Angle vs Reid: The dessert was better than the debate.

Were you as psyched up for this HUGE DEBATE as we were? Wow. I even invited guests, did a brisket, served cocktails and dessert. I have to admit that I was a tad embarrassed, with our new to Nevada friends here watching, that neither candidate exactly set the world on fire with eloquence speechifying.

Would that, just for a few minutes, Harry Reid could’ve channeled Rove or motor-mouth Ed Gillespie. Thank gawd, we had really good dessert to look forward to. Fortunately, Reid makes up for being professorial and occasionally tongue-tied with a decent command of facts - not that Angle is at all swayed by them.

Sigh.

Here’s what I was thinking through the debate:  When will it end? Sharron Angle - refusing to be influenced by evidence or reason, Harry Reid wandering off onto wonkishly long-winded answers. Slogans vs. substance. Fossil fueled Sharron Angle vs the always renewable power of Harry Reid. Neither is exactly Churchillian in their presence or style.

Amid the confusing non-answers, flubbed numbers, exaggerations, missed opportunities, disconnected attempts at Reagan-era boosterism and misplaced gravitas there is one point that stood up and saluted:

Sharron Angle has been living on the largesse of her BLM retiree husband’s federal pension and medical insurance for virtually her entire adult life. She’s right up there with a lot of the politicians she so loves to hate for what they supposedly have.

She came across as a self-absorbed, self-satisfied and yet jealous bitch who knew all her bizarre talking points to a ‘t’ - whether they were appropriate to the question or not.

Angle consistently ignores available data in favor of anecdotal particulars - such as mentioning that her father pays $800 for his monthly drugs despite being a wounded war veteran. The point went to Reid as he suggested that dear old Dad should come to the Reid office so that wiser heads might help him remedy such a ridiculous and unnecessary situation.

And typically, she engages in one ad hominum argument after another - attacking Reid personally. This works for her, since she would otherwise have to have an actual command of facts and issues beyond the simplistic TeaNut demagoguery.

On the subject of health care reform, Harry Reid remarked that, obviously, insurance companies wouldn’t do squat unless the government forced them to - so much for the free market. But Angle blundered forward carrying the banner of “Obama-care” saying “What we have here is a choice between the free market and Americanism…. We don’t have to force anyone to buy anything,” agreeing that she would not force companies to cover specific disorders.

The point went to Reid when Angle whined about not getting a coal-fired power plant in Ely or nuclear power at Yucca Mountain. Reid shot back that the reason just might be that he was working really hard to make Nevada a leader in renewable power - and related that he had just brought 1,000 jobs to Nevada with an LED plant. Sharron, duh!

That Angle had the bad manners and lack of class to suggest that the Senate Majority Leader “Man up” was telling. Refer to my earlier statement about being a bitch. She’s a no-class bitch spewing the same old simple-minded TeaNut drool. She even went on to attack Reid for uh, having money. Isn’t that sort of the point of her free-market driven American dream? Point goes to Reid for explaining that as a successful attorney and investor, that can happen, even while you put five kids through “100 semesters” of college.

I do have to hand it to Angle, she didn’t come off as well, crazy. That maniacal Stepford Wives smile was fixed and creepily unchanging. But that doesn’t seem to be a debate winning attribute. And you have to say that she really does embrace her own brand of fact-challenged crazy saying she was “glad to give voters the opportunity to see that Harry Reid has voted to give Social Security to illegal aliens.”

Sigh.

Nothing changed this evening. For those who’ve been paying attention all along - you knew when Angle was lying and dissembling, running for cover in slogans and tales of Ronald Reagan when confronted with actual uh, issue questions. Reid, for his part, dryly plodded onward delivering facts like he delivers jobs for Nevadans - just fine, if without style or flash, thank you.

What can you say about the woulda been match of the century?

I’m voting for Harry Reid.

-maven

The HBO Bill Moyers/Bill Maher discussion continues

Well, I got an email from YouTube today suggesting that I may want to consider joining their program to ‘monetize’ my video - since it has been so WILDLY popular. Who know that would happen? Yes, there have been more than 400 comments between the four video segments I posted.

Are you listening, HBO?

People want to hear the message. Don’t put people like Moyers on and then restrict access to only the paying public. The Moyers interview is bigger than that, and you should be, too.  Furthermore, think of all the potential customers there are within these 400 who just might sign up for HBO.

Somebody brought up an excellent point the other day about posting these interviews on a blog. What’s the difference between that and clipping an article from a magazine or newspaper (in the digital virtual sense), posting it or quoting from it for discussion in a public forum?

So many of the comments on YouTube are so good, and thought provoking that I thought I’d post them again here.

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The Weekly Wrap: Friday, 10 October, 2008

Put your guns down - evidently nobody on the right thinks civility has a place in the political forum, so they’re loading the crowds with mean-spirited and foul-mouthed rowdies. Former McCain strategist, John Weaver thinks they just might shoot themselves in the foot with this course of action:

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