December 16, 2015

Here's my overall review of last night's debate: No candidate in either debate last night proved themselves fit to shine President Obama's shoes, much less fill them.

From Chris Christie spitting "feckless weakling" (above) at President Obama to Ted Cruz smiling wickedly as he imagined making the sand in the Middle East glow in the dark, it was a giant clusterfck. Beginning to end.

World War III? Or isolationism? No matter which, because each and every one of those Republicans -- save Rand Paul -- wouldn't care if we nuked each other until the United States glowed in the dark, too. Presumably their billionaires have built super-duper bunkers to withstand the holocaust of nuclear war.

It was disgusting.

And if they didn't kill us all with nukes, no problem. Because they're just as glad to kill us with poverty and need, including making sure none of us have access to a doctor when we need one. A little GOP snake oil will do us just fine, in their tiny little minds.

Charlie Pierce:

First of all, none of these people will be my commander in chief. None of these people will have the job of keeping me "safe." The first priority of a president is not keeping the country safe. The first priority of a president—indeed, the only priority of a president—is to preserve, protect and defend not me, but the Constitution of the United States. So sitting there, listening to a bunch of people who never served a day in combat talk about how they're going to turn the Middle East into obsidian glass and how they will keep me safe, it was hard not to fall off my chair. Frankly, I wouldn't hire any of these people to watch my car in a valet parking lot, let alone lead the country into what they never miss a chance to call, "the Third World War." Chris Christie? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio?

There are things that scare me. There are things these yahoos could do right now to "keep me safe."

They could quit trying to kill the Affordable Care Act so that I can know my son will always have access to health care.

They could get serious about dealing with the gun problem we have in this country.

They could express the tiniest bit of concern about our own home-grown extremists like Dylann Roof, who is apparently in a terrorist class of his own along with Robert Lewis Dear, untouchable and unmentionable in a Republican debate.

These things scare me. ISIS does not scare me.

I want to not worry that some nut is going to spray the movie theater with bullets while one of my kids is inside it. And to be clear, I'm not worrying about Muslim extremists in that case. I'm worrying about some armchair commando nut who ordered his AR-15 on the Internet and decided to take it for a test drive at the premiere of the new Star Wars movie.

ISIS does not scare me. These Republican idiots on the stage, puffing up and calling each other brave while calling President Obama a "weakling" do not scare me. They disgust me.

But their billionaires, they scare me. Because they really do want to kill us all. In the name of freedom and prosperity, of course.

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