Sex Scandal Again Rocks Washington
Published 12:00 am Monday, December 3, 2012
There’s nothing like a steamy sex scandal to take our minds off the election last week. Two of America’s top generals — one now the head of the CIA — have been exposed for sending thousands of emails to women — not their wives.
The flap has been salacious.
It begs the question: Who’s running the war?
The two ensnared soldiers — Gen. David Petraeus, head of the CIA, and Gen. John R. Allen, commander of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan — sent thousands of emails to their two younger lady friends. The lid blew off the affair when one of the women apparently became jealous of the other and started sending anonymous emails to her competitor.
The FBI was asked to investigate and unearthed a tawdry affair.
By one news report, there are between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of documents from the emails.
Obviously we are over-staffed if the generals have that much time on their hands. The Army has too many soldiers wearing brass stars.
It’s also a poor recommendation for our CIA that the director can’t keep his emails to his girlfriend secret. Are they doing a better job hiding the big stuff?
Heavily Republican Davie County was in a state of shock last week when President Obama cruised to re-election. Considering the sad state of the economy, gasoline prices and all the usual factors that would presage an incumbent’s downfall, Republican candidate Mitt Romney failed to capitalize in what had been predicted to be a slam-dunk when the campaign began in earnest a year ago.
Like athletic games, you never quite known who’s going to win until they count the votes.
I had predicted Davie would break 60-40 for Romney. I missed badly. The final tally gave Romney a 71-28 edge. Voter turnout was 73 percent. Half the voters — both Democrat and Republicans — voted straight party. Pat McCrory, Republican candidate for governor, got 75 percent of the vote in Davie.
Statewide, Romney edged Obama by 96,620 votes — 50.46 percent to 48.29 percent. The Libertarian candidate and all write-ins managed just 55,770 votes. The statewide turnout was just under 68 percent.
Watching the vote returns on the television last week, I had to marvel again at how differently people think in various parts of the county. Given the same facts, the same information, the same cast of characters, voters from my community reach very different conclusions from those in Boston, California or Wisconsin …