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mygif

Slot machines don’t work. The man’s game is video poker.

I have no idea why I remember that.

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mygif

Ok, Spain won and Chile is winning so I’m ready to watch Obama beat McCain.

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malakim2099 said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

I’m thinking the first (well, 27th or so, technically) season of Doctor Who is more appealing. I love me DVD collections.

Go get ’em MGK! πŸ™‚

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mygif

“like the Buffalo Bills in the second half of a Super Bowl”

Awwww…a low blow, sir. A low blow. πŸ™

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mygif

Missouri’s not necessarily Republican –

the state of Missouri has voted for the winner in every U.S. Presidential election beginning in 1904 except in 1956.

Man, I hope I don’t mess up the html too badly.

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bunnyofdoom said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

God, that whistling is really fucking annoying.

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Eric TF Bat said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

I read on the local right-wing rag’s website that the Mass Debate was on right now, so I came right here. Why bother listening to the Fresh Prince and Grampa Simpson in real life when I can get it via the greatest dot.snarker in Canadia? Woot!

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bunnyofdoom said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

Oh snap Obama! Wonder what Fox news response will be?

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SilverMoonWolf said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:31 pm

The lines do not like Obama tonight and that upsets me.

With the “negative campaign” question, I fucking wish Obama would turn to that withered old bag and say “Say to my face that I associate with terrorists. Say it.” just to watch McCain shrivel up like a witch under a kansas farmhouse.

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Johnny Oso said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:40 pm

Ayer’s O’CLOCK BONG!

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mygif

McCain’s doing better than usual, but Obama played off Ayers and ACORN well.

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Johnny Oso said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

Holy Shit did McCain almost say that Palin brought “breasts” to the race?

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Patrick C. said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

I would not overestimate the importance of the lines. They are, after all, a wholly unscientific sampling of a very small group of people.

Which is far from me saying “let’s just call this election for Obama and be 100% sure our guy has already won.” That would be overconfidence, and I did it in 2004, and it led to heavy drinking later on and is bad. But I wouldn’t take the lines as gospel, either.

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mygif

That’s why I’m doing the heavy drinking NOW.

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mygif

Thanks to this post, I now know what’s happening even though I’m missing it.

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mygif

John McCain: “Sarah Palin is a role model to women…”

Has he completely cracked, or what? Cripes, and I thought the Canadian election campaign was terrible. Americans, you have my sympathies! I don’t know how you can stand this.

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SilverMoonWolf said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:49 pm

McCain’Ospeak translatotron: “Wind! Solar! Tide! Hydrogen! All things I will completely ignore in favor of killing more brown people in that there other country to get more oil!”

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mygif

I don’t want Stepford Barbie anywhere near the White House.

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mygif

Bahaha. Chris, I swear…I laughed out loud at the jetpacks line. Also the insane bitch line. Bahahaha.

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Johnny Oso said on October 15th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

McCain is blinking like mad during the health care bit.

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SilverMoonWolf said on October 15th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

That’s right you doddering old Mr.Magoo looking fart, dance. Dance around the fact that you’re going to tax employer health benefits. Try to pretend that you’re not going to fuck a majority of working people in this country over.

Why is it that I’m no longer outraged by lies and instead find them horrifyingly funny?

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mygif

McCain isn’t just lying, he’s repeating his old, refuted lies!

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mygif

Athene: We deal with it with LOTS AND LOTS OF GIN. LOTS AND LOTS AND…

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mygif

I had just said that McCain looked, during Obama’s abortion discussion, like he was passing SBDs.

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malakim2099 said on October 15th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

@syringavulgaris: I prefer Midori, or some Smirnoff Ice. Gin really isn’t my taste. πŸ˜‰

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mygif

I kind of wish the Obama campaign had insisted on a zap sent to McCain everytime he interrupted…

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Joysweeper said on October 15th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

Gotta say that I love that you’re doing this, MGK.

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mygif

Obama was on the defense at first, but he finished well.

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mygif

“I support the Troops to Teachers program” (yay?) “and we should be able to have our troops just teach without having to take all of those exams and get certified to teach” (WHAT.)

Obama: “Under my plan, Joe would pay ZERO in fines, because I have an exeption for small business!” (McCain looks confused, slightly shocked, and uncomfortable.) McCain a few minutes later: “…and Senator Obama would make Joe pay a fine for not providing health care to his workers!” DUDE. Talk about not listening! Or just ignoring and restating your talking points and hoping that the public won’t catch on that you just restated something that your opponent schooled you on.

Ooh, the abortion section was unnnnnnncomfortable. Yikes.

Oh, and I give myself props, because I predicted a full NINETY SECONDS AHEAD OF TIME that McCain would bring back Joe the Plumber during the whole healthcare portion of the debate.

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mygif

This is the thing that’s hurting McCain. He’s not just lying. He’s repeating lies SECONDS after they get refuted. That goes beyond misinformation and into some kind of postmodern existential questioning of the underlying nature of reality.

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mygif

Ok, McCain’s face when Obama talked about killings of union leaders in Colombia (much of it very much connected to Black Water, and american oil — and other — interests. Not mentioned the farm workers killed so their lands can be taken away etc etc)… I’m really looking foward for this disgusting little shit to fuck off.

And, GODDAMN!, Obama fucked the abortion issue in the ass! It loved it and it didn’t leave it pregnant!

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mygif

And, fuck, all that Joe talk was so creepy.

I bet every Joe felt soiled tonight.

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mygif

When Obama laughed off the Ayers accusations and then McCain started melting down over acorn? That was awesomejuice.

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mygif

You didn’t write about the best part! At the end, when McCain sticks his tongue out for no reason, crazy-old-man-style!

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mygif

I didn’t catch that Obama mentioned that 100% of McCain’s ads were negative. In fact, I thought he should’ve brought it up and missed a great opportunity.

Of course, during the abortion discussion, I was kinda expecting Obama would say something along the lines of: “Now, just a few minutes ago Senator McCain was expressing that a fundamental difference between us is that, according to him, I think that government should make your choices, and he believes that you should make your own choices. But I support a woman’s right to choose, and Senator McCain believes that the government should make that choice for you.”

And great googly-moogly, what is up with McCain’s belief that he can pay for better schooling (rewarding teachers and what-not), give $5000 to every American for health care, perform research on autism, and not pay for any of it because of his spending freeze? It’s… I… usually I can step into someone else’s worldview and see how it’s internally consistent, but this? Does he believe that elves are going to do the autism research in our sleep and get our kids into charter schools, along with cobbling our shoes, or something? Really, what the hell is up with that?

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mygif

Also, since I missed the first reference to Joe the plumber, I thought that when McCain started talking to “Joe” he was talking to Joe Biden. Or was possibly going senile on live tv.

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Nora Bombay said on October 16th, 2008 at 12:15 am

Ah. I voted on Monday. So technically my work is done. Of course I now live in Chicago, which means that even if I had not voted for Obama? I would have voted for Obama.

I appreciate the recap. It made me feel better about my decision to watch the end of the truly awful Indiana Jones IV, instead of having an McCain induced annurism.

Plus: McCain? Is the one who is friend of the terrorists. Er, Cuban Exile Groups, who mysteriously stopped advocating the violent overthrow of all people related to the Cuban government on September 12 2008. But spent every moment before that blowing shit up.

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mygif

My 12-year-old sister was like, “Joe… Biden? Joe Sixpack? Which Joe are we talking about here, exactly?” She is made of win.

McCain is like if Gopher from Winnie the Pooh turned into a real person, only not in the cool way where you and Tigger have crazy antics, in the way that makes you horrified that Pooh is a morbidly obese idiot savant and that Piglet is the little old cat lady/man that you suspect may be a child molester/cannibal. The only cool one would be Eeyore, and only because he is a happy drunk. Just like that. Goddamn whistling…

I also would like to point out that having anyone be a teacher who has not had to pass tests and be certified is a Bad Idea, especially when pushing a fiscal plan for the education system dependent solely on passing tests. Seriously, I’ve been to some crappy schools, but No Child Left Behind has really fucked over the schools, students, and teachers that don’t have money and resources.

Obama + the Jetsons = AMAZING

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mygif

I lived in a poor neighborhood almost all my life and every school available was complete shit with the possible exception for the charter schools. I was lucky enough to get 3 years in the last good public school before they closed it and sold it. I’d like to hear about why charter schools are such a bad idea.

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mygif

Man, I love reading your live blogging on the debates.

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mygif

Obama looked presidential. McC’s face looked like a pumpkin with all the colour bleached out of it.

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mygif

I think charter schools and a voucher program for private schools failing that is a great idea; I don’t have a financial background, though, and I admit to not researching these issues particularly recently. I also believe that more money for public schools to be not suck is badass.

When you’re stuck in a shit school, getting out of it is amazing. I usually just got out whenever it was time for us to move out of the area again, or most recently by graduating shortly after getting to the area. Admittedly, public school is not a major issue for me because I’m not in K-12 and my younger sisters who are have already gotten through most of the ride.

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mygif

Basically, the reason vouchers are a bad idea is that they rest on a really obvious wrong-headed idea, that the amount of money we spend on education can be divided up on a kid-by-kid basis. Thinking about it for even a minute makes it clear that it’s wrong; I live in Minnesota. In January, when the kids are in school, having half the kids doesn’t mean your heating bill is half as big. Vouchers drain needed money from the public school system, ensuring that the remaining kids will have even a harder time getting a good education.

Meanwhile, all the evidence shows that private schools don’t have a better track record educating kids than public schools; their success rate seems better, but only because they don’t have to take in underperforming kids. If you can simply exclude C or worse-students from walking through your doors, of course you’re going to have kids with B averages or better.

When you boil it down, vouchers are all about taking money away from the public school system, where there’s oversight and accountability, and giving it to private schools that are only held accountable by market forces. And we’ve seen that work so well for the airlines, the S&Ls, the subprime mortgage market…

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mygif

Oh, yes, and getting to the actual comment I wanted to make before I got sidetracked by the comments section πŸ™‚ , McCain managed to single-handedly negate the political benefit of having a mother of a special-needs child on the ticket by a) saying that Palin, with a four-month-old, knew more about special needs than anyone (any parent of a Downs Syndrome child will tell you that four months is way too soon to notice a difference in their developmental curve) and b) confusing Downs Syndrome with autism.

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mygif

Vouchers don’t work because instead of dealing with WHY the school is shit, the kids with motivated parents get to leave while the rest get fucked even more badly. Kids getting fucked = bad.

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mygif

McCain sounded like a tea pot half the time.

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mygif

Charter schools suck because they can select to take in only the motivated and smart kids (even if they have a lottery entrance system, they can still make sure they only get the “good” kids by emphasizing work and having parents willing to go through the process and so on) while the public schools have to take everybody. So yes, you do end up with some good charter schools, but the public schools just get worse.

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mygif

The men in this focus group who controlled the man-lines all seemed to be very stupid and McCain-y. Boo!

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mygif

In my particular situation there’s a choice between shit school or sorta OK school. Take away the charter and it’ll be a choice between shit and shit like it was before the charter school showed up.

I was homeschooled from 3rd to 7th grade. After which I decided to try public school again. It was horrible. We spent the entire year going over subject and predicate in English class. We had 6 or 7 different Math teachers during the year. Health class was spent watching movies.

I think charter schools could not do worse. It’s my hope that the competition will help improve all the schools.

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mygif

and speaking as a Canadian let me just say any American whining about NAFTA needs to go shut the fuck up really fast even if it is Obama, all right?

just curious what you meant by this, MGK.

as an American, I agree that free trade with Canada is a “duh” move, but NAFTA has been devastating for Mexican workers and farmers and, well, the entire country of Mexico in general, not to mention the way that US and Canadian corporations have seized the opportunity to undermine all our regulations or any of the hundreds of other negative consequences that have not been addressed; I think the treaty needs serious pro-labor/pro-environment improvements if it is to continue.

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Jayunderscorezero said on October 16th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Curses! They cut the “McCain shuffle” from the British broadcast of this.

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mygif

goblin: It’s because of a recent disagreement in which America taxed imported softwood lumber from Canada by about 27%. Which is not free trade.

In the end, because America refused to pay up except with some sort of deal, Canadians only got back 80% of the duty charged by the American border, and Canada is permanently limited to 34% of the US softwood lumber market.

Canada lost over a billion dollars to US tariffs which NAFTA ruled to be disallowed. Clearly free trade at it’s best.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/

… And that is why Americans are not allowed to whine about NAFTA, because they don’t abide by it if they can, anyway.

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mygif

The best way to improve the public school systems (where they need improving — some jurisdictions have very good public systems, but nobody spends any time bitching about them on the internet) is to spend the money and take the time to improve them.

The best way to make a bad school system even worse is to undermine it by draining out the motivated/lucky students and slashing their budgets.

This is not rocket science.

Public officials should be forced to send their kids to public schools for the same reason that they should be forced to have the level of healthcare of the least insured of their constituents.

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