This weekend, while flipping through the channels, I came upon the NBC Sunday morning news show Meet the Press. The host was Tim Russert. The guest was House Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
To the transcript Nancy and Tim:
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to gasoline prices. This is how Tom Friedman in The New York Times wrote about it. “What would OPEC do if it wanted to keep America addicted to oil? That’s easy. OPEC would urge the U.S. Congress to deal with the current spike in gasoline prices either by adopting the Republican proposal to give American drivers $100 dollars each, so they could continue driving gas-guzzling cars and buy gasoline at the current $3.50 a gallon, or by adopting the Democrats’ proposal for a 60-day lifting of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon. Either one would be fine with OPEC. … We now have a Congress proposing to do exactly what our worst enemies would like us to do – subsidize our addiction to gasoline by breaking into our kids’ piggy banks to make it easier for us to pay the prices demanded by our oil pushers. … There is something really disturbing about the utterly shameless, utterly over-the-top Republican pandering and Democratic point-scoring that have been masquerading as governing in response to this energy crisis.”
What you didn’t get from the transcript was the name of the article that Tim Russert was quoting from. It flashed on the screen while he was reading portions of it. It was an op-ed piece that ran in the May 3rd edition of the New York Times called “Let’s (Third) Party” by Thomas Friedman.
The most telling part, however, was that Tim Russert pulled a snippet out to discuss, while totally ignoring the central point of the piece, which was:
What to do? I’m hoping for a third party. The situation is ripe for one: America is facing a challenge as big as the cold war — how we satisfy our long-term energy needs, at reasonable prices, while decreasing our dependence on oil and the bad governments that export it — and neither major party will offer a solution, because it requires sacrifice today for gain tomorrow.
Now, that would have been the question for Nancy Pelosi to answer!!! For too long, the established parties have vehemently denied the existence of any thoughts other than their own. At the same time, they have entire teams of dirty tricks people finding ways to bury competition from Green, Libertarian, Constitution and other alternative party and independent candidates who actually have innovative ideas. I only wish that Tim Russert wouldn’t have soft-balled her. What would Nancy have said? It’s tough to tell what kind of bullshit response she could come up with were she posed such a question. Having seen a lot of Nancy Pelosi on Sunday morning talk shows, Nancy’s the best at delivering bullshit responses with a straight face. I would suspect she’d say something like:
“People in third parties are kooks. Greens want to protect the environment. Libertarians are into privacy and civil liberties. The Constitution Party? It all sounds very fringe to me.”
And all with a straight face. And this country sinks further into the shitter. Kind of makes me wish I wasn’t too stupid to be confused by more than two choices on a ballot.
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