Gen. Petraeus seemed to be about the last guy to get caught with his pants down, but he would up having an affair and stepping down from his CIA post because of it. He seemed to be one of the good guys, having written the book on counter-insurgency warfare and becoming the top general on the ground in Southern Asia before getting the CIA job. He was mentioned as a possible running mate for Romney, as many respected generals are.
No, I don't think this is designed to head off him talking to Congress about the Benghazi case; there wouldn't be anything to stop the committees from asking a newly-former CIA chief to talk about stuff other than the standard security issues that might require part of his testimony to be done privately to keep secret stuff secret.
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The Air Force provided a great backdrop for Michigan State's basketball opener, as they turned a C-130 hanger into a fieldhouse in a couple of days at the big Ramstein base in Germany. Alas, UConn won, giving interim head coach Kevin Ollie a win in his first win since taking over from Jim Calhoun. However, MSU loves to play a tough out-conference schedule, since you'll learn more by losing to UConn than by mopping the floor with Slippery Rock, as Michigan did last night.
Speaking of openers; Kentucky has reloaded. This might well be a better club that last year, and they won the title last year.
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Interesting divorce of sorts in Alberta, as the provincial Tories are looking to distance themselves from their federal brethern. Since Alberta's conservative split in two with a Tea Party-style Wildrose Alliance starting up and coming in a solid second in the last election, you saw a few federal Conservatives MPs backing Wildrose. The automatic seats that federal Conservative MPs get at the provincial conventions may be pulled as a result.
That's a natural progression, since the provincial PCs are more centrist, having pruned the more libertarian/social conservative wing off via Wildrose; the current provincial Tories look more like the RINOey federal Tories of the 90s before merging back with the Reform/Alliance movement, more Joe Clark than Stockwell Day or Stephen Harper.
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I'm showing my age, but the news of Justin Welby as the new Archbishop Of Canterbury had me thinking of Marcus Welby, the old TD doctor. Welby is a moderate evangelical within the Anglican camp, somewhat more in line with the southern old-school churches than the British and North American churches who have listed left by and large. He's not an economic conservative, having chewed out lenders in a speech at the House of Lords, but he does have a business background, having worked for an oil company before entering the ministry.
What that means for pan-Anglican affairs remains to be seen. Welby seems to be pro-women-in-ministry but old-school on homosexual issues; thus, he's on the liberal side of one hot-button issue and on the conservative side of the other. The classic mugwump, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.
You got old? Dennard Robinson is being treated by a former center for the Michigan Wolverines Dr. Marc Lilja 1991-1993.
Posted by: alan | November 10, 2012 at 12:39 PM