Please pardon the repairs, Dear Reader. We made a video of Larry King interviewing Petraeus in the gloam last nite and posted it. Some of you may have already seen it. Upon review this grey dawn, it wasn’t/isn’t up to your standards. Most damning, it just wasn’t funny enough to deserve your attention.
We will confer with our Muse and send the matter to arbitration.
The Arbitraitor’s ruling has come down. Both the Muse and the Stiftung (collectively “The Parties”) failed to comply with their contractual obligations. The Arbitraitor found the Muse in breach for Her lazy conceptual design. Moreover, the Arbitraitor ruled that the Stiftung also was in breach for louche, faxed-in tech support. Accordingly, the final and unappealable decision is that the Parties must offer a concise summary of the last 2 weeks in American domestic and foreign policy to this site’s readers.
The Parties offer it herewith:
Jenny says
wow what a nice post about Socks and retail information.
Its a very needed information because i need to buy variety of socks.
Dr Leo Strauss says
It’s a cruel universe. Tommy Hilfiger we just learned is the official logo designer of one of the Stiftung’s alma mater. Nothing is sacred.
Comment says
Just a side note on spin – surfing we just saw the headline “Bush Picks ex-Judge as AG.” Without reading the article , we just thought it was funny because it probably never occured to the headline writer to describe Gonzales as an ex-Judge – Ari Fleicher was the only one we recall being consistant and disciplined when refering to Gonz as “Judge Gonzales.” Still – it never took hold, unlike Judge Webster. We gather few knew Gonz was a Judge or an Air Force Academy grad.
Anon says
Meant to ask if you think it pointed to anything looming vis-a-vis Iran. The Guardian seemed to be trying to connect the dots to Dubya and his supposed plans. Maybe there is a fifty percent chance he’ll “do” Iran.
DrLeoStrauss says
Non-plussed.
Anon says
Hey Doc, any theories about this:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170188,00.html
Incidentally – Liberty College did change its name to University
Dr Leo Strauss says
Brookmont is now the ‘Waldorf School’ and evinces an oddly New Age vibe as we drive by (it is more or less adjacent to the old Defense Mapping Agency). Felix is suffering recent attacks on his claims that he is wearing the Rolex of Che as the Cubans are contesting the remains are actually Che’s according to dental records, etc. More discrepancies are being alleged.
It never ends. As one chain smoking man once remarked, the past always telescopes into the future.
Comment says
What ever happend to Felix Rodriguez? Meant to say EOVP above.
Comment says
So Tenet insisted in being called “Director.” Instead of stopping a war that was bad for America, he just settled for an old skool title. Very late Roman of him.
Comment says
Brookmont with have to change its name to Academcy or Institute, so as to keep up with the neighborhood name inflation. Next thing you know Falwell’s school will have to change to “University” from “college.”
Comment says
Midway or Coral Sea? Sometimes it seemed that Cheney crew was thinking more along Pearl Harbor lines – with EOPVP in the Japanese role (albeit without Yamamoto’s fated feeling tinged with strategic doubt)
The Agency should have tried to “Sink The Bismarck” and not left that up to Joe Wilson and Larry Johnson.
Comment says
We sent that comment above too soon – It’s unclear and we should have proofed – But just meant to say that unimportant sounding names (GAO) can sometimes sound more important – Especially with intel agencies = But shame on the Community for being so immature to begin with.
Comment says
Then it’s a double win for the Cheney crew – since “National Clandestine Service” sounds conspicuous and unimportant in that way that tries to show itself as important sounding. The paradox is at work here with intelligence agencies – in that the more plain and unimportant sounding names – then they sound more important because people just assume that an office that sounds so conspicuous like can be the real important one – We think its a bit different with mapping – because cartography has a different mystique. How does one say, ” I am a clandestine officer,” out loud without eliciting giggles.
Yes – Doc, we here at Comment know that what we are saying is naive in terms of beltway vernacular. But ….
Dr Leo Strauss says
UPDATED
The designation of “National Clandestine Service” was a bureaucratic sop to the ruins of the Agency during the Cheney War. Among this regime’s highest accolades was to designate some bureaucracy “National” — just as under Brezhnev wearing chest medals became the vogue. There’s probably a National Center for Creating National Centers somewhere, classified of course.
It got so bad Clapper wouldn’t take over the Defense Mapping Agency, which has been near the old Brookmont Elementary School off Sangamore Lane for decades just fine. He wanted it too to be a “national something” — to deal with the other “nationals” on equal status footing — and give him the same status as well. Hence, the new “National Geospatial Intelligence Agency” — same building, same location, same everthing, except changing the stationary and signage alone probably a fortune.
Technically, until Jose Rodriguez asked/was ordered to roll back his cover as NCS head to attend some Latino conference or something a month ago (we could not be bothered to keep up with all the brouhaha), the position at least nominally was kept from Tweety. Even Kappes’ role normally wasn’t public knowledge/held ante bellum, as was the case with Pavin, etc. But with the Neocons running around screaming Kappes was ignoring GPS coordinates in the Bekaa and then pumped it on the Corner, Stephen Hayes and via that megaphone shill Cliff May, Kappes found himself outted — and then literally out.
Here, I think by releasing Sulick’s re-hiring, Hayden, while an Air Force officer, is attempting to signal he is on the side of trying to salvage the Yorktown/Agency — pick your battle, Coral Sea or Midway (and his chances for ultimate success). YMMV.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Aldershot, the sock sends his appreciation — he has always been more of a theater sock puppet but did this gig to “pay the bills.”
Armchair says
Didn’t Bill O’Reilley do a special promo on Jill Magid’s “Kissmask” for his holdiday gift idea special?
Comment says
What would the sousveillance society think of the absurdity of having the word “clandestine” brightly inked ones business card and resume?
Dr Leo Strauss says
The Sousveillance Society:
Marisa Olson set up and moderated a fantastic panel yesterday afternoon at Conflux about Souveillance Culture. The panel was sponsored by Rhizome and gathered Amy Alexander, Jill Magid and Hasan Elahi, 3 artists whose work engages surveillance and explore the cultural and political implications of sousveillance. The panel assumed that we live in a surveilled society but also in a culture that likes to show and tell. Our society has shifted from one that cherished its right to privacy to a society that promotes the idea “if you see something, say something.”
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009733.php
Aldershot says
I don’t care what you say, that sock could act.
Comment says
Torture is for thugs, amateurs, war criminals and people who need to obtain bogus info for General Powell’s UN speeches – So isn’t that what the whole opposition to Rizzo is about? No one needs Powell to speak to the UN now.
Comment says
If they really want to be clandestine they should drop the word “clandestine” from the office title – Go minimalist with a name like Office of Plans or Office of Analysis etc – No need to worry about a banal sounding name crimping on ones social life – word will get around and the plan sounding name will soon acquire an in-the-know chic.
DrLeoStrauss says
Potentially good news — Hayden rehires Sulick as head of NCS (National Clandestine Service). The only lingering question in the back of the Stiftung’s mind is can the Past really be innovative in targeting the future. Kappes and Sulick, if any can from the Past, might be the ones to do it.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2aoo6s
The Clinton Administration itself was hopelessly analog when it came to office and ‘got’ digital and networking only later, but they at least began to. We are not wholly in the Amy Zegart camp when she notes the Community was too ossified and sclerotic to deal with Al-Qaeda and needed a 9/11 to change, but neither are we wholly outside her critique. That’s a long night of drinking to explain. But here’s Amy’s latest on this point.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2s273k
And Rizzo is blocked as Agency General Counsel. As the aliens said to Jody Foster in “Contact” playing the same role she more or less always plays, “Baby steps, baby steps.”
http://preview.tinyurl.com/37ahoy
anon says
The schadenfreude up in Canada is medicore:
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/255426
Armchair says
There is something very strange about The Mitt Romney.
Quoting At Random says
But down here, next to a display of Tommy Hilfiger, it’s all started to sideways on her, the trademark thing. Less warning aura than usual. Some people ingest a single peanut and their heads swell like a basket ball. When it happens to Cayce, it’s her psyche.
Tommy Hilfiger does it every time, though she’d thought she was safe now. They’d said he peaked, in New York. Like Benetton, the name would be around, but the poison, for her, would have been drawn. It’s something to do with context, here, with not expecting it in London. When it starts, it’s pure reaction, like biting down on a piece of foil.
A glance to the right and the avalanche lets go. A mountain side of Tommy coming down on her head.
My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Saville Row, flavoring their ready-to-wear with liberal lashings of polo kit and regimental stripes.
But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes, and doesn’t know, but suspects in her heart that this is what accounts for his long ubiquity.
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Dr Leo Strauss says
More reasons to laugh at/loathe Team Mitt:
Romney names terrorism policy advisers
By Amy D. Farnsworth, Globe correspondent
Mitt Romney today tapped a former CIA official, who is now a top officer in a private security firm with widespread operations in Iraq, to head his counterterrorism policy advisory group.
Cofer Black, who also served as a top State Department counter-terrorism official, is now chairman of Total Intelligence Solutions and vice-chairman of Blackwater USA. That firm came to public attention in 2004, when four employees were ambushed, killed, and mutilated in Fallujah.
“The United States faces a new generation of global threats and challenges,” Black said in a statement issued by the Romney campaign. “Governor Romney recognizes the threats before us and has already laid out the policies needed to give our men and women the tools they need to protect our country.”
Others who will advise Romney on counterterrorism include businesspeople, a former military officer, former FBI officials, and former Foreign Service officials.
Representative Pete Hoekstra of Michigan will lead Romney’s intelligence policy advisory group, the campaign said. Hoekstra is the senior Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Last year, Hoekstra criticized President Bush for not informing Congress about what he described as a major intelligence program, though he didn’t identify it because it was classified.
“Governor Romney understands that a President must focus on both current and emerging threats to our nation and that an agile and aggressive intelligence community provides America’s first line of defense against those threats,” he said in a statement.
“We have made progress in securing our homeland since 9/11, but we still have much work to do,” Romney said in a statement. “Critical to our security is effective intelligence-gathering and counter-terror efforts that can prevent further attacks. The individuals in these groups have had distinguished careers in our intelligence and counter-terror communities. I look forward to working with them to ensure that our government has the tools necessary to maintain America’s security.”