winterbadger

Despite my best intentions, I haven't been watching this. I did hear some interviews by WAMU's Kojo Nmadi on his show the other day that really confirmed my low opinion of the Republicans as a group. He was talking to some running for legislative offices who are seen as up-and-coming Rep stars. One asserted, in answer to Kojo's question about the effect the candidate thought Bush's popularity would have in his race or vice versa, "Well, Kojo, I'm not running for any individual; I'm running for [candidate's own name]." Uh, OK.

Another fellow (I think the chap challenging Barbara Mikulski for her seat in Maryland) gave a long explanation for his support of Bush's proposed federal marriage amendment, which involved the usual "activist judges" quotes and eventually boiled down to "I support states' rights, so I think the federal constitution needs to be changed because otherwise the states can't exercise their rights." Yeah, that was hardly transparent.

A third person, a woman, was being interviewed about the contrast between the way Democrats had distinguished the war on terror from the war on Iraq and the way Republicans were treating it all as one big event. Wasn't that conflating two different things that even the president had admitted were not directly connected? Her reply: no, he [Bush] had gone in there and pulled the terrorists like Saddam out of their holes; he'd set himself a goal and he'd succeeded and everything was settled and we were much safer now with all of the terrorists behind bars and the war pretty much done and over. Does this person even live on the same planet with the rest of us?

It's not the Republicans who have the lock on dopiness, though. I was listening to an article on Democracy Now this morning about the protests in NYC, and the reporters (who, it being Pacifica, seemed not entirely sure where the line between reporting on and participating in the protests was) seemed to think that the msot succssful event of the day, the one that had accomplished the most and of which they were very proud, was a "direct action" (pretentious, a little?) that had generated so much noise during the outdoor filming of an MSNBC feature on finance that the feature had been move inside. (what the producers were thinking staging something outside in NYC at all, let alone during a convention, I have no idea.) Wow, guys! You shut down a TV program! Next step world peace, right?