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Eight questions for John McCain

In honor of the disgraceful ABC deabte, Keith Olbermann has eight questions George Stephanopoulos can ask John McCain...

Barack and Bruce: BAD FOR AMERICA

Little Saturday night humor...

Clinton throws MoveOn.org under the bus

WTF?!?

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."

When you have Clinton attacking one of the largest progressive organizations, it shows that her campaign is either batshit crazy, or morphing into an pathetic Republican talking point. For one, Clinton is 100 PERCENT completely wrong when it comes to MoveOn being against the war in Afghanistan and she should know better SEEING THAT THIS IS THE SAME GROUP THAT BACKED HER HUSBAND AGAINST THE DRUMBEAT OF IMPEACHMENT.

MoveOn's Eli Pariser issued this response...

"Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points."

It's safe to say that with nonsense like this, I'm really beginning to lose any respect I have for Clinton's two-faced campaign.

Thumbs down

That appears to be the consensus of just about everyone in regards to the Abbott and Costello wanna-bes who hosted last night's debate:

The Washington Post's TV critic says Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos "turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

"For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with," Tom Shales writes.

Time's Joe Klein says he has "slightly--well, a microscopic smidgeon--more sympathy for the gotcha-moderators from ABC than Tom Shales does." He blames the trivial nature of the questions on the trivial nature of the campaign.
Guardian America's deadlineUSA blog issues its verdict with the headline: "Worst. Debate. Ever."
Over at the Huffington Post, Greg Mitchell slams the moderators for focusing on "trivial issues" and says the debate is "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years."

Andrew Sullivan seems to agree. He slams the Gibson-Stephanopoulos team in The Atlantic's Daily Dish blog. "The loser was ABC News: one of the worst media performances I can remember - petty, shallow, process-obsessed, trivial where substantive, and utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about," he says. "At the end of the debate, it appeared that the crowd was actually heckling Gibson."

Heckling, hell, I would have thrown a rotten tomato at Gibson's face and by the look of things, I wouldn't be the only one.

Between his bullshit questions and Stephanopoulos taking talking points from Sean Hannity, ABC disgraced America and clearly showed way the League of Women voters should be the only organization moderating future debates.

Meanwhile, today Barack Obama gave his two cents on last nights trainwreck.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama dismissively talked about his debate with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the line of questioning from ABC News' moderators, arguing that it focused on political trivia at the expense of the problems facing average voters.

At a rally in the May 6 primary state of North Carolina, Obama drew roars of approval Thursday when he mocked aspects of the presidential debate that had him on the defensive Wednesday night. He faced tough questions about his controversial pastor, his comments about bitter voters in small towns and his relationship with a 1960s radical.

Deadpanning, the Illinois senator said, "It does not get much more fun than these debates. They are inspiring events."

In criticism of his rival, he called the debate "the rollout of the Republican campaign against me in November" and said it represented textbook Washington politics that Clinton was very comfortable playing.

"They like stirring up controversy and they like playing gotcha games, getting us to attack each other," he said. "Senator Clinton looked in her element. She was taking every opportunity to get a dig in there. That's her right to kind of twist the knife a little bit ... that's the lesson she learned when Republicans did it to her in the 1990s."

[...]

"Last night I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people," Obama told the North Carolina crowd. "Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices."

Zell Miller 2.0

As a follow-up to Keith Olbermann and Howard Fineman's discussion regarding the bitterness of Joe Lieberman, from this morning, here's Mr. Irrelevant discussing his plans on portraying Zell Miller at this year's Republican National Convention.

Don't look at me, I voted for this guy.

The ugly

If you missed last night's disgusting debate, here's all the garbage you need to watch.

"The crowd is turning on me"

This pretty much sums up my opinion of Gibson and Stephanopoulos' god-awful performance during tonight's debate.

Shameful, simply shameful...and it seems like I'm not alone with this criticism.

UPDATE: E&P's Greg Mitchell nails it.

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the moderators to turn to those far more important issues. But some in the crowd did -- booing Gibson near the end.

Requiem of an intern

Oh my!

At a forum on Connecticut’s history of disciplining public officials Tuesday, a legislative intern known for sporting a Fedora at work made some wild accusations about what goes on around the Capitol.

“Eighty percent of the legislators here have some form of corruption, whether in their background or right now,” the intern for three House Democrats said at Tuesday’s forum, according to video footage from the Connecticut Network.

[...]

“From liquor and smoking in a state facility, from sex in actual offices to kickbacks from lobbyists…” Marsulo said.

[...]

Former Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan of West Hartford told the intern Tuesday that in 1970 he started his internship at the Capitol and it led him to want to run for public office. He said the bulk of the people here are good people. “There are some bums, but there aren’t very many,” Sullivan said.

“This is what you get from politicians,” Marsulo responded.

Earlier during the exchange Marsulo said, “I can’t reveal a lot of where my sources are right now. I will in the future.”

Rep. Kathy Tallarita, D-Enfield, who is in charge of the Internship program at the Capitol, said Wednesday outside the House Chamber she is taking measures to address the situation. She said the three legislators the intern works for have had no issues with him. He works for Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Oakdale, Rep. Sandy Nafis, D-Newington, and Rep. Jeff Berger, D-Waterbury.

“We’ve never had to deal with someone being so disrespectful,” Tallarita said.

Can you say former intern...