Not that I’ve ever put much stock in polls, but some of you simply require them to be the center-point of your argument — as if the sheer popularity of a candidate disproves all his negatives. For you, I present this:
RCP Average on 10/14/08: Obama 50.2, McCain 42
RCP Average on 10/20/08: Obama 48.8, McCain 44
Only 6 days ago, Obama was up 8.2 points. His lead has since dropped by 3.4 points, putting him at a 4.8 point lead.
Not that I care about polls.
(1:40 into the video)
Joe the Plumber gets bologna when he can’t afford ham; Barack Obama gets angry when he sees the price of arugula at the upscale grocery Whole Foods.
It’s fun to see the MSM put out fact checks on the things Palin got wrong last night, noticeably sidestepping Biden’s many blunders concerning foreign policy, legislation he and Obama voted on, and The Constitution. The ABCNews fact check turns out to be a two page advertisement, missing the required, “I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.” And some of the few fact checks that even mention Biden are perfectly willing to help shore up his arguments! Well sure, he got all the details wrong, but his point was still valid! This is what a fact check looks like. Just give us the facts. Don’t try to explain away your favorite candidate’s missteps.
He apparently makes stuff up out of thin air. We’ve known this, we’ve seen him do it on the campaign trail. Only then, it was much more immediately obvious. Does a gaffe have to be immediately obvious to be a gaffe? Hmm. Not sure. Either way, there was a real beaut last night.
What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.
Like many who watched the debate, I was bracing myself for Palin to say something off-putting about foreign policy. She’s the one who needed the crash course, allegedly; Biden is supposedly Mr. Foreign Policy. He’s supposed to be the experienced elder statesman Senator Barack Obama chose to help him govern and fill in some of his knowledge and experience gaps. He’s supposed to know far more about foreign policy than she does.
In the comments, nothing like trying to spin Biden’s ridiculous assertion as a positive:
For Palin to have said that, she would need to possess foreign policy knowledge that extends beyond rehearsed talking points, which she clearly does not.
Palin is like Jacques Derrida. She can’t even be wrong, because she says nothing. This is because she knows nothing. One can’t even have a relationship with the truth if one knows nothing of it. Biden’s errors result from knowing too much.
See? Biden steps in it so often because his brain is simply overloaded with foreign policy expertise.
As for Biden’s remark. Yes, its hard to interpret. I have no idea what he meant.
You are correct, it is very hard to interpret balderdash. Don’t hurt yourself trying to figure it out though. The media’s already moving on to other things; no one will be talking about the debate come dinner time.
More comments:
The interesting thing in these comments is that Biden’s fantasy doesn’t impact the pro-Obama people at all. This isn’t a gaffe, it’s a man simply making things up out of thin air.
Biden proved last night that he could quite literally say absolutely anything and no one would care.
So true.
UPDATE: Had to add this one from the comments at Commentary Magazine:
Did Joe Biden say anything about hearing the Sermon on the Mount when he visited Greece, or the time, just after sundown when he helped Paul Revere onto his horse?
I think we can all agree that McCain’s speech wasn’t nearly as good as Palin’s. No need to run a poll on that. (To be fair, just as with Obama and Biden, their roles in speechmaking are entirely different. But still.)
My brother is in the Navy. I have great respect for the armed forces, and would do nothing to minimize their service. But from a politically strategic point of view, he’s beating a dead horse. Most of the country knows about McCain’s ordeal in Vietnam, though I’ll concede that they may not know the hairy details. But at this point, it’s too much. He’s talking about his experience in place of talking about policy. It’s something Obama’s been avoiding for quite some time now, and if McCain/Palin has any chance of taking it in November, they need to tell Americans what they’ll do that’s so much better than the other guys.
Except for the last minute or so, the speech had the tone of a lecture. I suppose that would’ve been fine if he’d been dealing out facts, if he’d begun with something like, “Alright friends, let’s talk details…”
But he didn’t. The text of the speech would imply the kind of emotional narrative that Obama recited. The Obama camp is totally right on one point: McCain and Friends desperately need to talk policy in detail. (As much as a politician on the campaign trail can, of course.) Obama has been notoriously ambiguous. McCain’s won over as many as he can with the POW story. To beat Obama come November, he needs to get specific with not just what he’s gonna do, but why that’s the best course for the country.
First it was on Guy Fawkes day. The most ever donated to a candidate online in one 24-hour period: $4.3 million. Today it broke that record, and John Kerry’s one-day donation record of $5.7 million with over $6 million. And all with a grassroots effort from TeaParty07.com. That’s just within the 24-hour block, but donating continued even after midnight EST, leveling off at about $6.2 million.
Never heard of him? I’m not surprised, the media’s definitely snubbing him. I don’t know why, it’s excellent news. Competely Internet-driven grassroots effort continuously raises millions in one-day moneybomb events.
And people are getting excited about him merely because his message just makes sense. He’s not a flashy candidate. He doesn’t promise different groups of American people that he’ll “work for them,” like your run-of-the-mill options. Honestly, I think this guy’s sign is a sentiment for a lot of Americans. I have completely non-political friends getting excited about Ron Paul.
It’s a different kind of support than you’ve ever seen on the campaign trail. It’s not about hating the other candidates. I won’t be voting for Ron Paul because he’s the lesser of two evils. I love his message, and this will be the beginning of a big change for this country. Finally, Washington will see what happens when people have an honest candidate they can get excited about.
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
Awesome. But I can’t possible tell you everything you need to know about Dr. Paul. Except that I donated today, and I definitely don’t even have the expendable income to be doing that. But I believe in his message, and when he speaks, I don’t feel like I’m being fed a line by someone with googly eyes pointed at the White House.
Speaking of Google, find out more, and follow the grassroots advice: “Google Ron Paul“
Okay, I can’t help it! I know I swore off all nuances of politics in future posts, but I can’t help it! Tonight is the first of three Presidential Debates. You really should gather a group of friends and all sit down to a pizza and some presidential hilarity. Now first of all, let’s be honest with each other: these debates are no more about true debate techniques and substance than Martha Stewart conveys a homemaker. Since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of Presidential debates, they’ve slowly been reduced to comedic fodder solely intended for fueling Saturday Night Live (and hence all other lesser comedy shows).
Now, in order to understand any of the brilliant wit that will no doubt be hurled our way in the next 3 months, I feel it my duty to advertise the debates. Friends, if you missed the debates last election, I’m afraid you completely missed out on Al Gore’s grand sighs and Locked Box routine, and you wouldn’t have understood clever Bush-like words such as “strategery” in the next weekend’s SNL skits. Don’t misunderestimate him kids, our favorite cowboy can coin up a little somethin’ in a heartbeat. You know as well as I do that he’s been informed of his mispronunciation of nuclear by various White House aides, but he’ll still look the camera dead in the eye and say, “Nukular.” Oh man! That gets me bout as good as a childhood ticking.
But let’s not leave the opponent out either; his douche-o-meter certainly hasn’t peaked yet. In one of his debates with an opponent for the Senate race, he definitely called the guy a “chickenhawk” for being tough of Defense but not serving in Vietnam. The accusation would have been true, of course, if his opponent had not been 16 when the war ended. I can’t wait to see what tonight has in store!
And now for a few absolutely astonishing quotes from the campaign trail this year:
“You bet we might have.” –Sen. John Kerry, asked if he would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein if he refused to disarm
“I want to thank my friend, Sen. Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. (Laughter.) Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.”–President George W. Bush in Nashville
“Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?” –Sen. John Kerry
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” –President George W. Bush