Anyone watching the debate?

Sweet :)

I feel like I'm in a financial planning seminar.

yes, me and the husband are watching and eating popcorn.

not as much of an education as I'd like, but also not as fall-on-your-face painful and I was worried about.

At least so far.

Looks good so far. She doesn't sound totally stupid and he doesn't sound like a total jerk... glad to see this may be a substantial conversation!

... what Lisa said :)

Well, since we're all teachers here. I'm feeling major guilt about not grading papers while watching the debate. This thing better get interesting to justify my coming late night.

she gave a better answer on climate change to Katie, I think.

She's not answering Biden's questions, but this is better for her--getting put into a corner didn't work for her, as we saw on CBS.

Papers will always be there to be graded. I grade most effectively at the last minute... And students are really forgiving, I've found.

Yeah, those Couric interviews were worrying.

Drill, baby, drill?

I'd love to know how much the oil companies donated to her gubernatorial campaign.

and I keep laughing at "clean, green, natural gas."
I come from West Virginia. We know exactly how "green" that gas is.
It really is amazing how powerful catchy phrases are, no matter how distorted.

oh wow. that was amazing. hearing them both say they don't believe in the state "allowing for" or defining gay marriage--Biden for church-state separation reasons and Palin because she wants religious faith to dictate moral issues like marriage.
Wow.

I love it when people have to say: "I'm tolerant" and then clarify it.

uh oh. Did she just say it was the "shia" extremists that are fighting us in Iraq!?!?!?!??!

I hate people not getting the sunni/shiite split right!!!!!!

people are obsessed with the Shi'ites because of Iran. They just transport their "enemy faction" from one country and arena to another....

She's equivocating too much (gay marriage) and not being clear (troop withdrawal): rhetorically, he's ahead.

but hotness-wise, she's definitely ahead. I do have to say, she's very easy on the eyes. Not bad at all. I think Tommy's developing a crush....

It seems those who want to spend billions on war in Iraq love the troops more than those who wanted to keep them at home.

She said the Iranian President's name right. That name is hard to pronounce!!!
/Kissinger? That's one kind of realpolitik I wouldn't like to see back in the White House...

oh but we're such big defenders of women's rights that we're super big allies of Saudi Arabia?!?!?!?

And freedom is so important that we'll cozy up to China?!?!?!!?

Ah, Gov. Palin, except Hitchens had a great piece ripping the ol' Kiss.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201130

h/t to Matt Hunte for sending it over earlier this week. Talk about a foreign policy cult about the ol' guy.

The reasoning on Israel is so circular. They are our biggest allies so we have to defend them against all others and they are our biggest ally because we defend them against all others. Ugh.

I heard Kissinger a couple years ago. Such a scary, now-dotty, man. I mean, his arguments about how we should behave in the world was incredibly short-sighted and down-right evil.

Great link Matt! Somehow I doubt that Obama's conversations with leaders around the world will take us to the same place that Henry took us what with his support of reprehensible regimes throughout Latin America- I want a 'realpolitik' that doesn't view equipping and enabling terrorist states as an acceptable foreign policy.

well, this flu-ridden old professor has to go to bed so I can catch an early flight. I've seen enough. Good for Palin holding it together. About as substantial a debate as politicians are going to give you.... I think Palin's redeeming herself, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Now I can disagree with her on the issues and not because she's an idiot.

Her response just now on Sudan was excellent. As was her take on Biden's position before and after his selection as VP. He's doing a poor job of answering her challenge on his vote for the war.

But why was her move to have Alaska divest from Sudan motivated by appearances (a desire not to be seen to be condoning abuses in Darfur)? Why not act out of a moral conviction that profiting from that situation is wrong?

More authority in the VP?

After Cheney's royal reach, no thank you.

My word, Biden jumped all over that question about the role of VP.

Palin: Yeah, McCain such a maverick. Note all his Republican friends. Rudy, Mitt. . .

Palin talks well but I'm still waiting to hear direct substantive answers to the questions. Guess we'll have to keep waiting. Repetitive answers and unable to truly address the questions asked.

I think they both did a great job of not fitting the roles cast for them by pundits. It was an informative and enjoyable debate and I look forward to reading opinion pieces tomorrow!

It was fun to blog this with you all. Night!

Unfortunately most of the commentary will be about the performance and not the substance since for the members of the punditry (and arguably the right-wing establishment) politics is a end in itself.

I voted for Ron Paul. I will vote for Chuck Baldwin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5HIPsnZOc
Go Constitution Party!

"Let me tell you what Barack asked me to do. I have a history of getting things done in the United States Senate. John McCain would acknowledge that. My record shows that on controversial issues. I would be the point person for the legislative initiatives in the United States Congress for our administration. I would also, when asked if I wanted a portfolio, my response was, no. But Barack Obama indicated to me he wanted me with him to help him govern. So every major decision he'll be making, I'll be sitting in the room to give my best advice. He's president, not me, I'll give my best advice."

Biden's response to what Obama wants him to do as VP is exactly what Cheney has done as VP.

The following: "The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote."

That quote from Biden is not in contradiction with the role Cheney has taken as VP.

The Cheney Vice Presidency has permanently redefined what the role of the Vice President is, Biden clearly stated he will continue this role as he goes to the Hill to promote the Obama/Biden initiatives. This is in fact a continuation of the Cheney VP Doctrine.

Jeannieb43

But Johann, Biden is NOT Cheney.
Cheney has rewritten the rule book on being Vice President. He took over the presidency. He's a scary person. Very scary.

I can trust Biden. He did well tonight, holding back when he would have liked to point out Palin's errors ["nucular," "Obama will raise taxes on the middle class," etc., etc.].

Well, my personal thought is that it's embarrassing to have Palin represent women... She's just "too cute" the way she rolls her eyes. And could we stand having another president who says "nucular"? I couldn't!

Biden might not be Cheney, but the argument was a constitutional one. Cheney did nothing to violate the constitution. The attack on Cheney is that he overstepped his bounds as the VP.

While I do agree with you that Cheney's actions as VP were over the top, this is really why: President Bush signed a executive order granting the VP the power to classify and declassify information.

Biden is unlikely to give up the new power that Cheney has secured for the Vice President. I grant you that he may make different, even "better", use of the power, but giving it up he will not.

No part of the government has ever returned a power that they somehow secured. This isn't going to change regardless of who's President. Especially since you don't want to be remembered as the President that reduced the influence of the Presidency.

Could a US President issue an executive order suspending the US Constitution, and replacing it with a UN Constitution, on an indefinite basis, due to an international state of emergency?

orthodoxymoron

Short answer. YES

Long answer. Pending (It's late and I have papers to write)

The constitutional basis is there, as well as precedence set by none other than Lincoln.

"No part of the government has ever returned a power that they somehow secured. This isn't going to change regardless of who's President."

Johann,

That's a broad-brush argument, based on a popular assumption about politics that belies the facts. One of the purposes of the separation of powers has worked at times to curb executive excess. For example:

After Nixon's overreach, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was put in place and held (until Bush II) as a restriction on executive power. Another example of a then new limit on the executive branch is the U.S. War Powers Act. Another example is precisely the one you bring up about Lincoln. The rights (he never suspended the Constitution) suspended under him were returned in 1866. A lot of folks make the mistake of thinking that suspending Habaes Corpus equals suspending the Constitution, but that's not correct.

This New Yorker article on Addington from two years ago details some of the Cheney doctrine.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact1

Biden just doesn't have the Nixon-chip on his shoulder that Cheney had. Furthermore, if you pay attention to the context of that quote, Biden is actually attacking the overreach of the VP office under Cheney, specifically, how Cheney has refused to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act by arguing that he is NOT a part of the executive branch due his is role in Congress.

Orthodoxymoron,

I've noticed your tendency to post-classic conspiracy theory videos, particularly that old militia myth about the income tax. You're certainly entitled to those opinions.

Having spent some time growing up in Adventist circles where these New World Order theories mix with our eschatology, it's always fascinating to see how new events fit their framework. One of the things that I've seen is that as the Republican Party has tried to put its anti-civil rights history behind it, the overt racists have often migrated to these conservative populist theories about banking, immigration, and the UN.

Once again, according to some links on the ol' wikipedia it appears to prove true.

Orthodoxymoron, How do you justify voting for this guy, who is on record as thinking that the South was the right side during the Civil War and who has appeared on white nationalist radio?

It was so choreographed and rehearsed that it did not mean much. It appeared from CNN's on-camera voter panel that Obama-Biden clearly got the largest number of decisions, assuming that the screeners actually got a room full of undecideds and not people who lied to them. Frankly, I had the impression that Palin is a sincere, Christian, middle class mom who is really clueless and Biden is a boozy, old, politician who has forgotten more than Palin knows, but does not have enough creativity and energy left to deal with the kind of problems we face. Thank God for Obama's youth, energy and brilliance and pray that whomever is president never dies!!!

Much of the talks involving this debate, and the previous one, as well as the overall presidential campaign at the moment focuses on how to take care of the American middle class. In essence the message goes like this: the rich have taken care of themselves, but it is the well-being of the middle class of America that we need to focus on. My concern is that none speaks about the poor of America. In the earlier stage of the campaign Jim Wallis challenged Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with some serious questions about their attitude towards the poor of America. By now such discourse has disappeared from the presidential debate, and it should be back. Only the blind cannot see that America has a serious problem with poverty too, and that this should be one of the top concerns of the new administration. There under the cover of affluent and prosperous America stretches a home of a third world America populated by millions and millions of people stuck in their suburbia ghettos, under-educated, unprotected, with no prospect of life and no future, prone to violence, crime and all kinds of abuse, whose living conditions are often much worse that those of many living in the real third world countries. Who will take care of the poor of America?

Palin is scary. This debate mattered because McCain is the oldest guy to run and she certainly could be stepping in should he be elected. That's why this debate mattered.

She couldn't name a Supreme Court case last week that she disagreed with. And she could actually be naming a new justice to the Supreme Court if circumstances created that opportunity. What does she know about it?

I saw no substance, plans any different from the current administrations's same-old-same-ole. Claims--yes. Plans--no.

About her demeanor--I have many students who could probably be perky and wink and use colloquial language.

I would be proud and confident should Biden have to take over the presidency. Though the country would be shaken, and it would be a terrible event, whomever is president, Biden would step in and handle it with confidence, honesty, and all his integrity and energy. He has been through crises--personal and political. He is a proven, transparent, authentic statesman.

Whomever assumes the presidency no doubt will appoint at least one Supreme Court Justice. As an Adventist, THAT ISSUE ALONE, prompts me to vote against the Republican machine which pays back its hard-core, most conservative voters by nominating the most anti-separation of church and state justices they can find.

Just my opinion.

Jeannieb43
PLM, I agree.

The Republican Party is now being controlled by the radical rightwing. Although McCain himself was previously pro-choice, now that he's running for president he has changed his position and has gone public with his anti-choice stance -- because it's the radical rightwing which is controlling whether or not he's supported by the party.

He went on TV at one point and stated that his appointments to the Supreme Court would be "in the mode of Justices Roberts and Scalia" -- in other words, voting against personal rights of choice and of religious freedom.

Those two areas make McCain anathema to the rights of thinking Christian Seventh-day Adventists.

I wonder if people liked when Joel Hunter said it's an error for us to make statements like "a Christian should vote for proposition xyz" or "a follower of Christ should not vote for candidate abc".

The Republican Party is now being controlled by the radical rightwing. Although McCain himself was previously pro-choice, now that he's running for president he has changed his position and has gone public with his anti-choice stance -- because it's the radical rightwing which is controlling whether or not he's supported by the party.

Posted by: Jeannieb43 | 03 October 2008 at 1:12

Possibly the most silly thing I have heard concerning the situation.
One might achieve some success in arguing that in the primary's but everyone who watches politics knows its always a race back to the center for the general election.

Not to detract from the seriousness of these comments, but I thought the SNL opening was quite good!

Soft, pointless, both acted like they were running for this years Oscars. The issues were like playing trivia in the back seat of a New York Cab. From top to bottom it is second tier which is quite a step up from the second growth "shrub". Tom

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald shares some evidence showing how ineffectual Palin's scare-mongering about Iraq was during the debate, on average voters watching.

The current GOP tactic of attacking those who are increasingly skeptical about the Iraq war as weak and unpatriotic is increasingly failing to work.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/03/iraq/index.html

I hate War! I have been In War! All those who have avoided war seem to love it!

During combat, I treated about 60 wounded a day. About 10-12 percent beyond human help. Not very pretty. In our case, justified, although provoked. But this mess--somebody got a terrible case of Jock Ich only to find out Shock and Awe is not therapeutic. One wonders if elections will be of any help. The human stress is almost becone rational conversation and problem resolution. We are in a hypervigilent mode from top to botton with second rate protagonists on either side.

It is far better to worry if Tigar Woods will ever make a come-back or if silicon implants will keep their place for a reasonable carrer life span in News/Weather/Sports Color.

My plastic surgeon friend really worries about it. He is 12 years out from retirement. I am not suggesting you put it on your prayer list, although it is on his. Tom

"All those who have avoided war seem to love it!"

Tom, you've just described all those "chicken hawks in this administration. Against most of the former generals who had experienced war first hand, the "hawks" won.

Frank Rich pretty much nails it.

Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky, whether he’s repeating his “Miss Congeniality” joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time (“The fundamentals of our economy are strong”) or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain). McCain’s “dismaying temperament,” as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.
...
It’s against this backdrop that Palin’s public pronouncements, culminating with her debate performance, have been so striking. The standard take has it that she’s either speaking utter ignorant gibberish (as to Couric) or reciting highly polished, campaign-written sound bites that she’s memorized (as at the convention and the debate). But there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.

This was first apparent when Palin extolled a “small town” vice president as a hero in her convention speech — and cited not one of the many Republican vice presidents who fit that bill but, bizarrely, Harry Truman, a Democrat who succeeded a president who died in office. A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05rich.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&o...

Well said, Alexander.

I've just returned from an Obama rally this afternoon. His ability to connect in person is powerful. But it's his ideas that are finding connection. His delivery is effective. His arguments about McCain's desire to deregulate health care next (after banking) are also effective.

I expect the debate Tuesday night will overshadow the Palin and Biden debate.

Alex, great commentary about two second tier candidates.

It was Teddy Roosevelt that took on the special interests, Taft took it all back, and FDR that took a page for Teddy's book--but the SDA Church of wage earners stood by the con men for generations. When ever Al Capone is mentioned, the President of the General Conference should stand up and take a bow. It is no a wonder that Al built his Michigan hide-away within two miles of E.M.C. (During that period, craftsmen considered Al the best pay in town) Tom