46 responses to
“Surfacing.”

1. brian stouder said on October 2nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm

   So just in case you’re read­ing this, who­ever you are: Are we sup­posed to do some­thing tomorrow?

   It was our ryst-Tay at the otel-May!

   btw — McCain is spend­ing money in Indi­ana!! Hahah­ha­haha!!! If Indi­ana ain’t locked down for McCain, then indeed it does begin to look like the end of his mis­be­got­ten cam­paign. (no doubt, the evil Indi­ana media is at fault — PROFITING from the unfair cov­er­age McCain gets, by extort­ing cam­paign adver­tis­ing out of him as he falls behind Obama. This is WAY WORSER than any­ht­ing Gwen Ifill could pos­si­bly do!

   My offi­cial Obama tee and hat hasn’t come yet; I finally snapped up one at the mall last week­end, and wear it proudly

2. Catherine said on October 2nd, 2008 at 5:35 pm

   I’m down with the drink­ing game, but we need to know what the Biden drink­ing sig­nal is. When he repeats some­thing three times? What’s that ver­bal tic of his, is it “actu­ally” or something?

   I need rules, folks, oth­er­wise I’m just going to have to drink every­time Sarah Palin’s accent annoys me, and that way lies a ride on the porce­lain bus.

3. Gasman said on October 2nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm

   Brian,
   You for­got to say that it was, “the evil LIBERAL Indi­ana media is at fault.”

   I’ve got­ten a chuckle at those who insist that the media hasn’t been fair to poor Sarah. In what way have “THEY” been unfair? Couric’s ques­tions were giant, fuzzy, gen­er­ally friendly soft­balls that should have given here every oppor­tu­nity to score big points. That she struck out each time is a clear indi­ca­tion that she is not ready for the big leagues.

   It is rather amus­ing that the hard right sup­port­ers of poor mis­treated W3 (Won­der Woman from Wasilla) angrily demand that we take her seri­ously, but NOT by ask­ing her per­ti­nent ques­tions that are fair game for Biden. Which is it; is she a seri­ous can­di­date or not?

   I feel that del­i­cate miss W3 is going to be get­ting a bit of an edu­ca­tion tonight. How­ever, the expec­ta­tion bar is set so low for her per­for­mance that if she doesn’t drool on her­self or bab­ble inco­her­ently her side will claim a mar­velous victory.

4. joodyb said on October 2nd, 2008 at 5:49 pm

   Joe is advised from many quar­ters to try not to smile at all, as it may make him look con­de­scend­ing, among other things.

   A friend sug­gested this week­end that Sarah’s last name may in fact be Pal­ing. (Beg­ging par­don if some­one has already shared this theory.)

   Sarah Palin’s guber­na­to­r­ial debate videos are online. Pro­gres­sive talk­ers say­ing not to dis­miss her skills.

5. ellen said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 pm

   This after­noon, Hannity’s idea of a rea­son­able debate ques­tion for Palin was: “What val­ues inform your deci­sion­mak­ing, Gov­er­nor?” But he con­sid­ers the whole vp debate nul­li­fied any­way, because of Gwen Ifill.

6. Suzi said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm

   Any Mar­garet Atwood fans out there? Inter­est­ing essay on Palin and The Handmaid’s Tale:

   http://​www​.truthout​.org/​0​93008R

7. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

   Cather­ine, at the end of the pre­vi­ous thread, I just sug­gested “lit­er­ally” as the trig­ger to take a drink when Biden is speak­ing. Either that or “ladies and gen­tle­men.” He says both all the time.

8. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm

   There’s a nice story about Sarah Palina in today’s WaPo by Sally Jenk­ins, who is usu­ally a sports­writer, but also does some feature-writing. What­ever else one might say about Palin, she had a col­or­ful upbringing.

   To tell the truth, I see some of my sis­ter, who was also a point guard, in Sarah. The drive, the feisti­ness. But, unlike Sarah, my sis­ter knows what she’s talk­ing about.

9. Catherine said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm

   Lit­er­ally! That’s it! Thanks, Jolene. Let the games, I mean debate, commence.

10. joodyb said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm

    jolene, i loved that story. to brand her as your typ­i­cal amer­i­can girl seems a stretch, now. the eye­balls! the camp­ing! the play­ing through pain! her leap into the lime­light makes sense. say what you will, but by strict def­i­n­i­tion, she is extraordinary.

11. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Yes, joody, with a bit of pol­ish and bet­ter edu­ca­tion, she could be extra­or­di­nary. She’s clearly will­ing to try any­thing, and she’s a sharp-elbowed com­peti­tor. There’s just not enough depth or coher­ence to her thinking.

    If she had more expe­ri­ence and con­fi­dence as a thinker, she wouldn’t say ridicu­lous things about know­ing for­eign pol­icy because she lives near Rus­sia. She’d say, “Obvi­ously, in my role as gov­er­nor, I’ve had a local and regional focus, and in that role I’ve done x, y, z. That expe­ri­ence would help me in deal­ing with for­eign lead­ers in [whichever way].”

    Although I’m both­ered by her igno­rance and the “overly deci­sive” (not sure who I’m bor­row­ing that phrase from) way in which she expresses her­self, I’m more trou­bled by what seems like mean­ness. There’s not much warmth or humor behind her jibes at her oppo­nent. I know that pol­i­tics ain’t bean­bag, but we have had enough of peo­ple who treat the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion with disdain.

    As I’m writ­ing this, I have the feel­ing that I’ve said it before, so for­give me if I’m repeat­ing myself.

12. alex said on October 2nd, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    So if she fucks up, Gwen Ifill takes the fall tomor­row on right-wing radio for ask­ing “gotcha” ques­tions. And if she blath­ers emp­tily but main­tains her poised swag­ger, we get another good SNL skit out of it. Here’s bettin’.

13. Colleen said on October 2nd, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    http://​www​.pal​in​bingo​.com

14. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Great sen­tence from James Fallows’s pre-debate com­men­tary: Joe Biden will be judged on whether he gets any­thing wrong; Palin, on whether she gets any­thing right.

15. Bill said on October 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    I’m watch­ing the Cubs. The debate is being DVR’d for later.

16. alex said on October 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    She’s a flam­ing lib­eral. Who knew?

17. John said on October 2nd, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    I messed up, I should have picked “Mav­er­ick” for the take-a-shot word instead of “Alaska”.

18. mark said on October 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    Nice pre­dic­tions guys.

    Con­ser­v­a­tives are very happy tonight.

19. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm

    Actu­ally, I didn’t catch many instances of “lit­er­ally” either.

    I did think her question-answering strat­egy was inter­est­ing. Doc­toral stu­dents all over Amer­ica will, no doubt, enter their oral exams say­ing, “I’m not going to answer the ques­tions the way you asked them.” Pretty amazing.

    The absence of follow-up ques­tions is a seri­ous problem.

20. del said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    I thought that the Obama/McCain was a draw, but the polling sug­gests that to the pub­lic Obama won. Tonight Biden won very con­vinc­ingly. I won­der how Palin’s golly-shucks, darn it col­lo­qui­alisms will play out in the polling? Sarah Palin doesn’t belong at the top of a ticket. Amer­ica does not need another light­weight who pro­nounces nuclear, nucu­lar. And more impor­tantly, to any­one who lis­tened for con­tent, the choice is starkly clear.

21. del said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Just checked the CBS poll of uncom­mit­teds imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the debate. The same polling that had found that Obama beat McCain by 39% to 24%, now finds that Biden beat Palin 46% to 21%. I don’t think con­ser­v­a­tives will be very happy with that Mark — but we’ll have to see more polling.

22. Jolene said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    Marc Ambinder, a blog­ger at The Atlantic, has these results:

    CNN’s poll gives the debate to Biden, 51% to 36%.….Frank Luntz’s focus group found Palin’s per­for­mance to be most effective…CBS News’s poll: 46% of uncom­mit­ted vot­ers sur­veyed gave the debate to Biden, where 21% thought Palin won. But 55% said their opin­ion of Palin changed for the bet­ter; 53% said their opin­ions of Biden changed in the pos­i­tive direc­tion as well. 18% of uncom­mit­ted vot­ers are now com­mit­ted to Obama; 10% are com­mit­ted to McCain.

23. brian stouder said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm

    Pam and I got a kick out of the debate; it was inter­est­ing television.

    Hon­estly, it seemed to me that Gov­er­nor Palin did well; she was dis­ci­plined and dogged, mak­ing the points and hit­ting the marks that she wanted to, and she looked good. (although, per­son­ally, her hair in her left eye bugged me; every­time she blinked her hair bounced)

    As the debate pro­ceeded, Pam was quickly put off that Gov­er­nor Palin wasn’t answer­ing the ques­tions; I was slow to pick up on that, but then the pat­tern became more and more pro­nounced, until the gov­er­nor lit­er­ally pro­nounced that she wasn’t going to answer the ques­tions, nor sub­ject her­self to “media fil­ter” inter­views, going forward.

    A catch phrase that Gov­er­nor Palin used repeat­edly that imme­di­ately both­ered me was her “all of the above” stance, with regard to global warm­ing. “All of the above”? What can an “All of the above” pol­icy actu­ally mean?

    In foot­ball terms, it seemed to me that Biden did an excel­lent job of ball-control; grind­ing out yards on the ground, con­trol­ling the clock, plac­ing the gaunt­let in front of his oppo­nent. Gov­er­nor Palin, on the other hand, started throw­ing the ball and tried razzle-dazzle plays — and, although that game plan left room for bad things to pos­si­bly hap­pen, she pulled it off (more or less).

    One other lit­tle thing — I was again taken aback by the sex­ual sub­text that Palin inserted (so to speak) in the energy dis­cus­sion. She made the some­what taunt­ing “drill baby, drill” joke — which prompted me to com­ment to Pam about that, and then in the next moment Gov­er­nor Palin dis­ap­prov­ingly said that Biden had referred to off-shore drilling as “rape”!! She almost seemed to be para­phras­ing the infa­mous Bobby Knight crack regard­ing ‘lay­ing back and enjoy­ing it’…

24. mark said on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    This is a crit­i­cism of CBS, noth­ing more. I checked their web­site at 11:48 to take a look at the poll results that del referenced.

    They claim it was the result of a “sci­en­tif­i­cally valid” sur­vey of 473 unde­cided vot­ers reflect­ing a national dis­tri­b­u­tion. Dif­fi­cult to do with a sam­ple that small, but pos­si­ble within a fairly large mar­gin of error. CBS didn’t men­tion the mar­gin of error.

    But fur­ther on CBS tells me that the results are from a por­tion of the 473 polled only; oth­ers haven’t responded yet. They don’t say whether they are still wait­ing on 2 or 200.

    Why are they report­ing poll results before they have poll results? Their sam­ple size doesn’t leave much room for missed votes. The final results may be sim­i­lar, but they ought to wait to find out.

25. mark said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:02 am

    brian–

    With the excep­tion of the last para­graph, I largely agree with your review. I didn’t catch the sex sub­text you saw, at least not where you saw it. Palin does know she is attrac­tive, and she does some pos­ing that I sus­pect has served her well over the years.

26. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am

    You’re right, mark. It’s very odd that these incom­plete results were reported. At first, I thought they were say­ing they would have data on other ques­tions (e.g., who was good on par­tic­u­lar issues), but they say that the num­bers they’ve posted may change as more data come in.

27. alex said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 am

    Palin’s got good bone struc­ture. I say she’s bet­ter with the up-do, the one that looks like a skunk rais­ing its tail. That thing where she ties it around the crown of her head and lets it hang down on the sides is too Ma Kettle.

28. nancy said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 am

    She has great bone struc­ture, but she looked just a tad drawn tonight. Like she’s lost about seven stress-related pounds in the past month. The chirpi­ness may be a facade.

29. Catherine said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 am

    If I have to lis­ten to another four years of “nucu­lur,” I swear to God I’m mov­ing to Canada.

30. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 am

    Mark, amen to Palin’s pos­ing serv­ing her well over the years. I think folks are on to her style and have met women like her at par­ties; fawn­ing and flir­ta­tious women who know how to play men. A nat­ural flirt. As Brian noted her bangs kept get­ting in her eyes and ABC kept replay­ing footage when she would actu­ally wink while talk­ing “directly to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Her per­for­mance was pro­foundly weak. At one point when she men­tioned “mav­er­ick” for about the 30th time she answered a ques­tion by mug­ging for the cam­era, smirk­ing and rhetor­i­cally ask­ing, “Whad­dya expect from a cou­ple of mav­er­icks?” That’s gonna find its way into Tina Fey’s act.
    And I think that her col­lo­quial style will not play well with the older gen­er­a­tion. Biden was more tra­di­tional and respect­ful of the office of vice pres­i­dent and that will play well with the older vot­ers of Florida, a key state.

31. mark said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 am

    My favorite Biden moment:

    (Para­phras­ing) “If you go down to Home Depot, where I hang out a lot, and you ask peo­ple if they are doing bet­ter than they were eight years ago, you’ll hear loud and clear they are not. And if you ask them to name any sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence between John McCain and George Bush on any sig­nif­i­cant pol­icy issue, they’ll tell you there isn’t any.”

    Now I don’t doubt that Biden hangs out at Home Depot on occas­sion. And I read­ily accept that he talks pol­icy with the locals. He’s a wonk and he likes peo­ple and talk­ing. As for the sec­ond ques­tion, I doubt he’s been at Home Depot much since being picked by Obama, but it’s rea­son­able license.

    What entered my mind was the image of a cou­ple in their mid-fifties, shop­ping at Home Depot on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing so he can fix a cou­ple of things at home. “Damn it, Marge, I’ll come back another time to get the rest of the things. Biden is camped out in plumb­ing again. I’ve told him four times things are worse for us than they were eight years ago. But I don’t even under­stand that sec­ond ques­tion of his and he don’t know a darn thing about fix­ing our toilet.”

32. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 am

    Amen on the “nucu­lar” issue, Cather­ine, and I, too, thought she looked drawn. I like the glasses a lot, but she really does need to get a grown-up hairdo. I could deal w/ the hairdo, though, if she would get a grown-up vocab­u­lary or, more accu­rately, way of express­ing her­self. I don’t find “Gosh, golly, durn, bless her heart” style espe­cially appealing.

    But, if your cri­te­rion is, ‘Is she like us?”, I guess hav­ing a can­di­date who gives shout-outs to third-graders is about as folksy as you can get.

33. Gasman said on October 3rd, 2008 at 12:51 am

    Gov. Palin acquit­ted her­self much bet­ter tonight than dur­ing her inter­views with Gib­son, Couric, or even Han­nity. Why did she do so badly pre­vi­ously? Her uneven per­for­mance record both­ers me. If it indi­cates an inabil­ity to think on her feet, she would not find it eas­ier if she got to Wash­ing­ton. If it’s because of an over-reliance on staffers for prep, then it seems to indi­cate a shal­low­ness and lack of independence.

    As to con­tent, she rarely answered any ques­tions posed to her, whether from Ifill or Biden. Her deflec­tions were not in the least bit art­ful and seemed to tele­graph that she was either uncom­fort­able or unable to answer most of the time. Again, she would find ques­tions from oppo­nents in the Sen­ate or House much more dif­fi­cult than those she faced tonight.

    As for for­eign pol­icy ques­tions, I can see her nego­ti­at­ing with Pres­i­dent X from Berz­erk­istan who angrily wants to know why a McCain admin­is­tra­tion is pro­vid­ing arms to Berzerkistan’s neigh­bors, their nation’s mor­tal enemy. Vice Pres­i­dent Palin responds, “Well, now, that’s a great ques­tion that I’m not going to answer through any lib­eral media fil­ter. Just let me tell you about oil pro­duc­tion in Alaska, which as you know, shares a nar­row mar­itime bor­der with Russia.…”

    Not a con­vinc­ing case for her being VP.

34. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 am

    Yeah, the Home Depot ref­er­ence was a bit silly in an oth­er­wise pow­er­ful pre­sen­ta­tion.
    My first impres­sion was that Biden went after McCain instead of Palin. Very effec­tive. Next, he linked McCain to Bush empha­siz­ing Obama’s mantra of change. Very smart. And Palin offered no rebut­tal. Were Palin to address Bush’s poli­cies she would be dig­ging a hole. Biden was, like Obama, clear and direct. Palin was, as her for­mer guber­na­to­r­ial adver­sary had described her, skilled in the ora­tory of plat­i­tudes and “glit­ter­ing gen­er­al­i­ties.” Not much sub­stance at all. She kept repeat­ing her­self and was in some­thing of a par­al­lel dimen­sion, fir­ing up the base with ref­er­ences to Biden’s wife’s hav­ing a “reward in heaven” for being a school­teacher, offer­ing a “shout out” for 3rd graders. Very weak.

35. Gasman said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 am

    As for the dubi­ous­ness of CBS’s early poll results, they seem to be in line with the oth­ers that are com­ing out. FiveThir​tyEight​.com lists the fol­low­ing as of this writing:

    CBS — Biden 46%, Palin 21%; CNN Biden 51%, Palin 36%; Medi­aCurves focus group — 2:1 for Biden. I doubt that the Palin num­bers will go up much, if at all.

    As for my pre­dic­tion of the right claim­ing vic­tory for Palin, here it is:

    http://​www​.john​m​c​cain​.com/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​d​e​f​a​u​l​t​.​a​s​p​x​?​g​u​i​d​=​8​2​3​a​0​f​a​5​-​6​8​d​3​-​4​0​7​1​-​9​8​e​9​-​d​d​7​2​b​9​5​9​6​7​6​8​&​a​m​p​;​s​=​c​n​n​&​a​m​p​;​t​=​p​a​l​i​n​-quote

    Peggy Noo­nan trum­pets, “It was her evening. She was the star. …she became a star prob­a­bly on a new level.”

    I guess those polled were sim­ply unable to rec­og­nize that, appar­ently, a star was born tonight.

36. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:14 am

    Gov. Palin acquit­ted her­self much bet­ter tonight than dur­ing her inter­views with Gib­son, Couric, or even Han­nity. Why did she do so badly previously?

    She sounded bet­ter tonight because there were no follow-up ques­tions. In fact, as far as she was con­cerned, there might as well have not been any ques­tions at all. She said what she wanted to say, regard­less of what was asked. Alll can­di­dates answer the ques­tions they want to answer, but few do it so flagrantly.

37. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 am

    Any sug­ges­tions as to what com­mer­cials or stump speech lines will come from the debate?

    My nom­i­na­tion: Some­thing along the lines of “John McCain and Sarah Palin think it’s fine if teach­ers get their reward in heaven, but Barack Obama and Joe Biden want to increase teacher salaries here on earth.”

38. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 am

    Here’s some debate stuff on global warm­ing:
    PALIN: … But there are real changes going on in our cli­mate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to pos­i­tively affect the impacts? …
    IFILL: Sen­a­tor, what is true and what is false about the causes?
    BIDEN: Well, I think it is man­made. I think it’s clearly man­made. And, look, this prob­a­bly explains the biggest fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden — Gov. Palin and Joe Biden.
    If you don’t under­stand what the cause is, it’s vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to come up with a solution.

39. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 am

    Jolene, the stump speech should include the fol­low­ing:
    George W. Bush, John McCain — whad­dya expect from a cou­ple of “Mavericks?”

40. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 am

    Some stand alone vac­u­ous­ness which starts with a base­ball cliche, then “bor­rows” from Ronald Reagan’s silly debate rejoin­der to Jimmy Carter, then includes the Stu­art Smal­l­ey­ism “dog­gone it,” some redun­dancy, and ends with vain­glo­ri­ous ref­er­ences to God:
    PALIN: 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 tell Amer­i­cans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You men­tioned edu­ca­tion and I’m glad you did. I know edu­ca­tion you are pas­sion­ate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?

41. del said on October 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 am

    I am start­ing to get very pissed off. Time for bed.

42. Dexter said on October 3rd, 2008 at 3:40 am

    “Nuke-U-Ler” never both­ered me…what bugged me more was old Ronald Rea­gan say­ing “guvv-mint”.
    This was Palin’s bright­est hour, true. She’s good at this sort of thing, as she is bad at one-on-one inter­views, as we all know.
    She per­formed exactly as I expected, mak­ing the out­ra­geous claim that Barack Obama will sur­ren­der in Iraq. Biden called her on that one…one thing any­one who actu­ally fol­lows the news knows is that Barack Obama is no dove, he believes strongly in the tired old “police­man of the world” out­look and is promis­ing a full-scale occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan as soon as pos­si­ble.
    He and Edwards both pro­posed the “sta­tion US troops out of Iraq and into Kuwait to be on high alert”…and Obama never said a word of clos­ing that embar­rass­ing US Embassy in Iraq.
    So, no…there was no win­ner of this dis­ap­point­ing debate, it just cemented what liars the repugs are , twist­ing their cor­po­rate lack­ey­ism into a jum­bled plat­form they want us to climb aboard…good for Joe Biden for shoot­ing her bull­shit down. Trickle-down eco­nom­ics does not work…Reagan said it would and he lied too .
    McCain has aban­doned Michi­gan for good…THAT is the big news in my book.
    You Hoosiers know where Water­loo, Indi­ana is…US6 & I-69…years ago Water­loo had the CBS TV affil­i­ate, WINT-TV, which became Chan­nel 15, WANE in the 1950’s.
    I just found out that Ronald Rea­gan used to hang around Water­loo and use the sta­tion: from inter­views my brother did for a story about the murals by artist John Rea that have existed for 70 years on the walls of a Water­loo tavern,

    “Ronald Rea­gan used to come to Water­loo and do pro­mos for G.E. at the local TV sta­tion.
    He would always stop by, get a ham sand­wich and a bot­tle of beer, and play on the shuf­fle­board table. My dad always said Mr. Rea­gan was a nice and per­son­able gentleman.” — Chuck Smith, son of tav­ern owner Toots Smith, of Smitty’s Tav­ern, now Ketch Kan Tavern .

43. brian stouder said on October 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 am

    “White Flag of Surrender’.

    That phrase made me laugh out loud! If we take it seri­ously, the fol­lowup ques­tion — which would be breezily ignored by the gov­er­nor — might be “if Obama’s pol­icy pro­nounce­ments equal a “White Flag of Sur­ren­der” to you, what would Vic­tory in Iraq look like to you?”

    and any­way, as the Pro­pri­etress informed us yes­ter­day, the only “white flags of sur­ren­der” that got waved yes­ter­day were by the McCain-Palin cam­paign, in the great state of Michigan!

    Huz­zah!! Huzzah!!

44. coozledad said on October 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am

    Why in hell do they keep let­ting that embalmed tro­phy Cokie Roberts out of her pack­ing mate­r­ial? If I had kids I’d be mighty pissed that I had to explain to them that life doesn’t always end so bru­tally.
    http://​media​mat​ters​.org/​i​t​e​m​s​/​2​0​0​8​1​0​030001

45. brian stouder said on October 3rd, 2008 at 8:53 am

    Nice link, cz.

    It lead me to this one, from a fel­low on the floor at the debate, which I found fascinating

    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​a​j​-​b​o​c​k​e​l​m​a​n​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​-​s​a​w​-​i​n​s​i​d​e​-​t​h​e​-​d​e​b​_​b​_​1​3​1​4​9​4.html

    an excerpt

    On top­ics where it was clear she knew the talk­ing points, she kept look­ing into the cam­era with a big smile. On for­eign pol­icy and other points where she gave light answers, she was intently review­ing her notes on the podium. I’m not sure how much things came across on cam­era, but each time that Palin made a cute move — twice wink­ing at the cam­era, giv­ing a ‘shout out’, claim­ing to be a mav­er­ick or paint­ing her­self as out­side the belt­way — there was a vis­ceral reac­tion from the peo­ple in the room. Even from the Repub­li­cans seated next to me. The Repub­li­cans I spoke with imme­di­ately after­wards felt very somber about her performance.

46. Jolene said on October 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Inter­est­ing link, Brian. I was just look­ing at Peggy Noonan’s col­umn re the debate in the WSJ and con­cluded that she has lost her mind. Of course, oth­ers have noted pre­vi­ously noted that this might be true, so I don’t count myself too clever for noticing.

    Still, she starts out singing Palin’s praises, seems to notice, along the way, the shal­low­ness of some of her responses and the false­ness of her folksy demeanor, and ends by con­clud­ing that the genius of Tina Fey’s por­trayal of Palin reflects a kind of love for her.

    Really, Peggy should make sure she gets a good night’s sleep before com­ment­ing on major pub­lic events.