Sympathy for Petraeus? Not Hardly.

The irony dripping off the Petraeus/Broadwell/Kelley affair is rich and bitter. Consider:  The man who brought the disastrous counterinsurgency mentality back from Vietnam into the current debacle in Afghanistan moved over to the CIA, thus assuming executive responsibility for the civilian-killing drone program that is the jihadists' single best recruiting tool. The Afghanistan surge, which Petraeus advocated, was and is a colossal waste of blood and treasure, whose net effect is to leave the Taliban stronger. That alone should have doomed him, let alone helping direct a remote-control murder program that has veered from imperial arrogance to war crimes (secondary strikes on rescuers and funerals. Go on, look it up, I'll wait.).

But what brings him down is...a perfectly legal extramarital affair. Not with a Russian spy, mind you, but an American in the military establishment who could not be more loyal to Petraeus and all he stands for.

What's really rich is the method of his destruction. A prime mover of the invasive American surveillance state (though, supposedly, uninvolved with domestic surveillance) has his email traffic peeped by the FBI...why? Suspicion of a crime? National security issues? Terrorism? No, an FBI agent had a thing for yet another (married) woman, and used his police powers to pry into two citizen's private lives in order to please her.

The whole sordid thing is a metaphor for how low we've sunk as a nation of laws and liberties.

It's a Brand New Day

You'll have to listen to the Neil Patrick Harris original to get the rhythm and tune right. I promise to be all bipartisan and sweet to get along with after this one day of gloating that Allen West, Joe Walsh, Richard Mourdock, and Todd Akin all went down in ignominious defeat. Tommy Thompson, Scott Brown, and their ilk, I hope they stay in politics because even if I disagree with their agenda, reasonable people can do that.

You'll have to imagine Barack Obama staring into the camera as the guitars thrash:

What appeared as a sick electoral dilemma

'Cause at first it was weird
Though I swore to eliminate the worst
Of the lurch to the past that your party made
It's true I was vague on the how
So how can it be that you
Have shown us the light?

It's a brand new day
And the votes are in
Black Kenyan socialist
Is the one who wins
Oh and don't forget:
Lesbian SEN-A-TOR!
It's a brand new day....

All the times that you blocked my agenda I'll forgive
Single-payer torpedoed, in honesty I'll live
Mr. Hate, Mr. Rich, Mr. Bigotry are through
Now the future's so bright and I owe it all to you
You blew up the riight!

It's a brand new day
And the Senate's mine
Allen West is toast
Wall Street's just a punch line
I tried to compromise
Now I wonder why
It's a brand new day...