Tuesday, August 15, 2006

A Telling Endorsement

Former New York City Council Speak Peter Vallone Jr. has endorsed Lieberman. I love his reason why:

"I'm endorsing Joe Lieberman because he is a friend and a great Senator who endorsed me when I ran as the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York in 1998, and whom I believe best represents our country in a time of great need. I believe that the terrorists are sworn to kill us in our homes and workplaces, so it is much better to be fighting over there than here, and it is not a time to place party over country. We can and should differ with the Republicans on how, but not why."

So, Vallone's first reason is that they're pals and, also, Joe endorsed him once.

I could point out everything else that's wrong with what Vallone had to say but there's really nothing worse than this tacit admission of mutual back scratching as the impetus for a political endorsement.

1 Comments:

At 7:39 PM , Blogger Jon E. said...

Yeah, as usual you've gone straight to the interestingly dumb part of the claim.

But I'd like to take a minute and point to the maddeningly dumb part of this endorsement, the "It's better to fight them over there than here" line of "logic."

That claim only makes sense if you're talking about a specific, finite set of enemies. If you're up against 10 murderers, it's much better to take all of your friends and fight your 10 enemies in your enemies' hideout. That way you're not fighting them in your house. Your kids don't get caught in the crossfire, and the baddies don't shoot up your fish tank.

But before we invaded Iraq, al-Qaeda and similar nutjob jihidi groups were all over the world, including the US. After we invaded Iraq, a lot of those guys are still all over the world, doing whatever they were doing before. Because Iraq wasn't their hideout. So now we're fighting the baddies who dropped by the fight after it started, the baddies who stayed were they were, PLUS a whole bunch of other guys who didn't want to fight us until we busted into their house and shot up their fish tank.

 

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