How the debate questions SHOULD have been answered.

[Pwns]

If substance and truth was what won debates instead of soundbytes and bumper sticker slogans, this is what the debate answers would be like...

50% of college graduates can't find work. What will you do to help us find work?

The jobs will come when the economy heals. The economy will get better faster not with austerity but with spending on things OTHER than most of what Obama has spent on. For starters, we need to invest more in clinical trials to ease the bottleneck of potential drugs waiting to go to Phase I trials. The US is the only country with the money and resources to rigorously test drugs in clinical trials and there is a real possibility for the US to start a biotech renaissance like we did with computers in the 90s. We also desperately need to beef up our residency programs and medical school slots to ensure we have the manpower to carry out the trials and take care of an aging and increasingly more diabetic population. There are also a good many R&D projects that corporations can't fund by themselves that would also help ensure that we have marketable products that HAVE to be produced on American soil. The German manufacturing base has stayed relatively healthy because they invested in R&D and they now produce some high quality stuff that developing countries just don't have the human capital to produce. We should mimic them.

But that alone won't ensure college will be worth the money for every college student. We need to stop fooling ourselves into believing that every kid is college material and get real. Investing tens of thousands of dollars on a degree in multicultural rainforest white guilt studies is not nearly as smart of an investment as it used to be and high school counselors should be discouraging that instead of peddling the "you're a loser without college" canard. More students should be coaxed into attending technical schools to learn marketable job skills. These days a lot of technical school grads are doing better than a lot of graduates of 4-year colleges. Why do we continue with the "college for everyone" mantra?

Women still make X¢ for every dollar a man makes. How do you plan to deal with this situation?

I'm not going to actually answer this question because it's based on a nonsensical premise that doesn't hold up when scrutinized by facts. The number you cite is an extremely crude estimate that doesn't take into account the fact that men take more dangerous jobs, work more hours, have lower health insurance costs, and are generally more assertive in negotiating salaries in interviews. Not to mention that women tend to marry men with more earning potential and thus are usually restricted to looking for jobs where their husbands find jobs. If you would stop listening to idiot feminazis and take more than a cursory, simple-minded look at the numbers, you would see that single college-educated women (ironically the ones that tend to buy into female victimization arguments) are earning more than their single college-educated male counterparts. If your biggest concern in this election is that woman don't make as much money as men on a superficial look at things, please sit at home on election day and don't vote again until you learn what's what.

The financial crisis was due solely to the policies of George W. Bush. How are you different from Bush?

I could ask you how exactly you see that Bush is completely at fault for the financial crisis, but I know it will not sound like anything that makes any sense so I will skip that step and just educate you. The financial crisis was caused by a failure of BOTH parties to fix the roof and fill up sandbags when they saw the storm coming years away. People like Barney Frank are every bit as much at fault as Bush and the democratic congress that took over in 2006. Look up Barney Frank up on wikipedia if you don't know who he is. Read a non-partisan book or other source about the financial crisis then come back and ask questions that make sense.

[Ibanez]

I enjoyed my White Guilt courses.