Pulling our chains

It seems to me that every few days something else comes to light that sets us upon one another with all the ferocity of a pack of starving dogs. Last week it was Cindy Sheehan and now it's the whole Clinton/Edwards debate debacle. I addressed what I thought Cindy was trying to say and now I guess I'm going to have to address this thing as well.

The fact is if we don't all find some way to hang together, we're sure as hell going to hang separately. If we allow the Republicans to play us like it looks as though they're doing, either through manipulating media coverage or by placing agents provocateur among us, we're all going to regret the ultimate outcome far more than we might imagine.

I'm not sure WHAT the hell happened at the debate, but my suspicions are certainly raised by a few minor details. I trust Fox News about as far as I can throw its studio. The fact that they just happened to catch two of the top tier candidates in an unguarded and (apparently) compromising conversation by accident seems far beyond coincidence. We don't even know if one of THEIR people threw out the original idea that sparked the conversation in the first place, not to mention the actual context of the exchange of words we've been allowed to overhear.

I know that a DUer has posted the transcript here and, from one perspective, it seems that we have a reason to be suspicious. But, on the other hand, it's certainly possible that the very SAME exchange could be referring to exactly what Edwards said it was. I certainly see no evidence either way.

Personally I'd rather err on the side of caution in this matter. My absolute distrust of Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Republican party, makes me suspicious in the extreme. It's almost impossible to believe this whole thing was a "happy accident" from their point of view. I smell Rodents Of Unusual Size.

While we DUers, arguably some of the most politically aware individuals on the left side of the aisle, are busy chasing our tails and snapping at one another, there's a large, rat-faced person of indeterminate origin (perhaps a reptile if one accepts Swampy's presumably tongue-in-cheek premise) rubbing its hands together and chuckling in some saurian fashion.

I'm more than willing to give Clinton and Edwards the benefit of the doubt in these circumstances, considering who "accidentally" managed to give us a glimpse into this scenario. I really like Kucinich in a lot of respects, and wince when I read when people accuse him of "grandstanding," but I'd say he knows no more about what was going on there than we do, and has his own reasons for whipping up a feeding frenzy surrounding it.

Maybe I'm naive. My wife seems to think so. But I've very seldom gone wrong in trusting my instincts. There are things about Hillary I don't like. I've certainly not been shy in saying so in the past. And I declared for Edwards a couple of weeks ago. So maybe I'm simply prejudiced in this instance. That's certainly possible.

But without knowing more I'm not willing to come down on the side Fox News, and its corporate masters, would prefer. Hillary's top dog in the running for the moment and Edwards, though third in line, is the only leading candidate that either grasps, or is willing to discuss, the class war that's been waged against the middle and lower classes in this country. That makes him dangerous to the status quo. The more people he can reach, the more trouble it may generate for the Powers-That-Be in the future. If they could somehow manage to discredit both of them in one fell swoop, it would be quite the coup for them.

I distrust anything that just "happens" to work to the advantage of our adversaries. I consider the likelihood of it being an accidental miscue of Fox's equipment that brought us to this point to be somewhere equal to spotting a herd of pigs flapping across the sky.

I'm skeptical as hell.

And that's pretty much all I have to say on the subject without more reliable information.

:kick:

around here never cease to amaze me.

And what if they were actually conspiring to limit debate? What purpose does it serve for everyone here to get in an uproar over it? More to the point would be to band together circling the wagons and shooting OUT rather than in at ourselves.

You win by fighting the bad guys, not your friends.

Or the next day.

Or Tuesday.

But definitely Wednesday at the very latest.