perfidy

Ken Layne:

After getting through the insane security at CitiBank Headquarters -- caused by four-year-old Evidence of Terror Plans released Sunday to scare the bejesus out of you -- you get to say "Hi" to Laura Bush in the lobby! That's neat.

It's neat when schedules work out that way.

Oh, and the Immediate Alert Scary-Ville terror info? Now they're saying it actually refers to an attack planned for Sept. 2. You know, the last day of the Republican Convention in New York, when Bush gives his big speech?

[snip]

If you launch a Big Scare on Sunday -- when the big political news for the coming week is the just-finished Democratic convention -- and don't tell us the info you're holding is four years old and that it doesn't refer to any immediate attacks, and then the newspapers come out with that information, and then you change your story and say that the Attack Plans actually refer to Sept. 2 in New York, when the incumbent president will give his big campaign speech, you do not sound like a person would ever treat the Dept. of Homeland Security as anything but a campaign office.

So am I to understand that NYC will be under lockdown for the next month, and the whole world watches as the Terrorized City awaits that Sept. 2 deadline with terrible fear, and we get there without an attack (I hope), and a grateful nation watches the Bush speech, and then the barricades & body armor go away with the GOP convention? Is that the schedule?

Although this is a resoundingly cynical way to look at matters, it's also a fair question. As Michael Totten notes in his link to Layne,

I'm not about to romp off to moonbat land, but this doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Who is the bright bulb behind this stunt, anyway?

Do I think the Bush Administration made up a bogus terror alert to get a jump start on the convention? No. Keep your Kool Aid. But they sure are trying to score points off it, aren't they? Say hello to Laura Bush in the target building's lobby. Please.

Kerry got no bounce - no bounce - from his own convention. If I were advising either Kerry or Bush I'd tell both of them to be quiet and stay away from the cameras. Quit bugging the bejeezus out of everybody. People aren't voting for in this election, they're voting against.

Precisely. Come November, I see two choices for myself: to vote for Kerry, or against Bush. These are not congruent conclusions, and whether I decide to vote for Kerry or to throw my vote away writing in "Turd Ferguson" or "Kodos" hinges in part on how often the Kerry campaign and the Bush goverment succeed in not causing me go fetal every time they make a move.

As for the lack of a convention bounce, I think that is less the result of an unsuccessful convention than an indication of just how many people have made up their minds already. Thank goodness I live in Massachusetts (where John Kerry could literally eat a live baby outside Faneuil Hall and still carry the state) rather than Ohio, where my parent's can't turn on a television or radio without enduring some excruciating pitch for Bush or Kerry. This is going to be an ugly one, and close.