McCain gets Hammered and a Liberal’s Lament…and a New Poll

John McCain really gets hammered by an ABC panel; even the conservatives slammed him.

Barack Obama’s Major Gaffes (hat tip to Science Avenger)

To show how balanced I am I’ll go ahead and list part of the conservative case against Barack Obama: his top ten gaffes, as seen by a conservative.

First up, here’s the quotation that became the genesis of the “Obama is an elitist snob” meme.

10) “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

See? One’s food choices and one’s knowledge of culture makes one bad, bad, bad! But losing count of the number of houses that one owns (or that is owned by one’s spouse) is ok.

When the internet is afire with false rumors that you’re a Muslim, do you really want to bizarrely reference your “Muslim faith?”

9) “Let’s not play games. I was suggesting – you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.”

This comes from the George Stephanopoulos interview:

“Rick Warren: …Now, let’s deal with abortion; 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. As a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time, all of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?”

Barack Obama: “Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

Gee, admitting to moral ambiguity is bad? I guess that it is in the simplistic world of the wingnuts. Frankly, I like it when someone admits that some moral problems are difficult and one can’t always be 100 percent certain of what is correct or even if an optimum exists at all.

7) “…I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.”

This is bad? I admit that I don’t get it.

6) “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ it’s still going to stink. After eight years, we’ve had enough of the same old thing. It’s time to bring about real change to Washington and that’s the choice you’ve got in this election.”

Again, this is bad? What makes this a gaffe?

5) “The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…”

Ok, this wasn’t said in an artful way. The idea here is that most white people and most minority people have a somewhat different experience. I’ll give you an example: where I live, there HAVE been documented incidents of racial profiling.

Now I get a speeding ticket. I wonder: did the State Troopers look at me a bit harder than they do at my white wife? Well, probably not, but when you are a racial minority, that probably is always there, even if you wish it weren’t. Heck, even the (former?) Republican J. C. Watts admits this!

4) “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

I consider this to be a simple slip of the tongue, such as McCain talking about Czechoslovakia when he meant the Czech Republic

Or McCain talking about the Iraq-Pakistan border:

3) “I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Clearly Obama was referring to the situation at that time; eventually Wright kept being more and more outrageous.

2) “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest…”

To me, this was nothing more than a “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel argument.” In fact there were some who saw the war as an opportunity to raid the US Treasury. That always happens; doesn’t anyone remember the Truman Commission and why it was formed?

1) “You got into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Ok, this was an unwise thing to say in the open, even if there is some truth to this. See the next section of my blog.

Note: Robert Reich had something to say about this several months ago:

[...]We’re heading into the worst economic crisis in a half century or more. Many of the Americans who have been getting nowhere for decades are in even deeper trouble. Large numbers of people in Pennsylvania and across the nation are losing their homes and losing their jobs, and the situation is likely to grow worse. Consumers are at the end of their ropes, fuel and food costs are skyrocketing, they can’t go deeper into debt, they can’t pay their bills. They aren’t buying, which means every business from the auto industry to housing to even giant GE is hurting. Which means they’ll begin laying off more people, and as they do, we will experience an even more dangerous downward spiral.

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment – all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

Hat tip: Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

So, there you have it! Ignore the fact that McCain and Palin have repeatedly displayed their ignorance about almost every single issue:

The economy

(psst: the FEC is the Federal Elections Commission, and the President can’t fire the SEC chair)

Energy

National Security

(The above is genuine; it isn’t a SNL parody. )

and focus on the above Obama gaffes.

Liberals vs. Conservatives.

I talked about this TED talk video about the moral differences between liberals and conservatives.

I think that there is some truth here. But I am noticing something else.

Every liberal that I’ve talked politics with, and I mean every single one (college educated, graduate degree, high school diploma, GED) said “I want someone smarter than myself to be President”.

On the other hand, one of the smartest people I know (who is a conservative…go figure) said that he really doesn’t place that big of a premium on intelligence when it comes to his Presidential candidates.

So, do liberals differ from conservatives when it comes to valuing intellectualism or intelligence?

I am going to post a new poll on the sidebar that asks this.

A Liberal’s Lament
Ok, I’ll make a confession. Yes, I am happy with my Presidential candidate. But frankly, I am less than happy with at least one of the downticket D candidate. But the R candidate is, in my opinion, an extremist who I can’t vote for.

In all seriousness, I wish that I could vote for a Republican (such as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln or even Dwight Eisenhower.

Where are Republicans such as this?

It irritates me that the Democrats have all but a lock on my vote.

So so so so swim

Workout notes 4000 yards. I felt a bit sick during swimming but am feeling better after coffee. 5 x 100 warm up, 5 x 100 fist, 5 x 100 25 3g, 75 swim, 5 x 100 25 sgs, 75 swim, 500 drill swim (zoomers), 10 x 50 (alt free/paddle), 5 x 100 IM on 2:30, 250 “fast” side (5:13), 250 in 4:11 to cool down.

I was going to walk but my stomach was upset; it feels better now.

Update: after some coffee, I was able to walk 5-ish miles at about 13:10 mpm (West Peoria).

Election maps I have Obama winning 333-205, but the MSNBC users have it 298-240; the difference is that I see Indiana and Virginia flipping our way.

You have a whole slew of predictions here.

Check this out (hat tip to Friendly Atheist) Sarah Palin gets skewered. But more importantly, there is a discussion about faith, irrationality and people in general (about 6-7 minutes into it)

Daily Kos: SNL SKEWERS McCain and His Sleazy Lies

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Sam Harris Article: in defense of elitism.

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. “You can’t blink,” she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

Education I have to bang my head on my desk.

Saturday Night Losers Edition…

People who read the Daily Kos will get the joke. It is Saturday Night and I am blogging.

Workout notes: 4 mile run; 9:27 mile 1, 9:00 mile 2, 8:44, 8:47 were the last two miles (17:33, even pausing for a couple of cars). I saw Bob running with his sweetie and another nice looking lady; that guy is a babe magnet.

Political notes A new friend (Gina) met me and we drove to Davenport, IA to campaign. The Obama campaign opened a field office at a strip mall; very plain inside with people phone banking, working on computers, etc.

We got our pitch and were dispatched to probably the most run down area I had ever been sent to. Lots of folks just didn’t answer; many were tired of the campaign and some just didn’t care. We did register some voters and got some mail in ballots out there, and yes, there were a few Obama supporters as well.

So it wasn’t all bad. Afterward, we had some nice stir fry and then enjoyed the drive home.

Then my wife was recovering from an incident where the washing machine hose burst and she lacked the strength to shut off the faucet and banged her head when she went to the basement to turn off the water supply.

Politics: are big states overrepresented by the Electoral College?

No. A common misconception is rebutted.

Hat tip to Statistical Modeling.

Political Video

An amateur McCain attack ad:

McCain calls Palin an “energy expert”. Really?

Keith Olbermann on Sarah Palin