Sorry folks, my intentions were good.

My point was that we need to focus on the mid-terms specifically. All other topics are good but secondary.

Love you all, jb

Balrog, I’ve taken a break to cool off, so I’m going to say this in the spirit I believe you did indeed intend, though I know it’s EPU time.

You rally the troops by example-talking about the exciting fight YOU are engaged in-not by trying to cut short other activities they may be engaged in.

So, rather than ask for my CV regarding the fight in Texas, tell me what’s got you revved up in MN(?) and we’ll keep each other on track.

Rock on.

- At least twice, Bush conveyed the message to the Taliban that the United States would hold the regime responsible for an al Qaeda attack. But after concluding that bin Laden’s group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole – a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Cheney – the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action. …

On May 8, Bush announced a new Office of National Preparedness for terrorism at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. At the same time, he proposed to cut FEMA’s budget by $200 million. Bush said that day that Cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and “I will periodically chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review these efforts.” Neither Cheney’s review nor Bush’s took place. …

- … And until the summer, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill suspended U.S. participation in allied efforts to penetrate offshore banking havens, whose secrecy protects the cash flows of drug traffickers, tax evaders and terrorists.

But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.

Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism — which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying — while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.

The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA’s attention.

Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission’s suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. “Frankly, the White House shut it down,” Hart says. “The president said ‘Please wait, we’re going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.’ And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day.”

from CJR

http://prisonplanet.com/what_w…..issed.html

Hart specifically mentioned the lack of preparation for “a weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building.” But the report was not simply alarmist. It was unusually constructive, avoiding grandiose language for a step-by-step blueprint of what urgently needed to be done to create a National Homeland Security Agency, revive the frontline public services, and pull together the forty discrete official bodies with responsibility for national security……

Hearings were scheduled for the week of May 7. But the White House stymied the move. It did not want Congress out front on the issue, not least with a report originated by a Democratic president and an ousted Republican speaker. On May 5, the administration announced that, rather than adopting Hart-Rudman, it was forming its own committee headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, who was expected to report in October. “The administration actually slowed down response to Hart-Rudman when momentum was building in the spring,” says Gingrich. ….

Name of the vid is “Bill Clinton Freaks Out.

the meme is still in the wingnut court.

Just a framing suggestion from an ex-copywriter – rather than “we tried and failed,” perhaps “we were trying, and trying hard, but the clock ran out on us. We passed the ball to the new Bush Administration and they dropped it.”