Way to go Lou Dobbs! One of the few actual journalists on CNN.

You want change? Give me a dollar.

How dare these candidates want to control their own message, instead of allowing reporters to control it!

Forgive me for beating an old drum of mine - nowhere is it written that a president or candidate for president is constitutionally required to answer to the press. The press has no constitutional standing. Reporters are citizens like anyone else, and have no special rights or privileges just because they are employed by a profit-seeking news outlet.

If John McCain holds a town-hall meeting and takes questions for an hour, but he doesn't submit to a media-controlled press conference, he hasn't hidden from anything.

If politicians like Obama and Edwards and Clinton won't go on FoxNews, who's ducking who? If they'll attend DailyKos conventions but they won't go to a Fox-sponsored debate, I don't want to hear a stinking word about McCain "ducking the press."

The bigger point is, there is no story to report here.  She gave us nothing we didn't already know.  Just useless drivel.

This is like reporting the candidates wear shoes.

This is a perfect example of why Lou Dobbs is the ONLY reason to watch/listen to CNN when an anchor or commentator is on the screen. 

Any other time =  Fox or Mute...

Busted.

Dobbs: Excellent response, Dana. Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?

Bash: I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.

*****

"People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues." - George Will 

I've been growing more fond of Lou Dobbs recently.  I was afraid to admit it, but I feel so much better coming clean about this. It's always good to purge a little.

Lou, I think I love you....(I'm a fickle woman.  I'll have someone new by next week).  :o)

Dana Bash-Palin @ CNN:

You and your colleagues are in a tizzy because Governor Palin has the nerve not to speak to you media types, but she will do those silly town hall meetings.  This is circumventing your mission.

Here's why she may not want to speak to you.  She knows you will take whatever she says and run it through your MSM filter.  You will do whatever you can to distort and misrepresent what she says, say by selective editing, to present her as an ill-informed, gun-toting, radical right-wing idealogue who wants to impose her will on America and return us to the stone age.

Perhaps she has figured out that it's in her best interest to speak to the American voters directly.  That way they can hear for themselves exactly what she has to say, they can make their own judgments on her qualifications and background, and they won't have her message filtered and interpreted and commented on by you and others in the MSM to portray her as you want her to be perceived.  That, Dana, dear, is why she has better things to do than talk to you and other reporters.  You and your co-horts have but one mission at this point:  Destroy this woman and her reputation.  Why the hell would she allow you to do that when she can speak directly to the voters at townhall meetings?  The only reason your panties are in a knot is because you're not getting the chance to slam and discredit her.  I really feel your pain!

What nerve!  How dare Governor Sarah Palin, candidate for vice-president, spend her campaigning time speaking directly to the voters and signing autographs instead of talking to the media.  How can she ever expect the media to edit, comment, interpret, misrepresent, and tell the public what to think about her if she won't talk to them?  Imagine, she speaks directly to the voters at the rallies and townhall meetings and doesn't make time for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, and CNN, all highly-respected and non-partisan networks who have nothing but her best interests at heart.  Will she ever learn??????????