Back Into Politics

As some of you may have read, I’ve separated my fiction writing from my political writing. I know that not everyone likes both and that some despise one or the other. Therefore, I will make sure that nobody is subjected to writing they don’t like and separate the topics. If you like my fiction writing, you can find that over on my substack page, Professor Ornery Dragon’s Substack. If you like my political writing, then you can just sit back, relax, and keep reading. If you like both, well then, thank you! And you’ll have to flip back and forth between the sites… sorry!

All comments about posts are always welcome whether you agree with me or not. HOWEVER,

• I will not tolerate any personal attacks against me or any commenters, even if I disagree with the commenter.
• The only valid target is the argument, NOT the person making the argument.
• If you cannot address the argument without cutting down the commenter, I WILL BLOCK YOU.
• If you get creepy, stalker-y, rage-y, or start to froth at the mouth, I WILL BLOCK YOU.
• If your feelings get hurt because somebody dares to disagree with your precious opinion, I won’t do a damn thing. Research your position, grow a pair, and get back into the fight if you dare.
• No appeals allowed.

Are we clear? Good. My blog, my rules. If you don’t like these rules, you are free to read elsewhere.

Okay. So, let’s get down to brass tacks (sharply hauls brain back from rabbit hole of figuring out where, exactly, that phrase came from), I actually sat down and watched the first (and likely only if Biden remains the Dem candidate) presidential “debate.” Lemme tell ya, it was painful.

Let’s set the stage and then we’ll look at what happened.

First off, this is freaking June and we’re watching a presidential debate. Neither party has held a convention or formally picked a candidate. This is unprecedented.

Secondly, there was no studio audience. None. It was a stage, two reporters/moderators (Jake Tapper and Dana Bash), and no-one else other than camera crews.

Thirdly, the Commission on Presidential Debates did not sponsor this debate (we’ll get back to this later).

Okay. So, it already feels a bit off.

I’m not going to go into the specifics of whether each candidate did or did not answer the questions, or what they said when they did answer. They both avoided a lot of questions and answered some. Biden because he was working off a script, and Trump because he was using the time to respond to Biden. So it’s a wash on actually answering questions.

To those who would argue that Biden wasn’t working off a script and did answer, I point you to the time when the question was (I think) foreign policy and Biden rattled off something, then stopped. Bash responded with “President Biden, you have 82 seconds left. Did you want to say anything more?” He had 82 seconds left of 120. Think about that. At which point he wandered off onto another subject completely. He did this several times and both Bash and Tapper asked if he wanted to use his whole time. He looked confused when they asked, too. Most of the time you can’t shut a candidate up.

Anyway, back to my overall impressions.

A bit of background on me (it is relevant, I promise). I spent ten years watching my mother fall to Alzheimer’s. I’m waaaay too familiar with the signs and tells of someone with serious cognitive issues. I’m also very familiar with the effects of the drugs that are touted as “slowing the progress” of Alzheimer’s/dementia. No, I’m not an Alzheimer’s doc. But I am trained as a researcher and I have done a lot of research into this disgusting disease. I’ve read a lot about it and the drugs that are used to “combat” it (none of which are successful, btw. They can slow the progression but cannot stop nor reverse the disease. Often, when the drugs are stopped, the disease speeds up and there are multiple side-effects including depression which docs then fight with another set of drugs.)

Biden is, and has been for a few years, suffering from some form of dementia. And it’s gotten rapidly worse due to the stress he’s been under since he campaigned and then became president. Stress causes any cognitive issues to worsen almost exponentially. If you don’t believe me, go look for the videos that you know you never saw on CNN or MSNBC or other major outlets. You owe it to yourself and your heirs to know exactly what you voted for when you voted for Biden.

The cognitive decline was on full, public display last night. Biden’s first answer sounded like he was on speed. He then spent the debate alternating between answering as if he was running for reelection and in the next sentence sounding like he was running for the first time. He brought up stories that have been long-debunked such as the “plenty of fine people” canard about Charlottesville (again, not going to do your research for you, if you have an ounce of self-respect, you will go look up these things and verify my statements for yourself. You are an intelligent human being… prove it).

Biden trotted out the “suckers and losers” story about D-Day ceremonies, another false story. He brought those out because those stories along with the Russia dossier, the stripper story, and many others, were the stories that were used to attack Trump in the 2020 election season. Each one of those stories was created out of whole cloth or manipulated sound bites by Democratic operatives.

Several times (and again, go look for the video) Biden froze and then became incoherent. The split screen showed him staring with a blank look at Trump while the latter was speaking. It was a little freaky.

Trump handled himself pretty well considering how bombastic he can get and how fast he can go off the rails. I thought he did a good job of reining himself in. Although, he does need to work on his facial expressions, they give away a lot, especially the eye-rolling.

Part way through I noticed Trump had a neat trick he was using. When it was his turn to respond, he would say something along the lines of “I just wanna answer his last point” and do that before actually answering the question. Sometimes doing that he failed to answer the question the moderator asked and a couple of times they repeated it and said “You never answered… do you…” and he ended up with a bit of extra time. Tricky, that. Of course, CNN made it clear from the beginning that the timing and cutting off of mics was at the moderator’s discretion, so if you’re gonna complain about that, talk to Tapper and Bash.

Oh, and they did ask Trump about accepting election results no matter the outcome and he gave what I thought was a good answer – that he would as long as the elections were certified free and fair. Question for those screaming right now – what do you have against auditing election results and checking for fraud? What are you afraid is going to be found in an election audit?

About the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. I’m familiar with Tapper but I’d never seen Bash before. Of course, I haven’t watched CNN on purpose in years – being trapped in an airport waiting area doesn’t count as watching on purpose.

CNN is notoriously biased (yes, it is, you know it) but Tapper and Bash were pretty good about not being obvious about it when asking questions. And they were even-handed with the mic cutting as well. They didn’t extend Biden’s time or shorten Trump’s time.

This will likely be the only presidential debate we’ll get this year no matter who is the candidate. The Commission on Presidential Debates has canceled the fall debate schedule and told the campuses scheduled to host that there will be no debates at all. It appears likely that if the Democrats do decide to replace Biden at their convention, that there will be nothing with the replacement either. That all remains to be seen.

In the end, the debate scared me. Why? Well, because the doddering Biden is running the country and it’s clear he’s not capable. His pupils were big as dinner plates with everything they’d pumped into him. And, the reality is he’s not running the country, those around him, including his wife, are the ones running this country and I don’t trust any of them to know what they’re doing as far as I can throw them.

About Trump, I said this in 2016 and I’ll say it again. He’s loud, bombastic, blunt, and a former Democrat. But he wasn’t wrong about the good state this country was in when he left office (Covid issues will be dealt with in another post, this is just about the debate). And I’d rather have gas under $2.00/gallon, a secure border, and a growing economy than more of the chaos and incoherence we have now.

So, buckle up, Buttercup. It’s going to be a very, very bumpy, scary and weird(er) second half of 2024.