John Edwards Attacks Hillary Clinton For Planting Questions

U.S. Presidential Candidate John Edwards, fresh from the Nevada Debate where it was widely reported and admitted by CNN that the network planted a question to ask Senator Hillary Clinton -- herself the focus of several revelations of planted questions -- about "Diamonds and Pearls", launches a video called "The Politics of Planting, and a website designed to expose all of Clinton's planting episodes called Plants For Hillary.Com

According to the John Edwards website, the new "planting" site..."will offer a one-stop shop for all Americans interested in growing the Hillary plant movement.
As part of the PlantsforHillary.com web site, potential plants can listen to testimonials from past plants, read the "Top 10 Questions Plants Should Never Ask Hillary," learn how to recognize other plants at Senator Clinton's events, submit suggestions for planted questions, and purchase the soon to be released "Questions are hard...so plant them" t-shirt.
The site also features a new YouTube video—"Politics of Planting"—which highlights Senator Clinton's evolution from parsing answers to answering planted questions.

Here's that video:

Nevada Progressive Blogger Greg Brown Thinks Debate Was Embarassing For Nevada Dems

Using words like "inappropriate " and "embarrassment" Greg Brown, a Nevadan who attended the debate , writes:


(It's hard for me to disagree with what Greg is saying here. I'll have more on this in a debate wrap up in a little while. - promoted by Sven)

I was at tonight's debate and really appalled by the audience behavior. There was a lot of inappropriate cheering and even more inappropriate booing that interrupted candidates during their responses.
The fault for that lies with CNN and with us, Nevada Democrats. I think it particularly lies with the tendency of the Clinton campaign to turn every event into a rally rather than a disucssion. I don't think they intended for their supporters to behave this way but be under no illusion -- it was the Clinton supporters, only a part of the crowd, who were booing Obama and Edwards.

The coup de grace came at the end, when CNN -- which had made a big deal of vetting the questions to avoid having anyone who could be tied to any of the campaigns (as if having knowledge of the candidates' platforms and a preference among them renders one unable to pose a question). Then, they select only a handful of those to pose questions that were vetted ahead of time. After all that, they give the last question to a student who asks the most embarrassingly superficial question, possibly in American presidential history.

Tonight was an embarrassment for the Nevada Democratic Party.

I could not agree more.

CNN Rigs Nevada Debate For Hillary Clinton - Plants "Diamonds and Pearls" Question In Nevada Debate

Without a single doubt the dumbest question asked at last night's CNN Democratic debate in Las Vegas was the one about what Senator Clinton would choose between Diamonds and Pearls. That totally out-of-place question was asked by 15-year-old Maria Luisa. It's in the video below:



..And is being picked up by blogger , after blogger , after blogger.

Now, according to Marc Ambinder , it turns out the question wasn't of her making, but of CNN's. On her MySpace page, where this picture comes from and is set to "private" after all the emails she's gotten, she explains ""Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN.



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."

Shame on CNN for manipulating the debate. But it didn't stop there.

CNN Rigs Debate for Clinton

All night long it seemed that CNN had rigged the debate so that Hillary Clinton had all of the chances to recover from the self-inflicted wounds she sustained in the Philadephia Debate. From the unusually Pro-Hilary crowd, to the way new CNN anchor Campbell Brown soft-balled questions to Senator Clinton. It gave me a bellyache to watch. But this revalation of a planted question in favor of Clinton by CNN is the coup-de-grace.

This is bad, both for the Hillary Clinton campaign, which is showing a tendency toward planting questions and flip-flopping on answers to questions they didn't install, and CNN, which is called "Clinton News Network" by many.

I do think the other Democratic candidates and supporters should feel cheated by this, and move to take action to prevent it from happening again.

Still, even with CNN's gaming, Barack Obama won the debate.