Day: September 28, 2023

GOP Debate #2–27Sep23

Sit back and enjoy this magical journey into the minds of the ‘Sh*t Show participants.

But first a small amount of background.

The Republican National Committee announced Monday night that the other seven candidates who participated the first time around did make the cut, which included donor requirements (at least 50,000 unique donors, at least 200 of which had to come from at least 20 states or territories), polling requirements (3% or more support in two national polls or 3% in one national poll plus two polls from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina), and the signing of a pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee.

Those seven are Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, and Mike Pence, the AP reports. Former President Trump is once again opting to skip the debate in favor of giving a speech to union workers in Michigan. On Monday, Trump gave a speech that Fox News broadcast live, until Trump mentioned that he skipped the first debate—which was hosted by Fox—at which point the network cut away, Yahoo News reports. So far, just Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Haley have met the even-more-difficult requirements to participate in the third debate, which will take place in Miami in November, Politico reports.

THe night was anything but exciting….ion fact it was just a bunch of idiots taking shots at each other and the frontrunner.

Christie tried to be cute….Haley attacks….DeSantis struts like the depot he thinks he is….and the rest was pretty much a snooze.

Yes, the seven GOP candidates on stage are fielding a wide range of questions on policy—and talking over each other quite a bit—but an absent Donald Trump is surfacing as a topic, too. Chris Christie, for example, even floated a derisive new nickname for the former president. Speaking into the camera, the former New Jersey governor addressed “Donald” directly: “I know you’re watching,” he said, because “you can’t help yourself.” He then accused Trump of being afraid to appear on stage with his GOP rivals to defend his record. If Trump continues to skip the debates, “no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore,” said Christie, per the AP. “We’re going to call you Donald Duck.”

Haley tries to be clever…..

It will be surely be one of the most repeated lines of the night: “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” Nikki Haley told Vivek Ramaswamy on Wednesday during the GOP debate. The shot came as Ramaswamy defended his decision to join TikTok even though it’s banned from government devices because of its ties to the Chinese government, per Fox News. Ramaswamy said he did so because it’s vital for Republicans to reach younger voters, though he added that as president, he would try to ban children under the age of 16 from using “addictive social media.”

Haley accused him of hypocrisy—”this is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have”—before launching the zinger about feeling dumber. She further accused her younger rival of partnering with Chinese firms on business ventures. “We can’t trust you,” she told him. In response, Ramaswamy said, “We would be better served as a Republican party if we’re not here hurling personal insults.”

DeSantis was smug and a bit comical….

While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the very last candidate to speak Wednesday night, he made a point to go after Trump when he finally did so. The former president, he said, “is missing in action” because he’s skipping another debate, per the Washington Post. DeSantis made the case that Trump’s spending has paved the way for today’s inflation and thus he should be on stage to defend his policies.

But Americans in their competitive zeal need winners and losers…..so here are the results from last night….

Republican presidential candidates, minus frontrunner former President Trump, debated again on Wednesday night—and as in last month’s debate in Milwaukee, Trump is being seen as perhaps the night’s biggest winner. “This was another debate where the guy leading by 40 points was not onstage and took only the slightest of blows from those who were onstage,” writes Andrew Propkop at Vox. “It was also another debate where there was no clear winner—no breakout star that could be elevated to Trump’s main challenger.” Verdicts on the candidates who were actually on the stage:

  • Ron DeSantis. The Washington Times puts the Florida governor among the losers, saying: “The man is in second place and not moving. He didn’t do anything in this debate to change that calculus. And then there’s that awkward forced smile.” Liz Peek at Fox News, however, says DeSantis was a winner, “helped by low expectations,” who may have cemented his hold on second place with some effective attacks on President Biden.
  • Nikki Haley. A winner, according to SE Cupp at CNN. The former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor “was laser-focused on exposing the weaknesses of the candidates who did bother to show up—more so than anyone else on the stage,” Cupp writes.She pointedly took on Florid
  • Tim Scott. The senator from South Carolina was among the winners, with a lot more energy than in last month’s debate and a willingness to mix it up with rivals, says Sally Goldenberg at Politico. “At times, he risked undermining his affable persona, but it was a risk worth taking as Scott needs to demonstrate to GOP donors that he’s a reasonable alternative to Trump,” Goldenberg says. “On Wednesday, he made progress on that front.”
  • Vivek Ramaswamy. The biotech entrepreneur was considered one of the winners of the first debate but a lot of pundits put him in the losers’ column this time around. He “struggled to handle the attacks his opponents threw at him on Wednesday evening,” and there were plenty of them, per the Hill. One of the night’s standout lines came from Haley, who told Ramaswamy “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber” as he tried to explain why he joined TikTok.
  • Chris Christie. Another loser, according to Andrew Stanton at Newsweek. With his outspoken criticisms of Trump, “it was no surprise that he again found himself in hostile territory Wednesday evening, and his attacks against the former president fell flat,” with some audience members booing, Stanton writes.
  • Mike Pence. “The absence of sustained arguments about Trump himself and Jan. 6 stripped away the most interesting aspects of his candidacy, and what remained was just boredom and anachronism,” says Ross Douthat at the New York Times.
  • Doug Burgum. The North Dakota governor also failed to make much of an impact. He was “in desperate need of a knockout performance … and while the governor tried to steal the spotlight throughout the debate, he was unable to land a punch,” according to the Hill.
  • The debate was held at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, and Adam Wren at Politico has another entry for the losers’ column. “Even though I watched a few candidates wander over to his gravesite not far from the media file tent earlier in the day, I was struck by how little candidates namechecked the Gipper even on his home turf,” he writes.

There you gp….all the fun you missed.

Actually the whole damn stage were losers including the moderators….

All in all a thoroughly wasted time for the networks….they should have stuck with profit seeking and left this pack of idiots to their own devices to get heard by the voters.

Now aren’t you glad the Old Professor has so much time on his hands?

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

All Eyes On The Shutdown

At least all eyes in the media is laser focused on this sham of a governmental game show…..Dems have offered a compromise but that was a fart in the wind….things are looking close to dismal.

IST has a rundown for those that prefer to stir clear of the MSM and their constant tomfoolery.

The magic—or dreaded—number is four. As Reuters reports, the US is four days away from what would be the fourth government shutdown in a decade, and things aren’t looking very promising. The Senate is barreling forward with bipartisan temporary funding that House Republicans have already said they won’t support. If Congress can’t manage to pass legislation for President Biden to sign by 12:01am ET Sunday, millions of federal employees will be furloughed, among other consequences. The latest:

  • On Tuesday the Senate handily (77-19) voted to start debating a temporary measure that would provide funding through Nov. 17 and greenlight about $6 billion each in aid for Ukraine and US disaster response efforts. The House GOP opposition is partially rooted in an insistence that any short-term funding measure also take on the issue of migrants at the border.
  • The AP reports Speaker Kevin McCarthy is pushing for a Friday vote on House Republicans’ own stopgap funding measure that would see many federal agencies lose 8% of their funding and include that hard-line border security measure.
  • Politico’s take: “McCarthy is already facing the threat of a far-right rebellion, one that would be virtually guaranteed if he put any Senate-negotiated plan on the floor with billions of dollars in Ukraine aid—not to mention a lack of further spending cuts and no border policy changes.”
  • The Hill sums up the Senate’s chess move: the hope that “if they jam the House right before the deadline, McCarthy will relent and bring it to the House floor, where it would likely pass in a bipartisan vote.”
  • CNN flags one potential Senate wrinkle. Getting the measure passed in time would require a sped-up process that all 100 senators would have to vote in favor of, but GOP Sen. Rand Paul has said he will “slow walk” any bill that contains more money for Ukraine.

This whole thing is just a game politicians play.

Now you know as much as anyone and you did not have to sit through endless commercials to get to it.

You are welcome!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”