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One final comment (hopefully) on this latest scare –
If you check out pesky’apostrophe, Mac says something that actually matched up with a concern I had. That the fact that my initial reaction was “Just in time for midterms!” may be just a bit cynical.
I admit that the first thing I thought this morning when I heard about the foiled UK airline plot was, “Hey, just in time for mid-term elections!� All this cynicism is completely unbecoming, but the last five years have been hard on my optimism meter, truly. After all, you have to admit that the current administration and the current incarnation of the Republican party has done for terrorism what Calista Flockhard did for eating disorders in the 90s.
It would be nice to believe that the administration isn’t quite nefarious enough to out and out team up with al Qaeda in order to scare the pants off the electorate enough to keep voting Republican [and, in truth, I just can’t quite bring myself to be that cynical]. Even if they’re not, one has to wonder whether terrorists are keeping an eye on elections, knowing that whenever there’s the slightest bit of noise about terrorism ma and pa get scared and decide they don’t want to switch horsemen in mid-apocalypse. And since the horsemen in question have seriously aided their recruitment efforts and have made big in-roads into turning America into the Christian Iran, well….I’m sure you can understand why I might be tempted to wear a teeny foil chapeau.
I now dig the phrase “teeny foil chapeau” and intend to add it to my vocabulary. It’s the least I can do after giving her “ship in distress, yo.”
Anyway – I, too, was concerned that maybe I was getting a bit too cynical for my own good. Then Joe Lieberman weighed in:
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut seized on the reports of a terror plot yesterday to attack Ned Lamont, his Democratic opponent for re-election, saying that Mr. Lamont’s goal of withdrawing American troops from Iraq by a fixed date would constitute a “victory� for extremists.
“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,� Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.�
Mr. Lieberman said yesterday that he was trying to stay above the fray of partisan politics and sidestepped a reporter’s question about Vice President Cheney’s remarks about Democrats. The senator said he was focused on Connecticut, not on the rest of the country.
“How the heck can we be in a battle in which we are fighting as Democrats and Republicans against each other, when these terrorists certainly don’t distinguish based on our party affiliation?� Mr. Lieberman said. “They want to kill any and all of us.�
We’re all gonna die! Quick, confiscate the Diet Mountain Dew!
Okay. So Da Leeb is desperate. That much is clear. I mean, one Senator fighting for his political life is capitalizing—
Oh, wait. There’s more? Yahoo! News, do you have anything to add?
Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.
The London conspiracy is “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation,” the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.
“It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America,” he said. “We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren’t completely safe.”
His remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn’t: News of the plot could soon break.
Didn’t you hear me? We’re all gonna die!
Oh – wait – there’s more from the same article?
“I’d rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn’t done well,” one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals.
“Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won’t “look as appealing” under the circumstances.
Yeah. I’m not so worried about being cynical any more.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:40 am
It feels shitty to be this suspicious all the time, even if they deserve the cynicism. Grrr.