Praying For A Terrorist Attack
by digby
Fred Barnes is disappointed that the North Korean test wasn't bigger:
The problem here is that national security isn't the leading campaign issue. And saying it should be won't make it so. What's needed is an event--a big event--to crystallize the issue in a way that highlights Republican strength and Democratic weakness. It was two events--the foiled British terrorist plot and the need to comply with a Supreme Court decision on handling captured terrorists--that led to the Republican mini-rally in September.
Of course there's little time left for a major event to occur. The North Korean bomb test wasn't big enough to change the course of the campaign. So Republicans may have to rely on their two remaining assets: They have more money than the Democrats and a voter turnout operation second to none.
Is that really ok now? Republicans are now allowed to openly wish for some sort of national security "event" that would be big enough to change the course of an election? A dirty bomb in NFL stadium maybe? That would shake things up. How about an assassination? That'd get everybody's attention.
Heck, if they can't get themselves a crisis, I guess they';ll just have to depend on making an argument to the American people and letting them decide on the basis of the republican record. It hardly seems fair, does it?
They really have no boundries these days do they?
Link via Arthur Silber.
While you're over there, take a moment to read some of Arthur's writings these past few weeks. Here's a taste:
We proceed steadily down the road to hell, and all the mechanisms for a full dictatorship are now in place -- and our media act as if nothing has changed. Oh, there's some dispute about what it all means, but that's just the normal difference of opinion. And a few people appear to be deeply worried, but they're just those "extremists" and "leftist loons" who come around to annoy us well-balanced "centrists" every now and then.
And I still continue to hear some especially dull-witted defenders of the administration use the long-discredited argument: "But do you know anyone who's been 'disappeared,' who's been taken away in the middle of the night and never heard from again? Do you know anyone else who knows someone like that? Of course not! See, we're still a free country! You're just a nut!" I dealt with that one here. These people wouldn't know a principle if it announced itself in one-syllable words and then stabbed them in the gut -- which, by the way, it has now done.
Don't look for the meaning of national and world events in our major media. You'll never find it, because it isn't there. But our leading "reporters" and "journalists" will still have their phone calls answered by the powerful who use the media to trumpet their personalized propaganda, and they'll still be invited to the "right" parties. Everybody's happy.
Except for all the rest of us.
Yep.
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