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Hook, Line and Sinker
So we really fell for it.
On a day in which the Joint Chief Of Staffs, talking on the day before the anniversary of 9/11, admits that we are not winning in Afghanistan, there were 50,000 stories about lipstick.
If, on the day before the seventh anniversary of 9/11, a hundred thousand voices had echoed stories about the failure in Afghanistan, how powerful would that have been!!! What else is more important, more stark, more tragic about the fiasco that is the Bush presidency??
50,000 voices on the failure to capture Bin Laden. The failure to curb Al Queda. The failure to actually put an end to the constant stream of public relations videos pushed out by Bin Laden and his cronies. Failure to stop the recruiting into extremist, fatalistic, terrorist camps - how powerful would that have been!
Single-minded focus, on a sad day in September, before the anniversary of 9/11, on just where we are. What we failed to do. And how grievously we have let them down, those that died.
There should not have been any other story today. The story those generals told this morning was important, sad, and disturbing. It was up to us - what we talked about, today. Surely we could have managed that. Surely we could have managed that little focus, exercised that little discipline on this one day in September.
Surely, on this one day in September we could not have, should not have allowed ourselves to be distracted - that's the least we could have done.
And yet, I came home from work and went on the Internet, and kicked off my Tivo. And all I heard was lipstick, sex, lipstick, pig.
The one powerful moment in time when we could have all stood up and said - this is wrong, this is the status in Afghanistan, Mr Bush, shame on you, that you have so mismanaged this war, the only war that we owed those who died.
What a country.
On a day in which the Joint Chief Of Staffs, talking on the day before the anniversary of 9/11, admits that we are not winning in Afghanistan, there were 50,000 stories about lipstick.
If, on the day before the seventh anniversary of 9/11, a hundred thousand voices had echoed stories about the failure in Afghanistan, how powerful would that have been!!! What else is more important, more stark, more tragic about the fiasco that is the Bush presidency??
50,000 voices on the failure to capture Bin Laden. The failure to curb Al Queda. The failure to actually put an end to the constant stream of public relations videos pushed out by Bin Laden and his cronies. Failure to stop the recruiting into extremist, fatalistic, terrorist camps - how powerful would that have been!
Single-minded focus, on a sad day in September, before the anniversary of 9/11, on just where we are. What we failed to do. And how grievously we have let them down, those that died.
There should not have been any other story today. The story those generals told this morning was important, sad, and disturbing. It was up to us - what we talked about, today. Surely we could have managed that. Surely we could have managed that little focus, exercised that little discipline on this one day in September.
Surely, on this one day in September we could not have, should not have allowed ourselves to be distracted - that's the least we could have done.
And yet, I came home from work and went on the Internet, and kicked off my Tivo. And all I heard was lipstick, sex, lipstick, pig.
The one powerful moment in time when we could have all stood up and said - this is wrong, this is the status in Afghanistan, Mr Bush, shame on you, that you have so mismanaged this war, the only war that we owed those who died.
What a country.
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My friend, someone fell for it hook line and sinker. But it weren't us.
It was McCain. Between you, me, and Nate Silver, the "lipstick-on-a-pig" thing was bait. McCain took the bait, and made it a story. The effect was that Obama got to call him out for being a trivial whiner, and all the national newscasts spent the afternoon saying that
a) McCain is full of it because
b) It's his failed economic policies that are the pig.
Then Obama gets to go on Letterman and make more jokes about McCain's failed economic policies.
Why, again, is this a problem?
Because every moment we don't spend talking about issues is wasted? Because we're going to win the election by talking about tax incentives for green technologies?
People don't give (pardon me) a pig's arse about tax incentives. We'll win the election by making McCain look like a fool. And today that worked just fine.
September 10, 2008 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yea it makes you wonder what sort of an idiot would say such a stupid thing and cause such fire when we have real problems. Oh but I forgot we are talking about Obama a man whose whole point is to attack Sara Palin with his left wing hit squad doing the dirty work instead of actually offering real solutions to our problems. Oh I keep forgeting we are talking about a man with no experience so how could he have any ideas only nicely writen speaches. When asked what will he do it is always Du....Du... I mean ....We need.... I think...... Du... You have to understand ...... etc... 19 months and still waiting for an answer what the hell does he want to do except SURENDER TAX SPEND Change the country to a European style Socialist country and take the education system back to the days of teacher union control instead of parental control. I mean really this cry babay makes me more and more sick everytime he opens his mouth, For him to now cry and complain about the press is being unfair to me is just PATHETIC. He should slip away somewhere and find his manhood and then try to be a professor or something because it is so obvious he is not a president.
September 10, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
rationalcause, there is time enough to remember the victims of 9/11 tomorrow. It should not be politicized, despite what the GOP already has done to make it political.
The war in Afhganistan is a legitimate issue, and the fact that we are losing there makes it more so, especially for those who have died there and their families.
Yes, it would have been nice to blog the hell out of it, especially had the news arrived earlier that the generals believe we are losing ground seven years after 9/11. But many of us did not know until the evening news.
As for lipstick, Obama made his point about manufactured controversies today, and most of the media did a fair to good job of fact-checking McCain. Any day we win is a day closer to finishing the job in Afghanistan and making our foreign policy make sense again.
Rec'd.
September 10, 2008 10:18 PM | Reply | Permalink