The Debate

[Ilaekae]

He looked like he was embalmed, didn't he?

[Opilione]

The US presidential circus of election never ceases to amaze and terrify me. But I'm an Aussie, so YMMV.

[kev ferrara]

Most focus-group-designed quote of the night...

Obama: "We will kill Bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda."

Kill and crush good. Cro-Magnon American like kill and crush enemy. Me vote Obama.

Ug. <lifts boulder, smashes lizard with it.>

[Elwell]

That what, John? Come on, you know you want to say it...

[ArtZealot]

That what, John? Come on, you know you want to say it...

McCain was supposed to do amazing tonight...that is definitely not going to help his campaign, even if it was just a point across his chest and two words, it sounded and looked pretty bad.

[Ilaekae]

Gee, maybe it's just me, but...does anyone else get the feeling these two bastards really hate each other--especially McCain against Obama?

[Jason Manley]

mccain is always angry. such feelings come from five years in a 110 degree maggot hole after being coddled by a family full of oil wealth and military prestige. even with a harder upbringing he would still be a mess for the rest of his life after that.

obama has every right to be pissed after all the lies and crap mccain and palin are spewing these past few days. McCain is pissed because he is losing again.

anyway..mccain needed a major victory tonight to see any movement in the polls and he failed to do that. I am looking forward to his camp being ejected from the drivers seat come election time.

[squidmonk3j]

anybody have a link to a video stream of the "debate"?

[Danny Tatom]

the whole things on youtube

[ArtZealot]

anybody have a link to a video stream of the "debate"?

Or just browse around any of the news sites to find decent quality debate coverage. I didn't even realise until just last week, the video areas of sites like CNN and MSNBC are great. Those two in particular have great sections where you can watch whatever videos you want, and queue it up, pause it etc. it's pretty well put together and has all of the debates of this election as well. It's worth checking out.

Regarding the latest debate topic, i'm reading everywhere that it was a tie, but then there's online polls that say obama won the debate by a landslide. Either way, a tie for obama is a win, since as jason mentioned, McCain had to do amazing and turn this thing around, which he did not do. Things are looking very good for obama.

[squidmonk3j]

thank you both

[Aly Fell]

It's on the NYTimes website:

DEBATE

[Dorkthrone]

Most focus-group-designed quote of the night...

Obama: "We will kill Bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda."

Kill and crush good. Cro-Magnon American like kill and crush enemy. Me vote Obama.

Ug. <lifts boulder, smashes lizard with it.>

I knew I wasn't the only one who thought that comment was a little off.

[kev ferrara]

Regarding the latest debate topic, i'm reading everywhere that it was a tie, but then there's online polls that say obama won the debate by a landslide.

The net skews left, young, and narcissistic. But I repeat myself.

Polls are a marketing tool pure and simple. Anybody who thinks polls are about scientific data collection should be gently persuaded to stay home and watch Nikelodeon on November 4th.

kev

P.S. Some people remain rebels even after their waist size reaches 40.

[Ilaekae]

YAY! I'm skewed left, young, and narcocrispistatic. And I repeat myself, too. And I repeat myself, too.

That's prob'ly why I came away with the impression that McCain was a bit pissy on some issues, veered into the same-old same-old rhetoric and insults that we've all memorized already, and why Obama looked like he was waiting for a car wreck to happen.

...and 40 is the new 48...

[Sorknes]

Everybody here thinks Obama won the thing. But everyone here is left, even our right.

Is it true that McCain didn't want to shake hands with Obama after the debate, or is that just intawebz shiatz?

[arttorney]

Politics here is an extremely dirty business. I am sure if you could look deep into those guys hearts you would find that neither one of them would like to shake the other guys hand. I know somebody who ran for Senate and some of the stories she has told me about her opponent's conduct are simply disgusting.

The point, though, is that they were putting on a TV reality show each hoping to end up as "The Survivor" and so they did and said a lot of things that were calculated to make a certain impression on the TV viewership in the U.S. Obama touched McCain's shoulder at the end, and my first impression of it was that he was hoping he could get McCain to flinch on TV at his touch. Nice try, but it didn't seem to work.

[Aly Fell]

Having just watched it, I don't really see a clear 'winner', if there can be one to such things. Although I think the slant goes to Obama who seemed more relaxed and I like him, but to an outsider, on this occasion they seemed to talk essentially the same thing and perpetually use patriotism to back up their arguments. Didn't Samuel Johnson have something to say about that? But perhaps I'm just being facile?

[wassermelone]

Is it true that McCain didn't want to shake hands with Obama after the debate, or is that just intawebz shiatz?

Just internets.


Obama 'won' in my book. McCain was simply awful during the economy/domestic affairs portion of the debate. He picked up at the end during the Foreign relations section, but Obama also did well. McCain needed a knockout that he didn't get.

I liked both their responses to the question about Russia.

I hated the format. I want 15 - 20 minute seperate room speeches by both of them. Then I want to go into formal 1-2 minute back and forth tear downs. Come on, I want them to be at each others legislative throats!

[Jason Snair]

I'm going to give it to Obama.

Visually speaking: Obama was relaxed, caring, and stable. When not talking, he sat plainly and looked like he was really listening. McCain, on the other hand appeared stressed, angered and on edge. This format is supposedly his thing, and even though I think he did connect with the audience members, at times it seemed like he was really trying to force that connection. I noticed that he would lean toward them, almost invading their space. It made me feel uncomfortable. I also noticed that when not speaking, McCain roamed the set and occassionally grimmaced and smirked at what Obama was saying. Pretty disgraceful.

Content: I think both answered and dodged questions equally. There's only so much substance you can squeeze into 2 minutes, I guess.

[James Kei]

Polls are a marketing tool pure and simple. Anybody who thinks polls are about scientific data collection should be gently persuaded to stay home and watch Nikelodeon on November 4th.

kev

True for the most part. There is one individual that is taking a more scientific approach to the polls. Nate Silver.
This guy is a highly regarded Baseball statistician. He accurately predicted who would win the world series down to the number of wins and losses to get there.
He applies the same projection structure to politics. Using all of the poll data and runs over 10,000 simulations to create a model. Fascinating stuff. He accurately predicted the primaries. This guy is a genius.

Check out his website. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

[ArtZealot]

Anybody who thinks polls are about scientific data collection should be gently persuaded to stay home and watch Nikelodeon on November 4th.

haha, yeah i'm sure thats what they told Gore after the general election of 2000.

[kev ferrara]

There is one individual that is taking a more scientific approach to the polls. Nate Silver.
This guy is a highly regarded Baseball statistician. He accurately predicted who would win the world series down to the number of wins and losses to get there.
He applies the same projection structure to politics. Using all of the poll data and runs over 10,000 simulations to create a model. Fascinating stuff. He accurately predicted the primaries. This guy is a genius.

James, unless you yourself can do the math, you have no idea how credible Mr. Silver's work is. Anybody can claim anything. Statistics are one of the most abused of all the pseudo-sciences (see Nassim Taleb). All I know about Mr. Silver is that he successfully got you to come here and advertise his site. And the more publicity he gets the more money he makes.

Oh, and I also know that his FAQ section proves he's a charlatan. (Him and his one friend.) He's merely weighting other pollsters poll data based on their past predictive performance and adding up the numbers. That means he's relying on everybody else's methods and doing essentially no primary research of his own (no pun intended). But every pollster wants to get better at what they do and will develop new methods for improving. So the old data is not relevant scientifically. "Correlation is not causality" is like one of the basic tenets of science. Thus the very first thing said about his methodology means he is full 'o the shite.

Oh, and having to explain what the number 538 means is also a dead giveaway about who his audience is.

EDIT: JESUS CHRIST CHANGE YOUR AVATAR BACK TO THE CARTOON ANIMATION!!! LOL!

[James Kei]

I understand your skepticism, but I've been watching his site before he blew up.
This guy crunches a lot of numbers but he freely admits that polls are such a small sampling of data that the margin of error is actually 6 to 8 percent vs. 4 percent that most pollsters go by. Also, he does make his own adjustments based on new data. He can explain it better than I can in this interview with Dan Rather. It's about as close to an accurate projection as were going to get.
Individual polls are shit. But combine them all, and eliminate the irregularities, and we may have something here. He does openly support Obama, but claims that he doesn't let that affect the math. Take it with grain of salt.

Here's the interview. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...and-keith.html

[smugbug]

Initial thoughts:

"That one..." <--that right there is going to bite McCain in the ass. Big Time. It put his condescending and grumpy 'tude towards Obama in one clear soundbite.

Obama seemed relaxed talking about healthcare reform and the economy.

Thought about playing a drinking game with McCain's use of "my friends." (note: glad I didn't. oy vay)

Note to McCain campaign: do NOT. Repeat: Do Not allow McCain to crack jokes on the stump. It makes him look MORE creepy.

This did not seem like a true town hall debate; especially with Brokaw as the moderator. His umpteenth time of demanding the candidates stick to the 90-second rule was annoying. Shit, his question of "is Russia evil" was laughable.

That's all you had, Brokaw? Egads.

So, please, do not allow Brokaw to moderate any more debates.

A question that so needed to be asked: "What do you consider to be a 'win' (and subsequently allow the pulling out of US troops) in Iraq?"

McCain making the assumption that the young man in the audience didn't know what "Fannie Mae" or "Freddie Mac" were. Niiice.

McCain not mentioning his running mate...er, Palin once. But he mentioned Lieberman at least three times.

McCain continuously "scooting" about on the carpet. I know he thought by walking about it would look as if he was "active" - but it did the opposite.

Overall? It was a boring and stale affair (thanks to you, Brokaw), but Obama kept his cool and he won it.

[Ilaekae]

The world's last conversation on anything...

Ilaekae: The world ended at 5:16 am this morning.

Kev Ferrara: No it didn't.

I: Yes it did. I was there watching it happen.

K: Highly unlikely... Where are you getting your information from?

I: Direct observation.

K: So we're talking purely subjective and biased sources here...

I: I'd have to agree with you there, but I can't identify any other logical reason for why my entire horizon view is now non-existent.

K: Open your eyes and face reality.

I: Don't have to. My eyelids burned off in the first 0.00009th of a second of the primary flash.

K: Do you actually have any proof that you have no eyelids? For example, did you perform the Kleinman-Rauchler Test(1) and look in the mirror to verify your findings?
(1) 1996--Trans-Gender Publishing (Excerpted from Scientific American 1887-1992 [see]

I: Unable to. My mirror doesn't exist anymore.

K: Ah... So the evidence indicates that you possibly may never have had a mirror in the first place...

I: Pretty sure I did. I remember buying it and lugging it home on the bus.

K: If you say so.

I: I do.

K: That doesn't make it true, obviously.

I: True. How about if my neighbor came over and checked to see if I had eyelids?

K: So we're off the mirror now?

I: He can see if there's a mirror, too.

K: So I'm supposed to believe a third party that I've never met? What is his genetic makeup, geopolitical/religious/ethnic background and are his opinions supported by acceptable standards of International unbiased non-media sources with no connection with modern communications technology? Has he ever even published for legitimate peer review?

I: Didn't we get up on the wrong side of the couch this morning?

K: Alright, alright... For the sake of peace on Earth, I'll play your game... Ask your neighbor to verify what you said.

I: Can't. His house, dogs and tomato patch are all gone, so I'm guessing he is, too.

K: I give you an inch, and you twist it into a self-flaggelating knot of pre-tesseract ovoid pan-socialist obfuscation. Can't you stay on subject for just a few minutes?

I: 'kay. The world ended at 5:16 am this morning.

K: Sigh... do you even know how to read?









...we all know it had to be done...

[kev ferrara]

The simple version:

I: I'm right.

K: I'm sure you think that.

I: What I agree with is written down.

K: <yawn>

I: Everybody agrees with me.

K: How does that prove anything?

I: I need to be right motherfucker!

K: Never noticed that.

I: I will now make fun of your seeming objectivity in the hopes that others will agree and by that method I will achieve righteousness.

K: Just make it funny, and I'll thank your post too. MmmK? Bye now.

[Ilaekae]

You have to admit that you deserved that...at least a little...

[TASmith]

whether deserved or not it was awesome!

Kitty, you really need to start writing comedy. Tell me you've started a book? I mean, that sounded right out of a Douglas Adams novel.

[Sorknes]

I mean, that sounded right out of a Douglas Adams novel.

Douglas Adams was the first thing that hit my mind too! *lol*




*suspects the kitty has tasted some of the same substances Douglas Adams tasted as well....*