===
Biden just wins, Obama wins bigger
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(7:12pm)
If anything, Joe Biden probably had the best of Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate. He came across tougher and more seasoned, laughing at the pup beside him and pitching it straight to the folks.
Trouble is, of course, he had a terrible hand to defend.
Ryan frustrated me by being too deferential in letting Biden heckle him, interrupt and talk over. He protested only once, when he could have named and shamed the tactic.
But that said, Ryan seemed more the man with a plan, even if some bits of it seemed not quite to add up. He seemed more clued up on the detail, and his closing speech was much stronger than Biden’s suddenly unfocussed pitch. I can see why some people might actually prefer to have a nerd like Ryan in charge of stuff than good old Irish Joe, with his bluster, hello-honey smile and whiskey-smooth voice. I can also understand why many women in particular might have found Biden’s interrupting and smirking a big off-put. Not at all (vice) presidential. That said only one of the two looked tough.
But whoever won, the Obama camp will be the more relieved. No one expected much from Biden and a bad loss would have given a big push to the Romney bandwagon, feeding the narrative of Obama decline. That story has been checked. A Ryan loss would have meant much less damage to Romney than a Biden loss to Obama.
Caveat: Biden is fast with the easy answer. Much will depend on whether some of his answewrs where pure baloney. I don’t trust his claim that the Adminstration was not asked for more security by its diplomats in Libya before the September 11 attacks. If that proves false....
UPDATE
But what do I know?
UPDATE
How sweetly Biden speaks, telling us what isn’t true:
Vice President Joe Biden accused Rep. Paul Ryan of putting two wars on the “credit card,” and then suggested he voted against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq…
“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.”Then Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
And on Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.
UPDATE
I thought Paul Ryan’s performance was highly disappointing. He came across as weak and submissive. There were many opportunities for him to turn to Biden and say, “Joe: shut up! It’s my turn.” But he never did it…
Frankly, I expected much more from Ryan, and he let us down. A disengaged viewer would have seen Joe Biden as the much more forceful, much more knowledgeable candidate. Worse, Biden’s victory gives the Democratic media exactly what they were looking for: an opportunity to declare the beginning of the Obama comeback. This was a needless defeat;.. Let’s just hope that Biden overplayed his hand and TV viewers thought he was a weirdo.
When Ryan pointed out that our mission in Libya had asked for more security personnel, Biden claimed that the administration wasn’t aware of any such request. He said: “We weren’t told they wanted more security; we did not know they wanted more security there.”
Yet, as Josh Rogin points out, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya during the relevant time period testified before Congress that they repeatedly requested more security, and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests. Indeed, Eric Nordstrom, the top regional security officer in Libya during the summer, testified that Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, turned down his request for more security.
Biden was therefore being dishonest ...
Biden also tried to dance his way around the fact that the administration put out false information on the nature of the attack in Benghazi, claiming that it was a protest, not a terrorist attack. He blamed the intelligence community, insisting that the administration simply relayed the intelligence it was given.
This dodge too appears to be dishonest. Jonathan Tobin notes that, according to reports, the intelligence community knew within 24 hours of the attack that it was an instance of terrorism, not a protest that got out of hand. It is difficult to imagine how it could have concluded otherwise, given the way the attack was carried out.
UPDATE
Michelle Malkin notes Biden’s apparent lie on Libya, and says his smirking and laughing cost him:
Michelle Malkin notes Biden’s apparent lie on Libya, and says his smirking and laughing cost him:
Pundits and news anchors are expressing post-debate shock at how smirky, condescending and arrogant Vice President Joe Biden was tonight. They buzzed on Twitter at his “malarkey” rebuke of Paul Ryan’s foreign policy criticism…
While his theatrics may mollify partisan Obama-bots looking for more aggression after the president’s Empty Podium Day in the first debate, undecided voters were turned off. What the Left perceived as “assertive” came across to uncommitted voters as asinine.
Ryan defended Romney vigorously and earnestly, spoke powerfully for life, and shredded Biden on entitlements, Medicare, and Obamacare.
Ryan held his own, told the truth, and showed dignity and class.
Smirky Malarkey McSmirk, on the other hand, was his own worst enemy.
UPDATE
Maybe I had a too-blokey reaction to Biden. I felt he didn’t get the whacking he deserved for his rudeness, and marked down Ryan too much for it. Others may simply thing the rude bugger will get his comeuppance all right - by not getting their vote:
RNC Chair Reince Priebus claimed that Vice President Joe Biden interrupted Congressman Paul Ryan “82 times” during the debate.
Barack Obama’s lackluster debate performance last week has dramatically altered the presidential race in Florida, with Mitt Romney opening up a decisive 7 percentage point lead, according to a new Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/Miami Herald poll.
The survey conducted this week found 51 percent of likely Florida voters supporting Romney, 44 percent backing Obama and 4 percent undecided. That’s a major shift from a month ago when the same poll showed Obama leading 48 percent to 47 percent — and a direct result of what Obama himself called a “bad night” at the first debate.
===
Cue feigned surprise
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(7:00pm)
Do not jump to conclusions!
SEVEN alleged members of a French _ _ _ cell accused of carrying out an attack on a Jewish food shop and of planning further attacks have been charged with terrorism, French public radio reports.
The only novel, and worrying, twist:
All, bar one, are recent converts to _ _ _
===
On 2GB
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(4:50pm)
On from 8pm with Steve Price. Listen live here.
With Kel Richards last night - and guests deputy Opposition leader Julie Bishop and Spectatoreditor Tom Switzer. Talking the sexism game, Labor hypocrisy, the return of the AWU scandal and Barack Obama’s Libyan disaster. Listen here.
With Chris Smith of politics. Listen here.
===
Why did Gillard not go to the police about the AWU scandal?
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(10:00am)
The questioning is becoming more pointed and intense - and I believe will soon cover the power of attorney Julia Gillard allegedly witnessed:
Senator Brandis - the opposition legal affairs spokesman and a barrister - questioned in the Senate why the Prime Minister did not tell the partners of Slater & Gordon that she had helped to establish a legal entity for her then boyfriend and Australian Workers Union official Bruce Wilson when she worked there in the 1990s.
Called the AWU Workplace Reform Association, the entity was reportedly created for the purpose of achieving safe workplaces, but was later allegedly used by Mr Wilson and union bagman Ralph Blewitt to perpetrate fraud.During an internal investigation into the fraud allegations three years later by the partners of Slater & Gordon, Ms Gillard admitted it was a “slush fund” to raise cash for the re-election of union officials. But she has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and says she “knew absolutely nothing about its workings”....“I am not saying that Ms Gillard was a party to a fraud,” [Brandis said in parliament]… “What I am saying is this:… It was done by Ms Julia Gillard on behalf of her then partner in circumstances in which the entire transaction was concealed from her partners."…[In Parliament, Deputy Opposition Leader] Julie Bishop, also a solicitor, asked why Ms Gillard “didn’t inform the appropriate authority of Mr Wilson’s fraud when she became aware of it?”
Ms Gillard said that “the appropriate authorities were engaged in this matter”.
UPDATE
Gillard refused again to answer questions put to her by Hedley Thomas, who now reveals:
Newly released documents from the legal file for the Australian Workers Union official, Ralph Blewitt, show that in March 1993 a firm of Perth accountants told the Slater & Gordon law firm, where the Prime Minister then worked as a salaried partner, that his gross salary that year was $51,801.Mr Blewitt’s financial capacity from his personal assets and salary was severely constrained at the time. Property searches show that he had bought a house for his family in Western Australia five years earlier for $78,000, and he had a mortgage of almost $75,000....The documents in the conveyancing file, which was released by Slater & Gordon to Mr Blewitt last month, contain no evidence of any inquiries to determine how Mr Blewitt could afford the Melbourne property. Yet the firm ensured he received a $150,000 loan under the firm’s mortgage-lending scheme.The documents in the file include a number of direct references to Ms Gillard, who was giving legal advice to Mr Blewitt, the AWU and its Victorian head, Mr Wilson, while in an intimate relationship with Mr Wilson that began in late 1991.Documents show that Ms Gillard went to the early 1993 auction at which Mr Wilson successfully bid on the property, and that she formally witnessed documents that gave him power of attorney over Mr Blewitt to complete the transaction.Documents show that Ms Gillard, then a solicitor in the “industrial unit” of the firm, helped on aspects of the property purchase… After Mr Wilson moved into the terrace house, Ms Gillard often visited him there.Subsequent investigations by police and the AWU’s then national head, Ian Cambridge, show that Mr Blewitt raised the $100,000 to put towards the Melbourne property from an entity called the AWU Workplace Reform Association Inc.
Ms Gillard had given legal advice to help establish the association, which was registered in WA. The entity, which purported to be dedicated to workplace safety, was a secret union election fund that improperly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars with invoices for bogus work for the large construction company Thiess.
Gillard has said she did not know what her boyfriend was up to. She was “young and naive”.
UPDATE
Michael Smith sends Julia Gillard an email asking two very specific and very important questions. We will publish the Prime Minister’s answers if and when she gives them:
Michael Smith sends Julia Gillard an email asking two very specific and very important questions. We will publish the Prime Minister’s answers if and when she gives them:
Subject: Question for the Prime Minister
From: mail....
To: sean.kelly...., john.mcternan....
Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:03:24 +1100
Dear Sean,I have two questions for the PM please. I know the answers are not already on the public record because no one’s asked these questions.Ms Gillard’s signature and solicitor’s stamp are on a document that purports to witness the donation of Ralph Blewitt’s Specific Power of Attorney over his purchase of real estate in Victoria to Bruce Wilson made on 4 February, 1993.I’ve put a copy of the document dated 4 February, 1993, with a back-sheet that says Ralph Blewitt, Specific Power of Attorney, Slater and Gordon Solicitors with the solicitor code JEG on the web hereThat document says that Ralph Blewitt donated the Power of Attorney to Bruce Wilson on 4 February, 1993. It was signed, sealed and delivered Ralph Blewitt. According to the document, the donation, the signing, the sealling and the delivering were all witnessed by Julia Gillard. Ms Gillard’s signature is written in her handwriting on the document, and Ms Gillard’s then-valid practising certificate details are stamped thereon.Yesterday I spoke on the record with Ralph Blewitt. He says that no such act as the donation, signing, sealing or delivering that Ms Gillard purported to have witnessed on 4 February, 1993 ever took place. He says that he signed the document in Perth during the week after the property purchase. He says that Ms Gillard was not present and could not have witnessed him signing the document. For your convenience I refer you to this recording of our conversation, published to the internet on 11 October, 2012.If you prefer I have had that conversation transcribed and I present what I believe to be an accurate transcription of the actual conversation with Mr Blewitthere.May I ask the Prime Minister two questions for the public record please.1. Did you witness Ralph Blewitt donating his power of attorney to Brue Wilson on 4 February, 1993, having regard to your obligations as a solicitor? Was it signed, sealed and delivered in your presence?
2. If you did witness the donation and Ralph Blewitt signing, sealing and delivering the document, where did that happen?
===
Every Labor minister failed the test Gillard set for Liberal students
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(8:02am)
Oh, how funny to see hypocrites skewered so completely. Not even the Minister for the Status of Women walked out:
Trade Minister Craig Emerson today condemned the remarks made by comedian “Allan Billison”, saying he left “shortly thereafter”.The Treasurer and fellow cabinet ministers Tanya Plibersek and Brendan O’Connor today branded the joke “offensive”, but none walked out on last night’s performance by the comedian, who spearheads a satirical union campaign, Fair Go For Billionaires.
The three ministers remained at the Canberra function through the comedy act, with Mr Swan and Mr O’Connor later delivering speeches to the audience.
Let’s remind ourselves of the standard demanded of the Sydney University Liberal Student Club only the day before by the desperately sanctimonious Prime Minister:
Ms Gillard asked Mr Abbott whether he had taken responsibility over the “died of shame” comments Sydney shock jock Alan Jones made about her father.
“Has he taken any responsibility of the conduct of his political party?” she asked."Who apparently when the most vile things were being said about my family raised no voice of objection.
”No one walked out of the room, no one walked up to Mr Jones and said that was not acceptable. Instead of course, it was all viewed as good fun.”
UPDATE
Strange, The destroythejoint website committed ”to stop hate speech, sexism and bigotry” is utterly silent on this disgraceful sexism. Can it be true that this site - actually the work of union officials and Labor candidates and supporters - really is as partisan as I said, and is out to destroy not sexism but a conservative broadcaster?
Or is it that it just needs to be tipped off about something that somehow escaped its attention?
UPDATE
What a lot of hypocrites:
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was among at least nine Labor ministers who sat through the vulgar joke about the Opposition Leader and his chief-of-staff Peta Credlin…
Small Business Minister Brendan O’Connor, Arts Minister Simon Crean, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury and Social Inclusion Minister Mark Butler all attended the dinner.
The closest we can find to a walkout:
Environment Minister Tony Burke’s office said he expressed outrage to other people on his table and left “shortly after”.
Ten minutes later? Half an hour?
While the Labor frontbenchers present at the meeting condemned the joke yesterday, it emerged that no figure from the ALP, the union movement or the comedian concerned, Allan Billison, had apologised directly to Ms Credlin last night.
UPDATE
John Hinderaker in the US describes a familiar symptom and recommends a cure:
One of the persistent phenomena of modern times is the Left’s ability to engage in the most dishonest and shameful conduct imaginable, while simultaneously assuming a pose of moral superiority. Walter Duranty was a case in point, as are last night’s honorees. The Left’s pretensions can best be deflated with mockery, and toward that end, the Duranty Prize makes a valuable contribution. May it be presented every year, until the business of journalism is reformed to the point where we no longer have need of it.
Click on the link for this year’s very worthy winner.
===
Details the media forgot to mention while lynching Abbott
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(7:53am)
In Australia the pool of political reporters and commentators is small, so inevitably there is a lot of conformity. If one or two or three leaders in the Canberra press gallery can be won over to a position, the rest of the gallery will follow.
Because most of the journalists who write about politics in Australia agree with each other, it’s easy to get media gridlock. Media gridlock occurs when everyone is talking about the same thing and no one is talking about anything else.All it took to shut down the Canberra press gallery for a fortnight was a one-sentence comment about the Prime Minister from a radio host at a private function.For days on end Alan Jones was the only thing any political journalist wanted to write about.
And just prior to the Jones episode there was also gridlock as the media pondered the consequences of a “he said/she said” incident involving Tony Abbott when he was a university student 35 years ago.
Speaking of that latter story, Professor Bunyip wonders whether Laurie Oakes could have been less judgmental of the 19-year-old Tony Abbott given his own threatening behavior as a student in 1963:
And why didn’t the media note that one of Abbott’s accusers had made equally lurid allegations against an Abbott rival:
[Malcolm] Turnbull’s invective is well known to Mr Patch. He remembers a spring night 29 years ago within the confines of Sydney University when they sat across from each other as student politicians.Each was a candidate for president of the Students Representative Council. When Mr Patch stood to state his policies, he said Mr Turnbull heckled and interrupted him relentlessly.
“I tried to go with the flow,” Mr Patch said. “When he got up to speak, I returned the favour, interrupting him. He got angrier and angrier and then suddenly he lunged at me. His left palm hit me in the upper chest. Before he could hit me with his raised right fist, I sprawled backwards.”
===
How did the ABC become Labor’s station?
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(6:55am)
I thought Fran Kelly pushed the boundaries even of an ABC without a single conservative host of a current affairs or news show. The host of ABC Radio National’s Breakfast is not merely a Leftist but - as she herself once put it - an ”activist”, and has given Breakfast a very pronounced political skew.
But then came her holiday fill-in, Philip Clark.
Clark is not just more thoroughly one-sided, but more offensively so for one reason: I believe he truly does not understand that what he takes to be commonplace observations are in fact partisan products of his political, tribal and cultural environment. His prejudices seem entirely unexamined.
And so he can push political lines with a completely clear conscience. This week, for instance, he has repeatedly argued the press gallery got it wrong on Julia Gillard’s deceitful, vicious and beside-the-point speech abusing Tony Abbott, claiming it was instead a great success. He can hail the Twitter response to it as a sign of general and world-wide approval. He can interview the new Speaker, Anna Burke, with the greatest sympathy, clucking over the rudeness and alleged misogyny of Gillard’s alleged critics in Parliament (meaning, of course, the Opposition) and not once think to ask the Speaker whether her clear partisanship in the interview is inappropriate, given she is charged with being an impartial umpire. He can be near silent on the catastrophic judgement and amorality of the Prime Minister, so evident this week, but obsessed with the alleged sexism of Tony Abbott. He astonishingly believes Barack Obama has good economic figures to boast about. If he seeks an opinion of US politics, it is invariably from someone of the Left. If he wants an “independent” commentator on Australian politics, it is again someone of the Left.
I was wondering who this Clark could be, mouthing political positions seemingly straight from a Barry Jones book launch, and decided this morning - after a particularly aggravating morning of Clarkism - to find out. And click, click, click - it fell into place:
Following university Philip joined the staff of Senator John Button when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce and Philip worked on a variety of industry assistance issues as well as acting as Senator Button’s Press Secretary.
My impression is that the ABC has of late completely abandoned even its pretence of seems partially balanced, as it were, or at least interested in presenting alternative voices. Insiders, for instance, now routinely has a panel of three journalists of the Left, presided over by an increasingly partisan and strident Barrie Cassidy.
What gives?
===
While we were talking about sexism, four more boats
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(6:27am)
Only a misogynist would point this out, of course:
An asylum seeker boat carrying 70 people has been found off the Cocos (Keeling) Islands…
It’s the fourth boat arrival in two days, taking the total number of people who have been picked up since Tuesday to 334.
I think it raises the question about the role that Tony Abbott’s playing.
UPDATE
ELECTRICIANS, security guards, government workers and businessmen were among a wave of middle-class asylum seekers caught leaving Sri Lanka by boat, the country’s navy has revealed.
In a briefing to a Liberal MP on a study tour, Sri Lanka’s navy revealed that most of the 2279 people arrested leaving on 52 boats this year from 24 locations were “economic migrants” looking for a better life in Australia.Sri Lankan authorities believed the asylum seekers had mortgaged property, taken out loans, pawned jewellery and received support from others to fund the $10,000 payment for people smugglers to take them to Australia.
The navy claimed in a briefing that asylum seekers chose to board unseaworthy one-engined boats for the dangerous 25 to 30-day journey to Australia in “appalling conditions” because of the “success rates” of Australia’s asylum processing claim system.
(Thanks to reader Gab.)
===
NSW Labor, a brothel, threats and a very lucky rezoning
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(5:58am)
Wonderful culture they’ve got there. Just the kind of people from whom we need lectures on sexism and bullying.
(No comments.)
===
Rabbits in the Elysee Palace
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(5:52am)
THE Elysee Palace was hit with a sex scandal yesterday when it was alleged in a book by two prominent French political journalists that Valerie Trierweiler, the country’s first lady, was conducting affairs with the socialist Francois Hollande and a minister from the previous right-wing administration while married to a third man…
She is deeply unpopular in opinion polls. She has been described as the “First Concubine” by the French media...
Miss Trierweiler, it was revealed, had been the shared mistress of Francois Hollande, now the country’s Socialist president, and a married conservative minister, Patrick Devedjian.
Not only that, but she was still married to her husband at the time.
And more controversially still, Mr Hollande was at the time living with Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children and a senior Socialist politician in her own right.
===
But not bad if done by Labor and its mates
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(5:43am)
Prime Minister Julia Gillard says nearly two-thirds of the increase in unemployed people can be accounted for by the result in Queensland, where the jobless rate rose from 6 to 6.3 per cent…
“Campbell Newman and his approach to sacking and putting into unemployment Queenslanders is showing and showing in these figures.”
Unions cutting jobs is good:
THE ACTU has joined the ranks of corporate Australia by moving to axe nearly 20 per cent of its staff and by outsourcing work.
THE ACTU has joined the ranks of corporate Australia by moving to axe nearly 20 per cent of its staff and by outsourcing work.
The controversial restructure will see nearly all jobs in the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ media and campaigns section cut. Sources said some of that work would be outsourced to Essential Media Communications, a union-friendly public relations company.
My, even outsourcing? I thought that was wicked when done by bosses?
===
Richo: “smell is permeating every corner of our land”
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(4:42am)
Even Graham Richardson thinks Julia Gillard has - as I put it yesterday - put power before principle and lost both:
In defending Slipper, she ditched all ethics and principles in an effort to hang on until tomorrow. Through all the crises she has faced, it appears that the PM’s goal is to get through the day…There can be no excuse for the long list of serious errors of judgment. When the crunch comes, she is just not good enough for the office she holds.
Footnote: If Tuesday was the worst day in the life of this government, worse is to come. Soon, the Treasurer will introduce a mini-budget of sorts. You don’t need to be an economist to know that the cost of refugees has blown out by billions, the mining tax will raise next to nothing, company tax receipts are way down and GST revenue is tanking.
UPDATE
The stench spreads. Dennis Shanahan:
While Nicola Roxon seems to have pulled in her horns as Attorney-General after overstepping the mark as the first law officer in siding with one litigant in a civil case of harassment, the government continues to throw a blanket of spurious excuses over parliamentary debate of her behaviour.In yet another breathtaking display of double standards in relation to Slipper’s position as Speaker, the government is pretending nothing can be said about the case despite Roxon’s own repeated public interventions.
Yesterday, it simply used the gag as a tactic to kill debate on Roxon’s “abuse of process” and political manipulation.
In parliament yesterday, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop asked Ms Roxon why she overrode official government guidelines to offer James Ashby, who had launched sexual harassment allegations against Mr Slipper, a settlement of $50,000. She asked if this was an attempt to prevent the release of the offensive text messages from Mr Slipper.
Moving a motion to suspend standing orders to require Ms Roxon to explain her role in the Slipper case, Ms Bishop also asked Ms Roxon why she had described the Ashby litigation as “vexatious” and an abuse of process while aware of the content of the texts.
She also asked if Ms Roxon had informed any other member of the government of their contents.
===
The Bolt Report on Sunday
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(12:14am)
Talking to top pollster and campaign strategist Mark Textor on the hits and myths of this wild week - and who won.
I’ll be joined also by former Howard Government Minister Amanda Vanstone and former Labor Senator John Black, the demographer,
On Channel 10 at 10am and 4.30pm on Sunday. Time for some straight talking on this poisonous political culture.
===
The global Abbott effect?
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(12:08am)
Last year the answer was simple:
Blame global warming, we’d have said. This year there’s another option:
===
Bishop blasts “victim” Gillard
Andrew BoltOCTOBER122012(12:02am)
The day will come when you can no longer call the gender card or the victim card, and by pretending to be a victim the prime minister has demeaned every woman in this parliament…
We didn’t come here to be told that we could not do the job and needed to be treated differently.We came here on this side of the parliament to say we were the best person for the job to represent the people, and the ideas we have are the best ideas to take us into government.We don’t wish to be treated as somehow less able or a victim of somebody’s spiteful words…Could you imagine (German chancellor) Angela Merkel making a speech like that, or Maggie Thatcher making a speech like that?
Of course not. The fact of the matter is if you take leadership you must exercise leadership and if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Frankly, if we have a victim as Prime Minister, can we please get someone tougher?
Liberal media split over how to spin Raddatz and Biden's performance at debate
America learned Thursday night in Danville, Kentucky that the F-word in Joe Biden’s famous “big f***ing deal” was actually “filibustering”and moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News let him get away with it time after time.
The 2012 vice presidential debate was sometimes a 2-on-1 fight, with Biden and moderator Martha Raddatz both interrupting Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan repeatedly. It was hard to top Biden’s obnoxious tone, though. The Washington Examiner quoted the RNC’s JoePounder
saying “Biden interrupted 82 times during the entire debate.” To those watching on television, that seemed like a low number.
saying “Biden interrupted 82 times during the entire debate.” To those watching on television, that seemed like a low number.
Raddatz took a liberal tack on abortion and let Biden control the debate tone by never shutting up. He led Ryan on time by 1 minute 20 seconds, 41:32 to 40:12, but it was doubtful that the debate clock could track every Bidenism. CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Biden managed to “continually inject himself” into Ryan’s comments. Cooper, too, was living in the land of understatement.
Even the post-debate CNN panel criticized Biden’s continual interruptions, facial expressions and laughter, giving the style portion of the debate to Ryan.
But not all news outlets were equally critical. The Washington Postspun the debate as the candidates “interrupting and re-interrupting one another during a 90-minute exchange shaped by Biden’s aggressive tone.”
spun the debate as the candidates “interrupting and re-interrupting one another during a 90-minute exchange shaped by Biden’s aggressive tone.”
The Post added that “the debate’s dominant voice was Biden’s”and was only mildly critical that “in a few instances, he cut off his counterpart multiple times in the same answer.”
TheNew York Times raised the issue in careful terms, asking if Biden will be judged for his “style.” “Will his laughing, eye-rolling and interrupting beseen as too pushy, too aggressive, too disrespectful?” Or, by implication, will Ryan seem more presidential for not acting as childish as the vice president?
raised the issue in careful terms, asking if Biden will be judged for his “style.” “Will his laughing, eye-rolling and interrupting beseen as too pushy, too aggressive, too disrespectful?” Or, by implication, will Ryan seem more presidential for not acting as childish as the vice president?
It was those uncontained interruptions that defined the debate. Raddatz’s passive tolerance of Biden’s massive number of interruptions was enhanced by her own periodic interruptions of Ryan. Despite this, CNN’s lefty host Soledad O’Brien called Raddatz’s performance “absolutely masterful,”a stunning departure from what the audience actually saw. Her fellow host Wolf Blitzer called the Raddatz performance “excellent, excellent.”
It was far from excellent. When Ryan pushed the point about useless government pork spent on green jobs, Raddatz interrupted him just as he was asking Biden about the alleged 5 million green jobs the administration had vowed to create.
In some ways Biden was classically Biden, demanding he “get equal time” despite getting more time and teaching Americans the Irish word for BS: “malarkey.” When Ryan schooled Biden on his countless interruptions, Ryan scored the biggest line of the night: “I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way,” Ryan said to audience laughter.
Raddatz had come under fire from conservatives earlier in the week because of her ties to the Obama administration, with the president having attended her wedding several years ago. The media tried to discount that, but this is also the same reporter who said in May,“let's face it, Hillary is cool. Trending.”
,“let's face it, Hillary is cool. Trending.”
One thing is certain: If the GOP wins in November, Biden can always get a gig on ESPN as a host on “Pardon The Interruption.”
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.
. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.===
Spot Found Where Julius Ceaser Was Made Immortal
Archaeologists believe they have found the first physical evidence of the spot where Julius Caesar died, according to a new Spanish National Research Council report.
Caesar, the head of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of rival Roman senators on March 14, 44 B.C, the Ides of March. The assassination is well-covered in classical texts, but until now, researchers had no archaeological evidence of the place where it happened.
Now, archaeologists have unearthed a concrete structure nearly 10 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall (3 meters by 2 meters) that may have been erected by Caesar's successor to condemn the assassination. The structure is at the base of the Curia, or Theater, of Pompey, the spot where classical writers reported the stabbing took place.
"We always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia of Pompey on March 15th 44 B.C. because the classical texts pass on so, but so far no material evidence of this fact, so often depicted in historicist painting and cinema, had been recovered," Antonio Monterroso, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, said in a statement.
Classical texts also say that years after the assassination, the Curia was closed and turned into a memorial chapel for Caesar. The researchers are studying this building along with another monument in the same complex, the Portico of the Hundred Columns, or Hecatostylon; they are looking for links between the archaeology of the assassination and what has been portrayed in art.
"It is very attractive, in a civic and citizen sense, that thousands of people today take the bus and the tram right next to the place where Julius Caesar was stabbed 2,056 years ago," Monterroso said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also onFacebook & Google+.===
Winter's last icy blast hits NSW
MORE than 300 motorists were rescued and are now hunkered down in emergency refuges as spring snow brought roads to a standstill this afternoon.
Drivers were stranded as the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains became impassable, with slicks of potentially deadly black ice developing as temperatures plunged.
The road was shut between Bullaburra and Mount Victoria, forcing motorists to shelter in refuges set up in Medlow Bath, Katoomba and Blackheath.
Bells Line of Road was closed, too.
"It's just too dangerous," SES spokesman Becky Gollings told AAP.
The State Emergency Services lashed chains to their tyres to access those areas - almost unheard of at this time of year.
It received 360 calls as fierce winds brought down trees and damaged roofs in the Illawarra, Southern Highlands, Sydney and the NSW south coast.
The road was shut between Bullaburra and Mount Victoria, forcing motorists to shelter in refuges set up in Medlow Bath, Katoomba and Blackheath.
Bells Line of Road was closed, too.
"It's just too dangerous," SES spokesman Becky Gollings told AAP.
The State Emergency Services lashed chains to their tyres to access those areas - almost unheard of at this time of year.
It received 360 calls as fierce winds brought down trees and damaged roofs in the Illawarra, Southern Highlands, Sydney and the NSW south coast.
A tree fell on Hill Top Public School in the southern highlands, but no one was hurt.
It was hardly all doom and gloom though, as the chilly weather brought children out to play and left many marvelling at their suddenly snowy "alpine" scenery.
Emily Lambert, team leader at the RSPCA Blue Mountains Animal Shelter, arrived to work in Katoomba in several centimetres of snow.
"The animals found it quite funny. One border collie didn't know what to make of it and ran around, trying to chase the snow flakes,'' she told AAP.
===
VP Debate Quote: Ryan – We Have to Tackle the Debt Crisis Before It Tackles Us
In tonight’s vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan addressed America’s debt problem. He warned, “A debt crisis is coming. We can’t keep spending and borrowing like this.”
He said that Americans need a strong leader to handle such a difficult issue, saying, “We have to tackle this before it tackles us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment