What is the media smoking and/or drinking that is making them even consider that McCain won?

[ck4829]

The Issues - Obama by a landslide
Presidential look - Obama by a landslide
Cool under pressure - Obama by a landslide

Obama kicked McCain into the stratosphere tonight, I really don't know how anyone can see otherwise.

[YDogg]

1. consider the source; these assholes have a vested interest in pimping for mcfailure

[McCCain4retirment]

5. I'm watching CNN,and they seem to not be bending down for McCain

[Kingofalldems]

2. Someone who continually fidgets, sneers and makes faces

automatically loses in my book.

[sandnsea]

3. Republicans are bullies and like other bullies n/t

[RoyGBiv]

4. Drinking at the trough of ...

... what gets us the best ratings.

Now that the opinion polls are coming out, they are changing their tune.

[Supersedeas]

24. make it close...make it 'stealable/Dieboldable'

[dudewheresmycountry]

6. spin, msnbc and cnn has theses polls

msnbc, obama 50% and mccain 36 ....... cnn, obama 60% mccain, whatever

[MrToby]

7. If I Have One Criticism of Obama Tonight,

it would be the number of times he said, "John is right" or some variation there of.

It just provides grist for the RNC puke machine. They are already splicing them all together for an ad and to put out on YouTube.

On content, I think Obama did great except perhaps on "the surge" issue. He really needs to point out the fact that the tribal leaders turning on the insurgency has been as big or bigger factor in the turn around in Iraq.

[Wizard777]

22. Not really it takes the wind out of McCains sails on his claims that Obama is partisan.

[MrToby]

27. IT DIDN"T TAKE THEM LONG....

Here is the first attack ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec3aC8ZJZTc

[Juche]

31. Whats wrong with that

To me, that shows Obama is bipartisan and pragmatic. If he mindlessly disagreed with everything mcCain says that would be a turnoff.

If you ask me, that mccain ad will just make moderates and independents more likely to like Obama.

I love how they make fun of Obama for agreeing with mccain, then say 'is he ready to lead? no.'. What does that say about the guy he is agreeing with then?

[HughMoran]

32. Repeating RW talking points

...just like you did in the other thread today.

BUSTED!

[redqueen]

8. Dunno but it's likely the same stuff that made them think that Iraq was a threat,

that Chvaez stepped down, and that there was nothing unusual about the Bush v. Gore case.

[eilen]

14. I think he realized that to the media

and general public opinion, the meme is that the surge was successful and nothing will convince them otherwise. It is a "popular fact" and he did identify what was successful about it in the debate--and it is not what McCain and the Bush administration are pushing.

It was something about the objective being to give the Iraqi politicians some "breathing room" and that it was successful for that objective.

[lolly]

9. Upton Sinclair?

Wasn't he the one who said "It's difficult to get a man to believe something if his job depends on not believing it."

[katukov]

10. Bush has set the bar VERY low for Republicans

If you recall Reagan, the "great communicator", mostly got his legendary oratorical reputation by mouthing platitudes about morning in America and urban legends about welfare queens, all the while yearning for a 1950's movie culture than never existed.

Bush set the bar even lower.

All McCain has to do is speak in complete sentences.

Obama's ability to think and speak on his feet, and his command of facts, is impressive. He would have much greater moral force if he would ditch the Washington Consensus bullshit about how we have to police the world.

[leftofthedial]

11. they are smoking corporate pole

as always.

[ColbertWatcher]

12. Forget what the GOP-controlled media is smoking, what was McCain on?

Uppers? Did they inject him with something?

He was up way after his bedtime and he wasn't cranky.

Anyone know?

[NoName Left]

20. He seemed planty cranky to me. Nasty Little Punk showed up.

He didn't erupt into spewing foul language and spit all the way to Obama's podium. For McCain, that's slef-control and not being "more cranky than usual".

[ColbertWatcher]

23. I still think he was on something. n/t

[bertman]

13. I'm sorry to say that I wasn't smoking or drinking anything dammit!! and I agree with them.

Three of us rabid Obama supporters sat through the whole debate then got up like zombies. Wife says it was a boring piece of crap that nothing new came up. Mother-in-law says McAnus looked a lot better and smarter than she thought he was. I thought Obama was too nice when McAnus was insulting him and didn't call McAnus out on some Very Big Whoppers, and agree that McLiar seemed to get in some very good punches.

But maybe I should have been smoking something or chugging a few. I hope you guys are right.

[crazy homeless guy]

15. I only saw the last half hour, but from what I saw...

I would say that McCain had the better debate. He got several jabs in at Obama, saying he was naive. He constantly controlled the conversation by simply talking over Obama, and with a more forceful voice. Obama is going to have to deliver his message with a stronger tone if he wants it to ring in the ears of the people watching these debates.

I don't know why Obama doesn't deliver a few straight one liners to knock McCain off his talking points.

Such as, "...to beat your enemy you need to know who your enemy actually is. McCain continously confuses Sunni and Shittes. McCain does not know who the enemy is. How can you defeat an enemy, when you don't know who you are fighting."

or maybe...

"Let me explain what is naive. Naivity is beleiving that we are winning a war against Al Queida in Iraq, while they are regrouping in Pakistan. That is naive."

Basically, it is a republican strategy. Attack the other person on what their strong point is supposed to be.

[indie_voter]

21. mmmm.... pizza. n/t

[onenote]

16. same shit that folks here were smoking/drinking when they insisted Mccain had suffered a stroke

Look, McCain is a relatively poor public speaker, but by insisting that he's a doddering, speech slurring, droopy eyed, one-foot in the grave fool, we contribute to a lowering of exepctations that actually makes him look better than he is. I hope that sort of shit stops now.

I think that the debate was basically a draw. McCain was barely present for the first part of the discussion of the economy. He had nothing. He got a bit more energized when it came to foreign policy. But he didn't land any serious hits. Nor for the most part, did Obama.

The game with debates these days is looking for "gotcha" moments. This one didn't have any and it will be forgotten within a week, imo.

[Beregond2]

17. Two reasons.

1. They are terrified of not seeming "balanced," unless they are on Fox.
2. They have a vested interest in keeping any race close. No one is interested in a race with a foregone conclusion.

[NoName Left]

26. They can't grasp that "fair" is not the same as "balanced" like a

teeter-totter. When blatant evidence of lies and nastiness by one campaign heavily outweighs an opposing campaign, insisting that they are equal perpetrators is unfair and unbalanced. This blathering is one of the things that has moved Traditional News Media into the entertainment category.

[Supersedeas]

18. McAdvertising $$$ from the Corporate Sponsors

[torbird]

19. It was closer than that

They both hewed to their dedicated paths. It came down to a difference of styles. If you like 20 year-old anecdotes and sour, defiant declarations, you probably liked McCain. If you liked somewhat vague, but confident, sensible positions, then Obama did well.

I thought McCain edged Obama.

BUT, McCain was supposed to win this one no contest. As MSNBC said just after, this debate topic was right in his wheelhouse. He didn't hit a homerun. So, Obama did better than the media thought he would.

In a twisted way, that's a win.

Anyway, it's more about who wins the after-argument, not who won the argument.

[Lil Missy]

25. The post debate polls show Obama won in every single category.

[warren pease]

28. It's their job. They're well-paid to support status quo tools...

Their corporate massuhs will absolutely not permit them to ask questions that could lead to uncomfortable moments for their pet reactionary corporate suck-ups.

People think it's all about ratings and share and ad rates and "quality sponsors." Nonsense. Their owners couldn't care less whether they turn a profit or bleed red ink for years. There's a lot more going on than just getting immediate cash.

The intrinsic value of harnessing the greatest propaganda medium in recorded history, and using it to pound home the message that the solid status quo is always better than the unpredictability of real change that moves society away from the status quo. Certainly the rich are fully invested in that theme and they have the overstuffed off-shore accounts to prove it.

Naturally, they want to preserve the system that made them rich fully intact. They also must discourage the other 98 percent -- those who bear the lash marks the status quo inflicts on the peasants -- from wanting any sort of change at all because TV teaches them that change is scary and uncertain.

The six gluttonous mega holding companies who control between 82 and 94 percent of everything Americans see, hear and read from mainstream outlets (amazingly known as "trusted sources") didn't go on their monopolistic buying sprees to add more revenue streams.

It's probably impossible to measure in dollars the real value of owning and controlling their own dedicated propaganda machine, and which is welcome in hundreds of millions of homes each day. But it's a good bet that a TV network that constantly loses money is still worth far more as a message machine than as a revenue source.

How many hundreds of billions of dollars do you suppose the rich have acquired by assigning their personal bullshit generators to endlessly pound home the stream of pure bullshit that tells viewers: status quo - very good; change - very bad. As with any other big lie, this one seems to have worked out pretty well.

The fact that there's even a debate on the idea of giving Wall St. criminals what little remains in the US treasury -- no strings attached, no higher reviewing authority, nothing at all for those victimized by these thieves -- that there's even one sub-human asshole willing to defend the largest single ripoff in history...

But there's hundreds of thousands of them -- in congress, among the insufferable TV pundits and, of course, in the banking and financial "services" business -- and they're not remotely embarrassed to take the side of the massuhs against the American people.

Everybody not named Pollyanna knows the beltway pols have been bought and sold so many times they can't even keep track of which of their "campaign donors" they're working for on any given day. And nobody really seems to think that's even a little weird -- a so-called democracy based on prostitution and bribery.

That's because there are also tens of millions of Americans whose brains have been blasted with so much propaganda they've turned into a suety pulp of dead cells. These people celebrate their own stupidity by advocating for the massuhs and against their own best interests.

That's how it is in the parallel universe, where so many people shoot themselves in the foot so many time that it's amazing the entire country isn't in wheelchairs.

It's one thing to get people to sit down, shut up and take what they're given. It's another to suck them into supporting status quo corporate malevolence while they applaud their own screwing.

This wide a gap between fact and fantasy isn't sustainable in a country where the people are allegedly in control. Meaning they're supposed to know enough about the issues of the day to be able to share ideas and opinions on something a bit more important than the soul-crushing angst of select starlets and tarts, d-class celebrity fuck-ups and public pukings captured on video, lipstick on pigs, angels dancing on the heads of pins and all the rest of the junk that's mostly replaced useful information in the former land of the free.

I know for sure that if this kind of "journalism" is allowed to continue -- the truth becoming more and more irrelevant and meaningless by the month, unorthodox facts suppressed, buried or ignored -- we're looking at a nail the size of a railroad spike driven into the heart of the great democratic experiment.

And there's the goddamn Bushies, waiting for the death rattle so they can rob another corpse of anything that's not welded to the earth's core.


wp

[Vinca]

29. The corporations are going to have to pay taxes if Obama is elected.

Since that looks increasingly likely, the orders have probably gone out: pimp McCain.

[deutsey]

30. Serving their corporate masters well n/t

[Sheltiemama]

33. Let me tell you something.

As a member of the media, I want you all to know that what those at the top think and what the rank and file think usually are at odds. If a paper endorses the Republican candidate, odds are the folks in the newsroom are disgusted with that choice.