The following thoughts are just about the debate. I am not going to replay all I have said about Biden or Palin previously. Those blogs are easy enough to find under the politics label. This is last night and only about it.
Ahead of time, I didn't know if I would watch the debate. My mind is made up. I am not in the undecided column. I approve of Barack Obama on character and ideas, I thought Joe Biden was a masterful choice for vice president; so there was no reason I had to watch.
There were reasons I thought I might not watch mainly my hearing clips on Palin where she came across so shallow and uninformed. Then there was the news that she would go on the attack. I remembered what she sounded like at the Republican Convention, out stumping for the ticket, and I don't like that kind of stuff. I didn't want to see Joe filleted. I hate hearing arguments or people being mean to each other. Nastiness is upsetting to me-- reality TV doesn't get my time either.
But then a funny thing happened. I turned it on, and it wasn't anything like the pundits had been predicting. This was a good discussion of issues and it stayed very civil. Yes, both Biden and Palin were hitting on reinforcing the top of their tickets, but they also seemed to be trying to discuss real issues and revealed a lot about who they were.
I have always liked Joe Biden in debates. To me, he is just a great guy, honest, open, knowledgeable and reflects caring attitudes. From all I know of him, he lives his life the same way. Yes, he has a nice home and is a Senator with the perks that brings, but he has kept his real Joe qualities and doesn't have to use folksy talk to show that.
Joe hasn't had the knack to make himself into the hero Americans so often choose in an election, but he is a good leader. If he ended up the president through a terrible tragedy, he would do a good job. He'd be a Harry Truman. Barack chose wisely when he picked Biden. I knew it before and after an hour and a half, I knew it even more.
Since I was unsure I could watch this all, I actually would go in and out of the room. Can I stand it? Can I stand Sarah Palin for that long? Her answers were pretty much to be expected. We heard how she's a maverick too and now it's two mavericks Republicans will be sending to Washington.
Palin is more mountain woman than rancher; so she can be excused for not knowing what a maverick is but I hope she learns. Mavericks don't make good leaders. They don't know to whom their loyalty belongs. A maverick is a rebel and won't be able to bring people together in consensus as she claimed they could do (think if McCain could be friendly to Obama even in the Senate, he might show more promise of that 'famous' working across the aisle ability that he's supposed to possess?).
After the debate and listening to Palin's superficial but not unpleasing answers (although that folksy manner gets old with me fast), I am not sure she is a maverick. More of an opportunist... the young bull trying to take over the old bull's harem maybe? Right now, she is young in the bigger game of politics and perhaps she has not yet settled into her identity.
I don't agree with Sarah Palin on many important issues, but I ended up thinking better of her than I expected (especially that would have been true if I hadn't known her record and only went by what I saw last night).
She's not ready now and most especially not when McCain is the presidential candidate. She can't defend the disconnection between John McCain's personality, record and goals. Biden brought that out again and again-- the man McCain pretends to be versus what he is. Biden did not attack her at all. He went for the big bull not the wantabe. He made a lot of very telling hits if someone listened to what he said and even checked it out if in doubt.
Despite her shallow understanding of issues, despite her too much following McCain, she did seem like hey maybe someday. Come back, lady and let me see you again in a few years. If Palin was thrust into the presidency right now, I think it'd be beyond her; but I thought more highly of her than I expected. Hopefully she will get that chance to grow and she was no laughing stock last night, but golly gee, she yaknow could learn a coupla things. She's not ready yet
This year, it's Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and I loved Joe last night. He was so good, so rich in his understanding, his explanations, his compassion. Yes, He won the debate! Hands down!
11 comments:
Amen to that!
Palin seemed robotic and overly coached to me. Her answers were rattled off like they had been taped into her memory vaults somewhere. She does have some folksy charm, but that has never been one of the qualities I look for in leadership. (Look at where that kind of "charm" has gotten us these past eight years.) I don't know if she will grow into someone who would be a viable candidate in a few years. She really doesn't seem inherently smart enough.
Yes, I've always liked Joe Biden. He seems a solid, thoughtful, and considerate human being. His answers were substantive and smart last night. I'm also very glad that he's on the ticket. I think Obama made the right choice there.
Sorry, but Sarah really won quite handily!
Check this out, about your messiah Obama:
Roots of rotten mortgages
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, September 29, 2008
The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977. Seeking to address complaints from anti-poverty activists and housing advocates about banks allegedly discriminating against minority borrowers and "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, the CRA decreed that banks had "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of victims of discrimination in borrowing.
To add a government stick to the process, the CRA decreed that federal banking regulators would consider how well banks were doing in meeting the goal of more multiculturalism in loaning when considering requests by banks to open new branches or to merge.
A good "CRA rating" was earned by way of increasing loans in poor neighborhoods. Conversely, lenders with low ratings could be fined.
The Fed, for instance, warned banks that failure to comply with government guidelines regarding the delivery of "equal credit" could subject them to "civil liability for actual or punitive damages in individual or class actions, with liability for punitive damages being as much as $10,000 in individual actions and the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the creditor's net worth in class actions."
However well-intentioned in terms of delivering "economic justice," this push for more government-directed social engineering produced a widespread weakening of long-established industry standards for credit worthiness.
Led by Congressional Democrats, this policy of replacing private and decentralized decision-making with a system of centrally-delivered rewards and punishments was basically a one-party effort. Republicans, it seems, were more aware of the unintended consequences that flow from government interference in the market.
As Investor's Business Daily recently put it, succinctly and correctly: "Over the past 30 years, Democrats, along with a handful of Republicans, have demonized lenders as racist and passed regulation after regulation pressuring them to make more loans to unqualified borrowers in the name of diversity."
The march toward the eventual financial meltdown picked up speed during the Clinton administration via an increased lowering of loan standards in order to expand minority borrowing.
The result was widely praised. "It's one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era," wrote Ronald Brownstein in May 1999 in the Los Angeles Times. "In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African-Americans owning their own homes is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites."
In 2000, Howard Husock reported in City Journal that the "Clinton Treasury Department's 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. There would be no more A's for effort. Only results -- specific loans, specific levels of service -- would count."
The "specific levels of service" referred to how well banks were responding to complaints, including complaints from advocacy groups that were in the business of complaining.
"By intervening -- even just threatening to intervene -- in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers," reported Husock. "A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from The Bank of New York."
In addition to setting the stage for giving money for mortgage payouts to ACORN and other lending amateurs, CRA authorized those organizations to collect fees from the banks for their "marketing" of loans.
"The Senate Banking Committee has estimated that, as a result of CRA, $9.5 billion so far has gone to pay for services and salaries of the nonprofit groups involved," reported Husock.
There's big money, in short, in "nonprofit" activism -- and upward mobility. A guy carries a sign advocating "Change" in front of a bank and the government turns him into a salaried protester, credit analyst and dispenser of mortgage money.
"The changes came as radical 'housing rights' groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans," reports Investor's Business Daily, regarding the Clinton era. "ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama."
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at rrreiland@aol.com.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_590330.html
This crisis is rooted in the money drain on the government caused by unfettered illegal immigration and bad mortgages to people (minorities) who could not afford them...nothing more, nothing less.
Free markets must be allowed to work within the constraints of personal responsibility and accountability.
hi Liz and welcome to rainy day. I do respect and invite dissent here; so hope you voice your opinions as you have them. If you had just posted that link, I'd have trashed it because you already posted it in the prior blog, but since you added the difference of opinion on the debate, I'll leave it here; and since I answered you there, I'll leave that there or otherwise my reply would look silly. In that comment, I put this link for you or anyone else to look at-- McCain on fannie and freddie. I hope you do read both sides to form your opinions.
As for Sarah winning last night, if someone liked cute and folksy, a PTA mom, someone from outside with no clue what inside would be like nor would they care, if they paid no attention to Sarah's actual record but got everything off Fox, probably they would think so.
As I wrote, she seemed nicer than I had thought she might. It doesn't appear that she knows much about the federal government. To some people, that will be a virtue. Not to me.
Nice that we can all agree to disagree in this country and do it politely which the debate was.
I will frankly be glad when this election is over whoever wins so I can quit writing about it. I am sick to death of it and much prefer nature, the farm, emotions, anything but politics but I won't quit until after November 5th. That's when I either bemoan Obama's loss or cheer that we all won :) Then I would like to write about a lot of much more enjoyable things for a long time. Life is too short to get caught up in this and whoever wins, this country will survive... I hope :)
anonymous, nobody knows for sure where the problems are because it's hidden in banking for now; but there is good reason to think it's rooted in home loans but grown with derivatives and bundling where those mortgages were sold time after time with eventually who knows what values.
Also there are plenty of non-minorities who got those loans, some who refinanced their houses to pay off consumer debt and kept doing it until their homes didn't have the value to do it again. Blaming one ethnic group or another won't cut water with this.
There is plenty of blame to go around and if they actually investigate, they may find answers. I have little faith in real investigations where it comes to government though.
And the recent measure they passed in the Senate makes me sick. I am afraid that more money will go out and the problem will return with the feds deeper in debt. If you read my earlier blog on federal budget, you know we don't have a lot of room to keep borrowing like this. There will come a reckoning.
Interesting comment by Liz but if my information is correct there is an astonishing number of people age 50 or olderwho have lost their homes to the banks. Without going into it as far as Liz seems to have, it would appear to me that the root cause is a president who has neglected to lead. a good leader of our country would have warned us that we needed to be responsible like our forefathers and purchase only what we could pay for.
I will certainly try harder to get a grasp of what is happening by doing more reading on both sides. Thank you for your input Liz.
I like fact check because it does the work for me in terms of what is said and what is spun. Here is fact check on the debate last night as to-- what was right and what was wrong. The ads are already spinning and if we don't want to be spun along with them, we need to know what's true and what is not. There will always be spin-- on both sides.
Rain, I posted the content of 'Fact Check' on my blog. Palin made many errors while Biden made one. He referred to Syria as Hezbollah.
I do not call that a win for Palin. In fact, having read many opinions on who won, the only one I could find that defended her (without giving her a win) was David Brooks of the NYT. The polls that CNN ran show Biden winning about 53% to 36% with the rest undecided.
I have to add that Liz completely ignored the deregulation that Republicans pushed under Reagan; thus allowing the predatory lending.
Just a reminder. I will allow dissenting comments here but not links to hate-filled sites nor that kind of comment. If you think that way, find your own blog to promote your ideas.
I couldn't agree with you more. One of the things that alarmed me about Palin's answers was the one about increasing the duties of the V.P. She seemed all too ready to assume more power. That may be what this candidate is all about.
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