I got to watch it in 50” HD at my parents house.
It definitely would have been much more entertaining if each candidate had been placed in a giant hamster ball and had them go at it ala American Gladiator.
And really, it would have been just as informative.
Because recycling the same bad ideas the Democrats have had for 30 years isn't change.
Cool article in the WSJ about spending and the budget deficit.
The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion. This year revenues have declined by 0.8%, but a major reason is the $150 billion bipartisan tax rebate that has hit the Treasury without spurring the economy. Without these nonstimulating rebates, federal tax payments would have climbed another 2.5%, according to CBO. Revenue is expected to be a healthy 18.5% of GDP next year without any tax increase.
Yeah, I haven't gotten my rebate yet, because I still have to get the money together to pay my taxes in the first place.
Another myth is that the war on terror has busted the budget. While operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are expensive, defense spending is $605 billion this year, or about 4.5% of GDP. That only seems large by comparison to the holiday from history of the 1990s, when defense fell to 3% of GDP. As recently as 1986, defense spending was 6.2% of GDP.
The CBO says that, merely in the two years that Democrats have run Congress, federal expenditures are up $429 billion -- to $3.158 trillion.
Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it. Senator Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) has tallied up at least $398 billion in "paygo" violations so far. Earmarks were also supposed to be cut in half by this Congress. In 2008 there were some 11,000 at a cost of $17 billion, the second most ever, and far more than half the peak of 14,000 in 2006.
Bush was bad, but Pelosi was worse.
Was Sarah Palin for the bridge before she was against it?
Actually, Sarah Palin is still for a bridge.
I'm sure you're confused now. Let me back up a bit with some history.
First off, they don't call it the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, they call it the bridge to the airport.
40 years ago, people in that area of Alaska were looking for a place to build an airport. Airports require land that is well, flat. The only land around that was flat was Gravina Island. So they build the airport there, and the federal government promised that someday, they would build a bridge to the airport. In the meantime, the Alaskans setup a ferry system.
40 years later, the airport is getting more and more use. So the Alaskans bug their Senator, Ted Stevens. The problem is, the waterway between the island and the mainland is deep, deep enough for ocean going vessels. So bridging it would be equivalent to building a copy of the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn't Ted Stevens money though, so he slipped it into the bill. $363 million dollars worth of bridge.
Some people (McCain) was outraged by this, and started calling it the bridge to nowhere. Which wasn't entirely fair, but $363 million dollars was definitely too much to pay. So, long before Sarah Palin became governor, the earmark became a regular highway funds allocation instead of an earmark.
When Sarah Palin was running for governor, and she was asked about it, and she said, yes, they need a bridge to the airport. So she "supported it".
When she became governor though, and she had the entire transportation budget for Alaska (including some of that $363 million), she decided there were a lot better things to spend money on than the bridge. Mostly, roads. It seems that Alaska has this long history of its congressmen getting earmarks for this project and that project. So they had a lot of bridges with shitty roads connecting them, because after the congressmen were done earmarking transportation funds for this bridge or that bridge, they ended up with no money for the roads. Alaskans are overall, generally happy about this, because coming up with a list of transportation projects and prioritizing the important ones is what governors are supposed to do.
Meanwhile, she still believes that they need a bridge to the airport, but not $363 million worth. So she directed the state transportation people to either come up with a cheaper plan, or float it as a bond issue so the state residents could decide correctly.
So:
Do journalists know how to read?
I'm looking over the web page for the organization Sarah Palin belongs to, Feminists for Life and I found the following in their FAQ.
FFL has never advocated prosecuting women seeking abortion
FFL has what they call a "pro-woman" stance, which they state as:
No woman should be forced to choose between sacrificing her education and career plans and sacrificing her child
Also, Sarah Palin has specifically stated that she doesn't believe in picking judges that will advocate her religious views. She hasn't done so. But she has increased funding for unwed mothers by 354% in Alaska which is consistent with FFL doctrine.
So I'm wondering if Sarah Palin is a "plague on both your houses" Mercutio on the abortion issue. That's my term for people who feel like I do that both sides of the abortion debate are correct; it may be murder but making it illegal won't solve the issue, presenting better choices will solve the issue. So neither Pro-Life or Pro-Choice.
Given that we've been screaming at each other over this issue for 30 years, I'm starting to think that solutions like Feminists for Life make the most sense. As the Democrats used to say, safe, legal, rare. Seems like Sarah is working on the rare part.
I confess I haven't watched McCain's speech yet.
But Bill Whittle has, and he sums up a lot of my feelings about this election.
Sarah's speech in one sentence: Just because I'm country doesn't mean I'm stupid.
I thought she did pretty well, especially for a vice-presidential speech. She's not as good a speaker as Obama, but she seems more real then Obama who always seems like an actor playing a politician to me.
In fact, when she was up there on stage with her family, I was struck by how real they seemed. Most political families look like aliens have abducted them and replaced them with people who aren't quite human. Sarah's family look like actual people still.
I think the speech will be a huge hit with what the elite like to call flyover country. As someone who grew up in LA and moved to Flagstaff, I've gone from the suburbs to the country and at this point city people annoy me.
They're rude, they litter, they're always spinning their wheels so hard they never get anywhere. Flagstaff is a bit of a tourist getaway for Phoenix, and several times either me or my wife has upbraided someone from Phoenix with "Cut that out, we don't do that here. In fact, that's why you like coming here, because everyone is friendly and our town isn't covered in trash." The city people are always startled a bit, but usually go "you're right."
There's been this undercurrent in the criticism of Sarah of city people looking down their noses at country people. I really have no idea who would win the experience race between Obama and Sarah. But dismissing her experience as mayor, as a business owner, and as a governor seems foolish. Personally, I prefer ex-governors to ex-legislators. In general, governors are closer to the center then legislators, because they have to actually get things done. This is true for both parties. But when I looked at Sarah Palin months ago as a possible running mate for McCain, I wasn't sure if 20 months was enough experience.
But having worked her way up from city council member to mayor, to oil/gas commissioner, to governor, Sarah has paid her dues. Less so with Obama, he talks pretty but he's never really delivered. As others have pointed out, I'm comparing the bottom of the ticket with the top of the ticket though.
Sarah Palin is definitely not against birth control, and near as I can find, has never really been asked about her views on teaching about birth control in sex ed. People have said that she's for abstinence-only education, but she's never said that. She was offered two bad choices, "explicit sex ed" and "abstinence only" and all she said was that she wasn't going to choose "explicit". Seems more like a bad interview.
She's a member of Feminists for Life which is generally pro-contraception.
Here's the actual exchange:
Q: Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?
SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.
Not supporting distribution of contraceptives is not the same as supporting abstinence-only programs. Someone should ask her.
How come Sarah Palin has never appeared on Meet the Press?
Because in Alaska, they don't meet with varmits, they shoot them.
So Deceiver.com, which is the site that did the best research on Edwards just posted this rant about Palin and the nutroots.
But is there anything else about this story that’s Deceiver-worthy? Are there any famous people being complete hypocrites? Yes: the media. I know, I know, you’re sick of people ranting about “the media,” as if it’s some sort of monolithic entity instead of thousands of people making thousands of decisions every minute of every day. But it sure does seem like most of them are focused on one goal here: Clearing a path between Obama and the White House.
To understand McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, you have to understand Arizona and Arizonans. I wasn't born in Arizona, but since moving here I have come to love it.
Our greatest strength here in Arizona is our fiercely independent nature. Shortly after I moved here, Arizona lost their federal highway funds. Why? Arizona couldn't be bothered to fill out the paperwork.
In California, this would be a disaster of epic proportions. In Arizona, we didn't really care. We lost the matching funds? Oh, well, so people driving through our state on the way to California will hit a few more potholes. Screw 'em. We'll maintain 17 so people can get to Flagstaff and Tucson, and the 40 from Flagstaff to Kingman, but after that, if the federal government wants to make us fill out forms every year, they have to make them easier.
When you live in a state where 50% of the land is managed by the federal government, you get pretty cynical about the federal government's ability to manage things from thousands of miles away. If you ever forget, you merely need ask your local Native American what they think; its not just their land that is managed by the federal government, its their very lives. I never knew Navajo had so many curse words...
We were the last of the 48 states to actually become a state, in 1912. Which means we had years of being managed by the federal government as a "territory", so you can imagine how much that sucked.
Meanwhile, California, the state I was born in, has decided that poor people shouldn't be allowed to eat in fast food restaurants. "For their own good."
Now lets consider Alaska. Alaska has even more of the land and population controlled by the federal government, from even farther away. They also were a territory for a long time.
I think McCain met with Palin, and could tell in 5 minutes that she was a kindred spirit, a cowgirl.
Cowgirl Up, America! Screw the feds! Lock and Load!
