McCain vs Obama debate, Who do you feel won? Options

[Billy]

I like McCain. But I feel that McCain treated it like a beauty pageant and Obama actually debated.

[Mommy]

McCain defines SPECIFIC ways in which he intends on cutting taxes. In fact, he goes a step further and tells how HE HIMSELF can influence the change. He promises to veto every earmark spending bill that comes across his desk. That will save tax payers billions. Obama says he wants to hold corporations accountable. OK. How are you going to do that? Don't you think that is something the United States has been trying to do ever since the Enron failure? Additionally, business taxes do need to be cut. We are losing our industries and manufacturing to foreign competitors. Business owners would rather set up shop elsewhere because it costs too much to do so here. Obama is a fucking idiot if he thinks that business incentives counteract the taxes they have to pay. McCain definitely won.

[Spectatrix]

McCain defines SPECIFIC ways in which he intends on cutting taxes. In fact, he goes a step further and tells how HE HIMSELF can influence the change. He promises to veto every earmark spending bill that comes across his desk. That will save tax payers billions. Obama says he wants to hold corporations accountable. OK. How are you going to do that? Don't you think that is something the United States has been trying to do ever since the Enron failure? Additionally, business taxes do need to be cut. We are losing our industries and manufacturing to foreign competitors. Business owners would rather set up shop elsewhere because it costs too much to do so here. Obama is a fucking idiot if he thinks that business incentives counteract the taxes they have to pay. McCain definitely won.

I need to review what Obama has said and fact check it, but I'd like to address your comments about McCain.

1) Minor nitpick -- he has made a big deal about earmarks, but he hasn't promised to veto every one, just wasteful ones. I'm fine with that. Earmark abuse is definitely a problem with some politicians.

2) Even eliminating all earmarks doesn't save much. While there are exceptions, most often an earmark is just a specification of what projects a given agency is to work out, out of money they're already allocated in the budget. As an example, I know some Dems have been giving Palin a hard time about keeping the money that had been earmarked for the "Bridge to Nowhere", but the truth is that those funds were already set aside for general Alaska transportation use. The bridge earmark wasn't diverting additional money, just specifying that X amount of the money they were receiving was to be used for the bridge. Once the earmark was killed, it was still perfectly appropriate for Alaska to keep those transportation funds.

3) To my knowledge (and please correct me if I'm wrong), McCain has yet to specify what specific government agencies/projects he would cut money from. He has effectively said that defense spending is off the table (and may actually increase), but hasn't said where he's going to cut money from. If defense spending is included, cutting $100 billion from the budget would be approximately an 18% average reduction in spending across all other agencies/projects. Great! But I'd like specifics.


Anywho, I'd like more specifics from BOTH sides. It really disgusts me that politicians fall into this rut of broadcasting broad ideological differences without getting into policy specifics. And then they keep repeating the same old, inaccurate smears for months on end. I swear to god, if I ever got into politics, I would have a policy of thoroughly fact-checking every single ad and mailer that went out. Misleading and/or false into has no place in a campaign. I'm more or less ok with tearing down one's opponent, but it damn well better be based on factual, contextually accurate info.

</rant>

Yes, I'm pissed at both sides for this crap.