A thought just occurred to me...

During the Anthony Weiner scandal, many righties scoffed when I suggested that it would have been easy for hackers to discover the guy's password. The Petraeus scandal offers insight as to how that trick might have been accomplished.

We know that David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell communicated through a shared Gmail account. They both knew and used the password for that account; the messages were saved in the "Drafts" folder. Apparently, this is a fairly common practice among the hipster philanderer set.

We also know that at least one of the women with whom Weiner had a cyber relationship was an operative working for Breitbart. We know this because several stories appeared at the very end of the scandal indicating that the ruder photos -- including the Famous Crotch Shot and the raunchiest-of-all shot -- were in Breitbart's possession for some weeks before the FCS showed up in Weiner's Twitter stream.

(That fact is, to a large degree, the main reason why I still think that the whole thing was an operation and that Weiner's Twitter account really was hacked.)

You can probably guess where I'm headed with this. If Weiner and his online paramour (the one secretly working for Breitbart) shared an email account, then she would know his password. Too often, people use the same password (perhaps with subtle variations) across various services.

Hm. I wonder if the Breitbart brigade will notice this post? Back in the day, the outraged commentary they sent in to this humble blog amused me no end. It's always so cute to see a bunch of Republicans accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist. When was the last time Fox News broadcast 60 consecutive minutes without dishing out a conspiracy theory?

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Why they're after Rice

As I suspected. The Republicans have an ulterior motive for using nonsensical conspiracy theories about Benghazi to prevent Rice from becoming Secretary of State: They favor John Kerry for the job.

Gone are the criticisms of Mr. Kerry as a waffler who tried to have it both ways on the Iraq war and the caricature of him as a windsurfing symbol of privileged East Coast liberalism. Instead, Mr. Kerry, a Democrat, is depicted as a deeply knowledgeable statesman who would breeze through confirmation on his way to Foggy Bottom. 

I think the world of John Kerry; always have. (Yes, yes -- I already know that you disagree.) But the GOP favors him for reasons differing from mine. They like the idea of a Democratic senator resigning his seat. This is all about getting Scott Brown back in.

About Benghazi: Some Republicans really believe all of the paranoid horsecrap they've been saying, while others have used a ginned-up controversy in a sneaky, disingenuous fashion. From day one, the Obama administration has always made clear that the attack on the embassy was a pre-planned assault by a group armed with heavy weaponry. In previous posts, I've cited news stories proving that point. At the same time, it appears that there was also a spontaneous local demonstration against the Innocence of Muslims video, and that this demonstration provided the attackers with cover.

When the CIA gives conflicting information about an event, it's always fair to presume that they have received conflicting information from their sources. Such things happen. Nothing about this is very puzzling.

A moment's thought should tell you that Obama had no motive to hush up a terrorist attack, since rallying the country against terrorists is always good electoral politics. The people trying to cobble together a Benghazi conspiracy theory are loons who sincerely believe that Obama is a secret Al Qaeda sympathizer. Because, y'know, he's really a Moooze-lim.

Back to Rice: There is a legitimate argument against her, because her investments contain a potential conflict of interest.

Rice would bring to making decisions regarding the Keystone XL pipeline: Rice and her husband own “at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers,” including Enbridge, the “oil company extracting the highly toxic tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada’s boreal forest”; “major holdings” of between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada; “holdings between $5.0 to $11.25 million dollars in the Royal Bank of Canada” and other Canadian financial institutions funding the pipeline project.

One should point out that a lobbyist for TransCanada also had uncomfortably close ties to Hillary Clinton.

So the question before us comes to this: If not Rice, and if not Kerry -- then who should Obama pick? 

Tom Donlilon has been mentioned -- but his background as a former officer for Fannie Mae would open up still another can of worms. Colin Powell would be an interesting choice in many ways, but the WMD fiasco will always work against him.

Wesley Clark? Just sayin'....

The ideal choice would be Bill Clinton. But he'd never go for it.

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The country-we-dare-not-name is at it again

Israel tries to gin up a war by foisting another hoax on the world. Fails. Yet our media refuses to name the obvious name.

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Glenn Beck and The Truth about bad art

What makes bad art bad?

Conspiracy freak Glenn Beck thinks he knows. Utilizing his usual schoolboy tactics -- including an inappropriate mock French accent -- he pokes fun of a painting called "The Truth" by Michael D'Antuono. (The accent is inappropriate because Beck is trying to send up the New York art scene.) This work depicts Barack Obama in a Jesus-like pose, complete with crown of thorns.

I'm not sure what message D'Antuono hopes to convey with this image, nor do I much care. Perhaps he created this work to parody the worshipful attitude some liberals have directed toward Mr. O, especially during his first presidential campaign. Or maybe the artist really is loopy enough to see Obama as Jesus. Most likely, he hopes to have it both ways. What we have here is simultaneously an icon painting and an excuse for "postmodern" schoolboy smirking. 

I agree with Beck: The painting is terrible. But my reasons for coming to that conclusion differ from his.

I speak as someone who used to be a professional illustrator, and as someone who appreciates craftsmanship. Here's the work:

Click on the image to enlarge, or go here.

Judging from the artist's other work, his shtick seems to be creating paintings from photo reference. He grabs attention through thuddingly obvious message mongering, not by any display of technique. (However, I must admit that his other works do show a higher level of skill.)

In short and in sum, D'Antuono hopes to make a buck by providing a thuggishly liberal rejoinder to the thuggishly conservative Jon McNaughton. Although I'd probably prefer going to a dinner party where D'Antuono was the guest of honor, McNaughton is the better painter. He isn't great. But he's competent.

Let me repeat my own strong feelings. Time for boldface. Capital letters. I want to make sure we're very clear.

ART IS NOT ABOUT SUBJECT MATTER.

PAINTING IS NOT LITERATURE.

SUBJECT MATTER IS THE LEAST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF ANY PAINTING.

ART IS NOT WHAT BUT HOW.

IF YOU HAVE A MESSAGE, WRITE AN ESSAY.

Dimwits -- and the art racket is now run by dimwits -- insist on talking about the visual arts in literary terms. Why? Because they are ill-educated (despite their MAs and PhDs) and do not know what constitutes good painting.

(The only form of art that people don't like to discuss in literary terms is, of course, the novel. Modern book reviewers would rather talk about a book's cover, font choice, subject matter -- anything but the quality of the prose.)

Let's use terms that everyone can understand. Ever watch American Idol? Sure you have; we all have. Hell, even I have, and I don't care for pop music. (I don't know if the show is still on the air. That doesn't matter.)

The greatest gift that Simon Cowell gave the world was his insistence that we judge a singer by his or her ability to sing. In the pop music world, fans too often judge singers by extraneous factors, and thus fixate on fashion, sexuality, politics, drug usage or other irrelevant biographical details. People who pretend to care about the singer's art are usually pretty quick to focus on bullshit that has nothing to do with the craft.

Yet the craft is the only thing that matters.

Suppose someone were to judge an American Idol contestant by the political content of his or her song. Suppose Simon were to say: "I agree with the sentiments expressed by those lyrics you just sang. Therefore, you are a good singer."

That would be pretty absurd, wouldn't it?

ART IS NOT WHAT BUT HOW.

The same standards apply to painting. When you pick up a brush, I want to see some skills. It's showtime. You're on. Let's see what you can do.

And frankly, I don't give even a fraction of a fuck about your politics. Degas had appalling political beliefs: He was an anti-Dreyfusard and a regular reader of Libre Parole (the kind of rag which would have published Glenn Beck if Beck were French and if he had been alive back then). But let's face it -- as a painter, Degas was about a thousand parsecs ahead of both D'Antuono and McNaughton.

Here's what's wrong with The Truth:

1. The brushwork is both dull and sloppy. It's not free enough to have character; neither is it tight enough to be convincingly realistic. A "brushstroke-free" approach should convey interest through glazing, through the subtle layering of color, through the use of chiaroscuro. This artist applies paint to canvas the same way he might paint a chair. He just glops it on.

2. The lighting is all wrong. Look at the light on Obama's head. Doesn't match the rest of the picture, does it? The face obviously derives from a reference photo lit from the left, even though the rest of the picture is lit from above.

3. The rendering of the circle on the seal is wobbly. The style of the overall picture is sufficiently realistic to make amateurish patches stand out.

4. The President of the United States is wearing a bright blue jacket. Really? How often do presidents wear cerulean blue, as opposed to navy?

5. The red lining of the jacket is poorly handled. I would expect the jacket and the body to cast a shadow on the lining.

6. What's up with that gouge in Obama's face next to his mouth? I think that's supposed to be a jowl. Such things should be handled with subtlety; this painting makes Obama look like he survived a knife fight.

7. The warm yellow highlight on Obama's shirt isn't reflected on the rest of his figure. (Overall, I would say that the shirt is the best-handled aspect of this picture.)

8. Both lapels are badly painted. The left one almost disappears; the right one displays a very bizarre contour. I suspect that the artist worked from an insufficiently detailed reference photo. He should have used common sense to fill in the visual information that the ref didn't convey.

9. The curtains are unpersuasive. Look at the folds of the drapery where it is held by the hands.

10. When composing an image, a painter should avoid lines that direct the eye toward the corners.

11. Where's the mole?

On the plus side, the lettering and the stars are very well handled. 

And that, Mr. Beck, is the proper way to critique a painting. If you can't speak intelligently about technique, don't talk about art. Screw the politics of the thing.

Update: I wrote the above without familiarizing myself with D'Antuono's background. Turns out he's roughly my age -- and he, too, worked as an illustrator, making more money at the trade than I ever did. He even did a stint an AD for a big agency.

Wow. Based on "The Truth," I thought he was a kid.

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Polonium and the press

Polonium poisoning is very much in the news this week. First, investigators exhumed the body of Turkish President Turgut Ozal, who died in 1993, officially of heart failure. His body showed signs of several poisons, including radioactive polonium.

Now, forensic experts are checking the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. There have long been rumors that poison brought down Arafat in 2004, although the official cause of death is listed as a stroke. Not long ago, trace amounts of polonium showed up in clothing once worn by Arafat.

I may have much more to say about these mysteries anon. Right now, the factor that interests me is the remarkable ability of our media pundits to discuss the possibility of assassination without once touching upon the question of motive. Neither do our newsfolk feel comfortable with any attempt to focus on a potential perpetrator. In the world of American journalism, assassinations simply happen at random, like lightning strikes.

So far, I've encountered no American journalist -- not even on the left -- courageous enough to say that, if Arafat was assassinated, the obvious suspect is the Mossad. If Israel did kill the PLO leader (who was once thought to have more lives than a planeload of cats), the plan certainly backfired, since the current Palestinian leadership is more obdurate.

Our commentariat has always known how to hold their tongues. Whenever the conversation turns to Israel, they use velcro and Gorilla glue.

The case of Ozal -- who served as Prime Minister between 1983 and 1989, and President between 1989 and 1993 -- is also instructive.

Ozal had survived an assassination attempt in 1988, an incident ascribed to a lone gunman named Kartal ("Lee Harvey") Demirağ. Within Turkey, it is widely believed that Demirağ worked under the direction of General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, a far-right heavyweight and leader of Turkey's National Security Council. That's the conclusion Ozal himself eventually reached.

(Yirmibeşoğlu is an interesting fellow. He once admitted that his forces burned a mosque in Cyprus in order to blame the outrage on opposing forces.)

Now that we can be fairly certain that Ozal died by plutonium poisoning, the obvious suspects would be far rightists within Turkey's intelligence agencies. Our journalists will probably allow themselves to say as much -- but only that much. Do not expect your journalists to tell you that the American CIA has long had close links to both Turkey's intelligence community and to the Turkey extremist right. Some cynics have even suggested that our spooks control their spooks.

Via Wikipedia:

During the Cold War, an important asset was the Counter-Guerrilla, and the Grey Wolves; the paramilitary youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party.[5] Before the death of Counter-Guerrilla Alparslan Türkeş, the far-right paramilitary Grey Wolves were used to attack leftists.[4]

The CIA also maintains a cadre of moles inside the National Intelligence Organization, as acknowledged in 1977 by its former deputy director—and CIA recruit—Sabahattin Savasman.

Perhaps the name "Grey Wolves" seems vaguely familiar to you. If so, you may have seen it crop up in news coverage of the man who shot Pope John-Paul II in 1983, Mehmet Ali Agca. At the time, a cadre of spooked-up American journalists tried to convey the impression that Agca worked for Bulgarian communists. The truth of the matter was quite different: Agca was a creature of the Grey Wolves, and of the more-or-less fascist forces operating within Turkey on behalf of the CIA's "Gladio" scheme.

(Today, Agca remains convinced that he is Jesus Christ. David Shayler, the former British MI5 agent turned bean-spiller, has come to the same conclusion about himself, even though he previously sounded quite rational. I'm beginning to think that someone somewhere has concocted a "Jesus" drug. A few drops into the target's morning coffee -- and presto! Instant Messiah!)

Back to Ozal. Although this site seems, well, a little weird, it offers a post from 2010 which may give us a few leads:

For many years, the rumor has circulated that President Özal did not die of a heart attack on 17 April 1993, but was assassinated by Gladio; that is to say, Turkish agents operating under NATO's orders.

As to possible motive:

In 1993, the Kurdish minority within Turkey, under the banner of the PKK party, fought to establish a separate nation. The military formulated a tough, anything-goes battle plan against the Kurds, using special forces, assassins, Grey Wolves, local thugs and mafiosi. The counter-revolutionary plan also called for psy-war tricks of the sort we've already discussed in relation to General Yirmibeşoğlu. This whole grisly effort was under the control of Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar, who got a lot (and by "a lot," I mean a lot) of weapons from the Israelis.

Two people stood in his way: Turgut Özal and a general named Esref Bitlis. They both sought a peaceful way to deal with the Kurdish problem. And neither of them wanted to be controlled by the Americans.

Bitlis died in plane crash in early 1993 (a little more than a week after James Woolsey became DCI) -- and that crash is now known to have been the result of sabotage. The American CIA has long been the prime suspect in that event.

As for Özal -- well, we now have a better idea as to what happened to him.

Again: Don't expect our journalists (even the ones who work for MSNBC) to talk much about the CIA and Israeli links to the forces that killed Özal. Even after evidence of foul play comes to light, our media would prefer not look very deeply into such matters.

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Did Grover rewrite history?

You've probably been following the "Is Grover over?" controversy. Republicans have been backing away from Grover Norquist's "no taxes" pledge, signalling a new era in which Mr. N no longer controls the American agenda.

To counter this trend, Norquist got on teevee yesterday and reminded everyone that "Poppy" Bush lost the 1992 election because he broke his "Read my lips: No new taxes" pledge.

But is that the real reason why Bush lost? Or has Norquist simply repeated a beloved political fairy tale?

It behooves us all to recall that the man who won in 1992, Bill Clinton, made an explicit promise to raise taxes -- on the affluent. And he did just that. And the country got out of the red.

Interestingly, President George H.W. Bush was forced to break his word and raise taxes in 1990 because he faced a "fiscal cliff" of his own, in the form of a balanced budget co-sponsored by Phil Gramm. As you may recall, Gramm is the same fellow who deep-sixed Glass-Steagall, thereby unleashing the financial demons of 2008. Few politicians have done as much harm to the U.S. as ol' Phil did. 

It should be noted that the other fellow running in 1992, Ross Perot, made balancing the budget the centerpiece of his campaign. Thus, he too advocated raising taxes on the wealthy, and on gasoline.

Clearly, the low-tax candidate in that three-way race was George H.W. Bush. He apologized repeatedly for breaking his vow. He went around the country assuring audiences that he would never do so again.

Yet Clinton won. The public knowingly chose the guy who said "Read my lips: New taxes!" Then as now, the American public proved itself both elastic and educable. People understand that you can't fight a deficit without increasing revenues.

Taxes, in short, are not the reason why Bush lost. By 1994, however, the Republicans had rewritten the national memory of the contest that had taken place just two years earlier -- and in this revised standard version of recent events, raising taxes was the factor that cost Poppy the election.

Now Grover Norquist hopes that, once again, fairy tale history will triumph over actual history.

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Papa John's Pizza goes COMMIE!

A couple of weeks ago, Papa John's Pizza CEO John Schnatter made headlines when he said that he would have to cut back hours and/or raise prices on his products in order to pay for Obamacare. The price rise threat never made much sense: New health care regulations will cost the company (says Schnatter) between five and eight million bucks per year, which he can cover with a price rise of four cents per pie. Besides, I was always under the impression that, under capitalism, prices are determined by competition.

Well, I've been doing some research. Turns out that Papa Johns operates in a place called Canada, where Big Obtrusive Nanny State Gummint offers -- get this -- full, socialized health coverage. And yet the restaurants seem to be doing well!

So why did Schnatter bewail Obamacare so vociferously while marching in step along with those filthy northern Reds? Doesn't make sense. Unless...

Of course! This is all a scheme to lull us into complacency. Comrade Schnatter must be a "deep cover" Red agent directed to create a false opposition to Obama's Marxism. It's a classic pattern -- the kind of propaganda conspiracy that the John Birch Society frequently warned us about. Something something Hegelian dialectics something something.

Now that we've exposed Schnatter, I think we can point to another deep cover Marxist agent: John Metz, who operates 40 Denny's restaurants in Florida. He told the media that he was going to add a five percent "Obamacare" surcharge to the bill. Are you wondering how a price rise of a few cents could turn into a five percent surcharge? Well, y'see, that was all part of Comrade Metz' scheme to fool the public into believing that Denny's favors capitalism.

Turns out that Dennys is also open for business in Red Canada, the hellish wasteland where the Bolshevik hordes crucified John Galt. The company seems able to run restaurants (now serving "Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet") despite the menace of socialized medicine. 

Last year, we took a look at certain comments made by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who intimated that Obamacare would make his business impossible to continue. He also said that Obama had increased onerous rules and regulations on business. (Not true; regulatory increase was a Bush phenomena.) At the time, I wrote...

By the way: There are Home Depots in Canada! Plenty of 'em!

Those stores remain open for business even though those despicable job-killing gummint regulations are even more severe north of the border. (And yes, employers there do like to bitch about that situation.) Those unlucky Canucks agonize under the burdens of a socialized health care regime, which businesses large and small must help to fund.

And yet -- how can this be? -- Home Depot Canada is doing fine!

In Canada, the minimum wage is higher -- between $8.75 and $11.00 an hour (figured in "international dollars"). The government also imposes stricter environmental standards.

So, Bernie Marcus -- may I call you Mr. Brain-Dead? -- I have some further questions.

If you hate government regulations, I'd like to know just when you plan to close down all Home Depots in Canada. Also, can you explain why Canada, with its larger number of regulations, is much closer to full employment than we are right now?

I was confused by such things then. Now, at least part of the answer has made itself manifest. Bernie Marcus, John Metz and John Schnatter must be secret commie agents. Their job: Make capitalism look bad by saying incredibly stupid things and issuing lots of empty threats.

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Sartorial notes

This blog occasionally runs non-political posts on the weekends.

Once upon a time, when I had money, I bought clothes at nice stores and was considered something of a dandy. Alas, the money dwindled, and the past couple of decades have left me unburdened by ties or dress shoes or those tweed jackets with shoulder patches that I used to favor. Having spent so much time wrapped in ancient, fraying shirts that would have allowed Sherlock Holmes to deduce my lunchtime menu throughout the preceding week, I'm hardly in a position to lecture anyone on fine clothing.

On the other hand, no other male in my Baltimore suburb wears shirts with buttons. That fact makes me the local style expert. (In my 'hood, the classier gents reserve their good wifebeaters for church on Sundays.)

With hesitation bordering on outright fear, I'd like to question the judgment of one Timothy Gunn, who seems to have become well-known via his appearances on some television show that my ladyfriend favors. Not long ago, she met Mr. Gunn at a book signing. In her words, the mere sight of him made her "squee" all over the place. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. At any rate, she bought his book, Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible, just to have him sign it.

Being poor, we don't buy very many new hardbound books, so I was quite leery of this investment -- even though the sight of Mr. Gunn's signature gave her one of the biggest, most satisfying squees of her life. I was even more leery of the photo on the cover:

Now, I don't know much about this guy. He's supposed to be some sort of expert on clothing, and this is the image he chose to represent himself. Ignorant buffoon I may be, but I gotta ask...

Is this legal nowadays? 

What we have here is a dark suit with broadly-spaced stripes matched up with a very questionable purple/brown checked shirt (which you couldn't get me to wear at gunpoint) and a purple and blue paisley tie which is, well, not quite as loud as those sirens they used to blare at the end of the month during the cold war.

Have things really changed so much since the time when I last paid attention to this stuff? Back in my day, by cracky, we young fellers were told that if we wore a striped coat, we had better not wear anything but a solid-color shirt.

Being in possession of a George Lucas-y neck somewhat thicker the average Saturn V rocket, I despise the feel of a tie closing in around my throat. In olden times, I'd sport neckwear only on those days when I didn't feel like breathing. Just two ties lurked in my closet: One was solid burgundy and the other wasn't, and only the burgundy saw action. You don't really need anything else. (The other one was a present from a former ladyfriend who happened to be deaf. When people saw this item, they said: "Poor girl. She's also blind?")

Nowadays, I see political pundits on TV wearing ultra-bright ties with pink-on-pink stripes. We're talking blinding pink, the kind of pink that made Larry Flynt a rich man. I wouldn't even hang myself with a tie like that, or with most of these other eye-gouging strangulation devices that have become so common.

I sure as hell wouldn't wear purple-and-blue paisley. With anything.

My current ladyfriend became incensed when I questioned the judgment of the Great Infallible Squee-Inducer. "He's gay!" she explained. Apparently, that means Gunn is right and I am wrong.

But am I? I still say his outfit is kind of ridiculous. Then again, I'm old school, having formulated my notions about sartorial matters during Reagan's first term.

(Come to think of it, Reagan's outfits were kind of ridiculous too. Remember his brown plaid-pattern suits? And that stupid carefully-folded white pocket square? He dressed the way a prole thinks a rich man dresses.) 

Question 2: During a recent visit to a Balmer thrift store, I snapped up a beige cashmere sweater for three bucks. My ladyfriend did not approve of this choice, since she's a goth girl at heart and favors saturnine colors. But the thing is warm and cheap and it doesn't itch. Those are the only qualities most men ask of their sweaters. And, to be frank, of their dates.

What struck me as odd was the label. "Embassy Row Menswear." Sounds rather hoity toity. I seem to recall seeing clothing bearing this label long, long ago, back when my wallet held actual credit cards. Was "Embassy Row" the house brand for a department store? Who made this stuff?

Intrigued, I did some checking. The only clothing called "Embassy Row" available online can be found on Ebay. Since those items are all used (or "vintage"), I must presume that the company is no longer in business.

Does anyone out there know who they were? Were they, like, considered good?

Well, it doesn't matter if the brand was upscale or downscale. As part of a cold-weather defense system, a three-buck cashmere sweater works fine. It's warm and cheap and it doesn't itch.

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Walmart or Wal-Mart? A correction

Not long ago, I corrected a writer who referred to the world's largest retailer as "Walmart." The correct spelling, I said, was "Wal-Mart."

Turns out I was wrong -- but only in part. For many years, the stores used the "Wal-Mart" spelling, which you can still see in large signs above the entrances to the older stores. (A star replaces the hyphen.) But a few years ago, the company officially changed the name to "Walmart," no hyphen. Newer stores use signs with a star-free, hyphen-free, small-M logo.

Just to complicate matters, the corporate name remains Wal-Mart. And since the "No Black Thursday!" campaign is directed at headquarters, I -- arguably -- had it right all along.

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In observance of the Conspiracy Theorist Full Employment Act...

...Slate has published this article on the witness-free, photograph-free, evidence-free burial-at-sea of Osama Bin Laden.

So where do you think he really is? Does the body rest in Davy Jones' Locker -- or is the arch-terrorist hanging out under an assumed name in Buenos Aires?

What really bugs me is the lack of Bin Laden sightings. People have had post-mortem encounters with Jesus, Elvis, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Nicholas Flamel, Czar Alexander I, Hitler and many others. Why not Osama?

One of my favorite "survival" stories involves General Michel Ney, usually called Marshall Ney, who was Robin to Napoleon's Batman. (Well, sort of.) Historians tell us that Ney was shot by a firing squad in France; the year was 1815 and the General was just 46. However, soon afterward, a French-speaking fellow named Peter S. Ney showed up in South Carolina and took a gig as a schoolteacher, a profession he carried out until his death in 1846. Petey never came right out and said that he was the Marhsall -- except, reportedly, on his deathbed -- but he dropped lots of hints to that effect. Many of the people who knew him became convinced that he was indeed the famed aide to Bonaparte. For more, see here and here.

One survival story I find almost persuasive involves Hitler's favorite commando, Otto Skorzeny, who officially died in 1975. If you scour the net, you can find a few photos of an elderly "post-mortem" Skorzeny. I must admit that the images are pretty damned unnerving. Still, I hesitate to embrace this theory, if only because there are people out there who just love to play games with Nazi history. (See, for example, my earlier post on those lovable funsters Henry Makow and Gregory Douglas.)

A peculiarly persistent legend involves Joan of Arc. Throughout the 20th century, the "Joan survived the stake" theory gave rise to a number of books which quickly fell into obscurity. I'm both grateful and sorry that the famed Johannic scholar Régine Pernoud spent so much time rebutting this nonsense. In 2007, an author named Marcel Gay revived the idea. Although I've not read Gay's book, I have gone through the older ones; they're crap. Naturally, the media has treated Marcel Gay's thesis as something sensational and new, even though I'm pretty sure that he has done nothing more than rehash a lot of old dreck.

The survival theory has an origin in uncontested fact: Some five years after the Maid's death, an adventuress named Claude des Armoises impersonated Jeanne d'Arc. Astoundingly, she talked one of Joan's brothers -- Pierre, if I recall correctly -- into going along with the ruse. Claude's motive was financial. Most moderns are shocked to learn that Joan was wealthy, and that she used her money to buy property in Orleans. (Not to mention horses. And lots of expensive male clothing.) After Joan was burned in 1431, her estate became tied up in the Medieval equivalent of probate, and Claude thought that she could make a play for it. Of course, she made a point of avoiding King Charles VII or Gilles de Rais or anyone else who might have identified her.

(Brother Pierre's motives are a bit mysterious, although he always was a social climber eager to capitalize on the fame of his big sister.)

The revisionist historians take Claude's gambit at face value. As evidence, they point to records that the city of Orleans held a feast in the honor of The Maid, alive and well, when Claude-as-Joan came parading into town in 1436. What the conspiracists don't tell you is that, not many months later, the city paid for a memorial service for La Pucelle (Joan's nomme-de-guerre). Obviously, the town fathers saw through Claude's little charade. Although she didn't get hold of the property, she did go on to marry a knight and thus did fairly well for herself.

Adherents of the survival theory usually stitch it to the even nuttier notion that Joan of Arc was of royal birth. This idea is pure nonsense. Joan's father was a farmer in the town of Domremy who did a stint as mayor. She had an army of godparents who could, and did, testify to her origins.

The "royal birth" theory traces back to an early 19th century conspiracy theorist named Pierre Caze, the mayor of Bergerac, who was sort of the Alex Jones of his day. Caze also resurrected interest in Nostradamus after nearly everyone had forgotten all about the once-famed seer.

Aren't you impressed that I could rattle off all of that stuff from memory?

Back to Bin Laden: There were all sorts of rumors that he died long before he died. For years, whenever a Cannonfire article mentioned Bin Laden in any context, I would receive messages from cranks who seemed quite enraged by any suggestion that the guy might still be alive. "Cannon, you fool! Don't you know that Osama Bin Laden died in 2004?"

(Or 2001. Or 1999. Accounts vary.)

I have always told these correspondents that I did not know any such thing, and neither did they.

So what, now, should we make of the official story about Bin Laden's 2011 death in Abbottabad? Frankly, I do allow myself a certain skepticism, if only because the details are so infuriating and imprecise. If you want to see what I mean, just follow the very first link in this post. There really was no pressing need to toss the body into the ocean quite so rapidly, without an autopsy, without witnesses, without photos, in a ceremony unobserved even by the sailors on that vessel.

Yes, I would like better evidence. No, I don't think that's an outlandish request.

That said, let me make one point very clear to Mr. Crank-Who-Is-Dying-to-Write-an-Infuriated-Response-to-Cannonfire-Right-Now: No, I do not know that the raid was staged and that Bin Laden's death was faked. And if you are honest, Mr. Crank-Who-Is-Dying-to-Write-an-Infuriated-Response-to-Cannonfire-Right-Now, you will admit that you do not know either. If you had evidence, you would publish it in book form and make a lot of money.

Speculation is not evil. It can, in fact, be of great service. But speculation is not evidence.

My point in writing this rambling essay comes down to this. If we heard so much about Osama's death before he died, why have there been no reports of his life after his life? Where are the Bin Laden sightings? Whenever there's a questioned death, I expect sightings.

"Osama? Yeah, sure, I met him last week. Here's a shot of us together at Disney World."

You know. That sort of thing. Where are the photos of Bin Laden in line for The Avengers? Our popular mythologists have shirked their duties.

Added note: I forgot all about Jim Morrison, didn't I? Actually, one could write a whole book about rock stars who allegedly faked their deaths, and such a book would probably sell pretty well. Too bad I'm not of that musical persuasion...

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Happy Thanksgiving

I may have more to say about the holiday, and about holidays in general, later today. For now, you should know this: If you shop at a "big box" retailer on Thanksgiving, my dog Bella will hate you.

Robert Reich says you shouldn't shop on Friday either -- not at Wal-Mart, not this year.

A half century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.

Today, America’s largest employer is Walmart, whose average employee earns $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits.

There are many reasons for the difference – including globalization and technological changes that have shrunk employment in American manufacturing while enlarging it in sectors involving personal services, such as retail.

But one reason, closely related to this seismic shift, is the decline of labor unions in the United States. In the 1950s, over a third of private-sector workers belonged to a union. Today fewer than 7 percent do. As a result, the typical American worker no longer has the bargaining clout to get a sizeable share of corporate profits.

Despite decades of failed unionization attempts, Walmart workers are planning to strike or conduct some other form of protest outside at least 1,000 locations across the United States this Friday – so-called “Black Friday,” the biggest shopping day in America when the Christmas holiday buying season begins.

At the very least, the action gives Walmart employees a chance to air their grievances in public – not only lousy wages (as low at $8 an hour) but also unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, excessive hours, and sexual harassment. The result is bad publicity for the company exactly when it wants the public to think of it as Santa Claus.

Consumer spending is 70 percent of economic activity, but consumers are also workers. And as income and wealth continue to concentrate at the top, and the median wage continues to drop – it’s now 8 percent lower than it was in 2000 – a growing portion of the American workforce lacks the purchasing power to get the economy back to speed. Without a vibrant and growing middle class, Walmart itself won’t have the customers it needs.

Most new jobs in America are in personal services like retail, with low pay and bad hours. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average full-time retail worker earns between $18,000 and $21,000 per year.

But if retail workers got a raise, would consumers have to pay higher prices to make up for it? A new study by the think tank Demos reports that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers.

And, in the end, retailers would benefit. According to the study, the cost of the wage increases to major retailers would be $20.8 billion — about one percent of the sector’s $2.17 trillion in total annual sales. But the study also estimates the increased purchasing power of lower-wage workers as a result of the pay raises would generate $4 billion to $5 billion in additional retail sales.

This is a point I've been making all along. Every capitalist wants his employees to be paid little while other employees earn high wages, because well-paid employees have more to spend. But economies don't work that way. If a company like Wal-Mart (the correct spelling) demands low-priced labor, wages go down all across the country -- all across the world. Pressure grows to create ever-cheaper merchandise using slave or near-slave labor.

The entire economy enters a downward spiral.

Libertarian economists believe that tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves, due to increased economic activity. That's a myth. But it is a truism that increased wages pay for themselves by making the entire economy more robust. Any honest look at the years 1940-1980 will prove that point.

If a Wal-Mart employee earns a living wage, he'll spend ever dime of it. Even if he chooses to spend it on booze and cigarettes, that's great news for the people who make booze and cigarettes. More money circulates. Everyone gets richer.

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How you can fix the system (without spending a dime)

The following showed up in my email today. Although I know who the author is, I won't offer any identification, for obvious reasons. The point of this message is that you have the ability to affect the outcome of the great Wal-Mart strike. With one simple (and cost-free) gesture, you can help these oppressed workers.

As you know, I support the notion of a one-day boycott. Thanksgiving should be about family, not about commercialism. But if you really want to be effective, the form of protest recommended here will do the job.

SPREAD THE WORD!

*  *  *

I am a 12-year employee at one of those "big box" stores. Working "Black Friday" has not been a problem - until now.

This year, Black Friday has become BLACK THURSDAY. We are required (not asked) to work 12-14 hour shifts, beginning at 4 or 6 pm on THANKSGIVING DAY. 

Management tells us that this is what the customer wants. BULL!

I'm here to tell you that an employee walk-out, by itself, will not send the most effective message. The company executives may consider striking employees to be spoiled children holding their breath to get their way. 

We have already been told that "there will be consequences" for a strike or for calling out. That probably means getting fired. Sorry, but I need my job.

The message needs to come FROM THE PUBLIC that the big box retailers have chosen an irrational and offensive way to do business.

Tell the people who run those stores that you will not shop on Thursday. Tell them that disrespecting a sacred national holiday bothers you.

I'm asking that everyone reading this message to call the home offices of these big box stores. 1-800-WALMART is the number for Wal-Mart; 800-440-0680 is the number for Target. 

Tell them that, out of respect for both the employees and our national traditions, you will not shop on Thanksgiving. Tell them that you have been a loyal customer previously, but now you are considering taking your business elsewhere -- permanently.

Flood the phone lines!  Call!  

With enough calls, hopefully the higher-ups will see that commercializing Thanksgiving will not generate the sales they are looking for.

I just want to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my family. I shouldn't have to work a 14 hour shift.

PLEASE. CALL!

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Black Thursday

"Black Thursday." That's the name we should use. The employees of the "big box" stores understand why Black Friday is a huge deal for the large retailers. What they're fighting is Black Friday's slide into Thursday -- into Thanksgiving.

When you think about it, Thanksgiving was, until recently, our only non-commercialized holiday. People have complained about the monetization of Christmas all my life. Halloween? Well, that was always the Devil's day. But Thanksgiving somehow remained semi-sacred -- a time for patriotism, family and calm reflection. Now we (and note that I say "we," not "they") are transforming Thanksgiving into the crassest day of the year.

I've heard from one Wal-Mart employee who tells me that she normally works a standard daytime shift beginning at 7 a.m.  Her body clock is set for sleeping at night. Nevertheless, she will be forced to work "crowd control" beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday (the first day of "The Event") -- and the shift will last at least 13 hours.

That's simply unfair. And not a little dangerous, given some of the violent incidents that marked previous "Events."

This woman -- an eleven-year veteran of the company -- is now thinking of quitting. In fact, she has sent out resumes. So have a lot of the other Wal-Mart employees who have contacted me. Unfortunately, our economy has seen better days; even people with college degrees from good schools continue to send applications into Wal-Mart. Still, if all of the more intelligent and skilled workers transfer to other companies at the first opportunity, Wally World will increasingly be known as the place that hires only inarticulate dimwits who can't provide decent customer service.

The National Labor Relations Board will rule today on whether workers have the right to picket Wal-Mart stores on Thursday and Friday, after Wal-Mart filed an unfair labor practices suit. From the Christian Science Monitor:

For instance, Daniel Hindman, who has worked at the Paramount, Calif., Wal-Mart since 2008, says he will walk out Friday with 100 of the store’s roughly 130 associates, accompanied by at least five of the store’s 20 or so managers.

“Wal-Mart may try to bring in other workers at the last minute,” says Mr. Hindman. But those people will not know the stock “or even how to ring up items at a cash register,” he says.
Janna Pea, a spokeswoman for one of the workers' groups, adds that she expects some 1,000 of the roughly 4,000 chain stores to be hit with walkouts Friday.

Wal-Mart dismisses such claims. There are only a “handful of associates, at a handful of stores scattered across the country that are participating in these ... made-for-TV events,” says spokesman Kory Lundberg in an e-mail.

"Made-for-TV events"...? How condescending. Every time Wal-Mart spokespeople address employee grievances, they always sound like some southern sheriff in 1961 bewailing the "outside agitators" who came to rile up black people.

A final note: A lot of people consider Target (based out of Minnesota) more "liberal-friendly" than Wal-mart (based in Arkansas). But Target's company color is red, while Wal-Mart's is blue. Is there any way we can get them to switch...?

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Gaza

I have much to say, but perhaps these cartoons say it better. A couple of them were recommended by Glenne Greenwald in his excellent piece. Others were published some time ago, but remain relevant.

Greenwald:

But pretending that the US - and the Obama administration - bear no responsibility for what is taking place is sheer self-delusion, total fiction. It has long been the case that the central enabling fact in Israeli lawlessness and aggression is blind US support, and that continues, more than ever, to be the case under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The US is not some neutral, uninvolved party. Whatever side of this conflict you want to defend - or if you're one of those people who love to announce that you just wish the whole thing would go away - it's still necessary to take responsibility for the key role played by the American government and this administration in enabling everything that is taking place.

According to Haaretz, Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel's attacks on Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this "operation".

Gilad Sharon, the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has an Op-Ed in today's Jerusalem Post in which, among other things, he writes [emphasis added]:

"We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn't stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren't surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

"There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing."

Obama has said that "Israel has a right to defend itself." So Yishai and Sharon speak of a defense?

Who has the greater right to mount a defense: The occupied or the occupier? I would argue that an occupying power -- and I'm not just speaking of Israel here; I speak generally -- has no rights whatsoever. What "rights" did Napoleon possess in Russia, beyond the right to walk home in the snow? What right did America have to invade Iraq? By what right did the Germans conquer Poland?

By what right has Israel turned Gaza into the world's largest open-air prison?

The oppressed always have a right to fight back. The oppressors may commit acts of violence, but I will never concede their right to violence.

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Keep Black Friday on FRIDAY

Some of my well-meaning readers slightly misunderstood the course of action discussed in the preceding post.

That piece argues in favor of a boycott of Wal-Mart, Target and other "big box" stores on Thanksgiving. Keeping the stores open on Thursday -- allowing the traditional Black Friday stampede to segue into the preceding day -- means that employees must do without the traditional holiday meal in order to work long, long shifts of ten-to-twelve hours.

If customers abstained from shopping mania on what is supposed to be a patriotic and quasi-religious holiday, those employees could live better lives.

A ONE DAY boycott is all we need.

Alas, too many liberals have seen this situation as an opportunity to proclaim how virtuous they are. Sorry, but this is not a time for you to announce your superiority to the hoi polloi by affirming that you would never shop at the "big box" retail chains. Neither am I talking about such nonsensical prog memes as "Don't Buy Anything Day."

The people who express those sentiments mean well. But that kind of talk alienates the working class. Snooty, condescending and unrealistic prog memes breed the resentment that gave rise to the Fox News empire.

No, all I'm talking about is a simple idea that any All-American prole (like yours truly) can easily understand: Keep Black Friday on Friday.

Thanksgiving is for family and turkey and TV and football and arguments with your cranky Uncle Ed about some unimportant crap that happened twenty years ago. After you gorge, your body will want to doze-n-digest. (The over-indulgence, not the tryptophan, is what makes you sleepy.) Listen to the dictates of your body and keep your growing rump sofa-fied. Don't go out.

Tell your friends, tell your neighbors: Don't go shopping on Thanksgiving. No matter what kind of bargains are on offer, don't go to Wal-Mart. Don't go to Target. Don't go to K-Mart. Stay home.

Anyone who doesn't understand the reasoning behind this one-day boycott should read this supremely insulting comment from Wal-Mart management regarding the strike planned for Black Friday. (Also see here.) Unsurprisingly, Wal-Mart delivered its statement unto the world by way of Fox News:

In a statement to FoxNews.com, Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman characterized the movement as "another exaggerated publicity campaign aimed at generating headlines to mislead" customers and employees.

Wal-Mart proves, once again, that conspiracy theory is the first refuge of the right-wing scoundrel. The stressed-out employees aren't looking for headlines. They simply want to stay home with their families on Thanksgiving. They don't want to be forced to work all through the night on top of their standard 40-hour daytime shifts.

"We have a great group of associates at Walmart," the statement read. "We’ll have more than one million associates working throughout the holiday weekend and they’re excited about our Black Friday plans this year. This is the Super Bowl for retailers and we’re ready.

"We’ve been working on our Black Friday plans for almost a year now and we’re prepared to have a great event. Our associates care about providing a great customer experience on Black Friday and we’re confident that’s what customers will have at Walmart this year."

Excited? Excited? Freakin' excited?

How dare they! Wal-Mart management actually has the gall to say that their employees are excited?

I've heard from quite a few people who work for that company, and I can assure you -- every single one of them looks forward to The Event (as management calls it) with dread. Some employees are having a hard time sleeping, because they know that The Event will hit later this week.

These people are not "excited." They're pissed off.

We are talking about ill-paid workers employed by the richest retail company on earth. They're so badly paid that they qualify for food stamps even when they work full time.

All they want is one day off. The same national holiday that their parents and grandparents had off. Many of them don't care about the higher hourly pay. They just want to be with their families.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day of remembrance and prayer and patriotism and family togetherness. It is not a day for manic shopping.

If you shop for unnecessary crap on Thanksgiving -- you suck. Plain and simple.

(Now that's the kind of prole-talk the folks in my neighborhood can understand!)

If you get caught up in consumer frenzy on a should-be-sacred holiday, you have no right to criticize the greed of others.

Stop making life hellish for Wal-Mart and Target employees! For JUST ONE DAY -- Thanksgiving -- stay home and eat your goddamn turkey!

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What to do about Wal-Mart

As you probably know, the major chains have put increasing pressure on their employees to put in extra hours on Thanksgiving. For example, one department manager who normally works a day shift (beginning at 7 A.M.) tells me that he is being forced to work additional hours from 8 P.M. to 5 A.M. on Wednesday, followed by a 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. shift starting on Thursday.

No sleep. And very little time for family, on a family holiday.

The head honchos at the store refer to these grueling extra hours as "The Event." Lots of other stores are now having these Events.

Blame corporate greed, yes. But also blame yourselves. If consumers didn't scramble to show up at The Event, employees would not have to work these outrageous hours. Sure, they'll be paid extra, as per the dictates of federal law -- or, as Libertarians would call it, socialism. But most of those employees would rather spend the holiday with family.

There are two things you can do to combat this greed: Boycott Wal-Mart (if only for this one day) and support the Great Wal-Mart strike.

The boycott is a simple matter. Simply don't show up at the Wal-Mart and Target "events."

Attending Black Friday is a black mark on your conscience. Do not go. True, you could miss out on a few good deals -- but those deals come at great human cost. You have no right to critique corporate greed if you, too, play the role of the callous, inhumane money-grubber.

If you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that there's nothing within that store that you really, really need to buy on that day. Do not go. Boycott.

As for the strike -- well, perhaps it would be best if I let these folks do rest of the talking. Everything below the asterisks comes from a brave group called Sum of Us:

*  *  *

If there’s one corporation that exemplifies everything that’s wrong with the world economy -- the violation of human rights in the name of profit, the casual destruction of the environment, the enrichment of the 1 percent at the expense of everyone else -- that corporation is Walmart.

As Walmart expands, it kills small businesses and guts local economies, destroying more jobs than it creates. Walmart consumes more energy than the bottom 57 countries put together, and despite promises to embrace green energy, only 2 percent of its power comes from renewable sources. And Walmart is notorious for gender discrimination: women make up two-thirds of Walmart’s workforce, but less than a fifth of senior management, and the highest-earning women at Walmart make a third less than the highest-earning men.

And Walmart’s unethical behavior is working just great for the people at the top: the Walton heirs have greater net worth than the bottom 100 million Americans combined.

The SumOfUs.org community stands for putting people over profits, and Walmart stands for the precise opposite. And right now we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fight back against Walmart’s race-to-the-bottom economics. Walmart workers are getting ready to strike on the biggest shopping day of the year, “Black Friday,” and they asked the SumOfUs.org community to help make the strike as big as possible.

Can you help make the strike possible by donating to the Walmart workers’ strike fund?

For 50 years, Walmart has waged an all-out war on workers -- driving down wages, crushing attempts to organize, and sourcing from sweatshops all over the world. Today, Walmart is the world’s largest private sector employer (only the Chinese and American militaries employ more people), with over two million employees around the world. The average Walmart associate makes just $8.81 an hour, and hundreds of thousands of them live below the poverty line. Walmart costs American taxpayers $1.5 billion in food stamps, health care, housing vouchers and other programs every year because it doesn’t pay its workers enough to cover basic needs.

We can’t overstate how big of a deal this strike is. If this fledgling worker movement can continue to grow across the country, it could be our biggest chance to end Walmart’s abusive working conditions -- which would change the lives of millions of workers around the world.

The workers are taking an enormous risk by going on strike. They have no union, so they will have to go without pay. Some might be illegally fired. Workers who work Walmart’s definition of “full-time” often makes just $15,500 a year and can barely make ends meet as it is, so missing just a few days of work could mean their kids go hungry.

That’s why this strike fund is so important. The money will go to gift cards that will make up for lost pay -- which will help the families of these courageous workers make ends meet for the month. Our friends at OUR Walmart, the workers’ organization, say that this little bit of security could give more workers the confidence they need to walk out and make the strike even bigger. They’ve challenged us to raise $20,000 for the strike fund. Can we do it?

Walmart workers need our help to make this strike happen - will you have their back?

We know the workers already have Walmart scared -- store managers across the country have received emergency instructions about how to deal with the strikes. And if workers walk off the job on America’s biggest shopping “holiday,” they’ll seriously disrupt Walmart’s business and let the world’s largest retailer that it can’t ignore its workers anymore.

The strikes that have already occurred at Walmart have inspired the SumOfUs community. Over a hundred thousand of us have already taken action, by signing our petitions, sharing our solidarity statements, and more -- and almost 1000 have donated to buy ads about the strikes in Walmart executives’ hometown newspaper.

Now, are you ready to help deliver a knockout blow to Walmart?

Click here to support the workers by donating to the Walmart workers’ strike fund.

*********************************
Further Reading:
"Happy 50th Birthday, Walmart?" SumOfUs.org
The Walmart 1%
Making Change at Walmart factsheets
[1] Mother Jones: To Match Walton Heirs' Fortune, You'd Need to Work at Walmart for 7 Million Years September 20, 2012
[2] BBC: Which is the world's biggest employer? March 19, 2012
[3] Forbes: Six Waltons have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans December 14, 2011

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Of Beck and Bain

Is it too late for one more Bain story? This one gets odder the more I think about it.

Actually, it's a story about talk radio, a format I have ignored for the past few years. Brad Friedman has published an interesting story about the end of two progressive radio stations, Portland's KPOJ and Seattle's KPTK. The former, owned by Clear Channel, went to the Fox Sports format, "while leaving their two "competing" Clear Channel-owned Rightwing stations in the same market intact." KPTK, owned by CBS, is also expected to flip to a sports format -- even though the market already has more sports talk than listeners want.

Portland and Seattle are two of the most liberal cities in the nation. By what logic does Portland need two right-wing talk stations and no progressive outlets? From a pure business standpoint, that decision makes no sense.

As Daniel Hopsicker likes to say: "If it doesn't make business sense, it has to make some other kind of sense."

Here's the kicker: Clear Channel is owned by none other than Bain Capital. In a few previous posts, we've seen that there has always been something "spooky" about Bain.

Consider this: In San Francisco, Clear Channel owns a prog radio station called Green960, where the Stephanie Miller show -- very popular in that market -- was canned last year. The replacement: Glenn Beck. This move has not been popular, to say the least. According to Friedman, Beck has received far less impressive ratings, just as one might expect. Selling Glenn Beck to San Franciscans makes about as much sense as giving a cell phone to a mollusk.

Beck pretends to expose conspiracies of all sorts. Looks to me as though he's really the beneficiary of a conspiracy. As Friedman noted in an earlier story:

In many of those cities, the progressive station is usually carried on a weaker signal and broadcasters and their syndicators have pointed out that there is often little, if any, marketing done to promote the progressive stations. Such was the case on San Francisco's Green960 prior to last week's announcement, according to a number of insiders who spoke to The BRAD BLOG off record.

Of course replacing Miller with Beck in that market was done for reasons that have nothing to do with profit and everything to do with propaganda. Anyone who argues otherwise is trying to snooker you.

If it doesn't make business sense, it has to make some other kind of sense.

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Some women...!

Time for a brief update on the Petraeus thing.

First: What is it about certain women? For years, people have asked why Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian deserved so much rapt attention. Granted, Kardashian's fame is a bit more comprehensible to me: I'm human. And male and hetero and I like curves.

But these women...

Paula Broadwell has an obvious appeal: She's Wonder Woman. She can kick your ass while quoting Cicero in the original. Although this is not necessarily the kind of female who drives me insane, I can see why someone like General Petraeus might consider her a fellow superhuman and thus a worthy paramour.

But when it comes to twin sisters Jill Kelley and Natalie Khawam, my only reaction is: What the hell?

They aren't spectacularly prepossessing. A much more striking beauty stands behind the counter at the McDonald's where I'm sitting right now. (If you find any typos in this post, blame her.)

Kelley ran a fake cancer charity that did nothing with the money except blow it on parties. She has been sued a lot. At one time, she owed millions. 

Natalie lost custody of her kid because she testified falsely in court. By all accounts, she seems to be one of those "difficult" women for whom menopause starts at puberty and lasts until death. 

(On the other hand, one report holds that Natalie is a lawyer who represents "whistleblowers."  Intriguing...!)

We're talking about a couple of arrogant and wealthy sisters who, like all other arrogant and wealthy people, should be forced to learn humility by working as sales associates at Wal-Mart. 

Nevertheless, very important men keep treating these ladies as though they were very important. Shirtless FBI Guy launched an investigation into Paula's emails to Kelley, even though Paula had sent no messages justifying the effort. The fact that Kelley possesses both money and influential friends doesn't mean that she has a right to go through life without receiving annoying emails. Neither you nor I have that right; why should she?

So now we have a serving General who reportedly exchanged 20,000 (!!!) emails with Kelley, a CIA director who lost his gig because Kelley received a few irritating messages from a perceived romantic rival, and an FBI guy who went way beyond the boundaries of his job because jolie Jill made him feel all dazed and dizzy.

How can one socialite have that kind of allure?

Similar things could be said of her sister. Something like half of the males in the American power structure felt compelled to compose letters testifying to Natalie's good character in order to help her regain custody of her kid. Sorry to be blunt, but if she really did offer false testimony in court, she never deserved custody. I mean, she's a freakin' lawyer. She should have known better.

By the way: I think Glenn Greenwald has it right. When all is said and done, the real scandal here involves our right to privacy. 

Pundits have chided Petraeus and Broadwell for the insecurity of their communications system, because they would both log onto the same Gmail account and trade messages in "draft" mode. From a purely technical point of view, this is sloppy tradecraft. Yet Petraeus felt protected -- and what's more, he had a right to feel protected. He had a right to expect that the FBI would not snoop on his private fucking email. 

That's the part of this story that everyone is missing. By what legal justification did the Bureau gain access to that material?  

Yeah, he was the CIA Director. So what? 

The explanations I've heard amount to little more than pathetic attempts to excuse the inexcusable. The truth is simple: There are a lot of nosy people in this country, and many of those noses are blue. The Sex Police spent your tax dollars on yet another crusade to tell you things you have no business knowing.

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Is Boot why Petraeus got the boot?

Even in the post-election season, a blogger can't wander away from the internet for a couple of days, as I recently did. Time to catch up with the exploding tale of the David Petraeus resignation.

First and foremost: Of all the parapolitical interpretations I've seen, Robert Parry's still seems the most persuasive. Parry thinks that the Obama administration used this scandal -- which other presidents might have been swept under the proverbial rug -- as a means of ridding himself of a neo-con who worked in secret against Obama's interests.

We'll have more on that...

You probably know by now about the other other woman, Jill Kelly. The Paula-Jill catfight has the advantage of instantly deep-sixing all "honeytrap" speculation. Of course, even honeytrappers can fall in love. Besides, the "catfight" was rather civilized and may not have the significance most presume.

This bit is of interest:

A senior law enforcement official in Washington said on Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received examined all of her e-mails as a routine step.

“When you get involved in a cybercase like this, you have to look at everything,” the official said, suggesting that Ms. Kelley may not have considered that possibility when she filed the complaint. “The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.”

The official would not describe the content of the e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley or say specifically why F.B.I. officials decided to pass them on to the Defense Department. “Generally, the nature of the e-mails warranted providing them to D.O.D.,” he said.

Under military law, adultery can be a crime.

I presume that when Petraeus retired, military law stopped applying. And does the FBI often investigate adultery in the military? Isn't that an internal DOD matter?

I agree: The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.

Early on, we heard that the FBI was concerned about a possible leak of classified information. In that light, the following (from this CNN story) seems of interest...

Also, a video has surfaced of a speech by Broadwell in which she suggested the Libya attack on September 11 was targeting a secret prison at the Benghazi consulate annex, raising unverified concerns about possible security leaks.

"I don't know if a lot of you have heard this, but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to get these prisoners back," said Broadwell in a speech last month at the University of Denver.

A senior intelligence official told CNN on Monday, "These detention claims are categorically not true. Nobody was ever held at the annex before, during, or after the attacks."

Broadwell's source for that previously unpublished bit of information remains unclear, and there's no evidence so far that it came from Petraeus.

Obviously, someone told that woman something.

Let's take a few steps back. Why has the right remained so fixated on Benghazi, even though the average citizen wisely refused to go mad over the issue? I've long thought that a clue can be found in this Craig Unger piece. Unger intimates that leaders of the Republican party had received information from an intelligence source about Benghazi, and that this information was somewhat at odds with the story being told by the Obama administration. Unger does not divulge (and may not know) the name of this source, but it is fair to presume that he or she either serves in the spook community or has a relationship with someone who does.

Question 1: Did the same source speak to Broadwell?

Question 2: Was Petraeus the source? Was he chatting up not just Paula Broadwell, but also Karl Rove and crew?

Question 3: If Petraeus was not a direct source for the Republicans, could he have been an indirect source?

Odd thought: Perhaps Paula Broadwell was the one who went running to the GOP head honchos. That's quite possible. Right now, however, my main suspicion runs in another direction.

Petraeus is best buds with neocon writer Max Boot. During the campaign, Boot functioned as a Romney adviser. Remember all those stories about how Romney had surrounded himself with Dubya's merry band of war-lovers? Boot was a key part of that crew.

The Boot connection strengthens both Craig Unger's story and Bob Parry's. It seems quite possible that Boot was the source who told the Rove/Romney crew to keep pushing the betrayed-in-Benghazi meme. Moreover, it seems quite possible that Boot got his information from David Petraeus.

Put yourself in Obama's shoes. If your CIA Director is good friends with the key foreign policy adviser to the guy running against you -- well, yeah, that's something to worry about.

This segment from the Boot bio on Right Web is worth noting:

Boot has also criticized the Obama administration’s handling of foreign affairs, implying that it has not done enough to bolster “liberal” forces in regions impacted by the “Arab Spring.” After the September 2012 attacks on U.S. embassies spurred by the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims, Boot wrote that the “attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo … make clear that the provision of further IMF loans and loan forgiveness by the U.S. must be made conditional on Mohamed Morsi’s government doing more to control Islamist militants. In the longer term, such attacks show the need for the U.S. to do more to aid secular liberal groups in their struggle for power so that the Muslim Brotherhood does not develop a hammerhold on Egypt’s government, which it can then use to whip up hysteria over alleged wrongs done to Islam. Beyond that, the U.S. government must do everything possible–including the unleashing if necessary of Special Operations Forces and covert CIA operatives–to hunt down the perpetrators of the Libyan attack.”[3]

Along with like-minded writers like Charles Krauthammer, Boot holds privileged perches in the U.S. news media and foreign policy communities. He is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and his writings often appear in other major U.S. media outlets. Boot also writes frequently for William Kristol’s Weekly Standard and has participated in neoconservative advocacy initiatives like the Project for the New American Century.

Boot has been a leading agitator for a U.S. attack on Iran, writing op-eds and appearing in public forums to argue that “the only credible option for significantly delaying the Iranian nuclear program would be a bombing campaign,” as he put in a 2011 opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times.[4] In a January 2012 blog post for the neoconservative Commentary magazine, Boot cited a heavily criticized Foreign Affairs article by Matthew Kroenig championing a bombing campaign against Iran, to argue: “If the U.S. is truly determined to prevent [a nuclear Iran]—and if we’re not, we should be—the most effective option is to use force. Obviously, air strikes carry risks of their own, but those risks have to be measured against the risk of letting Iran go nuclear.”

Although my attitude toward Obama remains cynical, I don't think he wants war with Iran. The Democratic party won't tolerate an attack. Obama knows that military action will serve only to make him the most hated president in history.

Yet make no mistake about it: War with Iran is the ultimate goal of the neocons. Everything they do and say must be seen in that light. Moreover, they probably would prefer to push a Democrat into launching such a foolish and ruinous endeavor. Better to damage Team Blue than Team Red.

I doubt that the neocons really care about their ginned-up Benghazi charges. Libya is simply a cudgel for the right-wingers to use against the administration. That said, I would not be terribly surprised to learn there really is an as-yet-untold factor -- a secret something -- lurking behind the Benghazi story. Paula Broadwell may have offered a pointer in the right direction.

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Petraeus

A few people have asked for my take on the David Petraeus resignation, which he offered after the revelation of his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Although my ideas remain ill-formed, my first reaction was: "Infidelity? That's it? A CIA director is resigning over infidelity?"

Long ago, bed-hopping was almost a CIA trademark -- a signature sin, if you will. The company culture was set by legendary CIA head Allen Dulles, who remained married to his wife Clover despite a series of flagrant affairs. David Wise (who knew Dulles) offered these words in a review of a Dulles bio by author Peter Grose:

His marriage to Clover Todd was not a happy one, although they remained together, with affection, to the end of his life. He had a wandering eye, and there was an astonishing succession of Other Women. Once, Mr. Grose implies, Dulles enjoyed the charms of Queen Frederika of Greece in the dressing room next to his C.I.A. office. When the door accidentally locked behind them, the embarrassed spymaster and Her Royal Highness had to be let out by a C.I.A. aide. Besides the Queen, there was Mary Bancroft, one of his early agents in wartime Switzerland (Clover knew, but became her close friend anyhow); Toscanini's daughter, and even, apparently, Clare Boothe Luce. His covert operations were not confined to the C.I.A.

Allen Dulles' children knew all about their father's "girlfriends." Everyone seems to have accepted his philandering.

That was then; Petraeus is now. I'm astounded that the FBI found out about the affair by examining his emails. A CIA Director knows most or all of the nation's most important secrets, and one would hope that gaining access to such a person's email account is no easy thing.

Previously, I was under the impression that such an investigation would be under the aegis of the CIA Inspector General. On the Rachel Maddow show, Robert Engel -- who fidgeted like a man who knew more than he could say -- said that the CIA brought in the FBI. That's unusual.

Besides, since when does the FBI make infidelity public? Their business is to investigate breeches of the law, not offenses against morality.

The NYT writes:

Government officials said that the F.B.I. began an investigation into a “potential criminal matter” several months ago that was not focused on Mr. Petraeus. In the course of their inquiry into whether a computer used by Mr. Petraeus had been compromised, agents discovered evidence of the relationship as well as other security concerns.

The FBI made its inquiry around October 25 or 26, says Marcy Wheeler. That puts us right in the middle of the brouhaha over Benghazi. As you will recall, the CIA issued statements around that time which challenged the emerging right-wing narrative, which itself seems to have derived from sources within the intelligence community.

(Personally, I think that whole Libyan controversy had its origins in a classic dispute between analysts who offered competing interpretations of a complex event. Those disputes usually occur behind closed doors. But sometimes a row can spill out into public view -- especially when there's partisan advantage to be gained by exposure.)

It's tempting to come up with a scenario which links the Petraeus resignation to Benghazi, and I'm sure that right-wingers will compile a fetching little melodrama along those lines. (If you want to catch the overture, go here.) But Marcy says that reporters she trusts have assured her that this ain't about Benghazi. Instead...

The NYT says the investigation started only several months ago. While that suggests the investigation may have been a counter-cyber investigation rather than a counter-intelligence investigation–an investigation into whether the Chinese had hacked his computer rather than an investigation targeting Broadwell from the start–the timing would coincide with the leak witch hunts launched by Congress. I would laugh my ass off if the same members of Congress who are bemoaning the loss of Petraeus now somehow led to this investigation with their earlier demands for leak investigations targeted at top Administration officials.

Jesselyn Radack, who writes about the rights of whistleblowers, emphasizes that this controversy is not about an ill-considered love affair but, rather, the disclosure of classified information:

Paula Broadwell spent extended periods of time with Petraeus in Afghanistan, and she calls him her mentor. Putting aside the myriad ethics concerns with a top general sleeping with a grad student writing her dissertation about him, the legal issues are just as messy. There's the issue of a top intelligence offcial in the United States disclosing, in Espionage Act terms, "national defense information" and classified material. Moreover, it is being shared with someone who has no security clearance to receive such information. It adds insult to hypocrisy that Petraeus supplied this information for a fawning book about himself.

Right now, I just can't formulate a narrative that covers all of the facts. What prompted the FBI inquiry? Were the FBI investigators searching for evidence of Chinese hacking, or were they looking for evidence that Petraeus had leaked classified info to his girlfriend?

In the end, the FBI has said that they found no evidence of criminal activity. That's a broad statement -- and it covers both hacking and leaking. But if no crime was committed, why would we even know about the affair? Again: The FBI is not the Morality Police.

I simply can't think of a post-Hoover precedent in which the Bureau revealed a personal sin that had nothing to do with lawbreaking. Hell, even J. Edgar (who collected that kind of information zealously) tended to keep the dirty laundry out of the public eye, even when the laundry belonged to an enemy.

This CNN piece includes an important passage:

CNN Contributor and former CIA officer Robert Baer said the public announcement of the affair was uncharacteristic and implies more may have happened than has been revealed.

"Something like this doesn't come out and blow his career up unless something else is going on," Baer said. "Normally, when a CIA director resigns under this sort of pressure, he'd do it quietly. He'd say he was doing it for family reasons. He'd go off, we'd never hear any more about it. Somebody would write a book 10 years later, but to use it in his resignation letter is extraordinary."

Update: While researching the first version of this story, I somehow missed this key WP article...

The beginning of the end came for CIA Director David Petraeus when Paula Broadwell, a younger married woman with whom he was having an affair, “or someone close to her had sought access to his email,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s description of an FBI probe. Associates of Petraeus had received “anonymous harassing emails” that were then traced to Broadwell, ABC’s Martha Raddatz reported, suggesting she may have found their names or addresses in his e-mail.

The e-mail account was apparently Petraeus’s personal Gmail, not his official CIA e-mail, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s a big deal: Some of the most powerful foreign spy agencies in the world would love to have an opening, however small, into the personal e-mail account of the man who runs the United States’ spy service. The information could have proved of enormous value to foreign hackers, who already maintain a near-constant effort to access sensitive U.S. data.

This is odd. Other accounts have indicated that Petraeus had sent her many emails trying to re-ignite the affair. Why, then would she be trying to hack into his account? Isn't that the behavior of the spurn-ee, not the spurn-er? And even if emotions ran high, wouldn't she know better than to try to pry into a CIA Director's Gmail account?

"Associates of Petraeus had received “anonymous harassing emails” that were then traced to Broadwell..." Forgive a foray into conspiracism, but wouldn't it be possible for some James O'Keefe type within the intel community to stage a thing like that? Just sayin'....

At this very preliminary stage of the game, my instinct tells me that this controversy stinks of partisanship. According to a number of published reports (which may or may not be accurate), Obama liked and trusted David Petraeus, while a lot of people at CIA hated their boss. Some of that distaste has to do with what we might call cultural differences: Petraeus is a military guy who likes things done in a military way -- yes sir, no sir, if you say so sir -- while the CIA is a civilian institution which employs a number of prima donna types.

Of course, we may fairly presume that there are lots of Fox-addicted Obama-haters at both FBI and CIA. We may have just witnessed something akin to a mutiny.

Update 2: Or maybe not. Maybe Obama-loyal forces forced this resignation to get rid of someone who has displayed disturbing neo-con tendencies and a willingness to gin up a war with Iran. Robert Parry has an interesting theory, which may well be more than a theory.

If you accept Parry, you have to toss out any news stories you've read about Petraeus and Obama getting along famously. Hey, I can do that. No prob.

Petraeus is buds with Max Boot, a neo-con who stumped for the Iraq war back in the day. I never liked Boot.

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