Batchelor: ‘Fresh Juice Drones’ and ‘Law Broke.’

John Batchelor writes on his blog:

Fresh Juice Drones

Spoke with Carla Maranucci, SFC, re the mocking opera serenade of POTUS at the San Francisco glamorous St. Regis breakfast, where the wealthy paid $5000 a chair and enjoyed the Fresh Juice Party theatrics. POTUS was stumped and snookered. The song mocks POTUS for the Bradley Manning brouhaha and for the general and non-specific incoherence of the Obama “hope and change” sloganeering.

($76,000 protest disrupts swank Obama SF fundraiser: “We paid our dues..where’s our ‘change”?)

Speculation with Mary Kissel that the George Washington University speech that attacked Paul Ryan was meant to secure POTUS Deep Left — and that this demonstration may have farther left to go.

POTUS is not specially rattled by the event; however it does underline the general drift of the Obama administration into fecklessness and posturing.

Late in the day, the DoD announcement that POTUS approves drone strikes in Libya also illustrates the administrations hit-or-miss conduct these last weeks. Air strikes, then no air strikes, now back to drone strikes. A Libya policy as much unknown as the Manning policy, as the Afghan war policy.

Also, late in the news cycle, word from Pakistan of a major drone strike in the Northwestern Province town of Mir Ali, with many casualties. This drone strike is certain to bring retaliation by the ISI; and the CIA vs ISI dispute continues with violence.

POTUS Obama reigns over general incoherence. Mockery from his own supporters is a measure of the triteness coming in the presidential campaign.

Law Broke

Am stumped. Need legal reading. Does POTUS mean to wreck the deal-brokering prosecution of Bradley Manning by making public statement of conclusion to the US Army? Is this purposeful subversion, brain-fogged chit-chat, ignorant office-holding. For POTUS to comment to a public baiter on a military judicial proceeding before the court? Can this be walked back?

For now, this looks like a storm-rising from the Fresh Juice Party stunt in San Francisco. Transcript from Firedoglake:

OBAMA: So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works.

And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.

We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

[Q: Didn't he release evidence of war crimes?]

OBAMA: What he did was he dumped…

[Q: Isn't that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?]

OBAMA: No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.