Candidates pursue trivia while economy burns

[Winnscott]

USA Today editorial
October 7th, 2008

The nation's financial system is in crisis. Last month, the economy lost 159,000 jobs. On Monday, the Dow dropped "only" 370 points after being down nearly 800 earlier in the day. All the while, U.S. troops continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So what are John McCain and Barack Obama talking about? Associations and scandals so old that most voters don't even know what they're talking about without a historical playbook.

Fortunately, the presidential nominees are scheduled to engage in a town hall debate tonight where average citizens will pose most of the questions. You can bet that these folks will want to know more about how the next president would get us out of economic crisis and war than about long-ago associations.

But that is not likely to stop the descent of the campaigns into nastiness and trivia.

More: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/10/candidates-purs.html#more

[asthmaticeog]

1. Except that the "scandal so old..." was in fact the beginning of the current mess.

Hardly what I'd call trivia.

[MostlyAmused]

2. I saw Obama speak in Asheville Sunday.

He spent almost the entire 40 minutes talking in detail about his healthcare plan, including reasons why dealing with that crisis is a necessary component of dealing with the immediate wider economic / credit crisis.

It would be easy to report on that, if the media wanted to focus on real issues.

[torbird]

3. Nice "Fair and Balanced" there, USA Today

This is exactly the kind of horseshit "punditry" that helped get us where we are today. And let's be clear: USA Today wouldn't have run this article if McCain were the only one making attack ads. The article is meant to call out Obama for "playing rough" and actually (gasp!) defending himself from John McCain's false, outrageous, puerile attacks. It seems USA Today would rather that Obama just played dead until election day! And how dare a newspaper that has tried every tactic to dumb-down the American reading public assert that Obama is confusing voters by talking about historical facts???

I'm going to go find a USA Today newspaper box and take a dump in it.