This became more and more apparent to me. He’d say “John is absolutely right about …” or “John and I agree on …” but McCain never made those kind of inclusive remarks. McCain came across as intractable (sp?) when he was talking about sitting down with other heads of state. “Might makes right” and all that.
What Iran might just conceivably some distant day be to Israel, but al-Qaeda never will be to the U.S.
Mark my words, you will be punished.
The two “jokes” I remember:
“We’re talking about failures on Main Street, and people who will lose their jobs, and their credits, and their homes, if we don’t fix the greatest fiscal crisis, probably in – certainly in our time, and I’ve been around a little while.”
“You know, we spent $3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana. I don’t know if that was a criminal issue or a paternal issue, but the fact is that it was $3 million of our taxpayers’ money.”
He did, but I don’t remember what it was either. I do remember the silence that followed whatever it was that he said. He was waiting for laughs.
Olbermann is making a big deal over McCain “openly admitting” that the US has tortured prisoners, by saying that he wants to be sure that we’ll never do it again. I thought it was pretty much accepted that yeah, prisoners have been tortured. Isn’t waterboarding torture?
Olbermann is also poking fun at McCain mangling Ahmadinejad (can’t spell it) – that name doesn’t roll off anybody’s tongue, and I hope the pundits don’t try to make a big deal of it. Nobody really cares, and Obama might be the mangler next time, so shut up.
The debate didn’t change my vote, but it might have made me feel a tad better about a McCain win, if only Palin weren’t on the ticket. He’s sharper than I thought he’d be. I still don’t agree with most of his policies and I think he’s gotten all slimy, so I guess I’m glad for Palin, because she’ll make a lot of independents think twice.
I hate you.
That he had to look – if he did have to look – suggests he did not go into that hall wearing the bracelet with the intent of using it for rhetorical-political purposes. He simply was wearing it, and perhaps had been since it was given to him.
And, you know, that study was actually fucking useful, since it was a study of whether we were wasting our money on bear repopulation.
He has told that joke a thousand times, it is straight out of his stump speech, only tonight he flubbed it. His joke about his “old ink pen” is a retread also.
I’m voting for Obama, have planned to all along.
But I thought McCain came out stronger. He hammered on Obama’s weaknesses and put him on the defensive. It was a marginal victory, but still…
I also found it disturbing that McCain refused to look at Obama, or to address him directly. I noticed that Obama called McCain “John” repeatedly, and I kept waiting for a “Barack” to come from the other side. The lack of that direct communication made McCain look stiff and too rehearsed.
I’m glad that the “we invited Palin and she declined” thing got spread around. But Giuliani was making me want to smack him, with that smarmy little grin. And where did the thing about Obama saying we have to lose Iraq to win Afghanistan come from?
From a purely selfish standpoint, I’d really rather hear Barack Obama’s voice for the next four years giving speeches.
I don’t know whether it would have been appropriate for Obama, when McCain brought up the bear DNA earmark, to mention Gov. Palin’s earmarks for Alaska to study the mating habits of crabs and the genetics of harbor seals.
Didn’t they use the same joke at the convention?
I imagine it went over better with that friendly crowd than to a debate audience sworn to silence.
9iu1ian1’s ass. Like I noted, someone needs to slap His (Dis)Honor…
I found the Iraq item that bugged me from McCain, as I remember, many on the right in past discussions in the SDMB have pointed at the Foreign Policy website as a good source of information:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?page=1&story_id=4350
Besides McCain still claiming things are so fine in Iraq the fact remains that the surge has failed in many aspects, the majority of Iraqis still wants us out and when Iran decided to support the current Iraqi president, when he was on shaky ground, even I can see that Iran is already gaining ground even before the US leaves.
When McCain made the comment that Pakistan was a “failed state” I could not comment right away why it was dumb, the reason was that using the 12 point index from Foreign Policy this year Pakistan is number 9 in the failed state column,** Iraq is number 5**.
Well, they did laugh at the pen joke, as well as at a few other things early in the debate. So while they might have “sworn” to silence, they weren’t totally silent.
Ha! I was thinking the same thing. Actually, I was sputtering at the tv, “Crabs! The crabs!”
I mean, McCain himself admitted he didn’t have a seal yet. But he does hope to breed one.
This is the only time that you have both candidates side by side with a moderator who we hope can minimize his ego (I think Lehrer does well at this, certainly better than that pompous ass Russert, may he rest in peace, did). Most people will watch one or more debates and nothing else. It beats every other usual venue in my opinion. And the public deserves debates.
IIRC you are a Republican. I had this same reaction to Obama until I really thought through how much thought Obama was putting into his answers, depriving him of all smoothness.