TB Weekend in Review

So uh, I guess some stuff happened while we were out protecting our borders from all threats foreign. Try not to thank us too hard.

-The debate. Well, to call it a debate is stretching the boundaries of truth. It was less of a debate and more of an opportunity to to use questions from Jim Lehrer to pivot into tried and true lines from their stump speeches. Obama got in a few shots about John McCain singing songs about starting new wars, refusal to meet with NATO allies, and gave a bullet point checklist of all areas in which McCain was wrong. McCain on the other hand refused to even look at Obama out of the corner of his eye, wanted to stake the whole economics debate on him hating the fuck out of bear DNA studies, and wanted to stake the foreign policy section on semantic arguments about the definitions of words. Also McCain may have proposed to David Petraeus at some point.

Most post debate argle bargle had it scored as either a draw or slight Obama win, while some went for the "McCain with a slight win, but he needed to do better, so that means Obama wins" analysis. When all the snap polls and next day polls came out in the following hours and days it seemed that the public thought Obama took the debate handily, mostly because they thought he won the economics portion of the debate handily. Indeed if you watched CNN, you got to see a little second by second graph showing readouts of a CNN focus group pressing buttons of praise and shame when they heard words. What was telling is that Independents always seemed to track almost exactly with Democrats in answer response. They seemed to view McCain negatively and Obama positively. In fact I don't remember Obama dipping into the negatives with Independents at all. McCain just doesn't seem to have a message that tracks with people outside of his party. Point and laugh.

-Would you be surprised if I told you that a man who seems to run his whole campaign on day to day whims and longshot, hail mary gambles also has a massive gambling problem replete with shady ties to gaming industry lobbyists? That man who seems to live by rolling the dice, likes to waste his wife's money on rolling dice? Well it's true. Clackety, clackety, clack, John McCain's got the hot hand in the dice game baby girl. In a hack, dime store novel kind of way, this pretty much explains the entire McCain campaign's mindset. Dangerously unqualified VP pick, horning in on bailout negotiations perhaps to their detriment, lying with every breath, picking constant fights with the media? Roll them dice bitch, it's gotta come up sevens at some point.