Were it not for one Ohio plumber/ soon to be FoxNews correspondant, we’d still be laughing over Sen. McCain’s bizarre line about the old vets at his rally and the hats they wear: “Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you’re going to have some fringe peoples. You know that… But to somehow say that group of young women who said ‘Military wives for McCain’ are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything — and those veterans that wear those hats that say ‘World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq,’ I’m not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they’re great citizens.” There is one section of people in this country who badly want John McCain elected: military families. Everyone else is thinking meh, or voting Obama. So how about appointing him Secretary of Veterans Affairs, future President Obama?
Why was the debate last night instantly forgettable? Why did neither candidate stray far from his respective stump speech? Because both candidates gain from a format designed to minimize gaffes and specifics. More from Lindsay Beyerstein: “If the debates are to add value, they must push the candidates out of their comfort zones and force them to engage answer questions that their handlers won’t let them tackle on the campaign trail. The best way to do that is to have debates on relatively narrow topics…This time around, we should have had debates exclusively devoted to energy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic crisis.”
Last night Sarah Palin appeared to be following a Cosmo listicle “Ten Ways to Get The Job! Bat your lashes, challenge your interviewer with a smile, and don’t forget to wink!” She is so Elle Woods it hurts to watch. Maybe I’ve been looking at the world through blue state colored glasses for too long, but I can’t even understand why she is considered attractive. Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Culture11 LadyBlog thinks she “managed to strike some weird balance of cute and tough and … it kind of works.” But I tend to agree with this comment on Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ site: “For many Boomer women, the primary sexist experience of their lives is: ‘Those men gave the job to that guy instead of me, even though I am more qualified and/or have more seniority.’ For many Gen X women like myself (and Palin is Gen X) the primary sexist experience is: ‘Those men gave the job to that clueless chick instead of me, because the boss thinks she’s hot and/or will be a yes-man with no ideas of her own.’”
John McCain’s comment about North Koreans being three inches shorter than those who live in the South, was one of the most memorable lines of the night. NYT finds not only is it true, but a similar height gap exists between Americans and Northern Europeans. “United States takes in too few immigrants to account for the disparity.”
In the comments of my last post about it, someone noted Michelle Obama’s outfit Friday is by Thakoon, who also designed the dress she wore at the last night of the DNC. Her wearing it, appears to be the most controversial thing that happened at the first debate. Ok, I would have worn several strands of black beads instead of the bow pin, but either way is was smart choice. It’s the kind of dress only a gallery assistant or preternaturally beautiful 40-something lawyer can get away with, (and she bought it off the rack, no stylist needed.) While designer Thakoon Panichgul has made a name for himself, he’s only 33, and this kind of exposure catapults him to a whole new level. By the way, Thakoon recently used a print showing roses with legs, a collaboration with one of my favorite artists, Laurie Simmons. In other politics and fashion news, “When Sarah Palin met Afghan president Hamid Karzai, she wore earrings in the shape of her home state of Alaska.”
Although, many have commented on Intrade’s Republican-bias, it was still surprising to read Fivethirtyeight’s report on some funny business going down on the prediction market: “every so often, some individual trader or some small group of traders are shorting all the Obama contacts in bulk and resetting the entire market. The markets then organically climb back upward until the rogue trader strikes again six or eight hours later. The volumes on these contracts have been very high for the past week as a result…What’s a little weird, however, is that this rouge trader is not only selling Obama contracts and buying McCain contracts …. they also seem to be buying Hillary Clinton contracts.” The charts on Hillary and Obama trades are identical — trades happen at the same time. Fivethirtyeight explains, “someone is betting on some sort of disqualifying event happening to Obama…I don’t think this is any cause for alarm… if Joe Biden contracts were being bought up as part of this scheme, that might be more concerning, but they aren’t. Still, if I were the FBI, I would probably want to know the identity of this trader.” This was all before McCain “suspended” his campaign. In the meantime, Obama’s trading at 59.5, up from 52.3 yesterday afternoon. (McCain is 41.8.)
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