mccain's best performance so far but is it too little too late?

I did a write-up after the first debate. I skipped the second and let the Saturday night live video present my observations - but this last debate I took notes!

the first thing I noticed right of the bat was that there was a much friendlier and human style greeting, body language, words, and facial expressions than the last two debates.

I liked the format and the seating arrangement and the moderator much better than the last two. prefer the ability for them to have more than one response and rebuttal - more like a conversation. much better questions, more detailed and a bit harder to answer than some of the fluff questions from the other debates. moderator feels more confident speaking up. I like that they show both candidates faces as the answers are given.

as for the dial for the undecided to show their approval or disapproval (yes I watched on cnn all three debates) - are there really THAT many truly undecided folks out there at this point? and if they are undecided why? are they simply uninformed because they haven't thought about the upcoming election yet? and if that is the case do their reactions matter all that much to us at home?

repeat of the tax argument from every other debate. obama = taxes on exxon and corporations and cuts for the other 95% of the country. mccain = tax cuts for businesses will encourage business and boost the economy. heard this before in the other debates. in fact heard this since 1980. speaking of which mccain does try to add the classic class warfare response.

obama emphasizing future - future business owners, future technologies and future trade issues thru long term education etc.

mcain keeps saying nuclear - which obama does not oppose. obama formerly did oppose offshore drilling increases but re-evaluated and changed his mind.

spending freeze still baffles me.

tax increases for the rich and corporations during a depression is unheard of AND spending freeze is also unheard of - Hoover increased taxes and Roosevelt increased spending (on a lot of cool projects mind you - Tennessee valley river authority - forestation, dust bowl recovery efforts, they weren't all in vain. there are places you can drive around today where you can see all the old giant trees in a forest all lined up in neat little rows, thanks to the increased spending. however - I don't think that it IS an either or situation. reduce inefficiency and waste in the government and collect that 10-20 billion PER MONTH we are spending for Iraq and there goes most if not all of the budget deficit.

senator mccain's face looks different - tanner and tighter?. but also much better for mcain for them to be seated close to each other rather than standing facing the audience (1st debate mccain made no eye contact with obama and the town hall where mcain seemed to wander about too much. mcain is looking at obama and the camera and the moderator much more than in the past debates and seems much more comfortable this time. obama continues to make more face to face eye contact with both mccain and the moderator. when mcain is talking obama looks and listens to mccain. when the moderator is speaking obama looks at the moderator. when obama answers he looks at the camera. still struck by the fact that mcain is doing much better than the last two times. mccain is much more alert and connected to the debate - as evidenced by his correcting the moderators about climate control (air conditioning) and climate change. maybe others will say it was inappropriate but it was a good catch I think.

"if you wanted to run against bush you should have run 4 years ago" good one, good one.

dial not responding to obama as well as it did in the past two debates

mcain did oppose the republican party on a lot of issues - but that is mostly the old mcain not the new mccain we have seen in the last 8 years after he lost to bush, precisely for that very fact - that he opposed his own party.

mccain wanted 10 debates? I'm tired already after 3!

it is fair to question why palin and mccain did not speak up when people at their rallies called out terrorist and kill him. I think that the video from those events have hurt mccain and palin allot and if they would have spoken out they could have taken the moral high ground

I'm glad ayers came up. I think obama needs to explain that - and needs to explain who else has "palled around" with ayers. annenberg and other republicans.
and how about the palins and their associations with the anti American Alaska independence party. that would have been a great follow up question.

I have never heard the word "scranton" more in my life than in the last two months - actually ever since clinton talked about learning to shoot a gun up there in the primaries. why is scranton some sort of "perfect America"? I've been to scranton when I was in the monastery up that way, I'm sorry, it sucks. AND I'm tired of them throwing out special needs children as much as I am tired of them throwing out the word scranton.

I think allot of people would have liked to see Iraq divided into three countries - sunni shia and kurdish - and then us get the heck out. not sure mccain scored any real points on that one.

I do like mccain's point that there is a difference between Canadian oil, Venezuelan oil, and Saudi oil.

my sexism in paying more attention to the male dial thingy much more than the female one. I think this is due to three factors - females are stereotypical "supposed" to be democrats. 2 the male dial moves up and down much less. 3 - my own simple sexism.

another observation about the dial - mcain gets good responses with shorter answers. the more he talks he tends to droop off. obama initially takes a dip many of the times when he starts to speak but the longer he speaks the higher his dials go - topping out many times when he finishes his longest answers.

"do you support controlling health care costs?" -this is more like the older debate's questions - a softball -- both candidates HAVE to say yes, and who wouldn't?

obama will cut your families per-year health care PREMIUM by 2500 dollars? that seems a bit of hyperbole. prevention and better efficiency is the key to being able to extend health care to all Americans - which I have finally decided is a right - and if it isn't - it should be. something that could be brought up is that medicine continues to develop scientifically at a very rapid pace - making cancer and aids and genetically inherited diseases much cheaper and easier to deal with so science and development - especially genetic - will end up lowering long term costs.

the uninsured who go to the emergency room ARE the reason your aspirin costs 20 dollars at the hospital. I was uninsured and I had to go the charity care route two times in the last five years. between the two of those hospitalizations the cost was probably 4 or 5 thousand dollars in the end between the two. charity care covered most of that - which means nothing other than the cost gets shifted to everybody else who has insurance. and the rest that was not able to be covered by charity care. that went onto my bankruptcy - which means that - in the end it got routed back to the insured as well. I cant get my tooth fixed or run to the doctor when I have diarrhea for a week or whatever - but the hospital cannot legally turn you away in an emergency. therefore - the currently insured pay higher premiums because I had NO insurance. and I am not an anomaly. I represent a huge percentage of the American population.

O. lord - roe-vs-wade, I think people are so tired of this issue - even though it is such an emotional issue - I think the passions on both sides are fading. again - scranton, special needs, abortion. 30 plus years of this issue - I am tired of it being THE pro-life issue - some are pro-life before you exit the womb but could care less about your life after you exit the womb. I don't honestly believe that ANYONE is pro abortion. the question is how do you best minimize abortions? abortions took place well before roe V. wade, even back to the times of the early roman empire abortions were performed. and they would continue to be performed if roe V. wade were overturned. what, in the end, will make the number of abortions lowest? I think reasonable sex education and the availability of contraceptives makes abortion much less likely.

did obama really need to segue from abortion into equal pay? yes they are "women's" issues - but that wasn't really the answer to the question.

from everything I have read this is where the majority of Americans have settled on the abortion question - America wants a time limit on abortions and do not support partial birth abortions, and they also want an exception for the life of the mother, rape and incest. and both extremes tend to ignore what the American people seem to have already decided.

I totally lost interest in the education debate. I must admit.

closing statements. mccain tries to distance himself from the republican party. wants to freeze spending but also simultaneously expand all sorts of programs (special needs kids, education, buy up mortgages?) otherwise a very good wrap up speech!

obama - change. and he is the stronger change candidate since he is not of the party that has run Washington the last 8 years - and which only 10 % think have us on the right track at present. mccain has tried to co-opt that slogan and I don't think it flies as well for him. but obamas ending speech was rather weak.

end analysis - mcain went back towards the old mcain people liked in 2000, he was much more comfortable and much more eloquent than in the last two debates. I think he may have decided to stop listening to all of his advisers and just be himself and it worked well. everyone is much more huggy-love this time around. mccain did better but I would still call this a tie. perhaps mcain will regain a couple of the points he lost over the course of the last debate but again, I think by this point most folks have already made up their minds and if that is true than obama will do what he did to the clintons, he will start out slow and then in the end cruise past them and take the prize. we shall see November 4th.

going to type this up now and transfer it to the blog - THEN I'm gonna go see what everyone else thot and whether I'm in touch or completely out of touch.

matty