It's beginning to dawn on Democrats that they may not win control of the House or Senate in the November elections, so a pre-emptive blame game has begun. And the designated fall guy is Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
So long, Howie, nice knowin' ya.
Dean, the former governor of Vermont and failed presidential contender, is an easy, consensus target. He would certainly deserve part of the blame but would probably get a disproportionate serving of any crow after Nov. 7. Conversely, Dean will get little, if any, of the credit should the planets align and Democrats gain a majority in one or, mirabile dictu, both branches of Congress. That's just the plight of party chiefs.
Dean has few friends in Washington and no power base outside the committee, the majority of whose members are scattered around the country. Some offer support for Dean, but they have other fish to fry, both now and after the voting when the long knives really will be drawn if Democrats strike out on the congressional level for the seventh national election in a row.
Welcome, Howie, to the land of easy marks.
Even the Democrats can stomach a loser only for so long.
extended transcript - quit digging when you're trying to excavate a sinking legacy
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
But all the commenters at the end think WIlly did just grand - he's a towering intellect, and did much better than Bush would have.....
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/24/2006 11:16 Comments ||
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#2
the transcript won't show the purple faced rage (HT Drudge), the accusing tone and smarmy sneering. He's a petulant child
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2006 12:09 Comments ||
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Just saw a snippet on FOX - they're having fun with the interview!
So President Clinton wanted to get bin Laden, but the CIA and FBI wouldn't 'certify" he was responsible?
Who set the bar that high, Mr. President? The Constitution? Congress? Or someone who didn't want to take any risks because he was worried about his "legacy"?
And now you blame those who couldn't meet your impossible standards for proof. How typical.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/24/2006 13:01 Comments ||
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"This country only has one person whos worked on this terror. From the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents from 9/11, only one: Richard Clarke."
I doubt Clarke worked alone, but I hold Clinton personally responsible that he kept Clarke in that position for eight years while terrorists blew up everything from the Black Hawks (1993) to the WTC (1993) to the Riyadh facility (1995) to the Khobar Towers (1996) to the African embassies (1998) to the USS Cole (2000) and his response was pathetic. Perhaps Clarke was working alone. He may as well have been. Clinton, you are as useless as Jimmy Carter, so don't start poking your bony finger at us, you dishonest scold.
#5
And while I'm at it, Monica's Boy, how many thousands of anti-Western terrorists were trained in Al Qaeda's camps while you were busy pushing national health care, gay rights in the military, Kyoto folly, and refinement of the definition of "sex"?
Hafeez Mohammed Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been arrested, released, re-arrested and will undoubtedly be released again. This is not the first time that Pakistan has played out this farcical cycle in order to balance the pulls of two diametrically opposite forces. To Gen Musharraf, men like Hafeez Saeed are life-line; they cannot be put behind bars for long.
LeT in whatever name it assumes at a given moment is important for Pakistans low intensity war in the Kashmir valley and elsewhere in India. Lately there is an additional reason to be benevolent towards Hafeez Saeed. Like all other banned groups, LeT had deputed one of its franchises to operate in the quake hit Pakistan-occupied Kashmir which was swarmed by foreign relief and charity organisations too. One of the British agencies thus transported to PoK was a Sikh organisation with which the LeT (or whatever it was called at that moment) worked closely. The purpose must have been to gauge the potential for revival of unrest in Punjab after the previous attempt by Pakistan had failed.
Hafeez Saeed is considered to be more amenable to the ISI than others in the motley group of jehadi leaders in Pakistan. He also has become somewhat vulnerable to the establishment pressures after a split in the LeTs direct descendent, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. These twists and turns in shady Pak groups do not lessen their menace or sinister designs. Their immediate aim may be to run over India, but they have all a larger ambitious goal of seeing the green crescent flying over all world capitals. Yet, they seem to command only peripheral attention in America.
So President Musharraf is military dictator turned tease, making us wait for his book launch in New York tomorrow for more details of the Bush administrations crudely worded threat against Pakistan if it did not support the war on terror.
Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age, was the graphic warning from deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, though admittedly it came one day after September 11. Armitage has disputed the wording but the fact that such a threat had to be made (followed by a nice little package of $5 billion of aid) raises the question of whose side Pakistan is really on.
Pakistans chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Lieutenant-General Ehsan-ul-Haq, was in London last week talking about how no other nation has suffered so much in the service of the war on terror.
His forces deployed in the badlands that border Afghanistan have lost more than 500 soldiers more than the whole of the coalition combined. Musharraf himself has narrowly escaped three assassination attempts.
#2
the six most senior Al-Qaeda officials to be caught so far, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, were all arrested in Pakistan.
Why are they bragging about this? It is far more of an indictment than anything to boast of.
Tavleen Singh
If there is one thing endearing about the Leader of the Free World, whatever his flaws, it is the contrast between what he says and what tinpot dictators and religious fanatics say when they attack him.
This column comes from New York. I arrived on the day Irans President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN General Assembly that the US was guilty of hegemony and hypocrisy. The day before, Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush Satan. He said, Satan was here yesterday and you can still smell the sulphur.
What I found interesting about the speeches of Ahmedinejad and Chavez is that they seemed not to notice that in their own countries they would not have allowed anyone similar freedom to comment on them.
I have begun to find myself increasingly conscious of how the real clash of civilisations is not between Islam and Christianity but between those of us who live in free, democratic societies and those who live in fanatical, theocratic countries or dictatorships.
It always annoys me when George W. Bush lectures the world on freedom and democracy as if these were ideas that America invented, but lately I have begun to find myself increasingly conscious of how the real clash of civilisations is not between Islam and Christianity but between those of us who live in free, democratic societies and those who live in fanatical, theocratic countries or dictatorships.
The voice of the un-free world becomes louder in the debating halls of the world because we who live in free societies are almost apologetic about our values and rights. In India if there is the slightest infringement of Muslim rights, we liberals rise to the defense. Within days of the recent bomb blasts on Mumbais trains we were attacking the police for scouring Muslim neighbourhoods for suspects.
The killers were Muslims. The police had no idea who they might be so where else were they going to look if not in Muslim neighbourhoods?
When the Danish cartoon controversy arose and when the Pope recently made a devious reference to the spread of Islam by the sword there was more righteous indignation in the columns of the Indian press than almost anywhere else. This is fine but what worries me is how easily our rules change when it comes to dealing with the un-free world.
Why is it that we have no problem with Ahmadinejad threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? Why do we not get upset when Iran allows an exhibition of cartoons that make fun of what the Nazis did to the Jews? Why do Ahmadinejads remarks on the Holocaust being only a myth not disturb us?
It is my view that the Pope should not have said what he did. If he thinks that Islam spread by the sword and that the Prophet Mohammed had nothing new to say then he would have done better to say this clearly instead of quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor. Only when Christianitys problems with Islam (and our own) are spelt out clearly will the process of dialogue become possible. But, having said this, may I say that it worries me very much that when fanatical Maulanas speak out against us heathens and idol-worshippers (a.k.a. Hindus) we rarely read an irate editorial.
When that Muslim minister in Mulayam Singhs government put a price on the head of the Danish cartoonist it created barely a ripple in the Indian media. Think what would have happened if Narendra Modi had put a price on the head of Mian Musharraf?
The problem is not merely polemical. In the streets of New York I see a Muslim face every few steps. There are veiled Muslim women, Bangladeshi waiters, Arab voices and Pakistani taxi drivers. If the West is such a hateful place why are they here? There are plenty of rich, Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia where a good living could be made, are there not?
Speaking of Saudi Arabia, may I add that I find it hard to accept the noisy demands Muslims make to be allowed to build mosques in Western cities when countries like Saudi Arabia refuse to give similar rights to non-Muslims. What sense does it make for those countries to talk of human rights and religious freedom when they do not believe in these concepts themselves?
We who in live free societies need to be more grateful for our privileges and more conscious of the importance of preserving them. In the funny, scary times in which we live there is a strange, new phenomenon whereby dictators lecture the world on human rights and political freedom and we listen and applaud as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
This is happening on account of mindless anti-Americanism that makes us weep daily for the suffering people of Iraq and Afghanistan and forget that what happened in those countries was because of 9/11. For my part, on this beautiful September afternoon in New York, I am on the side of the Leader of the Free World.
tavleen.singh@expressindia.com
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2006 00:00 ||
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#2
Yeah but he missed the point of the muzzies. They get away with it all because they are The Master Religion™. Our silence only confirms their superiority - and their frustration: If they are so superior, how can they be so backward?
Oh, the confusion! They must not be radical enough! Yeah, that's it!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
It's beginning to dawn on Democrats that they may not win control of the House or Senate in the November elections, so a pre-emptive blame game has begun. And the designated fall guy is Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
