Tunnel Vision

A thousand points of darkness.

As part of a series on “The candidates and your money,” Fortune Magazine asked Senator John McCain what he perceived as the single greatest economic threat to the United States. McCain’s reply, after several seconds of staring “into the void,” was “radical Islamic extremism.”

  Raw Story

Our greatest economic threat. Still channeling W. Do their earpieces pick up the same frequency?

The Fortune interviewer goes on to say that [top McCain strategist Charlie] “Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue” that McCain would also be helped by “another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. ‘Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,’ says Black.”

And for eight long years they have been calling us lunatic conspiracy theorists who suggest that the current administration just might have had some responsibility in the 9/11 attacks, because they didn’t come right out and say these kinds of things. Of course, Black isn’t the first GOP whack job to say it out loud and without shame.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Federal Corrections

From Cursor:

As the DOD document dump keeps on giving, bemoaning the "low threat assessment" of the American people in the wake of the 2006 elections, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said, "The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack."

Anti-War Base

There's a phrase I keep hearing: "appeasing the Democrats' anti-war base." I heard it again this morning on NPR, describing some Republican congressman's complaint after the House vote to put an April '08 deadline on troop withdrawal (which Bush will veto). Here it is set out at The Intellectual Conservative in February of this year:

The problem for the Democrat candidates for President is that they must appease their large anti-war base, yet maintain a mainstream facade; all the while appearing to be Commander-in-Chief material.

I can't understand why they keep calling this a Democratic base, when polls are saying that 70% of the American public wants troops pulled out of Iraq. Seventy percent of Americans are not Democrats, much less a Democrat base, the way the Christian Right forms Bush's base (and at this point perhaps virtually his entire column). The anti-war base may be there, but pulling the troops out has support of much more than just those opposed to war in general.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Clinton supports Bush in Iraq

You thought it might be otherwise?