Tag Archives: Politics

Aimee: The Joker vs. Robin, My Take on the Vice Presidential Debate

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It was a classic comic book matchup. 

cesar romero as the joker

Cesar Romero as the Joker

Joe Biden playing the Joker. Rudely interrupting. Flashing a toothy smile. Laughing at the most unprofessional times. Condescendingly referring to Paul Ryan as “my friend.” Dude, this is THE vice presidential debate. This is serious business, not Let’s Make a Deal. Biden’s behavior threatened to steal the show and not in a good way. Bizarre.

And Ryan? Well, Ryan was Robin incarnate. Young. Polite. Mild-mannered. A tad naive, but refreshingly clean cut and reserved as compared to The Situation flailing about next to him.

Debates are won on substance, Aimee, not theatrics. Who won on substance? 

That’s true. Each side will dispute the other side’s “facts.” The fact checkers won’t agree either, and voters will take issue with how the fact checkers interpreted the facts in their fact checking. This will go on ad nauseum. Here are the poignant substance moments for me:

Biden referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as Bibi.
I wanted to crawl under my coffee table. How embarrassing for our country. Even if Biden’s on a nickname basis with Netanyahu, it’s inappropriate to refer to Israel’s leader as Bibi in a debate. On your Twitter feed maybe, but not in a nationally televised debate. Not respectful. Not classy. Not vice presidential. Biden made Ryan’s point: our casual leadership communicates weakness to our allies and to our enemies on the international stage. Why would they take us seriously?

Biden insisted the Middle East problems aren’t really as bad as we all know they are.
Terrorists in the Middle East hate us. I repeat, they hate us. I’m sorry to have to break it to some of you, but they want to kill us. Dead. Deceased. Obliterated. No more. What difference does it make if Iran is four weeks or four years away from a having a viable nuclear weapon? They need to be stopped now.

Does Biden seriously think our declaration of 2014 as the end of the war in Afghanistan will really be the end? To quote Lara Logan from her speech earlier this month in Chicago:

“You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script, but you don’t. There’s two sides and we don’t dictate the terms.”

And Biden had the nerve to blame the intelligence community for Obama’s disastrous response to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Blame shifting seems to be a Democratic strategy of choice these days. Blame a YouTube video, blame the Republicans, blame intelligence. You know what’s coming next. Wait for it…

Biden blamed George W. Bush. Again.
I have a soft spot in my heart for President Bush 43, and I’m not alone. Bush had his faults, yet I never once doubted his love and loyalty for America. I grow weary of people like Biden directly and indirectly attacking, demeaning, and blaming Bush for the ills of the universe. Liberals like to poke fun at him and call him a cowboy. But I like Bush. I like cowboys.

Abortion emerged as the sleeper issue.
The abortion issue still plagues America. Lisen and I will write more about it next week. Last night, the VP candidates came out swinging. Ryan said, “I believe life begins at conception.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. In that one statement, Ryan showed he understands the bedrock of the pro-life perspective. And, unlike Biden, he adheres to a position in line with his Catholic faith. We know what the man stands for. That counts for something in my book.

Batman and Robin

Batman and Robin

Biden didn’t thank Ryan, but Ryan thanked Biden.
Thanking one’s opponent at the end of a debate is a common courtesy. You learn that on the high school debate team. It’s good manners and good statesmanship. Did Biden simply forget? Or was this a final jab of disrespect, consistent with his demeanor throughout the debate? And we wonder why bipartisanship is nonexistent in the Obama presidency.

Biden has been a public servant since 1973, and that’s commendable. His acting out last night, however, was odd and inexplicable at best. Desperate at worst.

Meanwhile, Robin, er, Ryan held his composure. Calm, cool, concise, clear, polite. Maybe I’m partial to him because he’s my age; he’s Gen X. Maybe it’s his manners or the fact that that he wasn’t projecting as poorly as the current Vice President. With Ryan, I can see a glimmer of a chance for functional government again.

Holy hope and change, Batman! We have a winner!

Lisen: Voter Id Laws Aren’t The Answer; Voter Registration Is

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Are You Registered?

Look, I am not generally a conspiracy theorist. But, I’m always more than a little suspicious when legislation is roundly proposed by one party or another and even more suspicious when a single organization seems to be behind the lawmakers who sponsored said legislation. Let’s take the latest 62 voter id laws  that have been proposed in 37 states in the last two years. In the vast majority of these laws, conservative Republicans have been leading the charge. And behind them? The Washington, D.C.-based American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

So just who or what is ALEC? It’s a tax-exempt organization  established in 1973 by the late Paul Weyrich, the co-founder of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. While it claims to be a non-profit, ALEC has been  drafting and disseminating “model bills” advocating free market economic ideas, such as eliminating capital gains taxes and weakening labor and consumer laws.  Sure sounds like lobbying me.

In the past few years, ALEC has moved beyond purely economic initiatives to voter id and gun rights issues. Its model bill served as the basis for the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida (you know, the one that allowed George Zimmerman to murder Trayvon Martin).

And voter id? Thanks to ALEC, voter id has become a major focus of this current election cycle. While lawmakers have been busy proposing these laws, lawyers have been busy fighting against them. The courts are now filled with challenges to voter id laws in most of the states where they exist. So, all of you who want smaller government, is that the best use of our tax payers dollars?

Perhaps, if it was a real problem. But the truth is, it isn’t. How much voter fraud has there really been? According to News21,a national investigative reporting project funded by the funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, since 2000 we have only experienced 2068 cases of actual voter fraud. Let me repeat that: 2068 cases. Think about all of the local, state, and national elections that have happened since 2000. That’s hundred of millions of votes by hundreds of millions of voters and only 2068 cases.

So why the Republican campaign to ensure there is no fraud in our voting process? Votes. Or rather, votes for their candidates. Turns out those most affected by voter id laws are young people, hispanics, the poor, and the elderly. In other words, those most likely to vote Democratic.

But here’s the rub. A recent report indicates those currently without documentation are less likely to vote anyway.  So while our lawmakers and lawyers are duking it out in a frantic effort to keep voters from voting this November, our real focus should be getting those who aren’t registered to vote registered.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, of the 225 million people who were 18 and older, 206 million were citizens, and 146 million were registered. In the 2008 November election, 131 million people voted. In other words, only 58% of eligible Americans excercized their right to vote in the last election, but 90% of registered voters did. So, how do we change elections. Get people registered because once they are registered, they’ll vote.

If you aren’t registered, what’s your excuse? Don’t know how? Click here.

For more of my thoughts on voting, you might want to read my column about my mother who finally voted for the first time at the age of fifty-four and she’ll never miss an election again.