Well John McCain decided to show for the first Presidential debate in Oxford Mississippi on Friday.
After more than an hour and half of non-stop debating I feel that Obama held his own and even scored some good points. What is funny is that McCain has been a Senator for 26 years while Obama has been in the Senate for only about 3 years yet both seemed like seasoned veterans of debate.
If McCain threatening not to show up was meant to throw Obama off, it didn’t work.
Favorite line?
Obama: So John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the “surge,” the war started in 2003. At the time, when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said you knew where the weapons of mass destruction were — and you were wrong. You said we were going to be greeted as liberators — you were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shi’a and Sunni, and you were wrong. …if the question is, who is best equipped as the next president to make good decisions about how we use our military, how we make sure we are prepared and ready for the next conflict, then I think we can take a look at our judgment
I also wanted to share one of my favorite pictures of this election season. It comes from the site Punditkitchen, which lets visitors add captions to photos.
Whenever the concern trolls show up on one of the blogs I read, someone will post this picture in the comments and it cracks me up every time.
I got a good chuckle out of the Moose cooking tips she shared with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
A few years ago I had the pleasure to meet race car driver Bobby Rahal, so catch me driving in the Indy 500 next year. Since I live near a bank, the government will let me deal with the massive Wall Street bail out.
The high spending crooks on Wall Street ran a few financial institutions into the ground in the quest for millions of dollars in pay and many houses. Now they’ve come home with their hands out asking the government to bail them out.
The same government these same crooks paid off in the 1980s to remove the safe guards that would have helped prevent the meltdown we saw last week.
Senator John “I’m a deregulator” McCain and his economic advisor, former Senator, and bank lobbyist, Phil Gramm, were at the switch and leading the effort to remove government oversight at the time.
What about the free market these Reagan-era politicians got boners over? You get screwed over than you pay the price – right?
Not in the case of course. When it comes to the Wall Street elites it is all about not being responsible for their criminal actions. Kind of like Daddy bailing you out after a Frat boy bar brawl.
One TRILLION dollars is the bill all of us will have to pay for the unethical and criminal behavior.
In the text of the bill to go before Congress there is not ONE word about holding the crooks or their companies responsible for the failure and need for the buy out. Daddy arrives to bail them out.
As Glenn Greenwald writes:
Second, whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function — and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is “necessary” or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order — not a “crime” in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.
What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism — where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We’ve retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded.
Update: Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.
Ferguson, a native of Scotland, became a US citizen earlier this year.
Here is a video clip of what became a two part rant. The 2nd part was given during his desk chat before the first guest.
Here is a short paraphrasing of the best bits from the rant:
Why is McCain having his VP up there running for president – (as an old man) there you go isn’t she pretty? Spoiler alert – (shakes his no) – you’re not.
People want to see real solutions to real problems.
Only one poll that matters and that is November the 4th.
If your families are off limits then why are they on stage with you and they have a damn profile in People magazine! You damn manipulative hypocrites!
On the Today Show this morning they asked which candidate would you rather have dinner with? Here’s your answer – I don’t care – none of them. I want to know what do you plan to do for this country!
Let the Daily Show do what they do and the regular media needs to take this thing seriously.
If you don’t vote you’re a moron!
We have 2 patriotic candidates who love their country and they have different ideas on how to help this country – learn about them, read about them, question them, listen to them and on election day exercise your sacred right as an American and listen to yourself.
It seems it takes an outsider to remind us of what is important.
