And All the Rest That Fits

Now that I've completed my overall analysis, and my guy reaction, of the Biden-Palin debate, I have a few points I'd like to delve into. To begin, something of a petty one:

We've had two terms of a President who has butchered the English language, setting a bad example for children in America and making us look stupid abroad when foreign leaders can speak our language better than our own President. I don't think it's elitist to suggest that we try a President who, with a team of people telling them on a daily basis, is able to remember that "nuclear" only has the one "u" in it. It's "nu-cle-ar" not "nuc-u-ler." Also, "Iraq" and "Iran" are not Apple products (though I hear the new iRaq has wi-fi). It's not "I- Rack." If we're going to invade a country and kill tens of thousands of it's citizens, let's not add insult by acting like we've never heard of the country before and don't know how to pronounce it's name in our own language.

Now, the real facts. Palin disputed Biden's claim that our commander in Afghanistan said a surge-like strategy wouldn't work. She said that "McClellan" never said that. Perhaps that's true, because our commander in Afghanistan is named "McKiernan" and he did in fact say that something like the Sunni Awakening wouldn't work in Afghanistan, because the tribal situation there is more complex than the situation in Iraq.

Palin refered to the Obama-Biden strategy in Iraq as a "white flag of surrender." General Patreus, who she repeatedly invoked as someone she thought could do no wrong, said recently that he didn't think "victory" was possible in Iraq. If our goal is to rid the world of terrorists, specifically in Iraq, you never can have a victory. Terrorists aren't an ethnic group that can be wiped out. Terrorism is a tactic, and it will be employed anytime you have dissidents. It's happend in Iraq, it happened in Africa, it's even happened in Oklahoma. Obame and Biden don't want to drop our weapons and run for the hills, they want to continue fighting for the next YEAR and a HALF, they want to keep training the Iraq army for a YEAR and a HALF, and then they want to keep some American troops in Iraq to support the 400,000 MAN Iraqi army to defend their own country (a policy that both President Bush and the president of Iraq now support). That's not a white flag. That's turning the country over to the people we said we were rescuing from a dictatorship. That, is victory.

When asked about what campaign promises they might have to scale back considering the financial crisis our country is in, Joe Biden was very straightforward. He said we might have to slow or scale back our foreign aid, something I would oppose but certainly won't cost him any points here. He also named other things that he would put on the back-burner while specifying all of the things he thought we couldn't afford to withhold money from, including health care and education. Sarah Palin's response? Nothing. In a time when the value of the dollar has dropped, the stock market has plummeted, unemployment has risen, job creation has decreased, and our deficit is at an all-time high...Sarah Palin and John McCain will both cut taxes (decreasing the money our government has to spend) and increase spending, thus ensuring that our deficit climbs higher, we have to borrow more money from China, and our dollar and economy continue to decline in power.

How about that health care? Obama and Biden want to make sure that all Americans can get it, because studies (and common sense) have proven that if our citizens can go to the doctor when they need to, they will get sick and injured less often and therefore not have to miss work or work at a diminished capacity, thus increasing productivity and growth in our economy. Sarah Palin and John McCain say they would like to increase payroll taxes, thus causing employers to be burdened and therefore decrease health benefits, and then they want to replace the average of $12,000 in benefits you get with a $5,000 tax credit. They claim this is "revenue neutral," meaning that it won't cost extra, but in fact it means it will cost the government $5,000 for each person, because that's 5k in taxes they won't be paying to the government but to a healthcare provider. I don't understand how they don't consider that socialism when they want to take tax money and give it right to the health care companies.

Palin again repeated the falsehood that Obama wants to sit down with our enemies without preconditions. His actual policy is that he wants to engage with these countries diplomatically. He's not saying that he personally wants to sit down with these leaders, or that he will do it whenever or however they dictate. He is merely saying that we can't just ignore these countries and think that our threats will change their ways. His idea is so crazy, though, that 5 former secretaries of state, our current President, and much of the rest of the world agrees with it. Meanwhile, she thinks we shouldn't even bother sending diplomats unless they agree to immediately disarm, something you can't get them to do until you send diplomats to convince them to do it, and she has no response for why McCain doesn't want to meet with the leader of NATO-ally Spain who has troops in Afghanistan fighting with us.

Palin again repeated the falsehood that McCain put country first and suspended his campaign to take care of the financial crisis. He "suspended" his campaign by continuing to do television interviews, continuing to run campaign ads, and not going to Washington until the following day, at which point he derailed that negotiation process for his own political ends. She also said she wouldn't answer the questions they way the moderator wanted, and that she wanted to talk straight to the American people without the media filter. As a filter take the toxins from your drinking water, or cuts the tar from you cigarette, does she not realize that the media filters bs from a candidate's mouth and tells us when they are lying to the American people. Yes, I think she does, which is why she wants to talk straight to us - so she can lie to us.

She doesn't believe an unstable Pakistan WHICH ALREADY HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAT COULD HIT ISRAEL is as big a threat as Iran which merely wants Nuclear weapons. She states that America has nuclear weapons as a deterrent and that's a good thing, I suppose unaware of the fact that the reason Iran and North Korea want them so badly is so that they can use them as a deterrent against us so we'll negotiate with them and not invade. She said McCain knows how to win wars, even though the war he fought in is a war we lost and that as Senator, he presided over and supported several conflicts we fared poorly in, and opposed ones in which we succeeded. She said that, like Dick Cheney, she believes the Vice President is a member of Congress as well as the Executive branch, and that she wants to expand that role. She promotes placing our embassy in Jerusalem, a move that increase hostility against the U.S. and Israel from Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. She supports a two-state solution in Israel, something most Israeli's are opposed to, but has no problem with the fact that Hamas won in the elections in Palestine, probably because she doesn't know what Hamas is.

And her solution to the lending crisis? She thinks Americans should stop borrowing money. Well, you see, since the United States' government can't stop, and her policies would mean that more people are out of work and have higher costs, how are they supposed to live if they don't occasionally put something on the credit card? Well, if average Americans are anything like her, they'll just have to live in their Governor's mansions instead of their private estates, and they'll have to sell their jets and instead take flights paid for by lobbyists. She said she doesn't think paying taxes is patriotic, but maybe that's because in Alaska she cut their taxes and made the federal government and the American energy consumer foot the bill.

Finally, a special note for both Biden and Palin. I know you're trying to win an election. I know that change comes slowly. I know that a lot of people in America aren't ready for real change. However, there is never an acceptable time for bigotry. You can say you support the right of a same-sex couple to have hospital visits and joint home ownership. You can say they should have the right to enter into contracts together. None of these, however, are rights you couldn't get through a lawyer or as partners in a corporation. The fact is, you can say you are "tolerant" as Sarah Palin did, but tolerance is not enough. "Tolerance" means that you'll put up with something. I hate bees buzzing around me in the summertime, but I tolerate it. When she says "tolerate" she means she thinks you are a sinner, a pervert, someone who made a terrible choice, and because of that she doesn't think you should have the same rights as anyone else in this country, but I guess that she won't actively try to get you thrown in jail or beaten up. That's her "tolerance." But Joe, you should know better. You fought actively for civil rights, at a time in this country when black people, like the man you are running with, still hadn't been afforded all of the equal rights of the rest of us. You can give gay people all the individual rights in the world, but as the Supreme Court proved, separate but equal is not what our country stands for. As long as they are treated as "other" they will never be equal, and we will as a nation will never be truly free.

Thank you for reading, and good night.