VP Debate

The VP debate is history. I first noticed that Ms. Palin got rid of most of the accent and the girlish tone. A big plus in being taken seriously for her. I think she did alright. Frankly, that didn't suprise me. I thought Biden did a great job of rebutting the half truths. The right is clearly upset about that. I noticed the after debate spin by them was trying to bring them back again by claiming that Biden was wrong on many facts. We will see.
I thought Palin was at her worst on the war and peace issues. It was radical right bumper sticker slogans all the way. If she insists on not looking back I would like to know how they plan to prevent war rather than fight more. No plan at all from that side. They want to keep fighting and fighting and fighting. They think that is patriotic or something I guess. I must admit to the fact that their frame is in another world from mine on that issue. I don't get it at all.
Bidens knowledge of the Constitution was far superior on the powers of the VP issue. I think that would be the one place he undeniably whipped her. She had none of those moments. I liked Bidens answers so I think he won. She did an acceptable job for the crap she had to shovel though. In stylistic ways, better than McWar did. Which brings me to this.
When polls are taken on who won these debates I think most people don't score as a debate coach. I think style can play a role. The main thing for most is if they hear answers they are looking for. With polls for both debates showing a win for Obama/Biden it bodes well for the next election. I'm thinking the people agree with us. They've seen the failure of people who hate government to lead it.

Liberals Destroy America

Glenn Greenwald has a spot on post about the great American Patriots on the right.


National Review's Mark Levin, will be hard to top for many years to come, even by the most imaginative right-wing satirists:

The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution's limits on governmental power. If conservatives don't stand up to this, who will? If they don't offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will?

Indeed. I wish those liberals would stop exploiting crises in order to expand the power of Government at the expense of the individual, but I sure am grateful that our nation is teeming with stalwart conservatives who defiantly stand up to those erosions.....If it weren't for the heroic resistance led by the small-government, Constitution-loving conservatives at National Review, Weekly Standard and right-wing talk radio -- cheered on by the freedom-loving, truth-seeking investigators of the right-wing blogosphere -- we'd probably be living in some sort of Lawless Surveillance State by now, complete with secret prisons, state-sanctioned torture, warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, process-less and indefinite imprisonments, a virtual abolition of Fourth Amendment guarantees, and other anti-constitutional nightmares too heinous even to contemplate. As the heroic freedom-fighter Mark Levin so memorably put it: "If conservatives don't stand up to this, who will?"


This Mark Levin "point" is obviously now a virus making its way quickly through the right-wing noise machine. From Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

Left Creates a Crisis Mentality, Uses It to Abrogate Constitution

Let me read to you the preamble of the United States Constitution. . . . Some Hugo Chavez or some Brazilian president attacked the US over the weekend, saying that the US Constitution is out of whack. Somebody needs to tell him the US Constitution is not in play anymore. The US Constitution has been abrogated and is being tossed overboard section by section by the Democrat Party and the American left.

The GOP has controlled the House for all but 20 months of the last 14 years. They've controlled the White House for the last 8 years, and also had control of both houses of Congress for 4 of those years. It's amazing what "the Left" can accomplish by never being in power, and how "the Right" is powerless to stop it even as they control the levers of Government.

And they wonder why we find it impossible to take them seriously anymore. You've proved you can't lead, now get out of the way.