Interesting Conversations in Another Room

Going through the debate mostly chronologically:

McCain looked like an old man. A really old man. And that blinking thing he does really bothers me. He lost big time on the visuals. Oh, and he wasn't wearing a flag pin.

McCain's plan for the government to buy up mortgages of people who can't pay. For the sake of argument, let's assume that these people should have been given a loan in the first place (although many of them probably shouldn't have). A lot of these loans are in CDOs so that the ownership of each mortgage is spread between several entities. Either you have to buy all of the pieces (which may be a part of another CDO) and reassemble the loan, or somehow declare these CDOs void. The first way is hard, and the second is the government arbitrarily seizing investments. Not a particularly good plan.

Obama did a good job of tieing McCain to Bush, and McCain did a terrible job distancing himself from Bush. McCain has lost that narrative. He should have saved his Maverick card for last in the general election. It's just old and tired now.

If McCain is going to use ACORN and Bill Ayers, I'm going to pull out The Keating Five and Alaska Secessionists. Good on Obama for not stooping to that level. He should stick to policy.

McCain needs a refresher on Keynesian Economics. When the depression hits, spend more. When good times return, tax more. Balanced budgets amplify business cycles.

Alaskan oil reserves are pitifully small. The entire US oil reserves are just 21 billion barrels. Americans use 20 million barrels per day. Some simple math shows thats slightly less than a 3 year supply. By both McCain's and Obama's estimates, it will take at least 8 years to get off foreign oil. Drilling won't help much, and we should preserve our wilderness.

Also in the energy policy section, McCain had a weird answer where he mentioned six or seven different things back to back. I didn't get a chance to get them all down because it was really confusing. He can't seem to stay on topic here. Major fail.

McCain's health care plan is either stupid or smarter than I am. That's really bad for him, because if I'm having a hard time with it, I guarantee that others aren't getting it either. He said the average plan cost $5,800 a year, and he's going to give a $5,000 tax credit so that people can go puchase whatever plan they want. Call me crazy, but that's not a net savings for the tax payer. And if you are over average, then I guess you just have to eat the difference.

On Roe v. Wade, McCain basically said that anyone who agrees with the ruling isn't qualified to be on the Supreme Court. And he doesn't have an ideological litmus test. The stupid, it burns.