Aint over till the Fat Guy sings?

I didn't post last night due to a malware attack on my system, which is now up and running again today.

I had intended to write about the "debate". But here it is tonight.

I put the word “debate” in quotation marks because it was really a food fight.

Debates have rules so that each of the debaters as an equal opportunity to express their ideas and respond to the other.

This was not the case insofar as the ABC moderators spent a lot of time questioning Trump's assertions on their own--and of course ignoring Harris' which were full of exaggerations, bias and obvious falsehoods. They call it “fact checking”. Which in journalism means making sure everything fits a certain background narrative. Keep in mind that the questions themselves had to fit that story.

Some examples… Right at the beginning.

Harris: Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess.

US unemployment actually fell under Trump and then rose suddenly with the pandemic. Trump did not leave the country with "the worst public health epidemic in a century". The worst of the pandemic had passed when he left office, and along with it economic problems including unemployment that it caused. I don't think that Trump handled the epidemic particularly well-- but Fauci who has worked under both Democrats and Republicans was the real culprit. In any case, Harris was pushing Trump’s buttons from the beginning with misleading, if not false accusatory statements.

Harris: What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing

In point of fact, Project 25 is is a think tank project for the Republican Party – not for Trump himself. He claims not to have read it, which is probably true since he doesn't read very much anyway.

At this point, the moderator gets into the act, helping Harris’s prosecutorial efforts.

DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is a essentially a national sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said that you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on good coming into this country. As you know many economists say that with tariffs at that level costs are then passed onto the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly four thousand dollars a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs.

I tend to agree with Muir．But it also true that inflation was modest under Trump despite his tariff pollicies.

Harris: But what Donald Trump did let's talk about this with COVID, is he actually thanked President XI for what he did during COVID. Look at his tweet. "Thank you, President XI," exclamation point. When we know that XI was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.

This is disingenuous. Chinese were completely transparent as to what they knew about the origins of COVID. The problem was that nobody in the US— neither Democrats nor Republicans--or really Trump himself — accepted what the Chinese actually reported-that they didn't know anything about the origins of the disease.

Recently, indications are that this disease appeared first in Europe at least a year before it appeared in China. “Gain of function” is an aspect of natural mutation, even if can be bioengineered in some cases. My version of ASD, for example is natural “gain of function” affecting microRNA.

In any case, the Chinese dealt with the disease effectively with very few deaths —compared to the American case.

Linsey Davis provided direction for Harris to attack Trump’s ambiguity on abortion.

LINSEY DAVIS: I want to turn to the issue of abortion. President Trump, you've often touted that you were able to kill Roe v. Wade. Last year, you said that you were proud to be the most pro-life president in American history. Then last month you said that your administration would be great for women and their reproductive rights. In your home state of Florida, you surprised many with regard to your six-week abortion ban because you initially had said that it was too short and you said, "I'm going to be voting that we need more than six weeks." But then the very next day, you reversed course and said you would vote to support the six-week ban. Vice President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of abortion because you've changed your position so many times. Therefore, why should they trust you?

It is all right to question Trump on abortion and his opinions . But it is not all right to imply that he is untrustworthy because of his ambivalence! That would make almost everyone untrustworthy.

Once again you have a moderator doing Harris's work for her.

The moderators set the tone, putting Trump on the defensive. As I've indicated it was not a rational discussion. What started as a food fight moved on to shit slinging.

Trump was ducking and blustering.

Sad because there are a lot of issues that would benefit from rational discussion— and which the country desperately needs to address. We don't need televised toilet talk.

Trump could have won the “debate” if he had come prepared and avoided slinging shit back . Harris is a lawyer. And good at memorizing. But she is predictable. She is also not an original thinker. She recites what she is given to say.

After all was said and done. this was just another ABC unreality show. Trump said some off the wall things. But it was Harris who was up to her nostrils in you-know-what.

As a result, he could have turned it to his advantage if he were truly competent – which he isn't. He could have fact checked the fact checkers and their narrative, If he as good PR people, they can still have a field day drawing attention to Harris’ contradictions and exaggerations and falsehoods, as bad as Biden’s or worse.

I am not going to go through the entire debate. As I said, it went from bad to worse. Check out the text of the debate here – and weep.

Neither Trump nor Harris won．The public lost.

But wait…

The Fat Lady hasn’t sung yet. Nor the Fat Guy. A really good analysis…. And how Trump could turn it around.

A really good analysis…. And how Trump could turn it round.

Still, no matters who wins, the nation loses.

There’s Jill Stein to remind you of that.

Special Article Part 3

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