Truthers, Birthers, And Their Proper Side Of The Fence

I've seen Van Jones speak and had the opportunity to talk to him at the DNC last year. I'm going to rerun a bit of that discussion and have you tell me if these are the words of a Communist:

On green jobs, which is Jones' real focus area, he stressed that we need to move the environmental conversation from a cultural one to a political one. The green-collar economy "can be a place for people to earn money, not spend money. We need collective action for green citizenship, to create the jobs of the future in a Green New Deal. As long as carbon is free we're never going to move forward." He was pleased by the recent efforts by municipalities and states (green jobs bills have been passed in Massachusetts and Washington state, and the US Conference of Mayors is on board as well), but recognizes that the federal government must be involved as well. "This is about laws, not gizmos. Technology cannot be the savior. This has to be a bottom-up, inside-outside AND a top-down strategy. If the Feds are MIA, human life will be MIA in the future."

We talked about the offshore drilling debate, where Jones clearly stated that the Republicans won the day by lying to the American people. He had three major points:

• There is no such thing as American oil. There is oil drilled by multinationals that is sent overseas to China and India. American offshore driling will do nothing to solve any American oil problems.

• We banned drilling in offshore areas not to save birds and fish, but because of coastal families and coastal communities, because kids were walking into the water and coming out with oil on them, because property values were plunging. Democrats should not be willing to throw away America's beauty for a 2-cent solution in 10 years.

• We've seen the new phenomenon of the "dirty greens," who want to have an "all of the above strategy" on energy, with solar and wind, but also clean coal and drilling offshore and shale and all these dirty polluters. "All of the above" is not a strategy. It's not a wise choice, but a stupid swipe at a persistent problem.

That sounds like pretty mainstream liberal conceptions on energy and the environment. Jones was an activist who went into the government because he saw the need for a federal strategy to deal with green jobs.

But because he was previously involved with Color of Change, who has engineered a successful boycott of Glenn Beck, the Foc News crew has wanted to collect Jones' scalp. So they point to comments and replay them over and over. Not really anything he did, but things he said (ooh, he called Republicans assholes! What delicate sensibilities these chaps have), things he's signed. Although, I have to agree, this was certainly a mistake.

President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones has been targeted again and again by conservatives for his controversial views and now they’ll have another item to use as fodder.

Mr. Jones signed a statement for 911Truth.org in 2004 demanding an investigation into what the Bush Administration may have done that “deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones has thus far apologized for prior statements and said he didn't agree "now or ever" with the 911 Truth letter. But if he has to leave his job at the White House, that will be the reason. And he absolutely made a mistake

But it brings up something interesting. There are now around a dozen Republican members of Congress who have co-sponsored legislation, essentially asking the President to reveal his birth certificate. The Birther phenomenon is at least as crazy and irresponsible as the Truther phenomenon. Why would it be OK to have 12 members of Congress who are conspiracy theorists, and not one in the White House? Now, the members of Congress would tell you they're not conspiracy theorists. So would Van Jones.

The range of debate that's acceptable and unacceptable keeps changing, somebody send me a scorecard.

So You Don't Prosecute Our Friends For Wrongdoing, We'll Politicize 9-11

Danger, Eric Holder - apparently Republican Senators want you to know that if you actually obey the rule of law, you're killing innocent people just like the terrorists did when they flew into the World Trade Center.

Leading GOP lawmakers cautioned U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday against opening an investigation into alleged CIA interrogation abuses, saying that such an inquiry could have serious national security repercussions.

"It is well past time for the Obama administration to lift the cloud that has been placed over those in the intelligence community and let them return to the job of saving American lives," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Holder signed by nine Republican senators. An investigation that distracts the CIA, the lawmakers said, "could leave us more vulnerable to attack."

Among those who signed the letter were Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the minority whip; Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee; and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the judiciary committee.

If Republicans are being dicks, rest assured that Jon Kyl is in the middle of it. He also thinks immigrants should get a death sentence for overstaying their visas. So I'm sure Kyl wrote this part of the letter himself:

"The 9/11 Commission emphasized that keeping our country safe from foreign attack requires that the Justice Department work cooperatively with the intelligence community, but the appointment of a special prosecutor would irresponsibly and unnecessarily drive a wedge between the two."

Shorter Republicans - if you actually enforce laws against torture, the terrorists will have already won.

Honest Dick

Nancy Pfothenpfhaupfer wants you to know that salt of the earth Dick Cheney, the guy who chopped down the cherry tree at Mount Vernon (OK, shot it in the face, actually) and admitted it to his father, would never tell a lie:

"You know, obviously you've got different opinions on the whole issue of harsh interrogation techniques. And of course, Cheney wasn't running in the last election, but Sen. McCain, for who I worked, was very clearly opposed to all these harsh interrogation techniques. And he went on record saying, as a former prisoner of war for five years, you don't get high quality information from these types of interrogations. People will basically say anything in order to make it stop. I don't believe, however, that the former Vice President would be making statements that he knew to be inaccurate."

Shuster just breaks up laughing from that one. And mockery is the right reaction. Because we're now seeing Cheney backtracking from his own statement that CIA classified documents will show that torture saved lives.

The key moment came when his interviewer said: “You want some documents declassified having to do with waterboarding.” Cheney replied:

“Yes, but the way I would describe them is they have to do with the detainee program, the interrogation program. It’s not just waterboarding. It’s the interrogation program that we used for high-value detainees. There were two reports done that summarize what we learned from that program, and I think they provide a balanced view.”

Bear with me here, because this is crucial. Cheney is carefully saying that the documents summarize what we learned from the overall interrogation program. Torture, of course, was only a component of that program. So he’s clearly saying that the docs summarize what was learned from a program that included non-torture techniques, too.

Here’s why this is important. It dovetails precisely with what Senator Carl Levin, who has also seen these docs, says about them. Levin claims the docs don’t do anything to “connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques.”

Of course, Cheney's only hedging in the event that the documents do get released, so he can find some other rhetorical ground. He was perfectly content to lie when he thought that the documents would never get released to the public. The same way he lied yesterday about the Iraq war saving lives, an unprovable negative based on things Saddam Hussein had no capacity to do. It's an obvious falsehood, but he can retreat to some ground where he can claim that nobody else could prove him false. The same with him foisting 9/11 off on Richard Clarke, on the grounds that counter-terrorism was his job so only he must be responsible. Never mind that Cheney takes all kind of credit for keeping America safe AFTER 9/11. And of course this analysis neglects plenty:

When the moderator reminded Cheney that Clarke had repeatedly warned the administration about al Qaeda’s determination to attack the U.S., Cheney snarkily replied, “That’s not my recollection, but I haven’t read his book.”

In fact, it was Cheney who “missed” the warning signs, not Clarke. New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” reprinted some of Clarke’s emphatic e-mails warning the Bush administration of the al Qaeda threat throughout 2001:

“Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack” (May 3)

“Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot” (May 23)

“Bin Ladin’s Networks’ Plans Advancing” (May 26)

“Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent” (June 23)

“Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” (June 25)

“Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks” (June 30)

“Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays” (July 2)

Similarly, Time Magazine reported in 2002 that Clarke had an extensive plan to “roll back” al Qaeda — a plan that languished for months, ignored by senior Bush officials:

Clarke, using a Powerpoint presentation, outlined his thinking to Rice. … In fact, the heading on Slide 14 of the Powerpoint presentation reads, “Response to al Qaeda: Roll back.” … The proposals Clarke developed in the winter of 2000-01 were not given another hearing by top decision makers until late April, and then spent another four months making their laborious way through the bureaucracy before they were readied for approval by President Bush.

Dick Cheney is a pathological liar, who knows enough to give himself a minor rhetorical out should anyone call him on it. He's also a pathetic child for relying on 9/11 trauma to explain their terror policies.

"Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans," Condoleezza Rice said last month as she admonished a Stanford University student who questioned the Bush-era interrogation program. And in his May 21 speech on national security, Dick Cheney called the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a "defining" experience that "caused everyone to take a serious second look" at the threats to America. Critics of the administration have become more intense as memories of the attacks have faded, he argued. "Part of our responsibility, as we saw it," Cheney said, "was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America." [...]

Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

Read that whole thing. It's an indictment of the worst Administration in history, who used a crisis to pursue long-sought goals, and rationalizing them through fear and deception.

The Saddest Man

I didn't think too much about Dick Cheney's speech yesterday because the framing of a "showdown" between the President of the United States and the least popular human on the planet just made me laugh. But this monstrosity probably should be read and studied, because it offers a window into a diseased mind and an object lesson in specious logic.

First of all, the speech offered no broad vision of dealing with national security in the 21st century, but was simply an opening statement for Cheney's war crimes trial, with a defense of torture and all of the other illegal practices of his regime. But because these practices are indefensible, he structured this defense with lies and distortions and paragraphs that were sometimes contradictory in the space of a few words. He mentioned 9/11 twenty-five times, and tried to re-create the atmosphere of fear and desperation, a world in which he clearly still lives, traumatized and desiring only to inflict pain. He continued with this idea that the Bush Administration kept America safe, except on 9/11, when nine months of ignored warnings and inattention produced the tragic wreck of that day. And even more people died in future actions in Iraq and Afghanistan than died on September 11, anyway. He takes credit for taking down A.Q. Khan's network when America had nothing to do with it and A.Q. Khan now walks as a free man. He talks about moving decisively against Al Qaeda when Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remain at large, and when they pulled out of Afghanistan to start an unnecessary war in Iraq. He flat out lied about torture and its effectiveness on numerous occasions. He decried the Obama Administration's use of "euphemisms" when he was the one who INVENTED the term "enhanced interrogation techniques. He claims that Article II authority and the AUMF allows illegal actions. He CONTINUED - in this speech - to push a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. He kept claiming that the work at Abu Ghraib was the result of a few bad apples and not policy, which has been disproven time and again.

And then there's the most clever lie:

As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I've formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.

It's incorrect that the President declassified the torture memos - the Justice Department did. And just a few paragraphs earlier, Cheney attacked the President for doing so. He only likes HIS kind of selective declassification. But one thing he knows - under an executive order by none other than George W. Bush, the CIA cannot declassify the documents he seeks while they are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. Cheney knows this, so he can yap about the one document that would prove him right, knowing that it cannot be released. Cheney may have never seen the law as an impediment, and claims that Obama could insta-declassify whatever he wants, but he knows that the President won't choose to do so, allowing him to lie away about evidence that, by accounts of those who have seen it, wouldn't prove a thing.

But I'm really saying too much about this sad, pathetic man, trying to save himself from universal condemnation. Time has marched on.

How Dare YOU, Sir!

There's a new cottage industry in Washington, and that's defending George Bush's legacy on talk shows. The Bush Legacy Project never really got off the ground because the participants have to run such a con to even try to defend this guy, their pleadings look ridiculous. And here is Ari Fleischer:

FLEISCHER: It was in part because of Iraq and large part because of the economy that Barack Obama won. Having said that, I also think Barack Obama should say thank you every day that he inherited a world without Saddam Hussein in it. The one thing people are going to remember the most is that he kept us safe. […]

But after September 11th, having been being hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam Hussein might not strike again? We got a report saying al Qaeda is determined to attack the United States. Well, that’s not a surprise. Of course, they are. It doesn’t say where, it doesn’t say when, it doesn’t say how. So, if you get a report like that, what do you do?

It's the old conflate-Saddam-with-9/11 backflip one-and-a-half with a twist! What's the score? Ooh, a 4.5 with the Finnish judge, that's going to hurt him. And a 0 from the American people.

But this is the even better part:

Matthews: We were attacked on your watch. If you start getting into who was attacked when, we suffered the worst domestic calamity in history on your watch.

Fleischer: Chris, how dare you!

How DARE you bring up factual events!

Well, Fleischer clearly failed in that effort. How about Bush Legacy Project Manager, 43 himself?

Former President George W. Bush’s first post-presidency speech will take place on St. Patrick’s Day — March 17 — in Calgary, Alberta. Although organizers have declined to say if Bush will be paid, he once boasted that he hoped to make “ridiculous” money on the lecture circuit once he leaves office.

But instead of greeting Bush with open arms and (potentially) wads of cash, activists and human rights lawyers in Canada are hoping their government will greet him with handcuffs — or at the very least — bar him entry in to the country. In fact, Vancouver Lawyer Gail Davidson said the government has an obligation under the law to ban Bush from entering Canada because of his role in supporting torture:

"Davidson says that because Bush has been “credibly accused” of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are “inadmissible” to Canada. “The test isn’t whether the person’s been convicted, but whether there’s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,” says Davidson."

Oops. I guess directing and authorizing torture does get in the way of spinning all your successes.

(by the way, Stephen Harper is not going to arrest George Bush. But I'm sure he'll get the hero's welcome he deserves in Calgary.)

The Unbearable Lightness Of Glenn

Practically all I know about Glenn Beck is that he once famously said "It took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families."

Beck: You know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families. It took me about a year. Um, and I had such compassion for them and I really, you know, I wanted to help them, and I was behind -- let's give them money, let's get them started, and all of this stuff. And I really didn't -- all the 3,000 victims' families, I don't hate all of them, I hate about, probably about ten of them. But when I see 9/11 victim family, you know, on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up.' I'm so sick of them. Because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them. And again, it's only about ten.

So to see him tear up over the death of 9-11 widow Beverly Eckert, who died in that terrible Buffalo plane crash, is an act of hypocrisy by which all future hypocrisy can be judged. These guys wrap themselves in 9-11 so easily that they don't even know when they're contradicting themselves.

Tragic

The crash of a Continental commuter plane in Buffalo, killing all aboard, is terrible. That a 9/11 widow was aboard the flight is just a cruel irony.

Condolences to the families of the victims.

AK-Sen: I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

To Ted Stevens, being convicted on seven counts of making false statements means that you haven't been convicted of anything.

"I've not been convicted yet," Stevens said Thursday in a meeting with the editorial board of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "There's not a black mark by my name yet, until the appeal is over and I am finally convicted, if that happens. If that happens, of course I'll do what's right for Alaska and for the Senate. ... I don't anticipate it happening, and until it happens I do not have a black mark."

Stevens reiterated that position during a televised debate late Thursday night, declaring early in the give-and-take with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, "I have not been convicted of anything."

Here's the deal. You can appeal, but as of right now, you actually have been convicted. The part where the jury came into the courtroom and found you guilty? That was part of the whole conviction thing.

In other news, apparently Saddam caused 9/11. But it's a secret!

MODERATOR: Knowing what you know now, do you think that the country of Iraq and Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attack on the United States?

STEVENS: I know more than you think I know, and I believe they did.

BEGICH: I don’t believe they did.

At least he's not only deeply in denial about his own conviction.

Support Mark Begich.

...The Anchorage Daily News, which has been a great paper on the Palin/Troopergate affair, endorsed Begich today.

This is Going To Leave A Mark

I already talked about Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, the reviews for which have not been all that positive. She made an honest but ill-considered comment about going to war with Russia over Georgia, and she blanked on the question of what is the Bush doctrine, only answering it after help, and wrongly (the issue was preventive war vs. pre-emptive war, and she just went with the latter). But this statement could be even more damaging, because it's such an obvious falsehood.

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

"America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001," she said at the deployment ceremony, which drew hundreds of military families who walked from their homes on the sprawling post to the airstrip where the service was held.

I think the last thing anybody wants or needs is for a national leader to go around conflating Iraq and 9/11 again, especially on THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE 9/11 ATTACKS. It's discredited nonsense designed to whip up a patriotic fervor that can be used for all kinds of nefarious ends. And as you'll see in the video of the event, she was reading from a prepared script. This was intentional.



Now, you would think that such an astonishing ignorance of world affairs would be immediately disqualifying for higher office. But you would be wrong. In fact, Palin's lack of knowledge or even interest in foreign policy isn't a bug, says Robert Kagan, it's a feature.

Robert Kagan, a foreign policy advisor to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.

“I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world,” he said. “I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.”

They really think this way. The neocons believe that those with experience of the world are eventually corrupted by it, and those pure enough to have no experience whatsoever are more receptive to their worldview. This stands to reason - only an ignorant fool would follow the logic of the group that has been wrong on foreign policy time and again for over 50 years. The value of ignorance EXPLAINS the failures of neoconservatism, and the neocon worldview cannot be ingested without a fair degree of ignorance. So it's symbiotic.

Neocons believe that on the world stage, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. No wonder they consider Sarah Palin such a darling.

McCain and 9/11

Another year has passed, another memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks has been set, more wreaths have been laid, and Osama bin Laden is still at large.

Let's take a look at John McCain's relationship to this, shall we? On the morning of 9/11, he listed a host of countries that would have to pay for the attacks, including Iraq:

To be honest with you, Dan, I never thought that an operation of this sophistication and size would take place. I just never did. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and others — who we know engage in proliferation of — of capabilities and, from time to time, involve themselves in state-sponsored terrorism. But never did we imagine on a scale such as this.

He said Iraq was "obviously" next to Paula Zahn on October 9, 2001.

He was simply in a rush to get to Iraq, just like this President and this Administration. Now that Iraq has been proven beyond all doubt to have nothing to do with 9/11, and the occupation itself has been a disaster (more on that later), only NOW has McCain turned back to bin Laden, making the most selfish statement that a national politician has maybe ever made.

Keith Olbermann raised a brilliant point tonight. John McCain bragged in June that he, and only he, knows how to capture Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for killing 3,000 people on September 11. Pray tell, how Senator?

As Keith notes, it's been several months now and John McCain is still keeping his little secret. Is McCain planning on blackmailing the country, Olbermann asks - he won't tell us unless he wins? I can imagine some in the media will say "pshaw, we know what McCain meant." No we don't. McCain was happy to invoke September 11 for his own political purposes in June, and just last week at his own convention John McCain was happy to force the nation to witness again the horrific spectacle of planes flying into the World Trade Center and the towers falling. For some reason, John McCain thought showing that video, up until then taboo at a political event, was now fair game. John McCain told the country three months ago that he and only he - not Barack Obama, but John McCain - had the secret to how to capture Osama bin Laden. But apparently he's keeping the secret a secret.

Somehow the war on terror is supposed to be a "plus" for Republicans. The facts, of course, are that we invaded Afghanistan and then neglected the country to such a degree that even the Pentagon agrees that the current strategy is not working, and we're running out of time for our efforts to be anything but counterproductive. Not only is our coalition dissolving in Iraq, but the Canadians are bugging out of Afghanistan, leaving us practically alone in these money pits and sinkholes which are failing to make the country any safer. The President is only know authorizing raids inside Pakistan, but it's a clear end-of-the-term, election-year ploy to make a big headline splash, at the expense of angering a brand new Pakistani government.

(of course, Obama is talking about falling into these same traps. I don't argue for isolationism, but an understanding that, as Admiral Mullen said yesterday, "we cannot kill our way out of the problem." Ending terrorist threats require local law enforcement and lifting societies out of poverty as much as bombs and guns.)

The truth is that John McCain, a dishonorable man, has shown that he does not have the judgment and temperament to deal with the threats we face in a measured and realistic way. In fact, it's clear that he would fly off the handle and run the globe red with blood at the slightest provocation.

UPDATE: Michael Smerconish, who I couldn't stand when I lived in Philly but has also come around as a more sensible conservative, addresses this subject today as well.

You Don't Expect Us To Do Our Job, Do You?

It's really quite an incredible statement.

The White House said Wednesday that the failure to capture Osama bin Laden in the seven years since the Sept. 11 attacks shows the limitations of military and intelligence power.

"This is not the movies. We don't have super powers," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "But what we do have is very dedicated people who are working with our allies and trying to bring (al-Qaida leaders) to justice."

First of all, this is the BUSH White House saying that there are limits to military power, the guys who unleashed Shock and Awe, the guys who invaded unilterally, the belligerent, arrogant hotheads who are always willing to threaten force against anyone at any time. There are apparently limits to intelligence, too, this coming from the ones who would toss aside privacy, civil liberties protections, the Fourth Amendment and both domestic and international laws and treaties against torture, in the name of gathering intelligence.

Then they claim it's not the movies. They can't just stride in like cowboys and say "Wanted, Dead or Alive" and dress up in a fighting costume and take out the bad guys, you know?



Finally, they say they don't have super powers, they can't snap their fingers to bring bin Laden to justice, it's a long slog that requires lots of effort.

This is of course why all the effort put into going into Afghanistan and trapping bin Laden and his counterparts in the Tora Bore Mountains was called off, because it was going too well, I guess, and everyone knows these things take time:

When [did you become] ... aware that Iraq was topic A or B inside the foreign policy side of this administration?

I became aware of the significance of Iraq in February of 2002, when I was told that this administration had made the decision to begin to de-emphasize Afghanistan in order to get ready for Iraq, and that it wasn't just a theoretical decision; it was an operational decision that resulted in personnel and assets which had been important in the early phases of the Afghanistan war being redeployed to the disadvantage of victory in Afghanistan. ...

They must have known at that time that both philosophically and at a personal level, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were adversaries. The idea that they had collaborated in 9/11 was absurd.

How did you hear about it, that they were headed in this direction in February of 2002?

Well, I heard about it during a briefing at Central Command [CENTCOM], which is located in Tampa, Fla., on the Afghanistan war. The briefing was very positive. Things were going well; victory appeared to be close at hand. Then I was told in a private meeting that no, that wasn't the case; that in fact, we were beginning to recede from the war in Afghanistan precisely to get ready for Iraq.

Who told you?

Gen. Tommy Franks.

Take me into the meeting. What's happening? ...

The general said, "Senator, I would like to speak with you privately." We went into his room, and he proceeded to tell me that they weren't fighting a war in Afghanistan; that they were, in fact, beginning to redeploy assets. He particularly mentioned special operations personnel and the Predator unmanned aircraft as examples of assets that were being redeployed from Afghanistan to get ready for Iraq.

He then laid out what he thought the strategy should be for victory in the war on terror: Finish the job in Afghanistan; move to other areas that had large numbers of cells of Al Qaeda -- Somalia, Yemen being number one and number two. He went on to say that Iraq was a special case, that our intelligence there was very poor, and that the Europeans knew more about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction than we did.

But they don't have super-powers, OK?

Now, in recent weeks the commando raids and drone attacks at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have increased, and clearly there's an effort to make an October Surprise out of this very issue. So all this could be an expectations game. But Perino is right, in one respect. It IS very hard to capture Al Qaeda leaders when you de-emphasize their capture for 6 years to go on a happy hunting trip in Iraq. So reversing that all in a matter of a couple months is not entirely likely.

See also the fact that we are a rapidly deteriorating state with reduced influence in the world as our bloated military becomes increasingly irrelevant. The problem is that Republicans and neocons associate weapons with super powers, and their ineffectiveness at targeting terrorists with them is becoming clear. Perino didn't know how much truth she was offering.

I Respect John McCain's Incredible Service To Our Nation

OK, so I missed McCain's speech (more on that later), but I'm catching snippets here and there and reading the reports, and it looks to me that he ate it.

Of course, the guy's not known for oratory, so I wonder why they made it 53 minutes long. I guess that his main message was that the whole country must come together in the spirit of bipartisanship and line up behind every single conservative policy that the Bush Administration has rammed down our throats for the past eight years. But that doesn't make it a bad speech. I think the wooden delivery, the fact that they used that stupid screen so that the subject at the podium was behind a solid color almost all of the time (yes, we had more lime green Jello to watch tonight), and the lack of passion had something to do with it.

Jeffrey Toobin called it "the worst speech by a nominee that I’ve heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980." Michael Gerson, Bush's speechwriter ferchrissakes, said it was "a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they have never heard from Republicans before. And in reality, a lot of the policy they’ve heard from Republicans before." The reviews aren't glowing.

And Tom Ridge calling him John Bush doesn't help.



For three days, the Republicans hid the top of their ticket and talked in abstractions about some brave warrior king, Sgt. Rock or something, and then the real guy walked out tonight and offered the exact same policies as the past eight years. I think Matt Stoller is absolutely dead on.

If I'm a Republican, I'm really annoyed that Palin isn't running for President. McCain's speech was not nearly as good or as interesting as Palin's, and he's an awkward speaker. The loudest applause came from his references to her.

...oh, and I guess there was a completely gratuitous 9-11 reference, on video no less. Nice exploitation.



...two things I noticed from the earlier part of the program. Tom Ridge told a story about how he visited McCain at a low point in the primary campaign, and asked him how he was doing, and McCain said "I've been through worse." Amazing that he plays the POW card in private, too. Then, in Cindy McCain's campaign video, they tell the story of how the two met, at a party in Hawaii. They seem to have forgot the part about John being married at the time.

It Was Seven Years Ago Today...

Where were you when the President said "All right, you've covered your ass, now"?



We can never forget this stuff, nor can we ever forget the danger of electing anyone so disconnected with reality and controlled by outside forces... or in other words, the Republican nominee.

Walking Gaffe Machine

Is it the self-assuredness or just the ability to rely on the compliant press that enables John McCain to bust out all these misstatements on a daily basis?

Adding to the total today is the idea that Iraq was the first major post-9/11 conflict... boy, I knew that the GOP forgot about Afghanistan, but I didn't know they TOTALLY forgot about it.

And then he tried to deflect Barack Obama's successful speech in Berlin today by saying that "I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States," apparently forgetting the events of a month ago:

However, on June 20, McCain himself gave a speech in Canada -- to the Economic Club of Canada -- in which he applauded NAFTA's successes. An implicit message behind that speech was that Obama had been critical of the trade accord. Also, McCain's trip to Canada was paid for by the campaign.

I could loop in the persistent and damaging reports about Randy Scheunemann working in close contact with Bush Library briber Stephen Payne on influence-peddling schemes, too.

If I were McCain I'd just pack it in and follow the route of William McKinley's front-porch campaign - never leave the office or the homestead, and for God's sake don't open your mouth anymore.

The Return Of Rudy

You'd think that when you embarrassed yourself so totally as a Presidential candidate, possibly running the worst campaign in modern history, you'd spend the rest of the year in hiding, dodging the laughter of children on the street. But not so for Rudy Giuliani, who has decided to reappear as a surrogate for John McCain on national security. The ensuing reaction from the Obama campaign and the DNC almost makes me wish that St. 9-11 had won the GOP nomination.

The Obama campaign and the DNC struck back at Giuliani for criticizing Obama for pointing out the handling of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial as an example of how to deal with terrorists in American courts.

In an e-mail, entitled, “Giuliani v Giuliani: 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Case,” the Obama campaign points out that in 1993, Giuliani said at the time, per the New York Times, March 5, 1994: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared that the verdict ‘demonstrates that New Yorkers won't meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon -- the law.’”

Also from that day’s Times: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he hoped that the verdicts would lessen tensions rather than increase them. ‘It should show that our legal system is the most mature legal system in the history of the world,’ he said, ‘that it works well, that that is the place to seek vindication if you feel your rights have been violated.’”

The DNC takes its shot at Giuliani with an e-mail with a title, parroting Joe Biden’s Greatest Debate Hits: “Rudy, ‘Noun, verb, 9/11’ Giuliani returns.”

“Democrats are not going to be lectured to on security by the mayor who failed to learn the lessons of the 1993 attacks, refused to prepare his own city’s first responders for the next attack, urged President Bush to put his corrupt crony in charge of our homeland security, and was too busy lobbying for his foreign clients to join the Iraq Study Group,” DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said. “Rudy Giuliani, can echo the McCain campaign’s false and misleading attacks, but he can’t change the fact that John McCain is promising four more years of President Bush’s flawed and failed policies on everything from energy security and the economy to the war in Iraq.”

TPM Election Central has been digging up quotes all day from McCain advisers who repeatedly suggested during the primaries that he failed New York City on 9-11 and that he has no revelant national security experience whatsoever. It's been fun.

I don't think the McCain camp expected Rudy to get pounded so effortlessly. But since the campaign, the bloom is WAY off that rose.

Wright on Right (and Wrong)

I actually did catch most of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's interview with Bill Moyers over the weekend, and I found him to be articulate, with a deep knowledge of history and Scripture, whose message is really not as it is has been caricatured in the media (of course). Moyers took the time to give full context to the snippets of his sermons we were treated to for weeks on end, and it revealed some interesting results. For example, that "America's chickens are coming home to roost" line was not Wright's, but him quoting some "ambassador" on Fox News a few days after the 9-11 attacks. He was describing someone else's viewpoint, and it was ascribed to him, as if that were his immediate reaction to the fall of the Twin Towers. Wright also has as many harsh words to say about African-American men who fail to live up to their responsibilities as he does for selected actions of the government. He understands that when you love someone, you want them to do the right thing, and when they don't you express your disappointment or frustration to nudge them in the right direction. It's as true with a person as it is with a country, and that value of dissent is one value on which this country was built. So yes, Mr. Stephanopoulos, I think Rev. Wright loves this country as much as I do. And I think we both love it more than you.

Here is a very difficult but enlightening concept discussed on the program:

BILL MOYERS: Hermeneutic?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Hermeneutic is an interpretation, it's the window from which you're looking is your hermeneutic. And when you don't realize that I've been framed- this whole thing has been framed through this window, there's another world out here that I'm not looking at or taking into account, it gives you a perspective that-- that is-- that is informed by and limited by your hermeneutic. Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains. If the God you're praying to, "Bless our slavery" is not the God to whom these people are praying, saying, "God, get us out of slavery." And it's not like Notre Dame playing Michigan. You're saying flip a coin; hope God blesses the winning team, no. That the perception of God who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country. Same thing you find in Psalm 137. That those people who are carried away into slavery have a very different concept of what it means to be the people of God than the ones who carried them away.

BILL MOYERS: And they say, "How can we sing the song of the Lord of a foreign land?"

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct.

BILL MOYERS: That chapter ends up with some very brutal words.

REVEREND WRIGHT: It does. And--

BILL MOYERS: You used them in one of your sermons--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, I did. I was trying to show how people- how the anger- and we felt anger. I felt anger. I felt hurt. I felt pain. In fact, September 11th, I was in Newark. September 11th, I was trapped in Newark 'cause when they shut down the air system I couldn't get back to Chicago. September 11th, I looked out the window and saw the second plane hit from my hotel window. Alright, I had members who lost loved ones both at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. So, I know the pain. And I had to preach to them Sunday. I had to preach. They came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, those soldiers who slaughtered his son and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred for armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents, the babies, the babies . "Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." And that my beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.

This of course is why a Fox News anchor said on Sunday "I fell asleep midway through, Moyers blew it!" As Pastor Dan says, this is a stunning level of discourse for the soundbite culture to grasp, and one that's easy to rip from context. He's basically saying that we must pause at responding to a cycle of violence with more violence and try to determine the moral course, the one that offers redemption and wholeness, while acknowledging our imperfections and rushes of emotion. If you want Rev. Wright to stand in for Barack Obama, I would say this speaks extremely WELL of him. Pastor Dan gets this right:

One of the best things to happen to the media in the past twenty-five years was the emergence of conservative advocates who condensed the Christian faith to two simple talking points: abortion and homosexuality. It gave them a nice handle on the Christian story: churches comforted their flocks and sang nice songs on Christmas and Easter, and to the extent that they were political, they cared about these two issues and only these two issues. Everybody else was a dangerous radical.

It's the same story we keep hearing about any number of issues today. The corporate media has drawn the boundaries for acceptable discourse on religion with a decidedly conservative tilt. You can be against abortion and homosexuality, or you can be quiet about your political applications of your faith. Otherwise, you're part of the "fringe," and therefore suspect.

Wright threatens that consensus. He knows that the Bible has plenty to say about today's headlines, and he's not afraid to articulate it. As if that weren't bad enough, he's had the bad taste to teach the next president of the United States that Christianity might be relevant.

I'm not a Christian but I accept and embrace any religion that has a moral obligation to connect the faith to the issues of the day, to man's inhumanity to man, to the constant struggle for survival, to hope and justice and human rights. The Dobsons of the world use religion as a spear; Wright uses it as a clarion call. It's easily misunderstood.

Wright continued his public appearances by speaking at the Detroit NAACP and this morning at the National Press Club on the "invisibility" of black church traditions in mainstream American life. He could have been talking about the moral and spiritual center of religion.

People are going to continue to attack Obama on this issue, even, I see today, John McCain, who used some favorable interpretation of an Obama comment to get his licks in.

But McCain noted that Obama said on Sunday on Fox News that Wright was an issue, seemingly opening a door for McCain to connect the Democrat to his former pastor.

"I saw yesterday some additional comments that have been revealed by Pastor Wright, one of them comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman Legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior, I mean being involved in that. It's beyond belief..." McCain said.

"I can understand why Americans, when viewing these kinds of comments, are angry and upset," McCain said.

Jeremiah Wright was a Marine. His comment had nothing to do with the crucifixion and everything to do with America's role as a world superpower.

These are intentional misundertandings and discolorations. I'd like to believe that there is a simple power in Wright's point of view that can transcend his first impression created by the media but we all know that's not true. And yes this will be an issue until November. However, having heard his pastor I believe Obama has more wisdom and sense of justice than I previously thought possible in a Presidential candidate. In other words I found it to be a dog whistle for me.

UPDATE: I'm assuming that Atrios is referring to Wright:

There's this guy on my teevee talking about how our government supported Apartheid and the peasant-killing Contras using money gained by selling arms to Iran. Oh and 4000+ US troops died in Iraq over a lie.

What can be said about Wright is that he has a memory and he doesn't repaint our national picture by touching up the edges. His portrait is real and honest and informs the future. That's much too gray and shaded for the black-and-white robotic Republicans.

The 11th Day Of September Happened On 9-11!

I think the most despicable moment in last night's debate was Boy George Stephanopoulos' Hannity-fed question about William Ayers, and particularly the "look what he wrote in the New York Times on 9-11" remark. Please. I know you can't read, Boy George, but the thing is that newspapers come out early in the morning, meaning that Ayers wrote what he wrote on 9-10, and the correlation is nothing more than incidental.

That Clinton parroted this, referencing 9-11 with an alacrity that would rival Rudy 9iu11iani, is quite disgusting. She's really crossed over into a full Republican campaign mode. Her TV ads are almost totally negative, and her justification is that "The Republicans will bring it up in the fall," apparently allowing her to... campaign like a Republican. This has an impact. I had a discussion with my Hillary-supporting dad last night and I might as well have been talking to Bill O'Reilly.

It's I guess comforting to know that if Hillary is behind in the fall she'll fight dirty, but of course this campaign in ensuring that if Hillary does pull out the nomination by a miracle, she'll be well behind in the fall.

UPDATE: I don't want to leave Charlie Gibson off the hook, his believe that $200,000 is a middle-class salary and that the most important challenge facing the nation is THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX just portrays how out of touch these stufed shirt media types are.

UPDATE II: This is pretty damn funny.

Backpedal

Michale Mukasey faced a Senate hearing last week and had to wiggle away from his claims that FISA caused 9/11, or whatever he intimated.

On his third question, Leahy asked Mukasey to clarify a recent comment he made in San Francisco where he implied that the failure to listen in on a phone call from Afghanistan to the United States prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks had cost 3,000 lives.

"Nobody else seems to know about this. Can you tell me what the circumstances were and why?" Leahy said.

"The phone call I referenced relates to an incoming call that is referred to in a letter in February of this year to House Intelligence Committee Chairman [Silvestre] Reyes [(D-Texas)] from Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and I," Mukasey said.

"One thing I got wrong. It didn't come from Afghanistan. I got the country wrong," Mukasey continued without specifying the country where the call originated [...]

Mukasey, who used the phone call as an example to highlight the intelligence shortcomings before 9/11, did not explain why he included the comment to argue for expanded surveillance powers in a question-and-answer session after his speech on March 27.

"No FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] application should have been necessary to monitor a foreign target in a foreign country," Leahy reminded Mukasey. "We didn't need it then. And we didn't need it today."

He seems to think that if he can just muddy it up enough, if he can give the phone number but with the area code missing, he can get out of this.

John Conyers says no.

Based on the April 10 letter and other information from the Department, it now appears that the incident mentioned in your March 27 remarks concerned phone communication between a future 9/11 hijacker while in the U.S. and a known terrorist facility in the Middle East, which was in fact discussed by the Congressional intelligence committees in their report on 9/11. As the committees explained, however, the failure to utilize the information in this call had nothing to do with limitations in FISA, contrary to what your March 27 speech appeared to suggest. Instead, the problem was NSA’s narrow interpretation of its authority to collect and disseminate data on U.S. persons following its acquisition under Executive Order 12333. Your letter to Chairman Reyes recognizes this. As the Congressional intelligence committees’ joint inquiry pointed out, “NSA adopted this policy even though the collection of such communications is within its mission and it would have been possible for NSA to obtain FISA Court authorization for such collection…. NSA did not, however, develop a plan with the FBI to collect and to ensure the dissemination of any relevant foreign intelligence to appropriate domestic agencies.”1 In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the NSA changed this policy. Although a number of changes to FISA have been enacted since the attacks of September 11, this change in NSA policy did not require Congressional action, and FISA had nothing to do with the failure to intercept and utilize effectively the intelligence at issue. We hope that you will clarify your remarks accordingly.

In addition, however, the April 10 letter does not respond to several of our requests. Our letter did not, as you characterize it, generally inquire “why FISA’s emergency provisions were not an adequate substitute for the authorities the Government has obtained under the Protect America Act.” Rather, our inquiry concerned the specific phone call about which you spoke. We asked whether the then-existing emergency provisions would have allowed interception of the specific call at issue, if indeed the foreign portion of the call was a known terrorist location. To the extent that your response set forth an argument for the PAA or the Administration’s preferred version of FISA reform, it was non-responsive to our request for information. Based on the clarifications in the April 10 letter, we understand that the answer to our actual question was that, in fact, then-existing FISA provisions would have allowed the interception and dissemination of the phone call, but that it was NSA’s then-existing narrow interpretation of Executive Order 12333 that was the problem. Please explain promptly if that is not the case.

Our April 3 letter also asked for a copy of the secret Office of Legal Counsel Memorandum of October 23, 2001, concerning the purported authority to conduct certain military or other activities within the United States. Quite recently, you testified to a Senate Committee that the portion of that memorandum that has been publicly revealed – the claim that “the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations” – may no longer be operative, though you did not state whether this or other conclusions in the memo have been withdrawn.2 This testimony underlines further the need for release of this memorandum, and we ask that you promptly reply to our request that you do so.

Of particular interest is that (still classified) October 2001 memo. If the OLC asserted a right to defy the Fourth Amendment I want to know if it remains operative.

At some level, it's fun to watch these functionaries squirm, until you realized they've wrecked the country, that is.

Rice For America

It occurs to me that I never wrote about my meeting with Oklahoma Senate candidate Andrew Rice at a house party in Venice last weekend. Apparently the Oklahoma GOP is calling it some kind of dark secret, but somehow I found out about it and I'm not invited to anything. Furthermore, they claimed that Dianne Feinstein and Henry Waxman were on hand, which isn't true. I did see my state Senator Sheila Kuehl, my state Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, and LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl. But I guess they aren't big enough to term the event "a “Who’s Who” list of the most liberal Democrat’s in California." On the plus side, I suppose I'm one of those "liberal Democrat's" (jeez, they're a political organization, can't they hire a copy editor?).

Rice is a 35 year-old former divinity student (he has a Masters in theology from Harvard) who wasn't all that involved in politics until after 9/11, when his brother died inside the World Trade Center. Afterwards he devoted his life to social causes and became drawn into the world of public policy. He worked in the grassroots for a few years, behind the scenes on such projects as ensuring the creation of the 9/11 Comission. In 2006 he was elected at the age of 33 to the Oklahoma State Senate from Oklahoma City. In his speech he emphasized his proud Democratic ideals (though I'm a little upset that the word "Democrat" isn't on his fliers, I know it's Oklahoma but at some point we have to be proud of the signifier), particularly in the areas of ethics reforms, economic justice and fairness, and renewable energy solutions for Oklahoma. That last bit is significant, because he's going up against James Inhofe, public enemy number 1 for the environmentalist crowd. Inhofe's delusional rants denying the existence of global warming, which he called the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on Americans, has generated notoreity and publicity, but not the good kind. In fact, both of Oklahoma's Senators, Inhofe and Tom Coburn, are from the grandstanding, angry, wackadoo school of Republican politics. That state REALLY lost the lottery on this one.

However, even Coburn has come out and said that the war in Iraq is a mistake. Inhofe, when asked about it, said that "he couldn't have said that," moving him even further to the fringe than... Tom Coburn. At the gathering, Rice noted that Inhofe has been an elected official for 41 years - "that's six years longer than I've been alive." The nutball quotes from Inhofe over the years could fill a book, but my favorite was a story I heard at the event from an Oklahoma local. Howie Klein heard it too.

Someone I met from Tulsa told me a very interesting story about Oklahoma Secretary of State Susan Savage. Well, actually the story is about Oklahoma's crazy U.S. Senator, James Inhofe. And it isn't another "crazy Inhofe" story. This one is a "nasty Inhofe" story. I mean everyone I've ever met from Oklahoma has been polite and courteous; so this one kind of surprised me.

While Susan was mayor of Tulsa her daughter Emily's 8th grade class went on a school trip to Washington, DC. The school had arranged for the kids to meet a member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation. It turned out to be Senator Inhofe. When he came forward to address them he asked if Emily Savage could raise her hand. Nervously, she did.

"Emily's mother is the mayor of Tulsa," the senator told her classmates. "I try to work with her and do what's right for the people of Tulsa but Emily's mother believes in killing babies."

When Emily got home and told her parents what happened they thought she must have misunderstood Inhofe. Susan called the teacher who had chaperoned the trip and was aghast to learn that Emily didn't misunderstand anything. She called Inhofe and told him that if he ever came near her daughter again or said anything to her she would seek a restraining order in court. Which is exactly what the long-suffering folks in Oklahoma should do in November.

Inhofe's grandstanding and outrageousness has hurt him in Oklahoma. His approval ratings are below 50%, and Rice keeps him under 50 in a head-to-head matchup, too. That's the danger zone for incumbents. If the environmental groups see promise here, you know they'll jump in hard as well. Plus, you have to love a guy whose wife is named Apple. That's right, Apple Rice. Which I believe I've gotten at Thai restaurants from time to time.

Expanding control of the House and Senate is going to be very important this year, although it's getting almost no attention thus far. Rice is obviously a long-shot, but in a map-changing scenario anything is possible. I'll be posting a lot more on Congressional races as the year goes on.

Rudy Drops Out, Hands 9/11 Imagery Over To McCain

I'm watching this speech with Rudy Giuliani endorsing John McCain, and afterwards McCain gets up there and mentions 9/11 three times in his 5-minute speech.

It's like a disease that's catching.

p.s. The end of the prospect of Rudy Giuliani in federal government should bring howls of joy across the nation and maybe even the world. The man was a psychotic with post-traumatic stress disorder, and an authoritarian narcissist who would have been the worst possible outcome for any logical human being. The idea that he would be in any kind of McCain veepstakes is beyond crazy. Um, what great campaigning skills does he bring to the table? Would he compel a strategy of sitting out the general election and waiting for a December run-off?