http://www.youtube.com/wat
and watch Joe Biden WIPE THE DEBATE FLOOR with the beauty queen. It's brutal.
Highlights include:
“PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce.”
Sorry, the American dream is admirable, but we are resting on our laurels. Our work ethic pales in comparison to other countries in some respects. Take, for instance, the nearly starving in S.E. Asia and Mid/Central America who are willing to work excessive hours for minimal pay? These people are desparate to feed their families… and likely have a slightly more “driven” ethic than the average middle class American. How about the science and tech sectors in China, India, and Japan? These countries are pumping out hard-working, educated professionals to compete with the lead that the U.S. has normally enjoyed in these departments. Often these professionals leave the country (effectively “brain draining” their native countries, which is especially noticible in India) and compete very well in the U.S. where they have to tackle the additional barriers of language and culture differences!
This comment isn’t to put our country down… but to make the point that we should probably be a bit more humble than Palin implies.
Enjoy this strange doublethink by Palin:
“PALIN: We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt. “
And
“PALIN: Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper.”
WAIT…. so when it comes to the private sector of wall street and bank lending, you want GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT. But when it comes to giving enormous tax breaks to companies, you want the government to stand down and let the private sector “grow and thrive and prosper” (sic)? Am I the only one that sees a contradiction here?
“PALIN: I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you. But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they're going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity… (I edited out the Health care plan she goes on to address for the sake of the point)”
“BIDEN: Gwen, I don't know where to start. We don't call a redistribution in my neighborhood Scranton, Claymont, Wilmington, the places I grew up, to give the fair to say that not giving Exxon Mobil another $4 billion tax cut this year as John calls for and giving it to middle class people to be able to pay to get their kids to college, we don't call that redistribution. We call that fairness, number one. Number two fact, 95 percent of the small businesses in America, their owners make less than $250,000 a year. They would not get one single solitary penny increase in taxes, those small businesses.”
This one had me pause and rewind. I have one word to say here (follow the link)… and that is that Palin has been: http://i126.photobucket.co
“PALIN: … That doesn't cost the government anything as opposed to Barack Obama's plan to mandate health care coverage and have universal government run program and unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the feds”
I’ll grant Palin the point. I’m not a big fan of the Feds. However, as a future Physician who is genuinely concerned about patient advocacy, I’m under no illusions that for-profit insurance companies are managing our health care any better. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
“PALIN: We're circulating about $700 billion a year into foreign countries, some who do not like America -- they certainly don't have our best interests at heart -- instead of those dollars circulating here, creating tens of thousands of jobs and allowing domestic supplies of energy to be tapped into and start flowing into these very, very hungry markets.
Energy independence is the key to this nation's future, to our economic future, and to our national security. So when we talk about energy plans, it's not just about who got a tax break and who didn't. And we're not giving oil companies tax breaks, but it's about a heck of a lot more than that.
Energy independence is the key to America's future.”
I’ll refer to an earlier note. If America is completely energy independent, and for the purposes of this thought experiement doesn’t have to spend any energy on creating the infrastructure to become energy independent, it would last a little under 4 years under current rates of consumption. Four years. Also, a quick fact check reveals that while Palin said, "We're circulating about $700 billion a year into foreign countries" for imported oil this is repeating an outdated figure often used by McCain. At oil prices current as of Sept. 30, imports are running at a rate of about $493 billion per year.
Also note Palin’s comment: “And we're not giving oil companies tax breaks, but it's about a heck of a lot more than that.” This is completely false. McCain wants to cut corporate taxes from 35 percent to 25 percent, indirectly giving companies like Exxon something like $4 billion in tax breaks.
“PALIN: …So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.”
How does offshore drilling and tapping into U.S. oil reserves “conserving” anything?
Earlier she says, “But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”
To which Biden responds: “Well, I think it is manmade. I think it's clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden -- Gov. Palin and Joe Biden.
If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That's the cause. That's why the polar icecap is melting.”
Another big point to Biden. Here he is completely in line with the multinational organization of thousands of environmental scientists (source: http://www.ipcc.ch/) .
Now, watch how Palin shoots herself in the foot.
“BIDEN: … We should be creating jobs. John McCain has voted 20 times against funding alternative energy sources and thinks, I guess, the only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must, but it will take 10 years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to begun to be drilled.
In the meantime, we're all going to be in real trouble.
IFILL: Let me clear something up, Sen. McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Sen. Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don't believe you've always supported.
BIDEN: I have always supported it. That's a fact.
IFILL: Well, clear it up for us, both of you, and start with Gov. Palin.
PALIN: Yes, Sen. McCain does support this. The chant is "drill, baby, drill." And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into.”
Again, Palin clearly demonstrating how her energy plan is out of touch with reality. Later she proudly starts going into the details of the 40 billion pipeline that, as Biden correctly points out, will not pump a drop of oil until 2018.
Also, at this point in the debate I noticed three things:
1. Palin speaks almost entirely in sound bites and regularly repeats the same rhetoric for two different questions (e.g. McCain’s “maverick” status, her energy plan is frequently simply repeated instead of addressing the actual question)
2. Biden likes to verbally outline his responses with “Number one” and “number two”, etc. He shouldn’t do that.
3. While the Biden/Obama administration clearly favors more civil rights for gay couples, neither are willing to “re-define marriage” and “permit” gay marriage. Can’t we get over this “Civil Union but not Marriage” separate-but-equal bullshit and let these people enjoy legal legitimiacy to their relationship?
On Biden’s plan for troop withdrawal: “PALIN: Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure”
Great straw man argument, Palin.
Regardless, Biden nails McCain and the Bush doctrine in a single breath:
“BIDEN: John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again. John McCain voted against an amendment containing $1 billion, $600 million that I had gotten to get MRAPS, those things that are protecting the governor's son and pray god my son and a lot of other sons and daughters.
He voted against it. He voted against funding because he said the amendment had a time line in it to end this war. He didn't like that. But let's get straight who has been right and wrong. John McCain and Dick Cheney said while I was saying we would not be greeted as liberators, we would not - this war would take a decade and not a day, not a week and not six months, we would not be out of there quickly. John McCain was saying the Sunnis and Shias got along with each other without reading the history of the last 700 years. John McCain said there would be enough oil to pay for this. John McCain has been dead wrong. I love him. As my mother would say, god love him, but he's been dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war. Barack Obama has been right. There are the facts.”
Point Biden.
“PALIN: And we're going to forge ahead with putting government back on the side of the people and making sure that our country comes first, putting obsessive partisanship aside.
That's what John McCain has been known for in all these years. He has been the maverick. He has ruffled feathers.”
This line just made me chuckle.
“PALIN: The surge principles, not the exact strategy, but the surge principles that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan, also. And that, perhaps, would be a difference with the Bush administration.
Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause.”
A quick fact check shows that she misquotes Obama. Obama (August 2007): “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.”
Also, she reveals that the difference between the McCain/Palin and Bush/Cheney plan is TO COMMIT MORE TROOPS. Now, I see how Obama and McCain make a legitimate case for committing them in Afganistan.. but McCain plans on maintaining current deployment levels in Iraq for … how long?
I also enjoy Palin’s solution to the Darfur crisis is supporting the “No fly zone”…. remind me, how many of the genocidal massacres there are from jets?
“IFILL: Probably the biggest cliche about the vice-presidency is that it's a heartbeat away, everybody's waiting to see what would happen if the worst happened. How would -- you disagree on some things from your principles, you disagree on drilling in Alaska, the National Wildlife Refuge, you disagree on the surveillance law, at least you have in the past. How would a Biden administration be different from an Obama administration if that were to happen.
PALIN: And heaven forbid, yes, that would ever happen, no matter how this ends up, that that would ever happen with either party.
As for disagreeing with John McCain and how our administration would work, what do you expect? A team of mavericks, of course we're not going to agree on 100 percent of everything. As we discuss ANWR there, at least we can agree to disagree on that one. I will keep pushing him on ANWR. I have so appreciated he has never asked me to check my opinions at the door and he wants a deliberative debate and healthy debate so we can make good policy.”
Palin, I don’t think there can be two Mavericks… which means that you must be Goose.
“PALIN: Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.”
Extra credit for watching the boring grown-up debate? Yeah, when I was in third grade I was too busy kicking ass playing Pogs or being the Red Power Ranger… not watching presidential debates. Cute, though.
On experience:
“PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that's extremely important.”
Now the fact that alaska is a “huge state” as an argument. Alaska’s population is approximately 670,053 people. So that means she has the experience of governing a population that numbers slightly less than Charlotte, North Carolina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
Final Score:
Number of times Biden organizes his points by saying “Number one” and “Number two”: 9
Number of times Palin says "Maverick": 16
Match: Biden.
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