BrickHorn

Yep. I had the same thoughts last night. As a litigator, I would have made Vance choke on his words… and possibly made him look sympathetic in the process. Walz responded with affirmative statements of his own positions and policies, delivered like a regular Joe just trying to do the right thing. My sense is that will resonate better with the people that matter. Walz seemed rough around the edges, but genuine. Vance came across as a garden variety slick, lying politician.

“The only reason dozens of Germans plotted to assassinate Adolf Hitler is because the mainstream media kept telling people that he was Hitler.”

Vance is confusing Kamala Harris with Elon Musk.

“INDUSTRIAL SCALE CENSORSHIP!” Vance is more Trump than man now.

And do so in writing. Debates are a test of preparation, practice, and being quick on your feet. You’re time limited and on a public stage. You don’t have time to think deeply, and the best debaters are those who can recite rehearsed talking points smoothly. Literally none of those skills are valuable in real leadership, except on the circular basis that we keep expecting leaders to deliver precanned answers smoothly, despite the otherwise irrelevance of that skill to leadership. I’d rather the candidates be asked about policies in written questions, which they can then address in writing and, if desired, by delivering a speech addressing the points raised in the question.

I agree and this debate is driving me nuts. But I’m a litigator and my absolute favorite part of the job is cross examining smug fucks who think they’re the smartest guy in the room, and exposing their bullshit for what it is. Vance has lobbed up literally dozens of softballs that I would have pounced on. Walz is not that guy, and I think that’s a good thing on balance. His value add is authenticity. And I’m betting that’s more palatable to the American public than a smug lawyer who verbally abuses another smug lawyer.

Walz isn’t built for that. He’s not a litigator. He’s a teacher and a coach, and his comfort zone is anecdotes and practical solutions. He’d make a better leader, but debates test a different skill set (which is why they’re fucking stupid and counterproductive).

It’s funny. In real life, Vance botches basic human interaction and Walz is supremely at ease. But Vance is clearly but for a formal debate setting. Which out to be a huge red flag. Good debater often equates to practiced liar.

“The real problem is that people don’t trust us, the Nazis.”

JD: I need that girls’ night out on the town look. Barber: Say no more, fam.

And yet despite being not just President but Vice President, Kamala Harris couldn’t get ANY policies implemented!

Vance looks like he is on feminizing hormone therapy.

One of Vance’s kids is 7’4”?

I ate half a gummy one time and I immediately got blood-shot eyes, sprouted a Cheech Marin mustache, and started calling everybody “man,” man.

“Well well well, if it isn’t the Blowjob Brothers.”

The specific flavor of religion is not as important as religiosity generally. Once you incorporate a bunch of hocus-pocus bullshit into your mental model of the universe, you become an easy mark.

Next time you hear that, ask them if they know what caused the inflation under Biden. (Hint: one large driver was the 2020 government stimulus checks Trump sent out with his name printed on them.)

That’s not how non-religious works. The non-religious are not a coherent group, defined by a common identity and creed. It’s just a bunch of individuals who look at groups that meet weekly to reinforce their shared delusions and think “Fuck that weird shit.” We don’t sit in some massive hall every Sunday and talk about how much we all don’t believe in fairy tales or discuss plans to evangelize for critical thinking. We just each wake up and do our own thing, individually going about our days without wasting time thinking how best to confirm our lives to the perceived commands of some boring work of fantasy fiction. The non-religious will always be at a distinct organizational disadvantage compared to pretty much any cult.

If I were on Harris’s strategy team, I’d put out a scare tactic ad highlighting one random murder by a white dude in the Midwest, complete with the typical suspenseful music and melodramatic voice-over. It would say something like: ”In 2007, Ashleigh Prettywhitegirl was ruthlessly murdered by Joe Sixpack, a white man from Springfield who was born and raised in the United States. “But Kamala Harris thinks white, natural-born citizens should continue to live freely in the a United States. She says we shouldn’t deport all white people. She says we shouldn’t blame an entire race of people for the crimes of one man. ”And she’s right. ”I’m Kamala Harris and I approve this message.”

But how dare you compare him to Hitler!

Here’s what I don’t get: the numbers don’t add up. MAGAts swear up and down that Biden let millions of illegal inmigrants into the country each year. But there are only something like 20,000 murders annually. Even if all of those murders were committed by illegal immigrants (they were not), are these morons admitting that at least 980,000 illegal immigrants are not murderers? These fuckheads just have zero sense of reality and it’s infuriating how stupid / delusional they are about damned near every issue. None of their policy views or the inane beliefs underpinning them make any fucking sense whatsoever. It’s like 40% of the country is tripping balls on LSD round the clock and no matter how hard you try, they just can’t be pulled back into reality.

Go on…

True. But I tend to think education is more important than raw intellectual horsepower when it comes to making rational political decisions. Without a basic understanding of history, civics, and economics, even a brilliant voter won’t have the contextual knowledge required to distinguish good policies from bad ones. A lot of political reasoning is of the database search variety. You compare policy proposals to a mental database of things that have been tried in the past and their corresponding outcomes. We don’t resist communism because we run some thought experiment every time we consider it - instead, we conjur up all the examples of communist nations and recoil at what we know are the real world results. The same thing happens with morons who interpret every social welfare program as “socialism.” They instantly associate such policies with historical communist failures. The problem is that they aren’t educated enough to understand the substantive differences between modern European style welfare and Soviet communism. That’s why “otherwise intelligent” is such a common trope in any MAGA encounter story you’ll read here. Too many bright Americans have been spoonfed bullshit propaganda instead of a real education in history and economics. Hell, you see it every day on the Israel thread. Numerous bright and otherwise well-educated left-leaning posters have a huge blind spot when it comes to the history of that conflict, which causes them to spout idiotic shit.

Maybe. But my Facebook uncles are all too fucking real, and they post dumber MAGA shit than any bot.

It would be hilarious if he kept going until he passed both Saban for all-time wins and his brother Watson for all-time losses.