Debate Recap: An Honest Appraisal

If you saw my last post, you know I’m for RFK Jr., but to those of us in the know, that means I’m much more likely to look at things honestly and with an open and analytical mind. Of course, I watched both the Biden vs. Trump debate, as well as Kennedy’s highly creative approach of including himself virtually in the debate. There were some surprises that proved some of my predictions wrong. Sadly, some of my expectations, dire as they were, turned out to be too generous. Other expectations were not quite lived up to.

First off, I thought CNN did a good job, and compared to the last few cycles of presidential debates, I don’t have any significant qualms with the performance of the moderators. They only asked questions and tried to keep the candidates on track. I did not like the moderator for Kennedy’s version, who interjected his own opinions at points, which I happened to disagree with, such as that America is doing fine and people want to come here. I expected CNN’s moderators to be much more biased, and only one of their questions stands out in my mind as a one-sided attempt to undermine Trump.

The technique of cutting off the candidates’ microphones, which was doubtlessly intended to stop Trump from interjecting his one-liners and reducing the debate to an exchange of low blows, didn’t even work. Both Trump and Biden insulted each other non-stop, each constantly asserting that the other was the “worst president in history.” I found myself thinking whoever was the worst, the other was in second place. This is partly because, for example, Biden accused Trump of raising the deficit more than any other president before him. That is true, but Biden is on his way to raising it more than Trump. Biden called Trump a convicted felon, and Trump responded that so was Hunter Biden, and Joe himself could easily be one once he’s not president. And that is true. One of the great fears the Democrats have of a Trump victory is that he will do exactly to them what they did to him, which was to use the law to go after their political rivals.

The border was a big topic and an enormous weak spot for Biden. If America wanted to close the border, we could easily do so. If we can fight a proxy war with Russia via Ukraine and have hundreds of billions to send to Ukraine, we could close our border in a month. It was left open for some ulterior purpose we aren’t allowed to know, but it had to be deliberate, and the Biden administration is responsible for it.

Biden’s biggest attacks on Trump were about his character and were rhetorical knees to the groin. “You had sex with a prostitute when your wife was pregnant!” “You called men carrying torches out of the forest and with Nazi signs fine people.” I got the strong impression Joe’s knowledge about American politics came from watching Rachel Maddow’s hyperbolic tirades, rather than from his own administration and intel. Though you get a lot of that from Trump as well, and wonder if he’s been reading the New York Post or getting his ideas from conservative YouTubers. Biden basically calling Trump a Nazi was so cheap and obvious that it just registers as name-calling on the schoolyard, which could be said of the whole “debate.”

Donald was his usual self, claiming anything he did was the best in history, which I don’t think anyone believes. They both dipped heavily into the logical fallacy of “the appeal to authority,” claiming this or that group or body of experts sides with them. If one tuned in to see Donald be his brash self, one wouldn’t be disappointed. But I don’t think anyone tuned in to see Joe do his tough-guy angry routine. His whole setup about how Trump said veterans were “losers and suckers, and my son wasn’t a loser and sucker. You’re a loser and a sucker,” just came off as fake and ugly.

Everyone, even the hardcore “Democrats,” had to admit that Joe isn’t anywhere near the top of his game, and he suffers from too much age-related mental decline to perform his job, or even the job of an intern working for his administration for free to gain experience. Joe is out to lunch, and everyone knows it. And we also know that he’s been on a lunch break his entire presidency. And that should make us wonder about who is really running the show. We’re not allowed to know what shadowy, ultra-powerful, rich, connected, influential, corrupt, and evil personages, companies, and institutions are steering the country for their own personal gain, and at the expense of everyone and everything else. When you vote for Joe Biden, you are voting for The Shadow. You are voting for an unelected, unaccountable force.

Joe kept saying the same transitions over and over, “the idea…” and “by the way…”. And Trump made his curious puckering faces like he was tasting wine.

Biden presented a fantastical story about how an evil tyrant is going to take over Poland, Hungary, and Belarus. And Trump was correct in saying that we are the closest we’ve been to nuclear annihilation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. But I was for Biden asking to tax the super rich so that they begin to incrementally pay what the rest of us pay. I’ve been living overseas for a long time (I actually did leave when Bush was president, thank you), but the last time I worked full-time in America I paid over 30% of my earnings in income taxes. For those of you that don’t have this argument in your back pocket, that’s out of my essential income needed for basic survival. When you tax a billionaire 30%, it’s 100% out of their disposable income. But often they are paying 0% taxes. If you’re going to lower taxes, lower them on the people who need the money for survival, not for the people who are going to put it in an invisible offshore haven.

RFK Jr. was by far the most articulate candidate, despite the affliction that affects his vocal cords and always makes him sound like he desperately needs to clear his throat. Some people say they won’t vote for him because of his voice. Despite his voice, I can listen to him talk for an hour uninterrupted because he has so much to say, whereas listening to either Trump or Biden for 15 minutes non-stop would be a kind of low-level torture. Get your priorities straight. That said, I was mildly disappointed with Kennedy’s performance, but that’s because I hold him to a very high standard. He has a tendency to be long-winded and can be a broken record on certain points that he really wants to drive home. For debating purposes, he needs to be more concise, clear, and make the essential point before elaborating. All the candidates had substantial content that only makes sense if you already know what they are talking about.

RFK Jr. did knock it out of the park on several instances. He has a way of introducing hard facts that either we never got to hear, were downplayed, or memory-holed. One was that early on in the Russia-Ukraine War, Putin and Zelensky signed a peace agreement, and Putin began withdrawing his troops. This war that now threatens the US being in a hot war directly with Russia could have been settled hundreds of thousands of lives and more than a hundred billion dollars ago. The Shadow who runs the Biden administration did not want peace. They want a long, expensive war that funnels taxpayer money to the weapons manufacturers.

Kennedy also pointed out that Blackrock, I think Vanguard, and one other company own both CNN and Pfizer. It doesn’t mean they own it outright, but, for example, Blackrock owns 12% of CNN and about 8% of Pfizer. This might explain why CNN vehemently denied that the virus escaped from a lab for years, while the people in the know knew all along that it did. What we see here is that the news serves corporate interests and is basically a propaganda wing of those corporations and The Shadow. They can’t not be or they’ll lose their funding. The days when the news took on corrupt corporations are over. Now they serve them.

If you didn’t read my last post, here’s a quick litmus test to tell if your trusted news station is lying to you. Did they tell you that Kennedy didn’t qualify for CNN’s debate? That’s a lie. First off, their qualifications were designed to keep anyone out other than Trump and Biden. And if you don’t know, the “Democrats” fear Kennedy far, far more than Trump because he is a much more formidable opponent to corporate and political corruption. Trump is their second choice. So, CNN demanded any independent candidate needed 15% projected votes in 4 polls. Kennedy got that, including in CNN’s own poll. But then CNN retroactively eliminated the Monmouth poll, which is considered one of the most accurate. Why? So Kennedy couldn’t debate. Their second requirement is that a candidate must be on the ballot in enough states already to secure 270 electoral votes. The way to do this is by getting enough signatures in each state. As it happens, Kennedy already has enough signatures in enough states to have over 300 electoral votes, but the states have until August to finalize the process. So, since some of them are dragging their feet, Kennedy is eliminated, even if they will have no choice but to put him on the ballot once their time is up. If your news source told you Kennedy didn’t qualify, they lied to you and are a part of the propaganda wing of the DNC and The Shadow.

Yeah, people still think like I did a quarter century ago when we could trust, sort of, the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and your garden-variety news outlets. That’s changed, and we haven’t changed our own operating systems to register it. Those companies have been bought out and now serve the interests of the government and ruling elite that are taking control by any and all means necessary. Did they tell you the virus came from a wet market and anyone saying it came from a lab was a lunatic? Did they tell you Hunter’s laptop was a Russian hoax? Did they not tell you that Putin and Zelensky signed a peace agreement but we were having none of it because we want war? Your news source is crap. You’re getting government propaganda on a platter served up in your living room, on your computer or phone, or on your doorstep. If you want to live in reality, you’re better off watching Saturday morning cartoons or your grass grow. It’s better to be blissfully ignorant than to passionately believe lies.

The DNC, run by the Military Industrial Complex, Blackrock, Lockheed Martin, Pfizer, the billionaire class, and whatever other shadowy players, are doubtlessly now thinking of how to replace puppet Biden with another puppet who they can trust to do business as usual, which means funneling money up, up, and up to themselves. Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama, or whatever pleasant face they can find to hoodwink the public to put faith once again in our oligarchic rule, hoping this time it will finally be different, will be another nail or two or three in the coffin.

And if you haven’t figured this out, social issues revolving around race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identification, and even abortion are meaningless. They don’t care any more about YOU, no matter who you are, than they do about the Ukrainian soldiers dying on the battlefield. If you missed this juicy tidbit, Lindsey Graham recently revealed our true goal in Ukraine, which is to garner for ourselves, or rather our corporate elite and shareholders, “10 to 12 trillion dollars of critical minerals” in Ukraine. You see, Ukraine will need to pay us back for all the taxpayer money we sent via them to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and the war machine. Ukraine will need to pay Blackrock & Vanguard for the rebuilding. Hmmm. How could they possibly pay us back?? This stuff is so evil and disgusting (I guess that’s redundant) that the mind boggles trying to contemplate it. The administration doesn’t give a F about Ukrainian people or democracy. They don’t want democracy in America. They don’t care about us, and the social issues are a joke. The real issues are money, power, and resources. That’s all they care about, and why they are robbing us blind of all three.

The debate, whatever it wasn’t, was comic gold. I laughed out loud, literally (as in not figuratively) several times. My favorite part is perhaps the most poignant and important segment of the evening, when they fought over their relative performances on the golf course.

There should be a televised golf tournament between the two. I’ll just watch the recaps.

If either of them is truly the worst president in American history, the other is a contender. We have an alternative, and an outstanding one, easily the best in decades, and just the man we need right now to turn this Titanic away from the iceberg. But most people, possibly including YOU, whoever you are, were convinced in your heart that he was a raving lunatic before you ever gave him the slightest chance.

I have a saying. I have many. One of them is that you can’t hope to evaluate a person unless you know them yourself, and even then it’s a long shot. It’s so easy to sabotage someone with malicious gossip or completely out-of-context information. Certainly, with a presidential candidate, we would all agree that as mature, intelligent, independent citizens WE wouldn’t reject a candidate based on smear campaigns crafted by corrupt corporations! WE would evaluate directly for ourselves, trusting our own brains. Well, that’s not what I see. I see people afraid to use or trust their own brains. They just go along with the herd. And they are manipulated for this reason to believe that everyone unanimously agreed a long time ago that RFK Jr. was a dangerous loony. THAT is a sleazy tactic to manipulate you and sideline your brain. Give the guy a chance yourself and trust your own intelligence and instincts.

And have you ever watched a Trump or Biden speech all the way through, or did you just watch them filtered through your puppet news commentators, who are not reporters and are reading copy that was provided for them? I remember the first time I watched a Trump rally. Had to force myself. But I discovered he wasn’t really who the media portrayed him as. He has some good points, and at least he was not a war president.

There is a solution that isn’t one or the other of the worst presidents in American history or a puppet to do the bidding of our corporate overlords. Kennedy can win if average Americans just give him a chance. He’ll be on the ballot in every state, and all you have to do is vote for him. But that’s IF you decide he’s the right choice after you give him a fair chance.

Now, back to work.