Finally, a voice crying in the desert is actually heard. Mat Bai spoke up this weekend on the tube, cutting off GOP apologist Alex Castellanos when Alex tried to carry the Trump craziness about Bill Clinton to the usual media pimped level of stupidity.
Martha Raddatz was hosting This Week, and as usual, when she is allowed to take the microphone, slander had replaced nationally important issues. It took Bai to step into the fray and forcibly point out how insignificant Bill Clinton’s infidelities really are, in light of all the important stuff going on in the world today.
It was so refreshing to see a talk show pundit who actually had some idea of what we should be discussing when the most important job in the world is at stake. Is Bill Clinton’s twenty-year old blowjob actually important in a world beset by mass starvation, fanatic terrorism, and our disastrous, environmentally out of control climate? Trump seems to think so, but this is a guy who goes through physically reconstructed wives like my dog goes through a dish of puppy chow.
Maybe both Trump and Hillary but more especially those who are covering the election battles, should try to stick to what’s important, like the poverty level in this country, or the environmental damage being done by our fossil fuel giants or even what to do about our crumbling infrastructure. These are the questions we should be debating in our electoral process. But the Republicans seem stuck on insignificant bullshit like twenty year old, already discounted scandals or Bill’s penchant for leaving his fly open.
I don’t know about Alex Castellanos who makes his living kissing Republican ass, but most of the real people I speak to are worried about the job they just lost or the one they hope for, but can’t count on getting. Most of those people are terrified, not about a couple of Arab maniacs, but about what will happen to their family if someone in it gets a catastrophic illness or how they are going to afford to send their three kids to college without burdening them with a lifetime of debt.
Bai brings us to the realization that Raddatz’ questions to Ben Carson about how his election team is falling apart are unimportant. What she should be asking about is whether or not he has acquired any knowledge or information about what the hell is going on in the Middle East, or does he still think Hummus is a Palestinian freedom fighter? This is a guy who wants to lead the country and he has done no homework on what problems the country faces. Maybe he should own up to the same reality that he would face if Lindsay Graham walked into one of his operating rooms and started to cut open some kid’s head. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on and he has no business trying to be president.
The fact of the matter is that we will never fill the government with competent senators and congressmen if we don’t ask the right questions of the candidates, because if you don’t ask the right questions, you will never get the necessary answers. Delving into Bill Clinton’s search for the perfect blowjob will never get us the answer to how Hillary will handle China’s piracy of our patented technology. Carrying on about Trump’s obvious distain for women will not get the answer to how he hopes to exile eleven million American residents regardless of their citizenship status.
I recently did a column about the media and selling soap. . But it’s not just the media. All of us, the media, yes, but also the politicians, the lobbyists, pundits and supporters as well as every serious citizen must understand that if we require serious candidates to be become serious government officials, then we must conduct serious inquiries into their thoughts and plans on serious issues. Whether Jeb Bush can punch out Donald Trump is not a serious subject. How each would conduct our foreign policy in the Middle East is.
And yet one sees very little of this kind of adult tone in any of the debates or much of the coverage. Sure, the Republicans make it a standard procedure to attack Barak Obama’s policies in Syria and North Africa but not one single candidate has offered any kind of functional strategy to deal with the problems he or she is complaining about in those regions.
It’s interesting that no one on the Right has attacked Bernie Sanders except to call him a socialist, which in their world is a dirty word. Of course none of them understands how a socialist differs from a communist. But that’s okay because none of them understand or want to understand that what Bernie is selling is exactly what the American people need in respect to their financial wellbeing. No, of course it doesn’t fit the GOP party line but when did that corporate written and edited drivel ever take into consideration the well being of the average Joe?
We have, in this country, always been very concerned about the answers various politicians gave to questions asked. It is about time we started being concerned about the questions. How long it takes a presidential candidate to go to the bathroom is simply not germane – to anything. What is germane is how that candidate will react to a Russian incursion in the Balkans when he or she has his or her finger on the button.
There are basically eight questions that have to be answered by anyone who wants to lead this country for the next four years:
What is the best approach to getting peace in the Middle East, how do we deal with an emerging Africa, how do we level the trading field with China, what will our approach be to the environment, how will we upgrade our crumbling infrastructure, what will we do to fix the still existing problems with the ACA, how do we pay for the education of our youth so that they will be equipped to do the jobs that will emerge from all the quickly developing technologies and how do we fix an existing immigration system that hasn’t come close to working in fifty years.
Anyone with any basic intelligence will certainly be able to find other questions, but none of them will involve Bill Clinton’s infidelities, Donald Trump’s penchant for screwing his creditors, Ted Cruz’ birth place, Carly Fiorina’s inability to deal with the truth, who actually stopped traffic on the George Washington Bridge or whether or not Marco Rubio can explain how his drug dealer, brother-in-law got a real estate license in Florida.
Somehow, we must establish which questions are important and which are not. If we don’t, we will end up with the same kinds of idiots that we have allowed to infest congress and many of the state governments across the country. We could even end up with one of them in the White House.
Just perfect!