My Answers To The Debate

Watching the debate last night was painful. It was painful to listen to empty suite Obama push socialism while McCain pushed his talking points. I think McCain did OK, but he had a couple of chances to bury Obama and really shine and he missed them.

Let's look at each of these questions.

Brokaw: Sen. Obama, time for a discussion. I'm going to begin with you. Are you saying to Mr. Clark (ph) and to the other members of the American television audience that the American economy is going to get much worse before it gets better and they ought to be prepared for that?

Obama: No, I am confident about the American economy. But we are going to have to have some leadership from Washington that not only sets out much better regulations for the financial system.....

Elendil: I am glad to see that Obama agrees with me that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. What we do not need is more regulation. What we need is to get government out of the people's way. We have the most productive and inventive workers in the world. If we just get out of their way we can rebound quickly. Sure we might have a short time downturn in the economy, but that is the natural fluctuation of the market. Rather than interfere and distort the markets, we need to get out of the way so the correction takes place and we can come roaring back. If we stay out of the way, it will come back sooner rather than later.

Question 2: How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got -- got us into this global economic crisis?

Elendil: The bottom line is you can't trust us with your money. It is the interferences of Washington that have caused our problems. It was liberal policies that believed everyone should own a home that created the sub-prime mortgages and pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to create a market for bad loans. If government hadn't gotten involved in the housing industry we would not have created the bubble whose burst has driven our current problems. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What we need to do is get the money and power out of Washington and back into the hands of the people. My administration will work from day one to lessen the influence of Washington in our economy.

Question 3: Since World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to help our country, except the blood of our heroic men and women. As president, what sacrifices -- sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we're now in?

Elendil: We don't need to ask the people to sacrifice anything. They sacrifice enough. Anyone who looks at their paycheck stub can see their sacrifice. What we need to do is ask Government to sacrifice. It is time we ask Government what it can't live without. We need to call on Government to do with less. My administration will work relentlessly to make sure that government deals with less and gets out of the way. We have the best workers in the world. All we have to do is unleash their potentials from the shackles of government and we will turn this economy around.

Missed Rebuttal:

Obama: So let's be clear about my tax plan and Sen. McCain's, because we're not going to be able to deal with entitlements unless we understand the revenues coming in. I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans, 95 percent.

If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up. If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down.

Elendil: If Obama's tax plan is put in place you might get a tax cut, but you will also lose your job. His plan to tax companies and the rich will suck capital from the market place and cause companies to lay off employees. That is simple economic fact that my opponent fails to understand. And we will all have to pay a steep price for his ignorance.

Question 3: Sen. McCain, I want to know, we saw that Congress moved pretty fast in the face of an economic crisis. I want to know what you would do within the first two years to make sure that Congress moves fast as far as environmental issues, like climate change and green jobs?

Elendil: I want to state up front that I believe that man made global warming is a myth. Their is no evidence that human activities has caused the latest warming cycle. With that said, no one wants to destroy our environment. We need to work to lower pollution and find renewable sources of energy. I will work to make sure that we continue to be the most environmentally friendly country in the world. What I don't want to do is make rash mistakes that will damage our economy based on environmental extremists claiming that the sky is falling. I think we can work to improve the environment without asking Americans to sacrifice in the name of Chicken Little.

The first step is to develop nuclear power. We need to create more permits and keep environmentalists from filing lawsuits to hamper development. Nuclear power is clean and can provide us with our growing need for electricity. We just have to make it easier to do.

Secondly, we need to develop a bridge to the future of renewable energy. My opponent will lie to you and tell us we don't have the resources to do it. That is just not true. We have oil shale reserves out west that can produce 4 times the amount of oil that Saudi Arabia currently has. That is enough oil to power America for the next 100 years.

It will provide us with the time we need to develop alternative energies. I am not going to gamble the future of the economy on the hope that we can create energy sources in 10 years. I want to make strides to do what we know we can do now, and give alternative energies a chance to prove themselves in the marketplace.

Question 4: Should we fund a Manhattan-like project that develops a nuclear bomb to deal with global energy and alternative energy or should we fund 100,000 garages across America, the kind of industry and innovation that developed Silicon Valley?

Elendil: A big government solutions is a dumb idea. Government can't do what free markets can do. All we will do is waste a bunch of money on solutions that might or might not work rather than letting the free market produce the best alternative. Why should we fund an effort to generate a marketable renewable energy source? Whoever does it will make zillions of dollars because the free market will pay them for their ingenuity.

Question 5: Quick discussion. Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

Elendil: It is clearly a responsibility of Americans to insure themselves. My opponent will claim it is a right. Obviously he has never read the constitution. He seems to be more familiar with the writings of Karl Marx than our founding fathers. We have a right under the first amendment to free speech. We have a right under the second amendment to own fire arms. We have a right under the fifth amendment to a fair trial by our peers. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We don't have is a right to health care.

It is the responsibility of every American to provide themselves and their family to provide health care. But government does have a role. It has the responsibility to make sure health care is not substandard. It has a responsibility to make sure health care companies live up to their responsibilities. Government has the responsibility to promote healthy living standards. Otherwise government should get out of the way and let free markets bring the cost of health care under control. For it is people making free choices about coverage and doctors that will cause the markets to optimize and reduce costs.

Question: Sen. Obama, let me ask you if -- let's see if we can establish tonight the Obama doctrine and the McCain doctrine for the use of United States combat forces in situations where there's a humanitarian crisis, but it does not affect our national security.

Take the Congo, where 4.5 million people have died since 1998, or take Rwanda in the earlier dreadful days, or Somalia.

What is the Obama doctrine for use of force that the United States would send when we don't have national security issues at stake?

Obama: Well, we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.

If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?

If we could've stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act.

So when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.

And so I do believe that we have to consider it as part of our interests, our national interests, in intervening where possible.

Elendil: I guess Sen Obama didn't believe that ethnic cleansing of the Kurds was taking place in Iraq. Or that suppression of the Shiites didn't occur under Sadam. According to what he just said about moral imperative, we should have gone into Iraq and liberated her suppressed people. At this point I am confused. We shouldn't have gone it to Iraq because AQ wasn't there which they clearly have been over the last few years and we should have let the Iraqi people suffer under a dictator. But it is OK to help suffering people in other parts of the world. I must say that at this point your foreign policy is as coherent as a bunch of monkey's typing on a typewriter.

The rest of McCain's answer on this question was pretty good. In fact, the rest of McCain's answers throughout the debate were really good. He had an opportunity to stick it to the left and Obama and he failed to do it. I just don't think it is within him to be as ruthless as his opponent. It's a shame. He could have really left Obama out to dry if he had.