The key word is associates

I woke up this morning to Katie Couric interviewing Howard Dean and took issue with Katie over a couple things she said.

First off in one question she criticized the Democrat's for playing partisan politics and then in the very next question she quoted James Carville saying the democrat's need a spine transplant. What did she think the raging cajun was talking about. He was Clinton's Rove. So apparently she is saying people are sick of partisan politics, but the Democrat's should do more. I am confused.

The second part was this exchange,

COURIC: Hey, wait a second. Democrats took - Democrats took money from Abramoff too, Mr. Dean.

DEAN: That is absolutely false. That did not happen. Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff went to any Democrat at any time.

COURIC: Let me just tell you - According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Abramoff and his associates gave $3 million to Republicans and $1.5 million to Democrats, including Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid.

DEAN: Not one dime of Jack Abramoff money ever went to any Democrat. We can show you the FEC reports, we'd be very happy to do it. There’s a lot of stuff in the press that the Republican National Committee has been spinning that this is a bipartisan scandal. It is a Republican-financed scandal. Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff ever went to any Democrat, not one dime.

COURIC: Well, we'll obviously have to look into that and clarify that for our viewers at a later date.

Ok the big thing in here is at first she says Jack Abramoff, then when she is reciting the report she says Abramoff and his associates the key word being associates. Now it might seemIlike i am just playing a game of semantics, buy there is a huge difference. Jack Abramoff is going to jail in part for bilking his associates, mainly Native Americans who are traditionally democrat supporters so it is not unusual that they contributed money to the democrat's. The crime is not donating money the crime is buying votes. So if my friend Peter gets his credit card stole and at the same time gives me $50. I am part of his credit card getting stolen? That is what reports are saying when they mention Democrats also get money from Jack Abramoff's associates.

Here is the Abramoff part of the interview and here you can find the whole interview but you will have to look through the video section (I don't think they keep them up long so if it is not close to the date you might of missed it).

Holy shit! I just wrote all this and my stupid computer closed my browser. Luckily they have a recover post that got all this back for me. Otherwise you would all think I was cool with Katie.

Update 1/27: They tried to clear up what they said today, but still missed the boat on the difference of donations and the Abramoff scandal. (for some reason the spell checker messed up some of the words. I went through and tried to fix what I could. The spell checker is junk.)