Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged presidential debates
Chicken And Politics
Sep 28th 2008
As per usual on weekends, my friends and I gathered to hang out a bit. No major "lets go out" type activities this time. This was purely hanging out and watching some TV/anime/mst3k and having a good time.
Wassy also showed me how to make her Chicken Cacciatore which is excellent (part of the reason why I wanted to learn how to make it). She took me shopping for the ingredients so I could see what she got and then explained what she was doing as she was cooking which is the best way for me to pick something like this up. Since I'm a cooking noob, I don't know a lot of the techniques and don't have a feel for when stuff will be done, so seeing somebody do it (while I take notes) is a very helpful thing. Now I need to go out and buy a big skillet.
Conversation inevitably turned to politics because of the presidential debate Friday night. Personally I think Obama did well and responded to McCain just making crap up multiple times. I'm a little biased though since I'm a very strong Obama supporter. I found it interesting how different people are seeing the debate. It sometimes sounds like they weren't even watching the same thing I was. A lot of people have commented about Obama's suposed disrespectful looks at McCain, but I saw it the other way around. You could tell that McCain just can't stand having to stand up next to Obama. He barely kept control of his temper. And he also tried a bunch of rehersed jokes that just fell totally flat.
I just think Obama handled himself better. He agreed with McCain a couple times which I think showed class and a willingness to listen to the other side's ideas. He followed up by explaining where he differed with McCains positions which, unfortunetly, a lot of people seem not to have heard..they stopped listening at "I agree with my opponet". Dah. I also liked how at the very end Obama passed up a chance to keep fending off a McCain attack and told the moderator (who was trying to gain control of the conversation to move on) that he should just move on. A very classy move.
I'm looking forward to the expected bloodbath that will be the Biden vs Palin Vice-Presidental debates coming up this week. I'm going to pop some popcorn for this one. It should be good.
QotD: U.S. Presidential Debates
Sep 25th 2007
What issues do you look forward to hearing about
in the upcoming U.S. Presidential debates?
What do you mean by "upcoming"? They've been debating since what seems like last year!
Seriously, nothing. Everything said in the debates is a carefully constructed rehearsed statement which tells the viewer nothing except that the candidate has a PR guy. Every politician falls into this trap, making the debates a waste of time, really. Pre-formulated questions with pre-formulated responses (that might not even be related to the actual question) and in the end the pundits debate who "looked" more presidential. They're not even really debates. It's just two (or more) people talking past each other, just brushing the surface and never going into the details.
You know what…I'm going to go as far as to say that televised debates are the worst thing that's ever happened to the political process in this nation. It causes too much emphasis on presentation and not enough on the actual content of the message which is the important thing. If you don't come across well on TV or had a bad makeup job or something, boom, that's it. You're written off as being "not presidential" even if you were the guy with the best ideas and the ability to make it work.
But if you really want to know what I'm most interested in hearing some straight talk about, it would be mostly Iraq. I'd like to know what the candidate's plans are for getting out of there in a controlled fashion that's not going to cause any more harm than we already have. I'd also like to know if anybody else has plans for attempting to take it upon themselves to spread democracy around the globe (aka, Iran) because I'd like to know who not to vote for. Narrow the field down a bit. And people wonder why the US isn't viewed favorably outside it's borders…sheesh.
Man, it's been a ranty couple weeks around here.
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