Some debate observations

Tonight was the third and final debate before the election. A few of my humble observations follow:

-I thought this one was the best one. It gave them the most chance to go back and forth and get down to specifics.

-On every single question McCain was given the last word. This was usually when he got his "zingers" in with no chance for Obama to reply to them.

-In the first few minutes of the debate, McCain blamed the financial crisis on Fannie and Freddie. This claim has been made repeatedly by conservatives. It has also been shown as false many many times. The Community Reinvestment Act has also been blamed a lot. This is also false and has been repeatedly shown to be. These highlight the Republican's tactic of assigning blame to things associated to democrats and poor people, even when they know their claims are false. If you're interested, you can read a few things that show why these claims are false. It should not be up for debate that this crisis is largely attributable to the the complex financial instruments that were unregulated and wildly speculated upon, and unregulated financial institutions that made huge bets on bad lending. A NYT editorial today, this analysis of the debate makes this point too, TIME magazine's economics writer, McClatchy newspapers, and many more if you take the time to look.

-McCain likes to say US business pay the most taxes in the world. That is quite a false claim. He deliberately confuses the nominal tax rate with the amount of taxes the corporations actually pay. Check this from ABC news, which shows that 2/3 of US corprations payed ZERO taxes.

-McCain likes to push Obama about "re-distribution of wealth." It is funny. Republicans like to use taxes as a signature issue. On one hand they talk about how they will lower YOUR taxes, or just lower taxes, and accuse democrats of always raising taxes. In reality, the republican platform and their track record of the past few decades is lowering taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals by huge amounts and giving small token breaks to most people. When democrats make efforts to make the tax burden more fairly shared by lowering average peoples tax rates, they shout 're-distribution.' There is the hypocrisy. I will probably come back to this sometime soon. On a related note, they manage to back democrats into this corner by, as George W has done, by giving away so much tax breaks to their 'base' and bankrupting the country in the process. On the same token they have spent more and more while still making the claims of 'tax and spending' democrats. By destroying the federal budget and drowning the country in deficits and debt, thay have also made it that much harder for the democrats they know were coming into office to actually accomplish any domestic goals.

-When asked if he can balance the budget in his first term, McCain did not hesitate to declare, YES. It is funny to hear him say that when we are at the beginning of what looks like a nasty recession. The idea is silly, that the federal budget can be balanced during a recession. If he does that, guess that he won't use any government spending to try and bring the country out of that recession. He has been giving Obama lots of shit lately about 'raising taxes during bad economic times' like Hoover, and at the same time makes an irresponsible claim to balance the federal budget during a recession.

-Obama congratulated McCain on showing independance from Bush on the issue of torture, referring to McCain's actions before the MIlitary Commissions Act was passed in 06. While true that McCain gave a lot of lip service during the bill's debate to being against torture, the final bill did gave the CIA free riegn to torture. McCain sided with the 'team' and voted for the bill.

-After agreeing that smear politics and Ayers are silly distractions, McCain then goes on at length about Obama's 'connections' to Ayers and ACORN.

-McCain said that "ACORN is perpetrating the greatest voter fraud in history and destropying the fabric of democracy" To bad it's a paranoid fantasy.

-One of McCain's repeated points was that he is going to make a spending freeze in government. When the topic came to energy, he said he wants to build 45 new nuclear (not nucular) plants right away. How he will do this with a spending freeze I have no idea. Nuke plants are heavily subsidized by the gov't. They are hugely expensive to build and if private energy companies don't get subsidized to build them, and also get liability guarantees from the fed for public health liabilities, they would not get built.

-Free trade, and Columbia. Chopper has talked about the dumbing down of society, and here's a great example. McCain accuses Obama of opposing free trade in general and with Columbia specifically because he voted against a free trade bill with them. When Obama responded, he said he supports a free trade agreement with Columbia, but it needs to have enforceable enviromental, labor, and human rights protections. He didn't vote for the bill because it didn't have all of these, mainly because it was mainly a Bush and republican bill and those things are anethema to them. Shouls seem then that they both agree they want free trad eagreement with Columbia. Maybe they disagree on some of the specifics it should include. McCain stuck to his talking point that Obama opposes having a free trade agreement with Columbia.

-Again, how many times do we have to hear about Joe the fucking plumber? McCain likes to call him Joe the plumber to bring up an image of Joe sixpack and insinuate Obama will raise taxes on all you normal people. At least towards the end he spoke the truth: Joe, you're rich. To bad McCain spent the whole debate using Joe the plumber as a proxy for non-rich people.

-McCain loves vouchers. He screamed it over and over. Vouchers Vouchers Vouchers. Voucherss are a good way to takea money out of public schools and give it to private schools, and ensure that the public schools never get better. Maybe the end goal is to end public education and give everybody vouchers to go to private schools. Seems like a much more expensive proposotion than public education. Current voucher programs are only available to a few and make it worst for the rest of the kids that don't get them. One could argue it could also be worse for the ones that do when the schools arent required to meet curriculum standards like puiblic schools are. Little school on the prarie with Doris the churchlady teaching science. Not to mention, with the vouchers you are now giving federal money to religious schools that push religious indoctrination on the kids. But republicans are no opponent of giving federal money to religious purposes. Are you serious about improving the state of the poublic schools in poor areas? Then make schools state funded with equal funding for all schools based on # of students. But good luck getting suburban parents letting some of their tax money go to those inner city black ones. Maybe Chopper has an opinion in this.