The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: The DNC

Even a blind squirrel, or a broken clock...

"Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."...

"It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan."

The man who said those words?

What up indeed.

So how does the DNC respond? Well since it's the DNC, they do it in the most hacktastic way possible:

RNC CHAIRMAN MICHAEL STEELE BETS AGAINST OUR TROOPS, ROOTS FOR FAILURE

Here goes Michael Steele setting policy for the GOP again. The likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham will be interested to hear that the Republican Party position is that we should walk away from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban without finishing the job. They'd also be interested to hear that the Chairman of the Republican Party thinks we have no business in Afghanistan notwithstanding the fact that we are there because we were attacked by terrorists on 9-11.

And, the American people will be interested to hear that the leader of the Republican Party thinks recent events related to the war are 'comical' and that he is betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan. It's simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.

So opposing the war in Afganistan means you're "Betting against our troops"and "rooting for failure". Good to know.

I know Steele is only saying it because Obama is running the war, but that shit doesn't matter. It was wrong when the Bush Administration questioned the patriotism of those who opposed their wars, and it's wrong the the DNC to do it now. Period.

It would be absolutely insane for Michael Steele to lose his job over this (as opposed to all the legitimately destructive stuff he's done), but considering how stupid our political culture is, I wouldn't be surprised.

Election Day Preview - Liveblog 10 PM Tonight

Crazed shouts of ACORN! and VOTER FRAUD! are ringing out across the wingnut universe, so it must be an election day.

Races to watch tonight:

New York District 23
Hoffman Vs. Owens

Hoffman is a full blown teabagger who forced the Republican out of the race. The Republican then endorsed Owens, a crappy blue dog Democrat.

No tears shed if a blue dog loses their job, and a teabagger win could plunge the Republicans in a full on crazy vs. less crazy civil war. A Hoffman win could be lots of fun, and maybe the Democrats could run somebody less sucky next time.

Maine Prop 1

Would ban gay marriage in the state if passed.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week goes to Organizing for America, who didn't mention voting no on this in their Get out the vote email. Fucking weak.

New Jersey Governor
Jon Corzine vs. Chris "Doug" Christie

Corzine a good candidate and is fairly progressive on a lot of issues.

Apparently a major issue in the campaign has been how fat Chris Christie is. Our discourse is so fucking stupid.

Virginia Governor
Creigh Deeds vs Bob McDonnell

Bob McDonnell said that working women were "detrimental" to the family and opposes contraception. Jesus.

Creigh Deeds railed against cap and trade, opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and said he'd look into opting out of the public option if he had the chance. Fuck him. He is what's wrong with the Democratic Party, and having depressed his base into oblivion, he will lose. It's good to know that both candidates for Governor ran on platforms of taking Virginia back into the 1800s.

Remember that if a Republican wins in Virginia, Obama loses the 2012 election, and if a Democrat wins in New Jersey, it's because they cheated. It was a banner day for journalism at the Wall Street Journal!

Follow the results with a LIVEBLOG tonight at 10 PM!

LIVEBLOG!

10 PM!

TONIGHT!

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Bill Clinton

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

Gay rights groups and Labor Groups are boycotting the Manchester Hyatt in California because it's owner gave large sums of money to support Prop 8. Bill Clinton plans on speaking there for a trade group meeting, and as a result will cross the picket line. And while that's pretty annoying, the quote is the truly disgusting act:

“He's obviously sympathetic to this cause,” Clinton spokesman Matthew McKenna said. “I don't think you can name a leader in the world who has done more to advance gay and lesbian issues.”

This comes from a man who pushed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which rather than advancing a cause, actually TOOK AWAY the rights of gay and lesbian Americans. So you can make the case that any world leader who didn't actively oppress the gay community in their country has done more for gay rights than Bill Clinton.

And forgetting the facts, to make a statement like that while explaining that you're going to ingnore their boycott is pretty amazing in itself. I guess the real news here is that even though he hasn't been in the news much recently, Bill Clinton continues to find ways to remind everyone that he's a conceited jackass.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Juan Williams

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

I guess he was hanging out with Rahm and Bill over the weekend. From his appearance on The Reilly's Factor(where else), discussing Muntader "the Shoe Throwing Hero" al-Zaidi and the Iraqi people:

WILLIAMS: But on a serious level, how many American lives have been sacrificed to the cause of liberating Iraq? How much money has been spent while they’re not spending their own profits from their oil? American money. So I just think it’s absolutely the act of an ingrate for them to behave in this way. Just unbelievable to me.

Hey Juan, "on a serious level", here's why the Iraqis might not be so grateful:

– More than four million Iraqis forced to flee either to another part of Iraq or abroad.
– Four million Iraqis regularly cannot buy enough food.
– 70 percent are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50 percent in 2003.
– 28 percent of children are malnourished, compared to 19 percent before the 2003 invasion.
– 92 percent of Iraqi children suffer learning problems, mostly due to the climate of fear.

Add that to estimates of several hundred thousand civilian deaths, and it really makes you wonder why "they behave this way".

Instead of some profanity laced rant about how far Juan Willams' head is shoved up his own ass, I'll leave it to Matt Yglesias who has as smart of a response as I've ever seen to this type of idiocy:

Americans love and respect the men and women who volunteer for military service under our flag. And those of us who’ve had friends serve in Iraq, and especially those who’ve personally served in Iraq and watched friends be killed or maimed, think only the best of the people who’ve been doing dangerous jobs in difficult circumstances. But I think it’s crucially important not to allow these positive sentiments about soldiers and marines to deteriorate into sentimentality about the mission they were undertaking in Iraq. The Iraqi people didn’t ask to be liberarted conquered and occupied by a foreign power that destroyed their country and then immediately set about meddling in Iraqi politics and until just a month or so ago was struggling mightily for the right to permanently station military forces on Iraqi soil contrary to the will of the Iraqi public. Not only did Iraqis not ask for such services, but nobody anywhere has ever asked for them.

The harsh reality is that this was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world. But it’s impolitic to point this out in the United States, and it’s clear that even a president-elect who had the wisdom not to be suckered in by the War Fever of 2002 has no intention of really acting to marginalize the bad actors. Which, I think, makes sense for his political objectives. But if Americans want to play a constructive role in world affairs, it’s vitally important for us to get in touch with the reality of what the past eight years of US foreign policy have been and how they’re seen and understood by people who aren’t stirred by the shibboleths of American patriotism.

Some reality would be nice, but if that's what you were looking for, then you probably wouldn't have been watching the O'Reilly Factor.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: The McCain Campaign

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

It's not like we weren't expecting this race to get uglier. Maybe it's the polls completely tanking, but for whatever reason, McCain's campaign has been pulling out all the stops in seeing how low they can go. The answer, as it turns out, is pretty fucking low.

Race baiting? Oh yeah.

Calling him a terrorist? Sure, and it's the official campaign doing so:

And what does it lead to? Stuff like this:

The McCain campaign knows what they're doing, and just like the Clinton campaign, they know that this stuff works. There's a lot of racist and xenophobic hatred out there, and we can only hope that when Obama becomes president will cause there to be less of these assholes in future generations.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Rahm Emanuel... Again!

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

It's the start of the NFL season, so what better time for another installment of the Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week? And for the first time ever, we have a repeat offender: Rahm Emanuel!

So what did Rahm do this time?

David Sirota:

Here's the snippet (no link because the publication is subscription-only):

"Among the House Democratic leadership, Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) is actively advocating that Democrats would be better off having the votes on pending [free trade agreements] this year for a number of reasons, sources said. They said that one of the reasons Emanuel cites is that there are likely more Republican members in this Congress than there will be in the next, which would mean that fewer Democrats would have to take a potentially divisive trade vote now."

Correct: Emanuel - one of the original architects of NAFTA - wants congressional Democrats to pass controversial NAFTAs with Colombia, South Korea and Panama right now, so as to avoid inevitably STRONGER opposition from his own party in the next Congress.

To really fathom how incredible this is, understand that Emanuel - the Democratic leader - is effectively acting as the House Republican whip. He's saying that he wants these bills up for a vote because there are enough Republican votes right now in the House to pass it over current Democratic objections - and there won't be enough GOP votes in the next Congress.
(Emphasis Mine)

Wow, even for Rahm that's disgusting. Trying to jam through unpopular legislation because you're worried that your own party might win to many seats for it to be possible next year... that's sure how you want your party's leadership to be thinking.

This all goes back to a point that Sirota and others made during the spring after Pelosi postponed the votes on these trade agreements. If the congressional leadership wanted the deals dead, they would have been dead. They postponed them not because of principles (or spine, guts, conviction, balls, dignity, whatever you prefer), but because they didn't think they had enough votes to pass them. The question is not if they can make these horrific deals better, the question is when they have enough votes to slam them through congress against the will of the American people. Not if, but when.

But then again it's not like using his power to fuck over the working class is something new for Rahm, either. I can't quite remember, something about dead bodies...

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Rahm Emanuel and Bill Clinton

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

Rahm Emanuel:

"We've put about $45 billion into Iraq's reconstruction . . . and they have not spent their own resources...They have got to have some skin in the game."

"Skin" in the game? SKIN? How about several hundred thousand dead you prick! Is that enough "skin" for you? And just when you think you've heard the worst... enter former president Bill Clinton:

He boils down complex international affairs to the most digestible basics—Iraq is a neighbor still crashing on your couch five years after his house burned down. “It’s not about the fire anymore,” he says.

There is so much nonsense in that statement I really don't know where to begin. First things first, if you're gonna use such a ridiculous analogy, lets at least get the main thrust of it right. Bill, I'm not sure if you were paying attention in 2003 or not, but unlike Billy Joel, we DID start the fire! So, I guess that makes it a lot less like a fire in this guys house, and more like arson committed by us. But even with that out of the way, it's still idiotic, so I figure we might as well just rewrite his quote in order to make it closer to reality:

He boils down complex international affairs to the most digestible basics—He tells the crowd that Iraq is like that time when you had a bad day at work and decided to torch your neighbor's house. "After you torched his house, you figured it's only right to invite him to crash on your couch till he gets a new house. Wait, did I say crash on your couch? Sorry, I meant to say that after the fire you went to the burnt rubble where he now lives and beat the crap out of him every day for the next couple of years until his family has had enough and decides it's safer to be homeless than live in the rubble with him. After a while, other people start joining you when you beat the guy up, and pretty soon every psychopath in the neighborhood is walking a few blocks over to kick his ass, or just start another fire where his house used to be. As you can imagine, this starts to get out of hand, and thats when you have might have to stop beating up him up everyday, give him the tough love he needs by telling him: 'Hey buddy, it's not about the fire anymore'"

Even though my fake quote may have gone on far too long, the funny part is that it still makes a hell of a lot more sense then the actual quote from our former president.

This is a serious problem. Back in the fall I was worried that this trend would spread among democrats who don't feel like they can oppose the war without stooping to the racist rhetoric of the colonial powers. This type of talk is truly disgraceful, but if people think that racism works for short term political gain, (and clearly, some democrats do) you know someone's gonna take the bait.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Geraldine Ferraro

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

It starts with the other day with Geraldine Ferraro's comments about Barack Obama:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Huh... that's fairly offensive, not to mention a really idiotic thing to say. You'd think that 43 for 43 record of white men being president would take down that whole "advantage" arguement, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt. After all she could be referring to this black president, but since's he's a basketball player, and that was an ad based on nickname he gave himself... somehow I doubt it. DHinMI at dailykos has the ugly strategy behind her strange statement:

One can laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement, or ridicule the idea that African-Americans somehow have it easier in America than white men or women. But to do so misses how Ferraro's statement will be heard by too many Americans.

The fact is, there are a lot of White people in American who believe they're at a disadvantage, that Blacks get things handed to them. The idea may be foreign to some people, but I've heard it my entire life. I've heard it at family gatherings, in my neighborhood when I was a kid, from family friends and all kinds of other folks. It's not a fringe belief. It's at the heart of the belief system of the so-called Reagan Democrats—swing voters and even some Democrats who were cradle Democrats but defected to Reagan and have been up for grabs in most elections since 1992.

Some of these Reagan Democrats will hear Ferraro's comment, and they'll think about the job they didn't get because, they believe, it went to an affirmative action hire. They'll think about the guy promoted over them because, they believe, he's black. And they'll think "here we go again."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! Race baiting from the Clinton campaign! Now THAT makes sense! Well, we've been down this road before, and since it's been seen by the national media, they'll let the smear stay in the news for a few more hours before Ferraro gives her insincere apology:

"It wasn't a racist comment, it was a statement of fact," she said on CBS' Early Show, adding that she would leave Hillary Clinton's national finance committee if she were asked.

"Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Wow, that was different. Instead of apologizing, she strongly defended the comments. It looks like the Clinton campaign over played it's racebaiting tactic by allowing the comments to be said by an actual racist! What a twist! The Hillary Clinton campaign, produced by to you by M Night Shyamalan. As if to solidify the point, what's her next move? To appear on one of the remaining sanctuaries for racism in the mainstream media: The Bill O'Reilly show!

O'REILLY: This crossed the wire. Apparently you told the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, California, quote, "If Obama were a white man, he would not be in this position. If here were a woman of any color, he would not be in the position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is in a country who's caught up in the concept." Did you say that?

FERRARO: Yeah, but I also said a lot before that.

O'REILLY: Right, but you know you're gonna get hammered on that.

FERRARO: I was not speaking – no, I was speaking to – it was a paid speech. I was not representing a campaign. I go out and give speeches. I don't –

O'REILLY: Oh, I understand that.

FERRARO: You know, like you do.

O'REILLY: I absolutely know they can take you out of context, but do you believe that Barack Obama, if he were a white mean, white senator, would not be in the position?

FERRARO: Absolutely

O'REILLY: I got it. I got it. I got it. No, listen, I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong [...] but you're gonna get hammered by it, but if anybody does, let me know, and I'll take care of them. Geraldine Ferraro, everybody. Geraldine's too nice, see.

Classy stuff. But not as damning as this gem all the way from 1988.

That's right, you guessed it, about Jesse Jackson:

Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don't ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."

Asked about this at a campaign stop in Buffalo, Jackson at first seemed ready to pounce fiercely on his critics. But then he stopped, took a breath, and said quietly, "Millions of Americans have a point of view different from" Ferraro's.

Discussing the same point in Washington, Jackson said, "We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got North to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history."

I guess some things never change, huh?

Kos pulls a great quote from blogger dna who explains further explains the strategy and the cost:

If the Clinton campaign was truly embarrassed or disagreed with Ferraro's comments, they wouldn't be tossing her into the media frenzy to shout her message from the mountaintops that Barack Obama's success is due only to his blackness. And they would not be utilizing the most effective means of doing so--the Right Wing smear machine that nearly destroyed Bill Clinton's presidency.

The aim here is to evoke racial resentment on the part of white voters over issues like Affirmative Action, and cast Obama as a talentless hack who excels only because our country is held victim by political correctness. The hope is that this will drive a permanent wedge between Obama and white voters that will sway Superdelegates to ultimately go with Hillary at the convention. At worst, Obama will be so damaged in the general that he can never be a threat to their ambitions again.

Aside from the various ironies at work here, the fact that Affirmative Action has mostly benefited white women and Hillary's use of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy she gave a name to, the possiblity that Hillary, even if she gets the nomination, may face a similar line of argument given the fact that bans on Affirmative Action will be on the ballot in several swing states, there may be a silver lining. After this campaign, black voters should consider very seriously our allegiance to the Democratic Party in the voting booth, and the reality that white liberals are comfortable with our success only to the point that they can control and take credit for it.

Agreed. That last sentence hits home for those of us who believe that a Hillary Clinton victory based on super delegates will completely destroy (And rightly so, I might add) the democratic party.

After a couple days of this stuff, it also looks like this Ferraro has been fired, leaving behind this rather amazing letter:

Dear Hillary –

I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen.

Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren.

You have my deep admiration and respect.

Gerry

Nice. But just like their other race baiting campaign, when the dog whistle turns into a siren, its becomes a lot less useful.

The more I read these quotes and others by her (especially the ones here about John Lewis and others who dared to endorse Obama), this doesn't quite qualify as one disgusting act. It more qualifies Geraldine Ferraro as a disgusting human being, and I really hope she quietly returns to her previous position of complete irrelevance that she maintained so well before the existence of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Daniel Snyder

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

What a day.

First it starts with news that Yes Man(Official Title) Vinny Cerrato has been promoted to Executive Vice President/Football Operations... officially killing my dream that the redskins would have a successful GM who came with a solid plan, which was independent of Dan Snyder's mood swings and spur of the moment decisions.

Not content with crushing one dream that I had hoped for but didn't expect, Snyder next defied all rational logic by apparently choosing a Team of Jim Fassel, Rex Ryan and Jim Zorn to take charge of the Redskins. See, Dan Snyder has this whole thing figured out. Most fans thought he going to do the rational thing and promote Defensive Coordinator Greg Williams. We thought he was just publicly interviewing the other candidates because he's an egotistical ass who wants to make a show out of everything he does. Yeah, he wasn't thinking about how this would humiliate Greg Williams and confuse the team who wanted him to be their coach, but all would be made right in the end, right? Right? RIGHT?

No, of course not! The joke was on us because Dan Snyder was ACTUALLY interviewing other candidates! In fact, he found a team of them that he liked so much that he decided that it was worth blowing up our current squad to put these guys into place.

Rebuilding... not even close to what I was expecting this off season.

The Joe Buck Discusting Acts of the Week: Just below the surface...

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

Since there is seriously racist subtext to much of Joe Buck's blowhard commentary (the Moss incident just being one example), I feel like this is appropriate. As sad as it is, racist tones are never too far from the mainstream culture in this country and two stories today act depressing reminders.

One comes from a golf analyst of TV:

The Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman will serve a two-week suspension after saying during a recent broadcast that one way younger players could best Tiger Woods would be to "lynch him in a back alley."

The other from a surrogate for a leading presidential candidate:

It's not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can't buy your way into it," Cuomo said, according to Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin. He then added, "You can't shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room."

According to Joan Houston Hall's Dictionary of American Regional English, the phrase "shuck and jive" means, "To be deceptive or evasive; to tell tall tales or lies; to fool around. esp freq among Black speakers," and "stalling or obfuscating, especially to avoid having to admit that you did not know something or were trying to divert someone's attention."

Our country has come a long way, and we still have a long way to go. We have advanced to the point that the cowards who wear sheets have been forced to the margins of society, but racism still resides in our culture today, even if it has been pushed just below the surface.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Steny Hoyer

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

This week that award goes to Steny Hoyer:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

"We have to get to a point where the American public more clearly perceives our policy position and is not confused by whether or not the Democrats intend to support the troops that we've sent to Iraq. I don't think there's an option on that," Hoyer said.

Lets have a look at this logic. The vast majority of the country wants to end the war, the democrats have the power to end the war, and instead doing something to... wait for it... end the war, they decide that it's more important to shield themselves against mean republicans calling them pussies. Rather than explain how amoral/cowardly/stupid this whole mess is, I'll defer to a great clip of Ben Affleck on Bill Maher explaining the stunning logic behind these decisions.

If all of that wasn't enough, the article ends with another gem, showing the complete and utter idiocy of the democratic leadership:

Hoyer struck a pragmatic tone, pushing for Congress to adjourn for the year by the end of next week. He suggested that Democrats need to divorce their goal of ending the war from the battle over funding.

Let me make sure I understand this. The democrats should put away the only tool they have to end the war... so that they can get to work on ending the war! Good one Steny! At least now that you've revealed your master plan it makes a little more sense how you've been so completely and utterly worthless at getting anything accomplished.

That was a disgusting act by Steny Hoyer and its unfortunate that we had it on our air live.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: The CNN Las Vegas Debate

The Disgusting Act of the Week will be awarded periodically to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's over the top outrage at a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

And the winner this week... CNN, for their Las Vegas Democratic Debate.

The debate itself was pretty uninteresting, with few good questions and pointed exchanges. That being said, I thought it was Obama and Richardson's best performance, John Edwards' worst, and more of the same lying and question dodging that we have come to expect from Hillary Clinton.
However what made this debate a disgusting act was both the audience, and the coverage that followed. When watching the debate on television, I noticed several odd things about the audience. First off, there were loud boos of both John Edwards and Barack Obama at points that really didn't make sense, and second, it they didn't sound like regular boos. As a fan of several sports teams who, well, have seen their fair share of boos, I know a normal sounding boo starts softer, and grows louder as it spreads through the crowd. These boos were different though, they sounded like they were coordinated, immediately at top volume, like you were flipping on a switch. It didn't seem to make too much sense until I read a diary by LV Pol Girl over at dailykos, who attended the debate and gave her own take.

The audience was basically divided into two sections. One side was UNLV, the well behaved section and the other section was the Hillary (oops, I meant the DNC) section. The DNC section is where I was seated and it was filled with Hillary supporters. The guy next to me said he was for Edwards and lied, because the only person he cheered for was Hillary. Loud, obnoxious, women were sitting behind me that talked throughout the debate and sneered "trial lawyer" every time Edwards spoke and called Obama "arrogant".

So the audience was predominantly pro-Hillary, but that was only one piece of the puzzle. In order to counter what had been over a week of bad press coverage based on the last debate and planted questions, the media needed to agree that Hillary had turned things around. Enter the CNN post debate team:

• James Carville: Admitted Hillary Clinton supporter, sent out a fund raising letter for her campaign last year.
• David Gergen: Former Bill Clinton adviser and confidante.
• J.C. Watts: Former republican congressman (Your guess as good as mine why he's there)

And, in a truly shocking development, the panel loved Hillary.

"She really turned it around."
"She hit it out of the park."
"She fought back, but looked like a leader"

And in the end, the transformation was complete. After one week of questioning her status as the inevitable nominee, all it took was one night of dodging questions, packing the audience with your supporters then putting your supporters on tv as analysts to return to the race to the status quo. I guess the brain-dead media giveth, and the brain-dead media taketh away.

That was a disgusting act by CNN and it's unfortunate that we had it on our air live.