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.

Political Nonsense

I think I need to clarify my concerns about Bernie Sanders a little before we start the first Democratic debate.  I don't actually care what Bernie thinks about guns.  As far as I can tell, there's no gun control law weak enough that Congress would even think about considering passing it, so what the next President thinks about guns would seem to be inconsequential.  We're stuck with guns.  Yay America!

My concern is that Bernie's position on guns is so off-brand for him.  Bernie isn't a talking points machine like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, and that's part of his appeal.  He says real stuff.  You might not agree with all of it, but when Chuck Todd asks someone if they're a capitalist and they say no, it's a pretty good bet they're telling the truth and saying something they mean, because why would anyone running for President lie about that.  So, when Bernie talks about guns and I hear the same rambling political nonsense that I hear from everyone else, it feels really suspicious to me.  Why is he such a generic politician on this one issue?  Just because people like to hunt in Vermont?  I don't buy it.

I had a similar experience listening to Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago.  Trump, like Bernie, draws a lot of his appeal from not sounding like a generic politician.  But when Trump announced his economic plan, it was basically the same economic plan Republicans have been shopping for 35 years.  The magic power of tax cuts, paid for by eliminating loopholes. 

Politicians talk about loopholes as though they're some naturally occurring phenomenon.  As if we got to Washington D.C. in the 18th century and we were like "Hey, this looks like a great capitol, but these wild tax code loopholes are growing everywhere.  We can't get rid of them, so we'll just have to incorporate them into our government."  Tax code loopholes have been very intentionally created and the people who created them aren't just going to give them up because we ask nicely.

I expect to hear plenty of political nonsense tonight.  Hillary Clinton has a microphone and she is a category 5 hurricane of talking points.  I'll be interested to see what Bernie does and, as far as the rest of them go, maybe Lincoln Chafee will talk about the metric system again.  Let's get started.

8:31PM - In case you missed it, CNN saved a podium for Joe Biden in case he decided to show up at the last minute.  It's like the Democratic version of Passover.

8:32PM - Tonight's debate is being moderated by Anderson Cooper.  I have no feelings about that.  I don't like it, I don't not like it.  Anderson Cooper.

8:35PM - I tuned in at 8:30 because CNN said the debate started at 8:30.  Now it's 8:35 and I'm watching a commercial about South Africa.  CNN can't even show up on time for its own debate.

8:36PM - CNN just ran a graphic suggesting that this debate will be in keeping with great debate traditions like Lincoln/Douglas.  Settle down CNN.

8:40PM - They're seriously having someone sing the national anthem before the debate.  I need to know if the candidates had the opportunity to veto this idea because if they did, I'm already not voting for any of them.

8:41PM - Also, the person they got to sing the anthem was Sheryl Crow.  That's neither a joke nor a typo.  I have so many questions.  Where did they find Sheryl Crow?  Did they ask other people first?  Doesn't starting the debate with someone from 1994 prove that CNN is in the bag for Hillary?

8:46PM - Cooper started by asking each candidate to do their best Obama impression.  They were all incredibly racist.

8:47PM - Maybe it's just my TV, but Don Lemon appears to be wearing a beach towel cut into the shape of a suit.

8:48PM - Lincoln Chafee's resting facial expression is "goofy smile".  He looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.  I don't like his chances, is what I'm saying.

8:50PM - Hey, Jim Webb is here.  Jim was a marine in Vietnam.  I swear if this wasn't Jim's first public appearance since he announced his candidacy he'd be doing great.

8:52PM - Martin O'Malley started by touting his 15 years of executive experience.  OK but that was in Maryland, where the only real city was still on fire last time I heard.  The most brutally realistic drug/crime drama I've ever seen was set in Baltimore and everyone watched it and was like "yeah, seems about right."  I'm not sure this resume bullet is as impressive as Martin thinks it is.

8:54PM - After a few Republican debates it was jarring to hear someone say "thanks to President Obama" non-sarcastically.

8:56PM - Bernie Sanders is pro habitable planet.  It's sad that there's a whole political party that isn't.

8:56PM - When Bernie says he wants to take back our government, he actually tells you who has it.  That's a helpful tip.

8:58PM - Somebody told Hillary Clinton that people don't like it when she sounds angry.  She's going for the Lincoln Chafee permanent goofy smile, but she can't pull it off.

9:01PM - Coop asked Hillary if she'll say anything to get elected.  She gave a long answer, but the short answer is yes.

9:03PM - Bernie says he's going to win because he'll explain to people what a Democratic Socialist is.  I'm not sure Bernie understands how elections work.  Cable news won't stand for just calmly explaining where you stand on issues Bernie.

9:05PM - Coop pushed Bernie on whether or not he considers himself a capitalist.  Bernie said he's not part of the casino capitalism we have now.  I'm disappointed to hear Bernie hedging a little.

9:07PM - Cooper to Chafee "You've been everything but a socialist".  Chafee started saying he's been a block of granite on the issues.  Cooper interrupted saying "it seems like pretty soft granite".  Will Coop be heckling the candidates all night?

9:08PM - Coop made essentially the same point about Baltimore that I just did, without the Wire reference.

9:10PM - O'Malley's defense of his Baltimore record was genuinely interesting.  It made me want to learn more about Martin O'Malley and also crab cakes.

9:11PM - Webb says he's always supported affirmative action for African-Americans because of their unique history, but then he seemed to also be making the argument for affirmative action for white people from the Appalachians if they're poor.  Those two arguments don't really seem to go together.  I don't think white people in Appalachia were ever held as slaves.  To be fair, I'm not up on my Appalachian history.

9:14PM - Sanders just referred to himself in the third person while trying to somehow explain his position on guns.  I heard nothing to assuage my concerns.

9:15PM - Clinton hammered Bernie on guns.  His response was essentially "I'm from a rural state, so you don't understand things about guns New York lady".  Still not buying it.

9:16PM - O'Malley just said he passed gun legislation "not by looking at pollings or looking at what the polls say".  Sounds like Marty skipped debate prep.  Also, Marty has a habit of pointing out people in the audience and telling stories about everyday Americans.  You know how much I hate that.  Having said all that, Marty was really strong with his guns answer.

9:18PM - Bernie made another argument about rural Americans.  Marty went back at Bernie saying "it's not about rural".  I'm officially putting Marty in the maybe column.

9:20PM - Webb says average Americans deserve the right to protect their families...by getting into shoot-outs with criminals one assumes.

9:22PM - Chafee says we need to bring the gun lobby in to find common ground.  Good luck with that Shaggy.

9:23PM - Seriously, it's so weird hearing people say good things about President Obama in a debate.

9:23PM - Bernie just referred to Syria as a quagmire in a quagmire.  That pretty much sums it up.

9:24PM - Bernie says Iraq was the worst foreign policy move in the history of this country (I may be paraphrasing, but I also may not be).  He added..."some people voted for Iraq...cough cough...Hillary...cough cough".

9:24PM - Shaggy is also hammering Hillary on the Iraq vote.  To be fair, Lincoln was a Republican in 2003 so it was a crazy time for everyone.

9:26PM - Clinton..."President Obama made me his Secretary of State after he beat me in a primary because of my Iraq vote...are any of you looking for a Secretary of State?"

9:27PM - Bernie says a no fly zone in Syria is a dangerous idea.  He's probably right about that, but really, everything we do or don't do about Syria at this point is a pretty dangerous idea.  It's like waking up in the morning and finding that someone has filled your apartment with poisonous snakes.  There's really no good move at that point.

9:29PM - I'm no Hillary fan, but man, all of these guys were so right about Iraq in 2003.  Too bad none of them were able to do anything about it.  These guys need to take it down a notch or two.  There are five people on the stage, none of them were able to come anywhere close to stopping us from going into Iraq.

9:32PM - Webb is openly arguing with Cooper about the debate rules.  He also says that the biggest foreign policy focus in his administration would be China, and they don't own the South China Sea.  Sadly, I don't own the South China Sea either.  Webb sounds a little Trumpy to me sometimes.

9:33PM - I'm pretty sure Coop just caught Bernie not paying attention to the foreign policy discussion.  Focus up, Bernie!  People who don't like Hillary are counting on you!

9:36PM - Webb's a marine and I'm concerned that Coop might disappear during the first break.

9:37PM - Webb says you can't get to the Tripoli airport today.  Jim has a habit of wandering off the point, maybe this is why he doesn't do a lot of TV.

9:38PM - This whole thing about Sanders being a conscientious objector during Vietnam seems like a stupid question.  Wouldn't a President who isn't inclined to go running into war be a good thing?

9:40PM - Can we have a mid-debate elimination of Lincoln?  He's just getting in the way at this point.

9:41PM - Bernie says our greatest national security concern is climate change.  I'm not saying he's wrong, but I am saying that I'm becoming increasingly concerned that Bernie would get slaugthered in a general election. 

9:49PM - Bernie backs Hillary up on the email issue, saying that the American people are tired of hearing about Hillary's emails.  This whole exchange ended with Hillary thanking Bernie and doing her whole maniacal laugh thing.  For the record, I still think it's a real issue.

9:50PM - Shaggy thinks it's a real issue too.  Cooper asked Hillary if she wanted to respond to Shaggy, she said no.  We've all dismissed Lincoln at this point.

9:51PM - Coop wanted to talk about issues of race, so he went to Don Lemon for the first time.  CNN!

9:52PM - Do black lives matter or do all lives matter?  I saw Eric Bolling suggest that question on The Five today.  Good job CNN.  We all hate you.

9:53PM - Marty says if we were burying poor white kids in the same numbers that we're burying poor black kids, we'd have a very different response in this country.  Obvious point, but still true.  Marty is really growing on me.  I wish news people would have stopped talking about Trump for five minutes and introduced me to Marty before now.

9:54PM - Webb can't stop himself from complaining about the amount of time he's getting.

9:56PM - Bernie says we need to create millions of jobs by rebuilding infrastructure, raising the minimum wage to $15, creating pay equity for women and making college free.  I don't object to any of those things.

9:57PM - Hillary wants every American to have the opportunities her and Bill did.  That's sounds a little unrealistic.

9:58PM - Put Marty down for reinstating Glass-Steagall.  Put Hillary down for not doing that.  She says she's for letting regulators break up big banks if we think they pose a risk.  I think they pose a risk.  Is that good enough?

10:01PM - Hillary says she told Wall Street to "cut it out" in 2007.  How'd that go?

10:03PM - Marty is hammering Hillary on not supporting Glass-Steagall.

10:04PM - Hillary..."I didn't take a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone".  Yikes.  Then she said her and Barack Obama crashed a meeting with the Chinese in 2009.  That sounds like the worst Hangover movie ever.

10:06PM - These people love telling stories about things they said that nobody listened to.

10:07PM - Cooper to Webb..."you agreed to these rules and you're wasting time".  I'd like to watch a sitcom in which Cooper and Webb have to live together in a studio apartment.

10:07PM - Chafee's answer to why he voted to get rid of Glass-Steagall was that he had just arrived in the Senate and his dad had just died.  It's like he's trying to lose.

10:09PM - While Lincoln was talking I was just thinking about how often I'll imagine a Martin O'Malley/John Kasich election while I'm listening to Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio argue about nonsense next Fall.

10:10PM - Dana Bash asked Bernie if he'd want free college for wealthy kids.  That feels like a stupid and unnecessarily divisive question, and Bernie answered it just fine.

10:11PM - Clinton..."I fully support social security", she added "I mean, that's what those pollsters over there told me I think".

10:12PM - Bernie supports social security too, but he's a socialist so that's not really a surprise.

10:13PM - CNN brought in an Hispanic guy to ask about immigration reform.  Seriously CNN, we all hate you.

10:15PM - Does Hillary Clinton want to open up Obamacare to undocumented immigrants and their children?  She talked for a minute and I'm not really sure.  I guess "sort of" was her answer.  That seems to be her position on a lot of things.

10:16PM - Same question to Jim Webb.  His answer after a pretty long pause..."I wouldn't have a problem with that".  I'm going to put Jim down for a "no, but I still think I can win so I don't really want to say that right now".

10:20PM - Talking about the Patriot Act now.  Lincoln's excuse for voting for bad bills seems to be "lots of other people did it too so leave me alone".

10:23PM - O'Malley on Edward Snowden..."whistle blowers don't run to Russia and seek protection from Putin".  That's basically what Hillary was saying, but she spent a minute not really saying it and Marty said it clearly in about 8 seconds.  Somebody get me every available piece of information about Martin O'Malley.

10:25PM - Chafee would change our approach to the middle east by not bombing hospitals and weddings anymore.  I think we all agree on that.  I'm fairly certain Barack Obama isn't aiming for hospitals.

10:25PM - Clinton on how she'd be different from President Obama...she has lady parts.  Coop immediately quipped "Is there a policy difference?".  One point for Coop.

10:26PM - Bernie said we need a revolution.  Webb responded by saying he has respect for Bernie, but he doesn't think a revolution is coming and he doesn't think Congress will pay for a lot of the things Bernie wants to do.  Solid points from Jim.

10:35PM - Hillary says she's not asking people to vote for her based on her last name.  True, that's really more of an implicit argument than an overt thing she's asking for.

10:36PM - Bernie pointed out his lack of a Super PAC.  Bernie pronounces Super PAC the same way your grandma pronounces Facebook.  Not exactly wrong, but not exactly right either.

10:37PM - Marty wants a 100% clean energy grid by 2050.  That seems like a long time from now.

10:38PM - Jim points out that we can't solve climate change by just fixing America.  I've made this point before.  Climate moves around.  You can't just stop burning coal in the United States and then everything's fine.

10:39PM - Bernie points out that fossil fuels are funding the Republican party.  To be fair, they're funding a good portion of the Democratic party too.

10:40PM - Hillary is telling her Hangover 4: Crashing the China Meeting story again.

10:41PM - Hillary says that paid family leave in California hasn't resulted in all the problems Republicans always say will come with paid family leave.  She followed up by pointing out that Republicans don't mind big government when it's telling women want to do about health care.  Alright, one point for Hillary.

10:44PM - Bernie "suspects" he would vote yes on recreational marijuana.  He followed with good points about the criminal justice system, but I got hung up on "suspect".  If Bernie has a suspicion about where he stands on marijuana, I know a guy he can ask to confirm it.

10:46PM - Is Hillary ready to take a position on marijuana now?  No, no she is not.

10:47PM - Bernie's plan for how to get Republicans to do stuff seems flawed.  Just get lots of people to ask them.  I feel like he's skipping a couple of steps.

10:52PM - Coop asked them all which political enemy are they most proud of making:
Shaggy - The Coal Lobby
Marty - The NRA (score another point for Marty)
Hillary - Of course she couldn't just give a straight answer
Bernie - Wall St. and the Pharmaceutical industry
Webb - An enemy soldier that threw a grenade at him

10:54PM - Marty's closing statement was killer.  I'm declaring him the clear winner, which probably means he'll drop out tomorrow.

Less is Nothing

I came into the 2016 campaign thinking of Ben Carson as one of the smart guys in the Republican field.  He made a living operating on brains, which I'm given to believe is somewhat challenging.  I never expected him to know things about public policy or foreign policy, having never worked in government, but I thought he'd be good at common sense things and thinking on his feet.  Don't surgeons have to literally think on their feet?  Shouldn't quick decisiveness be a strength for a brain surgeon?  I feel like if something went wrong during my brain surgery, Dr. Ben would decide what to do about it halfway through my autopsy.  He's like a glacier with glasses.  But, even though it seems like Ben really REALLY thinks before he speaks, he still says things that make no sense to anyone.

In case you missed it, Ben decided he needed to go on TV and comment on the latest episode of America's longest running reality show "Lots of People Get Shot for No Particular Reason".  Like Survivor, it was never really a good show, but we have no intention of cancelling it.  Anyway, Ben figures that if he were ever confronted with a gunman, he would just rally everyone in the room to attack the gunman and stop him.  As far as I can tell, here's how Ben's fantasy plays out:

Scene: Dr. Ben is teaching a class about brains or whatever when suddenly a guy in a black jacket busts in with an assault rifle.

Ben: Hello Sir!  Do you intend to shoot all of us?
Gunman: Yes, that's the plan.
Ben: OK, can you give me a minute to rally all of these unarmed people to attack and stop you?
Gunman: Sure, that sounds fair, I'll just hang out here in the doorway for a minute.
Ben: OK everybody, out of your chairs, we're going to stop this gunman!
Student #1: Ummm, I'd really rather just sit here and maybe not get shot.
Student #2: Agreed.  Your plan seems flawed since he has a gun and we're unarmed.
Student #3: Yeah, I like being alive and if I just run at the guy with the gun, he's probably going to shoot me.
Ben: NO! NO!  You guys don't get it.  If you all run at him, some of you will probably die, but some of you might not.
Student #2: Yeah, we're definitely not doing that.
Ben: Excuse me, Mr. Gunman.  Could you give me a little more time with this? These people aren't really understanding the plan.
Gunman: Alright dude, but like, three more minutes.  I really need to get started with this.

And scene.

Now, to be honest, I don't really care what Ben thinks or says because Ben isn't going to be President and I already knew that.  Still, I was struck by the fact that Ben's solution to a mass shooting still involves a few innocent people dying, just not as many.  I've had this same concern for a while about the standard Republican response to mass shootings (most Republicans are smart enough to at least avoid suggesting that the victims were just too cowardly to live, I thought Ben was smarter than that too).

Usually, after one of these tragedies, Republicans will go on TV to talk about it.  After they get done sending thoughts and prayers, and before they get to the part where they accuse anyone talking about gun control of exploiting a tragedy for political reasons, they opine about how this all could have been prevented by a good guy with a gun.  What a wonderful world it would be if we were all constantly surrounded by armed vigilantes with itchy trigger fingers.  Everyone knows the best part of the old west was the constant possibility of being hit by a stray bullet.  Free lead everyone!

Also, Republicans have fantasies in which they play the role of Clint Eastwood, but most people aren't capable of just shooting someone.  That's why cops and military people need a lot of training, and frequently need a lot of counseling after they shoot someone.  That's why every time one of these shootings happens we talk about mental illness.  Killing someone is harder than Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina imagine it being, probably because they're both sociopaths. 

Any time someone opens fire on a group of people, even if there's a decently trained armed citizen in the crowd, a few people are going to get shot before the gunman does.  We can't shoot people before they start shooting other people unless Ben Carson is also working on a pre-crime division for the FBI (and I really hope he is, I would just like to see Rand Paul's reaction).  Sometimes these things happen in movie theaters.  Does a shoot-out between a crazy person and a vigilante in a dark theater really sound like a good idea to you?

While we're here, this is a little off topic, but let's quickly dispatch with another stupid argument.  I've heard politicians argue that we don't talk about knife control after a stabbing.  Yes, if you want to kill one person you can use almost anything you want if you're creative enough.  But if you want to kill 10 people in 3 minutes before the cops get there, a knife or a hammer won't get the job done.  Also, knives have other legitimate uses and guns are really only used for shooting stuff.  Anyway...

I don't think we should be willing to accept "less innocent people dying" as a valid goal.  That may be a realistic outcome, but I think we have to demand "zero innocent people dying" as the actual goal and work backwards from there.  I'm not saying ban all guns.  People already have them.  I also don't want to walk through a metal detector every time I go anywhere, although I feel like that's where we might wind up and I guess I can handle that if I have to.  Come to think of it, I already made a proposal http://somethingclever13.blogspot.com/2012/07/hunting-is-stupid.html

What I'm asking for is better leadership.  When you're talking about innocent people dying, less is meaningless.  I want a Presidential candidate with a proposal to get us to zero.  Why don't we demand a higher bar for our candidates?  I made this point on another topic recently.  In a country of 320 million people, only one of us has to be in charge at a time.  Is it too much to ask for one person with a new idea? 

The Big Show

I have to say that I'm not a big fan of how Fox is handling this first debate.  For one thing, I don't understand why they felt the need to do one real debate with the top ten candidates in the polls and then one much less real debate with the other seven.  It kind of seems like we're saying that if you aren't polling in the top ten in August, you don't have a real chance to win.  That might be true for some people, but it still seems a little early for that kind of weeding out. 

Why not do two debates and just randomly split the field?  Or, since we're doing more than one debate anyway, why not split the field into three debates randomly so everyone gets a chance to actually talk.  You could run them on three consecutive nights.  How would this not be good television for Fox?  Why am I the only one around here thinking with my brain?

I suppose the concern is that if you did three debates on three consecutive nights, the people in the third debate would have an advantage, having heard what the people in the earlier debates said and how the audience responded to it.  Maybe they'd even have a night to poll test some stuff.  Honestly though, the chances of any of these people saying something they haven't said 100 times before is pretty minimal. 

Also, Fox is a news network.  Can't they exercise some editorial judgment here and not just blindly go with the polls?  We all know Ben Carson and Ted Cruz aren't going to be President.  Meanwhile, some of the guys at the kiddie debate were at least serious people, who probably will also not be President, but still.  You don't have to like him, but Rick Perry was the Governor of a huge state for 15 years, and tonight he debated at 5PM because Ben Carson and Donald Trump are polling well with people who couldn't find the United States on a map of North America.  Fox is making me feel sorry for Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.  My two least favorite Ricks.  I don't like this.  Let's just get started, OK?

Tonight's debate is being moderated by Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly.  Wallace is the closest thing Fox has to a real journalist, and I'm not entirely sure why he can't just moderate this debate on his own.  The other two...well...Megyn Kelly has done this before at least, but that doesn't mean she did it well.  And Bret Baier?  You'd have a better debate if you replaced him with an actual bear.  Where's Shepard Smith when you need him?

8:50PM - It appears that between the first debate and now, everyone on Fox agreed that Carly Fiorina won the first debate.  That was not what I saw, but I have to admit that Brit Hume probably knows what Republican primary voters like better than I do.

8:53PM - Fox's pre-debate panel appears to be getting paid by the number of times they say Donald Trump's name.

8:56PM - Megyn had to call the candidates out four or five times before they actually came out to the stage.  Looks like nobody went to rehearsal.

8:57PM - Just a super weird start.  All ten guys came out and stood in a line in front of the podiums while Megyn and Bret peppered them with questions like "Are you nervous?" and "What do you think of this crowd?".  Then Bret finally let them go to their podiums.  Then Megyn said these guys are probably all glad Carly Fiorina isn't here.  Seriously, did I watch the wrong debate this afternoon?

9:01PM - Fox has been asking viewers to submit questions via Facebook that they can use during the debate.  I always hate that.  You have a whole network full of supposed journalists, but your game plan involves taking questions from internet trolls.  Every network does this, and it is always stupid.

9:04PM - Bret starts by asking the candidates to raise their hand if they will not make a pledge to support the eventual winner and not run an independent campaign if they lose.  Trump's hand went up immediately, saying that he needs to respect the winner.  Rand Paul jumped right on him saying that Trump is used to buying politicians so he's already hedging his bets (in case the eventual winner can't be bought, is I assume Rand's point).  Rand should have won that exchange pretty easily, but the crowd's reaction was sort of mixed.  I think it scares Republicans that Trump is bringing people into the process that are loyal to Trump but not the party, or reality.

9:08PM - Solid minute from Rubio about how this election can't just be about resumes, and he'll make the Republicans the party of the future.  Make a note to keep an eye on Rubio, he may actually know stuff.

9:10PM - Bush says "In Florida, they called me Jeb because I earned it".  I don't know what that means, but I guess Jeb is a compliment in Florida. 

9:11PM - Megyn was trying to ask Trump about his habit of calling women fat pigs and disgusting animals.  His response was 1) be completely dismissive of Megyn 2) say he doesn't have time for political correctness and 3) threaten to stop being nice to Megyn.  There you go.

9:14PM - Ted Cruz still looks like a muppet.

9:15PM - Bret asked Christie about New Jersey being an economic catastrophe.  Christie responded "if you think it's bad now, you should have seen it when I got there".  Yikes.  Then Christie rattled off a list of Republican economic policies that he put into place in New Jersey.  After years of deficit cutting and regulation busting, New Jersey is a dumpster fire.  Ummm, Chris needs to re-group a little.  Somebody get him a meatball sandwich.

9:18PM - Huckabee suggests using the 5th and 14th amendments to outlaw abortion under all circumstances saying "the Supreme Court is not the supreme being".  Roe v Wade happened in 1973.  Same sex marriage supporters should make a note of that.  That argument is far from over for people like Mike.

9:19PM - Rand is having fun pointing out that ISIS rides around in a billion dollars worth of U.S. Humvees.  Rand then suggested that maybe we shouldn't be handing out weapons all over the middle east.  What an interesting idea.  Maybe don't give everyone weapons.  Can we do that?

9:21PM - John Kasich is pretty good at debating.  He successfully defended his use of the Medicare expansion and then talked about providing care for mentally ill people.  Put Kasich in my maybe column for now.

9:23PM - Jeb proposed fixing immigration instead of using it as a wedge issue.  Trump hasn't insulted anyone in a few minutes so he has to be getting pretty punchy.

9:24PM - Trump, "if it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration".  OK well that's not true, but that never stops Donald.  Wallace asked him twice what specific evidence he has that the Mexican government is sending criminals over the border.  In a shocking twist, Trump was not able to provide evidence. 

9:31PM - Wallace keeps trying to ask about illegal immigration.  Nobody seems to want to answer him, except to say that everyone is in favor of building a giant wall.  Rubio finally pointed out that someone could dig a tunnel under the wall.  Put Marco in the maybe column too, even though he's still in favor of building the giant wall even though he openly admits walls are pretty easy to conquer.

9:35PM - Ted Cruz is not for amnesty.  He is very much for hearing the sound of Ted Cruz' voice.

9:36PM - Christie was apparently appointed to his job in the Bush administration on September 10, 2001.  Sounds like Chris would be a hell of a good luck charm.  I wouldn't go to Atlantic City with him.

9:38PM - Rand says we need to use the 4th amendment to get warrants to collect records from terrorists and not collect records from other people.  Chris is not a fan of getting warrants.  Chris also appears to be employing the Guliani style "September 11th is the answer to every question" strategy.  I don't recall that working out too well for Rudy.

9:40PM - Apparently multiple people, including military Generals and the State department, have told Ted that you can't defeat ISIS until you change the situation on the ground in Iraq and Syria so it's not so conducive to radicalization.  Ted thinks the idea that there's not a military solution to ISIS is nonsense.  You can see why I find the idea of a Cruz Presidency slightly problematic.

9:42PM - Jeb admits that he wouldn't have gone into Iraq knowing now that the intelligence was faulty, rejecting Megyn's argument that since people died in Iraq it isn't OK to say it was a mistake.  That was pretty good.  His answer to what he would do now was less good.

9:44PM - Ben Carson says "I wasn't sure I was going to get to talk again".  Like Kelly, Wallace and Baier, I had pretty much forgotten Ben was there.  He gave an answer similar to what Bobby Jindal said earlier, saying that everything will be OK if we just stop fighting politically correct wars and let the military do whatever they want. 

9:46PM - Trump wanted to quickly point out that he was always opposed to the Iraq War.  Good for him.  Then he said that single payer health care would have worked in another age in America, whatever that means, but now we need a private system.  I can't imagine Trump actually knows anything about health care, except that he hates having to give it to employees.

9:48PM - This is why Trump is doing well.  Sometimes he says things that are true.  He explained his donations to many politicians, Democrats and Republicans, including Hillary Clinton, by saying that if you give them money they do what you want, and that's a broken system.  Can't argue with him on that.

9:51PM - The question to Huckabee was "Is the government to big for anyone to shrink it?".  Huckabee started by saying no, but then talked for a minute about all the ways the federal government is too big.  I think Huckabee thinks no means yes.

9:52PM - Carson appears to be advocating for a flat tax, based on his feeling that the bible supports a flat tax.  It'll be fun to have Ben around for a while.

9:53PM - Jeb said a lot about education, but all I heard was "challenging the teacher's unions and beating them".  Yes please!  I'm very pro-union, but teachers unions are the absolute worst.

10:00PM - Kasich was asked how he would fight Hillary Clinton's argument that Republicans want to oppress women and take the country back to the past.  He said he would respond by balancing budgets.  I think he skipped a step or two.

10:01PM - Same question to Carson.  First he slipped in a doubt that Hillary will actually be the candidate (slick move), then he said he would educate people about how progressives are really causing the problems in this country.  Any political operative will tell you that if you're educating, you're losing.

10:03PM - Wallace asked Jeb how he would get us to 4% growth.  His answer mostly boiled down to cutting taxes and making a wish.  I'm officially worried about Jeb.

10:04PM - Walker keeps bragging about how he's been elected 3 times in Wisconsin.  He keeps leaving out the fact that that's because they tried to recall him twice. 

10:06PM - Wallace asked Christie if Huckabee is lying when he says he can save social security without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age.  Christie said "No, he's not lying, he's just wrong."  This is why people like Christie.  That's both honest and a little funny, and also true.  I'm glad he took that sandwich break.

10:07PM - Huckabee still says he can save social security without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age, you just have to institute his fair tax.  Huckabee makes a good point, which is that people didn't opt into social security.  The government started taking their money when they started working and they didn't get a choice, so it's not their fault the system is in trouble.  All true, but life's not fair and magic tax plans won't fix social security.  People are going to have to deal with a raised retirement age eventually.  That's just the way it is.

10:11PM - Wallace pointed out that four Trump companies have gone bankrupt, but Trump responded that he's never personally gone bankrupt.  Wallace asked him about one specific deal where his lenders lost over a billion dollars and 1,100 jobs.  Trump basically said that the lenders deserved it and everybody in Atlantic City goes bankrupt.  I have to give Wallace some credit.  He really has been trying to call Trump out on his bullshit, but Trump just keeps responding with louder bullshit and Wallace only has two hours. 

10:14PM - I know these guys genuinely believe that cutting corporate taxes will help working people.  It's just that there is zero evidence to support that hypothesis and it's really frustrating.

10:16PM - They just showed a clip of the earlier debate.  One thing I didn't notice before, Carly Fiorina's hair appeared to be dyed to match her jacket.  That's an odd choice.

10:17PM - Rand made a legitimate point about the Iran deal.  He thinks the Obama administration gave up too much too early.   You can disagree, but that's a perfectly reasonable critique and certainly better than the "I would tear up that deal on day one because freedom" answer we're getting from everyone else.

10:24PM - Question to Jeb about him being on the board of the Bloomberg foundation, which gave money to Planned Parenthood.  He says they never had a debate about the budget and he was just on the board because of Bloomberg's commitment to education.  OK then.

10:25PM - Rubio swears he's never supported a rape and incest exception to his anti-abortion stance.   Just tell me how this isn't big government.  I just want an explanation.

10:26PM - Question to Trump..."when did you actually become a Republican?".  He says he's evolved on abortion and he's pro-life now.  He said it very angrily, as he says all things all the time.

10:28PM - Can we all just agree that everyone here is anti-choice?  Do we really have to go through this every four years.  We all know the Republican nominee will be anti-choice.  Why do we have to compete every election cycle to see which guy is the most anti-choice?  Seems like a poor use of time.

10:30PM - Kasich just got applause for going to a same sex wedding.  The home crowd cheered pretty loudly for him.  John stays in the maybe column, but this probably means Fox will declare him the clear loser of the debate.

10:32PM - Rand says he's opposed to the government invading the church.  Luckily, so is the government, so we're all good there.

10:35PM - Racial issues question to Walker.  He looks terrified.  He says police need better training and we should treat everyone the same here in America.  Score one generic answer for Scott.

10:38PM - Trump just recommend buying stock in Iran.  I think he was kidding but I can't say I'm 100% sure.

10:39PM - Bret asked Cruz if Russia and China are cyber terrorists.  Bret was just baiting Ted, and boy did Ted take the bait.  Has Ted mentioned that he opposes the Iran deal?  He does.

10:40PM - Republicans keep pointing out that Iran released hostages the day Reagan was elected.  If Iran released some hostages the day Obama was elected these guys would have marched on Washington and screamed about how Iran sees Obama as an ally because he's a secret Muslim.  I'd love to see a Republican debate where nobody is allowed to mention Reagan.  It would last 7 minutes before they all ran away.

10:42PM - Scott Walker would apparently send weapons to anyone who wanted them.  Can we just have one 10 minute discussion about the history of arming everyone who claims to be on our side at any one point in history?  Just once.  Please?

10:43PM - Huckabee feels that the purpose of the military is protecting Americans and not being nice to transgender people.  I'm glad President Huckabee feels like he'd be OK as President turning away willing and able military volunteers.

10:45PM - Rand says it would be better if Israel was independent and we didn't have to keep sending them money we don't have.  That's the exact same argument Republicans make about poor people, but for some reason Republicans don't like it when you replace poor people with Israel.

10:46PM - Christie wants to make the Navy bigger again.  He's really worried about the Spanish Armada.  You never know when they'll show up.

10:50PM - A Facebook questioner asked if any of these guys have received specific instructions from god.  Please someone say yes.  Please!

10:51PM - Sadly, even Cruz didn't take the bait on the talking to god question.  Disappointing.

10:52PM - Kasich just talked for a minute about uniting the country, listening to other people and not leaving anyone behind.  I'm a hard maybe on Kasich right now.

10:54PM - Rubio says god has blessed the Republican party with some great candidates when the Democrats can't even find one.  Then he talked about reforming the VA.  Rubio may have something for the rest of these guys.  Keep an eye on him.

10:56PM - Carson says he doesn't talk about race that much because he's a neurosurgeon.  I thought that was a pretty good line.  Ben's not going to win, but he's pretty funny sometimes.

Summary of the closing statements:
Kasich - He talked about having a lot of experience.  I think John may be a pretty good candidate, but he needs to work on being less boring.
Christie - Chris' dad worked in an ice cream plant.  That explains some things.  He again mentioned that he was appointed to the Bush administration on September 10, 2001.  Seriously, I wouldn't stand next to him anywhere.
Paul - Rand made an electability argument and said he's a different kind of Republican.
Rubio - Rubio wants expand the American dream for more people.
Cruz - Ted gave one of those nonsense day one plans.  Booooo!  Ted's first day would have approximately 910 hours in it.
Carson - Carson says that everyone is bragging about the things that they were the only one to do, and then says "I'm the only one to separate Siamese twins."  Then he says he thought he was the only one to take out half a brain, but when he gets to Washington he may find that someone beat him to it.  Seriously, Ben's funny.
Huckabee -  Huckabee tried to be funny.  Huck isn't funny though.
Walker - "I'm a guy with a wife and two kids and a Harley".  Ugh. 
Bush - Jeb tried to jam his whole platform into 30 seconds.  Always a mistake.
Trump - I think he just called America a loser.

Man, that was long.

I'm Not Voting for Hillary Clinton

You can't make me vote for Hillary Clinton.  I won't do it.  The list of people I would not vote for under any circumstances has on it but one name, and that name is Hillary Clinton.  I don't even care what she says she believes in this time.  I just want her to go away.  Her and Bill are rich, and they've accomplished plenty, why won't they just go away?  Why?

Unfortunately, having only two parties to choose from, this means the Republican primary process takes on extra special significance for me this time around.  No longer are the Republicans just funny TV personalities I can laugh at and then not vote for.  I have to vote for one of these people.  So everybody focus up!  Alright?!?  I'm serious!  Time to take a look at the Republican candidates.  I was worried that the internet wouldn't have enough room on it to list all of them, but internet inventor Al Gore says we're fine.

I've broken the candidates down into three tiers.  Within each tier, I'll try to list the candidates in order from least likely to win to most likely to win.  Seriously now, I have to vote for one of these people, so let's all just pay attention and see if we can find some hope here.

Tier Three
Tier three consists of people who have the same chance at winning the Republican nomination as I do.  I couldn't tell you why they're running, and I couldn't tell you why anyone would bother donating money to them or saying their name when a pollster calls and asks who they might be voting for.  I'll still try to list these people from least likely to most likely, but keep in mind that trying to parse out the varying degrees of absolutely no chance really is splitting hairs.  Pointless, needless hairs.

Jim Gilmore
I don't know who this person is.  I assume he created Gilmore Girls and listen, girls with blue eyes and dark hair is an excellent concept for a TV show.  I wish every show was based around that general theme.  But Gilmore Guy here isn't going to be President.  Sorry.

Carly Fiorina
Being an actual person I've heard of is a good start.  Carly was CEO of Hewlett-Packard for a while, and was apparently terrible at it.  To be fair, taking over a tech company in 1999 was a little like taking over as Brittney Spears' manager in 1999.  You knew it wasn't going to end well, but somebody had to do it. 

Being a former CEO whose claim to fame was lay-offs certainly didn't stop Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination.  Mitt, however, was at least a governor at some point.  Carly once ran for the Senate and lost.  I don't think that's going to cut it.  Also, Carly is awful on TV.  Really awful.  If you ever get a chance to see her do an interview on Fox, watch for as long as you can just to see what I'm talking about.  You won't last long.

Lindsey Graham 
I can't figure out what Lindsey Graham is doing.  He always struck me as a guy who was perfectly happy being a career Senator.  I suppose if he and John McCain are ever going to build a blanket fort in the White House, it's up to Lindsey now.  Unfortunately, "John McCain is my best friend" isn't exactly a killer campaign slogan when you're dealing with the Republican base.  They still think McCain ruined Sarah Palin's epic run for the White House.

Bobby Jindal
Take your pick of reasons why Bobby won't win.  How about doing everything but setting his own shirt on fire during a comically awful State of the Union response?  Or how about the fact that he looks and sounds like a little kid pretending to be his dad every time you see him speaking?  Or how about the fact the apparently everyone in Louisiana hates him?  Or how about the fact that nobody will take you seriously if you're a 44 year old man who still calls himself Bobby? 

George Pataki
You probably think I have Pataki ranked a little high, right near the top of the people who have absolutely no chance.  Maybe it's my New York bias, but I don't understand why George isn't doing a little better.  Then again, I haven't actually seen him do anything since I found out he was running for President.  George knows that in order to run for President you have to like, leave your house and stuff, right?

Tier Two
Tier two consists of people who, under the right circumstances, could hypothetically win the nomination.  For a couple of them, those circumstances would mostly involve leading a military coup, or having a deadly virus kill all the other candidates.  Still, I think each of these people has some plausible, if improbable, path to the nomination.

Ben Carson
I know, you think Ben should be higher.  I disagree.  Carson is one of two candidates who are specifically hurt by Donald Trump.  The tea party failed because it became a magnet for everyone in the Republican party who wanted to get angry about everything without actually having to learn about anything.  Carson looked like he might be their guy in 2016, but then Trump came along and boy, talk about being angry without actually learning anything!  The Trump train will wreck eventually, but by the time it does Carson will be lucky to still get his show on Fox, which is really all he wanted in the first place.

Ted Cruz
The other guy Trump is absolutely burying is Ted Cruz, for basically the same reason.  Ever since he got to the Senate Ted Cruz has been the champion of being loud and disagreeable.  Now he takes a firm back seat in that category to Mr. Trump.  Second place in the loud and disagreeable competition is just the first loser.  If Trump disappears more quickly than I expect, his voters will have to go somewhere and Ted still has a platform as a Senator.  Unfortunately for Ted (and fortunately for the rest of us, in this context at least), I don't think Trump is leaving anytime soon and until he does, Ted stays buried.

Rick Perry
Presidents from Texas have a tendency to get us into intractable quagmires overseas.  And with so many potential quagmires available to us currently, I'm confident that Republican voters will recognize that Mr. Perry is not the guy right now.  Also, he's terrible at debating and might actually be a moron.  I'm not a big fan, is I guess what I'm saying. 

Mike Huckabee
I'm a little disappointed in Huck.  Growing up, the priests always told us to love the sinner and hate the sin.  Some of them were better at that than others.  I always thought Mike was pretty good at genuinely not hating the people he believes to be sinners.  Now I'm not so sure. 

Mike's path to the nomination has always been the same.  Rally the social conservatives and stick around long enough to go one on one with the establishment candidate, with enough primaries left to make it a real fight.  This time around, I wonder how much fight the social conservatives have left in them.  They keep losing, in public opinion, in the courts, with former Olympic athletes who they thought were cool.  At some point, some percentage of those folks have to give up and move on to other things.  I don't think there's enough left to take Huck anywhere good, but I guess we'll see.

Donald Trump
I know, I know.  But he's doing so well in the polls! How can you not even have him in the first tier??  Let me ask you an honest question.  Do you really think Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination?  I don't.  I think he'll stay in for a while, probably at least into March.  But as other candidates start to drop out, two things will happen. 

First of all, nobody who is supporting any other candidate, except for maybe Cruz and Carson, will come over to Trump when their guy leaves.  Every time someone gets out of the race, everyone else will get some new voters and Trump will stay where he is now.  Secondly, while Trump will probably look pretty good in Thursday's debate with nine other people, eventually he'll wind up on stage with just two or three other people and that's when his real weakness will get exposed.  He's a lightweight.  He doesn't know anything about governing or public policy.  That's fine when you're one of 17 people shouting at the TV cameras, it's less fine when you're on stage trying to debate 2 or 3 people who have spent their lives working in government. 

Trump can't win for the same reason I can't be a famous guitarist.  I think I'd be an awesome famous guitarist!  I'd be so charitable if I was rich and I'd always sign autographs for fans.  I'd always be on tour and I'd play colleges and charity events for free because I'd be rich anyway and you can only spend so much money.  I'd be great at this!  Oh but there's this one thing, I'm terrible at playing the guitar.  Just that one thing, otherwise I'd be great.

Rick Santorum
And now you're wondering how it took me so long to get to Rick.  I've been hard on Rick in the past, and I don't agree with him a lot, but I honestly think he's a solid candidate.  Listen to Rick speak if you ever get the chance.  He talks a lot about the economy, the middle class and jobs.  He hardly ever talks about bestiality anymore.  I don't think Rick's economic plan is any good, but at least he has one, and I think he honestly wants to do good things for working people.  He's pretty genuine on the economic stuff, and I think that'll resonate if he gets a chance.

Rick was also a Senator, and from a state with actual people in it.  He understands how governing works and he has experience in primary debates.  I feel like Rick should be doing better than he is, and I have some expectation that he'll start doing better soon.  I'm not saying I like it, I'm just saying I think Santorum may be more for real than he seems right now, and I'd suggest keeping an eye on him.

Rand Paul
I have to admit to being genuinely interested in Rand at some point.  I've always been a fan of Ron Paul, and I was looking forward to seeing Rand keep up the family tradition of getting booed in Republican primary debates for being somewhat tentative about bombing everything.  Rand is still probably the guy in this field I'd be most likely to vote for, but doesn't it feel like his moment has passed a little bit? 

He really jumped on that whole NSA data collection thing, but it turned out most people didn't really care about that a lot.  And even though Rand is actually more hawkish than his dad, I think most Republicans think he's still someone who wouldn't feature explosions in his foreign policy, and I'm not sure that fits into the current Iran pants-shitting vibe the Republicans currently have going. 

Marco Rubio
All of Marco's avenues seem to be closing.  He lost the tea party people when he decided to support immigration reform and, you know, be Hispanic.  The whole anti-Castro thing doesn't really play outside of Florida.  The most generous description of his State of the Union response would be "not totally awful", which is better than Bobby Jindal's "catastrophic", but still not good. 

Rubio's best path to the nomination is the same as Barack Obama's path in 2008.  It's a pretty good path, but I wonder if this avenue is closing for Marco too.  He's no less new to the national scene than Obama was around this time in 2007, but Republicans got really excited about him and pushed him like Vince McMahon pushing a new wrestler, and now Marco already seems like he's been around for a while.  I think we may already know too much about Rubio for him to play the new guy.  Also, I'm not convinced that anyone from Congress can win this time around.  People really hate Congress.

I seem mostly down on Marco because, like Rand Paul, I think his moment may have passed.  On the other hand, Jimmy Smits won the election on the West Wing, and if anyone is a Republican Matt Santos, it's this guy.

John Kasich
Kasich is the hardest guy on the list to place, because he just got in.  He's a governor, so he's not tainted by being a member of Congress.  He's a swing state governor, and he seems to be a least mildly popular in his state.  He has legitimate experience governing.  Republicans have seemed quietly excited about Kasich for a while now. 

Kasich sort of quietly announced his candidacy right in the middle of Trumpageddon.  Sometimes a bad launch can kill a campaign.  I don't know if that'll happen to Kasich, he seems pretty legit, but it's really hard to say right now.  It looks like he'll probably make Thursday's debate, and I expect he'll do pretty well, and then he should be on his way to the top tier.

Tier One
Tier one candidates are the people who are currently legitimate contenders.  People who I think can win without anything weird happening.  One of these guys would make a really awful President, but the other two would probably be not completely terrifying.

Chris Christie
Maybe I need to give up on Chris.  Maybe this just isn't going to happen.  I'm not ready yet though.  He's the only guy in this field who won't put up with getting bullied by Trump.  His experience as a U.S. Attorney should kill in debates about security.  He's well known and currently a Governor.  The fact that MSNBC still won't stop crying about the George Washington Bridge also leads me to believe that liberals are genuinely afraid of Christie. 

Will social conservatives ever really trust him?  No, but they didn't trust Romney or McCain either and they eventually dealt with it.  Does he need to get his poll numbers up?  Yes he does.  He may not even make the stage on Thursday.  It seems like he's got enough financial backing to hang around for a while, and he should do better once some of the other people start dropping out.  I think he'll get the Rubio people, maybe the Perry people, maybe even the Huckabee people if they don't go to Santorum.  I still think he can win, soon I may be the only one left.

Scott Walker
Walker seems to remind Republicans of Reagan, which is a terrible thing for anyone who actually understands what kind of President Reagan was in real life, but an awesome thing for Scott in the Republican primary.  He's also become the patron saint of union bashing, another killer trait for a Republican.  If I thought Scott Walker was actually a decent candidate, he'd be the clear favorite.  He doesn't really seem like a decent candidate though.  He seems like an empty suit that's been filled with talking points and billionaires' political wishes.  Like I said, he's a lot like Reagan.

Jeb Bush
I think Jeb is still the favorite.  I know his poll numbers never move and he doesn't really seem to do or say much, but consider a few other things.  He's incredibly well-funded, he was a swing state Governor and Republican primary voters don't remember his brother nearly as negatively as the rest of us.  Would it help you to know that his real name is John?  Sounds less silly than Jeb, right?

We have to find out if Jeb actually wants to be President that much.  I'm not 100% sure he does.  I don't know that anyone is especially excited about Jeb, and maybe that's because he doesn't seem too excited about himself.  I'm not looking forward to voting for Jeb, but I think it's the most likely outcome for me.  I mean, how bad can a Bush Presidency be, right?

Epilogue
Oh and one more thing.  Did you notice how I didn't mention Newt Gingrich?  That's because he's not running this time.  If you're looking at all of these people and thinking you don't like any of them, just remember that none of them are Newt Gingrich, and that's pretty great.

Journey to the End of My Sense of Humor

I started blogging almost six years ago for reasons that I don't fully remember.  I could say that I needed a creative outlet, but it's more likely that I just wanted to yell back at the people on the TV and this was the next best thing.  It was my intention to post something two or three times a week, and it went that way for a while.

I found that as I started writing regularly, I started becoming more aware of my inner monologue.  Eventually, after the 2012 election, I got so tired of the voice in my head, and my sense of humor, that I all but abandoned this space.  I needed a break from me, and while that's never entirely possible, I could at least give myself a break from writing, editing and re-writing my thoughts all the time.  I tried to get back here a couple of years ago, but that didn't really take. 

I bought a new car a few months ago.  I'm very impulsive and impatient, especially when it comes to buying stuff.  One day I was just sitting in my apartment getting ready to schedule an oil change for my 11 year old car.  Seriously, my car would have been a sixth grader, and I beat it up pretty good.  I don't think I ever took it to a car wash, and sometime last summer I kicked the clutch pedal the wrong way and just yanked it right out of the car.  I was able to jam it back in, but, not surprisingly, it never really worked as well after that.  Good tip for everyone...ripping things out of your car and then kicking them back into place isn't an awesome way to keep your car in top shape.

Anyway, one day in March I was sitting here thinking about not really wanting to put any more money into my old car.  I went online to research possible new cars.  Now, my grandpa is still alive, and he didn't win World War 2 so I could buy a Toyota or a fucking Volkswagon, so I limited my search to American cars.  I settled on Chevy because, I don't know, my Saturn was a GM car and it turned out pretty good.  About 90 minutes later I was putting a $500 deposit down at a Chevy dealership so Joe, the nice Irish car salesman, could find me a blue Chevy Cruze with a standard transmission.  Joe had a KISS mug on his desk, but I bought a car from him anyway because his hockey equipment was in the car that he let me test drive, so that kind of evened out the whole KISS thing.

Three days after that, I went back to Joe with a large check which I gave him in exchange for a blue Chevy Cruze with a standard transmission.  I didn't like the shade of blue then and I don't like it now, but I wasn't in the mood for red just then so blue was my best choice because the other two choices were white (no) and a fourth color that I honestly don't even remember.  A week later I kept thinking how much I wished I had just gotten a red one.

On the way home with my new car, I stopped in a parking lot to play around with the transmission a little before I got it out on a real road.  I realized that I didn't know how to put the car in reverse, so that started about 7 minutes of panic in a McDonald's parking lot.  What if I never figured out how to make my new car go backwards??  It would be like the Zoolander of cars!  Then I figured it out.

Then I stopped at home for a few minutes before heading back to work for a night meeting.  When I started my new car, for the second time ever, the check engine light went on.  I checked the gas cap and whatever else I could think of.  Luckily, my previous car had a pretty consistent check engine light problem, so I knew what to check, but nothing helped.  I was very unhappy.

I took my new car back to the dealership, and after they checked it out a little, they called me and announced that I needed a new part.  They said I needed to bring it in later in the week to get the new part (which they had to order), then I needed to drive it around for a few days, then I needed to bring it back in again to have it pass inspection with the new part.  This all made me very angry.  I sent Joe a very angry email, which I don't feel bad about because even though this wasn't his fault he's a KISS fan and that is his fault.  I had a very angry conversation with two different people in the maintenance department, which I do sort of feel bad about.

Everyone completely understood why I was very angry, but that didn't really make me less angry.  But eventually,  I realized that being very angry wasn't helping solve my problem, and I decided to stop being very angry.  And when I stopped being very angry, all the car people started trying extra hard to help me, because I wasn't being angry at them anymore.  Since I got my new part, everything about the car has been great.  It even retained its new car smell for like three months.

So back to blogging.  This whole car fiasco reminded me that angry Sean is generally not productive Sean, and that regular Sean is not really a big fan of angry Sean.  I started writing with the main goal of being funny.  I got tired of my own writing, in part, because my tone slowly changed from being funny to being angry, and mean-spirited.  To be fair, you can hardly blame me.  To keep informed on my subject matter, which is politics more than anything else, I watched a lot of cable news.  Here's a quick story about cable news that I think illustrates my point.

Not that long ago, maybe around the same time I bought the car, I tried to watch MSNBC.  I honestly hadn't watched MSNBC at all in like a year because it is so very awful.  While Fox's detachment from reality is often genuinely entertaining, MSNBC's detachment from reality is usually just sad and unsettling.  So I turned on Chris Matthews, a familiar face to ease back in.  Chris, and I swear this is true, was talking about Chris Christie and the George Washington bridge.  A whole segment on it.  Roughly 18 months after the non-scandal happened.  Why?  I watched the whole segment and I honestly couldn't tell you.

Completely unrelated tangent.  I was just adding some tags to this post (Chevrolet, MSNBC, Fox News, etc) and apparently I've never tagged a post with Zoolander before.  How does that happen?  23 year old me would be very disappointed in current me.

Anyway, you can't blame me for getting angry all the time back when I was watching hours of cable news every day.  Honestly, you should be impressed I'm still alive.

I'm at the point now where I either need to start writing here again or I need to come on here, thank the 8-10 people who read most of what I wrote, and give up.  I'm willing to give it one more try.  And this time I can try it without crushing my soul with hours and hours of Fox and MSNBC.  If there's one thing I learned the first time, its that I never learned anything useful watching cable news anyway.

There's an election just starting, with debates and what-not, and plenty of silly sports things about under-inflated balls to talk about.  And maybe sometimes I can just tell funny stories that happened to me in life.  I've heard people find that interesting.  If I can't get back into this now, then maybe it just isn't for me anymore.

First up, a total rundown of the Republican field.  Then a debate on Thursday.  Then we'll see how it's going.  Maybe it'll go a little less angry this time.  Maybe I can get through this whole election without calling anybody a dumbass, and maybe then I can sign off feeling good about how it ended.  Or maybe it doesn't have to end there.  Or maybe I'll write a couple of things next week and realize that I've wrung everything out of the sponge that is my sense of humor already and I don't have anything else useful to say.  We'll see.