Some quick thoughts on last night's debate.

[catsittingstill]

It seemed like half the time when McCain stopped to take a breath, I could hear him trembling. 

McCain's use of "that one" to refer to Obama kind of caught my ear.

I wish McCain had answered the last question: "What don't you know and how will you learn it?"  He just launched into his heroic life story, all the way up to "country first" as usual.   Obama at least referred to the question, and I thought his joke was cute, but I would have liked a more complete answer from him too.

McCain was gaming the format to take slams at Obama that Obama couldn't answer.  I thought that was pretty low; I didn't understand why the moderator even stood for it (it could easily have been cut off by making McCain go first every time) and I'm glad Obama stood up for himself a little.  I did notice that Obama could answer questions without constant attacks on McCain (yes, there were a few attacks, but my impression was that Obama usually didn't start it, and he attacked a lot less than McCain did), but that was pretty much what I expected from him from his previous behavior.

McCain's complaining about "government mandates" on health care really surprised me.  McCain supports enslaving women to scream their way through labor with unwanted babies.  That's a pretty damned intrusive goverment mandate.   I don't see how any government mandate Obama might come up with in his wildest dreams could be as intrusive as that. 

NPR did a nice piece this morning fact-checking some of the stuff.  Obama got a couple of things wrong.  McCain got about twice as many things wrong.  Not that I was counting or anything :-).  McCain trying to tie Obama to Fannie Mae (yes, Obama got campaign funds from them, as did every member of Congress including McCain) and overlooking the fact that McCain's own campaign manager was a Fannie Mae lobbyist was, um, ... I was about to say "interesting," but never mind, it's only typical for the new McCain.

I don't think it's a game-changer, but the Republican spin-meisters are the best that money can buy.  We'll see.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It looks to me like McCain is losing; if the election were held right now, Obama would win. Now we need to get through the coming month. The forecast is slime, slime, and more slime...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

bleah. I think you're right.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a trend among politicians to never admit to not knowing everything there is to know, on the theory that it is inconsistent with appearing strong and confident and sure of yourself. Very annoying, and maybe dangerous.

Tom Brokaw is a Republican for McCain. You kinda noticed he was not neutral.

Under the Palin/McCain, every rapist will be allowed the freedom to choose the mother of his baby.

And on Daily Kos, they're already proudly putting forth sticker/button logos that say, "I'm for THAT ONE"

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I'm for THAT ONE too.

I felt like Brokaw was trying to keep Obama from answering McCain's gratuitous attacks. At the time I thought it was coincidence that Obama was always having to go first, letting McCain get in smears that were unanswerable in the format, and that Brokaw was simply pushing for rules over fairness because he was afraid of looking biased toward Obama and pushing for rules is usually defendable.

But now I am starting to wonder.

I still think Obama came off better, though.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Did you notice that every instance of Brokaw chiding the candidates for running over the time limits was after Obama's turn? Never after McCain's turn.

It also seemed to me that Brokaw usurped the "town hall". The questions were supposed to be from ordinary people. Brokaw asked "follow-up" questions that usually had only a tenuous connection with the original questions, as if he were saying, "Never mind that, answer the question I think should have been asked." So half the time they were addressing Brokaw's ego, not the voters' concerns.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I did notice that Brokaw seemed to always be chiding Obama. I had put it down to Obama needing to answer McCain's smears and thus perhaps actually talking longer than McCain, though a few times I did think that it didn't *seem* like Obama was talking longer.

I thought some of the questions were from people actually present and some were e-mailed in and Brokaw was reading the e-mailed ones. I hadn't actually noticed the pattern you mention in the follow-up questions, but I have to admit my brain was churning as I listened, and I might not have noticed everything that was there.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, when Brokaw read a question that was emailed, he identified it as "a question from the Internet". Before he began asking any questions, he said that he did intend to ask his own follow-up questions, so I'm assuming that the questions he didn't explicitly identify as emailed to him were his own questions.

[howeird]

"What don't you know?"
I don't know. If I knew, I'd know, wouldn't I?

"and how will you learn it?"
Learn what?
--
C'mon now, intrusion into someone's body is not at all analogous to mandating that parents get health insurance for their children. And it seems to me the intrusion in your example was made by the guy who got her pregnant, not the government. :-) Of course I agree the government needs to stay out of women's bodies too.
--
Taken in context "that one" didn't bother me. But I he really needs to stop calling us "My friends".

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

C'mon now, intrusion into someone's body is not at all analogous to mandating that parents get health insurance for their children.

Both are government mandates. Government mandates that intrude on my body are much more intrusive than government mandates that intrude on my pocketbook. Supposing the government mandate you're talking about actually would intrude on my pocketbook, which I don't consider a given.

The guy who got her pregnant probably did it by accident. The government deliberately making it impossible for her to correct the situation is certainly doing it on purpose.

[howeird]

Both are government mandates.
I guess I'm being literal. A mandate makes something mandatory. It requires you to take a certain action. Anti-abortion laws prevent you from taking a certain action. In the case of health care, I think both are wrong for the government to do. IMHO people should not be required to take or be prevented from taking any action regarding their health.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

When the government makes it impossible to quit being pregnant they require you to continue the pregnancy. With all the results.

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

The thing that really made me choke was McCain's plan for taking care of the health care problem: give 'em all $5,000 and they can all go buy themselves some health insurance. Why none of the commentators seemed to pick up on that was boggling to me. $5,000 won't buy even one person decent health insurance for a year, much less a family, and it doesn't even begin to address any of the other problems we have with health care in this country. It made me so angry...

[howeird]

The numbers are easy to look up on HMO web sites. The average HMO payment looks to be about $300 a month, add in the cost of prescriptions and an individual is well under $5k a year. The $5k figure is probably based on the current standard deduction.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The $5K break is for families.

[howeird]

On top of the $10k standard medical deduction couples already get? I'm not sure, McCain has not made that clear.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

the medical deduction is only if the medical expenses exceed, I think 7% of your adjusted gross income, and cannot be applied to health insurance premiums as far as I know, only to actual charges for medical services. Like X-rays, operations, doctor visits, stuff like that.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

*Plus* he's going to tax health benefits for anyone who gets insurance through their job. So that's the tax credit minus the extra taxes on your health benefits.

[jenrose]

Our health insurance is almost 7000 per year, and it is crappy enough that we have 7000 worth of copays and deductibles on top of it SO FAR.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My sympathy :-(

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I've seen an assertion (I don't know if it's true) that the use of "that one" is a phrase that specifically belongs to a certain level of old-school racism, along with refusing to look at him or shake his hand. Folks of our grandparents' generation (edit: er, *if* they were bigoted, that is; not *all* folks of that generation) would show their disdain for black people by not using their names or looking at them, not acknowledging that they're people. McCain being of that generation. The columnist I saw quoted asserted that the phrase "that one" was actually in common use for that.

I'll try to find the article that was referred to.

Edit: Some interesting quotes on what different commentators made of the comment.

Also, an interesting comment on the post-debate behavior of both candidates.