CIA Director David Petraeus Resigns Citing Affair

Um, okay:

CIA Director David Petraeus resigned Friday, citing an extramarital affair he had.

Multiple sources tell NBC News that Mike Morrell, the deputy CIA director and a longtime CIA officer, would likely be offered the job as acting director but with the understanding that he may be elevated to the job permanently at some point.

...Here is Petraeus' resignation letter:

HEADQUARTERS Central Intelligence Agency

9 November 2012
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation.

As I depart Langley, I want you to know that it has been the greatest of privileges to have served with you, the officers of our Nation's Silent Service, a work force that is truly exceptional in every regard. Indeed, you did extraordinary work on a host of critical missions during my time as director, and I am deeply grateful to you for that.

Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life's greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing. I will always treasure my opportunity to have done that with you and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end.
Thank you for your extraordinary service to our country, and best wishes for continued success in the important endeavors that lie ahead for our country and our Agency.

With admiration and appreciation,
David H. Petraeus

Blink.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Jam: "Beat Surrender"

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The Parks and Rec Open Thread

Two men enter. Only one man exits with the last bacon-wrapped shrimp.
(Spoilers are making unity quilts herein.)

Ohhhhhhh this episode! IT MADE ME SO ANXIOUS! So many parents not getting along and being total d-bags! I really want to just SKIP AHEAD to the things that I liked and did not make me want to crawl into a fetal position under a unity quilt! BUT. There were two other things I did not like about this episode:

1. I felt like Ulani's character was...weird. Like there was some joke I was supposed to be getting about her being a woman of color and/or bigger and taller than Ben's Dad. Or something? And also I was like pretty much on their side? If they've been together for a long time, which was clearly the suggestion, why wouldn't she come to the party and why wouldn't she part of the quilt, even if they're not married? Surely, Leslie and Ben don't actually believe that only marriage makes a family.

2. April calling Ann "this lesbian nurse," though I realize it was supposed to be a reference to Ann saying she is dating herself, doesn't seem like a joke April would make. When we first met April, she was part of a poly triad with two bi men. And also wasn't there an episode where April promised to stop busting Ann's chops all the time? It just seems like the writers won't let April grow up, which is getting kind of frustrating.

Now onto the good stuff...

First! Can we talk about the reaction shots in this episode? There were so many great reaction shots!


See?
And then there was this stuff!

The Knope-Wyatt Unity Quilt! Joe Biden! Glenne Headly, you Dirty Rotten Scoundrel! Mike from Breaking Bad! Stars collide and a whole new beautiful universe is born!

"My family situation is complicated. They got divorced thirty years ago and they hate each other. Okay, I guess it's not that complicated."

"Of all my metaphorical art projects, this is by far the coziest."

"There's no more tissue! Everything ends! Everything goes away!"

"I'll admit it—things are going surprisingly well. Aaaaaaaand pack it up it's over we're screwed."

"Slight speedbump—everything is terrible. But I am going to fix it!"

"Ann, you are such a good friend. You are a beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk ox."

"Ever since I got my first job at the age of nine, I put all my money into gold, which is currently at an all-time high, so I have a certain amount of money. I've said too much."

"Snails crawling out of your mouth!"

"Rethink that move, son."

"Get ready, driver. We're gonna make out so hard in the back of your cab."

Discuss.

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In The News

[Content note: Homophobia, racism, misogyny]

For Your Friday News Hole:

President Obama showed his supporters his gratitude by giving them a heartfelt thank you. That was pretty great!

Romney thanked his staff by cancelling their credit cards on election night. That's not so great.

Also cancelled: Romney's $25,000 fireworks celebration over Boston Harbor. Dang.

And: Romney had no concession speech penned. Obviously. What a great campaign!

Anti-choicers are doubling down now. Of course.

Today's Secret Word: Sedition. Family Research Council's chief dildobrain Tony Perkins and self-appointed dildobrain Donald Trump are both calling for revolution.

Related: Peter Morrison, racist douchebag and treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, wants Texas to secede.

See also.

Oklahoma residents who vowed to flee to Canada if President Obama was reelected got a primer in the quickest route possible out of the country from a local traffic reporter. Heh.

Here is some creepy: A new Xbox patent allows Kinect to monitor how many people are watching a movie.

Obama is "so absolutely delighted" by our marriage equality wins in Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota.

Lynyrd Skynyrd will cease using the Confederate flag as a stage decoration at concerts. Neat!

Stacie Laughton, a New Hampshire Democrat, became the nations first openly transgender lawmaker. Yay!

Gay sex will lead to human extinction! What? We made all the heteros stop fucking?

Also might lead to extinction: Here is the trailer for World War Z, a zombie movie.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Virtually every night of my life, at some point I end up the well-cuddled meat in a Mazelda sandwich:


Zelda on my left.


Matilda on my right.

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What Paul Krugman Said

Let's Not Make a Deal. Really. Everything he said. All of it.

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Number of the Day

1%: The return on investment Karl Rove got on his conservative donors' investments of more than $300 million in this election. Well, in fairness, one of his political action committees got a 1% return. The other got a whopping 13%.

Republican strategist Karl Rove created the model for outside money groups that raised and spent more than US$1-billion on the Nov. 6 elections — many of which saw almost no return for their money.

Rove, through his two political outfits, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, backed unsuccessful Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney with US$127-million on more than 82,000 television spots, according to Kantar Media's CMAG, an ad tracker based in New York. Down the ballot, 10 of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates the Rove groups supported also lost their races.

...The return on investment for American Crossroads donors was 1%, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based group that advocates for open government. The group calculated the number based on how much of the money was spent supporting winners.

For donors to sister-organization Crossroads GPS, the success rate was 13%, the group said. That's a lower return than for donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee and to the two major Democratic congressional super-PACs, according to Sunlight.

Who woulda thunk it? Karl Rove is a more successful redistributor of wealth than any Democrat!

Snerk.

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Quote of the Day

"I am a conservative. I'm trying to conserve the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and Roe v. Wade."—The Rev. Al Sharpton, on his show last night.

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I Write Letters

To the Person Who Filmed the Now-Infamous Mitt Romney 47% Video:

I don't know who you are. I don't know if you're a woman or a man, or young or old, or what ethnicity you are, or anything about you. Almost nobody knows your identity, and I think that's a good thing. Even if I did know, I would keep your secret.

Because your name isn't important to me. Your courage, however, is.

It was a brave—and straight-up punk rock—thing to do to shoot that film of Mitt Romney yukking it up with his rich funders about how awesome it would be if he were Latino and how gross it is that people think they're entitled to food. During the last presidential election, there was all sorts of laughably ironic talk of "mavericks," but it was this presidential election in which an actual maverick showed up, video camera (or phone) in hand.

It wasn't just your job you risked taking that video and making it public. You risked your personal safety, should your identity have (or ever) become widely known. You risked being sued, losing your privacy, having your name and reputation inextricably tied to that video for the rest of your life.

These are not small things.

I want to acknowledge the risks you took, and I want to say that I believe you had a huge impact on this election. I don't think any one thing is ever responsible for deciding the outcome of a presidential race, not even Richard Nixon's sweaty mug, but lots of things. And among the things that made this race, your video was one of them—and a critical one, at that. Your video was, for many voters, the first glimpse they saw of the real Mitt Romney, and his real base.

And I want to say thank you. Whoever you are, and whatever your reasons for shooting and sharing that video, thank you.

Gratefully,
Liss

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Boys Do Cry

Yesterday, President Obama spoke to his campaign staff in Chicago to tell them thank you and share some of thoughts about what it meant to him to see so many amazing, engaged, talented young people working for his reelection. It is a remarkable video, an intimate, candid moment with a president of a kind we rarely get to see.

[Full transcript at end of post.]
Last night, Iain and I saw this clip on The Ed Show. After it aired, I was wiping tears from my own cheeks, not only because it was a moving address, although it was, and not just because I cry at everything, although I do, but because I felt like it was really important that there is a video in the world of the male leader of the American Empire crying from profound emotions of gratitude and joy and pride and hopefulness.

We have seen our leaders, very occasionally, shed a tear over the returning bodies of dead soldiers or surveying wreckage of natural disasters; we have seen our leaders, rarely, cry in grief. Acceptable male tears.

But this is something different.

I asked Iain if that was an important image to him—to see his male president cry openly. He said that it was, that it was a totally different model than "the strong silent type, the taciturn leader" to which he'd been exhorted to conform, even though it denies to men access to the entire spectrum of human emotion.

A whole new model for men. A model in which strength is modeled by showing emotion, and by allowing your nation to see you show emotion. That seems like a pretty big deal.

And it feels to me that this moment speaks to another important demographic shift in the United States, that gets talked around but never about directly in assessments of which men vote for whom. It feels to me that maybe this President—a younger President, raised by a feminist mother—is attractive to men who want access to the fundamental parts of human expression that the Patriarchy says they cannot have.

If part of every affirmative vote for one candidate in a two-party system is also a disavowal of the other candidate, maybe some of the men who voted for President Barack Obama were in part repudiating the Romney model of manhood, rejecting a man who reminds them of fathers who told them that men don't cry and denied them their full humanity.

This, conservatives will sneer, is evidence of the feminization of America. They love to say that.

And it is evidence of feminism's reach—and the queer rights movement, and anti-racism, and all manner of social justice advocacy, which is at root the fight for acceptance of a full spectrum of humanity.

But this moment is not about the nation becoming more feminine. It is about the potential for all of us to become more fully human.

The humanization of the United States.

That is a powerful thing. There will be criticisms of the President that he was feminine, weak, unserious. There will be criticisms that he cried crocodile tears for the cameras. There will be many silly and cruel things said, because there always are when this President does anything that displays decency, and when any person transgresses hir imposed gender roles.

But this simple display of emotion was a gift. This was a gift to little girls, to assure them that crying isn't some stupid thing only girls do that makes them less than. This was a gift to little boys, to assure them that boys do cry—and so do men. It was the emotional equivalent of this:


Me, too.

What a generous thing, to let us all see.

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Open Thread

Hosted by a left-turn only sign.

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Question of the Day

What is your favorite place to rest?

You may interpret this however you like--your favorite spot to snooze, a relaxing vacation spot, or anything else you find restful.

(Mine, of course, is "a place with a snuggly, snoring beagle.")

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Daily Dose of Cute

Mistress Elinor Gwynn invites you to join her for a snooze under the blanket.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

The Wonder Stuff: "The Size of a Cow"

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In The News

News Where You Need It:

Florida is still counting votes. I suppose it's a good thing this election is already settled then.

Los Angeles County voters Tuesday approved a measure mandating condom use in the making of adult films within the county.

A poll has revealed 90% of gay men and women voted for President Barack Obama.

"Man, sometimes God really sucks." — Glenn Beck, on the election.

Meanwhile, America's billionaires are pissed at Karl Rove.

Joe the Plumber's political carreer is all but over after received a mere 24 percent of the vote.

Sundance Channel has unveiled a new show about a transgender man dealing with his new life, and his past as a lesbian activist.

Want a good vegan fried chicken recipe? Watch this.

Joe Biden will appear in a guest spot on next week's Parks and Recreation.

South Africa unvieled new currency featuring Nelson Mandela.

Speaking of: Here is a classic video of The Special AKA performing "Free Nelson Mandela".

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This Seems Fun

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Open Thread

Hosted by a stone mountain path.

I'm taking the day off. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Question of the Day

So...what next?

DOMA. The Hyde Amendment. ENDA. Ending the Drone War. Unwinding Citizens United. Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. Universal healthcare. This. That. Everything. I want it all. Tell me what's next. Tell me all of it.

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Daily Dose of Cute

Forward.

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Here Are a Few Things...

1. Washington Update: I just got an email from the Task Force declaring victory, i.e. that Referendum 74 has passed, allowing same-sex couples the freedom to marry. Further, the National Organization for Marriage has conceded that they lost. It's still not official, but it looks increasingly likely that Washington ALSO voted for marriage equality!

2. This tweet from Shelby Knox is great:

This whole election season women were treated as a special interest group. In the actual election, we made up 53% of voters. #fem2

— ShelbyKnox (@ShelbyKnox) November 7, 2012

3. Jessica did a great state-by-state round-up of the ballot measures that passed and failed yesterday.

4. Puerto Ricans favor statehood for first time. It was a nonbinding referendum, but the results are still very interesting: "Puerto Ricans were asked about their desires in two parts. First, by a 54% to 46% margin, voters rejected their current status as a U.S. commonwealth. In a separate question, 61% chose statehood as the alternative, compared with 33% for the semi-autonomous 'sovereign free association' and 6% for outright independence."

5. Shaker Anitanola passed on this piece by David Simon: "Inevitabilities. And Barack Obama."

6. Shaker wordaddict passed on this piece by Paul Krugman: "The Real Real America."

7. And this piece by Andrew Cohen is very interesting: "Why Mitt Romney Lost: A Simple, Overriding Theory." I don't know that that's precisely why Romney lost (seems another symptom of Republicans, and by extension Romney, not being very nice), but I absolutely think that nothing makes people more determined to vote than telling them they can't.

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