Debate predictions?
 

ok, i'll start the thread. tonight is the night that i have heard billed as "Shrek vs. Breck", the quintessential washington insider vs the outsider.

what are your predictions?
how many times do you think we'll hear haliburton and 2 america's(nice soundbytes), vs war on terror and deficit spending (real issues)?

how many minutes into the debate before Edwards uses the patented Bill Clinton hand extension with thumb upward gesture?

how many minutes before Cheney gives one of his ridiculous Shrek looks?

This one's gonna be a draw, I think. Cheney is going to sound like a crotchety piece of shit old man, while Edwards is going to sound too damned syrupy...or like he's going after a car seat maker who made a defective seat.

you're probably right. i still think that if they wanted the race to be better the R's should have fired Rumsfeld and put Cheney back into that position and put McCain in the VP slot (even though i don't really like McCain he would have been a nice balance) and the D's should have gone with an Edwards/Lieberman ticket where they could have maximized Edwards' outsider angle and his smoothness and used Lieberman for substance.

neither ticket would work in reality, but i would rather watch that race.

I'm not a fan of the overly "sincere" jury-addressing manner of Edwards, but the reason he developed it is that it works with most juries, and juries are made up of normal people. And, at least for me, it beats gruff, insistent, lying.

i approach them both the same way i do all people. neither of them is an angel or the devil. they are what they are. completely altruistic sincere people aren't usually found in the national political scene.

Edwards has won. Calling out Cheney for supporting the elimination of the very same weapons systems in particular that they're excoriating Kerry for voting against in an omnibus bill. Cheney's respnse? None.

I don't think so...Cheney has the edge here. Edwards seems impatient...he's jumped the gun on Gwen Iffel a few times and just interrupted Cheney. Plus he addressed Cheney directly...isn't that a no-no in the rules?

you may like what edwards is saying, but he is coming off as a smug punk kid, trying to one up his elder. (who looks like a grumpy old man)

It's even again...Cheney just sounded so stupid in his last 30-second comment.

BTW - just like it is somewhat misleading that kerry voted against the $87B before.....

Cheney was a major part of the reform movement in the congress in the early '80s who were working with Boyd and the acolytes in the pentagon to circumvent the normal corrupt R & D process. so he did vote against versions of each of the programs, but not the programs themselves.
example: the original bradley design was so flawed that the army didn't want to live fire test it before production. when they were forced to they tried using a half charge rpg, and filled the gas tanks with water so that it wouldn't explode.
the F15 and F16's that the old line pentagon brass were trying to push through were nearly double their needed wait and goldplated with useless features - cheney campaigned against these iterations of the design.

but cheney realizes that if he tries to explain that he will come off sounding like kerry with his 10 different reasons for his vote.

Cheney is starting to recycle lines--"his record speaks for itself."

"i did talk about israel... he didn't"



hahahahaha

these 2 are getting downright pissy with eachother. what a contrast with the cheney/lieberman debate.

Edwards is edging ahead, though the sniping is pretty silly.

cheney didn't answer well, but edwards jobs info is old.

Edwards has danced around the last few topics...Cheney seemed irritated by the same-sex question.

yeah, cheney knew he was going to get hit with that one because everyone knows bush and cheney are at odds on the issue.
i would have thought he would have prepared himself better.

honest question - i thought marriage in one state had to be recognized in the other 49? i forget the name of the law, but i know it deals with reciprocity in most areas.

edwards was surprised that cheney hit him with the numbers from his medicare tax loophole.

It's official...this is a snoozefest.

there was a little bit there where they got a little uppity with each other, but they finished off with a resounding snore.

"Full Faith and Credit Clause." IIRC, that is only valid if the marriage is legal in the state. IE, first cousins and interracial couples have at various times and in various states been recognized as married or not.

Huh. I thought this was a much more substantive and interesting debate than the last one.

thanks hm, that is the one i was thinking of. then, hypothetically, if minnesota legalized gay marriage, wouldn't new mexico be required to honor them as a married couple? or am i misunderstanding the law?

In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which, for federal purposes, defined marraige as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" (1 U.S.C. § 7). DOMA further provided that "No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship" (28 U.S.C. § 1738C). (See Law about... Conflicts of laws, Constitutional law)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/marriage.html

I'd call it a draw, myself. Cheney came across as the experienced insider. Edwards seemed a bit brash by comparison. I liked the way Cheney managed to sneak in his typical fear mongering with veiled refereces to terrorists in one of our cities with a nuclear bomb, and then later in the debate mentioning terrorists in one of our cities with biological weapons. :ninja:

No, but Massachusetts would. As I said in an embarasssingly complicated and unclear sentence, when interracial marriage was slowly being recognized, there was a period when some states recognized it, and others didn't. Those marriages weren't recognized in states in which it was illegal. The same was true for first cousins - and may still be, I'm not sure.

Cheney fact check. Anyone find one of these for Edwards yet?

Article IV

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state.

Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

Actually the states WOULD be required to legally recognize the marriages of the other states. The fact that they violated this part of the Constitution does not make it any less valid. Nor does the "protection of marriage act" voted on in 1996 because that is an illegal congressional act. No laws that contradict the U.S. Constitution are legal including acts of Congress. This has not been challenged yet, and if it were, it would fail for sure.

So if one state makes it legal, all states in the union must recognize it.

There's one issue I've never seen anyone bring up with gay marriages. I mean we all know marrying anyone you choose (regardless of gender) is a right for all Americans including gay ones. I've never seen anyone mention the fact that a straight man can marry a woman in another country and sponsor her as his spouse to enter the U.S. but gay people can't do that. There are a host of other ways homosexuals have their rights violated including social security, etc.