US Politics and Economy Analysis: Obama Talks Corporate Jets But Fails to Lead

Obama's demeanour does little to suggest he takes the problem as seriously as the authors of the Congressional Budget Office report. He is flunking his responsibility to take the initiative in explaining to the public the magnitude of the issues at stake. When he talks corporate jets not entitlement spending reform, he only makes it harder for those voices in Congress who are struggling to lead responsibly to be heard. If the president does not appear to be taking them seriously --- to my knowledge, President Obama has not once publicly acknowledged or encouraged the efforts of Sen. Conrad to build some sort of bipartisan consensus on the deficit, why should anyone else?

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Afghanistan Snapshot: Why the US Presence Will "Surge" As Troops "Withdraw"

US Contractor in IraqThe number of contractors in Afghanistan is likely to increase significantly in the next year as the Obama administration pulls back some of the extra 68,000 troops that it has dispatched there since January 2009.

Typically, the U.S. pays one contractor to support every soldier that has deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. The ratio of contractors to troops increases dramatically during a military surge as well as during a drawdown, and often stays higher than troop levels when military numbers are low, i.e. down to 30,000-50,000.

The reason is simple — the military needs extra workers to build new bases as well as to shut them down. Just like a hotel or restaurant, a military base also needs a minimum number of people to do the basics like janitorial or food service work. And as troops withdraw, U.S. diplomats are likely to hire extra security contractors as they are doing now in Iraq.

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US Campaign 2012: How Michele Bachmann Confused John Wayne with a Killer Clown

Michele Bachmann is the new darling of many Republicans in the Presidential race for 2012. The Congresswoman was once distinguished by flamboyant remarks such as, "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." (The 1976 swine flu scare, which had a sequel in 2009, occurred during the Presidency of Republican Gerald Ford.)

Now, however, Bachmann seems to be been tagged a contender --- she wanted to treated "more seriously than Sarah Palin", according to the BBC --- for the GOP nomination. This appears to have occurred because she trumped six Republican male candidates in the first debate with lines like "As president of the United States, I will not rest until I repeal Obamacare."

Still, the Congresswoman can slip back into her old verbal ways. On Sunday, as she launched her Presidential campaign in front of her childhood home, she told Fox News, "I want [people] to know just like John Wayne is from Waterloo, Iowa, that's the spirit I have too. It's embracing America. It's sacrificing for America."

Only one problem: Marion Mitchell Morrison, later renamed John Wayne, was born 150 miles away in Winterset, Iowa.

Serial murderer John Wayne Gacy, known as the "Killer Clown", lived and worked in Bachmann's native town of Waterloo.

Obama and Afghanistan: Scott Lucas on the BBC "A Cynic's View"

I chatted this morning with BBC Radio WM about President Obama's speech on Afghanistan, putting forth some of the points I later posted in an EA analysis.

The discussion begins at the 1:09.55 mark.

See also 4-Point Guide to Obama and Afghanistan: "This is Not a Withdrawal, It is a Limit to Escalation"

Afghanistan Video and Transcript: Obama Announces "Withdrawal" of US Troops

Afghanistan Video and Transcript: Obama Announces "Withdrawal" of US Troops

OBAMA: Good evening. Nearly ten years ago, America suffered the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor. This mass murder was planned by Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and signaled a new threat to our security – one in which the targets were no longer soldiers on a battlefield, but innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives.

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4-Point Guide to Obama and Afghanistan: "This is Not a Withdrawal, It is a Limit to Escalation"

1. This is not "a substantial withdrawal". It is a limit to the escalation in the US military presence begun by the Obama Administration soon after it took office.

2. This "withdrawal" is based on an Al Qa'eda puppet show.

3. This is not a Presidential victory over his military advisors, with a full US withdrawal as the eventual outcome.

4. This is a speech looking towards a domestic victory.

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Afghanistan Feature: 10 Other Ways to Spend the $113 Billion Given to This Year's War (Jilani)

President Obama is expected to announce within a week if and how many combat troops he plans to withdraw from the war in Afghanistan. Some of those who will be most impacted by the decision are U.S. soldiers and their families and Afghans who have been dealing with the ramifications of the war for nearly a decade.

Yet the war is affecting more than just Western soldiers and their families and Afghan citizens. It has become a costly drain on our nation’s treasury; the money that is being spent on the war represents resources that are being drained away from important domestic priorities in a nation with crumbling infrastructure.

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Afghanistan Feature: Obama to Announce Plans for Troop Withdrawal --- But How Many and How Fast? (Landler/Cooper)

President Obama plans to announce his decision on the scale and pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in a speech on Wednesday evening, an administration official said Monday.

As he closes in on a decision, another official said, Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009.

Under another option, a third official said, Mr. Obama would announce a final date for the withdrawal of all the surge forces sometime in 2012, but leave the timetable for incremental reductions up to commanders in the field — much as he did in drawing down troops after the surge in Iraq.

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Libya: How Obama Overruled His Lawyers on Intervention (Savage)

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

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Bahrain Snapshot: Obama Administration's Ineffectual Plea to Crown Prince "Please Change"

The significance of this article by Mark Landler of The New York Times is not in the immediate story of Obama Administration officials meeting the Crown Prince of Bahrain in Washington this week but in the political reality beyond the encounter.

The Administration's strategy of persuasion, alongside some mildly critical rhetoric, is unlikely to achieve much, if anything, in Bahrain. Indeed, as Landler indicates below, the Crown Prince's visit may be a political sideshow --- in mid-March, his approach of engagement of some elements of the opposition to discuss reform was quashed by other members of the ruling family, and he has struggled to regain influence since then.

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