This didn't have anything to do with there having been an election three days ago. Only conspiracy theorists would imagine that Obama wanted the popular general in his administration up through Election Day, but wanted him out afterwards. Only they would think that CIA and FBI directors can be tricky to fire (see tenure of J.E. Hoover, 1789-1972), so it's best if matters can be arranged where they fall on their own swords.
But only conspiracy theorists might think such terrible things.
P.S. Here's the opening of a letter that appeared in Chuck Klosterman's advice column last July 15:
In other coincidental developments:
Also, coach Mike Brown was fired by the Lakers. Excellent ... All the pieces are falling into place ...
P.S. Here's the opening of a letter that appeared in Chuck Klosterman's advice column last July 15:
My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job.
In other coincidental developments:
Lockheed Martin Corp. ousted its incoming chief executive, Christopher Kubasik, for having a "close personal relationship" with a subordinate at the defense contractor.
The company said Mr. Kubasik was asked to resign Friday after an investigation determined the "improper conduct" violated Lockheed Martin's code of ethics. He will receive a $3.5 million separation payment.
The announcement from the Pentagon's biggest supplier came just hours after Washington was rocked by the surprise resignation of General David Petraeus as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after admitting an extramarital affair.
Also, coach Mike Brown was fired by the Lakers. Excellent ... All the pieces are falling into place ...
Posts
81 comments:
Suggested NY Post headlines
Ralph Peters on Fox News:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fox-news-analyst-on-petraeus-resignation-these-tough-chicago-guys-knew-of-this-affair-held-it-in-their-back-pocket-until-they-needed-to-play-the-card/
"Fox News analyst Ralph Peters on Friday called the timing of Gen. David Petraeus’ sudden resignation as CIA director “just too perfect for the Obama administration” and speculated that “tough Chicago guys” held onto knowledge of the affair until they needed to push the spy chief out.
Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said on Fox News that just as the administration initially called the assault on the Benghazi consulate on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks “purely coincidence,” it’s again “purely coincidence” for the affair to surface after the election but before Petraeus went to Capitol Hill for questioning about Benghazi. CIA Acting Director Michael Morell will now testify instead of Petraeus.
“As an old intelligence analyst, the way I read this — and I could be totally wrong, this is my interpretation — is that the administration was unhappy with Petraeus not playing ball 100 percent on their party line story,” Peters said. “I think he was getting cold feet about testifying under oath about their party line story, and I suspect that these tough Chicago guys knew of this affair for a while, held it in their back pocket until they needed to play the card.”
He added, “Right after the election and right before Petraeus is supposed to get grilled on Capitol Hill, it just really smells.”"
Perhaps Petraeus believes so much in the noble tradition of public service that he honorably sought to avoid affecting the voters' concerns either way
Well, if the CIA director was going to have an affair, I guess he could do worse than a gorgeous ex-West Pointer with a Bond Girl name...
I submitted "Chicago Intelligence Agency" but so far that prime witticism has passed without remark
Oh please... She looks nice enough but she's no honeytrap
Interesting bio on the (more prestigious of the 2) cheated spouses
So Hoover transcends the centuries now?
"So Hoover transcends the centuries now?"
He apparently had some inside dope in his files on President Adams.
"But only conspiracy theorists might think such terrible things."
What on earth are you talking about? I just saw the Times say that the Obama Administration waited until after the election for Petraeus to resign. I don't know why you think everyone is out to get you.
According to the report I heard, the FBI found out about the affair when they were investigating his lady biographer for "unusual Internet activity". That seems like a bizarre priority for the Bureau. Did they run out of Muslim immigrants to entrap in bomb plots?
"So Hoover transcends the centuries now?"
Not under that name, perhaps. He might have faked his death and assumed the identity of a stillborn child every 70 or 80 years, like Christopher Lambert's immortal character did in Highlander.
They say Meyer Lansky had incriminating photos of Hoover.
Any living descendants of John, Abigail, John Quincy, Henry, Ansel, or Amy better think twice before making a run at my town
Paula Kranz is one hot spy.
I wonder who she works for?
Too bad the media won't do any digging whatsoever
Interesting you mention Hoover; the 10-year "term" was waived for the current director... Obama has a wonderful Midwestern (selective) respect for continuity
Recently we here at i-Steve discussed robustly the vast chestful of ribbons General Petraeus's uniform sported. One might be forgiven for guessing at which one of them was awarded for extracurricular conduct above and beyond the call of duty.
Yes, I have to suspect that for quite some time the Obama cabal had the goods, from the FBI, on Petraeus.
To which cabinet member is the FBI subordinated? Why, it's Eric Holder, over at the Department of Justice. Obama is tight with Mr. Holder, is he not? Obama was never tight with General - or later, Director - Petraeus, as Obama was never anything like "Choom" tight or Harvard Law Review tight with anyone who wears the uniform.
Should no further facts emerge, then this will, for fifty, sixty years, provide endless fodder for conspiracy theorists.
One thing's for sure: Petraeus's life just shriveled to minuscule proportion. And he will endure the rest of it in the doghouse of all doghouses.
Since feminism came along and elbowed its way into the military culture, the old "Compact," of Tom Wolfe's description, the unwritten, unspoken "Compact" that guaranteed that military men posted away from their wives enjoy certain, shall we say, extramarital freedom of action, has not endured. Moreover, Petraeus was too high up not to have had such a great blunder occasion so great a fall - even back in the Compact's heyday, the Compact applied more liberally to junior officers and junior enlisted. Then there's also the unignorable enormous chancre of fact that Petraeus made the cardinal error of joining in sin with the femme fatale who wrote the book on him.
Ms. Broadwell will, no doubt, go one to make a fortune from her fifteen minutes of fame. (Which begs the question: Whom will Hollywood cast to play the General and the Camp Followe - oops! - the Femjock Reporter in the sizzling blockbuster movie about their five-mile run dalliance?)
Which brings us to Golden Oldie Time here to close out the Auntie Analogue show: let's hear it for General-Director Petraeus from way back in 1964 - for the former Four-Star from the Fab Four! - "I Should Have Known Better"!
http://takimag.com/article/how_bimbos_saved_the_american_republic_robert_weissberg/print#axzz2BlyRHsem
bimbo factor
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/11/is-that-healthy-experiences-of-microagressions-by-black-women-at-historically-black-institutions/
microhate
Speaking of testifying and General Petraeus, maybe Move-On's General Betray Us ad is finally apropos.
Oh please... She looks nice enough but she's no honeytrap
I don't want to be mean, but have you seen Mrs. Petraeus? She's rather frumpy looking, and I would suspect she's looked that way for the last 25 years.
Given that he started his tenure at the Agency in Sept 2011, and he's had Broadwell shadow him for quite some time while she worked on "All In", its quite funny how he got through security.
The Agency loves to tell its recruits during processing how everyone from the director down goes through the same/similar security process when the vet this kind of stuff.
Once again, you have one rule for the powerful/appointees/elected officials and one rule for the lowly gs-09/13 analyst/operator.
That said, she's toned and fit in all the right places and would smashed it given the chance.
Nasty noticer!
"What on earth are you talking about? I just saw the Times say that the Obama Administration waited until after the election for Petraeus to resign. I don't know why you think everyone is out to get you."
The "Official Story" from the NYTimes:
"White House officials say they were informed on Wednesday night that Mr. Petraeus was considering resigning because of an extramarital affair. Intelligence officials notified the president’s national security staff. Mr. Obama at the time was on his way back to Washington from Chicago, where he had gone to receive election returns."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/us/citing-affair-petraeus-resigns-as-cia-director.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print
Bill Clinton never resigned and the Secret Service still admit him to the White House.
Even Lyndon Johnson had a mistress and Richard Nixon kept a lanky Chinese woman on a houseboat up some slough near Antioch.
Huey Long? Wilbur Mills?
Could Petraeus have done a Lawrence of Arabia?
Obama is TOUGH!
It could be worse for Petraeus.
Former CIA director William Colby, fired by Gerald Ford after angering the Old Boys Network (especially the legendary Richard Helms)for revealing too much of the CIA's crown jewels to Congress, years later turned up missing, "drowned", in the Potomac River. Fell out of his canoe, apparently, but not until it beached itself by his dock.
J. Edgar Hoover was targeted for removal (forced resignation?) by the Nixon administration, and G. Gordon Liddy wrote in "Will" of devising ways to poison Hoover. Lucky for the rest of us that Hoover had the good grace to drop dead of a heart attack before any such conspiracy.
Off topic, but the deleted scene of the director's cut of "Nixon" has Sam Waterston as Richard Helms explaining to RMN how things work in Washington. Nobody ever did figure out what Nixon really meant when he said the "we protected Helms from a hell of a lot of stuff". Great fun to watch, especially as November 22 rolls around again.
Petraeus’s Other Woman spoke about the biography at the Local Lefty Bookstore a while back. My only impressions were that she was decently intelligent and attractive and very ambitious.
But I could not figure out what she been doing in the military, or what use the military had gotten out of her. She seemed more like the type of woman (or man) who makes a successful career in Washington politics than in the drab world of the military.
Frankly, I don't see why they still couldn't make him testify. The facts remain the same regarding Benghazi. If necessary subpoena him. If anything, now he loses some incentive to lie about it, since his job isn't on the line anymore.
NRO now has a 690th reason to not elect Obama
Yeah, the obvious guess here is that this was in the works, but Petraeus waited to resign till after the election. That would have been to his benefit as much as Obama's, I think. Who the hell wants the entire election press coverage machine focused on their extramarital affair for a couple weeks?
The second letter (and answer) from a NYT ethics column back in July are ... interesting.
If your wife is as ugly as Petraeus', you should get a pass on adultery.
The FBI was spying on the CIA? Something funny here.
Anonymous:"They say Meyer Lansky had incriminating photos of Hoover."
That was the cover story. Hoover actually was Meyer Lansky. That way, he was able to control both organized crime and law-enforcement.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-wins-8-10-wealthiest-154837437.html
http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2012/11/09/voter-fraud-129-of-registered-boston-vote-on-election-day/
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/breaking-st-lucie-county-florida-had-1411-turnout-obama-won-county
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/good-news-obama-won-county-in-ohio-with-108-voter-registration
sailer knows stats. he should look into this.
I'm pretty sure at this point that no man (not sure about the ladies) is appointed or elected to a high position in the government if they do NOT have a mistress/ are frequenting prostitutes. That way there is always a cover story at hand if they have to be tossed out (which, given the high re-election rate for incumbents, is unlikely to be via election, irrelevant anyway for the appointed officials). I have to give Clinton sort of backhanded credit for not following the script and just brazening it out, I wonder why this doesn't happen more often.
Now its much harder for the head of the CIA to "brazen it out" given the sensitivity of the post. The news article on Petraeus that I saw, courtesy of Time Warner, helpfully listed other firing offensives for CIA chiefs. In one case classified documents wound up on the guy's home computer, which is probably really easy to do inadvertently, especially given how many trivial things the government classifies.
Adultery is a UCMJ offense that people have gone to jail for, in fact being single and having an affair with someone else's spouse is a UCMJ offense. This didn't keep Petreaus from having a pretty good career in the military.
(see tenure of J.E. Hoover, 1789-1972)
Thanks, Steve. Nice to start my day off by bursting out laughing!
Steve, can you spell this out more? Is the idea that if Petraeus resigned before the election, then that would hurt the Obama administration? But that the Obama administration released information about Petraeus's affair after the election in order to hurt Petraeus without the administration?
To me, at least, Petraeus being or not being the head of the CIA seems like such a minor issue to voters that I can't imagine Obama, et al. being too concerned about it.
I've seen suggest Petraeus as a potential Republican Presidential candidate. Of course this usually come from the sort of people who used to suggest Powell as a potential Republican Presidential candidate.
The title of Paula Broadwell's biography of Patraeus:
"All In"
Here's hoping that the General resigned so that they couldn't boss him around before his trek to Capitol Hill to testify on Benghazi. Reports are that his affair was well-known by even reporters way back before he became CIA head.
The House leadership has already said they will ask him to testify )or issue a subpoena if he doesn't come willingly; the Democrat Senate has already said they won't. Ha. Like that surprises us?
Married woman, with two kids, screws big man because he orders lots of people around. Female Hypergamy squared. Meanwhile, some 14 year old actress is alleged to have an adult boyfriend, reason why she wants her sister not her mother to have custody.
That's what no standards looks like. A guy who is supposed to embody discipline (Petraeus like all senior officers was always a joke) has none. Not even for a face that not only would not launch a thousand ships, but not even a second glance.
Yeah, slam dunk Obama used blackmail to keep Petraeus in line. OT: the Hill reports Obama had the highest gender gap ever, took women by 12 points while Romney took men by 8 for a total of 20 points.
Most women, including White women, are sluts. As sluts, they'll vote Obama, mostly. Of course Obama STOLE the election, Chicago style, but it was close enough for him to do that.
The end game is of course, the end of normal, non-violent politics and a Golden Dawn. Which I hope to avoid by leaving the country pronto and never looking or coming back. Steve -- have you looked at Australia? I'm sure someone there could use your talents.
"Anonymous said...
The title of Paula Broadwell's biography of Patraeus: "All In""
And Ms. Broadwell was an "embedded reporter". Indeed.
I wonder if any of that impressive array of fruit salad on Petraeus's chest -
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/09/all-must-have-prizes.html
- was awarded for the Broadwell campaign - nailing his synchophantic biographer.
However, for whatever reason, she dumped him, and he apparently mooned over her for months on end (apparently sending her thousands of E-mails) like a smitten 18 year old. The E-mail traffic is probably what betrayed him.
And this was our new American Caesar? What a nimrod.
There is both more, and less, to the Dave-Paula saga than meets the eye.
As a former counterintelligence officer, I have a *lot* of questions.
http://20committee.com/2012/11/10/all-in-the-unraveling-of-dave-petraeus/
"The company said Mr. Kubasik was asked to resign Friday after an investigation determined the "improper conduct" violated Lockheed Martin's code of ethics. He will receive a $3.5 million separation payment."
I am shocked by this. Truly shocked. Lockheed Martin has a code of ethics? I'll wager that this code remains un-decoded.
I see you've edited your post so it sounds less delusional.
"Whiskey said...
Which I hope to avoid by leaving the country pronto and never looking or coming back."
Bon Voyage. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
"If your wife is as ugly as Petraeus', you should get a pass on adultery."
I didn't want to say it, but I"m glad somebody did.
Adultery is a UCMJ offense that people have gone to jail for, in fact being single and having an affair with someone else's spouse is a UCMJ offense. This didn't keep Petreaus from having a pretty good career in the military.
CIA is a civilian agency.
The whole affair reminds me of the old Kevin Costner/Gene Hackman movie No Way Out which I watched again a short while ago. Hackman, as Secretary of Defense, murders his mistress (Sean Young) in a jealous fit and his (closeted homosexual) chief of staff works overtime trying to cover it up in the midst of a hunt for a Soviet agent at the Pentagon. Costner plays an ONI officer lover of Young who winds up trying to avoid becoming the prime suspect.
The title of Paula Broadwell's biography of Patraeus:
"All In"
Teehee!
"Anonymous said...
If your wife is as ugly as Petraeus', you should get a pass on adultery."
I wouldn't call her ugly, just plain. Look at this picture of the young couple from 1974 (scroll down the page about half-way), and they don't seem unmatched:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2230697/David-Petraeus-resigns-head-CIA.html
Interestingly, she was the daughter of the superintendent of West Point when Petraeus went there. Moreover, she's also a government flunky - working as some kind of official in the consumer protection bureau that was created for Elizabeth Warren. Also - as far as can be gleaned from Wikipedia - they don't have any kids. A rather strange Washington power-couple.
Can't Petraeus still be subpoenaed? And why wouldn't the O admin keep him and use the threat of exposure to get him in line before testifying?
Maybe Petraeus is a better man than he appears and refused.
Ethicist Chuck Klosterman answer: Don’t expose the affair in any high-profile way. It would be different if this man’s project was promoting some (contextually hypocritical) family-values platform, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The only motive for exposing the relationship would be to humiliate him and your wife, and that’s never a good reason for doing anything. This is between you and your spouse. You should tell her you want to separate, just as you would if she were sleeping with the mailman. The idea of “suffering in silence” for the good of the project is illogical. How would the quiet divorce of this man’s mistress hurt an international leadership initiative? He’d probably be relieved.
The fact that you’re willing to accept your wife’s infidelity for some greater political good is beyond honorable. In fact, it’s so over-the-top honorable that I’m not sure I believe your motives are real. Part of me wonders why you’re even posing this question, particularly in a column that is printed in The New York Times.
Your dilemma is intriguing, but I don’t see how it’s ambiguous. Your wife is having an affair with a person you happen to respect. Why would that last detail change the way you respond to her cheating? Do you admire this man so much that you haven’t asked your wife why she keeps having sex with him? I halfway suspect you’re writing this letter because you want specific people to read this column and deduce who is involved and what’s really going on behind closed doors (without actually addressing the conflict in person). That’s not ethical, either."
Perhaps Dr. Broadwell blew the whistle (to the FBI) himself.
Mike Eisenstadt
The good news is that it's clear he wasn't batting for the other team.
On the Code of Ethics front, it seems that some big Silly Valley company decided it was time to promulgate a Code of Conduct.
On the day of its announcement, some female staffer was heard to say: "Ohhh, great, another c*ck we can violate!"
I hear they quietly changed the work Conduct to Ethics.
Most women, including White women, are sluts.
If anyone mentions 'Most Jews', whiskey immediately calls them anti-Semites for grouping people. Yet he groups white women all the time and ignores the fact that a majority of white women voted for Romney. He seems to come up with a theory and then ignores any facts that might poke a hole in it. Like a broken clock, he is occasionally correct on some issues, but the vast majority of the time his grand theory doesn't withstand the facts.
PS. Your fixation on women, especially white women, is getting kind of creepy. Now that you are describing them as sluts, you seem to have taken your usual critique of them up a notch. I hope all is well for you on the home front buddy. You don't sound well.
"Anonymous Plenty O'Tang said...
Oh please... She looks nice enough but she's no honeytrap"
Maybe nice looking in her prime; she looks a few days past the expiration date at this point. At least Clinton chased 20 yr olds.
Since feminism came along and elbowed its way into the military culture, the old "Compact," of Tom Wolfe's description, the unwritten, unspoken "Compact" that guaranteed that military men posted away from their wives enjoy certain, shall we say, extramarital freedom of action, has not endured. Moreover, Petraeus was too high up not to have had such a great blunder occasion so great a fall - even back in the Compact's heyday, the Compact applied more liberally to junior officers and junior enlisted. Then there's also the unignorable enormous chancre of fact that Petraeus made the cardinal error of joining in sin with the femme fatale who wrote the book on him.
___________________________________
According to author and oft-interviewed former CIA agent Robert Baer (on CNN) and a couple of other former CIA agents on Fox (whose names I can't recall) it is NOT uncommon for Directors to engage in affairs, and they have not been fired nor have they felt they needed to resign. As long as they had the affair(s) with women that are American and have been "checked out," it's done "comomonly."
Baer and the others said this resignation for the reasons the General is highly unusual and "there's more here than meets the eye."
Really?
"Even Lyndon Johnson had a mistress and Richard Nixon kept a lanky Chinese woman on a houseboat up some slough near Antioch."
Details please, as I grew up in Antioch and never heard that.
Was she from Locke??????
"Maybe nice looking in her prime; she looks a few days past the expiration date at this point. At least Clinton chased 20 yr olds."
Okay, I'm a woman, so even IF I think I understand men, I am reminded now and then that I don't.
Still, you're going to tell me that this woman, in your opinion, is NOT sexier, even at her age, than Monica Lewinsky? Monica Lewinsky? Monica Lewinsky?
John Batchelor's sources, in my experience, are usually on target: great clip below of Larry Kudlow's interview with Batchelor about the Petraeus reason for resigning (his non-public testimony on the Hill on Benghazi during which he kind of went with the company line of "it was the video) was NOT under oath).
Batchelor mentions the arming-Syrian rebels story---
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog/2012/11/beauty-didnt-kill-beast
The two female reporters at Fox, Catherine Herridge and damn, forgot her name, are the Woodward and Bernstein of this story.
Apparently, the General's biographer took notes on his military performance from under his desk. Life imitates art once more - in this case, Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. Just think of your secretary Governor.
And Terry Southern still delivers the goods 48 years on. The military back in 1964 were already thinking hard about future defense requirements:
General "Buck" Turgidson
Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove
Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky
I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
"All the pieces are falling into place ... "
I couldn't stop myself from mentally saying "Bwa ha ha ha" immediately after reading that.
LOL. mike brown. i so called that.
the old great coaches, who were all white, are retiring, and being replaced by guys like mike brown. mediocre, or worse, black guys. here is the kind of brainpower you get now in the NBA for 5 million dollars a year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPb2nZPxffU
yet the claim is made that "winning is all the matters" and "the best available talent is hired". does anybody still seriously believe this? the lakers immediately went back to considering a white guy. phil jackson, jerry sloan, or mike d'antoni are the only realistic choices.
i notice that the arenas are half full for most games, so the NBA certainly hasn't solved it's "losing 200 million dollars a year" problem to any degree. perhaps their strategy now is 100% television audience. the live audience, the ticket buyers, they're still pretty much all european, but when we switch to the television market, it instantly changes to obama's america. at least half the television viewers have to be african, if not more. neilsen ratings seem to bear this out.
by 2020 the NBA will be a dreadfully boring place. almost every team will be the same. 12 black players who play exactly the same way as the 12 black players on every other team, with few teams having a particular style or flair. a non-descript mediocre black head coach. and very little distinct personality from team to another. each will play in relatively new 16,000 seat arena which has no history or identity, named after a corporation.
the generic, strip mall-lization of professional basketball in america. vast, unchanging, uniform suburbs spread out in every direction, one company owns all FM channels and plays the same 40 songs on every station in every city, and now every NBA team is the same too. don't beam me up scotty.
G. Gordon Liddy wrote in "Will" of devising ways to poison Hoover.
IIRC, it was columnist Jack Anderson that Liddy was conspiring to assassinate, by coating his steering wheel with a solution of LSD and DMSO and then hoping he'd have a fatal accident. Kind of a goofy scheme.
Marlowe - I loved that film! -- Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in eighties film "No Way Out." I predict the tale of Petraeus' fall will be a juicy one, as well. And better yet, this story is nonfiction. What precipitated Broadwell's email threats to an unknown third party? She was motivated by jealousy, and the recipient of her threats was Anjelina Jolie. How many people have the kind of clout to launch an FBI investigation - over a percieved threat rec'd in an online catfight? Jolie would we one of the few.
Abu Sufian bin Qumu. led the attack in Benghazi on the U.S. Consulate building/
He was captured and detained at Gitmo, but was later released to Libya in 2007.
How did he get released? The left-wing law firm “Center for Constitutional Rights” and “Covington and Burling”, represented him under pressure from a handful of U.S. Senators.
The leader of that Law firm in 2007 was none other than Eric Holder himself, and the name of the main Senator that help lead the way was one Senator Barack Obama.
Still, you're going to tell me that this woman, in your opinion, is NOT sexier, even at her age, than Monica Lewinsky? Monica Lewinsky? Monica Lewinsky?
Yes. Sad but true. Most women are in deep denial about this sort of thing.
She seemed more like the type of woman (or man) who makes a successful career in Washington politics than in the drab world of the military.
Well, I didn't go to one of them, but I now take it for granted that academies such as West Point/Annapolis/etc. have become mere resume-buffing factories in our sissified late-capitalist society. Through Facebook I was recently looking at the updates from a friend of a friend who indeed got the appointment up the Hudson, and graduated, and then did her MBA program in Manchester, UK, did other quasi-educational corporate missionary work, and now is a rising financial services VP type, inter alia. As regards alma mater she seems to treat it in the same respect as would any upstanding USC or Alabama fan, i.e. lots of photos & commentary on football "rivalry." I missed somehow whatever part in there where she bore the weight of a pack and gripped to the stock of a rifle (or however that George Orwell saying went). It's all just a meritocratic jobs program now anyway, after warfare is assumed by its rightful masters in the robots & drone planes.
They are actually invoking formally independent Earvin "Magic" Johnson in the Lakers coup d'etat. Do you think Magic will run for mayor after the squeaky guy is deposed (getting caught with a sexy Iranian news reporter)? Or will he just skip it and head straight for the governor's mansion
The most shocking thing about a supposedly great military power like the US is its absence of generals of distinct talent with formidable personalities. Men like MacArthur. Maybe Truman's scalping of him set the tone for the future.
What I find most striking about the Petraeus affair is the utter disregard for "optics" by the administration - he resigns two days after the election, everyone knows they've known about it for weeks and it doesnt cramp their style at all. I used to think that this type of thing was a result of the Obama administration's not realizing that it even looks bad because their press coverage is so adulatory. I now think a more Dalrymplesque explanation is more likely ("“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ) This is apparent in saddamesque election results in various precints and the like. I think the idea is to shove it in your face "whacha gonna do about it, huh?" The shamelessness is not an accident or a mistake but a feature; it's the "Chicago goes to Washington" model. I'm afraid it's effects will be as pernicious as those Dalrymple discusses.
At the very least, the Dems have neutralized a man who would have been a very attractive presidential candidate for the Republican Party. I suspect that Hillary cares about such thingsl.
This reporter hottie seems, well, hot to me. In comparison to Monica Lewinsky and the average woman in the street.
Mind you, Im a weirdo in Whiskey terms. I think Monica, big n bulky Monica, was pretty cute too.
so, petraeus, whom the isteve commenters deemed not manly enough a few weeks ago (http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/09/all-must-have-prizes.html) was a stud after all.
"Anonymous said...
Mind you, Im a weirdo in Whiskey terms. I think Monica, big n bulky Monica, was pretty cute too."
I've always thought the same. A big zaftig girl like Monica - what's not to like? She was cute. I don't fault Bill for being attracted to her. I blame him for being governed by every little tingle in his dick. I blame him for turning the oval office into a vignette from Penthouse Letters.
Anon 6:45:
Link? Evidence? The internet is full of claims like this, but if you can't provide some kind of useful evidence from someone more reliable than an anonymous comment on a blog, you will probably not convince many people worth convincing.
Mr Anon:
I suspect Monica was no actual danger to Clinton's marriage, though, given that at that point Hillary couldn't actually chop his balls off without getting past the secret service. He was horny and Monica was interested and cute and available, but there wasn't going to be a deep meeting of the souls between them. By contrast, it sounds like Petreus fell hard for this woman, hard enough that he kept harassing her by email after they'd broken things off.
Not to go all French or libertarian on you all, but woudn't we be better off if these guys were paying some clean, high-priced professional to get their extracurricular activities in? I mean, there are reasons not to want Petreus as CIA director, but surely that decision ought to be independent of what he can and can't keep in his pants.
NOTA: you're not helpless. You are perfectly able to use Wikipedia, Google, etc. Holder's tenure at Covington & Burling is humdrum old news. Meanwhile the Libyan freedom fighter Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu has his own page at the NYT's super-special "Guantanamo Guantanamo Gauntanamo" site.
I do hope Steve caught the "ghostwriter tell-all" particularly the focus on the Int'l Brotherhood of Long Distance Runners
She looks aight in some pics, worse in others--depends who's doing the make-up that week. Obviously she was born to run. Much as I hate the avant-les-ciseaux Miley cut, Catherine Herridge's definitely hotter than Broadwell, but I do think Benghazi beat brawler Jennifer Griffin, as cancer survivor & classy dame, has earned a bye on those all-important metrics. Perhaps this dynamic duo of News Corp newswaifs will succeed where Petraeus's personal puffer pooch-screwed it; Harvard usually beats Army in the end...
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