Last Night's Democratic Presidential Debate

I've been very happy since I moved into my new cubicle. Other than having to put up with Loud Woman (who's talking loudly this very instant AND pacing near my desk), I have a lot of perks. My favorite is the 25-inch TV I have tuned onto CNN, because for some odd reason, I enjoy hearing the EXACT same ridiculous stories about the upcoming Presidential Election.

All day yesterday CNN had a clock counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the much-hyped debate at the University of Texas in Austin. I will admit that I fell into the Ticker Trap and was anxiously awaiting the start of the debate. Come 5:00 PST, I was ready. Come 5:02 PST, I was bored and disappointed. Why did I even bother getting my hopes up, I asked myself. This wasn't going to be an interesting debate, and I should have known that. Obama and Clinton are both Democrats. They share a lot of the same views. They were debating, nay -- bickering -- the smallest of details. Minutia, if you will.

"It was a very odd debate -- the questioners had to beg them to differ with each other," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

The only bit of intrigue in the whole debACLE was the Spanish-speaking panelist who started each question with a little bit of Spanglish; a perfect example of all the pandering that's gone on this election season. As I was getting ready to leave a little after 6:00, I was not at all sorry that I'd be missing the rest of the "action." I knew CNN would fill me in on the details when I came in for work on Friday. And boy did they ever...

Oh wait, no they didn't. NOTHING happened last night. It was ALL bullshit. And CNN knows it. It's so great to see a network devote so much money and attention to an event, have it disappoint immensely, and watch them pretend (rather convincingly) that it was the most important event in both Clinton and Obama's campaigns. I've been watching CNN for about seven hours now, and the only topic from the debate they've discussed is the "plagiarism" "scandal." I don't want to get into it in this post, but you can see what's up by clicking here. I think Obama defended himself pretty well, actually.

If that was the most controversial moment of the debate, you can see why CNN just ran a weak-ass report dissecting -- or nitpicking -- one of Obama's anecdotes that I'm sure was supposed to be meaningful. Basically he told a story about an army officer in Afghanistan in 2003 who had 15 out of 34 men get transferred out of his unit and into Iraq. Obama continued that the unit had to scrounge for weapons, sometimes taking them from Taliban forces they'd captured... Well, apparently that story was bullshit. You see, those 15 men weren't transferred to Iraq. MOST of them were, but not all of them. So Obama had lied. Regardless, 15 men were removed from the officer's unit. As for the weapons, the unit found themselves with a lot of broken firearms that weren't replaced in a timely manner, and ended up taking Taliban weapons and using them as their own. They even had to use a Taliban .50 cal to mount on their Humvee. Yes, that's the weapon that provides the primary defense for their vehicle. It broke, and they had to replace it with one they confiscated from the enemy. But they weren't "scrounging," so Obama's anecdote was bullshit. Right?

Gawd... But that's the price you pay for choosing to be a 24-hour news channel: you gotta take some real meaningless shit and dress it up to look like controversy.

Only 9 more months of this shit...