Friday, October 10, 2008

SNL Spoofs 2nd Presidential Debate: Transcript, Video (10-9-08)

This is the latest in the series spoofing the presidential campaign by Saturday Night Live. This a Thursday special segment of 'Weekend Update.' This time they go after John McCain, Barack Obama, and Tom Brokaw, during the second president debate held Tuesday.

Read the complete transcript

CHRIS PARNELL AS TOM BROKAW: "Good evening, and welcome
to Belmont University, in Nashville, Tennessee, for the second in a series of three Presidential debates, between Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and, Senator John McCain of Arizona. I'm Tom Brokaw, of NBC News, and I will be your moderator this evening. Tonight's debate will follow a town hall format, with questions submitted by the eighty undecided voters in our audience, as well as thousands more sent in via email. From this enormous list of penetrating, insightful, and provocative questions, I have chosen the eight least interesting. For each question, the candidates will be allowed a twenty-five second response, and, at my discretion, a three second follow-up. These are the rules both campaigns agreed upon. Our first question, is for Senator Obama, and it comes from Elizabeth Wheeler."

CASEY WILSON: "Senator Obama. Over the last few weeks, the financial crisis which began with home foreclosures has threatened to wreck the entire economy. As President, how would you deal with this?"

FRED ARMISEN AS SEN. BARACK OBAMA: "First of all, Elizabeth, thank you for that question. There is no doubt, that after eight years of failed Republican policies, policies which Senator McCain supported, this economy is a shambles. But let me tell you, and the American people, one thing I absolutely promise..."

PARNELL AS BROKAW: "Time's up. Senator McCain?"

HAMMOND AS SEN. MCCAIN: "Elizabeth, to find any solution to this economic mess, we're going to have to put aside partisanship. Something my opponent -- this character here -- isn't very good at. But I've done my whole career. You know, my friends I'm not the most popular guy in my own party. Just ask Senator Trent Lott. I took his car one time without asking, and totaled it. Just drove it into a wall, and walked away. So I'm not going to win any popularity contests among Republicans. But, Maria, when it comes to the economy, here's what I'd do. It's very simple..."

PARNELL AS BROKAW: Your time is up.

The Economic Collapse: I Hate to Say I Told you So

I have argued for many years that stock market crashes are part of the nature of the beast. Speculative bubbles will always end the same way, unless we change the system by eliminating speculation. The stock market should be for the purpose of investment. I have already offered my solution. But it could be late to prevent what seems an inevitable economic collapse as happened in 1929. The politicians (including Obama and McCain) have failed us, again. It is time for the people to take over. The alternative is economic abyss.

Here are my previous posts predicting economic collapse:
March 17, 2006:

The Congress and Bush have given us the biggest prize of all: historic debt and deficits. The problem with all this debt is that eventually someone will come around demanding payment. Since we have no savings the money has to be borrowed. This raises interest rates which makes of our currency more vulnerable. Take your choice hyper-inflation or recession (depression). Then what?

You can't have a disastrous war while running historic deficits. It didn't work during the Vietnam War. It won't work now. The only difference back then is that we didn't have a destroyed manufacturing base. Its all being shipped abroad; everything is being imported. We are broke as a nation. We are also broke morally as well since we have allowed criminal politicians to put us in this position.

July 4th 2006:
We could be on the verge of a financial collapse in the United States. As interest on the national debt continues to rise this could mean a collapse of the dollar causing a defaulting on our massive debt problem. This was the conclusion of Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute think tank, who appeared on C-Span this morning.

[...]It is a terrible and disgraceful mess that we've gotten ourselves in. And where is the outrage. Where are the politicians and the media (apart from C-Span) in sounding the alarm. Already we've seen our national savings rates at the lowest levels since the Great Depression. There is that word -- depression. We are already seeing repercussions in the case of the government shutdown in New Jersey. Expect to see more of that. We have a President and Congress running up obscene deficits to pay for the quagmire in Iraq. There is nothing left over to pay for essential services. We are already seeing a rise in the crime rate because there are less police and prisons to go around. Our roads and bridges are going un-repaired. And if we have another Katrina disaster (not to mention terrorist attack), which is likely, we won't be able to help the victims. This is the awful reality on this July 4th. I fear for my country.

February 1st, 2007:
The reality is that we are going broke as a nation. And its only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down as it did in the 1930s.

February 28th 2007:
Is This 1929 all Over Again?

[...]We did not learn from Vietnam War and so we are repeating the same mistake. In July of 2001 this blogger (I was not a blogger then, but I did have a message board) warned about a "disaster" without realizing what exactly would happen. I have argued since 9-11 that we have not learned from that terrible day. We are still a decadent society, a nation of spectators. We sit around and watch a disastrous war on TV started by a President who has stepped on constitutional freedoms. It is happening with little protest or outrage. Now we could be facing a crisis that was inevitable: a stock market crash. And its happening because we didn't think about it (just as with 9-11). But history tells us stock markets crash. And since we learned nothing from 1929 we are doomed to repeat the same mistake.

December 16, 2007:
Greenspan: U.S. Moving Closer to Recession[...]I'm more worried about a depression.

January 16, 2008:
It is getting very dangerous. This could easily snowball into a panic (I won't use the d-word). We need to wake up. There are very serious problems with the U.S. economy, and that impacts the rest of the world markets.

- There is only one solution. Only 'We The People' can solve the problem. We have a political system that works on behalf of small economic/political elite. It is up to you to take back what belongs to you. The alternative is to perish. Begin today to fight back.