The Home Stretch
The problem here is that national security isn't the leading campaign issue. And saying it should be won't make it so. What's needed is an event--a big event--to crystallize the issue in a way that highlights Republican strength and Democratic weakness. It was two events--the foiled British terrorist plot and the need to comply with a Supreme Court decision on handling captured terrorists--that led to the Republican mini-rally in September.
Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard 10/16/06
JIM LEHRER: Wow. Wow. And you think -- what would it take for -- is there anything the Republicans can do now to stop this tide?
DAVID BROOKS: Something will happen. There will be some national security story or something. Something will happen.
NewsHour 10/13/06
Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard 10/16/06
JIM LEHRER: Wow. Wow. And you think -- what would it take for -- is there anything the Republicans can do now to stop this tide?
DAVID BROOKS: Something will happen. There will be some national security story or something. Something will happen.
NewsHour 10/13/06
posted by The Cunning Realist at Wednesday, October 18, 2006
19 Comments:
David Brooks? I'm sure he saw the Foley story coming to. It sounds to me like Brooks thinks military action is coming against Iran or North Korea. Hhhmmmmm.
Do Freddy and Bobo have any idea that they're wishing for the death and dismemberment of innocent strangers when they pray that "something will happen" to keep their man-crush George firmly in control of both houses of Congress? Either they're willfully blind, or they just don't care who suffers as long as it's not them or anyone in their elite circle. The apologists for the current occupants of the Oval Office are beginning to sound like the senators in Caligula's Rome... -- Anne Laurie
"Anthrax Found in Halloween Candy--Al Qaeda Suspected"
Would they stoop THAT low to stay in office?
karl/diebold will blow the opposition away...most should be just about forgetting foley by now...he's a victim himself and should be sympathised with...the foley leak was ill timed...leak was too early...karl will get enough minds off iraq...just watch...
Maybe we can send Barnes and Brooks to Russia for a story. I hear the Russians take good care of journalists.
Paranoia runs deep.
Into your heart it will creep
There doesn't have to be an attack. It could just be another one of these "terror cells" caught in the US. They'll talk big about how they have broken up a major threat to our safety, and we'll find out after the election that it was just a couple of guys with spare tanks for their gas grill and a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge in their den.
"Friends help you move. Good friends help you move bodies." But if you were ever bitten by a vampire, and there's one person out there who would not rest until you were staked, beheaded and buried face-down at a crossroads, that person is your best friend. There probably aren't half a million foreign nationals in the world who'd urinate on the White House if it were on fire, but the country as a whole still has a big handful of really good friends in disquieting and/or high places. A coup or martial law don't worry me nearly as much as a breakdown in civil order or general economic collapse, which couldn't be stopped by a legion of 00-licensed agents with access to time travel equipment.
The foreign press washed their hands of this regime early this summer, and now everything the federal government does is interpreted in light of Bushco's willingness to lie, cheat and kill its own for no apparent reason, much less for self-preservation. Only Americans believe in tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists anymore; everyone else has eyes and long memories and no particular reason to hate Michael Moore's guts. Just to put the cherry on top, the Cluster Bomb Festival in Lebanon finished off Israeli exceptionalism, made non-Muslims pissed at America for its obvious intention to kick over every anthill in the Middle East, and forced the last few members of the Coalition of the Non-Suicidal to begin thinking in terms of America as a potential jealous-ex-boyfriend stalker with no job or friends and nothing to do all day except play with his collection of functional nuclear weapons. Roughly in that order. Even Pope Oblivious XIII couldn't follow that act.
Bombing a UN observation post and telling the SecGen to shut his piehole about it didn't play very well outside the FBI's jurisdiction, and the British in particular have never gotten around to forgetting that Little Boots stole the election in 2000, mostly because the same M.O. shines through everything done in his name since then, but partially because he turned around and did it again. There's literally nothing Bushco can pull that hasn't been gamed to death for the last six months in the European papers. A last-minute terror bombing, suspended elections, a Cabinet member machine-gunned by a drifter recently thrown out of his local Nazi organization, nothing. The only reason anyone believes in the page scandal is because it's such a catastrophe that nobody in office can say "children," "safety," "protection from evildoers" or "Internet criminals" without looking like a total dillhole.
Doesn't matter what they do now.
Fear is only a motivator if it's bookended with trust. Firing a gun in the air in a crowded room is effective to get people to do what you want so long as they clearly know and trust before the gun is fired where to run.
The GOP has lost half the equation. The populace doesn't know who to turn to anymore when brimstone starts raining down from the heavens. They don't know who to trust. At this point, firing the gun only gets them to move - they won't go in an orderly manner. Given the current polling of Congress and the GOP, if they fire that gun, it'll only drive more people to the polls - and that works to the Dems favor.
If we have a national security crisis - it will now favor the Dems. The only way the GOP stands a chance is to keep people at home, suppress the vote, or to cheat.
Rove was totally dependent on that halo of trust around family values and national security so that when the terrorists and blowjobs showed up, people knew exactly where to go. He's lost all of that. He's got nothing left. He's done.
"He's got nothing left. He's done."
Is it too much to hope?
when brimstone starts raining down from the heavens
Be fair. That's a peculiarly American obsession, the compulsive need to rain fire on people and buildings; most cultures find it distasteful. Sort of like how Soccer Moms tolerated and rationalized an American torture facility run out of Saddam's own actual mother-lovin' (and still warm) torture facility, and even put up with the rape rooms (ditto -- feng shui is important when sexually brutalizing women and children, and why remodel when it's already honed to perfection?), but immediately broke out in hives and started sneezing brains because of, I'm sorry, a !!!SEX!!! scandal that ultimately wrecked the lives of about as many young men as are killed... maimed or mutilated but "repaired" enough to live out their natural 70+ year lifespan... or brain-slammed by "ammo dump accidents" or IED detonations so that they lose eight to ten IQ points a month until they finally wind up in a locked ward with the rest of the Alzheimer's cases -- in a typical "outbreak of violence" three-day weekend in Iraq alone.
The dumbest thing the Republicans could do is play silly buggers with the election. Third time's the charm. Civil order breaks down, no National Guard to restore order, and no undisclosed location big enough to hold all the families of the local cops who will be expected to play King Canute with bullhorns and tear gas against their actual friends and neighbors, many of whom are better trained and equipped than they are. That assumes the value of the American ruble does what you'd expect when the markets receive incontrovertible evidence that Dead Presidents unbacked by gold, rule of law, any kind of economy that makes things out of other things, or military force make really lousy toilet paper. And because it's so very dumb, so pointlessly auto-cannibalistic, I kind of expect exactly that.
Sort of like the Ken Lay deal. Expect to hear about how terrible bills of attainder are, repeatedly, over the next few weeks. It's nice the ruling junta finally found a few square inches of the Constitution that don't fill them with revulsion and disgust. I look forward to the RICO seizure-and-auction scam being challenged and struck down forever by our Framer-loving US Supreme Court in the months to come.
Note Bush's statement yesterday in signing the Military Tort--uh, Tribunal bill:
"With the bill I'm about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice," Bush said in a White House ceremony.
Sounds to me like they've got somebody stashed away in a secret prison somewhere. Now that whatever they've done to detain and, uh, "debrief" this person(s) is legal, they're ready to parade him/them in front of the US electorate.
"Surprise!" says Turdblossom.
Finally, most Americans have come to realize that Bush is an incompetent fool that never should have been elected in the first place. With the level of corruption and arrogance in Congress (Delay, Hastert, Frist, Reynolds, Cunningham, Ney, Burns, Foley, Weldon, Allen) the stench has become overwhelming. October bullshit surprise or not, it seems most people will not believe Bush and the Republicans deserve credit for anything good that would happen. Rather it would happen coincidentally or accidentally and not due to any policies. Something like 40% of Americans think the recent crash in gasoline prices has been manipulated by Republicans ahead of the election.
Ya gotta wonder how many people are out there who are hitting their forehands with the palm of their hand and saying ''how the hell could I have voted for that moron for President, let alone 2 times?"
It's a case of Republican math. They have had total control for 6 years and if something happens it will still be the Democrat's fault, because they didn't let them put even more draconian measures into place.
Besides anyone who dissents can always be arrested or be declared an enemy combatant. After all he is a "war time president" like he likes to remind everyone.
"Maybe we can send Barnes and Brooks to Russia for a story. I hear the Russians take good care of journalists."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/laughland2.html
minds are increasingly straying from the mainstream press...
What is the distance between the wish and the act? Is it an inseparable gulf? Ethically and morally beyond Rovian capability? Or those whose interests he protects?
Believe so at your own peril.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/analysis.htm
You guys think about that who is creating the mess, can not solve the mess created, so do not expect neo cons to break their pattern. Nothing will happen soon, except a downhill fall of the system starting with finance and economy. When something political will happen, sombody else will be be the factor. Do not expect dictatorship from actual political players.
Well, I don't actually imagine this may have effect.
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