I watched the debate


I did. I sat through the whole thing, and I did not enjoy it.

Harris said nothing radical. No surprising policy changes; she wants to stay the course with Israel, demanding a cease fire and release of the hostages, but what I wanted to hear was that she would leverage the sale of arms to pressure Israel into ending the genocide — nope, she couldn’t say that. She did promise other positive changes, though with a $6K tax credit for new families and $50K for new business startups. Otherwise, she hammered on Trump a bit, as expected. “In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” she predicted. She was exactly right.

Trump glowered through the whole thing. He looked resentful at being there, and yeah, he kept returning to immigration. He really hates a lot of people, and wants to deport millions of people, all those dangerous criminals pouring over the border, released from prisons and insane asylums. He repeated that nonsense about immigrants hunting down your beloved pets and killing them and eating them.

Asked about abortion, he claimed that everyone, including women, Democrats, and professors, loved the fact that he killed Roe v. Wade. No, they do not. Asked if he would veto a bill that proposed a nationwide abortion ban, he dodged the question. Asked about January 6th, he said “I didn’t do it.” He’s a liar and a coward.

Here’s a 20 minute summary of the whole thing.

The highlight for me, though, was when he was asked about what he planned to replace Obamacare with, he admitted he didn’t have any specific plans, he had concepts of plans.

He’s a hate-filled sack of shit. He’s got nothing but jingo and contempt for anyone who doesn’t look like him.

Maybe that will be enough to get him elected, unfortunately.

Comments

  1. says

    Don’t be a Debbie Downer, PZ! Harris is terrific and would have no trouble getting elected to POTUS and flush that worthless orange manure down the toilet once and for all!

  2. says

    Oh, I forgot to mention: I learned that both Seattle and Minneapolis, two cities I am strongly connected to, have been burned to the ground. Tragic.
    I hope no one notices my association with two of the great disasters of the past decade.

  3. Hemidactylus says

    Meanwhile over on the right;
    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-brit-hume-declares-trump-had-a-bad-night-debating-harris-she-baited-him-successfully/

    Hume: Well, I thought the single question that needed to be answered tonight was “Madam Vice President, why have you changed your views?” Give us your thoughts on why you changed position, not just on the handful, the small handful of issues that were raised by the moderators, but on a range of other issues. There were like two questions on the whole thing all evening. She never had to account for her changes. Never.

    Baier: She said she’d go down the list. She never really–

    Hume: They never did. Now, look, make no mistake about it: Trump had a bad night. He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him, something I’m sure his advisers had begged him not to do. You know, in the first debate when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going. And in this debate, he rose to debating. And we heard so many of the old grievances that we’d long thought that Trump had learned were not winners politically. And there they all were, you know, talking about how he didn’t lose the election and all that, I mean… So, my sense is that she came out of this in pretty good shape. How long this will last is anybody’s guess. But for tonight, at least, this was pretty much her night.

    Baier: You’re saying she had a good night?

    Hume: I’m saying she certainly did.

    https://www.mediaite.com/politics/drudge-report-declares-the-end-for-trump-during-debate-with-kamala-harris/

    Matt Drudge’s eponymous Drudge Report covered the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump by running a simple two-word headline under an AI-generated photo of Trump surrounded by cats: “The End.”

  4. Snarki, child of Loki says

    “Harris is terrific and would have no trouble getting elected to POTUS and flush that worthless orange manure down the toilet once and for all!”

    #insert “LowFlushToiletJoke.h”

  5. awomanofnoimportance says

    A song for our time:

    Oh Donnie Boy, the bells, the bells are tolling
    Make no mistake, they’re tolling now for thee.
    Your lies have failed, and all across the nation
    Tis you, tis you must go and leave us be.
    For comes November, all the land reject you will
    And send you forth to dark oblivion’s void
    May all the world forget you once deceived our kin
    And by your name no more may any be annoyed.

  6. Hemidactylus says

    And not from the right, the childless cat lady administered the coup de grâce one would hope:
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taylor-swift-kamala-harris-endorsement/

    Overall Kamala did well. She should have had even more fun at his expense, in addition to pokes like crowd size, by complimenting him for his role in the warp speed pipelining of the COVID vaccines. That would have induced some intense dissonance where his narcissistic love of praise conflicts with the cultivated paranoid delusional antivax sentiments of his rabid base.

    She did gut punch him on his wanting to execute the Central Park 5 to highlight his racism.

    Her facial expressions and gesturing nonverbals were great when he had the mic, rambling incoherent hatred. She contrasted with her preference for lifting people up.

    The moderators were too lenient with the fascist dumpster fire, letting him go on last word nonsequiturs toward the end of each question cycle instead of mercifully cutting his mic.

    She should have followed up the points made about Project 2025 by pointing to the overlapping Agenda 47 as he tried to dishonestly wriggle off the hook of being a Day One Dictator.

    I would prefer we completely pull the plug on aid to Israel since they have made the desert bloom all on their own and should be completely self-sufficient. That sort of assertiveness against an oppressive occupying state would not land well. She did assert the two state solution which is popular neither with Zionists nor anti-Zionists.

  7. Reginald Selkirk says

    Republicans have an answer for Trump’s poor debate performance

    Republicans know Donald Trump didn’t win Tuesday’s debate. And they know who to blame: the media.

    “It was three-on-one. They continued to engage in so-called fact-checking of Donald Trump. They never did that to Kamala Harris,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told reporters.

    “You have two moderators there who acted as agents of the Harris campaign,” said David Bossie, a longtime Trump adviser and Republican National Committee member from Maryland.

    “It was a little outrageous that they would fact-check only one candidate on the fly,” said Tim Murtaugh, who was the communications director for Trump’s 2020 campaign…

    Only one candidate was flinging outrageous lies at a prodigious rate.

  8. says

    Rightwingers are cut endless slack, have infinite leeway and are always treated with the most-padded kids gloves, yet they always complain how unfair everyone’s to them whenever all of that doesn’t protect them from their own incompetence. I don’t know who to hold in higher contempt, them or their enablers.

  9. robro says

    Heather Cox Richardson has this summary of the debate:

    Former president Trump has always approached debates as professional wrestling events in which the key is not to explain policies or answer questions, but rather to demonstrate dominance over your opponent. In 2016 the Democratic nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, had a hard time countering this strategy effectively because of the many expectations of what was appropriate behavior for a female presidential candidate. In 2020 and then again in the June 2024 “debate,” Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s stutter made it difficult to counter Trump’s scattershot attacks.

    The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.

    She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television.

    Of course, Dr. Richardson is a liberal partisan so not surprising. Actually if Harris had flubbed it badly, I’m fairly sure Dr. Richardson would say so.

    She concludes her newsletter on the debate by pointing out one of the big news stories from yesterday: a certain pop icon posted that she is voting for Harris-Walz, signing it “Childless Cat Lady”. She did it explicitly because there was an earlier post suggesting she would vote for Trump. Her statement was balanced: she had watched the debate, researched the candidates, and made her choice then announced it because of the false claim. She encouraged others to do their own research and make up their own minds.

    In other news of guess who is voting for Harris-Walz: James Murdoch is among 88 U.S. business leaders who signed a letter endorsing Harris-Walz. That’s Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son.

  10. raven says

    He offered to give Swift a child and protect her cats.

    Yeah, saw that last night.

    There is something seriously wrong with Elon Musk, something deep and dark in what passes for his mind.

    I saw a bumper sticker on a Tesla car a few days ago.
    “I bought this before we knew Elon Musk was crazy.”

    It has become so embarrassing to drive a Tesla that some people won’t any more.

  11. seversky says

    I would prefer we pull the plug on the UN and UNRWA unless they stop supporting a proscribed terrorist group such as Hamas.

    I would also prefer that incendiary talk about genocide and occupation be dropped.

    Israel has one of the most powerful and heavily-armed militaries in the region and Gaza is a sitting duck. Given that, If Israel were really practicing unrestricted and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, it’s more likely the casualty figures would now be in the hundreds of thousands rather than the 40,000 claimed by Hamas (that’s if you are gullible enough to believe a word they say)

    As for occupation,, the Israelis withdrew both military personnel and civilians in 2005. All that bought them was the establishment of a terrorist state on their southern border and then a steady bombardment of missiles into their territory. Can you imagine the US putting up with Mexico firing hundreds of missiles into the border states and doing nothing? What happened on October 7th was an act of war and occupying the territory of your enemy in time of war is a legitimate and legal strategy, Should the Allies not have occupied Japan or Germany in WWII?

    Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Israel. Why would you want to play Hamas’s game and weaken Israel’s ability to defend itself against them? Do you approve of what they did?

  12. raven says

    The results were quite surprising. On Threads, 9% claimed to have sold their Teslas because of Elon Musk, while 46% said they wouldn’t buy another one, and 39% said they never liked Tesla anyway. Just 7% said they would buy another Tesla. Aug 24, 2024

    Is Elon Musk Driving Away Tesla’s Core Customers? – Forbes
    Forbes https://www.forbes.com › Lifestyle › Cars & Bikes

    Elon Musk is so sick and cuckoo that he is actively harming Tesla car sales.

  13. laurian says

    Kamala worked TFG like Ali on a speed bag.
    Tay Tay tagged in and threw the Kill shot.

    It was glorious

  14. says

    If Israel were really practicing unrestricted and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, it’s more likely the casualty figures would now be in the hundreds of thousands rather than the 40,000 claimed by Hamas (that’s if you are gullible enough to believe a word they say)

    AFAIK at least, no one has credibly disputed that 40,000 figure as a good approximation of the number of people killed in Gaza. Nor is it disputed that most of those people were women, children and other noncombattants. And no, “the IDF are really powerful so they coulda killed a lot more people” does NOT serve as an excuse.

    As for occupation, the Israelis withdrew both military personnel and civilians in 2005.

    Leaving Gaza as an open-air prison literally under perpetual siege with no ability to independently acquire enough food, water, medical supplies, construction materials, or other necessities from outside. This “terrorist state” you speak of was one knowingly enabled, and often actively supported, by Israel.

    Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Israel.

    Which Israel knowingly allowed and all but explicitly invited by refusing to prepare for it, even after being warned by US and Egyptian intel.

    Why would you want to play Hamas’s game and weaken Israel’s ability to defend itself against them?

    Israel isn’t “defending itself,” they’re actively CONQUERING and driving Palestinians off of land they want for themselves. And no, I don’t approve of such conquest or ethnic cleansing, any more than I approve of what Hamas did to give Israel more excuses to keep on doing it.

  15. Reginald Selkirk says

    Iowa voters react to Trump & Harris debate performance


    “He’s not being nasty which is very important and she’s lying like she does, as you can tell I’m all for Trump,” said Mary Tonnemacher, a Dallas County voter, while pointing at her Trump shirt.

    “I think he’s controlling his emotions quite well and he’s answering things in a very factual way and I think Harris is showing too much emotion,” said Sheila Murphy, a voter from Harrison County….

    Viewing the world through orange-tinted glasses.

  16. raven says

    genocide advocate creep:

    Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Israel.

    Israel committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Gaza.

    They have also more or less destroyed much of Gaza, the home for 2.1 million people.

    As you don’t know, two wrongs don’t make a right.

    Israel is now ahead in the body count by 33:1.
    The vast majority of those dead are civilian children and women noncombatants.
    This isn’t defense, it is revenge, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

  17. IX-103, the ■■■■ing idiot says

    I liked the part of the debate where Kamala unleashed on Trump for bypassing the Afghanistan government to instead negotiate the withdrawal with terrorists, releasing 5000 terrorists, and Trump’s response was that Biden/Kamala are “negotiating with the wrong people”.

    I’m surprised no one mentioned that Trump was defending negotiations with the group behind 9/11 during his debate on 9/10.

  18. KG says

    Ah, we have a genocide fan among us!
    seversky@15,There’s no doubt that Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th, and continues to do so by holding hostages. But that in no way excuses the continual slew of war crimes being committed by Israeli forces, or the clear statements of genocidal intent by senior figures such as the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, and others. It is abundantly clear that Netanyahu has no intention of allowing the war to end any time soon, and he has done his best to expand it by assassinations carried out in Beirut and Tehran.

    Given that, If Israel were really practicing unrestricted and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, it’s more likely the casualty figures would now be in the hundreds of thousands rather than the 40,000 claimed by Hamas (that’s if you are gullible enough to believe a word they say)

    Figures put out by Hamas’s health ministry have proved accurate in previous cases. In this case, they are likely to be a considerable underestimate, given the extent of destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, tented refugee camps etc., including in areas deceitfully designated as “safe areas”. (Note that even if every Israeli claim that Hamas was present in civilian buildings is true, this would not justify in international law the huge number of civilians, including children, killed, or the extent of material destruction.) Not only will many dead be buried under rubble, in cases of such prolonged destruction and deprivation of essentials, the great majority of deaths are generally indirect, due to disease, malnutrition, inability to treat existing medical conditions, and so forth. A recent Lancet estimate is that deaths due to Israeli actions could be as much as 186,000. Israel is refusing to allow foreign journalists into Gaza, which it would surely do if its claims of trying to minimise civilian casualties were true, or if doing so would cast doubt on the figures for deaths put out by Hamas.

    As for occupation,, the Israelis withdrew both military personnel and civilians in 2005.

    Gaza nevertheless remained under occupation in legal terms, since Israel had control of its borders, coastline and airspace. Israel, of course, has been in continuous violation of international law for decades – that law forbids the settlement or annexation of territory seized in war (and no, claiming God gave you the land thousands of years ago doesn’t count as justification for doing so).

  19. Hemidactylus says

    Note how seversky @15 by means of JAQing off is implying heavily that I am a Hamas supporter. What Hamas did on October 7th was a monstrous atrocity and crime against humanity. That does not absolve the brutal excesses of Israel’s response. Hamas acted conveniently for Netanyahu given it took focus off his legal woes and made any future resolution of the political status of Palestinians with regard to their statehood less likely.

    Also note seversky’s superficial mention of the 2005 Disengagement without getting into Sharon’s various motives like diffusing the Palestinian demography bomb and sidestepping various peace initiatives (eg- the Quartet) extant at the time. Recall Dov Weisglass and formaldehyde? Sharon also had a looming corruption scandal that parallels that of Netanyahu currently. Arguably both had/have used Gaza as a means of acting in their own self-interest. Arik left Gaza and Bibi reentered for apparently similar self-serving reasons.

    Sadly Sharon could not see the outcome of the Disengagement through as his plan devolved into:

    Step 1- withdraw unilaterally from Gaza via a painful process allowing nemesis Netanyahu to grandstand

    Step 2- form Kadima party as a new vision of Zionist politics in face of Likud hardliners and settler protests

    Step 3- stroke out not long after Step 2

    Also not only is Israel occupying the West Bank (the Judea and Samaria of their eventual biblically mandated dreamland), via the religious settlers they are engaging in a creeping annexation.

    As to Gaza seversky says …“occupying the territory of your enemy in time of war is a legitimate and legal strategy” meaning Israel may reoccupy Gaza then, which in seversky‘s earlier assertion is “incendiary talk about…occupation”.

  20. Reginald Selkirk says

    Republicans’ ‘Eat Less Kittens’ billboards explain why Democrats run Arizona

    Of course. Democrats would know that it should be “eat fewer kittens”

    The Arizona Republican Party brain trust — having lost a presidential vote, both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats and all key state offices — has launched a new front in their bid to quit looking like loons.

    Digital billboards, a dozen of them, promoting what is perhaps the craziest conspiracy theory of the year (and that is saying something).

    “EAT LESS KITTENS — Vote Republican!” the state GOP’s billboards proclaim.

    The billboard features four kittens dressed in cow costumes, a la the iconic Chick-fil-A ads…

  21. says

    What Hamas did on October 7th was a monstrous atrocity and crime against humanity. That does not absolve the brutal excesses of Israel’s response.

    This point bears repeating and lots of it: Hamas did what they did in the most atrocious and inexcusable way possible! They didn’t just kill unarmed Israeli civilians, they stripped them naked and paraded their bodies about in public. NONE OF THIS was done to either take or hold territory, or to liberate any Palestinians from anyone, or to serve any conceivable Palestinian interest or aspiration. It was done entirely to serve ISRAEL’s interest: to give Israel, on a silver platter, all the excuse they could possibly need to wage a war of extermination; and to bring maximum shame and discredit to the Palestinians, their cause, and all critics of Israeli policies everywhere, including America.

  22. says

    Cross-posted from The Infinite Thread:

    https://www.wonkette.com/p/debate-spent-two-minutes-on-climate

    Debate Spent Two Minutes On Climate, And One Candidate Actually Talked About Climate

    Can you guess which one? Can you?!

    […] When Joe Biden won the nomination and then the presidency, he incorporated a lot of Jay Inslee’s plan into his own policies, particularly his signature Big Fucking Climate bill, aka the Inflation Reduction Act.

    But in 2024, the chief discussion of climate and clean energy has focused on Donald Trump’s pledge to undo all the progress that Biden made. Climate made only the briefest appearance in the June debate between Biden and Trump, when Biden tried to talk about his policies and Trump changed the subject and also lied a lot.

    In last night’s debate between Kamala Harris and an angry bag of mostly bile, climate was only raised at the very end of the debate, with each candidate getting only a minute to answer because time was running out, and how’s that for a metaphor.
    But at least there was a climate question, and Harris answered it aptly, as you’d expect. Then the angry bag of mostly bile ranted for his minute about anything but climate. Not too surprising, since Harris had activated his “tirade” setting early on and he’d come unglued for most of the final 84 minutes of the 90-minute debate. Here’s the clip! [video at the link]

    Harris noted that Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax, then said that people who have been affected by extreme weather and wildfires know how real it is, especially those who have lost their homes, or been “denied home insurance or is being jacked up” for their premiums.

    She pretty deftly noted that the Biden-Harris administration has maintained US energy independence while also making possible the first serious shift away from those fossil fuels:

    “I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world.”

    Harris contrasted that record to Trump’s big talk about saving manufacturing jobs, which declined under Trump, and noted that she received the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and its president, Shawn Fain, who understand that

    “part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.”

    Trump, for his part, didn’t even bother with his usual throwaway line about wanting clear air and water (which ain’t climate) and instead raved about how nobody has a factory job any more, which is bullshit of course. Then he lied some more, claiming that manufacturing jobs are leaving, they’re leaving home, bye bye, meeting some Chinese man on the motorway in Mexico. No, Biden and Harris are not sponsoring Chinese EV plants in Mexico […]

    You could possibly give Trump some credit for being on topic when he lied that his tariffs will save jobs (they never do). He accused Harris of wanting to “kill the United Auto Workers and any auto worker, whether it’s in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place” — generously, that may have meant jobs, but his mind is a terribly literal place — and then shifted to an incoherent rant about Joe Biden being paid off by China and Ukraine and “the mayor of Moscow’s wife,” and that is Trump’s climate plan. [Madness on display.]

    […] Trump, weirdly, accused Harris of planning to ban fracking “the day after the election,” lying nonsensically that instead of transitioning rapidly to renewables and making them economically viable, Harris would simply turn off the lights out of pure spite:

    “They’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil.”

    At the Boise Democrats’ watch party that “I’m a big fan of solar” got a huge laugh.

    Finally, on another major Biden-Harris industrial policy achievement, the CHIPS and Science Act, which has boosted the US microchip industry and created a boom in new factory construction to bring computer chip manufacturing back to the US, Trump flat out lied again, winning a fact check from those radical Marxists at the Wall Street Journal. Trump lied that due to Biden-Harris policies, “we hardly make chips any more,” when in reality, the CHIPS Act provides $52 billion in federal subsidies to incentivize chip manufacturing, which the industry has leveraged into even more additional private investment. Says the Journal:

    The U.S. has in recent decades lost much ground in chip production to Asia, but the new legislation, called the Chips Act, has sparked several multi-billion-dollar construction projects around the country that, when complete, will markedly boost U.S. production of computer chips. The chip program is one of the largest industrial development programs the federal government has ever administered.

    We’d say the highest-ever growth in new investments in domestic chip manufacturing is pretty good, but the factories won’t start producing chips until they’re actually built, and by then undocumented migrants may have eaten all the silicon and engineers […]

  23. awomanofnoimportance says

    Raging Bee, No. 28, I’m one who thinks that Israel had the moral high ground immediately after October 7 but lost it once it started engaging in what certainly looks like genocide. In my opinion, neither Israel nor Hamas is covered in glory.

    That said, I think it’s important to note that Hamas does not care how many civilians Israel kills because of the horrible publicity that it’s generating for Israel. If Hamas cared about Palestinian lives, it would not be staging operations from hospitals and schools. It staged October 7 knowing what the likely Israeli reaction would be, and that it would be a public relations disaster for Israel, and decided that tens of thousands of Palestinian lives was worth the price of disgracing Israel.

    And the point being lost on both Israeli partisans and Hamas partisans is that it is possible for two things to be true at the same time: October 7 was an atrocity (and by the way, when is Israel getting its hostages back?); AND ALSO that the Israeli reaction was an atrocity. The only real victims here are the civilians caught in the crossfire.

    And personally, I’m inclined to cut off funding to both of them.

  24. Reginald Selkirk says

    1) Would it be possible to not have the Palestine debate consume every other thread on the Internets? Thank you.

    2) Former Reagan speechwriter on debate: Trump ‘cleaned his own clock’

    Former President Reagan speechwriter John Podhoretz said former President Trump caused problems for himself during the ABC News debate Tuesday night.

    “He cleaned his own clock, and when he didn’t clean his own clock, she cleaned his clock, and when she didn’t, Muir and David cleaned his clock,” Podhoretz, now working as an editor at Commentary Magazine, wrote Tuesday night on the social platform X.

    “In the end, his clock was cleaned,” he added. “He smudged her clock face a little.” …

  25. lotharloo says

    @23 Reginald Selkirk:

    That’s because you need to be a very special person to be undecided. I’m sorry to say this but my sister is one of those educated by also ignorant people who is undecided. She blames the media for some shit but a lot of times gets her news from social media. She claims democrats have ruined immigration and that even though Trump was wrong about the “eating cats stuff” there but there’s a video of someone eating a cat but the media doesn’t want to talk about it. And so on and on.

  26. Reginald Selkirk says

    @32: It sounds like she’s not really “undecided”, she’s just not yet willing to openly declare her support for The Orange One.

  27. Reginald Selkirk says

    Trump confronted by ‘Central Park Five’ member he called to be executed in debate spin room

    You can bet Donald Trump wasn’t prepared for this particular showdown.

    On the sidelines of his first and possibly only debate against Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, the former president on Tuesday found himself face-to-face with none other than Yusef Salaam.

    Salaam is a member of the “Central Park Five” – a group of Black and Hispanic youths Trump once called to be executed for a crime they were later they later exonerated of…

    They don’t really get into the fact that Trump never recanted nor apologized, even after the exoneration.

    It’s the dreaded double-down again.

  28. says

    How many lies has tRUMP told now on top of the 30,000+ during the four years of his murderous ‘alleged term’ in office? (mangled, distorted, deceitful and exaggerated BS counts)
    It was difficult to keep from vomiting from all the disgusting stuff issuing from his mouth during the ‘alleged’ debate.
    The Central Park Five should own trUMPS ass! Oh, wait, no one would want to own his huge shitty ass!

  29. Reginald Selkirk says

    @35 an article with better context

    Trump Defends One Of The Most Blatantly Racist Moments From His Past

    Instead of apologizing to the wrongly convicted teenagers, who are now grown men, Trump used the spotlight afforded him to call them guilty all over again.

    “They admitted — they said, they pled guilty,” Trump said, responding to a remark from Vice President Kamala Harris about his actions.

    “And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately, and if they pled guilty,’” he concluded.

    (Noneofthempleadedguilty.)

  30. Jean says

    What would be the reaction if a country decided to bomb a stadium full of people because a handful of terrorists are suspected of being there hidden among the crowd? Would that be ok because the country is just defending itself? That’s very similar to what Israel is doing. Being a terrorist to counter other terrorists is not the solution and not a moral position.

    As for the original subject, the “concepts of plan” reminds me of the Fyre festival (the original one and the new one being “planned”).

  31. Reginald Selkirk says

    All Rise for the Most Insane Conspiracy Theory About Last Night’s Debate

    The prevailing theory in MAGAdom is that Kamala Harris was discreetly wearing a pair of earbuds embedded in the earrings she wore on stage. The tech itself is real—in 2023, the audio company Icebach unveiled a set of pearl jewelry called the “Nova H1 Audio Earrings” that were outfitted with the ability to transmit audio into the wearer’s cochleas. If you are way down the rabbit hole, you might be willing to believe that Harris had orchestrated some sort of elaborate walkie-talkie system so she could receive live coaching from, I don’t know, Pete Buttigieg, standing a few feet offstage. It’s a position that has been signal-boosted by some of the more prominent knuckleheads on the right—particularly Naomi Wolf, former feminist scholar, current anti-vax nut job, who frankly deserves some sort of lifetime achievement award for gullibility. Here’s Wolf, laying out her case:…

  32. says

    Hume: Well, I thought the single question that needed to be answered tonight was “Madam Vice President, why have you changed your views?”

    Maybe they’ll ask JD that at the vice-presidential debate.

    And for the heck of it, someone ask Lindsay Graham too. And every other Republican who fell into line after initially being honest about the Hamberdler.

  33. says

    Oh, I forgot to mention: I learned that both Seattle and Minneapolis, two cities I am strongly connected to, have been burned to the ground. Tragic.

    Well, you didn’t expect Antifa to let you in on the big secret, didja? Plausible deniability donchaknow… :-/

  34. Bekenstein Bound says

    seversky@15:

    I would prefer we pull the plug on the UN and UNRWA unless they stop supporting a proscribed terrorist group such as Hamas.

    Who let this petaQ in here?

    I would also prefer that incendiary talk about genocide and occupation be dropped.

    I’m sure you would. Such talk is very inconvenient to Nazi eugenicists such as yourself.

    Israel has one of the most powerful and heavily-armed militaries in the region and Gaza is a sitting duck. Given that, If Israel were really practicing unrestricted and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, it’s more likely the casualty figures would now be in the hundreds of thousands

    As, indeed, they are, perhaps close to 200,000. (The official numbers are a joke.) If things don’t change very soon it’s likely to skyrocket into the millions when starvation and disease take their toll.

    Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Israel.

    That doesn’t justify genocide in response. Nothing does.

    Hemidactylus@25:

    Hamas acted conveniently for Netanyahu given it took focus off his legal woes and made any future resolution of the political status of Palestinians with regard to their statehood less likely.

    Yeah … too conveniently. I get a very strong “Dooku and Palpatine” vibe off Hamas and Netanyahu. October 7 was the part where “Attack of the Clones” ended, “Revenge of the Sith” began, the Separatists kidnapped Palpatine, and Palpatine and his apprentice betrayed and murdered Dooku. We’re now at the part where Palpatine has the separatist leaders massacred at Mustafa and issues Order 66, or close to.

    Reginald Selkirk@26:

    The Arizona Republican Party brain trust

    Er, excuse me just one minute.

    How can they have a brain trust without any brains?

    Raging Bee@28:

    Hamas did what they did in the most atrocious and inexcusable way possible! They didn’t just kill unarmed Israeli civilians, they stripped them naked and paraded their bodies about in public. NONE OF THIS was done to either take or hold territory, or to liberate any Palestinians from anyone, or to serve any conceivable Palestinian interest or aspiration. It was done entirely to serve ISRAEL’s interest: to give Israel, on a silver platter, all the excuse they could possibly need to wage a war of extermination; and to bring maximum shame and discredit to the Palestinians, their cause, and all critics of Israeli policies everywhere, including America.

    See?

    Dooku.

  35. bcw bcw says

    Living next to New York City, I had arguments with Facebook acquaintances in Iowa who were convinced the city was a burning wreck during the BLM protests and refused to believe my own testimony and photos. They still won’t come here because they are too scared.

  36. StevoR says

    @15. seversky : “Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes in their incursion into Israel. Why would you want to play Hamas’s game and weaken Israel’s ability to defend itself against them? Do you approve of what they did?”

    Of course not. No body here – pretty much nobody I’;m sure – approves of Hamas and what they did.

    Now, tell me have you heard about Hind Rajab and what happened to that 6 yera old child and the ambulance sent withpermission and co-ordination to rescue her? Watch this 12 minute long clip – one of many discussing this Palestinian Girl who desperately called for help before Being Murdered By Israeli Forces which also blew up the ambulance killing the people sent to save her

    Do you approve of that? O

    Or how about the nightmarish sadistic torture horror movie – but real list of things done by Israelis to Palestinians prisoners discussed here – Israel’s Atrocities Exposed By CNN – A Network Defined By Pro-Israeli bias discussed by Owen Jones? Do you approve of that?

    Do you approve of anyone deliberately starving other people’s innocent children to death? That is what Israel is doing in Gaza too.

    I would also prefer that incendiary talk about genocide and occupation be dropped.

    I’m sure you do but your preferences her e do not reflect or dictate the reality as real human beings are experiencing right now.

    FYI. Genocide Watch has noted some things about this war, this genocide, which I’ve already quoted here :

    https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/09/09/this-summary-of-israels-defenses-holds-up/#comment-2235809

    These are the signs of the genocidal process in Israel’s war in Gaza:

    .1) Israel’s leaders persist in conflating all Palestinian people with Hamas. [classification];

    .2) Israel’s leaders incite genocide against Palestinians by dehumanizing Palestinians as “human animals” and by summoning Biblical justification for genocide [dehumanization, polarization];

    .3) Israel collectively punishes all Gazans for the actions of Hamas. Israel’s leaders deny that there are any innocent civilians in Gaza. This falsehood denies any duty to obey the laws of war, which require avoidance of attacks on civilians. [dehumanization, polarization];

    .4) This collective punishment is used to justify the bombing and killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children, and noncombatants, including at least 85 journalists [persecution, extermination];

    .5) Israel has forcibly displaced 1.7 million Gazans from their homes into tent cities [persecution];

    .6) Israel bombs and assaults hospitals where wounded civilians seek medical care and shelter [persecution, extermination];
    Israel bombs Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza [persecution, extermination];

    .7) Israel bombs and attacks areas in Gaza to which it has directed civilians for their “safety” [persecution, extermination];
    Israel bombs “escape routes” it has designated for Palestinians fleeing Israeli attacks [persecution, extermination];
    Israel’s blockade and siege of Gaza is producing widespread famine [persecution, extermination].

    Together, these actions demonstrate intent to commit genocide, the intentional destruction in part of the Palestinian people of Gaza. Until the Israeli invasion of Gaza ends with a permanent ceasefire, Israel will continue to commit four of the acts of genocide enumerated in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention:

    .I) Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza, including of so-called “escape corridors,” and “safe areas” to which it has directed Gazans, is intentionally killing members of the Palestinian ethnic and national group.

    .2) Israel’s displacement of 1.7 million Gazans and its blockade of food, water, fuel, and healthcare is causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of the Palestinian ethnic and national group.

    .3) Israel’s blockade of food, water, and fuel, its destruction of eighty percent of Gaza’s homes, and its destruction of all but seven of Gaza’s hospitals is deliberately inflicting on the Palestinian group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

    .4) Israel’s bombing has destroyed most of the hospitals of Gaza where Palestinian mothers could safely give birth to their babies, thus imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

    There is a growing consensus among international lawyers that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. A United Nations panel held by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) recently concluded with a determination that Israel’s war against Gaza is genocidal by intent.

    Source : GenocideWatch article “Genocide is Never justifiable -Israel & Hamas in Gaza” by Grace Condon and Frankie Condon (February 4, 2024) linked in link above.

    Those statistics of course are out of date as the war, the genocide, continues. How much of that do you approve of and how much of that can you dispute and with what evidence?

  37. StevoR says

    @ 15. seversky : “I would prefer we pull the plug on the UN and UNRWA unless they stop supporting a proscribed terrorist group such as Hamas.”

    The United Nations certainly has its flaws and issues and badly needs major reforms eg removal of the veto powers, stronger enforcement ability, etc.. There’s a pretty raaonsable cas ethat it has failed in its foudational mission so far. But are they supporting Hamas? Really? Citations and strong supporting evidence needed.

    As for occupation,, the Israelis withdrew both military personnel and civilians in 2005. All that bought them was the establishment of a terrorist state on their southern border and then a steady bombardment of missiles into their territory.

    Okay – and in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

    Can you imagine the US putting up with Mexico firing hundreds of missiles into the border states and doing nothing?

    Of course not!

    What happened on October 7th was an act of war and occupying the territory of your enemy in time of war is a legitimate and legal strategy,

    Fighting a war still doesn’t allow people to committ War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. It doesn’t allow you to starve children to death.

    Children in Gaza have been dying from starvation-related complications since the Israeli government began using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Doctors and families in Gaza described children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration, and hospitals ill-equipped to treat them. …(Snip).. of April 1, that 32 people, including 28 children, had died of malnutrition and dehydration at hospitals in northern Gaza. Save the Children confirmed on April 2 the deaths from starvation and disease of 27 children. Earlier in March, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials found “children dying of starvation” in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan and al-Awda hospitals.

    Source : https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/09/gaza-israels-imposed-starvation-deadly-children

    Should the Allies not have occupied Japan or Germany in WWII?

    The Allied Occupation of Germany lasted from 5th June 1945 to 23 May 1949 so approx 4 years.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany )

    The Allied Ocupation of Japan lasted from September 2nd, 1945 to April 28th 1952 or approx 7 years.. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan)

    The Occupation of Palestine has lasted from 1948 until today and is on-going. Wellover seventy years and counting.

    The Allies did not engage in mass scale settlement of Japanese and German land importing hundeds of thousands oftheir own people and did not rule in their parlaiments etc .. that there would never again be Japanese and German nations. Rather key differences.

  38. StevoR says

    PS. On that last point :

    Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state, reflecting the deepening decline in support for a two-state solution among wider Israeli society. Of the 120-member legislative body, 68 voted in support of the resolution, which says a Palestinian state would “pose an existential danger to the State of Israel.” Nine members opposed it, while others did not vote.

    Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israels-knesset-votes-overwhelmingly-palestinian-statehood-netanyahu-p-rcna162466

    That vote, of course, has rather huge implications.

    I wonder if seversky will read this and the other comments here, think about them and respond to them?

  39. Silentbob says

    @ 51 John Morales

    All the more impressive when aware of Stevo’s history. (As I’m sure you are.)

    People can change and grow. Who knew?

  40. says

    One of our cohorts just read an article that mentioned that Biden’s spokesperson jean-pierre is either Haitian or of Haitian descent. WOW, how many people can the rtwinnuts insult and threaten?

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