Obama, Part II: Remodeling the cabinetry

[Phillip V]

Some things will never change.

We can change our education, training, parenting, and then ultimately ourselves.

What are you, a Pepsi slogan?

Alpha Males and Alpha Females don't change their spots.

Acknowledge the spots and then wear makeup, get a tan, grow hair, etc. The spots can be mitigated.

[Legbiter]

Heh, here she's with Jon Stewart fawning all over Petreus while peddling her All In book. Slightly funny in hindsight.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-25-2012/paula-broadwell

[CountDeMoney]

So cynical, Strixy. So cynical.

[garbon]

Some things will never change.

We can change our education, training, parenting, and then ultimately ourselves.

What are you, a Pepsi slogan?

Alpha Males and Alpha Females don't change their spots.

You're joining the seduction community too?

[garbon]

So cynical, Strixy. So cynical.

I know, why would anyone be cynical about Obama? He's so forthright and honest.

[Phillip V]

A crapload of new "reviews" have been posted to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/All-In-Education-Petraeus-ebook/product-reviews/B005ERIJIY/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_recent?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

[CountDeMoney]

Alpha Males and Alpha Females don't change their spots.

You're joining the seduction community too?

Gee, Type A gung ho military superstar with a history of rumored indiscretions, and a Type A woman with a history of self-aggrandizement?  What could happen? 

Yeah, seduction community.

[CountDeMoney]

So cynical, Strixy. So cynical.

I know, why would anyone be cynical about Obama? He's so forthright and honest.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[Sheilbh]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Yeah.  The reports are that Obama found out on Wednesday.  Petraeus wanted to resign, Obama dissuaded him, Petraeus insisted.  My guess is that either he really does want to spend more time with his family and try and fix his marriage, or this is something that a CIA Deputy Director or other more junior figure would have to quit over and he wanted to do the honourable thing.

I imagine the conflation of his own personal failings in having an affair, with an attempted security  breach would have horrified a man like Petraeus.

[Count]

His wife was the daughter of the head of West Point when he was at West Point. What a striver. 

[CountDeMoney]

His wife was the daughter of the head of West Point when he was at West Point. What a striver. 

No kidding.   

Honestly, I haven't been following his non-career life closely enough to know the whole deal about his biographer and how the whole book thing went down;  I know there was a female who co-wrote the book, but even without his confession, if I knew what she looked like, the circumstances surrounding how she went with him to Afghanistan and would go running with him, and all the other bullshit involved in the development of his biography, I would've thought, yeah...they're fucking each others' brains out.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Um wow. I actually know Broadwell, we graduated the same year from West Point. 

We were both kind of in the same situation in that we were slightly older than the average cadet in our class. Most people that go to the academy go out of high school, but a small contingent go later. I don't remember the reason she didn't go in right out of High School. I enlisted out of High School and then applied/started in '91 because I realized I really wanted to go and I needed to start trying so if worst case scenario I didn't get admitted I could try again a few more times before hitting 24 when you can't apply further. Of the people who go to the academy at an older age a lot of them were in my shoes and were currently enlisted active duty wanting to go, but I don't think Broadwell was in that situation. I think she was a year younger than me when we graduated (I was about 2.5-3 years older than a normal grad.)

[Sheilbh]

He was apparently one of her phd advisors too.

[CountDeMoney]

Paula's just had an idea for a new book to write.

Super.  His career is ruined, and she's going to be on the morning talk shows next year, pushing a new book about the affair, entitled, "All Over".

[CountDeMoney]

Plot thickens.  Cat fight led to the big dog.

F.B.I. Said to Have Stumbled Into News of Petraeus Affair
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. investigation that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as C.I.A. director on Friday began with a complaint several months ago about "harassing" e-mails sent by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus's biographer, to an unidentified third person, a government official briefed on the case said on Saturday.

When F.B.I. agents following up on the complaint began to examine Ms. Broadwell's e-mails, they discovered exchanges between her and Mr. Petraeus that revealed that they were having an affair, said the official, who spoke of the investigation on the condition of anonymity.

The person who complained about harassing messages from Ms. Broadwell, according to the official, was not a family member or a government official. One Congressional official who was briefed on the matter on Friday said senior intelligence officials had explained that the F.B.I. investigation "started with two women."

"It didn't start with Petraeus, but in the course of the investigation they stumbled across him," said the Congressional official, who said the intelligence officials had provided no other information about the two women or the focus of the inquiry. "We were stunned."

Mr. Petraeus said in a statement that he was resigning after 14 months as head of the Central Intelligence Agency because he had shown "extremely poor judgment" in engaging in the affair after 37 years of marriage.

The government official dismissed a range of media speculation that the F.B.I. inquiry might have focused on leaks of classified information to the press or even foreign spying. "People think that because it's the C.I.A. director, it must involve bigger issues," the official said. "Think of a small circle of people who know each other."

The F.B.I. investigators were not pursuing evidence of Mr. Petraeus's marital infidelity, which would not be a criminal matter, the official said. But their examination of his e-mails, most or all of them sent from a personal account and not from his C.I.A. account, raised the possibility of security breaches that needed to be addressed directly with him.

"Alarms went off on larger security issues," the official said. As a result, F.B.I. agents spoke with the C.I.A. director about two weeks ago, and he learned in the discussion, if he was not already aware, that they knew of his affair with Ms. Broadwell, the official said.

Web-based e-mail like Gmail and Yahoo Mail can be quite vulnerable to hacking, and it is possible that F.B.I. experts were studying whether Mr. Petraeus's accounts had been compromised. Any possibility that hackers could use the C.I.A. director's e-mail as a route to break into sensitive government computer systems would be an obvious concern.

But the fears of bigger security problems proved unjustified, and the security questions were resolved, the official said.

Neither the Congressional intelligence committees nor the White House learned of the investigation or the link to Mr. Petraeus until this week, officials said. Some Congressional staff members said they believed that the bureau should have informed at least the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees about the unfolding inquiry, and the committees are likely to demand an explanation of why they were not told.

White House officials said they were informed on Wednesday night that Mr. Petraeus was considering resigning because of an extramarital affair. On Thursday morning, just before a staff meeting at the White House, Mr. Obama was told. That afternoon, Mr. Petraeus went to see him and informed him that he strongly believed he had to resign. Mr. Obama did not accept his resignation right away, but on Friday, he called Mr. Petraeus and accepted the resignation.

"Dave's decision to step down represents the loss of one of our nation's most respected public servants," James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said in a statement on Friday.

A senior intelligence official said on Saturday that Mr. Clapper had learned of Mr. Petraeus's situation only when the F.B.I. notified him about 5 p.m. on Tuesday. That night and the and next day, the official said, the two men discussed the situation, and Mr. Clapper told Mr. Petraeus "that he thought the right thing to do would be to resign," the intelligence official said.

Mr. Clapper notified the president's senior national security staff late Wednesday that Mr. Petraeus was considering resigning because of an extramarital affair, the official said.