If they stonewall the 9/11 report, can they hold the election?

Great Debates
101

Because of what I like to think of as the “Thanksgiving” ploy. (Some of you younger Dopers may not remember…consult with an Elder). Basicly, this ploy offers the comfort of ambiguity where it isn’t deserved.

“Well, we really don’t know what the report says, we’ll have to wait till it comes out, can’t believe all those self-serving leaks that the liberal media is whinging about…I can certainly see waiting for all of the facts without rushing to judgement. Let’s at least wait until Thanksgiving before we start making any wild accusations…”

The Man Who Fell Up has based a lot of his electability creds on his image as Vigilant Defender. It is, of course, a crock. I want that clear and unambiguous fact established for all to see. My reason, of course, is that I want GeeDubya to lose. Again. I figure he has to lose by at least 10% to forestall any supra-legal shenanigans leading to another installation, before we are safely in the “They Wouldn’t Dare!” Zone.

To be fair, I saw Nixon re-elected, and it didn’t kill me. Didn’t draw a sober breath for about six weeks, but it didn’t actually kill me.

102

Don’t forget the revelation that the Bush Administration decided not to respond to the USS Cole attack because they were worried that it would embolden al Qaeda and prompt them to attack the United States.

Instead, Bush sat on his hands, which… emboldened al Qaeda and prompted them to attack the United States. Way to go, George! :smack:

103

While I normally eschew appeals to authority as of no forensic value, I make an exception for Hunter Thompson.

The good doctor,( on learning that dub claimed to have fallen asleep during the super bowl)
his is no time for the “leader of the free world” to be falling asleep at masively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super Bowl. That is a hell of a lot of eligible voters to insult when your chances of living in the White House this time next year are less than 50-50. Was he drunk? Does he fear the sight of an uncovered nipple? Was he lying? Does he believe in his heart that there are more evangelical Christians in this country than football fans and sex-crazed yoyos with unstable minds? Is he really as dumb as he looks and acts? These are all unsatisfactory questions at a time like this. Is it possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb immediately? All these things are possible, unfortunately, in a White House that is drowning in it’s own failures. Desperate men do desperate things, and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer.

Hunter is an astute observer of political behavior,( when he’s taking his medication and he hasn’t been up more than 45 hours…)

When it comes to foil beanies, Hunter is Mack Daddy.

He’s lookin’ for the election rope-a-dope too…

104

Doesn’t have to be either. Perhaps due to budget constraints there’s a shortage of toilet paper in the white house. There are bound to be several hundred pages in that report… Or maybe they’d like to get the report in hand so they can say: “Nothing to see here, people. Move along.”

elucidator, it was you who said in this thread that there is nothing new in the pending report. Therefore, I fail to see any reason for outrage concerning the date of it’s release. ??? As for this: “To be fair, I saw Nixon re-elected, and it didn’t kill me. Didn’t draw a sober breath for about six weeks, but it didn’t actually kill me.”
Oh, yeah, well I saw LBJ elected so I guess we’re about even in that department.
By wonderwench:“I could wrap Betty Page around my pony tail.”

So, wonderwench, how YOU doin’? :wink:

105

[QUOTE=John Carter of Mars]
"To be fair, I saw Nixon re-elected, and it didn’t kill me. "

Oh, yeah, well I saw LBJ elected so I guess we’re about even in that department.
Interesting.
LBJ saw Nixon elected, and it killed him of a heart attack when Nixon axed the Great Society.
:slight_smile:

106

Well, John, permit me to reverse the question. If there is nothing in the report to worry about, why will it take some months to pore over it and ensure there is nothing in it that might threaten national security? Is it your contention that this delay has no political implications? If it has no plausible national security threats, then what’s the prob? It is my suspicion that the Bushiviks would rather not have this surface to their embarassment. Do you concur that this is their probable motivation? If not, what is?

As I said: any delay allows weasel room, it allows Admin talking heads to stand there and say “Well, we don’t have the full report yet, we can wait to see what it really says, yadda blah yadda blah…” The “Thanksgiving” Ploy.

It ain’t that much of a whuppity-whoop, but still, shouldn’t happen.

107

You want a serious answer, elucidator? Ok, my contention is that once the report is released to the administration, they’ll scan it pretty quickly. If there’s no new damaging information in it, they’ll release it to the public very soon.

If there is something in there they don’t like, they’ll sit on it until after the election. It’s called politics, and both parties play it the same way. Not much to get riled up about, IMHO.

108

Of course I want a serious answer, John, whaddaya think, I gotta sense of humor? But you’re still just a tad off the mark…I don’t suggest there is any new damaging information, what we already know is bad enough to torpedo GeeDubya’s preferred image as the Vigilant Defender. If there were any bombshell-type revelations, they would have leaked by now.

No, what they want to avoid is to make it official. As long as the report isn’t released in its final form, there is still some wriggle room.

109

The national election has never been delayed, much less cancelled, due to a “state of emergency”.

The initial precedent was set by Abraham Lincoln (a Repulican, by the way) who, despite some calls to the contrary, insisted on holding a presidential election during the Civil War.

If a disaster make it physically impossible for people to get to the polls there might be some provision made for that particular area but not for the entire country.

Just curious - I recall that 9/11/01 was an election day in New York City. In fact, some folks were spared from the WTC disaster by detouring to cast their ballots prior to going to work. Anyone know how that turned out? How did they handle that situation in regards to the hours the polls were open, results, etc.?

110

They cancelled the election.

whatever votes were cast were void.

111

I’ve been working on that.

(foil beanie on)

I has to be a generalized push directed on November 1 towards rolling up all the board of election personnel (the pros, not the poll watchers), presumably grounded in: "we’ve learned that there is a plot to trigger simultaneous explosions in various poll locations; the election people have been infiltrated by moles, we have to sort them out.

OK, so now everone with a key to the room where they store the machines is in gitmo, they set off a round of bombs on tuesday morning, just for style, y’know, and then it’s martial law, curfew, and once the day comes and goes, well, what the hell

you can take it from there…

(foil beanie off)

Remember, the underlying premise is that in october the polls have both houses and the white house going dem because he shit has hit the fan so pronouncedly in Iraq, plus the various investigations and grand juries are crescendoing, as it were.

In other words, there will be a total repudiation of the neocons, of carlyle, of the bush doctrine,

and, there will be hearings in the new dem congress, and grand juries from the new dem attny genl.

112

The 9/11/01 NYC mayoral primary was delayed 1 week, that’s all, with any votes from 9/11 discarded. Being under municipal control, that flexibility existed. *General * elections are scheduled under federal and state constitutions and their timing cannot be changed without the full amendment process.

113

I am not suggesting that the sequence of events culminating in the passage of November 2 without anyone voting was gong to be constitutional, ya feel me?

114

If they get through the day, they are half way home.

How about a national “shelter in place” order Tuesday morning, based on a supposed chem or bio plot.

If they can keep folks inside, there is no election.

remember the key is not whether their excuse is plausible.

What the fuck, they have left plausibility behind long ago.

They have the balls, do they have the means?

If you say “yes”, then all we are arguing about is sufficiency of motive…

115

Pardon the digression:
During the Reagan administration, Cheney and Rumsfeld participated in “Continuity of Government” exercises. The plan was that experienced government officials, like Cheney and Rumsfeld slipped away in the dark of the night with a cabinet member, say the secretary of transportation, and a truckload of MREs to an undisclosed location. The concept was that on three of these groups, one could surive a nuclear war and run the country. The problem is that it bypasses the decision of who is POS after the President, Vice President and Speaker of the House are nuked.
That makes the idea of a bomb threat Tuesday scary.

116

Why? Between yourself and alaricthegoth, we are getting precious few complete arguments.

What Cheney and Co. were involved in were not ‘Who will live and become the next President’ excerises, they were, ‘Who will live and become the next Presidents advisers/workers/etc’ excercises. Concise plans have been in effect for passing along the Presidency for quite some time. Probably from when the reds got the bomb. What is lacking, however, is the planning for everyone else. The President does not rule alone; He needs advisers. He needs people to pass along the orders he issues. Et cetera. Continuity of the (executive branch) gov’t, and all that.

Ah well, it hopeless. GW is going to wage TOTAL DOOM APOCALYPSE GALAXY WAR on us, come tuesday. He will do this using dark and arcane magics, of course, since no other methods have been put forward. Hey, I hear that Rove is sitting in the White House, making a ring for each governor, a ring for each Senator, a ring for each of the Justices, and one ring for W…

117

Sure they were. They planned to demonstrate they were in command by ordering a nuclear submarine to surface.

118

from tapped–a sorta blood chilling slip of the tongue by La Professora, don’t you think? It got by me until I saw this post.

WHO VETTED THIS? In her speech to the 9-11 Commission yesterday, Condoleezza Rice seemed to be suggesting that President Bush will be in power until the war against terrorism is won, and that this may take several decades.

?Since [Sept. 11], America has been at war and under President Bush’s leadership, we will remain at war until the terrorist threat to our nation has ended,? said Rice in her prepared – and, presumably, carefully vetted – opening remarks (emphasis added).

Huh?

–Garance Franke-Ruta

119

Put on your red dress, mama, and your foil beanie too…

Condi weighs in…or prepares the ground…

From tapped:http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/04/index.html#002854

DON’T VOTE, YOU MIGHT GET HURT. I know that I and other folks have been criticizing the administration pretty harshly for the way it handled various pieces of pre-9/11 intelligence. There’s little question that more action can and should have been taken. However, I’m a little disturbed by this report in the New York Times, which has Condi Rice warning vaguely that the terrorists might launch an attack on election day:
In recent weeks, as intelligence officials have faced intense public scrutiny about their apparent failure to follow up several leads that might have prevented or delayed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, F.B.I. officials have said they are actively searching for evidence of any plots related to the election year. But so far, they report, they have not found a specific threat.

General warnings have been sent to state and local law enforcement agencies, administration officials say. But the hearings held by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks suggest that warnings are of little use when they are not matched to a specific threat.

Intelligence officials say that abroad, like at home, they have heard nothing that suggests an imminent attack.

Ms. Rice chose her words carefully.

“I think we also have to take seriously that they might try during the cycle leading up to the election to do something,” she said. “In some ways, it seems like it would be too good to pass up for them, and so we are actively looking at that possibility, actively trying to make certain that we are responding appropriately.”

She added: "The hard thing about terrorism is that they only have to be right once, and we have to be right 100 percent of the time. And nobody can be certain there won’t be another attack. But, of course, we are concerned about the election cycle.