Trump will be labeled “old, old, old” by the legacy media and Kamala campaign (but I repeat….). “Cognitive decline” will be (re)placed, squarely on the front burner. Not saying, for a moment, that this is legitimate. Just predicting (easily and obviously) what will happen. Hope I’m wrong. But I won’t be.
I suppose it's on now but I'm not interested in what either one says, and what matters is not what they say but rather if there's any spin success, so I certainly am not watching it.
Kackles is trainable to the extent that she will refrain from cackling.
She will respond to each stimulus by picking what she hopes is the most appropriate clumsy talking point she’s been provided. This will be painfully obvious to non-woke observers.
The silent mics will work in Trump’s favor, as he will not be able to relentlessly interrupt his opponent, which understandably alienates non-MAGA observers.
Bottom line — Kackles represents the Left-wing of the Israel lobby & Trump the Right-wing, so the whole damn show is another kosher charade.
But if it exposes the pretentious hypocrisy of woke, that will be my consolation.
I think you've nailed it! Harris has some intelligence, and (after 25 minutes) has been trained to deliver a couple of minutes of vague policy and not to cackle. Sadly, Trump loves the Israeli lobby (and their money) nearly as much as anyone.
Just in case anyone here needs to hear it: there is nowhere in the US where any law limits access to care for ectopic pregnancies, though it may result in the incidental death of the child. Don't believe Democrats who try to convince you to not seek medical care.
I don’t understand how anyone’s vote would be affected by a “debate” like this. No actionable information comes from it. Harris only lies. Trump is directionally correct in what he says, but the full truth is too complicated to convey in this format to low information viewers.
The male moderator is quite hostile to Trump. Trump is almost all hyperbole, little control of basic factual arguments. Kamala is condescending, contemptuous, but not embarrassing herself because She and the Moderator have Trump mostly on defense.
Disappointed that this qualifies as a debate in our society it lacks intellectual integrity. I would imagine those with higher IQ’s don’t watch and those who have and do, watch for the theater.
The funny thing about the entire pro-wrestling-like debate spectacle is that it's obvious they are playing to the dumbest segment of the population, trying to coax swayable, low-IQ, low-info, unreflective voters. If it's a sports match, those people are the "ball" to be moved. This is obvious when seeing the product that The Media produces with these things.
The higher-IQ, higher-reflective consumers of this product are cheering on their chosen team in this game of the swaying idiots with misdirections, 'gotchas,' emotionalisms.
The race between Trump and Kamala has been a Battle of the Sexes thing since the beginning and tonight is more of that. Halfway through the debate, I couldn't figure out why my heart rate was spiking. Then I realized what it was: Kamala's traps and manipulations reminded me of my nightmare ex girlfriend. What we saw on TV was a woman publicly manipulating and humiliating a man (helped along by her two lackeys). I think a lot of the male viewers could relate to that. Even Anthony Zurcher, the BBCs presidential correspondent, came across as shaken during his post debate analysis.
It's interesting to reflect on the Hilary-Trump debate from 2016. That debate was between two men, basically, Hilary sticking to the hard issues. Iron meeting iron. Trump can win in that environment. I wonder if Trump was expecting Kamala to try to debate him on the issues like Hilary had.
Female viewers could no doubt instantly identify what Kamala was doing. I suppose their feelings about it will fall along party lines. Either a "she's manipulating him" or "you go girl".
In the end, it doesn't really matter that Kamala beat him in such an underhanded way. The media will spend the next two months carpet bombing "Kamala Beat Trump" until the average person forgets the details.
The take home message for all you guys out there? Be careful who you marry.
The reports that Kamala chased away about 95% of her staff after relatively short tenures, it is probably true that Kamala has some kind of Cluster-B personality-disorder which she very effectively wields.
Yes, it is just like the "nightmare ex-girlfriend" who succeeds in manipulating situations and turning people against you, using lies and half-truths and all the wide range of the tools in their hands. Borderline Personality Disorder, or a similar one from the Cluster-B area of things.
Part of the reason women were traditionally excluded from the realm of the political was the recognition, by traditional society, that women could be so successful in manipulating in this way. It can be harmful enough within personal relationships. But at the social or 'political' scale, it can be very bad indeed.
.....See also my essay from a few weeks ago:
"Kamala Harris and "female solipsistic-narcissism" in the political, in the 21st-century USA"
When I started paying attention to Harris, I sized her up as what they used to call a dragon lady, though not of the East Asian variety: power hungry, shrewd, manipulative, able to size up a man with a glance, perceive his weaknesses and how she can take advantage of them.
I shook my head at all these guys dismissing her as stupid -- right, right, passed the California bar, a prosecutor, and a tough, even cruel, one...sure, stupid...you go ahead and believe that -- and calling her Blowjob Beulah or whatever, implying that she was some empty-headed doxy rather than a cold-hearted, calculating Mary Tudor type, as John Knox envisioned her and railed against, who uses every weapon in her arsenal to advance her goals.
She is contemptuous of everyone, although she knows very well how to hide that when currying favor and when to openly display it to belittle and destroy.
Should Harris becomes president, those who think they are using her, that she is their front woman, may be in for a surprise. Once she has the power, she will use it ruthlessly, rule with an iron hand and crush without mercy those who stand in her way. She'll have her own Marian Prosecutions. Guess who the Protestants will be.
It is hard for me to judge, since I find her so obnixous and listening to her triggers an almost visceral negative reaction.
But it seems Harris won the debate.
She stuck to her script, she showed herself as clear-eyed, fairly quick-witted, calm, and intelligent.
She showed that she may be ignorant and uneducated, but she is also quite smart.
Taleb probably would call her type "Intellectual Yet Idiot ".
It is easy to forget that the Woke Left is the original Intelligenzia, the intelligent class. They made a cult of ignorance, which may be necessary if your ideology is inherently contradictory.
But they still have many intelligent and creative people on their side, who may wake up to become less complacent because their grip on power loosens.
While the Right, who have now the upper hand in the culture war, is starting to become entrained with easy, pat arguments and world views.
Trump blew a YUGE opportunity to turn the abortion issue back on Kamala, who clearly supports full-term abortion, AKA infanticide, which is only popular with the crazy fringe. He blew a few others as well.
However Kamala comes off as such a smarmy, out-of-touch political insider with a strange, off-putting accent and grating voice that I don't think she won many people over.
To put it simply Trump fumbled but Kamala was repellent so I doubt it made a difference.
One does not make a case for banning all abortions by focusing on the very few late term abortions. Minnesota puts out a report on abortions and only one abortion was performed in Minnesota after the 30th week. Late term abortions are a non-issue versus forcing the victims of rape and incest to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and then forcing them to care for the child.
"Trump blew a YUGE opportunity to turn the abortion issue back on Kamala, who clearly supports full-term abortion, AKA infanticide, which is only popular with the crazy fringe."
Everyone knows this is just a bait-and-switch and you want to ban almost all abortions.
It is the same with Trump saying that he will not ban abortion when everyone who pays attention to politics knows that whoever Trump appoints to head the FDA will withdraw approval for mifepristone and thus, end abortions in most states. In addition, who ever Trump appoints to the Justice Department will use the Comstock Act to ban most forms of contraception, medications used for abortion, and keep women from crossing state lines to get an abortion.
He did bring up full-term abortion when he mentioned that clip of Ralph Northam discussing infanticide. What is so frustrating about Trump and why someone like DeSantis seemed so much more desirable as a candidate (to me) is that Trump cannot articulate an argument clearly and pull from a base of knowledge about an issue that he does not care about. He said that he was the former governor of West Virginia, which immediately confused the 0.1% of the audience that could have recalled that clip anyway if he had mentioned Northam by name. What is more frustrating is that the odds that the next president will have any meaningful impact on abortion policy nationally is also about 0.1%, so the amount of time dedicated to that topic was a complete waste.
A second Trump Administration will withdraw FDA approval of mifepristone despite whatever Trump says during the campaign. The Republicans are blatantly lying about abortion and the Democrats are not calling them on it.
Could past Republican administrations not do this while Roe was on the books? That seems quite speculatory to me. If it did happen under a second Trump term, then I would imagine suction D&C would go back to being the predominant abortion procedure in states where it's legal.
Previous Republicans did not think about it just like Republicans in previous decades would have never supported a bounty law such as the one passed in Texas or using building codes, life codes, and medical licensing to block abortion in deep red states.
Even in blue states, landlords and neighbors are vulnerable to organized pro-lifers opposing an abortion clinic.
An ideologically conservative FDA or other top administration official would not have thought about banning one of the most common methods of abortion when the pro-life movement has dominated the GOP for decades? Even though every past Republican administration does much more trivial things pro-life things like reinstating the Mexico City policy? I don't know much about how the FDA process for removing a drug from the market works but I don't imagine it's as simple as the Commissioner of Food and Drugs or the HHS secretary writing an order and passing it down.
Trump was terrible, Kamala was good and I don't see why Trump kept talking for the 2 minutes each time. Often he could instead have made his point and stood there defiant. E.g "I succeeded in allowing individual states to vote on their own abortion policies thereby removing this most divisive issue from the national debate, while Kamala wants to make it central to all our politics forever." (*Pause, look forward, serious silence.) Or "Putin waited until I'd left office and Kamala was in office to invade Ukraine. Just as Hamas waited until then to attack Israel. Put me back in office and none of these people will dare to start wars." (Then just looks forward again calmly and masterfully.)
Furthermore, at points Kamala was actually clever/Trump was stupid, as when she said he never talks about people's interests and then Trump answered without talking about the people. All he needed to do was say "I ran for President because I love the American people. I got shot in the head and am still running because I love the American people. The American people are the greatest people in the world, which is why I'll give them their greatest economy in the world back and make America Great Again."
Overall, I don't get why it was so hard for Trump not to come across as awful. Honestly, were I American, I would consider voting for Kamala, who's taken a page out of Keir Starmer's book and realised that all she has to do is sound like 90s Bill Clinton, i.e drop the woke nonsense, to win against tired and, yes sadly, "weird" right wing oppositions; which is a tremendous shame given how obnoxious Democratic junior staffer policies are likely to be.
But then maybe Trump will be saved by the possibility that very stupid people will actually find his performance good? After all, he sounds like a no nonsense mother, whom you can feel secure with, talking to her 3 year old, which is not my thing, but is wanted by a lot of people, probably...
"E.g "I succeeded in allowing individual states to vote on their own abortion policies thereby removing this most divisive issue from the national debate, while Kamala wants to make it central to all our politics forever." (*Pause, look forward, serious silence.)"
There's no other hot-button issue that's handled on the state level. And the pro-life movement keeps trying to ban it on a federal level.
Like Keir Starmer, Harris also completely shifted her political philosophy and policy positions into such vague territory that no one watching that debate gained any new knowledge about what she intends to do as president, which is different from the current administration. All of Trump's blustering aside, he made that point clearly enough. Unlike Keir Starmer, Harris is not running to replace a 14-year incumbent unpopular political party rightly or wrongly blamed for the country's problems. From that perspective, she is more in the position of Rishi Sunak.
Kamala's body language and facial expressions were smug and haughty. Trump missed some easy shots. When she ridiculed him on the cat-eating Haitians comment, and ABC "fact-checked" in her favor, Trump could have fired back that ordinary citizens with smartphones using free-speech platforms report events that fake news outlets like ABC would never report!!
Not watching it. Know who gets my vote and I'm not watching Cackles tonight.
Trump will be labeled “old, old, old” by the legacy media and Kamala campaign (but I repeat….). “Cognitive decline” will be (re)placed, squarely on the front burner. Not saying, for a moment, that this is legitimate. Just predicting (easily and obviously) what will happen. Hope I’m wrong. But I won’t be.
Coming on in less than 30 minutes, I believe. I find it hard to believe that the moderators won't bend over backwards to help Harris.
I suppose it's on now but I'm not interested in what either one says, and what matters is not what they say but rather if there's any spin success, so I certainly am not watching it.
[Also at Unz]:
Kackles is trainable to the extent that she will refrain from cackling.
She will respond to each stimulus by picking what she hopes is the most appropriate clumsy talking point she’s been provided. This will be painfully obvious to non-woke observers.
The silent mics will work in Trump’s favor, as he will not be able to relentlessly interrupt his opponent, which understandably alienates non-MAGA observers.
Bottom line — Kackles represents the Left-wing of the Israel lobby & Trump the Right-wing, so the whole damn show is another kosher charade.
But if it exposes the pretentious hypocrisy of woke, that will be my consolation.
Meantime, enjoy the farce!
🙂
I think you've nailed it! Harris has some intelligence, and (after 25 minutes) has been trained to deliver a couple of minutes of vague policy and not to cackle. Sadly, Trump loves the Israeli lobby (and their money) nearly as much as anyone.
So neither one of them has nailed down the key antisemite vote?
You can relax -- they're still shamelessly competing for the blessings of your Israel lobby billionaires.
Just in case anyone here needs to hear it: there is nowhere in the US where any law limits access to care for ectopic pregnancies, though it may result in the incidental death of the child. Don't believe Democrats who try to convince you to not seek medical care.
Incorrect:
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/dashboard/exceptions-in-state-abortion-bans-and-early-gestational-limits/
I have to delete my comment now lol… pretty bad.
May also result in the death of the mother if not treated.
I don’t understand how anyone’s vote would be affected by a “debate” like this. No actionable information comes from it. Harris only lies. Trump is directionally correct in what he says, but the full truth is too complicated to convey in this format to low information viewers.
The male moderator is quite hostile to Trump. Trump is almost all hyperbole, little control of basic factual arguments. Kamala is condescending, contemptuous, but not embarrassing herself because She and the Moderator have Trump mostly on defense.
That's basically what Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn are saying too.
Where?
Racket News
It appears that Taibbi and Kirn did a debate live-commentary on Rumble, also hosted on Youtube and Twitter(?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iz44OvtuQ4
https://rumble.com/v5eejle-atw-live-donald-trump-kamala-harris-debate-drinking-game.html
Disappointed that this qualifies as a debate in our society it lacks intellectual integrity. I would imagine those with higher IQ’s don’t watch and those who have and do, watch for the theater.
The funny thing about the entire pro-wrestling-like debate spectacle is that it's obvious they are playing to the dumbest segment of the population, trying to coax swayable, low-IQ, low-info, unreflective voters. If it's a sports match, those people are the "ball" to be moved. This is obvious when seeing the product that The Media produces with these things.
The higher-IQ, higher-reflective consumers of this product are cheering on their chosen team in this game of the swaying idiots with misdirections, 'gotchas,' emotionalisms.
The race between Trump and Kamala has been a Battle of the Sexes thing since the beginning and tonight is more of that. Halfway through the debate, I couldn't figure out why my heart rate was spiking. Then I realized what it was: Kamala's traps and manipulations reminded me of my nightmare ex girlfriend. What we saw on TV was a woman publicly manipulating and humiliating a man (helped along by her two lackeys). I think a lot of the male viewers could relate to that. Even Anthony Zurcher, the BBCs presidential correspondent, came across as shaken during his post debate analysis.
It's interesting to reflect on the Hilary-Trump debate from 2016. That debate was between two men, basically, Hilary sticking to the hard issues. Iron meeting iron. Trump can win in that environment. I wonder if Trump was expecting Kamala to try to debate him on the issues like Hilary had.
Female viewers could no doubt instantly identify what Kamala was doing. I suppose their feelings about it will fall along party lines. Either a "she's manipulating him" or "you go girl".
In the end, it doesn't really matter that Kamala beat him in such an underhanded way. The media will spend the next two months carpet bombing "Kamala Beat Trump" until the average person forgets the details.
The take home message for all you guys out there? Be careful who you marry.
This is a good analysis.
The reports that Kamala chased away about 95% of her staff after relatively short tenures, it is probably true that Kamala has some kind of Cluster-B personality-disorder which she very effectively wields.
Yes, it is just like the "nightmare ex-girlfriend" who succeeds in manipulating situations and turning people against you, using lies and half-truths and all the wide range of the tools in their hands. Borderline Personality Disorder, or a similar one from the Cluster-B area of things.
Part of the reason women were traditionally excluded from the realm of the political was the recognition, by traditional society, that women could be so successful in manipulating in this way. It can be harmful enough within personal relationships. But at the social or 'political' scale, it can be very bad indeed.
.....See also my essay from a few weeks ago:
"Kamala Harris and "female solipsistic-narcissism" in the political, in the 21st-century USA"
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2024/08/04/kamala-harris-and-female-solipsistic-narcissism-in-the-political-in-21st-century-usa/
If being narcissistic was a disqualifying trait, then no one would be voting for Trump.
No one would have voted in my lifetime.
When I started paying attention to Harris, I sized her up as what they used to call a dragon lady, though not of the East Asian variety: power hungry, shrewd, manipulative, able to size up a man with a glance, perceive his weaknesses and how she can take advantage of them.
I shook my head at all these guys dismissing her as stupid -- right, right, passed the California bar, a prosecutor, and a tough, even cruel, one...sure, stupid...you go ahead and believe that -- and calling her Blowjob Beulah or whatever, implying that she was some empty-headed doxy rather than a cold-hearted, calculating Mary Tudor type, as John Knox envisioned her and railed against, who uses every weapon in her arsenal to advance her goals.
She is contemptuous of everyone, although she knows very well how to hide that when currying favor and when to openly display it to belittle and destroy.
Should Harris becomes president, those who think they are using her, that she is their front woman, may be in for a surprise. Once she has the power, she will use it ruthlessly, rule with an iron hand and crush without mercy those who stand in her way. She'll have her own Marian Prosecutions. Guess who the Protestants will be.
The pattern you describe fits many manifestations of "borderline personality disorder," in my opinion.
It is hard for me to judge, since I find her so obnixous and listening to her triggers an almost visceral negative reaction.
But it seems Harris won the debate.
She stuck to her script, she showed herself as clear-eyed, fairly quick-witted, calm, and intelligent.
She showed that she may be ignorant and uneducated, but she is also quite smart.
Taleb probably would call her type "Intellectual Yet Idiot ".
It is easy to forget that the Woke Left is the original Intelligenzia, the intelligent class. They made a cult of ignorance, which may be necessary if your ideology is inherently contradictory.
But they still have many intelligent and creative people on their side, who may wake up to become less complacent because their grip on power loosens.
While the Right, who have now the upper hand in the culture war, is starting to become entrained with easy, pat arguments and world views.
Trump blew a YUGE opportunity to turn the abortion issue back on Kamala, who clearly supports full-term abortion, AKA infanticide, which is only popular with the crazy fringe. He blew a few others as well.
However Kamala comes off as such a smarmy, out-of-touch political insider with a strange, off-putting accent and grating voice that I don't think she won many people over.
To put it simply Trump fumbled but Kamala was repellent so I doubt it made a difference.
One does not make a case for banning all abortions by focusing on the very few late term abortions. Minnesota puts out a report on abortions and only one abortion was performed in Minnesota after the 30th week. Late term abortions are a non-issue versus forcing the victims of rape and incest to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and then forcing them to care for the child.
"Trump blew a YUGE opportunity to turn the abortion issue back on Kamala, who clearly supports full-term abortion, AKA infanticide, which is only popular with the crazy fringe."
Everyone knows this is just a bait-and-switch and you want to ban almost all abortions.
It is the same with Trump saying that he will not ban abortion when everyone who pays attention to politics knows that whoever Trump appoints to head the FDA will withdraw approval for mifepristone and thus, end abortions in most states. In addition, who ever Trump appoints to the Justice Department will use the Comstock Act to ban most forms of contraception, medications used for abortion, and keep women from crossing state lines to get an abortion.
He did bring up full-term abortion when he mentioned that clip of Ralph Northam discussing infanticide. What is so frustrating about Trump and why someone like DeSantis seemed so much more desirable as a candidate (to me) is that Trump cannot articulate an argument clearly and pull from a base of knowledge about an issue that he does not care about. He said that he was the former governor of West Virginia, which immediately confused the 0.1% of the audience that could have recalled that clip anyway if he had mentioned Northam by name. What is more frustrating is that the odds that the next president will have any meaningful impact on abortion policy nationally is also about 0.1%, so the amount of time dedicated to that topic was a complete waste.
A second Trump Administration will withdraw FDA approval of mifepristone despite whatever Trump says during the campaign. The Republicans are blatantly lying about abortion and the Democrats are not calling them on it.
Could past Republican administrations not do this while Roe was on the books? That seems quite speculatory to me. If it did happen under a second Trump term, then I would imagine suction D&C would go back to being the predominant abortion procedure in states where it's legal.
Previous Republicans did not think about it just like Republicans in previous decades would have never supported a bounty law such as the one passed in Texas or using building codes, life codes, and medical licensing to block abortion in deep red states.
Even in blue states, landlords and neighbors are vulnerable to organized pro-lifers opposing an abortion clinic.
An ideologically conservative FDA or other top administration official would not have thought about banning one of the most common methods of abortion when the pro-life movement has dominated the GOP for decades? Even though every past Republican administration does much more trivial things pro-life things like reinstating the Mexico City policy? I don't know much about how the FDA process for removing a drug from the market works but I don't imagine it's as simple as the Commissioner of Food and Drugs or the HHS secretary writing an order and passing it down.
Trump was terrible, Kamala was good and I don't see why Trump kept talking for the 2 minutes each time. Often he could instead have made his point and stood there defiant. E.g "I succeeded in allowing individual states to vote on their own abortion policies thereby removing this most divisive issue from the national debate, while Kamala wants to make it central to all our politics forever." (*Pause, look forward, serious silence.) Or "Putin waited until I'd left office and Kamala was in office to invade Ukraine. Just as Hamas waited until then to attack Israel. Put me back in office and none of these people will dare to start wars." (Then just looks forward again calmly and masterfully.)
Furthermore, at points Kamala was actually clever/Trump was stupid, as when she said he never talks about people's interests and then Trump answered without talking about the people. All he needed to do was say "I ran for President because I love the American people. I got shot in the head and am still running because I love the American people. The American people are the greatest people in the world, which is why I'll give them their greatest economy in the world back and make America Great Again."
Overall, I don't get why it was so hard for Trump not to come across as awful. Honestly, were I American, I would consider voting for Kamala, who's taken a page out of Keir Starmer's book and realised that all she has to do is sound like 90s Bill Clinton, i.e drop the woke nonsense, to win against tired and, yes sadly, "weird" right wing oppositions; which is a tremendous shame given how obnoxious Democratic junior staffer policies are likely to be.
But then maybe Trump will be saved by the possibility that very stupid people will actually find his performance good? After all, he sounds like a no nonsense mother, whom you can feel secure with, talking to her 3 year old, which is not my thing, but is wanted by a lot of people, probably...
"E.g "I succeeded in allowing individual states to vote on their own abortion policies thereby removing this most divisive issue from the national debate, while Kamala wants to make it central to all our politics forever." (*Pause, look forward, serious silence.)"
There's no other hot-button issue that's handled on the state level. And the pro-life movement keeps trying to ban it on a federal level.
There is no other option available to a Republican. Banning abortion at a national level would lead to them losing landslide after landslide.
Many pro-lifers don't care. They just want to feel morally superior to others and think they'll be rewarded in heaven even if they lose on Earth.
Trump isn't a pro-lifer though. He just needs to not alienate them entirely
But whoever Trump appoints on the recommendation of the Heritage Foundation will be rapidly anti-abortion.
Like Keir Starmer, Harris also completely shifted her political philosophy and policy positions into such vague territory that no one watching that debate gained any new knowledge about what she intends to do as president, which is different from the current administration. All of Trump's blustering aside, he made that point clearly enough. Unlike Keir Starmer, Harris is not running to replace a 14-year incumbent unpopular political party rightly or wrongly blamed for the country's problems. From that perspective, she is more in the position of Rishi Sunak.
Kamala's body language and facial expressions were smug and haughty. Trump missed some easy shots. When she ridiculed him on the cat-eating Haitians comment, and ABC "fact-checked" in her favor, Trump could have fired back that ordinary citizens with smartphones using free-speech platforms report events that fake news outlets like ABC would never report!!