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I didn’t watch the Republican CNN debates but I did catch the sound bites on the Hillary Clinton’s plant of Retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr. Clinton’s team has now stooped to a new low of inserting herself, via proxy, into a forum that she wasn’t even invited to.

Not surprising that CNN a/k/a “Clinton News Network” would be surprised that Karr has a position in the Hillary camp after all they have been surprised at all their other debate plants and aids for (s)Hillary.

This is not the first dance for Hillary on planting questions; this deceptive sham went on during her 1999 run for N.Y. Senator. Her campaign spokesperson gave the same response in 1999 that they are giving today “This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.”

So let’s start with last night GOP debate:

Washington Times Nov. 29, 2007; Clinton plant infiltrates CNN debate

• CNN/YouTube used a question at last night’s Republican debate that came from a man who was named to a steering committee of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

• Retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr, who asked a question about gays in the military, was named to the leadership team of LGBT American for Hillary this summer, according to an article in the Advocate that was posted June 27 at gay.com.

• Gen. Kerr was in the live audience and moderator Anderson Cooper invited him to give what turned out to be a two-minute speech on the issue that drew audience boos. The general identified himself in his question as “an openly gay man” but remained in the closet about his ties to the Clinton campaign.

• After the debate, an embarrassed Mr. Cooper said CNN did not know of the Clinton ties and “had we known that … we would have acknowledged that if we used the question at all.”

Retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr is on the (s)Hill’s presidential campaign website, LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee Members

CNN Democratic Debate in Las Vegas was a sham as I stated in a previous post. So let’s look at all the crap that CNN pulled in that pro-Clinton forum.

This first section is odd and worth noting that CNN deleted part of their own debate transcript. Close to the end of the page you will see the deleted/edited transcript. However, I located the full transcript which is also listed below. By the way there is a Clinton connection.

CNN Transcript Deleted LaShannon Spencer question

• BLITZER: I want everybody to stand by because we have a lot more to talk about, a lot more of these questions from undecided voters here in Nevada, but we’re going to take a quick commercial break. Much more from the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, right after this.

• (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (CROSSTALK)

• DODD: First of all, thanks for your question.

Where is that pesky question? Ahhhh I found it.

International Herald Times Nov. 15, 2007 – Unaltered Transcript

Notice how CNN’s Malveaux changed the question and Biden caught it.

• BLITZER: Welcome back to the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We’re at the Democratic presidential debate. Suzanne Malveaux’s got another undecided voter with a question.

• MALVEAUX: LaShannon Spencer, please stand up for a moment. What is your question?

• LASHANNON SPENCER: We constantly hear health care questions and questions pertaining to the war. But we don’t hear questions pertaining to the Supreme Court justice or education. (Applause.)

• My question is, if you are elected president, what qualities must the appointee possess?

• MALVEAUX: I’d like to get to Senator Dodd, if you would. And in answering that question, also tell us whether or not you would require your nominees to support abortion rights.

• SEN. DODD: Well, first of all, you want — first of all, thanks for your question.

• SEN. BIDEN: Suzanne’s decided. I’m not answering her question. I’m answering the question of the woman who is there. Okay? (Cheers, applause.) And — number one. And then I’ll answer Suzanne’s question.

• BLITZER: Well, let’s ask the woman. Do you want him to answer that question?

• SEN. BIDEN: Do you want me to answer your question?

SPENCER: I would like for you to answer both questions.

• SEN. BIDEN: I will answer both. I’ll answer your question first. Your question first, is I’ve presided over more Supreme Court justices than anyone in American history, number one.

• (SKIP) I did that it was really long but then that’s Joe.

• SEN. BIDEN: Number two, Suzanne Malveaux’s question.

Now who is LaShannon Spencer; well she was the political director for the Arkansas Democratic Party. Aren’t the Clinton’s from Arkansas? Why did CNN edit their transcript? Maybe because Ms. Spencer didn’t ask the question the way CNN or the Hillary camp told her to.

Moving on, you remember the Diamond vs. Pearl question by Maria Parra Sandova; well let’s see how this played out.

CNN Transcript

Maria, would you stand please? Give us your full name.

MARIA PARRA SANDOVAL (ph): Maria Parra Sandoval (ph), and I’m a UNLV student. And my question is for Senator Clinton.

This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?

(LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Now, I know I’m sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice. I want both.

There is far more to Maria than we thought, it just so happens that Ms. Sandoval was an intern for Harry Reid. She also runs a MySpace page under the alias Maria Lusia where she explains how she came about her worthless question to Clinton.

The Atlantic.com Nov. 16, 2007; “Diamonds v. Pearls” Student Blasts CNN

• Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred “diamonds or pearls” at last night’s debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

• CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

• “Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”

Now, Luisa is getting “swamped” with critical e-mails. So what happened?

Writes Luisa:

• “CNN ran out of time and used me to “close” the debate with the pearls/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, “you gave our school a bad reputation.’ Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That’s what the media does.

Now let’s look at the after debate political analyst conflict of interest.

NYTimes Nov. 16, 2007; Questions About Carville and CNN

• There are very few political analysts more closely associated with the Clintons than James Carville, who was a key adviser to Mr. Clinton in the 1992 campaign.

• So it’s no surprise that Mr. Carville’s appearance on a round table after last night’s CNN-sponsored Democratic debate is arousing some morning-after controversy.

• Last night, Anderson Cooper of CNN introduced Mr. Carville, who appeared alongside panelists David Gergen and J.C. Watts, as a “former presidential adviser.”

• And Mr. Cooper made one attempt at a disclosure: “I should point out David Gergen was an adviser in the Bill Clinton White House,” he said. “As, of course, was James Carville.”

• But he didn’t point out that Mr. Carville is also an informal adviser to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

• Last night, Mr. Carville praised Mrs. Clinton’s performance along with the other panelists. “I agree with David and J.C.,” he said at one point. “I think that Senator Clinton’s people have to be — and Senator Clinton — have to be pretty pleased tonight that they certainly reversed a trend. We will see where it goes from there.”

• And he was pointedly critical of Mr. Obama’s debate performance. “I think he might be even slightly intimidated, that he thinks Senator Clinton is more experienced than him, a little more hungry than he is,” Mr. Carville said.

• There is also a fair amount of criticism of CNN’s overall conduct of the debate, especially Wolf Blitzer’s questions.

• We put in a call to CNN and will update this post when they get back to us.

Since they have not updated the post, I guess the “Clinton News Network” has not gotten back to them. Shocking I know.

I find this ironic that CNN wrote about (s)Hillary and plants. It’s long so I pulled excerpts.

Student describes how she became a Clinton plant; Nov. 13, 2007

• GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) — The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign events said “voters have the right to know what happened” and she wasn’t the only one who was planted.

• Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she’d like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.

• He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it. “The top one was planned specifically for a college student,” she added. “It said ‘college student’ in brackets and then the question.”

• Topping that sheet of paper was the following: “As a young person, I’m worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?”

• Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said, “This is not acceptable campaign process moving forward. We’ve taken steps to ensure that it never happens again.” Elleithee said Clinton had “no idea who she was calling on.”

• Gallo-Chasanoff wasn’t so sure.

• “I don’t know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and … I was the only college student in that area,” she said.

• In a separate statement in response to the campus article, the campaign said, “On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton’s energy plan at a forum. … This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.”

Outside The Beltway Nov. 11, 2007

• One day after Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign confirmed that a staffer planted a question for the presidential candidate at a recent campaign stop, another person has come forward with a similar story.

• Geoff Mitchell, a minister who recently moved to Hamilton, Ill., from Iowa, told ABC News that he was approached this spring by Clinton’s Iowa political director Chris Haylor to ask Clinton a question about war funding. Mitchell, 32, said that the request “did not sit well with me in the tradition of the Iowa caucus.” “I grew up in Iowa and I value the tradition of the caucuses of answering the questions of the people,” Mitchell said.

• The campaign acknowledges the practice and, given that it’s happened at least twice, it’s not unreasonable to presume they’ve done this as a matter of course. It is indeed a violation of the spirit of free exchange and, frankly, rather bizarre given that Clinton could easily get her message out in her prepared remarks without stooping to this.

The piece below has nothing to do with CNN however; it does show that Clinton loves her plants and how her camp uses the same excuses.

Huffington Post: Clinton’s Planted Question…In 1999; Nov.12, 2007

• Three days after Hillary Clinton’s campaign was forced to admit it had planted a question at an Iowa campaign event, an eagle-eyed tipster noted that this wasn’t the first time the former First Lady’s camp arranged for a friendly voice to lob a softball question.

• In announcing her Senate run in 1999, MSNBC reported that “responding to a planted question at a Teachers Union event [Clinton] made it clear she is in the race for the US Senate.”

• Clinton’s aides reacted to the news of the most recent rigged question by saying “this is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.”

Transcript from the 1999 broadcast:

ANNOUNCER: From NBC News, this is THE NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS.

WILLIAMS: Good evening.

We have a lot to tell you about tonight, beginning with what had become a whisper campaign of late, and it went like this: After what turned into a somewhat disastrous trip to the Middle East and with polls showing she should not run, Hillary Rodham Clinton just might pull out of the race for Senate from New York. Well, today, the first lady, responding to a planted question at a Teachers Union event made it clear she is in the race for the US Senate.

First here tonight, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell on the woman who says she’s in it to win it.

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): Brian, today’s events were as carefully choreographed as the New York City Ballet.

(voice-over): Under pressure to either get in or get out, Hillary Clinton finally makes it official by answering a prearranged question from a friendly union leader.

QUESTION: So, is it yes, or is it no?

HILLARY CLINTON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: I believe that if we work together, we really can make a difference for the children and families of New York. So the answer is yes, I intend to run.

-MSNBC, November 23, 1999, THE NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS

I don’t know about you but after living in the parallel universe of BushCo. and Fox News, I have zero interest in a candidate from either party who will take us down the same deceptive road. There seems to be much truth in the following two statements made by Edwards and Obama.

John Edwards

“George Bush goes to events that are staged, where people are screened, where they’re only allowed to ask questions if the questions are favorable to George Bush,” Edwards told reporters after speaking to the National Farmers Union.

“That’s not the way democracy works in Iowa and that’s not the way it works in New Hampshire,” he said. “We don’t stage questions. We go in and answer the questions that are asked.”

Barack Obama

“I don’t want Bush-Cheney lite,” he told reporters yesterday. “I want a fundamental change.”

Posted by nytexan November 29th, 2007 | Category: CNN, Clinton, Deception, Election, Politics, candidates, debate, primary | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL