1.) A visual representation of last night’s debate:
It feels good to act like a 12 year old fanboi sometimes.
2.) Next, I am in pain from laughing at the caption to the photo over here. Honest to goodness physical pain.
3.) Larison, as always, is worth a read:
First a few words about the bizarre debate over what happened to the “real” McCain, which becomes more relevant as McCain has started asking, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Even among McCain critics, there are some who still insist on coming up with excuses for the former media darling, and they echo the excuses journalists have made for McCain for years: sure, he’s lying about this or that, but he’s clearly uncomfortable doing it, which proves that he’s actually a good guy. More recently, McCain has seemed angrier and grumpier than usual, prompting the same excuses: he doesn’t enjoy doing this kind of campaigning, and it shows, which somehow makes it better. This has been the strange ethical standard applied to McCain for as long as I can remember. According to this odd view, if someone is not very proficient at lying and smearing his opponents and gives the impression that even he knows what he’s saying is nonsense, that somehow proves that he is honest and decent at heart. The correct view is exactly the opposite–if McCain knows the truth, doesn’t really believe what he’s saying and tells lies unconvincingly, that is evidence of the far deeper corruption of the man. Instead of being badly misguided or misinformed, he willfully says things that he knows have no merit or that he knows are unworthy of anyone in his position. In short, being a bad smear artist does not make someone ethical or honorable; it makes him unethical and incompetent.
I know a lot of you don’t click through, but you really should read the whole post.
4.) This post title made me laugh as well.
5.) This, as well, is pretty damned funny:
The fractious Michigan Republicans may not be doing McCain-Palin any favors by keeping the story that he’s abandoned the state alive. They’re now petitioning for a Palin visit.
The Democrats have answered with a petition to bring Tina Fey to Michigan.
6.) Apparently, the mortgage buyback scheme McCain tossed out last night was not even discussed internally at McCain HQ. Erratic.
7.) So this is how the inevitable meltdown of the right happens- to howls of laughter.
More as I see it…
Brian J
Here’s the thing. Let’s assume for a moment that McCain really as a pretty decent guy at heart that hated this style of campaigning. Let’s say he wanted the debate to be about issues and substance, instead of nonsense and garbage. Well, even if that’s true, it’s not reflected in his campaign. And who is calling the shots here? John motherfucking McCain. Not Steve Schmidt. Not Rick Davis. Not Karl Rove. Not anyone of the advisers or campaign consultants who make suggestions. Not one of these people can force him to campaign a certain way. He’s chosen this path all by himself. If he doesn’t like it, he has nobody to blame but himself. To insist on any other notion is to agree with the child who shouts to his or her parent, "But he made me do it!" And that’s just fucking insane.
nicethugbert
Headline: McThatOne Fails Take Home Makeup Exam
Headline: McThatOne Loses Do Over
jake 4 that 1
Obama already has the appropriate picture in his office.
jibeaux
Since you started linking to Larison, I’ve read a few things over there at that American Conservative. They’re not bad. This was even funny. The opinions are often different from mine, but they are honest consistent opinions. I keep thinking, so *this* is where the actual conservatives are, not the hacktacular hypocritical hateful Bush-loving apologist sellouts who are a dime a dozen.
Then I read that it was founded by Pat Buchanan.
How am I supposed to make heads or tails of THAT, exactly?
SGEW
From the Ben Smith Politico article:
The John McCain campaign are actually the mysterious inTrade scammers, who bought on McCain’s uptick after the RNC, and are going to throw the game.
Never attribute to incompetence what an unlikely conspiracy will explain. Or something like that.
Punchy
Tbogg just confused teh fuck outtie me, making me think Andrew McCarthy was the actor dude.
TheFountainHead
You got TBogged.
Brian J
Maybe this all part of Rudy Giuliani’s plan to become president.
Cain
Same here! Wikipedia set me straight.
cain
Brian J
How’s this for good news? From First Read:
*** Is this why Obama opted out of public funds? But just like at the vice-presidential debate when we also learned that day that Team McCain was retreating from Michigan, the biggest news yesterday in the presidential race might have come before the debate even started. Interviewed on MSNBC, Obama strategist David Axelrod revealed that 4 million individuals have now donated to the Obama camp. That’s up from 2.5 million last month, meaning — if our math is correct — that 1.5 million new people gave money to Obama. So how big will Obama’s September fundraising haul be? It looks like it might be BIG. Will it top the 100-million mark? (1.5 million new donors at 100 a pop… Well, you get the math.) This all perhaps explains how Obama outspent McCain by a nearly 3-to-1 margin last week, per data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project. Writes the Washington Post’s Cillizza, “From Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, Obama spent more than $20 million on television ads in 17 states including more than $3 million in Pennsylvania and more than $2 million each in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. McCain in that same time frame spent just $7.2 million in 15 states. Even when the Republican National Committee’s independent expenditure spending in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin is factored in (a total of $5.3 million), Obama still outspent t
cleek
@jibeaux:
Pat can be honest and candid. and he’s very old-school paleo-conservative – he’s been a consistent critic of BushCo over the years for not being paleo- enough. and he’s not much of a partisan shill (by comparison to the Fox News loudmouths, anyway). no, Pat’s problem is that he honestly thinks some crazy things.
SGEW
(shudders quietly to self, touches iron and knocks on wood to avert evil)
NonyNony
So it’s kind of like his "spending freeze" idea that just popped into his head in the first debate? I like how he’s going to freeze government spending – except of course for our two wars and the woefully underfunded Veteran’s affairs areas – but we’re also going to buy up a whole bunch of mortgages. And cut taxes. Oh and enact a fairly radical change to our health care system and fund it only with "fat and waste" cut from Medicare and Medicaid. All while eliminating the budget deficit. (Has he promised to pay down the national debt yet too? I haven’t caught that one if he has.)
Jeez. He might as well be promising "magical ponies for everyone!" It would be more believable.
eglenn
I like Pat Buchanan and I can’t put it precisely into words. I mean, even Rachel Maddow likes the guy…
NonyNony
Well, until Palin joined the ticket. He seems to have lost his critical thinking faculties entirely now that she’s on the scene. I think he’s seeing those starbursts that Lowry was seeing the other week or something.
But yeah, up until a few weeks ago I put Buchanan in the "intellectually honest paleo-conservative camp". They’re better than neo-cons, but their devotion to ideology over pragmatism leads them to some nutball beliefs at times.
Billy K(hrushchev)
You seem confused. John McPain sold hissown self out to the wing of his party he detests because he thought it was his best shot at being elected. In return, he does what the party says. He’s as much a puppet now as Bush was.
He doesn’t call the shots, and that’s why there’s the frequent dissonance.
gopher2b
Last night, after the debate, I went on youtube and found the ’92 debate between Clinton, Bush, and Perot. Very interesting. As much as it pains me to say, Clinton would have wiped the floor with both of them. It also highlighted what frustrates me so much with Obama in this format: he doesn’t answer the question head on. He really doesn’t – at least on economic issues. I know the popular sentiment is that Obama one but I think that is biases coming through.
(I was also shocked to see how disconnected Bush was back then. It was amazing. Although he probably knew it was over by that point).
cleek
Larison writes:
…after pointing out that McCain is perfectly happy to keep talking about the Surge, even though that isn’t an effective tactic.
i’m sticking with the theory that McCain didn’t bring them up is because he knows those things are complete bullshit. he doesn’t mind them in ads because TV ads are supposed to be scary, overblown bullshit. but he can’t bring himself to say that stuff in person because he knows it would sound completely fucking absurd. not only would not be effective, it would make him sound like a lunatic Bircher. and that’s not the guy he thinks he is.
(obviously i don’t claim to be able to read McPOW’s withered little mind)
—
i admit i haven’t seen Pat lately.
Billy K(hrushchev)
Me too. It’s weird.
In a way, I wish he ran the GOP. We’d always know exactly what their thoughts and agenda were, and they’d never win anything.
chopper
no no, mccain is just waiting for the short sell ban to end tonight. then he can make mad loot off of his failing campaign stock.
Comrade Incertus
That reminded me so much of the "OMG! Obama totally flipped Hillary off during his speech!!!!!"
Cain
This isn’t the first time McCain threw shit out without telling his campaign. I remember that he really pissed his campaign off when he went on David Letterman and announced his candidacy. He was supposed to do it somewhere else but somehow the mood took him and he announced it right then and there.
Boy, I bet his advisors were pretty pissed off about that. Now he’s doing it again. God help us what he’ll do in the White House.
cain
jcricket
I loved Andre McCarthy’s songs with that Jack Lemon fellow in the British band back in the 60s. Soo melodious.
John McCain’s reputation as a maverick, reformer and moderate are wholly undeserved. Sure, he wasn’t always quite this much of a hack, but he’s been solidly socially conservative (100% anti-abortion, for example) his entire career. He’s also been anti government for most of his career (at least verbally so).
He never crosses his party where it matters, only where it will shore up his image.
Brilliant politician and media strategist, but honest and forthright? Never. Moderate? Never. Bipartisan? Not meaningfully.
So I’m not surprised we have the McCain we have now. Not one bit.
jcricket
Like when he failed to tell Palin he was pulling out of Michigan?
McCain should know that pulling out is not a reliable method :-)
gopher2b
I think McCain doesn’t bring up Obama "associations" because he knows Obama has a prepared response and that prepared response has the word "Keating" in it. McCain is no longer an honorable person in my mind and I’m not going to ascribe any character onto someone who either (1) tells his surrogates to lie, (2) doesn’t know they are lying, (3)doesn’t fire them when they do. All of which are sufficient to oppose his candidacy
Comrade Incertus
A better response would have the words "G. Gordon Liddy" in it.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
I don’t think we’ll be seeing any open press conferences for Palin anytime soon, since she went all "US Americans, like such as South Africa" with her one question yesterday.
TheFountainHead
Does Sadly, No! have a legit RSS feed? I found the RSS feed for comments but not for posts, does it not exist?
TheFountainHead
Good Lord, she makes Bush sound like a Rhodes Scholar! It’s fucking scary that someone with such a poor control of language could get to be the governor of anything!
Billy K(hrushchev)
Survey says….
Top two answers on the board!
Comrade Kevin
@TheFountainHead:
Try this:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SadlyNo
It works for me.
Brian J
You and I are more or less saying the same thing. Regardless of who is picking the strategy, McCain is signing off on it. It’s not some sort of bizarre, unforeseen turn of events. It’s his reaction to his campaign failing.
Fulcanelli
I’m sure you’ve all seen this kicking around, but if you haven’t…
Bwaaaahahahahaaaa…
God, what a pack of fucking retards Johnny Drama’s traveling circus has devolved into. What was that old Reagan joke about Ronnie always having to be on the bottom during sex, because he could only fuck up?
The ACLU?! 100 points and an iPod Touch to the one who reads this out loud to Palin’s face in front of a video camera. Bitchez!
/wipes off keyboard
boonagain
Goshdarnit, Palin doesn’t actually care anything about pulling out,never did.
TheFountainHead
@Comrade Kevin: Danke!
Dennis - SGMM
McCain was a bit short on details in his mortgage buy back plan. Who is going to eat the difference between the face value of the mortgages and the renegotiated value? I’m guessing that it’s us, comrades.
theturtlemoves
Between the Islamonegroes with their "Electric Slide" and the Cubanocommunists with their "Macarena", what are honest, God-fearing real Americans, white Americans, to do? I mean, sure we can counter with the "Boot-Scootin’ Boogie", but is that going to be enough? A way of life is dying at weddings across the nation…
cleek
OMG… Althouse is fuckin insane.
—
chicken dance!
cleek
theturtlemoves:
there’s always the chicken dance!
cleek
fuckin a. now your site thinks i’m a spammer because i posted a link to a YouTube video ???
Fulcanelli
@theturtlemoves: The Chicken Dance?
dobrojutro
Anyone else notice McCain stayed clear of the word ‘maverick’? The word is too irony-soaked to be of use to anyone for a few years, ‘cept fer Palin I reckon.
Phoenix Woman
That’s friggin’ brilliant.
Billy K(hrushchev)
One word: Cotton-eyed Joe.
OK, two words; one of them hyphenated.
cleek
@Fulcanelli:
yeah… i tried linking to an awesome YouTube clip of the the Chicken Dance on Lawrence Welk, up above. and my comments got eated by the spam filter. drat!
Cruel Jest
No. McCain didn’t attack with Ayers because he couldn’t bring himself to do it to Obama’s face. When asked when he would take the gloves off, he replied, "How about Tuesday?" Well, Tuesday came and went and McCain backed down. He retreated. He didn’t have the guts to stand up and say in public what he’s been saying behind Obama’s back. Lies. Fear. Indecision. Tiny Man/Bible Spice ’08!
Cain
Really? I’ve always found her level headed. I have even subscribed to her newsletter.
cain
Bubblegum Tate
I’m sort of the same, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like Buchanan. More that I respect him for his honesty and intelligence even as he holds some absolutely despicable views.
As for The Rock, good comparison, although it should be noted that The Rock is actually conservative (though not wingnutty). He’s also a really smart, funny guy. Several jobs ago I worked with a guy who was good friends with him, and he used to call up my co-worker and leave these unbelievably funny Don Rickles-like voicemails for him.
jibeaux
Cleek, I totally agree with you about Buchanan, I guess my point is more that the magazine doesn’t really seem like his. It seems more intelligent, less crazy, than something that would have his name on it. They even have a blogroll of "Paleo conservative blogs", which doesn’t sound like a compliment, really.
Marshall
The quote of the campaign, if not the entire Bush administration :
(From Ann Althouse by way of Sadly, No!)
theturtlemoves
Now I have that stupid song stuck in my head, you rat-bastard. Gonna need to purge that with some death metal or something…
TheFountainHead
Never purge to Death Metal, you only end up trying to imagine what the song you were trying to purge would sound like if it was done as Death Metal. Very dangerous.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
THAT is the family I was supposed to be born into. ;)
Conservatively Liberal
Line dance, it’s the perfect Republican-type of dance. Everybody does exactly the same thing at the same time. The Democrats just use a mosh pit. It works, but it can be pretty wild at times.
Shorter alt.haus: The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
Shorter me about alt.haus: Fuckwit
Tbogg = WIN!
Larison: He sure ain’t seeing sparkles flying around his living room. Straight up assessment by him.
The Michigan Democrats should pay Fey to do a spoof rally for the wingers. I bet they wouldn’t know the difference.
tavella
See, John, this is why you came over to the side of good: we have better senses of humor.
Conservatively Liberal
I think I heard a few hundred brain cells screaming and then performing seppuku while I was reading that. She couldn’t form a cogent and coherent sentence if her life depended on it. Hell, I doubt that she even knows the definitions of cogent and coherent.
She probably doesn’t even know what sentence means.
SpotWeld
The Democrats have answered with a petition to bring Tina Fey to Michigan
I would so love to hear that Tina Fey was signed up to have a show at the U of M campus… seriously her kind of audience out there.
OriGuy
Wipe his feet on the mat at the entrance and say, "Thank you for the invitation, Mr. President."
Jess
Win!
shpx.ohfu
A visual representation of last night’s debate
I had the same reaction, more or less.
El Caballo de Sangre
Larison is a smart, intellectually coherent, small-c conservative. It’s no surprise that he hates McCain. Since knowledge and ideas mean something to him, it’s REALLY no surprise that he is completely appalled by Palin.
And yet he is every bit as dismissive of Obama. I feel confident in predicting that there’ll be a lot less enjoyment around these parts in linking/clicking through to Eunomia after the election.
One thing to keep in mind about Larison: He’s 100% down w/ Treason In Defense Of Slavery.
Blue Raven
No respect for the bunny hop or the alley cat in this room, I see.
Of course she does. That’s what you give to convicted felons after you force their victims to pay for their own evidence kits.
Seanly
Alright, alright, I’ll click through!
It was okay…