Nowhere-Fast.net

Everyone’s still talking about the VP debate as if it actually mattered.  Good lord - the only way that it would have mattered would have been if one of the VP candidates spontaneously combusted on live TV.  That would have caused quite a stir.

In the meantime, it appears as though the bailout bill was passed.  What did it take to get everyone to agree on this course of action?  Why, an additional $150 billion in questionable earmarks.  Huh, that’s funny - so taxpayer dollars are being spent to bribe our politicians now?  That sounds reasonable.

Well, the two VP candidates have officially finished their debate.  It was stunningly mundane and completely expected.  Palin had her bar set so low that her appearance would have been considered a success had she managed only to not mutter incoherently and drool over herself while Biden could only have been a success if he had suddenly developed the oratory power of Lincoln on a hot streak.  Neither of those things happened - on the contrary, both candidates spoke well (good for Palin) and avoided any unnecessary rambling or gaffs (good for Biden).

Indeed, both candidates spoke well, but Palin seemed to have a large problem with listening.  It seemed as though there was a mysterious field between her and the moderator that transformed every question into a request to talk about energy policy using folksy Alaskan metaphors.  Also, I’m almost completely convinced that Palin has no comprehension of what the term “Achilles heel” means.  Seriously, when she was “answering” the question, “what is your Achilles heel?” I was embarrassed for her.  Here is her answer in brief: “My Achilles heel is that I’m so awesome because McCain’s energy policy rocks and the middle class need money.”

Biden, for his part, managed to not say anything stupid.  According to many pundits that makes this his “best debate ever.”  Sure, that’s not exactly how they phrased it, but we all know what they meant.  Biden did, however, go out of his way to talk about how he’s got a serious man-crush on McCain despite the fact that McCain has been wrong on every issue throughout his entire life.  And that’s a lot of issues because McCain is very old.

All in all, though, this debate isn’t going to change anything.  It answered the two remaining driving questions of the campaign.  One: can Biden talk for an hour and a half without planting his foot firmly in his mouth and Two: can Palin talk for an hour and a half.  The answer to both of those questions is, as everyone knew but somehow no one expected, yes.  So we’re back where we started, only now the pundits have their Scooby Snacks for the week.

It looks as though Texas is following in Florida’s footsteps as the next battleground state for the teaching of intelligent design along with evolution in the science class.  That’s not a good thing to do, Texas.  If you keep this up then people might start messing with you, and we know how you feel about that.

The quote of the article has to go to the chairman of the Board of Education, dentist Dr. Don McLeroy, when he said that the fossil record is “strong evidence for (evolution), but I also think it’s some of the strongest evidence against it.”  I would kindly request that anyone, whatever your position on the issue of evolution and intelligent design, consider that statement and then consider that it came from the chairman of the Board of Education.  Scary stuff.

It’s a rather sad commentary on the recent economic woes that when I see a commercial for a financial institution I find it ironically funny rather then annoying.

I’m not going to talk about the content of tonight’s debate.  Plenty of people are doing that already.  I do want to talk about the presentation, though.

I watched the debate on CNN and they had presented the event in an interesting format.  In the center of the screen was the traditional “politician at a podium” debate set up, but on either side were “scorecards” by various pundits that reflected either positive or negative points for each candidate.  Across the bottom of the screen was a real-time graph that tracked the positive or negative feelings of a group of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

All in all it was not only a very busy format, but it was frustratingly distracting.  As a viewer you spent as much time focusing on the points being scored as you were on what was being said and because of that it was easy to miss some important pieces of information.  The debate is about what the two people campaigning for the highest office in the land think about certain issues, not what a selection of “experts” think about what the hopefuls say.  Let the viewers form an opinion before forcing your punditry upon them.

I really would have preferred a simpler presentation - say, a shot of the candidate talking and the text of the question or statement that they’re responding to written across the bottom of the screen.  Allow me to make up my own mind.

Today I would like to list some words that have had their meanings forever changed by presidential politics.

Maverick.

Hope.

Barracuda.*

Change.

There should be some sort of process by which the general public decides what words can and can not be used in campaigns.  Some sort of general tally that accurately aggregate the will of the entire country in a meaningful and responsible way.  That would probably be really hard to pull off, though.

Also, if a boat is moving past you quickly you can not say “wow, that sure is a swift boat.”  Thanks alot, assholes.

*Note: “Barracuda” is also a part of an upcoming list of “songs I can no longer enjoy.”

So McCain wants to suspend the campaigns and postpone the debate in order to deal with the financial crisis.  As is normal Republicans are praising it as the act of a true leader and Democrats are decrying it as the act of a desperate partisan politician.  The truth, as is always the case, lies somewhere in between.

Yes, there is a partisan political component to McCain’s request.  The two men are locked in a tight race for the office of the President of the United States - when they take a dumb it’s a partisan political action.  That’s not all that there is to it, though.  The job of our elected officials is not to get elected, it is to govern the nation.  Will a presidential campaign get in the way of the job of the two politicians running for office?  Of course it will.

John McCain has become the de facto leader of the Republican party because no other dominant figure retains any credibility whatsoever.  Obama is not in that position among the Democrats.  Right now it is more important for John McCain to stop campaigning and focus on leading his party but that isn’t the case for Obama.  Right now Obama needs to focus on not losing the election (he should really have it in the bag but for some reason it’s still a close race) and that is exactly what he’s doing.

One thing, though.  During the hurricane Gustav situation I really respected Obama’s decision to stay away from New Orleans unless he was personally requested because his inevitable entourage would disrupt the vital rescue and clean up efforts.  Saying that he doesn’t want to butt his nose in unless he’s invited and can actually help was the sign of a reasoned person valuing pragmatism over earning political points.  The thing is, he said effectively the same thing when McCain invited him to Washington.  He’s in a position where he should jump right into a crisis like this because his input should be incredibly helpful.  If it isn’t then he shouldn’t be running for president.

I wish that I knew more about the economy.  I’ve never been much interested in the nitty gritty details of how the movement of wealth actually works, something that really has been working to my detriment over the past few years.  The difficult thing about situations like the one that we’re in is that so much shit hit such a huge fan that even the people who know about this stuff are left stammering and bickering out in the cold.  It’s similar to the effect the Hillary New Hampshire upset had on political pundits - things are so screwed up that it seems as though no one really knows what’s going on so there’s almost no reason to listen to anybody.  All of a sudden everyone’s an expert because the barrier for entry has been lowered.  Even so, I still don’t know jack about the economy.

One thing that I do know, though, is that this descent into chaos really got rolling after the Bush administration changed regulations at the behest of financial institutions.  That’s not to say it’s all the Bush adminstration’s fault, but their actions in the context of a society that really enjoys its greed were always going to end poorly.  It’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t at least one guy who said “hey guys, you know this might not be the best idea.”

It’s nice to occasionally still see examples of the sorts of articles that should be being written about the candidates.

I was working on my post earlier, but then I realised that someone else had already written it.  That’s what I get for procrastinating and not being syndicated by the Associated Press.