Petraeus's Private Part Proves Peter Principle

Former CIA director David Petraeus resigned a week ago because of an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.  Apparently Broadwell broke into Petraeus's Gmail account when she suspected Petraeus was having a second affair with a third woman, Jill Kelley. Then she sent Kelley e-mails telling Kelley to stay away from her man. Kelley reacted by contacting her friend in the FBI, triggering an investigation that forced Petraeus' hand.

Petraeus's inability to conceal his affair may be a blessing in disguise for America. He made three major mistakes that betray a lack of crucially important characteristics the head of the Central Intelligence Agency should have.

First, Petraeus could not resist a compromising affair despite all that was at stake: his career, his marriage, national security, his relationship with his two children, etc. In other words, he let his sex drive jeopardize everything that could possibly mean something to him. Any man with as much power as the head of the CIA should have mountains more self-control.

Second, Petraeus chose to associate with someone who demonstrated an abject failure to act discreetly. Apparently, Broadwell had started acting like "a shameless self-promoting prom queen," following Petraeus around and photo-bombing his pictures. She followed that up by sending those e-mails to Kelley which lead to them getting caught. The director of the CIA absolutely must be a better judge of character than that. He (or she!) must be able to tell who can keep a secret. If someone can't be discreet then you shouldn't be working with them, let alone having sex with them.

And third, Petraeus had little to no proficiency with computer-based espionage which is kind of a big deal now that ALL information is on computers. I mean, the man was the chief spook in America and he used a Gmail account to arrange his clandestine romance! That's not someone you want knowing state secrets.

Let's go over the losers and winners of this scandal:

Losers

• Foreign intelligence agencies: They missed an opportunity to blackmail an elite-level intelligence chief because they didn't clue in to Petraeus's affair first. Now some spy is back in Russia getting tortured by Putin for failing to exploit this American weakness.
• David Petraeus: Lost his job, wife, and high status. The best he can hope for now is a Cialis endorsement like Bob Dole had with Viagra where he talks about having the "energy" to keep up with a 40 year-old in his sixties <wink wink nod nod cash money>.
• The reputation for discretion of American Generals working in Afghanistan: Two years ago General Stanley McChrystal couldn't get his aides or himself to keep their mouth shut about how loony Joe Biden is when talking with journalists from noted hippie magazine Rolling Stone. Naturally this resulted in him losing his job. Petraeus ended up being named as McChrystal's replacement and now he's lost his job, too. And the guy who took over in Afghanistan when Petraeus moved on to the CIA is currently being investigated for romantic e-mails with the same Kelley who reported Broadwell's threats. What's with these high-level American military commanders failing to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour?
• The Pentagon Brain Trust: Petraeus was the Pentagon's wunderkind, attracting glowing praise from a broad swathe of commentators for restoring some level of respectability to American military efforts in the Middle East. But now the poster boy is gone and with him the only brain to run a semi-successful counter-insurgency campaign since armies could get away with mass genocide. The Peter Principle is the concept that your merit eventually causes you to get promoted to a job you can't handle. That may have happened here with Petraeus moving up the ladder until he was doing intelligence and not the military stuff he was best at, then having that blow up in his face when he couldn't handle the change in lifestyle and turning to an affair as consolation. At least his incompetence wasn't exploited by America's enemies (as far as we know).

Winners

• The FBI: Finally America's internecine institutional squabbles produced something of merit for once. I'm sure the agents at the FBI involved with the Petraeus investigation exchanged many a high-five over the fact that they were going to embarrass their archrival but the result was good for American even if the Bureau's motives may have been ulterior. The FBI leveraged their good fortune by waiting until election day to tell the White House about the impending scandal to curry favour with the President.
• Gmail: If it's good enough for the CIA, it's good enough for you. And there's no such thing as bad publicity.
• Whichever major arms producer hires Petraeus as a consultant: He can share insider information with his new employer about what the Pentagon is going to be looking to buy in the future and/or provide the latest on corporate counter-espionage techniques.
• The British tabloids: The UK media is so good at covering scandals, especially sex scandals. They beat a lot of American papers to the punch by gathering juicy "insider accounts" from hangers-on trashing the main actors in this mess then blending those quotes with dozens of photos of Petraeus and Broadwell smiling while sitting next to each other. You just know this is going over great with their readership at home since British people are so perverted.
• Paula Broadwell: Now sales of her Petraeus biography are going to go through the roof so that people can comb through it to look for double entendres, foreshadowing, and hidden meanings. "All In: The Education of David Petraeus" is still out in hardcover and available in paperback starting December 11, 2012, just in time to make the perfect Christmas gift for your mistress! And Broadwell was already retired from the army anyway. Maybe she knew what she was doing when she sent all those angry e-mails to Jill Kelley. After all, why send threatening e-mails to a potential "other woman" when you already are another woman? Isn't that just inviting scrutiny? Is the position of mistress that coveted that you need to stake out your ground even if it risks bringing a national sex scandal down on your heads? Methinks Harvard grads like Broadwell aren't that stupid.

Better Days

I took these pictures today (November 10, 2012) at my local sporting goods store. Do you notice anything odd about the products pictured?

To me, what jumps out is the lack of "CLEARANCE 70% OFF" stickers on them. Considering recent headlines like "Lance Armstrong's stripped seven Tour de France titles will go vacant, global cycling body rules", "The Lance Armstrong doping scandal: What's next?", and "Effigy of drugs cheat Lance Armstrong is burned at the stake after being chosen as celebrity guy at bonfire party," isn't it time to consider putting Livestrong merchandise on sale? I mean, it's not like they're still trying to sell Michael Vick jerseys at dog pounds in and around Atlanta for exorbitant prices like this.

Let's face facts: $34.99 is a lot for a simple grey t-shirt. You could put God's Own Truth on the front of a grey t-shirt and I still wouldn't pay $34.99 (plus tax) for it. If instead you put a link on the t-shirt to someone who was called a "serial cheat who led the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen" by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) then I'm going to be willing to pay even less. Why would I pay extra to walk around dressed up like an ironic advertisement for disgrace?

You'll notice the Nike logo is on the Livestrong merchandise too. If I'm Nike, I'm trying to blot out any societal memory of the Lance Armstrong/Nike link ASAP. Nike should be paying retailers to burn this stuff. The company's whole image is built around the concept of training hard to be better, not consuming drugs to be better. E.g., you'll notice no one gets a syringe filled with horse testosterone stabbed into their ass in this ad spot:

That's because Livestrong isn't short for "Live strong thanks to the power of steroids!"

The best before date on the Livestrong brand was when the USADA banned Mr. Armstrong for life and stripped him of all his titles. That happened back in August. Any leftover merchandise should have been shipped to Africa with the "New England Patriots - Super Bowl XLVI Champs" hats by now. Instead, it's being hawked shamelessly at a premium.

What has happened to our nation's favourite Corporate Blood Machine when it lets itself be smeared by association like this? Just because it took the USADA 14 years to figure out Mr. Armstrong was cheating doesn't mean it should take Nike that long to react to the news. Indeed, they should have found out first; their private investigation division is probably much more well-funded than the USADA. I just don't get it.

P.S. If you need the XXL then you might only be "Living Strong" in the most figurative of senses

Bills After-Action Report - 2012 - Game 8

That felt generic. Like the best word to describe that game would be "nondescript".

The bad team lost in pedestrian fashion to the good team. (Naturally.) The good team was favoured by 11 points at home and won by 12. (As expected.) The stereotypical bad team had to settle for field goals, faded at the end of the game, and lost the turnover battle. (Of course.) The stereotypical good team controlled the clock, recorded more pass and run yardage, and converted more first downs. (As anticipated.) The next day the sun rose.

The home fans got to cheer and were home in time for dinner. They didn't fight in the parking lot and no snow was in their weather forecast.

Sure, it was close for a while in a meh sort of way, but the beat writers could have written 90% of their game story before kickoff if they wanted. [Ed. note: They do that anyway. They probably had a couple paragraphs down on Wednesday afternoon already about Houston spoiling Mario Williams's return blah blah blah Ryan Fitzpatrick still struggling with accuracy blah blah blah uninspired play-calling blah blah blah failure to convert on third down blah blah blah breakdowns in the secondary blah blah blah moral victory against an elite team blah blah blah taking stock at the halfway point of the season blah blah blah playoff hopes fading fast blah blah blah next game is against archrival etc etc etc. God I hate writers.].  When Buffalo "stormed back" with those two field goals to be within one going into halftime it was the most forgettable and then quickly forgotten of rebuttals.

Even the Texans seemed to have a strong sense of ennui about the whole thing, like they were only there because of contractual obligations and not because they had any intrinsic desire to defeat the Buffalo Bills at a game of American football. The Texans didn't put more into that game than was really necessary and they knew what was necessary was not very much. If you don't beat yourself when playing the Bills then you don't have much to worry about and we got to enjoy a game plan built around that concept. It was a statement game for the Texans if a yawn counts as a statement. Or maybe it was a trap game for the Texans but someone on the Bills sideline forgot to actually set the damned trap. Probably Chan Gailey since he couldn't play the "Nobody Believes In Us!" card if his meager life depended on it.

Next week the Bills are on the road again as double-digit underdogs. Let's hope they can at least lose in an entertaining fashion.

March is Fraud Prevention Month

I don't make enough money from this blog so I do some work for the government on the side. I mean, technically it's full-time but it's pretty laid back there so I have lots of time to work on other stuff when I'm stuck at the office. (Bleech!)

Recently I finished the poster for Fraud Prevention Month (above). We drew heavily from a collage of clinical depression stock photos my colleague found on tumblr. Before we knew it the deadline was fast approaching so rather than stage our own shots, we just went to the Xanax website and grabbed a bunch of ‘before’ photos except for the one in the bottom right which we found on a post-partum depression website. With the photos in place we just needed to put the copy on, add some meaningless shapes at the top and we were home free. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

March is a good month for fraud prevention because March only has these other 14 causes already associated with it in Canada:

• National Nutrition Month
• Help Fight Liver Disease Month
• Juvenile Arthritis Awareness Month
• National Brain Injury Awareness Month
• National Kidney Awareness Month
• National Social Workers Month
• National Epilepsy Month
• National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month
• Red Cross Month
• National Engineering Month
• Youth Science Month
• Easter Seals Month
• National Music Therapy Month
• Deep-Vein Thrombosis Awareness Month

Priorities are important so we make a lot of them!

Political Humour

I made this as a joke response to something else but then I realized what I was responding to was itself sort of a joke and I had missed it, so I'm putting it here because it is obviously too beautiful to throw away.

Click to read the small text

Not Cool Enough Story Bro

Yo, bro, we have *got* to do something about this global warming business; my balls are sweating like insane amounts right now. Seriously, broseph, I've trimmed my pubes down to nubs and I *still* got a waterfall happening below the treasure trail. Despite my voluminous lung capacity my bronchioles may not be up to the garganormous task of converting enough CO-dubs into oxygen to sufficiently mitigate anthropogenic climate change. I've been heaving and puffing like God's own Big Bad Wolf, bro-man, but the Earth Mother continues to warm and the beans to my pork continue to percolate, like, relentlessly. I've been doing cardio *balls-to-the-wall* but it seems like the fire in my shorts is still rising, Bane-styles. No, bro, now is not the time for gono jokes. Imma need you to cardi-bro with me until my sack can recalibrate 'cause it seems like I can't homeostate on my own (no homo). My testes have not been this hellaciously dehydrated since we slammed 'quila shots in Tijuana and passed out on the beach in the 1,000 degree sun the next day and then those Mexi-hos stole our board shorts. What I'm saying and conveying, lord bro-sir, is that your respiratory system might make a *vast* difference for my vas deferens, if you catch my drift. Speaking of drifts, I wish my balls could catch one right now, bromeister; I would drop my drawers tout de freakin' sweet if there was a cool breeze passing through--especially if it was from your Mom's mouth again like last night! Ha bro! Hey, I'm just yanking your joke stick, broski. Chill. No need to overheat 'cause there is enough of that happening betwixt my two plums, lemme tell you bro. Because of this heat my boys have dropped further than the employment rate now that President Obama has cooked the numbers. Like my balls are cooking. Bro: for realsies though, I need you to respirate until my scrotes can recuperate. Can you do that for me, bro? ... Bro?

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Pajamas & Privacy Interests

In R. v. Cote, Ms. Cote called 911 to report that her spouse had been injured. When the police attended at Ms. Cote’s home around midnight the lights of the house were off and Ms. Cote answered the door in her pajamas. The police came by to see if they could collect some evidence but they told her they were there to find out what happened and to make sure the premises were safe. She confirmed the presence of two firearms but could only locate one. The police later obtained warrants to search Ms. Cote's residence: they recovered a rifle of the same calibre as the bullet recovered from the spouse’s skull who had since died. Ms. Cote was charged with second degree murder.

The matter wound its way all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada where she was acquitted. The evidence strongly suggested her guilt but a lot of it was excluded because the court felt the police had seriously invaded Ms. Cote's privacy to obtain it. In the words of the court:

[85] ... the appellant’s right to privacy was serious: the unauthorized search occurred in her home, a place where citizens have a very high expectation of privacy. ... The appellant, dressed in her pyjamas, accompanied the police as they illegally searched the interior and exterior of her house in the middle of the night for not an insignificant amount of time during which she was detained without interruption.  The breach was thus not “transient or trivial in its impact” and implicated her liberty, her dignity as well as her privacy interests.  The appellant certainly had a reasonable expectation of not being subjected to such an intrusive search, without lawful authorization in the middle of the night, and several hours after her spouse had been transported to the hospital.

The lesson, as always, is that you should always answer the door in the most intimate and revealing clothing you have when you think the police might be investigating you for a second-degree murder you committed earlier in the afternoon. If they have a warrant then you can put regular clothes back on, but you should stay as naked as you can handle otherwise. Until you see a justice of the peace's signature you want to act tired, uncomfortable and intimidated. Turn off all the lights before they have a chance to come then act surprised when they answer the door. Throw your dignity in harm's way and do what you can to make searches take as long as possible. Then shut up.