There is evidently a consensus among the pundits that the “winner” of Wednesday night’s GOP debate was Carly Fiorina.
There is also a consensus among fact-checkers that virtually nothing she said was accurate–and in the case of her attack on Planned Parenthood, was manufactured out of whole cloth.
Of course, the GOP primary voters to which she and the others were throwing their red meat were highly unlikely to notice.
I don’t know what’s more terrifying: the GOP’s embrace of “look at me, look at me” Donald Trump (who is unable to answer any substantive question with even a modicum of understanding or gravitas, and who endorsed the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism) or Ben Carson (the “scientist” who doesn’t believe in evolution or climate change and hasn’t a clue what government does) or Fiorina’s obvious calculation that she can improve her prospects by being the female face of the war on women, even if that requires playing fast and loose with those pesky things called “facts.”
Probably the best summary of the debate(s) was offered by Gail Collins, who–in one particularly memorable phrase–compared Jindal and Santorum to “rabid otters.”
The one indelible “take-away” from the debate–at least for Hoosiers–is that today’s GOP sure isn’t the party of Dick Lugar and Bill Hudnut.
How does that car commercial put it? This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile…
I haven’t watched the periodic sitcom, “The Republican Debates”; I’m sticking with The Meathead whose intelligent, factual responses – even if screamed – to Archie’s inane, off-the-wall political beliefs. Consider, if you will, Archie’s religious beliefs which often lead to his political beliefs; such as the fact that God created woman from man’s rib – a cheaper cut. This explains the current Republican anti-woman crusade on all issues of civil and human rights.
As for “The Donald”; how many here in Indianapolis remember a few years ago he was named to drive the pace car in our beloved 500 Mile Race? The onslaught against that crap began immediately; I was one of the more than 17,000 from around the country who rose up to demand he be recalled. In only a matter of days, the news release read that Donald Trump thanked us for the honor but his schedule didn’t allow time for the training he would need to drive the pace car so he bowed out. Personally; I much preferred the few headline reading, “Trump Dumped”, that was not made-up shit, that was gospel. Who can we send complaints to about this presidential nomination issue?
The failure of the GRAND OLD PARTY was on full display to the nation and the world and I was ashamed of what our once great party has become, no ideas, no vision, no solutions to our problems, and no plans for opportunity and equality. Just me,me, me.
I liked the headline of the African-American newspaper distributed in Jacksonville last week: BEN CARSON IS DONALD TRUMP WITHOUT A BIG MOUTH.
JoAnn, send your complaints to the friends and neighbors who stay home on Election Day.
Does your local high school have a “election workshop” near Election Day, a mock polling place, where many HS seniors may lose their fear of the polling place?
or
do your politicians believe 18-year-olds have brains sufficient only for “boots on the ground”, i.e. cannon fodder?
We have CNN Int’l here and I was able to tape the rebroadcast of the debate because I didn’t realize there were two rounds and the first round I didn’t bother watching even though I had taped it. So yesterday afternoon, I watched the ’round 2 tape’ and I was in a bad mood the rest of the day. I couldn’t believe that anyone would actually vote for any of them!
Good grief, Margaret Thatcher on the 10 dollar bill? Come on, there are so many options for women in that country, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt to name a few and they said, their mother, their wives? Sigh.
And Bush said, my brother kept us safe? OMG, I was screaming at the TV, do you know your brother was the POTUS on 9/11? I think he got the loudest applause for that statement and that to me said it all. The GOP rewriting history.
Rubio was the only one that showed he knew anything about immigration issues, because being married to an immigrant, I went through the process and it’s severely broken.
Rand Paul did show some knowledge about marijuana legalization and he even invoked the reality that whites don’t go to jail for smoking it like minorities do in massive numbers.
But the best zinger was Kasich, that said if he was watching this at home, he would have changed the channel. Hear hear – I couldn’t believe he actually said something that REAL within 10 minutes because I’m sure many would have done exactly that! The rest of his nonsense was not worthy of remembering.
It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I’m thankful that CNN is holding the Democratic debate next month because over here, I can’t go on-line and watch any of the other stations like CBS, ABC etc. because they are blocked in Europe. CNBC shows the NBC nightly news (which I tape) but I don’t know if they are holding a debate or not on that channel.
I hope #FeelTheBern shows them what a true debate is all about next month!!! Go Bernie!
Carly has worked hard at what Bush II was famous for. Making accomplishments from total disasters. I suppose if total disasters are what you’re good at making then lip sticking them is an essential skill.
Clearly out of that pack of jackals on stage there was not one qualified candidate. For any office. That leaves all of those who only vote Republican with a problem. Stay home or take a chance at trashing the country again.
Well, her comments were dramatic, but proved to be contrived and exaggerated. That certainly will come back to haunt her among more than a few voters. Should she get the nomination or be on the ticket it will come back to haunt her and color everything other charge she makes in the future. For those anti-abotionists she has risen in stature, but for many others she cut her own throat with that lie.
OMG; my friends, neighbors and family are sick of my rants about voting. My children and most of my grandchildren do vote – and do vote for Democrats because they keep abreast of “what’s happening”. I have one grandson who is a paramedic in the U.S. Navy so I’m sure you know my view on “boots on the ground”. He would be on the battlefield responding to screams of “medic”; I prefer he stay in the medical clinic in San Diego. I don’t know what the local high schools offer; with Republicans depleting the public education budget on a regular schedule, doubtful they invest much in the way of civics education, preferring to keep our youth uneducated in that area. I am against the Charter Schools (a few here have been investigated for various reasons) and Voucher Students are studying the religion of whatever religious school they have been vouchered into…they are not forced to participate in prayers. Have to admit some of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are in Charter schools or are Voucher students, that is out of my control. Two of my grandsons are home-schooled and excelling in all classes. One of them occasionally adds astute political posts on Facebook and has been known to quote Greek philosophers to prove his point:)
As for “boots on the ground”; this is a Republican state so you know the answer to your question. Pence is returning (again) from Japan, his 7th trip in his first term as Gov with another year to go. The nation (and probably much of the world, other than 3rd world nations) is aware of his RFRA and ensuing “fix” fiasco earlier this year. I’m sure, if asked, he would agree with bombing Iran ASAP and restarting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I vote – straight DEMOCRATIC ticket – every election day. I am 78, deaf and disabled; can only participate on line via Sheila’s daily blog, respond to political newsletters and sign and forward all relevant petitions and surveys that come my way via the internet and USPS. All I can do is all I can do:)
The Republican are not as stupid as you all think. They’ll ultimately make it Black against White. And who do you think will win that one?
The Republicans were going that way in the last presidential election. Near the end, Sarah Palin started to interject race into the election. Fortunately, an ACT OF GOD intervened and helped defeat Mitch Romney.
The ACT OF GOD was Hurricane Sandy which devastated the New Jersey coast. It forced Governor Christie of New Jersey to embrace President Obama for disaster relief. And that, pretty much, put an end to Sarah Palin and her “racial division campaign.”
“There is evidently a consensus among the pundits that the “winner” of Wednesday night’s GOP debate was Carly Fiorina.”
What? No. Trump won the debate, and Rand came in a strong second.
You’re just mad because Hillary is going down hard, will probably get indicted, and the Democrats are clearly outclassed by every Republican on the stage.
Carly did land a devastating slam on the Democrats by exposing the horror of Planned Parenthood killing live babies for body parts. One day, we will look back at the day abortion was allowed as the greatest holocaust and another Dark Ages.
Huckabee and Ted Cruz also got in a great slam by correctly stating that the Supreme Court is not the country’s legislature and that when the Court attempts to make gay marriage the law in Kentucky, the Supreme Court has broken the law.
Good debate. It shows at least some of the country isn’t totally lost.
“Fortunately, an ACT OF GOD intervened and helped defeat Mitch Romney. ”
You’re one sick f****er, Marv. if you think there was anything at all “fortunate” about Superstorm Sandy and all the devastation and displacement it caused.
This just proves how sick, depraved and radical the Democrats are. They don’t care who dies or is wiped out, as long as they can find a way to weasel a political advantage out of it.
“Never let a crisis go to waste.” Rahm Emanuel
Thanking God for Superstorm Sandy is blasphemy. Or, perhaps, our gods aren’t quite the same. Maybe your god lives in another spot and has another name.
I agree with Gopper’s assessment of the debate. He’s telling you the candidates didn’t turn off their base. And probably picked up many independent voters. The debate was not for my benefit or most of the participants involved in this blog.
If anyone should know, Gopper should. He understands what’s at stake in the next election as much or probably more than any of us.
Carly Fiorina should go into film editing. She added a visual image that was not even in the edited videos of Planned Parenthood conversations.
Come on Gopper,
It was very FORTUNATE for Obama’s re-election. That’s what I meant and you are upset that the racial campaign was put on hold until the next election. Hey, you might win this time.
Hey Gopper don’t get so upset.
We’re virtually neighbors. Right?
Go Gators!
The Gopper’s back with his usual Vim and Vitriol, it’s
going to be an entertaining Friday after all …
I hope I didn’t offend anyone with the use of FORTUNATE.
In my defense, I will say: FORTUNATE was the word used by the leading Republican strategist In assessing President Obama’s victory. I apologize and may the Judeo-Christian God forgive both of us.
I am ever amazed at how grown, supposedly educated people can look at a turd and call it a pickle.
Tina Fey saved this nation single handedly. Mccain was a shoo in: black man over a white? Ain’t gonna happen. A white man with heart problems. Hmmmm. The justified terror of that nuthatch sitting a heartbeat from the oval office motivated Dems to go to the polls in droves and Goppers to stay home. To even conceive that Sandy could swing a national election is to completely ignore 9/11.
Americans don’t care about Americans dying. Or anyone else. They put up a statue, rename a building or lower the flag and keep right on letting them die. Or killing them.
Doubt it? It was widely know that Bush/Cheney arranged for the exclusive travel of known terrorists supporters immediately after 9/11. Theirs was the only plane allowed in American Airspace. Does that prove my point?
For the pundits and “journalists” – and WAY too many voters – it’s all about style points.
Excellent. Well put.
I’m going on a vacation to a tropical paradise for awhile.
Happy New Year 2016!!!
Read what she said, Sheila, and then watch the video. It’s not made up. I can’t believe you defend those reprehensible practices.
“I apologize and may the Judeo-Christian God forgive both of us.”
Please don’t say that, either. This “Judeo-Christian” nonsense didn’t appear until the 20th Century, and it’s offensive. Prior to the 20th Century, there was no way that Christendom saw any spiritual commonality with Talmudism. Nothing. They were as different as oil and water. One was occidental, the other, oriental.
The Mosaic sect of Jesus was lost with the fall of the Temple, and Mosaic observation in Judea following the campaigns of Vespasian was all but wiped out. What emerged as a quasi-Torah sect currently known as Judaism came from Babylon around 500 AD as Talmudism, a sort of Torah-Zoroastrian hodgepodge that had been stewing and brewing in Babylon for about 1,000 years.
Only until very recently, with American Christendom having as many Christian denominations as gas stations, did this non-sequitur of “Judeo-Christian” gain currency.
Unless you’re Karaite. They have a good case for referring to a Judeo-Christian God.
“I can’t believe you defend those reprehensible practices.”
Then I submit there’s something horribly flawed in your belief-forming processes. Do you not read? Do you not understand? Do you not know history? Do you not know who these people are? You’re supposed to be Catholic. Do you not know your church history?
Have you ever heard of Alice Bailey, Paul? She was one of the founders of the New Age Movement, relatively prominent at the United Nations, as she was a great champion of world government, and she was influential to many reformers and agitators. Today, Bailey is taught more than ever, but not always under her own name. I suspect Bailey would be quite pleased to have general unattributed circulation of her ideas.
You should research Alice Bailey.
Here’s her 10 Point Plan
THE STRATEGY:- The 10-Point Charter
PURPOSE: – To change Christian tradition or to redeem the nations of Christian tradition.
1. TAKE GOD AND PRAYER OUT OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM
2. REDUCE PARENTAL AUTHORITY OVER THE CHILDREN
3. DESTROY THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN FAMILY STRUCTURE
4. IF SEX IS FREE, THEN MAKE ABORTION LEGAL AND MAKE IT EASY
5. MAKE DIVORCE EASY AND LEGAL, FREE PEOPLE FROM THE CONCEPT OF MARRIAGE FOR LIFE.
6. MAKE HOMOSEXUALITY AN ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE
7. DEBASE ART, MAKE IT RUN MAD
8. USE MEDIA TO PROMOTE AND CHANGE MINDSET
9. CREATE AN INTERFAITH MOVEMENT
10. GET GOVERNMENTS TO MAKE ALL THESE LAW AND GET THE CHURCH TO ENDORSE THESE CHANGES.
This is just supposition, of course, but my guess is that Gopper was home-schooled by Sarah Palin and David Duke. He graduated Summa Cum Loud.
Wray; you hit that nail on the head, too bad I can’t say you did the same to those who shall remain unnamed.
Guess Gopper never learned in Sunday School that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi; come to think of it, I didn’t learn that in Sunday School either. Learned by reading the Bible; Old Testament and New Testament, can’t have one without the other…which totals up to the Judeo-Christian religion to thinking people.
It’s great that Carly is now being called out as the “Pants on Fire” moment with that PP moment of hers. I’ve counted at least 7 publications that have dismissed her “Pants on Fire” moment as pure nonsense. Those videos of PP were spliced up and she never saw that image. I hope it takes her down. How dare she not defend other women that may need to get an abortion to save their own life. Gaaaaa.
If you thought this debate was funny, wait until the Democratic debates. Current Democratic ideology is about 500 miles from Kennedy’s Democratic Party. And if you think that Republicans are better at lying than Democrats and self-proclaimed socialists, then you just haven’t been paying attention.
Dunning Kruger effect.
It’s not what we don’t know, that gets us into trouble. It’s what we know, that ain’t so. (paraphrased from Will Rogers and Kin Hubbard)
A miseducated electorate and peasantry is easier to lead to vote against their own interests, to disarm, to rob from, etc., etc.
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/dunning-kruger-effect/
“Judeo-Christian family structure?”
Abraham split the world into three great religions, partly by having sons by women other than his wife.
Lot’s line was preserved only by incest, after his own wife perished by looking back at the God’s destruction of Sodom for failing to take care of the poor (yes, really — you’ve never read Ezekiel?).
Then there’s Saul, and David, but who pays attention to that stuff anyway? Surely not someone who still claims, contrary to history and evidence, that prayers were taken out of schools. (Prayers were never in public schools, until after WWII — and then only school-imposed prayers were removed, as contrary to the establishment clause of the First Amendment. But who pays attention to the Constitution anymore, especially among the right wing and Tea Party?)
It is good to have people like Gopper replying to this entertaining and informative post; it is good to know how people on the right think. We will not convince him that we have the facts; although Sheila’s citations within this post are very informative, if one reads them; and he will not convince us that he knows what is best for our country.
These debates are painful to watch, with obvious pandering to what each candidate thinks is the audience’s emotional touch point. When a candidate, like Fiorina, has an actual plan as she states for Syria, even thought it largely matches what Obama is already doing, the audience gives her kudos.
My questions to Fiorina, whose double mastectomy was provided by her husband’s excellent company health care, is would she deny those Planned Parenthood breast exams to the poor women who will go through a similar painful experience?
Sadly I already know the answer is no.
Ginny’s right! It’s style points and shockingly shallow. Nothing at all below the surface. All these so-called debates need are “Mitch” Romney (who exactly is that?) and his ‘binders full of women’. Drop by Bass Pro shop for a pair of hip boots before the next one–You’ll need ’em!
“It is good to have people like Gopper replying to this entertaining and informative post; it is good to know how people on the right think. We will not convince him that we have the facts; ”
The facts are these: the abortionists are ghouls who will do everything to preserve abortion wholly at the desire of the woman absent any scintilla of accountability or possibility of denial.
They see all manner of savagery and butchery as permissible, and they are so craven that nothing savage in the conduct of an abortion will shock them or cause them to limit the provision of abortion.
The facts are that the abortion advocates rose from some of the most evil people ever to live who hold the most sinister motives.
I know not whether there is Satan, but I know that if there is a Satan, he is pleased by your work. He’s telling you to Live. Have fun. Have indiscriminate sex. Have multiple partners. Cheat on your spouse. Have sex with as many people as possible to be sure that you have the best sex partner, or partners, if one won’t satisfy you. No one, not even your spouse, is entitled to limit your sexual freedom. If a child results from the sex, kill it, and keep having more sex. Having a child would just limit your sex opportunities, anyway. Nobody and nothing can ever stand in the way of your sex or tell you that you’re having too much sex. Sex is the goal. More sex is the goal. If it’s pleasurable, do it. That person you just saw is the goal. Face it. You’re just a little curious about having sex with him or her. Go over and say hello. Tonight might be a little more interesting. Find someone else for tomorrow. If anyone gets in the way of your sex, attack them. If anyone connects morality to sex, attack them. Your pleasure, right now, is all that matters. Think only of what feels good, right now.
Satan won’t tell you that this practice will destroy your ability to be a devoted spouse and your spouse’s ability to be devoted to you. He won’t tell you that abortions and multiple sex partners will damage your ability to be a good and devoted parent, because he wants your spouse to live the same way, and he wants your children growing up knowing what kind of people the parents are. If your child is never really sure of the father, he’s all the happier. If your spouse is always looking at someone else, why ruin your spouse’s possible moment of fun? Satan won’t tell you that abortions and casual sex will leave you emotionally scarred and guilt-ridden for the rest of your life, because that would only interfere with your ability to seek pleasure in the moment.
Think of the moment. What will bring you pleasure in this moment? Do you know anything more fun than sex?
Have a date for tonight? Why not? Mr. Rightnow is close by. You just saw him. Broaden your horizons. Take a chance on something different. Your friends are going to be having sex, tonight. Why not you?
Gopper should see his shrink and get back on his meds quickly. His tether to reality, already frayed, has snapped!
Gop … Not getting any ?
Red, Gooper has never had any for the first time yet.
Watching the Republican Debate was like sitting on a port-a-potty when the weather is 90 degrees and the potty has not been emptied in days. The loudest applause seemed to be when ever a candidate mentioned some draconian punishment of Iran. Rand Paul received a few hand claps when he cautioned against intervention.
I suppose if these Republican Candidates were around when Jesus passed out loaves and fishes to the crowds, Jesus would be condemned for enabling welfare, being a Socialist, or not keeping all the loaves and fishes for himself.
“The facts are these: the abortionists are ghouls who will do everything to preserve abortion wholly at the desire of the woman absent any scintilla of accountability or possibility of denial.
“They see all manner of savagery and butchery as permissible, and they are so craven that nothing savage in the conduct of an abortion will shock them or cause them to limit the provision of abortion.
“The facts are that the abortion advocates rose from some of the most evil people ever to live who hold the most sinister motives.”
Gopper, those are not facts; they’re your opinions, and not very educated ones at that.
What I find utterly amazing in his comment is that not once does he credit the MAN for all of that brazen and irresponsible sex. It’s only the woman in that diatribe that he is after. The scientist in me says “wait a minute, it takes two to make one of those babies, where’s the guy’s responsibility in all that?” In his world, there is no fault with the men and THAT RIGHT THERE, IS THE PROBLEM. Grow up.