The Watering Hole, Thursday, October 11th, 2012: Tonight’s VEEP Debate

Posted on by

Now that the political pundits have finished wetting themselves over last week’s Presidential Debate, their focus for the last few days has turned to tonight’s Ryan vs Biden Vice-Presidential Debate. (I use “Ryan vs Biden” as opposed to “Biden vs Ryan”, as I consider this to be a “Visitor vs Home Team” contest.) The common discussion themes for the pundits boil down to:

1) Will Joe Biden blow it by losing his control – or his mind? and
2) Will Joe Biden blow Paul Ryan out of the water, thereby helping to make up ground lost this past week?

Personally – and this might just be hope speaking – I think that Biden’s very real intelligence combined with his decades of speaking experience will show Ryan’s reputation as the most intellectual (aka ‘wonkish’) guy on the Republican side to be overstated. (Then again, with today’s Republican acerebralists and anti-cerebralists, that overstated reputation doesn’t say much.)

Regardless, I believe that tonight we’ll be treated to a few memorable moments, whether they’re courtesy of a Biden fumble or Ryan eating humble pie. One that I would love to see, if foreign policy comes up during the debate, would be for Joe Biden to use his decades of often hands-on foreign policy experience to ridicule Paul Ryan’s supposed creds: “I’ve been in Congress for a number of years…I voted to send people to war…”

Foreign Policy magazine has put together what they consider to be “The 6 Best Moments in Veep Debate History.” While I may disagree as to whether the ‘moments’ that FP chose were the “best”, the article and videos make a nice walk down Vice-Presidential-Memory Lane.

This is our daily open thread–discuss something!

About these ads

125 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Thursday, October 11th, 2012: Tonight’s VEEP Debate”

  5. Happy real deal, fatherbob.

    Can anyone explain what the deal is with Mitt, his family and the spokespeople for the campaign? Mitt was supposedly transformed by a family intervention just before the debate yet his lies misspoken, taken out of context statements are still being corrected by campaign people. Who’s in charge? Who’s lies are we supposed to believe?

    I wonder if there are enough bedrooms in the Whitehouse for the entire family advisory/intervention team to keep Mitt mentally stable appearing like a caring person?

    • I think that’s why he’s building Camp David West in La Jolla with the car elevator so nobody can see who is coming and going. Otherwise there’d be no reason to do this project during the election.
      I was thinking it was to sneak in his wives but maybe it’s to let the shrink sneak in. The media is so lazy it could be anything.

    • I heard that Mitt’s kids coached as to how to act in the debate, which proves one thing: That whole family is made up of despicable amoral assholes.

  6. Here’s hoping Biden will stay on the attack, insisting that Ryan spell out each and every program and loophole cut that he says will be in the budget balancing act. Make him account for every dime of savings, then turn that into the REAL impacts on American Families.

    Force PolRyan to explain why sequestration is in front of us. Why did he vote no on the committee that was entrusted to come up with compromise? Why won’t he agree to include the wealthiest of Americans in the budget deficit effort?

  9. Happy Maternal Expulsion Day, F-Bob.

    But if the GOPers have their way, shouldn’t we be moving our birthdays back 9 months? Which means we’re all older, which means we get SS sooner…hmmm….

    • I don’t know how secret it was, most folks would assume that an embassy annex is CIA. I would not be surprised if the two ex-SEALs were contracted to CIA. It is however just irresponsible to began holding hearings on a tragedy in order to score some cheap partisan points without first holding some sort of closed session in order to get an idea of just what anthills you might kick over. Sometimes events are minimized and misinformation allowed to spread for very good reasons. Issa and his ilk are a threat to national security.

    • Attempting to undo the damage, the Republicans follow up by accidentally revealing the base is still active…

      not anymore…

      • Republicans could fall in a bed of roses and still end up smelling like shit. So much stupidity.

  13. Today, from the International Monetary Fund, of all places…
    IMF Chief Lagarde to Europe: Lighten Up on the Austerity
    Key excerpt:
    “The fund warned earlier this week that governments around the world had systematically underestimated the damage done to growth by austerity. Ms Lagarde said that, given this reassessment of the impact of fiscal consolidation on output, it was no longer sensible for governments in Europe to stick to budget deficit targets, should growth disappoint.”

    Mr. Ryan, how do you interpret this statement, in light of your fixation on cutting programs and services that will negatively impact the economic growth needed to produce JOBS?
    h/t FDL

    • Galt: I’m not taking any instructions form any fag commie Euro…. and a French woman at that!

    • Gee, back in grammar school, being a well-spoken bespectacled blonde female brainiac was the kiss of death when it came to male interest.

      We’ve come a long way, nerdy girls!

    • And you know what was even hotter about that clip – she still had 20 seconds left on the clock – and said “Nope, I nailed it – thanks anyway” – only when the mod asked her again did she kick him one more time to make sure he was in a pool of his own blood, teeth and drool on the floor.

    • Just because you remember something your mother or father told you when you were younger does not mean you should repeat it verbatim, especially if it was many, many wears ago, when people were less respectful in their choice of words. You need to stop before you speak and apply today’s standards. There were plenty of ways he could have told the story without repeating exactly what his father said. And you;re right, Pete. There is no context in which the phrase would have been inoffensive. Besides, even the sentiment has a “blame the victim” mentality to it.

  16. This man is running for Governor of my state, and, believe it or not, this isn’t the reason I’m not voting for him. ;)

    • Let me guess – its because he sued the Feds to strike down the ACA. Tea party toadying did it for the Zoo, eh? He seems to have an OK rep as the AG, competent, moderate – and then he went all foamy-at-the-mouth Teabagger on the ACA….

      Compared to Inslee, someone with at least a decent idea of how to bring high-tech, energy industry jobs on a wide range of smart green techs – not just the big names, but some really interesting legislative approaches…. INslee has ideas, McKenna? Not so much.

      • All that, and he has a mean mouth and shifty eyes.

        Inslee has a brain and an open face.

        These are not the only things to be considered when voting, but they are significant first impressions.

    • The Rudester hits the mofo ball out of the park, past the parking lot into the next county.

  19. Issa has a new windmill. As usual, I predict he will waste a bunch of valuable time that could be spent looking into malfeasance by the last administration or Wall Street moguls and find nothing is amiss. But? The mere fact that he’s launching an investigation is all the FAUX”News” crowd will need as “proof” of a deep, dark, conspiracy.

    http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/11/994151/gop-plans-congressional-investigation-into-september-jobs-number-conspiracy/

  20. Jon Stewart on polls. It’s good but he forgot the weird bit. The bit where Reichwhiners claim polls that show them losing either don’t matter or are inaccurate while those showing Dems losing are often quoted in the same paragraph. Then there’s the equally weird bit about how Reichwhiners react to bad polls by attacking the polls while Dems react by correcting the lies that led to the shift. I might add that the most disturbing polls of all are those that show most people think Mittens won the debate. Obviously, it’s just plain stupid to claim that someone who lied out their ass at every turn won a debate.

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-those-divergent-useless-and-acc

  22. Pew polled VP debate expectations:

    By a 42% to 25% margin, more independents expect Ryan to do better than Biden in the debate. Most members of both parties predict victory for their party’s candidate, but Republicans are more confident than Democrats. Nearly eight-in-ten (78%) Republican voters say Ryan will do the better job in the debate. Fewer Democrats (62%) expect Biden to do better.

    • I still desperately want to see either of the Dem candidates say; “that’s not what you said yesterday, last week, or a year ago”. “Were you lying then or are you lying now?”

      • I think Galt wants to be known for being The Man with the Ayn Rand Plan. I think he wants the respect for being the one to create it – he believes it, he really does, he doesn’t like hiding it. That’s the difference between him and Gekko, Galt is a true beleiver, Gekko will just say anything, he doesn’t really believe in anything himself.

        If Joe can cajole Galt into saying: “Yes I am John Galt and want to bring forth Atlas Shrugged on Earth!” – then its over for Gekko/Galt.

        Rob Reich has the right advice.

        • If Joe goes off down the path of saying: “This is just the same old shit Republicans have tried since Reagan”… then I think Galt will wnat to own his plan – he’ll want to ‘be on that wall!’. Galt wnats to tell us all the truth…. because as Jack says, he knows we ‘can’t handle the truth’.

          OK Im done prognosticating … I’m not watching this stuff.. just lobbing sh*t from over here.

  24. Jennifer Granholm, who prepped Biden for his Palin showdown, shares what the candidates should be focusing on this time:

    “You know, Joe Biden is a passionate person and he, one of the reason [sic] I love him, wears his heart on his sleeve. So if I’m on the Ryan side I’m going to want to see if I can goad him some way that gets him personally upset, in some way to knock him off balance. See if I can get him to commit a gaffe.

    On offense for Biden, I would go right after the differences in policy between Ryan and Romney. Ryan has got positions that are extreme. I’d go right at that, and try to exploit the differences between the two …. To go at the policy differences between the president and the vice-presidential candidate is a good strategy, and I imagine it can be flipped this time around. There is not going to be daylight between Biden and Obama, but there is daylight between Ryan and Romney. Going after that, exploiting that and showing people what Ryan’s positions really are would be an important tactic.”

    • that was on the Daily Show this week – 1936 – Prescott Bush and US fascism on the march. Thank FSM he won that one.

  27. Chris Matthews is making a dumbfuck woman in Kentucky look like the idiot she is. She was screaming out “COMMUNIST!!”, so he asked her what she meant by that and, naturally, she couldn’t say.

  28. Below is video of the president stumping in Florida today. Josh Marshall says that this “is the first time since the debate I’ve really seen him with a groove, like he’s ready to do this”:

    • I think they should use real professional type debate judges instead of TV personalities.

Comments are closed.