Been away from the computer all day anything happening?
*checks the headlines*
Oh god fucking damnit you asshole how hard is it to just not fucking abuse women you sick fuckers.
This post is in: Assholes
Been away from the computer all day anything happening?
*checks the headlines*
Oh god fucking damnit you asshole how hard is it to just not fucking abuse women you sick fuckers.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
As you might guess, after the second picture, the licking turned to biting, and then there were squeaks, and now the kittehs are off the desk. But they can be sweet about grooming each other.
By request, a pet and no-politics open thread!
by Adam L Silverman| 269 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
From Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker.
Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, has long been a liberal Democratic champion of women’s rights, and recently he has become an outspoken figure in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment. As New York State’s highest-ranking law-enforcement officer, Schneiderman, who is sixty-three, has used his authority to take legal action against the disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein, and to demand greater compensation for the victims of Weinstein’s alleged sexual crimes. Last month, when the Times and this magazine were awarded a joint Pulitzer Prize for coverage of sexual harassment, Schneiderman issued a congratulatory tweet, praising “the brave women and men who spoke up about the sexual harassment they had endured at the hands of powerful men.” Without these women, he noted, “there would not be the critical national reckoning under way.”
Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on them as “assault.” They did not report their allegations to the police at the time, but both say that they eventually sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and also choked. Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could have her followed and her phones tapped, and both say that he threatened to kill them if they broke up with him. (Schneiderman’s spokesperson said that he “never made any of these threats.”)
A third former romantic partner of Schneiderman’s told Manning Barish and Selvaratnam that he also repeatedly subjected her to nonconsensual physical violence, but she told them that she is too frightened of him to come forward. (TheNew Yorker has independently vetted the accounts that they gave of her allegations.) A fourth woman, an attorney who has held prominent positions in the New York legal community, says that Schneiderman made an advance toward her; when she rebuffed him, he slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark that lingered the next day. She recalls screaming in surprise and pain, and beginning to cry, and says that she felt frightened. She has asked to remain unidentified, but shared a photograph of the injury with The New Yorker.
In a statement, Schneiderman said, “In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”
Much more at the link. This is quickly going to overtake the news’ cycle, so buckle up and strap in. The ride is going to get bumpy! I expect “Executive Time” will be lit!
Updated at 9:50 PM EDT:
SCHNEIDERMAN RESIGNING pic.twitter.com/ZTmPDftATT
— Sam Stein (@samstein) May 8, 2018
Open thread.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Gun nuts, Open Threads, Republican Venality, All Too Normal, Assholes
NRA just announced: Lt. Colonel Oliver North, USMC (Ret.) will become President of the National Rifle Association of America within a few weeks, a process the NRA Board of Directors initiated this morning.
— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) May 7, 2018
Just in time for the Oval Office Occupancy’s big anti-Iran push!
NEW: Oliver North will become the next President of the @NRA pic.twitter.com/iDt28zTPQB
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 7, 2018
Contra to many of your jokes, I'm sure Ollie knows a thing or two about guns and the sale thereof https://t.co/BDQqckwrZ1
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) May 7, 2018
Yes, Ollie will do a better job of running the NRA that if Iran it. https://t.co/mJsnnvPkmq
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) May 7, 2018
Guess what? Iran-Contra is trending!
— Lisa Tozzi (@lisatozzi) May 7, 2018
Oliver North, who sold weapons to Iran so he could buy guns from a Syrian terrorist and then give the guns to farmer-murdering death squads, with the help of a drug-dealing Panamanian dictator. Then lied about it.
The face of law-abiding gun ownership. https://t.co/5GJgFLSjD7
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 7, 2018
Was Oliver North the Patient Zero for nominating disasters costing the GOP Senate seats they ought to have been able to win?
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 7, 2018
Fun Ollie North Trivia:
The immunity deal North was given accidentally resulted in a later case against him being dismissed.
As a result, Mueller and company will never give people close to Trump immunity in exchange for testimony.
They will all go to jail. All of them. https://t.co/WSZWLidwgy
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) May 7, 2018
NRA: it's so unfair that these Parkland kids call us terrorists.
Also NRA: Our new President armed Hezbollah.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 7, 2018
Per the great documentary A Perfect Candidate, Chuck Robb's closing message against Ollie North in 94 — this line played heavily at the end of a race North lost by 3 points https://t.co/bU5475ErWs
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) May 7, 2018
Gun-Humpers Open Thread: Oh, Yay, <em>Another</em> 80s Retread!Post + Comments (110)
by Adam L Silverman| 195 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Rofer on Nuclear Issues, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine
Cheryl has been covering the bad faith and disingenuousness of the JCPOA critics and their bad faith arguments against the agreement. I want to focus on the actual strategic issue of what war with Iran would actually entail given the people that are advocating against the JCPOA seem to think that a military solution would bring about a better resolution.
Strategic air strikes won’t achieve our objectives.
Let’s look at three maps. The first details Iran’s nuclear sites:
(Map 1: Iranian Nuclear Sites)
Map 2 is of Iran’s military bases:
(Map 2: Iranian Military Bases as of 2002)
The third map is of Iran’s population centers and population density.
(Map 3: Iranian Population Centers with Population Density)
The Iranians aren’t stupid. All of their nuclear research sites, nuclear energy sites, labs, military bases, etc are either built near heritage sites, near cities and towns, and/or close enough to the borders and the ground and sea lines of commerce and communication (GLOCCs and SLOCCs), that attempting to blow them up will cause not just significant collateral damage, but that damage will include damage to heritage sites (a war crime), as well as potentially release enough toxic material that will necessitate undertaking an immediate humanitarian assistance, disaster management and mitigation, and emergency response mission alongside offensive military operations. Iran’s placement of their nuclear sites and military bases complicates use of strategic air strikes. Moreover, these sites are hardened, meaning that Landpower will have to be used to actually go in and finish the job after the initial air campaign is concluded.
The Iranians will pursue an asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare strategy against the US.
The Iranians have the ability to close the Shat al Arab waterway and the Straits of Hormuz in order to spike global petroleum prices. They also have the ability to sink a US aircraft carrier. Such actions would be part of the overall Iranian strategy to fight the US on an asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare strategy. If they do this, it will spike global oil prices and crash the economy, which would itself be part of the asymmetric and irregular strategy.
This strategy goes beyond asymmetric naval warfare. Iranians are incredibly patriotic. Even a majority of those unhappy with the current government and who would like to see some changes. The minute we attack, those folks are going to rally to the national cause and defense. As such the Iranians allowed their war planning to leak back in the mid aughts when they were worried that the US would use Iraq as a launching pad to attack Iran. The planning basically called for emptying all the population centers, moving everyone into the mountains, and creating civilian cadres assigned to military units to conduct asymmetric and irregular warfare against the American invaders. The Iranians have specifically developed a layered or mosaic defense.
In 2005, the IRGC announced that it was incorporating a flexible, layered defense —referred to as a mosaic defense—into its doctrine. The lead author of this plan was General Mohammad Jafari, then director of the IRGC’s Center for Strategy, who was later appointed commander of the IRGC.
As part of the mosaic defense, the IRGC has restructured its command and control architecture into a system of 31 separate commands—one for the city of Tehran and 30 for each of Iran’s provinces. The primary goal of restructuring has been to strengthen unit cohesion at the local level and give commanders more latitude to respond to potential threats—both foreign and domestic. But the new structure would also make it difficult for hostile forces to degrade Iranian command and control, a lesson the Iranian military has learned by analyzing U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.
The mosaic defense plan allows Iran to take advantage of its strategic depth and formidable geography to mount an insurgency against invading forces. Most of Iran’s population centers and major lines of communication are spread out within the interior of the country. Iran’s borders are ringed by rugged mountain ranges that serve as natural barriers to invasion. As enemy supply lines stretched into Iran’s interior, they would be vulnerable to interdiction by special stay-behind cells, which the IRGC has formed to harass enemy rear operations.
The Artesh, a mix of armored, infantry and mechanized units, would constitute Iran’s initial line of defense against invading forces. IRGC troops would support this effort, but they would also form the core of popular resistance, the bulk of which would be supplied by the Basij, the IRGC’s paramilitary volunteer force. The IRGC has developed a wartime mobilization plan for the Basij, called the Mo’in Plan, according to which Basij personnel would augment regular IRGC units in an invasion scenario.
IRGC and Basij exercises have featured simulated ambushes on enemy armored columns and helicopters. Much of this training has been conducted in an urban environment, suggesting that Iran intends to lure enemy forces into cities where they would be deprived of mobility and close air support. Iran has emphasized passive defense measures—techniques used to enhance the battlefield survivability —including camouflage, concealment and deception.
This strategy is one of attrition. Leveraging the human geography of Iran – Iran’s people, places, and things – to bog the US military down and inflict such high casualties as quickly as possible in order to destroy support for the war in the US and severely damage the morale of the troops fighting it on the ground. Basically the Iranians, who invented the game of chess, have opted to prepare to play go and to play it for massive psychological effects against the US. This means the US would be fighting a war among the people. Something we are particularly bad at. Those US military units that are actually good at it, do not have enough personnel to actually conduct this type of campaign at the national level.
The US military has a readiness problem!
As GEN Thomas, the SOCOM Commander testified to Congress back in May 2017:
The head of U.S. Special Forces told Congress Thursday that constant deployments and unrealistic mission expectations were taking a major toll on his troops.
Army General Raymond Thomas, top commander of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee, saying his elite forces had been engaged in “continuous combat over the past 15 and half years.”During Thursday’s testimony, Thomas also criticized “media circles” for promoting the idea that Special Forces could solve any issue around the world. Special Forces, about 8,000 of which are currently active in an estimated 80 nations, are not a “panacea” to remedy all global conflicts, he argued.
We don’t have enough of the specialized personnel to cover down on all of SOCOM’s missions right now, we certainly don’t have enough of them to fight an asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional war against Iran. Not only that, but US conventional forces are also overstretched and barely able to conduct the missions they already have.
The US Air Force, as well as US Navy aviators, have been in almost constant combat operations since Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm. As Lt. Gen. (ret) David Deptula, the Dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies has stated:
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has been at war not just since 9/11, but since 1991. After 25 years of continuous combat operations, coupled with budget instability and lower-than-planned top lines, have made the USAF the oldest, smallest, and least ready it has ever been in its history. The average USAF aircraft age is 27 years—the youngest B-52 is over 50 years old. Going into Operation Desert Storm, the USAF had over 530,000 active duty personnel, today that number is 320,000—40 percent less, and the USAF has almost 60 percent fewer combat fighter squadrons today (55) than it did during the first Gulf War in 1991 (134). Today, over 50 percent of USAF forces are not sufficiently ready for a high-end fight against near-peer capabilities posed by China or Russia.
LTG Deptula’s analysis can be seen in the increase in crashes, like the one last week, of US military aircraft.
In March of 2017, the US Army notified Congress, through the official testimony of three 3 star general officers, that it was also faces a conventional force readiness problem. We now know this is even worse than we thought as the Army is way off – by 12,000 recruits – its recruiting targets to this point in 2018.
The Trump Doctrine and a campaign of maximum pressure will not work with Iran.
The Iranians do not actually care if they treat the President fairly or else. They’re not interested in currying favor with him personally, with his family and associates in regard to business, nor with the United States. That isn’t to say that they want a direct confrontation. Rather, unlike Kim in the DPRK, they aren’t seeking a summit to elevate their status in the international system or as a way to get out from under crippling sanctions. Iran has survived under such sanctions since the early 80s. Any attempts by the President and his surrogates to try to replicate what they think was a successful strategy against the DPRK that brought Kim to the table, will not work with Iran. Moreover, the Iranians know that two of the President’s most prominent surrogates in regard to Iran – his National Security Advisor Ambassador Bolton and his personal attorney Mayor Giuliani – are actually paid surrogates for the Mujahedin e Khalq (MEK), which is a quasi-religious/quasi-political cult that was on the US’s terrorist list until a few years ago and not thought highly of in Iran. This reduces two of the President’s key surrogates on this issue effectiveness within the region. The President’s approach to applying maximum pressure, including weaponizing twitter through the use of incendiary and insulting tweets, is the wrong strategy to achieve results with Iran. It is not clear if it was even a major factor, despite administration assertions, in Kim’s decision making. Even if it becomes clear that the maximum pressure campaign was a major contributing factor in Kim’s decision making, Ayutalluh Uzma Khameini is not Kim Jong Un and Iran is not the DPRK.
War with Iran would be so catastrophic to the US it shouldn’t even be contemplated. The actual physical terrain, as well as the human geography, is disadvantageous to the US. ISIS is not done and has either dug into its remaining strongholds in Iraq and Syria or reconstituted itself as a purely guerrilla force. Arguably the region’s best strategist is MG Suleimani, the Quds Force Commander, who turned around Assad’s flailing military campaign in the Syrian Civil War. Given Iran’s asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional war planning, if the US attacks Iran it will be like placing one’s hand in a wood chipper and pulling out a stump.
Open thread.
(I previously wrote about this issue here).
War With Iran: A Campaign Of CatastrophePost + Comments (195)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate
NEW: @realdonaldtrump has spent $400M+ in his own cash on property since ‘06, defying normal real-estate practices. https://t.co/4ulKSCB5zV
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 5, 2018
Be kinda nice if this scheduled post is outdated by the time it appears, but…
This may turn out to be the most important piece about Trump in a long time. Where he found hundreds of millions in cash, and why he’d take the risk of committing it in a decade of near-zero interest bank loans, are questions he will not want investigators to explore. https://t.co/HmehPy3zFj
— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) May 6, 2018
… Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.
It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.
Why did the “King of Debt,” as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects?
And how did Trump — who had money tied up in golf courses and buildings — raise enough liquid assets to go on this cash buying spree?…
To total up Trump’s cash payments in real estate transactions, The Washington Post examined land records and corporate reports from six U.S. states, Ireland and the United Kingdom. These records show purchase prices for Trump’s properties, details about any mortgages and — in the United Kingdom and Ireland — the amount of cash Trump plowed into his clubs after he bought them. The Post provided the figures it used to the Trump Organization, which did not dispute them…
During the 2016 campaign, Trump continued to brag about how he’d mastered the art of spending other people’s cash.
“I do that all the time in business: It’s called other people’s money. There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money because it takes the risk,” Trump told a campaign-trail audience in North Carolina in September 2016. “You get a good chunk of it, and it takes the risk.”
Trumpworld laundering Russian/Ukrainian money through US real estate contributes to unaffordable housing. Boom, there's your campaign ad for any Democrats still worried about how to message Russiagate to pocketbook voters.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 6, 2018
Did he have a choice? Who would loan him money? https://t.co/Ig0TJbR0ct
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) May 5, 2018
Good Q. @erictrump says that the family *chose* the cash route, even tho banks were willing to lend. And they did still have @DeutscheBank. https://t.co/RpG7OXZBNc
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 5, 2018
The most obvious question: there's a big mismatch here between Trump's net assets/net income versus the scale of his all-cash outlays. Does Trump have undeclared silent business partners in his post-2006 acquisitions? If so … who? https://t.co/I02FDD7TiA
— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 5, 2018
2006 matches when Cohen came into his orbit. And a book released next week says Cohen was hired as a favor to his father-in-law Fima Shusterman, who appears to have been a silent partner in Trump's businesses. Cohen entered Trump world as a conduit for many from Russia/Ukraine. https://t.co/G2CPBH6vtd
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 6, 2018
It's honestly gobsmacking to think he ever had this sort of liquidity. And oh look, right around the time he hired a new lawyer with deep family ties to organized crime on two continents. https://t.co/R9wMmGCsQR
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 6, 2018
A couple years ago, I theorized that Trump’s self-reported low utilization rate for debt was due to the ridiculously overinflated valuations he’d put on his assets. An overlapping or independent explanation may be widespread money laundering. https://t.co/JGj31xRIxI
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 5, 2018
2/ There is a reason Trump has so many shell LLC's for each business entity.
One manages the day to day biz, the others can be used to hide the real investors. If there are no loans, there need be no disclosure what partners or debts exist.https://t.co/SqXJRCU441— (((STOP))) tRumpnado (@Trumpnado2016) May 5, 2018
It is very interesting to see all of this reporting on Trump's cash heavy business making very shady real estate purchase while the reporters try to use every phrase in the book except "money laundering"
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 6, 2018
Important Read: Laundering Whose Dirty Dollars?Post + Comments (189)
by David Anderson| 11 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Whose price should be lowered?
That will be the critical question in the next round of drug pricing food fights.
Is the relevant price what the patient pays? If so, then this is primarily an insurance company problem as they will need to rework their benefit designs and cost sharing structures.
Is the relevant price the combined patient and third party payer price? If so then this is primarily a problem of overall drug pricing levels.
We will need to be very clear in our thinking when we hear the debate over drug prices. One of the projects that I am working on is looking at chemotherapy parity laws. These laws are insurance benefit regulations. Most states requires insurers to charge the same cost-sharing for oral or IV chemo even if they are of the same line of treatment with vastly different total prices. One option may be a few thousand dollars for a full course of treatment while the other option can buy a nice row house in a soon to gentrify neighborhood in Pittsburgh for a single year of treatment.
From that patient point of view, they don’t really care that Drug A costs $2,000 and Drug B costs $55,000 if they are paying a $300 co-pay for either one. They’ll see a few pennies more per month in their premiums if they choose Drug B but that is piffling. Insurers will try to run people through pre-authorization hell to get as many people to Drug A as possible as the first line of treatment.
Now if we decide that the total cost of a drug is what matters, then we should expect differential cost sharing from insurers. Drug A might have no cost sharing while Drug B might have a 50% co-insurance until the out of pocket maximum is reached. But even then, the cost of Drug B is so high and the associated costs of cancer treatment are so high, most people will max out on their insurance anyways.
Prices will come down for drugs that have clinical substitutes and buyers are willing to either say “No” or “No, not at that price” en masse. This means lots of restricted formularies, differential cost sharing, step therapies with try to fail protocols.
So as the debate on drug pricing heats up over the next couple of weeks, please be aware of what price is being talked about — is it the patient facing price or the total dollars transferred from all payers?