Oct
6

VP Debate Transcripts And Reax

Fox News has the transcripts up as well as vid… So does C-Span.. transcripts and vid, though the link to the vid looks either broken or overloaded at the moment. Go in through the front page, and find it.

Look, I’m not going to waste my time and yours fisking every line of transcript.
There are a few in the ‘sphere who can and are handling that task better. 
But I can’t let a few things pass that I saw last night.

First the supposed problem surrounding ‘no-bid’ contracts, and Haliburton. Those were established for a couple of reasons, both of which Edwards and Kerry both know and neither of which they’ll tell you about.

  • They were the only contractor capable of handling the need. THe government didn’t bother with a bid process because nobody else could do the work, period.
  • The Congress passed a specific law allowing such contracts to be passed out on that basis. This was a law that both Kerry and Edwards voted for, when it came up. Is this yet another flip-flop?
  • What Edwards implied last night is that Cheney continued to get paid by Haliburton as a response to some action of Cheney in his role as VP of the US. This is a blatant lie. Cheney is being paid by Haliburton for work done long before he became VP. This is a matter of public record, and Edwards is a liar for casting these payments in this light.

    • Amazingly enough, NBC mentioned the no-bid lie as such, though Fox didn’t.

    Something nobody touched was the Edwards lie, attempting to disconnect Saddam from 9/11…. But lie it was. And it’s been documented, as I pointed out two days ago. Saddam had WMD, Saddam had AQ links. Get over it, already, JohnJohn.

    Gwen Ifill was a bit of a suprize. After watching Lerher lean left for 90 minutes, I expected more of the same from her. I was suprised and pleased to note her calling Edwards on not addressing the questions. I do wish they’d had her mike in a better placement, though. They had it well off angle for some reason.

    Cheney came off as being straihtforward, experienced, and sober… quite a different thing from what the left has been trying to paint him. Cheney did well in regard to breaking that stereotype.

    More than once, Edwards performance last night has been described to me as a ‘yappy little dog.. the kind you want to kick through the nearest cat door’.. Most notably on the elevator this morning (hi, Carl… great line) and Mikey Kaus this morning seems to agree.

    ABC gives the debate to Cheney. So does fox, so does MSNBC. (With Mathews sounding like he was in mourning on IMUS this morning… for that matter, so did Imus) CBS, to the shock of aboslutely nobody, gives it to Edwards.

    One glaring omission on a constitutional level I noted (Ed-And so does Ed at CQ, apparently) was the claim by Edwards that “No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state’s marriage.” Edwards went on to criticize for “using the Constitution as a political tool.”

    As usual, this is a lie. I will direct your attention to article IV of the constitution, called the “Full Faith and Credit” clause. As Captain Ed rightly points out,

    “States are compelled by law to recognize marriages performed in other states. If any state performs a marriage between homosexuals, then all other states in the union will be bound to recognize it, regardless of that state’s law. “

    So what this is, is the Demcrats trying to get this in on a national basis, through the back door. (Edit- Did I really say that?)

    Enough.
    Comment away, gang. It’s your floor.

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    Posted by Eric Florack BitsBlog Print This Post Print This Post Subscribe to RSS feed