ABC Delivers Biased Debate: Obama Answers

Before last night's ABC debate, I e-mailed some questions I would like asked. I did it for the following reasons, since the debate had become debased to the point of personal attack ads by the Clinton campaign reminiscent of the Bush campaigns... complicit with a press that was afraid to press Bush on anything. This was sent out yesterday before the debate (my e-mail), and oddly enough, the debate did exactly the opposite of what I hoped it would do. It went on the offensive of one candidate, run by a former employee of the other candidate's family. The following is what I asked, followed by Senator Obama's assessment today of last night's debate, in what I thought was very accurate. I stated as follows in my e-mail:

Attacks are using fabrications or half-truths about a candidate to divide voters and cause questions in voters minds, albeit questions fabricated by the attacker.

There is a difference between that and asking direct questions of an opponent about why they actually DID do something, or why they have certain stands on issues. That is not attacking. That is winning the political fight through discussion of issues.

Facts I'D like examined are
1) Why did Hillary support the Bush's War on Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan?
2) Why did she vote to declare the Iranian Brigade a terrorist organization, thus giving Bush the ammo to go into Iran before he leaves office?
3) Why was she the ONLY Senator (Democratic or Republican) absent from the vote on granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms?
4) Why was Mark Penn on her payroll for a full year while still consulting the Colombian government on trade and jobs? - and, concurrently, how does she feel about her husband receiving an award and large sums of money from that same Colombian government as she "professes" to oppose Nafta? And Why is Mark Penn still advising, if this is an issue?
5) Why did she work so hard to support NAFTA in the beginning?
6) Why did she vote for Bush's Federal Bankruptcy Law which made it more difficult for those with mounting credit card debts to gain bankruptcy amidst the escalation of credit card rates that approaches the usury of organized crime in decades past? (30 percent in some cases)
7) How did she feel about her ultrawealthy supporters who wrote the infamous letter to the DCCC stating that they would take their money from local campaigns if the superdelegates did not go with Hillary? And, again, concurrently, how did she feel about the ties of some of those letter writers to organizations such as Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, which Ed Rendell now calls fair and balanced, and other groups, such as the one that sold illegal weapons to the Chinese Government, was fined, and declared bankruptcy before having to pay the U.S. Government the fine?

These are not attack points. They are checkable facts that I wish and hope the newsmedia will ask her, and that the moderators in the debate will ask her. But, given my skepticism that they won't, I hope that Senator Obama DOES check the facts on these issues, and then ask her in the debate.



What we got was an hour-long questioning of Obama on such "tough" points as: Why doesn't he wear the flag pin? (Where was Hillary's, Charlie's, and George's as they asked that question?); what about someone who was on a board with him long ago who was in the Weather Underground when he was 8, while at the same time there was no follow-up with Senator Clinton as to why she didn't feel it a problem that her husband pardoned two members of the Weather Underground?; and the re-instatement of race into the campaign by our fair friends at ABC, just as Senator Obama had delivered a wonderful speech having united the various splintered groups in this country.

And why were none of the substantial questions I, as a mere blogger, could see were factual issues that needed to be addressed?