If you want a blow-by-blow account of last night's GOP whatever-it-was, you have come to the wrong place. Yes, I kept the TV tuned in to all five-plus hours of it, even the Pee Wee wrestling match intro featuring canned survival food-seller Rick Santorum and a few others whose names escape me at the moment.
But I took readers' advice and read a book about how we can't afford rich people at the same time as I semi-watched the debate. I also played a few games of Bejewelled on the iPad and mentally interposed the exploding gems with the heads on the stage in a futile effort to stay riveted.
I knew that I had to indulge in a couple of survival skills when CNN commentator Brooke Baldwin referred to the Reagan Library as "hallowed ground," and Wolf Blitzer rudely interrupted a relatively intelligent point Anderson Cooper was trying to make to announce that Donald Trump had just exited his limo and was entering the building.
There's got to be a morning after, and truth be told, only a few memories remain. (If you thought I'd be taking notes on the show, think again.)
Some highlights:
Jeb Bush thinks brother George kept us safe. He also wants to put Margaret Thatcher's mug on the $10 bill. Donald Trump did not make any disparaging remarks about Maggie's mug, nor that of any other female for that matter.
Carly Fiorina makes Hillary Clinton actually look like the Mother Teresa her campaign team is trying to market to the voters. Fiorina never smiles. She looks directly at the camera as she calls for mass killings of people for the sake of her personal friend, Bibi.
Although Donald Trump didn't make fun of the looks of any female, it sure looks like the GOP cohort still stands united in its hatred of all women and its fetishistic defense of fetal parts, which apparently are being sold on the open market right next to the breakfast cereal.
As one of the few people on the stage who don't have blood on their hands due to the wars they voted for, Donald Trump may still have effectively condemned thousands or even millions of people to death with his off-the-cuff remark that the baby of one of his employees developed autism overnight after receiving vaccinations.
Ben Carson, M.D., allowed that Trump might have a point about getting too many vaccines at once, but advised him to do further reading. Carson sounded like he whiffed a huge dollop of ether before coming onstage.
Jeb Bush admits that he smoked dope while a preppie and apologized to Mom Babs for his perfidy. He didn't apologize to his mom for not nominating her mug for the $10 bill. Ben Carson nominated his mom, and so did a few others whose names escape me. A few even went totally socialistic and nominated Rosa Parks.
Mike Huckabee, whose only platforms are anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, praised the polio vaccine. He was apparently unaware that the first polio vaccine was developed with the help of fetal tissue research.
5 comments:
I watched the debate, at least until Nova's 'Dawn of Humanity' program came on. From what I did see, I think Marco Rubio really shined - like the tip of a nuclear warhead.
Marco is one scary dude because he's handsome, articulate, and coolly passionate, kind of like Obama but with a pulse. Unfortunately the only thing he seems focused on is war and the use of military force everywhere and anywhere, especially if it helps poor little Israel. He makes Lindsay Graham and John McCain look like doves.
Marco Rubio a very, very dangerous man in my book.
Hi Anne,
I concur that Marco is one scary dude. Kind of a Hispanic Hitler in tone and intensity. Very aggrieved, very dangerous. He looks like he is about to snap like one of those characters in an Investigation Discovery show, such as "Behind Mansion Walls."
I replied to one of the endless Times op-eds endlessly analyzing whatever that was last night. My comment to Charles Blow's column:
Jeb chose Margaret Thatcher because she is the founding matriarch of neoliberalism: the death of democracy at the all-too-visible hand of unregulated capitalism. Of course he and the others did not discuss race relations. The collapse of the global banking system wrought by neoliberal ideology has disproportionately effected black and brown people through more foreclosures, more evictions, more job losses, worse wages, more blighted neighborhoods pockmarked by crumbling schools and usurious check-cashing joints and grocery stores selling stale, overpriced food full of empty calories.
Not only should Jeb not apologize to Babs for smoking pot during his preppie days, he should probably smoke more dope while listening to the Pope. It might mellow him out. Pope Francis is the perfect antidote to the pile of steaming dung that is today's GOP. He will also be speaking in Spanish, which Jeb brags about understanding perfectly. No excuses for the Jebster.
CNN and the rest of the corporate media also bear the blame for both the topics aired at the debate and the Roman colosseum tone of the coverage of the pseudo-event and its endless aftermath. They are not about to bite the plutocratic hand that feeds them any more than the bought-and-paid for candidates posing before the obscene hulk of Ronald Reagan's Air Force One.
Incidentally, today marks the fourth birthday of the Occupy movement, whose spirit lives on in the Bernie Sanders candidacy.
Bruni and Collins fit in with politics as entertainment with their post debate columns.
I said.....Mr. Bruni, you told us how you dined with Trump. Ever dined with a democratic candidate?
If the Dem debates had started in August, along with the Gop’s, the public could get balanced coverage---the whole purpose of an election campaign. It might even be fun for columnists to contrast the issues. We could actually compare their platforms side by side. What a concept! Or is that too dull?
Imagine scheduling only 4 Democratic debates, and 1 on a Sat night in Xmas shopping season. This is obviously done to prevent Sanders challenging Clinton. It’s an offense against democracy.
Dems debates don’t even start ‘til Oct 13, while the Gop debates go on and on, their many candidates dominating the entire media 24/7 month after month, giving their ‘stars’, or the most notorious ones, time to build up momentum. How many articles have we had on the Gop line up? They have so many contenders, that if 1 is relatively quiet 1 week, the others take their place in the media spotlight. Always something for the pundits and reporters to hype, er, discuss.
O’Malley gave a courageous speech protesting the Dem debate schedule. Come on, Dem party officials, get with the program!
A reply to my comment said the Dems are hanging back in the shadows. May be part of some grand strategy?
Karen, Hitler is EXACTLY who came to mind but I wasn't sure if I wanted to mention his name. Glad you did! He has the same barely controlled or concealed fanaticism. Even the Bombsy Twins don't have that, thank goodness.
I can't imagine a more suitable Presidential candidate for the Koch brothers to buy.
The NY Times' editorial board has published a scathing critique of the debate. This was my response in a comment that has yet to be published:
What hypocrisy. This editorial comes one week after the Public Editor of the New York Times investigated this newspaper’s coverage of Bernie Sanders’ campaign and found, “The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders’s campaign, but it hasn’t always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate’s age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say. And then there’s the Trump factor. While it may be realistic, and reflective of reasonable news judgment, to give Mr. Sanders less coverage than Mrs. Clinton, that’s certainly not happening with Donald Trump – whose every utterance and dust-up is breathlessly chronicled. The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, told me recently that he wants to focus more heavily on issue stories in the coming weeks and months.”
We, your readers, are waiting, Mr. Baquet. You might begin by dismissing Carolyn Ryan, your political editor, whose judgment is as much an affront and danger to our democracy as those Republican candidates.
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