Ted Asregadoo

This is the first time Barack Obama and John McCain have faced each other as competitors rather than Senate colleagues, and it’s clear that the chumminess of that institution cast a long shadow over the early part of the debate. Both were cordial, often agreed with one another, and had trouble defining themselves as candidates with different ideas on addressing the problems of the country.

It wasn’t until moderator Jim Lehrer pushed the two of them to articulate their differences that we saw that chumminess start to evaporate.  One of the overarching themes of Friday night’s debate was about resources and how best to allocate them. Money, jobs, energy, and even troops were the resources in question, and the politics centered on how much for whom. Tax breaks for oil companies and businesses, or tax breaks for families making $250,000 or less? Which was going to do its economic magic and help the economy recover? Trickle down or bottom up?

On energy, the two candidates were pretty much on the same page, and only differed on details of how much and when. What shocks me the most is Obama’s support for nuclear energy. Why, if he’s so keen on preventing nuclear “suitcase bombs” from going off in American cities, does he not see the danger of nuclear reactors as terrorist targets? Also, almost no attention is being paid to the huge costs to taxpayers in setting up nuclear reactors, and once they are set up, how do you deal with the nuclear waste? Yucca Mountain can’t hold it all. His pragmatism on oil drilling is understandable, but it overshadows his commitment to alternative energy — which, when McCain chimes in, makes it sound like both men don’t mean it.

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Well, the big night arrived, and the three of us gathered together to experience this historic moment in America the only way we knew how:  via the warm glow of our computers.  Welcome to the recap of the big finish for the Democratic National Committee Convention.  Jon, Dw, and I are ready to take you where you’ve probably already gone since, you know, the Convention was last night.  Okay, on with it!

Dick Durbin Introducing Obama’s Biographical Video

Ted: Are you watching Dick Durbin?
Dw: Yup.  I’m giving him a pass. He’ll start Jenny Craig tomorrow.
Jon: I wish he’d get it over with.  I didn’t tune in for pasty-face.
Ted: Dick Durbin looks like a guy who could own a motel on Interstate 80 … near North Platte, Nebraska.

The Biographical Video Starts

Jon: This profile video is a bit lackluster for my taste.  All these videos have to be compared to Bill in ‘92, and that video of teenage Bill with Jack Kennedy.  This video is a bit generic — apart from the personal details, the themes could be plugged right into Hillary or Biden’s intro video.
Ted: I have to admit that my mind is wandering as I watch this.
Dw: True story. After Obama’s speech in 2004, I told people he was going to be the nominee in the next election cycle. They told me I was nuts.
Ted: I remember his speech, and I too saw a winner.  But I kept it to myself.
Dw: Wise move. I should learn to shut my mouth more often. (more…)

In response to the nearly self-fulfilling prophecy of a recession, President Bush recently announced proposals to offer tax rebates in the ballpark of $150 billion. He also proposed a kick-in for industry to help support production, all in the name of boosting a rapidly sagging economy. There’s just one problem with his intentions — they won’t work.

The biggest variable is the price of oil. It depresses the value of the dollar worldwide, it crushes the budgets of millions of American households, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. With the tables shifting in world economics and China booming with industry, if we had the ability right now to reject Middle Eastern oil outright, the effect on the price per barrel is presumed by most analysts to be negligible.

This, of course, is the pebble at the center of the massive snowball. Those American households I mentioned are dealing with a lot — subprime mortgages, credit crises, foreclosure, unemployment, and the winter cold that doesn’t care about the price of oil or the size of your home or how far you have to drive to an underpaying job. (more…)