My thoughts on the debate

Was anyone else stricken, as I was, by McCain's calloused words, what with his obscure voter fraud allegations and odd connotation between his and Obama’s race with that of Kennedy and Goldwater’s? Seriously, it gave me shivers. In case you missed it, here, let me share the moment with you:

SCHIEFFER: All right. We're going to move to another question and the topic is leadership in this campaign. Both of you pledged to take the high road in this campaign yet it has turned very nasty.
Senator Obama, your campaign has used words like "erratic," "out of touch," "lie," "angry," "losing his bearings" to describe Senator McCain.
Senator McCain, your commercials have included words like "disrespectful," "dangerous," "dishonorable," "he lied." Your running mate said he "palled around with terrorists."
Are each of you tonight willing to sit at this table and say to each other's face what your campaigns and the people in your campaigns have said about each other?
And, Senator McCain, you're first.
MCCAIN: Well, this has been a tough campaign. It's been a very tough campaign. And I know from my experience in many campaigns that, if Senator Obama had asked -- responded to my urgent request to sit down, and do town hall meetings, and come before the American people, we could have done at least 10 of them by now.

When Senator Obama was first asked, he said, "Any place, any time," the way Barry Goldwater and Jack Kennedy agreed to do, before the intervention of the tragedy at Dallas. So I think the tone of this campaign could have been very different.

And the fact is, it's gotten pretty tough. And I regret some of the negative aspects of both campaigns. But the fact is that it has taken many turns which I think are unacceptable.”
So if Obama had responded to McCain’s urgent requests…then the McCain campaign would not have called Obama a terrorist? They would not have perpetuated this lie to people who they know are frightened and under-informed and without resources to repudiate or disprove through thorough and accurate fact checking? They would have stopped their supporters at their rallies and said “No, that’s not acceptable, we won’t tolerate it” the very moment someone yelled “Kill him!” after Obama’s name was mentioned? Really? Cause I’m having a bit of a hard time believing that.

When John McCain claimed that Barack Obama and ACORN were "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy" I laughed. Folks, this is an absurd claim. In the first place, any time you have thousands of employees, someone’s gonna be a slacker. That’s why there’s supervisors who check those registrations. That’s how the fake names were found. No false voter was registered. Voter fraud would only occur had the vote been cast. ACORN helped deter that. The fraud was not perpetrated by ACORN, it was committed AGAINST ACORN. McCain forgot to mention how many of those people who were found to be turning in false names were registered Republicans, and members of the Young Republicans. Hmmmm….that’s interesting, if you ask me.
McCain knows full well that bad registrations are simply worthless. They will never translate into actual votes! In addition, he knows full well that preventing people from exercising their right to vote is the real problem, and that his own party is employing such cynical abuses in Democratic precincts in swing states, by purging them off the records, disenfranchising them. In 2000 and 2004 both, it was proportionally a much higher number of Democrats than Republicans who were purged.
His claims have one most certainly transparent goal, however, and that is to plant the myth that Obama is stealing this election. Absurd. Funny, but absurd. We know what stolen elections look like, we saw 2000 and 2004, Florida, Ohio...ring a bell?
The other spine shivering experience I had during this debate was when McCain used the air quotes when talking about women’s health concerns in relation to pregnancy and abortion when the topic of Roe vs Wade came up. McCain says that he believes Roe vs Wade was a mistake, and he would like to see all abortion, even in the case of the mother’s life being at risk from the pregnancy. Imagine you are a 25 year old newlywed, with have a heart condition that you were born with. And you’ve been a good girl and been on birth control to prevent yourself from getting pregnant, because your physician says carrying a baby most likely would be too much strain on your weak little heart and kill you. A month or two ago, you got sick with bronchitis and were prescribed some antibiotics. Antibiotics make the pill less effective. Suddenly, you find yourself pregnant. The physicians all tell you that this pregnancy will cause you to have cardiac arrest and both you and the baby will most likely perish before the birth is successfully completed. John McCain says too damned bad. You’ll just have to buck up and do the best you can for as long as you can, and hopefully, you’ll live. Best case scenario? You’ll be on bedrest and they will induce labor as early as possible, causing the baby to be born before it’s fully developed, putting it at risk for lifelong health conditions, and you may still die from the stress of the delivery.
Maybe John McCain should use air quotes when he talks to my friend from a few years back, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy. That's when the egg implants itself in your fallopian tubes. It can kill you by rupturing your tube and causing you to hemorrhage. Abortion is the only treatment for this situation. She most definitely did not want to abort, her and her husband had tried and tried to get pregnant for nearly a year. But what else is one to do when the baby will not survive and you will die if you don't abort?

Honestly, I'm sick from from it all. I wish we could just start all over with a fresh new cast in Washington.