Nash McCabe, the woman who asked Obama if he "believed in the American Flag" was an ABC plant.

Nothing surprises me with the corporate media and its democratic/republican hacks. Watch what will happen when Nader demands to be in the debates. Obama did not defend Kucinich's right to be included by NBC and its invitation, not standing on principle, to walk out against any corporate, class exclusion.

I may be wrong, and Obama, and the democratic class hierarchy will do the right thing, but I bet I am right. The democrats screamed loudly when the Republicans were stealing votes, disqualifying voters, but the democratic class thugs, themselves participated in endless lawsuits, and disqualifying Nader voters. Let us hope everyone is learning from this corporate, ideological rot.

Is it just me, or did John Stewart nail it dead on? Like a bad ABC sitcom "Nash McCabe" with a background looking like the Dukes of Hazard

That was exactly my thinking and why my debate article was titled we won, we won. We did win!!

I didn't know Obama wrote this article, Jay. Interesting insight into pseudonyms.

Never said it was Obama that said it, in this case. However, I suspect that there is a whole culture of hypersensitivity to the issue within his circle and amongst his supporters.

Never said it was Obama that said it,

I think you kinda did.

Mr. President, why did you sign legislation in favor of..."

"This is about me being black, isn't it?"

ok, you didn't 100% say it, but, well, 90% is still an A-

So Charlie, George, and the producer got together and decided to put on the worse debate in political history? Great legacy...what is their motive?

it's not a conspiracy, it's been proven correct.

Actually a conspiracy can be a group of people conspiring to do something. Proving something doesn't make it not a conspiracy.

If one refers to a conspiracy theory, it is the theory proven correct, not the conspiracy. To ask "does this conspiracy go to the boardroom of ABC" is to ask "were members of the Boardroom of ABC involved in initiating this action?" So to say that "it's not a conspiracy, it has been proven" doesn't make much sense.

You should have said "your tone suggests mockery which is not warranted as these are proven facts." Perhaps backed up with "do you think that they'd go on the air without some sort of goading or, at the least, complicity from the top brass?"

I've done a little bit of poking, but they seem to be mum. Almost like they expected us to be looking. (I also have wondered whether there's some link between ABC and the New York Times, but nothing has turned up yet.)

To find a connection between political agendas and corporate interests is to delve into the twisted web, created by the Foundations-NGO's and corporate Board members over a century or more. There are many situations and individuals to look to but there's very slim odds the type of straight line smoking gun will turn up here.

You might like to look at the views of some insiders back in the days of tWWII when these forces were in the founding phases and the names of those involved held more transparency. Now with corporations having subs and shells and methods to disguise who owns and influences what, it gets to be a sport of skill to track the lines. Without the history it's probably darn near impossible.

Here's a few good places to start for anyone with an appetite for it. It does take a bit of dedication to try and come up the curve on the old history, though worth it.

CFR history....In the 1950s a the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations gave the Council on Foreign Relations $2.5 million grant.[12]16

After World War II covert foreign policy became State Department standard operating procedure. The Ford Foundation became a major player in funding covert activities. In 1948 the Air Force set up Rand Corporation to perform classified research. The Council on Foreign Relations medcine, munitons, food, and media industries had access to the research through their Intelligence Connections. Taxpayer funded research could be easily turned into Council on Foreign Relations member and insider profits.17

The interlocks between the trustees at Rand, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were so numerous that the Reece Committee, a congressional committee tasked with investigating the foundations, listed them in its report (two each for Carnegie and Rockefeller, and three for Ford). In 1952 alone, when the chairman of Rand was also the Ford Foundation president, Ford gave one million dollars to Rand. 18

Conspicuously absent from The Reece Committee report were the links between the Foundations to the Council on Foreign Relations. In his book "A THOUSAND DAYS"(1965), CFR member Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, provides the link. Schlesinger writes "the American Establishment," whose "household deities were Henry L. Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders [1965], Robert A. Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie Foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs...."

From the Declassified Archives at GWU, another wonderful place, a bit about the commingling of corporate government and media with a commentary by Bill Moyers.

We reported real stories and talked with real people about real problems. We told how faraway decision-making affected their lives. We reported on political influence that led to mountaintop removal mining and how the government was colluding with industry to cover up the effect of mercury in fish on pregnant women.

We described what life was like for homeless veterans and child migrants working in the fields. We exposed Wall Street shenanigans and tracked the Washington revolving door. We reported how Congress had defeated efforts to enact safeguards that would mitigate a scandal like Enron, and how those efforts were shot down by some of the same politicians who were then charged with investigating the scandal. We investigated the Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Steven Griles, a full eighteen months before he resigned over conflicts of interest involving the oil and mining industries for which he had been a lobbyist on the other side of that revolving door. We reported on those secret meetings held by Cheney with his industry pals and attempted to find out who was in the room and what was discussed. We reported how ExxonMobil had influenced the White House to replace a scientist who believes global warming is real.

We won an Emmy for the hour-long profile of Chuck Spinney, the Pentagon whistleblower who worked from within to expose graft and waste in defense spending. And the blog, Dailykos.com, speculated that it was our interview with Ambassador Joe Wilson, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq and months before Robert Novak outed Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, that first outraged the administration. "An honor I dreamed not of…"

None of this escaped the attention of the Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, a buddy of Karl Rove and the designated driver for the administration's partisan agenda for public broadcasting. Tomlinson set out, secretly, to discredit our broadcast. He accused us of being unfair and unbalanced, but that wouldn't wash. We did talk with liberal voices like Howard Zinn, Susan Sontag, Sister Joan Chittester, Isabel Allende, Thomas Frank and Arundhati Roy. But we also spoke with right-wingers like Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas, Frank Luntz, Richard Viguerie, Robert Bartley of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and then his successor, Paul Gigot.

What got Tomlinson's goat was our reporting. After all, we kept after his political pals for keeping secrets, and over and again we reported on how the big media conglomerates were in cahoots with official Washington, scheming for permission to get bigger and bigger. The mainstream media wouldn't touch this topic. Murdoch, Time Warner, Viacom, GE/NBC, Disney/ABC, Clear Channel, Sinclair - all stood to gain if their lobbying succeeded. Barry Diller appeared on our broadcast and described the relationship between the big news media and Washington as an "oligarchy." Sure enough, except for NOW with Bill Moyers, the broadcast media were silent about how they were lobbying for more and more power over what Americans see, read, and hear. It was left to one little broadcast, relegated to the black hole of Friday night, to shine the light on one of the most important stories of the decade.

It's systemic and we need to go at it one little rotten piece at a time.

What does McCain have to do with the dem debate?

IV, really? Really?