It makes a normal voter wonder, “Where in the heck to they find these people?”

The answer was inadvertently revealed at msnbc.com by Domenico Montanaro in his interview with “undecided” voter Oliver Clark, one of the Town hall debate questioners …

…the Sunday before last, I received a call from the Gallop Poll. They asked a few questions regarding my choice in the Presidential election. They asked who I would vote for. I said most likely I would be voting for Barack Obama. They followed with, “is there any chance that you would change your mind“? I said “Of course anything is possible.” They then asked me as an uncommitted voter would I like to participate in the Town hall debate. I said “Of course!”

Of course! It’s so clear to me now. This man is obviously undecided.

So, next time a pollster calls me and asks me if there is any chance I might change my mind, instead of telling them, “No,” I’ll just say, “When monkeys fly out of my ____,” and voila! You might just see El Nuko in the next Frank Luntz focus group!

This snippet from Obama on government spending (from CNN transcript, emphasis mine),

“So we’re going to have to make some investments, but we’ve also got to make spending cuts. And what I’ve proposed, you’ll hear Sen. McCain say, well, he’s proposing a whole bunch of new spending, but actually I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.”

A net spending cut? That’s the first time I’ve heard this. It is nowhere to be found at his website. Perhaps he has detailed these spending cuts somewhere else. Or perhaps it is similar in to the so-called “peace dividend” of the Clinton Administration when only the Defense budget was cut.

In fact, Major Garrett reporting on Fox News stated that the Obama Campaign described the spending cuts as a combination of savings that will be realized by withdrawing from Iraq, and by sunsetting the rate reductions in the Tax Reform Act of 2001. In other words, there are no targeted spending cuts in any government spending programs at all.

And later, responding to another question on fiscal policy, Obama said,

“It means looking at the spending side, but also at the revenue side. I mean, Sen. McCain has been talking tough about earmarks, and that’s good, but earmarks account for about $18 billion of our budget.

Now, when Sen. McCain is proposing tax cuts that would give the average Fortune 500 CEO an additional $700,000 in tax cuts, that’s not sharing a burden.”

If I’m doing my math correctly, 500 CEO’s getting a $700k tax cut comes to some $350 million. A tidy sum, to be sure, but it pales next to the $18 Billion in earmark pork barrel spending that Obama minimizes. The fact that Obama himself has requested more in earmark pork barrel spending than would be raised by his targeting of the CEO’s of the Fortune 500 speaks for itself. This was a poorly played piece of class warfare, but it does speak to the need of the Right to put the TCFTR meme to bed once and for all.

* It’s “simply not true” that Barack Obama said he’d meet Iran’s president without preconditions, Biden insisted.

Yet when Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes - a position Biden back then termed “naive.”

* Biden said he’s “always supported” clean-coal technology - after stating emphatically only last month, “We’re not supporting clean coal.”

* Biden asserted - repeatedly - that the US spends more money on three weeks’ combat in Iraq than it’s spent in Afghanistan since the war began.

That claim’s only remotely intelligible if he limits Afghan expenditures merely to US rebuilding efforts - and even then, he’s off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers.

* Also on Afghanistan, Biden insisted - repeatedly - that “our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work” there.

That may not be an out-and-out lie, but it took supposed foreign-policy neophyte Sarah Palin to bring any context or nuance to the statement.

What Gen. David McKiernan had said was that tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq - requiring a different form of cooperation.

But he flatly said more troops, and more local engagement, are needed.

Sounds like a surge to us.

* Then there was what might have been the biggest head-scratcher of the night. Said Biden of the Bush administration’s supposed Middle East follies:

“When . . . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Huh?

Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?

As if America’s NATO allies would have gone in the first place.

At some point, Americans have to wonder: Is this a fellow who should be a heartbeat away from the White House?