The Debate: Quick Takes

• Most over-used adjective: maverick
• Most over-used word: "also"
• Most butchered word (*Blame Bush*): nucular
• Most missed real argument that was never mentioned: Barack Obama is up to his eyebrows in the sub-prime debacle.  His entire career before he entered public life centered on the "community organizing" that put the screws to banks in Chicago to lend to risky borrowers.  His closest political associates and allies are all implicated in this mess.
• 2nd most missed argument: Senator Biden voted against the Alaska pipeline.  'Nuff said.
• Most wretched phony assertion: "greed on Wall Street" with no mention of Congressional corruption.  This is an argument tailor-made for McCain, but it was 100% hands-off.  That omission will lose McCain the election.  This wasn't Palin's fault, she's hamstrung.
  
• Best word fluff: Palin calling Biden "Senator Obiden"
• Worst personal testimonial: when Biden started pulling out the story about how his wife and daughter were killed, and his son was in critical condition after a car accident.  He started to choke up.  All I could think of was, "Does he do this every speech?" Then I thought about John Edwards and his creepy, oft-retold about climbing onto the mortuary slab with his dead son.
• Most substantive comments about experience: Palin won this one hands down, because she has executive experience that she can take credit for, that she doesn't have to share around or qualify by saying "I brought this legislation [but it didn't pass]"
• Also, best one up:  Biden kept referring to "the commanding general" in Afghanistan, and how he said that the "surge strategy" wouldn't work there (John McCain " favors" a surge for Afghanistan).  Palin said, very specifically, that McClellan (close, really McKiernan, is the commanding general) had never ruled out a surge strategy, then ennumerated the specific characteristics of said strategy, and then modified for geography, and the specific differences between Iraq and Afghanistan.  It really shows she's been boning up, and she really did better in Biden's so-called area of expertise.  He was, after all, forced down in Afghanistan.
  

Overall, Biden was Biden, same ol', same ol'.  Sounds like a senator, and is a drab wash out.  Even though Palin called him out on some of his record, all he had to do was weasel out of it by saying, "That was a procedural vote," or something.  Typical senatorial blah blah.

Palin struggled in a couple of areas, getting the stumbles and repeating herself.  One was particularly bad-  she seemed to lose her train of thought and it began to sound like the staircase scene in "Tootsie": we were just sitting here wanting to do the Heimlich maneuver on her to get that answer out.  Otherwise, I would say, she acquitted herself rather well.  When she's strong, she's pretty strong, and she appears to be doing a remarkable job

And, the all important camera shot: Palin, of course, wins the camera shots totally.  Biden, on the other hand, not only had the plug issues (they really aren't that noticeable anymore) but it's clear that he has been botoxed.  He couldn't raise his eyebrows and the folds of his eyelids just slopped down over his eyes.  And the acres of plain, flat forehead simply calls attention to the receding hairline that the ugly plugs were meant to remedy... it's just a vicious cycle.  Get of the vanity train, Joe,  It's unbecoming.

Mark Goldblatt Gives Voice to Our Fantasies

Palin’s Moment
Previewing Thursday.

By Mark Goldblatt

Thank you for the question, Ms. Ifill — patronizing though it is. And, yes, if pressed, I could probably stand up right now, walk across the stage and name every country on that blank map of the Middle East you’ve so graciously set up for me. But I think I’ll pass.
First of all, I’d rather not spend next week fielding questions about whether I saw Tina Fey doing another impression of me of Saturday Night Live, this time bending over to point out Yemen — during which, of course, she’ll throw in a blank stare and gratuitous wiggle of her butt in order to suggest that the only reason John McCain picked me for the vice presidential slot was because I was once a beauty queen.

Second of all, I’d rather not log onto the Internet next week and discover that one of your producers has surreptitiously supplied Bill Maher, who two weeks ago called me a “category five moron,” with a camera angle that shows a flash of cleavage — which, of course, he will freeze-frame and weave into an obscene rant.

The point, Ms. Ifill, is that ever since I accepted Sen. McCain’s invitation to be his running mate, I’ve become an object of ridicule and derision among the media elites whose commitment to political correctness apparently admits an exception for howling, sophomoric sexism as long as it is directed at their ideological adversaries.

It’s not that I expected a fair shake, Heaven knows. I realize that there’s a deep-seated emotional investment among liberal commentators in the candidacy of Barack Obama. I watched them chew up and spit out one of their perennial darlings — Hillary Clinton — when she stood in the way of their group hug. I heard Senator Clinton called a “big f — -ing whore” by an Air America host; I heard one MSNBC host accuse her of  “pimping out” her daughter, another call her a “she-devil,” and a third suggest that she needed to be taken into a backroom and beaten senseless to convince her to drop out of the primary race. And I heard a CBS News anchor — yes, the same one who turned a recent interview with me into a pop quiz — ask Sen. Clinton if she remembered being nicknamed “Miss Frigidaire” in school. Ugly stuff, isn’t it? So it’s no surprise that when Senator McCain began to surge in the polls after he selected me as his running mate, the liberal media would come loaded for bear every time I made a public statement.

Ever since Senator McCain made that selection, by the way, I’ve been working hard to get up to speed on foreign policy and global issues. The reason I wasn’t up to speed beforehand is that, curiously enough, I’d been focusing all my energy on doing the jobs I’d been elected to do. When I was elected mayor of Wasilla, I tried to be a good mayor. When I was elected governor of the Alaska, I tried to be a good governor. I didn’t regard either position as a stepping stone to anything else. I saw no need to go on fact-finding tours, at taxpayers’ expense, to foreign countries in an effort to bolster my geopolitical credentials for higher office.

By the time John McCain and I take office in January, rest assured I will be up to speed on geopolitics. I will be altogether qualified to be a heartbeat from the presidency. And I’ll surround myself with altogether qualified advisers and staff, not yes-men and yes-women. Because I know from experience — the very experience my opponent, Sen. Biden, lacks — what it is like to make an executive decision. I know what it is like, after the legislative wrangling is done, after the wheeling and dealing by party hacks who are determined to maintain political cover and plausible deniability, to have the buck stop at my desk, to enact a law by my signature, to put my name on the bottom line.

So no, Ms. Ifill, I think I’ll keep my seat. You can take down your blank map. I came here tonight to discuss, to the best of my abilities, the international and domestic issues that confront the United States and to provide the American people with an insight into my governing philosophy. I didn’t come to convince voters that I could be a Jeopardy champion. If that’s the main qualification for the vice presidency, then I’d suggest both Sen. Biden and I step aside for Ken Jennings.

Nam Guadalupe Palin

I think the first thing I wondered about Sarah and Todd Palin was, "What kind of weird baby name book are they using?" 

Well, it turns out that they are using a little web tool here to help them with the names, and you can translate your name into Palinese.  Just type your moniker, click your heels three times, repeating "There's no place like Nome," and click the button. It's as easy as that. 

Nam Guadalupe Palin is what this blog would be named if it had been born to Sarah and Todd.  Sounds a bit multi-culti, but I'm sure they would have looked at it and seen perfection.  They are just that way.

[h/t Dizzying Intellect]

It really is this simple...

American Digest has a brilliant series that is filed under "5 Minute Arguments" and called "It Really Is This Simple."  This is the whole post for #3:

And you know how much I like bicyclists... this one is just a no-brainer.

Barack's Pro-Life Position

I just mentioned in a comment that BO came out with a rather strong statement calling for "hands off" on the Bristol Palin pregnancy:

I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits. (h/t Andrew Sullivan Blog)

I think that's mighty big of him.  I'm a little disappointed, though, that he didn't add: "You never know.  That child may be president of the United States some day."

In 1959 Dunham's parents moved to Hawaii to pursue further business opportunities in the new state. She soon enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied anthropology. There she met Barack Obama, Sr., a graduate student from Kenya and the school's first African student, in a Russian class.[2] When they became engaged, both sets of parents opposed the marriage, with Barack, Sr.'s father in particular objecting. Nevertheless, the couple married on February 2, 1961 in Maui, Hawaii.

On August 4, 1961, at age 18, she gave birth to her first child whom she named Barack Hussein Obama II. (Wikipedia)

Uh, Congratulations?

I just walked in from the car, where on the news at the top of the hours wsas tthe story that, in response to rumors that Sarah Palin faked her [last] pregnancy, she announced that, no, Trig is her baby, not her daughter's, but, indeed, her 17 year-old daughter Bristol is currently pregnant....

I'll let us all sit with that for a mo'.  Knocked up.  Up the spout.

Here's the Reuters article: To rebut rumors, Palin says daughter Bristol, 17, is pregnant.

Cut to the chase: She's getting married to the father and is keeping the baby.   McCain knew.

Speaking as someone who is an idealist, I am very disappointed.  As a mother of teenagers, as someone who taught Sunday school to middle schoolers, was a substitute teacher for tour local middle school, I am saddened but understanding.  For the baby, this is the second best choice: two very young parents, in a family that will be inundated with publicity.  But her parents let her determine her future, the baby lives, and they didn't know Mom was going to run for Vice President when all this happened.

Of course, the liberal blogs are going apesh*t over this, and the mainstream media, descending on the fast track to the 8th circle of hell, reaching new depths of fatuous suck-upiness, as Peggy Noonan would say, is playing with this one, too, in a way that the McCain camp has labeled, appropriately, "appalling."  This for another post.

Update on Monday, September 1, 2008 at 02:50PM by bbmoe

I just mentioned in a comment that BO came out with a rather strong statement calling for "hands off" on the Bristol Palin pregnancy:

I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits. (h/t Andrew Sullivan Blog)

I think that's mighty big of him.  I'm a little disappointed, though, that he didn't add: "You never know.  That child may be president of the United States some day."

In 1959 Dunham's parents moved to Hawaii to pursue further business opportunities in the new state. She soon enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied anthropology. There she met Barack Obama, Sr., a graduate student from Kenya and the school's first African student, in a Russian class.[2] When they became engaged, both sets of parents opposed the marriage, with Barack, Sr.'s father in particular objecting. Nevertheless, the couple married on February 2, 1961 in Maui, Hawaii.

On August 4, 1961, at age 18, she gave birth to her first child whom she named Barack Hussein Obama II. (Wikipedia)