BELIEVE IT, IF BUSH’S INTELLIGENCE CHIEF FLUBBED UP AS OFTEN HE’D BE TOAST. MORE.

                                       3 Monkey Foul-Up.            
     In one day…in an administration intelligence 3 member panel—blind, deaf and inept forecasting…(1) the National Intelligence chief made the astounding contention that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular not religious (huh?; why the Muslim name then?), (2) eschews violence, and (3) has criticized al-Qaeda as a “perversion of Islam” while (4) the CIA director patted himself and his colleagues on the back saying the U.S. government has not been taken by surprise—then  announcing (5) that Hosni Mubarak could well be stepping down later that day (he didn’t and announced he was staying)  as (6) the FBI director swatted his supposed boss,  the National Intelligence chief for his Muslim Brotherhood-is-secular comment.
        I’ll tell you this: if that three-man catastrophe happened under George W. Bush the New York Times, the AP, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Yahoo news service and broadcast networks…especially CBS with Katie Couric’s wide blue eyes snapping and cute button nose wrinkling in disgust…would be demanding a shakeup on the basis of incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance.   As it was, hardly a peep out of anybody but Fox.
     What rarified brand of hashish National Intelligence Director James Clapper was smoking is questionable as the Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, religiously extremist—no serious doubts about it. Clapper was wrong again: It does not and never has ruled out violence. It’s very cozy with major elements of al-Qaeda. Wrong yet again: The CIA director Leon Panetta patting themselves on the back for a good job was disproven at the panel where he gave out wrong information about Mubarak’s decision while his colleague FBI Director Robert Mueller contradicted Clapper saying “obviously elements of the Muslim Brotherhood here and overseas have supported terrorism”—leading Clapper to send out a “clarifying statement” later with the correction.
       You can just wonder if this isn’t banner headline news underscoring incompetence what it will take to get two of the three…Clapper and Panetta…fired—as well it should. Clapper has already made one major goof by appearing on Diane Sawyer’s CBS-TV morning show and sitting there dumbfounded when she, a news anchor, informed him of a serious terrorist attack that happened hours earlier in London—something every news consumer knew but he. Panetta was a Dem congressman and Bill Clinton’s chief of staff but was never known as an intelligence expert.
        A scandal that rivals this  incompetence is the obvious liberal “understanding” cover-up between the so-called mainstream news media and the Obama administration to spike unfavorable stories—and I will bet you anything that this morning—a day after it happened—you will not find it in any sense but buried in the regular press.  The Sun-Times has a dutiful stenographer of favorable Obama doings in Lynn Sweet…who has the makings of an excellent reporter but who has turned cosmetician. 

The other day there was a minor occurrence at a White House    social event which, had it happened under George W. Bush,  would have qualified as banner-line if Ms. Sweet were reporting it.   Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior counselor, was enjoying herself at an elegant reception when a  uniformed  4-star general passed by.   Somehow Jarrett thought he was a waiter, held aloft her glass and asked for a Chardonnay refill.   If that ever appeared in Sweet’s reportage which when favorable things happen takes in every little detail, I missed it. 

                         Conservatism’s Great Peril.

      Acceptance of self-outed gay “conservatives” at the CPAC meeting this weekend reflects the possibility of a dire threat to the movement.    Extremist libertarians or libertines are responsible who have been pushing gay rights for all they’re worth for some years.   They scored a breakthrough this year when accommodationist David Keene got seduced by the money these folks would pony up—and everyone else except the highly principled Heritage Foundation followed suit.

       American conservatism has been endowed with the Burkean brand since its inception—the belief in solid religious principle that is tied in indissolubly with economic freedom and societal order.   Let libertines in who say they’re libertarians and you have the wack-a-doodle Ron Paulites who not only endorse outed  homosexuality but eschew any discipline the state may have over drugs and who…many of whom with an anarchic glint in their eyes like Paul’s…want to dissolve the intelligence systems of the country and pull defenses back to Fortress America—which even if these battlements were to be attacked, these guys would be zonked out on hashish to care.

          Which means that it would only be a matter of time before what  happened yesterday—with Dick Cheney booed as he introduced Don Rumsfeld…booed because the libertines hate our going to Iraq….in short typify anything short of holding off terrorists when they invade your home as example of overactive government.

         Such libertines as I describe them (to differentiate between them as solid libertarians who are rightfully fighting over-regulation and taxation) won’t take over the party but if allowed to continue will cause social conservatives to whom their espousal of gay rights…and in some cases abortion…as repugnant, leading to formation of a third party for social conservatives that will destroy any chance of affecting change at the ballot box.

        The libertines should as pro-active gay rights people should have been kept out.  Ron Paul himself if not an active proponent of these things is an advocate of unilateral disarmament…a supporter of cashing in the Federal Reserve and letting Congress—God help us—set interest rates.   All you have to do is to take a look at this frenzied creature to know that extreme proponents of this kind of thinking should be institutionalized.   By which I don’t mean his  kid, Rand.