Thursday, September 17, 2015

Thoughts about last night's debate

Boy, howdy, Carly Fiorina is impressive.  Holy cow.

Boy, howdy, Rand Paul was a disappointment.  He was really good going after Bush on medical marijuana.  But he wasn't impressive.

Boy, howdy, Donald Trump is a d-bag.  That doesn't disqualify him from the Oval Office, but wow.

Jeb Bush walks, talks, and quacks like the establishment.  Big applause line when Jeb stuck up for his brother, but I think he's actually befuddled about how to campaign.  Likely this is because his donors don't want him to actually say what he'd do.  Likely that's because he's not as smart as they are.  Dead man walking.

I really want to like Chris Christie.  I really do.  "Who's going to prosecute Hillary Clinton?"  LOL. I loved it when he said a 55 year old construction worker doesn't care about Donald Trump's or Carly Fiorina's careers.  His story about 9/11 was good.  Of course, he'd ban guns.  Good thing he's toast. 

Sen. Cruz may be closest to most of my positions.  He should get more traction, but probably won't.  I don't like him because he's a conservative, I like him because he's a maverick that is willing to drive the herd rather than run with it.  He had a great shout-out to Gun Owners of America.

Rubio will go pretty far, but not this election cycle.  He's pretty impressive, and very young.  He's great on Global Warming.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him offered the Vice President slot.  I also wouldn't be surprised to see him turn it down.

Not sure what I think of Carson.  I suspect that he's anti-gun, but don't really know.  He's what I should like -  the Thinking Man's thinking man.  But I'm not sure.

I'd say something about John Kassich, but very time he opened his mouth I fell asleep.

Nobody is talking about regulations.  This is the biggest gap in the entire campaign, and probably the biggest argument against Trump (who as a big businessman uses them for his competitive benefit).

Who cares about foreign policy.  Nobody will cast a vote based on this next year.

Huckabee was the only one who mentioned the second amendment.  Don't think I like him, but he's there.

Did I mention that Carly Fiorina is impressive as hell?

Lord, Donald Trump is a jerk.

I guess there were others on the stage, too.  Whatvs.

The CNN moderators were pretty goodc, even with the expected gotcha questions.  And the format was decently debate-ish with the candidates challenging each other.

We're not voting ourselves out of this.  None of the men (or women) on the White Horse are going to save the Republic.  But the circus is entertaining and the bread is free.  Are you not entertained?



I did this for you so that you don't have to.  No need to thank me, it's all part of having a full-service blog.

8 comments:

Irish said...

"We're not voting ourselves out of this." exactly.

Anonymous said...

Neither Rubio or anyone else will turn down the Veep slot if offered. They all say they are not interested before the offer. If asked I can give 3 or 4 names of people who would make a great V.P. but it is not for me. Then the nominee calls saying I want to have a private one on one meeting with you. Nobody turns it down.

Archer said...

Carson is anti-gun. In the past he's professed the "guns as a public health issue" (read: like smoking) line.

He's walked back from it recently and when pressed is saying the right things, but I believe it's more because "gun control" is a non-starter for the Republican base and not necessarily because he's changed his beliefs.

He's a very smart man -- analytical, fact-based, as you said, a Thinking Man's thinking man -- and I really want to like him. But I can't bring myself to trust him on the issue of guns and the Second Amendment.

Mike said...

Carson may be anti-gun, it wouldn't surprise me. However, the fact that he is "probably, possibly" for a minimum wage hike is a sure sign he's clueless on economics and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Really smart people, of which I know quite a few, don't constantly tell me how smart they are and generally think through their positions. Ben Carson doesn't ring true on either of those. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I think he'd make a lousy president.

My dad has worked for HP from slightly before Fiorina showed up. Seeing what happened to that company under her leadership has soured any chance of me ever voting for her. She does talk a very good talk, but what she did at HP was to gut the R&D group and engage in huge acquisition and financial engineering gambits that failed, were obviously going to fail, and were much more about her being the largest female CEO and her compensation package than the good of the company. Buying Compaq was the worst case. Compaq sold almost nothing that wasn't a direct competitor of an HP product, which meant that her buying Compaq reduced consumer choice, reduced competition for HP, and made massive numbers of HP and Compaq employees redundant, who she then put out on the street. HP had never had a layoff before Fiorina. It's been doling out pink slips in huge swaths ever since. They are laying off 85k people this year. At Lucent, Fiorina was a champion for offering vendor financing over long terms on equipment that depreciates very quickly, thus ensuring that the loans would be underwater if any issues arose for the people buying it. Issues arose in the dot-com crash, and Lucent was gutted. She's been a terrible businessperson in all of her major roles.

R.K. Brumbelow said...

Here is Carson's position on guns as he expresses it: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/07/21/ben-carson-is-talking-about-guns-again-and-hes-clarifying-a-very-important-point-for-second-amendment-advocates/

drjim said...

I have to agree with Mike about Fiorina.

I know people that worked at HP when she did her best to destroy the company, and it was brutal.

I like the way she talks, but man, did she screw the pooch at HP.....

I don't think I could vote for her.

Will said...

The problem with Fiorina is common for CEO types. For the most part, they lack morals, which is why they are so keen to damage a company just to improve their stock holdings. In essence, they think just like the typical politician. One of the results of this tends to be the maxim: when their lips are moving, they are probably lying.

An excellent book that covers management types:

http://www.amazon.com/Neanderthals-Work-People-Politics-Drive/dp/0471527270

matism said...

Trump's policy paper on the Second Amendment looks good to me:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights

How does it look to YOU???