Sarah Palin Vs Joe Biden: Vice-Presidential Debate Round Up

and, Palin winking and calling herself a hockey Mom again gave me a bit of a headache.

So why do you mention "lying" and only list a Palin comment ?

Fact check seems to have Biden listed with more actual lies / fact errors during the debate.

And you have to just love factcheck, when Biden says an out and out lie in an attempt to win an exchange, it is said to be "incorrectly stated" by them. They go on to use terms like "Biden Fudges". It makes the lie sound so delicious !!! everyone should just eat it up!

I'm just glad the footwear within my reach were slippers. It bounced off the television. 

Reading the transcript, and watching the debate reruns, I find Biden's responses mostly off-topic and non-responsive to the topic right from the start. But then I'm an American and a voter, and what do I know?

" 'Not screwing up completely' is the new victory, I guess."

Sad, isn't it?

Yeah, I kept any and all footwear out of reach.

Given Palin's Katie Couric disaster, it's true that she could have done much worse in the debate. Still, her performance was amazingly bad. She spent the night speaking (if you can call it that) in absurd cliches about how government is bad, how Americans need to get Washignton off their backs, and how she, because she is an "average American" with a family, is uniquely qualified to run government. Her attacks on government are pretty rich given the fact that the useless, good-for-nothing government is currently bailing out the free-market geniuses who have trashed the US economy.

I just hated how she kept avoiding questions and then insisting she was talking to the American people. Seemed to be a bit of a tactic if you ask me..

I have seen this "avoidance" concept bantered around quite a bit today. I have not made a study of the transcript, but I did not upon a quick read through see anything she didn't actually answer. Seemed to me Biden pulled the classic debate tactic of throwing out several charges at the end of his rebuttal and thus making his opponent have to choose whether to let his comments stand as facts or debate them before moving on to the current question.

She seems like a female version of George Bush.  "Heck of a job Brownie."  Just down home folks.  They both are pretty embarrassing to the American public.  But hey, maybe we expect too much from our "leaders."

Listened on radio only so missed all the winks and nods.  It sounded like a draw, and spieling out facts doesn't matter in the slightest in that kind of show.  Even the moderator was excellent. 

I have always advocated that politicians talk to the American People in the STYLE Palin did last night. So she won the debate in THAT respect, even though half the things she said were distortions and lies and I still feel she would be VERY dangerous in the Oval Office.

As to substance, honesty, experience and knowledge, BIDEN WON hands down.

At least Biden tried to answer the questions.  Palin is not prepared.  Her answers were just a bunch of populist talking points. The winking made my stomache turn.  Answer the questions! This isn't a beauty pagent, or a popularity contest.  Palin's candidacy is a slap in the face for America by the Republican party.  She shows just how stupid they think their base is. By foisting this telegenic attack dog to the cameras and foresaking a vast pool of qualified candidates they show how much they care about America.

The prospect of another puppett president is truely frightening. 

Well, here are some folks that took the time to do some homework on Sarah Palin's record as the new Governor of Alaska, and reported what they found.  It is worthy to at least take a look at this, as it does indeed show another side to Palin that you aren't going to see in one of her carefully crafted public appearances and speeches!  This report is brought to you through: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?ex=1379217600&en

Reviewing this and other information supporting her negative style shows that perhaps the observation of Sarah Palin as a Pit Bull with Lipstick is more accurate than one would think at first glance.  Especially given her recent direct attack on Barack Obama which was totally uncalled for, I would have to agree that she is looking more and more like a Pit Bull every day!  So, here's the report I mentioned earlier:

"WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political."