Sunday, November 18, 2007

In the Las Vegas debate Thursday, the Democratic candidates had to keep their answers short because CNN didn't want to keep the audience off the gambling floor for too long. Wolf Blitzer started cutting them off as soon as they started speaking. And in the case of Dennis Kucinich, Blitzer barely let him speak at all. He practically prefaced each question to Kucinich with, "You have absolutely no chance of winning but...". The first primary is several weeks away, but the "frontrunners" get much more time to speak than the "second tier" candidates. How can you have frontrunners when no one has voted yet?

General Musharraf wants to keep the state of emergency in Pakistan until after elections are held. What better way to hold a free and fair election than have your opponent under house arrest during the campaign? That means he would have about as many public appearances as Fred Thompson. And Musharraf might decide to put off the election indefinitely, something Rudy Giuliani wouldn't mind, since he talked about postponing the Mayoral election in New York after September 11.

The Annapolis Middle East Summit has been criticized by Republicans like Mitt Romney who revealed his vast knowledge of the conflict when he said, "How could you possibly have a peace conference at this stage? Who would you talk to?" Apparently Romney has never heard of the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, who will be at the Summit and hopefully will be spoken to. What should have been a week-long meeting, now is rumored to only run for a day, and if they listen to ignorant words like Romney's, the Summit might wind up as a 10 minute conference call.

CBS News writers are threatening to go out on strike, which would give Katie Couric a chance to do what she does best- a news broadcast without any news. The best part of the CBS Evening News is the recorded voice of Walter Cronkite at the beginning of the show. Originally they were going to go with a video of Edward R. Murrow rolling over in his grave. But Katie isn't the only one. All the 6:30 PM network news shows fail to report what's really important. I guess the war in Iraq must have ended, because it wasn't even mentioned on tonight's NBC Nightly News. But there was time for a 5 minute story on teenage paparazzi.Thank God, we live in a country that allows a free, independent press to flourish. They don't get to see stories like that in Pakistan.

Although what Musharraf has done is totally reprehensible, it's hard to fear a guy who was a guest on "The Daily Show". And one hopes that even Musharraf can see the irony in appearing on a show that regularly ridicules our President, while doing so in Pakistan results in a three year prison sentence.

And yet I think it's great that the Bush Administration is actively talking with a leader who does things we disapprove of. While they're at it, can't they make time in their schedule for Ahmadinejad? Or do they only talk to world leaders who wear ties?