Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for Friday, December 11, 2020 and it will be dark here for a good long while.
Quick Hit
* Revenge of the blob * An unsurprising turn of events * Strange bedfellows * The damn NDAA * Racially profiling computers * A knife made of sand *
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Restocking The Cabinet
President-elect Joe Biden is (finally) announcing his picks for top military-related positions, tapping former four star Gen. Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense and former Obama chief of staff Dennis McDonough Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Tapping McDonough, according to multiple reports, was done because of his familiarity with bureaucracy and crisis management -- problems that have plagued the V.A. for ages, according to the GAO (which the Trump administration exacerbated) -- but veterans advocacy groups are panning the move as they'd hoped for someone with actual military experience, like former Under Secretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, an LGBT vet, or Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee who lost her legs in a helicopter crash.
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the non-profit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, railed in The Daily Beast that McDonough is a "political operator" and "not a vet," concluding, "It’s yet another sad reflection of how low veterans rate in terms of understanding and prioritization for American political leadership—from both parties."
BONUS: An I.G. investigation has found that current V.A. Secretary Robert Wilkie and his minions tried to damage the credibility Andrea Goldstein, a staffer on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and Navy reservist, who filed a sexual assault complaint against an credentialed contractor with a history of grab-ass games who was trespassing at the D.C. Medical Center. The report notes that freshman Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw funneled dirt on Goldstein to Wilkie, but Wilkie's minions didn't technically break any laws. The report adds the VA, "failed to address an environment known to be inhospitable to women at the Washington D.C. V.A. Medical Center." Pro Publica broke the story about Wilkie's fuckery back in February.
A Gigantic Circlejerk
As for Austin, Biden's team seems to have forecasted the shitstorm over his selection as Sec. Def. seeing as how Biden has an op-ed in The Atlantic titled, "Why I Chose Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense," and a similar video on Twitter. Most defense and foreign policy nerds expected Biden to tap Michelle Flournoy, but it looks like she was once again sacrificed to the swamp monsters (for now).
Austin's confirmation isn't a sure thing as some members of Congress are hesitant to once again waive a rule requiring the Sec. Def. be out of the military for at least seven years. Some feel boxed in depending on whether of not they voted for former Sec. Def. Jim Mattis.
Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico he'd, "support any of the waivers," because he doesn't believe in the waiver rule.
Sen. Duckworth told NBC's Andrea Mitchell she would support Austin for his confirmation, but would vote against a waiver, saying, "What has happened with these waivers is that we're slowly shifting towards a point where you could actually have military officers leave active duty and go on and become defense secretaries. That's not appropriate. That's only appropriate in places where there are military juntas, and America is not not one of those nations... This principal is bigger than any single individual and I'm going to stick by it."
Everyone who gets paid to have a fucking opinion has now gathered into one gigantic circlejerk to spurt out a few hundred words on Austin's nomination. Elliot Cohen, a Never Trump neo-con, has a two-faced piece in The Atlantic demanding civilian leadership of the military (that doesn't mention his public war boner for Flournoy or Jeh Johnson). Kevin Barron, the editor over at Defense One, penned an op-ed bitching about the fuss over the waiver, ultimately arguing that we should reevaluate the law (again) if it’s such a problem. The cry baby caucus is complaining that Austin, like most military brass, spent his entire career in the military before retiring for cushy gigs with unsavory defense contractors (while others just seem to have cut/pasted short-sighted shitposts intended for Flournoy). Loren Thompson, a suit at the Lexington Institute, an ad agency for the defense industry, praised Austin, cheering the return of the cliquey eggheads affectionately known as "the blob." Lawfare's Ben Wittes moderated criticisms from neo-con Kori Schake and Brooking's Mike O'Hanlon, with Schake suggesting that a corporate CEO could run the Pentagon while O'Hanlon pondered whether a former CENTCOM commander was capable of running the Pentagon without suffering from group think. As usual, the most vocal critics calling for fresh blood haven't bothered to publicly name realistic alternatives.
Some of the idiotic clickbait over Biden's cabinet picks obscure the fact that Biden explicitly said what he'd do starting with that long essay back in the January issue of Foreign Affairs. And then all throughout the Democratic primary. And during the general election. And again over the last several weeks since becoming president-elect. That anyone is surprised an almost 80 year old career politician with almost five decades in D.C. would surround themselves with friends in the greater blob-o-sphere is honestly kind of ... stupid.
COVID Aid And The Omnibus
The House and Senate have passed a temporary one-week government funding bill, and a defense spending bill, but they're still hung up on COVID aid and nobody knows what the hell will happen next. There's still a lot of dirty laundry that needs to be washed and ironed before anyone can go home for the holidays, and there's already chatter about a second continuing resolution through Christmas.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are digging in. McConnell is demanding liability protections for schools and businesses who've made people show up during the pandemic, and Pelosi insists upon $160 billion for state and local governments so they can fund unemployment benefits. The only thing the two seem to agree about is that COVID aid should be paired with the government spending omnibus.
This afternoon Politico reported that congressional committee leaders were trying to cobble together things everyone could agree upon, but the GOP was being stubborn. There's some movement marrying together the $900 billion COVID relief bill with state and local aid, and some of the liability protections, but nobody's holding their breath. Yesterday the Washington Post gossiped that McConnell's warned negotiators that Republicans want a permanent liability shield, not a temporary one.
A number of Senators tried to torpedo negotiations on both the government and defense spending bills, but they dropped their protests (for now). The most noteworthy was an unlikely alliance between Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley; the two are threatening to derail further spending talks and shut the government down unless there's another round of $1,200 dollar stimulus checks.
BONUS: A number of states accidentally overpaid people who became unemployed as a result of the pandemic, and now they want the money back -- even if those people are no better off than they were at the start of the pandemic.
Waiting For Shutdown
That (enough) congressional Republican's are bucking Trump to support the $741 billion National Defense Authorization Act should be a bigger deal, but they're making damn sure it's not noticed by their constituents. Despite some mealy mouth words from members of the House Freedom Caucus about supporting Trump's threat to veto the NDAA, the bill passed with enough support that suggests a veto could be easily overridden. Even Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Leoffler and David Perdue voted in favor of the NDAA, citing a need to #SupportTheTroops stationed in Georgia.
There was a moment where Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul threw his regularly scheduled tantrum, picking a fight with Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney over a provision she slipped into the NDAA that would require the Defense secretary to send an unclassified report to Congress on troop withdrawals in Afghanistan -- a move the Trump White House opposed back in July on the grounds it would, "contravene the President’s constitutional authority." Paul eventually backed off his threats to shut the government down (again), presumably after members of his caucus threatened him with a lawnmower.
NOTE: Though both the omnibus C.R. and the NDAA have passed the House and Senate, Trump has threatened to veto the defense bill because it will rename military bases named after Confederate generals, and doesn't contain a law that will let people (him) sue social media companies. Trump could also cause incalculable chaos by simply refusing to sign any of the bills, thereby shutting the government down (again).
Odds And Ends
The Senate squashed a Democratic-led effort to stop the sale of missiles, Reaper drones and F-35s to the UAE in a pair of votes that fell mostly along party lines. Politico adds that there's a chance Biden could still halt the sale after taking office. In October, Antony Blinken, Biden's pick for Secretary of State, told Jewish media outlets he was "concerned" about the sale of advanced weapon systems to the UAE, and that it would be something they'd look at closely. In a related story, Germany has extended a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia for another year due the kingdom's war in Yemen. A November report from Oxfam found that G20 allies have provided more than $17 billion in weapons to the Saudis since it began started the war in 2015.
Huawei, the world's biggest telecom manufacturer, helped build a "Uighur alarm" surveillance suite to target China's ethnic minority population. Using AI software from Megvii, the suite can track certain facial features and recognize age, sex, ethnicity and the angle of facial images, based on a report from security geeks. China has rapidly expanded controversial facial recognition tech in the last few years to target individuals in crowds using systems trained to racially profile. In the U.S., mass surveillance tech has been facing scrutiny and bans from human and civil rights groups, and the army of geeks who argue the tech is faulty and can be fooled easily. They point to the crap in, crap out theory that posits existing data sets used by law enforcement agencies can be used for racial profiling.
One More Thing...
There's Japanese guy who makes kitchen knives out of random stuff. They're oddly soothing videos, part silent film, part DIY, and part chemistry lesson. Oh, and the porcelain cows are like recurring characters.
OK, here's a cute critter video: PENGUINS!
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