and because it is so good... so entertaining i feel compelled to mirror it here, so in 10 years I won't have to wade though O'Grady's archives if they are still there... if we are all still here...
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Round two
Tonight brings us another one of those so-called "debates," with all the spontaneity, vivacity and unpredictability of a primary-school theatrical production. If Mister Strait Jacket goes off his meds and his talking points tonight, we might get a moment's entertainment. Otherwise we're in for an evening of Obama struggling to make thoughtful points between intervals of McCain stolidly lying his ass off. I'd give a healthy organ to see Mister Strait Jacket distractedly gobble a fistful of uppers instead of the usual tranquilizers, if only to give Hunter S. Thompson something to chuckle about in Hell.
I will be watching, and sipping, and occasionally chiming in here on the DogS(h)ite. But I think I'll do without Twitter this time. I haven't had a chance to explore it much, and I find it more convenient to rant and rave in the old, familiar style. So stay tuned. And keep a bloodshot eye peeled to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly and Mother Jones in case you'd like a little fact with your fiction. I started making shit up pretty early in the veeps' debate.
Speaking of making shit up, listen for some blather from McInsane about what The Nation's Ari Berman has termed Obama's "flimsy ties" to Bill Ayers, the Sixties radical who was present at the birth of Weatherman (later the Weather Underground) as the old Students for a Democratic Society started coming apart at the seams.
I have a motheaten copy of "Weatherman," edited by Howard Jacobs, a book I recall picking up while hitchhiking through the Midwest in 1972, and a determined election mechanic could really give Middle America the heebie-jeebies with a few choice selections from some of Ayers' writings from that period — if so many of us of a certain age hadn't had our own revolutionary heads so firmly up our own dialectical asses at about the same time. Hell, McInsane says dumber shit every day, four decades later. Who's the real threat to the Republic here?
There should be a statute of limitations on youthful ignorance: The Weather Underground planted some bombs, John McCain dropped a few bombs, and I'd rather not have either Bill Ayers or McCain in charge of the nation's armed forces come 2009. Happily, only McCain seems to want the job these days, and all it takes is a simple yes-or-no vote to send him back to where the formerly militant Ayers is — in the history books.
Here we go:
7 p.m.: Whaddaya know? McCain actually looked at Obama.
7:04 p.m.: Obama rips W and McCain on their hands-off handling of the economy.
7:07 p.m.: Mister Three Decades in DeeCee talks reform. Buy up them bad loans. With what money, I have no idea. He knows how to get America working again. Meg Whitman as Treasury secretary? Mmm hmmm . . . .
7:10 p.m.: Obama: Warren Buffett, maybe. But let's save the middle class..
7:11 p.m.: Bailout v. rescue. McCain talks about how he "suspended his campaign" to deal with the crisis, which is so much ice-cold horseshit.
7:14 p.m.: Obama: Deregulation is the problem here, and McCain is a jive-ass muthafuckah. Wanders off into a screed and then says: "You're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers."
7:18 p.m.: McCain: Americans rock.
7:19 p.m.: Best question yet: How can we trust either of you? Obama: Well, if things suck now, think about McCain, who has spent the last eight years with his liver-lips pressed to W's butt.
7:21 p.m.: McCain: I'm a bipartisan (not a maverick, but it's early yet). More baseless attacks and a bizarre detour into energy independence.
7:24 p.m.: Tom Brokaw: Health care, energy, entitlement reform — which takes priority? McCain: Talking points! Talking points! My friends, talking points! Obama: Energy is a priority. In 10 years we can be free of Middle Eastern oil. Next, health care. Third, education. And finally, McCain is full of shit to his non-existent sideburns. He wants a $300B tax cuts for Big Bidness. Won't work.
7:28 p.m.: McCain: Earmarks! Spending cuts! Freeze everything except defense and veterans affairs. Say fuckin' what? Is this fascist Italy or what? Meanwhile, blabble gabble glabble.
7:31 p.m.: Obama invokes 9/11. Attacking problems within and without government. How do we use energy? We're gonna have to find new ways to find oil. Clean coal. Safe nuclear energy (and he can pronounce the word). And we must all conserve energy, happily using products bought in the USA. Also, ramp up the Peace Corps. The Army ain't the be-all and the end-all.
7:34 p.m.: Obama: No across-the-board freezes. Let's see to it that sacrifice is shared.
7:36 p.m.: McCain: Obama wants to raise taxes and cripple small business. I am in favor of reducing taxes, including his fabled $5,000 refundable tax credit for health insurance.
7:38 p.m.: Entitlements like Social Security and Medicare? Obama: The Straight Talk Express lost a wheel on that one. We have to look this bad boy over. Meanwhile, I want to provide a tax cut for 90 percent of Americans. And McCain wants to give his rich buddies a pile of money. Let's save the middle class. Then we can deal with the rest of this mess.
7:41 p.m.: McCain: I'll take 'em on. All of 'em. I'm not too popular with my own party, much less his, but I'm bipartisan (what, everybody hates his dumb ass and he's still gonna get something done?). Even Brokaw is starting to think he's full of shit.
7:44 p.m.: McCain is seriously raving now. Maybe he did mix his meds in the green room.
7:47 p.m.: Obama: Rips McCain for screwing the pooch on alternative fuels in his nearly three decades in Congress. Talk is cheap, and drilling won't help.
7:48 p.m.: Brokaw: Manhattan Project or Silicon Valley when it comes to cranking up energy alternatives? And off McCain goes again, jabbering about "goodies" and offshore drilling and "bridging the gap" by drilling offshore, my friends, my friends, my friends.
7:50 p.m.: Question: Is health care a commodity? Obama: Moral and financial imperatives demand that Americans have the same options as senators. Nice big pool. McCain wants to tax your employer-based health-car bennies.
7:53 p.m.: McCain: Health records online. Walk-in clinics. Obama's a dick. Talks about "gold-plated, Cadillac plans" — like the one he's had all his life as a military dependent, Navy vet and retiree, and congresscreature. That this asshole talks about "government mandates" and what "employers understand" when he never worked in the private sector is like me talking about nuclear physics.
7:57 p.m.: Obama: Oh, Lord, is this guy full of shit.
7:59 p.m.: McCain: America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world. Paints himself — the dude who stacked three American aircraft fucking the duck and backed W 95 percent of the time — as Mr. Judgment. What does Obama know? Ti ti, GI.
8:02 p.m.: Obama: It's true, I don't understand some things. Like why W and McCain have flushed the country, its alliances and its economy down the Iraqi crapper.
8:04 p.m.: Brokaw: Absent national-security interests, what is the Obama Doctrine regarding intervention in nightmarish situations? Obama: We can't be everywhere all the time. Work with allies.
8:06 p.m.: McCain: Iraq. Petraeus. Victory with honor. A cool hand at the tiller (this from a guy whose nicknames at Annapolis were "Punk" and "McNasty."
8:09 p.m.: Question: Drive into Pakistan a la Cambodia during Vietnam? Obama: Naw, pressure them, don't give them money, expand non-military aid, and if we have OBL in our sights, then we act.
8:12 p.m.: McCain launches into much bad noise about Teddy Roosevelt. Aw, shit. Where's the wine?
8:14 p.m.: Obama: Speak softly and carry a big stick? This from Mr. Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran? Puh-leeze..
8:16 p.m.: McCain:&#%@^$@!!!
8:18 p.m.: McCain is on again about "the surge" and honor and victory — this time in Afghanistan. Never mind that both the strategic and tactical situations are entirely different. No wonder he was at the bottom of his class at Annapolis.
8:22 p.m.: Russia v. Georgia: Both McCain and Obama tromp all over their wieners on this one.
8:25 p.m.: Question: Defend Israel against attack? McCain: League of Democracies. Serve, sacrifice, never again. Obama: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I will do everything that is required to prevent it. Military actions not off the table, but sanctions, energy conservation and diplomacy first.
8:30 p.m. Brokaw: What don't you know, and how will you learn it? Obama doesn't answer the question. Talking points. Sounds tentative and full of talking points. McCain goes off into pure, unadulterated horseshit. Oh, fuck, this is awful.
8:22 p.m.: Russia v. Georgia: Both McCain and Obama tromp all over their wieners on this one.
BWahahahah... that's just an awesome line... i'm in stitches reading it over again...
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