CNN

1 Comment Posted on Democrats, Liberals

never works for me

CNN:

One of the Democratic advisers told CNN there is fear within the party that the president’s signature issue is “on the rocks” because of dramatically high cost estimates for separate bills being drafted by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts and Max Baucus, D-Montana.

The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for the Kennedy bill — that it will cost $1 trillion and yet leave millions of Americans without health insurance — has given Republicans strong political ammunition to charge reform may be too expensive at a time of massive federal deficits.

Um…yeah…it’s gonna cost LOTS of money plus reduce choice for the average buyer — obviously we must rush this brilliant idea through Congress.   If even some of the Democrats are balking at these costs, you know there’s serious money being discussed here. 😉

Posted on '08 Election

hard to defend

I hear the argument that Republicans need to increase their reach online so that we can get our message out to more people. I agree with that. There is an undeniable benefit to the organization of the lefty netroots community that has been translating into real votes for their Democratic candidates. We saw some of this in the 2006 election. However, these CNN/YouTube debates are not the best way for Republican candidates to achieve this goal. Those of us who are plugged in to conservative blogs and other alternative media recognize CNN’s bias for what it is. The average American may not get how slanted CNN has made these debates. It is damaging CNN’s credibility even further when they do not take the time to check if those asking questions have an agenda to push, or whether they are even undecided voters. There’s nothing wrong with Democrats asking questions of the Republicans. The format allowed for people from both parties to ask them questions. CNN should have allowed more questions from Republicans than Democrats, since we are the ones who will pick our nominee. That’s not what happened here.

CNN never hesitated to name the affliation of Grover Norquist (who is hardly an impartial observer in this debate) to his Americans for Tax Reform. With just a little homework on their part, they could have found out about the Democrats asking questions without any disclosure of their affliations with Hillary, Obama, and someone belonging to a union supporting John Edwards. This is a joke. A bad joke. If the Republicans decide to boycott CNN from now on, I would support that completely.

As for the debate itself, I don’t know who won. The fireworks between Romney and Giuliani was quite entertaining. But I’ve stopped keeping score. There were no winners in the audience, because CNN totally abdicated its responsibility to run an honest debate for the Republicans.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

unarmed combat

If you read most of the press on last night’s Democratic presidential debate, you will learn that Hillary managed to rebound from her uneven performance in the previous debate (and the paralyzed reaction to the question about illegal alien driver’s licenses). If you actually watched the debate, you might have a different reaction to what you saw Thursday night. Obama and Edwards were right to call her out on her sketchy answer to the illegal immigration question. The problem is that Wolf Blitzer and Barack Obama allowed her to recover from that by allowing her to change her mind yet again with a one-word answer. (Her current view is that no, they shouldn’t get driver’s licenses. I doubt this position will change.) Obama seems to be intent on shooting himself in the foot. When criticizing an opponent for not giving straight answers, it’s important to give them yourself, especially on a question guaranteed to be asked in this debate. Obama didn’t do this. It took him forever to finally say that yes, he’s for illegals getting driver’s licenses (but only for public safety purposes). This blows my mind. Richardson gave a better defense than Obama did, and he has no shot of winning the nomination. Maybe that’s the reason he was willing to defend his “yes” answer.

Will Hillary get a better fight from the Republican nominee than she’s getting from Obama, Edwards, and all the rest??? I sure hope so. At least Wolf pretended to ask hard questions.

I continue to like some of the things I’m hearing from Biden and Dodd. They make more sense on foreign policy than any of the rest except Hillary. I also give Dodd credit for trying to explain to the other candidates why giving driver’s licenses to people who are here illegally is a bad idea. Domestic policy is another story. I don’t trust any Democrat on that topic.

Kucinich will always be Kucinich, God bless him. He’s still not convincing anybody that he’s presidential material.

As it turns out, CNN is not above screening questions for this debate, and telling questioners which one to ask. The crowd was unquestionably pro-Hillary. It was a very hostile environment for Obama and Edwards, and we shouldn’t have expected anything less this late in the race. I’m not going to blame CNN for the crowd. Who knows how the Hillary campaign might have stacked the deck in her favor by bringing in all those favorable audience members? But I don’t think Wolf Blitzer treated Obama and Edwards the same way he treated Hillary. Whether the bias was conscious or unconscious,  the sentiments of the crowd and of the moderators were obvious. I’m not surprised by it. That’s the way CNN is. They are just as biased for Dems as Fox News is for Republicans.

If you want to read the transcript, go here.