The Vice Presidential Debate

I could, of course, poke fun at both vice-presidential candidates. I mean, Biden did have a little renewed bout of his childhood stuttering, didn't fully squelch his tendency to say anything that comes to mind, and referred to himself in the third person. But he HAS been in the Senate for longer than I've been alive, and he isn't worth millions of dollars, and he's not as funny as our girl Sarah.

I have to say, while I'm pretty left of center, I DO believe in going across the aisle and not voting according to party. But what I'm seeing a lot of, and what I don't like, is that many people seem to vote Republican because of cultural issues like religion, patriotism, family values and (Matt's favorite) gun ownership. And it bothers me because religion shouldn't be a part of government (I'm fine with taking "In God We Trust" off the dollar), Republicans don't have the market on patriotism or family values, and with the country in the state it's in, none of these issues should trump economic ones.

And, while people may be able to relate to Sarah Palin (who, by the way, IS a millionaire... so maybe she's not as close to Joe Six-Pack as she'd like you to believe), I gotta say I don't want the girl next door to be second in command as far as running the free world. Especially with McCain as old as he is. I'm just saying.

And, on the subject of patriotism, I'm tired of hearing about how other countries hate us because we are free. The Iraq war (once we had to admit we couldn't find any WMDs) was then justified by a "freedom" agenda. Um, okay. Then why don't these countries hate Canada? Probably because a lot of our talk about freedom and democracy is rhetoric and we're more concerned with hegemony. (Look it up.) Other nations willingly admit that, so why can't we? Partially because the flag-waving crowd might not like it.

Anyway, back to the debates.

They were better than I thought they'd be, and better than the first presidential debate. The candidates were personable, well informed, and skilled at twisting the truth on some of their stats. It will be interesting to see whether the presidential candidates are able to be more affable during their next debate. Maybe they can use Sarah's flow chart to prepare:

Almost as funny as this one.