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Friday, October 3, 2008
Go watch some October baseball…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ll be rooting for the Red Sox to go up 2-0 on the Angels.
Unlike those White Sox, who look to be going down 0-2 to the Rays. Some people just don’t know how to pick ‘em.
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Wall Street gets bailout — now we wait
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, the unacceptable has been accepted. Following the lead of the Senate, the House passed the Wall Street bailout bill by a vote of 263-171, with this version drawing significantly more support from both Democrats and Republicans than the first bill.
“I have decided that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something,” said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat who voted against the first bill. And that’s about right. There’s no guarantee that this is going to work, just an understanding that failure could have grave consequences and we better take our best shot at avoiding it.
President Bush will apparently sign the bill into law before the day ends. The markets will take the weekend to digest the effort, and we’ll see what happens next week.
UPDATE: All seven of Georgia’s Republican congressmen voted against the bill again.
“We are not convinced that this legislation is the best answer for hard-working taxpayers,” according to a joint press release. “We cannot preserve our free-market economy by sacrificing the very principles that underlie it.”
UPDATE II: And the Dow Jones average closes down 157 points for the day, after being up 300 points just as the bill was passing.
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Krauthammer tosses in the towel
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charles Krauthammer, the neocons’ neocon, gives it up for Obama:
“Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a ‘second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.’ Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition — do you really know who he is and what he believes?
Nonetheless, he’s got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.”
UPDATE: Obama continues to stretch his lead in the top tracking polls. Gallup just released its latest three-day poll, with Obama’s advantage growing from five points to seven points. That’s about the tracking poll average.
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One of the signs of a sick culture….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
…is that we pay people millions of dollars to be professional jerks.
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The morning after, Palin-palooza
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rudy Giuliani says that last night’s performance by Sarah Palin was one of the best debate performances he’s ever seen.
Seriously.
“Only the liberal media could deny her this victory,” said Mr. 9-1-1.
So I have a question: After saying something so foolish and dishonest, how does Giuliani look at himself in the mirror this morning? How does he expect people to take him seriously?
Really. I’ve seen better debate performances from a street wino. And he was arguing with himself, not with Joe Biden.
Of course, the same could be said of Palin. She had two opponents last night. She wasn’t in the same class with Joe Biden, and it showed. But more important for her, she did manage to defeat the Sarah Palin we saw with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, and for that her supporters are immensely grateful. She avoided another YouTube moment, an accomplishment perhaps but a pretty low standard for success.
In any other election year, with any other candidate for major office, people would have been appalled by Palin’s recital. Imagine her on the debate stage during the GOP presidential primaries with a performance like that — she would have been forced out of the race before the sun rose the next morning.
She showed no mastery or depth in any field, only a capacity to skate over the issue with memorized talking points. And even then she was often skating on thin ice.
Both early poll results confirm that impression. In a CBS poll of uncommitted voters, 46 percent called Biden the winner, while only 21 percent gave it to Palin. (I bet none any of those 21 percent called it one of the best debate performances in history.)
According to a CNN poll, 51 percent thought Biden did the better job, while only 36 percent called it for Palin. I’d be surprised if any later polls reversed that conclusion. Palin beat Palin, but she did not prove herself competent or qualified to be vice president of the United States of America.
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