"Live" Debate Blogging

This is a new adventure - we will see how it goes. But I am pumped. i am the one who did the research and called talent out on the editorial page of the Star for missing 2/3 of the SASC meetings, and Claire uses my statistic. The final debate in the series between Talent and McCaskill is starting now.

Larry Moore is introducing the panel of inquisitors - Talent is opening . Jim says This election is about changing Washington and he has done that already...Sorry Jim, gotta do better. He is blaming Claire for being part of the problem. He came out flinging mud.

Claire just started refuting calmly. She pointed out that talent is playing a bloodsport for power and using fear and smear. She is killing him with kindness, and attacking Talent's strategists. She says she won't question his character or his ethics, she wants everyone to listen, because she will be sticking to the issues.

I heard him deflate.

He is tap-dancing around the stem-cell issue now. He supports stem cell research and is opposed to SCNT. Claire is calling him out on the bill he sponsored that would lock people like me up for doing research. (I took that personal). Claire wants to stand on the side of science and hope and cures.

Jim says that we will be able to get treatment in a couple of decades that we know to be ethical. Jim, that's in the eye of the beholder.

Nick haines just asked Claire what things she would want to see done in a hundred days. She wants to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, raise the minimum wage, and she wants to negotiate the Rx drug plan.

Jim looks like a deer int he head lights, and spent a big part of his alotted time to defending his no-negotiation stand on the Rx drug plpan. Jim - some of the seniors have hit that donut hole and are wondering what they will do next month. He said Claire would have opposed the Medicare drug plan, implying in general. She reminded him she would have insisted it be for the benefit of seniors and not big pharma.

Jim is now telling Sylvia Maria Gross of KCUR (NPR affiliate) about his imigration stance. Claire is responding with the record of the Republicans in not prosecuting the employers who hire illegal immigrants. (Down from over 1400 per year under Clinton to 3 per year under Bush and the Republicans.)

Claire is calling Jim on sponsorign a Social Security privatization scheme. Now he is denying he backed privatization. And he is back on the Medicare drug plan and tried to say Claire was against it.

Claire is rebutting - telling how she really feels about the Medicare part D program - that she wants to save money for seniors, not protect the profits of big pharma.

Kraske just asked him if Rummy should be fired. Jim isn't answering he is talking about his service on SASC.

Claire says he should be fired, and is enumerating Rummy's wrongs.

And now Claire is pointing out that Talent didn't ask a single question in the five meetings of SASC that he and Rummy have both been present for.

Tlent is asking Claire about her family businesses and an off-shore tax shelter and asking her to release her families tax returns.

Here we go again, Claire says. She reminded the public taht his wife is a tax attorney, and says she has filed all necessary paperwork. He is back to off-shore tax shelters.

Claire appologized for calling him a false patriot, but she prefers fully funding the VA. And she said he was surrounded by scandal, but it wasn't his fault because he is in Washington. Laughter from the audience.

Claire asked Jim about the minimum wage isue on the ballot. He hasn't made up his mind. She reminded the people that he has voted against a minimum wage increase 11 times.

He says she doesn't support assistance to small business tied to a minimum wage, because she doesn't support small business.

Mike Mahoney asked Claire about the Josh commercial. She says it is up to Josh, and she is sorry that she aired the commercial and that he is in this position.

Jim is hounding the vet, and now denying that he voted against funding body armor. (This is a lie, he voted against the funding in 2003 and 2004.)

He flogged his record with vets. Claire pointed out that veterans groups came to her and the Disabled Vets Assn. gave him an "F."

Sylvia Maria Gross is asking Claire what she thinks about No Child Left Behind and what she would fund. Claire wants to return some local control over a rigid mandated inflexible standard. SHe wants the mandate funded and teacher training. Jim has voted to cut education funding.

jim thinks education is a-okay. He claims he has voted for funding and increases in Pell grants. He didn't vote for NCLB because he wasn't in the senate. Claire is agreeing that they agree on NCLB, and looking senatorial.

Jeff Fox of the Examiner is asking about healthcare costs and the middle-class being squeezed. Talent is going to say cut taxes, I just know it...

Right on schedule. He is talking about empowering the people through tax cuts that aren't helping that squeexed middle class.

Claire is reminding us that he is for cutting taxes on the rich, and she supports tax cuts for the people in the middle class. It isn't about Wall Street, it's about Main Street.

Kraske is asking Claire about manipulation of the gas market. Today they spiked. Claire claims she never said Bush was manipulating the gas prices, but OPEC. And reminding us of Jims votes to give big oil $9 billion dollars and that is why she would have voted against the energy bill. (I would have too, for that very reason.)

Now he is saying she is against ethanol and biodiesel. (Um, no. She was against the bills as written.)

She is reminding us that she voted for ethanol in the state legislature with him and he voted no. She says she will stand up to big oil.

Mike Mahoney is asking Jim how he can say we are making progress in Iraq when the Iraqi police chiefs were arrested for the problems with the Shia death squads. Jim says we can't leave, the mission isn't complete.

Claire called the Axis of Evil diatribe a failed foreign policy. And there it is! She just called him on missing 2/3 of the SASC meetings. (This blogger heard the number, and then did the research to verify it, so props to me here.)

He did not deny it.

She called him on supporting the president 94% of the time. He is trying to back away from it. Saying the president agrees with him, not the other way around. Claire says if she agreed with the president 94% of the time, she would admit it.

Closing statements:

Jim Talent: Thanking the debate panel and the University Academy. Standing on his record - Medicare Part-D, the COMBAT Meth law, he has passed 30 pieces of legislation. Now he is attacking her record as a prosecutor and the employee whio was fired for Meth abuse. He is using 90 seconds of his time attacking Claire.

Claire: Calling him on the ads he has approved that 527's have put out. She stands on her record as a prosecutor (I live in JaCoMo - she was a good one) she is attacking his voting record, not his family.

I'm not neutral. I want Talent to lose this election big.

But I think this one goes to Claire.

Judge for yourself - you can get the podcast from KCUR.