Pundits Depress Me

Last night I watched the VP Debate. In all honesty, it was more interesting than the Presidential Debate last week. Both candidates were engaged and on target.

But this morning, I got up and discovered that only two things happened last night.

1) Sarah Palin "exceeded expectations" because she managed to fill 90 seconds of air-time with hot air.
2) Joe Biden "exceeded expectations" by successfully only filling 90 seconds of air-time with hot air.

I listened to the discussion on MSNBC and I checked out FOX. So far, the only people who are actually discussing what the candidates actually said is NPR.
Therefore, if you would like to listen to an actual discussion about the merits of either candidate's positions, you are completely out of luck unless you tune in to NPR. Otherwise, you will hear nothing more than empty blow-hards announcing how their candidate "exceeded expectations".

Maybe I missed something, but I would rather EXPECT that a VP Candidate should have the capacity to discuss the major issues of the day for at least 90 seconds.

In case you missed the actual debate, here are some of the highlights from the somewhat skewed and biased opinion of . . . . me!

Sarah Palin distrusts the entire East Coast.


Sarah Palin wants to expand the powers of the VP. She believes the ability to expand the authority of the VP can be found in the Constitution. Constitutional law experts are now looking through the lost Sea Scrolls for the missing pages of the Constitution that could support this legal position.

She and John McCain and mavericks, but I'm not sure why, since she didn't tell me.
Biden told me that McCain is not a maverick. I presume that he would extend this criticism to Palin, but he never actually said anything about her the entire time. This leads me to conclude that he is A) Afraid of her OR B) Afraid of the media's perception that he beat up a woman. It's 2008. Can we please move past these stereotypes? Please?

Palin believes that tax-cuts for the wealthy will help the American economy. She also manages to simultaneously believe that the government should get out of our lives, while bailing out Wall Street. This displays a remarkably adaptable capacity for compartmentalization, or she doesn't understand what I'm talking about. I really do not understand how anyone can be daft enough to continue running around calling for additional deregulation (she did this cleverly and obliquely), lower taxes (on the wealthy, though she did not say this), and lower government spending. Since the economy is tanking, this seems like a bad time to restrict federal spending. Besides, the $$$$$ we spend in Iraq dwarfs other federal expenditures, other than the proposed federal bail-out of wall street. Since she does not want to get out of Iraq, I am forced to conclude that her spending plan is going to cut the relatively inexpensive federal programs that actually do help people, while maintaining an expensive, disastrous war. Net impact on the national debt - it soars to unprecedented heights.

Biden says he and Obama want to get out of Iraq through a phased draw-down of American forces there. Sarah calls this the White Flag of surrender. Unfortunately, even with over 4,000 American Soldiers lying in coffins, we still can not debate the merits of this war without calling each other unpatriotic.

She did well. She did a good job of articulating the neo-con positions of the Bush Administration. It's almost as if she was able to channel Dick Cheney . .. . . while wearing lip-stick! Impressive. I wish Biden had attacked her more. John McCain was not in the room. He should have focused on his opponent, not the old guy she's running with.