Can I vote present?

ok, so i confess to having been a little depressed at the end of the debate last night. we watched it with a friend, a neighbor from upstairs from Ft. Worth, who is probably the only other republican on the west side. He's married to a lovely woman from Berkeley who is probably more liberal than my wife. a republican from texas and a liberal from berkeley- cats and dogs living together! go figure...but i digress...

my friend works on the street, and we were both put off, right off the bat, by Palin's first answer, blaming the crisis on "wall street and predatory lenders." not a good start. for the rest of the debate, she was vague, dodged questions (not always w/o effect) and too often fell back on talking points, although i thought she scored some points, surprisingly on foreign policy, a supposed weakness. and she left too many cards on the table, both of us were yelling at the TV whenever she missed an obvious point, or let Biden off the hook.

part of the problem i think is she's not used to speaking with someone else's voice. she'll get better, Obama's early debate performances were not good (he;s improved immensely) and others w/ more experience, have done worse, Gore, Bush, Giuliani. But i agree she's been poorly handled by the McCain campaign, both in shielding her early on, and during the debate prep. By the end, i thought she'd found her footing, particularly on Afghanistan and Iraq. If the campaign is smart, they will unleash her, and let her do nothing but travel back and forth across PA, Ohio, and the upper mid-west, including, god help us, Michigan.

Throughout the debate Biden showed considerably greater fluency with the subjects at hand, and exhibited a calm gravitas that was quite compelling. If you were scoring this debate the way you'd score a high school debate, there's no question Biden won; he had command of his facts, marshaled his arguments with force, and presented them concisely. in short, we both felt he ran circles around her. if this Biden had shown up in Iowa, the primaries could have turned out quite differently.

The problem of course, is that Biden's gravitas is built almost entirely on his ability to lie with astounding passion and conviction, and apparent command of substance, and here is where the real media bias comes in to play (btw, I thought Ifill was fine, not as good as Jim Lehr, but she did no (direct) harm). by their unwillingness to call him on his lies, they bolster the perception that he's right. as one of the guys on the corner put it:

I could be a great physicist if I'm not held to a requirement to be factually correct:

"Well, Gwen, that's an interesting question. As we all know the hamster spinning at the earth's core runs in a counter-clockwise direction. Let me repeat that so everyone understands. That hamster does not run in a clockwise direction, that would be madness. It's counter clockwise. That's why our lakes and rivers don't simply turn into a fine mist, and why our atmosphere doesn't simply spontaneously combust. This is something that my dear friend John McCain just doesn't understand. And it saddens me."​

Effective, but factually incoherent, so while you could say Biden won on presentation (and i say that admiringly), you can't say he won on merit.

here's a list of Biden's lies, distortions, hallucinations from last night. We picked up some of them, but others were subtle enough that a little research was required. yes, i know the mccain has put out a list today, but the list below is from NRO.

[rquoter]
THE CONSTITUTION: Biden: "Vice President Cheney's been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. He has — he has — 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 — he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that."

As noted by the McCain Camp, Article I of the Constitution does not, in fact, define the role of the Vice President of the United States. It defines the role of the legislative branch, otherwise known as the branch in which Joe Biden has served for the last 36 years.

[A reader writes in noting that Article I does mention the veep at one point — "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." However, by describing the veep's role in the legislature, it doesn't really help Biden's claim that it "defines the role, that's the executive, he works in the executive branch."]

IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN SPENDING: Biden said that the U.S. spends more in Iraq in one month than it has in Afghanistan in six or seven years.

That figure is off by 2000 percent.

‘KICKED HEZBOLLAH OUT OF LEBANON’: Biden: When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said, and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Reuters thinks he meant to refer to Syria, but I still don't think it would be accurate to say the U.S. kicked Syria out of Lebanon. The Lebanese kicked Syria out of Lebanon.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT: Biden's statement that McCain voted against the Violence Against Women Act is accurate. But as Robert Byers notes, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Morrison, the Court ruled that much of Biden's law was an unconstitutional power grab by Congress of rights reserved to the states. Nobody voted against the WAWA because they support violence against women; they objected over constiutional concerns that a Supreme Court majority validated. .

UPDATE: As I suspected, there are others.

ARMS CONTROL TREATY: Biden: "Number two, with regard to arms control and weapons, nuclear weapons require a nuclear arms control regime. John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that every Republican has supported."

I have no idea where Biden gets this "every Republican has supported" claim, as 49 other Republican senators voted 'no' with McCain.

When the roll was finally called on October 13, the resolution to ratify the CTBT (including the six safeguards that Daschle had submitted as an amendment) was defeated by a 51-48 vote with one abstention. (See the voting record.) Forty-four Democrats voted for ratification as did four Republicans: John Chafee (R-RI), James Jeffords (R-VT), Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Arlen Specter (R-PA). Fifty Republican senators and one independent (Robert Smith of New Hampshire) voted against ratification, and Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) voted "present." The treaty fell 19 votes short of achieving the necessary two-thirds majority necessary for ratification.

WEST BANK ELECTIONS: Biden: President Bush insisted on elections in the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, 'Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them.'"

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler notes that "Obama had been a senator for only a few days when the election took place, but if he made such statements, they did not appear in news reports or transcripts that are contained in the Nexis or Factiva databases."

PAKISTANI WEAPONS: "Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean."

I won't quite chalk this up as a lie/hallucination, but Biden is on shaky ground here. (See below.) The distance between Israel and Pakistan is 2,085 miles, or 3355 kilometers. The longest-range existing strategic missile in the Pakistani arsenal has a range of 3000 kilometers, but it might have longer range with a lighter payload. (But how much can you lighten a nuclear payload?) They are working on developing longer-range missiles; maybe Biden knows of some development that public sources do not yet know about. Theoretically, the Pakistanis could put the weapon on a boat and then sail it to the target, but by that standard, any site on a coast in the world is within their range.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This site indicates that the top range of Pakistani missile that can carry a nuclear warhead is 1000 miles. By being off by 1,000 or so, I'm now upgrading this to full lie/error/hallucination status.[/rquoter]


Then there's the "Barack never said he'd meet with Ahmandinijhad. well, yes he did (listen to the question at the beginning)

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KQ2yJqWguCU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KQ2yJqWguCU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>


and Biden on "clean coal?" whooo, boy...

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Yjx8RnDfdvM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Yjx8RnDfdvM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Finally, the most shameless, and egregious lie of the night. Biden said:

"Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington and go to Katie's Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years."​

putting aside for a moment the idea that Biden spends any time at all in Home Depot, Katie's Restaurant went out of business over 20 years ago. i suspect it's been at least that long since Biden walked down Union Street.

 

the Palins have released their tax returns. . interesting to note the discrepancy in both income and charitable donations, vis-a-vis Biden.

 

no doubt, all politicians lie, but Obama's entire campaign is premised on the idea he's different, and yet all the evidence suggests he's a big a liar as any other politician. i thought what the democrats wanted was the opportunity to change the culture in washington, but it seems that what's really at issue is "it's our turn" to lie, cheat and steal. that's not change of any sort.

 

yes he has, , and it's odd that the times, cbs, cnn, et al, won't look into it a bit more:

[rquoter]Hunting Mr. Good Will

WHO is "Will, Good"?

Mr. Good Will - who lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You" - has contributed 1,000 times to the Barack Obama campaign.

All the contributions have been in amounts of $25 or less. But they add up to $17,375 - far more than the legal limit of $4,600. That's $2,300 each for the primary and general election campaigns.

Kenneth Timmerman, a reporter for NewsMax, a conservative Web site, discovered Mr. Good Will when he reviewed 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest Federal Elections Commission master file for the Obama campaign.

Mr. Good Will said he was from Austin, Texas. When I called directory assistance, they could find no listing for him.

Mr. Doodad Pro made 786 contributions for a total of $19,500. Like Mr. Good Will, Mr. Pro lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You." Mr. Pro said he is from Nunda, N.Y. Directory assistance found no listing for him either.

Mr. Obama has raised a whopping $223 million in contributions of less than $200. Candidates are not required to disclose the names of those who contribute less than $200, and Mr. Obama has not. John McCain has made his complete donor database available online.

But the Federal Elections Commission does require campaigns to keep a running tally of contributions and to disclose the identity of donors once their total contributions exceed $200. This is how Mr. Good Will and Mr. Doodad Pro came to light.

If there are more suspicious donors to the Obama campaign, we won't know until long after the election as long as their aggregate contributions are below the legal limit. Mr. Timmerman was particularly curious about 11,500 contributions from overseas totalling $33.8 million.

Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton required foreign donors to provide proof of citizenship. Until very recently, Mr. Timmerman said, the Obama campaign did not. "More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address," Mr. Timmerman wrote. But they accounted for only 12 percent of Mr. Obama's overseas donors, and the aggregate total of their contributions was just $201,680.

"In July and August, the head of Nigeria's stock market held a series of pro-Obama fund-raisers in Lagos," Mr. Timmerman said. "At one event, a table for eight went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000."

Making contributions on credit cards via the Internet - as both Good Will and Doodad Pro did - makes it easier for foreigners to contribute. Web logger Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) reported three Palestinians living in a refugee camp in Gaza tried to donate $33,500 to the Obama campaign last year. They were caught only because the amount was far above the legal limit. If foreigners donate in amounts less than $200, their illegal involvement would be virtually undetectable.

If Mr. Obama were a Republican, the news media would be demanding he disclose the names of all of his donors - as er, the Republican has done - so we can see if there are among them other Good Wills and Doodad Pros.
CNN recently sent a reporter to Little Diomede Island, the westernmost part of Alaska (2.4 miles from Russia) to determine whether Sarah Palin had ever been there to see Russia with her own eyes. But CNN - and the rest of the media - have been incurious about the Obama campaign's fund-raising.

"Off the record, every suspicion you have about [the mainstream media] being in the tank for O is true," said an e-mail to Web logger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) from someone he knows at a major news organization. "We have a team of four people going through Dumpsters in Alaska and four in Arizona. Not a single one looking into ACORN, Ayers, or FreddieMae [sic]. Editor refuses to publish anything that jeopardizes the election for O, and betting dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. … The fix is in, and it's working."[/rquoter]

 

apropos Good Will hunting, hmmmmmm

[rquoter]"Republican National Committee (RNC) Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross will announce today a complaint that the RNC is filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the Obama campaign. The complaint will address foreign national and excessive contributions accepted by the Obama campaign that demonstrate it is operating outside of federal campaign finance law."[/rquoter]