Kansas Sen. Sam (We Hardly Knew You) Brownback is set to endorse former rival Sen John McCain as his top choice among Republicans -- what this means remains to be seen but it won't help McCain as much as it would have Mike Huckabee who would like to have a little establishment love.
Among Dems in NH, the latest Rasmussen poll will get pundit tongues a wagging as Hillary Clinton's inevitability charge took a slight hit. If you believe the polls (and I do a little; like third-hand gossip) Clinton has a 34 to 24 percent lead over rival Sen. Barack Obama. Rasmussen said her lead has shrunk. I say, it's just getting exciting.
Jeopardy: Generals for $200
Ironic, I guess, it was eight years ago in the fall of 1999, a few months before the NH Primary, when then candidate George W. Bush, an otherwise popular but undistinguished Governor of Texas, flunked a National Geographic quiz given by a Boston TV reporter. In particular, Bush showed his foreign policy acumen when he couldn’t give the name of the Pakistani general who had just taken over Pakistan in a coup. His name was Pervez Musharraf and he was in the headlines then because, well, a country with nukes that undergoes a coup tends to make a few headlines.
Fast forward to 2007 -- Musharraf is a valued ally (of sorts) in the so-called war on terror and he’s been a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Bush even knows his name. Musharraf is even in the headlines again this time by playing the role he’s actually played all along -- dictator. Musharraf has even learned from Bush by using the threat of terror to declare a state of emergency -- though it’s funny how Musharraf has arrested political opponents, shut down television and radio stations, and essentially shut down the country’s legal system. Not unlike America, where Bush and other right-wing groupies whine about the traitors in our midst (Democrats, Republicans with an ounce of independence and, yes, American-hating media weasels) and offer a state of emergency mentality as part of their daily modus operandi.
Writing yesterday in Salon, Middle East expert and blogger Juan Cole sums up the devil’s bargain Bush made with General what’s his name and why it’s left us with yet another dilemma of options ranging from really bad to worse. In fact, it’s been reported that a Bush White House aide exuded a sigh of relief because compared to Pakistan, Iraq didn’t look so bad -- gotta leave it to the Bushies to find a ray of sunshine in a dark night especially since the tragedy of the Iraq obsession continues to play out badly across the globe, including with Pakistan which really has nukes (unlike Saddam Hussein in Iraq), really does have terrorists aplenty (unlike Iraq before our invasion), and is, well, slightly unstable.
Funny how history never seems too far away and shows up as a primary concern out of nowhere.
Dem presidential hopeful (emphasis on hopeful) Joe Biden has stepped up to the plate and offered his own analysis of the Pakistan bomb waiting to explode. He’s the first candidate to give it serious attention (and Joe, being Joe, couldn’t resist calling up Musharraf himself). We can’t wait to see what the Mayor of 9/11 (aka Rudy Giuliani) has to say. After all, Republican Rudy claims to be the foreign policy savant and accused Biden of being a foreign policy phony.
But the bigger question is this: do you think Jon Stewart will get another chance to ask Musharraf where Osama Bin Laden is?
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