A thing of beauty!

On Nov. 3, as the media slowly recovers from the severe whoop-ass they and their candidate took the day before, they will realize that Karl Rove is an evil genius. They will see that Rove had Matthews in his pocket all along.

On the other hand, we need to seriously be asking -- "Why is it that these guys are called professionals?"

Oh, come on Kevin don't be ridiculous. Before the spitball question he asked Miller five times or so if he really thought Kerry and Edwards didn't want to defend the country. Which, based on Cheney and Miller's statements, is not a ridiculous question. If you are going to imply over and over again that you don't think the Democrats want to defend the country then you should be able to say it when asked. He avoided it over and over again and then he went absolutely nuts. This interview isn't a win for Miller just because you put up quotes that sound good. Most people that see the whole interview will not think Matthews was being moronic at all; they will think Miller is a loose cannon.

"I wish we lived in the day that I could challenge you to a duel."

*ROFLMAO!* I wish I'd seen that just to see the look on Matthews' face. ;]

Ah'll bet Zell'd win the duel, too.

Yes,Bill whatever you say darling

Yeah Kim nod a sarcastic head.

Did Miller and Cheney obviously allude to Kerry/Edwards being weak on defense? Yes

Did Miller state that Kerry voted against weapons programs? Yes

Is the intented inference that Kerry wouldn't protect the country? Yes

So when Matthews trys to ask, multiple times, about procedural voting in Washington (i.e. I voted against a bill that I wouldn't have voted against if a rider hadn't been added, or $50 million wasn't added to a new highway in Montwanta) Miller freaks out.

Tonight the Republicans goal was to say, "if you don't vote for Bush you are at risk." Plain and simple. If you deny that you are lying to yourself. Matthews was simply asking Miller if he really thought Kerry didn't want to defend the country.

If you watch the video, or read the text, you will see that. Just because you might not like Matthews, or you want the Republicans to look good, doesn't mean you should defend a position based on parsed quotes.

Looked at the Dem underground stack on this one (Michelle Malkin)...Apparently a gaggle of epithet spewing morons is the representation of this years crop of young democrats..."Oh gawd how cool is that...I get such a torqed up rush typing out rocking words like fuk and kunt and hore"....sheesh what a clusterfuck of brain dead losers. Or ...maybe its a cover so no one asks any embarrissing questions like "did you read the book" or "can you read".

I followed the link, couldn't get anything to show up. :-(

Here, Bill, I'll explain using small words, so hopefully you can understand:

Zell Miller does not trust John Kerry's judgment.

It does not matter whether John Kerry "wants" to defend the US, what matters is whether or not he's actually capable of doing it.

On 9/11, the United States was hit with a mass casualty terrorist attack.

President Bush's response is "we cannot rick this happening again, we must destroy all state sponsors of terrorism." So he started with Afghanistan, continued with Iraq, and will be taking out other dictators during his second term.

John Kerry's response is "well, we took out those bad guys in Afghanistan, now we should go back to sleep until the next attack. However, when the next attack comes, I promise I'll make whoever does it, pay."

Now, if you think Kerry's response doesn't put us more at risk, you're an idiot and an ignoramus. IOW, you have the same poor judgment that Kerry has.

Which is perhaps why you, and Mathews, couldn't understand the plain language and straightforward logic of Zell Miller.

Thanks for being a child about the debate. If you think Kerry's response was that simple then it isn't worth continuing this talk.

Even as Air force One touches down at Kennedy and the President arrives for his upcoming appearances at the RNC Thursday night, Kerry and company try mightily to wring the last ounce of traction from the "no win" comments during Bushes interview with Matt lauer on the NBC today show yesterday. Apparently the fact that practically every living person over the age of 7 in the U.S. now knows that their claims are wrong and out of context, intentionally miss-representing what the President was expressing, is a small un-important detail. These guys at the DNC can't seem to stop making a fool out of their candidate at every opportunity. Not to be outdone in the buffoonery department the New York Spin Times liberal press echoed all of the DNC's talking points covering the politically motivated spin in certitude and unflinching detail. Moreover, Edwards, he of the "Amazing disappearing Vice Presidential candidate" popped up from his spider hole to make sure no one alive could mistake their collective screwup. In speeches today Kerry said he would do everything differently than Bush when it came to fighting the war in Iraq. Other than trying to fight the extremists on Mars no one can figure out what the hell he's talking about. Maybe he means he would have voted against the war and then voted to fund it and would have snuk in under the cover of darkness and stolen all the women's burka's, thus preoccupying the bad guys long enough to snatch Saddam and sentence him to watching Mayberry RFD reruns for the rest of his life. Apparently what his followers would rather he do differently is change the way the DNC election campaign is being run. Insiders say that the groundswell of unhappy liberals is growing by the hour. Evidence that it is finally having an effect is this mornings infusion of fresh meat into the DNC camp, Susan Estrich's melodramatic protestations on FOX news today not withstanding. Not a few Dem's feel that Kerry's slow response in refuting the Swiftvets coupled with running his candidacy on his Vietnam record indicates that no one is minding the store. Time is running out. If Kerry doesn't find a way to clear up at least some of the confusion about his positions on the issues before the debates, people will tend to take him even less seriously and doubt his conviction and core values to a greater extent than they already do. Since he's already lost 5 or 6 points to Bush even before the wrap up of the Rep convention, other than last minute stumping, the debates are his final chance to establish a firm understandable position with a large viewing audience and recover some lost ground. In all fairness Kerry wanted to face the Swiftvets controversy immediately and aggressively but his chuckle headed advisor's demurred and restrained him. I have said for sometime now I thought McAuliffe is a young turk, arrogant, inexperienced, dick head that should be back at Yale debating issues of law and decidedly not running a presidential campaign. I'm assuming he was recommended by the goreniacs/deaniacs so its hardly surprising. Ivy league mavin's always express their superiority to the "uneducated American electorate". Unfortunately that tends to generate a rather disappointing result come election day. If I were a liberal Dem about now I'd be focused on kicking some serious DNC ass ... The clock is ticking...

Bill, it isn't a question of whether or not Kerry wants to defend the country. The question is whether or not he can defend the country. Does he have the guts to take the hard road if things turn ugly? His ambivalence (or idealism) on these spending bills also suggests that he can't make hard and compromised descisions today for the future security of the country. That is, he couldn't for twenty years and he hasn't done anything to show that he has changed. John Kerry wants to be the good guy but he doesn't have the guts to be unpopular, for him that's harder than being under enemy fire which he managed to endure in the 'Nam as well as one could expect of a 23 year old kid.

Matthews was being completely disingenuous in failing to treat political rhetoric like the hyperbole that it is. He framed the questions as Democratic talking points and worked very hard to undermine Zell's credibility by asking questions that any highschooler who had seen the speech knew the answers to. He is and has been an insufferable prick for the last year because he doesn't like the President and he's known the Dems couldn't win the national election since the primaries, when they put up eight candidates that were the walking dead. Plus Leiberman, who the fanatics in Central Park this week could never bring themselves to vote for.

And nailing yourself to a cross because no one will take your ridiculous talking points seriously is extremely childish. Grow up.

I like Chris Matthews usually, but that exchange with Miller was absolutely priceless. You could hear that the others on the panel were snickering and totally enjoying the moment; probably not that they liked seeing Matthews get skewered, but that they were witness to a rare TV event when he gets beat at his own game.

It is about time someone spoke directly to Matthews. Regardless of whether you lean left or right it should be obvious what a lousy and biased interviewer he is. He will have a liberal/socialist on and will darn near make out with them he's so friendly. If someone is on who effectively states the conservative side of an issue he just brow beats them from commercial to commercial. The left decries FOX as biased to the right. However, if you watch them interview a leftist they are respectful and allows them to make a point. I don't care for O'Reilly but even he will let the other guy have the last word. Matthews seems scared of a conservative getting a viewpoint clearly expressed on his show.

What is not evident from the Millers-Matthews interview is that just a few moments before that started, Miller had been interviewed by a group from CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Jeff Greenfield and Judy Woodruff. They essentially ganged up on him and were very adversarial, sounding more like the Democrat response team than objective reporters. (I know, what a suprise.) They especially focused on asking him why he was "angry" and Miller said he wasn't. Wolf Blitzer very angrily insisted that Miller was "angry" in his speech and Miller was just astonished that he thought so.

They (Wolf especially) were also demanding - really, demanding - to know why Miller didn't become a republican. They seemed quite offended (angry?) that he would stay in the Democrat party but still insist on being a conservative.

My take - Miller is a Southern politician of the old style, with a practiced rhetoric that is very similar to a preaching style. He says what he says strongly and intensely - but it is not anger, it is a style. The dumb northerners just didn't get it. They were just shocked - shocked! that someone would display strong emotion publicly.

Anyway, Miller was clearly irritated that they were trying to ambush him into making sound bites contrary to his actual position. He went straight from that interview to the Chris Matthews interview, I think really only about five minutes later, and it seemed to me that he was already pretty irritated at the CNN people, and then Matthews started his usual asking a question and interrupting the answer shtick, and Miller just wasn't having it. I think it was worsened by a satellite delay - which is idiotic when you realize that the two of them were at most two blocks away from each other (Matthews at Broadway/6th Avenue and 34th street, Miller somewhere in Madison Square Garden at 7th Avenue and 33rd street) but nonetheless there seemed to be a significant delay in Matthews speaking and Miller hearing and vice versa.

I think that Miller might have had a little more patience with Matthews' antics if he had not just come from the CNN panel's nonsense, but he was clearly fed up and not going to take it anymore by the time he got to Matthews. And good for him - it's about time that somebody handed Matthews his head like that.

I agree with what Zell said, Kerry is "Satan incarnate" and the Democrats are "his wretched spawn on this earth".
Man that guy knows how to tell it like it truly is!!!

Cheney talks about showing "our softer side" but Bush has had a lot of opportunities to take out Sadr and is militia, and haven't done it. But then maybe they were just being "sensitive".

I want Zell to become the mayor of NYC, and Rudy as governor.
Gawd! that beatdown he gave Matthews ... priceless
I just keep rerunning the thing and sit here laughing my ass off! Wife's looking at me sideways.

I can't believe you people are supporting Zell and his hatred. He'sand insane man. He's said nothing but half-truths. An the duel line is unforgivable. He's going to be the downfall of this campaign. Just you wait and see. God bless, George Bush.

Zell will be a negative influence just like Gore's loony ravings will negatively affect Kerry. In other words, he won't.

From Sally's and Gideon's (and others) comments, it looks like the core lefties in the Democratic Party are writing off the South. Good for them! Who wants those racist white men in your party, anyways! Let them tell you not to tailor your Party's foreign policy platform to the whim of the French, and the next thing you know, they'll be giving you grief over your proposed income tax increase. Best to get rid of every state from Florida to Maryland right now, and be done with it!

By the way, the link no longer points to the Matthews interview. IS there an updated link for everyone?

Wait, here's the new link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

Matthews has it on his "blog", click the picture

p.s. I thought Matthews had a low opinion of blogs!

It was obvious that Miller was having a tough time hearing what Matthews was saying. Still, it was nice watching Chris Matthews squirm while being verbally slapped around by Miller!

Gideon, you're overstating Kerry's case. I'd say he's no better than Evil Lite. He's the Dark Lord of Heck, maybe?

Can I have a Zell Miller moment, please?

Ahem...

Get the hell out of NYC you miserable f*cks! Or better yet, stay for a day or two, because after tomorrow you won't have police escorts to move you around.

Thank you.

Zell's Bells! Great post. Matthews is a tool. End of story.

Re: problems with the video loading . . . I had the same problem--are you using Microsoft Internet Explorer? If not, it will not load correctly.

MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-affiliated site, so go figure.

The video is priceless!! I think Chris had to change his shorts at break.

Hey Sally - Tuesday night, Ted Koppel challenged Jon Stewart to a duel on The Daily Show. Seems like duels are about to come back in style.

I guess duels are the new bell bottoms.

Chris Matthews is responsible in no small part for the erosion of journalistic standards on every level, in every medium. It is fitting that a responsible adult embarrassed him publicly on his own show. To pose a loaded question as he did to Zell Miller is schoolyard punk stuff that belittles everyone on the show and in the audience. It is why MSNBC's ratings are in the toilet.

John Kerry's voting record indicates he has no principled position on anything, including the defense of this country. He voted to send our brothers and sisters and our neighbors' sons and daughters into combat and then having done so, voted to withhold funding to afford them every advantage. That's just wrong. That's obscene. That's insane.

No, as his Senate record indicates, John Kerry and the Democratic Party is not prepared to defend this nation and its institutions. Instead, as with Chris Matthews and his recent guests, they are only more than willing to tear them down. Their champion is still Bill Clinton, and we all know now the legacy he bequeathed to the American people. We won't be fooled again.

Chris Matthews is part of the problem, not the solution, as Zell Miller made plain for all to see. The time for childish, petulant, pompous primadonnas ended on 9/11. Thank God the adults are back in charge. Thank you, Zell Miller. Godspeed, George Bush.

Matthews exposed himself in the following exchange:

MATTHEWS: You have said and it has often been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. Was there not...

MILLER: Do you believe that?

MATTHEWS: Well, of course it‘s true.

MILLER: Do you believe that?

MATTHEWS: But it‘s a statement that nobody would have challenged. Why did you make it? It seems like no one would deny what you said. So what‘s your point?

Matthews takes offense at Miller's statement but earlier asked this ridiculous question:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that John Kerry and Ted Kennedy really only believe in defending America with spitballs?

Sorry, Matthews, but nobody believes Kerry and Kennedy would use only spitballs to defend America so why did you ask this question? So what's your point? You engage in the very thing you accuse Miller of doing.