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He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)

Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
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(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

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"A nutty lesbian blogger."
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Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
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who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
--"Joe"
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I did laundry rather than watch tonight's debate

by: Pam Spaulding

Wed Apr 16, 2008 at 22:15:00 PM EDT


UPDATE: A whole lot of people who did tune in didn't like what they saw -- and folks are ripping ABC a new one. Check out the 6000+ comments on the network's site. DHinMI (Dana) at DKos sums up the performances of Gibson and Stephanopolus this way -- Lee Atwater Lives.

UPDATE 2: If you missed it, Nicole Belle @ Crooks & Liars has more. I placed the mashup below the fold (along with a partial transcript for those of you who can't view the mind-boggling video at work), as well as a video of George and Charlie getting heckled after the debate.

I didn't bother turning on the presidential debate held in Pennsylvania tonight; thank goodness I didn't. Based on the blow-by-blow, the majority of it involved ignoring actual issues -- oh, say Iraq, health care, the economy. Apparently ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos thought it would inform viewers more about where  either candidate would take the country if they dredged up the various bloody political battles/scandals/bloopers of the campaign for deeper analysis.

For those who did watch, did they bring up the latest flap over Hillary's 1995 comments about lunch-bucket Dems (the demo she's cozying up to these days):

Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

That surely would have given George and Charlie an on-air woody.
Pam Spaulding :: I did laundry rather than watch tonight's debate
Think about this -- ABC News has millions of Americans watching, the economy is in the sh*tter, Iraq is a mess, healthcare is in shambles, and you have 2 hours to discuss the issues of the day with the candidates. Look at the selection of topics and framing of questions. This is journalism? My, I thought these clips were from The Onion:

Dredging up the dumb running mate question...

GIBSON: There have already been many votes in many states, and you have each, as you analyze the vote, appealed disproportionately to different constituencies in the party, and that dismays many in the party. Governor Cuomo, an elder statesman in your party, has come forward with a suggestion. He has said, look, fight it to the end.

Let every vote be counted. You contest every delegate. Go at each other to the -- right till the end. Don't give an inch to one another. But pledge now that whichever one of you wins this contest, you'll take the other as your running mate, and that the other will agree if they lose, to take second place on the ticket.

So I put the question to both of you: Why not?

***

The whole "bitter" blue collar worker BS (btw, it hasn't hurt Obama in polls, so what is the point of this framing?)...

MR. GIBSON: Talking to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco 10 days ago, you got talking in California about small-town Pennsylvanians who have had tough economic times in recent years. And you said they get bitter, and they cling to guns or they cling to their religion or they cling to antipathy toward people who are not like them.

Now, you've said you misspoke; you said you mangled what it was you wanted to say. But we've talked to a lot of voters. Do you understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant?

***

Yawn. The "electability" question

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me pick up on this. When these comments from Senator Obama broke on Friday, Senator McCain's campaign immediately said that it was going to be a killer issue in November.

Senator Clinton, when Bill Richardson called you to say he was endorsing Barack Obama, you told him that Senator Obama can't win. I'm not going to ask you about that conversation. I know you don't want to talk about it. But a simple yes-or-no question: Do you think Senator Obama can beat John McCain or not?

***

Rev. Wright AGAIN

MR. GIBSON: Senator Obama, since you last debated, you made a significant speech in this building on the subject of race and your former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And you said subsequent to giving that speech that you never heard him say from the pulpit the kinds of things that so have offended people.

But more than a year ago, you rescinded the invitation to him to attend the event when you announced your candidacy. He was to give the invocation. And according to the reverend, I'm quoting him, you said to him, "You can get kind of rough in sermons. So what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public." I'm quoting the reverend. But what did you know about his statements that caused you to rescind that invitation?

***

More time frittered away on Wright...

MR. GIBSON: Senator Clinton, let me -- I'm sorry, go ahead. Senator Clinton, let me follow up, and let me add to that. You have said that he would not have been my pastor, and you said that you have to speak out against those kinds of remarks, and implicitly by getting up and moving, and I presume you mean out of the church.

There are 8,000 members of Senator Obama's church. And we have heard the inflammatory remarks of Reverend Wright, but so too have we heard testament to many great things that he did. Do you honestly believe that 8,000 people should have gotten up and walked out of that church?

***

O...M...G...

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, two questions. Number one, do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do? And number two, if you get the nomination, what will you do when those sermons are played on television again and again and again?

***

Here comes a question on the economic crisis..oh damn, first we need to learn more about Clinton's Indiana Jones fantasy in Bosnia...

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Clinton, we also did a poll today, and there are also questions about you raised in this poll. About six in 10 voters that we talked to say they don't believe you're honest and trustworthy. And we also asked a lot of Pennsylvania voters for questions they had. A lot of them raised this honesty issue and your comments about being under sniper fire in Bosnia.

***

Great Caesar's Ghost -- why doesn't Obama wear a flag pin!

MR. GIBSON: And Senator Obama, I want to do one more question, which goes to the basic issue of electability. And it is a question raised by a voter in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a woman by the name of Nash McCabe. Take a look.

NASH MCCABE (Latrobe, Pennsylvania): (From videotape.) Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don't.

MR. GIBSON: Just to add to that, I noticed you put one on yesterday. But -- you've talked about this before, but it comes up again and again when we talk to voters. And as you may know, it is all over the Internet. And it's something of a theme that Senators Clinton and McCain's advisers agree could give you a major vulnerability if you're the candidate in November. How do you convince Democrats that this would not be a vulnerability?

***

The clock is ticking on the 2 hour debate...will the questions turn to global warming...NO, it's time to talk about radicals from the 70s!

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?

The full transcript of the debate is here.

And look at this -- Charlie and George are heckled by the audience after the debate:
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I did laundry rather than watch tonight's debate | 18 comments
ABC non-journalism
For the first time in my life, I sent an e-mail comment to a major news network.  Charlie Gibson earned the (dis)honor of my wrath.  If ABC wants to drag us all to the lowest common denominator, then they're doing a bang-up job with this so-called 'debate'.  Is this the state of journalism?
A Complete Disgrace
I've been watching the John Adams miniseries,and I read McCullough's biography and a bunch of other books on the Founders, but I don't think any knowledge of our Founders is necessary to have understood that tonight's debate was a  travesty of democracy and journalism.  The so-called newsmen badgered each candidate, asked ridiculously unimportant questions for most of the evening, didn't seem to know very much, and wasted time and space.

I was outraged at how little of substance was covered, especially torture. Last week ABC News broke the story about all our administration bigwigs meeting to discuss torture, and how Bush signed off on it, yet this subject not only has been ignored by the national MSM, it wasn't even significant enough for Gibson and Georgie Boy to raise.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/L...

Ironically, in the most recent John Adams episode, JA inveighs against the French for torturing a captured American captain during a period of high seas tension between the two countries.  And so much of the series has been devoted to debates in those years about crucial matters of governance, yet our 24/7 media is trapped in a hamster cage of trivialities.    

Where was a question about the Fourth Amendment?  Where was a question about the powers of the Vice Presidency?  I give Clinton mad props for at least mentioning that Cheney thinks he's a fourth branch of government, but it was only a joke, and only in passing.  Why aren't both candidates sounding the alarm as the Constitution is torn to shreds, bit by bit?  Why doesn't the press care?

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

I am baking apple pies,
I didn't bother to watch or listen either.  I figure I can read about it later.

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.
That Was Awful
Be glad you missed it. That was a hit job in the worse possible way and Gibson and Stephanopolous' actions are indefensible.

utter horsehockey
all of it.

my short synopsis here (with links to Wonkette's longer and snarkier coverage):  http://breaktheterror.wordpres...

http://breakthterror.blogspot.com

More Disgrace
Well, Attytood nails a lot of what went wrong last night:

http://www.philly.com/philly/b...

But something I haven't seen mentioned yet, or extensively, is Charlie Gibson's loathsome comment about Virginia Tech: that every American was saying a prayer on the one-year anniversary for those people (not clear if he meant the survivors or the victims or both).

Well, shit, can the degradation of public discourse get any worse?  Can it be perverted any more by studied acts of overt religiosity, or lipservice to same?

Was this Fox News?  The Prayer Network?  Since when are journalists imposing a kind of religious litmus test on the country by assuming anyone prays about any particular subject? I was so deeply offended by this I left the room. And that wasn't the only time.  I found the implicit rightwing bias of the questions lobbed at each candidate unforgivable.  

What a bunch of yahoos.

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

Good choice, Pam
I missed it too, but husband watched it- he is now telling me in painful detail EVERY EXCHANGE and as I just told him, if he doesn't stop, I'm taking a page out of Pam's book and going to go do the laundry! ;)

What a wasted opportunity, especially this late in the campaign. The candidates and the voters got ripped off.

Click HERE and sign up: Campaign For Military Partners

Click here for DADT photobook

Ripped off, indeed
And wasn't Charlie Gibson the same moderator who assumed at the small New England college that professors working there,  a married couple, made $200,000 a year--to the laughter and mockery of the audience and even some of the candidates?

Last night he seemed to think middle class means an income of $200,000 a year.  Only about 3% of the country has an income above $200,000.

How can Gibson not know this?  Oh, wait, I have the answer: he's busy trolling rightwing web sites to find stupid questions to lob at Clinton and Obama.

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

[ Parent ]
Maybe Gibson
took economics classes from McCain? You know, the economics where the GNP is 5 billion times more than it really is, and we live in a faux-socialist society where everyone makes at least $200,000 and there is no lower class.

Just for the record, your average university professor makes hardly any money. My friend finished his doctorate in Philosophy to find that most teaching positions offered less than $25,000 starting out.

[ Parent ]
I Had the Chance to Watch
My partner was flipping through the channels last night and asked me if I wanted to watch the debate. I told her no, I was tired of debates and I would read about it today. Boy, and I glad I did that now that I see these posts.
"Shoddy and despicable"
That's what Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales dubs the debate yesterday in his excellent analysis of what went wrong:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Who knew anyone could do a lousier job than Wolf Blizter?

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

Sing it Lev!
You know, they had much better debates when they had a much larger cast of characters. I hate mid-season rewrites...

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Click here for DADT photobook

[ Parent ]
same old same old
They're sounding like what Lady Bracknell said about people in society at the end of the social season "when everyone has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much."

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report
[ Parent ]
SEND A COMPLAINT TO ABC
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/pag...

Here was mine:
I am writing to voice my strong dissatisfaction with ABC's debate last night between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.  Last night's debate was nothing more than a smear campaign against both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.  It was the worst display of journalistic ability I have ever witnessed from a network and their supposedly seasoned professional journalists.  Both Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopolis should be fired for this debacle.
ABC, Charlie Gibson, and George Stephanopolis did our country a great disservice last night by failing to focus on the REAL issues plaguing our country.  Here's a few:
• The United States is in an endless war in Iraq, our troops are overstretched, and the current administration is looking for any angle to convince Americans to engage Iran.
• Professional, competent, well trained, patriotic gay and lesbian soldiers are being mass exited from crucial Military career fields under DADT while enlistment standards are being lowered for everybody else in a furry to fill the ranks.
• Trillions of dollars in national debt on a credit card from China.
• Recession and the collapse of the U.S. dollar.
• Millions of Americans can't afford health care.
• Failing economy with thousands of jobs moving overseas while corporate America gets rich.
• Americans losing their homes while the government, on the backs of taxpayers, bails out the mortgage companies that caused this crisis rather than helping those who have lost their homes.  
And why hasn't ABC aggressively investigated and questioned candidates about the REAL reasons behind the high cost of gasoline instead of your lazy reporting of per usual reasons:  supply/demand, Katrina, refinery capacity, etc.  
ABC has lost all credibility with me, my friends, and my family.

Any chance
you could host the next debate?

Seriously, had this timely list been the game plan, we would be having a far different conversation today...

Click HERE and sign up: Campaign For Military Partners

Click here for DADT photobook

[ Parent ]
And there's more!
--What about habeus corpus having been suspended for a year and a half, secretly?

--What about spying on American citizins?

--What about "the unitary executive" and its apparently unlimited powers?

--What about the role of the vice presidency?  Would either candidate ever let a veep become as pwoerful as Cheney?

What about the lies that got us into Iraq?

What about the great moral stain of Abu Ghraib, which only low-ranking soldiers have been punished for?

That's off the top of my head, but that's enough for two hours.

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

[ Parent ]
abc in disgrace
I couldn't even get onto the abcnews site to post a comment when I tried. The questioning really was disgraceful.

I already voted in California, but I voted again this morning with a credit card at barackobama.com. If Hillary says "yes, yes, yes" she'll support Barack, then let's get this show on the road and focus all efforts on November.

What they asked--the bald truth
Here's the dispiriting, disgraceful breakdown of the questions, courtesy of Kos:

      1.  Process (VP running mate)

      2. Bitter

      3. Bitter/Process (can Obama win?)

      4. Process (can Obama win?)

      5. Process (can Clinton win?)

      6. Wright

      7. Wright

      8. Wright/patriotism

      9. Wright

     10. Wright/patriotism

     11. Bosnia/Clinton's honesty

     12. Clinton's honesty

     13. Flag pin/patriotism

     14. Ayers/patriotism

     15. Iraq (would you ignore commanders?)

     16. Iraq (do you know better than commanders?)

     17. Iraq (would you ignore commanders?)

     18. Iran/Israel (Iran will threaten to use nukes)

     19. Pledge no tax increases (with McCain attack)

     20. Capital gains tax rates

     21. Gun registration

     22. Guns/ D.C. law

     23. Affirmative action

     24. Gas prices

     25. Foreign oil

     26. Process (how would you use GWB?)

     27. Process (superdelegates)

   

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

I did laundry rather than watch tonight's debate | 18 comments
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