by Eyck Freymann
Here are some of my initial impressions from the debate. Make of them what you will:
- Sarah Palin is a role model to reformers? Huh? How is that even possible?
- Biden has a "cockamamie plan to divide Iraq into three sections". WAKE UP! That's what's going to happen. Ultimately, unless we stay in Iraq for a million years, we will have to pull out. Iran will come in to fill the vacuum and effective annex Shiite Iraq. There will be a conflict with the Sunni over the oil and the Kurds will seize the opportunity to try to break away.
- FactCheck for McCain: A University of Wisconsin study (widely accepted) did find that 100% of McCain's ads are negative.
- Obama didn't vote for Breyer: Justice Breyer was nominated by Bill Clinton. Obama was not in the US Senate to vote for or against him at the time.
- McCain made a big, big mistake by mocking Obama's desire to have a health exception for women in the abortion bill. He just lost himself the "Wal Mart moms".
- Obama, once again, is cool and Presidential. McCain, on the other hand, seems hotheaded and out of control. I wouldn't trust him to keep his finger on the button.
- Andrew Sullivan correctly pointed out that history will remember this debate not for the substance, but rather for McCain's psychotic tics: tongue jabs, jerky arm movements, and moments of extreme hyperactivity.
- I wish someone would point this out: Down's Syndrome and Austism have nothing to do with each other.
- iBerk pointed out something very wise to me: How is the "troops to teachers" plan a good idea? It seems to me that it's not going to solve our problems by taking returning troops (many of whom will have to undergo therapy for physical and psychological injuries from the war) and jamming them into a classroom without making sure they have degrees. I'm all for providing for our troops, but there is a reason why you have to have a degree to teach! Better idea: expand the G.I. Bill (which McCain voted against, by the way) to pay more towards educational and career opportunities for our troops.
Obama '08
2 comments:
I have to say, when the two were talking about negative campaign ads, I thought John McCain was about to cry. Both candidates are great people, but that's not what we're voting for.
The idea that Iraq can be divided into three nations sounds good on paper, but I don't have much faith in the ability of any nation, including Iran, to maintain borders between Sunni and Shiite Iraq. As we saw with the regime of Saddam Hussein: the only thing that can create a sustainable, minimally peaceful coexistence of Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq is an oppressive Sunni regime. Moreover, even if Iran takes control of the Shiite controlled areas of Iraq, the Shiite militias will still attempt an ethnic cleansing of the Sunni population with or without Iran's discretion, just as the Sunni population did when they began to defy their anti-American-occupying-force sentiment because their priority was the Islamic sectarian conflict that has been raging since A.D. 632, (the "Sunni awakening" was not the fault of the military forces of the U.S.)
I'm not saying that the idea of a divided Iraq is a bad or unrealistic one, I simply believe that it is highly unlikely to ever occur.
The idea that we should give our veterans the ability to teach without a degree is completely absurd. Teaching is the last profession that we should be handing out to anyone without taking into account their own education. Our soldiers are heroes, but heroism alone is as much a qualification to teach a child anything from writing in cursive to calculus as the ability to "see Russia" is a qualification to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
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