Karma

This whole election feels like a punishment.  A cruel punishment too.  After eight years of having a smart and decent man in the White House, we're forced to give him back and choose between Pantsuit Nixon and Orange Mussolini.  Is it because we re-elected George W. Bush in 2004?  Come on!  That's so unfair.  We were scared and John Kerry sucked.  Is it because we elected Reagan in 1980?  I agree that was a very punishable offense, but it was so long ago.  I was zero years old at the time.  Why punish us now?  And isn't the damage Reagan did to our economy punishment enough?

Is it something not even related to politics?  Is this punishment for the Kardashians or American Idol or Burger King putting mac and cheese inside Cheetos?  That seems so unfair.  This punishment does not fit those crimes.  Why are the election karma gods so mean?  Why is this happening to us?

Cable news has been pre-gaming all day.  At one point, Fox did two consecutive segments on why it isn't the moderator's job to point out when Trump is lying.  Then Eric Bolling called Hillary's claim that she didn't send any classified emails "the ultimate lie".  Since Eric has no sense of perspective or proportionality, I have no problem asserting that Eric is exactly as bad as Hitler.

Anyway, let's hope the election karma gods agree that Hillary is punishment enough.  I certainly think she is.  Let's hope they're just using Trump as sort of a cautionary tale so they don't have to go through this with us again.  Live, from the 13th floor lounge in Estabrook Hall, or possibly the 8th circle of hell, it's the first debate!!!

8:53PM: Rabinowitz is talking during the final minutes before the debate.  I feel like he'd be a Trump guy.  Rachel Maddow kept criticizing him for talking too long and getting behind schedule.  It was pretty great.

8:55PM: I was going to have an exclusive for the debate tonight.  Gary Johnson was going to be right here in my apartment with me, giving commentary.  Unfortunately, Gary wandered outside like an hour ago to get high and I haven't seen him since.  I don't think he's coming back.

8:56PM: I decided to watch tonight's debate on MSBNC just for fun.  Brian Williams was all over the pre-debate coverage because nobody remembers anything.

8:57PM: I get why we need the crowd to settle down.  We're supposed to be hearing the candidates talk about what kind of President each of them would be.  I don't need 45 minutes of clapping and booing out of a 90 minute debate.  But honestly, if the crowd has to remain completely silent, why are they there?  Why not just have Lester Holt sit in a quiet room with the candidates?  I have so many good ideas.

8:59PM: Brian says we're starting at 9:03:30.  Thanks Brian.  Meanwhile, Rachel was just explaining the rules and they sound pretty loose.  I've heard the campaigns didn't actually sign an agreement about the rules, so this should be really messy.  I don't know much about Lester, but he seems friendly and a little soft-spoken.  I'm not sure he's the guy for this.  I guess we'll see.

9:02PM: Our friends at MSNBC are taking these extra three minutes to make sure we all know that the expectations game leading up to this debate has been totally unfair to Hillary.

9:04PM: Lester says each 15 minute segment will start with the same question to both candidates, and then they'll have two minutes to answer.  After that, roughly 11 minutes of open discussion.  Let's see how that goes.

9:05PM: Hillary is wearing a bright red suit.  She looks ridiculous.  That's not a sexist comment.  If Trump was wearing a bright red suit we'd never stop laughing at him, and rightfully so.  She looks like a tomato.  If Hillary was wearing a black suit, or a grey suit, and someone said she should dress up a little more and she looks boring, that would be a sexist comment.

9:08PM: The first question is about jobs.  Hillary is going through the Democratic laundry list of paid family leave, sicks days, making the wealthy pay their fair share.  Meanwhile, Trump looks less orange than usual, but his hair still looks like cotton candy.

9:09PM: Trump says Mexico is building some of the best plants and America..."not so much".  Then he seemed to indicate that he agrees with Hillary on paid leave, or sick days, or both.  Then he promised tremendous tax cuts (for businesses, don't get excited).  Trump's ability to brag about things he hasn't done yet is actually kind of amazing.

9:11PM: Hillary called Trump's economic plan "Trumped Up Trickle Down".  Hillary needs to focus on doing things she's good at.  Jokes are not one of those things.  Then she took a swipe at Trump borrowing money from his dad to get started.  That one landed clean.  Point to Hillary.

9:13PM: Trump says his father gave him a "very small loan" in 1975.  I think we'd all be pretty surprised by what Trump thinks is a small amount of money.

9:14PM: Trump randomly asked Hillary if it's OK to call her Secretary Clinton.  Then he said he wants her to be very happy.  That was weird.

9:15PM: Trump's proposal for bringing jobs back from Mexico appears to be, essentially, tariffs.  Someone should point out why that is a bad plan, and why it won't work.  Hillary is apparently not that someone, because she wants to talk about other stuff.

9:17PM: Hillary says Donald believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.  I have to say I've never heard him say that, but it sounds like something he'd say and it was a funny line.

9:19PM: For all the talk about Trump being different and being an outsider, his economic plan is pretty cookie cutter Republican.  He wants to bring back jobs and create incentives for companies to expand, and he plans to do that through the magic power of tax cuts.

9:21PM: Trump is yelling about how Hillary's husband signed NAFTA.  Instead of saying something like "I'm not my husband, and the first lady doesn't get a vote on signing trade deals", Hillary decided to defend NAFTA.

9:22PM: Trump won't let Hillary finish a sentence.  If only there was some kind of moderator around to reign this in.  Hillary also took a minute to plug her new book.  So far this is bizarre.

9:24PM: Trump keeps saying Lester's name like he made a black friend.  Also, the first 15 minute segment has been something like 19 minutes long.

9:26PM: Now they're literally yelling at each other about fighting ISIS.  Trump said Hillary's been fighting ISIS her entire adult life.  Wait, I thought Barack Obama founded ISIS.  Hillary was already like 63 years old when that happened.  Is that when women become adults in Trump's mind?  I'm so confused.

9:28PM: Trump stopped talking for a minute and Hillary made a really coherent point about building the middle class instead of working from the top down on the economy.  When she was done, Trump, instead of actually waiting for Lester to ask him a question, just started talking and launched into some bizarre attack on the Fed and how they're going to raise interest rates as soon as Obama leaves office.

9:31PM: Lester finally got a question out and it was about Trump's tax returns, which he still won't release.  Trump says he'll release his taxes as soon as the audit is over.  Lester pointed out that the IRS says he can release his tax returns during an audit.  Then Trump said he'll actually release his tax returns when Hillary releases her 33,000 deleted emails.

9:34PM: Hillary says maybe Trump isn't as rich as he says he is, or maybe he's not as charitable as he says he is.  She also said he must be trying to hide something really important, or even terrible.  She's really hitting hard on the something to hide point.  Hillary's poking the bear and trying to get it to attack.

9:37PM:  Trump, interestingly, isn't really saying he doesn't have anything to hide.  He's just saying you don't learn anything from tax returns.  Then he rambled for a minute about being underleveraged and then I think he called us a third world country.  Are we sure he knows what country he's running to be President of?  He doesn't seem to be a big fan of this one.

9:40PM: Hillary has an architect in the audience who built a clubhouse at one of Trump's golf courses and didn't get paid for it.  Trump says maybe he did a bad job.  That's such a con man answer.  Everybody who I stiffed just did bad work.

9:42PM: Trump's essentially arguing that if there's a law that allows him to stiff or short change contractors he's going to take advantage of that and there's nothing wrong with it.  Honestly, this whole election is bizarre.

9:44PM: Lester wants to talk about race.  I'm going to go ahead and say that Trump's handlers are feeling a little apprehensive right now.

9:46PM: Hillary gave a pretty standard liberal answer on race and police and communities, but she also talked about guns, but she didn't really go into it and I kind of wish she had.

9:48PM: Trump said Hillary won't use the words law and order.  She said law at least twice.  Trump also went into his support for stop and frisk as a policy.  Lester pointed out that stop and frisk was deemed unconstitutional, which is true.  Except is Trump's mind, where that's not true and it was just one liberal judge and if DiBlasio wasn't such a pussy he'd appeal and he'd win and then we could do it again.

9:51PM: The face Trump makes whenever someone says the word unconstitutional is the same face a dog makes when you try to give it a command that it hasn't learned yet.  Fascists don't spend a lot of time worrying about constitutionality.

9:54PM: Trump agrees that people on watch lists and no-fly lists shouldn't be able to get guns.  Not that you can enforce that policy without universal background checks, but whatever.

9:57PM: Hillary said crime and murders are still going down since DiBlasio took office.  Trump says she's wrong and murders are up.  Again, if only we had some kind of moderator who could look this stuff up.

10:00PM: Lester asked Trump about the whole birther thing.  Trump said he succeeded where Hillary failed and he got Obama to release his birth certificate.  Lester correctly pointed out that the birth certificate was released in 2011 and Trump kept going with it for five more years.  Trump really didn't answer that part, but he did point out that black people and Obama should be grateful that he got to the bottom of the birther issue.  Seriously, that's a thing that just happened.

10:03PM: Hillary just said Trump has a long history of racist behavior, going back to the 70's.  Trump's general argument seems to be that racism is OK when everyone is doing it.  Hillary was mean to Obama too.  And lots of companies got sued for racial discrimination in the 70's.  Such a good point.  Racism was all the rage back then.  Now he even lets black people into some club he owns.  What a swell guy.

10:07PM: Lester asked them who is responsible for cyber attacks.  Hillary seems to be zeroing in on Russia.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Trump is getting ready to blame China.

10:08PM: I'm sorting drifting in an out at this point.

10:09PM: Trump took the first half of his cyber attack answer time to list a bunch of people who are endorsing him.  Then he said we don't know it's Russia, maybe it was China (points to me) or maybe it was a 400 pound person on their bed.  I suppose we couldn't really expect Trump to get through 90 minutes without some fat shaming.  Also, Trump has a 10 year old son.  Yikes.

10:12PM: Can't one of them just admit that the government is run by people who need to have their grandkids teach them how to use computers and that's why we suck at cyber security?

10:14PM: Trump says we should have taken the oil out of Iraq when we left and then there would be no ISIS.  I'm not an expert on international law, but I'm like 101% sure that's not legal.  Also, how do you take the oil?  It's not just like sitting in a warehouse.  Oil comes from under the ground.  We would have to occupy the country, ya know, forever.  

10:18PM: I got distracted by Trump's insane taking the oil plan and when I drifted back in Trump was declaring NATO obsolete.  Except now it's not obsolete because they're going to deal with terror and Trump is taking credit for that.

10:20PM: Trump and Lester are arguing about whether or not Trump was for the Iraq war.  Trump swears he told Sean Hannity that he was against the Iraq war.  Trump just keeps saying "nobody calls Sean Hannity".  JUST ASK SEAN HANNITY DAMNIT!!!

10:22PM: Trump got a good laugh from the audience when he said he has a much better temperament than Hillary.  The question was why is his judgment better than Hillary's.  His answer was, because it is.

10:23PM: Hillary pointed out that NATO had our back after 9/11.  That's a good point but we've already been through how Trump doesn't really make good on his debts so that's not really an argument that's going to work on him.

10:24PM: Hillary criticized Trump for saying that he'd start a war by blowing Iranians out of the water for taunting us.  Trump didn't say he wouldn't do that, he argued that it wouldn't actually start a war.  I feel like that's a risk we probably shouldn't take.

10:27PM: Apparently we're heading into the last segment.  I thought we had abandoned the schedule a long time ago.

10:29PM: Trump is not a fan of the Iran deal.  It is, apparently, one of the worst deals that any country has ever made.

10:30PM: Hillary had to stop the debate for a second to assure other countries that they shouldn't listen to this maniac and the United States will still honor the agreements we have with them.  We really are hitting rock bottom, aren't we?

10:32PM: Trump keeps insisting that his secret plan to defeat ISIS is fantastic but he's definitely not going to tell us about it because, as he said about an hour ago, Douglas MacArthur would not approve of that.

10:33PM: Lester asked why Trump thinks Hillary doesn't have the look of a President.  Trump claims that he meant she doesn't have the stamina.  Of course, what he actually means is that she's not a 10.  And why would we want some broad who's not a 10 running the country?  Am I right?  Ivanka's a 10 and if you elect me you'll get to see her every day, believe me.

10:36PM: Trump says that many of the things he's said about women were directed as Rosie O'Donnell and everyone agrees that she deserves it and no one feels sorry for her.  Then he said that Hillary isn't being nice to him and he could be very tough to Hillary and her family but he isn't doing that but he could.  That's a killer grown up answer.

Final question.  Will they each accept the final vote as the will of the voters?  Hillary said yes.  Trump rambled for a minute about making America great again, but then said yes.

What a goddamn nightmare.

Stalemate

It seems as though the Republican party's best plan for beating Donald Trump now is to play him to a stalemate.  Cruz can win some more states, maybe Kasich wins Ohio, maybe Rubio wins Florida, then nobody gets a majority of delegates and they pick someone better at the convention.  I'm not so sure about this plan.  Who do you pick?  Getting Cruz over Trump isn't nearly worth all this trouble.  Kasich or Rubio?  Are we sure Republican voters are ready to support a candidate who won two states, or one?  Who else?  Romney?  Paul Ryan?  Maybe just go get Jeb?  A plan to get rid of Trump before it's too late is all well and good, but they need a viable plan B and I'm not sure they have one.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has really grown on me in the last few months, but I'm growing increasingly frustrated with his campaign.  The Sanders campaign raised almost 43 million dollars in February, but still decided not to contest half of the super Tuesday states.  Why?  People on TV keep asking why Bernie can't win any black votes.  Well, one of the reasons appears to be that he isn't trying very hard.  I like Bernie, but I'm starting to wonder if the people running his campaign do.

Tonight's debate is in Flint, Michigan.  I'm a little suspicious about the make-up of CNN's audience tonight.  I suspect not too many of them are actually from Flint because I feel like people who have been getting poisoned for two years don't do a lot of clapping and hooting.  But hey, Wolfie says CNN handed out some bottled water this weekend so we're cool, right?  Anyway, did you guys hear what Trump said yesterday?  What a dick!

7:58PM: Another national anthem before a debate.  Then Anderson Cooper referred to himself as "moderators".  Great start for CNN.

8:00PM: Anderson started off by running earnestly through the whole story about how the Michigan state government allowed an entire city to be poisoned by drinking water to save money.  Hillary added, "Ummm, hey Coop, I do the disingenuous grandstanding around here, OK?"

8:02PM: Bernie thinks poisoning people shouldn't be what this country is about.  I feel like we'll be making a lot of painfully obvious points tonight.

8:03PM: Hillary adds that the state and federal government should be sending some money so that the water can be not poisonous in the future.  Also a solid idea.  Hey, do either of you know any of those Senate folks, or that Obama fellow?  I bet they could help with that.

8:05PM: A lady from Flint said she's not sure if she'll ever trust the water again.  That's such a good point.  I don't know that this is necessarily fixable.  If I lived in Flint, you couldn't pay me enough to drink the tap water ever again no matter how many government jackasses told me it was safe.

8:08PM: Bernie says people shouldn't have to pay a water bill for poisoned water.  Wait, is that currently happening?  What the fuck is wrong with Michigan?

8:10PM: We're getting to Bernie's part of this debate.  For those of you who haven't met Bernie, he's not a big fan of corporations.  You know who else doesn't like corporations?  People in Flint, because corporations blew out of town and turned Flint into a goddamn nightmare.

8:12PM: Coop asked Hillary if she would fire the head of the EPA.  Her answer seemed to be that she doesn't know how high the problem went in the EPA.  The correct answer to that question, at least while you're standing in Flint, is "yes Coop, I would definitely fire that dude".  Bernie kind of balked at firing the head of the EPA too, but he did a better job of it.

8:16PM: Hillary committed to replacing all lead water pipes as President, but also talked about how some houses have lead paint and she's going to get rid of that too.  If you vote for Hillary, she will personally re-paint your house.

8:18PM: Some guy asked Hillary why the people of Flint should believe that she's not just using Flint to score political points, since she never really talked about Flint before.  Her basic answer was "listen, the political points were so easy here.  Your Governor is a moron".

8:20PM: Same question to Bernie.  He didn't do much better.  Yes, you're being used to score political points.  If you don't like it, why did you show up tonight?

8:23PM: Hillary just did a minute on not letting corporations export jobs.  Bernie immediately responded by hammering her on NAFTA.

8:26PM: Hillary said Bernie was against the auto bailout and Bernie made a face that defied description.  Then Bernie said Hillary was all for bailing out her friends on Wall St.  Apparently both bailouts were in the same bill so I guess everyone's an asshole.

8:31PM: Bernie says he's not shy about being a one-issue candidate because his one issue is re-building the middle class.

8:32PM: Bernie doesn't really know what we're talking about anymore so he's going to talk about super pacs and why Hillary won't release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall St.  She keeps saying she'll do that when the Republicans do, which is a nonsense answer but she's sticking with it.

8:33PM: Hillary said Barack Obama took more money from Wall St. than any other person ever and then he stood up to Wall St. when the time came.  Wait, weren't we just talking, like five minutes ago, about that time Barack Obama gave Wall St. 700 billion dollars in unmarked bills with no oversight?

8:37PM: Bernie's not calling Hillary stupid, he's calling her trade policies stupid.

8:38PM: They're talking about the export-import bank now.  Coop wisely explained what that is before he asked Bernie why he opposes it.  Bernie said 75% of the money from the export-import bank goes to big businesses like Boeing.  Coop pointed out that no other Democrats agree with Bernie, but Ted Cruz does.  Ouch Coop.

8:39PM: Bernie said Democrats aren't always right.  Hillary made the DOES NOT COMPUTE face.

8:42PM: Basically, Bernie is saying the export-import bank mostly supports big business and Hillary's counterpoint is that it supports small businesses too.  As far as I can tell they're both basically right.  Democrat debates are boring.  Don't you guys want to order the military to commit war crimes or build a giant pointless wall?  Come on!

8:49PM: Big applause for the girl who got shot a couple of weeks ago by an uber driver but didn't die.  We really have big dreams in this country.  Hey everyone, maybe some of the children who get shot for no good reason in our country will just be horribly injured but not die!!!  USA! USA!

8:51PM: The girl's dad asked Hillary what she'll do about mass shootings and said he didn't want to hear about background checks and mental health.  Hillary immediately pivoted to that time Bernie voted to give gun manufacturers immunity.

8:53PM: Bernie says nobody has a magic solution to gun violence.  Why is that always the answer?  "Guns?  Hey man, I don't know magic".  Bernie is standing by his view that gun manufacturers should have immunity.  It's such a weird position.  Hillary, correctly, pointed out that manufacturers could make guns safer but they aren't doing it, so they are partially responsible.

8:59PM: Bernie is completely unraveling on guns and Hillary is absolutely destroying him.  She even went into how he talks about corporate greed all the time but he's protecting the corporate greed of gun manufacturers.  Bernie just keeps asking if he understands the question correctly and saying that Hillary wants to end gun manufacturing in America.

9:02PM: We've moved on to mass incarceration.  Lemon brought up the 1994 crime bill and asked Hillary why black people should trust her to get it right this time.  Hillary said Bernie voted for that bill and Don should ask him about it.

9:05PM: Lemon took Hillary's advice and asked Bernie about it.  Bernie said there was good stuff in the bill too (which is true).

9;06PM: A guy in the audience asked Bernie what experiences he's had which have allowed him to understand other cultures.  He talked a lot about his civil rights record, which sounds good.  Bernie did a solid job, but I feel like the right answer would have been an acknowledgement that Bernie has no idea what it's like to be black in America.

9:09PM: Lemon asked Hillary what racial blind spots she has and she chose to answer the question that the guy asked Bernie because Don's question was really hard.  Lemon, in a stunning display of doing his job, pushed back at her and asked the question again.  It was glorious!  Then, Hillary kind of gave the "I honestly don't know what it's like to be black" answer.  Don Lemon did journalism and then Hillary Clinton gave what sounded like a genuinely honest answer to a question.  I need a minute.

9:12PM: Bernie told a story about how a black friend of his couldn't get a cab in DC 20 years ago and then eventually came around to saying he doesn't really know what it's like to be black in America either.  Bernie's still rattled by the gun debate.  I'm surprised he hasn't left yet.

9:15PM: Remember that time Hillary Clinton used the phrase "super predators" in 1996?  Don Lemon does.  Don wants to know if it was racial code.  Hillary says she was talking about drug cartels.  OK.

9:17PM: Bernie just asked Hillary if she was just talking about some welfare bill from the 90s.  She said she wasn't and Bernie was like "OK, I"m going to talk about it anyway".  Hillary said they created 23 millions jobs in the 90s and Bernie was like "yeah, but what about NAFTA and Wall St.?"  I'm souring on Bernie again.  I feel like it's a bad sign for Bernie that every time I start to think I kind of like him I watch a debate and actually listen to him for two hours and then I kind of stop liking him.

9:24PM: Coop says the schools in Flint are failing and running out of money.  How about instead of spending money to fix the water we just build these people a new city because this sounds like a mess?  Seriously, there's lots of empty land between cities in the midwest.  We could put New Flint anywhere they want.

9:28PM: Bernie's going to tax the wealthy to fix schools.  I know Democrats don't like to hear this, but if you look at education budgets in cities, funding doesn't really look like the problem.  Schools need better leadership and better ideas more than they need more money.

9:30PM: Coop got booed for pointing out that teachers unions are the fucking worst.  When asked if she thinks unions protect bad teachers, Hillary said she wants to look at that, and then said she understands that's a common criticism and that we need to eliminate that criticism.  Not fix that problem, eliminate that criticism.  Yup.

9:34PM: Hillary keeps saying she wants to go further.  Sometimes it's unclear what she wants to go further than, but further she will go.

9:35PM: Lemon wants to know how Bernie will fund his big infrastructure plans.  I bet he's going to talk about taxing millionaires and billionaires.  Rats!  He talked about taxing corporations.  I was so close.

9:36PM: A student from a local college is asking about fracking.  Coop says she's an undecided voter but she's a college student so she's voting for Bernie.

9:37PM: Hillary wasn't willing to take an anti-fracking position, but said she'd make it more difficult.  Bernie jumped in and said he's 100% against fracking and then started talking about climate change.  Coop asked Bernie if Democratic Governors who say fracking can be done safely are wrong and he very glibly said "Yes".  Bernie's got his legs back under him now.

9:41PM: Hillary always completely ignores Bernie's premise that it's hard to be tough on industries that give you a lot of money.  Coop pushed her on a specific fund raiser with a big domestic fracking company.  Hillary said there's nothing to be concerned about there and then went for the applause line about how this debate is better than Republican debates.

9:44PM: Bernie agreed about the Republicans, but then asked a good question that he's asked before.  Why would these big corporations keep giving money to all of the candidates who keep saying the money has no influence on them?  Do they just like giving away money?  Do they get a sense of pride every time they see a silly campaign add?

9:50PM: Hillary is building a broad coalition of people across the country.  People who have lost any desire to get excited about anything and are made of 100% pragmatism.

9:52PM: Bernie says he wins polls against Trump way more than Hillary does.  I know that's true, but it really doesn't seem sustainable.  I understand why Bernie makes establishment Democrats nervous.  He's a little uneven as a candidate.

9:53PM: Some lady just asked Bernie if he thinks god is relevant.  When did the Republican debate start?  We eventually got to how Bernie is very proud to be Jewish and then Bernie subtly compared Trump to Hitler.  For the record, he really is more of a Mussolini.

9:55PM: The same lady asked Hillary for whom she prays.  Seriously, what's happening right now?  Fifteen minutes ago we were talking about science and climate change and now we're talking about who we pray for.  Reign it in Coop!

9:58PM: I prayed for this debate to end and Coop mercifully answered my prayers.

Closing Statements

Bernie started out talking about how his dad came to this country with no money and then went on to talk about the wealthy and super pacs and political revolution.

Hillary did a thing about breaking down barriers.  If you can find a way to believe anything she says, it was pretty solid.

Where's Jeb?

Last weekend we bid a sad farewell to Jeb Bush.  Sad isn't really the right word.  Last week we bid an underwhelmed farewell to Jeb Bush.  What happened to Jeb isn't as much of a mystery as people seem to think.  Like Mitt Romney and John Kerry and Al Gore, Jeb was yet another example of what happens if you give a candidate every possible advantage except a personality.

Jeb's campaign was like buying a box of 64 crayons and then opening them to find out that you've got 64 white crayons.  It's worse than boring.  64 red crayons is boring, 64 white crayons is boring and pointless.

That said, Jeb was at least moderately reasonable sometimes and tried to run a campaign that wasn't completely based on insults and yelling.  In a Democracy, we get the leadership we deserve.  If we're really stupid enough to elect Donald Trump, then that's what we deserve. 

On that cheery note, it's time for another debate.  I don't consider town halls real debates, so I haven't done one of these in a little while.  Tonight's debate is being hosted by CNN.  CNN is the absolute worst, and the non-Trump guys on the stage are getting desperate, and also we're in Texas, so this should be a debacle.

8:33PM: Bush 41 and Barbara Bush are in the house.  I assume they were always planning to attend this one, which makes Jeb's recent exit extra depressing.  Bush 41 doesn't look so good, but I assume that's what comes with watching your son fail at presidenting for eight years.

8:35PM: We're starting things off with the national anthem because Rubio and Cruz have recently been saying that this isn't a game and CNN says screw you to that bullshit.

8:40PM: CNN is now in the middle of five minutes of commercials they're running before the debate even starts.  When we finally got back Blitzer explained the rules of debates to us because this isn't the 50th debate we've had in the last 4 months.

8:43PM: Carson said they all need to be looking for solutions tonight instead of destroying each other.  What is Carson still doing here?  Does he not get cable?  Has he not heard that he's finished?

8:44PM: Kasich started the debate by telling young people that they can do whatever they want.  Sometimes I feel like Kasich is participating in a completely different campaign than everybody else.

8:45PM: Cruz says as President he'll do what he says he'll do.  That's 100% true.  He's a maniac and as President he'll do maniac things.

8:46PM: Blitzer, because he hates all of us, has decided to start right in on immigration.  If I could set Wolf's beard on fire with my mind right now, I would.

8:47PM: As Trump rambles through an answer about immigration, I'm struck by the fact that Trump seems so unfamiliar with even his own policies.  You listen to a guy like Ben Carson talk about foreign policy, and you can tell he's still learning and being sort of vague about stuff, and that makes sense because he has no experience in that area.  Trump sounds that way when he's talking about his own positions.  It's bizarre.

8:50PM: Rubio was kind enough to basically make my point for me, and then he followed up by hammering Trump on hiring immigrants instead of Americans.  Trump responded by saying it was too hot for Americans to work in Florida so that's why he had to hire immigrants.

8:52PM: Trump just spent 30 seconds randomly attacking Mitt Romney.  It's so strange to me that people can watch him talk and think "Yeah, that's my guy".

8:53PM: Rubio wants us to google Trump + Polish workers, so you should probably do that.  Trump's response about hiring immigrants is that he's the only one on the stage who's ever hired anyone.  These other guys have staffs, right?

8:55PM: Cruz says he was obstructing immigration reform in Congress while Trump was firing Dennis Rodman on TV.  Zing!

8:56PM: Every time a debate crowd boos Trump or cheers someone else, Trump accuses the crowd of being full of lobbyists.  I'm 100% sure Trump doesn't know what a lobbyist is.

8:57PM: Cruz, as he sometimes does and it terrifies me, just made a really good point.  Trump's insatiable need to be liked isn't exactly a great quality for a President, who often has to do things that people don't like.

8:58PM: Kasich gets to talk for a minute while Cruz and Rubio reload.

9:00PM: Ben thinks everything we do should be fair because he's running for President of kindergarten.  Honestly, I got bored while Ben was talking and checked my email.

9:02PM: Wolf asked Trump how he's going to get Mexico to pay for the wall since they're definitely not going to do that.  Trumps answer was, and I swear this is true, "I will, and it just got 10 feet taller".  Also, the wall in Trump's head is really tall.  Larger than whatever building they're in.  I mean, honestly, I'd love to see it.

9:04PM: Rubio just said Trump would use illegal immigrant labor to build the wall, and then accused him of wearing ties and suits made in China and Mexico.  Rubes is on fire, adding, when Trump said Rubio doesn't know anything about business, "I don't know anything about bankrupting four companies".  Then he said if Trump didn't inherit 200 million dollars he'd be selling watches in Manhattan.  Marco Bomaye!  Marco Bomaye!

9:08PM: More immigration talk.  Ya know, after years of trial and error, I've discovered that cheeseburgers don't give me heartburn, but almost everything else does.  That seems odd.  Should I be concerned about that?

9:11PM: Cruz has a habit of calling other people politicians as if he's some kind of farmer or something.

9:12PM: One of the moderators just asked Cruz why him and Rubio spend so much time arguing over who's going to be tougher on immigrants.  Cruz somehow wandered into a speech about judeo-christian values and dish washing.

9:14PM: Rubio said what a lot of Republicans say, that Latinos care about more than just  immigration.  Republicans aren't failing with Latinos because of some policy disagreement.  Republicans are failing with Latinos because Republicans have been weaponizing racism by using the issue of immigration as a bludgeon and Latinos are understandably offended by being the target of that weaponized racism.

9:16PM: I'm getting a little tired of Kasich's Mr. Nice Guy act.

9:19PM: Trump started his answer by saying that he doesn't believe anything Telemundo says.  Then he said he's bringing Latinos into the Republican party, and then he said he loves Telemundo, and then he said Telemundo is fine.  Then he said he settled his lawsuit with Univision.  Watching Trump talk is like watching a circus that all the humans have abandoned so the animals are just sort of wandering around and eating stuff.

9:22PM: Cruz says that one more liberal justice would erase the 2nd amendment.  Justices don't get to just erase stuff in the Constitution.  I'm sure about that, I checked.

9:23PM: Hugh Hewitt says religious liberty keeps him up at night.  Me too, but probably for different reasons.  Hugh is one of those people who has fever dreams about churches all crumbling down as soon as Hobby Lobby has to let a female employee get birth control.

9:26PM: Trump says Cruz needs to apologize for criticizing Trump's sister, who is apparently a judge.  Then Cruz accused Trump of implying that Cruz is a "crazy zealot" and Trump responded by asking Cruz if he was calling himself a crazy zealot.  I think Cruz needs a minute to recover.

9:30PM: Trump says he's OK with funding Planned Parenthood as long as they don't do abortions.  After Trump effectively stops Planned Parenthood from performing abortions, I predict he'll open his own chain of classy, gold-plated abortion clinics.

9:30PM: Kasich on same sex marriage, "the court has ruled and I've moved on".  Then he said if you own a business you need to sell stuff to everybody.  This is what passes as tolerant for Republicans, "I don't think gay people should have rights, but I'm not going to get all mad about it".

9:34PM: Rubio actually has something that sounds like a plan to replace Obamacare.  It was vague and poorly thought out, but still, Trump's plan is just "something much better".

9:35PM: Trump said the insurance companies are making a fortune and it's not Ben's fault or Kasich's, but he's not mentioning any names specifically.  His basic point though, was that Obamacare was a huge gift to insurance companies, which I said like 6 years ago and is sadly true.

9:37PM: Rubio has a habit of making my points about Trump for me.  Trump says Rubio's biggest problem is that he doesn't understand the imaginary lines around states that Trump is talking about.  Trump rambled a little more about lines and about different plans, to which Rubio said "now he's repeating himself".  The crowd laughed and cheered for about a minute.  Rubio then went into a stand-up routine in which he mocked Trump's stump speech.  Rubio is in charge right now.

9:40PM: Kasich says hospital bills are harder to translate then the dead sea scrolls.  One guy in the audience loved that reference.  I'm starting to zero in on why Kasich isn't winning.  When he's not talking about how nice he is and how 12 year old girls don't like yelling, his policy answers are very jargony and they sort of go over everyone's head.

9:43PM: Ben says health care is not a right, but it is a responsibility for society.  How is it that the right to life people don't believe that staying alive is a right?  I wish one of these CNN people would ask that question.  Where's Anderson Cooper when you need him?

9:45PM: Blitzer keeps trying to interrupt Ben because Ben is way over his time, but Ben's just like "look, health care is the only thing I know about and I'm going to talk as long as I want".  Then Blitzer tried to move on and Cruz asked if he can talk for a while.  Blitzer tried to stop him for a second but then just gave up and let him talk.  If I had set Blitzer's beard on fire an hour ago we wouldn't be listening to Ted Cruz talk right now.

9:48PM: Cruz is now badgering Trump on health care.  Rubio and Cruz are standing on either side of Trump and just hammering him on everything.  It's really fun, but also instructive.  Trump, for all his bluster, is a lightweight intellect who doesn't know anything about governing, and he can't actually win debates against people who do this for a living, like say, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

9:51PM: Trump says he'll balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud and abuse.  Candidates say that every year and it means they have no idea how to balance the budget.  Nobody has ever actually balanced a budget just by cutting waste, fraud and abuse.

9:53PM: Why won't Kasich just say "No, Donald's budget plan won't work because he has no idea what he's talking about"?  I've really soured on Kasich lately.  If he doesn't want to win, why should I want him to win?

9:56PM: Trump says Mitt Romney's late disclosure of his tax returns cost him "bigly".  Trump doesn't speak English so goodly.

9:57PM: Hugh Hewitt tried to ask Trump if he was lying when he said he'd release his tax returns.  Trump responded by insulting Hugh's ratings.  Rubio wisely took his time on the tax return question to talk about an actual important thing.  Hugh Hewitt really wants to talk about tax returns though.

9:59PM: Cruz is talking about how Trump can't beat Hillary but Cruz can.  I'm pretty sure neither of them can.

10:01PM: Trump says he's beating Cruz so badly in polls that it's embarrassing for Trump.  He even brags like a seven year old.

10:04PM: Trump says it's unfair that he's being audited because his company is so big.  For a guy who supposedly wins so much, he whines a lot.

10:09PM: Trump says he's a friend of Israel because he once was the grand marshal of a Israeli day parade.  I once went to a St. Patrick's Day parade.  Can I be ambassador to Ireland?

10:11PM: Trump made a good point about how you can't really broker peace for Israel if you're not seen as somewhat neutral.  Cruz gives no fucks about that.

10:14PM: Rubio also agrees that neutrality is overrated and I guess peace is too because Rubio seems to believe it isn't possible.

10:15PM: Rubio says Trump will maybe bring condos to the Palestinian areas.  Rubio brought all the zingers tonight and the crowd loves them.

10:16PM: I've always said Kasich is a sneaky hawk and now he's proving my point by talking about regime change in North Korea.  I think Kasich might want to invade North Korea.  That sounds like a bad plan.  Blitzer asked him specifically if he would risk war for regime change and Kasich said it depends.  Yikes.

10:18PM: Blitzer keeps talking about the rules but one of the rules seems to be that Trump gets to talk as long as he wants about whatever he wants whenever he raises his hand.

10:20PM: Carson was asked about North Korea and answered by complaining about how much time he's had to talk tonight.  My impulse is to complain about why Ben is still here, but to be honest, I'm just happy Carly Fiorina's gone so I'll take the win and move on.

10:22PM: Ben Carson's tie tonight defies description.  It's like somebody wrapped two ties around each other.

10:23PM: Apparently there's been a cease fire in Syria for about 22 hours and Trump is already sure it isn't working.  Cruz at least summoned the humanity to say that he hopes it works.

10:25PM: Trump says he gave checks to George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004.  Principles!

10:26PM: Rubio says Trump is asking to be Commander in Chief.  I would say he's closer to demanding it, but whatever.

10:27PM: Trump keeps saying he'll get other countries to pay us more to have our troops there.  Does Trump have some kind of magic way to extract money from other countries?  This is such a bizarre claim and he makes it all the time.

10:29PM: Trump just called Rubio a choke artist and Cruz a liar.  They get to respond but first Kasich's going to talk a little.  He just gave us a Libya geography lesson.  They have a lot of desert.

10:32PM: Trump and Cruz are now arguing about whose pants are on fire.  Trump also, once again, asserted that anyone who cheers for anyone but him is a lobbyist.  Rubio is wisely staying out of it for a minute.

10:34PM: Ben is trying to say that his name was mentioned, I honestly don't think it was.  Ben's getting a little desperate.  Blitzer is useless.

10:36PM: Rubio is pretty agitated explaining what the FBI wants Apple to do.  He finished by saying that Apple's brand is not more important than national security.  Everybody seems to agree that Apple should do what the FBI wants them to do.  I get the sense that Apple is making a slippery slope argument, and I always hate those.

10:39PM: Kasich is openly advocating for backroom deals to settle arguments about national security and privacy.  I feel like that's not really what we want.

10:40PM: Question to Trump...why not build a Canada wall?  I'm surprised he had the discipline to stop himself from promising to build the best Canada wall ever.  He once again mentioned that his Mexico wall is going to be very tall.  I'm so interested in this now.  How tall is very tall?  Like 100 feet?  Do you think we could get Trump to build us a scale model just for fun?

Closing Statements:

Dr. Ben - Ben seemed to be plugging the movie they made about him.  Let's just move on.
Kasich - Experience matters and also he recently won a poll against Hillary Clinton.  Unfortunately, Republicans seem to have no interest in voting for John.
Rubio - Marco says this campaign has come a long way.  It's basically March and there's still five of you.  You haven't come far enough yet.
Ted - Ted promises that he'll continue to not do anything and fight against anyone who tries.
Trumpster - Trump says politicians are all talk and no action.  Why is Trump completely orange except for the skin around his eyes?

OK, that's it.  Super Tuesday is next week and Trump is probably going to win a bunch of states and then there's really nothing we can do about him, so that'll be fun.

Are You Not Entertained?

There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity.  Donald Trump is one of the most ignorant people you could imagine, but he's not a stupid guy.  Trump is a fascist who's attempting to rise to power by acting like a populist.  It's a very old trick, but it's a smart one because it works sometimes.

Skipping this debate is also not stupid.  There's no downside in this for Trump.  He gets the attention he craves without having to debate the people who are actually trying to beat him.  He gets to watch everyone attack Ted Cruz while he puts on a rival event as a monument to his narcissism and megalomania.  

And there's a stretch goal too.  Trump's supporters only get news from Fox.  Those are his people.  If he can convince his supporters that Fox is just like every other media outlet, with their bias against Trump and his amazing truth telling, then he can inoculate himself against any criticism.  There will be no source of information that can convince his supporters that they should look at other candidates, no matter what he does.  This could be a decent plan.  

Meanwhile Democrats are LOVING this.  I watched MSNBC for most of the hour leading up to the debate.  I would describe the mood on Chris Hayes' show as "Obama election level giddy".  They're watching this one guy, this silly joke of a man, burn down their rival party on national television.  You can see how this would be fun for them.  But listen Democrats.  Trump support is incredibly virulent.  He's like one of those movies where one monkey escapes from a lab and two days later it's only monkeys and zombies and Brad Pitt.  Be careful what you wish for Democrats.  Trump getting nominated seems like an easy win...but what if you lose.  We all still have to live here with the zombie monkeys.

8:57PM: I had to watch Bill O'Reilly read his fan mail while I waited for the debate to start.  It appears Bill mostly writes books about killing people.  That's not weird.

9:00PM: Tonight's debate is being moderated by Fox's A team (which is just Chris Wallace) along with Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly.  Points to Megyn for not eating shit from Trump.  I don't like her haircut, but to be fair, I don't like Bret's head.

9:03PM: Megyn asked Ted about Trump not being there.  Ted, in a stunning display of his superficial charm, said "I"m a maniac, everyone on this stage is fat and ugly and Ben, you're a terrible surgeon.  Now that we've got the Trump stuff out of the way...".  

9:06PM: Rubio called Trump the greatest show on Earth and then immediately started insulting Barack Obama.  Marco seems riled up tonight.  I don't love it.

9:07PM: Everything Jeb says sounds a little pathetic.  Jeb!

9:09PM: More than anyone else, Chris Christie likes to talk directly to the camera.  He has this habit of dramatically turning to the camera mid-answer.  It's pretty unsettling.

9:11PM: Rand just called his dad "the most honest man in politics" in a generation.  He may not be wrong about that.  Baier asked him if Cruz is the intellectual and political heir to Ron Paul.  Rand responded with a low key disdain that was really the correct tone.

9:13PM: Rubio just interrupted a discussion between Ted and Rand about auditing the Fed to tell us that he's going to kill ISIS fighters and keep everyone safe (this was, I guess, a response to Rand's position about bulk data collection).  As usual, Rand is for the government getting a warrant before they can go through your stuff and Marco is for killing terrorists and worrying about your stupid rights later.

9:16PM: Ben has performed lots of surgeries, so obviously he's qualified to be President.  Why is Ben still here?  Everyone knows he's done.  Can't we at least put him at the kiddie table with the other nobodies?

9:18PM: Ted, again, says he'll utterly destroy ISIS.  With talking points I assume.  Ted wants to arm the Kurds.  Please can we just once not arm random people we just heard of in the Middle East?  Please.  Just try it once.  Why is handing out weapons always our move?  Why are we so stupid?  

9:20PM: Ted saw an opportunity to mention Reagan and dove right in.  No mention of that time Reagan sold weapons to Iran though.  Republicans always forget about that.

9:26PM: Wallace tried to get Christie to attack Cruz and Christie took the opportunity to hammer Hillary Clinton for a minute.  Ted argued that he should get his 30 seconds since his name was mentioned, but Wallace correctly pointed out that his name was only mentioned in the question, not in Christie's answer, and completely shut Ted down.  I'm glad Wallace is here.

9:28PM: The crowd booed Wallace for asking Jeb about his brother's quagmires.  Why?  I'm concerned that we let this state have such a big voice in electing our Presidents.  

9:29PM: Cruz is complaining about the questions.  THAT NEVER WORKS.  WHY DON'T ANY OF THESE GUYS NOTICE HOW THAT NEVER WORKS???  I also can't tell if the crowd is for or against Cruz.  They booed after Cruz finished complaining, but it was hard to say whether they were booing his complaining or Wallace's mean questions.

9:31PM: Rand on Syria "should we be bombing both sides of the war?" and then "arming the allies of ISIS will make the situation worse."  Maybe I should just be for Rand.  There's something I don't like about him, but his foreign policy is so much better.  Like, SOOOO much better.

9:34PM: Megyn asked Rubio if his position on dealing with muslim citizens and closing down mosques runs afoul of the first amendment.  Marco responded by saying the word terrorism a lot and being very angry.  I'm souring on Marco.

9:37PM: Christie says Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have made law enforcement the enemy.  I don't agree with the Obama part, but I have to ask about the Hillary part.  Where is he getting that?  She was Secretary of State.  What does that have to do with domestic law enforcement?  

9:39PM: Ben rambled for a while but then he mentioned Teddy Roosevelt.  Bully!

9:40PM: Megyn just asked Kasich about technological back doors for smart phones and Kasich said we really shouldn't talk about that because it needs to be solved in the White House situation room, which he seemed very confident would happen.  Sometimes I feel like Kasich knows lots of secret stuff.  

9:41PM: I've said this before but it's worth another mention.  Kasich is a sneaky hawk.  He seems like a really nice guy and you think "nah, grampa John would never bomb people".  But he would, he'd bomb lots of people.

9:42PM: Jeb is talking about how people died because of the VA.  From the guy whose brother sent those veterans to Iraq for shits and giggles.  It really does bring the problem with Jeb's candidacy into focus.

9:44PM: YouTube question about the relationship between African-American communities and police departments.  Baier wisely threw it to Rand because he's the one guy on the stage who might actually give a shit.

9:48PM: Bret just astutely pointed out that promises to cut waste, fraud and abuse never materialize.  Points to Bret.  

9:49PM: Christie is going to cut Planned Parenthood funding.  Hooray for talking points!

9:49PM: According to a Fox infographic, first amendment repeal is the third most searched repeal topic.  That feels concerning and I'd really rather talk about that instead of more stump speeching about repealing Obamacare.  We get it.  You guys don't like Obama.

9:51PM: I think Bret just called Jeb Senator Bush, so I'm taking his points back.  Jeb is for Puerto Rican statehood.  OK.

9:52PM: Question to Kasich about poison water in Michigan.  John's answer was less than inspiring, but he doesn't really have that passionate anger gear.  I'm fairly certain John wouldn't poison his own citizens.  I wish he would have calmly said the Michigan Governor should resign.

9:54PM: Marco never thought cap and trade was a good idea.  That makes two of us, but I suspect we have different motivations.

10:00PM: Video montage of Marco's flip floppery on amnesty.  Is it so bad that Marco isn't 100% sure about the best way to deal with immigration reform?  That would seem to put him in the category of everybody.  Some of these guys just want to build a giant wall.  At least Marco has been willing to talk about actual ideas.

10:01PM: Jeb just plugged a book he wrote as "affordable for everybody".  I think he was going for self-deprecating, but it came off more like "I know my campaign is over so please buy my book at least".

10:03PM: We're arguing about immigration now.  I couldn't be more tired of this topic.  

10:04PM: Question about how Ted added a poison pill amendment to an immigration bill, then claimed it wasn't a poison pill, then claimed it was.  Yes, Ted is a pathological liar and a monster.  We already knew that.  I did, anyway.

10:06PM: Big applause for Steve King (the terrible Iowa Congressman, not the author).  I can't wait until Tuesday when we don't have to pay attention to Iowa for another four years.

10:08PM: Ted just listed Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin as references.  So yeah.

10:09PM: Marco just said, directly to Ted's face, that Ted's been willing to do or say anything to get votes.  Shots fired.  I like Marco again.  On the other hand, we're still on immigration so I kind of wish one of those shots would hit me in the face.

10:10PM: Christie is going back to his "I hate listening to these guys argue" thing.  I think it's a good move for Chris.  He really ought to be doing better.

10:11PM: People who post nonsense on YouTube are now calling themselves YouTube creators, so that's fun.  YouTube may be the worst thing that's ever happened to us.

10:12PM: Carson was clearly sleeping when Megyn tried to throw the YouTube question to him.  Like me, Carson had apparently forgotten that he was at the debate.  Carson suggested that one out of every ten immigrants could be a terrorist.  That's baseless and dangerous and makes Ben less funny.

10:14PM: Wallace is steering us away from immigration.  Once again, I'm glad he's here.

10:14PM: Question to Ted about how nobody in Congress likes him.  He says people who work for his campaign like him, and so do idiots like Steve King.  So there.

10:16PM: Jeb says he's seen polls where he's beating Hillary pretty regularly.  Those are just polls Jeb takes at family gatherings, and even those are pretty close.

10:17PM: For the record, I think Barack Obama would be a pretty good Supreme Court Justice.  Marco disagrees, but that's mostly because Marco, like way too many people, believes the Supreme Court is a political body.

10:18PM: Marco wants to be clear that Jesus is the only savior.  Ugh.  Then he said "Bernie Sanders would make a good President...of Sweden".  Ha, that was good.  Then he mentioned Benghazi.  Ugh again.  That answer was a real roller coaster for me.

10:20PM: Wallace just asked Christie about the bridge thing.  Is this actually a real thing for people?  I always thought this was the stupidest story.  Do people really care about it?  It makes no sense to me.

10:25PM: I always like Kasich's answer on taking federal money for medicare.  People in Ohio paid federal taxes, then the federal government was like "hey, do you want some of this money back?" and Kasich was like "yes please".  I don't think that makes you a big government guy.

10:27PM: Wallace seems to be on a tear of religious questions.  I'm getting less happy that he's here.  We're talking about Kim Davis now.  Ugh.  Christie's answer was pretty not terrible.  Why couldn't somebody else in her office just do the marriage license?  Seems like a simple enough answer.  I would also suggest she could have just quit if she didn't like her job anymore, but apparently that's not a viable answer.

10:30PM: Marco says Jesus makes us a special nation.  I don't really know what to make of Marco these days.  I really want to be able to vote for him if he winds up running against Hillary, but he's not making it easy.

10:32PM: Abortion always undermines Rand's Libertarianism.  It did the same thing to his dad.  He has to be anti-abortion, being a Republican and all, but saying the government should make that decision for people runs counter to everything he believes.  It's tough being a Libertarian in a party that wants the government to enforce their religious beliefs.

10:36PM: Marco gave us plenty of tough talk about Iran.  Then Kasich chimed in. He's been talking to Belgian diplomats and thinks we can bring the world together.  Is Kasich James Bond?  

10:38PM: Christie starts every answer with a brief explanation of how he's going to make his answer about Hillary Clinton.  I don't like her either, so I'm kind of on board, but it's also kind of annoying and repetitive.

10:43PM: Rand thinks that any CEO who did what Bill Clinton did with an intern would be fired and shunned.  I think Rand may have some rose colored glasses regarding how effectively CEOs are held accountable.  I'm fairly certain Bill wasn't the only CEO touching the interns, especially in the 90's.  

10:46PM: Jeb says Republicans shouldn't be mocking disabled people.  Agreed.

10:46PM: Big applause for the Governor of Iowa, who can't finish a full sentence without shilling for ethanol.  Iowa really is the worst.  Ted's not in the pocket of ethanol because he's too busy being the pocket of oil.  I wouldn't call that a principled position.

10:49PM: Ben says we are blessed with tremendous energy in this country.  That's pretty ironic coming from Ben.

Here come the closing statements:

Rand - He misses doing eye surgery and doesn't like debt.  Then the Rand people went nuts.

Kasich - We can solve problems, and I know this because I'm actually the secret shadow president of the world.

Christie - He mentioned September 11th.  I'm not kidding.  He's like Giuliani in a fat suit.

Jeb! - My band has some CDs for sale in the back if you want to grab one on the way out.

Dr. Ben - Ben recited the preamble to the Constitution, seemingly from memory.  Ben gets an A in 7th grade social studies.

Marco - Something about shining America's light and the 21st century.  He's still better at debating than these other guys.

Ted - Ted frequently brags that he will kill the terrorists.  I wonder if he's planning to do it himself.

I'm really interested to see who wins on Monday.  This should be fascinating.  

I'm Still Not Feeling the Bern

Last time I watched a Democratic debate two of the candidates dropped out of the race immediately after the debate.  Come to think of it, Jim Webb may have dropped out during the debate.  I've heard about debates happening since then, but the DNC did a pretty good job of keeping them secret.  I heard one of them was on the moon and you could only watch it with a telescope.  Hillary 2016!

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, they seem to be choosing between Cruz and Trump.  That's as bad as it could be.  If we elect one of them, it's not like he'll be President for a few weeks and we can all have a good laugh and move on.  We'd be stuck with him for four years.  We have nuclear weapons.  Lots of them.  It's a bad situation.

So, the Democrats really need to get their act together.  I still have concerns about Sanders in a general election, and the Clinton campaign is predictably collapsing.  I can't figure out what's wrong with the Clinton campaign except to say that they're just bad at being in a race.  Also, Martin O'Malley is a person who exists.  I thought O'Malley could at least get enough support to maybe drop out and make an impact with an endorsement.  Even that seems like a long shot now.  Things are bleak, is what I'm saying.

8:53PM: Tonight's debate is in South Carolina where Bernie Sanders is, let's be honest, just way too Jewish for those people.  Clinton leads by approximately 109 percent in South Carolina polls.  I assume Debbie Wasserman Schultz is spending these last few minutes offering Sanders increasing amounts of money to just go back to Vermont and eat some ice cream.

8:57PM: Sounds like Bernie has recently changed his position on guns, or at least some part of the gun debate.  That's fine.  I was never under the impression that any of these people could actually do something about guns if elected, I was more concerned about Bernie's position on guns being inconsistent with everything else he believes.  I still have that concern.

9:00PM: Tonight's debate is being moderated by Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell.  Color me underwhelmed.  To be fair, I can't really think of anyone at NBC who I would trust to not be completely in the tank for Hillary.  I think they still feel bad about 2008.  Obama was just so cool though.

9:02PM: Apparently we'll have questions from "the YouTube community" throughout the debate.  Oh goodie.  Glad to see NBC can't even come up with two hours of their own questions.

9:03PM: Hillary thinks Martin Luther King Jr. was pretty great.  Leave it to Hillary to take controversial positions.  She's a real maverick.

9:04PM: Bernie also thinks Dr. King was super.  African-American voters do not think Bernie is super.  I don't really understand that.  It can't just be that he's old and white.  Hillary is almost as old, and incredibly white.  Like, translucently white.

9:05PM: O'Malley is a fan of Dr. King too.  His actual name is Martin, so I guess he wins this round?

9:07PM: Bernie's top three priorities would be universal health care, $15/hr minimum wage and infrastructure spending to create jobs.  Hillary's are essentially the same, but she added equal pay for equal work.  Both of them want to bring the country together.

9:09PM: O'Malley fit like five things into his first priority.  He threw in support for unions and immigration reform.  Then he talked about climate change.  Marty's top three priorities are roughly 13 different things.  He said everything that a Democrat has even been for.

9:10PM: Bernie just called Clinton's attacks on him about guns disingenuous.  Clinton came back by reciting Bernie's record on gun votes.  He looks genuinely embarrassed, which again raises my concerns about his motivation on this issue.

9:14PM: Hey Marty, do you want to take everyone's guns?  O'Malley says he's never met a self-respecting deer hunter who needed an automatic weapon to down a deer.  Marty also says he agrees with Bernie and Hillary, they've both been inconsistent on guns.  Zing! You've just been O'Malleyed!

9:17PM: Hillary says we need to end the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.  She added "some of that shit was signed into law by my husband, but what can I say, I married a dumbass...you get it ladies".  OK I made that second part up.

9:19PM: Bernie is employing the Trump argument of quoting polls he's leading.  Sanders is confident that African-American voters will come around when they become familiar with his record.  That could be true. He is kind of running out of time though.

9:20PM: O'Malley was the only person to actually say "black lives matter".  I feel like that should count for something, but I have a sense that it won't.

9:21PM: Holt says we're going to hear from "some of the most prominent voices on YouTube".  Prominent voices on YouTube?  What?  I'm interested to see what cats would ask Presidential candidates.

9:23PM: Sanders just said "if a police officer breaks the law, like any other public official, they should be held accountable".  Is it just me, or did he subtly motion towards Hillary as he said "like any other public official"?  Maybe it's just me.

9:25PM: We've been talking about heroin I think.  I don't know, I got distracted by a fire truck outside my building.  Bernie said something about pharmaceutical companies taking some responsibility for the drugs they're producing.  I'm for that.

9:31PM: Clinton says the Democratic party worked since Harry Truman to get the Affordable Care Act passed.  I'm not sure that's exactly what Harry had in mind, but OK.  The question was does Bernie want to destroy Obamacare.  Hillary didn't answer that question, which Bernie quickly pointed out.

9:33PM: Bernie, as we all know, is for universal health care.  He wants to provide health care for everyone and get rid of private insurance.  This is a simple question.  Do you want a candidate who's for universal public health care or do you want a candidate who's for subsidizing private health care?  It's a simple question.  I don't know what Hillary is arguing about.  Bernie's a socialist.  He wants universal health care.  It's the one thing everyone knows about him.

9:36PM: Hillary's argument seems to be that Bernie's goal of universal health care would force us to start from scratch and give up the gains made by the Affordable Care Act.  That's a fair point.  Hillary is basically saying we'll never have the votes for universal health care.

9:39PM: Bernie says we need to have guts and he brought up the influence of money on politics.  This is pragmatism vs. idealism and it's a pretty fun debate but neither of them appear to be having any fun.  Maybe (seriously) this is why Trump is doing so well.  He seems to be having a blast.  Yeah, he's angry, but he's happy to be angry.  These two look like they're getting side by side colonoscopies.  Also, I think Martin O'Malley is still here but I can't really be sure.

9:43PM: Oh, there's Marty, unsuccessfully trying to break the Sanders filibuster.  When he finally got to talk, he quoted Frederick Douglass and everyone clapped but still nobody voted for him.

9;45PM: Some fucking douchebag from YouTube just asked how these people are going to engage his generation.  Hillary talked about how young people value their independence and autonomy.  Wrong.  I work with college students.  They're the least independent and autonomous people you could ever meet.  Who's next?  Oh, apparently nobody, only Hillary gets to answer that question.  Awesome job NBC.

9:52PM: Bernie says "I don't get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs".  Ouch.  We all understand Bernie would be roughly a trillion times tougher on Wall St. than Hillary, right?  If you want Wall St. to be better regulated, you're voting for Bernie.  We really shouldn't have to spend a lot of time of this.

9:54PM: Hillary just called Dodd-Frank a "regulatory scheme".  I have a feeling you'll be hearing that sound bite in a Ted Cruz commercial this fall.  Where is Elizabeth Warren right now?  Why won't she run?  Is she busy?  Can't somebody else do whatever it is she's doing right now?

9:56PM: O'Malley is making snide remarks every time Hillary pauses.  It's pretty funny.

9:57PM: Marty says he's for a modern version of Glass-Steagall and Hillary isn't.  That appears to be true.  Hillary responded by saying O'Malley took Wall St. money in the past.  Yes, yes, everyone's a whore.

9:59PM: In case you didn't know who Bernie was talking about when he brought up Goldman Sachs speaking fees a few minutes ago, he was talking about Hillary Clinton.

10:01PM: How will Bernie pay for all his fun socialism?  Taxes on Wall St. speculation.  I think Bernie believes he has adequately explained himself now, but I don't think most people understand Bernie's plan anymore than they did two minutes ago.

10:04PM: Solid explanation of something from Bernie.  Yes, he would raise middle class taxes to pay for medicare for all, but those same people wouldn't have to pay $10,000 in private health insurance premiums anymore.  My employer does pay a nice sum for my health insurance, but if Bernie got rid of those premiums, I don't feel super confident that my employer would gladly just hand that money over to me.

10:07PM: Another YouTube question.  This one had cartoons.  Journalism!

10:09PM: Bernie wants to move our energy system away from fossil fuels.

10:10PM: Marty invited the other two to join him in pledging to have a 100% clean energy electrical grid by 2050.  Lester decided to go to a commercial instead of letting them answer.

10:13PM: Chuck Todd is now talking to the camera for some reason.  Since when do debates have halftime?

10:16PM: Andrea asked Bernie if it's now time to re-open a US embassy in Tehran.  Personally, I would love to see Argo 2.

10:19PM: Hillary's three point plan for Syria doesn't include ground forces.  Marty has a three point plan for lunch tomorrow, but honestly, two of the points are just two different kinds of cheese and I'm not sure that really counts.

10:20PM: Bernie showed some restraint by not actually staring directly at Hillary while talking about the mistakes of Iraq.

10:21PM: Marty says Governors have led us to victory in two world wars.  George W. Bush was a Governor too.  There may be a hole in Marty's argument.

10:23PM: Bernie, once again, pointed out that he strongly opposed the Iraq war.  He added "UNLIKE SOME OTHER HILLARY CLINTONS WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS".  OK he didn't, but maybe he should have.

10:27PM: We all agree Assad is bad.  Bernie seems to be advocating for a one problem at a time approach, saying we should work with anyone who wants to destroy ISIS because that has to come first.  I feel like that's one of those things you say before you become President and realize the actual scope of the mess over there.

10:29PM: Hillary just said something about advancing your security and your values.  No, no to the second thing.  We tried that.  Not everyone wants our values.  Values are things that you value.  You can't tell other countries what they're supposed to value and you certainly can't bomb them into sharing your values.  We've learned nothing.

10:31PM: Marty says the government should have to get a warrant no matter what door they want to come through.  Some people in the audience applauded very loudly and I'm pretty sure Rand Paul was one of them.

10:33PM: Bernie says private companies and the government know where you are at this very moment.  Hi private companies!  Would you like to send me some money or something?

10:38PM: Even though all night nobody else ever got to follow up on the last question after a break, Hillary gets 30 seconds to make a point about what they were talking about before the break.  O'Malley asked if he could also have 30 seconds.  The moderators seemed very reluctant but Marty got his 30 seconds in and used it to say bad things about Trump.

10:41PM: Would Bill Clinton have a real policy role in Hillary's White House, or just a kitchen table role?  She says he'd advise her on the economy.  Weird question, OK answer.

10:43PM: Goldman Sachs will not have a Treasury Secretary in Bernie's cabinet.  Well that should fix it.

10:44PM: Bernie says Bill Clinton's actions (I assume we're talking about the intern banging) were deplorable but that's not what he's here to talk about.  That whole section was about Bill Clinton.  That was weird.

10:49PM: Lester asked them if there's anything they wanted to say tonight that they didn't get a chance to say.  He started with O'Malley and everyone laughed.  Poor Marty.  He took his 60 seconds to talk about immigration, Puerto Rico, Honduras and El Salvador.  Maybe Marty is struggling because he's not great at staying on message.

10:51PM: Hillary took her time to talk about Flint, Michigan.  She just kicked the shit out of the Governor of Michigan, and rightfully so.  Bernie said he also called for the Governor's resignation.

10:53PM: Bernie also took his time to talk about money in politics.

I guess that's it.  I could name like 10 Democrats I like more than any of these three.  Booker/Warren 2016!

The Man That You Fear

This Republican primary race is hard to figure.  Nobody can rationally explain how Trump still leads all the polls.  Trump got himself in trouble recently by suggesting that we just stop letting muslims into the country.  And by "got himself in trouble" I mean scored another week of non-stop media coverage and surged in the polls.  Does Trump not allow follow-up questions?  Or if you ask him a follow-up question does he just yell and make faces until you give up?  How would this plan work?

For years, Trump insisted that Barack Obama was a secret muslim engaged in a lifelong plan to lie about being a muslim so he could become President of the United States and do...I don't know...whatever terrible thing Trump thinks he's going to do in the next year before he's not the President anymore.  Any yet, no muslim terrorist would be cagey enough to slip past airport screeners on the lookout for muslims.  Seems like a flawed plan to me.

Anyway, the part I really can't figure out is how Ted Cruz is suddenly pushing into a clear 2nd place.  How is Ted Cruz the anti-Trump?  How do you decide you don't like Trump and then you see Ted Cruz and you're like "sign me up!"?  If Donald Trump is your problem, Ted Cruz is not the answer.  If the things Donald Trump says scare you, Ted Cruz is the man that you fear. 

While Trump is wildly unelectable, comically so, Cruz is vaguely electable under the right circumstances.  For one thing, he at least has some experience governing.  He's terrible at it, also comically so, but he's done it a little.  And while Trump has the temperament of three toddlers in a man suit, Cruz has all the sociopathic tendencies of a serial killer.  That might sound unelectable, but serial killers only become serial killers by luring victims into his lair or whatever.

The point is, Cruz is like Trump only worse because he actually takes this election seriously and he may just be tricky enough to get nominated.  And if we have to choose between Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton my only suggestion would be that we all hold our breath until one of these parties gives us a decent candidate to vote for.  OK, let's see how long I can last tonight.

8:47PM: Tonight's debate is being moderated by Blitzer and some other CNN clowns.  I'm starting with zero patience for CNN so my attitude isn't going to get any better.

8:49PM: Rand immediately attacked Trump and said boots on the ground in Syria should be Arab boots.  Big pop from the crowd for Rand.  Interesting.

8:50PM: Kasich says his daughter doesn't like politics because it's loud and there's a lot of yelling.  I'm going to score that as two consecutive attacks on Trump.

8:52PM: Carly started off by saying "Like all of you, I'm angry".  That pretty much sums Carly up.

8:53PM: Jeb started off with something about how things are under attack and Hillary is under investigation and something else is under the gun.  I told you last time, Jeb loves to have fun with words.

8:54PM: Rubio apparently lived in Vegas for six years when he was a kid, and his dad smoked three cigars a day.  Then he said something stupid about traditional values but still, is it possible Rubio is actually interesting?  Why has he been hiding it?  Tell us more about your smokey Vegas upbringing!

8:57PM: Carson started off with a moment of silence for San Bernadino victims.  Then he made some tortured analogy about the country being in critical condition and excising the cancer of ISIS.  Ben's campaign is like Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense.

8:59PM: It's amazing how Trump still stands out on a stage full of egomaniacs.  He immediately pointed out how he's center stage and "people like" what he says.  He's like a little kid telling you how he did great at school today.

9:00PM: "I will build a wall, it'll be a great wall."  I don't really have to tell you who said that, right?

9:02PM: Jeb points out that banning all muslims from the United States isn't a serious proposal and might make some of the countries in the Middle East we're hoping will fight ISIS with us a little uncomfortable about working with us.  Then he called Trump a "chaos candidate".  Zing!  Trump responded, predictably, by insulting Jeb and Jeb's campaign and generally being a dick.

9:04PM: Question to Rubio: "You said banning all muslims is unconstitutional, but polls show a majority of Republicans support Trump's proposal...".  I wish Rubio had just said that constitutional things aren't up for a majority vote, but he said some other stuff instead.

9:06PM: Cruz just quoted FDR's grandfather, but then he actually made a vaguely coherent point about the difference between radical muslim terrorists and other muslims.  This is what I'm telling you about Cruz.  He knows how to sound normal.  He isn't.

9:08PM: Carly seems to be advocating for a new Patriot Act because the old one was written in 2001 and we need to invade the privacy of all the phones and apps and stuff that have been invented since then.  She said we need to work with the private sector and she can because she knows them.  I'm pretty sure these other guys know them too.

9:10PM:  Chris Christie's American flag pin is shaped like New Jersey, which is just adorable.

9:11PM: Kasich says the Saudi's have a coalition of 34 countries that want to help us fight terrorists.  Can we stop the debate and find out if that's true?  That sounds like a good step and I feel like it's a lot more important that whatever Trump is about to say.

9:14PM: Cruz is making Rand's point about focusing on bad guys instead of having more surveillance of law abiding citizens.  I imagine Rand is raising his hand pretty energetically right now but CNN doesn't care.

9:15PM: Cruz and Rubio are having an argument about which one of them is telling the truth about the USA Freedom Act.  I believe Rubio.  As I may have mentioned, Cruz is a sociopath.

9:17PM: Rand is casually attacking Rubio, saying that Rubio is for open borders.  That was weird and seemed to come from out of nowhere.  Rand got another loud cheer.  The Rand people are in the house tonight.

9:19PM: Christie after a five minute argument between Rand and Marco "if your eyes are glazed over right now, this is what it's like on the floor of the Senate".  I couldn't tell you why Christie isn't doing better in this race.  Did MSBNC really land punches with that stupid bridge story?  That can't be it.

9:21PM: Ben just complained about how much time he's been allowed to talk.  That strategy literally never works.  Blitzer asked Ben who was right between Rand and Marco.  Ben, instead of, you know, taking a position on something, said "you'll have to ask them".  Ben is terrible at this.  How is he still here?

9:23PM: Blitzer asked Jeb a question that mentioned Jeb's brother.  Low blow Wolfie.

9:25PM: Carly says the government is too far behind the technological curve.  She's not wrong about that.

9:26PM: Question to Trump regarding his comment about "closing that internet up".  Trump wants to use our most brilliant people to keep ISIS off the internet and also penetrate the internet to find where ISIS is.  Does Trump think the internet is, like, a place you can go to?

9:29PM: I didn't listen to what Kasich just said because I was still trying to figure out what Trump was talking about.  Now I know why Kasich can't get any traction.

9:30PM: Cruz just called 15-30 bombing missions a day "photo op foreign policy".  How many bombs does Ted want to drop on Syria?  Syria isn't that big.  I think it's become fairly clear that we can't bomb our way out of this.  Also, when asked if he would bomb civilians in Syria, the gist of Cruz's answer was yes.  Sociopath.

9:32PM: Marco says you need a ground force to defeat ISIS.  He's not wrong.  He says you need a Sunni Arab ground force with some embedded Americans.  That's also probably right, but doesn't sound likely.

9:34PM: Blitzer seems to be trying to provoke fights between Rubio and everyone else.  If this was MSBNC, I'd say they were trying to make the only viable candidate look bad, but I don't think Wolf is that cagey.

9:35PM: Cruz says we need to be killing bad guys and not getting stuck in Middle Eastern civil wars. Be afraid.  Ted can do this.

9:36PM: Facebook question...apparently Trump recently said we should be killing families of ISIS members.  So, the Facebook guy was wondering, ya know, should we really be intentionally killing civilians?  Trump, amazingly, stood behind that idea and said it would make people think twice about joining ISIS.

9:39PM: Jeb says Trump can't insult his way to the Presidency.  Jeb is all over Trump right now. Trump said we will never be great again with Jeb's attitude and got booed for it.  These crowds never seem to have a lot of Trump people in them.  Who are the Trump people?

9:41PM: Breaking news from Ben, children don't like it when you tell them that you have to open their head up to remove a tumor.  Good note from Ben,

9:42PM: The other guy who isn't Wolf asked Ben if he's willing to be as ruthless in fighting ISIS as Churchill was in fighting the nazis.  Solid question.  Ben said he wouldn't say ruthless, but he would be tough.  Those aren't the same things though.  Ruthless is the right word.

9:44PM: Rand's people explode whenever mentions the Constitution.  He's like a band that has that one song everyone came to hear.  Meanwhile, more boos for Trump.

9:46PM: Kasich wants a massive, American-led army to defeat ISIS.  Kasich is a sneaky hawk.  You wouldn't expect it because he seems kind of laid back.

9:49PM: Christie is playing the "I'm not from Washington" card pretty hard.  It seems like that would work, but it doesn't work for Chris.  You would think maybe it's just because Trump is getting the anti-Washington votes for now, but I can't imagine the Trump people voting for Christie.  This race is a mess.  Also, Christie wants to be friends with the king of Jordan.

9:51PM: Watching Ben talk about foreign policy is like watching a 6th grader try to give a memorized book report.

9:56PM: Cruz seems to be co-opting all of Rand's ideas.  Now he's talking about how toppling dictators is a bad idea when the people who take over the country next are worse.  Rand has to be wondering why he's not doing better.  It can't be because Cruz is more likable.

9:58PM: Rubio's argument for toppling dictators is pretty coherent.  If a dictator is going to go anyway, why not get involved and try to help create a stable aftermath?  I'm not saying I agree, but I am saying Rubio seems to have a decent grasp on foreign policy.

10:00PM: Kasich mentioned the Saudi coalition again.  Does he have secret information that nobody else has?  I'm so intrigued.

10:00PM: Some guy was shouting at Trump from the audience.  Trump didn't take the bait.  I'm stunned.

10:01PM: Trump wishes we had the 4 or 5 trillion dollars we spent in Iraq back and that we had used it here on roads and stuff.  OK so this is one of those reasons why people like Trump.  He says stuff without thinking, but sometimes that means he says stuff without thinking about whether or not it fits with Republican dogma, and that lands with people.

10:03PM: Wolf asked Carson if the Middle East is better off with dictators.  That's kind of an unfair question and Ben sniffed it out and said dictators are bad but we can't just fix the Middle East with bombs.  Ben isn't a dumb guy.

10:05PM: Rand says "there's often variations of evil on both sides of a war".  That really is the foundation of Rand's foreign policy.  If we have no good choices, why bother choosing a side?

10:06PM: Cruz says all of these complicated questions are silly and we should just be defeating our enemies.  Ted doesn't realize that these questions about dictators are questions about who our real enemies are and if we should be taking sides in these fights.  Ted really shouldn't be President.

10:09PM: OK so we basically all agree that we have no good choices in the Middle East and the result of the Syrian civil war will be bad for us no matter how it turns out.  Can we just move on to something silly like the economy or guns or something?  This is depressing.

10:11PM: Quick kudos for Wolf here for not letting this debate be another episode of Trump and Friends.  On the other hand, we're really beating this foreign policy stuff to death.  Presidenting sometimes involves doing things in America too.

10:12PM: Would Christie shoot down a Russian plane in a no-fly zone?  Damn right he would!  Then he called the current President a feckless weakling.  Wolf seemed stunned.

10:13PM: Rand called Christie reckless and said "if you want World War 3 I think you've found your candidate".  I agree that Russia might not be cool with us shooting down their planes.  Then Rand mentioned that stupid bridge story.  Low blow Rand!  I'm giving Rand a time-out.

10:15PM: Jeb says he knows what he doesn't know and he wouldn't get his information from "the shows" (which is apparently something Trump said he does).  Get ready for some Trump insults!

10:16PM: Trump actually controlled himself and rather than attacking Jeb attacked CNN for asking Jeb about Trump, but then he said CNN just does it for ratings because he's still Trump.  Jeb didn't take the olive branch and punched back at Trump some more and then we got the insults I was waiting for about Jeb's poll numbers and his spot on the stage.

10:18PM: Kasich took the opportunity to jump in and be the voice of reason.  Then he mentioned the economy.  Yes! Please!  Something else!

10:19PM: Does being the head of surgery at a hospital qualify Carson to be the Commander in Chief?  The answer is no.  That's not what Ben said.  Ben said our country was designed to have citizen statesmen.  That's 100% true, but things are marginally more complicated now than they were in the 18th century.

10:20PM: We're going to talk about immigration now.  Ugh.  Part of Rubio's answer was "we will not be able to do anything on immigration...".  That's really all he needs to say.

10:22PM: Cruz and Rubio have basically the same haircut, but somehow they don't really look the same.  I think Ted's head is a little more oddly shaped.

10:24PM: Ted wants to secure the border.  Is anyone against securing the border?  I didn't think so.  Can we please move on?

10:25PM: Ted says he led the fight against Marco's immigration bill.  Yes, but Ted leads the fight against every bill ever because he's a legislative arsonist.

10:26PM: Every time two of these guys start fighting, Carly starts yelling about how this is why people don't like politics.  What did Carly think a debate was?  Sometimes people disagree.

10:27PM: People talk about Trump's hair a lot.  It really isn't so weird.  It's just kind of thin and an odd color.  It looks like cotton candy.

10:28PM: I feel like if you talked to Jeb in person, he'd be one of those people who really struggles to make eye contact.

10:29PM: Apparently Carson visited a Syrian refugee camp recently and called it "really quite nice".  He also said they need more medical care.  Seems like Ben could have just stayed there and we all would have won.

10:33PM: Rand says he hasn't taken a position on sending the 2,000 Syrian refugees already in the United States home.  Now would be a good time to take a position though.  We're having a debate.

10:35PM: Question from Facebook...if the bible says we need to embrace those in need, how can we justify not accepting refugees?  Christie's answer was basically, because the FBI says so.  We've come a long way in Republican politics when the FBI trumps the bible.

10:37PM: Wolf just said we are just beginning.  What?  This has already been going on for two hours.  I'm taking Wolf's words as a threat and quitting while I'm ahead.  These debates are too long.  We need to take Ben, Trump, Carly and Cruz and send them on a super secret mission somewhere until we can get this election settled.

Tough Talk

One quick thing before we start tonight's festivities.  I heard that Jeb Bush recently said he would kill baby Hitler.  I really can't think of a better example of everything that's wrong with our political process and the people we have to choose from to pick a President.

Here's this guy, Jeb.  He's trying to get us to elect him to a very complicated job with lots of difficult decisions.  When faced with the prospect of an infant who is eventually going to grow up to kill millions of people, his first reaction is "Well, I had better get busy murdering that infant!".  Given all the possible courses of action in that situation, Jeb immediately selected the least rational, most violent decision possible.  Not even a thought like "Hey, I bet if we start now we could make sure that baby grows up to live a productive life instead of becoming Hitler" or "Hey, we have like 40 years to make sure Germany doesn't devolve into the kind of place that produces Hitler".  Nope, just right to "Somebody fetch me my baby stabbing knife!".

This is such a perfect example of the way we've conditioned Presidential candidates to behave.  All tough talk and soundbites, no actual thoughts.  I understand regular people joke about using a time machine to kill Hitler all the time, but this guy is running for President.  I wish he had taken the opportunity to show us that he understands world history at a higher-than-3rd-grade level.  The only thing that surprises me is that he hasn't shot up in the polls.  Republicans really have given up on Jeb.

Tonight's debate is being hosted by Fox Business Network.  The existence of Fox Business Network has always troubled me a little.  I get the conservative argument for Fox News.  The media is liberal, it needs a conservative counterbalance.  OK.  But CNBC isn't exactly anti-business.  CNBC has roughly the same relationship with big business that ESPN has with the NFL.  They may try to be tough when they think nobody is looking, or when they feel like they have to, but for the most part, ESPN needs the NFL to exist, and CNBC needs big business.  So what does the conservative counterbalance to a network that's already mostly in the tank for big business look like?  Honestly, I've never bothered to find out, but maybe I'll get a little taste of it tonight.

9:00PM: The FBN intro just referred to Wisconsin as "the cradle of American industry".  That doesn't sound right.  Something about cheese seems closer to the mark.

9:02PM: Tonight's moderators are Neil Cavuto, Maria Bartiromo and Jean-Luc Picard.  Neil is like a less charismatic Sean Hannity.  I know that doesn't sound possible, but it is.

9:05PM: At the end of his explanation of the purpose of tonight's debate Neil paused for applause that never came.  Classic.

9:06PM: Neil asked Trump if he's sympathetic to the people who want to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr.  Trump said "I can't be".  Not even a no, he physically can't be.  Trump appears to believe that wages in America are too high.

9:08PM: Carson also opposed a higher minimum wage because he thinks it'll make jobs go away.  A job that doesn't pay you enough to feed yourself seems like it isn't really worth saving, but whatever.

9:10PM: Rubio correctly pointed out that every country has rich people but the middle class is what makes America great.  He neglected to mention how his buddy Reagan destroyed the middle class, I'm sure he'll get to it later.  He added "we need more welders and less philosophers".  Everyone knows Republicans hate thinking.

9:12PM: Kasich started out by sort of sounding a little bit like he doesn't hate the idea of raising the minimum wage.  He sort of circled back to it at the end by saying that just looking the other way (away from people at the bottom) isn't acceptable.  You can see why I don't hate this guy, right?  I would gladly vote for Kasich over Hillary Clinton.  I would also gladly vote for a cheese sandwich over Hillary Clinton, so I guess that doesn't really say much about John.

9:16PM: Why is Ted Cruz still here?  Honestly.  Have you noticed that Congressional Republicans keep endorsing Rubio?  You know why?  Because the only people who hate Cruz more than Democrats are Congressional Republicans.  He's not a serious person.  He's a crazy idiot.  He's currently talking about locusts and Calvin Coolidge.  And he still looks like a muppet.

9:19PM: Jeb is for repealing every rule that Barack Obama ever made.  Yeah!  That's how Presidencies work!  When you replace a guy, just repeal all of his bullshit and start from scratch.  Luckily, even Jeb isn't voting for Jeb at this point.

9:21PM: Picard asked Carly how she'll respond when people point out that the last two Democratic Presidents added lots of jobs while the last Republican President really didn't do much of that.  Carly responded with talking points about how politicians are bad, and also her plan for a three page tax code.  Carly goes in the not a serious person category.  Sorry Carly, I don't like making you hang out with Ted, but you did this to yourself.

9:24PM: Rand says we should look for root causes for income inequality.  His suggested root cause appears to be Democrats.  And also the Fed.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Rand's ability to talk about the Fed for a solid minute doesn't make him his dad.

9:29PM: Cavuto was happy to affirm Ben's assertion that nobody ever scrutinized Barack Obama when he ran for President, because Fox.  Ben says he's an honest person.  I think that's probably true, but I'm still not voting for him.

9:32PM: Trump criticized Barack Obama for using executive orders.  Yeah!  How dare he do things he's empowered to do!  Jerk!

9:33PM: Trump says walls work, just ask Israel.  Glad to hear that Trump's vision for a perfect U.S./Mexico border is based on the relationship between Israel and Palestine.  That sounds fun for Texas.

9:34PM: Kasich just called the argument about sending illegal immigrants home "silly" and "not an adult argument".  He actually got solid applause for that.  The Wisconsin crowd seems a little iffy about Trump.

9:35PM: Kasich is running the table right now.  He's going to talk whenever he feels like it and you can't stop him.  And Trump gets more boos than cheers every time he attacks Kasich.  This is a fun group.

9:37PM: Jeb is also for not deporting 11 million people.  You can see Jeb and Kasich trying to position themselves as the adults on the stage.  Trump remains quite happy to play the petulant 9 year old.

9:38PM: I can't blame Rubio for staying out of the immigration conversation.  One immigration bill almost destroyed his whole career.

9:39PM: Rubes keeps saying we have an outdated higher education system.  Hey!  I have feelings you know!

9:40PM: Cruz is for raising the retirement age as younger workers get to retirement age.  Where's Huckleberry to cry about this?  Was he in the JV debate?  Poor Huck.

9:41PM: Cruz thinks Democrats would care more about border security if lawyers and bankers were crossing the border illegally.  Following Ted's train of thought is like trying to follow...trying to follow...I really can't think of anything more erratic than Ted Cruz.

9:43PM: Carly turns every answer into an argument for her three page tax code.  She also thinks we need to try the free market...THE FREE MARKET, she said angrily for some reason, for health care.  We did try that, for like a really long time.  It didn't work.  That's how we got into this mess.

9:46PM: Carly just mentioned Scott Walker, which reminded me how funny it is that Scott didn't even make it to the Wisconsin debate.

9:46PM: Carly openly acknowledged that there are a lot of good things about Obamacare, but she still wants to repeal it because Obama.

9:51PM: Cavuto asked Carson whose tax plan God would endorse.  That's obviously a perfectly reasonable question.  Tell me again about how it's the liberal media who asks unfair gotcha questions.

9:53PM: Ben says people at the poverty line will get a rebate under his tax plan.  Great plan for poor people, just make them wait until April to get some money, I'm sure they'll find food somewhere until then.

9:54PM: Rand says he has three different plans to balance the budget.  Does that mean that if we elect him we get to pick one?  That sounds fun.  Put Rand back in the maybe column.

9:56PM: Ted appears to have adopted Huckleberry's 10% flat tax plan.  Like most of these guys, Ted's tax cutting plan includes balancing the budget with magic.

9:58PM: Ted hates the Department of Commerce so much he'd eliminate it twice.

9:59PM: As I watch Jeb try to keep going now that he's just another guy on the stage, it occurs to me that Jeb doesn't really need this shit.  I don't know how much money the Bush family has, but I would guess that it's somewhere around a lot.  Jeb could easily walk away and spend his retirement sailing and time traveling to kill toddlers.  If I were Jeb, I probably would have walked away a month ago and told Republicans that they can have Trump if they want him.

10:02PM: Rubio says no one is born with strong values.  I think that's a really interesting argument.  I've known great people raised by terrible parents, but I also get what he's saying about values being learned.  I think this would be a fun chat for Marco and I to have.

10:04PM: Marco just called Rand a committed isolationist.  Rand says you can't be a conservative but be liberal on military spending.  Marco and Rand are actually having an substantive exchange.  The moderators look nervous.  Quick, somebody ask Trump a question!

10:06PM: Cruz said he wanted to offer a middle ground, which appears to be talking like a conservative while still spending on the military like a drunken sailor.

10:07PM: Carly really wants zero base budgeting.  I think somebody just told her to go out there and say business stuff so people will remember that she was a CEO.  She also still can't answer a question without mentioning her three page tax code.

10:08PM: Trump says we need to make our military bigger and better than ever before so nobody messes with us.  Trump wants to treat the world the same way the mafia treats local business owners.

10:10PM: Republicans really hate things that have a lot of pages.

10:11PM: Trump really doesn't like China.  To Trump, China is the Mexico of Asia.

10:12PM: All of Trump's China nonsense was about the TPP, which Rand pointed out does not include China.  They appeared to be trying to play Rand off to commercial while he was making his point.

10:18PM: Just got some great insight into Carson's nuanced understanding of foreign policy.  He seems to believe that, in general, putting American troops somewhere is better than not doing that.  He also thinks we need to make jihadists look like losers.  Somebody is running to be Trump's Secretary of State.

10:20PM: Maria just showed us a word cloud of issues people on Facebook want to talk about.  Obviously, we're ignoring the giant "Campaign Finance" in the middle of the cloud.

10:22PM: Trump says the Iran deal is "one of the worst contracts ever signed ever in anything".  Can you imagine how stressful it would be to just live around Donald Trump on a daily basis?

10:24PM: Trump says we can't continue to be the policemen of the world.  Trump just made a coherent point.  My brain hurts.  Jeb couldn't wait to disagree.

10:25PM: Trump says Assad is a bad guy, but we have no idea who the rebels in Syria are and we shouldn't be so quick to arm them.  Yet another coherent point.  What's happening right now???

10:26PM: I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to hear how Carly can relate Syria to her three page tax plan.  Carly's plan for Putin appears to be to annoy him by doing military stuff in countries near Russia.  She would do that while going on Russian TV and saying "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you".

10:29PM: Trump on Carly "why does she keep interrupting everybody?".  There's the Trump I know.  I feel better now.

10:30PM: Rand is strongly in favor of not arming ISIS.  Yes, maybe don't give weapons to random people in the Middle East.  I know it sounds crazy, but couldn't we try it?

10:31PM: Rubio is noticeably better at debating than the rest of these people.  It's not that he's making better points, but he's better at saying stuff.  He finished this point about ISIS by saying "either they win or we win".  That's a pretty simplistic way of looking at things, but it's also a great soundbite.

10:33PM: Kasich, on the other hand, generally says better things than everyone else, but there's something off about his style.  Kasich just went for about three straight minutes, and most of what he said made sense.  I predict the Fox people will not mention his name in the post-debate discussion.

10:40PM: Jeb says he was recently in Washington, Iowa talking about how bad Washington D.C. is.  Jeb loves word play.

10:41PM: Jeb is desperately trying to talk about Hillary Clinton as if he's still the front-runner.  It's kind of sad.

10:42PM: These guys are talking about how they don't like the big banks, and how they're too big.  It's like I've stumbled into some kind of bizarro Republican debate.  Obviously, none of these guys would actually break up any banks, but all of them would love to travel back in time to make policies that would stop them from getting big.  For guys who don't like science, Republicans seem to really be relying on somebody inventing time travel.

10:43PM: Carson appears to be attributing the economic success of early America to the lack of regulation.  Well, that and slave labor.  He left that second thing out.

10:45PM: Kasich says Wall St. has too much greed.  He knows he's a Republican, right?

10:47PM: Cruz says he wouldn't bail out the big banks again (more time travel based policies) and he would prosecute criminals on Wall St.  He said yes to that question, but then he just mostly talked about Washington D.C. again so I suspect when asked about it in the future he'll say he was talking about criminals in Washington.

10:50PM: Cruz also wants to go back to the gold standard.  Did I mention that he's not a serious person?  Sidenote, Trump would love the gold standard.  Everything he owns is gold-plated, including his head.

10:52PM: Kasich just got booed because Cruz tricked him into saying he wouldn't let banks fail if it meant letting working people who put their money in the failing bank lose all their money.  I think the crowd is getting a little punchy.

10:53PM: Carly doesn't understand what socialism is, but she knows she doesn't like it.

10:58PM: Maria got booed for calling Hillary Clinton's resume impressive.  She was asking Rubio how he would run against someone with that kind of experience.  Rubio, instead of taking some cheap shot, talked about how this election is about the future.  I told you, he's good at debating.

Listen, it's 11PM and, as you may remember, I've developed a very strict not putting up with more than two hours of this shit policy, so I'm done.  I'm sure the closing statements will be quite riveting.