Obsession with Shooting

I just visited the Think Progress blog. It's amazing. There were 20 postings on the main page, including the small little quote-type postings, 11 of which dealt specifically with Cheney's hunting accident, and one more that describes the accident as cover for the domestic spying scandal. Three posts in a row and four total dealt with the probing question of whether or not the VP had had a beer earlier that afternoon. Is this really what we need to be talking about?

This is one of my big complaints about lefty blogging, particularly the premier sites like Think Progress and Talking Points Memo. They grab little scandals and scadalettes that put conservatives in a bad light and put all their attention on them rather than discussing issues. Another example would be TPM diving into the minutia of the Abramoff scandal (I count 63 uses of Abramoff's name just in one week at TPM). Now he's on the shooting beat too.

Surely there's more to discuss than just the ways the Republicans can be made to look bad. Surely liberals have something to offer America other than, hey the conservatives are bad. Don't they?

My favorite moment of the State of the Union was when the president mentioned the defeat last year of his plan to address social security. The Democrats went crazy cheering this achievement. The president's reply was dead on: the problem is still there. (I liked the moment because it provided the only break from the carefully stage managed performance that was the speech and introduced, however briefly, a real human element. It reminded me of British politics, with a roudy Parliament questioning the PM.) Surely the Democrats have something more to offer than merely shooting down whatever the Republicans come up with. Don't they?