Is it really that hard to eat on $25 a week

Some folks in Illinois tried to eat on $25 a week to understand the plight of the food stamp-users. And then they whined about how hard it was.

Listen folks, my first year in college (98-99), I lived on $27 per week. Not ate, lived on that money (which I made babysitting for a family near the school). My scholarship covered rent, utilities, tuition, and books, so we'll ignore those expenses, and my parents were generous enough to cover liability insurance on my $400 dollar car, but everything else came out of that babysitting money. We're talking food, clothing (well, that kind of grungy look was still in, so thrift stores got a lot of my business there), gas, household items, makeup (again, relied on the grungy look), entertainment, booze (it was college, after all), and anything else that happened to come up.

I ate a lot of tuna fish, macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, eggs, and generic everything, but I always had plenty. Yes, I very rarely had good quality meat (the occasional chicken breast when they were on sale), but it's hard to cook good quality meat for one in a college student's kitchen, anyway. (Plain Spaghetti-Os were something like 50 cents a can; the ones with meatballs were a dollar and a few cents, so I used to get both and combine them, that way I could get 4 meals with meat.) And I rarely had treats like sodas or ice cream. But I got by just fine. (And now, am a fabulous cook!) These people can, too.

Debate Time!

OK, now for the debate. McCain has traditionally had the advantage in townhalls, but anything can happen right now. Will McCain continue to swing hard like he has been this week? Will the townhall format be destroyed by ringers? We shall see.

9:00- OK, now we get to see why Obama has refused to do townhall-style debates up to now.

9:06- McCain: "Now, I have a plan . . ." Good way to start.

9:10- Did anyone else notice that McCain is left-handed? Have we ever had a left-handed president before? I've always noticed that left handed people are more creative- is that a good explanation for the whole Maverick thing.

9:12- "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I'll bet that you've never even heard of them before this crisis." I'm not sure whether Oliver is amused or insulted.

9:18- Fox has a weird split screen going on, with the speaking candidate in the top right hand corner, and the listening candidate in the lower left. Obama is turned full body towards McCain while he speaks.

9:34- Obama says that Washington needs to lead by example on spending so that consumers will follow suit. Yes, I wasn't sure if I should buy that flat-screen TV on my credit card, but then I said "Hey, what would Congress do?"

9:19: Theresa asks: "How can we trust either of you with our money?" Obama's answer: "Oh, yeah, well Bush was worse." McCain: "I've been a reformer!" Correct answer: "You can't, but it's not like you've got a lot of choices here, honey. What are you gonna do about it, vote third party. Hah!"

9:27- Tom Brokaw keeps asking them to keep within the time limit, but doesn't seem willing to do anything about it but nag.

9:22- McCain tells Theresa to check the watchdog groups, they all say Obama is the most liberal big spender. I don't know why that seems like such an interesting tactic to me.

9:24-hehe- TPM says: "We're told this audience was selected to be a cross-section of the local community. But is it not obvious that it's weighted to bald men?"

9:25- McCain seems to be having a difficult time talking about how he's work across the aisle- he keeps stumbling over words. This is odd for him, because its the same talking points we've heard from him a hundred times before.

9:38- Obama wants to respond, but Tom Brokow smacks him down. GO TOM!

9:46- The computer caught on because it was a better way to do things, like, well, compute. Green energy just seems to be about feeling superior to others.

9:48- Hah- we should really start referring to Obama as "that one."

9:50- One of the most commonly asked questions of Obama is whether Healthcare should be a commodity? Really?

9:54- "Senator Obama will fine you." How has this not been a campaign commercial yet?

9:56- Tom asks: "Is healthcare a right, privilege, or responsibility?" Is there any good answer to that? Obama says "right"- so others are obligated to provide it if you choose not to do so for yourself?

10:04- Tom Brokow's defining the "Obama doctrine," right up front. You hear that, future vice presidential candidates? No confusion next time.

10:07: Hehe- Jac says: "9:55 - Tom Brokaw asks: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?" Are single-word multiple-choice answers in a presidential debate simplistic, patronizing, or ridiculous?"

10:09: Poor Katie asking about Pakistani sovereignty. She looks really really nervous. And Obama just plants himself right in front of her and stares at her the entire time that he answers the question.

10:11- Obama looks really unnatural when he says that we will kill Bin Laden. Like it's really difficult for him to say.

10:13- Oh, Brokow went down this time. I take back my prior "go tom."

10:16- I hate when politcians say that they know how to do something that the government has been trying to do all along. Well, if you know how so well, tell somebody why dontcha?

10:21- Obama's response on Russia is completely incoherent. Wait, did Obama just say that the Bush policies are making us more safe? I don't understand him at all here.

10:30- "What don't you know, and how will you learn it?" Well, I don't know why anyone thought that that was a clever enough question to make the cut.

10:32- Obama says that there are young people that have the grades and the will and the drive to go to college but don't have the money. I'd like to meet just one person who has all of those things, but financial difficulties prevent him or her from going to college. Any college. While working part-time. I was one of those students; my parents gave me nothing for college. But with a little grades, will, and drive, I managed just fine.

10:34- I think that the last question should have just been "What would you like to talk about, and what would you like to say about it?" Would have been the same result, most likely.


The End. On the whole, a pretty good debate, but nothing exciting at all. McCain threw out a lot of insults, but none of them really led to sparks.

When I was eight years old . . .

Neil Boortz makes, I think, an exceptionally good point about the argument that Ayres’ activities don’t matter because they happened when Obama was 8 year old:

While we're at it, I'm getting tired of this asinine argument that Ayers threw
his bombs when Obama was only eight-years-old and that this somehow excuses
Obama for any friendship the two may have had. Actually ... this makes the
situation worse. It is not as if a friend of Obama's went off the deep end and
started planting bombs. This man's record was there when Obama found him. It was
not a question of what Ayers might become ... it was the fact of what he already
was, an unrepentant terrorist, when Obama embraced him. An 80-year-old could use
this mindlessly stupid "but I was only eight years old" argument to excuse a
friendship with Hitler today.

Right on. For more, see this (by way of instapundit): "Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me."

FCC Commissioner Coming to UT!!

On Monday, October 13, FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate will be speaking to the Tennessee College of Law.  This will take place in Room 132 of the Law School at 6:00 pm.

While the Federalist Society is not sponsoring the event, this could still be a great thing for Federalists.  The FCC is always a hotbed of debate and controversy at the intersection of freedom of speech, decency, and fairness.  This is a great chance to ask questions on all these hot-button topics.

Most importantly, the event will be catered.

So show up and bring your concerns to this great event!

What does size have to do with presidency?

Ann Althouse has a link to a very interesting chart comparing recent candidates.

The answer: we like them tall and not too thin. In all of the races where the shorter candidate won, he was stockier than the tall guy (think GWB and John Kerry).

So, what do we have here- Obama is tall, but very thin (at 6 foot 1 1/2 and 180 lbs), but McCain is very small, (5 foot 7, 165 lbs).

Is anyone else shocked that McCain is that short? My husband is 5'8", and I think of him as a pretty little guy (which I like, quite a lot). But I've always thought of McCain as pretty tall. He seems tall. And, maybe because he's skinny, and young, but I always thought Obama seemed somewhat short.

Does perceived size matter?

Once again, any criticism whatsoever of Obama is racism

According to the AP, by way of Hot Air:

“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so
imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would
target their own country,” Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A
deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain’s ticket-mate echoed the line at three
separate events Saturday.
“This is not a man who sees America like you and I
see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see
an America of exceptionalism.”…
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with
overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a
black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a
predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

If you ask me, the McCain camp should try to milk this all they can. The more people see this "If you dare question me, I will label you a racist" sort of politics, the less they will trust Obama.

Kudos to president of the LA branch of NOW

Shelley Mandel complements Sarah Palin: "America, this is what a feminist looks like."