Creepy Joe's™ republican talking points

On ABC's This Week, Creepy Joe™ Lieberman debated Senator Jack Reed about Iraq and Iran.

In the kind of crazy logic that he calls non-partisanship, Lieberman criticizes Obama for shifting his position on Iraq to one that he says is closer to John McCain's. One would think, therefore, that if the only issue keeping Lieberman from supporting a fellow Democrat was Iraq, that he could now fully back Obama.

But no, Lieberman confounds by saying that Obama has been inconsistent, and incorrect in his Iraq policy. In fact, Lieberman does everything but call Obama a flip-flopper, and he reprises a tactic from his campaign against Ned Lamont, remember this:

My opponent is running against me, as you said, on this one issue. And yet even on this one issue, he has not leveled and been consistent with the people of Connecticut. He has taken all sorts of positions. One day saying he is for withdrawal and another day he is not. One day saying he is for a specific deadline, another day he is not.

Today, he said the same thing about Obama. It's a tired, old strategy, although one which worked for Lieberman against Lamont.

And with his fearmongering on Iran, Lieberman once again demonstrates that he represents Israel first, his version of the U.S. second, and Connecticut in a distant third.

The news media is broken

I went to bed last night after watching the debate, actually after tuning in to Keith Olbermann to see a bit of analysis about the debate.

I was already disgusted at the quality of the questions by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous. They dwelt on the petty and trivial minor issues discovered by bloggers and inflamed by a media who don't know how to address important issues and maintain an audience. I was furious at the questions chosen by Pennsylvania voters who seem obsessed with nonsense like Barack Obama's flag pin and Hillary Clinton's exaggerations about Bosnia. I was appalled that Stephanopolous followed the wing of right-wing bloviators and questioned Obama about a 60's radical with whom he had a very tenuous relationship, and then Clinton amplified the ridiculous inference.

And after determining that Clinton was being as negative as she could be while hoping not to alienate the last of her supporters, and that Obama handled the nonsense with as much dignity as he could muster, I heard NBC Political director Chuck Todd tell Olbermann that Obama had been pummeled and appeared "shaken." I couldn't believe my ears about a debate I had just watched myself.



And if you think I'm the only American disgusted with the quality of the questions delivered by Gibson and Stephanopolous you can begin by considering that the audience at the debate booed Gibson, and that many commentators are as furious as I am, including Greg Mitchell, Colin McEnroe, Josh Marshall, Marty Kaplan, Greg Sargent, Tom Shales, Niall Strange and Andrew Sullivan.

And then there are the nearly 13,000 people who commented directly to ABC.