So--let's start with Rudy!
Everyblogger and hir commenters have had at this by now, but, okay, here goes:
Rudy Guiliani has presented himself since 9/11 as something of a terrorism expert, because he was mayor of the major metro area that got attacked that day--but you knew that. What you may not know, and I sure as hell don't, is why he's seen that way. We were attacked domestically under Bush. There were the events of 9/11, but there was also the anthrax attacks, and the DC sniper, the shoe bomber, an incident at LAX at an El Al ticket counter, (for stuff that all happened in the first two years of the Bush administration)--and also some lesser known, but still pretty terror-isty things:
From March 6, 2006:
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A University of North Carolina graduate from Iran, accused of running down nine people on campus to avenge the treatment of Muslims, said at a hearing Monday that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar was accused of driving a sport utility vehicle through The Pit, a popular campus gathering spot, injuring nine people Friday. None of the victims was seriously hurt.
Police Chief Derek Poarch said Taheri-azar told investigators he intentionally hit people to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."
Taheri-azar, 22, appeared in Orange County District Court in nearby Hillsborough on nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault.
Or there was this event August 29, 2006 which involved, (from Wiki--it's like this event was wiped off the internets except for some right-wing anti-jihad sites):
Omeed Aziz Popal is alleged to have intentionally struck 18 pedestrians with his black Honda Pilot SUV on August 30, 2006, and faces a murder charge and 19 counts of attempted murder.[1][2] Popal was 29 at the time of the attack. Several major news organizations have described his attack in the San Francisco Bay Area as a "rampage".[3]....
Popal's attorney, Majeed Samara, has described his client as "mentally ill".[11] However, he provided no details. In contrast to his lawyer's claims, one psychologist has said that "the mental disorder explanation is actually very weak," and that it fails to account for this specific crime, which is exceptionally rare in the U.S.[12]
The media has noted the similarities between Popal's case and that of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, an American citizen who intentionally struck nine pedestrians with his SUV on March 3, 2006, and was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. Taheri-azar was 22 at the time of the attack.
(I count these two if Mr. Guiliani wants to count the Ft. Hood shooter.)
It starts to look as if terrorism has been an ever-present threat the past 9 years that Guiliani has been getting attention by speaking about it. That is so funny. Because it would seem as if he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Imagine that.
Okay, now that Guiliani is out of the way--John McCain is ready to face his opponent in the 2010 Senate race. He's prepared to run against....
Barack Obama?
I know, right? That's the cornerstone of his recent radio ad (yeah, that's his site, click where it talks about his radio ad). It says something like this:
"President Obama is leading an extreme, left wing crusade to bankrupt America. I stand in his way every day. If I get a bruise or two knocking some sense into heads in Washington, so be it. I'll keep fighting for jobs and economic growth for Arizona as long as I'm in the Senate," McCain says in one of them.
"My lot in life has been to wage war against wrong, like today's massive spending at the worst possible time," he says in the other. A narrator calls McCain "Arizona's last line of defense" against Obama's agenda and says McCain leads the charge against "ridiculously unaffordable ideas like government-run health care." Conveniently for the McCain campaign, it appears that the only place to listen to the ads, other than Arizona radio stations, is here, on the campaign's contribution-form web page.
Last line of defense against Obama. Who whupped his ass in the presidential race. McCain's tropes will be:
Earmarks--bad!
Stimulus--bad!
Spending money--bad!
And any actual aleviation of the recession because of the aforementioned is going to have to be shown as illusory by McCampaign 2: The Senator Strikes Back. And he's going to have to out-conservative the Teaparty candidate that will surely primary his former-maverick self. It will be tough, but he's already established what he will do for the great people of Arizona:
He will willfully obstruct any legislation Obama seems to support, probably with little heed to merit, he'll eschew any earmarks or stimulus that might come their way--because that's just too much spending, my friends, and he'll possibly go back on anything he might have just said depending on what people seem to want at the moment. Except for the parts where you get what you want, Arizona.
Office-holders like McCain are why we have elections.
And now--I'm sorry--Sarah Palin!
I am so looking forward to 60 Minutes this Sunday, when Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the authors of Game Change, a book regarding the 2008 presidential election, will be interviewed. The above "O'Biden" clip is just a spot-verification of the claim by McCain campaigner Steve Schmidt that, well:
In the McCain-Palin camp, Schmidt says that when he was told by a campaign staffer prepping Palin for her debate with Biden that the vice presidential candidate was doing very poorly in her preparation, it was a crisis moment. "He told us the debate was going to be a debacle of historic and epic proportions…she was not focused…not engaged," he tells Cooper. "She was not really participating in the prep."
Schmidt confronted Palin with this and, he says, "She said, 'You know, I think that's right.'"
If that wasn't enough for deep concern, Palin had a reflexive tendency to refer to Biden as "O'Biden," says Schmidt, something that had to be fixed before the debate. He says others in the campaign came up with a solution. "It was multiple people - and I wasn't one of them - who all said at the same time, 'Just say, Can I call you Joe,' which she did."
Schmidt says he took over the prepping, simplified it, and says she "more than held her own" in the debate. But not without one "O'Biden" slip on national television.
O'Biden--yes, she did.
Ahhh--poliblogged. Got that out of my system for a minute....feels better.
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