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October 09, 2004
The blogosphere fact-checks some asses again
Previous debate fact-checking here and here.First, a brief interruption for some polls:
Bush is way ahead according to CNN.
ElectoralVote.com has Kerry ahead for the first time in a month.
Slate's EV projection shows Bush still leading but the gap has narrowed.
Rasmussen has Bush at 50%, "the first time all year that either candidate has hit the 50% mark in our survey."
All the futures markets dipped for Bush after the first debate and then leveled off.
Now for the debate.
First, here's a roundup of fact-checking sites.
Here is the Bush site's response to Kerry's lies, with cites. Lots of good comments on the debates in this thread.
Drinking game: Every time Kerry says "I have a plan." If only he would tell us what it is. (BTW what is that shit he keeps repeating about "training Iraqi troops faster"? Is he going to put amphetamines in their food or something?)
Tom Maguire, in the midst of an ongoing fisking of the debate:
At one point, Bush contrasted his support for Israel with Kerry's ongoing desire to win an international popularity contest. I assume Kerry rejoined with an expressionof support for Israel, but I was in and out of the room. If Kerry did not, declare this race over now.You wish. I wish. But at this point Kerry has 80% of the Jewish vote. My people have their heads up their asses. They don't want to leave the Democratic plantation, and they hate to think of themselves as capable of killing people, even terrorists. They would rather start 10 new dialogue groups with any marginalized powerless Muslim pundit they can find, where they hope to be loved and spared from dhimmitude if they concede every point and quote the Torah a lot on Peace and Justice and sing Arab songs they just learned in a multicultural workshop where they respectfully listened to angry Muslim feminists denounce Zionism as a colonialist plot. They are never daunted by the fact that their overtures are not returned, and more dialogue is always preferable to changing their self-image as terminally nice peace-loving people.
Now, the Israelis are different. After years of dealing with their equivalents of 9-11, they have few illusions. And they poll very differently on our election.
Charles thinks he knows why Kerry avoided taking a stand on Israel. He knows he's got the majority of the Jewish vote anyway. I hope this backfires on him. Lots of Jews in Pennsylvania and Florida.
Kerry floats some dubious statistics on Missouri's contribution to the Iraq War. (This is actually a question about the sacrifices of our allies, but the point is that Kerry managed to denigrate them again, and used poor math to do it.)
Michelle Malkin on Kerry's Medicare drug proposal. These wonky policy arguments make my eyes glaze over, but I get the impression that Bush would rather encourage a free market in drug research and production, even if the drugs cost more in some cases, and Kerry would rather drive down costs by regulating the market sufficiently, which would dampen to incentive to develop new drugs. Do I have that right? Of course it would be nice to have both cheap drugs and lots of productive research. Maybe Kerry can wave the magic wand that speeds up training for Special Ops and Iraqi soldiers, and make it happen.)
Deacon on the horror of bad relations with Europe.
Maguire on stemcell research.
Some choice Kerry quotes on allies and "wrong" wars, plus heated comments.
How the Times is trying to spin the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, now that they see a possible Halliburton angle. More heated comments. Notice the democrats.org ad you have to sit through to get to the NYTimes article?
More Kerry demagoguery.
An illustration of Bush's tax policy as applied to small-business owners.
The truth about the Kevlar vests. (You knew that line about a "bake-sale" was too good to be true.)
The truth about Gen. Shinseki. Even the media pundits are balking at this one.
Maggie Gallagher agrees with me on the meaning of Bush's facial expressions (Debate #1: Disgust. Debate #2: Incredulity.) :
It was not the brilliance of Kerry's debating tactics but the absurdity of the essence of the new Kerry position: The war on Iraq is an easy thing. The reason bad things are happening is Bush is bungling.Can I recruit some of the ornery feminists who read this blog to email this guy and tell him - politely! - how clueless he is? (letters@prospect.org) This is the most drippingly condescending thing I have read about the "women's vote" in this entire election season.Give that man a wand and slap a pair of wings on his back: John Kerry is running for fairy godmother! Our allies are opposed to the war? A swoosh of the Kerry wand and President Kerry will have the French and Germans rushing to our rescue in no time. Iraq needs a new army to defend itself? Zap bing -- the Kerry touch will make training an Iraqi army faster and easier. Al-Qaida and other terrorists are pouring over the border to join the fight? When Kerry is elected, the guerrilla insurgency will magically disappear. A summit? How brilliant! Why didn't President Bush think of that?
Certainly, this isn't the kind of angle that will have been discussed on the cable post-game shows. The few women permitted into the club are busy proving that they can be one of the guys (Andrea Mitchell) or that they can be just as sycophantic toward Bush as the big boys (Candy Crowley); they know that's the only way they can stay on television, so they sure aren't there to represent their sex.That's rich. A man deciding which female viewpoints best represent their gender, as if we are all alike and he's the one to decide who we are. Check out his descriptions of Bush and Kerry and tell me if he watched the same debate the rest of us did.
In fact, I have some equally anecdotal ammunition for the other side: It was a beautifully warm clear night, so I walked from the Metropolitan Republican Club through Central Park, discussing the debate with a guy who also lives on the West Side. His informal polling of co-workers, wife's friends, neighbors, shows what he calls "the ugly factor": which candidate would you rather wake up next to for four years? The answer is not John F Kerry. Now that's as silly a reason for picking a candidate as "wanting to join the boy's club" or "Bush comes across like a bully," and I am going to assume the percentage of women who vote based on policy is the same as for men. But if Tomasky thinks security moms take Kerry seriously or are turned off by Bush's "swagger," he needs to get out more.
More ammunition:
. . . I was concerned that Bush was hurting himself on the "likeability" side by talking too vehemently, but my wife, a much better judge of these things, was impressed by his forcefulness and command. And, whereas she thought (as I did) that Kerry looked very good in the first debate, she was not impressed with the Senator tonight. . . . Kerry made no meaningful attempts at humor and smiled much less than in the first debate, though he did smirk a few times. Bush managed to remain deadpan, and even tried a joking reference to the scowling of the first debate. Advantage, Bush.The Europeans thought Bush won.
At least one debate questioner found Kerry's $200k remark condescending, and says he's now voting for Bush. Way to go, John!
Judith | 10/09/04 at 08:26 PM | Categories: - GOTV '04
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