josh marshall

Cynthia and I watched the debate from beginning to end, on C-Span — no talking heads for us. McCain came out at the beginning as sharp, clear, and focused, a better communicator than Obama. But that didn’t last long. After a while it was clear that at least Obama had thoughtful, well-constructed answers, especially under the time constraints and the fact that responses were not allowed, although Obama managed to get a few in anyway. It became clear that McCain was lying a lot of the time, or simply mis-informed. Obama may have been gilding the lily a little but at least he had trains of thought in his answers. McCain tended to jump around a lot, and kept opening with “My friends” which came across as phony after a while. His worse moment was when he thought he was being cute with that snide side-pointing at Obama as “that one”. Of course, I’ve been reading what others have been saying: Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum, NYT editorial, plus several more in this vein. The snap polls have all given the debate to “That One” by a solid margin.

No, he’s not taking an aphrodisiac to avoid choking later on a Viagra pill, he’s just confused about who Zapatero, the Prime Minister of Spain, is. He evidently thinks he’s one of those South American bad guys. Josh Marshall proves this quite nicely in this video of the confused repartee between McCain and an interpreter from a Spanish language radio station:

Josh points out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top foreign policy adviser and full fledged neoconservative, says McCain was not confused at all, and was simply refusing to commit to a White House meeting with Zapatero as part of policy. So, who is running the McCain campaign, McCain or his handlers? Does McCain know what’s going on? Does the rain in Spain fall mainly on McCain? (I read that on somebody’s blog comment today.)

Josh Marshall provides the facts on John McCain’s lie that Sarah Palin vetoed earmark spending while governor. Josh calls it McCain’s lie of the day.

Josh Marshall asks: Palin an Earmark Reformer? Simply Laughable. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Let’s put lipstick on that pig!

One of my morning reads to capture the news and find out what’s going on in the world has always been Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. He’s got a great post this morning on the hysteria of the neocons over the Russian response to Georgian troops invading Ossetia. Here’s the closing paragraph of this short four paragraph read:

Watching the Bennetts and the Krauthammers get all jazzed up about Georgia as the new Afghanistan, with all the painfully awkward nostalgia and excitement of an 80s era Gilligan’s Island reunion flick is entertaining. But much less so when you realize these jokers might be running the government in six months.

Of course McCain is right in there with the rest of them, championing them in fact and sending his surrogates to Georgia. Well, we’ll see whether the whole thing doesn’t blow over in a couple weeks. I’ll come back here then with an update!

I got this video from the Josh Marshall TPM blog as posted by David Kurtz. It shows pretty clearly how Obama will begin to correct the Bush-created imbalance favoring the super-rich in this country. Go Barack Go!

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo again. This time he finds some pretty good raunch in Chris Matthews’ leg, Roger Clemens’ seedy lawyers, and Mike Huckabee’s squirrels. Pretty funny in a disgusting sort of way.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has a nice analysis of the super delegates legitimacy problem followed by a couple recent polls from Texas and Ohio here:

A friend of Josh Marshall points out that another good moment for Hillary in the Saturday night pre-NH debate came when the moderator asked her about her likability, or lack of it. Josh suggests it was her best moment and Obama’s worst.

I agree it was a good moment for her. Obama’s “You’re likable enough.” response may have been just a tad condescending? Although maybe not?

Amazing how you have to have it all to win an election in this day and age of intrusive media.

Here’s Ron Paul on Meet The Press yesterday, December 23, 2007. If only he weren’t for elimination of the income tax! His foreign policy, which he gets into in the later part of this interview is right on! Listen to Tim Russert try to trick him into saying he supports Al Qaeda. It doesn’t work!

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has a worthwhile post on the Ron Paul alternative universe here.