Please, no more

Please, please, let us have no more debates. Clinton and Obama just finished their 20th debate, the last 3 one on one. MSNBC spent the entire day talking about the debate that we had tonight. Then we had the debate, 90 minutes. As I write this the newspeople are still going on and on about it, going over every answer, every nuance, every gesture, everything they can dredge up to pontificate about. Virtually nothing happened during the debate that we didn’t already know about. Clinton would have happily kept going on health care for the whole 90 minutes but mercifully, they stopped it after an only excruciating 16 minutes. Nothing new was added to this question that they have debated over and over again. Then clips were shown of the two of them saying things about each other, things they obviously said to try to make election points that really amounted to very little. Then Tim Russert, who seems unable to resist hypothetical questions, provided some of those. These are questions for which the answers are perfectly obvious or cannot be answered at all. In other words they are a complete waste of time. Russert seems to have a reputation for being a really tough interviewer. He might be tough in the sense that he doggedly pursues ridiculous questions but he’s basically pretty inept. Brian Williams didn’t seem to have much to offer or say. Clinton must have had a super make-up artist as she looked much younger and less fatigued tonight. Obama was, well, just Obama. He doesn’t get rattled, doesn’t get shrill or angry, just looks calm and Presidential. All in all another waste of a lot of air time. No one won, the moderators were, like, moderators, with a lot of really kind of stupid questions. Russert did manage to maneuver Clinton into admitting that she would like to be able to take back her vote for the “war.” Verbally this is the closest she has ever come to acknowledging it was a mistake. You would have thought Russert had just ended WW III, from the look on his face as he was receiving congratulations from his peers. Mind you, she still didn’t admit it was a mistake, but I guess progress comes slowly in the news business. Personally, I think we need a much more precise definition of “news.” As it is anything can be news, and unfortunately these days, is. When asked about Putin and Russia the candidates gave the answer that anyone who reads already knew. I guess if you were illiterate or totally uninterested you might have found it interesting. Did anyone say anything we didn’t already know or could have predicted? I don’t think so. If they hadn’t spent the whole day talking about the debate that was to come they could have given us some real news. Like, there must have been a car chase in L.A. Or Paris Hilton must have been up to something. Or Britney. There must have been all kinds of news we missed. Darn. I have cut down my news watching to 45 minutes per day (just the first 45 minutes of Olberman), and I am seriously considering giving that up. No news is good news.

On the home front: Linda took the front-wheel drive Honda to work for the first time and actually managed to get it up the ice sheet that is our driveway. Work on my book proceeds, but not as fast as it should. We are about to order seeds for this year’s garden. I just re-read The Heart of Darkness and have started on The League of the Iroquois. We patiently await our fifth season of the year, spring break-up. Lots of mud, potholes, and ruts. Eventually they will get around to converting the potholes from holes to bumps. Life goes on at Sandpile, er. Sandhill. Cheers and best wishes to all.

LKBIQ:
“Men’s natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.”
Confucius