Marginalia Americana

(What the Bush Administration Did for Americans)

In a recent online conversation among a few friends, one of us wondered if the Bush administration had come up with any successes from a policy (not political) point of view. The Bush tax cuts did not seem so useful to us, since none of us were particularly well off. Prescription drug coverage by Medicare didn’t cut it either; we were too young for that. In fact, this question was difficult to answer to the point of being rhetorical. One of us came up with homeland security, specifically airport security, but the one who posed the question told us that taking measures that any administration would have done in light of the situation did not deserve mention as policy.

But there has been no attack on the homeland, and the economy has held up. So, perhaps the Bush administration should be credited for:
1) taking its eyes off Afghanistan and going into Iraq so that militant Islam would concentrate its resources on the Middle East and its vicinity; and
2) appointing two powerless Treasury Secretaries so that Greenspan would not be distracted.

Unfair? Perhaps. But politicians are like shamans; they take credit for the rain, and get blamed for droughts. There's still too much stacked against the Democrats to give them even odds or better to take the House in November, but, Republicans, watch out in 2008. Iraq looks dangerously unstable and the US economy is showing signs of cooling.

(Anderson Cooper Uses Cable TV as an Education Tool)

CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°scored something of a coup when Cooper copped a 20-minute interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and aired substantial portions of it on the show on the Sept. 22. Unfortunately, he seemed to be stuck on the question of whether Ahmadinejad believed the Holocaust did not happen, and failed to crack Ahmadinejad's armor of evasions and counterquestions. He had to be reminded in a different segment by Wolf Blitzer that Ahmadinejad never talked about the Holocaust in his UN speech. He also seemed obsessed with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's bizzare, if harmless, UN speech calling President Bush the Devil and badgered Ahmadinejad on his opinion about it.

Cooper did more reporting on Ahmadinejad the following day, and did do a better job, though the teleprompter, absent during the interview, must be given some of the credit. A good learning experience in all. Unfortunately, Cooper himself was doing a lot of the learning.

( Louisville Paper Gets Disc With 232 Photos of Nude National Guard Women)

Sorry, no pictures in that article. This reminds me of the US controversy over gays in the military, though. As a heterosexual male, I think I would be far more distracted from my combat duties by spending day after day with physically fit, sweaty women in close quarters than by the fear that the gay guy in the shower stall next to me might make a pass. But maybe that's just me. You wonder what's the JSDA policy, if any, is on that one.

Back to the news itself; these things happen, because war is hell.

("The Daily Show" Host Jumps on the I-Report Bandwagon. (September 28))

Or so CNN claims. Actually, John Stewart is making fun of the idea of having amateurs send in video reports that CNN could subsequently air. Amid the laughter, John Stewart subtly reminds us that people are going to put themselves in danger to gain footage. You can bet The Daily Show (as well as the rest of media) will be all over CNN the first time somebody suffers serious physical damage. In the meantime, what do we call this phenomenon of an award-winning news channel reporting on an award-winning news program reporting on the news channel?

You know a show is hot when you snag Pervez Musharraf before Larry King does.