Ground fog, and most-likely way up in the dark, there’s overcast skies here on California’s north coast — Friday morning; and ain’t we just burning the shit right-through September?
And 2014? A whole year — nearly gone already.

A near-three-week retiree, I haven’t felt any time-travel slow-down either. And I do practically nothing, which blows to shit the old chestnut of ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ or highly-engaged in something interesting, or words to that effect — now just blowing right by without a blink, no matter…

Even this early, duplicitous bullshit of an arrogant asshole loaded with ironic horror — James Clapper yesterday ‘bristled‘ at being called a liar, even as he discussed the “ethics” of delusion.

(Illustration: James Clapper caricatures, above and out front, found here).

Clapper, of course, is director of National Intelligence, which in asshole means your shit don’t stink — no matter how smelly the room — the remarks Clapper made to a trade group were the normal shit-crap, but really doesn’t compare to the awful, numb-nuts comments he blubbered via David Ignatius at the Washington Post.
Especially concerning the current ISIS debacle — history student Clapper ain’t:

“What we didn’t do was predict the will to fight. That’s always a problem.
“We didn’t do it in Vietnam.
“We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese.
“In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army. .?.?. I didn’t see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming.
“I didn’t see that.
“It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable.”
…
“We are supposed to keep the country safe, predict anticipatory intelligence, with no risk, and no embarrassment if revealed, and without a scintilla of jeopardy to privacy of any domestic person or foreign person.
“We call that ‘immaculate collection.’”

In a short roll-call of US intelligence-prediction failures, Vietnam is way down yonder — just in recent years for instance, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; maybe like the Iraqi invasion being a “slam dunk,” or what the fuck is an Arab Spring.
Arrogant incompetence — pretty much sums up the whole show.
And as one ventures into reality, even a ‘$52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013,’ couldn’t still render decent intelligence in real time on the biggest single, global horror-shit-storm in awhile — ISIS. A situation that’s pretty fucked.

Clapper don’t seem to care — Dan Froomkin at The Intercept reports on Clapper’s bullshit yesterday at the trade show, a ludicrous conceit fairly obvious:

Speaking in public, but in a friendly setting, Clapper mocked the notion of intelligence collection without risk, the potential for embarrassment or invasion of privacy. He snidely called it “Immaculate Collection.”
Clapper also confirmed a report that, in commemoration of Constitution Day, he led his staff this week in two separate “re-administrations” of the oath of office to the Constitution, which he characterized as a good bonding experience, rather than an urgently needed recommitment to observing the constitutional rights of Americans.
“While we’ve made mistakes, to be clear, the IC [intelligence community] never willfully violated the law,” he insisted.
And he complained bitterly of being “accused of lying to Congress.”
Clapper flat-out lied to Sen. Ron Wyden during a Senate hearing in March when he said the NSA does not wittingly “collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”
Clapper has previously said he “responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.”
On Thursday, he said he had been falsely accused of lying “because of a mistake and trying to answer on the spot a question about a specific classified program in an unclassified setting.”

The ‘Immaculate Collection’ shit he’d already blubbered the night before via telephone with Ignatius at the Post, a phrase, I guess, was just so “too cute by half,” he used it the next day to delight the nerds and geeks.

And time continues to hurry its pace right along…unclassified or not.