Author: Shalimar

With the thwarted attack in London already being attributed to Al Qaeda and our threat level being raised to red, it looks like we are in for a repeat of the 2004 election.  “Terror, terror, terror, only Republicans can save you.”

We all know this is bull, and it shouldn’t be to hard to reverse with a series of commercials targeted to each district.

My idea:
Open with the famous clip of Bush saying he just doesn’t spend much time thinking about Bin Laden anymore, with the date in the corner of the screen.  Believe it or not, many Republicans have never seen this because the media didn’t make a big deal of it even though it is probably the stupidest thing a US President has ever said.

Follow that with a clip or clips of the local Congressman or Senator professing their support/love/undying admiration for Bush, with dates in the corner as before. Preferably there would be a clip from roughly the same period as the Bush clip, plus another recent one, though it might be hard to find many Republicans saying anything positive about Bush recently.

Next, play a clip of someone in the administration saying Al Qaeda is responsible for the London attack that was thwarted, with date stamp in the corner as before.  No one has gone before a camera saying that yet, but I assume Tony Snow will at some point.  If no one does, newsreaders have already quoted unnamed administration officials as saying Al Qaeda is responsible, so there will be clips of people like Daryn Kagen and Wolf Blitzer to use.

Finally, finish the commercial by running the clip of Bush again, looping if necessary to get it to at least 10 seconds.  Superimpose over that the text “Time For A Change” for 5 seconds, then “Vote Joe Smith for Congress”.  Fade to black, and that’s the end.

That’s one idea.  Hammer away with other commercials on the same theme, tailored to each competitive district, and it should be a landslide victory in November.

I was thinking about the USA Today story.  The NSA’s goal is to acquire a database with records of every call ever made in the United States.  They aren’t taping all of the actual calls, just keeping records of who called whom when.  There was also a hint on CNN from the author that this program may have been planned before 9/11.

What would you do with that kind of database?
I can’t see that it serves much of an investigative purpose.  Police already have access to phone records with a search warrant if there is probable cause that a crime was committed.  FISA allows even more leeway in the definition of probable cause on national security issues.  Is collating all of this information for “patterns” really going to add anything substantial to our national defense?

Politically, on the other hand, such a database can be put to enormous advantage, especially for a party that expects (as the Republicans did in 2001) to be in power forever.  There is tremendous advantage in knowing who political opponents have spoken with and when those conversations took place.  There is even more advantage for the leak-obssessed in knowing who certain reporters talked to in the days leading up to politically-damaging stories.

I suspect a thorough investigation into exactly who had access to the information the NSA is accumulating would be very revealing.  There is no way this power-mad administration could possibly refrain from the overwhelming temptation to use this vast accumulation of data for political purposes.  In fact, that’s probably why they started collecting it in the first place.