“The Eight Shames and Seven Dwarfs”
David Petraeus fought to keep his job at the CIA after being told the FBI knew of his affair with Paula Broadwell. But James Clapper firmly showed him the door the day after Obama was re-elected. “Petraeus planned to stay in the job even after he acknowledged the affair to the FBI, hoping the episode would never become public. He resigned last week after being told to do so by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. on the day President Obama was reelected.”
The new information shows that Petraeus told Broadwell this summer to stop sending the harassing e-mails after Kelley told him about them. Law enforcement officials said the e-mails indicated that Broadwell was jealous of Kelley’s friendship with Petraeus. His warning came about the same time Petraeus ended the affair with Broadwell.
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that Petraeus might face charges in connection with the Broadwell affair. “Petraeus could possibly face military prosecution for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent claims that the affair began after he left the military.”
Everyone is shocked, shocked! George Stephanopoulos even referred to the Petraeus scandal as “shocking news”.
Despite the lengthy investigation into Broadwell by the FBI, the White House says it was not made aware of it until Wednesday, the day after the election, a revelation that surprised many.
“It just doesn’t add up. That the FBI would be carrying on this type of investigation without, again, bringing it to the president or the highest levels of the White House,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said. …
Yes the ‘shocking news’ dawned upon 1600 Pennslvania avenue like the sun coming up in the morning. And before it set, Petraeus was gone. Paula Broadwell’s father asserted “this is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out. There is a lot more that is going to come out. You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”
That something else has to be bigger than Petraeus; common to all the mysteries of this most impenetrable of presidencies. News under the Obama administration has become coded to a degree unknown outside the annals of Soviet Russia and Mao’s China. In those regimes people talked about numbers, flowers and calendars to indirectly reference what could only be spoken of openly in whispers.
Nothing was what it seemed.
The “The Three-Anti (1951) and Five-Anti campaigns (1952)” were “ostensibly aimed to root out corruption, embezzlement, waste, though they also served to purge opposition to the new Communist government.”
The “Hundred Flowers” (1957) campaign encouraged critics to speak up — so that they could be identified by the State Security apparatus.
The “Destruction of the Four Olds” (1966) is not, as one might think, a scrappage program involving cars made by a division of General Motors but “call to burn and destroy cultural artifacts, Chinese literature, paintings, and religious symbols and temples. People in possession of these goods were punished. Intellectuals were targeted as personifications of the Four Olds, resulting in their persecution.”
The 6521 project is the most recent, occurring only in 2009. It was a “nationwide operation … to ensure ‘social stability’ by suppressing potential dissidents during anniversaries of political significance. The campaign’s name refers to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, and the 10th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong. ” And there you have it: 6521.
There were wheels within wheels; layers beneath layers; matryoshka dolls within matryoshka dolls.
These innocuous sounding Chinese names were in fact shadow plays aimed at sending a fascist message couched the most innocuous sounding terms. The sheer vagueness of the campaigns lent an edge of terror to them. Nobody knew what they were about and that imbued them with a sinister and crepuscular menace.
Democracies are creatures of the open day. The procedural mechanism of constitutional republic exists to ensure that all the cards are dealt above the table. That the lights always shine. The sign democracy is working is that everybody basically understands what is going now; when things are really about what they say they are about.
By contrast autocracies are thronged with secrets, secret passages, star-chambers and cabals. The characteristic of a conspiratorial political system is that nobody knows who’s next.
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One of the most wonderfully front-loaded distraction campaigns in recent memory. And it is working like a charm.
100% of the vote in numerous precincts in Ohio and Pennsylvania? What else? The regime had gathered the votes they needed before election day even began. The United States is no longer a democracy. The corruption will be maintained by repression.
“The procedural mechanism of constitutional republic exists to ensure that all the cards are dealt above the table. That the lights always shine. The sign democracy is working is that everybody basically understands what is going now; when things are really about what they say they are about.”
But it hasn’t been that way in the U.S. for a long time.
My generation grew up with JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the weasel-like machinations of the Clintons, and various other rumors of shady actions by America’s presidents and other leaders. Regardless of what the actual truth is, the perception is that no one in American politics has been acting completely above board for several decades now. Perhaps that’s why the general population doesn’t seem too troubled by the nefarious deeds of Obama and co. It’s simply business as usual. This may also be reflected in today’s hyper partisan political environment – everybody thinks the other party’s guy is trying to screw them, so we’re now locked in a vicious cycle of tit for tat. I’m sure if you asked many lefties these days to justify Obama’s underhanded actions, they would simply say it’s payback for the sneaky stuff Bush “got away with.”
John Kerry as Secretary of Defense and Susan Rice as Secretary of State.
What could go wrong?
I’m pretty sure “Broadwell” is a play on words. They do that a lot. Like they had a character named “Steele” who was a copyright lawyer or something… very annoying. Now I think “Paula” is one of the worst little actresses since Susan McDougal (seeing her in chains was an early clue that something wasn’t right with the news).
Those were all good ideas, but you forgot the Four Pests campaign which almost succeeded and gave kids something to do at least.
Ok, wait, what? Now General Allen is supposedly involved in this mess? And with the same woman that DP’s mistress was harassing? WTF is going on here? Was there some sort of generals’ swingers club going on at HQ ISAF that I’m not aware of?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/scandal-probe-ensnares-commander-of-us-nato-troops-in-afghanistan/2012/11/13/7955fea4-2d54-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story.html
Now I see why things in Afghanistan are falling apart. Our commanders are just a wee bit too preoccupied…
“nobody knows who’s next.”
Are you reading the minds of all our military brass?
—
In passing, there was a rumor floating about a few days before Nov 6 of Valerie Jarrett observing ‘those not explicitly with us will be viewed as against us.’
ahahah
la grande lessive arrive
What jumps out of the account is that Petraeus didn’t see it coming. He didn’t think it was a big deal. He had fixed the problem, talked to Broadwell. The other woman wasn’t going to press charges. She was a family friend. There was no crime — if we leave aside adultery. It was family court business. Maybe not even that if no one was going to make an issue of it.
And then he gets called after election day, and boom he gets called to carpet. How do you like that? I for one, don’t like it. Most workplaces you can tell if your being measured for a termination notice.
It strongly suggests is that Petraeus isn’t a problem with something that has happened. He’s a problem with something that is going to happen. There’s some loop Petraeus is not part of. Something he’s in the way of.
Well let a hundred flowers bloom! Let a thousand schools of thought contend!
If the election was compromised by Russian and Ukrainian black hat programmers — long known to be wise to the multitudinous holes inside Windows — then it stands to reason that a purge of the CIA is underway.
Folks, the typical ballot tabulation is performed in a Windows environment run by the brainiacs of our civil service. (unions)
In the manner of Suxnet, pendrives inserted here and there would be all that is necessary to flip Romney to 0bama — at the margins driving the electoral vote wildly to the Left.
That Putin & Co. are on record as preferring Soetoro is universally known.
The strategic goal of corrupting democratic tabulations goes at least as far back as post-war Europe. At that time the KGB and CIA fought, vote by vote.
By combining the utterly fantastic database of American election preferences with up to date polling — the Democrat machine, born of Chicago, would have exactly the level of information to corrupt the vote — while making it deniable.
When NAMs fail to make it to the polls — the Machine votes in their stead. How else to explain 99+% turnouts? ONLY despotic regimes/ Democrat machines attain that mark.
Further, in normal voting, someone makes an error, and votes for the wrong guy. However, in those areas of elderly, NAM voters — not a single vote slipped into the wrong column. Stunning, I’d say.
And, we have aroused rural Republican districts that failed to turn out votes even up to ‘McCain standards’ — a man who drew marginal enthusiasm in 2008.
But, the weirdest of all: North Carolina — not even considered a swing state — didn’t even poll as a close contest at all — b a r e l y made it into the Romney column. As ever, urban votes — just blocks from HQ — were the last to be tallied. It’s final vote was w a a y out side the 95% confidence level — of every pollster of note.
The ‘Suxnet ability’ to shift the vote — remotely — would make 0bama a Putin client.
No wonder he’d be more ‘flexible’ after being re-selected.
Since any pursuit of these matters would turn on the CIA’s assets and methods, terminating DP ASAP meant kicking him to the curb 11-06-2012.
So, yes, the sex angle is a trivial cover for a much deeper game.
————–
As a side benefit: the stolen election has the opposition chasing its tail. Instead of applying Occam’s razor — the Republican establishment is hacking away with bi-faced flints. The result is a bloody mess.
They just can’t believe their lying eyes. Instead, they’re taking big gulps from the Chicago machine, and smacking their lips.
The body count within the DoD/CIA ranks is mounting at a pace.
The last time this happened England had Richard III on the throne.
Our tricky monarch makes RMN look like a choir boy.
6.E2
And with the same woman that DP’s mistress was harassing? WTF is going on here?
There’s also the clown from the FBI who sent Kelley a topless picture of himself:
“Kelley is the unpaid social liaison at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa who allegedly received threatening emails from Broadwell and reported them to the FBI, starting the investigation of the former CIA director which eventually led to his retirement.
She also reportedly received shirtless photos from an FBI agent who was on the case. The agent was removed when investigators found out.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/general-john-allen-petraeus-2012-11
Quite a cast of characters– more than enough for Wretchard’s second novel, perhaps to be titled No Way!
This Petraeus attack is about discrediting the military in the public’s eyes – the last group of “government employees” that the public really trusts. It is doubly helpful in keeping the public’s interest even farther and farther from Benghazi. Heck. It’s about sex. Obama is a masterful Machiavellian.
The leftists can’t stand it that a group of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals – like all the guys and gals I served with – have more honor and integrity in their little fingers than the whole lot of them together can ever hope to achieve.
Whiskey’s got an interesting read on Benghazi over at his place. He seems to say that the level of angst felt by not only the current and past military folks, but the current and past special operators, is pretty strong at leaving our “guys” behind while only lifting one finger to help them. He didn’t identify the finger he was talking about.
Seething? C’mon guys, get hold of yourselves, get a light grip, don’t lose the bubble, breathe…see there? Don’t you feel all better now?
We are not in a constitutional republic. We are not in a democracy. The election was stolen, and that becomes more apparent with each passing day. If the government in DC does not have the consent of the governed, it has no legitimacy. That lack is going to be worked out one way or another. Those who support the regime are TWANLOC.
I am beginning to hear rumblings about 2014 or 2016. Those who are considering those as solutions either do not understand the situation, are in denial of the truth, or are working for the regime. Once you have won supreme power through stolen elections, you never dare have an honest election again. The First American Republic is over. We have a Long, Cold, Hungry Night to go through, and things are going to be collapsing around our ears. Those who survive the hard times to come, and those raised by them, may give birth to the Second American Republic someday.
There is going to have to be a period of redefining what patriotism is, and in relation to what. I submit that the starting point is that the government ≠ the country ≠ the people ≠ the Constitution. Where we go from there will depend on events and opportunities. You get more of what you support, and less of what you starve.
Moving back to Wretchard’s discussion of the Petraeus story; I have to note that 4 Flag rank or higher officers have been summarily relieved since Benghazi. All under less than transparent circumstances. I have no problem, under normal circumstances when he was not going to testify before Congress about what happened in Benghazi, if Petraeus was forced to step down as DCIA. Whether the “Honey Trap” was foreign, domestic, or political; its success means that the DCIA would be subject to blackmail.
If he was charged with actual security related offenses, I could even see that, if the facts show such. But the word out of DC on the media is that they are going to try him under the UCMJ charge of “Adultery”.
The charge does exist. It still is in the Uniform Code of Military Justice [Article 134]. It is also one of the most rarely charged offenses in this country. In a country ruled by a political party that places itself above law and conventional morality, whose politicians screw like minks on viagra whether married or not and with or without consent, where the Supreme Court ruled that any sexual conduct between consenting adults is legal, and where there are cases going through the courts to legalize plural marriage, incest, and to lower the age of consent to the onset of puberty; the choice of that particular charge is …. interesting in a Pharisaic sense.
I commend to the attention of BC-er’s the aptness of studying the fate of Generalfeldmarschall Blomberg at the rise of Hitler. Hitler had to neutralize the German General Staff as a possible alternate power center and rival. He did.
Further, it may be useful to review the fate of Marshal Tukhachevsky. He was the popular commander of the Red Army, had defended Moscow, defeated two pro-Czarist armies during the Russian Civil War, and had reorganized the Red Army in the early 1930′s. Even though he had no record or hint of disloyalty to the Party, Stalin feared him as a possible rival in the future.
The NKVD secretly passed deliberately falsified information indicating Tukhachevsky was conspiring with foreign elements to the Germans, who passed it to the Czechs, who passed it back to the Soviets [not knowing its real origin]. And that became the basis for the charges against Tukhachevsky. He was tried and executed, which started the “Great Purge” that decapitated the Soviet military and killed Stalin’s rivals in the Party.
I am not saying that Petraeus is as innocent and loyal as Tukhachevsky. After all, knowing what he was, he took Obama’s Shilling to run the CIA. I am specifically noting that military personnel can be loyal to duty and country, and be set up for personal political reasons and the convenience of those in civilian power.
Long ago, I learned to listen to that little voice in the back of my head that sometimes tells me something ain’t right. It has saved my a** more than a few times by keeping me from walking into dangerous situations. That voice is telling me that while there may not be exact parallels, that there are analogs to those situations in play here. YMMV.
By the way, just for accuracy; I got the details on how Tukhachevsky was set up from a friend of mine who is a published expert on Russian military matters from Czarist times to date. I know some Russian history, but that was new to me.
Finally, the Petraeus story has an interesting footnote. Supposedly, this story broke when the Broadwell woman began sending threatening emails to another, purely platonic acquaintance of Petraeus’ named Jill Kelley. It seems that the FBI agent who was dealing with Kelley became …. enamored and fixated on her. He sent her pictures of himself shirtless, in what was an apparent attempt to impress her. He has been removed from the case.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-agent-petraeus-2012-11
Under the current regime, Federal law enforcement seems to have lost any sense of professionalism. We have SS agents patronizing hookers in foreign countries on the government dime, leaving firearms around aircraft and in airports, and passing out drunk on the streets of American cities. We have TSA agents stealing anything not nailed down, molesting passengers, and in at least one case possessing kiddie porn. Now we have an FBI agent sending undressed pictures of himself to a crime victim he takes a fancy to.
Liu2 kou3shui3 de5 biao3zi5 he2 hou2zi5 de5 ben4 er2zi5men5.
These are who are going to be making midnight knocks on our doors?
Subotai Bahadur
“The leftists can’t stand it that a group of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals – like all the guys and gals I served with – have more honor and integrity in their little fingers than the whole lot of them together can ever hope to achieve.”
Just because you wear a uniform doesn’t make you a saint. Our generals have been particularly deficient for a long, long while. It was only a matter of time before their moral shortcomings caught up with them. Is it fair that they’re being held to much higher standards than other public figures? Maybe not, but those are the rules of the game.
Deleted.
Pardon me for adventuring into wild speculation for a moment.
Wretchard, I think your instinct is correct on the abrupt departure of Petraeus as an indicator of the future, not the past.
My read on this is that the Obama high command did not initiate the removal, although their hand was ultimately forced.
I see a battle now commencing between the intelligence community and the administration. They were sold down the river on the Benghazi affair and they are probably retaliating. I’m sure Petraeus was a useful tool to the administration, and he has now been removed.
It’s probably going to get nasty from here on.
Maybe it’s all the fault of a sex video.
Go back out to Los Angeles, arrest some schmuck, and lock him up.
Problem solved.
w@9: ”What jumps out of the account is that Petraeus didn’t see it coming.”
This is all so simple. Somebody contracts with Major Paula Broadwell to write an hagiograph of General Patraeus. Then over time Broadwell and Patraeus become romantically involved. Jill Kelly, a family friend Petraeus, receives some threatening emails which she gives to another friend, an FBI agent, to see if he can identify the source of the emails.
At some point, the FBI pulls the agent off the investigation because the agent is obsessing over the investigation (there are rumors that the agent sent shirtless photos of himself to Kelly). The agent, fearing that the FBI is going to bury the investigation, notifies Rep. Cantor’s office of the investigation. Cantor directs his office to notify the head of the FBI of his concerns on the 27th of OCT. The notice is not received by the FBI until the 31st of OCT. due to Hurricane Sandy (you just can’t make this stuff up).
Now they uncover a cache of thousands of emails linking Jill Kelly with General Allen, Patraeus’ successor as the top US commander in Afghanistan. The FBI turns this investigation over to the Pentagon thinking that it may be a violation of military rules rather than federal rules.
Meanwhile, Broadwell is named as the source of the emails Kelly had turned over to the FBI. In the emails, Broadwell warns Kelly to ‘turn it down a notch’; it is supposed that Broadwell was jealous about Kelly’s relationship with Patraeus.
Nobody has heard further from the FBI agent, but Obama was reelected, so now we will have to buy Sandra Fluke birth control pills.
Is that it?
14. E2
Well then, that settles it doesn’t it? Nobody called anyone a saint, but only a fool makes such a cynical generic statement about “people” who put their lives on the line for all our butts – including Generals. But don’t worry, the way it’s going there’ll soon be a huge dearth of honorable people willing to serve. Then maybe we can start up the draft again. I nominate you, sir. I think you fit perfect description you’ve made for all Generals. Now the only question is how many stars to give you.
“History and History In the Making.”
I know Obama is neither Marius, nor Caesar, nor Octavian in his personal story. However it’s hard to not to see that he along with Bush43 have employed much that Marius did in watering down the nation’s culture. The parallel influx of Latins then and Latinos now is way too striking.
No doubt then that there is fear of a Sulla no matter how unsuitably Petraeus fitted that role. They simply know that Marius did not survive Sulla, and that is enough. There is some dark humor in their fear if what you say up at 9 is true: that Petraeus didn’t see it coming. That he surely should have were he anywhere near the competent strategist he believed himself to be. Patton comes to mind about now, and Petraeus doesn’t come close.
Observing tyranny on the rise is unsettling stuff. Again, “nobody knows who’s next.”
subotai@13: “But the word out of DC on the media is that they are going to try him under the UCMJ charge of “Adultery””
This is the administration’s attempt to ingratiate themselves with the religious right. The ‘bitter clingers’ had best applaud this overture or they’ll never see another.
As far as the administration is concerned, this is a two ‘fer
@19 -
I’m not cynical, I’m angry. I did two tours in Afghanistan with the Army. While friends and colleagues of mine were getting killed and injured, McCrystal was giving stupid interviews to Rolling Stone while Petraeus, and now it appears possibly Allen, were apparently busy chasing tale at CENTCOM and/or HQ ISAF. Meanwhile, the war just keeps dragging on.
It was easy for GOP white people to say about Hermon Cain’s adultery : ” I do not want this man to be putting his hands all over my daughters .” His popular leap off tall building. This thinking should be toward white man leader as well. I do not want the hands of a leader to be all over my daughter’s flesh. The leader must be a good father figure who does not molest his daughters beneath him and great respect will come to this role of father figure leader. May these adultery men be shamed and if unrepentant thrown in hell in afterlife for 10,000 years with the fallen angels figure of speech
Amen Amen Amen
I read the piece about Jill Kelley [the target of the threatening emails from Petraeus' girlfriend] being involved with Marine General Allen, commander of our forces in Afghanistan. First, I will agree with what was said by Gabriel Malor over at ACE OF SPADES. Malor is a professional writer. And he has not written anything near the 20-30,000 PAGES they claim as evidential and inappropriate correspondence between Allen and Kelley over the last year or two. In his entire life. I have been writing off and on since the early 1980′s, and heavily from 9/11/01 to date. I don’t have 10% of that. And everyone who has put up with me here knows I am a wordy bugger. I call BS. I think that a purge is in progress, trying to take down and discredit the military leadership.
And have you noticed that suddenly, after Obama stole the election, that the press suddenly remembered how to aggressively investigate a story, at least as long as it is against an enemy of the regime?
Things are coming to a head, right smartly. If I may offer another item for BC-er’s to research; take a look at the death of José Calvo Sotelo, 1st Duke of Calvo Sotelo in Spain in 1936. A Spanish conservative politician and leader of the Opposition in Parliament, he got into a dispute with Socialist Deputies on the floor of the Spanish Parliament. The next day, a Spanish equivalent of a police SWAT team [Guardia de Asalto, or Assault Police] and a group of Socialists and Trade Unionists came to his home, pulled him out in front of his wife and children, and took him away and executed him. His death was one of the immediate triggers of the Spanish Civil War.
We have been asking, “Who is John Galt?”. Another question to ponder is, “Who will be our Jose Calvo Sotelo?”.
Subotai Bahadur
In one district in Florida Allen West is fighting the obvious fraud. Petreaus had the potential to challenge the regime on a national scale.
It is a heavily overused cliche to say that “the fate of the Republic” rests in someone’s hands. On this occasion it may be true. Mitt Romney may not read the Belmont Club but he must be reviewing the same evidence we do. If he stands up and unfurls his banner on a hill then History will turn and the battle will begin. If he does not then we shall go quietly into the night. If he does so then there is no guaranty of victory. He would be like Charles II facing ruthless Roundheads, fated to become the people’s martyr. The prospect is terrifying and most men would flinch at it. Is there anything that indicates that Romney can rise to this challenge?
re 25: very dramatic.
There’s an opening scene in a movie where Columbus is sitting on the beach with his son watching the ships mast disappearing over the horizon. He’s holding an orange in his hand. He turns to Diego and says, ‘It’s round!’, It’s round! They both smile and laugh, in acknowledgement of something they both very well know.
There is only one party. For Romney to go and stand on a hill, there would need to be two. They don’t even swap out department heads any more. The FBI head seemlessly serves from one administration to the next. Same with dod and elsewhere. Is this convenience? Or simply acknowledgement of one ideology between them, or what today is called pragmatism, or in actuality no ideology. The ship has sailed. But don’t worry skipper, it was this way yesterday too. We just have to stop pretending and start over. And we begin again with man’s right to his own life, and we rebuild everything. Taxed enough already sounds good to me. Ignore the left, watch for infiltrators, and stick to first principles.
Twice is a farce.
The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair.
Brought to you by the party of Teddy Kennedy.
”Some of them thought I’d killed Castiglione, some of them didn’t know what to think, but all of them knew that when the sun came up in Vegas there were about a dozen corpses lying around out there, and that maybe half of them belonged to me and the others were Castiglione’s.” Balacontano seemed to be out of breath, but he added quickly, “Except for the federal cop, who was going to attract such an army of federal undercover types that even the pay phones would be tapped for the next hundred years.”
“Why did he go to Castiglione’s? Did he think Orloff was working for Castiglione?”
“Hell, no,” said Balacontano. “He did it because he knew it was going to create confusion.” –Thomas Perry, “Sleeping Dogs”
In his native Chicago, Alinsky courted power wherever he found it. His alliance with prominent Catholic clerics, such as Bishop Bernard Sheil, gave him respectability. His friendship with crime bosses such as Frank Nitti — Al Capone’s second-in-command — gave Alinsky clout on the street.–Catholic Citizens of Illinois
Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. called Alinsky “very close to being an organizational genius.”–spacecoast.craigslist.com
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.–Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals”
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.–Saul Alinsky, Dedication to “Rules for Radicals”
“Observing tyranny on the rise is unsettling stuff.”
How did Allan Bloom put it in the “Closing of the American Mind.” Oh, yeah: “it’s a little like knowing Hitler when he was young.” (Rough paraphrase, since I no longer own the book.)
I don’t know but things are getting pretty stinky. Smells like a purge more and more. My feeling though is they are going to mess up their purge and be found with their pants down. After all they already have an FBI agent with a photo of his shirt off.
Really, who can you trust for information anymore? When do the Tong wars start?
For those of you looking for evidence of a Russian disinformation campaign, I would offer the comments seen in the European press on the morning of July 15, 2010 alleging that closing in the BP oil spill with the capping stack would cause eruptions from the sea bed that would drop toxic rain on all of America “east of the Mississippi”.
The flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico permanently ceased that very afternoon, without incident.
Would Russia want to sabotage American oil production to increase the value of its own oil reserves? They must really be bummed out to read the front page story in today’s Wall Street Journal, U.S. Redraws World Oil Map http://tinyurl.com/cdp9w2g
How would fellow traveller George Soros benefit from diverting American drill ships from the GoM to Brasil to drill for Brasilian oil? (and thereby fulfill Obama’s pledge of making America Brasil’s best customer for oil?) I guess jailing Chevron enginers has put a dent into that ploy.
Hey Putie-Poo! You thought pitchforks and torches in the streets of Moscow was something? Wait ’til you see pitchfork and torch armed Tea Partiers on the streets of Washington D.C.!!
They won’t be wussies like those Occupiers!!!
“The “Hundred Flowers” (1957) campaign encouraged critics to speak up — so that they could be identified by the State Security apparatus.”
This is why one does not sign the secession petitions: they or on the white house web site. After Nov. 6th, one must be circumspect.
What about this “secret jail” and its possible occupants? If there were jailed terrorists in it on 11/11/12 what happened to them?
Are the jailed occupants still there? Were they released? If they were released – what was the date?
Lastly, I thought the Big Zero has signed an order prohibiting these jails in 2005. Why is there mention of CIA jails?
1. E2 #2:
I have observed for some time now that the reason the Left brings up so many petty little nothing is part of a “noise level” campaign to convince the legion of dumasses that “They’re all the same.”
Just think about it. The 7 Fed DA’s fired? Plamegate? The absurd 9/11/01 theories? And going back further: The Bitberg ceremony? Iran Contra? The nuns killed in Central America. Bush not invading Bosnia? The selective recounts in Florida? Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me? Is that all ya got?
That’s all they got. With a compliant media and a clueless electorate that’s all they need to create a noise level to make the nonspecific immpresion that “They’re all the same.”
Hey! I just thought of a bumper sticker:
“Fore! More Years?”
W says “Democracies are creatures of the open day. The procedural mechanism of constitutional republic exists to ensure that all the cards are dealt above the table. That the lights always shine. The sign democracy is working is that everybody basically understands what is going now; when things are really about what they say they are about.”
If that is the case, then I contend that our democracy died 4 years ago when every effort was made (and made successfully) to shroud and/or falsify the entire past history of then-candidate Obama. Thank you so much, MSM.
Ah yes, I wish the Obama administration would round up enough agents to send 25,000 agents into Texas to mess with its citizens. Heck send 100,000 we would welcome them all. “THIS IS TEXAS!”
13. Subotai Bahadur
Actually, Tukhachevsky probably was a threat to Stalin. He was brilliant, something of a libertine, a charismatic personality; and the Red Army, rank and file as well as senior leadership, was fiercely loyal to him. He had no love for Stalin and his loyalty to Stalin was strictly pro forma. I think it quite likely that he would have made a move against Stalin at some point. Viewing the affair strictly from Stalin’s evil perspective, it makes sense that The Boss would have liquidated him, along with most of the army’s senior and middle commanders. He recognized that a dynamic personality such as Tukhachevsky–and one with a growing power base–could not be trusted, nor restrained, short of elimination. At the very least, and even if Tukhachevsky did not intend to replace Stalin, the general would have wielded far too much power and influence in the affairs of the Soviet state, forcing Stalin to share power and compromise his aims and actions–an intolerable circumstance for Stalin. Tukachevsky was not guilty of the charges that were trumped up against him: he was guilty of being Tukhachevsky, and Stalin rightly feared him for just that reason.
Wretchard @ 9: “Most workplaces you can tell if your being measured for a termination notice.”
P4 certainly should’ve seen this coming after Benghazi. As Paula Broadwell leaked at the Denver Alumni Symposium (google the video)on October 26th, Ansar al-Sharia were trying to spring militia men detained in the consulate. Who knows the quality of this intel, but she certainly had a source, one who supplied her with enough to attract the loudest of internal alarms. P4′s political duty was to step up and tell Romney and the GOP House to chill out on Benghazi, that political heat and open testimonty would scuttle CIA assets . . . which it did. His first duty is to the agency, perhaps his second to the President that appointed him, and he failed at both.
Insurgent milita were supposed to be his forte, but now the shine is off, his real record doesn’t look so bright. How did that trainig program for the Iraqi Army go in 2004? How wise was it to arm and train Iraqi Shiite groups who now constitute the core of Maliki’s death squads? At what of the $16million a month given to the Sunni insurgents who had killed hundreds of American troops? Was the temporary peace it purchased worth the dishonor? Imagine, if you will, Wretchard’s reaction if such a policy was proposed under the Obama administration.
Add to all this Jill Kelley and the classified information she possessed, the affair with General John Allen, and a “shirtless” FBI agent, and you’ve got an elite sex cult straight out of the fevered dreams of Kubrick. It is not the “loop” he’s excluded from, it’s the loop he’s in, that got him fired.
Interesting to see that the theory of systematic vote fraud is gaining traction. Here in Colorado based on this link http://watchdoglabs.org/blog/2012/08/21/colorado-comparison-of-registered-voter-counts-to-census-voting-age-population/ it seems very likely. While Romney was a weak candidate, his handy defeat seems unlikely, especially since it was reportedly due to weak turnout on the right and high turnout on the left. With this success by the Left, we will probably never see another honest election.
The problem with most lies is that it is usually very hard or impossible to prove them false with complete certainty. In life few things are “certain beyond a shadow of doubt”. So many people wallow in confusion and fail to make decisions on the best information available. And so we find ourselves in the current situation.
I think our Constitution is effectively dead based on the Obamacare ruling and the failure of the Republicans to make any serious attempt to act on Constitutional principles. Our citizens wallow in a cesspool of lies and misinformation. Our election process is corrupted. We have passed the tipping point.
Now we wait. What, if anything, will be the trigger that causes true patriots to say “Enough!” and begin to fight? Sadly we will probably be picked off one by one as we dither about what to do. “When they came for …”.
I don’t doubt that there will be some who fight, but will there be enough? Better to live (or die) on your feet than spend your life on your knees. Will we pass the test? In 1775 the Revolution was begun over an order of magnitude less than what we endure today.
32. njartist49 “This is why one does not sign the secession petitions: they or on the white house web site. After Nov. 6th, one must be circumspect.”
Also clear your browsing history and don’t install Flash games that spy on you… This government has many clever ways to know if you disagree with them.
I will write Gen John Allen to ask how he applied to get on his ISP whitelist so he could send 30,000 pages of sex emails to Jill Kelley. I think the limit for Gmail is 300 outgoing per day before they flag you as a possible spammer. Other services behave similarly. If you are legit, however (like a charity or are a bona fide business) then you can register to be on said whitelist.
War and Peace runs to 1,472 pages. We are looking at about 20 such novels here. That’s a lot sex emails. Note to self: ask Gen Allen for tips on how to be so prolific. Also, set up camera on tripod to take shirtless photo of self.
Let a hundred flowers bloom!
41. wretchard: “Note to self: ask Gen Allen for tips on how to be so prolific.”
Yes, that occurred to me as well. How does one find the time, and the words? Near as I can tell, he must have spent most of his time in Afghanistan either writing to his paramour or thinking about writing to her. Probably jerking off a lot too.
20. Pascal
Wow! I was just lecturing someone on this very scenario re: Marius and Sulla. I even put forth Petraus as a possible Sulla, albeit tentatively.
Sulla, remember, was a war hero, a great General, a super-duper genius and quite the maniacal killer, besides being a world-class pervert.
That he managed to keep Rome on a steady course for his tenure and the fact that he literally drank and screwed himself to death at quite an advanced age, and that Rome went straight to hell afterwards leaves one somewhat ambivalent about him, but to deny his greatness is impossible.
I sense no greatness about Petraus. Hard worker? Smart man? Willing to butt heads? Sure. That’s why he’s a threat to Ostupidhead, who plainly is NO Gaius Marius! Not even on his best day!
I’m afraid we still have an opening for a Sulla. Or Patton. I’d even take MacArthur at this point.
Keep your eye on the price of oil. American energy independence will crimp the style of a lot of bad actors. The Arab Spring could turn into the “Winter of Their Discontent and Hunger”. Even Muslim Brothers have to eat. So where do the petrodollars come from to buy wheat?
Anyone ever heard of the “amber waves of grain”? Back in the day, we had to export wheat to the USSR to stave off starvation on the steppes! With oil prices down, Putin will soon run out of rubles to bribe the nomenklatura.
Embargo Iran and you undercut the mullahs and their clients in Syria et al.
Anyone for Keystone XL???????????
Peace Through Strength!
Personally, I can no longer afford to allow myself to continue being made to wallow about in the public fever swamp to unravel the disinformation.
The collective enemy is already in plain sight. I can see the bloodshot whites of their eyes even through the endless fog of leaks and unbelievable rhetoric which work 24/7 to snuff out the very possibility of sunlight or principled living. It is left to me and my own to defend enough [immediate] space for liberty to be remembered – as all the levers of Constitutional restraint and justice have apparently been reduced to an effective nothing. Unseen, unheard, and undefended…If not outright reviled by the plurality of polity which even bothers to unseat their fattened rumps, or disengage from their nanny’s golden teat, for long enough to vote their missing consciences. I’ll never be one who is rendered docile and contented with gobbling down the fallen table scraps of the stolen fruit of other men’s labors.
As such, the feeble actions (and inaction) of so-called better peers have upended the luxury of an unprecedented and hard won design margin that once allowed little folk like me to place our liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the hands of others. My priority list has been unceremoniously re-ordered from above to; water, food, shelter, energy, and then liberty…With the pursuit of abiding happiness following at a distant last. Unforgivable!
So it’s with a hearty f*ck you that I thank these misguided ‘gentlemen’ peers who would deem to lead me and my ilk [more] gently into the coming night to face enemy guns armed only with the butter knives from their party table. The collective lot of them isn’t worth the loss of one single member of my true family.
I am, and will remain, a free man.
This article is correct. A totalitarian regime is upon us.
Democracy cannot survive without a free press, free schools, free universities, free enterprise.
The subversives have destroyed or are destroying all that.
The rest is quite logical: the fights between red barons to position themselves in the nomenklatura, the traps for the naives, the silence…
What’s the point of becoming a general if you have to jerk yourself off?
The smart heads in the private sector would try to have an actual competent secretary as their “personal aide.” They’d at least get a honey not directly under them. In one case I suspect two guys supply under desk help to each other.
At one place that I worked off an on in the defense industry they had one manufacturing section that was pretty much all women. Periodically over the years they’d bring some male forman who lacked zipper control down or would try the do me or your fired tactic. As the feds got more rigorous about “harassment” the pressure grew to get control of the situation. The problem was the nature of the work proved better results when done by women. Finally they found an open lesbian supervisor and offered the job to her. The rumor machine
said that when they first offered it too her, she laughed at them. She said,” given the number of women there what makes you think there wouldn’t be some that would hit on me, also these days all it takes is the accusation to generate a law suit”. She got them to set up safe guards, she always had another management member with in ear shot for instance, and possibly a written guarantee of management back up in case someone tried to game her. I think she also spread the word that is someone tried to mess with her, she had buddies that would mess with them. It got pretty quiet after she took over.
I also remember a guy from a different department tried to get a date with a well endowed blond girl who worked in that department.
She shot him down. He was complaining that she was a bitch. A friend of mine said to him, “A slut is a woman who will sleep with anyone, a bitch is a woman who will sleep with anyone but you.” He stopped complaining.
njartist49 @ 32: “This is why one does not sign the secession petitions: they or on the white house web site. After Nov. 6th, one must be circumspect.”
Well, you got that one wrong! This is the time to stand up and be counted. The alternative is to sit shivering in the Sandy dark, desperately hoping that the authorities you serve finally get round to delivering the ‘free’ ObamaCheese tomorrow.
Talking about ‘counted’, and picking up on John Work @ 39 — a question for the statisticians and database analysts in our midst:
Suppose there were a database with about 120 million entries, divided into 50 groups, with each of those further subdivided into thousands of sub-groups. The null hypothesis is that the database is accurate. How would one go about testing the alternative hypothesis that the database had been corrupted by mis-categorization, double-counting, or missed entries?
To turn that question on its head, what if a rich person (say, a Mormon businessman) offered a large global X-Prize for the first person to demonstrate convincingly that the database was in fact accurate? Could this become a class exercise at universities around the world? And what would be the consequence if no-one could win that large financial prize?
41. Wretchard
Did he just send copies, or does he have some kind of program that spontaneously writes thousands of sex emails and sends them? You are an extremely prolific writer, and it would take you ages to send that many.
Just like everything else we hear from government, it just is TOO stupid to be a simple mistake.
Do some of you Cold War Clubbers remember ”samizdat”?
How long before this site becomes ”samizdat”?
Can you see the FBI trolling through, finding our email addresses, seeing what we may have said in an intemperate moment … ”Right now I’m so mad that if I had a gun I’d shoot that guy!!”
Wretchard @9 and Anacharsis Cloots @38
“Most workplaces you can tell if your being measured for a termination notice.”
While this assertion may be true in general, is it true in this instance? Is the CIA a normal workplace? Is the Obama White House a normal workplace?
Two conditions tend to prevail when people resign/get terminated with no forewarning: 1) Discovery of criminal behavior (theft, embezzlement, assault, etc.); 2) Ambushing a designated fall-guy (to cover for someone else’s screw up).
Every time I’ve witnessed the ambush scenario, someone at the top of the food chain targeted and sacrificed a subordinate who was vulnerable, a direct threat, or both.
It appears Petraeus was vulnerable AND a direct threat. Who is above Petraeus in the food chain? Why is/was he a threat? What lengths will “they” go to to neutralize the threat?
Like so many above, I have to conclude this is not about an affair. It’s way bigger than that.
Just to tangle this further, CBS news managed to turn my stomach in yet one more knot last night, leading off the national news with the story of Sgt Bales, the accusations against whom are that last March he left camp in Afghanistan and killed a number of civilians. Now, whatever the facts of that matter, for CBS to sneak that in ahead of the Petraeus story suggests some kind of link between the two. Is it coincidence that Bales first appeared in court on November 5, just before the election? Maybe. Is it a story that leftwad CBS is going to feature? I suppose. Was it just chance that CBS juxtaposed the story with the Petraeus epic? Hmm.
Has CBS shown a tenth of this interest in the events of Benghazi or the coverup? Nope.
–
jj @ 43: I’m afraid we still have an opening for a Sulla. Or Patton. I’d even take MacArthur at this point.
I’d settle for an Alexander Haig.
Think he;ll try the “Ugly wife” defense? She does resemble Newt Gingrich in a wig, after all…
Welcome to Obama Part 2. Disaster.
Has anyone considered the idea that maybe Petraeus was blackmailed into *taking* the DCIA job?
#39 John Work
My thanks for that link. It just became a major part of my presentation to our TEA Party group tonight.
Subotai Bahadur
Petraeus is…”a problem with something that’s going to happen”.
The Daily caller has an article by Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry,(Ret.):
Who Is the Government Going to Shoot?
re the 20,000-30,0000 pages:
One wonders if they define ‘pages’ as filled 8.5 by 11″ pages or if by ‘pages’ they actually mean emails, with an email ‘page’ being only a few lines?
Older people such as myself may use email the way the younger generation texts. If that is the case it would go a long way in explaining the volume of email.
Gordon @ 50 – FBI? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
Watch Special Agent Barbara O’Donnell’s sworn affadavit http://tinyurl.com/8548wwd get torn to ribbons in court!
Secret Service Agents with Colombian hookers? I guess if you a federal law enforcement agent and you lie down with Obama and his 40 Thieves, you’ll get up with fleas!
Just watch those fat pensions go up in smoke!
If Obama’s Watergate is coming down on him even faster than Nixon’s did, the difference is that there are not enough citizens left who care.
Secrecy was the way of WWII through the cold war. There was a Perestroika for the Soviets and another in the States as part of the Peace Dividend. We had a flourish of open government. Now that we have swung from a democracy at war with communism to a nationalist state at war with freedom we are once again left to reading the tea leaves, except this time around we are not mollified that it is in our best interests. The regime aired Spanish language ads in Mexico that explained how to receive food stamps in the USA. Convince me that that isn’t the act of aggressive hatred towards the US populace. It is an act of war against the US populace which steals money from them and enslaves them to work all the harder for foreign nationals. You cannot commit national genocide anymore but you can enslave people with irrational spending and squeeze them out of existence. If the Nazi’s only taxed and worked the Jews to death we’d all be speaking German right now.
lets see let’s say 15 words per Email, that would be a total of 15 X 30,000 = 450,000 words. Depending on font size you can get about 400 to 500 words per page 450,000 / 400 = 1125 pages. So about two books worth at a minimum?
At 30,000 messages, for one year, I figured this is about 17 per minute around the clock.
Per Sharyl Atkisson on Twitter:
CBS: we’ll be posting the story shortly re: Gen. Allen & Petraeus’ support of Jill Kelley’s twin sister in custody battle.
Atkisson continues committing acts of journalism-can’t believe CBS keeps her on payroll.
Of course Obama knew all about this and the timing was planned to avoid scandal before the election. Petraeus is a complete and utter fool. While the petty political gamesmanship by the Obama Administration is no surprise, I expected better from David Petraeus. What a disgrace.
Who knew the L♥ve Shack was the Pentagon?
Much like the reports of that Russian reporter dying of rare isotope poisoning, reports of 30,000 emails sends a message alrighty.
Elizabeth Scalia, aka “The Anchoress,” knocks it out of the park today at her blog:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/11/13/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-i-feel-fine/
Here’s a sampling:
“For too long I have watched friends remain enthralled to the notion that a single man or woman equipped with rhetorical skills, a bit of spine, and right-thinking would be able to resurrect what is remembered by some modern conservatives as a golden age.
“It’s not coming back because half the country didn’t want it, or didn’t even recognize what it had and therefore won’t miss it, and because for young adults and the generations coming up the backbone of conservative theory—rugged individualism, privacy, minimal government—is a complete non-sequitur; it does not compute. Their parents hovered and arranged play-dates and videotaped their every move; they went through public schools working on group projects rather than writing individual reports; they are less acquainted with an omniscient God than previous generations, and comfortable instead with the omnipresent camera and interfaces—the strange god of All Media, Interactive.
“Quite unlike their parents, in other words, this is a generation less interested in their personal consciences; one tailor-made for living under authority, and with built-in limits to their liberties.”
More from Elizabeth Scalia:
“What we’re seeing with the Petraeus sexcapades is a classic magician’s misdirection. Two months past the attack on Benghazi, which resulted in the death of an American Ambassador and three others — an attack we are told the White House watched while ordering no response; an attack the mainstream media helpfully blacked-out, at first, then allowed to be spun — we are now being served The Prestige, where all of reality is being turned on its head, and the audience isn’t even sure what it’s seeing, so it simply becomes giddy, and content to be led.
“If the nation is content to forget the image of Ambassador Chris Stevens’ naked body being hauled away by a crowd “taking him to the hospital where he later died”; if the nation is completely fine with a truly heinous story of government malfeasance, depraved indifference to human life, political calculation and incompetence being turned into bread and circuses for the mobs, well, then shame on the nation, for choosing to be entertained, once again, by the people who know that all the mob really wants is a show, and is quite pleased to give it to them.”
It’s all to keep our minds of the massive vote fraud that just took place.
Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Here’s the Atkisson story-much more than simple expression of personal support for the twin-sister of Jill Kelly. It’s a plea from two of the most powerful and influential men in the world to a domestic judge asking him to reconsider his prior (apparently correct) child custody decision. It’s not obstruction of justice but they either could not have really known her well or knew her well and sent the recommendation anyway. No wonder Benghazi is such a cluster-they’re too busy writing e-mails, “knocking boots” under desks and horning in on a state court’s business. Petraeus is toast-Allen is a milquetoast. Allen, if you remember is the clueless jackass whose excuse for the Afghans slaughtering US soldiers involved in their training and the rising number of attacks on U.S. troops by Afghan police and soldiers may be have been “due to the stress on Afghan forces from fasting during the just-concluded Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”
He also apologized PROFUSELY at the beginning of the year for the unintentional burning of a number of Qurans at the Baghran airbase near Kabul, pleading for forgiveness from “the noble people of Afghanistan,” while they chanted, “Die, die, die!” Then he promised a “decent burial” for the remains of the revered tomes-”they would be “properly handled by appropriate religious authorities.”
sbw @ 67: Elizabeth Scalia, aka “The Anchoress”
Yeah, that reads well (though just what she’s doing quoting herself in the third person escapes me). Have faith, she says. Will do. But I still can’t see the bottom. And it’s all so – unnecessary.
Even if all this transcendental doom is drech, even if the real problem is limited to the fact that the top ten RINOs who advised this RINO candidate were a self-reinforcing bunch of losers, there will now be consequences, and severe ones.
Have you read, “That Hideous Strength”, in which Merlin wakes up, sees the woman Jane, and immediately sees she has made the greatest error (sin?) of omission in all of Britain and suggests her head be cut off because it is a weariness to look at her? I’m feeling that way about Mitt, and Karl, and probably a dozen anonymous advisors whose names I’ll never know. In THS the day is yet saved because the opponents “have pulled down deep heaven upon their own heads”, and a sacrifice – Merlin – is made in time.
Ach, what can I say? It’s a world gone mad, the New Dark Ages, and the trick is to learn to lay back and enjoy it.
**blink**
What’s a purge Valerie?
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/general_demoted_for_lavish_travel_spending/
Lovely flowers you’re growing there sweetie.
—-
I was going to write a retrospective on the 1940 movie “Escape.” I captured several clips for that purpose. But the one that was really filled with biting irony today is this one. It tells of a sanctuary lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQIqDx_dYw
Subotai @ 24
You inspired me.
Who killed John Galt?
Hmmm perhaps, “THIS IS THE USA!”"Oh look they are digging a bottomless pit for some reason?”
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions
Wretchard, you are a very good man, a deep thinker and a great writer, but this statement of yours is totally wrong. “Autocracy” is any system of government in which the ruler actually rules—that’s it, plain and simple. Nothing could be clearer, simpler, or more above board than the idea that he who is in charge, is in charge. In autocracies everybody knows where the buck stops, what the rules are, and from whence the rules derive their authority. Correspondingly, all functioning human organizations, from great empires to girl scout troops, are de facto autocracies, no matter what else they happen to call themselves. That’s because autocracy is not an artificial system excogitated and imposed by men, it is simply the logos-structure of reality itself, entailed by the nature of organization. As the philosophers would say, autocracy is not a kind of government, autocracy just is government.
Constitutional Republics, on the other hand, are the shells of perished autocracies. In a Constitutional Republic the visible seat of power stands empty while the various factions collude, either through force of law or gentleman’s agreement, to let no one sit upon it. But power still orbits around the dynastic seat like an asteroid belt, deriving whatever direction it has from thence. Predictably, Constitutional Republics can hang on in the stream of history but they can’t actually grow, and are incapable of creative force or piety. In a moment of crisis the Constitutional Republic is saved only by some faction seizing the old monarchial controls if only for a time, an “emergency dictator” as it were. This proves the rule that autocracy is the only premise of effective government, and as long as such seizures are possible there is still some vigor left in the old bones and the Republic endures, inglorious but persistent.
“Democracy” in the abstract refers to nothing more than a system of voting, without deeper significance when it comes to certifying the legitimacy of a political process. In the relevant historical sense, however, democracy is synonymous with the ascendance of money. The term is an adjective for that cynical, urbane, “modern” phase that always adumbrates an empire’s passing from the scene of history the way that old age presages death in a man, in which the manipulation of money is ever the means and the end, the cause and effect of power, and no other rule seems to apply. We Westerners know this phase under the rubric of “Social Democracy,” which just passed its high water mark and is beginning to decline into the Caesarism to come.
Now “secrets, star-chambers, and cabals” are not the province of autocratic governments but of insurgent governments, revolutions, and coups d’etat. Cromwell was an insurgent; the Chinese Communist Party is an insurgent government in China and is not supported by the majority of the Chinese people, who remain fundamentally conservative. In this respect it is important to remember that the Obama Administration is NOT an insurgent government and is actually desired or tolerated by a majority of American people. It is “Social Democracy.” There is no great conservative center which Obama and Company must wrest power from, lie to, and persecute. Therefore I take a very dim view of these conspiracy theories which would insist that the election was stolen, or that the Patraeus defenestration is a purge from above. Obama has no need of such devices. There is nothing deeper behind this scandal, no shoe left to drop, except perhaps more personal scandals for more people. Gen. Patraeus was long thought an incompetent airmchair general by many on the Far Right, and now it appears that their evaluation was correct. The real danger here is that our generals, those with whom the defense of the nation is entrusted, can not even govern their own reckless passions, and abandon their posts due to personal inadequacy.
Must be one he** of a screw-up they are trying to keep covered up in regard to Benghazi to be willing to institute a slow-motion night of the long knives on the militart leadership of this country.
If a “hot” civil war does finally start up in this country, there will at least be a deep “talent pool” for leadership on our side.
Kinda wonder if the news of b.”INSANE” obama’s treachery has reached the boys undersea on the “boomers”. If the death camps do indeed show up here at home, they would be a fearsome opponent for the communists in this regime in Washington, DC.
#75
Obama has no need of such devices.
That may be true enough. But does HE really know it?
After all, Nixon ended up beating McGovern by a landslide; but somehow, somehow, not being certain—and/or(?) being Richard M. Nixon—he still believed that Watergate was necessary.
Which set in motion the penny that dropped.
It seems that one can overcome everything. Everything! Except one’s character. (Perhaps….) And Obama’s character has been out there for all to see (though so many, apparently, have refused to….).
Me? I would prefer this not be a scandal that extends beyond Petraeus (though some might ask—and with justification—how that might even be possible at this stage) because I don’t think it’s good for anyone, especially not for the country. Especially not now.
For it could, if it gets out of hand, become a major distraction in the hands of a master manipulator, a superb conjuror, an awesome prevaricator; and one must keep one’s eye on the ball. Or to use another cliche, save one’s powder until….
Still, that penny may just have started its slow descent…
(Excellent post, by the way.)
67 and 68. SBW (aka Roughcoat).
The Anchoress is talking about “The Hand Gazers”. You see them everywhere gazing intently at their hand in which rests their favourite “device”.
Their Universe is a bubble whose radius is exactly one arm’s length. They have never lifted their eyes to the distant horizon, the far off mountains or the stars above.
They twitter and tweet, oblivious to the world around them. They are easy meat for their competitors, easy meat for political predators and programmed to follow, without question, the diktats of whatever narratives appear in their “smart” palm.
To steal a page from our BC incarnation of Subotai Bahadur these people are “Those Who Are Hand Gazers” or TWAHG.
AAGH!!
Bwahahahaha!
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/abc-affiliate-ran-phony-cover-broadwell-book_663264.html
75. Matt
So Matt: how would you wish to be governed? You never came to a conclusion in your post as to what you would consider an acceptable form of government.
75. Matt
very interesting
De Gaulle might have shared your vew
What do you make of the fact that Natalie Khawam’s ex-husband is a partner in Akkadian Private Ventures, which “develops infrastructure projects and helps arrange financing for clients from Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) principally in emerging market countries.”
More from the website:
“Grayson Wolfe is a Partner at Akkadian. He previously served as Director of Broader Middle East Initiatives and Iraqi Reconstruction and Special Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. He was appointed to the bank by President Bush in June 2002. Between January and August 2004, Wolfe served as Manager of the Private Sector Development Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq. In this capacity he was directly responsible for implementing a wide range of initiatives to attract foreign direct investment and provide financing to Iraqi companies. During this time, Wolfe worked extensively on the ground with senior Iraqi and Kurdish officials, and with the Ministries of Finance, Trade and Oil.
“From 2001 to 2002 Wolfe worked as an attorney for the law firm of Fleischman and Walsh, LLP, where he represented clients engaged in Homeland Security, Telecommunications and Intellectual Property matters. He served as a member of a seven-person team that worked with the North American Railroads and Chlorine Chemical Industries to develop a National Homeland Security Risk Analysis and Management Plan. This plan was adopted by the Class I Freight Railroad CEOs on Dec 6, 2001. Wolfe served as Legislative Director and Counsel for members of Congress from 1999-2002. He has also served in numerous positions in presidential, federal and state political campaigns. Before this, he worked for Citicorp in Poland focusing on emerging markets and franchise development opportunities in Central and Eastern European countries.”
Matt: “That’s because autocracy is not an artificial system excogitated and imposed by men, it is simply the logos-structure of reality itself, entailed by the nature of organization”
You might see limits of your anthropology if you consider that the primitive tribe is not ruled by any man,but rather by the order of myth and ritual. It takes many millennia of tribal life before human culture evolves the big man who can contest our equalitarian instincts in the cause of greater freedom, but he can never fully succeed.
In the beginning, men model themselves on the gods, and not vice versa. No human is divinized until the emergence of agricultural empires. The word, the name of god, speaks to an order that is not autocratic but transcendent and paradoxical. The word both differentiates men and defers any final reckoning. Autocracy in individual organizations can never add up to any pure autocratic state because the larger reality speaks to the paradox by which the transcendent word can ever emerge, to found an organizatin in the first place, and as such it always has to be negotiated and performed by those at centre stage. No autocrat can exist without lieutenants full of resentments and devious calculations.
I have a very different take on this. There is a conspiracy afoot in the Petraeus-Broadwell affair, but it is within the FBI, which is engaged at this point in an exercise of self protection.
The FBI didn’t withhold announcing the investigation until after the election to avoid embarrassing President Obama. They didn’t announce mainly to avoid embarrassing themselves for having the investigation’s lead agent revealed as hot to trot for Kelley (the complainant), initiating the investigation not based on adequate reasons but from boyish infatuation, as way to move in on her, and sending her provocative pix of himself. IMO, this is the primary reason the FBI stayed mum.
Right now, it seems to me that the main thing going on is the FBI is engaging in a huge coverup of its own ineptitude and failure to adhere to professional standards. There is no “there” there in the investigation – no evidence of criminal conduct or intelligence threat and, most importantly, no reason for the Broadwell emails to have been the subject of an investigation to begin with. But now the FBI is “all in,” and is not going to stop until somehow, some way, no matter how flimsy the reason, they get the opportunity to slap cuffs on somebody.
Now the “investigation” is not about Petraeus, not about Obama, not about Allen or Broadwell or Kelley. It’s about the FBI circling the wagons.
News reports say that last night the FBI conducted a consent search of Broadwell’s home, meaning that the Broadwells permitted it through their attorney. It also means that the FBI did not have probable cause for a search, else it would have been done under warrant long ago. That in turn means that the “threatening” emails were not threatening in the least because if their content had crossed some legal threshold, once the FBI established who sent them, it would have arrested Broadwell right away and conducted a home search incident to the arrest.
There is nothing here deserving of the media attention it is getting (which should be redirected now directly upon the FBI itself, not the principals) or deserving of the expenditure of investigator man hours and resources being expended on it. Does one smell the aroma of a US attorney general ordering the FBI to make sure that this non-issue stays the lead story as Congress prepares to hear testimony about the Benghazi attacks?
The only reason the Broadwells would have consented to the search was to exculpate themselves by the FBI’s analysis of their computer equipment and other items coming up null. This was a major mistake on Broadwell’s and her attorney’s part. As I said above, the FBI is going to make darn sure it arrests somebody, anybody, in connection to this case, and right now Paula Broadwell is the leading contender. They will find a way. Paula, if you don’t know who the fall guy is, it’s you.
From US News:
In other news, Paula Broadwell’s driver’s license was found in Rock Creek after she had lost it while jogging. “The Park Police also alerted the FBI, says Bill Kellogg, a spokesman for the Park Police. The FBI did not initially return calls for comment on the report. Broadwell’s attorney, Robert F. Muse, confirmed that Broadwell, a North Carolina resident, lost her driver’s license in the park.”
@#63 Gordon
It’s the other way around. One message every seventeen minutes around the clock for a year.
Ooooops!
Still your point is good. That’s a lot of messages.
Don Rodrigo,
I would prefer it if the civilized world were divided into regional principalities of varying sizes, federated into a Catholic empire, where the absence of a franchise puts an end to special interests and social demogoguary, and the most the average citizen would ever have to see of “government” would be the local Count. Since the world mostly runs on its own, the real purpose of government is to defend the borders, keep domestic peace, protect and preserve the Church, mediate disputes when they arise, and to patronize the arts. Government therefore should be subsidiary, largely hereditary, and should have little to do most of the time. That, along with stable money, should ensure about as much peace and prosperity as is possible in this Vale of Tears. Autocrats and their subjects usually understand that the world mostly runs on its own, and that true management consists largely of facilitating what is natural and not getting in the way of it.
Autocracy is freedom; it is the desire of every man of good will. If you don’t believe me, just look at your own screen name. What sort of world breathes forth men with the title Don? You won’t find any Don Rodrigos walking around in a democratic age. They recall to mind the age of Cervantes and Charles V. We remember that age, we want it, we call ouselves by its names in our whimsical moods (like when we’re picking out a screen name).
The Holy Roman Empire never was, but always is.
*****
83. Truepeers,
Been reading some Tillich lately? I have no idea what you are talking about, and from the look of things neither do you. This is logic, not anthropology. The opposite of autocracy is not democracy or egalitarianism or anything else; it is a logical contradiction, a nonexistent thing.
The “larger reality,” as you put it, actually speaks to the fact that there is a Prime Mover who governs all that happens in the visible world. The political affairs of men are a microcosm of the larger reality and they contain their own Prime Mover, in a relative sense, in the person of the ruler. Politics is the art from which all other arts derive their impetus, as Aristotle said. If it weren’t for politics, none of the other arts would be practiced, for they would have no context or meaning. It is not for nothing, therefore, that Aristotle, along with St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri, recognized the monarchial form as essential to civilization, and the only form truly corresponding to the nature of man.
We can’t argue with reality. Things just are the way they are.
Re: Paula Broadwell’s driver’s license was found in Rock Creek Park.
Maybe she and GP are getting it on in the the park. She could eat crackers in my bed.
Kinuachdrach @ 49:
maybe like this? – mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
Hey, folks, there is nothing that anyone in this regime can be counted as the truth. Nothing. From no angle. From no source.
Depend only on your friends. Your pastor. Your family. Time to count the correct things.
Matt,
My point is that if one wants to argue that autocracy corresponds to the nature of man, one, in my way of thinking, needs a way of explaining what it is, exactly, in terms of one’s understanding of the origin of man; and that is an anthropological question which can also be a religious question. Maybe you don’t mean that autocracy is the same thing as monarchy, but that the latter is simply an instance of the former. But, in any case, monarchy is obviously something that comes relatively late in human cultural evolution, since we lived tens of thousands of years in tribes which were basically egalitarian, in which all men bowed down to a ritual and myth that no man controlled; and so to say monarchy or autocracy corresponds to the nature of man would lead me to want to know what it was in the pre-monarchical times that pre-figured the later fuller realization of this. It doesn’t make sense to me to say that man only realizes his true nature when civilized. His true nature, however limited its articulation, must be there from the start.
Exactly how is Matt’s vision of a world with apolitical subjects ruled by self appointed religious under performing detached autocrats any different than Islam? I’ll take the Dar al-Harb, thank you.
Donald Sensing is correct about the feds cuffing someone. If nothing “substantive” is revealed, they’ll manage to charge some shmuck with impeding an investigation by “lying” or when all else fails, the old standard, tax evasion.
@Pascal, November 13, 2012, 12:16 am:
BHO is no Caesar. He is our version of Manuel Azaña, and, as Subotai Badahur points out, it is March of 1936 in Madrid.
Death squads up next.
Thanks for pointing there Robert. My SCW history is weak. I will learn more of the man.
I said he was no Caesar or even a Marius (All Roman consuls were generals to begin with). My point was the Marian sort of effort to weaken native values by importing Latins then and Latinos now (the combined policies of Bush43 moderately (under cover of tolerance) and Bummer now drastically with him making up laws (where Congress refused to pass them.)
Their Social War was relatively short. Our social war has been going on incrementally (“Progressive”ly) since around the 1890s. A better man than I could chronicle Progressive movement to Frankfurt critical theory to the Counter Culture and capture of the Dem party by radicals and its purging of moderate liberals. All the while the “statesmen” of the GOP played the Kantian synthesis game, fighting conservatives (as the embodiment of all antithesis) and often viciously. Their aim (and success) was to allow them to compromise just a wee bit here and a bit more there with every radical thesis. All to the purpose of consolidating power by whittling away at the constraints on power in the constitution.
The personages of the Spanish civil war may be informative, but I think there is far more than that in play. Spain was nowhere near the top of their game in 1938. America is as was Rome in 85 BC.