Here.
I know I said I'd stop talking about the debate/Biter-gate!!!111/Our relentlessly stupid media, but I couldn't help but notice this (via Dday at Digby, here). It's a GAO report titled "The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas."
Here's my point. Yesterday's debate featured questions on why Obama doesn't wear a flag pin. McCain, as has been pointed out here, sometimes doesn't wear a flag pin. This is an issue for Obama not McCain. The only reason is that there is a perception in the media that Obama's patriotism--as a Democrat--is already in question whereas McCain's isn't. Why? Because, as Glenn Greenwald told me in a phone interview a couple of weeks back:
[I]f you oppose American wars, as Democrats have sometimes done—much more than Republicans—then it means that you’re afraid to fight, you’re unwilling to fight, and you don’t think the country is just in its fights and that makes you both weak and unpatriotic.
While the media is obsessing over its own, empirically inadiquate narrative, the GAO released a report saying that we have no strategy to fight Al-Quaida. So, basically, flag pins are important for showing toughness on National Security (if you're a Democrat), but actually fighting terrorism isn't (if you're a Republican).
I'm sorry, I lied when I said I wasn't going to write about this stuff; I can't help myself. But then again, neither can the media.
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