The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Monday
Sep222014
The Commentariat -- Sept. 23, 2014
Valerie Volcovici of Reuters: "... the United Nations on Tuesday will zero in on climate change, giving leaders from 125 countries a platform to explain how they plan to address the issue.... The White House announced on Tuesday that Obama would issue an executive order to require federal agencies to ensure their international development programs and investments are designed to help communities adapt to the impacts of climate change." ...
... Jon Stewart explains climate change to Republican deniers. Thanks to P. D. Pepe:
... As Victoria D. comments, Stewart should have said "Republican" more because it's House Science Committee Republicans who need third-grade visuals to understand the obvious.
President Obama made remarks late this morning about strikes on ISIS. Politico has a brief report here:
... Update. The New York Times report, by Mark Landler & others, is here. ...
David Kirkpatrick & Omar Al-Jawoshy of the New York Times: "After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines. Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists' march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraqi Army. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been besieged for nearly a week at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province." ...
... Loveday Morris of the Washington Post: An ISIS suicide attack on an Iraqi army base in Anbar Province -- the attackers arrived in bomb-rigged Humvees & hundreds of Iraqi soldiers may have died -- "has highlighted shortcomings in an army that the United States has spent billions of dollars training and equipping, and it has further undermined the force's reliability as a partner as President Obama expands airstrikes into provinces including Anbar.... 'There were no reinforcements, no food supplies, no medicine, no water, and then our ammunition began to run out,' said 1st Lt. Haider Majid, 28. 'We called our leaders so many times. We called our commanders, we called members of parliament, but they just left us there to die.'"
... Michael Hirsh in Politico Magazine on "America's new war president." Hirsh looks at the realities, including the political realities, that have led President Obama to begin what Hirsh calls a "new war" against ISIS. CW Note: Hirsh works for Politico now, but he has been a level-headed, nonpartisan reporter & opinionator for a long time. My one disagreement with Hirsh here is that he ignores conditions that invited an ISIS-type jihad, most notably Bush's Stupid War. Worth a read. ...
... Juan Cole: "Some 80% of Raqqah[, Syria]’s 240,000 inhabitants, i.e. about 190,000 people, are said to have remained after ISIL took over the city.... It is inevitable that US and allied bombing on important Raqqah military targets will kill a certain number of civilians.... The some 22 sorties flown on Monday will have killed some ISIL terrorists, blown up some weapons warehouses, and destroyed some checkpoints. But ISIL are guerrillas, and they will just fade away into Raqqah's back alleys. The US belief in air power is touching, but in fact no conflict has ever been quickly brought to an end where US planes have been involved." See also today's News Ledes.
Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors alleged Monday in federal court that a man who jumped a fence and ran into the White House's unlocked front door Friday night posed a threat to President Obama and was keeping 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car, parked blocks away.... After a 15-minute hearing, [U.S Magistrate Judge John] Facciola ordered [Omar Jose] Gonzalez held until Oct. 1, pending revocation of bond by authorities in an unrelated July 19 incident in Wythe County, Va. In that case, he was arrested while allegedly carrying a sawed-off shotgun, two sniper rifles and several other firearms, as well as a map of the Washington area with the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Va., circled and a line pointed toward the White House, a local prosecutor said. Earlier, on Aug. 25, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Mudd said, U.S. Secret Service officers saw Gonzalez carrying a hatchet in the back waistband of his pants along the south fence of the White House and questioned him." ...
... The New York Times report, by Michael Shear & Michael Schmidt, is here. "Among the items found in Mr. Gonzalez's vehicle in July was a mini-arsenal of 11 guns including two shotguns and four rifles, some equipped with scopes and bipods that a sniper would use and 'a map of Washington, D.C., with writing and a line drawn to the White House,' law enforcement officials said. He also had four pistols, three of them loaded, and a revolver." ...
... CW: Only in America could a guy get away with carrying a "mini-arsenal" & a map to the home of the head of state. The only illegal item he was carrying, according to Virginia police, was a sawed-off shotgun. Everything else was cool. Instead of investigating Secret Service policies, we should be looking at our culture of violence, one in which the police "did not regard ... as dangerous or mentally unstable" a veteran carrying a mini-arsenal who led them on a high-speech chase. Apparently they took his word that he was a veteran & that made everything fine. ...
... AND, yes, this post is related. Charles Pierce: "I would wager that, in every state where there is a close election, and where open-carry laws of one kind or another are in force, you will see armed men at precincts 'protecting' the vote. It's the logical confluence of voter-suppression and unlimited gun rights.... And then, in 2016, there will be more guns at the polls. They really don't miss a trick." ...
... CW: I was thinking of observing that most of the country is becoming Dodge City. Then I remembered that Dodge City & other Western towns actually had strict gun control laws. Luckily, the Supreme Court of the day -- not exactly a bastion of liberal ideology -- did not pretend the Second Amendment expressed an individual's right to pack heat.
Gregory Korte of USA Today: "The Treasury Department will crack down on so-called tax 'inversions,' targeting companies that try to avoid taxes by moving their headquarters overseas. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the new rules would help close what he called a 'glaring loophole in the U.S. tax code' in which U.S. companies acquire foreign businesses and then switch their citizenship to avoid paying U.S. taxes." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the lead.
John Boehner Thinks the Jobless Are Lazy. But the House passed a "jobs" bill! Danny Vinik of the New Republic: "Last Thursday, House Republicans passed a 'jobs' bill that includes a smorgasbord of traditional conservative ideas. But it would also increase the deficit by $590 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And these aren't temporary costs, like the stimulus (which wasn't that much larger, money-wise than this new GOP 'jobs' plan anyways). After the first decade, the costs will only increase.... It would make permanent a collection of tax breaks.... It would require Congressional approval for any regulation with estimated costs over $100 million. The bill would also change Obamacare's definition of a full-time employee from 30 to 40 hours and, oh yeah, repeal the medical device tax." Read the whole post.
Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times: "Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said Monday that his biggest mistake in the handling of the Ray Rice situation is that he didn't get an earlier look at the surveillance video from inside the elevator -- and had no interest in seeing it. '"I lacked a whole lot of interest. Zero desire to see that tape,' Bisciotti said in a news conference called to address and dispute a lengthy story by ESPN's 'Outside the Lines' that said the Ravens knew the details of Rice striking his future wife inside the casino elevator within hours of the incident." A transcript of the full rebuttal, published in the Baltimore Sun, is here.
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Sen. Rand Paul's lawsuit over National Security Agency surveillance was put on hold Monday, pending an appeals court ruling on a parallel case brought before the senator's. Judge Richard Leon did not explain the rationale for his ruling but granted a Justice Department motion to halt the case while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considers the NSA surveillance issue in separate lawsuits brought by conservative activist Larry Klayman." CW Working Theory: Leon just wanted to cut the billable hours of Ken Cuccinelli, who brought the suit on behalf of Paul & Freeeedom Works.
Senate Race
Charles Pierce comments on Rep. Tom Cotton's (RTP) challenge to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) CW: It's a great commentary, but I do wish to warn readers of the foolishness of the idea that we all would be living in the Kingdom of Heaven if only So-&-So had won/lost a particular election. I suppose this view is an offshoot of the "great man" theory of history, infused with wishful thinking/I-told-you-to-vote. Obviously, elections matter, but the dynamics that tip the balance one way or the other don't vacillate all that much. Voters are still conservative or liberal, dumb or dumber, etc. To assume that defeating Newt Gingrich -- as Pierce does -- would have radically changed history is a mistake. We'll never know but -- more than likely House Republicans, whose makeup would have remained essentially the same, would have chosen another jerk for Speaker. The show goes on no matter the players.
Presidential Election
Steve M.: "... the Washington Free Beacon wants you to realize that ... Hillary Clinton's youthful correspondence with Saul Alinsky proves that she's an unreconstructed radical leftist.... Let's see: Hillary Clinton was a top adviser to her husband, the governor of Arkansas, for twelve years; she was America's First Lady (and a top adviser to the president) for eight years; she was a U.S. senator for eight years; and she was secretary of state for four years -- and in all that time she's been a Third Way left-centrist and a relatively hawkish Democrat. But she was just fooling us! She knew that, one day, the full flower of her evil leftist scheme to communize America would bloom, because ... she knew her time would come." ...
... CW: I'll admit I ignored this shocking story; I'm grateful to Steve M. for explaining it. It isn't just that the right lives in an "intellectual closed loop," as Krugman wrote in his column yesterday, but also that within that loop, the loopy do not adhere to basic logic thinking or simple common sense. ...
... Like Every Lefty, Clinton Is a Party Animal. Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "... the Clinton Global Initiative now outshines the U.N. gathering, at least when it comes to star wattage. It also serves as an annual company picnic and convocation of the faithful for the Clintons' far-flung political and business networks." CW: I find the Clinton conglomerate extremely creepy. I suppose to some extent most of us are phony self-promoters, but the Clintons have carried vainglory to a mawkish, tawdry extreme. ...
... Molly Ball of the Atlantic, last week: "Everywhere Hillary Clinton goes, a thousand cameras follow. Then she opens her mouth, and nothing happens."
News Ledes
Der Spiegel: "German-American journalist Michael Scott Moore has been freed two-and-a-half years after he was kidnapped in Somalia. German officials received Moore, who worked for Spiegel International years before his abduction, on Tuesday afternoon local time." Via Gawker.
New York Times: "The United States and five Arab allies launched a wide-ranging air campaign against the Islamic State and at least one other extremist group in Syria for the first time early Tuesday, targeting the groups' bases, training camps and checkpoints in at least four provinces, according to the United States military and Syrian activists. The intensity of the attacks struck a fierce opening blow against the jihadists of the Islamic State, scattering its forces and damaging the network of facilities it has built in Syria that helped fuel its seizure of a large part of Iraq this year." ...
... AP: "Syria said Tuesday that Washington informed President Bashar Assad's government of imminent U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State group, hours before an American-led military coalition pounded the extremists' strongholds across northern and eastern Syria."
New York Times: "The Israeli military said Tuesday morning that it had shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had 'infiltrated into Israeli airspace,' the first such incident in at least a quarter of a century."
New York Times: "Israeli forces early Tuesday killed the two men they suspected of abducting and murdering three Israeli teenagers from the occupied West Bank in June, according to a military spokesman, closing a crucial chapter in what became the bloodiest period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Aisha, 33, 'came out shooting' around 6 a.m. as troops breached a two-story structure in Hebron where the suspects had been holed up for a week."
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Reader Comments (13)
Good news: Obama is dealing with the tax-aviodence inversion deals, but needs Congress to go the next level. There are those whose loyalty apparently is not to their country, but to corporations (they feel so sorry that they have to pay such high taxes) so blame once again the Obama administration for being so mean. I find this mindset so egregious , so pathetic and so unpatriotic.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/22/obama-inversions_n_5864686.html
"Let’s begin with gun control. The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” For over two hundred years, federal courts generally interpreted the Second Amendment quite narrowly. In their view, the opening reference to a “well regulated Militia” limited the scope of the amendment. The Second Amendment did not create a freestanding individual right to have guns.
Well-organized groups, above all the National Rifle Association, rejected this interpretation and insisted that the Second Amendment did indeed create an individual right. For many years, their view was widely regarded as unpersuasive, a form of ideology masquerading as constitutional law. Stevens notes that as late as 1991, even retired Chief Justice Warren Burger—a well-known conservative, appointed by President Richard Nixon—said that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
"It is remarkable but true that in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, a majority of the Court accepted the very view that Burger deemed to be a “fraud.”
From Cass Sunstein's NYRB piece on John Paul Stevens ( who I'd like to hug) book, "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should change the Constitution."
If you haven't seen this Jon Stewart video on climate change, please do––he nails it once again and boy, do we feel his fury!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/jon-stewart-congress-climate-change_n_5866400.html
@pd Pepe: Stewart did indeed nail it. A lot of good research goes into a piece like this on the Daily Show; for example, one of the congressmen whining that the science claiming climate change was biased and the next thing that appears on the screen is a list of his three biggest campaign donors - all fossil fuel companies including Koch and Murray Energy (coal). I just loved the concluding demo by Stewart regarding ice cubes and rising seas. It felt like a third grade science class which was appropriate because the intended audience (stupid Congressman) was indeed an idiot as Stewart in frustration blurted out.
One small quibble about this report and so many others elsewhere: Stewart keeps referring to the "Congressional" committee as idiots. No, it is NOT the whole committee - it is the REPUBLICANS on that committee. This distinction cannot be made often enough - but it isn't.
@Dave Southern in yesterday's Commentariat:
"I notice that this website published from time to time the false belief that air power alone has never won a war. Are you forgetting Kosovo? President Clinton brought Serbia to heel with nothing but bombs, no boots on the ground. Could we win a war with nuclear bombs?"
First, it wasn't President Clinton but NATO (every country but Greece participated) that bombed Kosovo. All during the period of bombing & for some time before, peace negotiations were ongoing. During the bombings, there were tens of thousands of NATO troops at the ready, waiting to enter the region. Britain put 50K troops on alert with the idea that they would go in as a fighting force, & the primarily-Albanian KLA continued to fight throughout all of this.
It's true the U.S. didn't put any troops on the ground during the bombings (U.S. NATO brigades entered as soon as the ceasefire was called), but the threat of an international invading force -- which included ground forces from his ally Russia -- is what convinced Milosevic to throw in the towel.
With the exception of the Kurds (and possibly some Syrian rebels), whose aims do not precisely align with U.S. goals (see Dexter Filkins' piece linked yesterday), so far there are no trained, reliable ground forces in the "war" against ISIS.
Marie
PD,
The Stewart piece was brilliant. Thanks for the link.
Not too long ago I commented that it's just amazing how inured we've become to Republican perfidy. Not just amazing, but terribly unfortunate. And it certainly extends to the area of global warming (nay, all science) concerns and Republican stupidity (willful or otherwise).
So, on one side, we have this guy, John Holdren, Presidential Science Adviser who, according to his Wikipedia entry,
"...trained in aeronautics, astronautics and plasma physics...earned a bachelor's degree from MIT... Ph.D. from Stanford... taught at Harvard,...Berkeley,...work has focused on the causes and consequences of global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, ways to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons and materials, and science and technology policy.... was chair of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from 1987 until 1997 and delivered the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance lecture on behalf of Pugwash Conferences in December 1995, etc., etc., etc."
On the other, half a dozen guys who couldn't spell "SCIENCE" with an open book test.
Seriously, it's like third graders telling a PhD in applied mathematics that they don't get the axiomatic basis of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory because in their experience "set" is a thing that comes after "ready" and before "go".
My favorite exchange came when one of the ignoramuses (R, Natch), ripped off a string of comments that he believed disproved the concept of global warming. Holdren dryly suggested that he read the scientific literature rather than public comments.
Double face palm. When one face palm just won't suffice.
So Cheeto Man Boehner thinks poor and unemployed people are just lazy loafers. Hmmm...Here's a quote. See if you can determine what group the speaker is talking about:
"You know, I really don’t have to work, I don’t really want to do this, I think I’d just rather sit around."
If you said the 113th Congress, especially the Republican controlled House of Representatives, you win your very own picture of Speaker Boehner. It's not autographed though. He was sitting around and really didn't want to lift the pen. He needs that arm strength for the Highballs.
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
Except in the case of Mr. and Ms. Kettle, they don't make $174,000 a year for doing nothing like members of congress. And they most certainly don't make $225,000 for doing nothing, like Speaker Boehner. This congress is set to go down as one of most unproductive, lazy, indolent, don't-give-a-shit legislative group in history. And Boehner is part of the reason, the guy who criticizes people who are out of work, in many cases, because of Republican policies pushed by him and other GOP slouchers in congress.
I decided to consult Mr. Roget in hopes of coming up with more expressive terms to describe just how slothful Boehner and the useless House 'baggers have been. Lethargic, sure; apathetic, absolutely; negligent, of course. Some descriptions don't quite fit. Listless might work, but it suggests that they might be able to care if they weren't so down at the mouth. Dormant? Sounds pretty good at first, but then you realize that dormancy suggests that at some point they'll come to life and do some actual work, which ain't happenin'. Not on Boehner's watch. I think I'll stick with do-nothing pieces of shit. It ain't elegant, but it's the truth.
And these are the reptilian reprobates who want to stick it to people who would do anything for a job.
It's not as if these assholes have done absolutely zero though. They took 7,573 votes to deny Americans health care. And in just one year, 2013, "... the House voted in favor of anti-environment positions 109 times — a statistic that shows the 113th Congress is following close on the heels of the 112th, which was dubbed by [Henry]Waxman and Ed Markey (D-MA) as the most anti-environment House of Representatives in history." So there's that.
The public has taken notice. According to Bloomberg View, in July, "Confidence in Congress dropped to 7 percent last month. To put this into some context, Congress is rated below lice, cockroaches, traffic jams, and replacement refs during the National Football League officials' strike."
And these are the charlatans who plan to make it harder for people to make ends meet (the Paul Ryan "Economic Plan") and to get a job, but go out of their way (well, not really, it's not like they're doing anything) to insult those who are poor and unemployed.
Oh, and by the way, this current lazy-ass congress is on track to beat the previous record holder for congressional indolence: the 112th congress, another John Boehner effort, so to speak. The last lick of work that incompetent goldbrick did was pushing a broom in his daddy's bar.
But the worst thing about this congress? Most of them will be back. Gerrymandering, Citizens United, dirty tricks, election rigging, voter suppression, a Supreme Court antithetical to representative democracy, and a general apathy on the part of too many eligible voters to get to the polls. Laziness compounded.
The cockroaches and lice will all be back for the 114th congress.
Marie,
Regarding Charlie Pierce's conjectures about a World Without Newt (hold on a sec...I'm really enjoying that thought........okay, back to business), I don't know that things would have been quite the same without him.
Who knows, in fact? No one really. Counterfactual history has never been a source of great interest for me. And it's not as if I am a reliable proponent of the Great Man Theory. I was, for a time, enamored of the work of French Annales historicism, which quite pointedly rejected Great Man considerations (this changed a bit when, in speaking with an Annaliste trained historian who was giving a lecture course on the Revolutionary War, I learned that he probably wasn't going to be able to devote much time to the doings of George Washington. There is such as thing as proportionality, after all...).
Anyway, I do believe that there are times at which certain individuals who are in the right position, and with the right abilities, can focus various elements floating around in the zeitgeist and meld them into a force for good or for evil, and everything in between. There's a reason all of Europe feared a runty little guy from Corsica for the better part of 15 years. No one else had been able to marshall the many and varied forces and desires abroad in the world quite as well as Napoleon or to bring them to bear in so drastic and effective a fashion.
And I'm not saying that Gingrich was a Napoleon, although he would be pleased at that comparison, no doubt, but he was able to channel right-wing angst, fear, hatred, and the opposite senses of mastership and victimization into a force and apply that force in a way that significantly impacted American politics.
Would things have been dramatically different without him? Sure, maybe some one or two or three people could have come along to do some of what he did, but his baleful influence is with us still. Could George H.W. Bush have caused as much harm to the Republic as Reagan? Maybe, but conservatives don't stand up and salute whenever Poppy's name is mentioned.
So although I don't fully subscribe to a Great Man Theory, it's my sense that certain individuals are more able at certain times--selected for, if you will--to appreciate that the conditions for opportunities are present and how best to take advantage of them, for better or worse.
Now let me get back to reverie of a World Without Newt. And while I'm at it...Dubya. And Cheney. And the Kochs...
Good piece by Bob Reich on why knuckleheads like The Donald, and other corporate losers get chance after chance and are bailed out after every bad bet, unlike average Americans who get it in the neck when billionaires get it wrong.
When Trump fails, he sticks others with the bill.
"Wall Street doesn’t worry about failure, either. As you recall, the Street almost went belly up six years ago after risking hundreds of billions of dollars on bad bets.
A generous bailout from the federal government kept the bankers afloat. And since then, most of the denizens of the Street have come out just fine.
Yet more than 4 million American families have so far have lost their homes."
No bailouts for them. No second, third, and fourth chances, and certainly no chance to get their homes back.
Unlike The Donald, who, despite his failures, is still around flapping his lips about what a genius he is.
Well, I thought I was done for the day, but a friend sent me this link:
Bill O'Reilly's Army vs ISIS! Victory is at hand!.
I know, I know. It sounds stupid. It IS stupid. It's fucking Bill O'Reilly. You were expecting maybe a good idea?
Anyway, here's Loofah Boy's great plan for defeating the Islamofascist forces in the Levant, as it is once again being called. This is based on the premise that Bill is tired of hearing Obama lies and about "boots on the ground" and the fact that no one can beat ISIS except......him.
So here's the plan. Pay attention class.
First, get a whole bunch of psychos from all around the world, like 25,000 of them. Second, give them a shitload of guns. Third, train them, whatever the hell that means. At least for a couple of weeks. Fourth, get other countries to kick in whatever it takes to fund Bill's army, remembering that they will all agree to sign up for three years and are being promised a mountains of cash. They'll all line up, I'm sure. Fifth. War over. Bill wins. Medal of Honor.
Pretty nifty plan, eh?
But Bill says his Anti-Terror Army won't hire anyone currently serving in the armed forces of this or any other country. So who does that leave? Rambo wannabes, soldier of fortune knuckleheads, delusional galoots, guys who have washed out or retired, and your average everyday psychopaths who love the idea of being paid a lot of money to kill brown people in the desert.
What could possibly go wrong?
How does this fucking guy even have a job? This is the sort of thing drunks at the end of the bar slur out just before collapsing into alcohol induced comas. But this guy gets paid a fortune to come up with this shit.
That Rupert Murdoch. He sure has improved the state of public discourse in this country, hasn't he? Thanks, Rupe!
@AK and Billo's Army,
Ah yes, giving people arms and training. That is working so well for the Iraqis in Anbar Province.
There was a graphic on the "business" page of our local paper today. It seemed to be proud that defense contractors are making lots of money despite the Sequestration. I thought I was looking at something from the Onion at first, but no, it took itself seriously: Invest in defense contractors.
NiskyGuy,
Your story is a perfect indication of the conflicting goals to which we, as a country, have been attached.
On the one hand, we must--MUST--proclaim that we are all about military victory and democracy and winning the war on terrorism, no matter how amorphous and ambiguous, and also the war on salt water taffy and white men and Christmas and the ability to walk into polling places wearing cartridge belts and carrying more weaponry than Marines on fucking Iwo Jima, because FREEDOM, I suppose. And, of course, unbridled capitalism.
But a military goal is one thing. The goal of making money off the death of human beings, for corporations engaged in the pursuit of those deaths is an entirely different one. They may overlap at times, as in WWII, but members of the military industrial complex don't really care if we win or not. Winning for them means money, and the longer we're at war, the better, so "victory" for the likes of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, has an entirely different connotation.
From my studies of history, I would say that this has been going on in this country for many generations. The difference is that during, say, the Civil War, there were plenty of members of the war industry who, most certainly, wanted to make money, but also wanted to win. They actually cared about what happened to the country.
That sentiment has eroded over the years to the point where, now, corporations involved in military adventurism, couldn't fucking care less who wins or loses; as long as people are being bombed, burned, blown up, shot, knifed, vivisected, vaporized, crippled, murdered or maimed, they make money.
And woe betide any puny politician or citizens interested in peace who want it otherwise.
NiskyGuy:
Back in the day when I was the editor of a newsletter that focused corporate governance, and in that guise examined all the standard measures of corporate performance--growth, rank among peers, return on investment, and sn on--it was clear that defense contractors were becoming the new widow's-&-orphan's investment stocks. I'm somewhat amazed that AP (the likely source of the story you cite) has finally discovered what we published in the mid-to-late 90s.