Ted's gracious welcome means that I may let him look in the Palantir, if he continues his fulsome praise of my beard and my style!
I am honored to be here, and will attempt to contribute much of a muchness. I'd like to try something, in terms of uploading a file. We'll see if it takes.
Most readers of the Left Sphere of Darkness in blogging terms will remember George Bush's disastrous appearance at the Unity Conference, the minority Journos annual get-together. Bush got handed a quite good question on the role of sovereignty in the 21st century as it applied to Federal/Tribal issues. He responded with a 4th grade Social Studies definition of the term sovereignty as opposed to answering the quite nuanced question itself. Well, we know that Bush doesn't do nuance, but his clear lack of anything resembling a policy clue is just startling. So here's the clip.
So, what's the deal with this clip, why does it matter?
The clip itself is representative of the degree to which Bush is NOT the master of the town-hall format, that's what. The whole 'Bush will do better in debate #2' meme really pissed me off to no end. That meme was generated by pundits (I won't call them people) who felt very strongly that the scripted love-fests Bush has been attending all year on the campaign trail were somehow 'real' public appearances. Odd that these pundits should be so convinced by all this Parlockian nonsense and frippery. Really quite peculiar.
This clip from the Unity conference, however, is Bush at a real townhall-style meeting. To get any comparison, you'd have to go back to New Hampshire 2000 and find footage of Bush doing pre-primary meetings. Who won? John McCain by 16%. Ouch.
I post this not just to point out the staggering obviousness of Bush's unnuanced answer to the sovereignty question, but also to illustrate the point that I made in my (dare I say) virgin post: the cable media, and most of the network punditocracy in this election cycle, are simply in the tank for Bush. They have bolstered his credibility at every opportunity, and have then stuck their fingers in their ears and gone 'lalalalala' whenever reality intrudes.
March of 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq , E.J. Dionne wrote a column in the Washington Post in which he asserted that the President was on medications to control anxiety and affect. The White House did not deny it. The SCUM, however, continues to ignore all evidence to the contrary, and plays in its happy sandbox.
To anyone reading this:
I fear an Australian outcome for this election. Let's work as hard as we can to avoid rewarding not simply the secrecy, mendacity, and belligerency of the Dry Drunk Presidency, but let's also KICK THE SCUM in its useless butt.
Now, I need mead.