Thursday, October 02, 2008

Vice Presidential debate: How are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?


Transcript.

Yes, Palin performed better than in the more open-ended interviews. The format and the lack of follow-up helped her to partially mask her ignorance, and she was allowed on multiple occasions to simply ignore the question and talk about something else. Gwen Ifill actually made me wish Katie Couric had gotten the job. Yikes. In response to Biden pointing out her failure to answer one question, she snapped “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.” (And her Trig record, and...) So she’ll “talk straight,” but only about the things she wants to talk about.

The “maverick” count: Palin used “team of mavericks,” “the maverick from the Senate,” “the consummate maverick”... actually only 6 times. Seemed like more. Biden came prepared with a long “he has not been a maverick on health care, he has not been a maverick on the war” thing which Obama should have started saying a long time ago.

Biden: “We’re going to focus on the middle class, because it’s -- when the middle class is growing, the economy grows and everybody does well.” Ah, the Democratic version of trickle down.


Palin: “You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?’ And I’ll betcha, you’re going to hear some fear in that parent’s voice.” They probably think you’re threatening to blow up their house unless their kid throws the game. Another way to figure out if this has been a good time or a bad time in the economy, Sarah: look at one of those many newspapers. Or talk to a, whaddayacallem? economist.

Oh, and that was the first betcha at 6:05. And the first maverick, in “team of mavericks,” at 6:08. First darn at 6:09.


6:10 “hockey moms,” in this rousing cry: “One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again, never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars.” You heard her, Joe Six Pack and hockey moms: band together and burn down your local bank.

6:11 first heck: “It’s not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurtin’ like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.”

Palin accuses Obama of voting 94 times to raise or not to lower taxes. Biden points out that by the “bogus standard” she’s using, McCain voted to raise taxes 477 times.

Palin disagrees that it’s patriotic for the rich to pay higher taxes.

Biden says McCain’s plan to tax health insurance benefits is the ultimate bridge to nowhere.

Palin calls herself a “Mainstreeter.”

She is dropping g’s all over the place and doing the folksy thing so heavily that she may well be doing an imitation of Tina Fey doing an imitation of Sarah Palin.


Palin: “I’m not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate.”

Palin: “And I don’t want to argue about the causes [of climate change]. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”

Biden: “Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.” Oh, but he’s against gay marriage.


Palin: “But I also want to clarify, if there’s any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant... But I’m being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non- support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.” She said “straight up” twice in that paragraph.

WHAT OUR TROOPS DON’T NEED TO HEAR TODAY, THAT’S FOR SURE: 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.”

She can pronounce “Ahmadinejad” (who she says isn’t sane or stable) but not “nuclear.”


Palin, in the middle of an Israel pander-off: “But I’m so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on”.

Palin accuses Obama & Biden of “constantly looking backwards” and “doing the blame game.” Evidently, because Obama talks about change a lot, it’s impermissible to point out the mistakes of the Bush administration, you know, the things he wants to change from.

Biden responds: “Past is prologue.” I appreciate that he readily had Shakespeare in his intellectual arsenal, even if he just convinced half the American people that’s he a know-it-all smarty pants.


What should be the trigger for the use of nukes? Palin: “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period.” She says the safe, stable way to use nukes is as a deterrent. I wonder if she thinks she answered the question?

She seems to think NATO allies are involved in Afghanistan but not in Iraq.


WHAT JOHN MCCAIN KNOWS: Palin: “John McCain who knows how to win a war. Who’s been there and he’s faced challenges and he knows what evil is and he knows what it takes to overcome the challenges here with our military.”

Joe spends a lot of time in Home Depot.


Turn the hokey setting on your tv way down for this one: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You prefaced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and blah blah blah”.

I have to say that even with all the hecks and betchas she’d previously deployed, I just wasn’t expecting a doggone it.

WHAT SARAH KNOWS: “Of course we know what a vice president does.”

For example: “I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” See, and you thought she didn’t know what a vice president does.

WHERE MCCAIN HAS ALREADY TAPPED HER: Palin: “John McCain and I have had good conversations about where I would lead with his agenda. That is energy independence in America and reform of government over all, and then working with families of children with special needs. That’s near and dear to my heart also. In those arenas, John McCain has already tapped me and said, that’s where I want you, I want you to lead. I said, I can’t wait to get and there go to work with you.”



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