… a giant manufactured distraction from the so-called Grand Bargain that Congress is negotiating now to deprive us of the social insurance programs we paid for in advance?
Sex scandals are as old as the hills. We need to stop acting like they’ll stop the earth from turning and start take a more French attitude about them. Do you know how many of their leaders have done things that would give the Villagers distracting gossip for years to come? How about almost all of them. They’ve all had affairs or mistresses or children whose births were not consecrated by the marital bond. At some point in their history, probably right after The Terror or maybe it was the Nazi Occupation, the French started to realize that if they took every person who’d ever had a sexual indiscretion out of their leadership ranks, they would still be begging for bread and run over by rich aristocrats or living in fear or some crazy German.
And Petraeus is not even that important. Oh, sure, the CIA is an important department and spies and all that. But Petraeus is never going to be president, at least not now. It’s very rare for former military generals to get to be president. Eisenhower was the last one and I can only think of one other- Ulysses S Grant. Grant was corrupt in a completely different way not having anything to do with sex. But I don’t care about Petraeus.
I don’t care about Petraeus’s tawdry, Jerry Springeresque love life where one mistress texts another mistress telling her to keep away from her man. Can’t you picture it? Two heavily made up women in skin tight clothing fighting over some skinny dude with a mullet? He’s sitting there in the background with a bemused look on his face as the camera pans over the scene but he’s actually trying to figure out how he can talk them into a threesome.
Um, that’s not going to keep the heat on when we’re 65 and have to wait 5 additional years for our social security benefits to kick in.
I used to think that the politicians were going to put so much economic pressure on the American people that we would take the deal of immediate relief and give up our claims to our pre-paid deferred compensation.
But that’s not really how it is. It’s the politicians who are trading our futures for their short term relief. Why are we not talking about that? And why don’t we all vow to keep ourselves in good physical shape so that we can seek out and find all of the young congressmen and Senators who are going to sell us out? Let’s make a promise to never leave them alone if they cut this deal for as long as they live. Even after they retire from Congress or are voted out, let’s make it our mission to remind them every day of their lives that we are still here and we will remember and make sure they remember and that for them, the pressure will never, ever let up. There will never be any short term relief for any young member of Congress who bargains away our prepaid retirement benefits. We will be the albatross that hangs around their necks until the day they die.
Filed under: General | Tagged: grand bargain, Loretta Lynn, Petraeus, Social Security |
The Confluence 
It’s so dull that even the stories trying to make something out of it are dull. It’s so dull, you could build a comedy routine out of what happens to your skin and the lining of your eyes as you listen or read about it.
So yes. It’s gotta be a distraction.
General George Washington.
Whoops! Forgot all about him. But he was first at everything. It’s not the same.
Zachary Taylor was a general, major general, I believe.
General Zachary Taylor
And he was known for… what, exactly?
Anyway, my point still stands. There have been 44 presidents and only a few generals. Not a great record and Petraeus’s war isn’t a “good” war, if you know what I mean.
A list of American presidents’ military ranks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Presidents_by_military_rank
Quite a few, altho some of them look to me to be political appointments. But I’m not expert in those matters. Maybe someone else here can jump in.
Yep, not that many saw actual combat.
But what does this have to do with Social Security and Medicare?
Right. Absolutely nothing.
It’s your blog, as you’ve made emphatically and explicitly clear, but you made the statement. There have been quite a few and neither of us knows who saw what in the way of combat or how some of them got the rank of general.
Quite a few is actually not that many. There a few notable ones and the rest sat behind a desk.
Petraeus doesn’t even fit into Eisenhower’s category.
Thanks. My sentiments exactly.
I don’t remember where I saw this (John Dvorak, a computer columnist?). There’s a wild rumor circulating that this is part of an attempt to take attention off the CIA role in supplying arms to Syrian rebels through Benghazi. In my book, that’s better than supplying them to the dictator (best would be world peace and all that good idealistic stuff), but the big deal Repubs could latch onto is that some Syrian rebels are part of Al-Qaeda. So you have a possible “CIA running guns to terrorists” scenario, and said terrorists then use the guns to kill Americans in Benghazi. Something like that. The idea being that a resigned Petraeus won’t be called to testify before Congress.
Initially, I gather, after the resignation word was he wouldn’t be testifying. Then that he would after all. Recently I saw that some underling would be testifying instead. We’ll see.
As with all wild rumors, there’s not necessarily even an atom of truth to it. It could easily be another super-boring sex story of no relevance to anyone except the media who get all the clicks. (I’m sure Petraeus’s wife has known for years.)
Don’t know how far-fetched this distraction scheme is at all. Will they get away with it?
It could be a dual-use diversion. Diverting from problems with the various subcells of the Benghazi-Libya account. But also diverting from the multi-trillion dollar Grand Bargain Ripoff currently being advanced through the Class Enemy Occupation FedRegime and its LegisFecal Excretion process.
Why let a diversion go to waste, eh?
” I paid for this entitlement!”
Ike had his own sex story. Nobody made much of it though. He wanted to divorce his wife, Mamie, after WW II and marry the woman who was his driver in England (Kate Summersby). No go.
Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison and James Garfield were all generals. Garfield was a politician before he was a general. That probably would have made him a better President but he died too soon to find out. Jackson and Harrison definitely had battlefield experience and well known victories,
I think we were truly fortunate not to get Douglas MacArthur.
Lots of Presidents had affairs and scandals of one sort or another. It seemed to have little effect on the individual except, perhaps, strengthening them. Lincoln and FDR had been through the mill a few times..
Agree about MacArthur, and several other more recent generals, Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, for instance.
From what are they trying to distract us from?
And why are they trying to keep us entertained with sex soap opera?
so we don’t pay attention to how bad things are for the majority?
They are trying to distract us from the Congressional Catfood Conspiracy against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaide.
My take is to keep us distracted from the massive lawsuit:
Case 1:12-cv-04269-JBW-RML Document 36 Filed 10/25/12.
It has to do with the bailouts and using them to extract money from our country by following the money of BO administration.
I got an email from an org that works on passing Single Payer and it said it was great Obama was re-elected, but that now we had to protect Social Security and Medicare from his compromise. WTF (sorry for the language)
And CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is busy lying about Obama passing Universal Health Care (Honestly, he is a Aristocratic LIAR) making it look as if we working people just love to complain. This election we got ‘Mitt Romney is worse than Obama, vote Obama.’??? Will journalists start telling the truth or continue to pom pom?
Are there any actual journalists left?
I remember reading that the whole pack of McClatchy reporters kept writing ” no sign of weapons of mass destruction”
articles for the McClatchy Newspaper Chain all during the runup to Iraq War II . So there were some there and may still be some on some subjects. But it does seem that all the brand name MSM journalists served their owners’ social class interests in selling the Obama.
An interesting metaphor (or something) occurred to me, maybe borrowed from an explanation of what commercial network TV really is. The NyTimes has many good reporters doing real reporting. The real reporting is like bait put out by hunting clubs for ducks. The NyTimes’s readers are the ducks.
The hunters are the propagandists under NyTimes journalistic cover who shoot the ducks. For example, lots of readers (ducks) read the NyTimes for the good journalism (bait) and while they are sitting and reading (feeding) the hunters (propagandists like Judith Miller and David Brooks) shoot the ducks . . . er . . . the readers.
On first read, I thought you wrote “porn pom”.
Please read this post by Arthur Silber for his take on the Patraeus scandal. He provides some good reasons as to why this is happening now. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.kr/2012/11/seriously-america-its-never-sex.html
Thanks for the link, Dfv. That was a great article and a great, clear-eyed blog. I bookmarked it.
Here is NaCap’s most recent post about a major player in the Simpson-Obama Catfood Conspiracy against our PREpayed for entitlements. ( ” I payed for this entitlement!”) It is about an evil organization called Third Way, which is a real name for a real organization with real people in it pursuing a real agenda. The article is by guest blogger Bill Black who has studied “insider looting from above” of bussinesses via control fraud.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/bill-black-wall-street-uses-the-third-way-to-lead-its-assault-on-social-security.html
Third Way is the DLC reconstituted. The Democratic Party is thoroughly infiltrated.
I hate these conspiratorial theories. This Third Way/Neoliberalism/DLC shit is as stupid as the right wingers getting all bent out of shape about the Trilateral Commission.
Why not just think of it as people with their own agendas and interests-themselves- doing what suits them best? There are rich people who don’t want to pay back all the money they borrowed from the trust fund to pay for their tax cuts. They want the trust fund recipients to forgive those loans and since we won’t do it voluntarily, they’re going to force it on us.
Then there are politicians on both sides who like power, don’t want to lose it and would prefer to leave public office with a nice nest egg. They don’t really care what happens to us.
That’s all this is. There are no organized secret societies that dress in hooded robes and sacrifice a goat in the name of the Third Way. Using these labels obscures what is really going on and just ends up sounding silly.
You are quite wrong, RD.
I agree with Kim; RD is pulling a Yves here (reference to Yves Smith’s ignorant comments on the Pharma industry). Yes, there are rich people with financial motivations that ignore and disadvantage the interests of the masses. And those rich people DO organize, not into secret societies, but into PUBLIC organizations called Third Way, DLC, World Economic Forum, National Association of Manufacturers, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Hudson Institute, Manhattan Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, etc etc etc. And those rich people do support ideologists (economists, sociologists, political scientists, priests/ministers, etc) who develop and sustain the rationals for the dominance of the rich and the subjugation of the poor. “Neoliberalism” is not a conspiracy theory but a consciously developed version of neoclassical economics. Students and the public are indoctrinated into systems of rationalizations notably by economics and law school faculties. Ideologies have patrons in the sort of PUBLIC organizations like those named previously. Unfortunately, few people pursue careers based on empirically/rationally verifiable principles like mathematicians and chemists.
Not a complete survey of the field I am pointing to, but a good starting point:
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Oh, I failed to mention the secretive (e.g., Masons) and outright secret (e.g., ???) organizations. I don’t know or have any experience with them. But to deny they exist and have influence seems foolish to me. The PUBLIC organizations peddling ideologies and enforcing ideological conformity are enough to prove my point.
P.S. The Bilderberg group/meetings is a good example of secretive collaboration among the power elite [Wikipedia; official website].
Does it matter if they roast a goat while they chant spells in some secret clubhouse? No, it does not. They can’t do itby themselves. They need the assistance of other democrats who are not into goat roasting.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter if they have they own organizations. We still oppose them.
What the left needs is an organization that will push back against anyone who wants to push these kinds of policies. And the reason why they get away wi it is because we DON’T have such an organization. We do not have the equivalent of the Christian Coalition or the Tea Party or the Grover norquistian group whose name escapes me right now.
So, these groups only look formidable and organized because we are neither.
I think we’d better get on the stick. We’re already almost too late.
Now, if we could all just get along and work together and quit distrusting each other, we might make them nervous,
I propose the Federation for Democratic Reform as an umbrella group to act as an organizing body for a voting bloc, to lobby, the educate and quickly mobilize the left to DO SOMETHING!!
I don’t want to be a leader. I’d suck at it anyway. But I am more than willing to work for such an organization as long as it keeps it simple, like sticking to the “12 Word Platform”. Just tell me where to sign up. the time for talking is over.
Are you now using the same “High Controlling” mental-obedience enforcement methods against me and others which you have accused others of using yourself at times in the past? The article I linked to seems very well documented and presents numerous facts which are either factually true or factually false. I am certainly prepared to look at any genuinely factual evidence you can present to disprove the facts and interpretation of this article. Do you have any?
By the way, this guest post I linked to was not written by Yves Smith. It was written by Bill Black, author of The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One, and other things. He is a tenured professor in Oklahoma I believe, and he is a respected expert in the area of the ins and outs of financial fraud and the mechanisms of government enablement of and support for and lending cover to such fraud. “Conspiracy Theory” is not in this case a term of analysis. It is a mere epithet of dismissal and abuse, similar to the epithets you noted My Eye Quew
Too Ess Yew using against the OWS demonstrators.
These Yersinial pestoid scum and every cancer cell associated with them need to be purged and burned and cauterised out of the Democratic Party. Or otherwise “Democrats in Exile” need to exit the Democratic Party en masse in such as way as to successfully exterminate the Democratic Party from existence. Pretending a cancer does not exist is not the appropriate first step to diagnosing and then removing a cancer.
Careful what you wish for. I agree that American sex scandals are absurdly overwrought but you don’t want to go too far in the French direction either: The hush-hush ooys-will-be-boys culture here very nearly gave us a pimp and rapist for President, and made life insufferable for women in politics and the workplace. A long-overdue national conversation on matters of sexual harassment and attitudes towards privacy took place after the DSK disaster and there has been some progress (albeit small and incremental, but that means something for France)
Elect and appoint more women.
You said it Sis, we need more political representation Amen.
this whole thing is geared to distracting from the voter fraud that went on during the election:
http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/the-big-list-of-vote-fraud-reports/
At the White House website, a report in the Examiner explains, there was posted a petition seeking a recount of the race. “In one county alone in Ohio, which was a battleground state, President Obama received 106,258 votes … but there were only 98,213 eligible voters. It’s not humanly possible to get 108 percent of the vote,” the petition claims.
A blog, Punditpress, reported “In Florida: Obama Got Over 99% in Broward County Precincts”
The same site reported: “What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote”
There also was the report about “Good News: Obama Won County in Ohio with 108% Voter Registration”
Further, it said: “Fraud in PA: Obama Got Over 99% of Vote at Polls Where GOP Inspectors Were Removed; Turnout Somehow ’30%’ Above Gov’t Numbers”
The same site reported: “What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote”
lol I hate when they get sloppy. A mere 89%- 90% would be more a bit more convincing……the lies were better in my day
I think what they were reporting was the percent of voter turnout compared to the previous election. This is not an unusual. We’ve seen it before. If the number is over 100%, it means that there were more voters than last time.
Let the Kabuki threaer begin!
Union leaders meet with Obama, back austerity drive against workers
http://tinyurl.com/aeesntn
Trade union leaders met Tuesday with President Barack Obama to give their support to his plans for massive cuts in social programs upon which tens of millions of workers depend…..
The union officials did not even mention the likely expiration January 1 of extended unemployment benefits, which will deprive more than 2 million jobless workers of cash assistance……
There has to be more to the Petraeus sex scandal of course …in DC they are humping like bunnies and plenty of jealousy runs amuck… oh hum ( the addiction that makes ’em nuts is the power of course , not the personal attributes of General Comb Over and the like . That power bong is as addicting as crack cocaine, or more and once the drug is withdrawn, people lose it )..one of hopes we got is one of perhaps battling factions within the top.9999 %. It’s when they move as one that we get thoroughly cooked
So perhaps this is some turf war … I do know Petraeus was hot for the CIA to take over the coming over head drones ( which aren’t just for Pakistan anymore ) from the military…making there operations even more secret, so his removal for whatever the reason is a good thing imo.
I have to agree with that silver lining. The fact that he continued from the Bush to Obama regime was discouraging. I am glad he’s out and dishonorably so. And I, too, see the “wag the dog” scenario unfolding, yet again.
The Petraeus thing is weird. Usually, these types of prurient scandals cover up something larger, but in this case, it’s hard to make out what that would be. At the moment, It appears to be a combination of excessive FBI surveillance combined with bureaucratic infighting.
The media will dutifully cover a scandal, especially one involving a four star general doubling as head of the CIA.
Watch carefully in the coming days and weeks and see how the various ” veal pen ” organizations are commissioned to sell cuts to social insurance programs to the public.
Well, as Riverdaughter has suggested up above, it may not be a “coverup”. It may be a pure “diversion”. It may be diverting the CEO MSM from covering or even mentioning the Simpson-Obama Grand Catfood Conspiracy underway in the House and Senate.
Any energy that millions of members of the media consuming public invest in following l’affaire Petraeus is energy not available to obstruct the Catfood Congressfolk and the Catfood President from taking away our survival benefits.
I PAID for this entitlement!
You are correct in that we need to do something regardless of what forms and organizations these people do or don’t take. However, the fact that some of them are grouped into a nameable and shameable front group allows that group and its named members to be isolated, polarized, ridiculed, and frozen, and subjected to all the other tricks in the Alinsky handbook. Giving the real actually existing Third Way group and all its real live members whose real names Bill Black has laid out for us . . . giving them the Full Metal Jacket Alinsky treatment could destroy them and thereby deprive their fellow Democrats of the organizational strength and support which this group lends them. It is one approach among many which deserves to be pursued in shaping the political economic battlespace so that the 99% can achieve Full Spectrum Dominance over the 1% and maneuver the 1% into the “killbox” of political economic combat and then proceed to “kill” them within the “killbox” . . . metaphorically speaking.
The Federation for Democratic Reform would have to agree on a few
key goals and stuff which all its members could agree on. It would have to leave those things under dispute by various left-liberal groups off its agenda sheet. Otherwise it would be split right back down by the various special-agenda sub-groups within it.
If “save our benefits” is the only thing that a Federation for Democratic Reform can all agree on, then I would be satisfied with just that and would lend greater or lesser support to such a Federation for Democratic Reform to save my benefits.
I PAID for this entitlement!