VP debate

I watched the VP debate. In all honesty, and much to my surprise, I thought Sarah Palin did a really fine job. She was articulate, had a great presence, seemed to know what she was talking about, and all in all did very well. That is, she did very well for herself, and because she did well for herself she also did well for the McCain/Palin ticket. Proving that she was not an absolute airhead will be an obvious plus. She was well prepared and knew her lines. However:

I’m not sure how fair the playing field really was. For example, it was announced by several people that she was going to attack (which she did). On the other hand it was suggested to Biden that he should not get upset and should act like a gentleman (he did that). But it does seem to me there is a bit of sexism involved in such an arrangement. I think Biden could have been more aggressive than he was but he did pretty well in defending himself and Obama. And, while Palin did well for herself and the ticket, she didn’t really do anything other than simply promote the same old McCain positions. We have to “win” in Iraq and Afghanistan (whatever on earth that could mean). The Democrats want to wave the white flag of surrender. McCain has a great medical plan, he’s always been a maverick, he’s been against deregulation (the usual blatant lies about McCain’s positions). She failed to give even a single example of how McCain’s plans differ in any meaningful way from Bush’s. In short, it was the same old BS all over again, but she did it pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised to see that she is not a complete fool after all. She did absolutely nothing to deny that McCain wants to give billions more in tax breaks to the oil industry, and of course she went on the drill, drill, drill baloney (which will ultimately benefit no one but Alaska residents and oil companies. When she told an out and out lie (which she did several times) Biden was quick to respond, but she remained unfazed. Lying seems to come naturally to members of the Brafia. She went through the McCain BS about when he said the economy was strong he was merely referring to American workers, etc. The usual nonsense. Neither she nor Biden made any gaffes so in that sense I guess it was pretty much of a draw. So were any minds changed? Perhaps. But I doubt that enough were changed to make any appreciable difference.

I must say people are understandably upset and very jittery about the state of our world, especially those with strong positions in the stock market. One of the things that struck me today when discussing this was the ubiquitous statement that “things could be worse.” I wonder, is there a threshold where things could not be worse? How bad do things have to be before they cannot be worse? It seems to me that you can, in general, always argue that things could be worse. You know, if your have the flu, you could have cancer, if you have lost substantial monies in the market, you could have lost everything, if you broke your leg you could have busted both legs, and so on. So how low does it have to go before it cannot get worse? How about when you die? When you die does that represent the worst it can get? How do you know? What if you go to hell? What if you burn in eternal fire? Can it still be worse? I guess in principle it could. It seems to me that saying things could get worse is in the same category as saying you’re sorry. I ran over your children and killed them. I’m sorry. What the hell good does saying you’re sorry do? About the same good as saying things could be worse, I guess.

It seems clear that something must be done to help the economy. I do not think that passing the present bill, which has been made worse than it was by the addition by billions more in pork to appeal to House Republicans is the way to go. Furthermore, I do not believe the world will end if this bill is not passed immediately. There are alternatives that have not even been considered. This is just another example of the administration trying to stampede us into making another bad decision like the Patriot Act. I hope the House will not be panicky enough to vote for this bill tomorrow but I suspect they will. Panic makes people do irrational things even when the panic is artificially induced, and the Bush/Cheney administration has been a master of inducing unnecessary panic. Unfortunately, they are not very good at doing anything about the consequences of their panic machine.

LKBIQ:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken