Debating the Debate, Tariffs, Trump’s Holocaust Hilarity, SCOTUS Grab

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony watches part of Thursday’s debate and is disappointed.
     
  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good watches the debate and sees a disaster.
     
    Key pain:
    This was just absolutely too excruciating to watch. A complete an utter disaster. President Biden appeared frail, misspoke repeatedly, and seemed confused. In short, He looked old.
     
    Expecting a frail old man to combat Traitor Trump’s torrent of lies in a debate was foolish and downright stupid.
     
  • Kevin Drum says what almost everyone thinks, but with more presence of mind: Oh Christ. What a dog’s breakfast of a debate.
     
    Key slightly best of the very bad:
    In addition to general incoherence, Biden continually got deep in the weeds about policy but only in passing. There’s not a person in a hundred who could have understood most of his references unless they were explained, but Biden just blew through them as if everyone in the audience had inhaled a copy of the Congressional Record.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors says the debate turned out to be all style vs substance – and substance lost. tengrain gets to specifics, explaining why.
     
    Still, when the dust settles, minds will not be changed.
     
    Key loss:
    If anything was lost, itā€™s the debate itself. Iā€™d be surprised if future candidates agree to ever have them again.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life says the substance of the debate didnā€™t matter. The optics or impressions do.
     
    Key Trump result:
    Trump didnā€™t attract any more support.
     
    Key Biden result:
    Biden may have repelled support.
     
  • The Onion‘s analysis of the debate: Neither Trump nor Biden want to be President.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson reacts to debate night:

    and has a suggestion:

  • Put PZ Myers in the negative column. He says President Biden should be put out to pasture.
     
    Key harsh judgment:
    …pitting a doddering old man against a lying sleaze monster is no way to decide how to run a country.
     
  • Rick Wilson draws a debate lesson from his aviation training: Itā€™s an emergency. Fly the plane.
     
    Key procedure:
    The order of handling the emergency is always the same: aviate, navigate, communicate.
     
    Weā€™re in the ā€œaviateā€ phase right now. Weā€™ll get to ā€œnavigateā€ and ā€œcommunicateā€ in a few days, but for now, fly the plane.
     
  • Hackwhackers reviews some of the reviews of Biden’s bad debate and Trump’s debate lies.
     
    Key verdict:
    Not time for panic, but for cool, dispassionate heads.

  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson watched the same debate and has a different view. She points to the exaggerated post-debate focus of media and pundits on Bidenā€™s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events.
     
    Key Biden:
    Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.
     
    Key Trump:
    His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list.
     
    The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
     
  • Infidel753 has wise advice. Put off post-debate panic until we hear from actual voters.
     
    Key hold:
    The average truck driver or waitress or accountant is not as panicky and dumb and easily spooked as the average pundit or activist.
     
    Another thing:
    Infidel adds a personal note on his own well being. I know from my own experience that a friendly comment of support can be encouraging.
     
  • Dave Columbo has what may be the best common sense take on the debate:
     
  • The Borowitz Report suggests post debate therapy.
     
  • This holds:

  • Taegan Goddard at Political Wire quotes the final after-debate word:
     
    Key word:
    I donā€™t walk as easy as I used to. I donā€™t speak as smoothly as I used to. I donā€™t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job.
    – President Joe Biden
     
  • Green Eagle sees a clear path to a Trump victory with his debate proposal to end federal income taxes, substituting high tariffs on everything instead. The problem after his election is those tariffs will pretty much wipe out a lot of the middle class.
     
    Key consequence:
    A sudden 60% increase in prices today would not exacerbate, but absolutely cause a worldwide depression worse than the one of the 1930’s.
     
    Well, Trump is clearly incapable of understanding the consequences of this proposal, and neither are the tens of millions of “independents” and uneducated voters that exist in this country. However, every single one of these ignorant people can fully embrace the delight they would feel if income taxes were eliminated.
     
  • YellowDog Granny has illustrated thoughts on heat, craziness, and Trump (Okay. I can see how that all connects.).
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil links to the accounts as mr Trump has a few laughs about the Holocaust ovens. Turns out, for some reason, some others have no sense of humor.
     
    They must have forgotten that, when it comes to Nazi genocide, mr Trump is hilarious.
     
    Personal:
    Maybe it’s age, and the fact that I grew up when the Holocaust was still a fresh, horrible memory. Images of Nazi gas chambers and ovens packed with the bodies of victims just don’t crack me up the way it does mr Trump and a few of my conservative friends.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, mr Trump has moved on from sinking his electric boat next to a shark to electric planes that will crash on cloudy days.
     
    Key media negligence:
    You are unlikely to see this on ā€œTV news,ā€ whether cable or broadcast.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged is willing to look as mr Trump offers to take off his shirt to show all the wounds and scars inflicted by his enemies. He doesn’t actually strip down (Thank you, Lord) but we can take his word for the beatdown wounds.
     
    I noticed the next similar claim:

  • At a White House briefing, Tommy Christopher poses a question about a frequent Trump abortion lie, and Jennifer Klein manages to minimize eye rolling as she explains, once more, that Democrats do not advocate abortions after birth (which pretty much would have been more homicide than abortion).
     
  • Scotties Playtime links to new facts from Texas linking abortion bans to infant deaths.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us Corey Lewandowski, hating mouthy women:
     

    Key headline:
    So The GOP *IS* The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club
     
  • No Labels decides to run a third party Presidential campaign, even if it will help elect Donald Trump. driftglass is happy with founder William Galston for resigning in protest. Right up until poor Mr. Galston reflexively surrenders to the siren call of his both-sides addiction.
     
    Key offense:
    …I think there’s a certain symmetry between the two political parties at this point. Namely each party, for different reasons, believes that a takeover by the other party would entail catastrophe for the country…
     
  • Julian Sanchez points to a Newsmax chyron on the conservative 2020 voting fraud falsehood as an example of how to state the truth in a way that lies.
     
    Key Lying Truth (shamelessly stolen from Julian Sanchez):

  • Not all falsehoods from Newsmax are so nuanced. News Corpse watches uncritical repetition of another blatant lie, that the FBI planted evidence against Trump. mr Trump, of course, re-posts the lie as fact, while misspelling his own name.
     
  • William F. Buckley once pointed out one common problem with extremists: their inability to make ideological distinctions.
     
    He gave as an example a left wing publication that reacted to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 with a cover photo of the dying Senator with the head of a pig superimposed over Kennedy’s own.
     
    Nice.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara sees socialism as leading inevitably to a Stalin-like totalitarian state. He seeks to redefine socialism as pretty much any departure from libertarianism.
     
    Key signatures:
    …printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures…
     
    Key synonyms (partial list):
    communist, fascist, socialist, social democrat, national socialist, Christian democrat, neo-Keynesian, progressive, populist, nationalist, or globalist
     
    Key identity:
    Ultimately, there are no major differences.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy explains why a minor Supreme Court case turns out to be a really big deal: a power grab by conservatives:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the polling numbers, and finds no group opposed to a formal ethics code for the Supreme Court.
     
  • Juanita Jean sees Ted Cruz walking a tightrope above a tidy bit of money from a podcast he regularly conducts. If the cash is political funding he’s in danger of a campaign finance violation. If it’s personal, he can tumble on the side of an ethics violation.
     
    I’m thinking Schrƶdinger’s cat with a lot of coin.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz, as might be expected, has a thought about morality:

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has mr Trump endorsing the mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana schools. He seems amazed anyone knows what they are.
     
    Key astonish:
    ā€œHas anyone read the ā€˜Thou shalt not stealā€™? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? Itā€™s just incredible.ā€
    – mr Trump to the Faith & Freedom Coalition, June 22, 2024     (Really?)
     
    Comrade Misfit provides Jimmy Kimmel taking it all in:
     

    and
     
    Offers this helpful Ten Commandment list to educators:

  • Right Wing Watch brings us Pastor Jack Hibbs explaining the benefits of the new Louisiana educational requirement:

  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce is advised in a comment from a loving Christian pastor to quit complaining about his chronic illnesses and resulting pain.
     
    My own reaction:
    I am a faithful reader. I have never seen an instance of whining by Bruce. His accounts have usually been designed to show empathy for others in pain.
     
    Note to Bruce:
    You are an atheist who serves as a model of the sort of Christian that, in my better moments, I aspire to become.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen finds a wonderfully wistful thought by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova on Lot’s wife.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL’s guest, author, blogger, podcaster, educator, and mental health provider is Dr. Vicki Atkinson, who draws from personal experience on how to survive a toxic family tradition.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Four Dinners from across the pond is frustrated by Britain’s parliamentary system.
     
    Key example:
    In 2019 The Conservatives won a large majority and, therefore, governed Britain, with 43.6% of the vote share.
     
    Now even my faulty mathematics tells me that 56.4% didnā€™t vote for the government they got.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 has profound feelings about math:
     
  • Nan’s Notebook thinks about mysterious monoliths appearing around the world in the last few years, including a new one near Las Vegas.
     
    Key sociological question:
    Who doesnā€™t love a mystery?
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research gets a bit punny at a study from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden about sleepiness at different times of day.
     
  • As if retirement isn’t already hard: This is the sort of decision that causes me sleepless afternoons.
     
    Clickbait satirist Reductress helps answer the burning question: should you put a down payment on a house, or buy a throw pillow?
     
  • Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) goes to court:
     

2 thoughts on “Debating the Debate, Tariffs, Trump’s Holocaust Hilarity, SCOTUS Grab”

  2. whew! great round up of basically all of us hoping voters understand difference between someone who blows hot air and someone who wants to do what’s right… tx for linking my blog here

    Reply
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