The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Apparently, Everybody Involved in the Petraeus Scandal Is a Swinging Sex Freak

Posted on | November 13, 2012 | 53 Comments

The CIA chief, his West Point-educated girlfriend, an FBI agent, the “social liaison” at McDill AFB, the top general in Afghanistan — they’re all as freewheeling and frisky as college juniors on Spring Break in Cabo. Gabriel Malor at AOSHQ summarizes the sordid mess:

Jill Kelley, the woman who was (allegedly) threatened by Gen. Petraeus’s squeeze Paula Broadwell and who (apparently) started the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus’ ouster, who went to the FBI for help after the threats and then (allegedly) had a relationship with the FBI agent in charge of her own case, who (allegedly) sent her shirtless pics of himself, also (apparently, allegedly) had “compromising” communications with Gen. John Allen, the Big Damn Commander of our war effort in Afghanistan. . . .
It’s not a love triangle. It’s a love Pentagon.

Good grief. America’s national security has been entrusted to the pledge committee at Delta Tau Chi. This is shocking beyond description:

Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan, exchanged thousands of “potentially inappropriate” emails with Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who claimed to have been harassed by the ex-mistress of former CIA Director David Petraeus . . .
The FBI notified the Defense Department on Sunday of “potentially inappropriate communications” between Allen and Kelley, and turned over to Pentagon lawyers 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails exchanged by the two from 2010 to 2012.

Who the hell sends “20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails” to anybody? That’s somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 pages a year. Jilly Kelley is a civilian, a married mother of three, so why is the four-star Marine general in charge of the Afghanistan war sending her all this e-mail? When did he ever find time to, y’know, fight the war? But the FBI hasn’t covered itself in glory, either:

After Kelley alerted the FBI, agents began pursuing it as a possible case of cyber harassment or stalking. “The thought was she was being followed,” the source said.
The anonymous emails continued — sent from multiple alias accounts — and some later ones in the sequence contained references to Petraeus, though not by name, the source said.
What most alarmed Kelley and the FBI, the source said, were references to “the comings and goings” of high-level generals from the U.S. Central Command, which is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and the U.S. Southern Command, as well as Petraeus — including events that were not on any public schedule. This raised the question as to whether somebody had access to sensitive — and classified — information. . . .
Meanwhile, it has come to light that the FBI agent contacted by Kelley about the emails she received from Broadwell was removed from the case. According to officials, the agent’s supervisors said he had become infatuated with Kelley and had sent her shirtless photos of himself.

What the hell? Is our entire government staffed with people who have nothing better to do with their time than to chase poontang? Are our taxpayer dollars being used to pay for this stuff?

Hey, we’ve got a trillion-dollar deficit and we’re in hock to the ChiComs, but don’t you worry, America — we’re getting our money’s worth out of these dedicated public servants who occasionally do some actual work in between their cybersex sessions.

 

Category: Military, Scandal, Sex

LIVE AT FIVE: 11.13.12

Posted on | November 13, 2012 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Petraeus Scandal Rolls On As Focus Turns To Senate Inquiry

Petraeus and Broadwell

Broadwell’s home searched by FBI, Senate Intel Committee opens probe into FBI investigation


Obama Considering John Kerry As New SecDef
Did you know he served in Vietnam?


Windows Head Steven Sinofsky Leaving Microsoft
Sources say he wasn’t a team player



POLITICS
Thousands Of Long Islanders Still Without Power

Crews replace a power pole in Belle Harbor, NY

Government-run utility failing hard at restoring power


Not One Romney Vote In 59 Philly Wards?

Idaho Inmates Sue CCA

Bears, Budgets And Farmers Top Congress’ To-Do List

Turbo Tax Timmy Staying At Treasury Through Inauguration

States Petition To Secede From Union

Red Cross Runs Out Of Supplies Early, Further Frustrating Sandy Victims



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Continues To Slide As European FMs Postpone Release Of Greece’s Next Payment; NYMEX $85.01, Brent $108.46
Largarde, EU Clash Over Greek Debt Levels
US, Greek Worries Weigh On Asian Shares & Commodities
With Jefferies Deal, “Baby Berkshire” Deviates From Buffett
Black Friday Creeps Into Thanksgiving
Hostess To Close Three Plants After Union Strikes
Environmentalists Claim Many Coal-Fired Power Plants “Ripe For Retirement”
Corn & Soybean Production Estimates Increased
JC Penney Stock Drops To Lowest In Three Years Amid Pricing Plan Worries
Google To Refund Some Pre-Price Drop Nexus 7 Buyers
Google Unveils $199 Acer Chromebook
“HALO 4” Launch Day Sales Break $220 Million
Google Reportedly Facing FTC Ultimatum Over Antitrust Suit
Six Intriguing Features In Blackberry 10
Why We Shoot: “Call of Duty: Black Ops II” And “HALO 4”



SPORTS
Bryce Harper, Mike Trout Named Rookies Of The Year

Mike Trout, AL Rookie of the Year

Trout youngest and Harper second-youngest winners of the award

Steelers Tip Chiefs In OT, 16-13; Roethlisberger Injured

LeBron James Scores 38 To Rally Heat Past Rockets, 113-110

Jeff Gordon Fined 100K, Docked Points, Placed On Probation For Wreck

Oates Tackles Learning Curve In AHL

Rondo Barely Misses Triple Double As Celtics Beat Bulls 101-95

Agreement On BCS Playoff Structure Reached

Massive Crowd Greets Aggies After Alabama Upset

Giants Sign Affeldt For Three Years, $18 Million

Carl Crawford Expected To Be Ready For Opening Day

Scott Boras Says Indians Ownership Doesn’t Care About Winning

Hockey Hall of Fame Reunites Sundin, Sakic

Thoughts, Observations And Leftovers On The Nationals



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan’s Snub Of Baba Wawa For Leno “A Slap In The Face”

Old & Burnt/New Hot Mess


Veteran interviewer whines about starlet’s evasion


Related: Nicki Minaj Rips Walters Over Rumored Feud With Mariah Carey


Voice Of Elmo: I Did Not Have Sex With That Underaged Boy

Anne Hathaway Joins “Robocalypse”

50 Shades Of Divorce

E! Network’s “Married To Jonas” Renewed For Second Season

Facebook Couples Pages Make Brit Journalist Want To Barf

 James Wan In Talks To Direct “MacGyver” Movie



FOREIGNERS
New Syrian Opposition Group Recognized By Gulf Council
Syrian Jet Bombs Town Near Turkish Border
Dalai Lama Wants Thorough Probe Into Tibetan Deaths
Corruption Scandals Pushing PRC Leaders To Open Books
BBC Execs Could Face Discipinary Action Over “Newsnight” Error
Clegg Says Government “Absolutely Determined” To Deport Abu Qatada
$2 Billion In Zimbabwe Diamonds Plundered By Mugabe Cronies



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Red America Forced To Reconcile The Emerging Democrat-Secular Majority
Jawa Report: FBI Agent In Petraeus Case Under Scutiny For Sending Shirtless Pix Of Himself
Via Meadia: Is Philandering A Security Concern?
Wired: Petraeus Scandal Engulfs ISAF Commander, General Jones
Tim Blair: No Jokes Spring Immediately To Mind
Legal Insurrection: Will We Ever Again Hear The Whole Truth About Anything?
Lonely Conservative: So, What’s With This Secret Prison In Benghazi?
James Taranto: Broadwell And Benghazi
AZCentral: Democrats Take Two More Arizona Seats; Sinema, Kirkpatrick Win
NewsBusters: CBS’ Nancy Giles Says Whites Oppose Abortion “To Build Up The Race”
Patterico: Joseph Curl On What To Do Now
NRO Corner: Romney Political Director Claims “The Ground Game Worked Just Fine”

Category: Live at Five

Let’s Blame Crowder

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 11 Comments

I mean, why not? Instead of this finger-pointing and blame-gaming and circular firing squad, let’s just grab hold of some random schmoe and make him the designated scapegoat for all our despair, rage, envy and frustration. Stephen Crowder is the new Emmanuel Goldstein!

Category: Video

When You’re Down to Your Last $4 Million, Hallucinogens May Seem Fun

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 17 Comments

Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee once had what is colloquially known as “f–k you money,” but suffered a reversal of fortune:

John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.
“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”

What’s an erstwhile multimillionaire to do? Move to Belize!

He has spent the intervening years building a new life for himself on the coast of Central America. He has just auctioned off the last of his sprawling properties back in the United States and sold or given away many of his possessions. He has taken a huge financial hit, he says, but that’s okay. He has enough to fund his latest passion, his gift to the future: developing new kinds of antibiotics from herbs found deep in the rain forests of Belize. . . .
He describes the economic injustice of the developing world, the imbalances of education and capital, and how tapping the biodiversity of the rain forest for natural cures will help address those problems. “The product is something the world desperately needs, or will need, within a few years,” he says, “as our last lines of antibiotic defense are breached by the ever-growing ranks of drug-resistant bacteria.”

Hmmmm. Does this sound vaguely . . . flaky? Yeah, it sure does. And when the going gets flaky, the flaky get going:

As dawn broke over the interior of Belize on April 30, an elite team of 42 police and soldiers, including members of the country’s SWAT team and Special Forces, converged on a compound on the banks of a jungle river. Within, all was quiet. The police called out through a bullhorn that they were there looking for illegal firearms and narcotics, then stormed in, breaking open doors with sledgehammers, handcuffing four security guards, and shooting a guard dog dead. The compound’s owner, a 67-year-old white American man, emerged bleary-eyed from his bedroom with a 17-year-old Belizean girl. The police cuffed him and took him away, along with his guards.
Inside, the cops found $20,000 in cash, a lab stocked with chemistry equipment, and a small armory’s worth of firearms: seven pump-action shotguns, one single-action shotgun, two 9-mm. pistols, 270 shotgun cartridges, 30 9-mm. pistol rounds, and twenty .38 rounds. Vexingly for the police, all of this was actually legal. The guns were licensed and the lab appeared not to be manufacturing drugs but an herbal antibacterial compound.
After fourteen hours, the police let the man and his employees go, but remained convinced they had missed something. Why else would a wealthy American playboy hole himself up out here, far from the tourist zone on the coast, by a navigable river that happened to connect, twenty miles downstream, with a remote corner of the Mexican border? Why else would he hire, as head of security, a rogue cop who’d once plotted to steal guns from the police and sell them to drug traffickers?

You really should read the whole thing, including the part about how McAfee, 66, moved to Belize with his 28-year-old girlfriend (whom he started dating when she was still a teenager) and then developed a business partnership with a 31-year-old Harvard biologist, Allison Adonizio, who rebuffed his crude and weird advances:

He showed her websites devoted to various kinds of outré kink, and became increasingly open, when his girlfriend Irwin was out of town, about bringing prostitutes off the street and into his bedroom. (One day Adonizio came upon “literally a garbage bag full of Viagra.”) After she’d broken up with a boyfriend on the mainland, “he kept trying to set me up with these weird friends that were into polyamory and crazy kinky stuff,” she said. “He tried to convince me that love doesn’t exist, so I might as well just give in and sleep with all these crazy circus folk.” He liked to hint that he had connections to dangerous criminals, implying that he could have her ex-boyfriend killed: “I have someone who can take care of that,” he told her.
When at last she decided she’d had enough and asked McAfee to buy out her share of the company, he exploded, she says, screaming and lunging at her. She fled and locked herself in the lab. McAfee pounded on the door and shouted obscenities. Afraid for her safety, Adonizio called a friend to escort her off the property. The next day, she boarded a flight back home to Pennsylvania. . . .
“As soon as I started questioning his motives, he turned on me and became a horrible, horrible person, controlling, manipulative and dangerous,” she told me. “I’m thankful that I got out with my life.”
In the wake of Adonizio’s departure, McAfee grew more isolated. An investor who’d wanted to back the anti-quorum-sensing venture backed away. A joint-venture agreement with Dr. Louis Zabaneh, one of the country’s most powerful men, fell apart. The hangers-on drifted away. After 14 years, Irwin left him.

So, if you were a gambler, would you bet that things got better or worse after that? If you bet on “worse,” you’re a winner:

Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run from murder charges, Belize police say. According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force’s Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye.

The report goes on to explain McAfee’s downward spiral into oblivion:

In July of 2010, shortly before Allison Adonizio pulled the plug on their quorum-sensing project and fled the country, McAfee began posting on a drug-focused Russian-hosted message board called Bluelight about his attempts to purify the psychoactive compounds colloquially known as “bath salts.”
Writing under the name “stuffmonger,” a handle he has used on other online message boards, McAfee posted more than 200 times over the next nine months about his ongoing quest to purify psychoactive drugs from compounds commercially available over the internet. “I’m a huge fan of MDPV,” he wrote. “I think it’s the finest drug ever conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown.”
Elsewhere, he described his pursuit of “super perv powder” and warned about the dangers of handling the freebase version of the drug: “I had visual and auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia of my life.” He recommended that the most effective way to take a dose is via rectal insertion . . .

Ah, so the software genius and former multimillionaire becomes a crazed and lonely recluse in a Central American jungle, shoving weird hallucinogenic drugs up his bunghole, suffers some kind of psychotic breakdown, shoots a man and takes it on the run, an international fugitive wanted on a murder charge.

They say that the difference between “crazy” and “eccentric” is that eccentric people are rich. John McAfee used to be eccentric.

 

Category: Uncategorized

Ace of Spades: Eric Holder Is Obviously Lying About the Petraeus Affair

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 18 Comments

The logic is impeccable: Holder’s FBI discovers the CIA chief is dangerously compromised and doesn’t tell the President?

Bovine excrement!

Therefore, the alternative hypothesis that Holder was negligent in not telling the President is merely an interesting counterfactual along the lines of, “What if Lee’s army had AK-47s at Gettysburg?”

We know Holder is lying. The question is, “Why is he lying?”

Category: Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Military, Scandal, Sex

The Triumph of Androgyny

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 30 Comments

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!“

Katie Hill and her boyfriend Arin Andrews share a unique bond — they were both born as the opposite sex.
Katie, 18, spent the first 15 years of her life as Luke, son of a Marine colonel, while Arin, 16, was born a girl called  Emerald who excelled at ballet dancing and won beauty contests.
Both struggled with their sexuality all through their childhoods and were teased and bullied but their lives were  changed when they both began hormone therapy and later met at a trans support  group in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and instantly fell in love. . . .
High-school student Arin undergoes  testosterone shots to give him the more masculine shape he’s craved his whole life. Meanwhile high-school graduate Katie, 18, has finished her female hormone course — oestrogen shots — which helped her to  develop natural breasts with no silicone implants.
Katie, who has legally been a female since  she was 15, believes she was born with naturally high levels of oestrogen and  was teased as a boy throughout school for having small AA-cup breasts.
An anonymous donor was so touched by her story they paid for her £25,000 ($40,000) gender reassignment surgery just four  days after her 18th birthday on May 16, 2012.

 

Welcome to the The Rocky Horror Picture Show as reality.

 

Category: Culture, Gays, Sex

Please Don’t Tickle Me, Elmo — Or: What’s the Muppet Age of Consent?

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 17 Comments

The punch lines write themselves — “WHAT DID BIG BIRD KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?” — but of course, this isn’t a joke:

The man who voices the puppet of Elmo on Sesame Street has taken leave amid allegations he had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy.
Kevin Clash, 52, has taken a leave of absence from the popular children’s show after the programme’s lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old man who claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16.
TMZ, who reported the allegations, said that Mr Clash had admitted he had a relationship with the man, but only after the accuser was an adult and said the accusations were both false and defamatory.
‘I had a relationship with [the accuser]. It was between two consenting adults and I am deeply saddened that he is trying to make it into something it was not,’ said Mr Clash . . .

So, Elmo admits he’s a gay Muppet who pursues sex with men less than half his age, but insists that he scrupulously avoids sex with those who are under the age of legal consent, so that the day before your 18th birthday, you’re strictly off-limits, but the minute you are legally an adult, you’re fair game for the Furry Red Humping Machine.

Such lofty moral standards . . .

Category: Gays, Scandal, Sex

The Republican Clown Car Campaign

Posted on | November 12, 2012 | 115 Comments

Susannah Fleetwood has a long critique of the 2012 campaign today at Right Wing News that makes an important point early:

Mitt Romney out-performed eleven out fifteen of the Republican Senatorial candidates, and the four that he didn’t out-perform were from very blue states that Republicans never win. . . .
In other words, if the problem was that Romney was a weak candidate (and the Republican brand was in good shape), then those numbers would be flipped the other way around. What the numbers tell us is that Mitt Romney performed well in those states in spite of the Republican brand–not because of it (people who came out to vote against Akin still voted for Romney).

This fact must be explained by anyone who wants to scapegoat Mitt Romney, to say that mistakes by the campaign or weaknesses of the candidate entirely explain what went wrong in 2012. If the Republican Party were generally in good shape, it would not be attracting to its ranks and nominating to high office such catastrophic disasters as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who lost Senate races in states that Romney won.

Nor can we blame this debacle on the “GOP Establishment.” Susannah quotes me (from a long phone conversation we had while I was driving home from Ohio) about the problems of “selfishness masquerading as populism” and people who weren’t “task-oriented or mission-focused.” You saw this, for example, in the case of Akin, who refused to resign the GOP nomination even after such eminent conservatives as Mark Levin urged him to quit for the good of the country. Akin selfishly clung to the nomination (which he’d won with just 36% of the primary vote) as if he owned it, as if he were the living embodiment of the Republican Party grassroots and anyone who criticized him was part of the “Beltway elite.”

When I say that people weren’t “task-oriented or mission-focused,” I refer among other things to people who let their leftover disgruntlement from the GOP primary campaign distract them from the key task of 2012: Defeat Barack Obama at all hazards.

Look: Mitt Romney wasn’t my dream candidate. I went all-in for Herman Cain and, when that campaign ended, I went all-in for Rick Santorum, because I saw them as best positioned to stop Mitt from becoming the “It’s His Turn” nominee. But once the alternatives were eliminated, I put aside my dissatisfaction and got in step. (See my May 7 column, “Mitt’s Men Don’t Plan to Fail,” which includes a few sharp hindsight ironies.) Meanwhile, however, there were devotees of various failed Republican primary challengers who couldn’t turn loose of the anti-Romney arguments they had parroted for months, and who continued bitch, bitch, bitching all the way to November.

If selfishness and stupidity are “True Conservative” principles — if an unwillingness to engage in broad-based coalition politics is celebrated as a virtue — then we are truly doomed. Puerile gestures and egocentric bullying are incompatible with effective teamwork. To borrow a phrase from Elbert Hubbard, “Get Out or Get In Line.”

OK, so much for my lecture. Now go read Susannah Fleetwood’s article, “Romney Lost Because Republicans Behaved Like Undisciplined Clowns.”

UPDATE: In the comments, I found myself accused of being part of the “Establishment,” engaged in “blame the base” messaging. Whatever. Some people will not listen to arguments that are not personally flattering to them, that do not elevate to a pedestal their particular beliefs. Evidence that does not confirm their beliefs must be ignored or rationalized, and the bearers of bad news must be demonized. Psychological defense mechanisms are not a political philosophy. People who are incapable of self-criticism are incapable of self-improvement. If you cannot learn from failure, you are doomed to repeat your failures. Attempting to externalize blame, to abdicate responsibility for failure by reference to convenient scapegoats, is not conservatism, it is narcissism.

UPDATE II: I’m grateful to Mark Steyn for this analysis:

Regardless of what kind of Republican you are, the electorate was antipathetic to you.
In other words, whatever the weaknesses of a supposedly weak candidate, the party was weaker. With hindsight, that first debate performance appears to have made Mitt sufficiently likeable for a narrow slice of voters to overlook the R after his name. The candidate was less of a problem than the Republican brand.

Dead on target: The Bush-era “brand damage” problem, which conservatives hoped had been vanquished by the Tea Party uprising and the “Republican Mandate” of 2010, came back with a vengeance. The problem is not conservatism, nor is it “centrism,” but rather the success of the Democrat-Media Complex in making the Republican label a negative symbol. To the extent that various GOP candidates or spokesmen cooperated in that project — e.g., “legitimate rape” — then they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

To put it another way, the problem is political and cultural, rather than ideological, and we need to learn to distinguish these categories. Constant invocations of ideology — the claim that any Republican we disagree with is guilty of insufficient fidelity to conservative principle — tend to sow suspicion within our ranks and undermine effective cooperation. This is not to say that there are no RINO sellouts, or that the Charlie Crist/Richard Lugar types don’t do damage to the GOP, but rather to say that ideological deviation cannot be blamed for every problem in the Republican Party.

 

 


Category: Conservatism 101, Election 2012
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