The View from Right Field

U.S. Special Ops Are Going to Syria. But Don’t Worry. They Won’t Have a Combat Mission. Huh?

The U.S. is sending up to 50 special operations forces to Syria, but don’t worry.  White House press secretary Josh Ernest tells us, “They are not being deployed with a combat mission.”  Let me see if I understand this.  We are sending troops into another country, to help rebel forces fight against other people in that country, and yet the White House tells us these troops “are not being deployed with a combat mission.”

I am not sure which is worse.  That the White House thinks we will believe what they are telling us.  Or that the White House might actually believe it themselves.

The Best Republican Candidate Is the One Who Can Get Elected

Unlike in past presidential elections, I have not picked out a favorite candidate in the race of the Republican nomination – because the most important thing is not this Republican versus that Republican¹ but actually winning in November 2016.²  Two weeks ago I wrote about what the “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives doesn’t seem to get about 2016.  Next week I hope to post something on foreign policy.  Today let me comment on the Republican debate Wednesday night.

First, while I don’t think Ted Cruz would be a good candidate – because he wouldn’t get elected³ – I did like his response to the question as to why he isn’t a problem solver and why he still beats his wife (or something like that).  (Obviously, that wasn’t the exact question, though it was pretty close to that in spirit.  You can see the actual question and Senator Cruz’s response here.)

I also liked Marco Rubio’s comment about the mainstream media being Hillary Clinton’s super PAC.  If you don’t think the MSM is in the bag for former Secretary Clinton, why did the MSM tell us that the Benghazi hearings last week didn’t disclose anything new when we found out Secretary Clinton privately emailed her daughter the night of the Benghazi attacks saying the attacks were done by an “al Qaeda-like group” while she was publicly blaming an Internet video for the attack – and even told the father of one of the people killed in Benghazi, three days later, that they would arrest the guy who did the video and “was responsible for the death of your son.”

Foreign Policy Doesn’t Get Much More Naïve Than This

You would think that, after almost seven years in the White House for President Obama, and over 30 years as either a senator or secretary of state for John Kerry, they would have some idea on how to conduct a foreign policy.  However, it doesn’t seem to be true.  This is from Monday’s Wall Street Journal:

“Secretary of State John  Kerry and his European allies, in their renewed drive to promote stability in the Middle East, are increasingly reliant on the two countries the U.S. has historically argued only undermine stability – Russia and Iran. …

But the West is taking risks by including the Russians and Iranians in diplomacy, said Emile Hokayem, a regional analyst at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, expressing a view that is shared by many Arab officials. …

Here’s Why Iran Won’t Violate the Nuclear Agreement – Or At Least Why We Won’t Say They Are

An editorial in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune notes that, while negotiations with Iran were going on, Secretary of State Kerry said Iran was going to have to disclose its past work on building nuclear weapons, i.e., weaponization, as part of any deal.

When the agreement was finally announced, the International Atomic Energy Agency was delegated the job of finding this out.

But the Obama administration is now hedging.  The Administration is saying it doesn’t need Iran to say what it has been doing.  “[W]e believe we already know about Iran’s past activities,” it claims.  This from intelligence agencies that have gotten virtually nothing right about the Middle East for decades.

Chicago Cubs: A Look Back to 2015 and a Look Forward to 2016

2015 was a magical season for the Cubs.  Nobody expected it, and look how far we got.¹  Not far enough, obviously, but far enough to be really exciting.  And far enough that fans seem to be more focused on how good 2016 will be than how close we came, and yet how far away we wound up, in 2015.  The question is, though, whether these expectations for 2016 are realistic.

First, obviously, we aren’t going to surprise anybody in 2016.  I’m not sure how important that is, but it isn’t going to happen.

Second, we need a lot of starting pitching.²  We finished the season with about 2½ quality starting pitchers, if you count Kyle Hendricks as ½ of a quality starter.  Dan Haren has retired.  Jason Hammel had a good first half (just like 2014) and a bad second half (just like 2014, except it was for Oakland in 2014).  Relying on Jason Hammel for 2016 is a hope, not a plan. 

Lois Lerner, the IRS, and Tea Partiers: Nothing to Look At Here, Just Move Along

The Justice Department announced Friday that it would not be bringing charges against Lois Lerner, or anybody else, in the political targeting “scandal” at the Internal Revenue Service.  If you remember, two and a half years ago, Ms. Lerner disclosed (probably because she knew the Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general would be issuing a report soon) that people at the IRS were targeting, or at least giving additional scrutiny to, applications submitted by tea party and other conservative groups.

I put the word “scandal” in quotation marks because, while Republicans think it was a scandal, and President Obama said, at the time, it was “inexcusable” and he was “angry’ about it, Democrats do longer think it was all that big of a deal.  Even though the IRS’s inspector general identified only tea party and other conservative groups as being singled out, Democrats started saying that liberal groups were looked at, too.  Also, it was just a matter of “mismanagement” and “poor judgment,” as the Justice Department said in its letter to Congress yesterday, not a real scandal.¹

The real scandal, Democrats say, was during the Nixon administration, when President Nixon tried to get the IRS to do audits of his political foes.²  Of course, the difference is, back then, the head of the IRS refused to do it, while Lois Lerner, et al, were apparently doing it on their own.  Which is exactly the problem – and the bigger worry. 

2015 and the “Long-Suffering” Cubs Fans

[I will, in a few days, post my thoughts on the Cubs’ 2015 season – and next year.  For now, a few thoughts on the Cubs fans’ 2015 season.]

With the Cubs having lost the NLDS to the Mets, we will now see, once again, all kinds of articles about long-suffering Cubs fans.  I explained why I am not a “long-suffering” Cubs fan nine years ago both in this blog and in a letter to the editor that was printed in the Chicago Tribune on October 4, 2006.  (A copy of that letter is attached at the end of this post.)

Let me update that letter a little.  As I said then, I am not a long-suffering Cubs fan because I don’t suffer.  The Cubs may not have won the last game of the year, but we won a lot before that.

More importantly, my kids still come home to go to Cubs games with my wife and me.  In September of 2006, I got on the waiting list for season tickets.  It took five years, but in December of 2011, my name came up.  It was not the best time to start buying season tickets, but we did. 

President Obama Tells Congress: If You Won’t Spend More for Domestic Programs, I Won’t Spend More on Defense – Even If I Asked for It.

The Senate and House have passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”).  (Who says Congress can’t do anything.)  The NDAA includes some needed reforms on things like military pensions and authorizes $612 billion in defense spending.  This amount includes $38 billion in defense spending above the budget caps already in place, which matches the amount President Obama requested. 

The President, however, has threatened to veto the NDAA because Congress has not passed the increase the President wants in domestic spending.  He is basically saying, if you won’t let me spend more on my favorite programs, I won’t approve the additional spending that you want, and that I asked for, for defense.  If you won’t let me spend more on what I think is most important, I’m willing to take risks with our national defense by not spending the amount that even I asked for.

If you think I am exaggerating when I say President Obama thinks domestic spending is more important than defense spending, consider the opposite scenario:  Do you really think President Obama would threaten to veto increased spending for domestic programs if Congress wouldn’t increase defense spending? 

The “Freedom Caucus” Is Missing the Point: You Have to Win Elections to Get Stuff Done

According to Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal, John Boehner is resigning as Speaker of the House of Representatives “in large part because of opposition to his leadership from 40 to 50 House members called the Freedom Caucus.”  Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) says, “[T]he heartland hasn’t seen us fight” for conservative ideas and policies.

It may be true that the so-called “base” hasn’t seen Republicans “fight” President Obama, but that may be as much because they haven’t been paying sufficient attention as for the lack of fighting.  The sequester is limiting government spending.  (It is doing in a terribly inefficient, meat cleaver-like way, but it is doing it.)  We got a decent estate tax law and income tax law passed permanently.  Affirming John Boehner’s idea, courts have said that Congress has standing to sue the Obama administration for the way it is, in the view of House Republicans, spending money without a proper Congressional authorization to do so.

But the main problem is that the kind of “fighting” the Freedom Caucus seems to want to see, i.e., government shutdowns, etc., are actually going to help keep in place the very policies that the Freedom Caucus opposes.

President Obama Finally Agrees to Stay in Afghanistan a Little Longer

President Obama has finally decided that the facts on the ground are such the United States needs to keep troops in Afghanistan, both to stop the Taliban, ISIS, et al, and to help the Afghani people, past January 20, 2017.  One wonders how much better things might be in Afghanistan if the President had been willing to consider this possibility a little earlier, instead of setting, for so long, January 20, 2017 as a deadline for leaving regardless of what was happening on the ground.

According to the United Nations, the Taliban now controls more of Afghanistan than it has at any time since 2001.  If we had not been so focused on getting out by January 20, 2017, might we have been able to help the Afghanis avoid this kind of situation?  Unfortunately, we will never know.

At least, we are now staying to help.  Maybe we have learned something from how we left Iraq.