really odd thing McCain said & other debate comments

I’m sure it was just some kind of misspeak, but what the fuck:

I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.

It’s about 2:45 in in this clip.

What he’s literally saying is something like ..ok nevermind it still doesn’t make sense (OK I’ll TRY…”Don’t use a plan that has already be proven wrong, because then it might almost fail….”).  Maybe what he meant though (at best), is that “you shouldn’t have a bad plan and expect it to work.”  Which is still a stupid thing to say in that it’s a truism.

More thoughts (after having finally watched the whole thing):

…the bit Obama said about McCain and the bomb Iran thing…BURN.  People were saying here were no real shots in this debate…that’s the first one I’ve seen so far, and it was a decent one.

McCain told too many stories for a debate, and his dismissiveness of Obama came off to me as condescending (whereas when Obama countered him he appeared politer to me).  His general performance was fine though.

Obama’s return on the bracelet thing could have been much sharper and a burn in itself , but I think he restrained himself.  Still, the point itself is a nice burn for the audience to fill in the blanks on (in the sense of “not everyone believes the same thing, and its silly to invoke one person as representing all people in that category”…which is one of the reasons I don’t think stories belong in debates).

woah…nuking Israel would be quite different from a Holocaust…ok, maybe it technically would be a “holocaust” (no capital)…but still, how often do you hear Americans talk about the two Japanese holocausts then?  I assume he’s referring to the capital H-olocaust to try and rile people up.  To mean the image of the Holocaust brings up the camps and systematic extermination & torture of a people.  Nuking would be a genocide or something equally foul, but I think the Holocaust stands separate.

Or am I just “parsing words” as McCain says Obama is.  That’s part of how I argue I guess…although it does bother at least a few people, I tend to think that that is part & parcel of debating & the political arena itself.  If someone says you do something or whatever and uses a particular word, and that word is technically wrong, you have to correct them or else that shit will get all memed up (it probably will anyway though).

…why is McCain smirking so much?  Whenever Obama talks about him specifically…I could swear I’ve seen him smirking on a few occasions.  Sure, you obviously don’t agree with him but this is another example of petty dismissiveness that, to me, makes him look more like a cranky old man than looking presidential.

I like how Obama was just like “alright lets move on” when McCain kept babbling.  I wonder if McCain was purposefully trying to make him angry?

What is “blood and treasure”?  Is this a technical term.  The blood I understand but…we have treasure? (Why do I have an urge to post some kind of lolcats image here??)  I mean, i know what he means (I *think*), but there are many better ways to say it.

McCain on taking care of veterans…hmmm mm.  The ..shoot whats the logical fallacy name for it: “appeal to the masses”?  The bit about   “they know I’ll take care of them”…that doesn’t fly.  OK so I’m not a trained debater, maybe that is legal, but it looks stupid to me.  You don’t win an argument by saying “Jim down the street knows I’m right!”  That means nothing.

He did manage to bring up the PoW thing.  Good job John, you stuck to the script!

Call me biased (which I am admittedly, so it would be fair for you to do so), but I think Obama came out ahead here.  He acted more Presidential, respectful & thoughtful.  He held his own on all the foreign policy stuff (which I guess people were thinking he couldn’t do), and he tied in those things with our current issues to bring home the point that they are all related.

And yes John, it does matter greatly whether or not you can admit that going into Iraq was WRONG in the first place.  The fact that you still can’t understand that says so much. The fact that he keeps talking about like it was the right thing to do…of course we have to “win” somehow now, since we are there, but that doesn’t me that we should have ever been there!  What kind of crazy logic that is I’ll never know.  Thankfully.