Flutterby™! : Presidential debate

Got together with Bill and Phil last night to watch the debate of the Presidential debate. Wow, McCain is remarkably inarticulate and puts an amazing about of conditional clauses in his run-on sentences. I doubt the guy said a complete coherent sentence all of last night.

Having said that, I think McCain won because I think his voter base isn't looking for insightful reasoned answers, I think they're looking for a "booyah" football coach sort of experience. Stringing together a bunch of unrelated observations and ignoring that they don't actually lead to the conclusion that one is trying to draw has worked effectively for that voting block before. A great example is McCain's reference of the "Putin is our president" poster, evidence that shows that the political situation in South Ossetia is quite a bit more nuanced than McCain let on.

So McCain is the person you'd vote for if you're looking for a football coach style president.

However, another note... If I understand McCain's health care proposal, McCain is proposing to drop the employer's deduction for health insurance costs, replacing it with a maximum $5000 personal deduction. Anyone else think this is a way to force the individual states into providing health care? It takes a bunch of upper income people with good health care plans who will suddenly realize that they can deduct the full extent of their health insurance if they're paying it as taxes to their state, but not if they're paying it directly to the insurer.

Interesting that McCain is doing his damnedest to push health care completely into a government service.

Finally, what's up with Jim Lehrer's use of the word "ruler"? Truly we've lost our way...