Except for "To the Contrary," which had an interesting discussion as to whether or not immigration was the only real problem leading to urban sprawl which was taking a lot of prime farmland, the shows focused on Afghanistan, the McChrystal firing, and the Petraeus hiring.

Meet the Press dedicated it's entire show to a discussion of Afghanistan. I really didn't want to waste a cool morning watching that while there was a lot of work to do in the garden, but Kristi worked on the front porch and could listen to the show. She said that a couple things stood out to her - first, that so many civilians have been killed so far, that they probably will never be for us. Second, is that on the other hand, if we do pull out, any and all of those folks that have worked with us will be wiped out because the so called Afghanistan government isn't strong enough to protect them. I can't disagree with that at all.

In conjunction with that, were discussions about whether or not Afghanistan is Obama's Vietnam. For the most part, the talking heads didn't think that Afghanistan was Obama's Vietnam, but I agree that it could be if he allows himself to get sucked into dropping the withdrawl deadline. Several of the commentators believe that Obama, by choosing Petraeus to replace McChrystal, will be forced to withdraw the deadline he has set for withdrawl. If he does that, and the U.S. ends up getting bogged down there worse than we are now, then it could become Obama's Vietnam.

The "Comment on Kentucky" show was more interesting than usual. First, they actually discussed Wendell Berry's growing criticism of the University of Kentucky. The source of the disagreement is about UK going to corporate and changing it's goal as a university of one trying to best serve the residents of the commonwealth to one in which the welfare of the university itself is what is driving university action. This, according to Berry, is inconsistent with the purpose of a "land grant" university like UK.

Also, Washington correspondent for the University of Kentucky, James Carroll appeared by phone. He talked about Rand Paul's recent Washington trip in which he came and sucked up to the Republican leadership in DC for the purposes of fundraising. As to those making the point that he ran against such things in the primary, it was said that he is distinguishing between the primary and the main elections, which means that we can expect that Paul will have his hand out to McConnell and the rest of the republican power structure. But it will give Conway fodder for his TV ad campaign, and he proved during the primary that he can hit and hit hard on TV. This is a great opportunity for the Democrats to pick up a seat and give McConnell a slap in the face.