In Other News

I have a damn headache because the weather cannot make up its damn mind. It is warm; it is cold; it is warm; it is cold. It is getting old, is what it is doing.

Please; ignorant people supporting politicians who block any legislation on global warming, would you just do something stupid that gets you killed so we can elect people into congress that will do something to combat global warming.

Wow, that was mean.

Well, that is what happens when I get a headache. I get grumpy.

Slow Night

I had hoped to see more developments in the whole CIA/FBI/Generals investigation. But it is getting boring already. Turns out most of the players are actually really lame.

Still, something is not right about this whole situation. The sex is getting in the way of seeing clearly.

My problem is still the fact that the FBI continued digging into the emails after determining that no law was broken or national security compromised. Their relational just does not sound plausible.

What The Hell Is Going On?

The shocking revelation threatens to fell another of the U.S. military’s biggest names and suggests that the scandal involving Petraeus – a retired four-star general who had Allen’s job in Afghanistan before moving to the CIA last year – could expand much further than previously imagined.

via Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan investigated, Petraeus scandal widens | Reuters.

Seriously. This investigation seems to have uncovered a hornets nest. And my thoughts on Kelley being an innocent bystander are drawn into question.

The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications – mostly emails and spanning from 2010 to 2012 – between Allen and Jill Kelley, who has been identified as a long-time friend of the Petraeus family and a Tampa, Florida, volunteer social liaison with military families at MacDill Air Force Base.

It was Kelley’s complaints about harassing emails from the woman with whom Petraeus had had an affair, Paula Broadwell, that prompted an FBI investigation, ultimately alerting authorities to Petraeus’ involvement with Broadwell. Petraeus resigned from his job on Friday.

And that is not the only thing that makes Kelley look less the innocent bystander.

U.S. officials had said in recent days that their investigation was largely complete and that prosecutors had determined it was unlikely they would bring charges in that case, which started when Kelley contacted an FBI agent in Tampa about harassing emails from an anonymous source.

That FBI agent, who has not been identified, has also come under scrutiny after it was discovered he had sent shirtless photographs of himself to Kelley, but “long before” this investigation, a law enforcement official told Reuters. The photographs were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The agent had never been on the Broadwell case, but had taken the information about the emails to the FBI cyber squad in Tampa, the law enforcement official said.

I do not know. This could all be way overblown. The raggedy edge of an old-fashioned culture exerting one last hurrah before finally being laid to rest like the rest of its old-fashioned values that never really existed.

More Detail On The Petraeus Emails

Okay, so this article explains more about the start of the investigation. I can understand the rigor to which the FBI pursued the emails.

(Open Source) 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.

Moreover, the sender of the emails had “covered her tracks pretty well,” the source said.

However, once it was determined that no laws were broken, why did the investigation then continue? Because to see if Petraeus was behind the emails is lame beyond all belief. And makes absolutely no sense.

Other post about this subject: In case anyone is wondering; Rove Once Again Leaking CIA Info? What Happened?

I Can Only Hope

Balloon Juice:

I expect the Republican Party and the Conservative movement to fracture. Like the malevolent evil that it is, I expect that neo-Confederate ideology will find a new home in some Conservative third party (perhaps ‘Libertarians’). Wherever it finds sanctuary, it is a force of racism and white supremacy that will plague America for a few more generations. And yet, as of last Tuesday, it will never again have the power it once had.

Oh, Okay

I did not clean house. What I did do was my laundry, play a lot of online chess at GameKnot, and work up a lot of energy over the possibility of a good conspiracy. Oh, come on, conspiracy theories are fun! Also, I just pulled 20 Pizza Rolls out of my toaster oven. The cooking instructions on the package said to only cook up to 15, but hey! I’m a rebel!

In Case Anyone Is Wondering

In considering this post, and this post, the point is not that Karl Rove was attempting to discredit Petraeus, it was that he had a funnel of information flowing from Petraeus through Broadwell that he used in an effort to discredit Obama’s foreign policy.

It is a simple concept people – work with me!

Some of the information hinted at by Broadwell might have been sensitive and not within her classification of security. That would go a long way towards explaining the FBI digging so deeply before discovering that Petraeus was involved.

And yes, I know, it is all conjecture. It is my day off, let me have my fun.

 

He Finds All The Best Stuff On The Internet

I do not know how George Takei does it, but he finds some of the funniest stuff on the internet. The following is one of the greatest:

People choose to be stupid on the internet