My least favorite thing about debates is that they are very subjective to the observer. If you believe one person is honest and the other is not, and you do not have a fact sheet in front of you, whenever the two site opposites as fact, then you simply believe the one who is telling the truth is your boy.

So no one really ever wins a debate.

In terms of justification, both candidates exaggerate their points. I don't like it but it's not too severe.

Case in point Obama in the first debate said 95% of American's would get a tax cut under his plan. Inaccurate; 95% of Americans filing as families will receive a tax cut. The 95% of people filing as single will see their taxes stay the same. In the third debate Obama reworded it to "95% of Americans will not see their taxes increase under my plan." Which makes the statement accurate without full admitting he was inaccurate the first time.

Similarly McCain cites our spending $600 million on oil in countries who don't like us. Inaccurate; we spend $500 million on foreign oil total. That amount includes the oil we buy from our allies like Canada. McCain unfortunately did not attempt to rephrase this in the third debate, he used it again verbatim.

And that's why he is down in the polls. Even if something is common knowledge as being a lie or mis-statement or a wrong choice, McCain keeps harping on it as if he's deaf, and we do not need a president who does that during policy making, or during diplomatic discussion.

Something people occasionally bash Obama for is when he says "John is absolutely right about..." during debates. But pay attention. Obama listens to what McCain says, and gives him credit when credit is due for having a correct idea or assumption, and then illustrates areas where McCain is shortsighted in his opinion or chases the incorrect method by Obama's estimation.

McCain's method is to make a false statement about a well documented aspect of Obama's policy, and after Obama explains how the statement is false, McCain plays deaf and does not adjust his argument. Instead of trying to find a fault or difference with Obama's method, he repeats the same inaccurate description of Obama's plan.

McCain has many fundamental differences with Obama and Obama's way of solving problems, but instead of citing those differences in perspective as his argument against the Democrat's policies, he tells people Obama's policies are something other than what they actually are. It's hard to have confidence in the plans of a man who cannot defend his own ideas and differences with his opponent without making false claims about what the opposing view actually is.

Joe The Plumber.

McCain would not shut up about Joe the Plumber. In brief:

McCain pointed out that Obama talked to Joe the plumber, and Joe was afraid that after he took over the plumbing business he had worked for so many years, that his taxes would go up too high for him to succeed as the owner of a business.

Obama confirmed that indeed happened, but his plan involves keeping taxes the same for people making less than $250,000 a year, 95% of taxpayers, and has included tax breaks and special program opportunities for small businesses. Businesses getting tax increases will be large multi million dollar corporations, not small businesses.

This is true. Joe works for a plumber who's business makes over $250,000 dollars... but no individual makes over $250,000. That figure is the gross of the business, not an individual, meaning even if Joe took over (which he can't he doesn't have a plumbing license) his taxes would not increase even without receiving Obama's small business help benefits. only 5% of Americans make over $250,000 a year, that number includes almost no small business owners, as it is nearly impossible for a small business to create enough revenue for any individual in the company to make $250,000 individually and still fall under the category of "small business".

Later McCain claimed Obama's Health plan would hurt Joe by forcing him to provide health insurance for his employees or be fined by the law, and forced to use the government health care system.

This is also not true. Under Obama's plan, Small businesses are exempt from being fined for not providing benefits to employees, it provides the government health insurance plan as an optional choice for Joe or his employees if he or they cannot afford other private insurance companies.

McCain gives a $5,000 health tax credit to individuals. The average health premium is 4 times that, and his plan causes the guidelines that require private insurance companies to take older patients and patients with pre-existing health conditions to expire, without creating a new option for those people who cannot get insurance from private insurers under those circumstances, making that $5,000 essentially useless. He then finishes destroying the point of that credit by taxing job health benefits for the first time in history, which actually WILL increase Joe's taxes if he provides health insurance for his employees, and does not provide a new option for his employees if he does not. This essentially takes the $5,000 tax CREDIT, and makes it into a RETURN, and thus you MAY break even, but you are not just getting an extra $5,000.

Research is a funny thing like that..

Research is also funny because it made me think I was wrong for a minute. I found a comparative financial site that's projections showed McCain's plan increasing jobs and gross far better than Obama's. I was fascinated and wanted to see how my math was so wrong and theirs was so different then mine. I got excited too soon. The at each stage the comparison cites all of the factors that the projections do not take into account, and those factors included Spending, The war, the fact that Obama's plan is flexible and McCain's plan is permanent and does not allow for adjustments (the projection pretends both stay exactly the same without adjustments or time line programs which is drastically inaccurate in calculating Obama's plan), differences in policy regarding business regulation, education, the new health plans or the taxes as concerning the health plans, McCain's plan on balancing the budget, Obama's tax cuts for businesses that create jobs in America instead of outsourcing, etc.

As I read further I found that the writers of the research also believe strongly in the trickle down economic system, and calculated that as a parameter for all the projections, spending about a page on explaining how cutting taxes on the top executives in large corporations causes them to invest in in more endeavors, which creates the need for more materials and resources, which creates more jobs. In that stage they failed to mention the factors that were not included in the projections such as the cumulative data on the real-world effects on the American economy during the 12 year stretch of R. Reagan, and G.H.W. Bush, and under the 8 years of G.W. Bush, CEO bonuses as investments, rates at which money is invested in bank accounts in real-world situations (basically it shows how the system COULD work if everyone is nice and throws all of their extra earnings into American investments, without taking into account the real world rates at which that actually does or doesn't happen)

The article also failed to articulate the fact that Obama's plan does a better job of paying for the government, by receiving higher taxes from the group of people who though they only represent 5% of the population, represent 33% of the population's pre-tax income. Obama's plan cuts taxes for families in the lower 5 (out of 7 total) income brackets but leaves the taxes on single taxpayers the same. Obama's plan increases the government's funds to be used towards programs and balancing the budget (which won't happen under either plan and at least Obama is honest about that timeline) while only increasing taxes on people who make between 6.25 times and 27.93 times the gross income of the average American family.

Those poor souls who make between $250,000 and $1,117,000 annually will be increased from 36% taxes to 39% taxes while everyone else who makes less than 250,000 (the average person/family making about $40,000 - $55,000) are living it up like kings on still only 36% taxes.

Tough break, really.

In McCain's plan every bracket gets taxed roughly 36%, but there are more loopholes for large businesses (which Joe will not qualify for), and for the first time in history, your health benefits will be taxed.

So I guess it will be another day before someone gives me evidence to change my mind.

The next issue I found startlingly irritating during the debate was the energy policy discussion. McCain accused Obama of missing the big picture of using American off shore drilling. Obama pointed out that he wanted to look into offshore drilling to see if it was worthwhile or not before making a decision, and that first he wanted to push Oil companies to drill on the land they already own which they have not developed yet. He also pointed out that we consume 11% of the world's Oil, but even with offshore drilling will only provide under 3% of the world's oil, and therefore it was not a solution to the problem.

This is an overlooked issue that has irritated me for a long time; Oil companies currently own very large areas that are not yet being used due to a lack of money being invested into developing that land for oil rather than other investments the oil companies are making. The push to create more offshore drilling simply gives drilling land to companies that already are not drilling to their full potential. It's just an excuse to give certain companies more real-estate. It's a complete waste of time. And given the fact that Obama's statement about 11% consumption verses 3% potential output is actually completely true, it really is a futile endeavor. Keep in mind that with only 3% output we are still the third greatest oil producing country in the world. It's not as if we aren't already pumping our own gas, we just need more than ANYONE actually has.

McCain also harped on Nuclear power. Plutonium and Uranium are not cheaper than oil, and radioactive waste needs to be sealed and protected for 20 to 50 thousand years. Japan, whose favorite hobby is taking something Americans thought up, and making it better and faster, have not managed to make widespread nuclear power efficient yet, and they've been working on it for 30 years longer than us. Again, this is a really poor solution, and is coming from a man who believes it is necessary to cut American scientific research and development to accommodate the economic difficulties, and the Wars that he feels we need to send more troops into (while somehow costing us less money than it is now with less troops in those countries than his plan entails, that would take some stroke of genius.)

Obama's plan involves increases in development of land and water based wind energy (which 15 years of study concludes is more cost effective and efficient than nuclear energy, and new studies are finding does not effect bird species diversity and life as was once expected) and more research and development of geothermal, solar, cellular etc. McCain has only recently stated he has any desire to have the country look into these options, and only after he was criticized for not considering them, AND still has yet to give any plan regarding HOW he intends to create programs to develop these resources.

McCain's energy plan is more expensive and less efficient, not to mention less environmentally sound. A Lose, Lose, Lose, situation.

Afterwards the Roe V. Wade argument was brought up, at which point McCain accused Obama of voting for late term abortions and partial birth abortions.

Obama replied that he had voted down a bill that did not allow exceptions for situations in which the health and life of the mother was at stake. The state already had laws in place that prevented such late term abortions, so he felt comfortable that he was not doing harm by voting against the bill until it included text protecting the rights of the life of the mother.

McCain scoffed at this and said something that infuriated me beyond anything a politician has uttered out loud so far in the past 3 elections. He said we need to change American culture.

The beautiful thing about America is that it has many cultures, and many ways of thinking about things. McCain misses a fundamental part of America. You can make a law that tells people not to harm each other, but you cannot tell them what to think of each other. Someone is probably thinking he means the same thing as when Dr. Martin Luther King would say we need to change culture to eliminate racism. But I've watched McCain and Palin long enough to know he means we need to all be Christian conservatives, and that his way of thinking should be taught. He and his VP are already pushing for Abstinence Only education, and Intelligent design theory (Which Palin still blatantly calls Creationism, because she's that far gone) so another statement from McCain, no matter how seemingly small, that refers to the Christian Right thought police is enough to send me into a rage these days.

He also pissed me off by saying that for a Justice to the Supreme Court there would not be an opinion litmus test, that it would be about qualifications... and followed that up by saying that a person who regularly upholds Roe V. Wade would show through that decision that they were unqualified... Wow.

Then Obama shied away from pointing out the fact that as a professor of Constitutional Law, he was well equipped to choose a Supreme court Justice based on merit instead of just an opinion litmus. That made me almost as irritated with him as with McCain. But I suppose he did not really have to say anything spectacular after McCain made two terrifying statements within a minute of each other. Not difficult to compete against.

Obama is against abortion, but is for state legislation instead of federal constitution changes. He also believes in the rights to health and life of the mother of the unborn child. That is how most democrats feel, and that is how most vote. Most state laws reflect this. Obama was smart and made a jab at Palin's
abstinence only education stance, and it's statistical correlation to abortion rates and unwed mother numbers (and was finally a jab at Palin's personal situation, which the official Obama camp has been ignoring until now) But I'm sure none of that matters to anyone who is fundamentally conservative.

That pretty much concludes what went on in the debate, and why I believe as a nation we need to send a "Dear John" to Mr. McCain. I believe this will happen, but believing is not enough, action will make it happen. I really feel that Barack Obama needs to be the next president of the United States of America in order for this country to be safe and secure, and economically sound.