Thursday, October 02, 2008

Live blogging the debate

Terrible start and going to be nice to each other.

It wasn’t Wall Street that was running wild friends at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that ran wild and the only man in Washington to try to stop them with John McCain.

Why does she want to tell us times are bad? We know this. I suppose this works but I’ve never understood it. It’s clear she has not adjusted her answer in response to his. I suspect that’s going to be a pattern

John McCain sounded the warning but she doesn’t explain why that’s important.  She doesn’t really know her way around this issue.  But of course, neither does McCain.

She sounds hurried and canned.

Biden explains why he is able to reach across the aisle, but isn’t the issue the top of the ticket?

“The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” and she should defend that remark.

She gives a halfhearted defense of his remark, but she does respond directly, which is a good sign. And she turns the focus to the top of the ticket. Good move.

She is given the choice between greedy lenders and blaming homebuyers (voters). Gee, I wonder which one she will pick? She chooses lenders. Good move. But a better move would be to say Congress, particularly the Democrats in Congress who gave implicit backing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bankers have always been greedy. But they don’t loan money to people who can’t pay it back. That only happens when you have the government insulating a private company from risk if it loses but allowing it to keep the money if it wins. That’s what got us into this problem and that is the responsibility of the Democrats.

Biden says McCain is at fault because he is in favor of deregulation. She has to make the distinction. It’s fine if the rich people are playing with their own money. Problem is when you give a guarantee from the government against their losses. That is what led to this problem.

Banks were deregulated for all of their business back in 1991. Investment banks were never regulated because they never had a guarantee from the government. That’s not what went wrong. What went wrong was the mortgage market, and what went wrong in the mortgage market was that government created these entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, staffed by Democratic pols, becoming a retirement home for Democratic lobbyists.

Man, Biden really knows each vote that happened in the Senate.

Biden makes a good point, the 400 times he voted to raise taxes is a bogus standard. Moreover he is correct she did not answer the deregulation question and it’s a terrible mistake because that should be something she should hit out of the park.

What about campaign finance reform? John McCain is the architect of the system. The top of the ticket went around the country saying it was fundamental to his is very being, fundamental to “what I’m about,” the system of campaign finance reform and then after checking his bank account a few days after winning the nomination, he changed his mind became the first politician residential candidates in our history to abandon the system.

Now we are on to whose taxes are going to be raised. He says people who make over $200,000 year are small businesses. That is correct, but doesn’t that admit his premise? That they really won’t raise taxes on anyone unless they’re already making $250,000 a year?

“Are you interested in defending Senator McCain’s health-care program?” I wonder if Senator Biden will be asked if he wants to defend any of Barak Obama’s plans?

Biden says that 95% of small business and make less than $200,000 a year. Sounds plausible, and the fact that he knows a statistic like that is kind of impressive.

Biden argues that you lose the $12,000 plan your employer to issue and all you get in return is $5000. Now isn’t that odd? The fact that the average health care plan through an employer is $12,000, isn’t that a problem? Doesn’t that indicate that there’s something wrong?

Palin has a very good comeback on that $4 billion tax break for Exxon Biden is talking about. “Bless their hearts, they’re doing what they have to do as CEO”s, but they’re not my biggest fans.” Biden is smiling as she said this. I think it’s a smile of admiration.

Obama vote against it before he voted for it. There is a certain disadvantage to knowing too much sometimes.

Biden takes advantage of her policies in Alaska and says he would like to apply them nationally. I guess that’s why he was smiling.

She blames Wall Street greed.  Then she gives us a short lecture on living within our means.

Why doesn’t she talk about Washington corruption?  Why focus on Wall Street corruption?  Doesn’t that play into the hands of those who want to make it all a matter of Wall Street regulation. 

Someone has to point out that if you can buy a house with no money down based on a teaser rate, and then can’t pay when the interest rate goes up, there’s nothing wrong with you defaulting on that mortgage. You don’t have any equity in the house. The rest of the American people don’t owe you anything. It took a risk to reasonable risk and if you just walk away you haven’t done too badly. You’ve been branding. And we can’t leave these nonperforming mortgages houses occupied because the market won’t clear. (This is where it can never be a politician, never think out loud)

Her neck looks really old.

She decides to ignore all that massive detail and swerve toward the issue of energy wins from a celebrity talk about that. Totally unscrupulous and the absolutely right thing to do. Yes, please lay into this were going to vote more money for windmill research Dodge. What are we going to do now?

Shouldn’t the governor of Alaska to take advantage of the fact that she lives in a very cold part of the world and if anyone has an excuse for not being too worked up about global warming it’s them?

She makes an excellent point. When we come out with all this purity, don’t drill here, all that happens is the oil was drilled in some other country where they care much less about the environment. All our precious concern for the environment is just moving the damage somewhere else to people who can much less afford to bear it.

One man’s vital energy research project is another man’s pork. John McCain voted against a lot of these because they happen to be in the district of an influential legislator. Paired

I feel reasonably certain that the oil will get here before the wind power.

“Drill baby drill,” she then corrects him. More jujitsu. Excellent.

Great the way she mentions that Biden called Obama out on voting against funding for our troops.

Biden saying that everyone’s in favor will bomb his plan now. Of course, everyone’s for leaving once you win. That the people that wanted to surrender and leave in the middle of the fight vindicated. It was said we should leave in the middle of flight and let the enemy take the field because the fight was hopeless are not vindicated when after we win we start talking about leaving. If we had done what Obama wanted to do we would have a humiliating defeat and Al Qaeda would have had a famous victory at the very center of the Arab world. At the very center of the world oil supplies. It would have been a disaster. It would’ve been in Vietnam on steroids.

Biden says they don’t have a plan because they don’t have a timetable for leaving. But of course this is a non sequitur. Obviously we want to leave. That’s why we’re welcome in the first place, because people know we want to leave.

Biden accuses McCain of voting to cut off funding for the troops. He explains the McCain voters against a $1.6 billion amendment for M-raps, because it had a timeline in it. Unfortunately, he didn’t oppose it because it included funding for the M-raps, which are stupid. The way you protect yourself from landmines is not hiding behind giant pieces of metal rumbling through the streets it’s by getting out of your vehicles getting to know the people convincing them that you can protect them from the terrorists and finding out from them who the terrorists are. To protect the troops by acting like the good guys, not like you’re afraid, not like you’re criminals who step out of the tanks.

Biden wants to defend Obama and his judgment against McCain’s on the conduct of the war in Iraq. Is that really a winning strategy? Is clearly something that Biden himself does not leave.

It is a pity the Democrats didn’t go after them when they had excellent though it was the first three times.

Again, Eifel helps out her boy, and turns Obama’s promise to meet face-to-face with America’s enemies within the first year of his presidency in two “having some level of engagement with our enemies.” Of course we have some level of engagement with our enemies. That is not and never has been the issue. The question is do we naively think that having face-to-face, heart-to-heart chats with cold-blooded murderers is going to bring them around.

Our friends and allies have been saying sit down talk.  The fact that Bush sent a high-level diplomat after five years is not a defeat, it is the result of five hard years of work through our allies in the six party talks are four party talks with Iran.

A two state solution is the solution, but what is standing in the way of that is not a lack of American diplomacy, is in transients on the side of Hamas and the PLO. And as long as we keep rewarding them for terrorism they will continue to be the obstacle.

Sometimes there are people you just can’t negotiate with. There’s nothing to negotiate about.

Has the administration’s policy towards his robe and an abject failure Western Mark well if you measured by the number of agreements they’ve had signed perhaps yes. If you measured by the number of Jews have been killed, it’s a great improvement. Israel finally faced up to the fact that they didn’t have a negotiating partner, so to protect themselves, they put up a wall. They stop suicide bombers cold. The rest the world turned on Israel attacked her President Bush defended her still buy her.

Now, in answer to his criticism of the Bush administration’s policy on Israel, she goes into this canned speech about too much finger-pointing. That is a shame. I like the way she was actually engaging him directly. More importantly, why is she admitting that the Bush of ministrations policy is going to be McCain administration’s policy?

Biden says “I haven’t heard how his policies will be different.” He is exactly right.

She’s asked about the use of nuclear weapons. She should’ve used this as an opportunity to criticize those who say that an Iranian nuclear weapon is no problem because it would have return address. Are such people saying that our security should be paced on the willingness to commit mass murder? If we must seriously contemplate a thing such a thing in the event of an Iranian nuclear weapon, isn’t that an argument for using military force to prevent having to face the choice?

“Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle will not work in Afghanistan.” Biden takes that as a reason not to try the surge tactics in Afghanistan. But didn’t all of our generals say the same thing about the surge in Iraq?

“Nuclear weapons require nuclear arms control regime.” But isn’t the point that we already have one? We have a nuclear nonproliferation Treaty that the Iranians themselves signed. The problem is in not a problem is the lack of treaties it’s a lack of partners that will follow them. All of our problems is around and North Korea have evolved from getting them to live up to the obligations they’ve already signed his treaties. Getting him to sign more, having more diplomacy, is not going to move us ahead.

Biden wanted to go into Bosnia, in spite of the experts telling him that these people been fighting each other for thousands of years. He went against the experts and was proved right. Good for him. I’m about to make him an honorary neocon.

She should use these Biden positions to fork him, use them against him. Apply them to the situation in Iraq.

“When a country engages in genocide, when a country engaged in harboring people who are killing our people. Period.” Aren’t these arguments for a new meaning in Iraq?

Biden says “we would be tied down for years, we would not be greeted as liberators, we would have to deal with Sunni she fighting,” then why did he vote for the war? In defense of the neocons, they lease didn’t think these bad things would happen.

When she is nervous she smiles. It shows a lack of gravitas. It is not presidential. She should stop it.

The “heartbeat away” question comes up. Biden uses it as a queue for his stump speech.

The Bush policy of preemption and regime change. I kind of like those.

She, on the other hand, uses it as an occasion to repeat the word  “maverick. ”Then she goes into her, I’m just an everyday working class American,” shtick.

Biden says Bush has been bad and McCain agrees with his policies. That deserves a state answer.

“Let’s look ahead, doggonit.”

“The money was left behind,” is something she should jump on. How much did money go up under no Child left behind? I’ll bet it at least doubled.

She should use this as an opportunity to point out that all the other guys are senators. Then she should go on to talk about what she will do in the office.

She is in such a hurry to get her little bon mots out.

John McCain voted against the violence against women act. It is amazing that has not come up. It was 20 years ago I suppose, still, how often do you vote against apple pie?

I think she has a much more interesting story to tell about what she brings to the table, much better than these mechanical, canned recitations of a resume. She has had to deal with people telling her that this or that issue is over her head and she should just listen to the experts, and do as she is told. And she has stuck to her guns and proven them wrong. It seems a very good story for president. That ability, to not be intimidated by “experts” or “the people with experience” is pretty important. It is perhaps more important than knowledge in any one particular area.

Biden gives a list of places where Kane is not a maverick. She should hit back on every one of these.

If Bork had been on the court, elected officials would be making a lot of decisions that are now made by judges.  He congratulates himself on making the judiciary and object of ideological warfare.

Biden has been able to work across the aisle, it is the top of the ticket that has the problem there. She should say, “I think Senator Biden has set a fine example of bipartisanship. I wish the man of the top of the ticket could make the same boast.”

She never pauses between her sentences. It’s as if she’s afraid she’s going to be cut off if she stops and breathes.

Biden mentions, graciously, that McCain has kids in Iraq.



Biden: My Achilles’ heel - “my excessive passion.”—isn’t that in one of those self-help books?  In a job interview you say your fault is being too committed to your job?


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