OG in the (White) House

The recent "leaks" of President Obama's deep involvement in selecting drone targets have resulted in most of the media focusing on the administration's pursuit of the leakers rather than any kind of analysis of the consequences of the policy. There have been some good op-eds, which is encouraging, but I'm struck how the Obama administration seems hell-bent on outdoing the Bush administration not only in its use of drone attacks (5 times as many in half the amount of time) but also by the energy and vigor with which they're attempt to construct a legal defense for it. The Bush administration was a bunch of amateurs compared to this group. I guess when the do something (wrong), they really do it right.

That's change we can believe in. <sigh....> Here's the 'toon:

The Pain in Spain

I think Paul Krugman's column today in the NY Times captured best the lunacy and viciousness of the European Central Bank's monetary policy. They are all for bailing out the banks, the very criminals who got Spain into this pickle, but won't lift a finger for the working women and men who were and are the innocent victims of the crisis. Instead the technocrats and plutocrats who love them patronizingly talk of the need for the peones to embrace austerity as if its the path to spiritual transformation.

What's next? They bring back Torquemada and Spanish Inquisition to torture the Spaniards into see the light? I'm sure the Republican-dominated US Congress won't be far behind, and poor Barack Obama will be forced to sell another piece of his ever-dwindling soul to hop on that band wagon.

The butcher Assad has been slaughtering women, children and men for the past year and a half, and the Western powers are only now expressing outrage? But do not fear; Kofi Annan, the great enabler of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, is in on the spot, and his peace plan is working by golly. We've reached, and I quote, a "tipping point."

I've heard all of the geo-political arguments why military intervention in Syria is a non-starter and I understand that arming the wrong rebels (read: terrorists, aka, "the bad guys") might only make things worse. Here's what I don't get. The only thing stopping the UN Security Council from doing anything other than giving Syria another feeble wrist slap is Russia. I can understand if we've lost all leverage with the Assad regime, but have no more strings to pull with Moscow? That's pathetic. Now is the time to go from wrist slap to bitch slap. But I digress...here's the 'toon: