Let’s Examine Joe’s Tears

Last night, Joe Biden cried.  Again.  With a month to go before the election, were those the tears that were supposed to melt America?

How does a white woman attack a white man?

That was the challenge facing Sarah Palin in last night’s debate.  A strong, powerful woman going up against a sensitive man has to be careful how she approaches such a delicate situation.  Does she attack?  Or, does she simply allow for his vulnerability?  Now that the debate is over, I feel we must examine Joe Biden’s tears.

While recounting the story of the tragic loss of his wife and daughter and the serious injuries to his two sons, Biden became understandably emotional at the memories of the grief and hardship he experienced as a single father and widower.

He cried for himself.

He did not cry for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina or Gustav.  He did not cry for the women disenfranchised in the primaries that lead to his being tapped as vice-presidential nominee.  What of their suffering?

What of the sense of loss felt by the parents of the 125 people murdered in the streets of his running mate’s hometown, or those of the parents of more than 4,000 American casualties of the Iraq war?  Did he cry for them?

No.

He shed not one tear for the thousands of women who are injured or killed at the hands of husbands and lovers, or even for the rape victim his campaign sought to exploit for a negative ad.  No emotion was shown for women like Britney Spears, who face the loss of custody of their children just because they don’t like to wear panties when they take their kids for a drive.

The things written here are almost too shameful to type, and certainly don’t reflect the sympathy I feel for the victims, and the families of the victims, mentioned.  If I offended anyone, I humbly apologize.  However, in light of the fact that similar statements made by Obama campaign surrogate, Jesse Jackson Jr. against Hillary Clinton, a woman Joe Biden himself admitted would have been a better VP pick than him, and who, I believe, would have made a much better president than either he, or Barack Obama could ever hope to be, were allowed to stand, Biden’s tears must be examined.

And considering that Biden shed no tears over that, he, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party, come up seriously lacking.

Obiden Media Debate Spin-Palin Great, But…

Obviously the press has received it’s official Camp O “what we’re supposed to tell them to think” memo about last night’s debate, since article, after article, struggles to find new and clever ways to make their tediously predictable, “she was great, but…” spin seem tolerably credible.  Espousing David Axelrod’s astroturf seed, these happy yappers are running off at the keyboard in gleeful abandon of reality.

Truth is, she smoked him. No matter how many stories are written about what the squiggly lines on the rigged little meters mean, or what all the drunks in the bar the writer was in, said, when it comes to perception, Palin won hands down.

As I said all along, my mind is not changed one iota about who I’m going to vote for.  “None of the above” is still my personal choice, so far.  But looking at the debate, it’s easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, or to be more descriptive, manure from the bull shit.

Joe Biden, and those who love him, are touting his superior foreign policy credentials as proof he “won.”  But it was not a foreign policy debate.  In fact, there’s no real reason to expect a vice-president to be overly-knowledgeable about…much of anything, really.  Besides, every time Biden opens his mouth, one is reminded of his tendency to insert foot, or say someone else’s words, or flat-out lie.  So, even if he “wins,” he loses, because the legacy of his own big, mouth-juicy foot will always follow him around, just to trip him up and make him fall flat on his Pinocchio nose.  Every time.

Palin, on the other hand, came across as everything Barack Obama claims to be; a wide-eyed, innocent, Washington outsider, hell-bent on reform.  More importantly, she projected small town all-America to…all America.  She was mom and apple pie standing on a stage taking up for the little people, just because, gee whiz, it’s the right thing to do.  The fact that stats and facts didn’t roll off her tongue worked in her favor;  she was a female Jimmy Stewart, and while she may not have been around as long as her debate opponent, she sure knows moose patties when she sees ‘em, and gosh darnit, knows how to turn ‘em into fertilizer, too.

So, the Camp O team can spin themselves dizzy laying fake grassroots seed from here to Alaska with their, “she did okay, but…” stories.  Hockey and soccer moms shopping in Wal-Marts for tube socks for Joe Sixpack all across the land just found themselves a shero.

And yeah, there’s an element of racism in the fact that Sarah Palin is so appealing to some voters simply because she’s an All-American White Woman, but so what?  If Barack Obama hadn’t tried to win the presidency by race-baiting and girl-bashing, it wouldn’t make any difference at all.  She probably wouldn’t even be in the race.

But then, neither would he.

Spin that.

Wall Street Successfully Extorts Government

Claiming imminent global economic disaster, the nation’s financial industry held a gun to the country’s head and demanded 700 billion dollars, or they would stop loaning money to each other.  It worked:

With the economy on the brink and elections looming, Congress approved an unprecedented $700 billion government bailout of the battered financial industry on Friday and sent it to President Bush for his certain signature.

In news more closely related than people are paying attention to, Wells Fargo is throwing a monkey wrench in government plans to restructure the banking industry.

A battle broke out for control of Wachovia Friday as Wells Fargo signed a $15.1 billion agreement to buy the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, while Citigroup and the federal regulators backing its earlier deal insisted that Citi’s takeover bid go forward.

The surprise announcement early Friday by Wachovia Corp. that it had agreed to be acquired by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. in the all-stock deal — without government assistance — upended what had appeared to be a carefully examined arrangement and caught regulators off guard.

Already this year the government has been involved in the aquisition of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual by JP Morgan Chase, whose CEO Jamie Dimon and Midwestern Group chairman, William Daley are both advisers to Barack Obama’s campaign.  Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch, and the Federal Reserve rescue of AIG seem to indicate that the financial landscape being bailed out today bears little resemblence to the one that caused the crisis.

But that’s just one little ol’ taxpayer’s take on things.

She Had Him At “Hello”

When the endless analyses and commentaries have all been written about tonight’s debate between vice-presidential candidates, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and they will, one thing will stand out in America’s mind as it does in mine.  With the benefit of a few hours of reflection, I can process that which is most memorable to me about tonight’s events into some sort of perspective.

From the moment the two combatants greeted each other, she owned him.

“Nice to meet you.  Can I call you Joe?”

With that simple phrase, she took over the debate, set the terms and served notice, “I will take no shit from you, Mister.”

“Of course,” Biden replied with a smile.

Biden, clueless, had no idea he had just surrendered any advantage he might have imagined he had.  However, her charmingly dismissive embrace of him was the most effective weapon she had, and she deployed it liberally.

It came late in the debate when Biden had made one of his pre-designed points, bashing the Bush administration and tying the miscreants in power to his would-be Republican successor John McCain. With the sprightliness of a quarterback calling a gimmick play designed for a certain kind of defense, she offered this: “I say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards.”

Sure, on the surface, it was a cute Shoeless Joe-Ronald Reagan call back, but in reality, it was much, much more.  That was Sarah-speak for, “You’re not so tough, big guy, and I’m not scared of you.  At all.”

Again, and again, Governor Palin gently chided, scolded, and nudged her “more experienced” opponent back into the place in which she wanted him to stay.  Over and over, she made her point, “I don’t care what you say, I’m in charge of me.”  She didn’t try to outdo him in his area of expertise, it wasn’t neccessary.

“I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter … of the mainstream media kinda telling viewers what they just heard,” she said. “I’d rather just be able to speak to the American people.”

All she had to do was exactly what she did; tell America directly, who she was.  Joe Biden was incidental to Sarah Palin’s debate, and to anybody who was paying attention, she made that abundantly clear at “hello.”

*UPDATE: Believe it or not, I hadn’t seen this Peggy Noonan video when I wrote my post, in fact, most of the time, I write my impressions, then search for support data, primarily looking for direct quotes or salient facts.  There are times however, when I will write commentary about something I’ve read, like in the post about the CNN/Rock The Vote debate event.  In the case of Palin’s “can I call you Joe” moment, it caught my attention as soon as she said it, but I didn’t really think about it until later.  Anyway, looks like Ms. Noonan saw things pretty much the way I did.