RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/ditch-commission-presidential-debates-bruce-thornton/

The first presidential debate, a raucous display of decidedly “unpresidential” behavior, called forth the usual bromides and analyses. Hands were wrung over the threat to our “democracy” and the loss of “civility,” complaints that were missing when in 2014 Joe Biden bullied Paul Ryan. Many pundits on both sides confessed their depression over the spectacle. As usual, most voters didn’t have their minds changed by this glorified reality-television show.

Maybe it is time to just ditch the CPD sponsored debates.

Televised presidential debates are an artefact of the television age. As a creation of an entertainment medium, the debates have never been about informed questions, answers, and rebuttals over policies or governing philosophies. They are political ads and gotcha tournaments, with the audience keeping score over who makes a gaffe, misspeaks, blatantly lies, avoids the question, or personally attacks his opponent. Like professional wrestling, each contestant has his or her fan base whose minds will not be changed, and whose estimation of points scored will be mostly subjective.

And don’t forget, superficial appearances are very important too. Remember poor Dick Nixon, whose five o’clock shadow, translucent skin, and lack of cosmetic skills may have lost him the presidential debate in 1960? I recall a poll (later challenged) that found radio listeners thought Nixon won, but television viewers thought JFK did. Even if the poll was flawed, there’s no question that appearance counts. Remember Hillary complaining about Trump “looming” over her during their debate? And of course, good looks and physical presence, as filtered through a television camera, add another subjective and irrelevant element to the spectacle.

More revealing is the fact that the “moderators,” as the hosts of these shows are called, nearly always come from television news shows. That is, from the ranks of professional readers of other people’s words. I can’t figure out how a job based on such an ability, a pleasing voice and demeanor, and the knack for not looking like an oaf on television, equips anybody to be a critical analyst of the policy prescriptions of professional politicians.

https://dianebederman.com/social-justice-tikkun-olam-and-the-democrat-party/

Judaism teaches that social justice includes leaving grain and produce during the harvest for the poor to glean in order to provide all people the dignity of work. A hand up and not a perpetual hand out.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the corner of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.” (Leviticus 19:9-11)

Our Jewish ethic teaches us that we have moral agency; free will; that we are the subject of our destiny and not the object of our fate. We are not the victims of circumstance because we choose our path, no matter the road blocks put in our way.

Yet, I watch and listen as Jewish people support a party that places multiple road blocks in front of those in most need of uplifting by promoting a welfare state: free stuff; free education, free health care, subsidized housing. It all sounds lovely, but for those whose hand is always out, there is no dignity; there is no moral agency.  I agree there is no dignity in homelessness or hunger but socialism is not the answer. We know this from history watching what happened in Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela, rich beyond belief, from oil, whose people are now unable to buy toilet paper. Socialism is evil. It is debilitating. It undermines dignity turning citizens into generational victims.

Dear Jews, listen to those less fortunate. Listen to the Latinos and Hispanics whose families fled socialist countries to come to America for the freedom to rise up and to fall down, knowing you could rise up again. Listen to them as they warn against socialism as preached by Bernie Sanders and shared by AOC.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-1-the-debate-strengthens-the-case-for-a-libertarian-to-vote-for-trump

Back on July 22, I participated in a debate hosted by the Soho Forum on the question of which presidential candidate a libertarian should support — Biden, Trump, or Jo Jorgensen (the candidate of the Libertarian Party). I argued the case for Trump. You can watch the July 22 debate, including my presentation, by going to the Soho Forum website.

Later today, at the request of the Soho Forum, I will be recording an update to my July 22 presentation. Not much has happened to move the needle since July 22, particularly given the dearth of public appearances by both Biden and Harris, and the flat refusal of those two to respond to any remotely unfriendly or probing questions from reporters. That leaves mostly just the debate of September 29 in the category of new information. Trying to do my job conscientiously, I watched the whole thing. If you did the same, I pity you, and I also strongly suspect that you found the experience unpleasant, as I did.

As a general matter, I found Trump’s aggressive approach off-putting and unhelpful. On the other hand, Biden’s approach was to make wild and unsupported statements and promises, often inconsistent either with his website or other statements he made in the debate itself, with seeming complete confidence that the moderator would give him a total pass. And on that he was right — time after time, moderator Chris Wallace gave him a total pass. The underlying concept was that in a Biden presidency, the government would provide perfect solutions to all human problems and bring justice and fairness to all through the magic of government spending and programs. Does anybody really buy this? Unfortunately, I think a lot of people do buy it.

I’ll focus on just a few issues that arose in the debate. I have used a version of the transcript found here to try to get as close as I can to the exact words used.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/30/trump-wins-round-one-barely/

There was no clear winner in Tuesday’s presidential debate and the country was the loser. 

President Trump could have won decisively if he had just followed Napoleon’s famous advice not to “interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The moderator, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, did an excellent professional job largely without bias, and undoubtedly more fairly than those who will conduct the next two debates, but he didn’t come down hard enough on the interruptions. If Trump had just allowed Wallace to follow up on his questions of Biden, the former vice president would have stumbled badly. Trump’s irritating interruptions created an incoherent cacophony that enabled Biden to escape severe embarrassment. 

On balance, Trump almost certainly won, but a very few viewers would have had the perseverance to listen carefully enough to note that Trump defended his own record quite capably, and Biden was very shaky and imprecise both in criticism of his opponent and in explaining why he should be president. As was expected, the fact that he got through 90 minutes in the ring with Trump without becoming incomprehensibly muddled, empowered his supporters to claim that in limping out intact, he had won.

For those who followed it carefully or replay it, it will be clear not only that Trump is a much more forceful and articulate man than Joe Biden, but that he also clearly won the argument, insofar as it could be perceived within the tumult of interruptions.

The Democrats can claim the partial victory of their candidate having survived to fight another day, but the Democratic campaign—which has consisted exclusively of nonstop defamation of the president with a new false allegation every week—was discredited by Biden’s failure to make any of his accusations stick, or even sound like he believed them himself. 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/debate-goes-off-the-rails-as-trump-interrupts-biden-bickers-in-shoutfest

It was the presidential debate as barroom brawl, as television shoutfest, as exhausting insult derby.

To the frustration of moderator Chris Wallace, and perhaps much of the television audience, much of the Cleveland faceoff–and there’s no other way to put it–went off the rails.

Given the polarized nature of the country, few minds were likely changed unless the candidates were being graded on politeness.

Substance occasionally broke through, but by and large it was a night of sound and fury and, from start to finish, great frustration.

The first pivot point came after a mild exchange on the Supreme Court nominee, when Joe Biden said President Trump is in court to get rid of ObamaCare and Amy Coney Barrett has said the law is unconstitutional.

Biden’s jab that 20 million people would lose their health insurance brought the debate onto his turf, clearly part of his game plan.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/joe-biden-campaign-strangest-in-history/

Joe Biden may be running for president — and then again, maybe he’s not.

M any argue that 2020 will be the most important election in history, given the wide divergence between the Trump administration’s view and those of Democratic Party’s hard Left, which seems to have captured the Joe Biden candidacy.

Perhaps. But most will at least agree that the 2020 campaign is certainly the strangest, craziest and most absurd in the last 120 years.Joe Biden may at 77 be the oldest major candidate of either major party ever to have run for president. But in this eerie 2020 landscape of pandemic, lockdown, recession, and riot, far stranger than Biden’s frailty is his campaign routine — or lack of same.

Until mid August, Biden more or less stayed ensconced in his basement, campaigning by electronic projection. Not since James Garfield and William McKinley ran their 19th-century presidential campaigns from their front porches has an American presidential candidate simply abdicated from the campaign trail and remained inactive and almost mute.

Biden certainly does not weigh in on many issues. We have no idea whether as president he would join the Jacobin pack to pack the Supreme Court, push to end the Electoral College, enact the full Green New Deal, or seek statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

Does he unequivocally condemn the national rioting and looting? Would he reopen the border, stop deportations of illegal aliens, take down the new wall? Would Biden end fracking as part of his stated vow to phase out fossil fuels, as he has inferred in the past? Is China really a mere rival rather than an enemy? And if so, would he revoke Trump’s China-rollback policy? He has bragged of his role in the Iran Deal — would he bring that back? Biden’s silence only highlights the mystery, and magnifies the importance, of the first Biden–Trump debate — given that millions of voters are curious to meet for the first time the nominee of the Democratic Party and thereby will learn at last why, these past months, he either should have, or should not have, gone into hibernation.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-weak-leading-the-woke/

Let’s start with an easy one.

How old is Joe Biden?

As this issue goes to press, 77. America’s median age is 38, which means that more than half the country is less than half Biden’s age. If inaugurated on January 20, 2021, exactly two months after he turns 78, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., will be older on his first day in office than Ronald Reagan was on his last day as president. Reagan was the oldest president prior to Donald Trump, who is three and a half years younger than Biden and became president almost four years ago. As a result, Trump will reach the age of 78 years and seven months in January 2025, at the conclusion of what would be his second term. Biden will be that old in June 2021.

Last year, when Biden was a candidate for the Democratic nomination, he (or at least his advisors) suggested he would serve only one term if elected. Having become the nominee, he said more recently that he would “absolutely” consider seeking a second term in 2024. If that quest overcomes all obstacles, political and medical, Biden would leave office in January 2029 at 86, an age surpassed by only seven ex-presidents.

To think of Biden’s age another way, he is older than his party’s nominee in each of the seven most recent presidential elections: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton. One must go back to 86-year-old Michael Dukakis, who lost the 1988 election to George H.W. Bush, to find a Democratic presidential nominee born before Biden was.

How long has Joe Biden been in government?