Part 1 is here.
The transcript is here.
4. Asshole comment of the night: Pete Buttigieg saying that we have to ask how Donald Trump even got “within cheating distance of the Presidency.” The Democrats still refuse to admit that the election of the President was legitimate, without any evidence whatsoever. I don’t care who they are running for, the White House or mayor of East Podunk. I am not forgiving or trusting such a party until they recant, or are properly punished.
5. Do these people realize how ridiculous and irresponsible they sound regarding climate change? Beto O’Rourke: “I listen to scientists on this, and they are very clear. We don’t have more than 10 years to get this right.” Mayor Pete Buttigieg: “Science tells us we have 12 years before we reach the horizon of catastrophe when it comes to our climate.” How many times does the boy have to cry wolf before people catch on?
And, incredibly, there was support expressed by the two top demagogues on the stage for the absurd and totalitarian “Green New Deal.” Warren (who proved her intellectual dishonesty and lack of integrity by co-sponsoring the Green New Deal bill, though it wasn’t worthy of a sixth grade science student, much less a Harvard professor): “Climate crisis is the existential crisis for our world. It puts every living thing on this planet at risk.” Classic fact-free fear-mongering. Absolutely no scientist has suggested that “every living thing” is as risk even with the most dire climate chance models. As I have noted before regarding Warren, she deliberately tries to exploit public ignorance, and asserts things that we know she knows are not true. How can anyone support someone like that?
Then comes Bernie Sanders: “We can create what the Green New Deal is about. It’s a bold idea. We can create millions of good-paying jobs. We can rebuild communities in rural America that have been devastated. So we are not anti-worker. We are going to provide and make sure that those workers have a transition, new jobs, healthcare and education.”
The crypto-communist knows that what the Green New Deal is all about is, as Ocasio-Cortez’s guru, Saikat Chakrabarti, explained to the Washington Post, the Green New Deal isn’t “a climate thing at all,” but a stealth “how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.,” and, necessarily, a put government’s iron boot down on personal liberty thing, though neither Bernie, Liz, Saikat or the other aspiring totalitarians in the party will say so out loud.
6. When moderator Jake Tapper asked “whether the middle class should pay higher taxes in exchange for universal coverage and the elimination of insurance premiums,” Sanders rebuked him for using “a Republican talking point.” Thus was born a new progressive dodge. The next night’s debate participants quickly took up the task of distorting yet another term to make honest debate more difficult. My favorite was Julian Castro’s “Open borders is a right-wing talking point.”
Talking points are packaged arguments that the speaker often can’t support or doesn’t really understand. I’ve flagged the parroting of talking points here and on social media, such as when a friend recently said that Trump has violated “democratic norms.” I don’t want to get ahead of my Big Lie posts, but having studied the Presidency obsessively since I was ten, I think I am qualified to call “bullshit” on that claim. Breaking old traditions and Presidential “norms” are what Presidents do: the norm claim, like so many others, is designed for people who can’t name ten Presidents and who fall for the hypocrisy that what Trump does is wrong because Trump does it.
But using the “talking point” label to silence the truth is unethical. “Medicare for all” will require taxing the middle class, much as Bernie’s infamous Bizzaro World math would have it otherwise. Decriminalizing illegal immigration, as most of the Democratic field support, equals open borders. Refusing to accept a deliberate Democratic Party obfuscation isn’t being partisan.
7. To be fair, some of the 2A candidates sounded like they challenged the pro-illegal immigration fad, perhaps sensing that its a loser. Beto said, “I expect that people who come here follow our laws, and we reserve the right to criminally prosecute them if they do not.” He did not clarify whether breaking the law to get here should count, however. WHY would he expect that people who come here illegally to follow our laws? I don’t. Tim Ryan said, “If you want to come into the country, you should at least ring the doorbell!” Whatever that means: if nobody answers the bell, can you then break in the window?
Of course, none of CNN’s three moderators had the wit or integrity to follow up with that question.
8. Runner-up asshole statement of the night, from Sen. Warren (I’m shocked…shocked!): “The point is not about criminalization. That has given Donald Trump the tool to break families apart.” Right. Because the Evil Orange Man’s goal is to break up families.
9. Here’s more deceit from Pete Buttigieg: “Nominate me and we will have a different conversation with American voters about why the president of the United States thinks you’re a sucker when the problem in your life is your paycheck is not going up nearly as fast as the cost of housing.” Houses are increasing in value, which is nice for those who own homes. Mortgages are near historic lows, which means a lot of those increased housing costs are made up in lower interest rates. (My mortgage rate was originally 12%.) Rental rates have not increased as much as home costs, especially away from some infamous large cities. But here’s the New York “factchecker” covering for Buttigieg. They term his assertion as “the economy is not as strong as Mr. Trump likes to argue because expenses are rising faster than wages,” and rule “This is true. A March study from the National Association of Realtors found that in the past six years, from 2012 to 2018, median home prices across the United States increased by 47 percent while monthly wages rose 16 percent.” Wait: how does that study prove, or even suggest, that “expenses” are rising faster than wages?
10. Here’s an example of a statement that should disqualify a candidate from being taken seriously, from Pete “This is why we don’t elect people under 40 as President” Buttigieg: “So-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage, when scripture says that whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker.”
Cheap shot, hypocritical, absurd appeal to authority. Does Pete know he is running under the banner of the same party that is increasingly challenging conservative judges on the basis of their Christian faith? He’s gay: does this mean that he supports the Christian bakers?
Summary of debate 2A: This is why, as pathetic a candidate as he is, Joe Biden still leads in the polls.
Ethics Alarms 
5. When we were in Beijing, I noticed everyone had a job there. We stayed in a hotel on the grounds of the Olympic park. There were acres and acres of empty plazas and former gift shops. No people other than young Chinese guys in military garb standing guard. Great jobs. The kind of jobs Bernie and his comrades will provide. Standing around, keeping an eye on suspicious tourists from other countries.
Bill, that’s just busy work for those soldiers. Their real job is to keep the proletariat from getting too restless, by serving as a visual reminder of the capacity for violence that the government keeps in reserve. All Marxism-based governments have this kind of “jobs program” because Marxism is never voluntary for the majority of people who live under it…
I am waiting for someone to say that these health care proposals are not comparable to Medicare but is in fact Medicaid which is for the poor.
Medicare requires a monthly premium from users, Medicaid does not.
Medicare has a deductible, Medicaid does not.
Medicare is routinely accepted by doctors. Medicaid is not.
When will we someone ask Bernie and others how will they ensure that doctors will accept lower fees for their services?
What if fewer people go into medicine because its financial rewards are limited by government.?
What will happen to med schools ability to charge 6 figure tuitions for MD training?
What options will the electorate have if the government monopoly on health care insurance kills all private sector insurers and then fails to meet citizen’s wants
Update:
I should have pointed out that Medicare part B premium is on a per capita basis so every family rich and poor will pay about 150 bucks a month per person and a 200 dollar deductible per person if this Medicare for all
Chris, being a crypto-communist (nee socialist) means never having to explain where the money comes from.
“Medicare is routinely accepted by doctors. Medicaid is not.”
Not so fast, pardner…. Medicare is not “routinely” accepted by doctors, especially if they already have about 20% of current patients who are on it. That is the point where the reduced compensation of Medicare starts to turn a normal family practice towards insolvency. It took me nearly 3 years to get accepted in a medical practice, and that was 4 years before I hit 65. In some respects its like looking for an apartment in New York (as the stories go, I’m a long way from there) by reading the obituaries.
You are correct in questioning where the doctors will come from. I fear AA raising its head in medical training. I’ve already heard of “signing bonus” offers to medical graduates by big name hospitals.
I used routinely as a relative term to Medicaid. Many docs will not accept any Medicaid patients.
4. To be fair, the others have said essentially the same thing over and over again.
I wonder if he realizes that he’s completely disrespecting half the country? None of the Democrats seem to have the self-awareness to think that every time they say something like this, Democrats who voted for Trump or rejected Clinton frown and blanch.
To answer his question as if it were not pure pandering demagoguery, the “how” is Hillary Clinton’s demonstrated corrupt career in politics. A lot of people would rather take a chance on Trump than a woman who had not only committed provable crimes against the United States by illegally storing secrets on a homemade server, but also had been at the center of such scandals as Uranium One, Benghazi, and the corrupt Clinton Foundation just to name a few. That’s at least four strikes, and you only get three.
Honestly, even Creepy Joe probably could’ve beaten Trump then. Not so much now.
5. As I said above, none of the Democrat candidates have the self-awareness of a flatworm. When it comes to the cult of climate change, they simply spout dogma, because anything less is a slow form of political suicide.
Sounds to me like she not only tries to exploit it, but to add more ignorance to it.
6. The “talking point” objection is just a way to dodge answering the question by classifying it as a partisan dissimulation. Nothing more, nothing less.
10. Never trust a politician who quotes the bible. They always quote it context-free in a way that supports their position, even if the original in-context quote would not. Refusing to artificially inflate wages so that the number of jobs drops radically is not “oppressing the poor.”
I would offer Pete this:
Little lies like this, Pete, indicate you might be a big liar as well.
As promised, arrogant and ignorant. Not ready for prime time.
Exactly.
“Talking point” is a talking point. It’s probably wrong to point at and mock the victims of large-scale demonic obsession, but the’ve plumbed a new depth of meta-stupidity.
Heh. Meta indeed.
They’re probably chafed that their scheduling conflict wouldn’t allow them to jet over to Google Camp’s Global Warming Shindig in Italy and rub elbows with all the A-List Climate Hypocrites
NBC Senior National Correspondent Keir Simmons: “Google the event and reports say it’s focus was climate change….BUT A BUNCH OF BILLIONAIRES AND CELEBRITIES ARRIVING ON A REPORTED MULTIPLE PRIVATE JETS AND STAYING ON YACHTS to talk about global warming is hypocritical, some critics say.” (bolds/caps mine)
Ya think?
[***], I truly do!
Do as the Democrats say, not as they do, and they’ll give you other people’s money.
Oldest rule they have.
Jack your attention to detail is appreciated, but the shite these people spout morning, Noon and night leaves me with one reaction…eff them and eff their party. They hate America. They hate the Constitution, they hate Americans, especially all non-Alinskyites.
Re: #5: i almost feel ashamed to point this out, as the critical thought required should make me look condescendingly pedantic: plants are living things and will likely thrive and flourish in a warm, carbon-rich atmosphere.
-Jut
(And, yes, I am comparably ashamed of writing a single sentence with 3 colons, but Warren made me do it.)
(Holy crap! In checking my Warren reference, did someone really say: how many times do we have to cry wolf? Once is enough. That’s the problem with crying wolf: the more you do it, the worse it is. Sadly, climate alarmism has gone from Chicken Little “sky is falling” to “crying wolf.” It has gone from “we don’t believe your predictions” to “you lied.” Correct me if I am wrong: “crying wolf” has NO positive epistemological implications.
The only positive about the “crying wolf” thing is that the boy who did it finally wound up getting eaten by the wolf.
Re: Pistol Pete:
People tell me Buttigieg* is a Rhodes Scholar, an extraordinarily bright guy and an effective communicator. I don’t really see it, though. I have listened (objectively, I think) to his positions. He sealed his fate with me when he declared that cash in politics is a threat to the union, and that he would pursue an amendment to the First Amendment to address “Citizens United”. Does he not understand that the biggest contributions in politics come from George Soros, Planned Parenthood, Big Labor, and the teachers unions? Are those leftist or rightist lobbying groups? I thought so.
Re: Bob O’Rourke:
He thinks he turned Texas kind of blue last year. He didn’t. He lost to Ted Cruz, who is almost universally hated outside of Texas. He accomplished losing with $38 million warchest largely gathered from donors outside of Texas. He also hacked off the DNC because the party saw the writing on the wall and asked the Great Orator to share the wealth in other races, which Bob declined to do. Then, he went on a soul-searching trip to learn what the Average American really thought about, live blogging a shave, a haircut, and eating a sandwich. Yep. Taking that knowledge into the presidential campaign, he declared this week that one of his first actions would be to sign Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee’s reparations bill into law, which calls for a “conversation”** about reparations. Idiot. Any candidate for office who actually supports anything Sheila Jackson-Lee proposes should be dismissed as a fool.
jvb
*Ed. Note: Just out of curiosity, why is he called “Mayor Pete”? Is it because nobody really knows how to pronounce is last name? The media don’t say, “Senator Bernie” or “Senator Liz” or “Representative Tulsi”
**Ed. Note: Why is everything with these candidates a conversation or a fight (they all pledge to FIGHT for the Average Joe – yeah, the ones they look down on with contempt and disdain)?
I intend to take it as something of a compliment that logic, love of country, and awareness of reality are now considered “right-wing talking points”>