So Brian Said

"Brian, I’m looking at the paper and this is what i’m seeing: Oberlin may have more registered voters than it should. I don’t think that you did your research, either that or you’re a Republican trying to skew everything to make it look bad for the Democrats, which it seems to be happening a lot this election. Oberlin College has changed their rules, and right now the housing in the town that was normally filled with students, there’s a law that they have to instead be in college dormitories. All those houses that people made, leased out and made money off through lease and renting, there’s a whole new group filling those houses that are more of lower-income coming into Oberlin. So what you have is you have increased the population. Moreover there’s a lot of new building that has gone on in Oberlin since the 2000 election, and you did not do any research."

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9

I'll tell you what: While I'm probably going to lose my job now that I've been exposed as one of George W. Bush's plants in the media, it does feel good that I don't have to walk around with the weight of this lie on my shoulders anymore.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!
--McJangles 1:04 PM
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Drinking wine will really knock you out. Now it's 7:48 in the morning, and I've been up for an hour. I can't even fathom what people do with their days when they start this early. I just keep getting out of my chair, taking a few steps and then realizing that I have no idea what I'm doing.
--McJangles 7:49 AM
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When it rains it pours.

There are times I wish this blog weren't so public. For the record, I hate you and you, you're all right, and the rest of you are great.

I started to write a little "here's what I did today" post, but I realized that my blog isn't that way anymore. It's become much too thoughtful for me to maintain. I guess I'll just keep on sucking for weeks at a time punctuated by occasional flashes of brilliance.

Cheers.
--McJangles 1:48 AM
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"I love this song...."

Ding, ding! Round Two!
--McJangles 3:01 AM
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Ugh.

What a horrible debate. A train wreck. When I thought at the end that there wasn't a winner, I was afraid that meant that Cheney won but I was too partisan too accept it, so when I called the Journal's debate panel to get reaction, I was elated to hear a Bush loyalist give me the exact same opinion: no one answered the questions, too much BS, both of them tried to hijack the debate, nobody won.

Especially after watching the vice-presidential debate from 2000, I was excited for something meaningful. Cheney and Lieberman had a friendly, congenial debate with actual back-and-forth discussion, and they managed to cover a huge array of topics without running back to stump speeches. It had very low entertainment value, but it was enormously substantive.

Had these buffoons answered their questions today, this would have been the most informative and meaningful of the debates. Gwen Ifill asked good, Hardball-style questions. Greatest hits: Question about Bremer comment to Cheney, about the "global test" to Edwards, about gay marriage to Cheney, and to Edwards, would Saddam still be in power if Kerry were the president during this term.

Of course, neither of them wanted to answer the questions — they would have looked like asses if they did — so they made up their own and tried to chop down the other guy. I don't really mind people being negative, but Cheney and Edwards were just being contrary.

Edwards: Mr. Vice President, you're not being straight with the American people.
Cheney: Senator, you've got your facts wrong.
Edwards: Mr. Vice President, that is a complete distortion.
Cheney: No, you're wrong.
Edwards: No, you're wrong.
Cheney: Yeah, so's your mom. Hey-oh!

It took about three minutes before I was bored. There are many other failings in this debate, but this post is going to be too long anyway.

The only exchange worth watching was when Edwards brought up Cheney's record as a Congressman. Votes against Head Start, the Department of Education, against MLK day, against Meals on Wheels, and, as Colin Quinn put it, for capital punishment for kittens. Cheney's rebuttal? "I think the senator's record speaks for itself."

Now, I like to see Cheney zinged because I want to see him lose, but the reason this was the only worthwhile part of the debate is that it was the only thing I had never heard before.

All in all, that was a truly awful display.

For the next debate, I want the moderator start by saying, "The president thinks John Kerry is too inconsistent to be an effective commander in chief, Sen. Kerry thinks George Bush has thrown away America's chance at leading effectively in the world. There will be no more mention of those topics."

It sounds absurd, but that's what happened in 1992, the first time there was a town-hall debate in the presidential race. Carole Simpson talked to the audience in advance and found out what they wanted to hear about and what they didn't want to hear about. They said they didn't want to hear about the scandals, they didn't want to hear about character issues, and they did want to hear about the issues that impact them personally and directly.

She told the candidates that the audience didn't want to hear about character, and when Bush wouldn't get off character, she asked for someone in the audience to explain that. A family-counseling mediator stood up and asked that the candidates, as metaphorical parents of the American people, stop trying to villify the other parent and instead make a committment to solving their children's very real problems.

Bush started to say why he still thought they should talk about character, but they guy got up again and stuck it to him. Bush was pretty much knocked out for the remainder of the debate.

And that's exactly what needs to happen in a debate. The moderator needs to direct the discussion, and to do it in a way that makes the debate productive. If the debaters are able to plan out in advance everything they say, the debate is no more helpful than a stump speech.

Well, we'll get another shot on Friday.

EDIT: Hoooooooooooooly crap. Cheney said: "They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton."

I'll bet that he wishes he didn't direct undecided voters to a page that redirects to GeorgeSoros.com.

For the record, the real page is factcheck.ORG.
--McJangles 1:08 AM
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I forgot one part of my post-debate coverage.

After the debate, I noticed our copy of the military's handbook for commissioned officers sitting around. I picked it up to browse again, and the first thing I spotted was the Soldier's Creed, by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, shown on a scroll on the page before the foreward. Just after listening to 90 minutes of Iraq talk, I couldn't help but see the parallels.

The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger, too late in preparedness, too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.

Sounds to me like an indictment of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.

I watched the town hall debates from 1992 and 2000 yesterday as well, and was expecting the crowd to start chanting "Jerry" when I saw Al Gore repeatedly getting all up in Bush's grille. It raised an interesting hypothetical.

If at this year's town hall debate, George Bush grabs Kerry, puts him in a headlock and puts a gun to his head, what the hell happens? There's a Secret Service team detailed to Bush, but there's another detailed to Kerry. So then a Kerry guard pulls a gun and points at Bush. Does a Bush guard pull a gun on the Kerry guard? And then who do the Kerry guards point at? I wonder if there's actually protocol for such a situation.

--McJangles 4:27 PM
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Ah, the debate.

I've been waiting for the debate for about a month now. Itching for it. Dreaming of it. Fantasizing. In a wonk way, not in a wank way.

The thing that stood out to me most after the debate was that I really don't hate George Bush that much when you get him in a controlled environment. He's not surrounded by 1,000 Bushbots with dissent systematically weeded out, so he can't go making up ridiculous crap like "My tax cuts are working," "No Child Left Behind is working" or "We are winning the war on terror" or in Iraq.

I think everybody who's willing to be honest with themselves is going to admit that Kerry had the better performance, whether you think he had better ideas or not. He was aggressive, pretty concise and had substantive ideas. He drew out the differences between himself and Bush and he did it clearly.

Bush, meanwhile, was generally acting like the obviously guilty party on Judge Judy: shaking his head, biting his tongue when he wanted to interrupt, scowling, looking away as if it was all so absurd that anyone could think something he touched didn't turn to gold.

Kerry scored good points by having actual answers to the questions and saying what needs to be done differently, why it needs to be done differently and how it needs to be done differently, but Bush seemed to only say he was doing it his way because that's the way he's doing it and piss on you if you don't like it.

I was very disappointed with Kerry when he didn't seize on the most egregious example of Bush lapsing into his stump speech, where he says "We're doing everything we can at home, but you better have a president who chases these terrorists down and bring them to justice before they hurt us again." I would have loved to hear Kerry call him out for that fearmongering, which is the most distasteful thing Bush can do, and unfortunately, one of his most relied-upon tactics.

Minor points: It was annoyingly Senatorial in the character question when Kerry said "I acknowledge" Bush's daughters.
Bush has a smirk that he usually wears when he knows that you know he's lying, but he wore a different smirk last night. It didn't really bother me like the other one, but it reminded me of the caricatures by Tom Toles.

--McJangles 1:49 AM
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