The Great Debates Part I: All Barack and no Bite

Hey, was anyone else incredibly happy when Justin Bieber threw up on stage during a concert? I sure as hell was. It proves to me that even HE can't stand the sound of his music. 'Nuff said.

Usually, I would devote an entire blog post to ripping on Bieber and calling him a douchebag who does unrepentantly evil covers of good, decent songs from the 60s and 70s. Usually, I would rail on and on about how he has the vocal talent of a screeching four-year-old, and how he is somehow so stupid that he can't even figure how to put his hair on straight. But I'm moving on to a more pressing topic: THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE-NESS!!!

Tonight, as everyone knows, Barack Obama and Sir Mittington Wilfred Romneychester III, Esq, MD faced off in the first of three presidential debates. I watched the whole 90 minutes, and I was enthralled. If by 'enthralled' you mean 'bored to tears'. And I really shouldn't have been. After all, I'm the one who has been saying for years that campaigns need to be about the issues, not which candidate has a 'verifiable birth certificate' or wears 'magic Mormon underwear'. But this was a little too much, even for me.

Both Obama and Romney discussed policy for a whole 90 minutes, and Romney did surprisingly well. I mean, he lied right to Obama's face, but he did it CONVINCINGLY. Which is really the most important part of lying. This debate will probably give him a little boost in the polls, but not by much: Studies have shown time and time again that the debates don't actually affect voter turnout very much at all. The two exceptions are Nixon Vs Kennedy and the time Al Gore turned orange.

And speaking of Inconvenient Truths, here's one for you: To the average voter, it would look like Romney won the debate. Obama did a lot of characteristic 'ums' and 'uhhhhs', but Romney talked like a rapid-firing machine gun. If, in this case, the machine gun fired massive blobs of utter BS. He basically took back everything he has said for the past 18 months about his voucher system for Health Care, he committed a few blatant bald-faced lies when he said his health care plan was "Nothing like" Obamacare, and he even suggested the de-funding of PBS. Which, by the way, was the station that was carrying the debate. Not even a great fiction writer could come up with this crap.

He even started talking about Big Bird. Yeah, that's right. That's what we need in politics: Sesame Street.

Actually, that's not a bad idea... if we could get all the muppets into congress, they could teach the Democrats and Republicans some important lessons about sharing, cooperation, and not yelling out "YOU LIE" when other people are speaking. Yeah, I'm still bitter about that.

Bye!