Moderator Bias?
Now
What do you think the reaction would be if I told you that the moderator for Thursday night’s Vice Presidential debate was writing a book due for release that highlighted the rise of women to seats of power in America. That she did a lot of research, and featured women from different sectors and discussed just how far women had come. And that she includes a discussion of Gov. Sarah Palin, and her amazing transition from PTA mom to Vice Presidential nominee.
Going in to the debate this Thursday, could we expect her to be unbiased?
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A Little Premature?
Tonight’s the first debate—and yet a reader of the Wall Street Journal online found this:
Although the fate of tonight’s presidential debate in Mississippi remains very much up in the air, John McCain has apparently already won it—if you believe an Internet ad an astute reader spotted next to this piece in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning. – Hat Tip: Say Anything
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McCain Afraid to Debate?
Unlikely. At least, that’s the word from former Pres. Bill Clinton:
"We know he didn’t do it because he’s afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates," Clinton said, adding that he was "encouraged" by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.
"You can put it off a few days the problem is it’s hard to reschedule those things," Clinton said, "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted — I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don’t think we ought to overly parse that.”
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Bible Verse Arms Race
It doesn’t take long in discussions with Christians (or atheists for that matter) on blogs or forums to witness this strategy. I like to call it the pile on, but an arms race seems to fit the bill as well.
The definition of this tactic is to provide multiple Biblical texts, in rapid fire style, so as to make responding to them difficult, if not impossible, in a coherent matter:
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Mercy and Justice in Capital Punishment
When you think “Capital Punishment” I bet the first thought that crosses your mind is not “mercy.” In fact, in Amanda’s opening statement she believes that sparing someone the death penalty is both merciful and just.
When I first started trying to respond to this line of thought, I had the problem of pinning down exactly what mercy means. In my mind it’s a shifting and subjective concept. But when we finally agreed on what it was, we came to the following:
Mercy is not getting what we deserve.
The problem with stating that Capital Punishment is both merciful and just is that you have to define what just is first.
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Capital Punishment Debate
The debate over whether capital punishment is a moral or even an effective form of punishment is one that generations have discussed. The concept of Capital punishment goes back at least to the time of Moses, where Cities of Refuge were created to protect those that unintentionally killed someone from the Avenger of Blood, but it may go all the way back to the first murder– that of Able, murdered by his brother Cain.
Indeed, in that instance, God spared Cain’s life and marked him forever as a punished one and let him live. Isn’t that a good reason to accept life in prison over Capital Punishment?
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Bush vs. Kerry – Round 3
I had watched every debate, including the VP debate, in totallity live
up until this one. Given the momentum in the debates, I figured Bush
would consistantly do better, and since part of the strategy during the
last campaign and this presidency was to co-opt democrat ideas so he
could claim he got things done, I thought that the conventional wisdom
regarding Kerry’s advantage would be proven wrong.
That all being said, I also figured more people would tune into the
ball game! We’ve been all fighting a cold or something that we’ve been
passing around along with little sleep, so I opted to go to bed at 9:00
pm. However, curiosity and the fact that I had skipped dinner got the
best of me, and I caught the last 30 minutes of the debate– so I’ll
give my impression of that.
I can’t remember the first
question I heard– it might have been the automatic rifles. My
response to that question would be that, although it would be scary to
enter a house with someone with an automatic weapon as a law
enforcement officer, the bad guys are always going to have access to
these weapons. Gun control seems to only prohibit those that will
follow the rules from getting their hands on tools of defense. I
believe that there’s a European country– Switzerland?– that teaches
all homeowners to use semi-automatic weapons and they have a
tremendously low crime rate.
On the faith question, I believe
Bush did a better job because I believe he actually believes what he
says. It was somewhat of a loaded question– no matter how many of the
pundits say this was a softball– because had he answered directly that
his faith directs his policies he would have played right into the
argument that the democrats want to make about legislating morality and
the whole “God told me to go into Iraq.”
My reaction to
some of the closing comments by the FOX guys and the ones they
interviewed, it’s hard to say my reaction to hearing Kerry mention Mary
Cheney. I don’t think it was as much of a secret as the pundits are
making it out to be. It’s also a common tactic to name a person
representative of a group to illustrate your point. Usually, however,
it’s a person that you’ve met on the trail in relative obscurity
instead of someone that is semi well known.
I guess my
feeling is that it is one thing to be spoke about as someone who needs
a solution to a problem or to attack someone in public that has a
public voice, but no one outside of the campaign rallys or Mary
Cheney’s friends have ever talked to or heard from her. I agree with
Rush Limbaugh that the tactic would have been much better if he had
used someone he knew in the public spotlight, like Barney Frank, to
make his point– a point which I disagree with, by the way.
I
wish Bush would have been clearer than what I heard was his response to
whether homosexuality was a choice or born with it. He didn’t need to
alienate people– he could have said something like “Bob, in either
case we are given things in our lives– desires, physical ailments,
etc– and we have to make choices about what we will do with these
impulses and dilemmas…” Here he could have even played up
Christopher Reeve’s amazing will to survive and honored his memory
instead of what Edwards did for another contrast, should he have
desired. “… and homosexuals have choices about what to do about their
desires and impulses, but should we as a country encourage choices that
harm these people and families?”
Other than that, I thought
Bush did so much better with humor and with his answers about the women
in his life. It makes you connect when someone talks you through the
first time he saw his wife. Bush totally avoided politics in this
question, whereas Kerry tried to play up his deceased mother for
points. Time will tell how that worked.
