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We could have called this the jeg lag from hell episode, as John Yoo managed to spend 11 hours yesterday on an airplane that didn't fly anywhere, while Steve, already planted as an advance guard in Palermo ahead of next week's conference in Sicily where the 3WHH crew will be together in person at the University of Enna, is batting both jet lag and a airplane-acquired bug that left his voice raspy.
So Lucretia hosts this week, and wonders whether both parties are a hot mess at the moment, what to make of the scene from the cashiering of Messy Massie to Der Platner of Maine to Ken Paxton in Texas, but landing on the breath of fresh air that is Spencer Pratt.
In the middle of taping the news broke of the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, so we pivoted to an impromptu discussion of the wider scene of dysfunction in the "intelligence community." Steve made a case for bringing back James Jesus Angleton from the dead, drawing the predictable guffaws from John.
All just a warm up for our on-location episodes next week.
Steve Hayward
Discussion (5)
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On Spencer Pratt and the Los Angeles mayoral race, I think he's promising things that are beyond the authority of the office he's running for.
For example, the police chief is appointed for a 5 year term, with the mayor elected to a 4 year term. The mayor cannot remove the police chief without the tacit approval of the city council. Appointments to the position cannot be made without the approval of the city council.
It's similar with the fire chief. Yet, the biggest issues of the campaign involve those two departments.
Strangely, both those officials have a board of commissioners they directly report to, not the mayor.
And the delay of the rebuilding of the burned out houses is due to a coastal state agency that has little accountability to the governor. It was created by state referendum.
I've watched the Pratt commercials and they're funny. But I'm not seeing anything that's going after the Los Angeles city council.
One other thing, a lot of the Palisades fire occurred outside the city limits of Los Angeles proper. And the land the fire occurred on was a mixture of state, city and federal lands. The real problem with the Palisades fire wasn't the incompetence of the fire department, as it was the refusal of those land agencies to remove old trees and brush.
So if Pratt gets elected, he's going to be unable to change anything.
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George W Bush made two big federal government changes, organizationally, and with the consent of Congress.
They are the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security. In the case of the DNI, the director has no budget or hiring firing authority over those intelligence agencies supposedly under its purview. It was a cosmetic change.
DHS is an amalgam of agencies that already existed, that still don't work together any more than they did. I guess one agency did get created under DHS, and that was Transportation Security Agency (TSA) which is mostly identified with airport security, most of which should be privatized as most countries do.
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I listened to this episode on Memorial Day, while in Catania, Sicily of all places. The Grateful Dead had their Deadheads, I guess I might be an accidental 3WHHead.
Given that Palermo is the most-conquered city in world history, I think the headline should read that the Three Whisky Happy Hour has Sacked Palermo.
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Catania was a depressing place. Alas, Sicily is a very poor island.
Eleven hours! I was bitchy enough in December when I waited 4.5 hours for TPTB trying to de-ice planes in Richmond.
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Couldn't John have claimed that because they'd kept him in their plane for half a day, he was now domiciled at their location, and had squatter's rights?