I have not watched the Palin/Biden debate yet, but I can only assume Palin has done very well indeed. The reason I say this is that listening to the BBC’s coverage of this event on the Today programme this morning the entire tone was that Palin had not fouled up. Essentially the BBC line was that “gaffe-prone” Palin had managed to just about hold her own, though she wobbled “a bit” on climate change and Iraq. Biden was painted as having glided serenely through the debate. So, if we believe the BBC, instead of being a total train-wreck, Palin just about got through. Talk about raising and lowering expectations. The BBC, like their soul-mates in the Democrat Party, are scare senseless of the values Palin stand for and so they have spent the last several weeks mocking her. Meanwhile, back in the real world, I can but assume that Sarah walloped slow Joe.
THE TROUBLE FOR SARAH.
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ptet: Again you don’t get it. On Fox they had the BBC’s favourite pollster Frank Luntz who had a large group of floating voters (just like he did last week on Newsnight for Gordon Brown).
At the end of the debate that group of voters almost all said Palin had impressed her and had swayed their vote more so than Biden.
Why would people like YOU and the BBC ignore Frank Luntz now just because he came to a conclusion YOU don’t like?
After all we had to put up with the BBC bigging up his findings about swing voters and Broon last week.
henryflower | 03.10.08 – 2:19 pm,
To link to your other comment:
Right-click on the symbol to the right of the date/time of your comment.
A menu will drop down. Left-click on Copy Shortcut. (Or perhaps something similar; that’s what I have on my computer.)
Right-click in the text box of your new comment and a menu will drop down.
Left-click on Paste.
That’ll be your link.
Thanks Bryan – apologies for ignorance.
To back up the point about your absurd Palin love-in – from http://www.pollster.com
CNN conducted a telephone survey among previously interviewed respondents who planned to watch the debate:
51% said Biden “did the best job,” compared to 36% for Palin.
64% said Biden did better than they expected, 14% said he did worse than expected, 20% said he did the same as they expected.
84% said Palin did better than they expected, 7% said he did worse than expected, 8% said she did the same as they expected.
Asked before the debate if Sarah Palin is “qualified to be president,” 42% said yes and 54% said no. After the debate, 46% said yes and 53% said no.
CBS again followed up with a survey of uncommitted voters (those totally undecided or who say they might still change their minds) using the Knowledge Networks nationally representative online panel:
46% said Biden won the debate, 21% said Palin won, 33% saw it as a tie.
18% of these originally uncommitted voters made up their minds to support Obama, 10% made up their minds to support McCain, 71% were still uncommitted.
53% said their opinion of Joe Biden changed for the better, 5% for the worse and 42% said their opinion did not change
55% said their opinion of Sarah Palin changed for the better, 14% for the worse and 30% said their opinion did not change
We got good nooze and we got bad nooze today from the World Service:
First the good news – from the BBC bus touring the US, driven (though probably not physically) by Alan Little. From the bit that I heard, this was a well-balanced and interesting discussion, with Little making no attempt to stamp his own views on the proceedings. Contributors appeared to fairly represent Democrats and Republicans. (I recall that a programme by Ros Atkins from the bus was also hosted with an easy, non-partisan style and was a pleasure to listen to.)
More good news in the form of this statement from an early morning newscast:
For the most part, Sarah Palin spoke fluently, without the gaffes that have become the staples of late night comedy slots.
It’s good news because it veers sharply from the BBC’s incessant trashing of Palin.
And it made this bit of bad news, in the form of an e-mail read out on the programme, all the more incongruent:
She seemed to be struggling to form coherent sentences.
Nothing wrong with reading out a negative e-mail, but this one was obviously aired so that the presenter could make this punchline:
That about sums her up, proving he doesn’t understand that his function as a reporter is not to try to impress friends who might be listening to him, but to report the news.
I’m not making this up.
That’s useful, Brian, if I can manage to follow it! I will try to add it to my favourites. I have difficulty copying, pasting, embolding, formatting etc on this blog.
Bod,
Dont get too excited mate. Last weeks polls from MSNBC got found out because over 70% of those who responded were foreign nationals (ie. people that CANT vote).
Mailman
henryflower:
There is no way to discuss BBC bias in the reporting of the US election without straying into the issue itself. Over the weeks, people have quoted chapter and verse showing how the picture presented on the BBC is not “accurate”.
Accuracy is presenting a right-wing conservative point of view (Michelle Malkin’s) as truthfully and with the same weight as a mainstream Republican (Peggy Noonan) or a Democratic commentator (Howard Wolfson) or an extreme left-wing one (Keith Olbermann). Each has a point of view – they ARE NOT all reflected in BBC reporting.
Of course this blog isn’t a place to discuss the US election per se, but I’m getting pretty tired of having to “explain” simple facts to friends back in the UK who are not being informed by their most important broadcaster. The irony is that many of these old friends are IN THE BBC and asking me if what is being reported about the USA in the UK is true. Can you f****** believe it?
A case in point: they ALL thought the recent $400b bail-out was a noble Democratic initiative being blocked by nasty right-wing Republicans. When I broke down the figures, explained how many Dems voted against the plan (including many from Nancy Pelosi’s own Californian delegation), they saw the complexity of the issue.
Have Olberman or Malkin ever been interviewed on the BBC? How did they fair? And most important how were they introduced before the interview?
CNN’s poll gives it to Biden.
Luntz on Fox gave it to Palin.
Drudge’s online poll gives it to Palin.
The polling so far appears to reflect the prejudices of each particular pollster.
Only in a few days time when the Republican and Democrat national figures begin to move,will it perhaps be possible to say which candidate moved most voters their way,which is the only winning that counts.
John Bosworth: So spot on. We know for example that the BBC ignores the views of the BNP for the most part, yet treats the “greens” as equals to the Tories and Lib Dems. Yet the Greend don’t get any more votes than the BNP do.
So why the bias?
Thanks Bryan – apologies for ignorance.
henryflower | 03.10.08 – 3:05 pm
No apologies necessary. I ain’t no expert myself at this stuff.
That’s useful, Brian, if I can manage to follow it! I will try to add it to my favourites. I have difficulty copying, pasting, embolding, formatting etc on this blog.
Millie Tant | 03.10.08 – 3:09 pm
Dunno about formatting, but bold and italics is easy. Just do it like this:
< b >bold< / b >
< i >italics< / i >
But close the gaps I created so I could demonstrate the method.
It also needs to be highlighted that both Karl Rove and Dick Morris listed a number of questions Biden didn’t answer correctly. So I’d advise you not to let his “substance” convince you. He made up some of his points along the way.
The irony is that many of these old friends are IN THE BBC and asking me if what is being reported about the USA in the UK is true.
John Bosworth | 03.10.08 – 3:32 pm
That is just incredible. And so revealing of the lack of real journalists at the BBC.
I think the only chance Malkin would have of featuring on the BBC would be on its World Have Your Say programme on the World Service, every weekday at 5pm GMT. Here’s the blog:
http://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/why-is-this-us-vp-debate-important/#comment-83058
I recent years the hosts of the show have come to the painful realisation that there are points of view other than those of the far left, and sometimes make an effort to reflect those points of view on the programme.
Grant | 03.10.08 – 2:24 pm |
Your’re right Justin Webb does have a funny mouth.
A lifetime of being smacked in the gob but never getting the message?
The truth is Biden and Osama get passes from most of the MSM for their gaffs or lies.
I understand that Palin is new and therefore needs more scrutiny, but for example when in Germany and Osama talked to the masses about fighting in Afghanistan there were NO cheers from the crowd.
That went unnoticed by the wankstains at the BBC.
Gog: Perhaps he puts something in it that’s far too big…….. I meant like his foot you naughty boys and girls!
Wow!
people are trying to compare a right-wing gossip sites ‘click-on’ poll (Drudge) with credible, professional surveys??
Wingnuttery at its finest
John Bosworth | 03.10.08 – 3:32 pm |
Of course this blog isn’t a place to discuss the US election per se, but I’m getting pretty tired of having to “explain” simple facts to friends back in the UK who are not being informed by their most important broadcaster. The irony is that many of these old friends are IN THE BBC and asking me if what is being reported about the USA in the UK is true. Can you f****** believe it?
You took the words right out of my mouth.
OK, Its all here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb/
Read his blog during the debate. Tells you everything about him.
RE: “This is important” also on Webb’s blog: “McCain pulls out of Michigan”, did Webb ever mention that a few weeks ago Obama pulled out Georgia, a state he’d targeted. I found out not in the media but through friends. News? What news?
Kevin Spacey made an anti-Palin comment on Simon Mayo’s show this afternoon. This was deemed to be of such significance that it was included in the 4pm headlines and the remarks we’re replayed. Just emailed Drive the following:
So Kevin Spacey’s anti-Palin views immediately become headline news on Radio Five Live. The BBC isn’t the slightest bit embarrassed by its pro-Obama bias, is it?
That said, Mayo did interrupt the Spacey love-in long enough to read my email to him:
Recount only got one million viewers when it was shown on HBO. Liberal Hollywood has spent a great deal of time, effort and money producing anti-Bush films in the past couple of years and nearly all have bombed. Is Kevin Spacey dispirited by this? It amuses the hell out of me.
Spacey claimed Recount wasn’t an anti-Bush film and said, somewhat ironically, that HBO doesn’t determine success on numbers.
Martin 2:29
Please, don’t get me wrong about goldfish.
I have two goldfish, beautiful, loyal, easy to feed.
One is called “Justin”, the other is called ” Matt” !
Biden was dead wood, except for when he pretended to be overcome with grief regarding the car crash of his wife and two children 25 years ago, and he made a couple of factual errors which Palin wasn’t knowledgeable enough to pull him up on.
The subject of the debate, for two Vice Presidential candidates, was moronic because Viced Presidents have absolutely nothing to do with foreign policy. It’s not their area. That’s the President and the State Department.
McCain is not going to be sworn in and keel over with a heart attack and leave running the world up to Sarah Palin. He has been certified and re-certified as fit as a fiddle. She will have time to learn her way in.
Given that the subject was stupid and that it was inentionally chosen to wrongfoot Palin, she came through well. Fox News gave her 93%. Politician that she is, and living up to her reputation as a barracuda, she just banged away at how the democrats have mismanaged Congress and the economy. As her area of expertise is energy, she kept pulling the debate back to energy.
The gal’s a politician all right and she’s quick on her feet. Biden, a bloviator of some renown, must have looked at her and seen someone who’s an ace shot with a rifle and can face down a charging moose, a gal who owns and flies her own sea plane alone to vast, remote regions and a gal who goes snow plough racing for relaxation and thought, “Uh …”.
And she’s very pretty with it.
Again, it was a stupid subject for a vice presidential debate, but it was chosen by the moderator, the black and exceptionally heavy Gwen Ifill, a major supporter of Obama and the author of a book on Obama which just happens to be scheduled for publication on Inauguration Day. So no dirty tricks there, then.
Anyway, the governor wasn’t inspired, because she doesn’t have the background (yet), but she stayed fast on her feet, didn’t panic and landed a couple of punches. A Drudge poll had her on 70% against Biden at 28% with 409,089 people voting and the Little Green Footballs poll had her on 91.4% on 9,040 voters.
4.30 headlines on Drive – the Spacey “story” has been dropped.
“Biden’s 14 lies”: http://www.johnmccain.com/McCainReport/Read.aspx?guid=343ba934-6417-4b65-ac9e-92348acb5e97
Grant: I hope they have a little shipwreck to play in?
“we’re replayed”
DB | 03.10.08 – 4:28 pm
Typo – “were replayed”
DB: I heard your email. Nice one. Mayo didn’t read mine though about the FACT that 9/11 would still have happened even if Al Bore had been President.
In fact with Al Bore as President it could haved been a lot worse for the USA.
Bore was a terrible VP and why on earth the leftie media think he would have made a good President amazes me.
DB
Yes, BBC Radio 5 News at 4 pm, the ONLY item referring to the US VP debate was a quote from Democrat-supporting K.Spacey, simply opposing S.Palin as a Vice President candidate.
Radio 5’s support for Obama and Democrat Party is more blatant and direct than that of Radio 4 ‘World at One’, ‘PM’, etc.
Verity: If Palin as Governor had spent all her time sticking her nose into foreign policy, the people who elected her would have wanted to know what the hell she was up to.
Facts are for all the sleaze digging twats from the media all they came up with was a lie about book banning, the story that her last baby was her daughters, the media attacking the boyfriend of her daughter and the non story about the state trooper. All of these lies and spin stories were replayed by Frei and Webb on the BBC.
There is pleny of smelly stuff about Osama that the MSM don’t want to dig up.
Heron | 03.10.08 – 12:21 pm | #
If by ‘winning the debate’ you mean getting away with a bunch of lies, half truths and disingenuous arguments that his opponent didn’t do nearly enough to expose and rebutt, then yes I suppose you could say Biden comfortably won.
Melanie Phillips on Palin-Biden VP debate:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2194886/survival-isnt-enough.thtml
“I just do not agree with the reverence for somebody blatantly unsuited to the job of VP.”
Exactly what qualifications does that require?
Interesting that nobody mentions Sarah Palin was debating two Democrats,Biden and the “moderator” Gwen Ifil.The latter an Obama supporter and author of “The Age of Obama”.
Wall Street Journal
Joe Biden was no match for “Joe Six-Pack.”
Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation. He showed great forbearance. Too much forbearance. She said of his intentions on Iraq, “Your plan is a white flag of surrender.” This deserved an indignant response, or at least a small bop on the head, from Mr. Biden, who has been for five years righter on Iraq than the Republican administration. He was instead mild.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122300786229301597.html
Peter,
Been saying it for a couple of days, actually.
Even Justin Webb got the hint and mentioned it on his blog last night. Didn’t “report” it, though.
I find his ‘unqualified’ mantra very surprising – particualrly as it is so often chanted by supporters of the absolutely unqualified Obama, Bliar and Brown.
I see the Beeboids are wetting their knickers over Mandelson in sheer excitement…..
ukipwebmaster: There will be a lot of knicker wetting on Hampstead Heath tonight I should think.
Sandi Toksvig is a hideous scabby dried up cunt.
This was a public service announcement.
Martin 6:35
Re. Golfishes etc. I now have a pet cockroach. His name is “Peter ” and he tells me not to insult him.
Grant. Prezza had a crab called Peter.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42896000/jpg/_42896975_crab_pa406.jpg
DB: She reminds me of Jennifer Saunders. God they are both rough.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38869000/jpg/_38869109_toksvig203x300.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42517000/jpg/_42517803_jennifer.jpg
Thanks, Brian. I am used to posting on forums that have an icon for bold, italics etc.
David Preiser,
But not this thread.It is impossible to evaluate the debate without factoring Gwen Ifill.The US blogs were on it far earlier.
Here information about Freddie Mac and Fannie May the Democrats fingerprints all over it.
The BBC, so abstractly in favour of ‘democracy’, barely mentions that Mandelson is not even a Member of Parliament, yet Brown will make him a Lord, and a member of a Labour Cabinet.
Any suggestions? Lord Mandelson of …
Gwen Ifill did a lousy job. But where exactly did any of her questions exhibit a pro-obama stance? She seemed utterly cowed by the publicity beforehand. Justin Webb was with David Preiser on this one though.
whitewineliberal:
“She (Gwen Ifill) seemed utterly cowed by the publicity beforehand”
Damn right.
But shouldn’t she have declared her interest? And if she hadn’t been found out what would she have done? Personally I’d have replaced her with Laura Ingraham. But Laura’s written a partisan book or two, so that’s not fair, is it?
And now that the bailout passed the house and senate, and Bush has signed it, the US government now owns everybody’s home, and people like Barney Frank, Jabba the Hut in disguise, will never be brought to justice for stealing from the American people.
Sarah Palin wiped the floor with Joe Biden. I could hear Joe and Jill Six Pack across the country cheering her on. She won the debate in our language in her terms so decisivly that my husband and I sat and laughed our heads off at the snots commenting afterward. Then again, we were drinking rum for the debate’s obligatory “drinking contest”.
They simply didn’t get it.
They do not comprehend average people. They do not comprehend Sarah, and they do not comprehend her ability to speak to us, because they have no intention to do so – they want instead to tell us what to think. And they vainly believe that they do. They are fools. Come election day, she will wipte the floor with them, too. If we can just survive 4 years of McCain, we’ll be alright.
“The debate was a “win” for Palin because she didn’t look totally out of her depth.”
ptet: You do not get it either, not even a little bit.
You said, “She doesn’t have any politics. She’s a shill of the neocons, who says a lot about “conservative christian” issues and who didn;t deliver anything conservative or christian from her time in office as mayor or govenor.”
Also, you are an ass.
Lord Mandy of Mortgages r US
betyangelo: Spot on. However, I do agree with what was said on Fox today about McCain. He needs to stop acting like a Senator now and start acting like a President.
In the next debate he needs to verbally take Obama onto the flight deck of the Forrestal and give him a good beating.
The gloves have to come off. McCain is one tough son of a bitch. Middle America loves that sort of thing. McCain needs to show it.