How nice for us all.
Krauthammer states…
…what an awful lot of people have been thinking:
Of course [government knowledge of the affair] was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line to quote Bill, everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed.
Krauthammer isn’t usually a wild-eyed conspiracist, but perhaps he’s become unhinged by the election results. Then again, one doesn’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracist to think as Krauthammer does, or even to be a cynic. The timing, as they say, is suspect (as was the original timeline on Benghazi).
Will we ever find out the truth? And furthermore: even if we do, will enough people care? I sometimes whether whether the level of cynicism in America has gotten so huge that any corruption would be okay with most people as long as it doesn’t interfere with their stuff or their TV shows.
A thousand ballots found in a Broward elections warehouse…
…but don’t worry, says supervisor of elections Dr. Brenda Snipes, “this happens all the time.”
How very reassuring.
“What are you going to do? You gonna stand there and watch it go by?”
More from the old Rescue 911, one of my favorite TV shows of all time:
John Kerry, Secretary of Defense?
Rumor has it that John Kerry is being considered for the post of Secretary of Defense.
If true, this would be another example of what a keen sense of humor Obama has. For what better way to enrage the majority of conservative men who served in Vietnam long ago? They harbor enormous resentment toward Kerry for his Winter Soldier hearings (perceived by many to be based on exaggerations and outright lies), accusations of widespread American war crimes, and communicating with the enemy as some sort of self-nominated unofficial ambassador in Paris.
Take a look:
In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, at the time a leading anti-war activist, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese a year were being “murdered by the United States of America” and said he had gone to Paris and “talked with both delegations at the peace talks” and met with Communist representatives.
Kerry, now [in 2004] the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, confirmed Wednesday through a spokesman that he did go to Paris and talked privately with a leading Communist representative. But the spokesman played down the extent of Kerry’s role and said Kerry did not engage in negotiations.
Asked about Kerry’s saying the United States had “murdered” 200,000 Vietnamese annually when the country was at war, Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement that “Senator Kerry used a word he deems inappropriate.”
Meehan said Kerry “never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam.”
Meehan declined to say to whom Kerry was referring when he said the United States had murdered the Vietnamese; Kerry declined to be interviewed about the matter…
When Kerry was asked by committee Chairman Sen. J. William Fulbright how he proposed to end the war, the former Navy lieutenant said it should be ended immediately and mentioned his involvement in peace talks in Paris.
“I have been to Paris,” Kerry said. “I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government and of all eight of Madam Binh’s points. … ”
The latter was a reference to a Communist group based in South Vietnam. Historian Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, described the Provisional Revolutionary Government as “an arm of the North Vietnamese government.”…
Kerry’s suggestion before the Senate committee that there be an immediate pullout led to questions about whether such a move would endanger the lives of South Vietnamese allies who had counted on U.S. military support.
Kerry responded that “this obviously is the most difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the United States is not really in a position to consider the happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our withdrawal.”
If the United States did not withdraw, Kerry said, then U.S. bombing would continue, and “the war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America.”
Yeah, let’s make him Secretary of Defense. Why ever not?
The fabulous fulminating frogman
Here is the new must-read post-election essay. In this case it’s a rant of the highest order.
What bungle?
Drudge’s headline for this story reads, “Despite Benghazi bungle, Susan Rice favored for Secy of State.”
My response is: what Bengahzi bungle? Rice did exactly what she was told and what the administration intended. That was no bungle, that was following orders, and she may indeed receive her reward.
As for Holder, Drudge links to an article that says that Eric Holder will stay. This seems correct to me. I have long stated that Holder will stay indefinitely, and why. See this; so far I’ve not seen any reason to change my mind.
Actually, this is the real must-read election postmortem
I keep writing that if you only read one article on what happened in this election, and how Republicans can learn from it and go on to do a lot better next time, read this one.
And then this one and this one and this one.
Meanwhile, I’ve been writing drafts of my own latest version of “this one.” My thoughts keep changing, but recently they have come to rest in a place that turns out to be almost exactly the place John Hinderaker has reached in this piece entitled “Where Do Republicans Go From Here? The Social Issues.”
Hinderaker has touched on the heart of the problem, IMHO, and offered some excellent solutions. Whether Republicans and conservatives and libertarians will be able to unite behind them is another story; that’s quite a herd of cats.
But I’m really glad that someone as widely read as Hinderaker has made the case I wanted to make. If you like the article, please send it to your friends. I believe it needs to get as wide a readership as possible.
Melanie Phillips…
…has never been one to mince words.
And she sure doesn’t do so here:
The greatest satisfaction today over the re-election of Obama is not being felt in the Democratic Party. It is not being felt among the media, who are no longer objective observers but have turned instead into corrupt partisans who ruthlessly censored the truth about Obama and helped peddle his demonising propaganda about his opponent. It is not being felt among the gloating, drooling decadents of the western left who now scent a great blood-letting of all who dare defy their secular inquisition. No, the greatest satisfaction is surely being felt in Iran.
With four more years of Obama in the White House, Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the west. World War Three has now come a lot closer.
It is said that, with likely gridlock in Congress over domestic issues, Obama will concentrate on foreign policy. We should all shudder.
Read the whole thing (hat tip: commenter “Artfldgr”).
[NOTE: I disagree with Ms. Phillips about why Romney lost, and what he should have done to win. I think that, had he done what she suggests, he would also have lost. I think he lost for reasons I’ve already described elsewhere. People were remarkably uninterested in foreign policy during this election, and most have already dismissed (or would not credit) the idea that Obama has a radical nature and motives. The only people who would have bought it were already buying it.]
It’s not a love triangle…
I wonder if this sort of thing has long been as frequent at this level, or if for some reason there’s more of it lately. I also wonder if the proliferation of email has something to do with it. Email is so easy, so spontaneous, so tempting (ask Anthony Weiner if you don’t believe me). And it gives the illusion (to some people, anyway) of privacy.
After all, if your wife, for example, doesn’t have access to your email account passwords, she can’t see it. Trouble is, a lot of other people can, if they’ve a mind to. And if you’re in the intelligence business (or even halfway intelligent), you should be able to figure that out.
And you cannot ever count on all the parties involved to keep things to themselves. In this case, the email equivalent of a catfight broke out, and that was the cause of the denouement.
[NOTE: And although it’s probably true that in the olden days generals didn’t encounter women quite as often, they certainly encountered them. So the opportunity has long been there, as well as the old-fashioned camp follower. And then there was the ancient “Lock up your wives!” ditty about Caesar. Sex and soldiering, not an oxymoron.]
[ADDENDUM: More details on how the email thingee worked. Petraeus and Broadwell didn’t send each other emails, it turns out. They had a shared email account and could read each others’ unsent drafts, thus reducing the electronic trail. My guess is that they probably would never have been caught but for Broadwell’s angry emails to Jill Kelley.]
Ace is correct about the effect economic hardship had on this election…
…but he doesn’t go far enough.
Here’s some of what Ace had to say:
It is difficult to understand how a President could be reelected having presided over such a disastrous economy, but there it is: Because the economy is so weak, and people are so miserable and just holding on to their fingernails, the Catastrophic President becomes the only lifeline available to many. They wind up caring less about the economy as a general matter, because their survival instincts are just to keep themselves sheltered and fed. They are looking at the current moment, scared as hell of the next.
Ace doesn’t take the conversation one step further, which is to ask whether this was an unintended positive consequence for Obama of the bad economy despite his having tried his best to fix it, or whether part of the reason he really didn’t try very hard to fix the economy was because his agenda relies on keeping more and more of the populace hurting and dependent on leftist government.
Either way, it’s a win-win situation, isn’t it (for Obama, anyway, not the rest of us)? But if I had to bet, I’d go with option #2.
The two sides
Liberals fear that the right will legislate (or appoint justices who will dictate) what used to be known as conventional morality, in the bedroom and regarding reproductive rights. Conservatives are afraid that the left will legislate (or appoint justices who will dictate) an end to conventional morality regarding those same things, as well as marriage.
In the fiscal arena, conservatives are afraid that liberals are bent on legislating a new fiscal morality based on covetousness of the successful, and a class warfare “fairness” that will end up killing the golden goose of capitalism and impoverishing us all in the name of a hypocritical “fairness.” And liberals of course say that conservatives are bent on screwing (financially speaking, that is) everybody but themselves.
Note that in the above two paragraphs I am speaking of “liberals” rather the “the left.” When I say “liberals,” I’m attempting to refer to the group of well-meaning and not-all-that-political people whom I know very well. I am not referring to the far left (a few of whom I’ve also known fairly well) , who are completely different in beliefs and motives. And yes, I’m aware that the former group enables the latter and is mostly controlled by them, although liberals may be largely unaware of that fact, or of the motives of the far left.