Tag: Fear-Mongering

Words to Vote By.

“If one candidate is trying to scare you, and the other’s trying to get you to think; if one is appealing to your fears, and the other is appealing to your hopes — it seems to me you ought to vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.” — Bill Clinton, 10/26/04

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Awaken Your Fear.

You heard it here first: Barack Obama’s campaign has abandoned its message of hope, and, with Larry David, is now waging the politics of fear: “David is…quoted threatening the Dartmouth students who are undecided between Obama and Edwards. ‘Okay, alright,’ he said. ‘If you don’t vote for Obama, I’m never doing the show again.’” Sigh, it’s a sad day…no wonder Cheryl left him. Still, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Which reminds me, in case you missed Senator Clinton’s Hail-Mary Giuliani-ism of Monday, Ted of The Late Adopter posted it in an earlier comment thread. Said the Senator, speaking of Gordon Brown: “I don’t think it was by accident that Al Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more closely than some of our fellow citizens do…Let’s not forget you’re hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during the election, you want a president to be there when the chips are down.” Hard to call that a message of change. In fact, take out that weird stab at “our fellow citizens” who haven’t swarmed to Clinton’s candidacy, and it sounds like all the usual terror terror terror garbage we’ve been hearing from the GOP for years.

Dey Tuk His Jerb!!

The Amazing 2008 Race claims another candidate in Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who dropped out today, and endorsed Mitt Romney as the next-best purveyor of gibbering anti-immigrant hysteria.) “Tancredo has consistently polled at the back of the nine-person GOP field.” Well, when the Immigrants and Terrorists come to poison your homes, taik your jerbs, and devour your children, don’t say you weren’t warned.

Black Addington.

“We’re going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop,” Addington said at one point.” The Terror Presidency, a new book by disgusted conservative and former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith, further details the role played by Cheney henchman David Addington in this administration’s rolling back of the rule of law.”‘We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,’ Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.”

A Chicken in every pot, a plunger in every terrorist.

“If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense. We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense.” Meanwhile in related news, Rudy Giuliani lapses into aggro fearmonger mode to try to shore up his right-wing cred. That accompanying giant sucking sound you might hear is all of Hizzoner’s legitimately-earned but now hopelessly squandered Churchillian cred going right out the window…He seems to have reverted to his true colors much earlier than I anticipated. Said Barack Obama, correctly, of Rudy’s pathetic stunt, “[Giuliani has] taken the politics of fear to a new low…We know we can win this war based on shared purpose, not the same divisive politics that question your patriotism if you dare to question failed policies that have made us less secure. The threat we face is real, and deserves better than to be the punchline of another political attack.” Touche.

Tribunes v. Tribunals.

“Purely from a strategic point of view, this is another mess…Every time Republicans think they have an issue to unite them and divide the Democrats, the Republicans end up spending most of the time fighting among themselves.” As fear-mongering and falling oil prices perhaps help the GOP get back in the race this November, the WP surveys the political implications of the recent stand of principle by Senators Warner, McCain, Graham, and Snowe against Dubya’s grotesque tribunal plan. Politics or no, Dubya’s proposed gutting of the Geneva Conventions must be stopped: “‘What is being billed as “clarifying” our treaty obligations will be seen as “withdrawing” from the treaty obligations,’ Graham said. ‘It will set precedent which could come back to haunt us.'”

Fear Factor.

“The power of his rhetoric is in marked decline…We are losing a war right now, and there is no way to get around that.” Five years after the 9/11 attacks, Dubya and the GOP are once again in full “terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11” mode. But, really, what can you expect? Other than going virulently negative, it’s the only trick these jokers have left. If we let them pull it again this November, shame on us.

Terror Firma.

A day after Scotland Yard announces it managed to prevent a major terrorist incident (with the help of Pakistan), terror is back on the menu here at home, with the GOP invoking 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 and Lieberman — absolutely wallowing in shamefulness now — actually calling Lamont’s recent victory a boon for plane-bombers. This was a terrifying near-event indeed — were it not for top-notch intel work by British authorities, the world might’ve experienced another horrific day akin to September 11 in very short order. But, look closely, and you’ll find this plot by homegrown British terrorists bears the likely marks of Al Qaeda, which, last I recall, we left somewhere near Afghanistan to go dink around in Iraq. Crossover Joe and the GOP can shout terror to the heavens, but the fact is that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are more of a threat to us today because of Dubya’s non-sequitur Iraq sideshow. Make no mistake: America is less safe because Dubya and the neocons chose to cut and run in Tora Bora so they could prosecute their war of choice in Baghdad.

They hate these cans! Stay away from the cans!

“‘It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified ‘Beach at End of a Street.’” A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General finds that the government believes Indiana is the most target-rich state in the nation for terrorists: “The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212)” In addition, New York “lists only 2 percent of the nation’s banking and finance sector assets, which ranks it between North Dakota and Missouri. Washington State lists nearly twice as many national monuments and icons as the District of Columbia. Montana, one of the least populous states in the nation, turned up with far more assets than big-population states including Massachusetts, North Carolina and New Jersey.”