Sweating With An Oldie

The second Iowa gubernatorial debate started with Terry Branstad walking nearly all the way to Chet Culver's podium to shake hands.

I thought that was a nice effort to probably keep the Big Lug Nut from breaking into Sweaty Chetty.

Epic Fail and the scientific community is united in that fact.

I found myself distracted by the number of times Culver had to fling his facial fluid from his nose and brow.

I'm not alone --The governor’s physical appearance weakened his presentation, according to Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State.

“(He) looked sweaty and he was constantly touching his nose,” Schmidt said. “If you watched the debate, it was pretty clear Branstad was the winner.”

There was no Brain Suck moment for Culver, but it was odd during the Arizona immigration law question, that Culver claimed "Illegal is Illegal" and then criticized Branstad for wanting to fill up the jails with detained illegals.

Branstad scored when he said only 34% of flood money that has been allocated has reached businesses.

Culver tried to claim that it took Branstad 12 years to close the books on the 1993 flood.

Twelve years would be 2005 and almost to the end of the second term of The Pickle, Governor Vilsack.

Culver became annoying by wanting to go back several times to answer previous questions, on unemployment and preschool, when the debate had moved on to the next question.

At one point the crowd turned on him when he tried to go back to Terry Branstad not rebutting the preschool question.

Numerous times Culver tried to circumvent the format by wanting rebuttal time after he'd had a rebuttal.

I'm not sure why he just didn't use time from the next question to revisit the previous question, like he'd been doing.

I thought Terry Branstad scored when he highlighted how free preschool for all had actually hurt K-12 and College education, especially in lieu of Culver's 10% budget cuts.

Branstad hit a home run here when he said -- “Now we now know what I-JOBS is, It’s Illinois jobs”.

Somebody's been reading our blog (I-JOBS).

Branstad further drilled the point home when he mentioned the people from Illinois that marched with Culver at the University of Iowa Homecoming parade.

Culver lamely turned it into having support from all over including his sister here from New York.

Must be here to help him pack up Terrace Hill.

Is part of Culver bringing IBM, Google and Microsoft to Iowa include constant name dropping?

They must have required numerous free plugs.

Culver has also increased the total number of jobs created by 5,000 in one month, from the first debate figure of 16,000, to 21,000.

Culver continues to be no mathlete when he criticized Indiana as having unemployment at 50% above the U.S. average.

Indiana's August rate was 10.2%, during the same time period the U.S. rate was 9.6%.

I loved Branstad's shot at Staci Appel-sauce for brains and her Supreme Court sitting husband, Brent, when Branstad mentioned how partisan the judicial nominating process has become.

In his closing remarks, it sounded like Culver was claiming Branstad was Governor in the 1920s and I know during the debate I heard Culver call his opponent Blanstad.

Lastly, I felt sorry for the people that had to shake the hand Culver used to mop the flop sweat after the debate was over.