Attention Deficit

Now that the Bush recession has finally made the news, along with the prospect of the still incalculable costs of the taxpayer bail-out of investment banks in the tank from making bad home loans, I would like to direct your attention elsewhere.

Through this election year, news reports often rank issues supposedly in the forefront of voter’s minds. This year I keep hearing that the economy is the number one issue. Many are frantic about gasoline prices, too.

(Just imagine for a moment if we had elected Al Gore in 2000 with a mandate to institute a BTU tax. The heavy lifting would have been over by now, with conservation instituted, alternative technologies coming on line, and the price at the pump skyrocketing to over $2.00 per gallon.)

And of course, with hard times comes scapegoating, with the attendant outcry about immigration, and distractions like gun control, abortion, and gay marriage.

Remember that war we used to have?

I saw US News and World Report Assoc. Editor Alex Kingsbury on John Stewart’s show last week. He has just returned from his second trip to Iraq, or, “the suck” as troops there call it. He says that the surge has made it possible to patrol the streets in some areas policed by US forces without finding so many headless bodies laying around.

Kingsbury said that our people in Iraq have a different take on patriotism than we have back here, that they not interested in “which side you wear your flag pin on, but in who’s more informed; they don’t care if you’re for or against the war, they just want us to pay attention to what’s going on.”

He next pointed out that the Iraq war now makes up about 4% of all news reports.