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Tuesday, August 03, 2004
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GOOFY FUCKING DEMOCRATS
"Yeeearrrrrrrrghhhhhh!"
I'm sure you all remember that quote. That was former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean on the night he was humiliated in Iowa. Dean was sunk, in large part, by the fact that he's insane. This, in and of itself, is usually not insurmountable in politics. You don't get crazier than Ross Perot and 19 million Americans voted for him in 1992. Jean Chretien began losing his grip the second that he became Prime Minister of Canada. Almost immediately after assuming office, he publicly denied ever promising to eliminate Canada's wildly unpopular national sales tax, despite having made that promise on television. When asked about what people should do about the lagging economy in the Maritimes, he suggested that his questioner move to a more prosperous of the country. Then he choked a guy in public while dressed like a Mafia don.
I know it sounds ridiculous. That's why I provide you photographic evidence.
I needn't remind most Canadian that Chretien was re-elected after all of the above incidents. Twice.
I think that I've pretty convincingly established that being batshit fucking crazy will not sink you in politics. Having a big mouth, however, will. Howard Dean learned this the hard way. Or he was thought to have. John Kerry did not so much beat Howard Dean as Howard Dean's mouth did. So, what does Kerry do? He makes him a campaign surrogate, that's what! I'd love to sit in on that meeting. Here's how I imagine it would go.....
Senator Kerry: Mary Beth, I have a great idea.
Mary Beth Cahill (Kerry for President campaign manager): Yes, Senator?
Kerry: You know that guy Dean? The psychopath with the big mouth?
Cahill: Yes, Senator?
Kerry: I want to put him on TV, speaking for the campaign.
Cahill: Yes, Senator. Great idea. What could happen?
Well, this could happen.
Governor Dean, thanks very much for joining us.
This from CNN's Late Edition this past Sunday.
WOLF BLITZER: And I want to immediately get your reaction to both of these developing stories. First, the decision by the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, to increase the threat level here in Washington, D.C., from yellow to orange, from elevated to high. What do you make of this?
HOWARD DEAN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF VERMONT: It's hard to know what to make. None of us outside the administration have access to the intelligence, which led to this determination.
I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays this trump card, which is terrorism. His whole campaign is based on the notion that "I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me," and then out comes Tom Ridge.
It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it.
BLITZER: Well, when you say that, that's a very serious allegation, that the federal government, Tom Ridge, the president of the United States, may be playing politics with the whole issue of fear and terror threat levels. And I want you to explain specifically, so there's no confusion, what you mean by that.
DEAN: What I mean by that is the president himself has played politics with it. The president is basing his political campaign for re-election on the notion that he ought to be re-elected because terrorism is a danger, and his case to the American people is, "I'm the only person who can get us through this." So of course this is politics.
The question is, do I believe this is being fabricated? No, of course I don't believe that. But I do think that there is politics in this, and the question is, how much is politics and how much is a real threat?
I have no doubt there's a real threat here, but I also -- this is a long history of orange to yellow, yellow to orange, orange to yellow without a lot of explanation.
I find that the warnings -- watch out for somebody walking into buildings, watch out for somebody driving cars, watch out for somebody driving a truck -- that's not very helpful in New York City. It would be very helpful if the federal government would be much more specific about exactly what they'd like to us watch out for as they're raising all these levels.
BLITZER: But isn't it important that if there are serious indicators of a threat out there, that the federal government at least notify those who may be in harm's way to be a little bit more vigilant?
DEAN: Yes, it is very important. And one of the things about this warning, which is different than the previous many, many, many that the Bush administration has given us is they've given us specific cities and specific targets.
The usual pattern of the Bush administration is just come out and tell everybody, "We have chatter, we have chatter, watch out, watch out," and that is totally unhelpful. This at least confines it to a geographic area, and I think that's an improvement.
I think, frankly, that this is an area which I think John Kerry would handle much differently. I think John Kerry would probably wait until he knew exactly what the situation was.
He's also said that he would hire more special forces people, and that's going to be the key to stopping this. We need to stop these people in their own lands, not when they get to ours.
BLITZER: Governor Dean, you were governor of Vermont when Tom Ridge was governor of Pennsylvania. You clearly know him. Is he the kind of man who would play politics with this kind of sensitive subject?
DEAN: Look, I like Tom Ridge. And I knew George Bush, and I like George Bush.
The president himself has said he is playing politics with this. The president himself has said that he ought to be re-elected because of the terrible terrorist danger. I don't see what's the big deal about this. I mean, it's obvious politics has something to do with this.
BLITZER: Well, as I said before, that's a very serious charge that you're making against the president.
DEAN: I don't think it's a serious charge. It's something the president himself has acknowledged.
BLITZER: Well, when you say he's acknowledged, he says this is not...
DEAN: The president's campaign is based on...
BLITZER: Well, let me just say, he says that what he's doing is trying to protect the American people when he and his intelligence community, law enforcement community sense there are threats out there.
DEAN: I have no doubt that the president is trying to protect the American people. That's his job. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's good. That's what he should be doing.
However, when you're going to run on inspiring fear in American people, that's politics.
And there's no way you can get out of accusations and discussions about the relationship between politics and protecting us against terrorism in an election year when the president of the United States is avowedly running his political re-election campaign on the notion that he can protect us better from terrorism than John Kerry can.
BLITZER: Let's move on.
Even if Dean is right, he put it in the worst possible way imaginable. Senator Kerry had to go out and publicly disavow Dean's comments. Dean, in a typically Dean way, made himself the issue and put his own guy on the defensive. Any message Kerry had for that day disappeared. The only person more effective in stepping on the Democratic nominee's message of the day happens to be married to him.
But did Kerry do the sensible thing and pull Kerry off of television? Nope. Dean was on Hardball With Chris Matthews this evening. And he went further. Not only did he reiterate his original point, he added to it. Dean furthered his case by saying that is assertion is proved by the fact that the intelligence that lead to the terror threat was in the possession of the government for three weeks before Secretary Ridge held his press conference on Sunday. This is supposed to reinforce the time-tested assertion of "suspicious timing."
Everything is "suspicious timing" with these fucking people. Terror alerts, terrorist arrests, even the Sandy Berger leak (which was most likely leaked by the Democrats themselves.) If George Bush announced tomorrow that he was undergoing sex change surgery on Friday, the Democrats would say this was "suspicious timing" and a transparent ploy by the president to get the TS/TV vote.
Now, I know a little something about securing high-profile, high-value target buildings. I used to do it for two and a half years. I used to be a supervisor in such a building. It had two high profile tenants that weren't good at making friends. An attack on this building could severely affect the infrastructure of most of Canada and a good chunk of the eastern and midwestern United States. Bomb threats were common. Post-9/11, "Anthrax" letters began arriving. I was intimately involved in the planning of such eventualities.
One thing you emphatically don't do is advertise a threat before you are prepared to deal with it. Doing so could bring out every other crazy in the world to get their shot in. First, you protect yourself against the vulnerability. I can't tell you how many meetings and written proposals this can take to do. Let's just say that it's several. I used to write the proposals and have attended many of the meetings. As I said, I know a little bit about this.
Have I ever been in a situation where it took three weeks to address these things? No, I haven't. On the other hand, I've never been responsible for five buildings in three different jurisdictions. Three weeks doesn't seem all that implausible.
Governor Dean tonight stated that the timing was "suspicious" in that it surfaced two days following the Democratic National Convention. Would it have been better if the warning had been two days before? How about two weeks? Three? What wouldn't have been suspicious? How about if the warning hadn't been given at all and the buildings were later hit? Of course, no Democrat would ever hold up a newspaper with the headline "Bush Knew" in Congress, now would they?
I was going to also take this opportunity to poke fun at Senator Robert Byrd, but this post is getting overly long.
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