VP Debate Blog

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Trust me, her not being able to pronounce nuclear is the smallest of my objections to her performance tonight. My favorite moment was when she wouldn't answer a bankruptcy law question. She decided she wanted to talk about energy instead. Ridiculous.

Biden took a question directed to him and went back to a prior topic as well. Hang him!

[Kori Ellis]

... My favorite moment was when she wouldn't answer a bankruptcy law question. She decided she wanted to talk about energy instead. Ridiculous.

That was when I wished the mediator had a buzzer and could just cut them off. You shouldn't just be able to absolutely refuse to answer a question just because it's not one of your memorized talking points.

[Mr. Peabody]

THE NUKULAR OPTION

Why is it that President Eisenhower pronounced the word nukular, as does Bush II (and President Carter nu-kyir), when most educated speakers know that the word is pronounced NU-klee-er? It can't be ignorance; they were each corrected a thousand times. Is it some mysterious force in the air of the Oval Office -- or does the linguistic area of presidential brains create a synapse that snaps differently from most of us?

We are dealing here with a phenomenon called metathesis (pronounced mih-TATH-uh-sis), the switching of two adjacent sounds within a word. Many of us replace an unfamiliar sequence of phonemes (the smallest units of speech sounds) with a familiar one. The only other common English word that rhymes with nuclear is the unfamiliar cochlear. But in our spectacular language, there are dozens of words like secular, vascular, jocular and molecular, and our brains are tempted to make nuclear fit that familiar pattern. (I can even hear a variant ''cochular option.'')

The Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker informs me that ''a person mishears a sonorant consonant (like l or r or y) followed by a vowel as a vowel followed by a consonant. This can happen because the two sounds are acoustically similar -- they literally look alike on an oscilloscope. Presumably the respective neural patterns that arise when a person hears them are similar as well.'' (I'll have to test this on my home magnetoencephalograph.)

Pinker says he thinks that the brain may represent the ''set'' of speech sounds separately from their ''order.'' Sometimes that order gets lost. ''When this happens in the production of speech (as opposed to comprehension),'' he points out, ''the result is a Spoonerism such as 'It is now kisstomary to cuss the bride.' '' That's what caused a radio announcer to introduce President Coolidge's successor as ''Hoobert Heever.''

''When it happens consistently in comprehension,'' Pinker notes, ''the person might file away in his mental dictionary an incorrectly ordered pronunciation for the word: nuky'lr instead of nukly'r. He will then consistently pronounce the word with the alternative order of phonemes.''

The way to straighten out your mental dictionary, if you have this ''nukular'' problem, is to train your brain to think of the word not as three syllables but as two words: new and clear. Or you can wait until they bring back atomic.

[Trainwreck2100]

Just because hes an idiot, doesn't mean you can take it out on Alaskans.

Southern guy says Oil like ole

she pronounces it differently cause of her midwestern accent.

Just like instead of Spoon. She might say Spoon in that fargo esque way.

????

[2centsworth]

I know we disagree on who we're voting for this fall, but I agree with you on this.

I actually thought Palin made a great point when she brought up that all Biden wanted to do is blame Bush and look in the past, when America needed to move forward with new leadership.

Some other Biden "highlights"

* Saying Iran was a long way from a bomb, then in a response to Palin's counter saying that Iran was on the march to a bomb in the near future. WTF?

* Suggesting judges should be able to adjust principle amounts on loans. Uh, yeah, that will do WONDERS for the credit markets

* Trying to claim the moral high ground for Obama on legislation about Fannie/Freddie two years ago, when it's been fact checked already that McCain was the one who first rolled out a bill in 2005.

* We get it, you want to blame everything on Bush and Republicans. Fine, but don't turn around and say you and Obama are going to make it peace, love, and bipartisanship in D.C. Hypocrite.

I actually give both candidates a pass on going back to old topics as part of their answers. I don't think the 2 minutes/1 minute rebuttal format lent itself to them being able to completely finish what they had to say, and both went back to prior questions a couple of times to finish their response. Standard debating technique.

you'll find that I agree with you on 90% of the issues, but the problem is the Republicans aren't walking the walk IMO.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

I have one question....what exactly was Biden's position on Gay Marriage?

[Kori Ellis]

Biden took a question directed to him and went back to a prior topic as well. Hang him!

Come on AHF. Be ing real. She absolutely refused to answer. He went back to a prior topic AND then answered the question. She just refused to answer questions that she was too dumb to know an answer. That's ridiculous.

[T Park]

I think it drives home the point -- a reasonable one at that -- that there's little substantive difference between McCain and Bush; and we've all seen the results of Bush policies.

Ugh....

[Shelly]

Do they have an idea what questions are going to be asked beforehand?

[ducks]

* Suggesting judges should be able to adjust principle amounts on loans. Uh, yeah, that will do WONDERS for the credit markets

great point
lets go buy a 500k house and then then go to the judge and say I cna not afford it
reduce the princal

[T Park]

I have one question....what exactly was Biden's position on Gay Marriage?

Missionary?

[Shastafarian]

Biden took a question directed to him and went back to a prior topic as well. Hang him!

He went back to respond to her!!! She brought up energy out of nowhere. Her answer to him saying John McCain was not in favor of something was, "No we don't. And since that was a short answer I'd like to go to my record...blah blah blah...ENERGY....blah blah blah." Are you ing kidding me?

[T Park]

Do they have an idea what questions are going to be asked beforehand?

I think they do honestly.

[CuckingFunt]

You'd be suprised what Minnesota people say.

Before you guys attack me on that, Alaskans and Minnesotans have the same accent.

No. No they don't.

[FromWayDowntown]

Ugh....

If I was supporting McCain, I think I'd say the same thing.

[Shastafarian]

Do they have an idea what questions are going to be asked beforehand?

No

[T Park]

Maybe if she could state about the 57 states of America then she could be considered "smart"

[T Park]

No. No they don't.

Of course not.

I've never been there, you have, you have the farrrr superior experience.

Pardon me.

[Buddy Holly]

Sincerely, Shastafarian, others on this thread ing about nuclear. Do you all always take the littlest thing and turn it into big shows of drama?

Well, yes, yes you do.

I could care less how someone pronounces nuclear, as long as they understand the what the the word means.

My point with that post was explaining what the poster meant and how TPark takes the little things and creates unnecessary drama over it. Case in point, my stating the size of Alaska as being some type of insult to Alaska.

[Trainwreck2100]

I never said that.

, your worse than the ing poll guy on Fox News.

and I never said any blanket statements putting down Alaskans that didn't stop you from insinuating that i did

[T Park]

If I was supporting McCain, I think I'd say the same thing.

He doesn't but whatever rhetoric makes you happy.

[Kori Ellis]

I have one question....what exactly was Biden's position on Gay Marriage?

Same as the Republicans, I believe... wants gay couples to have some civil rights (insurance, hospital visits, etc).

[ChumpDumper]

I have one question....what exactly was Biden's position on Gay Marriage?

Not for government calling it marriage. That's about the only opposition to it I saw.

[TheMadHatter]

I'm not going to sit here and call Palin and idiot and say she doesn't have a brain. She clearly does, you don't get to where she got by being a complete moron.

She's just not qualified to President or Vice President and that is all that matters to me.

[2centsworth]

I think it drives home the point -- a reasonable one at that -- that there's little substantive difference between McCain and Bush; and we've all seen the results of Bush policies.

biden didn't drive any points home IMO. in fact, he reminds me more of the establishment than does anyone else. when it came to talking about ideas for the future, Biden was a huge loser in my eyes.