Post Debate

Workout notes 2 mile run (awful) and 2 mile walk (ok); good weather but I was tired and sleepy from last night.

Humor

Redstate Update on Joe the Plumber and the Debate

Sarah Palin as President: be sure to click the various parts of the photo (phone, windows, door, trash can, pictures, globe, etc)

Hat tip to a friend who sent me this.

Ads and youtube videos

McCain’s ad:

(really, it is a good ad)

A Democratic 527 ad:

Some Barack Obama.com videos about the Debate

On McCain’s attacks

On health care

On Mccain versus Bush

In fairness, Olberman thought that this was a good line for McCain, though I thought it didn’t have impace. McCain is really in a box here.

Some Opinion

Dick Morris (Republican): Obama did better, but maybe the debate opened Obama to the “tax and spend liberal” charge.

The short term impact of the third debate will be to help Barack Obama. But the long term implications may give John McCain a needed boost. Obama looked good, but McCain opened the tax-and-spend issue in a way that might prevail.

Obama took the worst that McCain could hand out and came out looking good. McCain was the more aggressive debater, but Obama looked like the better president. The constants of the debate remained. Obama is smoother, prettier, younger and more presidential. But McCain had a feisty appeal, a Trumanesque approach that may resonate in these times of anger and unrest.

Obama seemed to rise above the charges and show his reasonableness and his ability to inspire confidence. McCain was like a trial lawyer, hammering out his points, but Obama came across with dignity.

Here are a variety of opinions from the New York Times (Elisabeth Bumiller
):

In the first few moments of the debate, Senator John McCain appeared relaxed, even subdued, and seemed like he’d had a good night’s sleep. He seemed a lot like he was in the old days, around February or so, when he was astonishing himself by winning primaries.

But within moments, Mr. McCain’s irritation that he was sharing the stage with his younger rival seemed to get the better of him. He clenched his jaw, grinned mirthlessly and seemed unsettled. [...]

They have other opinion pieces from across the political spectrum; follow the link for more.
Here is a bit of what John Broder had to say:

C-Span showed the entire debate in split screen and whenever I looked up I saw Mr. McCain looking across at Mr. Obama with a strained look of incredulity, or the pained smile of an indulgent teacher listening to a recitation from a particularly dim-witted student. [...]

Mr. Obama, for his part, either listened stolidly, scribbled notes or smiled at his opponent with that Ronald Reagan “There you go again” smile.

For much of the time Mr. McCain was on the attack, Mr. Obama just sat there absorbing the blows as if wearing body armor. [...]

My guess is that Obama not being rattled at all infuriated the wingnuts. I suppose that is what comes from living in a Coulter-Hannity-Limbaugh bubble.

Science Avenger Pulls some comments from Townhall.com (a Republican leaning site).

Fox News Not Optimistic about McCain’s chances:

Starting Thursday, you put the money where it will help the down-ticket races. We all know what the last days of a losing campaign look like. Been there, done that. Not pretty.

Wednesday night was McCain’s last best chance to avoid triage. He needed to make something happen. He didn’t. Wednesday night was not a “game-changer.” Don’t take my word for it. Ask Republican Mike Huckabee. He said it, and he’s right.

Joe the Plumber may be the new icon of the campaign, but Obama’s comment that we need to “spread the wealth around” is not going to cost him this election. It’s not that kind of year. It’s the kind of year where people who never worry are worried, where economic insecurity is rampant, where the problem is not too much government but not enough. By all means spread the wealth around, if there is any to spread around. [...]

As Jimmy Carter once said, life isn’t fair. It isn’t. Hillary Clinton supporters now understand that all that stood between her and the White House was a failed caucus strategy; that she, too, could have beaten John McCain, and would have.

True enough. John McCain supporters, particularly those who were with him eight years ago, must be pained by the realization that the man who beat them, slammed them, threw mud at them then is costing their man the election now.

But this speaks louder than anything: election futures Intrade is listed first, then Iowa Electronic:

Democrats 85.50 +5.500 84.70 -0.001
Republicans 14.60 -6.200 16.00 -0.018

Only overconfidence or a huge unexpected event can cost Obama the election now.

Amusing Debate Moments and Interesting Comments from Pundits

John McCain is proud of me!

Or is he proud of these people:

I report, you decide.

Another funny moment:

And still another one (“even Fox News disputes that”)

Now for the pundits…

Some pundits are angry that voters decide for themselves who won!

David Gregory repeatedly proclaimed McCain’s “I’m not Bush. If you wanted to run against him, you should have run 4 years ago” to be The Line Of The Night. He clearly wanted it to be a defining moment of the campaign.

But something held Gregory and his colleagues back. That was the knowledge that snap polls were coming, and the likelihood that those polls would show Obama to be the winner.

Andrea Mitchell articulated it directly — and sniffily — saying that McCain had won on points, whether the polls would reflect that or not.

And there is more:

K-Lo never disappoints.

I Just Don’t Get [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
any of the insta polls, which seem to give it to Obama.

There’s nothing like befuddled conservatives wondering what happened to their “conservative America”.

Update: And if you want more out-of-touch Republicans, just read down the entire NRO page and laugh at their words during the debate. You’ll see things like:

Surf there to check out the fun!

The actual results?

CNN: Obama wins 58-31.
CBS: Obama wins 53-22 among independents.

Who is most in touch with independents and the American people? Hint: Not the deluded folks at the National Review, fresh off kicking their founder’s son off the magazine.

But it is fun to read what some of my trolls visitors say too.

Ok let me make one thing clear
I certainly respect expert opinion: e. g., the scientist that talks about the new discovery, or the economist who explains what went wrong and what me might do to go forward, or the historian that reminds us of past events along with their similarities (and differences) with current events.

And I enjoy political operatives explaining how they think that the candidates should make their case. But what is absurd is pundits trying to tell us how the debate when over when in fact the polls tell us. Of course CNN claims that their sample oversampled Democrats but guess who was watching in larger numbers?

Note also from CNN’s poll:

Who did the best job in the debate?

Independents

McCain (R) 31
Obama (D) 57

Republicans

McCain (R) 68
Obama (D) 18

Democrats

McCain (R) 5
Obama (D) 88

Independents went for Obama, and even while most Republicans gave the edge to McCain, clearly on the whole, Democrats were happier with their candidate than the Republicans were with theirs.

Now I acknowledge that Obama was a more popular candidate with Democrats than McCain was with Republicans (to begin with) and even some of the Republicans I talked to in Iowa weren’t thrilled with McCain being at the top of their ticket (of course, he didn’t really campaign there during the primaries; that was mostly a Romney versus Huckabee show.).

Off for a run.

More on the Economy, Some Republican Opinion, and Some Hate.

Historical Nugget: The Edge of the American West talks about Teddy Roosevelt speaking after he had been shot. He was then running on the Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket to try to unseat President Taft and defeat Woodrow Wilson. The post is short, punchy and sweet.

Economy
Paul Krugman winning the Nobel Prize in Economics has inflamed many wingnuts. But he did predict the subprime mortgage meltdown.

A few weeks ago, he wrote the following on his blog:

“I’ve been pointing out that the dictatorial powers Paulson has sought would accrue to the next Treasury secretary, who might well be Phil Gramm. I’ve been trying to come up with a liberal-leaning name who might seem equally horrifying to Republicans, and the only one I’ve come up with is … me.”

I noted to Mark Blyth and/or to Abbas that Krugman’s comment was funny because it was true. Now, the award of the Nobel seems to have had the same effect, setting some of the rightwing parts of the blogosphere aflame.

Note: Krugman backed Clinton during the primaries, and there is still sore sore feelings between him and the Obama camp (mostly on the health insurance plans; Krugman favors mandates whereas Obama only favors them for dependent kids).

Robert Reich talks about some of the causes and points out that there is too much blame placed on the average person:

The “living beyond our means” argument, with its thinly-veiled suggestion of moral terpitude, is technically correct. Over the last fifteen years, average household debt has soared to record levels, and the typical American family has taken on more of debt than it can safely manage. That became crystal clear when the housing bubble burst and home prices fell, eliminating easy home equity loans and refinancings.

But this story leaves out one very important fact. Since the year 2000, median family income has been dropping, adjusted for inflation. One of the main reasons the typical family has taken on more debt has been to maintain its living standards in the face of these declining real incomes.

It’s not as if the typical family suddenly went on a spending binge — buying yachts and fancy cars and taking ocean cruises. No, the typical family just tried to keep going as it had before. But with real incomes dropping, and the costs of necessities like gas, heating oil, food, health insurance, and even college tuitions all soaring, the only way to keep going as before was to borrow more. You might see this as a moral failure, but I think it’s more accurate to view it as an ongoing struggle to stay afloat when the boat’s sinking.

Here is another nice summary of the situation.

Republican Opinion on the Election

Dick Morris: first he says that Bill Ayers will matter.

Now he says: ok, maybe not, but what about ACORN!!!

Dick Morris knows his stuff, but he doesn’t shill very well.

So, what is going on with this election anyway?

African American enthusiasm is higher than ever before, and that is breaking up the old voter turnout models.

Even people who would normally hate liberals and Obama are voting for him this time.

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he’s too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON’T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT…but they STILL don’t give a f***. They said right out, “He won’t do anything better than McCain” but they’re STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry ‘04, Bush ‘00, Dole ‘96, hunter, Nascar fan…hard for Obama said: “I’m gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He’s gonna be a bad president. But I won’t ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President.”

And I am not kidding here: while I was canvassing in Iowa, someone told my partner that she was “going to vote for the nigger” and meant it. Seriously.

I just shook my head.

Speaking of hate: where is this coming from?

Rush Limbaugh:

A local Republican Organization (California) actually had “Waterboard Obama” on it’s website.

Though this is not about the Presidential race, check out what this Oklahoma Republican says:

Perhaps this is why you see stuff like this from the rank and file:

These are the folks that McCain is proud of?

Third Presidential Debate: Obama wins easily

Note: you can watch these yourself here.

There were times during this debate where I actually felt bad for McCain. His attacks were weak, lacked substance and Obama kept his cool, defended, counter punched and just came across as being Presidential.

McCain almost looked as if he were pleading to “oh please, listen to me and take me seriously”.

The PBS pundits are trying very hard to spin this debate as being close, but frankly I was delighted with the outcome.

McCain probably played to his base ok, but I can’t see independents being happy and I can’t see Obama supporters peeling away.

CBS snap poll of the undecided voters: 53-22 Obama over McCain.

CNN official Poll (not the internet one) 58-31 Obama. It isn’t even close.

By the way, just who is this “Joe”?

(hat tip to Seattle for Barack Obama)

Note: according to news sources, our “Joe” can’t even vote! (he isn’t registered).

Actually he is registered; he is a McCain voter.

Joke on the Daily Kos: how many votes does “Joe” have?

Now, what about this ACORN stuff?

Obama explained it correctly.

Progress Illinois

What Griffin fails to note, however, is that ACORN made very clear that some registrations they gathered from canvassers in Lake County may have been faulty. An ACORN spokesmen explained this in an October 7 press release:

ACORN flags and turns in three kinds of cards, those that it can verify, those that are incomplete, and those that it flags as problematic. It turns those in labeled in a special way and are very conservative in terms of what it flags as problematic. It has stacks of problematic cover sheets. [...]

The Lake County Board knew about the questionable registrations today because ACORN flagged them for the board. For example, the Jimmy John’s card is one that a caller had flagged and labeled as problematic. ACORN can get that caller to talk to the press.

According to Regina Harris, the Director of Registrations for Lake County, this claim checks out. “It’s certainly true. They did have three batches separated.” she told me this morning. “There was a pile they knew were good, there was some they said had missing info — like no voter ID number or a missing birthday — and another batch they called ’suspicious.’ “

Why would ACORN submit registration forms it had deemed “suspicious”? Because under most state laws, voter registration organizations are required to turn in all the forms they receive. In a phone conversation today, ACORN press coordinator Charles Jackson confirmed that this is the case in Indiana.

CNN

Citing a long history of voter suppression in the country, ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said recent charges against the organization are just partisan attacks intended to undermine the group’s voter registration efforts. “The current strategy seems to be, from the right, to create, to manufacture a so-called crisis of voter fraud . . . and then to solve that crisis through measures that are about constricting the electorate, narrowing the electorate, keeping people from being able to vote,” he said.

By the way, even some Republicans admit that this “voting fraud” cry is overblown.

Florida’s governor says his fellow Republicans may be exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there’s only been a scattering of isolated incidents.

Crist said in the closing days of any campaign “there are some who sort of enjoy chaos.” There may be more of that going on than fraud, he said.

Third Presidential Debate: McCain vs. Obama: Who Won?

You can also vote in these online polls:

* CNN poll (scroll down, on right)
* Wall Street Journal poll (scroll down)
* NBC poll
* Guardian poll
* USA Today poll
* The Drudge Report poll
* Fox poll (scroll down)
* AOL poll (scroll down, center)

Religion and Religulous

Workout Notes 4000 yard swim; slowish 500 (9:03), 500 drill/swim (zoomers), 10 x 100 on the 1:45 (1:41, then 1:37-1:38), 5 x 100 fist (1:43-1:45), 5 x 100 (25 3g, 75 free) 1:48’s, 10 x 50 on the 1 (47s), 500 strokes.

On one hand, I can see my times slipping, but mostly what this means is that I am past my peak. On the other hand, this would have been a good workout 2-3 months ago.

Religion and Religulous

My wife and I saw the Bill Maher film Religulous yesterday.

(hat tip: Friendly Atheist)

My take Basically, Maher goes to various churches and/or religious leaders and basically asks “how can you believe that? Do you really believe that? Isn’t this inconsistent with reality?”. He interviews: someone who started a cannabis church (Amsterdam, of course), someone who claims to be the Messiah, Francis Collins (the world class scientist), a sitting US Senator (Pryor, D-Arkansas) a few priests, and folks who were attending a trucker’s chapel (among others).

He also talks to Muslim Clerics, Jewish Rabbis and people who were visiting a “Holy Land” amusement park in Florida.

Maher’s makes me squirm at times; he asks people the questions that I’ve asked myself a long time ago; many resent it; some actually seem to enjoy the back and forth (Collins, the guy who played the Jesus part in that Florida park), some come across quite well (the Astronomer at the Vatican, the “maverick” priest outside of the Vatican), and some get quite defensive.

Facts do get presented, but this is mostly “let’s make a joke about it”, by which the point is made.

I am glad that I saw it and can recommend the film. But, in my opinion, the same points are more forcefully made by the Dawkins documentary The Root of All Evil.

You can buy the DVD at the Dawkins website (I have a copy) or you can see the videos here (48 minutes each)

The takes are a bit different though; Dawkins argues for atheism whereas Maher is more about “doubt” and being skeptical.

Speaking of doubt: how much doubt can one have and still call oneself a “Christian”? Follow the link to see this question being discussed.

About the effect of this film or the effects of the “new atheist” books: is the focus misplaced? The article I linked to notes that much of what is written is more written for the “already de-converted” or “never theistic to begin with” rather than to persuade the believer. Also:

[...]Maher and director Larry Charles are highly adept at ridiculing their fellow citizens. Anyone who has seen Charles’ last film (Borat) is familiar with his directorial style: put ordinary Americans on camera, ask them a few questions about their beliefs, and then stand back as they reveal their vapidity. The technique is simple, but the psychological response it provokes in viewers is anything but. We laugh as we shake our heads in disgust, squirming with a mixture of pity and repugnance for the pious fools on screen. But we also enjoy a rush of pride for getting the joke, since every laugh confirms that we in the audience are smarter and more sophisticated than the ignoramuses ignorantly and ineptly defending their convictions. Maher is our surrogate here, posing the questions, smirking at the idiocy of the responses, and sometimes explicitly ridiculing the interviewee to his face. And not only to his face. Maher and Charles have been kind enough to include some of their banter as they travel from one interview to another, cracking a few extra jokes at the expense of the last inarticulate boob.

And that is what makes Religulous a perfect complement to the recent books by Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens. Like these authors, Maher harbors so much contempt for religion that he would rather score easy points than explore the messy reality of humanity’s complicated–often sordid, but sometimes noble–religious impulses and experiences. That’s why Maher takes on simpletons and extremists instead of seeking out theologians and other thoughtful believers to explain and defend their beliefs. That’s also why moderate believers simply don’t exist in Maher’s America, which aside from the 16 percent of the country* that explicitly rejects institutional religion, seems to be populated only by fundamentalists awaiting (and perhaps even itching to hasten) the apocalypse. How else to explain the absurdly paranoid peroration with which he concludes the film? Over ominous music and images of mushroom clouds, Maher informs us that religious belief is a “neurological disorder” that must be eradicated for the sake of human survival. “Grow up or die,” he warns, as if those were our only options. [...]

The problem with this argument is, of course, that

1. Most believers really don’t have anything resembling a sophisticated understanding for their religion and would be horrified if they knew what many of the mainstream theologians thought and

2. Having a somewhat sophisticated thought process doesn’t make what one believes true; after all I reject astrology even if I don’t know what the more sophisticated astrologers believe.

I see it this way (and I’ll take on Christianity as that is what surrounds me):

1. If you believe in a resurrected person, then you are delusional.

2. If you see the resurrection in some symbolic or “spiritual” sense, then you really have more of a spiritual mythology (e. g., a story which brings deep comfort and meaning) and what you practice really isn’t classical Christianity but rather a spiritual/ethical system which stems from it.

Religion can provide benefits (prayer, meditation to calm the emotions and mind), and things such as yoga can calm the body as well.

The culture war:

Evolved and Rational taunts the theists a bit; she points out that the argument “life has no purpose without a god” doesn’t hold water. She provides this graphic:

More taunting
On the Dawkins site: people refer to all of those books that attempt to rebut the points made by the new atheists as the “flea circus”. This is why I like the Dawkins site: they openly post articles that are hostile towards us; all comers. This is not a ‘bubble” site where the all (or even most!) of the articles agree with us.

After the 2008 election, I’ll probably start hanging out there a bit more.

Politics:
Of course, an endorsement of a candidate by an atheist group will always be used by the political opposition. Hat tip to Science Avenger.