You’d think a Republican would remember C. Everett Koop.
So John McCain doesn’t know that contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV. Apparently what he does know is that he’s “sure [he's] taken a position on it in the past”, and just needs to have one of his staffers let him know what that was. He also knows that he’s against spending public money on it, even though it’d probably amount to about the cost of a minute and a half of the Iraq war, which he’s fine with extending another hundred years.
But hey, that’s politics these days. What I find most telling is the final paragraph. The media, ever ready to get to the bottom of things (so to speak), interrupted their own brief moment of journalism to change the subject and talk about a pig that Senator McCain saw at the Iowa State Fair last year. Let that sink in for a minute. (Sure they were actually in Iowa during this discussion, but still.) They go from serious, if somewhat baffling, subject… to a pig.
If you’ve got the stomach for it, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald frequently offers up critiques on the media (amidst other usually interesting political subjects). I’ll link just one example - if you’re interested, check it out.
April 2nd, 2008
Pigs and prophylactics. That’s politics, right?
No idea if the numbers actually work out, but I saw a blurb that the dollar amount spent on the military actions in Iraq would put Social Security on stellar financial footing, with money left over. Thanks guys. No, really — I don’t want to retire. Go blow it on death and destruction instead. That’s a nice parlor game, eh? Pick your favorite charitable organization’s 10-year budget and translate that into Iraq minutes (or seconds).
April 3rd, 2008
Ooooh… that’s a sad (but accurate) way to look at… I wonder how man Iraq (milli)seconds my yearly salary is. Someone should come up with a website… “Currently, the Defense Department says it is spending about $4.5 billion a month on the conflict in Iraq, or about $100,000 per minute.”
As for Social Security… realize that much of this Iraq money isn’t actual US money… it’s continued borrowing (or mortgaging of the US’s future) from other countries around the world. Thankfully this is like Fat Tony borrowing money from Homer… the world is going to have a hard time getting all this money back…