Today -100: February 9, 1921: Oh I knew I was forgetting something

The German government sternly tells Bavaria to comply with Allied demands on disarmament or face French occupation.

Learning that British soldiers would be on a train in West Donegal, IRAers roll boulders onto the track around a curve. The train hits it and derails, but no one is hurt.

OK, this time Prince Kropotkin really is dead.

 

There’s a mutiny in the Russian fleet at Kronstadt.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Eventually, after some discussion about whether the death warrant is still valid, the governor will just commute his sentence.

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I don’t think the moose loves it

Sarah Palin, campaigning in New Hampshire (is NH in play?), on why Alaskans are exactly like New Hampshironians: “We all love good moose hunting.”

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A John Travolta movie due to start filming in Paris was called off after ten of the production’s stunt vehicles were torched overnight. The movie’s title: From Paris with Love.

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In the 1960 presidential debates, famously, people who listened on the radio thought Nixon won while people who watched on tv thought Kennedy won. In 2008, though, we have many more options, and I’m curious about the effect of that balkanization on perceptions. I was doing the blog thing, so I was watching, writing and reading the online CNN transcript simultaneously, which meant I was listening more than watching and managed to miss most of the visuals, such as Sarah Palin’s winks during the veep debate and McCain’s air quotes last night around “health” of the mother, which make his callous, dismissive words so, so much more offensive – let’s look at that again now (20 seconds):



Wow, what a dick.

I watched the first debate on CNN but was so distracted by the constant movement of the audience reaction squiggles on the sides of the screen that I switched to uncluttered PBS for the later ones. I’m thinking now that that was a mistake, because PBS also mostly eschewed the split screen, which means I missed McCain fuming, smirking, twitching and rolling his eyes while Obama was speaking, and failed to get a full sense of just how irritable and petulant, undisciplined and unpresidential, he was being, like radio listeners in 1960 didn’t see Nixon’s flop-sweat and shiftiness. Of course there’s YouTube now, and embedded video clips like the one I just used, but it’s not quite the same as the cumulative effect over the course of 90 minutes.

But how many other versions of the 2008 debates were there? What did CBS or NBC, Fox, the BBC and MSNBC do? What other forms of “helpful” screen clutter were there, and how did they shape how viewers perceived Obama and McCain? What did Obama do while McCain was speaking – and do you think he practiced it? Share your viewing/listening experiences and thoughts in comments.

The last presidential debate: We’re talking about Joe the Plumber

Transcript.

Bob Schieffer opened with a plea to the candidates: “By now, we’ve heard all the talking points, so let’s try to tell the people tonight some things that they haven’t heard.” McCain: “My left ball is bigger than my right ball.” Obama: “My left ball is bigger than McCain’s right ball.”

McCain: “It’s good to see you again, Senator Obama.” Obama: “Dude, you didn’t see me last time. Eye contact, dude!”

Okay, I’ll stop making stuff up now. Maybe.

McCain: “Americans are hurting right now, and they’re angry.” Dude, you are so totally projecting.

Okay, I’ll stop saying dude now. Maybe.

McCain falsely blames Fannie and Freddie for the housing crisis. Wants the bailout to put homeowners first.

Obama: We haven’t seen a rescue package for the middle class.


McCain: “a couple days ago Senator Obama was out in Ohio and he had an encounter with a guy who’s a plumber.” Cue porn music. Evidently Obama wants to raise the taxes of “Joe the plumber,” but “I want Joe the Plumber to spread that wealth around.” “The whole premise behind Sen. Obama’s plans are class warfare”. And that’s not warfare you can believe in, you know, the good kind of warfare McCain likes.

Seriously, how many times can both of them say “Joe the Plumber”?


McCain deployed a statistic: 50% of small business income taxes are paid by small businesses. Er, right.

McCain: “We need to encourage business, create jobs, not spread the wealth around.” Heaven forbid we spread the wealth around.

McCain on the budget: “I would have, first of all, across-the-board spending freeze, OK? Some people say that’s a hatchet. That’s a hatchet, and then I would get out a scalpel, OK?” An angry old man with sharp objects? Um, OK.

Another thing McCain knows how to do: “I know how to save billions of dollars in defense spending. I know how to eliminate programs.” Oh, John, is there anything you don’t know how to do?


Yay, the $3 million planetarium projector makes an appearance! How we missed you, $3 million planetarium projector.

Why does Obama never defend the $3 million planetarium projector?

McCain informs Obama, “I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

After McCain trots out the “Obama wanted to increase taxes on people with incomes of $42,000” line, Obama says even Fox News doesn’t believe that shit.

McCain: “But it’s very clear that I have disagreed with the Bush administration. I have disagreed with leaders of my own party. I’ve got the scars to prove it.” Somebody should remind him he got the scars from the North Vietnamese, not the Republicans, before there’s an embarrassing incident on the Senate floor.


Schieffer: are you two willing to say to each other’s faces what your campaigns have been saying about each other?

McCain: well, if he had agreed to the town hall meetings... And John Lewis hurt my feelings by comparing me to George Wallace, and Obama didn’t repudiate those remarks, even though, “Every time there’s been an out-of-bounds remark made by a Republican, no matter where they are, I have repudiated them.” He’s done what now?

And the Obama campaign has had the highest spending than any time since... gratuitous reference coming up in 3..2..1... Watergate.

Joe the Plumber again. How we’ve missed you, Joe the Plumber.

McCain says that people have shouted nasty things at Obama rallies too and there are “some t-shirts that are very unacceptable.”

Obama is talking about the shouts of terrorist etc at McCain-Palin rallies, but he is completely incapable of even faking outrage, like McCain just did. Interestingly, he mentions Palin’s remark that he “palled around with terrorists,” which means he brought up William Ayers before McCain did. McCain then says that he doesn’t care about an old washed-up terrorist but darkly demands that he reveal “the full extent of that relationship.” Oo, sinister.

And ACORN is “now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” Maybe ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, creating a vortex that will consume us all.


McCain on Palin: a “bresh of freth air.” She “understands special-needs families... better than almost any American that I know.” Trig is, what, six months old?

Obama refuses to say if Palin is qualified to be president. Notes that McCain’s across-the-board spending cut would screw special-needs families.

McCain: “why do we always have to spend more?”

McCain on nuclear power: “Sen. Obama will tell you, in the -- as the extreme environmentalists do, it has to be safe.” Oh, those extreme environmentalists, always wanting things to be safe. Fortunately, says McCain, “We can store and reprocess spent nuclear fuel, Sen. Obama, no problem.” For 40,000 years. No problem.

McCain: free trade with Colombia is a “no-brainer,” but you’ve never traveled south of the border, so you wouldn’t know that.


Insurance. McCain: Joe the Plumber doesn’t want to pay a fine for not giving his employees health insurance. Obama tells Joe the Plumber he won’t pay a fine. Joe the Plumber must be very relieved.

Could you nominate any judge who disagreed with you on abortion? McCain: “I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.” Er, right.

Obama brings up the attempt in Congress to overturn the Ledbetter ruling on equal pay. McCain: “It was a trial lawyer’s dream.”

Obama, defending his vote in Illinois: “With respect to partial-birth abortion, I am completely supportive of a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health and life, and this did not contain that exception.” Dammit, he just legitimized the medically bogus concept of “partial-birth” abortions. “[N]obody’s pro-abortion. It’s always a tragic situation,” Obama says. I beg to differ.

McCain poo-poos the idea of exceptions for the health of the mother: “You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That’s the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, ‘health.’” Oh, those extremists.


On education, McCain says vouchers vouchers vouchers. Also, we should reward good teachers. Oh, and we should let people who have served in the military “go right to teaching and not have to take these examinations which -- or have the certification that some are required in some states.”

Obama thinks America’s youth aren’t an interest group, they’re our... wait for it... future.

McCain, in an unwonted display of self-control, managed to say “My friends” only once, although he did address one remark, “if you’re out there, my friend,” to... Joe the Plumber.


This, by the way, is Joe the Plumber.

Presidential debate: There were others who took a hike

There should be more transparency in the process by which debate rules are decided. For tonight’s “town-hall” debate, who was it who insisted on no follow-ups, going so far as to require that the questioners’ mikes be cut off immediately after they ask their question, and that cameras aren’t allowed to show their faces while the candidates respond to their question? Indeed, in previous debates, did the campaigns dictate where the cameras could and could not point?

Well, let’s see how that works.

Transcript.

McCain: “Let’s not raise taxes on anybody today.”

More items on the ever-growing list of things McCain “knows how to do”: “give some trust and confidence back to America,” “get America working again”.


Who would McCain appoint treasury secretary? Not you, Tom. Ha ha. No, seriously, “the first criteria, Tom, would have to be somebody who immediately Americans identify with”. Oh good, another hockey mom.

Some black dude named Oliver asks how the bailout will help the people he knows. McCain corrects him: it’s not a bailout, it’s a rescue. And for a little extra condescension (McCain loves telling black people that they don’t understand things), he tells Oliver that he probably never heard of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae before this crisis. He adds that Freddie and Fannie (which he seems to think were responsible for the Great Crash of Ought Eight) were making risky loans “with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington... There were some of us -- there were some of us that stood up against it. There were others who took a hike.”

Obama actually tries to explain to Oliver how the bailout would affect him, answering his actual, you know, question. Oops, spoke too soon; he quickly changed to returning McCain’s fire in kind, mentioning Rick Davis’s lobbying for Fannie Mae. Then said “but, look, you’re not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers.” Technically, pointing fingers doesn’t make a lot of sound.


McCain’s new favorite example of pork barrel earmarks, now that we’re all tired of the bear DNA, is an overhead projector for the Chicago planetarium. Who doesn’t like planetariums?

McCain keeps talking about how he reaches across the aisle to work with Joe Lieberman. Dude, if you want to touch Joe Lieberman, you just have to reach under your desk.

Asked what sacrifice they’d call for from the American people, McCain said many good projects – not crap like that overhead projector for groovy astronomy shows for stoned teenagers – would have to be scrapped. Medicare, Medicaid, that sort of thing. Okay, he didn’t specify Medicare and Medicaid, but that’s what he means. Obama suggested we need to save energy in our homes. Oh, and the Peace Corps, “so that military families and our troops are not the only ones bearing the burden of renewing America.” How exactly are our troops renewing America?


McC: Obama wants to raise taxes – just like Herbert Hoover!

Brokaw asks an alarmist question about the “ticking timebomb” of Social Security. McCain says “Social Security is not that tough”: all we have to do is just “sit down together across the table.” And it’s just “a little tougher” to fix Medicare: “have a commission, have the smartest people in America come together.” “And let’s have the American people say, ‘Fix it for us.’” See, and you thought this shit was complicated.

He’s calling for “a whole bunch of” nuclear plants, for the third time this debate. But he accuses Obama of “say[ing] that it has to be safe or disposable or something like that.”


Obama twits McC for voting against alternative energy 23 times, so McC responds about one, which was loaded down with pork, and who voted for it? “That one,” pointing at Obama. That one?

McCain insists his $5,000 tax credit will more than make up for taxing health benefits except for those with “these gold-plated Cadillac kinds of policies, you know, like hair transplants.” Somewhere, Joe Biden sheds a tear.

Is health insurance a right, a responsibility or a privilege? McCain: a responsibility, “in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member.” How is that a responsibility? Obama: a right, except for the people my plan doesn’t cover.


Both agree that America is a force of good in the world. So at least that’s settled.

Asked about intervening in humanitarian crises where US national security is not at stake, Obama asks, “If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?” Pat Buchanan? Also, pretty much everyone in power in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Asked about invading Pakistan to get bin Laden, Obama says we have to change our policy to Pakistan, we can’t coddle a dictator. This is his first un-adept response, since I assume he knows that Musharraf is out of power. He adds that “We will kill bin Laden, we will crush Al Qaeda.” McCain accuses him of failing to carry a big stick like Teddy Roosevelt. “Senator Obama likes to talk loudly.” He does?

Obama says that McCain suggests that Obama is “green behind the ears,” which is an interesting image, but that it was McCain talked of annihilating North Korea, and sang of bombing Iran. McCain says that was a joke. A hilarious, hilarious joke.


Obama drops the name Gen. McKiernan, just to prove he knows the name, unlike whatshername.

Is Russia an evil empire? (Brokaw amusingly insisted this question only required a yes or no answer). Obama: they do some evil things. McCain: maybe.

Q: if Iran attacked Israel, would we invade it before or after going to the UN Security Council? McCain: bomb, bomb, bomb... Obama ignored the Israel part, and talked about the unacceptability of Iran having nuclear weapons.

Last question: “What don’t you know and how will you learn it?” Obama: ask Michelle, she’ll tell you what I don’t know. McCain: “what I don’t know is what the unexpected will be.”

Oh, I didn’t mention, Obama came with a prepared response to McCain’s predictable “you don’t understand” theme, a long thing about yes, you’re right, I can’t understand why you’re such a dick. Something like that, I’m tired.

Oh, and evidently we’re not rifle shots here, we’re Americans.

Also, my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends my friends.

And Obama should really see a doctor about that green behind the ears thing.

And that concludes the second McCain-That One debate.

Vice Presidential debate: How are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

Transcript.

Yes, Palin performed better than in the more open-ended interviews. The format and the lack of follow-up helped her to partially mask her ignorance, and she was allowed on multiple occasions to simply ignore the question and talk about something else. Gwen Ifill actually made me wish Katie Couric had gotten the job. Yikes. In response to Biden pointing out her failure to answer one question, she snapped “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” (And her Trig record, and...) So she’ll “talk straight,” but only about the things she wants to talk about.

The “maverick” count: Palin used “team of mavericks,” “the maverick from the Senate,” “the consummate maverick”... actually only 6 times. Seemed like more. Biden came prepared with a long “he has not been a maverick on health care, he has not been a maverick on the war” thing which Obama should have started saying a long time ago.

Biden: “We’re going to focus on the middle class, because it’s -- when the middle class is growing, the economy grows and everybody does well.” Ah, the Democratic version of trickle down.


Palin: “You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?’ And I’ll betcha, you’re going to hear some fear in that parent’s voice.” They probably think you’re threatening to blow up their house unless their kid throws the game. Another way to figure out if this has been a good time or a bad time in the economy, Sarah: look at one of those many newspapers. Or talk to a, whaddayacallem? economist.

Oh, and that was the first betcha at 6:05. And the first maverick, in “team of mavericks,” at 6:08. First darn at 6:09.


6:10 “hockey moms,” in this rousing cry: “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again, never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars.” You heard her, Joe Six Pack and hockey moms: band together and burn down your local bank.

6:11 first heck: “It’s not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurtin’ like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.”

Palin accuses Obama of voting 94 times to raise or not to lower taxes. Biden points out that by the “bogus standard” she’s using, McCain voted to raise taxes 477 times.

Palin disagrees that it’s patriotic for the rich to pay higher taxes.

Biden says McCain’s plan to tax health insurance benefits is the ultimate bridge to nowhere.

Palin calls herself a “Mainstreeter.”

She is dropping g’s all over the place and doing the folksy thing so heavily that she may well be doing an imitation of Tina Fey doing an imitation of Sarah Palin.


Palin: “I’m not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate.”

Palin: “And I don’t want to argue about the causes [of climate change]. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”

Biden: “Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.” Oh, but he’s against gay marriage.


Palin: “But I also want to clarify, if there’s any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant... But I’m being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non- support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.” She said “straight up” twice in that paragraph.

WHAT OUR TROOPS DON’T NEED TO HEAR TODAY, THAT’S FOR SURE: Palin: “Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that’s for sure.”

She can pronounce “Ahmadinejad” (who she says isn’t sane or stable) but not “nuclear.”


Palin, in the middle of an Israel pander-off: “But I’m so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on”.

Palin accuses Obama & Biden of “constantly looking backwards” and “doing the blame game.” Evidently, because Obama talks about change a lot, it’s impermissible to point out the mistakes of the Bush administration, you know, the things he wants to change from.

Biden responds: “Past is prologue.” I appreciate that he readily had Shakespeare in his intellectual arsenal, even if he just convinced half the American people that’s he a know-it-all smarty pants.


What should be the trigger for the use of nukes? Palin: “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.” She says the safe, stable way to use nukes is as a deterrent. I wonder if she thinks she answered the question?

She seems to think NATO allies are involved in Afghanistan but not in Iraq.


WHAT JOHN MCCAIN KNOWS: Palin: “John McCain who knows how to win a war. Who’s been there and he’s faced challenges and he knows what evil is and he knows what it takes to overcome the challenges here with our military.”

Joe spends a lot of time in Home Depot.


Turn the hokey setting on your tv way down for this one: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You prefaced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and blah blah blah”.

I have to say that even with all the hecks and betchas she’d previously deployed, I just wasn’t expecting a doggone it.

WHAT SARAH KNOWS: “Of course we know what a vice president does.”

For example: “I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” See, and you thought she didn’t know what a vice president does.

WHERE MCCAIN HAS ALREADY TAPPED HER: Palin: “John McCain and I have had good conversations about where I would lead with his agenda. That is energy independence in America and reform of government over all, and then working with families of children with special needs. That’s near and dear to my heart also. In those arenas, John McCain has already tapped me and said, that’s where I want you, I want you to lead. I said, I can’t wait to get and there go to work with you.”

Additional thought about the debate

Jim Lehrer kept trying to get Obama and McCain to address each other. Was this the first time in his entire career that he’s tried to make a political discussion more interesting?

Presidential debate: If you have to do things, you have to do things

Transcript.

Well right off Obama called the place hosting the debate Old Miss when it’s proper name is clearly Ole Miss.

Obama: $700 billion is a lot of money.

McCain: “This isn’t the beginning of the end of this crisis, this is the end of the beginning”. And he will fight Fannie Mae on the beaches...


McCain says he’s been criticized for calling for the resignation of the head of the SEC. Actually, Johnny, you’ve been criticized for saying you would fire him, a power you didn’t know the president doesn’t have.

McCain believes in the “goodness and strength of the American worker”.

Christ, he’s going on about the study of bear DNA again.

McCain: I didn’t win Miss Congeniality in the Senate. You’d think he’d have dropped that line after picking a running mate who actually did win Miss Congeniality, but he’s really rolling out each and every sound bite he’s got (“I will make them famous, and you will know their names,” “I looked into Putin’s eyes and saw three letters,” etc).

Obama says we’ll be energy self-sufficient in ten years. Nonsense.


McCain on Obama: “It’s hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left.”

What are the lessons of Iraq? McCain: “you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” So what he’s learned in the last five years – hey, I just realized: we’ve been in Iraq about as long as McCain was a POW -- what he’s learned is that you shouldn’t have a failed strategy. I know he was a crappy student at Annapolis, but couldn’t they have taught him that a failed strategy is, you know, bad, because of the, you know, failure and stuff?

Obama says the lesson is that we shouldn’t have gone in in the first place.


O. says McC wants to pretend the war started in 2007. (Personally I want to pretend it stopped in 2007. Or 2003. Or before it started.)

Obama says the “surge” was “a tactic designed to contain the damage of the previous four years of mismanagement of this war.” McCain’s snide riposte: “I’m afraid Sen. Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” Obama: I do so.

Throughout, McCain is condescending like that. That smirk visible on split-screen whenever Obama was talking is more obnoxious than Gore’s sighing ever was.


McCain upbraids Obama for talking about sending troops into Pakistan. Not for planning to do it, mind you: for talking about it. “You don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things. ... I guarantee you, I would not publicly state that I would attack them.”

Obama says we lost legitimacy in Pakistan because we supported Musharraf. McCain defends supporting a military dictator, indeed supports the coup, because Pakistan was a “failed state.” Five minutes later he brings up his silly “League of Democracies” idea, with no evident sense of the contradiction.

On Iran, McCain: “We cannot allow a second Holocaust, let’s make that clear.” Okay, that’s clear. I guess they’ve focus-grouped the phrase “second Holocaust.” Obama should really stop supporting a second Holocaust, it’s probably not a big vote-getter in Florida.

Now they’re arguing about whether it’s okay to negotiate with Iran. Sigh. Obama: “The notion that we would sit with Ahmadinejad and not say anything while he’s spewing his nonsense and his vile comments is ridiculous.” McCain: “So let me get this right. We sit down with Ahmadinejad, and he says ‘We’re gonna wipe Israel off the face of the earth,’ and we say, ‘No you’re not.’? Oh please.”


McCain, trying a little too hard: “I know the veterans. I know them well. And I know that they know that I’ll take care of them. And I’ve been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans. And I love them. And I’ll take care of them. And they know that I’ll take care of them. And that’s going to be my job.”

WHAT MCCAIN KNOWS HOW TO DO: “I know how to heal the wounds of war, I know how to deal with our adversaries, and I know how to deal with our friends.”

Democratic debate: The bitter, bitter debate

Transcript.

One more debate after we were promised we were done with debates. I don’t know about the poor people in Pennsylvania, but I’m sure feeling bitter right about now.

Hillary notes that they are debating in Philadelphia where the founding documents of America were written – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the recipe for cream cheese. But “Neither of us were included in those original documents.” However, John McCain was included in those original documents. By name.

Neither of them will commit to a “Dream Ticket.”


Obama is bitter about having to explain again why he said people are bitter. Although the word he is using now for voters’ feelings is “frustration.”

Hillary defended people clinging to religion and “their traditions, like hunting and guns”.

Speaking of clinging to religion, they then talked interminably about Rev. Wright yet again. Little George Stephanopoulos asked Obama a couple of times if Wright is as patriotic as he is. Hillary said the whole Wright thing “deserves further exploration.” Oh yes, we so needed to have another debate.

Then it’s another re-airing of the Bosnia story. Hillary says she’s embarrassed about, you know, lying, but that it was “a very dangerous area” and the American soldiers in Bosnia “were totally in battle gear.”


Then someone on tape asks Obama why he doesn’t wear a flag pin: “I want to know if you believe in the American flag.” Charlie Gibson adds that not wearing one is a “major liability” for him (according to Clinton and McCain’s advisers). Then Little George asked about some English professor Obama has met who used to be in the Weather Underground. Hillary chimed in with some concern trolling, saying “this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.” Obama responded that Bill Clinton pardoned a couple of Weather Undergroundlings, so there.


Gibson asks both candidates how they can possibly withdraw from Iraq when Petraeus says they shouldn’t; “Are you essentially saying, ‘I know better than the military commanders here’?” Hillary pretends that the only problem in Iraq is that the Maliki government “will not accept responsibility for its own future” as long as the US is giving it a blank check. Obama reminds Gibson that the president is actually above Col. Combover in the chain of command. He says that the military has had a “bad mission” but has performed that bad mission “brilliantly.”

Would they extend the nuclear umbrella over Israel? Obama: an attack on Israel would be “unacceptable.” Hillary: let’s extend the “umbrella of deterrence” to the entire region! She would “begin diplomatic engagement” with Iran by not talking with its president, ever. “But I would have a diplomatic process that would engage him.”


Stephanopoulous: “Let me turn to the economy. That is the number one issue on Americans’ minds right now.” Which must be why he’s getting to it a full half an hour after the exhaustive discussion of the flag lapel pin issue.

I’m going to be hypocritical here and skip the boring economic stuff myself. They would both raise taxes on the rich, and maybe raise the capital gains tax, despite Charlie Gibson’s earnest but completely fallacious insistence that cutting the capital gains tax always increases revenue from it.

What will you do about high gas prices? Hillary: I’d investigate them.


Gibson: This has been “a fascinating debate.” Could not be more wrong.

Democratic Debate: There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. No there isn’t. Yes there is.

Condi was in Beijing yesterday, and had a press conference with China’s foreign minister. A China Central Television reporter asked her a question using the phrase “Taiwan’s so-called referendum” three times. She didn’t take the hint and use that phrase in her reply, but did say that “this referendum is not going to help anyone and, in fact, it shouldn’t be held.”

Okay, I thought I had more from that presser, but I guess I don’t.

So it’s on to the last, one can but hope, primary debate of 2008, in which Tim Russert made that Chinese reporter look good by comparison.

Transcript.

Pictures below illustrate the many hand gestures of the Democratic Party and of Paraguayan presidential candidates Pedro Fadul and Blanca Ovelar, who also debated last night, just because my news photo search also turned up pictures from that debate.

The first part was devoted to health insurance, sixteen full minutes as Bryan Williams pointed out aggrievedly, sounding as if he’d been forced to sit through a four-hour speech by Fidel Castro.

Both candidates said “health care” when they actually meant private health insurance. Only a public employee who doesn’t have to deal with a private insurance company would consider the two to be synonymous. (That reminds me that I never finished writing a post I started a couple of weeks ago on Clinton and Obama’s insurance plans; it wasn’t as intellectually coherent as I liked, and every other sentence was “Fucking Blue Cross just raised my fucking premiums twenty-five fucking percent!”) Hillary: “You know, for example, it’s been unfortunate that Senator Obama has consistently said that I would force people to have health care whether they could afford it or not.” So you’re not planning to make people have appendectomies against their will? Good to know. Obama: “Every expert has said that anybody who wants health care under my plan will be able to obtain it.”


Side-pointy

Hillary insisted that many of the uninsured can afford it, they’re just “young people who think they’re immortal.” I guess she just lost the young-people-who-think-they’re-immortal vote, although I suspect Obama already had a lock on that.

Obama: “With respect to the young people, my plan specifically says that up until the age of 25 you will be able to be covered under your parents’ insurance plan, so that cohort that Senator Clinton is talking about will, in fact, have coverage.” Except for the poor, forgotten orphans.


Side-pointy, up-pointy

Hillary complained that she was being picked on while Obama was being coddled: “Well, can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time.”

Obama said the Clinton campaign has “constantly sent out negative attacks on us, e-mail, robocalls, flyers, television ads, radio calls” (radio calls?) (Update: oh, I get it, he means call-ins to talk radio), but “we haven’t whined about it”. Unless you count what he just, you know, said.



Clinton: “I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning. I didn’t have a public position on it, because I was part of the administration, but when I started running for the Senate, I have been a critic”. So we’ll just have to take her word about having been a critic from the very beginning? No, wait: “I think David Gergen was on TV today remembering that I was very skeptical about it.” So that settles that to our perfect satisfaction.

Obama: “we can’t shy away from globalization.”


Double pointy

Clinton says it’s unfair to compare Obama’s 2002 speech against the forthcoming Iraq war with her record in the Senate voting to authorize it because “Many people gave speeches against the war then... And when he came to the Senate, he and I have voted exactly the same. We have voted for the money to fund the war until relatively recently. So the fair comparison was when we both had responsibility, when it wasn’t just a speech but it was actually action, where is the difference?” Yah, his principles are just as compromised as mine! We’re both sell-outs! Vote for me!

Obama’s response: “Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is, who’s making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?” See, that metaphor totally explains away his votes for Iraq war funding.


Me and my loud tie are crushing your head!

Russert asked Obama about Farrakhan’s announcement that he supported Obama for president. Obama said that he hadn’t asked for that support, could hardly stop the man supporting him, and added, “You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible.” Which was funny, because nobody had said anything yet about Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. Russert then proceeded to repeat every single anti-Semitic comment Minister Farrakhan has ever made in his entire life, as though Obama hadn’t just said he denounced them, then accusingly asked him, “What do you do to assure Jewish-Americans that, whether it’s Farrakhan’s support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?” This forced Obama to go on at length about how Jews in Chicago love him and about his unwavering, unequivocal, unthinking support of Israel, whose “security is sacrosanct”, and “the United States is in a special relationship with them, as is true with my relationship with the Jewish community.” However, I don’t believe he assured Jewish-Americans that he was not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness. Let the attack ads commence.


Side handy, shrug handy

Hillary, who also loves her some Jews, informed Obama that “there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting.” Also between disavowing and rebuffing, objurgating and spurning, condemning and repudiating, excoriating and abjuring.

Obama rejected (and denounced) this lexicological specificity: “I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. ... But if the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce,’ then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.”


Boob-covery, pointy

Obama also rejected and denounced the National Journal’s rating of him as the most liberal senator. Then he crossed over into that monomaniacal place every politician reaches sooner or later, and started speaking of himself in the third person: “And part of the reason I think a lot of people have been puzzled, why is it that Senator Obama’s campaign, the supposed liberal, is attracting more Independent votes than any other candidate in the Democratic primary, and Republican votes as well, and then people are scratching their head? It’s because people don’t want to go back to those old categories of what’s liberal and what’s conservative.” Really?

more at twiigs.com...

Russert asked Hillary, “What can you tell me about the man who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor?” Dude, do your own research. Google, Wikipedia.

Inherent in the words “who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor” is the (absolutely correct) assumption that the actual Russian elections do not matter, an assumption Hillary failed to remark upon. It will be interesting to see if there is a reaction from Russia.

After she went on for a bit about the man who’s going to be Mr. Putin’s successor, the state of the Russian polity, etc, Russert asked the question I was wondering, “Do you know his name?” She fumbled through several attempts to pronounce Medvedev, finally saying, “whatever.” We’ll never know if Obama knew his name.

(Incidentally, I didn’t actually watch most of the debate, so I’m not sure if it’s a transcript error that has Obama saying he was getting “filibuttered.” But filibuttered is my new favorite word.)

Obama said that if Russian troops join Serbs in attacking Kosovo (this was Russert’s scenario), he’d get NATO to do something or other. He added that “We have recognized the country of Kosovo as an independent, sovereign nation... And I think that that carries with it, then, certain obligations to ensure that they are not invaded.” Recognizing a country requires that, Barry? Because we’ve recognized 150, 180 of the suckers.

Hillary: “Well, obviously, I’ve said many times that, although my vote on the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq was a sincere vote, I would not have voted that way again.” So after 2002 you gave up the whole “sincerity” thing because it just wasn’t working out for you, is that what you’re saying, Hills?

Democratic debate: Change you can xerox

Transcript.

Obama: “The problem we have is that Washington has become a place where good ideas go to die.” Yes, but on the other hand, it’s a place where crappy ideas go to live.

Hillary wants a “trade time-out.”

Pointy

As with her vote for the Iraq war authorization, Hillary says she was totally snookered when she voted for the border fence: “I think when both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense, it would be considered. But as with so much, the Bush administration has gone off the deep end”. What she wants now: “smart fencing.”

Obama responded well to the line Clinton has recently been directing at his supporters, “Let’s get real.” “The implication,” he said, “is that the people who’ve been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional.” Actually, the implication is that they’re naive, don’t know how things are done in the real world, and are easily distracted by shiny objects. Which, admittedly, a lot of them are. The thing is, the people she’s insulting are not just Obama supporters, they are American citizens who exercised their constitutional rights in the manner they saw fit. That’s the basis of representative democracy, so politicians are kind of expected to pretend to have a bit more respect it.

It’s also not good as a form of persuasion. She’s not going to win over people who are leaning towards Obama by telling them “Let’s get real” with all the disdain of a parent addressing a son who has just informed them he wants to major in dance.

Pointy

Obama does pretend to respect the voters. He pretends the crap out of it. Indeed, he pretends that he is leading some sort of movement, through the power of his pretty, pretty oratory, which will “inspire the American people to get involved in their government and ... inspire them to go beyond the racial divisions and the religious divisions and the regional divisions that have plagued our politics for so long”. He never says anything about how the American people will get involved in their government after they vote for him in November. In the words of Stephen Colbert in the first episode of The Colbert Report, “Your voice will be heard, in the form of my voice.”

Pointy pointy

Clinton pushed the charge of plagiarism, a charge so thin that it will convince many people that he must be practically perfect because there is nothing more substantial that she can say against him: “Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. And, you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.” You can see that her candidacy isn’t going to be about words, because the phrase “change you can Xerox” doesn’t actually mean anything.

Asked if her claim that “One of us is ready to be commander in chief” implied in a, you know, subtle way, that Obama isn’t, she refused to repeat it in front of him. “Well, I believe that I am ready and I am prepared. And I will leave that to the voters to decide.” Will you? We have your permission? How fucking gracious.

How is she ready and prepared? “What I mean is that, you know, for more than 15 years, I’ve been honored to represent our country in more than 80 countries”. In the same way that Laura Bush just represented the US in five African countries?

As you can tell, it’s been too many debates for me, and I am just sick of the both of them. I am tired with the little bits of debate theatrics, as when Barack pretends to be jotting something down when Hillary is speaking. Once, she turned her head a little bit towards him at a moment when he was looking at her; he jerked his head away abruptly as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and started writing. What do you think he writes? He’s left-handed, by the way. I seem to remember that an unusual number of presidents have been left-handed.


He also has this aristocratic looking-down-his-nose thing. Just saying.

Democratic Debate: Hillary would be on anyone’s shortlist

Transcript.

Sitting next to each other, Barack and Hillary look like the anchors of the local 11:00 news.

Audience members included Meathead, Josh Lyman, Annie Hall, Ugly Betty, Stevie Wonder, Pierce Brosnan, Leonardo diCaprio....

Obama says he was friends with Hillary before the campaign, and will be after the campaign. But now, I believe that implies, he’s gonna eviscerate her.


Hillary: “Just by looking at us, you can tell we are not more of the same.” And then we open our mouths... (Later: actually, this was the dullest debate yet, and seriously deficient as blog fodder. Some of that in a good way, as when they were genuinely discussing differences in their health insurance plans, but mostly they know that neither of them is changing many minds before Tuesday, and are looking beyond it to the general election.)


Obama says he brings up Hillary’s flip–flopping on illegal immigrants getting driver’s licenses only to show how difficult the issue is.

Hillary on her Iraq war vote: “coercive diplomacy” is cool, she likes “coercive diplomacy,” uses it on Bill all the time, but “what no one could have fully appreciated...” Who is she, all of a sudden, Condi? “...is how obsessed this president was with this particular mission”. Blitzer asks if she’s saying that she was naive in trusting Bush and the crowd, possibly led by Diane Keaton, boos loudly.


Speaking of presidents on a mission, Hillary, when asked how she’d “control” Bill when they were back in the White House when she sure can’t do it on the campaign trail, gave out one of those guffaws, possibly at the thought of Bill, naked, tied up, with a hood over his head, thinking he’s in for some kinky sex, but actually on his way to Guantanamo. Or maybe to that “Lost” island. Then says she doesn’t want the campaign to be about Bill but the issues.


Barack, would you make Hillary your running mate? Astonishingly, he refuses to answer the inane question. He does say that Hillary would be “on anyone’s short list”. Isn’t that cute, it’s nine months before the election and he’s already drawing up death lists.