Live: Obama-McCain Debate notes

These are my live notes, typed live as I watched the debate on my computer.

Bailout

Both started out badly by supporting the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff of taxpayers. (Neither brought up the real cause of this crisis: the Iraq War’s immense expense, which Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke paid for by inflating the currency, which blew out the economy, as inflation always does.)

Taxes

Obama said he would cut taxes on 95% of Americans, raise taxes on the other 5%.

McCain  had a good point, explaining how Ireland has only a 11% business tax, so tax increases on “the rich” in America would drive them to Ireland.

McCain asked at what level Obama would increase taxes.

Obama didn’t answer, just repeating the 95%/5% mantra.

McCain: Obama voted to increase taxes on those making as low as $42,000 a year.

So far, 6:26 pm, it’s pretty close, with McCain ahead.

Energy

Obama wants more spending on renewable energy. And we need to invest more in science and technology. (Meaning more wasted tax dollars. Obama said China just launched some guys into space. Maybe he didn’t hear, but America did that in then 1960s. We even sent a guy to the moon in 1969.)

McCain: “No matter what, we’ve got to cut spending.”

But, John, what about the biggest and most wasteful spending of all, the Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Somalia-maybe Iran wars?

Obama: Need to make cuts. Need to change the culture. Need: Google for government. So we can see who’s promoting programs. (Except Google is a private company.)

McCain: How about a spending freeze on everything except  Defense, veterans affairs, and entitlements. (But how about starting the cuts with ending the unconstitutional foreign wars? Fewer wars, fewer veterans and their special needs. Start the cuts there.)

McCain: Need nuclaer power. Important for power, and climate change.

Financial crisis’ effect on budgets

Obama: FDR bought back houses, values went up. (Except Franklin “Dictator” Roosevelt didn’t end the Depression which lasted until 1946. And why bring up a tyrant who put 120,000 Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps?)

McCain:  Don’t put health care under control of government. Obama wants to spend another $800 billion. Low taxes, no new taxes, best way for the economy.

6:38 pm. Surprisingly, the old guy is winning. (Must have taken his meds tonight.)

Obama: It’s Bush, “your president,” whom you agreed with 90% of the time, who increased this spending, you voted for almost all his budgets.

McCain: I opposed the prez on spending, taxes, torture of prisoners, climate change. I have a record as a “Maverick.”

Lessons of Iraq

McCain: Lessons of Iraq are very clear. You can’t have a failed strategy. (Right. The wrong strategy was starting the war!)

McCain: Needed more troops. Surge. Strategy has succeeded. We will see a stable ally. Defeat would be increased Iranian influence. (But that’s what’s happening! The Shiites who control the Iraqi government are close to the Shiite Iranians.)

Obama: Fundamental difference. I opposed this war 6 years ago.  We took our eye off the ball. Should have kept going after Al Qaeda. Iraq now has a $79 billion surplus. Lesson: We should never hesitate to use our military wisely, didn’t do it in Iraq.

McCain: Next prez will have to decide when we leave Iraq. Obama contradicted himself on surge.

Obama: McCain believed Bush lies on weapons of mass destruction, etc., about the Iraq War.

McCain: Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy. 600 troops who re-upped in Iraq said: Let us win. (Wasn’t that from one of the Rambo movies? And maybe Obama doesn’t understand the diff between strategy and tactics; but McCain doesn’t understand the difference between strategy and Grand Strategy, which includes knowing that a long war blows out your economy.)

Obama: Withdraw most troops w/in 16 months, move them to Afghanistan, to crush and kill Osama bin Laden.

McCain: Petraeus and Osama both said Iraq is the main battlefield. (Yeah, but thats only because the US gov has been stupid enough to go there and stay there.)

6:51 pm. McCain still in the lead. But given that most Americans oppose the Iraq War, he probably lost some points here.

Afghanistan

Obama: Need more troops. Strategic mistake to have 4 times as many troops in Iraq as Afg. (No, Obama! We need to leave Afghanistan more than to leave Iraq. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.)

Obama: Need to deal with exploding poppy trade, and Pakistan.

This shows Obama really is a warmonger.

McCain: Let’s not repeat the mistake of, after helping Afghans drive out Soviets, we didn’t help then, the result was the Taliban. On Pakistan, I’m not prepared at this time to cut of aid to Pakistan. We’ve got to get the support of the people of Afghanistan. Work with Pak government.

Amazingly, McCain sounds more peaceful than Obama.

McCain: I’ve been to Waziristan. Run by tribes. Need new strategy, the same as in Iraq that Obama condemned. Will have to go with the Pakis and go to those areas. It’ll be tough.

Now McCain flys into fantasyland.

McCain: Petraeus now in charge in Afghanistan.  Need more troops. I know how to work with the Pakistan.

Obama: We coddled Musharraf, the former dictator. We lost legitimacy in Pak. And weren’t going after al-Qaeda.

McCain: Was a failed state in Pak when Musharraf took power. (And there isn’t one now?)

Obama: McCain is a warmonger.

McCain: No I’m not. Opposed 1983 deployment of Marines to Lebanon, got blown up. But I supported bombing Serbia over Bosnia, Kosovo. Genocide was taking place there. (A big lie. The US bombing of the Serbs led to the Albanians ethnically cleansing everybody else — Serbs, Bosniaks, Jews, etc. — from most areas of Kosovo.)

7:01 pm. McCain still ahead. Seems more “presidential.”

McCain: I was part of an army that was defeated. We’ll win this one, won’t have to come home in defeat and dishonor, then have to go back.

Obama: No American soldier ever dies in vain. They were obeying orders of the Commander in Chief. (What about soldiers following the Constitution, Obama? That’s what soldiers are supposed to follow, in wars declared by Congress, not the president. Obama is, essentially, a fascist. But McCain didn’t object, so, presumably, he is too. )

Iran threat

McCain: If Iran acquires nukes, it’s an existential threat to Israel, and to other countries in the region. We cannot allow a second Holocaust. Need to form a League of Democracies. The Russians are preventing significant action in the UN. We could impose sanctions on the Iranians. The Iranians have a lousy government, so their economy is lousy. (Finally, something Iranians have in common with Americans!)

But the UN inspectors and Bush’s own National Intelligence Estimate say Iran isn’t developing nukes.

Obama: McCain right, Iran bad, sanctions needed. But also need tough, direct talks.

McCain: Obama said he would sit down with Bad Man Ahmadinejad, Raoul Castro, and Chavez of Venez to talk without precondition. (Neither noted that Bad Man “President” Ahmadinejad actually holds a minor post, with the mullahs really calling the shots.)

My DSL connection conked out here, so I missed some of it. When is America going to get fiberoptic capabilities equal to those Korea had 10 years ago because they don’t suffer under America’s heavy load of absurd regulations? How about debating that?

DSL connection back up. (Note written after the debate: Checking some other sites, it turns out that when my connection was down, Obama did note that Ahmadinejad isn not the leader of Iran.)

Obama: Talks are good.

McCain: Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe Israel “off the map.” (Actually, Ahmadinejad never said that, as McCain should know. What a dangerous ignoramus. Obama doesn’t refute that.)

McCain:  Repeats that A. wants to wipe Israel “off the map.” Kissinger my friend for 30 years. (Amazing: Kissinger was and is a disaster, a Machiavellian murderer. Given how often McCain brings up his POW experience, it’s shocking that he would praise the man whose evil policies kept the Vietnam war going and going, and McCain in shackles, only to lose it in the end. If Kissinger/Nixon had ended the Vietnam War in early 1969, as they should have, McCain and the other POWs would have come home 4 years earlier.)

Russia

Obama: Resurgent and aggressive Russia bad. Actions in Georgia “unwarranted.’ (But Georgia started the war by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia.)

Obama: Russ must be out of South Ossetia, Abkhazia.

Obama is just taking the Bush-McCain line put down by Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top national security advisor, who was a paid influence peddler for Georgia.

McCain: Russia petrodollar dictatorship. Run by KGB. Need to bolster our friends and allies. Had do with energy. Pipeline. Watch Ukraine, Crimea, Sebastopol. Let’s make sure the Ukrainians understand that we are our friends and ally.

Obama: McCain and I agree.

Why is this our concern? The Cold War is over. Get over it. America’s empire already has bankrupted us. Let’s bring all our troops home, cut the military budgets, return the money to taxpayers, send the troops home to their loving families.

These clowns don’t understand that there’s no money for their imperial adventures.

Obama: Need energy strategy, self-sufficiency, so we’re not dependent on bad guys. Need alternative energy. I’ve got a plan.

Another plan!

Obama: McCain voted against alternative energy 30-something times.

McCain: No one in Arizona votes against solar.

Neither bozo noted that our energy “dependency” mainly is on imports from Canada and Mexico, our neighbors and friends.

Final question (yes!): Likelihood of another 9/11

McCain: Much less than the day after 9/11. We have a safer nation. Lieberman and I wanted a 9/11 Commission. We were stymied by Bush, until the families of the victims backed it.

Except that the Commission was a farce, as Ron Paul explained.

McCain: Safer today, but have a long way to go. Men and women in gov. doing a great job protecting America.

Obama: We’re safer in some ways. Still a long way to go. Harden chemical sites. Transit. Ports. Worries about suitcase bombs. Nuclear proliferation is important, need to spend more dough on that. Need to focus on al-Qaeda, in Afghan and Pakistan. Way we are perceived in the world is important. Need to restore America’s standing in the world. America is the greatest country in the world.

McCain: Obama doesn’t get it. Failure in Iraq would mean al-Qaeda would run the place, have a base.

Wrong, McCain. If we left, the Iraqis would fight it out among themselves, kill the al-Qaeda interlopers. McCain seems to be re-fighting Nam.

Obama: McCain, Bush solely focused on Iraq. Bin Laden still out there. (Sounds like and X-Files episode.) Chinese are swarming around the world.

McCain: Obama has made the wrong responses. Doesn’t have the experience. At first, didn’t attack Russians for invading Georgia. (But Georgia invaded first! And McCain adviser Scheunemann is a crook!)

Obama: My father was from Kenya. Foreigners don’t like USA now,  as they did when my Pa came here full of idealism. America dreams.

McCain: Brings up, as always, his coming home from prison. Reconciled USA to commie Vietnam.

The end. I need a double bourbon.

My conclusion

McCain won by a fair amount.  He looked more “presidential.” He was more knowledgeable about the issues, although his knowledge was wrong.

Obama was a little flustered. He’s stuck defending the same things as McCain: attacking Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, Russia, etc.

Not much difference between these guys on policy, really.

McCain had to do well to close the poll gap with Obama. Which he did, but not enough.

Too bad Americans don’t have more choices. These “debates” don’t include the third-party candidates: Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, and Ralph Nader. Including them would have livened things up and given voters a choice among real alternatives.

Both Obama and McCain blab a lot about democracy, but there isn’t a lot of it on display here, not in these debates, and not in the $700 billion shafting of the American people our bipartisan criminals in the White House and Congress will be voting into law the next few days.

Neither one earned my vote, nor will get it.