There is a rather misguided post in the ABC News Blog about John Edwards and the movie Sicko. Apparently Edwards was asked if the United States should have a Cuba style healthcare system. Edwards responded he didn’t know enough about it to comment. The blog then pointed out a previous appearance by Edwards in which he says he has seen Michael Moore’s movie Sicko.

From that the blog finds it impossible to comprehend how Edwards could have seen the movie BUT not be an expert on the subject of Cuban healthcare.

Beyond the endless calls that Moore makes pretty propagandistic films and is often loose with facts and interpretations, the pure thought that you could watch a movie and be an expert on anything is ludicrous, especially coming from a NEWS organization. At least thats what I thought ABC News was supposed to be but lately they have given me room to wonder.

Listen in short, paying $10 and sitting for two hours to watch flickering images on a screen doesn’t make anyone an expert on anything. I don’t care if its called a documentary or a romantic comedy. I would be horrified if John Edwards did consider himself prepared to enter the debate simply by watching a film and so should ABC News whether or not they are a blogger or the president of the news division.

Found via The Corner an official statement from the Thompson Campaign:

In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear.

Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens.

He does not believe that one state should be able to impose its marriage laws on other states, or that activist judges should construe the constitution to require that.

If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states.

Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

As Hugh Hewitt points out this means Romney is the only top-tier Republican who supports a gay-marriage amendment.

Lisa Wangsness writes in the Boston Globe about Mitt Romney’s use of 1950’s slang to prove a point. I don’t quite know what that point is though other than she believes it is some part of a conservative mechanism to touch nostalgia in America. Which I think is the cats meow.

Actually I think its a pretty weak article with little point, not unlike that horrendous and offensive Hillary Clinton’s cleavage article I read not long ago.

Basically you can add this to the ‘dumb articles about presidential candidates’ file.

My ABC affiliate won’t be running the debate in real-time today and frankly these debates have become so status-quo I probably would have just Tivo’ed and fast forwarded anyway so that is what I will be doing.

Meanwhile if you want live-blogging check out:

Huffington Post | Chris Cillizza

This one was tipped off by Marc Ambinder with a statement now appearing on Senator Obama’s campaign Web site from David Plouffe:

We have just been thru a period of three debates/forums in six days and the outlook for the future holds more of the same. And, because of likely calendar movement, once we get past Labor Day the Iowa caucuses are less than 120 days away.

So far, Barack has attended seven Democratic debates and nineteen candidate forums. There are five remaining sanctioned DNC debates, which we are committed to attend and two Iowa debates normally held in January, which are being held in December, which we are also committed to attend. We will also be attending the Univision debate in Florida on September 9. This means that by the end of this year, Obama will have participated in a total of 15 Democratic debates…

Unfortunately, we simply cannot run the kind of campaign we want and need to, engaging with voters in the early states and February 5 states, if our schedule is dictated by dozens of forums and debates. Ultimately, the one group left out of the current schedule is the voters and they are the ones who ask the toughest questions and most deserve to have those questions answered face to face.

Therefore, after this week, we will only be attending the five DNC debates through the sanctioning period of December 10, Univision, and the two Iowa debates previously mentioned. Candidate forums - where candidates appear sequentially will be considered, but we are unlikely to accept many of these. Instead, Barack will spend his time answering questions directly from voters in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and elsewhere. We simply cannot continue to hopscotch from forum to forum and run a campaign true to the bottom up movement for change that propelled Barack into this race.

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