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Senior MTV News correspondent John Norris gives us a pep talk

Gary Kebbel of the Knight Foundation talks to us about maintaining our blogger integrity.

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8:22 I’m going mobile. No more typing.

8:07 Richardson just said he’s trying to “provoke a debate here” and a number of us bloggers chortled in complete sarcasm. “You can’t have a real debate here, this is CNN.”

8:03 Taking a cue from Joel on the Biden blog I’m going to flip the order of my posts with more recent timestamps here at the top. Easier on me, easier on you. Sort of. Big hair guy behind me pipes up with the fact that the Youtubers who have been flown out here are using their time in the limelight in a bit of a goofy fashion.

7:56 Edwards says we need to hold GWB responsible. But how? The Senate can’t do it. How, John? The Youtubery of this debate isn’t making this very interesting or new or “revolutionary” or “historic” at all.

7:50 The blogger media room is terribly boring. Having debate parties at Kate & Jay Sandhaus’ place was WAY more entertaining in terms of color commentary than this. We’re all at our little tables typing away, in dead silence, and there’s no peanut gallery factor whatsoever. Thank God the ham salad sandwiches outside are tasty. And frankly, I’m getting tired of Anderson Cooper’s pointless “time” admonitions. He has no street cred in there.

7:41 I love it when Joe Biden gets riled up. I really think there’s a serious psychological component to my support for his candidacy; he sounds just like my dad sometimes.

7:39 Timothy asked if it was all white males in the blog room. Out of 17-20 people I count like six females, one of whom is black and one looks perhaps latina, and the rest…an asian guy and white males, yes. F’ing blogosphere. :-P

7:32 Okay, we’ve had two gay rights/marriage questions in a row, and Edwards just kinda punted on the gay marriage issue. It’s going to be interesting to see how this works in his campaign. However, I don’t think his answer is all that different than what Biden gave on Meet the Press, although Biden never said he has a problem with gay marriage whereas pony-boy has. Biden said he didn’t think the gov’t ought to be telling churches how to define marriage but that gay couples should have equal legal rights, privileges, and protections. Obama kinda followed on the same theme.

There is no way I’ll be able to live blog WHILE I’m live streaming, but I feel like I should be doing something here apart from just watching TV and turning occasionally to the webcam for snark, so, here we go.

So far the blog room in the media hall is still pretty silent. There’s a Republican blogger from polisite.com to my left (har har) and the guy with the big hair whose name I don’t know behind me both lending occasional snark on my webcam but other than that, it’s just a lot of typing. I really need to clip on the shoulder cam, switch to the iBook, and get moving.

One protester, among those who set the consulate on fire in Beirut, was encircled by flames and died after jumping from the third floor.

Ha, ha, ha. File that one under holy irony.

What, that headline a little too harsh? Well, tough titties. I've had enough of the right's “shock and awe” tactic in which they just make up crap and shout it as loud as possible over and over again till people believe it, so I've decided to start a little brash headlining myself. The difference is, mine's not an outright lie.

• Condom promotion to anyone must include abstinence and fidelity messages, U.S. guidelines say, but those preaching abstinence do not have to provide condom education. The abstinence emphasis, say some longtime AIDS volunteers, has led to a confusing message and added to the stigma of condom use in parts of Africa. Village volunteers in Swaziland maintain a supply of free condoms but say they have few takers. “This drive for abstinence is putting a lot of pressure on girls to get married earlier,” said Dr. Abeja Apunyo, the Uganda representative for Pathfinder International, a reproductive health nonprofit group based in Massachusetts.
• Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, runs a group whose mission involves “meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.” They're getting a major chunk of taxpayer change, including Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, scientologist, and FSM-worshipping taxpayer dough, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. Awesome.

I mean, I figure if we're going to live in a theocracy, might as well get some of the fun parts, too, right? You know it's a good day for the Bush administration when they stand proudly with Iran. What was it George said? About a year ago? “As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.” Unless you're bending or kneeling for liberty, then America kicks you in the teeth, ya dirty queermo. It must have sent John Bolton into conniptions trying to decide who he can't stand more. From today's Progress Report:

“In a reversal of policy, the United States on Monday backed an Iranian initiative to deny United Nations consultative status to organizations working to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people,” according to a Human Rights Watch release. In May 2005, two international gay rights groups applied for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, “the only official means by which non-governmental organizations around the world can influence and participate in discussions among member states at the United Nations. Nearly 3,000 groups enjoy this status. States opposed to the two groups' applications moved to have them summarily dismissed, an almost unprecedented move at the UN, where organizations are ordinarily allowed to state their cases.” On Monday, the Bush administration joined Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe — nations with some of the worst human rights records in the world — in voting to reject the groups' applications.