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*refresh* *refresh* *refresh*

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Michael John McGee said on September 26th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

I’m gonna wear the paint off the F5 key over the next 90 minutes.

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10FootBongz said on September 26th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

McCain isn’t kidding, he really doesn’t like earmarks. I think that they are his mortal enemy, and he wants to eat their children.

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The earmark that killed his parents was never found, and soon after, a young lad made a grim promise…
“I swear I’ll dedicate my life and inheritance to bringing earmarks to justice…and to fighting all porkbarrel spending! I swear it!”
The years passed as John McCain prepared for his chosen career!

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mygif

Is it me are all the line really high when Obama speaks and are they really low when McCain speaks?

Nothing says “Busted” like someone willing to call you on years of BULLSHIT.

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BLING WAR

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What is with the Spooky Voice when talking about Iran?

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The lines actually add to this liveblogging a dimension I’m not finding in the other liveblogs (and this is the most liveblogged event I’ve seen and I’m going to stop using derivations of that word because I think I’m making William Safire seasick somewhere.)

I just can’t watch it. I feel uncomfortable in that same way that I get when I see the old Orson Welles wine ads.

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Calling the Iranian guard a terrorist organization is like saying that the CIA is. It is meaningless but apparently something that has to be done in the current political environment.

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Parse: I do not think this word means what you think it means.

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Also, doesn’t “precondition” have a specific semantic function — logic/programming — and shouldn’t “condition” be used instead in the contexts we’re seeing tonight?

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F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5!

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Is anyone else seeing Joker mouth tics from John McCain?

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Look how much McCain is blinking. Many experts on the subject claim that rapid blinking is a sign of a person who is not only lying but knows they are lying.

He stops blinking when he makes certain statements about what he believes.

Not that Obama isn’t blinking himself. Just McCain’s eyes are going mad.

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Not an absolute win for Obama, but a solid performance, and McCain struggled at times. I think the thing is, McCain continually threw out bullshit and kept slinging accusations at Obama, and Obama wasn’t logistically capable of addressing every single one, so he got tagged more than he should. But he stayed on message, at least.

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Did the FOX News commentators watch the same debate? Or is this more of their inability to be objective news reporters?

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Harry Connolly said on September 26th, 2008 at 11:00 pm

Obama kept laying out intelligent policies while McCain kept laying out stupid attacks. Obama didn’t do as well as I’d hoped.

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The earmark that killed his parents was never found, and soon after, a young lad made a grim promise…
“I swear I’ll dedicate my life and inheritance to bringing earmarks to justice…and to fighting all porkbarrel spending! I swear it!”
The years passed as John McCain prepared for his chosen career!

Oh, GOD.

Now I’m imagining SimMcCain moving in with GoddamnBatman.

*whimper*

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mygif

This was amazing. Could you do this for every debate? Wow.

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@Stark: “Did the FOX News commentators watch the same debate? Or is this more of their inability to be objective news reporters?”

Did any of the commentators watch the same debate? I mean, really, McCain didn’t even deserve to be on stage with Obama. The simultaneously most wonderful and most abhorrent aspect of the American political system is that candidates like Obama and McCain end up at the same level even when they’re so most obviously not.

Also, it’s completely rad that the best political commentary I’ve seen is from a Canadian. Well done, MGK. “OBAMA HAS A BRACELET TOO! And his bracelet is all anti-war! BRACELET WARS!” ftw.

Oh, and concerning foreign policy, not only did Obama bust out the bomb-bomb-Iran reference ftw, but McCain couldn’t even pronounce the name of the president of Iran, to the point that Obama actually corrected him on it.

Audibly.

And even in spite of the three-foot-high lettered notes McCain had to sustain him through the debate.

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Finally. Someone watched the same debate I did.

That was made of win, MGK. 😉

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He should have followed through on Spain. When McCain was rambling about the Justice League of Democracies, Obama could have thrown in something like, “Don’t you need to be able to locate these countries on a map first, or at least know which side of the Atlantic to start looking for them?”.

Or he could have just pushed McCain that one last inch that was needed to make him lose it. That grin’s going to be stuck on his face for a week.

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MGK: This is amazing. You are amazing. This is actually the first place I went to for the blow-by-blow review. I agree with most everything everyone has said, and have to add:

I watched this on Fox, because it was the channel I switched to first, and besides the rapid blinking = lying, my mother’s first response to McCain was noticing his tongue-mouth tics. In her words, “He looks like a Slytherin.” She also did a zombie imitation of him when I mentioned the rumors that he’d had a stroke, which was his real reason behind trying to postpone the debate.

My mom is amazing.

McCain was also spackled with makeup, his regular blotchiness was nowhere to be seen on my TV.

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*this being his “real” reason to postpone, that is to say.

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He’ll cut fixed-cost military contracts!

Correction: I believe McCain said he’d cut “cost-plus” contracts, in favor of “fixed-cost.”

For a quick explanation of the difference http://www.doityourself.com/stry/fixedcontracts

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Tom Galloway said on September 27th, 2008 at 5:15 am

During the pre-condition bits, I kept hoping Lehrer would actually ask McCain to specify what exactly his pre-conditions would be for a sit down with those folk.

Was watching the debate with a bunch of people, thus when McCain started going off on how he’d met with such and such foreign leaders and Obama hadn’t, and Obama hadn’t been to Afghanistan, I let out a coughing noise that sounded suspiciously like “Palin”.

And I’m surprised that no one else seems to have picked up on this. At one point, McCain said something like “And Iran has a lousy government, and thus a lousy economy…”. Um, gee, right now the US has a lousy economy, so…

I do mean that people just didn’t seem to pick up on that. The bunch of people I was watching with were all extremely sharp and smart, and they didn’t realize what he’d said and its implications until I laughed at it and someone picked up on my laughter, realized why I was laughing, and said something about it.

But my own take was that Obama won slightly, but nothing near a knockout. I don’t think anything was said or done that will significantly sway undecideds either way.

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I love your liveblogging! Pointed here by Cheetahmaster on Livejournal.

Thanks for the confirmation that they discussed North Korea and China. I’ll have to skip watching the post-commentary on PBS from now on, because they obviously weren’t paying attention: one of the analysts said he was disappointed that they didn’t talk about North Korea or China, and all the other analysts nodded. Just because Jim Lehrer didn’t ask a question about these countries didn’t mean the candidates didn’t talk about them!

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There are many, many reasons to be pissed off at McCain. This morning I think I will go with….oh, let’s see…how about what he keeps saying about Iran?

McCain has repeated the following phrase or a variation of it a number of times: “This is a country that has said it wants to wipe Israel off the map.”

Okay, first of all I recently found out that the “wipe Israel off the map” thing is not an accurate translation of what Ahmadinejad said. Google it, learn for yourselves.

This is either something that McCain knows (meaning that him claiming that’s what Ahmadinejad said is just him perpetuating a myth or, to put it a more direct way, LYING), or something that he doesn’t know when he should know it. Guys in his position, aspiring to an even more powerful position, can’t afford to be misinformed.

Even if we assume that the translation was accurate, however, and we go by the exact wording as given to us by the media…even then, it’s “Israel must be wiped off the map.” Which is different, mind, than saying “WE must wipe Israel off the map.” That’s what John McCain keeps claiming it was: Iran saying that they would personally take care of the map-wiping.

It’s not the same thing. Any more saying “I wish John McCain would die” is the same as saying “I hereby declare my intent to purchase a firearm, travel to the States, and shoot John McCain.”

I’m not saying that I’m certain Ahmadinejad has no bad intentions, or violent intentions. I’m saying that it’s impossible for anybody to KNOW for sure given the evidence we’ve got now. And you know, after Iraq I am going to be pissed off if there’s a strike against Iran based on nothing more than that one mistranslated quote.

For all we know, they might be actually be telling the truth about pursuing nuclear power rather than nuclear weapons. Do we give them the benefit of the doubt? Yes, I say. We should give everybody the benefit of the doubt until we know for sure. Until there’s concrete evidence to back up the assertion that they want to nuke a country, either themselves or by proxy.

But hey, McCain doesn’t need evidence. It’s good enough for him to say “you know, those guys look suspicious. We should kill them just to be on the safe side.”

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McCain has been to Georgia, you know!

Was he willing to make a deal?

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No, but he did take a midnight train.

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10FootBongz said on September 27th, 2008 at 5:48 pm

Rob,
It’s nice that you are willing to give Iran the benefit of the doubt w/r/t their nuclear program, but what is your test for determining whether it is for power generation or for weapons? Is it when they test a bomb? Is it when they use a bomb on another country? One way for a country to get their point across that they are indeed pursuing a peaceful nuclear program would be to cooperate with the IAEA. Here is some info straight off of their website, in regards to Iran’s program:

The Director General also updated Board members on the status of verification of Iran´s nuclear programme. “The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Regrettably, the Agency has not been able to make substantive progress on the alleged studies and associated questions relevant to possible military dimensions to Iran´s nuclear programme. These remain of serious concern,” he said. He then called on Iran to “show full transparency and to implement all measures required to build confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme at the earliest possible date.” (the link is: http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2008/board220908.html)

Obviously, the US totally cocked up the works in Iraq, invading when all credible investigations claimed that Saddam did not have WMDs. That does not mean that the international community should just wait for Iran to prove that they have nuclear weapons. Once they have a bomb, that kind of ends the discussion on whether they should be stopped militarily (see, for example, North Korea).

Finally, while Ahmadinejad’s comments might have been mildly mistranslated, keep in mind that he has also claimed that the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated, he has claimed that Zionists are not Jews (using that as an explanation for how he doesn’t hate Jews), and his country is the major patron of two organizations (Hamas and Hezbollah) who have unequivocally stated that they wish to annihilate the state of Israel.

None of this means that the US and A has to bomb Iran to stop them, but it all means that something has to be done to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. Personally, I favour the Obama approach of trying to solve this issue diplomatically, but advocating a ‘wait and see’ approach to the situation, in light of all of the statements and actions of the Iranian president, is extremely reckless considering the number of lives at stake.

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WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE

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I watched this from “Miss congeniality” and then stopped at somewhere around Russia.

I was hanging out with my girlfriend, she was making me draw for her, and, while flipping the channel, she saw the presidential debate, and said “let’s watch it!”.

Me? I’m liberal/democrat/whatever, she’s conservative/republican/whatever. So of course we differ on the subject of who should be president.

She had to change the channel, because she saw how ANGRY I was getting with McCain. Mainly when he kept saying stuff about Obama that he DIDN’T say, like the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thing. Even AFTER Obama pointed out that Ahmadinejad wasn’t the most powerful person in Iran, MCCAIN STILL FLAILED HIS ARMS AROUND saying “You want to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! You’ll legitimize him! He hates the Jews!” no matter how often Obama pointed out that he wasn’t even talking about meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

Also, the new thing to do these days is to give presidential candidates bracelets that your dead soldier son used to wear.

And I think the reason McCain was so pissed was because he had to be up there with a black guy.

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mygif

It’s nice that you are willing to give Iran the benefit of the doubt w/r/t their nuclear program, but what is your test for determining whether it is for power generation or for weapons? Is it when they test a bomb? Is it when they use a bomb on another country

If there is no way other of determining the truth (such as espionage) before they actually fire a missile, whether for testing purposes or attack purposes…then yes.

I have a question for you now. If you suspected somebody of plotting a murder, what would be your test for determining whether they were really preparing to kill somebody?

I will be interested in the answer you give. Whether you say that the right thing is to just keep an eye on them and wait until they do something wrong…or that the right thing is to go all “Minority Report” and lock them up just to be on the safe side. Or if you give some other answer.

Once they have a bomb, that kind of ends the discussion on whether they should be stopped militarily

Let’s say that they actually get a bomb, and everybody knows it. Is that in itself a reason to declare war on them?

If merely possessing nuclear weapons makes you a bad guy, then you’d have to attack a whole lot of other countries once you finished attacking Iran. You might even have to attack yourself.

I’ll compare this to a hypothetical situation involving individual people, again. Let’s say I see you buying a handgun. Shoud I immediately say to myself “ZOMG! 10FootBongz is going to commit murder!” Of course not.

Personally, I favour the Obama approach of trying to solve this issue diplomatically, but advocating a ‘wait and see’ approach to the situation, in light of all of the statements and actions of the Iranian president, is extremely reckless considering the number of lives at stake.

In other words, we can’t wait for a smoking gun because it might be a mushroom cloud, right? Are you aware of who else said that? Are you aware that he was dead wrong?

I would rather risk a mushroom cloud than see the United States (or any other nation for that matter) attack another country unprovoked, kill many civilians (as they inevitably would even if they weren’t trying), and later find out that the country they attacked had no murderous intentions.

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[…] (This is a blog which rocks anyway, if you’re interested.  But at least read the debate liveblogs. […]

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I would love it if someone were to go out North Vietnam and try to find any of McCain’s old captors and see if they can shed some more light on the whole POW side of McCain’s story.

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If nothing else we might at least hear a different version of it, at long last. Honestly, when people call McCain a hero it reminds me of what Homer said about Timmy O’Toole:

Homer: That Timmy is a real hero!
Lisa: How do you mean, Dad?
Homer: Well, he fell down a well, and… he can’t get out.
Lisa: How does that make him a hero?
Homer: Well, that’s more than you did!

🙂

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In Russia, borscht eats you.

Without preconditions.

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We have to watch out for Pottsylvania too. Otherwise was will happen to Moose and Squirrel?

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Rob Brown, from what I remember Ahmadinejad said something much less alarming, as matter of fact. It was something akin to me saying “One day the republican party” (“the zionists”, Ahmadinejad said) “will be swept away from the pages of history like sand from the dunes of time” or something like that, in the sense of a gradual failure of their own hands and their own moral failures (in the same way I talk about Bush’s policies).

He really is an anti-semite fart, though. But that’s another story, and really irrelevant to what the rest of the facts are (specially considering the guy is just a puppet).

It’s really unbelievable the degree in which americans are made to clench their sphincters when it comes to Iran (remember the GOP convention 9-11 video this year that starts with “it started in Iran…”, and shows Lord Saviour Reagan or some other homoerotic macho-homophobe bullshit about warriors blahblah).

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My first post, ever, and its something political. The closest I ever wanted to get to political would have been commenting on Doctor Doom. Rob, I think you’re vastly overslimplifying the issue with Iran, you seem to be arguing from a standpoint of it wouldn’t be so bad if they produced nuclear weapons, and that anyone that asks for any sort of action against them just wants to kill civilians (Even though bong expressly said he favored diplomacy).

It defies comparison to something as simple as one person thinking one other person might want to kill them, and the straw man of saying we’re going to bomb the civilians of a country simply because we have a mild inkling they might not like us is a bit insulting, as debait tactics go.

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Fuck sake, people didn’t learn anything after killing more than 1 million people in Iraq (or “non-people”, since hajjis are just sand-niggers terrorists — or, as Secret Invasion puts it, “non human green alien monsters — Lizard Niggers”).

What are the laws in the U.S.? If you feel threatened by someone (even if you make shit up on your head about them), you get to kill them and their families, and do it all over again and again with others? ‘Cause otherwise would be too much of a risk?

Is “not being a sociopathic murderer scared shitless” just for “peace gaytards who live in Unicornland” now?

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Rob Brown said on October 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Gradeajay, I’m sorry but I don’t think I was making a straw man argument there. Bong said this:

“Once they have a bomb, that kind of ends the discussion on whether they should be stopped militarily…”

I interpreted that, perhaps mistakenly, as “if they get a bomb, then the time for diplomacy is done and military action should be taken.”

If military action is taken, I am very sure that civilians will die as a result. I really don’t want to see that happen.

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