A Debate I Could Have Believed In

I blame that damnable NPR debate drinking game. It pointed out that Senator McCain likes to pepper his speech with “my friends.” So during last night’s debate I was sensitive to the phrase and each utterance resonated louder in my head than it should have.

This morning I was curious exactly how many times he said it. I was guessing somewhere in the 40’s….it seemed like he said it multiple times for each answer. I found a transcript of the debate and did a find and replace to see how many “my friends” there where. I was shocked to find out it he said it only 19 times. Funny how the mind can play tricks on you like that.

For my own personal amusement when I did the find and replace, I replaced “my friends” with “jackasses.” I was startled how positively I responded to the altered text.

In response to the question: “With the economy on the downturn and retired and older citizens and workers losing their incomes, what's the fastest, most positive solution to bail these people out of the economic ruin?”:

[… Significant portions of the answer elided, actually, I’m going to be eliding things like crazy from here on out …]

“Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, jackasses, until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy. And we've got to give some trust and confidence back to America.

I know how do that, jackasses. And it's my proposal, it's not Senator Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal. But I know how to get America working again, restore our economy and take care of working Americans. Thank you.”

In another response while talking about reducing congressional earmarks:
…
“He voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. Jackasses, do we need to spend that kind of money? “
…

In response to reforming Medicare and Social Security:
…
“Social Security is not that tough. We know what the problems are, jackasses, and we know what the fixes are. We've got to sit down together across the table. It's been done before.”
…

In response to energy policy:
...
“That's fundamental economics. We've got to drill offshore, jackasses, and we've got to do it now, and we can do it.”
...

Oh well, I’ve had my little fun at Senator McCain’s expense. For the record, I also plugged in the verbal crutch that the NPR's drinking game has listed for Senator Obama – “Now look.” But it return zero hits… So there was any fun to be had there.