Your Vote

Your vote belongs to you.  If you know a strong Trump or Hillary supporter (why either of those things would exist is beyond me, but whatever), they will most likely tell you that you have to vote for their candidate, and any vote that isn't for their candidate is actually for the other person who is terrible, no matter who the vote is actually for.  This is a lie, and an insidious one.  The two major parties don't own your vote.  You own your vote. 

Your job is to use your vote responsibly, but you get to decide what that means.  If I lived in a state where the Presidential election was going to be close, I would suck it up and vote for Hillary.  I wouldn't like it, but I would do it.  That's how I would use my vote.  That doesn't mean that's how you have to use it.  And if you decide to use it differently and Trump somehow wins, that is not your fault.  Ironically, Trump is the fault of the two parties.

Yes, Republican primary voters nominated a future war criminal, and they should be ashamed of themselves.  Unfortunately, Trump voters can't read, so they will never know they should be ashamed unless one of you reads this to them.  And yes, the Republican party spent years cynically creating an environment out of which someone like Trump could crawl, and they should be ashamed too.  Plenty of shame to go around.

The Democrats don't get a pass though.  They had roughly six years to find us a proper successor to Barack Obama.  Did they spend those years introducing us to promising young Democrats we could get excited about?  They did not.  They spent six years clearing the board for Hillary.  The Sanders campaign wasn't some amazing story about the power of the people, it was an indictment of Democratic politics.  The guy who finished second in the Democratic primary race wasn't even a Democrat.  That's not a good thing.  If the Democrats had bothered to attempt nominating anyone other than the least likable person in history, that hypothetical other person (cough cough, Cory Booker, cough cough) would be up by 20 points right now and we wouldn't even have to worry about the great fascist pumpkin.

8:51PM: Brett Baier just told me Trump had chicken for dinner.  I decided to watch on Fox tonight since Chris Wallace is moderating and I'm already kind of regretting it.

8:55PM: I wouldn't blame you if you just watched the Cubs game tonight.

9:00PM: Tonight's debate is in Vegas, which seems like home turf for Trump.  It seems like a pretty good city for groping strangers.

9:03PM: Apparently Trump invited some "controversial guests" again.  What a fucking child he is.  I have to admit that I'm not in the mood for his shit today.

9:05PM: Hillary Clinton is dressed like a storm trooper without the helmet.  Trump's suits never look like they fit right.  Don't rich guys have tailors?

9:06PM: Hillary wants a Supreme Court that will stand up for rights and say no to Citizens United.  She also wants them to stand up to the powerful, which is a worthy, if slightly ironic, aspiration.

9:08PM: Trump started his Supreme Court answer whining about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg insulted him and bragging about how she had to apologize.  Then he said the court needs to protect the 2nd amendment, and the other ones too, whatever they are.

9:10PM: Hillary says she supports the 2nd amendment because she lived in Arkansas and upstate New York.  By that logic she would also support meth and sadness.  I would vote for literally anyone who was willing to say that it's not the 18th century anymore and maybe we don't all need to be armed all the time.

9:13PM: Hillary just accused Trump of being a tool of the gun lobby, which he is.  Trump responded by saying Chicago has terrible gun violence, because anytime Republicans get stuck in their own circular gun logic they escape to Chicago.

9:15PM: Wallace asked Trump if he wants to see the court overturn Roe v Wade.  He refused to actually say he wanted that.  He just said that it would happen automatically because of the justices he would appoint.  That was odd.

9:17PM: Trump appears to have no idea that he's on camera even when he's not talking.  He may not even be aware that the world continues to exist when he's not talking.

9:19PM: Trump is describing late term abortions the way a 4 year old would describe how babies are made.  I never wanted to hear Donald Trump say the word womb, but there it was.

9:19PM: Hillary is making a very simple "the government shouldn't step in the middle of personal decisions" argument about abortion and I think she's doing a great job.  I always think it's weird that the conservatives wound up being the party that thinks the government should make medical decisions for people.

9:21PM: alkdjshfalsdhahjaghafg!!!!!!!!!!! Why are we talking about immigration again?  Apparently Mexicans are bringing heroin to New Hampshire.  Then Trump mentioned the wall.  He hadn't mentioned that in the first two debates.  I was afraid he forgot about it.

9:24PM: Apparently Hillary also supported some version of a boarder wall at some point.  Trump, because he's Trump, is just using this as an example of how he's right and super smart when he should be actually be using it as an example of how she's a panderer with no actual convictions.

9:27PM: Trump says President Obama has deported millions and millions of people.  I don't know if he means that as an insult or a compliment.

9:29PM: Wallace asked Hillary about the wikileaks thing where she talked about open boarders.  She quickly pivoted to how wikileaks is an example of Russian espionage and Donald should renounce Putin and Russia's help immediately.  Trump's response to that somehow got us to radical islamic terrorism.  It's like free form debate jazz.

9:31PM: Clinton just accused Trump of being willing to be a puppet for Putin if he's elected.  Trump responded by saying, repeatedly, "you're the puppet, you're the puppet".  This is rock bottom, right?

9:33PM: Trump refuses to believe that Russia is involved in any hacking, and even though Putin isn't his best friend, he knows Putin has outsmarted the Obama administration and Hillary over and over again.  He's a big Putin fan.

9:35PM: Trump just said "I have 200 generals and admirals, 21 endorsing me".  Wait, what are the other 179 doing?  What does he mean he has them?

9:36PM: Chris Wallace is openly mocking his own inability to control this circus.  I always liked Chris.

9:39PM: Three debates is too many.  They're talking about the economy now and it's like groundhog day, except this time Hillary didn't say trumped up trickle down, which was a good decision.  Trickle down economics is silly enough, you don't need to try to make it sound worse.

9:43PM: Ya know, I've been the first person to say it's not fair for Trump to try to hold Hillary accountable for her husband.  They aren't the same person.  But if she's going to stand there and try to take credit for her husband's handling of the national debt then I guess Bill's fair game.

9:44PM: Every time Trump likes something Wallace says, Trump chimes in to let Wallace know he approves.  Wallace seems genuinely amused.

9:46PM: Trump says India and China (GYNA) are growing faster than us.  Then Hillary accused him of giving jobs to Chinese steel workers instead of American steel workers.  Ouch.

9:49PM: Trump is mouthing words and rolling his eyes while Hillary is comparing their histories.  When he finally got to talk, he said we should run the country like he runs his company.  How many times can a country go bankrupt?

9:52PM: Why would so many different women make up claims about Trump groping them?  Trump has decided that the Clinton campaign put them up to it.  Apparently, the Clinton campaign and Obama are also paying people to start fights at Trump rallies.

9:52PM: And why would these women agree to do this for the Clinton campaign?  For their 10 minutes of fame.  Because every little girl dreams of one day being famous for being groped by Donald Trump.

9:56PM: Trump always says that nobody has more respect for women than he does.  Really?  Nobody?  Not one person in the whole world?  That seems unlikely.  Don't you think we could find even one person, male or female, who wouldn't even joke on a bus about groping women?

9:57PM: Trump really wants you to believe that the Clinton campaign created all these stories about him groping women.  I wonder if he has some of that evidence stuff.

9:59PM: Everything that anyone has ever accused Trump of doing is false, OK?  Is everyone clear on that?

10:00PM: Hillary says she is thrilled to talk about the Clinton Foundation.  I feel like she shouldn't be.  She went on for a little bit about the good things the foundation does and Wallace quickly interrupted her and let Trump talk.  Trump thinks the Clinton Foundation shouldn't take money from countries that push homosexuals off buildings.  If they actually do that in Saudi Arabia, I actually agree with him.  Saudi Arabia is the worst.  If I actually believed Trump really believed what he just said, or even just knew what he was talking about, I'd say points for him.

10:04PM: Did Trump's charity pay for some of his law suits?  Apparently no, they just put up the American flag.  Hillary used the charity discussion to sneak in a jab about tax returns.  Now that Trump has openly talked about committing sexual assault, the whole tax thing seems like not such a big deal.

10:07PM: Wallace asked Trump if he'll accept the election results.  He wouldn't say yes.  He said he'll have to look at it at the time and he doubled down on saying the election is rigged.  Even just letting Hillary run is, apparently, part of the rigging.

10:09PM: Hillary called Trump's answer horrifying, which it definitely is.  Then she ran down a full list of things Trump lost at and immediately claimed were rigged, including when his reality show didn't get an Emmy.  Trump responded by saying he definitely should have gotten that Emmy.

10:11PM: How do we make sure ISIS isn't just replaced by something worse?  That's a pretty good question considering our track record would suggest that it absolutely will be.  Hillary, like most politicians, appears to be in favor of defeating ISIS without sending any troops or doing anything.  I'm not in favor of sending troops, I'm just saying you can't wish ISIS away so we're going to need a better plan than defeating them without any troops.

10:14PM: Trump is all about the element of surprise in war.  Everything would be a sneak attack with Trump.  For the record, when Barack Obama blows up your compound with a drone, I bet that's pretty surprising.

10:16PM: Trump still insists he was against the war in Iraq.  That's just plainly factually inaccurate.  I sometimes wonder if Trump is one of those time travelers who changed the past and now he remembers a different past than the rest of us.

10:18PM: Chris Wallace is openly laughing at this debate that he is moderating.

10:19PM: Chris tried to ask a question about a few of the things Trump lied about in the last debate.  Trump wouldn't even let him finish the question, denied lying about anything, and then went back to blaming Clinton for everything.

10:21PM: Last time the cash we gave Iran could have filled the whole room.  This time the pile of cash was just as big as the stage.  What happened?  Are we just using larger bills?

I'm going to stop here because I just don't care anymore.  I can't imagine being an undecided voter and actually trying to use this debate to make a decision.  This entire election has been a fucking embarrassment.  I started this by saying you should vote for a third party candidate if you want to, but maybe you should just vote for Trump.  Maybe he's the nightmare this country deserves.  I'm going to go watch the Cubs win the world series, and then after that happens Trump can unmake the world.  And when that happens, it'll be our own damn fault.  See you on election night.

Madness

Before we get started, I was 100% wrong about the Vice Presidential debate.  I thought Tim Kaine won.  I didn't think he was great, but I thought he clearly won.  Not one person on TV agreed with me.  Even though Mike Pence spent 90 straight minutes lying, he was super chill about it, and I guess that's all it takes.  So at the end of this, I'm going to tell you who I thought won, and I'm going to be wrong.

Anyway, remember last time when I told you this election was surreal?  Well, I spent most of the day Friday away from TV and not really getting any information.  I got home and there was baseball on and I didn't really get around to watching any news until after midnight.  When I got there, it was absolute madness.  MSNBC and CNN were doing live coverage, after midnight on a Friday, of Donald Trump on tape saying things that weren't even a little bit surprising.  This is a man who bought the Miss Universe pageant and then immediately started fat shaming one of the winners, because even Miss Universe isn't enough of a 10 for Donald Trump.  We can't act surprised when we find out that Donald Trump has no respect for women.  We already knew that, and I'm not sure MSNBC and CNN needed to do hours, literally hours, of after midnight coverage to drive the point home.  Chris Matthews was there.  Does Chris Matthews look to you like a guy who is generally up after midnight?

Having said that, the tape was jarring and upsettingly vulgar.  Listening to a major party Presidential candidate talking about popping some tictacs and sexually assaulting women, even when it isn't surprising, is genuinely unsettling.  It was unclear if he was talking about actual sexual assaults he had committed, or just joking about hypothetical sexual assaults he might commit, but neither of those options seems OK, right?  While I thought CNN and MSNBC went a little overboard, it was definitely a story.  Which is why I was both amused and disgusted to see that Fox News was making no mention of it.  Like, at all.  They were covering a hurricane, and literally nothing else.  There wasn't even anything on the crawl at the bottom of Fox's screen about it.  There has to be someone who can force them to remove the word news from their programming.  Come on, Obama!  Do something useful!

Republicans spent the last two days begging the Trump campaign to just apologize and not make things worse.  Trump responded by holding a quick press conference a little while ago with some women who had accused Bill Clinton of assaulting or harassing them.  Again, we shouldn't be surprised that a man who has no respect for women, and doesn't even really see them as people, would think it makes sense to blame a woman for her husband's philandering, but surprising or not, it is also still pretty unsettling.  

Remember that time when we were kids and we watched the Challenger explode on live TV?  This election has been like that, except it's gone on for a year and a half.  It's been like watching the Challenger explode on live TV for a year and a half.  I hate it.  Everyone hates it.  And we damn well should.  So, let's have a debate.  Yay.

8:53PM: I just flipped over to MSNBC to hear Brian Williams struggling to explain why Bill Clinton sexual assault/harassment accusers were sitting there in attendance at the debate.  Then Rachel Maddow showed us a clip of Trump from 1999 saying that it was a shame that Hillary had to put up with all of the Bill Clinton sex scandal stuff in public.  He went on to call her a "wonderful woman".  Sigh.

8:56PM: Hey, it looks like Anderson Cooper is moderating tonight!  Hey Coop!

8:57PM: There's also a woman named Martha.  Her jacket has at least one too many zippers.  As always, Coop is impeccably dressed.

8:59PM: Chris Matthews is predicting that Trump will point to Bill Clinton, and then to some of the women Trump invited, and say "you raped her, you groped her".  I predict that he will then fail to explain what that has to do with whether or not he or Hillary would make a good President, and somehow nobody will ask him.

9:02PM: I have to at least ask why the Bill Clinton accusers would agree to show up for this.  How could this possibly be a good thing for them?  Is Trump paying them?  

9:04PM: Have I mentioned that I hate town halls?  The people asking questions tonight are undecided voters.  They represent the most clueless people you could possibly find.  Why do they get to play?

9:05PM: Then candidates did not shake hands.  Off to a fantastic start.

9:07PM: Some lady asked them if they thought they were setting a good example for kids.  I wouldn't say either of them really answered.  I guess, if you get to ask the first question at a town hall, the upside is you get to go first, but the downside is whatever you ask, the answer is just going to be whatever opening statement the candidates prepared.

9:10PM: Coop, who is awesome, just told Trump that what was on the tape from Friday was Trump admitting to sexual assault, and he simply asked Trump if he understood that.  Trump responded by saying it was just locker room talk and he's going to knock the hell out of ISIS.  

9:12PM: Coop kept pushing, and he asked Trump is he has ever actually kissed or groped women without consent.  It took Trump quite a while, but he eventually said that he has not.  Coop actually made Trump answer the question.  Only Coop should be allowed to moderate debates.  

9:13PM: Hillary calmly laid out the case for why what we heard on the tape represents who Trump is with regard to how he sees women and made a broader point about Trump being unfit.  I've said this before.  I really like serious, calm, I don't care if you like me Hillary.  If she would just be that person all the time, I would be very happy to vote for her.

9:16PM: Trump asked if he could respond to what Hillary said about him, and Martha gave him some time, but he just sort of rambled about Hillary's Senate campaign and eventually Martha cut him off, and he complained about it being unfair.  

9:17PM: It took Trump roughly 10 minutes to get into how Bill Clinton was abusive to women and Hillary attacked those women viciously.  He also brought up a time when Hillary did the defense for a 41 year old who was accused of raping a 12 year old in Arkansas in the 70s.  I don't know much about that case, but I know that everyone is entitled to a defense, and sometimes young lawyers get stuck providing that defense.  It's a shitty but incredibly necessary job and only a guy like Trump would criticize someone for doing it.

9:21PM: Hillary gave a very good, calm response and ended up with saying Trump owes apologies to lots of people.  Trump's response was basically, I know you are but what am I?  Then he said Hillary didn't beat Bernie Sanders fair and square, and he can't believe Bernie made a deal with the devil and supported her.  Then he promised to have a special prosecutor investigate Hillary if he wins.  Just to be clear, he's openly threatening his opponent with political retribution should he win.  That's a thing that just happened.

9:24PM: Hillary seems maybe 3% rattled right now.  Trump is looking to get her over 50%.  I don't think he's going to get there.  She mostly seems amused by his desperation.

9:25PM: Hillary very simply stated that it's a good thing that someone with Trump's temperament isn't in charge of the law in this country.  Trump responded by saying that if he was she'd be in jail, because Trump has literally no idea how the justice system works.  The yahoos in the audience who support Trump went nuts for his witty one liner.

9:29PM: Trump wants to know why Coop isn't bringing up the emails that we just talked about for ten minutes, and then accused this of being a 1 on 3 debate.  

9:30PM: Health care question.  Oh boy.  Here's the quick answer Democrats should give whenever someone bitches about the Affordable Care Act.  If you already had insurance, the Affordable Care Act wasn't for you.  Not everything is about you, you selfish fuck.  The Affordable Care Act was for the 20 million people who didn't have health care before and do now.  Please go fuck yourself.  Hillary didn't say that.

9:32PM: Trump says Obamacare is a disaster, and it will never work because it is far too expensive health care.  Trump just wants to replace it with something better and much less expensive.  That's such a good idea, why haven't we done that already?  Oh right, because Trump's idea is a hypothetical idea that nobody actually has.

9:34PM: To be fair, Trump got through two minutes on heatlh care without calling Bill Clinton a rapist, so I guess that was a win for him.

9:35PM: Hey, Hillary just kind of gave my go fuck yourself health care answer.  I'm like this close to definitely voting for her right now.  Seriously.

9:36PM: Coop, because, again, he's awesome, is pushing Trump on what his actual plan is.  Like most Republicans, Trump's only idea is to break down the imaginary lines between states to create competition.  This is a dumb idea.  Most people don't go out shopping for health care in a free market.  They just get a job and then someone hands you an envelope telling you what health insurance you have.  The free market doesn't work for everything.

9:38PM: How will Trump work to prevent Muslims from all being lumped in with terrorists.  Apparently, he'll do that by suggesting that all Muslims are partially to blame for terrorism because they all know about it and don't report it.  I don't think that's the right answer.

9:39PM: Trump also said you have to be willing to talk about Islamic terrorism and call it by the right name before you can fight it.  That's not even 1% true.  I don't understand how stupid you have to be to not get that Obama doesn't want to give them the holy war they're so eager for.  Apparently, you have to be at least as stupid as Donald Trump.

9:42PM: Trump said, again, that he was against the Iraq war, which is demonstrably false.  You can ask Sean Hannity if you want, but it's still false.

9:43PM: Martha is trying to get Trump to tell us if he still supports the Muslim ban he proposed a while ago.  He just keeps saying "extreme vetting".  When pushed, he says it slower.  You guys, are we sure we don't want to vote for Trump?  A Trump Presidency would be so entertaining.  He literally mansplains policy points to female reporters when they point out that he isn't making any sense.  

9:45PM: OK, we can't really vote for Trump because it's too dangerous, but can we at least have a sitcom based on a hypothetical Trump Presidency.  Please??  Can't someone please work on that?  Aren't there any funny people who aren't too busy right now?  Rob Lowe had two different shows cancelled at the end of last season.  He could play a hypothetical President Trump. Come on, we can do this.

9:47PM: While I was fantasizing about a President Trump sitcom, Trump was rambling about refugees.  I guess some of them are murderers and Trump would just force them right back into their countries.  What percentage of people from other countries does Trump think are murderers?  Like 80%?

9:49PM: Martha asked Hillary about the Wikileaks thing with her speeches and how she said you have to have a public and a private position.  She basically said she was talking about Lincoln and how you have to manipulate Congress sometimes.  If she had added "because most of Congress is morons", the race for my vote between Hillary and third party candidates would be over.  She didn't though.  Instead, she somehow pivoted to Trump's tax returns.  

9:51PM: Trump literally just said "I know nothing about Russia".  I honestly don't even know what to do with that.

9:52PM: Trump is sniffling a lot again.  He's also unraveling as the debate goes on, a lot like last time.  My best guess is that he snorts Valium before the debates.  It causes him to get the sniffles and wears off as the debate goes on.  Do you have a better theory?

9:54PM: Trump, in an admirable effort to try to talk about policy for a minute, said Hillary is going to raise your taxes and he wants to lower them bigly, or maybe he's saying big league.  He needs to learn more words.  

9:56PM: Hillary says what he said about taxes is not true.  Trump is now randomly wandering the stage while Hillary is talking.  

9:58PM: It sounds like Trump just admitted to not paying personal income taxes.  I guess we don't really need his tax returns anymore.  Trump says Hillary knows people who don't pay taxes either.  They're not running for President though.

10:00PM: Somehow the tax question turned into Trump talking about how Hillary and Obama created ISIS.  I wonder if Trump honestly just hears and sees different things than the rest of us.  Is he Neo?

10:00PM: Now they're arguing about carried interest.  Trump says he wants to get rid of it and Hillary says she's against it too.  Trump, because he doesn't understand how government works, is asking why Hillary didn't just get rid of it when she was a Senator.  Hillary is trying to explain how government works, but if Trump's campaign people can't do it, I don't like her chances.

10:02PM: Why don't these debates have any commercials?  Can you imagine how much GEICO would pay to show us a 30 second gecko commercial right now?  You could fund Trump's whole imaginary health care plan.

10:03PM: The question is, with the State department calling for a war crimes investigation into Syria and Russia for recent events in Aleppo, hasn't the US waited too long to help in Syria?  Coop and Martha are both actual journalists.  How did they get this gig?  I know some social media person actually wrote the question, but Martha picked it instead of some question about how their faith informs their beliefs or whatever.

10:06PM: Trump said we're all tired, exhausted about nuclear.  I have no idea what he was getting at, but if he's already feeling tired and exhausted discussing nuclear weapons, maybe being President isn't really the job for him.

10:08PM: Martha asked Trump about Mike Pence's position on the humanitarian crisis in Syria.  Trump said he and Pence haven't spoken and he disagrees with what Pence said.  Then Trump asked why we can't just sneak attack ISIS leaders.  Martha is now openly arguing with him about his total lack of understanding of military strategy.  Martha is going to get some criticism later for this exchange, but I love it.  She's honestly exasperated but Trump's complete inability to understand or articulate military strategy.  It's like watching a college history professor argue with a 2nd grader.  He's wrong, but way too dumb to know it, and it's killing her a little bit.

10:13PM: Hillary is having a little trouble explaining what she would do differently than Obama, but then she got to arming the Kurds.  Can we please have a plan in the middle east that doesn't involve arming some new random group of people who we don't fully understand?

10:14PM: Trump says he will be a President for all of our people, and he will give people strength.  Now we're talking about trade.  I think it's a shame that nobody in this election defends free trade.  It's a complicated issue, and I'm not saying I'm for free trade, but both sides of the trade debate have valid arguments and I wish we were smart enough to have an election that involved that discussion.

10:17PM: Hillary is talking about her record of public service and work on behalf of underrepresented people.  Hey lady, Trump builds golf courses all over the place that can benefit any CEO, or even most CFOs.  Everybody makes the world better in their own way.

10:20PM: Trump says we have a divided nation like a guy who walks into your living room and takes a dump on your carpet and then says "Hey, what's with all the shit on the carpet?".  That's a joke but now it kind of sounds like something he's probably done.

10:22PM: Question to Trump about his 3AM tweets encouraging people to check out Miss Universe's sex tape.  Apparently that never happened and also Benghazi.  Is there any doubt that Roger Ailes did all of Trump's debate prep this time?

10:24PM: Hillary would appoint justices who have real life experience and haven't just worked in big law firms.  Trump is looking for judges very much in the mold of Justice Scalia, because I didn't already hate him enough.

10:27PM: Trump says the 2nd amendment is totally under siege.  This country is full of idiots with guns.  How much more guns can we possibly have?  This country has more guns than people.  Hillary says she respects the 2nd amendment too.  I don't, for the record.

10:29PM: Some guy with a mustache and a sweater asked about energy policy.  Trump says Hillary wants to put all the miners out of business, and there is a thing called clean coal.  Actually, there really isn't, clean coal is mostly nonsense.  And yes, coal miners are going to have to get new jobs soon, just like bank tellers and those ladies from 50s movies who used to connect phone calls for people. Life moves on sometimes, and it sucks, but that's the way it is.

10:34PM: Some guy just asked if they can name one thing they respect about the other person.  Hillary said she respects Trump's children.  Either she prepared for that question or that was pretty good thinking on her feet.  Something to respect about Donald Trump.  I couldn't have answered that question on the spot. 

10:36PM: I literally can't wait for Trump to answer this question.  I'm just imagining all the things he could say.  I'm so excited.  Trump kind of let me down.  He actually gave her a compliment.  He said she fights hard and doesn't quit or give up.  That could have gone so much better, or worse depending on how you look at it.

I guess that's it.  I think Martha and Coop were the clear winners here.  They were just fantastic.  Between the two candidates, I'd say Hillary won pretty easily because Trump was in full tantrum mode for most of the night.  That probably means the TV people will say Trump won.  See you next time, assuming the third debate happens, which seems pretty up in the air right now.

Pointless

Nothing could be more pointless than this Vice Presidential debate.  Vice Presidents are pointless in general, but this specific election renders them especially futile.  Hillary Clinton has been running for President since she was 5.  Even dead Hillary Clinton wouldn't give up the Presidency.  Tim Kaine has a better chance of being named President of Jupiter than he does of taking over for Hillary Clinton at any point.

The Trump situation seems different at first glance.  I've speculated over the last year that Trump is the kind of guy who would be President for a few months, get bored and frustrated with it and decide he's leaving because Miss Universe isn't going to fat shame herself.  And nothing we've seen from Trump would suggest that he isn't a giant child who is perfectly capable of that kind of move, but I don't know.  First, it's hard to imagine Trump giving up that kind of power.  Second, even if he left after a few months, that's plenty of time for him.  I doubt there would be a government left for Mike Pence to lead by then anyway.

This is a giant waste of everyone's time.  Unfortunately, I've developed a little bit of OCD about blogging debates, so we're going to watch these two jars of mayonnaise argue over which one of them is more tangy.  Or less tangy?  I'm not really sure which one of those is better in this context.

9:02PM: Shep Smith just told me that Donald Trump will be live tweeting throughout the debate.  This election is genuinely surreal.

9:04PM: The moderator tonight is someone from CBS who I have literally never heard of.  Her name is Elaine.  She seems nice.

9:05PM: They're doing the set up where they sit at a desk together with the moderator.  I would love to see Trump attempt this set up.  I feel like he couldn't stay seated for 90 minutes.

9:06PM: Tim Kaine looks and sounds like one of the adults from Sesame Street.  Also, apparently Tim was a missionary at some point, so I'm already not a big fan.

9:08PM: Pence started out by thanking Norwood University for their wonderful hospitality.  Unfortunately, he's at Longwood University.  Not a good start big guy.

9:09PM: Pence started out with the aw shucks I never thought I'd be here routine.  Believe me Mike, lots of people never thought they'd be one month away from Vice President Pence.

9:11PM: Elaine asked Tim why people don't trust Hillary.  Tim responded by explaining why he does trust her, and then trashed Trump for a little bit and threw some shade at Pence for defending Trump.  Tim came out swinging in the most polite way possible.

9:12PM: Elaine asked Pence why people think Trump is such a risky choice.  Mike responded by trashing Hillary for a minute.  Can they not hear Elaine's questions?  What's happening?

9:14PM: Kaine keeps interrupting Pence.  It's like he someone told him to watch last week's debate and then go be as Trumpy as possible.  It's weird, but it may be working.  Mike seems legitimately uncomfortable.

9:17PM: Pence just said he cut unemployment in half in Indiana while Kaine doubled unemployment in Virginia.  It's worth pointing out that Pence became Governor in 2012, in the middle of a recovery, while Kaine was Governor between 2006 and 2010.  You might remember the little economic oopsie we had in 2008.  It's why none of you can ever retire, ever.

9:20PM: Mike is shaking his head sarcastically as Tim accuses him of single-handedly holding off a minimum wage increase in Indiana.  That seems pretty true, so I'm curious to hear what Mike has to say about it.  He said nothing, I guess the head shake was plenty.

9:22PM: Pence just accused Barack Obama of running the economy into a ditch.  Kaine pointed out that Pence's accusation was factually inaccurate.  Pence responded by saying that you can roll out all the numbers you want but people in Scranton know the real story.  Pence is notoriously immune to facts.

9:24PM: Now they're arguing about Trump's taxes.  I have to say I don't care about this issue.  Trump can pay taxes or not pay taxes.  I'm just not really that interested in it.  If he released his tax returns and everything was in good order, would that somehow make him an acceptable candidate?

9:28PM: This is a strange debate.  Pence won't acknowledge facts or his own voting record.

9:30PM: On to cops and guns and stuff.  Kaine wants to focus on community policing, mental health and gun violence.  Tim doesn't want to frisk you.

9:31PM: Pence's uncle was a cop.  He says "police officers are the best of us".  Like, all of them?  100% of them?  That seems overly simplistic.  He went on the say we shouldn't use a broad brush to describe law enforcement.  It's like Mike can't hear himself talk.

9:34PM: Mike's opinions about police shootings are almost too stupid to summarize.  He's using one example of when a black cop shot a black guy to make the argument that police shootings aren't related to any inherent bias in our system.  I can't believe this guy ran a state.

9:38PM: Kaine did a really nice job of summing up this whole section by saying that having a racist in the White House probably won't help the whole racial divide situation.  Pence had no response.

9:39PM: Pence just accused immigrants of driving wages down.  Pence keeps wages down, we just covered that like 15 minutes ago.

9:40PM: Pence just criticized Clinton's basket of deplorables comment.  I wish Kaine would just say she was right and Pence should be ashamed of his campaign.  Tim did not say that.

9:42PM: They're arguing pretty incoherently about immigration now.  All you really need to know about this is, both parties believe immigration is a winning issue for them, and in some ways they're both right.  As such, neither party actually wants to solve the issue.  And they won't.

9:47PM: Kaine said Donald Trump can't start a twitter war with Miss Universe without shooting himself in the foot.  Solid line from Tim, I'm sure it went over really well in practice.  Tim is being really aggressive, you just can't tell because of his face.

9:49PM: Pence says America is less safe today than it was when Barack Obama took office.  Then he talked about 9/11.  I don't know why we keep letting Republicans bring up 9/11 as if some guy they never met was President then.  Why is ISIS 100% Hillary and Obama's fault but 9/11 was just a thing that happened?

9:51PM: How is Mike Pence going to stop home grown terror?  He's going to keep immigrants out.  I'm not sure Mike understands what home grown means.  Elaine was nice enough to point that out for me.

9:53PM: Somehow we're arguing about immigration again, and also Syrian refugees.  I thought Pence was a big Jesus guy.  I'm not an expert on what Jesus would say about refugees, but I don't think it would be "fuck 'em".

9:55PM: Tim is saying alliances and sharing intelligence are really important for fighting terror, and Trump's not really the guy for that.  Pence is pretending Trump never said NATO is obsolete.  He did though.

9:56PM: Elaine is trying to ask them about Syria but now they're arguing about Hillary's emails.  Elaine has zero patience for these guys and I'm a big fan.

9:58PM: Pence just called Putin a small and bullying leader.  Trump's not going to like that.  Then he said we need to rebuild our military, which is absolute nonsense.

9:59PM: Honestly, Pence is so much worse than Trump.  He's coherently lying and distorting reality.  Unlike Trump, you feel like he actually knows better and it's so frustrating.

10:02PM: Kaine was going on for a while about how Trump wasn't supporting troops and first responders on 9/11 if he wasn't paying taxes.  Elaine keeps reminding them that she asked about Syria.

10:04PM: Pence said "we just need American strength".  That really couldn't be a better summary of Republican foreign policy.  We don't need plans or allies or all that smarty pants bullshit, just strength.

10:05PM: Tim just suggested that Trump is a "fool or maniac".  Pence said that's below even Tim and Hillary.  Has Mike met his running mate?  Because that seems pretty accurate.

10:07PM: Kaine pointed out that every time he asks Mike to defend Trump's positions and statements, Mike passes on the opportunity.  Mike says he's happy to defend Trump.  He didn't, and hasn't yet, but he swears it's coming.  Editorial note from later...it never did.

10:11PM: It's telling that Mike thinks Tim is insulting him when Tim simply repeats things that Trump has said.  "How dare you bring up things I've said" would be an excellent Trump campaign slogan.

10:14PM: Hillary's love of canned zingers has rubbed off on Tim and it's not enjoyable.  Mike is wisely pointing them out and trying to get Tim off his game.

10:17PM: How would Mike Pence deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program?  He'd criticize Barack Obama and then start talking about the Clinton Foundation.  Take that Kim Jong Whatever!

10:20PM: Kaine just compared Trump's organization to an octopus.  Wrong Timmy!  Octopuses are smart.

10:21PM: We should let Elaine kick both of these guys in the balls at the end of the debate.

10:21PM: Would Tim Kaine take preemptive action if intelligence said North Korea was launching a nuclear weapon?  Shit just got real.  Tim said yes, though he seemed unclear on what kind of preemptive action he'd take.

10:23PM: It's time to talk about social issues, which means it's time for me to remember why I hate Mike Pence so much.

10:24PM: Tim says he doesn't believe the doctrines of any one religion should be mandated for everyone.  It's sad that he actually has to say that out loud, and sadder that Mike will pretend to agree even though he clearly doesn't.

10:26PM: OK my bad.  Mike actually made no effort to pretend he doesn't think his religious beliefs should be imposed on everyone.  Honestly points for Mike, I guess?

10:29PM: Tim Kaine makes an excellent case for pro-life policies.  It was short and rational and honest and made perfect sense.  Solid work by Tim, asking why Pence doesn't trust women to make their own choices.  I have no jokes for this.  Just a really solid minute from Tim on abortion rights.

They're doing a final question about how they'll bring the country together if they win, and I simply don't care so let's wrap this up.  I honestly feel bad for both of these guys.  Tim Kaine's job tonight was to convince people that they should like and trust Hillary Clinton.  Mike Pence's job was to sit there for 90 minutes and pretend Donald Trump isn't a dangerous maniac.  I think both of these guys, even Pence who I honestly fucking hate, deserve gold stars for effort on this one.  Kaine pretty obviously won, but it's not like Pence had anything good to work with.  See you next time.

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.