ScottMcDaniel dot org

First impressions:

* Palin was meant to be a spokesperson. She’s folksy and has the same scary charm Reagan had. That being said, the winks and cutesy lieele head tilts were over the top and clear pandering.

* Biden put the hockey mom myth to bed by talking about being a single dad who lost a wife and daughter, then choking up.

* When the fact check is done tomorrow, the confidence her delivery had is going to dissolve. FactCheck is up and running.

* Biden knows foreign policy better than anyone on either ticket. He took that easily.

* Her energy expertise is laughable and as a talking point more so.

* I was amused how she kept saying ‘i want to respond on ___’ when that wasn’t actually even brought up, just to hit her talking points.

The debate will be scored as who is more likable vs. who is more competent. So it’s going to go either way.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/vote-missers/

Good thing he made it back to the Hill to solve this crisis! Hopefully they’ll all recognize him.

---

Poor Joe Biden. He just can’t make his big brain cooperate with his big mouth.
:)

---

Referring to the Depression:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “look, here’s what happened.”

Jesse Walker of Reason expounds upon this particular thought:

And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, “Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?”

Sigh.

---

And if you didn’t see THIS one, well shame on you. Joe introduces someone he has never met before – a handicapped gentlemen.

It’s like watching ‘The Office’ in real time, isn’t it? For what it’s worth, he recovered well and it wasn’t like he did it on purpose – still, cringeworthy.

---

And finally, Joe says what we were all thinking about the tacky McCain vs Computer ad:

True, but not necessarily good for the campaign, JB.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26593948/

“I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment,” Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.”

Meanwhile Obama says he was too flippant in answering that the decision as to determine when conception begins was ‘above my paygrade’:

“And so, all I meant to communicate was that I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions,” he said in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12988.html

John McCain today announced a running mate who he met only six months ago and who he spoke with just once on the phone about the position before offering it in person earlier this week.

McCain’s first encounter with Sarah Palin came at a Washington meeting of the National Governor’s Association in February, according to a campaign-provided reconstruction of how the little-known Alaska governor was thrust into the national spotlight. The two discussed the position by phone on Sunday before McCain invited her and her husband to Arizona to formally make the offer. McCain, joined by his wife, Cindy, did just that yesterday morning at their home near Sedona, Ariz.

Look, I’m absolutely fine with McCain choosing a female VP – but to choose her to simply try to win the Hillary voters (who are rapidly dissipating and, let’s face it, crazy) leans more than a little toward pandering. There were so many other choices that could have solidified him with both the conservative (and some independents) base, including Meg Whitman of eBay.

PS: The next pundit who says ‘she has more executive experience than Obama and/or Biden’ without also clarifying that McCain has no executive background either is going to get a Xerox of my left cheek in their email box.
Do you really, really, really want to go down the road that says 1.5 years of governorship in Alaska is equal to 30+ years in the Senate or Congress?