restless reformer

I watched all two hours of the Hillary-Barack showdown.

Which wasn’t really a showdown. They were really, really friendly. A few quick comments, questions, and declarations of heresy:

• Did anyone else find it disingenuous when Hillary, asked about her husband’s recent tirades on the campaign trail, answered in the following way: I’m the candidate, not my husband, and should be judged on my own merits, so remember that it took a Clinton to clean up after the last Bush?
• There are far too many jokes one could make, on a wide variety of topics, about Clinton’s time in office and “cleaning up.”
• Barack is better in speeches than in debates; still, he did fairly well tonight. At a few points I even said, “That’s actually conservative; good for you.” Of course, there were the other times…
• I can’t believe we’re actually at the point in this country where we’re debating whether or not we should mandate health care for someone who doesn’t want it. How is that even a discussion? What happened to freedom?
• If my taxpayer money starts going to helping people lose weight, I swear I’ll fill out however many forms are necessary to do the civil disobedience thing, not paying taxes in protest. (that’s hyperbole, folks, just in case you missed it)
• The return of the cackle! It was like Hillary had held it in for the first hour and fifty minutes of the debate, and then let it loose on every question in the last 10 minutes.
• Barack missed a few huge opportunities to seal a win in this debate - especially when the question about the Kennedy’s endorsement was brought up.
• Barack demolished Hillary on the Iraq question. I can’t believe Hillary is actually trying to say she believed Bush would just do the inspections and not use the congressional approval for such as a justification for pre-emptive war. Come on. We all at home knew it was all a set-up for war. I don’t have too much to criticize - I supported the war, even though I had some deep reservations about the long-term effects of a pre-emptive war precedent, as well as a firm conviction that this war went against Christianity’s just war theory (I convinced myself this was a special case, somehow). In any case, Barack’s win on this point was the key moment of the debate.
• I loved the shots Barack took at Mad Bomber McCain.
• A quick fact check for Barack, who talked about increasing taxes on the top 1%: the top 1% already pay 40% of tax revenue in this country. I know, I know - being taxed won’t hurt, and I’m not a big fan of rich people. So I won’t complain when/if Barack gets into office, taxes the top 1% a bit more, and gives the middle class more cuts (which he says he’ll do), but I just thought I’d clarify.
• Not that the Republicans have anything different to offer on the matter (except Paul, of course), but I’m really nervous about the spending of these two.  (My bet is, while all the Republicans would fail to get spending under control, they wouldn’t raise spending as much as these two.  Except maybe Mad Bomber to fund all the bombs he’ll drop.)

That’s enough, I suppose. Fred was whining about a headache and was thinking about calling in sick on his only day to write (slacker). I have quite a bit to do tomorrow, so blogging may be slow to non-existent. Then again, I love to procrastinate.