Updating this thing has proven to be a pain in the ass, as you might guess from the frequency of updates. So I’m moving the “blog” part of this site away from the front page. Maybe I’ll replace the whole thing with a Twitter feed… updated automatically by my reptile brain:
“Food now…sleep…lady…fertile?”

Me and John Feffer, who writes that for propaganda purposes:

Pirates are the perfect threat. They’ve been around forever. They directly interfere with the bottom line, so the business community is on board. Unlike China, they don’t hold any U.S. Treasury Bonds. Indeed, since they’re non-state actors, we can bring virtually every country onto our side against them.

ZZZZzzzzz…

Today’s New York Times editorial hits on the same subject I covered in this week’s article for the Reporter: What does Obama intend to do with the nation’s nuclear weapons complex?

We both argue the proposed transfer of responsibility for nukes from the Energy Department to the Pentagon speaks to bigger issues.

From my piece:

Greg Mello, director of independent Los Alamos Study Group, says the proposal fits with a long-term plan by some disarmament advocates to collapse the nuclear weapons programs as much as possible into New Mexico, thus limiting congressional resistance to weapons cuts. Mello opposes the move. “There is a risk of creating a citadel,” he says. “If we’re not careful, we can move to a whole ’nother level of military occupation.”

The Times concludes, “Wherever the weapons complex is situated bureaucratically, it will have to be modernized, reduced in size and managed a lot more carefully.”

Way to go out on a limb there, guys.

They did propose that a new (or newly independent) agency, reporting directly to the Prez, take charge of nukes, which may be a better idea than handing them over to Robert Gates. Unfortunately, civilians have proven just as irresponsible with the weapons complex as you’d expect professional war-makers to be.

***

Speaking of O-bomba, what the hell is all this about? An “expansion” of the covert war in Pakistan, and–

another sign that President Obama is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy in using American spy agencies against terrorism suspects in Pakistan… At the same time, Mr. Obama has begun to scale back some of the Bush policies on the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, which he has criticized as counterproductive.

So, we won’t torture you anymore, we’ll just bomb your family.

Do we just all of a sudden have better intelligence about who’s hiding where in Pakistan? Probably not. So if Obama has a lucky streak in Pakistan–or, knock on wood, nets bin Laden–then it’s going to raise a lot of new questions about the Bush administration. (As in, whose ass were they covering that they couldn’t get the guy?) But if Obama merely widens the war because nobody around him has a better idea, then, well…good morning Vietnam!