Did anyone else get the feeling they were looking at some kind of quiz show last night?

It hit me when I had to press the mute button to answer the telephone. I looked back at the screen, without the sound, and this is what I saw: A glitzy theater stage dressed for some kind of Miss World beauty contest with clear acrylic lecterns and lots of red, white and blue glittery stuff.

The candidates march out in all their sartorial splendor, haircuts and manicures, dressed up like dolls. Didn't you think it was weird that they all looked like they had their makeup done at a mortuary?

Allowing the audience to hoot and clap like they are attending American Idol just adds to the overall effect of watching a variation of "Let's Make a Deal" rather than an event that has the outcome eventually of determining war and peace, your taxes, our national stature among nations. What happens in that forum eventually has implications for your future. Yet, it is treated like a cheap puppet show.

Then there is the substance, or lack thereof, in the questions and who gets to take first shot. The winner is the one who speaks sparingly. The more the candidate tries to explain, like Obama giving long and nuanced answers, the more pointy-headed and geeky he looks.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of Wolf Blitzer's voice. His over-exposure every day on CNN's Situation Room amplifies his irritating locution. Such as saying "ah" at least three times in every sentence. Such as drawing out his vowels like taffy. As in, "In a moment, we'll ah-hear from ah-Bill ah-Bennett, but first we're ah-going liiiiive to New York where ah-CNN’s ah-Chief Medical Correspondent ah-Dr. Sanjay ah-Gupta is standing byyyyyy. Stay tuned to the ah-Situation Room where news is happening naaaaaow.

Ugh. We are in for another 12 months of this? I'm moving to the Yucatan.

"But then, this comes from the same man who declared, at a gay and lesbian-focused forum earlier this year, that sexual orientation is 'a choice.'"

I wrote on Joan's blog last night:

"But after he couldn't even respond to Melissa Ethridge's absolute T-ball question a month ago at the Gay Lesbian Q.and A. of whether or not sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice or genetic, he came off as a flubber."

be so kind as to whip out his iPhone and order 40 pepperoni pizzas and some bread sticks while we're sitting here for the next five goddamned hours just six feet from the gate ramp?

Thank you.

Because he also showed he can't float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. He's a good guy, is Richardson. But after he couldn't even respond to Melissa Ethridge's absolute T-ball question a month ago at the Gay Lesbian Q.and A. of whether or not sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice or genetic, he came off as a flubber.

We can't have President Flubber following eight years of President Dumbass.

Republican Jack Donaghey, NBC Corporate Sleazo is carrying on a secret tryst with a Democratic Congresswoman from Vermont.

Now, that is so ridiculous, isn't it? I mean a Democratic leader in bed with Big Corporate?

Sorry to hear Richardson stepped on his "chingarito." Oh well, I don't think he wants VP anyway. I think he wants Sec of State, which, if Hillo wins, he ain't gettin' that either.

First thing, how you tell if someone is a racist? They swear up and down, constantly, that they are not a racist.

So he's a racist. He likes to let others point to the fact that he is married to Debi Segura, a Hispanic, as being unassailable evidence that he is not a racist. But in fact, there are racists in every race, there are racists in every skin color and there are people of mixed races who are both racists. Racism is ignorance and ignorance knows no boundary.

Now for the asshole part:

Lou Dobbs is executive producer of his own show. He can assign CNN reporters to go out and cover stories for him that already conclude his position. Then, when the reporter is finished, they don't get to leave the air. They have to stand there and take loaded questions from Dobbs and he expects them to answer the way he wants while nodding in agreement, as Dobbs launches into one of his tirades that usually begin with his face contorting, his head cocked almost sideways in mock disbelief and him saying, "I'm flabbergasted! I mean, the very idea of ... blah blah blah."

It's particularly disgusting to see Suzanne Malveaux, an American of African-American, Spanish and Hispanic descent, who graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in sociology, a very smart person, have to stand there silently while this idiot Dobbs goes into his predictable harangue about how these Mexicans aren't here for anything more than to suck the riches of America out of the country, or they won't assimilate, or they come bearing disease, or they commit terrible crimes, they drag our economy down, on and on and on.

Race baiting. That's all it is.

Dobbs, you are a racist asshole.

That might suit some better than having someone intelligent and fair-minded to speak to progressive causes.

Randi could come on and twist her hair, and say "Aw" over and over in that annoying Brooklyn accent and talk about buying shoes and world hunger and back to her shoes and then refer to her boobs as "the girls" and then roll her eyes and say, "Aw pull-eeeze" in that horrible Brooklyn accent and wind up saying nothing of importance.

Matthews would actually like that. He could have lots of fun with his perfect stereotype of a ditzo liberal knucklehead that he could run circles around.