Leaving aside your partisan bias, the absolute fact of the matter is that conventions historically ALWAYS resulted in a bump in support for the candidate, even for sacrificial lambs like Walter Mondale and Bob (“Bob Dole wants his bump!”) Dole.
Is there intelligence out there? I think so. Would the White House deliberately time the announcement to take attention away from the DNC? Only a damned fool wouldn’t think it likely.
Eluclidator, you know damn well that “story” was a letter to the editor, not a headline as you represented it. Just what else have you lied about, 'luce? I’ll have to assume everything you’ve ever said.
Pash
Hey, no! Its a whole different typeface and everything!
Look!
Daily Thunderbolt, September 23, 1863
Compare to:
Daily Thunderbolt, November 11, 1863
Whole different thing, man!
I’m sorry, but I can’t side DtC on this one.
From reading the NYT’s article, it is quite clear that this “surrveilance file” has been discovered very recently, and as soon as it was deciphered, it was acted upon by raising the number of police stationed around the targets in the file. Although the first sections of the file are 3-4 years old, it appears to have been consistently maintained, and it points out specific targets.
I just don’t see what’s unreasonable about doing something to attempt to protect these targets. I don’t see them arguing that an attack in immenent, just that they have recently discovered specific intelligence about these targets specifically being the subject of al-Quaida surveillance.
DtC, if you happened to be filling away upon FIA requests to the United States government and last week came across a document created by the Bush Administration in early 2001 (3 years ago) providing pictures of your house, yourself, and your chiuaua on it’s morning stroll captioned with things like, “Let’s get that meddlesom liberal freak and sink those Pinko-Commie SDMB bastards for good!” found that information on your habits had been monitored up to last January, and there were copious amounts of information updates to the file in between, you wouldn’t be at all concerned? Because, hey, you discovered the file last week, and some of it’s three years old, and the newest thing is from January anyway, so what’s the big deal? I’m sure you wouldn’t mind all of the black Chevy Blazers following you around and the little laser-dots on your forehead, because, hey, you havn’t gotten any recent information about the Bush Team being out to get you.
Right? Rigggghhhttt???
No, I would not be concerned because the information is now obsolete and I am not a paranoid, alarmist Chicken Little. The terrorists aren’t planning shit. This is all just a scam to try to depress Kerry’s convention bounce.
There you have it folks, you heard it here first. Terrorism=non-issue. Go home, nothing to see here, don’t think about it, it won’t happen, go chill at the NYSE.
I’ll disagree with a lot of what the Bushies have done in the “War on Terror”, and I’ll vote for Kerry to get rid of them, but not putting police around targets? Compared to invading Iraq and making it a great recruiting tool for terrorists, I’d have to say that this move is Fucking Brilliant ™.
In all fairness, Dio, you can’t go there. The best we can do is a Scottish verdict of “Not Proven”, at least in terms of making shit up.
But what is clear and undeniable, supported by words straight from Mr. Ridge’s mouth, is that the Forces of Darkness have not the least problem with exploiting national security issues to their advantage. Supposedly, we are recieving an urgent national security alert, and yet somehow Mr Ridge feels compelled to point out The Leader’s sterling record as wartime consiglieri.
(There ought to be a “smiley” for “don’t know whether to laugh or puke”.)
Sending a few extra cops around on the QT is one thing. Shrieking a red alert, blockading streets and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on the remote chance that some old dated files that show AQ was casing New York in the last century might actually indicate an impending, ongoing plan for an attack in the modern day is either chickenshit or bullshit. I call the latter.
At most, this is cause for a yellow alert or a mauve alert or whatever the lowest alert is. It’s the kind of thing where you send barney Fife around after dark to shake a few doorknobs. It ain’t no “ten,” that’s for sure.
What, specifically, makes this a “Ten?” Are we not still at “yellow”? The overall threat level has not been raised, police have merely been posted and people working at or around these places have been warned. Don’t they have a right to know? And did they go out and hire cops, or post cops that were already hired. I don’t see how this is costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I call: reasonable, specific, appropriate reaction to specific intelligence and you’re going bat-shit loonball over everything the administration does. If you want to keep the ABB Coalition (Anyone but Bush) on board, try being more reasonable in your next Pit-thread.
Warmest,
threemae
Tom Ridge said it wa a ten over the weekend and the alert level was red for a lot of targets in NY and DC.
I agree with Diogenes, and I’m sure he joins me in demanding an explanation from John Kerry as to why he hasn’t exposed this for the sham it is, since he gets essentially the same briefings the president does.
Likely because for a candidate to deliberately undermine the authority of security warnings would be political suicide, no matter how suspicious he was of their underlying motives. It’d be a gimme to his opponents; “Kerry wants Americans to ignore security warnings!”, “Kerry working against our security forces!”, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
Thanks. I knew there must be a reason. So you’re saying he’s a coward?
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. :rolleyes:
Or, back in reality, what I am trying to say is that if he makes the accusation, he will do himself serious damage for no particular gain, and that people with half a brain don’t do that. Would you rather he speak out and lose the election, or win and try to fix things? I find it rather strange that you persist in blaming Kerry for simple political realities.
But… but… Oh, wait. I got it now. Bush perpetuates the sham because he is a moron, but Kerry perpetuates it because he is a genius. Go easy on me here. I never get the memos.
Lib, could you explain what good it would do Kerry to question the almighty color code? Sure, it would endear him to the hearts and minds of the die hard cynics and smarty pants, but it likely wouldn’t go over with a majority of undecideds. It would also give Bush ammo to use against him.
Bush: “See, Kerry doesn’t care about national security like I do. He questioned the many hues of safety.”
And maybe I missed something, but has anybody explained why it was a good idea to raise the terror alert based on old information without a specific threat? The pictures aren’t encouraging and they do love to plan ahead, but without a time it seems kinda silly. Maybe they were testing the new “region specific” color.
I bet Tom Ridge gets the terror alert color by looking at his mood ring in the morning.
Does anyone else think Osama’s laughing at us somewhere? Every other week we’re issuing proclamations about this or that terrorist target, barricading doors, and generally giving thousands of innocent people a lot of grief. The country lives in fear.
If I were Osama, I’d love it.
What is this, make-shit-up-that-I-said day? Listen carefully. Bush may or may not be manipulating terror warnings for political gain. I, personally, do not know either way, and believe that post-hoc predictions of coincidence are so easily made that caution is needed. Regardless, Bush is not “perpetuating” a sham, he might be creating one. If he is, then without concrete proof, for Kerry to accuse him of it would be extremely politically damaging to Kerry, and would be easily countered by Bush with talk of Democrats undermining the nation’s security. Thus for Kerry to speak out would be stupid in the extreme, particularly as others are drawing precisely the conclusions you demand without Kerry exposing himself to politically fatal damage.
This isn’t exactly Advanced Political Intrigue For Mensa Members here, it’s stating the bleeding obvious. You, however, up on that high horse of yours, apparently believe that it’s unforgivable for Kerry to a) perhaps disagree with your conclusions and b) not speak out on said unproven conclusions despite the inevitable adverse consequences. Considering that you are apparently voting for Kerry out of pragmatic desperation, it strikes me as hypocritical in the extreme that you decry the same pragmatism in Kerry. It is not his job at present to expose all the evil that the Bush administration has wrought, it is his job to get elected, that it might stop. If you didn’t know this, you wouldn’t be voting for him. If you actually want him to win, then your carping in this thread is all the more inexplicable.
Depends on how he does it. Anyway, Bush already uses everything he says as ammo against him. It’s time for Kerry to use some ammo of his own.
Sample speech for next pep rally:
============================================================================
You know what the alert level is today, right?
[…pause… …audience mumbles… …some shout “Red!”, some “Yellow!”, some “Blue!”…]
And you know what to do, right? Where it’s safe to go. Who exactly is coming after you. When they will be there. And what they will do when they arrive. Right?
[…crowd laughing…] No!
That’s because this administration is not serious about protecting you from terrorism. But I am. When you get a terrorist alert from me, it will be an alert that actually gives you information. And it will be based on the very latest intelligence. I won’t wait for years to tell you we have a problem.
[…cheering…]
You deserve better than this! You deserve a president who doesn’t think all this terrorism stuff is some kind of pre-school coloring game. Terrorism is serious business, and you deserve a president who is serious about it!
[…cheering…]
============================================================================
And so on…
Mensa? 
That’s just a society of losers who can’t qualify for TOPS.