Frustrated Incorporated
I just want something simple, like the TRUTH!

“Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not trust press coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new Harvard University survey, which also revealed four out of five people believe coverage focuses too much on the trivial — and more than 60% believe coverage is politically biased.”

Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership National Leadership Index

More than 60% don’t trust campaign coverage, and what happened on CNN last night is a clear illustration of why.

Some people are saying,
“CNN didn’t plant anything. They’re not that sophisticated. They’re not that organized.”

Some people have a theory that, “You know, it’s just a result of groupthink. These people are all librals, and they have a view of conservatism — and their view of conservatism is that conservatives are kooks and weirdos and oddballs, and so when they see a question like this from Keith Kerr and some of these other people, they don’t think anything about it because they think everybody looks at conservatives the way they do, and so they don’t vet.”

I don’t care what the theory is. CNN doesn’t win no matter what the explanation. If they didn’t know that this guy was who he is and some of these other questioners that they chose were who they were, what does it say about them? They’re a news organization; they’re supposed to know things before anybody else does! They’re not supposed to be informed by one of their commentators during an after-show that one of their guest appearances was a plant or a Hillary operative, and act surprised about it. If they did know all of this and still went ahead with it, it means their elitism and arrogance is such that they don’t care. I have to believe they’re a little upset about this today, though, because this goes right to their image as a news organization. Forget “unbiased,” because that’s gone out the window a long time ago.

After that opening with this idiot who sang a song — did you guys see this? The opening YouTube video was a guy playing the guitar singing lyrics with his opinions of all the candidates. And, of course, the cameras cut to each of the candidates while this guy’s song is playing, and, of course, they have to smile and so forth. If I had been on that stage and if I had been a serious contender for president, after that, I would have said, “Mr. Cooper, we are running for the presidency of the United States, and this is very serious, and you are making a joke out of this, and I’m going to go somewhere where I can discuss this seriously,” and I’d walk off the stage. And I would be leading the pack, today.

We sat there last night and I think there’s a defensiveness, “Well, we gotta answer these questions. We gotta look good. We gotta do this.” I didn’t see a whole lot of aggressiveness other than when Mitt went after Rudy and vice-versa and so forth. McCain took some pretty good shots at Ron Paul on the war once they got to that subject.

But this was a joke. I mean, it’s not hard to rise above a joke.

Give me a break, gays in the military. When has that been an issue of any prominence recently? There was another question about homosexuality, the Log Cabin Republican guy. And then the Confederate flag, that’s long ago. Those things are all clichéd.

This presidential campaign is not about the Confederate flag, it’s not about gays in the military, it’s not about whether somebody’s read every word in the Bible, and it’s not about what would Jesus would say.

Immigration, the first thing out of the box, immigration. I hope, if you did watch this, I hope you noticed just how dominant that issue is and how important that issue is, the audience reaction to it. That was for me probably the highlight of this. Well, one thing that never came up last night was taxes, and they didn’t bring up taxes. I’m telling you, based on what’s happening around the country and these referenda that took place earlier this month, taxes, tax increases, are as big an issue as immigration is if the Republicans can make it so, in an effective way.

For CNN, there’s a pattern here of this kind of plants, and then they act like they didn’t know. This is worse than when NBC blew up the truck on Dateline to make it look like if you buy one you’re going to die. They made it look like it was a spontaneous explosion when they blew it up.

COOPER: Bill Bennett earlier mentioned that he was getting some reports from, uh, friends of his on the Internet that, uh, Brigadier General Keith Kerr — who asked a question about gays in the military during this debate — was on a, uh, steering committee for, uh, Senator Hillary Clinton. Uh, that was certainly something unknown to us. We have just looked at it. Apparently there was a press release from some six months ago, Hillary, uh, Clinton office, uh, saying that he had been named to some steering committee. We don’t know if he’s still on it. We’re trying to find out that information. But certainly had we had that information, uh, we would have, uh, acknowledged that in, uh, in using his question, if we had used it at all.

This is an organization that claims it’s journalistic, fair and objective.

We know it’s not.

It’s a fraud. I’m telling you, their arrogance and elitism aside, they have got to be disturbed by this today. But there’s a pattern. How are we ever going to trust anything like this CNN ever does again?

But I want to call your attention to some things. There was a YouTube question, an animated question from an editorial cartoonist. The editorial cartoonist caricatured Dick Cheney, and the animated cartoon question on YouTube, Cheney, was asking these Republican candidates if their vice presidential candidate would have as much power as he does.

Now, where the hell does that come from if not a convicted liberal bias?

If I had been on that stage, after watching that, I would have said to Anderson Cooper, “Mr. Cooper, I’m running for president of the United States, and I am not going to sit here and let you and this network caricature and mischaracterize the vice president of the United States. He is a great man. He has served his country in public service for decades, and the last seven years, and the attempts to destroy him are simply unacceptable and intolerable — and for you to facilitate this in the form of a debate about the future of this country, is something I resent, and I’m not going to deal with answering your question because it’s bogus,”

…and I would be leading in the polls today.

Remember the last debate that the Democrats did with Tim Russert moderating, and the simple, harmless little policy question of Mrs. Clinton about illegal aliens getting driver’s licenses in New York? Do you remember the storm that erupted that night and the next day.

“How dare Russert go personal! How dare Tim Russert launch a personal attack! Why, I’m going to make sure that Wolf Blitzer doesn’t “Russert” Hillary!” Blitzer got warned at CNN and, by the way, what did we get during that CNN debate? We got the Clinton News Network on full display, giving her a total pass. Planted questions, of course.

Now, after the debate, I’m not hearing anybody say, “
Well, these questions were a little odd, these little setups,” this, that, and the other things. People are talking about how the YouTube people, some of them were plants and might have been Democrat activists and so forth, but nobody’s talking about the absolute ludicrous nature of the questions.

I will guarantee you the base of the party that watched this last night, had to be as livid as I am with just the total nature and tone of the questions that were asked, because it clearly illustrated what CNN (and Democrats and liberals; they’re all the same), think of conservatives.

If I didn’t know better, Democrats wrote the questions, or CNN wrote the questions. What’s the difference?

There isn’t much of a difference.

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