I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

1Athena1

E - sign me up! I'd love to see it. We'd have a satelite nation that would be begging the feds for food and water.

alexandria58

On secession: just have to note, my favorite state, Vermont, had people wanting to secede during the Bush years.  (And a couple of the towns in VT indicted Bush and Cheney for war crimes.)  So, since I don't want to see Vermonters exiled for wanting to secede for what were good reasons, I'll just have to grit my teeth and put up with those in Texas who had bad reasons.

Enjoyful

Good point, Alexandria. How about we offer the secessionists $5k each to give up their citizenship and go elsewhere?

IllinoisLady

Athena ---- didn't say it, but I had a similar idea.  How long would it take to see what you have wrought for yourself with such an idea.

Jackie

Enjoyful

Or we could give then Planet Gingrich (aka "The Moon").

kayfh

what did the moon ever do to you? 

Anonymous

KAY

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

alexandria58

How about the Planet Kolob?  That seems appropriate.

Wabbit

Those so-called petitions are a joke.  People are signing but not giving their last names.  The Texas one has people from other states ... who are probably signing to tell them to go ahead and leave.  Some people feel the need to stomp their feet and flop on the floor and kick and scream any time they don't get their own way.  Foolish temper tantrums are best ignored.  The 24/7 circus that many pretend news channels have become are just filling air time with it.

My first job was working for the Navy in the Pentagon.  Military officers having affairs was very common ... there was at least one commonly known to be going on in most offices we dealt with.   This is nothing new.  The question is why this one blew up.   

   

kayfh

alexandria: Planet Kolob?  Thank goodness for google.

RetiredLibby

Well, this one blew up because Mrs. Kelley asked her FBI friend to investigate.  Otherwise, it would have died a natural death, unless the bunny boiler had harassed someone else or started boiling bunnies for real.

The FBI friend is now toast.  Sending shirtless pictures to a witness in an investigation (which Ms. Kelly became when she complained) is a BIG no-no.  It isn't just funsies or stupid -- he is done.  They can fire him over that.  According to FBI sources, he had become "obsessed" with the investigation and was removed, which is when he went to a Republican congressman from Washington state, who banged it in to Cantor.

Cantor didn't use it in the election because he had a grain of common sense.  Can you imagine how bad it would look -- that the Republican party was smearing a bona fide war hero for political purposes?  That is EXACTLY what it would have looked like, no matter what anyone else said.  That was really a no-win poop storm for the Republicans.  Not only that, apparently Petraeus was tied in with some conservative think tanks ... they had hoped to recruit him for political purposes after he left government service, I'd be willing to bet.

Both Ms. Broadwell and Ms. Kelley have retained attorneys ... and now the reported 20,000 - 30,000 pages of "inappropriate" emails between Ms. Kelly and General Allen?!  ooooh, this is not going well. 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-petraeus-allen-sex-scandal-20121113,0,29930.story

There may have been a crime committed in the "thousands" of emails between Ms. Kelley and General Allen ... either disclosure of classified information or a violation of the UCMJ.  This scandal is going to widen before it gets smaller.

Anonymous

Plant Kolob, another nods of thanks to Google - and a BOW to the creativity of Alexandria - btw, how's your book?

THANK YOU to the person who posted the link to Crooks & Liars.  Really, where ELSE could I've learned of an interview Calista Gingrich gave about Petraeus, expressing "sympathy" for family cuz adultery so painful, or sumpthin like that, I was chortling too hard to remember da woids...POT.  KETTLE.  Tea anyone?

I really think we need Lorena Bobbit to be interviewing some of these guys...seriously. 

1Athena1

HL - So far it looks to me as though the FBI mishandled the situation. The friend obviously acted very inappropriately, but the agency should never have let the investigation get so out of hand.

Funny how the real criminals always get away with it --it's ok to commit war crimes under Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush, but don't have an affair - especially with what looks like an opportunistic, unstable woman. Petraeus was stupid to do what he did, and may Holly Petraeus be allowed to choose her punishment, but I think it is far more damaging to allow people to make mountains out of molehills.

Something is very, very off. Scumbaggery is turned loose. There is evil, but of a very personal nature, with revenge and hatred at its ugly head. The taxpaying public should not have to be put through this nonsense.

RetiredLibby

I don't see how the Bureau "let the investigation get so out of hand."  They HAD to investigate these allegations, and they HAD to investigate whether the General's email had been hacked (whether someone was impersonating him) and then when they discovered the affair, they HAD to investigate whether any classified info was compromised.  None of that was out of hand.  During the course of the investigation (doing forensics on Ms. Kelley's computer), they discovered other compromising information -- which they HAD to follow up.  None of this is out of hand -- they are legally obligated to investigate what may be a crime.  The potential compromise of classified information is not a mountain out of a molehill, and I don't think this is revenge and hatred.  This is an investigation that has turned up some unsavory (and potentially illegal) behavior by a number of parties.  The leaking is quite unseemly (and a violation of a number of laws and rules), but the investigations are right and proper.

River_Rat

HL, spot on.  The investigation is proper.  The leaking is not.

crazy4carrots

And in other news.....

GOP complaints about Obama's energy policies seem a little silly in light of the International Energy Agency's new findings -- not only is oil production up over the last four years, but the United States will soon pass the Saudis as the top oil producer on the planet. 

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/11/13/15137576-the-worlds-top-oil-producer

QuinnCat

Everyday, I realize when a new facet of this Patreous story is revealed, that we really do not have the big picture, yet.  It's hard to comment on such a moving target, though I tend to agree with HL on the process part.  I don't think that doesn't mean there isn't any "scumbaggery" involved with the investigation, though.  At the moment, I'm finding it all rather amusing.  I even incorporated the whole mess into a dream about one of my superachiever Paula Broadwell-like coworkers who tends to ensconse herself into the lives of powerful men (though I doubt she's ever cheated on her husband)....in my dream, she had disappeared and a Search and Rescue team had to be assembled.  In some unique way, each of us probably can relate to this sex spy story - or atleast to a Bond movie! That's my amusement and to pretend this "stuff" doesn't go on, is just naiive - not that any of us are.

What's this secession stuff?  Geez, everyday, yet another equal and opposite reaction amongst Republicans on Obama being reelected.  I say GO!

1Athena1

Brief interruption - the mods have finally agreed to create a forum for breast cancer and comorbidities - yey:

http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/142

HL - I don't think we know what happened completely. I agree that they had to investigate threatening e-mails (which were the initial complaint) but at some point they should have alerted/worked with the CIA. I still don't think an affair is an indication of a possible national security threat - otherwise no nation in world history would ever be "secure." I think a lot of this is a personal problem between the people involved (the generals, the women, others) but SO FAR there is no indication that anything was public-interest based.

I'm sorry, but it just seems like the same old story, in which people use their puritanical beliefs OR their personal vendettas (why I mention personal evil) to stir up a national security bogeyman when what they really object to is the affair or their position within it.

Petraeus broke CIA "rules" which, with typical silliness, say that you have to tell your wife and your supervisor if you are having an affair. So technically I suppose he could be fired for breaking those rules. But protestations that this is a national security issue --or even a potential one......maybe, but for now, definitely not. For now, there appears to be much ado about nothing.

I suppose the investigation must continue. I am personally more interested in seeing the rabble rousers exposed barring the commission of a crime.

The country has far bigger threats to face. There has been bipartisan outcry over this. I hope America learns to stop fussing about affairs and take the real war crimes seriously.

Wabbit

Kam ... loved your map.  I've saved that one for those who have problems with the concept that it's people whose votes count ... not acres of land.

RetiredLibby

Athena, they CAN'T work with the CIA on investigations of CIA personnel.  The CIA is prohibited by law from operating inside the United States, and the FBI cannot reveal details of investigations to outside parties.  A couple of CIA sources have already said that if the FBI had not started the investigation on its own from an outside source, if the CIA had discovered the issue, they would have had to ask the FBI to investigate.  That is how investigations work.  The FBI investigates national security issues inside the United States.  They CANNOT alert or work with the very agency they are investigating.  Suppose someone there was the source of the harassing emails?  The papers say that as soon as they discovered that no laws had been broken, the FBI stood down on Petraeus.  As far as Broadwell, she opened herself up to more investigation by those highly improper statements about the CIA station in Benghazi holding captive 2 Libyan militia members and that's why the consulate was attacked.  If that was reported in a classified cable, she violated the law -- whether it was true or not.  The investigation that is continuing is of breaches of security, not the affair or morality.  Hell, law enforcement is notorious for having wandering lower appendage problems.  They don't care about the morality of this -- they do care about security breaches, and the investigation is nowhere complete on this.  I'm afraid we must agree to disagree on this one -- I'm no blind supporter of the Bureau, in spite of having a couple of agents in my past, but they are absolutely in the right on this one. 

Lindasa, I saw that info from the IEA yesterday.  Won't stop the right from screaming and making stuff up, but it did give me a chuckle.

L

QuinnCat

Gads, I just realized I'm party to a crime! LOL  I once had a friend that was having an affair with a CIA agent.  Seriously.  He was the head of one particular division which I will not mention....but this was about 15 years ago, so I'm sure all of the parties have moved on.

There's a book "How to Lie with Maps" in addition to "How to Lie with Statistics."  Maps can be statistical representations and the traditional Electoral Map is an example of how to lie with a map.  I would like to see the map I posted down to the county, but still have each county represented in size by the population and then mix red and blue to represent the vote Obama versus Romney...we would see more blue and purple than red.  There's probably one out there somewhere.

Sunny, what you refer to as a "realistic perspective" would be a choice of a "map projection."  I'm so appreciative that you are aware of such a detail.

1Athena1

HL - had no idea about the investigative powers of the CIA in the US (meaning they are none). I thought the Patriot Act had slightly changed that - maybe I'm wrong.

The Benghazi issue??? Ahh, that is the one part of this that does concern me. What the HELL is a biographer doing saying either unauthorized or inaccurate things like that in public over an incident under investigation that has created a maqjor diplomatic and political fallout both at home and abroad. Worse, I think she attributed it to the CIA if my memory serves me correctly. Such an angle is concerning.

QuinnCat

Athena - what she said at the forum in Denver was reported on Fox News that day...it was a brief, never to be repeated again item.  If nothing else, it made us aware that the bunny boiler was a Fox News watcher.

RetiredLibby

Nope, the CIA is still prohibited from conducting operations in the U.S. as far as I know. Furthermore, it could not investigate its own head -- it would have had to call in outsiders. It is the FBI's job to investigate suspected unauthorized disclosure of classified information no matter where it turned up. There was a case at State of a secretary giving classified cables to her Liberian boyfriend during the Liberian civil war in the early 1990s -- it was the FBI and not the State Department IG or the Bureau of Diplomatic Security that investigated.



What makes the Benghazi thing worse, Athena, is that Petraeus recently went there to talk to the station and ascertain what happened from the CIA's point of view. He went before the affair became public. Was there "pillow talk?" Broadwell clearly enjoyed displaying her access to intelligence info ... She also made postings on her FB page that skirted (if not crossed the line) disclosure rules. There is much more to this story than we know or may ever find out.



Kam, I have seen such maps on FB ... I will capture the URL of the next one and post it here for you. They are indeed interesting.



L

pupmom

Kam, I think you need to write a book based on that dream! Then it can become a blockbuster movie! 

1Athena1

Ok, so here is my new thread on the comorbidities forum:

http://community.breastcancer.org/forum/142/topic/796282

Hope people answer and I am not the only one there - otherwise I will delete and pretend nothing happened.

RetiredLibby

A very interesting article from the Atlantic about what we might want to think more about than Petraeus' indiscretions - the creeping militarization of the CIA:



http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/the-real-david-petraeus-scandal/265127/



"The circumstances of Petraeus's departure from the CIA are a little alarming; you'd rather your chief spy not be reckless. But the circumstances of his arrival at the CIA a year ago were more troubling. Yet no alarm was sounded that was anywhere near as loud as the hubbub surrounding Petraeus now. That's scandalous."



L

pupmom

Athena, really glad you got that new forum established. I don't currently have a comorbidity (unless seasonal allergies count) but who knows what will occur in the future. Good to have an easily accessible place to get support and info.

Don't delete! 

1Athena1

Thank you, Yorkie - hope people use that forum.

Going back to politics, it's good to remember that besides Karl Rove, the other toad who came out as a loser in this election is Grover Norquist. GOP members in the House may now refuse to honor his pledge of no marginal tax increases:

Republicans might have held the House, but Grover Norquist’s majority in Congress is all but gone.

Fewer incoming members of the House and Senate have signed the pledge against tax increases run by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, in a reflection not only of the seats that Democrats gained but of the success they’ve enjoyed in vilifying Norquist.

About a dozen newly elected House Republicans refused to sign the anti-tax pledge during their campaigns, and another handful of returning Republicans have disavowed their allegiance to the written commitment.

More here:

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/267467-norquist-pledge-takes-election-hit-

River_Rat

HL, that is a disturbing piece.  I remember reading some objections early on but then it seemed like everyone fell into line.

Edited to add:  Athena that is hopeful but I won't be happy until Norquist's dream as a twelve year old is small enough to drown in a bathtub.