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Surfacing.

My time as the Bagh­dad escort for my inter­na­tional col­leagues isn’t quite over, but I have a break. I’d like to tell you more about the last two days — it’s been enter­tain­ing, to say the least — but I don’t want to step on their story, what­ever it turns out to be. Let me just say that there’s no bet­ter way to spend a ran­dom Thurs­day than try­ing to sort our your droit turns from your gauche, and watch­ing an urban Euro­pean con­front a drive-through ATM:

“You open your win­dow to use the machine?”

“Yes, very con­ve­nient.”

“I won’t do this. Lazy coun­try.”

And so we pulled into the drive-through lane, parked a few feet beyond, opened the door and walked three steps back to get cash. Because once you start bank­ing from your car, a 42-inch waist­line is just around the cor­ner.

(On the other hand, I tried to buy Kate an Obama T-shirt at the East­ern Mar­ket last Sat­ur­day. The sizes started at L — on a slen­der 11-year-old, a large dress — and topped out at 5XL. So maybe it would do us all some good to walk back to the ATM.)

In other news at this hour, McCain is aban­don­ing Michi­gan, Politico says. There’s a cer­tain sense of all-over-but-the-shoutin’ in south­east Michi­gan, to be sure, but you can’t judge the rest of the state by our lit­tle tri-county area. At this point, how­ever, the veep debate is shap­ing up to be topic A for the next 36 hours, with the Couric snip­pets — end­lessly e-mailed and embed­ded and pref­aced with I can’t stand it — act­ing as trail­ers. That’ll be the high­light of my night, any­way.

So con­sider this your Palin/Biden debate open thread, and I’ll be back on my reg’lar sched­ule tomor­row. Oh, and speak­ing of tomor­row: I have an appoint­ment tomor­row, and neglected to write it down. There’s a lunch-adjacent thing on my cal­en­dar, but I know there’s some­thing else, too, and for the life of me I can’t remem­ber it. So just in case you’re read­ing this, who­ever you are: Are we sup­posed to do some­thing tomor­row? If so, please remind me so I can show up.

Mean­while, Cari­bou Bar­bie v. Bab­blin’ Joe! It’s so on.

Posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm in Current events, Housekeeping. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


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.

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