Did I say "short"?

Maybe I meant "dwarfish."  All I could think of, as I watched the seven Republican hopefuls "debate" in New Hampshire, was of Doc (Ron Paul), Grumpy (Newt  Gingrich), Happy (Mitt Romney), Sleepy (Tim Pawlenty), Bashful (Rick Santorum), Sneezy (Herman Cain), and Dopey (Michele Bachmann).

Oh yes, and about the format, part of which makes them all so small.  The New York Times, in an editorial, calls the mash-up "full of historical error, economic obfuscation, avoidance of hard truths and even outright bigotry."  That it was, but that it was meant to be.  The ability to delve deeply into a topic, to consider anything of any real size or importance, has long been stripped from televised American presidential debates in favor of the show.  We've even reduced it to the level of the "reality" show, trotting out so-called 'average citizens' to ask questions.

We have known for a while that all the Republicans want to to do is avoid actually doing anything to reform that failed free market they still love but nothing makes it more clear than the entirety of their actual input into debating what should be debated:

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Michael Collins

A couple of nights ago, I watched Jane Hamsher, the founder and publisher of the progressive website Firedoglake.com make a startling statement. She was a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show and was speaking about the fact that members of the congressional progressive caucus had drawn a line in the sand regarding the need for a public option, “after it became clear that Rahm Emanuel and Max Baucus were trying to deal a public plan away to the AMA, the hospitals, Pharma in exchange for keeping the money out of Republican coffers in 2010.”  I stopped my DVR and replayed this portion of the interview a couple more times to make sure that I had heard her correctly. It all started to make sense. It made me think about the healthcare debate in a different way. I realized that this debate is not about us – the American people. It is about politics pure and simple.

Those who Serve the Country Serve the Whole Country and Thus Should Be Given the 'Honor' and 'Respect' Due Them when Returned to this soil after Dying during that Service!!

There are some groups of people who welcome home the returning soldiers in airports and other transportation points.

We organize rallies for the families and communities on the return of locally based Units of the Reserves, National Guard, and on Army and Marine bases.

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Before they start a laughable attack on Joe Biden...

We know that Sarah Winky Palin's flub with the General's name was a minor one, the issue is more the fact that Winky Palin said the opposite of what the General said concerning a "Surge" (escalation) in Afghanistan not being useful in that country and, also, seemed to think reciting his statements on counter insurgency operations and other issues given by the mis-named General justified her lie.

But Red State thinks that the GOP giggle gaggle should be making fun of Joe Biden for dropping names:

In the interest of providing a more rounded account please do not overlook additions to this story, including McCain campaign's reply.

Seems like there is good reason to suspect that John McCain either listened to Barack Obama and Rick Warren during the first hour of the Saddlebrook debate, despite assurances to the audience that he had been isolated in a "cone of silence," on the premises of the church.

Bumped. Originally posted 2008-08-16 18:34:54 -0500.

I am going to give this pastor the benefit of the doubt on all of this before tonight's debate between Obama and McCain since his background seems to show a little more enlightenment than most of the religious types we have seen spoon-fed to the masses on TV news in the last couple of decades:

"As a pastor, I believe in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe we can separate religion from politics, because one's faith determines one's worldview, which informs one's decisions and determines how one would lead," Warren said.

His views on many of the political problems we face appear to be more encompassing - to include all of the very real problems of AIDS, poverty, the environment - as well as the other issues we usually hear about from the one-trick pony that Dobson's Focus on the Freepers has become. There are too many important issues that Dobsonites have purposefully and completely ignored and, even, fought hard to suppress in the religious discussions of politics.

But I do have a problem with some of the McClatchy story on the debate:

Last night, for the first time, I watched the debates on television. Aside from the Facebook fooforall and something irrelevant called the “Spin Room,” I even found the presentation reasonable—though the guy from ABC (the host of their evening news—which I never watch) clearly knows little about the lives or incomes of much of America (he raised derisive laughter when he said that two married college professors would be making around $200,000 combined) and has a naïve view of causality in Iraq (he believes that the “surge” is responsible for the drop in violence, that it is “working”).