"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Saturday, January 26, 2008

Saturday Primary Blogging
Posted by Jill | 7:58 AM
Being a John Edwards supporter is starting to feel an awful lot like being a Mets fan. Other polls are less encouraging, but the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll shows Edwards gaining four percentage points since Wednesday to a level of 19% -- five points behind Hillary Clinton and within the poll's margin of error. Fortunately, this is a primary and not a caucus, so we won't be hearing about Clinton caucusers closing the doors at 11:30 for a noon caucus.

No one's expecting Edwards to win in South Carolina today, but a second place finish, or even a very close third would be enough to keep him very much in this thing, if not as the nominee than as potential kingmaker. Of course as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, the so-called "superdelegates" (or as I call them, party hacks) could make the entire primary race moot if they decide to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton at the convention. But Edwards' role in this primary race is important, and it transcends his own potential for nomination. His role is about holding the feet of two centrist candidates to the progressive fire. We have one candidate who's a complete and unabashed corporatist, and another one whose inclination is to avoid fighting Republicans wherever possible in the name of "bipartisanship."

We're seeing this in the refusal of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to stand up for the U.S. Constitution by going back to Washington and standing with Chris Dodd (who deserves our thanks for his courage) in refusing to grant immunity to telecommunications companies who have been conducting mass surveillance of American citizens for the past seven years -- even before the 9/11 attacks. Oh, they've given lip service to opposing immunity, but they are sitting Senators, their votes are needed, but they're weaseling out of taking a stand. Yesterday John Edwards issued a plea to his opponents to do the right thing:

When it comes to protecting the rule of law, words are not enough. We need action.

It's wrong for your government to spy on you. That's why I'm asking you to join me today in calling on Senate Democrats to filibuster revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would give "retroactive immunity" to the giant telecom companies for their role in aiding George W. Bush's illegal eavesdropping on American citizens.

The Senate is debating this issue right now -- which is why we must act right now. You can find your Senators' phone numbers here or call the Senate Switchboard at 1-(202)-224-3121.

Granting retroactive immunity is wrong. It will let corporate law-breakers off the hook. It will hamstring efforts to learn the truth about Bush's illegal spying program. And it will flip on its head a core principle that has guided our nation since our founding: the belief that no one, no matter how well connected or what office they hold, is above the law.

But in Washington today, the telecom lobbyists have launched a full-court press for retroactive immunity. George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing everything in their power to ensure it passes. And too many Senate Democrats are ready to give the lobbyists and the Bush administration exactly what they want.

Please join me in calling on every Senate Democrat to do everything in their power -- including joining Senator Dodd's efforts to filibuster this legislation -- to stop retroactive immunity and stand up for the rule of law. The Constitution should not be for sale at any price.

Thank you for taking action.

John Edwards
January 24, 2008


(For the record, both of my Senators, Lautenberg and Menendez, are opposed to immunity.)

This is no time to "go all wobbly", as Margaret Thatcher might say, on the Constitution. Edwards isn't a current Senator, but as I mentioned above, his role is to get his opponents to do the right thing when it would (and apparently will) be far easier for them not to.

Meanwhile, in the Batshit Crazy Stakes, what should be the final nail in Rudy Giuliani's campaign coffin appears in today's New York Times: the revelation that the New York Police Department issued an analysis in 1998 opposing in no uncertain terms Rudy Giuliani's plans to locate the city's command center in the World Trade Center:

“Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” a panel of police experts, which was aided by the Secret Service, concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum.

The memorandum, which has not been previously disclosed, cited a number of “significant points of vulnerability.” Those included: the building’s public access, the center’s location on the 23rd floor, a 1,200-gallon diesel fuel supply for its generator, a large garage and delivery bays, the building’s history as a terrorist target, and its placement above and adjacent to a Consolidated Edison substation that provided much of the power for Lower Manhattan.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor then, has acknowledged some police skepticism about the site, but he has described it as resulting from a jurisdictional dispute between police officials and his emergency management director, who had played a role in selecting the site.

[snip]

“This group’s finding is that the security of the proposed O.E.M. Command Center cannot be reasonably guaranteed,” the commander of the intelligence division, Daniel J. Oates, wrote in the July 15, 1998, memo to the police commissioner.

The memo said the conclusions were based on analysis by police officials with expertise in infrastructure, building security, explosives, traffic and ventilation systems, who also consulted the Secret Service, including the agency’s New York special agent in charge, Chip Smith.

“Mr. Smith agrees with this assessment,” the memo says in its concluding paragraph, “even though his own office is in Seven World Trade Center. He acknowledges that the security of his office is a continuing concern because of the public nature of the building and the other reasons specified in this report.”

The memorandum was provided to The New York Times by a law enforcement official not affiliated with a rival political campaign.

Mr. Giuliani received a briefing on the Police Department’s recommendations, but it is unclear whether he received a copy of the memorandum.

Mr. Giuliani has said in the past that one of the reasons for choosing the location was that several federal agencies with which city officials needed to be in contact during emergencies, including the Secret Service, had their offices there. Other federal agencies in the building included the Defense Department and the C.I.A.

But the Police Department took the opposite position in the memo, saying the presence of those agencies made the building a more likely target.


The mythology that Rudy Giuliani was able to build up around his role as "terrorism expert" and "tough leader" grows simply out of two facts: 1) that the President of the United States was crapping his pants with fear on 9/11 as he jetted around the country after sitting in a third grade classroom for seven minutes using schoolchildren as human shields and Giuliani was the public face of so-called "leadership" that day; and 2) that he was able to do so because since his own command center had been destroyed, he had no place else to go but photo-ops on the streets of New York. As the news comes out of his ineptitude in getting radios that worked to the firemen of New York and his refusal to listen to just plain common sense about where the city's command center should be located, his claims of being the only candidate who can keep America safe ring ever more hollow. With current polls in Florida showing him in Huckabee territory at around 15%, Tuesday should deflate Giuliani's biggest dickus balloon once and for all.

Labels:

2 comments
Bookmark and Share
2 Comments:
Blogger Unknown said...
I predict Edwards is about as likely to go to the White House as he is to Super Cuts.

(Get it? LOL. I do amuse myself sometimes.)
1/26/08, 9:13 AM  
Blogger Distributorcap said...
rudy --- king of timing........

he got SO lucky on 9/11 having no where to go except to have photographers follow him''
1/26/08, 3:28 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home