Arkansas Blog

McCain probably won.

The problem for him is there are no electoral votes awarded for that. The poll of viewers asking who won has a natural built-in bias, the viewers pretty well know who they are voting. Just as the Hogs never foul, your candidate never loses a debate.

This is Obama's election. McCain cannot win it, Obama can still lose it but it would take a whopper of a screw-up to do it.

I give Obama an A+ for sitting next to McCain and not back-handing him. I couldn't stomach all of McCain's whining and used the mute a lot.

I don't think Obama was great and certainly there were some who could have tied up McCain in that web he was spinning, but fortunately McCain is such an angry, reckless man that just remaining calm in his presence makes one a winner.

Watching these things with the sound off is still VERY revealing/instructive. Tweety opined that McPain's "handling" of the abortion/mother's life thing SEALED the deal (election) for O'Bama!! I sure want to agree w/him, and CiCi has nailed it...McThuselah just gets more & more annoying. Tweety also said Obama "narrowly" won the debate - amazing.

We missed a BIG chunk due to MAJOR downpour, whacking the DirecTV signal...
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Where is that fellow--I think he was from Dallas--who logged in on this blog early in the campaign to tell us exactly how the electoral votes were going to fall into place?

If I remember, he's a political scientist, and said he was simply providing us with objective data about the coming election.

I also seem to recall he gave McCain a tidy majority.

Anybody remember that posting? I wonder what wisdom that objective blogger might have to share with us in these final days of the campaign?

ARK. BLOG: Would that have been Mule Boy?

Truthfully...it wouldn't matter if Obama drooled, stuttered and farted the national anthem and McSame projected John Kennedy because today we're still broke, fighting unending wars, holding un-convicted people at Guantanamo in perpetuity, torturing, allowing AT&T/government to spy on us without warrants and living with and wallowing in monkeyboy's eight years of crap. And, McSame can claim he's not Bush all he wants...his record and those love shots tell a completely different story.

As much as I would've enjoyed Obama shoving Palin's ignorant idiocy down McSame's geezer throat, he was right to take a pass. She's unworthy of the time/effort. Of all the things that terrify me about a McSame presidency, she's number one on my list. (Though I do get a kick out of picturing the look on the country club Republicans as Sarah's Kenyan witchdoctor uses hocus pocus to rid the country of its witches.)

"Truthfully...it wouldn't matter if Obama drooled, stuttered and farted the national anthem and McSame projected John Kennedy because today we're still broke, fighting unending wars, holding un-convicted people at Guantanamo in perpetuity, torturing, allowing AT&T/government to spy on us without warrants and living with and wallowing in monkeyboy's eight years of crap."
by: zelda

AMEN!

"An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

In Massachusetts, a housewife who had hidden her family's mounting financial crisis from her husband sends a note to the mortgage company warning: "By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead."

Then Carlene Balderrama shot herself to death, leaving an insurance policy and a suicide note on a table.

Across the country, authorities are becoming concerned that the nation's financial woes could turn increasingly violent, and they are urging people to get help. In some places, mental-health hot lines are jammed, counseling services are in high demand and domestic-violence shelters are full."

[CLICK]

They have a 'meter' that registers their 'test' group's reactions to each person as they speak.
There should also be a 'meter', in bright colors, that is controlled by folks like 'factcheck.com' and measures the BS. By halfway through the debate that meter would be way pass the 'critical' measurment.

Thank goodness for the Congress. If either of these 2 could do all the tax cutting and giving away they say they would do the Government would not be able to pay its light bill.

Joe the Plumber. Wow! The poor guy wants to buy a business that nets its owner over 250k per year. Poor Joe would have to pay more taxes under Obama's plan. Poor Joe could do like a lot of patriotic business owers do though. Layoff or fire his legal employee's and replace them with Mexican non-employees. The savings in SS contributions, benefits and worker injury liability alone would more than make up for the higher taxes.

In case you were thinking that every word out of the candidates wasn't quite on the mark, NPR has done some fact checking. Good reading....

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95774677

The Politico poll is the closest of the bunch. The blue-name link is to Huffington Post's run down of the others. I believe the CBS poll had Obama winning with 53 percent and McCain with 22 with the remainder calling it a draw.

I think McCain had his strongest outing, and that Obama looked so calm that I thought he looked a little tired. Probably tired of debating the angry little troll across from him, I would imagine.

The thing I've noticed about these three presidential debates is that my first reaction is usually to call it a draw, but the more I watch it and consider the effectiveness of the two candidates, Obama really stands out.

Not only has Obama mastered the appearance of a steady hand, he has maintained a steady hand throughout the primaries and the general election. I've been amazed at how well he understands the key dynamics of this election. I get the feeling that most dishonest thing Obama has said in this campaign is that he has been "surprised" by anything.

the (use this where appropriate)

I think your on to something bejeesus. It is hard to blame poor leadership in a democracy. We elected these fools and believed the nonsense that they were spouting. On one side you have the unholy alliance of the country clubers and the deluded right wingers. On the other side the left looks more and more like self serving weasels that begin to justify Rush Limbaugh's characterization of them. Neither side has any interest in the truth because they know too well that it will be used against them. And, now we sit here amazed that 8 years of deficit spending, living on credit, and buying twice as much house as we can afford with a mortgage that will double in 3 years, left us with a giant mess to clean up.

We've got to do better than that.

I was SO hoping someone got a screengrab of McCain doing that thing he does all the time.

Let's see, McCain can't :

Complete a thought or sentence.
Can't quit lying
Can't quit being a racist
Can't quit making up lies
Act's like a petulant spoiled angry child
Has no idea what he's talking about
Has absolutely no plan or vision about what he would do as president... except coddle the rich..and wage more needless war in an attempt to prove all his failings from Viet Nam to Iraq to be something else.
Would support 40 + more nuclear power plants in the US.
Would tax the ever living life blood out of what's left of your expensive heath care...if you have it at all. And reward insurance industry for their greed like never before.
Would absolutely make sure anti regulation ruled the day from finance to medicine and anything else business or health related.

/end short list

And there is a question of if he won the debate? Seriously?

"ARK. BLOG: Would that have been Mule Boy?"

Max, I can't honestly say that that name jumps out at me. Could well have been, though. What I seem to remember is that the poster lives in Dallas, has a blog, is a political scientist, and graduated from an AR university.

And all that may not have been in his posting itself, but may have been something I discovered by clicking on a link provided with the posting.

Is there an easy way, other than googling, to search for postings on the AR Times blog when you can't remember the date or even range of dates? That is, is there a comprehensive search engine built into the blog itself, which I haven't discovered?

Over here on the left side of the state near the Oklahoma territory we always know whose the clear winner of a chicken fight or a dog fight. The loser lies dead in the corner....no talking head can spin those results. So I'm always a tad disappointed when a political debate is over and everyone lives.

I thought Obama passed on several moments when I would have handed McCain his old misshaped head in a basket. Worst of all was the Pro-Abortion bullshit. My wife nearly split her decades old episiotomy stitches over that one. The most vile wretch of womanhood that ever spread her legs is not Pro-Abortion. That's like being Pro-Cancer. But like cancer unwanted pregnancies happen and no one is happy about it. As tragic as that situation is, old men who speak so casually about it should be aborted from public life. Here's a free tip....if you want to see a big batch of unwanted children go take a tour of Tucker Prison, then come back and tell me how bad it is that people who can't be good parents have a legal way out of a bad situation.

Anyone with a mother or sister or daughter or wife or girlfriend should worry about anti-abortion laws that DO NOT take the health and life of the woman serious enough to include an escape clause. Though partial-birth abortions are rare, they're performed when the life of the mother is at stake and while I don't get off on killing unborn fetuses, I will take the life of my mother or sister or daughter or wife or girlfriend over the risk of death any ole day of the week. The Duggars have proved you can always have another baby...but guys like me are lucky they found one woman on earth to put up with them and I'm not willing to risk her to please a rich old adulterer with 11 houses or Jay Cole.

I know Barack Obama is smart, but I suspect he's also kind. As much as I rant and rave I probably wouldn't punch John McCain in the nose if I had the chance....Ma raised me to be polite and it stuck. So I'm pretty sure Obama is kicking himself for not giving McCain the thrashing he deserved last night. It's OK....lord knows America needs a leader with a little kindness in him. We've had far too much of the Bomb bomb Iran mentality in the White House the last 8 years.

There may be other reasons to live and hope for the future, but it appears to me we all want peace and prosperity and happy days for all. We'll never see it again as long as we have Anti-Pro-Abortion people at the top of our government. Combining paranoia with crookedness, greed, and mean disregard for anyone not exactly like yourself has given us America 2008. We must change.

The majority of pundits (take it or leave it) agree that McCain started well, but ended poorly.

Obama was cool, concise, intelligent, and presidential. Don't minimize that or take it for granted.