Words fail me.

I don’t think that debate could have been any more stupid. Shame on ABC for taking all their cues from Sean Hannity, and shame on Hillary Clinton for eagerly playing along, particularly with the Ayers smear.

Update: I didn’t know this when I wrote the brief entry above last night, but as it turns out, Stephanopoulos was literally taking his cues from Hannity.

Hannity asked George what kinds of questions they’ll be asking at the debate tomorrow and they discussed a few things. When Hannity asked about the first question below about Ayers and whether George had plans to ask such a question, George replied, “Well, I’m taking notes now Sean.” It did actually sound like he was pausing to take notes. And Hannity continued to feed him more …

Here.

On a related note: a generous reader sent me the new Springsteen CD, Magic, off the Wish List a couple of months ago, and it’s barely been out of the stereo in my car since. The song Gypsy Biker, in particular, deserves to join the pantheon of best anti-war songs ever:

To the dead it don’t matter much
‘Bout who’s wrong or right
You asked me that question I didn’t get it right
You slipped into your darkness
Now all that remains
Is my love for you brother
Lying still and unchanged
To them that threw you away
You ain’t nothin’ but gone
Our Gypsy biker is comin’ home

I just heard somebody from The Politico on the Glenn Beck show explaining to the guest host that “Bittergate” is a huge gaffe for Obama, except that it really hasn’t affected the numbers very much because polls show that huge numbers of people actually aren’t very happy with the direction of the country, so it’s hard to argue with what he said, in his, you know, huge gaffe.

Okay then.

By the incomparable Roy Edroso, in this week’s Village Voice. (I contributed a few illos.)

… Roy is tracking responses over at his site.

Hullaballoo:

I would like to reiterate D-Day’s call to send emails to ABC today to ask Charlie Gibson to follow up on ABC’s scoop revealing that the highest levels of the executive branch held meetings in the white house to discuss in great detail and unanimously approve of torture techniques. ABC should be proud of their story and asking the Democratic candidates about it in such a big public forum would do a lot to get the story out.

You can contact them here and demand that they follow up their reporting on torture by pushing it into the Presidential race. Contacting World News Tonight with moderator Charlie Gibson and ABC News Programming Specials would probably be the most helpful.

I’ve been doing this for a long time, so most of this is stuff I figured out, or had explained to me, a long time ago. But for anyone who’s just starting out, there’s some fairly useful advice here.

In case you were wondering.

NAPITALIANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

When you’re a rich, famous Washington journalist, what should you do when government officials tell giant whopping lies to your face? Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos demonstrated the correct response: politely change the subject and pretend it never happened.

(You can read about the U.S. attempt to use a faction of Fatah to stage a coup and overthrow the elected Hamas government in Vanity Fair.)

STEPHEN HADLEY, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: One thing people need to recognize, he [Abbas] has called for Hamas to renounce terror. He has called for Hamas to reverse the coup where they essentially seized power in Gaza. And one of the things one has to recognize is President Abbas is doing something very difficult now. He’s trying to negotiate a Palestinian state with Israel. The Palestinian administration still represents the people of Gaza. There are Gazans who are in the government of Prime Minister Fayad. Over 50% of the budget of the Palestinian administration goes for salaries and other things in Gaza. So one of the things when you’re talking to Hamas, it really undermines President Abbas and the government of Prime Minister Fayad at a very critical time.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s talk about the Olympics…

Now might be a good time to donate to the Real News.

Robert Jensen did a long interview in 2005 with activist/philosopher/weirdo Abe Osheroff, who was then ninety. Osheroff died last week, and Jensen has written this kind obituary:

As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.”

That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home.

Osheroff is remembered most for his rich life of political activism. From the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War to streets all across the United States, he was a master strategist, energetic organizer, and courageous fighter.

But when I think about a world without Abe, it’s Osheroff-the-philosopher I will miss the most. Conversations with Osheroff typically turned into wide-ranging philosophy seminars — inquiry into the maddening complexity of being human in an inhuman world, focused on the difficult moral and political questions that he always pursued with intellectual rigor and a demand for accountability expected from himself and others. And at the same time that Osheroff was in this relentless pursuit of more knowledge and a deeper understanding, he squeezed all the joy possible out of this life. He taught and he told stories, he learned and he loved, with incredible passion.

The rest.

As we know, we are in Iraq merely to support the elected Iraqi government, and in all matters are following their lead. That’s why we had to help Prime Minister Maliki with his attack on the Sadrist forces. So let’s ask Maliki what we should do now:

ROBERTSON: This week is an important week in the United States. Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker, General [David] Petraeus giving their reports on the state of the surge — looking ahead on what U.S. troops should do — U.S. surge drawdown will end in the summer. They are considering a pause, maybe weeks or months to examine when they should pull all American troops out. What do you want the U.S. to do? Should there be a pause in the drawdown? Do you want it to be weeks? Do you want it to be months?

AL-MALIKI: […] I believe the American forces can draw down. I don’t believe the decision for a drawdown should be paused as long as Iraqi security forces — based on the first agreement the more Iraqi forces move forward, the more U.S. forces move back until all security responsibilities are handed over and coalition forces remain in a support role. And in a support role, you don’t need such a big number.

Here’s today’s top story in the Washington Post:

Bush Backs Petraeus on Indefinite Suspension of Troop Pullout in Iraq

President Bush ordered an indefinite suspension yesterday of troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer…

Fortunately Karen DeYoung and Peter Baker, the authors of the Post article, managed to write 1440 words on the subject without mentioning the views of Iraq’s prime minister. Otherwise Americans might have grown confused about how much Iraq is sovereign and all that freedom is reigning.

(The only large news outlet that seems to have quoted Maliki’s views when reporting on the “pause” is AP.)