Republicans depart further from reality

Both parties have their share of crazies, but as the GOP dwindles in numbers it also seems to dwindle in sanity and rationality. I keep hearing how Palin is some sort of Republican paragon of virtue. Honestly? That’s the best the GOP has to offer? I wonder b/c besides Palin, the only other people I hear from on the right are Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh. Convinced that ACORN stole an election in upstate rural NY where the GOP acted like the Democrats with it’s ridiculous infighting that cost it a seat it’s held for 130 years? Where does that “belief” come from, it’s not from any sort of factual analysis.

All sanity seems to have evaporated. I can see lots of reasons to be against whatever the latest version of the health care bill is, but comparing it to the holocaust? Death Panels? A sane party would discuss reality, not just shout “Socialism” and “Nazism” (at the same time…say wha?).

The part that makes me worry most for your party is that there doesn’t seem anyone from the grown-up rational thinking part of the party is willing to speak up for sanity, reason and real principles. (It’s really hard to take people seriously who claim that providing health care to the uninsured is the end of America and the most egregious affront to civil liberties in the history of America, when those same people shouting this drivel were completely silent, nay full supportive, of a GOP’s adminstration’s policy of tapping the phones of every American and holding Americans without consul indefinitely).

The NY23 debacle shows that the radical fringe of the GOP has no tolerance for any sort of moderation. It just seems that unless some principled and rational members of the Republican party steps up that the GOP will continue it’s march toward ridiculous fringe party. For all the silliness of the Democrats, they have never let the far left vegan/PETA/ecoterrorist/ fringe element run the show. It seems to me that the far right Eric Rudolph wing is in full control of the GOP and I just can’t take you guys seriously any more.

Appears the terrorists have defeated the right anyway

Ridiculous

I really believe that if Barack Obama ran into a burning building and saved the lives of a dozen children there would be an uproar from millions of Americans decrying the horrific Federal intervention into the lives of everyday Americans.

NY 23

It seems to me that the far right overplayed its hand in District 23. Honestly, it’s something you’d expect from the Dems. Obviously the GOP has some internal issues right now. For all the apologists claiming that this didn’t show a civil war in the party, there were twice as many rightwingers talking about how Sozzafava was a “Faux_republican” or Republican in name only. Which seems to make the clear case that the far rightwingers “running” the party these days feel there is no room for a moderate voice…I’m sure that surprises no one. But for all the talk of the big tent of diverse ideas, the very notion of disagreeing to the slightest degree with the far right will result in your ouster.

It’s fine with me, b/c this further proves how far out on the fringe the GOP is these days. And they are leaving millions of “centrist” Republicans with nowhere to go. They’ll either stay home on election day or vote for Democrats or third party candidates (that’s a good thing). In the meantime, the Far Right fringe cost the GOP a seat in the House it hasn’t lost in over 125 years. That takes SOME doin’.

Well played.

rebranding, opening up new markets

I was going to crack wise about how they need the money so they’re stepping up the marketing and branding. The bankruptcies and events that led up to them haven’t really been great for recruitment.

But I read an article and it’s clearly about money because they are going let them keep their own customs/rules. They’ll be Catholic “in donations only”

Pope Benedict XVI approved a church provision that will allow members of the Anglican church -- known as the Episcopal Church in the United States -- to become Catholics while maintaining many of their distinctive spiritual and liturgical traditions, including having married priests.

The Married Priest thing seems like a pretty big deal in terms of changing doctrine.

LeGarrent Blount might be reinstated

First, I have moved into the space where I believe WAYYYY too much was made of this. It is still the talk of college football a month later, while the Michigan guy who punched a guy on the field during the game got no mention. The ranting has diminished, but that first ten days it was talked about non-stop. A guy smacked talked and got punched…OMG the end of sports in America. He acted like a tool afterward indeed; do you know how many baseball fights there have been since this? Did the world end? Did a baseball player even get suspended for acting crazy and having to be restrained? NOPE.

Right now Blount’s punishment is the same one Dante Stallworth got from his league. That seems a bit out of whack to me.

Frankly I don’t care if he comes back or not although I’m partial to the notion that UO should stick to their punishment. He’s still got a future in the NFL if he keeps his act together. If he sits out this year and does well in the NFL, the university did the right thing. If they re-instate him and he does something dumb in the next couple of years and/or flames out in the NFL the University looks bad. I think letting him practice and go to school for free is a good compromise.

That's impossible, this doesn't happen in America...

Yes, I’m an old man and I have a rheumatologist, but I was on their website today and this is what it says:

Team Structure of Care at AARAA chronic shortage of rheumatologists exists
throughout the US. In most practices, waiting times for a new patient to
see a rheumatologist is 2 to 6 months, and many rheumatologists struggle to meet
the needs for follow-up care of existing patients. The shortage is projected to
worsen over the next 20 years.

How can this be? Americans don’t wait for Medical Care, that only happens in Communist dictatorships like Canada and France. That's what Republicans keep telling me.

BloodPhones?

Sound and Fury and Complete Bullshit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090720/ap_on_go_ot/us_health_care_overhaul

I absolutely love the RNC and GOP tactic of just screaming “Socialism” at every thing they don’t like, even though they seem to love Stalinist moves like wiretapping every American without a warrant and arresting people and locking them up with judicial review. But again that was then this is now (Like how somehow it’s awesome when Sam Alito talks about how his judicial decisions are formulated against growing up poor and Italian, but 2 years later if you’re Hispanic it’s somehow a crime…Why has no one mentioned Alito’s bias towards Italian-Americans in Ricci? Why? Double standard? Racism? Or just plain politics?...speaking of Ricci I am fascinated how this has become “her” decision in the ignorant Right-leaning media that America lives under. A decision that was decided in trial and her court unanimously upheld (meaning they found no errors in their reaching their decision), then 4 Supreme Court Justices agreed with her court’s decision. Somehow b/c of the way one SC Justice voted she’s now some idiot or has a bias. Shameful)

But that is not my major problem with this “discussion” on health care as overly simplistic as they make it out to be. It’s this fallacy that today in America “you and your doctor” are the only people who decide your care. What a bunch of crap. There is already someone in between you and your doctor and that is a profit motivated bureaucrat in some office in Hartford. I’m not saying that I want a government bureaucrat making medical decisions, but if I’m going to have someone in the middle (and we ALL do today) I guess I would rather have the person who doesn’t have a financial incentive to deny me care.

I have a pretty good plan here, but numerous times I’ve had to jump through ridiculous bureaucratic hoops to get care. I’ve had prescriptions written by MY DOCTOR refused by my health plan and told to try something else, not a generic version for which I have no problem, with but a different drug altogether. So, let’s stop this false dichotomy of today it’s “Me and my doctor” vs tomorrow it’s “Me and the government”. Because unless you’re paying for your healthcare out of your own pocket you’ve already got someone with a financial incentive to minimize your care in between you and your doctor.

All socialism is created equal, just some is more equal than others.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/21/house.dealerships.closures/index.html

Panel member Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said his concern goes further than
that.

"Every day I guess I get a little more concerned about what the
administration is doing in regard to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies. It seems
to me that literally the administration is declaring war on capitalism," Smith
said.

So, this stalwart of Capitalism is going to use CONGRESS to re-open unneeded dealerships that the auto companies decided should be closed. I guess they’re all for capitalism and the free market when it happens to someone else (say Michigan), but not in my backyard. Like many senators tried to do with the funding of 7 more F22s that the military doesn’t want or need, fortunately, most took their head out on that one and common sense prevailed. But hey if a plane is made in 44 different states it’s almost impossible to stop making more even if the Military doesn’t want or need them. Everyone is for capitalism and common sense unless it hurts their chances for re-election….IDIOTS ALL. To paraphrase Orwell. All socialism is created equal, just some is more equal than others.

So obvious

Robinson's comment here is so engrained that I never even really thought about it, but it is totally how politicians (especially white male Republicans) view the world:

Reaction to the Reaction

I'm not shedding a tear today for Michael Jackson. Firstly, I was never a fan of his. I certainly grew up during his heyday, but when I was younger I was listening to Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Stones and the like. Although, there was a period of time when it seemed like you had to pick Michael or Prince, I went with Prince. Not so much b/c I thought he was a musical genius when I was 16 years (although clearly he is), but b/c he was not Michael Jackson. I watched "Thriller" on MTV, what choice did I have, it was on a loop, but I attended Prince's Purple Rain concert, and never bought a MJ album or CD. Prince was the "freak" back then, but in later years that turned around didn't it?

The tragedy for me, is that a 50 year old man died why before he should have. I feel for his friends and family as I would with any stranger who dies at such a young age.

Much like when Princess Diana died, or Kurt Cobain I really don't get how people lose their minds over someone they've never met. I often look at these people and wonder if they carry on in such a way when their grandmother died, I wonder how much of the outward grief is for public consumption and a sense of commandeer with other mourners (Look at me, I'm like you, we are emotionally ravaged by the death of a guy I didn't know and never met). It all seems like so much theater to me, and it's not just Jackson fans, it's whenever something like this happens. I wonder how much of this is mourning the loss of their youth instead of a guy they didn't know. What is missing in their lives that causes them to so closely "identify" with a stranger?

I know that some of his work was good, maybe great. "Off the wall", "Thriller" and some of "Bad" are great. Some great songs, but he wasn't a revolutionary, maybe not even an evolutionary artist. Sorry. He was a great entertainer and dancer. I still remember the day after he Moonwalked on National TV, it was the talk of my suburban/rural central New York school the next day. It was an event, but it wasn't a musical revelation...it was a dance move. I don't even know the song he was singing when he did it.

His contributions to Music Video are undeniable. He made MTV in the 80's, but you have to wonder how lasting that contribution to the arts is when you consider that MTV and VH1 don't even play music videos any longer. The form is all but dead. Is "Thriller" a great song without the video? Is "bad"? No doubt he had other great songs ("PYT", "Wanna be startin' somethin'"), but he should be remembered for his contributions to Videos which is huge, where his contributions to music are less.

I read poll yesterday where the question asked was Jackson the "greatest pop star of all time". Besides being a flawed survey geared toward people with no sense of history, the other choices were The Beatles or Madonna. I would have voted for the Beatles, but what about Sinatra or Louie Armstrong or a host of others with longer and more influential careers? Even if you go for straight Pop Star cred, Madonna's career as a relevant artist is longer than Jackson's as he has turned into a Late Night TV joke and resided there for the past 15 or 20 years. He's tabloid fodder, not even an entertainer any more.

He sold more albums than anyone else, no doubt. He was a music sales machine, but sales/revenue has never been the standard for artistry. Otherwise Brittney Spears would be one of the greatest "musicians/artists" ever. Michael didn't invent Pop or even expand the genre very much. His whole deal is just a continuation of the work of James Brown and others who came before. James Brown invented genres of music, while being the consummate entertainer. Michael entertained, but simply followed the path Brown set for him and others.

Jackson was a man so seemingly ashamed of his blackness that he did everything he could to radically alter his appearance turning himself in a grotesque caricature. While Brown was singing "I"m black and I'm proud" Jackson spent untold monies on erasing the image of that kid who sang in the Jackson Five.

Sitting her today with ESPN on, I keep hearing about how magnificent he was. First, the strained effort to make this into a sports story is just annoying and second...it appears everyone has forgotten about the past 15 years of his life. Like it didn't happen.

This is my memory of Michael. Outside the Moonwalk and the videos, my thoughts are most about weirdness. Bubbles, John Merrick's bones, charges of molestation, Emmanuel Lewis, Neverland Ranch, buying the Beatles catalog and selling the songs for commercials, huge amounts of debt, dancing on Limo roofs in his pajamas and of course the mutilation of his face. This is the legacy he left. You can't ignore the charges against him and even his own creepy answers about sleeping with little boys. Dancing to a funky beat doesn't absolve him of that, despite everyone seemingly forgetting that in the past 24 hours.

Look, I'm sorry he's died. I don't hate the guy, but I always thought he was overrated and the Canonization of the man I've seen for the past 24 hours is disturbing. The post is about the reaction to his death. He was a great entertainer, he didn't change music but you can't ignore all the other things just b/c he's gone now.

All that said...RIP Mr. Jackson

Democracy come from the people...

Things are going well in Iran for Democracy. People are rising up, that is how DEMOCRACY comes to power. If Iraq proved nothing else, it proved that you can't force democracy upon a nation with the guns of another country. Freedom and democracy come form the people and the PEOPLE are doing the rising up in Iran. Let the Iranians focus on changing there government, that is what they are doing. The current Iranina government would LOVE nothing more than for America to get involved so that they can turn the populace against an outside enemy (fortunately, the "Bomb Iran" faction of the GOP didn't get their way, b/c if they had this would not be happening). Don't believe me? Ask yourself, after America was attacked on 9/11 did you worry about petty partisan bickering ? No, you didn't. You focused on the common enemy.

If America tries to interfere here, they create the common enemy that all dictators need to keep power. America should keep it's collective mouth shut and the the PEOPLE of Iran determine their future. Iran has a growing young secular and westernized population, theocracy was not going to last forever and let's hope the time has come for moderate voices in Iran to carry the day

Let's hope he overplayed his hand with stealing the election

It seems that Iran has a large part of the population willing to take to the streets and challenge the Islamist fanaticism the controls many countries in the region. As I've told my wacked out Bushie "friends" that attacking iran is exactly what the government wants b/c it would turn sympathy toward the government against a common Western enemy. I strongly believe that iranians are capable of taking their country back from the zealots. They are a secular population who doesn't want to live under the yoke of religous tyranny...in time Iran's young people will take the steps themselves to rid the country of the zealots.

My hope is that the government has gone too far this time for the citizens of Iran.

methinks Obama's less bellicose tone is winning the hearts and minds against extremism

In Pakistan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31267869/

And Lebanon:
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-06-11-voa53.cfm

NCAA stupid...again

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/31245888/


Don’t get me wrong, my disdain for Alabama is right up there, just below Notre Dame. But this penalty seems a little harsh, it’s not like they shaved points or used ineliglbe players. As usual, the arbitrariness of NCAA penalties is on display. It doesn’t even rise to the level of bad oversight of the program, short of having a member of the Athletic Department walking around 24/7 with every scholarship athlete, who do you monitor this behavior?

NCAA atheletes can get DUI’s and beat up their girlfriends and the NCAA is silent, but get an extra textbook and they bring the hammer.

And don’t forget this is the group that brings you the BCS every fall.

More Right Wing Extremists and their defenders

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/06/10/dhs_report/index.html

It's funny to me that Republicans are so terrified of putting untried "enemy combatants" in Super Max prisons in the US next to other terrorists, rapists, murderers, cannibals, pedophiles, etc. BUT if you call out domestic terrorists, who are killing today in our streets, they defend those groups...Interesting, no? Playing to the base, maybe?

Is the Supreme Court going to say the creepy science teacher can force your teenage daughter to take of her clothes?

This is most disturbing. Who exactly could support this? Obviously the Left would not support such behavior, Libertarians wouldn't want it.

ON the Right? Well, the right wing is constantly going on and on about how incompetent the public education system is, how lazy teachers are, what a bunch of losers they are. They just had all these tea parties. YET, are they going to claim that these same people who are incapable of teaching Johnny to read are capable of stripping their daughters down and inspecting them for Advil? What exactly is so time urgent that law enforcement couldn't be called in. Honestly, if you think some kid has a weapon or weed in his ass or in her cooch, a call to the local PD while the alleged culprit sits there in full view of the staff is unreasonable? They can't wait 10 minutes? A call home to Mom and Dad?

What happens when the new 24 year old assistant principle decides that Suzy looks like she's hiding something, so he takes her into his office and makes her disrobe? Really? Is this Saudi Arabia? Can he do a cavity search too?

I see no defensible position to school adminstrators ever forcing children to take their clothes off. No reason that is so urgent, parents and law enforcement can't be called.

I can't wait for the next 8th grade teacher caught with her student to claim that she is just conducting a strip search for Tylenol. Fuckin A.

If Texas secedes can they take some other states with them?

here's a classic:

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Bill Gates. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red statespay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro choice and anti war and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.
We wish you success in Iraq and hope that the WMDs turn up but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and SevenSister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, RushLimbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
We're taking the good pot too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

How is hating America so much being a Patriot?

Can you imagine the outrage if Michael Moore or anyone for that matter suggested seceeding from the Union? Seriously Chuck (and the Governor of Texas), you lost the election, a democratic election. obama didn't invade America and impose tyranny...in fact he has returned America to a place where the President believes laws and the Constitution apply to him, not like his predecessor. The Constitution is safe, safer than it has been in 8 years since Bush determined he was not bound by it's "quaint" provisions.

What a bunch of whiny hypocrites. Their silence while Bush arrested people and held them without access to the judicial system (IN THIS COUNTRY), tortured people overseas and held secret meetings that would have made any despot proud. Now all the sudden they've got religion again and remembered what "Conservativism" used to stand for, but as usual they make up shit and get all hysterical in their overreaction to actions that they accepted up until Jan 21st.

Shameless, igornant and hypocritical. Pathetic.

GOP grandstanding

I absolutely love how the GOP is turning a report on Domestic Terrorism into political hay. After years of anyone left of Sean Hannity being called a terrorist and someone who "Hates" America all while they did everything they could to fire up the right wing masses with their anti gay, anti-immigrant, shit, anti-everything not "American Enough" and xenophobia. Creating the very groups this report talks about. While doing NOTHING to support America's veterans, not providing adequate health care for Injured vets and extending tours 2 and 3 times while guys lost their minds..NOW these hypocritical assholes are going to wrap themselves up in "the Military" b/c some of them might come home and join the right wing groups. HOLY SHIT what an absolute bunch of hypocrites. Since when is calling out possibilities of threats to America UnAmerican? Since when are neo-nazi's and their ilk people we defend? Even on the "Right".

Especially ironic is a quote from an AZ state Rep who said the memo was like the worst propaganda put forth by Germany in the 1930s. Besides the blatant stupidity of such a hysterical statement, but I bet the irony is lost on our good man in his quest to further fire up the very groups mentioned. To criticize a document that says Neo Nazi's are a possible threat by comparing that very document to that created by the Nazi's is not only ironic and absurd, but proves how much ignorance pervades today's GOP.

They have called it a "threat to the Constitution" and "free speech"... Are you shitting me? The same group that wouldn't allow a dissenting opinion anywhere for 8 years, who shouted down anyone who dared say that wiretapping without a warrant is Unconstitutional are now wrapping themselves in the very document they despise to this day and pissed on for 8 years under Bush? really? Hypocrites, which they have often been, but now they are making up shit to fire up the masses. (Like the Fox Sponsored "Tea Parties")

Shameful, misleading and making political points with a serious memo on domestic threats. I didn't think it were possible to have any less respect for the GOP, today i have less.

My absence

it's been too long since I last posted. Too much goings on with work and too much spending my blogging capital on Facebook. I hope to get back to it and after watching Fox News for about 45 min this AM at the gym, I must put fingers to keyboard.

Republican's still fear-mongering

And a very interesting point that I'm sure these "highly principled" Republicans would never admit:

UPDATE: The crime for which Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted and
for which he's currently serving a life sentence in Colorado is the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, of which
Rahman was the alleged "mastermind." That terrorist attack took place just
seven weeks after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, but after that attack -- to use
the Beltway parlance -- Clinton kept us safe, for the rest of his
presidency. No more foreign Terrorist attacks on the Homeland.
It wasn't until Clinton left the Oval Office and George Bush became
President were Islamic Terrorists able to strike the Homeland
again.

Therefore, using the reasoning of Bush followers everywhere, this means that
Clinton's counter-terrorism policies -- i.e.: trying accused Terrorists in
civilian courts and incarcerating them in U.S. prisons -- have been proven to be
extremely effective in keeping us safe (since, as any beginning student of Logic
will tell you: if A precedes B, then it means that A caused B -- as in: A = "waterboarding, torture and GITMO," and B =
"no Terrorist attack on U.S. soil from 2002-2008"). Using that same
"logic": A = "trying Terrorists in civilian courts and imprisoning
them in the U.S.," and B = "no foreign Terrorist attacks in the U.S.
from February, 1993 through the end of the Clinton presidency."

late-comer to facebook; impacting my blogging

I don't seem to blog anymore. I tend to spend some time on FB instead. not obsessively, but the spare time I do have seems to end up being spent there instead of here. Damn Facebook.

Kennedy withdraws

At first her throwing her hat in the ring didn't bother me beyond the usual dynastic sense of entitlement, but it's not something the Kennedy's invented. Think of names like Adams, Taft, Udall, Bush and Clinton all have used their name to political advantage, some deservedly and some undeservedly (George W. Bush being the 3rd most qualified son of G. H.W. Bush comes to mind). But as I thought about it more, it did piss me off a bit. Clearly, she wasn't the most qualified New Yorker to be a Senator, there are others. And a last name isn't a qualification by itself...so i was glad when she withdrew.

But the cynic in me thought that maybe she was thinking that Uncle Teddy was not long for this world and that the political failout from trying to become the Senator from Mass would be less trying. This article appears to contradict that, but nonetheless I'm glad she's come to her senses.

Articles I had to send to a guy who I considered well-versed in politics.

This Reagan one is a bonus...
Myth of Reaganomics
http://mises.org/story/1544

Torture isn’t cool just b/c WE do it:
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them
George Orwell

It’s probably better surmised here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/08/nuremberg/index.html

and here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/24/torture/



These are about torture and abuse. And “we’re America so we can do it” isn’t a defense. No one every commits war crimes without saying they were just defending the homeland.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/16/terror/main680658.shtml

http://www.newser.com/story/45080/senate-report-pins-torture-on-rumsfeld.html

Waterboarding:, a war crime we executed Japanese for:
http://www.newser.com/story/39975/secret-white-house-memos-okd-waterboarding.html

http://www.newser.com/story/28074/ex-detainee-describes-gitmo-tortures.html

Extraordinary rendition:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6

Panetta is bad choice for CIA

I understand Obama's point, the need to clean out the partisans in the agency, but those appointees should be gone anyway. The professionals should remain and even a professional Intellegence person can make that happen and is probably better suited to do so. Just my thoughts.