Focus, people, focus

By Creature

If the president accomplished any mission last night with his "big" immigration speech it was to distract us, and the lapdog media, from the other real news of the day. And I'm not talking about killer alligators in Florida. I'm talking domestic spying. I'm talking Cheney and his propensity towards outing CIA agents with a total disregard for national security. And most of all, I'm talking about this:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Nineteen people were killed in a shooting and bombing attack at a bus garage in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday, police said.

Gunmen shot five Shi'ite militiamen. When a crowd gathered at the scene a car bomb detonated, killing 14 people and wounding 33.

On Sunday, a series of car and suicide bombs across the capital killed more than 30 people.

It's not that immigration reform is not an important subject, but its injection into the national debate is more about politics than anything else. The Republicans in Congress needed an issue to rally their base around before the November elections. They needed to pass some sort of legislation to show they were actually doing something on the Hill. The immigration "crisis" is about as much of a crisis as Social Security was post-2004, or, hell, it's as much of a crisis as Saddam was pre-2003.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)