You can’t watch television in Missouri these days without seeing competing commercials for Claire McCaskill and Jim Talent.  Recently, I’ve started seeing commercial for Springfieldian Roy Blunt, and poorly made commercials at that.  I think this shows how worried Blunt is from the recent scandals plaguing the Republican party, most recently the Foley sex-scandal.  It seems rather strange to me that Blunt would need to advertise because he really has no chance of losing this election.  Even if he were directly tied to the Foley scandal I think he would easily win his seat.  The voters of Southwest Missouri vote Republican.  Time an again smart, experience, and mostly conservative Democrats have lost elections to GOP nobodies simply because there is donkey next to their name on the ballot.  Unless Blunt was a child molestor himself there is no way they would vote for a Democrat, and even then I’m not so sure Blunt would lose.

I really think speeches like Nancy Pelosi’s recent outline of what her first 100 days as Speaker of the House would be like are a bad idea.  First of all, no matter how bad things look like for Republicans the Democratic Party should assume they are going to take control of the House.  Second, Pelosi shouldn’t make promises she does know for sure she can keep.  Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of what she said:  enacting all of the September 11 Commission’s recommendations, raising the minimum wage, cutting the interest on student loans (love that one!), and allowing the government to negotiate lower prices for Medicare drugs are all admirable and needed things.  However, if the Democrats take back the House it will be by a slim majority and unless Pelosi gets better as keeping her wayward representatives in line, she can’t expect to pass all of that legislation.  Unlike the Republicans, who even now remain in lock-step with each other, the Democrats in the House (and the Senate) are a fractious lot who rarely work as a cohesive team.  They’re good ideas, but she should act is they’re promises she can keep.

I’m not sure what to think of YouTube pulling footage of American soldiers being attacked in Iraq, much of it posted by current and former US soldiers.  Part of me doesn’t want to give attention to the bastards who are killing and maiming our soldiers, but the other part of despises censorship and wants the information out there to refute the White House party line that everything is peachy in Iraq and the insurgents are nothing to be worried about.  It’s a tough call to make and I wouldn’t want to be the people at YouTube because this can cause problems no matter how you look at it.  By its design YouTube is a place for anyone to post whatever they want; however, you don’t want to allow terrorists a place to spew their hatred and rejoice in hurting our soldiers.  Not an easy call to make.