After last Saturday night's debate, I spent three hours writing one of the best wrap-ups yet. When I awoke the next morning, it had vanished from the Maggie's editor.
I have four logical theories on what might have happened:
1. The dog ate the server's hard drive.
2. Bird Dog, ever mindful of the "politically centrist" in the site's banner and the possibility of class action law suits for false advertising, read how many harsh, critical things I'd written about the liberal scum-dog moderators and immediately deleted the post to save the site's reputation. Because, as everybody knows, if there's one thing a politically-centrist site would never, ever, do, it would be to disparage one side without fairly and centristically disparaging the other.
3. The webmaster, never dreaming in his wildest dreams that some demented blogger would actually be writing on a Saturday night when he's supposed to be out there having one of those "life" things I read about did some kind of maintenance routine, or maybe an upgrade didn't work and he hit 'Restore', and that was that.
4. God is a Democrat, and omnipotently seeing that my article was destined to be viewed as the "greatest piece of literature in the history of mankind" and would be read in every language on every continent on earth and play the decisive role in getting Sarah Palin and Chris Christie elected Empress and Vice-Emperor Of The World (Newt Gingrich as Secretary of Earth, Mark Steyn as Chief of Staff), decided He'd better nip it in the bud. "This Palin woman just doesn't know her place," He mumbled. "And what's with that accent!"
There were, however, two telling moments during the debate, so I thought I'd grab the YouTube clips and snip out the scenes for your enjoyment.
Since liberal moderators will be speaking and there might be children present, decorum dictates that we continue below the fold.
To start with, the two moderators were as different as black and white Cain and Perry Cain and Abel night and day. The CBS guy was your classic liberal elitist pompous jerk, holding his precious digital stopwatch in hand and interrupting the candidates at precisely the 00:01:00:001 mark. And when I say 'interrupting', he didn't just say 'Time's up', he actually cut them off in mid-sentence, blathering away about how they were "trying to adhere to the time constraints" or some such, and he did this constantly. Since every candidate tends to go past the limit, he was pretty busy being a jerk the entire evening.
The second guy, from the Nat'l Journal, raised a verbal finger at the 1-minute mark, then allowed them to conclude their final sentence or two. The audience then had a chance to play its part with any merited applause.
About 50 minutes in, Mr. Stopwatch tells the audience, in so many words, to shut the hell up. I leave it to your fertile imagination just how a mainly conservative audience responded to being told what to do by some liberal jerkastoid.
By my own digital stopwatch, his new rule lasted a good 39.8 seconds. Oh, and not to doubt a professional in the field, but did he say "the applause are lovely"? I didn't know that applause was plural. Maybe it's plural because two hands are involved. Or maybe he said "applauses".
Also, if you happened to spot any headlines the next day noting how Newt 'schooled' one of the moderators, that was that moment.
I would add one other thing about that clip. As a lifelong musician, I have pretty good ears, and audience sounds are readable in their own way. I'd already identified the Paulbot sound, and you'll notice it briefly bursting forth when the moderator starts arguing with Newt and claims American terrorists abroad have legal claim to their American civil rights and shouldn't be zapped with a drone missile, a Ron Paul platform. So, effectively, the new rule lasted about zero seconds, but zealots can't help themselves so I didn't count it, whereas the spontaneous, stopwatch-stopping applause that interrupted Gingrich was heartfelt and genuine, and even more so at the end.
And they continued to applaud whenever they damn well felt like it for the rest of the evening.
Well, So Much For That Meme Dept
When Bush first came to office, the press vilified him for pronouncing the word 'nuclear' as 'nu-ku-ler'. They viewed him as just some dumb country Texas rube who got elected simply because their elite, polished candidate didn't perform as well as expected, much the same way a Ferrari driver might have an off day.
Michael Medved, longtime Townhall bloggersman, visited the Prez one day with a group of conservative bloggers and later reported that Bush used the word three or four times, and never once mispronounced it.
In other words, Bush conned the media into lowering their expectations of him by playing up to the 'dumb hick' stereotype. Today, you'll still see lefty writers refer to the "illiterate" Bush, and that's one of its origins. For what it's worth, he graduated from Yale with a higher GPA than Kerry.
But ever since those days, I've noticed dozens of times over the years an actor mispronouncing it in a movie. A liberal actor, in a liberal Hollywood movie, if you follow me. So, if it was just so damn important when it came to Bush, it's kind of amazing that someone didn't walk up to the director while the scene was being filmed and say, "Uh, boss...?"
As a small side note, I happened to have watched 'Crimson Tide' the other night (about a nuclear sub) and had it handy, so I popped it in, skipped out to some meeting the officers were having and, sure as shit, one guy immediately said "nu-ku-ler". It's all over the place.
And, of course, if you're a prestigious editor working for a liberal rag, then you also get a pass.
For what it's worth, one of the candidates also mispronounced it, but hey, if Tom Hanks and Gene Hackman can mispronounce it, then everybody gets to. Those are the rules.
Biggest hawks of the evening? We'll play multiple choice:
A. Perry
B. Cain
C. Romney
D. Huntsman
E. Paul
F. Gingrich
G. None of the above
Answer: G; Bachmann and Santorum.
As far as I'm concerned, there were only two important questions; did they define waterboarding as 'torture', and how would they prevent Iran from going nuku-, excuse me, nuclear?
As for the waterboarding, unless I read my guide book wrong, I believe "bleeding-heart conservative" is an oxymoron, so my vote goes to whoever says "Whatever it takes to gain vital information in times of war." I consider this a real litmus test of liberal-conservative values. Anyone who claims waterboarding (aka "the least offensive and dangerous form of torture in the past 10,000 years") is "torture" is playing an ideological mind game in their head. Because as soon as something as lightweight as waterboarding is 'torture', then so in slapping, and so is spanking. People who study torture view waterboarding as the 'beer' of the torture world.
Worse, unlike the previous 10,000 years, the torturee today knows he won't die, thanks to stringent American laws against actually using some form of torture that, gasp, might actually involve death in its extreme. Get it? In our genius, we've invented the first torture in 10,000 years that guarantees you won't die at the end.
So, like the al Queda and Taliban groups in Iraq and Afghanistan patiently waiting for the wars to end on their designated dates, so, too, today's torturee knows he just has to wait out a nasty water bath and he'll be safe and snug back in his cell in no time.
As far as Iran goes, all of the smart candidates everybody but Ron Paul said we ought to bomb their sorry ass into dust — but only as a last resort, they all hastily added.
Overall, and surprisingly, it struck me that Bachmann and Santorum both came across in a 'take no prisoners' sort of way. But all of the smart candidates everybody but Ron Paul was close behind. I have a couple of video clips on the torture meme at the bottom of this page.
I wouldn't say there was a clear-cut 'winner', in the sense that they all performed well, nobody made any blatant gaffes, no bombs were hurled, and, for that matter, no one said anything that really stood out. Well, except when Paul suggested we rename Washington, D.C. to 'Ahmadinejadville', but I think he just said it for laughs. It's hard to say, since it's so easy to confuse good stand-up comedy with Ron Paul's foreign policy.
Regarding one of my own ongoing memes, the word Obama was spoken a number of times, an excellent sign. Much like the way the CNBC Attack Machine woke them up last Wednesday night, I think Mr. Stopwatch kind of focused them on who the real enemy was on this night. And they've certainly had enough time for their staffers to tell them to quit goddamn breaking Reagan's 11th Commandment. That was really getting pitiful for a while, but they seem to have gotten it out of their systems.
I'm going to spend part of the day whipping up a little mid-season review for tomorrow and we'll take a fresh look at where we stand.
This was just as good, maybe even better, than the round table debate. The video is here. There's just something about the candidates sitting at a table that both lends itself to a more relaxed atmosphere, yet makes the whole event
Tracked: Nov 21, 12:08