Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Directly after the 1983 UK premiere of nuclear drama The Day After, Robert Kee hosted a studio debate on Dec 10, 1983 discussing the impact of the film and the contemporary threat of a nuclear war. Someone found the whole thing on Betamax and just posted it today. (includes original commercials for that vintage 80s experience)





The White House Military Office Marine Corps aide was on "Football" duty for President Biden’s trip to Delaware yesterday evening.



My folks were on vacation last week in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and were astounded on what they witnessed. Banners, flags, t-shirts, ballcaps, coffee mugs, signs, the usual paraphernalia you see in a little resort towns...with one eye popping difference. It was all labeling/messaging of Trump. Not one democrat display nor anything with Biden. Every souvenir shop, store, on the boardwalk, on the beach & street venues was all Trump. Said it felt really good to see, but strange feeling to see so near to the Biden "Summer White House".






Speaking of vacations. Who's in? Let's GOoooooo!



No? How about a spy cruise...



Are you a target? Come find out on the Spy Cruise.

From the people that brought you Spy Cruise, introducing...



Spy Cruise

I knew that Lt. Gen Hayden was a strange one...

I had never gone on a cruise before, never harboured any interest. But when I caught wind of Spy Cruise, I was deeply intrigued.

A lecture series by covert operatives? Spies on a boat? My one reservation – and it was fleeting – was along the lines of "I hope al-Qaeda doesn't find out about this ship."

So I bought a ticket. And that's how, last week, I found myself chatting up American spies in the Caribbean.
I was targeting one in particular: Michael Hayden, a man who has probably forgotten more state secrets than most spies will ever know.

The Air Force general acted as president George W. Bush's eyes and ears while heading an ultrasecretive electronic-eavesdropping agency. Then he was made head of the Central Intelligence Agency, a job that is like being the president's brain – and covert fist.

Once at sea, it wasn't hard to buttonhole Hayden, a featured Spy Cruise speaker.

"I'm as much of a civil libertarian as the next guy, frankly," he told me when we sat down together. He argued that the CIA had been very restrained during the war on terror. "The little voice in your head says be careful whatever you do – you're going to have to live with the consequences the rest of your life."

He was so affable I had to keep reminding myself that spymasters are the most Machiavellian men on the planet. In Langley, Va., he would have helped decide who gets killed in Waziristan and Yemen – the badlands where CIA drone planes blow up presumed terrorists with Hellfire missiles. Recently retired, Hayden had traded his four-star general's epaulets for civilian shirt sleeves.

When we docked, I went on a guided horse ride through a rain forest – the general, I heard, swam with dolphins.

Casino Royale

My unofficial maxim for Spy Cruise was this: "All work and no play makes Jack Bauer a dull boy."
....
Today, Hayden likes to point out that Obama has stuck with many controversial CIA programs. He is outraged, however, that the administration ordered a criminal investigation into the spy service – specifically a probe of the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing "waterboarding" interrogations of top al-Qaeda terrorists.

The general didn't sound like much of a civil libertarian as he expressed fears that "risk aversion" is hobbling the CIA. "When you're operating out there, somebody's got to have your back. And it's got to be your government, not a particular administration," he told me. "What the agency has gone through in the last two years has shaken that trust."

Spies should be encouraged to be aggressive as lawfully possible, he argued.

Story continues... Show girls, sake-tinis and spies on a Caribbean cruise

Gen Hayden retired July 1, 2008 from the Air Force after over 41 years.
In 2020, he endorsed Joe Biden in the presidential election. He was one of the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed the October 19, 2020, letter that said the Hunter Biden laptop story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

"We kill people based on metadata."
- NSA Director General Michael Hayden (2014) Vid clip