How Many Different Ways
Can You Say Ess-Aitch-Eye-Tea?
[NOTE: Please don't miss the links added below]
An Off-the-Cuff Response to the Vice Presidential Debate
"If a wise man has an argument with a fool,
the fool only rages and laughs,
and there is no quiet." Proverbs 29:9
What's your criterion for "winning" a debate?
Is it a Personality Contest?
Will enough people care about substance to make a difference?
Are there enough people out there who can spot the difference between loquacious balderdash and genuine substance to matter?
Is it a Personality Contest?
Will enough people care about substance to make a difference?
Are there enough people out there who can spot the difference between loquacious balderdash and genuine substance to matter?
The former is Biden's stock-in-trade. He's almost as good at saying nothing in more words than you can shake a stick at as our not-so-illustrious president.
As a pair of first-rate gasbags, this year's Democratic candidates are frankly peerless.
So what is it that "wins" a debate?
Vice-President Joe Biden has one of the loudest, most persistent motormouths in the business. He's an arrant boor.
Paul Ryan is a sober, decent, thoughtful, good-looking guy in good command of his facts, but during the debate, Biden would hardly let him get a word in edgewise.
And whenever Ryan managed to squeeze out a sentence or two, Biden stepped all over his lines. [Reminds me of Bill O'Reilly. Could this be an IRISH thing, do you suppose? Oh wait! Ryan is Irish too, isn't he? Probably the lace curtain variety, though, right? It DOES make a difference.]
Martha Raddatz seems very pleasant, but she did nothing to stop Biden the Bombastic Barroom Brawler, who sounds like he was weaned on beer suds under the bar in a low-class Irish Saloon, from tromping all over the debate.
It doesn't matter WHAT you say, apparently, as long as its LOUD, FAST and RELENTLESS.
Let’s face it: Joe Biden is a FILIBASTARD.
Ryan should win on substance, of course, but Biden is LOUDER and more AGGRESSIVE. Ergo, Biden will most likely be declared the winner by the enemedia.
At least that's the way it looked with a half hour left to go in the debate ....
Paul Ryan is a sober, decent, thoughtful, good-looking guy in good command of his facts, but during the debate, Biden would hardly let him get a word in edgewise.
And whenever Ryan managed to squeeze out a sentence or two, Biden stepped all over his lines. [Reminds me of Bill O'Reilly. Could this be an IRISH thing, do you suppose? Oh wait! Ryan is Irish too, isn't he? Probably the lace curtain variety, though, right? It DOES make a difference.]
Martha Raddatz seems very pleasant, but she did nothing to stop Biden the Bombastic Barroom Brawler, who sounds like he was weaned on beer suds under the bar in a low-class Irish Saloon, from tromping all over the debate.
It doesn't matter WHAT you say, apparently, as long as its LOUD, FAST and RELENTLESS.
Let’s face it: Joe Biden is a FILIBASTARD.
Ryan should win on substance, of course, but Biden is LOUDER and more AGGRESSIVE. Ergo, Biden will most likely be declared the winner by the enemedia.
At least that's the way it looked with a half hour left to go in the debate ....
Later, at the bottom of the hour NOTHING had CHANGED for the better. It was all more of the same.
How many different ways can you think of to say ess-aitch-eye-tea?
How many different ways can you think of to say ess-aitch-eye-tea?
~ FreeThinke
ADDENDA:
HEADLINES at the DRUDGE REPORT:
 |
| Have you met Laughing Boy? A pressing question all of us need to ask: WHO is JOE BIDEN'S DENTIST? |
My criteria are certainly different than yours, Freethinker, but one of them is to go on offense. Attack, attack and attack and make Ryan look like exactly what he is, an ignorant little brat who reads Atlas Shrugged as nonfiction.
ReplyDeleteGet Ryan to make a long pause before talking about his and Mittens' abortion policy. Independent women understood that pretty well.
Biden came of as human. Ryan came off as a mechanical toy. Biden needed to sto the bleeding and did that.
Clear win Biden. The question is how many ubdecideds there are out there.
"My criteria are certainly different [from] yours, FreeThinke, but one of them is to go on offense. Attack, attack and attack ..."
ReplyDeleteAnd there you have it, ladies and gentlemen -- an unabashed confession, an exposé, a succinct statement of the mentality embraced by the left -- straight from the horse's ass.
" ... Of rudeness they've made a fine art --
Rough-tongued- acerbic and tart ..."
What could we hope to do with an ever growing number who honestly believe boorishness, aggressive insolence and proud displays of bombastic mendacity should be categorized as positive attributes?
We see it on blogs every day from the likes of Liberalmann, Steve, Progressive Corruptions, and our Pet Thorn-in-the-Side just heard from above.
Long, long ago the left dragged political discourse into the gutter and turned it into the moral equivalent of gang warfare.
That they regard their patent ignobility with great pride should trouble men [and women too, of course, you picky peeceeniks!] of good conscience everywhere.
Perhaps FJ would be so good as to find us the quotation from Nietzsche where he says that nobility will perish from the earth because of the very virtues it embraces? Something like that.
When self-appointed spokesmen for "our" side like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage turn the tables on the left by using the very tactics the left has brought into the political arena against the Marxian devils how quickly the leftist fiends are to cry "Foul!"
So, instead of true intellectual debate, we have been forced to descend to the barbarism of GLADIATORIAL COMBAT -- a tragic setback for Civilization.
~ FreeThinke
Perhaps FJ would be so good as to find us the quotation from Nietzsche where he says that nobility will perish from the earth because of the very virtues it embraces? Something like that.
ReplyDeleteHow about WtP 130 (1883-1888)
The highest equity and mildness as a state of weakening (the New Testament and the original Christian community--apparent as complete betisel in the Englishmen, Darwin and Wallace). Your equity, you higher natures, impels you toward suffrage universel, etc.; your "humanity," toward mildness confronted with crime and stupidity. In the long run you thus make stupidity and the unscrupulous victorious: comfort and stupidity--the mean.
And here you have it, ladies and gentlemen -- an unabashed confession, an exposé, a succinct statement of the mentality embraced by Freethinke.
ReplyDeleteNo thoughts here from me, I only post to remind our host of his previously expressed opinion -- any nausea this causes must be his own fault. :)
PS: In beyond good and evil, Nietzsche complained that religions have preserved too much of what ought to perish (the weak and misbegotten). Is that what you had in mind?
Still searching the Internets for evidence of "thought crimes" jez?
ReplyDeleteGrow the 'f up...
And this is what I have in mind (my confession)...
Nietzsche, WtP - "The Great Human Being" 966 (1884)
In contrast to the animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.-- Moralities are the expression of locally limited orders of rank in his multifarious world of drives, so man should not perish through their contradictions. Thus a drive as master, its opposite weakened, refined, as the impulse that provides the stimulus for the activity of the chief drive.
The highest man would have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, where the plant "man" shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g., in Shakespeare), but are controlled.
FreeThinke is EXTREMELY controlled... he often creatively "versifies" his anger. You, on the other hand, scream, shout, and jump up and down for attention, calling everyone names and demonstrating a remarkable INABILITY to control and channel your anger.
ReplyDeleteAnd therein lies ALL the difference, jez.
I'm always glad to be remembered -- and to be reminded of utterances I've been inspired to make in the past. How flattering to be remembered, even if willfully misinterpreted by a determinedly dismal antagonist!
ReplyDeleteI have always understood Nietzche's sentiments regarding nobility of character and sense of purpose to mean the majority presence of rude, lewd, vicious, baseborn attitudes and resultant behavior is so overwhelming it's inevitable that meanness and degradation will overpower all that is fine and good.
It may be tempting to believe that, because on the surface it seems all too logical, but as a Christian, I have no choice, but to reject such brutal cynicism, as an admission of defeat -- an implied embrace of dog-eat-dog barbarism and a reversion to brute savagery.
No thanks!
I'll continue in my own fashion to "Fight the Good Fight."
~ FreeThinke
Why, THANK YOU, Thersites.
ReplyDeleteI'm stunned. "Praise from Caesar is praise, indeed."
Any show of support or recognition in the blogosphere is as rare as feathered serpents who sing with the voice of a nightingale.
Your understanding is much appreciated.
~ FreeThinke
Let’s face it: Joe Biden is a FILIBASTARD.
ReplyDeleteClassic line! And excellent neologism!
A most excellent review that hits the bullseye.
Ducky's take is typical of the msnbc crowd, cheering as his crass candidate brays while the other man is speaking. The urge to shut up their enemies is strong in the progressives, and it is dangerous.
Joe Biden is a FILIBASTARD.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt.
I'd have turned off the TV set in the middle of the debate last night -- except that I have to discuss this debate with my students on Tuesday.
If I had been in Ryan's position, I might have blown my stack and told Biden where to go OR have given him the freeze-your-blood teacher's glare.
Biden behaved like a bully in junior high.
Duck,
ReplyDeleteAttack, attack and attack and make Ryan look like exactly what he is, an ignorant little brat who reads Atlas Shrugged as nonfiction.
Even if that's true, the one who looked like a brat was Biden. If Ryan had been channeling Ayn Rand, Ryan would have excoriated Biden. Rand was one nasty woman when angered.
Anyway, we did see quite the contrast last night: one man disdainful even as he CLAIMED to cherish bipartisanship and the other exhibiting decorum (for the most part). What style plays better in Peoria?
Nietzsche doesn't travel well in small doses, I recommend reading one of his books, they're not long. I found beyond good and evil quite rewarding.
ReplyDeleteWhat seems to be the Dems' position about the debate:
ReplyDelete"Biden has laid out a clear vision of the future."
Ugh.
I recommend reading one of his books, they're not long. I found beyond good and evil quite rewarding.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that none of it appears to have stuck...
Your understanding is much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteBetter, is your erudite verse.
Nietzsche doesn't travel well in small doses...
ReplyDeleteWell THAT is a obviously statement that would have would have disappointed the author...
Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Idols" 51
Goethe is the last German for whom I feel any reverence: he would have felt three things which I feel--we also understand each other about the "cross."
I am often asked why, after all, I write in German: nowhere am I read worse than in the Fatherland. But who knows in the end whether I even wish to be read today? To create things on which time tests its teeth in vain; in form, in substance, to strive for a little immortality--I have never yet been modest enough to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of "eternity"; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book--what everyone else does not say in a book.
Biden interrupted over 80 times? For pity's sake.
ReplyDeleteIf any of my public speaking ever behaved in the manner of Biden, I'd toss them out. Period.
Who "won" the debate? I suppose it matters upon which side gets to write history...(An appeal to Calliope)
ReplyDeleteI love the "Idols" quotation, Thersites.
ReplyDeleteAnd wasn't it Will Shakespeare who said (through Polonius, of all people!) "Brevity is the soul of wit?"
Great minds may sometimes clash, but, I suspect, more often they think alike. ;-)
~ FT
Too bad you weren't the moderator, AOW, instead of Martha Raddatz!
ReplyDeleteI have to say I rather liked her, however. She appears to be a lady. How incredibly rare that is these days!
Those who claim she was obviously biased in favor of Biden could not have watched the same debate I saw last night.
~ FT
Bottom Line...
ReplyDeleteWhen all is said and done last nights debate will have little to no impact on the race.
Basically I viewed the hour and a half ordeal as comic relief...
On to what is sure to be two more Presidential debate fiasco(s) .
FILIBASTARD? GOOD one!!
ReplyDeleteBiden didn't really ave the skills to effectively lampoon the Romney presidency. He gave it a good go and I applaud his effort but it fell short.
ReplyDeleteThen I realized that the perfect satire of the Romney's was recently re-released, Paul Bertel's Eating Raoul. It was originally a send up of the sexual revolution but it's aged very well and works perfectly as a look at Romney's version of the American dream.
Give it a look, Freethinker.
Good satire always seems to age well, even long after the object or objects of its scathing wit have ceased to be relevant.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we may still enjoy Gilbert & Sullivan more than a hundred years after Queen Victoria said, "We are not amused."
The treason why such a dearth of wit exists today is that popular culture and public life appear to be bad parodies of themselves to begin with.
"There's no there there."
~ FT
I may have misunderstood Freethinke when he said
ReplyDelete"... I believe it is appropriate to use any and all mean available to vanquish the bastard [Marxism, by which you mean leftism in general?]."
but if so it wasn't willful. The surface meaning here is that you condone any and all political tactics, including the slander of your opponent (the topic then at hand). This would make your disapproval of Ducky's preference for robust challenge in debate something of a double standard, I think. But I could, as you say, have misinterpreted your earlier remakrs -- clarifications welcome.
Caritas and grace. Without them, nothing BUT extremism can ever be "expected."
ReplyDelete"Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love" - St. John of the Cross
Don't put it... and you won't find it.