Since I was too lazy to watch last night’s debate I settled for reading the ZMan’s review. It was funny and if accurate means Walz is a hopeless weirdo-loser. But we already knew that so hopefully America was paying attention.
Tag: debate
My Last Presidential Debate
I wasn’t going to watch the debate because tomorrow is going to be an early trip and a long day so I can’t stay up late but then I said, “Ah, the hell with it. I’ll watch the sideshow.”
Well, she wasn’t Biden. She could string together sentences. And of course, the questions from ABC were almost all slanted against Trump and for Harris. But basically, it was a free for all with both of them hammering away at each other. Parts of it were somewhat entertaining but I wouldn’t call it very decisive.
I like the fact that Trump basically stuck to using a very large part of his time hammering her on the border and the economy. Those are the bread-and-butter topics that people really care about and I liked his closing statement where he made the main point; that all the things that Harris says she’s going to do could have been done at any time in the last three years. But they weren’t done.
So, does this debate help Trump or Harris more? I guess it marginally helps Harris because she didn’t stand there like an idiot in the way her boss did a couple of months ago. She’ll get a bounce because she’s proven she’s not brain dead and because the press will claim she was brilliant. But really this election is a referendum on the economy and the Border.
Neither of those issues work in Kamala Harris’s favor and talking about them isn’t good for her case. Now it’s entirely possible that America will vote for Harris. And it is possible that even if they vote for Trump that the powers that be will print off a million ballots in Philadelphia and Detroit. So maybe this whole exercise was pointless anyway. But it did give us a chance to see Trump and Harris side by side. I’ll have to say I do enjoy his show. He is unique. He’s crazy as a loon but he’s a hell of a lot more fun than anything else going on in this country. He’s got energy and he’s got flair.
Well, that’s my take. Was it worth it? Nah. I should’ve written about something fun. Basically, I can’t wait for this election to be over. It’s like some kind of boring speech you have to sit through while waiting for a game to start. What happens after November will be a new world. All the make-believe will be over and we can start thinking about the here and now. Maybe my focus will be on hoarding things that won’t be available in the future. Or maybe it’s time to start working on my do-it-yourself skills for when I won’t be able to afford the costs of craftsmen and the like. Or maybe I’ll concentrate on fiction writing and leave the punditry to Tucker Carlson and his buddies.
But whatever else I’ll be doing; I think I’ve watched my last presidential debate. I mean, what’s the point? If these same people are put back in the White House after four years of this then I’m in the wrong country.
Cannibals Ate My Debate with Donald Trump
Donald Trump has agreed to a debate Joe Biden with every possible unfair advantage going to Biden. It will be on CNN with no live audience and the moderators will be his worst enemies and they will be able to cut off his microphone if they don’t like what he is saying. It’s as bad as it can get in terms of stacking the deck against Trump.
So, you have to ask yourself why Trump would agree to this. My guess is that he believes that Biden can’t get through the proceedings without an embarrassing health problem of one sort or another. Based on all of his latest attempts at outdoor personal appearances, it seems like Biden has become alarmingly incontinent. In addition, Biden’s memory is now completely unreliable. And so, he is dependent on teleprompters to get him through routine speeches and question and answer events. Between these two conditions it seems highly likely that in a stressful and unpredictable event like a debate with Donald Trump, really bad things could happen.
It seems to me there is a definite risk that Trump could end up “losing” these debates. If the people running the debate control the feed, they can obfuscate any number of embarrassing moments and could even hide certain unfair practices that they allow Biden to benefit from. For instance, by controlling what the camera is showing they can hide the fact that an outside source could provide Biden with a tele prompted or voice in ear answer to a statement by Trump. Now Trump and his people know this. So, they are taking a chance that Biden’s team which includes both his own handlers and the CNN technicians could manipulate the video enough to make it seem as if Joe Biden won the debate. And yet Trump’s willing to go down this road. I have to assume he thinks the potential upside of a Biden catastrophe is likely enough to risk the probable downside of a successful manipulation.
I’ve got mixed feelings about the whole thing. I would have demanded, if not an even playing field, then at least one of the moderators being from the Right. Tucker Carlson would have been the obvious choice. But I’ll be watching the debates hoping to see Joe Biden break into tongues or fall over his feet or run off the stage to have his diaper changed. I may be sorely disappointed. Maybe Joe makes it through unscathed or maybe the moderators manage to make Trump look bad by stacking the deck against him with Stormy Daniels and “convicted felon” non-questions. But if Donald Trump is willing to buck the odds to score a knockout blow against the already wobbly Dementia Joe, then I should invest the time to watch this crazy bit of stagecraft.
Who knows we all might be watching a bit of history where fate steps in and decides the outcome. I’ve got the two hours to spend. I might even make some popcorn to make it fun.
The Biden-Trump Debates
Donald Trump has agreed to debate Joe Biden twice. Once in July on CNN and once in September on ABC. Why would he agree to go on those networks where every moderator they will select will run the debate as blatantly against Trump as they possibly can? They’ll shamelessly tilt the questions for Biden and against Trump. They’ll cut out his microphone whenever it might save Biden from an embarrassing moment and they’ll end by declaring that their in-studio polls show that Joe Biden won handily and Donald Trump is Hitler.
Now all of this is true. And Donald Trump knows all these things. And yet he accepted the debates immediately. I’ll assume that he believes that he has more to gain by these debates than lose. But is that true? I was thinking about what kinds of things the moderator could direct against Trump and score points against him. Obviously, they’ll concentrate on January 6th and abortion. But they might also throw in some COVID questions. After all, many on the Right are fairly angry at Trump for letting Fauci and his minions make our lives hell even before Biden got into office. Reminding people of that could be a way to hurt Trump.
Someone in the media suggested that Trump hasn’t completely agreed to all the conditions of the interviews and that he might still refuse at the last minute. Maybe that’s true and could explain why he has no qualms about being set up by the news channels. But refusing after the fact would represent an embarrassing retreat. People might think he’s afraid to debate Biden.
Two possibilities for accepting seem to me the most likely. The first is that he’s worried about his chances in the race and hopes for some kind of lucky break during the debate that would increase his chances of winning the election. Although Trump has led almost throughout the election period there are still several swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that are very close. And Trump needs at least one of these states to win. Maybe he thinks that these three states are among the ones that will be strongly influenced by a good debate performance. Because of how much Trump has at stake in the criminal cases against him, winning the presidency is almost a life and death situation for him. Maybe the extra chance to impress these voters seems extremely important to Trump for this reason.
A second reason why he may be so anxious to debate Biden is that he is convinced that he can utterly humiliate him on the debate stage and this will serve as the knockout punch for Biden’s candidacy. I think this may be the more likely reason.
Now it remains to be seen how all this turns out. After all this is a very dynamic scenario. Let’s start out just by looking at Joe Biden’s health. Based on how these things are handled by the Biden camp, Dopey Joe will be doped to the gills with some kind of cognitive booster; caffeine, amphetamines, Ritalin, whatever. Based on no information at all, my guess is Joe stroking out must be at least a reasonably high possibility. And even if he doesn’t keel over there’s no guarantee that the stuff coming out of his mouth won’t be in the, “cannibals ate my Uncle Bosey” level of daffiness. If either of those two scenarios play out, I’d call it a win for Trump.
But the opposite scenario can also occur. Biden could just stand there and spin lie after lie with absolute insouciance. This would match up to what happened back in the 2020 debates. The moderators took Biden’s side and his lies ended as the debate’s points against Trump in the press.
But things have changed quite a bit since 2020. Regardless if the moderators throw softballs at Biden, I assume Trump will go off script and attack Biden on all the various failures of his administration; inflation, immigration, crime and war. And Trump is one of the most vindictive guys around. With a little luck he’ll sting him enough so that Biden will take off on some self-justifying lie that will amaze even the moderators in its stupidity and obvious unlikeliness. Maybe that’s Trump’s biggest hope in all this. That he can wind up Biden enough to make him act like a nut on stage.
So, I’ll be watching in July. Should be interesting.
The World of Ideas
I was glad to get some interesting comments from both the civic nationalist and dissident right perspectives during the last few days. And I’m especially glad that the writers were level headed and thoughtful individuals. I visit various sites with all kinds of commentors who don’t always react to each other with, let us say, tolerant open mindedness. And I understand that verbal combat may be more of a feature than a bug at some of these sites but truthfully, I seldom learn anything useful from the sort of mental arm wrestling that goes on during these exchanges. So, kudos to all involved. We’ve raised the level of internet discussion by several orders of magnitude. Bravo.
I’m especially glad about this situation because I’m personally located somewhere on the border between the civic nationalist and dissident right factions. While I consider myself a civ-nat I recognize that for whatever reason my political cohort has been guilty of incredible gullibility for decades and I’m tired of being part of a conspiracy of the ignorant. So, I’ve been listening in on what goes on at the cool kids’ table and learning their lingo. And I’m not afraid to admit that they’ve got a lot of things figured out. But I also know that I’ll never be cool enough to sit at their table. I just believe too deeply in the decency of most people when they’re all treated fairly. I feel that if we run the game fairly, we can get people, all kinds of people, from the dumbest to the smartest and from the meanest to the most naïve to at least act decent.
But that’s why I’d like to have the discussion with people whose hearts are in the right place. If you ever see the comments section of a Fox News article it’s remarkable. There are some thoughtful comments. But they’re drowned out by a flood of rage-aholics. You could say that any site that has the traffic that a large outlet like Fox gets is bound to attract a goodly number of deranged individuals but from my point of view it renders the comments almost useless as a venue for the exchange of ideas. So that is why I’ve been trying to find people who straddle that same line on the political spectrum and set up a dialog. Because that political border is where I think the reality of our future lies.
We need to toughen up the civic nationalists to where they won’t let themselves be rolled by the progressives, while at the same time lure the dissidents back from the fringe where things get pretty dark. My dream would be to have a space where a guy as tough minded as the ZMan would be willing to have a good faith conversation with civ-nats like Michael Anton or Chris Rufo.
Now this might be terribly mistaken. As I’ve said many times, people must be allowed to select their own enemies and it’s ridiculously presumptuous of me to think I can judge whose interests are served by discussion and with whom. These are all grownups and they get to decide which playground to play in.
So, let’s not use those names. Let’s just use regular folks who inhabit the internet and try to see if the information flow serves any purpose. I’ve heard lots of interesting perspectives. And all of the talk has been quite cordial, which makes my life easier. So, keep up the good work.
Ron DeSantis Enumerates California’s Many Freedoms
I didn’t watch the debate. Life’s too short. But this clip was hilarious.
Asking the Hard Questions
I watched Tucker Carlson’s interview of Mike Pence in Iowa. It was extremely hard to watch. In fact, I turned it off more than a few times because it was just too painful to watch this man say one stupid thing after another. But stupid doesn’t really capture it. It was as if he were lying and yet unaware of just how poorly he was lying. When he talked about the 2020 election, he said that the voting irregularities would have had no impact on the outcome of the election. And then he claimed that changes that have been instituted have strengthened election integrity. I refuse to believe he’s that stupid. I think he’s just lying and when he makes his case that’s exactly what it seems to be, a very poor liar. When Tucker presses him on the various weak points in his story it’s like a little kid who has been caught doing something wrong and you ask him about it and you can almost see the wheels turning as he makes up a pathetic story that is patently absurd.
And then came the coup de grace. While Pence is complaining about Joe Biden not getting Abrams tanks to Ukraine fast enough, Tucker asks whether with all the terrible problems that now plague our country; crime, drugs, violence, inflation; shouldn’t Pence be more worried about those things than Ukraine’s access to more American weapons. And Pence’s answer was, “It’s not my concern, it’s not my concern.” Now he tried to bury this answer by claiming that as president he’d handle both domestic and foreign policy issues simultaneously. But all that anyone will ever remember is that he said that crime and homelessness and suicide and fentanyl overdoses and inflation were not his concern.
Well, Mike Pence will never be the Republican candidate for president. My question is, with his breathtakingly awful communication skills, how was he ever a successful politician? I’m aware that being vice president doesn’t require much in the way of talent. But he did manage to become the governor of Indiana. Is the bar that low in Indiana that a man without any discernible rhetorical abilities could become governor? I’m going to give Pence the benefit of the doubt and that he used to be a very honest man and that in Indiana an honest man can accomplish a lot. And that what we see now is what happens when a simple man is thrown into the cesspool that is Washington DC and tries to swim with the rats there. Inevitably he gets eaten alive.
I watched Tucker’s interviews with the other candidates too. Asa Hutchinson was equally hopeless as Carlson hammered him over his veto of a ban on pediatric transitioning and also on his tepid response to closing the southern border to drugs and illegal immigration. So, what I see is that Tucker is acting as the voice of the normal Americans who are fed up with the GOP establishment candidates. What he is doing is preventing the candidates from giving their lame rah-rah speeches and instead addressing the very painful fact that they don’t have solutions for the most pressing problems in America today. In fact, he exposes the fact that they want to make believe that these problems don’t exist. Or if they aren’t allowed to ignore them, then they just handwave them away as, “We’ll put our top men on that.”
Mike Pence is hopeless. Asa Hutchinson is hopeless. Nikki Haley is hopeless. But even the candidates who make some sense like DeSantis and Trump can’t answer the most important question, “What are we gonna do if and probably when the Democrats steal the election in 2024? That’s what we should be talking about with the men who want to be president. And they should be talking to the red state governors about the contingencies that they should already be putting in place. We’ve been occupied for over three years now by a rogue regime. Enormous damage has already been done. Taking concrete steps to begin reversing the damage and protecting people is long overdue.
So, good for Tucker for asking some hard questions. But I think the harder questions remain to be answered. That’s the debate that still needs to take place. Maybe Tucker can work on that.
Tucker’s New Gig
I saw this article about Tucker Carlson “floating the idea of hosting a Republican primary forum.” And I thought about all the ways such an idea could go right and wrong. But what I thought would be much more productive would be for him to assemble a panel of those on the Right who aren’t fake and allow them to speak to us about what they can and can’t do to make things better; straight talk.
Think about it. Carlson knows all these people. He knows who the phonies are, people like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence. He knows things about the power structure in Washington that we don’t. He could easily get all of the candidates with the possible exception of Donald Trump to accept an invitation. And without a doubt he could come up with an agenda that would be illuminating for both the attendees and the public.
I’d say this could be a series of discussions where the first few episodes should completely steer clear of the 2024 election. Instead, what is needed is an honest discussion of all the things that are pushing the country down the dark road it’s on. Congressmen and senators could talk honestly about the barriers that prevent honest change from happening. They could talk candidly about the way lobbyists control the direction and specifics of legislation. Past officeholders from the executive branch could shine a light on exactly who runs the federal bureaucracy. And I mean name names. And they could provide suggestions on how that mess could be repaired. The ultimate coup would be if Carlson could convince Trump to speak candidly about the way that the federal government stonewalled his attempts to enact his various policy directives. Then he could give his ideas on how this interference could be prevented in the future.
And even more important, I’d like to see a bunch of Republican governors sitting down together; Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Bill Lee, even a waffler like Kristi Noem could be there. They truly are the most powerful office holders on our side. Carlson could ask them to speak to the problems they face and also what things they see as opportunities. And he could ask them how they plan to help their constituents escape the effects of federal government interference in their lives. And how they plan to coordinate their efforts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these officeholders refused to get involved in such a project. Even politicians who aren’t out and out crooks like McConnell and Graham don’t want to stick their necks out and get put under the spotlight. After all, speaking the truth is treason in Washington D.C. But with so much of the Republican electorate now solidly red-pilled to what’s really going on in Washington it is in the interest of these politicians to convince their constituencies that they aren’t just part of the problem. Because a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that voting in Republicans is a useless activity. If that idea gets too ingrained even red state senators and congressmen may find themselves out on their ears.
So, this is just a lot of hot air. But Carlson could provide a public service (and make an enormous amount of money) if he can convince some of these conservative lawmakers to push back the curtain and let us know the ugly truth about our government. The truth is a remarkably valuable commodity. Providing the gory details to the American public would be a public service of enormous consequence.
Think of it as one of those livestream podcasts where the viewers get to ask questions. Carlson could take the top five questions based on number of questioners and at the end of the show have his guests answer them.
And I guess he should host a 2024 debate show. I’d be interested in his questions and his refereeing of the candidates. It would be hell of a lot better than what the mainstream media does every four years.
22OCT2020 – Post Debate Note
Well, it wasn’t what I hoped it would be. First off the moderator wasn’t more than normally biased. She slanted all the questions of course but there was even some questions that Biden didn’t like. And President Trump was actually given close to the chance that Biden got to talk. And President Trump was allowed to say a good deal about Hunter and the Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian deals. I think on balance President Trump got the best of it. He did a good job and made his points. All good stuff.
But it was no fun. There were no shouting matches or crying moderators. All just too normal and boring. Oh well.
The Hunter Biden Debate
On Thursday President Trump is scheduled to debate Creepy Uncle Joe Biden for the final time. The Democrats, or more specifically, the part of their organization that runs the debates, has decided that during each candidate’s assigned speaking period they will mute the microphone of his opponent. Now that’s interesting. It’s got me thinking, when Toobin thought his microphone was on mute he exposed himself and performed unspeakable acts. Might not Joe Biden do the same? And if the moderator reacts to it will Joe just say, “Oh come on man I heard you liked me.”
Another thought I had was this. If the moderator hears President Trump spilling the beans on Joe Biden’s various crimes might not she be tempted to mute him even though it’s his turn? I think this might happen. I’ve got to confess I’m really looking forward to this event. I think it will be hilarious and possibly amazing. The previous debate was wonderfully bizarre and based on the set up of the Hunter Biden expose earlier this week I expect the President to unload on this guy with both barrels.
But what everyone wants to know is what else is on the hard drive. Up till now it’s been pretty straight forward. But what if they’ve held back some really crazy stuff for the debate and it gets debuted there? I don’t have any information to that effect but knowing what a showman Trump has always been I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he unleashes a bombshell.
So now you understand why, from my point of view, tomorrow night’s debate is so fascinating. For all I know Trump has staged things so that Creepy Uncle Joe will be taken directly into custody as he exits the stage. I mean between Joe and Hunter nothing like this has existed since Tiberius Caesar took Caligula under his wing and showed him how it was done.
But let’s assume instead that nothing like that is going to happen. This will still be the first Presidential Election Debate within the modern era where one of the candidates and probably actually both candidates will accuse the other of being a criminal, a liar and a traitor right on the stage. You can’t ask for more drama than that.
Now that our politics will never go back to the mealy-mouthed days of Mitt Romney we at least can look forward to candidates calling each other horrible things out loud and uncovering the dirt that’s always been there but has been hidden from sight by the mutual consent of both parties to shield them from the wrath of the voters should their countless acts of graft and corruption ever be uncovered. But of course, I’m forgetting, that would require the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute these crimes. Sort of like investigating the Hunter Biden hard drive that they’ve had in their possession for nine months and did nothing about. Silly me.
Anyway, tomorrow’s event is must see tv. Joe will be hopped up on Ritalin and I guess there is some risk that his eyes will start bleeding again and his head might explode. But that is a risk I am willing to take. It is my patriotic duty to sit there and laugh uproariously right through every historic moment and then later on play back the best parts for even more laughs. I should dig out my old copy of I Claudius and re-watch the scenes with Caligula so I’ll have something to compare Hunter to when I do a separate post on him. Stay tuned.