devote much attention to Obama’s all too predictable meetings in Moscow.

So we did the next best thing: imagined what real audacity would do with Putin and Medvedev. That can only mean one man: Les Grossman. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Tropic Thunder’ all should be clear. Les is a Hollywood producer, which in *that* universe is more powerful than the president of the United States. It’s also pretty damn funny. To us, anyway. So Les Grossman, meet Putin and Medvedev. To underscore: this is definitely *not safe for work* or kids. But enjoy on the Q T . . . (the following is in Flash, so you iOS kids are out of luck):

We keeed. We keeed because we love. Or used to. It also seems so remote.

This old hoary chestnut from STSOZ 1.0 shows how difficult even a hollow slogan like ‘reset’ will be (assuming the U.S. stumbles upon even the right word and this time then also spells it correctly in Russian). (Perhaps the savants at State will latch onto ‘abort’? Audit? Colonoscopy? Seriously. One really can’t be too imaginative and then be too bemused to see what emerges from the other end of the bureaucracy).

Inchoerent Hegemon

We’ve ultimately decided to skip making comments about Putin and Obama. Feels like joyless work. One reason? We spent so many years on the Sov front. Before the Russian Federation emerged. And the aftermath in the 1990s. Most the strategic errors in U.S.-Russian relations are in our opinion unfortunately more due to American ignorance, bellicosity, lack of historical perspective and plain Warlord recklessness. Like a car crash unfolding in slow motion, one could anticipate almost every Russian reaction to U.S. policy since 2001 years in advance. If anyone had a clue about Russian history, politics, society, etc. Oh wait, Cher Condi was a Russian ‘expert’. The prosecution rests. So even typing why we don’t have the energy to comment on the summit feels like rehashing the obvious.

Frankly, we’re a bit envious of the young wonks, ‘specialists’ and bloggers on this topic. Everything is fresh and new. Soviet Union? Might as well be Carthage. The supreme Soviet/Russian leader hiding behind a cats paw to retain power and manipulate the West? Why, it’s shocking and a totally new development and so on. These are the same youngsters who can close a bar drunkenly talking about health care savings account and productivity offsets via deferred cost structures tied to section blah blah of the Code. We envy their ability to be so consumed. And also want to shoot them. (Metaphorically, with an ironic finger pistol – relax our dear Bureau Friends and your NSL xerox mills).

So forgive us if we close with Les Grossman once again. Celebrating the conclusion of the Putin-Medvedev summit. Yes, yes, we know, our peers, mentors and old friends from the Soviet/Russian days/arena are likely shaking their heads. But we’ve paid our dues. Don’t be a playah hata.

For Once We Hope Bill Kristol Is Right

2009/07/03 By Dr Leo Strauss 2 Comments

From the equine’s orifice tonight:

And haven’t conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she’ll [Sarah Palin] try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She’ll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she’ll have to perform well.
All in all, it’s going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn’t bet against it.

We hope so. We were planning on donating and already have been vocally agitating in Movement circles on her behalf. To ensure she became the 2012 nominee. Sigh.

There May Have Gone One Of Tina Fey's Best Annuities

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Why Should ‘Torture’ Be Any Different?

2009/07/01 By Dr Leo Strauss 3 Comments

Of course the Obama Administration punted today and delayed yet again the oft promised public release of CIA’s [sic] own internal investigation into torture and abuse of detainees. Why should this play out any different than say, don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT), defense of marriage, state secrets or a host of other broken commitments?

Imagine the scene. A 47 year old self-professed ‘change agent’ and Commander-in-Chief meets at the White House a decorated war veteran facing career termination because he happens to be gay. He looks the war hero in the face. And says without blinking or apparent irony while shaking his hand that he, the Commander-in-Chief, is helpless to sign an executive order placing DADT on hold pending congressional review. He’s helpless doncha know before some ‘generational prejudices’ in his own armed forces. (Something, oddly, his Secretary for Homeland Security can surmount and has no qualms doing, btw).

Now imagine what this towering oak, this schwerpunkt of progressive achievement is gonna say when he is stampeded by a herd of terrified GS-15s et al. braying at him for releasing yet more ‘secrets’? All while a bureaucratically weak Panetta tries to ride his internal stampede by calling Rahm on the backside?

When we labelled Obama ‘Boy King’ last Fall we worried about ineptitude, inexperience and general Peanut Farmerisms. All while secretly nursing -dare we say it? — hope that he would be a principled, focused and consistently progressive president. As stabilizing antidote to the Warlord’s perhaps fatal corrosiveness. He is far and away a much more canny politician than we credited him. And far and away just as much a disappointment.

Catering To The Pride Of Dead Bureaucracies

First, on the report issue one should note there are not many meta-level secrets left in it anyway. The most damning is, of course, that CIA had no legitimate purpose for using *any* enhanced interrogation techniques at any time. Why? Because it was and remained completely blind about the enemy. It had no assets. There simply was no way to evaluate whether anything said to them was true or false. Torture or abuse can not be rationalized in this situation even in McCain’s Jack Bauer wet dreams. This is CIA’s real shame. A complete and utter failure as an institution. Among many others. So on first principles of intelligence, the practice was unfounded. And another reason why Tenet helped lead CIA to its tragically deserved destruction.

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