Political gamesmanship

Unless you've been in rehab with Lindsay Lohan, you've probably heard about the chairman for the democrat committee for homeland security preparedness advise his staffers to get immunized for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus and influenza, before attending the NASCAR event in Talladega last weekend. Predictably, republicans are making huge political hay off the story by accusing democrats of thinking NASCAR fans are dirty, dsease-ridden, rednecks. That may be arguable, but what's it really about?

It turns out the committee is investigating whether local medical facilities can handle treatment of large numbers of victims if a terrorist should attack a large gathering like Talladega, SuperBowl, or World Series. With the single exception of Jimmy Carter, everybody agrees that large gatherings of Americans are prime targets of Islamic terrorists, or as alert reader Kevin likes to call them, Islamists. These staffers didn't even go to the event, they went to the local hospital to guage their rediness for a terrorist disaster. Now you could reasonably argue whether they needed shots just to visit a hospital...it's not like they went to perform surgery on TB patients.

As a republican, I'm always disappointed when our guys run with a story they know to be phony in order to get political mileage. That's what the other side does. We're supposed to be better than that. I guess that's why I'm disenchanted with American politics altogether...there's not a nickle's worth of difference between the two parties.