# Predict: Likelihood Palin will show for the debate? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 30, 2008, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866 "2008-09-30T16:17:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SisterCoyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@SisterCoyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SisterCoyote)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/41 "2008-09-30T18:30:15Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Is my left nut _always_ my left nut, or do they sort of roll around in there? That’s…a really good if somewhat bizarre question. I believe it is always your left nut, but someone with actual knowledge of anatomy will have to confirm. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/42 "2008-09-30T18:31:48Z")
I’m pretty sure they don’t move around that much. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/43 "2008-09-30T18:33:15Z")
> [@SisterCoyote](#): > > That’s…a really good if somewhat bizarre question. I believe it is always your left nut, but someone with actual knowledge of anatomy will have to confirm. Depends on whether you’re pitching or catching. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/44 "2008-09-30T18:38:53Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > Runs in the family. Most of the first-borns were “early”. Mee-OWWW! 😉 ETA: My MIL actually believes that firstborns are often premature. Bouncing 7-pound preemies. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/45 "2008-09-30T18:39:38Z")
_checks_ Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes like b. ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/46 "2008-09-30T18:40:23Z")
Of course she’ll show up. There’s way too much riding on this debate, not the least of which is her shaky reputation. She’ll be coached to saturation point but from everything I’ve read, she actually rolls merrily right along when allowed to channel her inner demagogue. There are a few things left up in the air, notably how much latitude the debate moderator will allow her and how many undecided voters will be willing to swallow her sound bytes. I rather hope Biden just gets medieval on her ass. He can be a loose cannon too but he’s soundly informed and a tough debater. Some, especially among Palin’s base, will be outraged if she isn’t permitted to put on The Sarah Palin Tent Revival. They’ll cry “sexism!” of course but they’re a lost cause (in so many ways). He might as well cut loose and call her on her shit, even if the moderator doesn’t. She may lose her poise but Biden is prone to horrendous malapropisms. I don’t _think_ he’d lapse into one of his, “WTF did he just _say_?!” spasms but ya never know. It could be entertaining political theater, even if for many of the wrong reasons. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/47 "2008-09-30T18:41:09Z")
> [@neutron\_star](#): > > This shit is infuriating. I don’t even watch the debates because of it. I think that every time any candidate pulls that crap, the moderator should yell, “THAT WASN’T THE FUCKING QUESTION! SHUT YOUR WEASELY FUCKING MOUTH AND ANSWER THE QUESTION I ASKED!” and keep doing it, all night if necessary, until they finally give a valid answer to what they were asked. Maybe they should get Samuel L. Jackson to moderate. (I’m sick of these motherfuckin weasels in this motherfuckin debate!) ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/48 "2008-09-30T18:45:50Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > \*Hopefully, “On a clear day I can see Russia” has been retired as an example of her preparedness on foreign policy. I heard she’s been gaining foreign policy experience by eating at the International House of Pancakes. ---
**Author:** ![ShadowFacts](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shadowfacts/32/2934_2.png) [@ShadowFacts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowFacts)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/49 "2008-09-30T18:46:20Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Is my left nut _always_ my left nut, or do they sort of roll around in there? Time for an experiment, in the name of science… ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/50 "2008-09-30T18:46:38Z")
> [@lieu](#): > > _checks_ > > Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes like b. So yours are switching places? How many times did you check? We want statistics. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/51 "2008-09-30T18:51:42Z")
Gonna have to let somebody else figure this out, people here at work are looking at me very strangely. ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/52 "2008-09-30T18:51:50Z")
[QUOTE=42fish] Maybe they should get Samuel L. Jackson to moderate. (I’m sick of these motherfuckin weasels in this motherfuckin debate!) [/QUOTE] Tim Russert, omigod, Tim Russert is _so_ missed right now. He wouldn’t put up with any shit whatsoever, and do it in the most gentlemanly way possible. Palin was spooked by _Katie Couric_, fer crap’s sake, the celebrity pseudo-journalist who put the ‘unc’ in unctuous. Tim Russert was the big dog of political journalists, the real deal. He was the real deal, knew his shit inside and out and just wasn’t overly impressed by political big wigs. Tim Russert would have had _both_ of them packing a spare pair of underwear. Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/53 "2008-09-30T18:52:10Z")
:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/54 "2008-09-30T18:53:54Z")
And, besides, transplant technology is not _that_ far advanced. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/55 "2008-09-30T18:56:39Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > [aside] **Shodan** : a completely unbiased and honest question, if I may. You’ve been attacked in this thread, seemingly unprovoked. Just so I understand the various opinions that have chimed in, would you say you accept McCain/Palin’s word on things (e.g., suspending the campaign, she knew what the Bush Doctrine was, etc.) with virtually unlimited credulity? (This isn’t a trick question to point and laugh; feel free to decline to answer if you think it’s a setup.) It seems to me that I give as much credit to McCain and Palin as most of the Usual Suspects do to Obama and Biden. But Sarah Palin has more or less achieved the same position on the SDMB as Bush has. Any hint of support, or even a hint of dissent from the prevailing hysteria of condemnation, is enough to trigger the onslaught. But there is a fairly blatant double standard hereabouts. Palin can’t read Gibson’s mind and tell what he means by the Bush Doctrine (did you know that Krauthammer, who invented the term, wrote a piece detailing that Gibson’s understanding of it was mistaken?). This means she is a complete idiot and unqualified and Gibson tries to scold her for it. Biden says he thinks Roosevelt went on TV in 1929 to talk about the stock market crash, and it is ignored. Palin says she has foreign policy experience because Russia is next to Alaska. This is roundly condemned. Obama says he has foreign policy experience because he lived in Kenya and Hawaii when he was a kid. _:crickets chirping:_ The thing of it is, the Usual Suspects are idiots. Extremists, as a rule, cannot think in any terms that aren’t extreme. So they believe that the only two possible alternatives are:[ul][li]utter, ranting hatred for Palin (and Bush, and any other Republican who seems to be at risk for making it to the Oval Office), or [\*]the kind of slavish adulation they feel for any Democrat who is at risk for the same.[/ul]But do a quick experiment, if you like. [/li] Find a post in which I said that McCain was justified in canceling his participation in the first debate. Now **Don’t Call Me Shirley** is apparently convinced that I have said that. Unfortunately… Not all of the SDMB, but all of the Usual Suspects, are knee-jerkers, and they are projecting. They assume that everyone else is like them. They look at most issues, decide which is the politically correct side (nearly always Democratic and/or liberal), plump for that, and then and only then look around for reasons to justify their choice. And on a board like this one, where a sizable contingent of the participants in political threads spend a large amount of their leisure time combing the left-wing blogs looking for rationalizations to do _anything_, they can count on some other nutcase to back them up, no matter how bizarre their position might be. I don’t have that. Fortunately, I don’t need it. I can tell when I am winning a debate by other means. If they try to set up a strawman, I am winning. If they begin screaming insults, I am winning. And when they try to put words in my mouth, they know I am winning. There are a number of folks on the SDMB with whom one can have lively and interesting discussions. There are a number of others who serve only as bad examples, and are useful only for the amusement gained in laughing at them. And for them to admit their errors serves no necessary part in the amusement. Like my dad once told me, if you pitch a rock at a pack of dogs, and one of them starts howling, that’s the one you hit. **Don’t Call Me Shirley** is howling, that’s all. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/56 "2008-09-30T18:59:53Z")
> [@TVeblen](#): > > She may lose her poise… But to her “losing her poise” is a shift into “adorable.” The bitter taste in viewers’ mouths would be from all of the saccharine. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/57 "2008-09-30T19:02:58Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > …If they try to set up a strawman, I am winning. If they begin screaming insults, I am winning. And when they try to put words in my mouth, they know I am winning. … And when you’re slumped in your corner, bleeding profusely and muttering \*“No mas. No mas!”, \*then you’ve _really_ got them on the run… ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/58 "2008-09-30T19:10:24Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I can tell when I am winning a debate by other means. > > If they try to set up a strawman, I am winning. If they begin screaming insults, I am winning. And when they try to put words in my mouth, they know I am winning. Apparently, as long as you keep posting utter bullshit, you think you’re winning too. Not shutting up isn’t winning. You spin so hard to make Palin not seem utterly unqualified for the position she is nominated for, it taints almost any other argument you’d make. I haven’t been a “Oh my god I want Obama’s baby” nutzo. I haven’t been a “McCain wants to draft me” freak-show. I’ve even criticized Biden for his foot-in-mouth habit. But for any intelligent person to sit there and tell me that they have all the confidence in the world in Sarah Palin … well shit. He’s either not that intelligent, or full of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Carl\_Corey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Carl\_Corey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Corey)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/59 "2008-09-30T19:12:19Z")
Why can’t he be both? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866/60 "2008-09-30T19:13:50Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Like my dad once told me, if you pitch a rock at a pack of dogs, and one of them starts howling, that’s the one you hit. **Don’t Call Me Shirley** is howling, that’s all. Y’know, Jesus _loved_ throwing rocks at dogs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-likelihood-palin-will-show-for-the-debate/465866.md?page=4)