Starve the Beast

While on the road any internet connection is spotty; so I wrote this and scheduled it because it is about something that concerns me. Getting to a motel with wireless, I am expanding it with recent examples. [Starve the Beast] uses the Edwards' affair but is about a bigger issue, one that distracts the public from the issues that actually impact their lives.

Since I did not see the Democratic convention, I missed the way it was covered but heard a commentary that many speeches were not covered in order to run commentary by the pundits. Say what! They want to tell us what to think and it's not just Fox. Worse, they zero in on things that don't matter to distract us from those that do. Reading comments here (which I much enjoyed as the commenters add so much), I saw from Robin that it could have been watched on C-Span which sounds like the only way to avoid those addicted talkers.

My opinion: just show the damned conventions; and if pundits want to comment on them from their supposed news program, do it later! It is not about them except to them!

What makes the mainstream media zero in on trifles? Why do campaigns end up being about junk? That one I can answer as look at the results of McCain running the Hilton/Spears/Moses ads and then at his improved poll results. With a certain kind of voter, it appears to work. It is, however, as bad as the junk food or meaningless reality television that invade our mind and bodies as they train us to only think or eat what is easy.

Was it important to voters if Larry Craig might be a wantabe homosexual? How about that Elliot Spitzer liked kinky sex? Both men ran afoul of laws that were intended to decide sexuality for others but what made the coverage so extensive?

Those stories run, and hundreds like them, instead of health care discussions, questions about transportation, environmental concerns, ways to stop buying so much oil while sending money to potential enemies, and a multitude of issues that actually matter to our lives. Have we become a tabloid people who don't have the ability to think about issues that require exercising the brain? Does the media bear part of the responsibility for it being that way or are they only the result?

Character does matter, but it should be when it relates and impacts the job the politician is being paid to do.

Sarah Palin has a teen-age daughter who is pregnant. Normally Democrats would understand and let that one go (stuff happens) but there might be a tendency to hit on it because of the way Republicans have done (think of how Lynn Spears was crucified as being a lousy mother when her teen got pregnant) or what they would be saying if it was an Obama child; but we need to step back and think about it. It is not an issue.

The issue with Palin is her lack of experience, decisions she has made while mayor of a small town or as governor these last nearly two years (trooper-gate might say a lot about her ethics if it's true), questionable land deals for the city when she was mayor that has left that city still in debt, never having met an oil or timber interest that she didn't want to support, being in an Alaska independence party in the 90s, apparently lying in her acceptance speech about her opinion on the bridge to nowhere, her radical religious views, and her lack of any serious understanding of international policies or constitutional law.

Given McCain's age and his being a two-time survivor of melanoma, it's not unlikely that she could be thrust into the presidency . She talks good given she was educated as a sports announcer, but could she have run a nationwide campaign for president? Is she ready to run this nation from day one? McCain said that was key to who he would ask to run with him but clearly it didn't turn out to be that way. McCain went for the tabloid vote.

If Palin stayed vice president, none of the above would matter, and she'd end up with more child care help from the government probably than she has had as governor; but what if McCain is disabled or dies in office? We end up with someone who probably thinks god takes care of everything, and a country who can ill afford more of that kind of thinking. I keep reading how she's so appealing because she's an ordinary person. So that's what we need to run this country???

Palin receives this nomination for two reasons. First and foremost on her resume is being a fundamentalist christianist which will hand McCain the fundamentalist religionists. For everbody else, we have the second reason, does anyone believe she'd have been invited to run if she had been the homely governor from Alaska with less than two years under her belt. You know the answer!