Hillary-Obama debate

[Coyote]

That wasn't journalism, that was a hatchet job, keeping Hils afloat to sell more media.

I agree that this will backfire. That arrogant, gloating pig bitch will probably now find sympathy floating towards Obama in the wake of this mockery of reporting.

[Vympel]

Greenwald

(He has a new book out dealing with right wing myths and the media's complicity in propagating them, very appropriate for the current time)

My favorite (unintentionally revealing) media commentary about the debate is from The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz, who devoted paragraph after paragraph to describing the substance-free "issues" that consumed most of the debate -- Obama's "remarks about small-town values, questions about his patriotism and the incendiary sermons of his former pastor . . . gaffes, missteps and past statements" -- and, at the end of the article, they added:

The debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action.

It's just not possible to express the wretched state of our establishment press better than that sentence does.

and

Last night was a perfect microcosm of how our political process works. The Right creates stupid, petty personality-based attacks to ensure that our elections aren't decided on issues (where they have a decisive disadvantage). Media stars -- some due to sloth, some due to ideology, some due to an eagerness to please the Right and convince them how Good and Fair they are -- eat up the shallow trash they're fed and then spew it out relentlessly, ensuring that our political discourse is overwhelmed by it, our elections dictated by it. That happens over and over. It's how our media and our elections function. Last night was just an unusually transparent and particularly ugly expression of it.

Meanwhile, Tom Shales of the WaPo:-

It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, 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. . . .

Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition. The tactic has been to "take one statement and beat it to death," he said.

This is the state to which the media in American has degenerated - juvenile and moronic, utterly devoted to pleasing and getting the approval of the powerful, and so completely servile to the political establishment (you know, the ones they're supposed to be keeping an eye on) as to look at what is actually good journalism from the US and reach for the smelling salts:-

CARLSON: What -- she wanted it off the record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you're interviewing wants a quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn't you do that?

PEEV: Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? In the United Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle that's decided ahead of the interview. If a figure in public life.

CARLSON: Right.

PEEV: Someone who's ostensibly going to be an advisor to the man who could be the most powerful politician in the world, if she makes a comment and decides it's a bit too controversial and wants to withdraw it immediately after, unfortunately if the interview is on the record, it has to go ahead.

CARLSON: Right. Well, it's a little.

PEEV: I didn't set out in any way, shape.

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?

PEEV: If this is the first time that candid remarks have been published about what one campaign team thinks of the other candidate, then I would argue that your journalists aren't doing a very good job of getting to the truth.

You just can't get anything more revealing than this about the state of the press in America - not only does that fucking idiot, Tucker Carlson, sneer about his "high journalistic standards", he explicitly says that his concern is to protect the powerful - his words! - from harm, so they'll give him access. Peev rightly points out that the access they're getting is bullshit.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is that the only entity poised to raise public awareness of the shitty state of media journalism in America is ... the American media journalists themselves, since the average American is notorious for ignoring media that originates outside the US.

[Elfdart]

ABC:

Assassinate
Barack
for
Clinton

The fix was in when they decided to have Stephanapolos on the show. He's been a Clinton fluffer for years.

[CmdrWilkens]

I think the best summation of the night comes from two sources:

First off there is Michael Grunwald (of Time):

In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama tells an amusing story about his first tour through downstate Illinois, when he had the audacity to order Dijon mustard on his cheeseburger at a TGI Friday's. His political aide hastily informed the waitress that Obama didn't want Dijon at all, and thrust a yellow bottle of ordinary-American heartland-values mustard at him instead. The perplexed waitress informed Obama that she had Dijon if he wanted. He smiled and said thanks. "As the waitress walked away, I leaned over and whispered that I didn't think there were any photographers around," Obama recalled.

Obama's memoir dripped with contempt for modern gotcha politics, for a campaign culture obsessed with substantively irrelevant but supposedly symbolic gaffes like John Kerry ordering Swiss cheese or Al Gore sighing or George H.W. Bush checking his watch or Michael Dukakis looking dorky in a tank. "What's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial," he wrote.

Last night at the National Constitution Center, at a Democratic debate that was hyped by ABC as a discussion of serious constitutional issues, America got to see exactly what Obama was complaining about. At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Senator Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly "friendly," and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel — with a single detour into Senator Hillary Clinton's yarn about sniper fire in Tuzla. Apparently, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ran out of time before they could ask Obama why he's such a lousy bowler.

and also Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News:

Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,...
With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space -- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited -- to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues....

But I'm not ready to make nice. What I just watched was an outrage. As a journalist, you appeared to confirm all of the worst qualities that cause people to hold our profession in such low esteem, especially your obsession with cornering the candidates with lame "trick" questions and your complete lack of interest or concern about substance -- or about the American people, or the state of our nation. You embarrassed some good people who work at ABC News -- for example, the journalists who worked hard to break this story just last week -- and you embarrassed yourselves. The millions of people who watched the debate were embarrassed, too -- at the state of our political discourse, and what it has finally become, at long last.

Quickly, a word to any and all of my fellow journalists who happen to read this open letter: This. Must. Stop. Tonight, if possible. I thought that we had hit rock bottom in March 2003, when we failed to ask the tough questions in the run-up to the Iraq war. But this feels even lower. We need to pick ourselves up, right now, and start doing our job -- to take a deep breath and remind ourselves of what voters really need to know, and how we get there, that's it's not all horse-race and "gotcha." Although, to be blunt, I would also urge the major candidates in 2012 to agree only to debates that are organized by the League of Women Voters, with citizen moderators and questioners. Because we have proven without a doubt in 2008 that working journalists don't deserve to be the debate "deciders."

Honestly those two reviews of the debate probably sum up just about everything that needs to be said. This was beyond shameful as it was a dis-service to so many people not the least of whom are the folks at ABC who actually broke the Torture story, they are clearly dedicated journalists whose entire organizaiton is now a tarnsihed remnant of what it was because of this performance.

[Morilore]

What would it take to get Obama, the next time he's conned into such a "debate," to respond to a question about Bittergate etc. with "I refuse to answer any more questions that are not about issues of policy and governance that matter to ordinary Americans, and I urge my colleague Senator Clinton to do the same."

And what would happen?

[Mr Bean]

What would it take to get Obama, the next time he's conned into such a "debate," to respond to a question about Bittergate etc. with "I refuse to answer any more questions that are not about issues of policy and governance that matter to ordinary Americans, and I urge my colleague Senator Clinton to do the same."

And what would happen?

There would be a second story about his refusal to answer the question.
A better way to handle it is with exasperation.

"Hold, hold it, hold it Insert Reporter here, you've already asked me about that, everyone's already asked me about that, my answear and my story is still the same, if you think X matters you need to re-exaim your priorities, what about Y? What about Z? What about A, what about B, what about C, what about D, what about E?

Do you think all those issues are less important than issue X? Especially since I've already answering the questions about X a hundred times over already?

Do you really think the American people care about X? Or are you just fishing for a headline story, hoping I trip up the hundredth time even if I've not the other 99 times?

That would go far more into shutting them up than a simple I won't respond to that.

[Darth Wong]

I think it might be amusing if he keeps a record of the number of times he's been asked those asinine questions, and then respond by saying "I would refer you to some of the answers I gave during the first ten times I was asked that exact same question, such as the one I gave on <insert date here>". In the meantime, I think this highlights an important issue in ..." and then segue into a mini-policy platform speech.

It shouldn't be that hard to do. The Reverend Wright issue segues naturally into a discussion of how we accommodate religious faiths that are not helpful to national unity: an area where Obama has demonstrated himself to be a strong speaker. Anyone who has ever been a member of any church knows that ministers routinely criticize our society; what we need to do is find a way to turn that negative energy into a drive for substantive solutions. The "Bitterness" issue segues naturally into the fact that people feel they need to fall back on reassuring constants during hard times, but we as a society have a duty to do something about those hard times rather than living in denial and pretending that everything is OK. It's not OK. The "flag pin" issue highlights the fact that real patriotism, by which we mean a sense of duty to help our fellow Americans, has become replaced by empty symbolism, in which we compete with each other to see who can dress most like a patriot, as if it's a fashion statement.

If people go with empty attacks, the only sensible thing to do is turn them around as quickly as possible into opportunities to make speeches.

[Turin]

Well Obama just put "manufactured political distractions" On Notice on The Colbert Report, so that should be the end of it. Right guys? Right?

[Patrick Degan]

That wasn't journalism, that was a hatchet job, keeping Hils afloat to sell more media.

I agree that this will backfire. That arrogant, gloating pig bitch will probably now find sympathy floating towards Obama in the wake of this mockery of reporting.

Looks like exactly that is happening —not only in the multiple pannings of the "debate" by editors and media critics but also, if what I heard on NPR today was correct, by way of Obama picking up three more Pennsylvania newspaper endorsements.

The latest Zogby poll has Obama and Clinton in a dead heat in that state with one week to go before the vote.

[SirNitram]

The latest Zogby poll has Obama and Clinton in a dead heat in that state with one week to go before the vote.

I've lost alot of confidence in Zogby and SUSA this cycle. They've consistantly been the outliers and wrong when the change comes due. Why this is, is not really material.

That being said, the majority of polls put the PA race within statistical dead heat, and have enough undecideds to swing this either way. I suspect Obama will suffer a minor loss, nothing like the trampling Clinton so desperately needs now.

[CmdrWilkens]

The latest Zogby poll has Obama and Clinton in a dead heat in that state with one week to go before the vote.

I've lost alot of confidence in Zogby and SUSA this cycle. They've consistantly been the outliers and wrong when the change comes due. Why this is, is not really material.

That being said, the majority of polls put the PA race within statistical dead heat, and have enough undecideds to swing this either way. I suspect Obama will suffer a minor loss, nothing like the trampling Clinton so desperately needs now.

Moreover her baseline after the March 4th primaries was around +20 so to be at the place we are now talking about narrow wins or possible upsets means a HUGE shift int he voters. I know the media won't pick up on it because htey are too invested in the horse race continuing but when one candidate picks up between 15 and 20% on their opponent that should kind of indicate growing strength to everybody.

[Coyote]

The latest Zogby poll has Obama and Clinton in a dead heat in that state with one week to go before the vote.

...I know the media won't pick up on it because htey are too invested in the horse race continuing but when one candidate picks up between 15 and 20% on their opponent that should kind of indicate growing strength to everybody.

It is also conveniently ignored that they are in a dead heat when just a month ago, Pennsylvania was so firmly in Hillary's pocket that the Obama campaign was considering just a token effort there. He's erased her lead and making her fight for a state that she should have walked away with-- despite not accessorizing with the latest "Made in China" lapel pins.

But that's not news, man.

[Gil Hamilton]

Exactly, Hillary was slated to win big in Pennsylvania but not there is a significant probability that Obama might pull it out.

It just sucks though. I don't even think that the media is trying to assassinate Obama out of any love of Clinton, but rather because they need to manufacture scandals and keep the race going as long as possible so they can pay their talking heads. After all, if Obama trashes Clinton and Obama remains largely scandalless, they'd have to report, like, news and stuff and that's hard.

It's amazing that there exists any people who think that the "profit motive" is a good way to keep society together. Profit driven journalism is just as bad as it sounds when I typed it.

[SirNitram]

No. It's not. Nor is Iraq. Or the economic downward spiral. Or oil.

What is news, defined by these people, is the Republican-created, eagerly-put-forward personality attacks. Republicans are big, strong, straight talking family men who smell of English leather. Democrats are out of touch elitists with gender confusion(Observe the emasculation of Edwards in print, or the masculization of Hilebeast for the past twenty years). The media laps this petty shit up.

[Darth Wong]

No. It's not. Nor is Iraq. Or the economic downward spiral. Or oil.

What is news, defined by these people, is the Republican-created, eagerly-put-forward personality attacks. Republicans are big, strong, straight talking family men who smell of English leather. Democrats are out of touch elitists with gender confusion(Observe the emasculation of Edwards in print, or the masculization of Hilebeast for the past twenty years). The media laps this petty shit up.

The media laps this shit up because it gets them ratings. It gets them ratings because 80% of the population is fucking stupid, and personality-based politics is the only thing their feeble minds can comprehend.

Blame the media if you want, but the real culprits here are the people for whom intelligent news would be too boring to pull them away from their precious NASCAR and UFC.

[montypython]

I don't know if this current media state is even worse than the worst Yellow Journalism of the 1890's, but whatever the case is this constant force-feeding of soundbites and non-news just makes the craziest rumors on the net seem more reasonable than broadcast news.

[SirNitram]

The media laps this shit up because it gets them ratings. It gets them ratings because 80% of the population is fucking stupid, and personality-based politics is the only thing their feeble minds can comprehend.

Blame the media if you want, but the real culprits here are the people for whom intelligent news would be too boring to pull them away from their precious NASCAR and UFC.

Honestly? I don't believ ethat much anymore. If it were just 'for ratings', McCain would be being savaged left and right for dozens of things, and the words 'Flip Flopper' would be branded on him, or near enough. No, he gets donuts. Video He attacks the media, they give him a treat.

Compare/contrast to this, on the debate.

Blitzer: It's small potatoes. Whoever gets the nomination can expect a whole lot worse in a general election campaign.

Madden: Oh absolutely. We were joking around before saying "there's no crying in baseball" and this is one of those instances. When you run for president you are actually asking for the right to be humiliated. That is an odd thing but very often times in debates like these, that get very tough, where you get tough questions, you're constantly probed and being hammered by the media, you can actually come out above, looking very presidential if you stand by those attacks and you come out ahead of them.

Blitzer: If you want to be president, Kevin is absolutely right, you have to expect that everything is fair game, almost every part of your life, and certainly your finances or anything like that.

When you campaign, you ask for the right to be humiliated.

Unless you are a Republican. Let's face it, none of them have had the kind of scrutiny from the main press that the Dems constantly get. It's not ratings that drives the personality attacks. It comes off as more a high-school clique.. Right down to mocking haircuts and choice of drink.. Fawning over jocks and kicking nerds.

[Patrick Degan]

Going back to the shitstorm oozing up from the unprofessional management of the debate, this little gem appeared in a FoxSports column about the NFL draft:

7. The interviews

Oy. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more boring than Goodie reading names at a podium, here come the interviews with the players. We know, you're very excited, it's a great opportunity, blah, blah, blah. Most of these guys don't need the NFL's tutorial on how to say nothing to media. They're already experts. You know what would jazz this up? Having Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ask questions that have nothing to do with football. "You've just been selected with the number one overall pick, but I notice you don't wear a maize and blue lapel pin. Do you hate your alma mater?"

Where Gibson and Stephanopholous haven't become objects of scorn and contempt, they've become laughing stock.

[Darth Wong]

Honestly? I don't believ ethat much anymore. If it were just 'for ratings', McCain would be being savaged left and right for dozens of things, and the words 'Flip Flopper' would be branded on him, or near enough. No, he gets donuts.

Of course, because that's the nature of the voting public itself. Like it or not, the American public itself is skewed heavily to the right, and so will naturally tolerate far more personal attacks on a perceived "left-wing" candidate than they would on a right-wing candidate.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Or they're just making sure that the winner of the longest possible democratic contest they can drag out is at a dead even heat with McCain rather than having a wide lead, so they can turn this into a "nail-biter" right down until the very end in November, which means they have to prop up McCain's candidacy.

[Darth Wong]

Or they're just making sure that the winner of the longest possible democratic contest they can drag out is at a dead even heat with McCain rather than having a wide lead, so they can turn this into a "nail-biter" right down until the very end in November, which means they have to prop up McCain's candidacy.

I don't think he needs that much propping-up. I have never been as sanguine about this election as a lot of the other people on the forum. Conservative thinking still runs very deep in the population, which is one of the reasons that conservatives have been spin-doctoring the Bush Administration as "betraying the principles of conservatism" for the last year or two. There's still a huge support base out there, and all the conservatives needed to do was divorce themselves from Bush's mistakes: something I think is rather easily done when your target audience has the attention span of a hummingbird.

[Elfdart]

Cliff Schecter nails it, as usual:

Important Questions For George Stephanopoulos To Ask John McCain This Sunday

Many have already pored over the ins and outs of a Democratic debate tailor-made for "Enquiring minds" earlier this week on ABC. Well guess who just happens to be coming to dinner...or This Week, this weekend?

Why none other than John McCain!

So in the spirit of seeing how all the candidates deal with "scandal," or just being queried about everyone they have associated with since that 6th grade teacher who crossed the street against a red light (do you denounce her Senator Obama? Denounce and reject her!?! Or perhaps just reject?), here are some questions that John McCain should be asked on your show this weekend, Mr. Stephanopoulos (sorry, old habit from when I had you as a professor at Columbia).

First a great list I came across, and then a few of my own I found in my research for my book The Real McCain. This list is from Perrspectives, a fantastic compilation, in my always humble opinion:

1. Do you agree with Pastor John Hagee that war with Iran is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?
In February, you shared a stage with Pastor John Hagee and said you were "very proud" to have his endorsement. You also called the Reverend Rod Parsley, a man who said of Islam "America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed", your "spiritual guide." Do you believe America's mission is to destroy Islam? Do you join Pastor Hagee in believing the United States must attack Iran to fulfill the biblical prophecy of Armageddon in Israel in which 144,000 Jews will be converted to Christianity and the rest killed? Is that why you joked about "bomb bomb Iran?" If not, why will you not renounce the support of Hagee and Parsley?

2. Doesn't your legendary temper make you too dangerous to be trusted with the presidency of the United States?Your anger, even toward friends and allies, is legendary. You purportedly dropped the F-Bomb on your own GOP colleagues John Cornyn and Chuck Grassley. In the book, The Real McCain, author Cliff Schechter claims you got into a fist-fight with your fellow Arizona Republican Rick Renzi. Allegedly, you even publicly used a crude term, one which decorum and the FCC prohibit us from even saying on the air, to describe your own wife. Which if any of these episodes is untrue? Don't your anger management problems make you too dangerously unstable to be president of the United States?

3. Doesn't your confusion regarding basic facts about the war in Iraq, including repeatedly citing a nonexistent Al Qaeda-Iran alliance, make you unfit for command?
On four occasions in one month, you confused friend and foe in Iraq by describing Sunni Al Qaeda as being backed by Shiite Iran. Then you showed a misunderstanding of the U.S. chain of command when you claimed you would not back shifting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan "unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that," a decision which Petraeus himself told you and your Senate colleagues only the week before rests not with him but with his superiors. Doesn't your lack of understanding and judgment when it comes to basic facts of America's national security disqualify you as commander-in-chief?

4. Given your past adultery, should Americans consider you a moral exemplar of family values?
You are the nominee of a Republican Party which claims to support so-called "family values." Yet you commenced an adulterous relationship with your current wife Cindy months before the dissolution of your previous marriage to your first wife Carol. Should Americans consider you to be a moral exemplar of family values?

5. Doesn't your flip-flop on Jerry Falwell being an "agent of intolerance" show your opportunistic pandering to the religious right?
In 2000, you famously called the late Jerry Falwell "an agent of intolerance," a statement which may have cost you the decisive South Carolina primary. But as you ramped up your next presidential run in 2006, you embraced Falwell and gave the commencement address at his Liberty University. When Tim Russert asked that spring if you still considered him an agent of intolerance, you said, "'no, I don't." Why shouldn't the American people consider you a flip-flopping opportunist who cynically courted the religious right to further your 2008 presidential ambitions?

6. Given your wealth and privileged upbringing, aren't you - and not Barack Obama - the elitist?
You have called Barack Obama an elitist. Yet you recently returned to your exclusive private high school, one which now costs over $38,000 a year to attend. Your wife is the heiress to a beer distribution company, reputedly owns 8 homes and has a net worth well over $100 million. Your children all attended private schools, academies which also happened to be the primary beneficiaries of funds from your supposed charitable foundation. Shouldn't the American people in fact view you as the elitist, and a hypocritical one at that?

7. What is your religion, really? And has the answer in the past changed as the South Carolina primary approached?
I want to ask about your seemingly ever-changing religious beliefs. In June 2007, McClatchy reported, "McCain still calls himself an Episcopalian." In August 2007, as ABC reported, your campaign staff identified you as "Episcopalian" in a questionnaire prepared for ABC News' August 5 debate. But as the primary in evangelical-rich South Carolina neared, in September 2007 you said of your religious faith, "It plays a role in my life. By the way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist." But in March 2008, Pastor Dan Yeary of your North Phoenix Baptist Church refused to comment on why you have refused to finally undergo a baptism ceremony. Congressional directories still list you as an Episcopalian. In the past, you've said, "When I'm asked about it, I'll be glad to discuss it." So what is your religion? And couldn't Americans be forgiven for assuming your changing faith is tied to your changing political needs?

8. Didn't President Bush betray you with his signing statement on the Detainee Treatment Act? You claim to be against torture, but aren't you a hypocrite for voting "no" on the Senate waterboaring ban?
You've said that "we can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured". And in December 2005, you famously reached a compromise with President Bush on the Detainee Torture Act banning cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees. But just two weeks later, President Bush issued a signing statement making it clear he would ignore the compromise you just reached. Then in February 2007, you voted "no" on a Senate bill banning waterboarding. Isn't it fair to say President Bush betrayed you with his December 30, 2005 signing statement? And isn't it fair to say you caved to the right-wing of your party on the issue in order to win the Republican nomination?

9. Why did you flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts you twice opposed? Why do you now support making them permanent for the wealthiest Americans who need them least?
You twice voted against the Bush tax cuts. Now you support making them permanent. In 2001, you said, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief." Now, according to the Center for American Progress, your tax plan would cost more than $2 trillion over the next decade and "would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers." Isn't it true that you flip-flopped on the Bush tax cuts? Isn't it fair to say that you now favor a massive expansion of the federal budget deficit in order to fund a tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans who need it least?

10. With the economy tanking, shouldn't Americans be concerned over your past statements that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should?"
Americans consistently report that the economy is the issue that concerns them most. Yet more than once, you proclaimed your ignorance when it comes to the economy. In November 2005, you told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." Then in December 2007, you admitted, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Shouldn't the American be worried about President McCain's ability to lead the United States out of recession? Given your past statements, shouldn't the American reject out of hand your claim that "I know the economy better than Senator Clinton and Senator Obama do?"

All of these are fantastic questions, now let me add two from The Real McCain:

11) How can you call yourself a straight-talker in light of the fact that you have changed your positions or rhetorically flip-flopped on the following issues: Abortion, Creationism in science class, immigration, intervention abroad, tax cuts for the wealthy, civil unions, a Martin Luther King holiday, the Confederate Flag, the Christian Right, Bob Jones University, whether Rumsfeld did a good job, whether Dick Cheney is doing a good job, whether President Bush is an honest man, a Patient's Bill of Rights, global warming, campaign finance reform in general, public financing of campaigns specifically, lobbying reform, whether the War in Iraq would be "easy," whether Sunni and Shiite are working together, whether "Iraqi blood should be traded for American blood," military readiness, how many troops are necessary for the suge to succeed in Iraq, ehtanol subsidies, the continuing existence of a minimum wage, closing the gun-show loophole, healthcare for children...and I could go on, but how about we start with those?

12) Finally, if Barack Obama must account for everyone he has ever passed within a 100 square mile radius of, then here are some associations you might want to explain, with the indicted, the white supremacists and the downright corrupt: Rick Renzi (indicted), Terry Nelson (racist ads against Harold Ford in 2006), Trent Lott (pining for a Strom presidency), The Wyly Brothers (corrupt), Bob Perry (Chief Swift Boater), Richard Quinn (white supremacist), Rev. Richard Land (homosexual hate), Ken Blackwell (Ohio election suppression), Charlie Black (lobbyist and according to John Gorenfeld's new book, Bad Moon Rising, Reverend Moon lover). That would be a start.

I don't write this to pile on Mr. Stephanopoulos. I have usually found you to be a fair-minded host. Yet, if you are to right the wrongs of that debate, please give equal time, and make John McCain answer for aspects of his political career which are much more relevant than a flag lapel pin to whether he or Barack Obama would make a better president.

Let's see one of these media whores ask McCain about his Florida campaign chairman who was busted in a men's room offering to suck an undercover policeman's cock (and paying the cop for the privilege), then claiming he had to because he was scared of the menacing black men in the park. If Obama gets sandbagged over Ayers, it's only fair to ask McCain about someone who actually worked for him.

Rachel Maddow mentioned it on MSNBC the other night and the resident GOP fluffer Joe Scarborough tucked his tail and ran off.

[Zwinmar]

I cant even watch the full debate. Clinton is such a fucking idiot in it, admiting she lied but trying to spin it so she says she didnt.