Wednesday, August 27, 2008

the wider world

as much as i don't care about the convention, i am concerned that the wall-to-wall coverage of the thing is drowning out a bunch of actual news stories that are happening in the world. like how the karzai government is teetering and the u.s. has apparently killed 90 civilians, including 60 children, in that country.

but the weird thing is that the convention coverage seems to be drowning out not only "world news" but also coverage of actual campaign issues. while the press is critiquing how a bunch of canned speeches were delivered or breathlessly reporting a series of possibly fictional obama-clinton slights, there are substantive issues out there that are mostly ignored.

i don't agree with andrew sullivan all the time (and i don't agree that the bush first and second term were as different as he makes them out to be), but he makes a really good point here. the mccain campaign's foreign policy is simply crazy. threats of force will always have a place in international politics. but when that's your response to everything, without regard to the probably consequences of your threats, i think that makes you unfit to govern. that's far more relevant to making an informed vote in november than anything happening in denver this week.