Yes, I am starting a political blog. For any of you who didn’t get to see the Democratic debate in its entirety last night, I have summed up the pertinent moments below.
Please, please opine, correct me, set me straight… I plan on keeping this up until the elections.
Opening thoughts:
Kucinich and Gravel are LUNATICS. They are, as I wrote mom last night, the Sanjayas of the Democratic primaries.
Bill Richardson, despite his BOAT LOAD of credentials, is seriously nothing but a Humpty-Dumpty with a dark toupee unless he learns how to SPEAK. Nothing he said was cohesive.. he was unable to get any solid point across. This is sad, because based on the man’s extensive international relationships and experiences, he has a lot to say. He is way too liberal… way too impractical. When asked what he would do in the first 100 days he starts rambling about education (after wrongly stating that no one had talked about it- not true at all)…
Hands down, Hilary and Obama blow everyone else away. They are the only two who I believe truly know what they are talking about.. and thus, I understood everything they had to say. Neither one rambled, went on bizarre tangents or repeatedly skated around questions.
Every other candidate, including Edwards, was so filled with double speak that it was so difficult to ascertain 1) what they were trying to say 2) what they believe in 3) If they even really got it.
However, Edwards was aggressive this time around… you can tell he was clearly there to try to gain in the polls and try to push down Hilary and Obama. Interesting, however, that Obama made no attempts to push Hilary down… she has been gaining on him in the polls of late.
Everything about this debate clearly framed out the top three- if not the top two. The seating/standing arrangements… the times that Hil, Ob and JE spoke.. Gravel probably was addressed 1/5 of the amount of times the others were.
Anything directed to Dodd (to quote my father- “A blowhard”- I love it), Kucinich, the raving idiot Gravel was just in sympathy/to make sure they’re not left out.
THEORY: Hilary asks Biden to be her VP. I have to admit, I thought the man was pretty rational last night. Biden, although he needs to reign in his emotions, knows his stuff and made SENSE frequently when he spoke. I don’t think a Hill/Obama ticket is feasible. Hil and Biden seemed to have a clear respect for each other- and were throwing subtle compliments back and forth. I think I picked up on a vibe... also, he would help her in some senses gain some of the conservative vote.
Ian felt Biden was playing the victim card much of the time… I didn’t see that.
On the issues:
IRAQ:
This obviously dominated.
Biden emerged as the best for me here… he was the only one up there that voted to continue funding the troops. The man makes sense.
J.E. tried to slam Hil and Obama here for not speaking or in his words, “leading” on this issue- even though they voted “correctly” in his words by not supporting spending. Because they didn’t speak out publicly ahead of their vote and “slinked” quietly up to cast their vote, JE tried to crush them for this. This led up to Obama’s shining moment as he pointed out that JE was “4.5 years late in leading on the issue” as Obama has been against the war from the beginning.
If I could opine… enough of the “well you voted this way” crap. I personally don’t care if they voted for the war or not at this point. I don’t care if they apologize for voting for it… I think they did the right thing by doing so.
One of the worst comments: Hilary- calling the Iraq war “George Bush’s war”. FALSE. This is OUR war. We’re all in it. We have to end it the smartest way possible.
IMMIGRATION:
Again, Biden made SENSE. There are estimated to be 14mm illegal immigrants here in the US. Let’s be practical, he said, we can not just cart all 14 million out of the US and make them stand in line at the border- this would cost Billions of millions of dollars and CRUSH our economy. RATIONAL. He likes the bill… says we weed out the criminals and then make the others EARN the right to stay here by learning English, paying back taxes, etc. I’m in support of this. Call it amnesty, call it what you will… we have to be practical.
Richardson- based on his being a self proclaimed “border governor” he should WIPE UP on this issue…. Instead, he stinks. He started this crap about not separating families (not trying to be insensitive- but that shouldn’t be the base of his platform on the issue) and could not actually answer whether he thought it was amnesty or not… ANSWER THE QUESTIONS. It looks ten times worse NOT to answer than to say the answer you know people don’t want to hear.
Interesting fact I learned from Hilary: Regarding making English the “official” language vs the “national” language. It is currently the national language… however, if we ever made it the “official” language, this means that we could never print ballots in any other language, the govm’t wouldn’t pay for translators at hospitals, etc…. essentially everything would be in English. I fully support NOT making this the “official” language and actually do agree with HRC.
HEALTHCARE:
People have to start admitting that they need to raise taxes for this to happen. Hilary is still afraid to say it. All candidates have plans out there… JE thinks Obama’s isn’t universal…
Interesting/Awful: 46mm people do not have healthcare and 50mm people are under insured… this has to be fixed.
It should NOT be fixed by repealing the Bush tax cuts for those who make more than $250K year. What enraged me MOST about the Democrats last night was their whole “steal from the rich and give to the poor/Robin Hood” attitudes… it is seriously CRIMINAL. This viewpoint and way of taxing gives the poor ZERO incentive to ever be rich… to ever work hard to get ahead… why should they when the Democrats want to REWARD them for their lot in life and punish those who have WORKED HARD and make $$. I know there are exceptions to this… but it’s hard to not take this issue personally…
We need a FLAT TAX. NOTHING else is fair.
Kucinich embarrassed himself by talking about a not for profit healthcare system… get off the stage.
Hilary was very presidential here… she made the point that essentially all the candidates have the same healthcare plan… but what is missing is the political FORCE to actually make changes.
However,… she tried it again by attacking all “hypothetical” questions… whining to the big bad Wolf Blitzer that any of the ‘hypothetical’ questions shouldn’t be answered because it would have to depend on the situation. This, I disagree with. Your entire campaign has to be filled with hypotheticals… that is how leaders are PREPARED and SOLID… they think of every hypothetical situation and have an ACTION plan… she was obviously trying to skirt the real issues in certain cases… basically any question that she didn’t want to answer/thought would put her in a bad place was a “hypothetical” that shouldn’t be answered…
Closing comment:
WORST question of the night: If you were President, what role would you give Bill Clinton in your administration? WHY is that a question?? Why does that matter? It was silly.. stupid… and embarrassing to see everyone kissing Bill’s cheating butt.
Repubs hash it out tomorrow night… can’t wait.
17 comments:
ok, lets blog this out...
they all lost the debate...they live in another world
being an honest leader is not calling a war that you voted for and support "George Bush's War" -- this is double-talk
being a sensible president is not creating socialized healthcare -- remember Reagan: "Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. "
being a fair leader is instituting flat taxation w/o penalties for being successful
being a rational commander-in-chief is recognizing that we have a powerkeg in the middle east and throughout the world in the form of islamic terrorism -- this is not a "time-table" war, this is a multi-generational offensive, with involvement throughout many time-zones, working with our allies (read: military+intelligence+diplomacy). Just look at JFK incident...this is a great example of successful intervention
guarding the border means dealing w/ the incentives to work here...translation: police the laws on the books and penalize businesses. No jobs = no wall-climbers
on the language point...why not make English the official language? Or, said differently, if it isn't under what conditions do we consider other languages equally "official"? What does it say that Hong Kong can set English (along w/ Cantonese) as their official language -- and Hawaii can set their official language as Hawaiian, but we can't decide on English?
Republicans, please bring some fresh air
Time for the CMH Blog – though I did not get to see the debates and at this point I have only kept up with the issues to a limited degree.
1) Iraq – we need to stay there as long as it takes. We can’t just give up and leave now, otherwise all the lives lost at this point will possibly be for naught. Though I admit my view here is clearly biased. I wonder how (if at all) my opinion would be different if I knew a ton of people / families directly affected by the war. (I hope it wouldn’t change my opinion.)
2) Agree mostly on the flat tax issue – although I would at least attempt to consider a very slight increase in the tax rate as income level goes up – I think this would only have a very minor effect on the amount of tax paid for the ultra-wealthy, but would lead to billions more dollars per year for the government to deal with the excessive healthcare under-coverage that exists. I would hope that people would take pride in reaching a level financially where they are asked to contribute a little bit more to help solve such a mounting crisis.
3) Agree that we can’t throw all the illegal immigrants out of the country, but everyone needs to be accountable and businesses need to be run ethically and according to the law. We need to take control of this issue and provide national guidelines for businesses and illegal immigrants to play by the rules and become legal and contributing members of this country.
4) I do not think we should make English the official language. It is too extreme and unfair to the millions of legal immigrants here who are such an integral part of this economy, but I would hope most of them realize that they need to learn English anyway in order to give themselves the greatest opportunities here. And if not, we need to communicate that to them.
I will definitely run home quickly from by kickball game and tune into the GOP debate tonight and hope to have much more informed comments/opinions about it tomorrow.
who are most of the Reps? other than Romney, Rudi and McCain I do not recognize any of them, nor have I heard them before tonight. I also think that Wolf Blitzer is trying to make it his show- too arrogant.
ok none of the reps have a clue except that most are staunch conservatives- i.e., god created everything so they are trying to fill the requirements of the religious right. Wolf is still just a U-boat commander
My thoughts exactly, Dad. Dare I say there are more weirdos on stage tonight than Sunday night? WHAT is with the lightening and the sound? Embarassing. Rudy=abortion. He's got it right. New post to follow. Blog on..
what is a neocon? Ron Paul gets the biggest loser tag so far.....
Is that Tommy Thompson's real hair? or a bad hairpiece?
mike huckabee may as well be jerry falwell- there is an opening at Liberty U for him
I wish McCain would stop calling everyone "my friends" every few seconds. And i've never seen someone talk so much with their elbows. He looked like he was doing the chicken dance the whole night.
Tancredo and Paul are weirdos who could not put an eloquent sentence together. Agree - there was way too much talk about Creationism. I felt like I was attending church service for a while.
I thought Romney and Rudy were the 2 standouts. I thought Mitt was the most put together and thoughtful candidate and least seemed like he was going off of a previously memorized script.
I didn't know about the Z-Visa. I agree that it should be temporary.
please i though that this way going to be just a debate at Howard, not a black america debate
al sharpton is in the audience- that says it all
who is the guy in the tan pants?
edwards is such a lightweight $400 haircut and all
what do drugs have to do with race?
Earth to Mike Gravel, earth to Mike Gravel
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