Sunday, September 01, 2024

Kamala Harris Throws a Fit Over Debate Rules

 arlier this week, as we covered at the time, former and potentially future President Donald Trump announced that they had reached an agreement on the upcoming September 10 debate with ABC News. For his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the same rules will be in place as the debate Trump did with President Joe Biden did on June 27 with CNN. 

 a list of rules to the Trump campaign on Tuesday. Those rules include muted microphones for when the other candidate is speaking.

Harris, however, is trying to put out another narrative, as she continues to drag her feet about the debates. 

On Saturday morning, she put out a lengthy post complaining about the rules, in a quoted repost of The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey who noted on Friday that the Harris campaign has still not accepted the rules. They want the microphones to be unmuted.  

While trying to make Trump look bad if he interrupts Harris might have something to do with it, Harris' gaslighting post claims otherwise.

"Donald Trump is surrendering to his advisors who won't allow him to debate with a live microphone. If his own team doesn't have confidence in him, the American people definitely can’t," her post claimed.

It's worth reminding that it was the Biden-Harris campaign who insisted on the rules in place for the June 27 debate, which Trump agreed to. Even after getting what he wanted, the president still performed so poorly that he was forced to withdraw from the race less than a month later. 

"We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way—with the microphones on the whole time," Harris also claimed.

It's especially laughable that Harris would speak about doing something "in a transparent way," given that she only just recently gave her first interview upon Biden withdrawing from the race and endorsing her as his replacement. Harris couldn't even do a solo interview, as she was joined by her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). It was also taped ahead of time. She's also refused to hold press conferences.

In the few hours it's been up, Harris' post already has approximately 15,000 replies and close to 2,000 quoted reposts, many of them taking issue with her narrative. 

Amy Curtis and Doug P put together some of the best replies, with many noting that it sounds like Harris may be trying to get out of the debate, something Democrats previously accused Trump of. It's worth reminding, however, that the issue for the Trump campaign was that the Democrats did not have an official nominee at the time. 

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Bill Maher: You Should Have the Right to Say That the Election Was Stolen

 

Let’s not kid ourselves here: Bill Maher has, more or less, called people who think the 2020 election was stolen are nuts. He’s undoubtedly pressed those who have advocated such a position on his show. The HBO host has repeatedly espoused his most profound worry that Donald Trump would never concede power, all of which has never come to fruition. It’s liberal psychobabble, but it’s also an opinion. And he’s not for censoring that being a free speech supporter. He might not agree with you about the reported funny business during the 2020 election, but he also doesn’t want to see anyone censored for having that view.

The comedian said that claiming the 2020 election as stolen, or any election for that matter, shouldn’t be censored. It’s protected free speech.

He mentioned the arrest of Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov in France, who founded Telegram, a Twitter-like social media platform, to segue into this deeper discussion about censorship, though the circumstances surrounding Durov’s arrest stem from his refusal to clean up some aspects of his site, like assisting in investigations into child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Guest Peter Hamby noted that the ISIS terrorists who carried out the 2015 Bataclan attacks organized on Telegram.

 That’s a fair point, but in this discussion, Maher used Durov since he’s like Elon Musk on free speech issues. I like the example the HBO host used to describe these two men’s positions regarding such matters: it’s a bathroom wall, and it’s not my job to clean it. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter until Elon took it over, which was another point made in this discussion: Brazil is blocking Twitter.

Maher also discussed Facebook admitting that the Biden administration pressured them to censor material on COVID:

 

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Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Hate You

 

Imagine running for President of the United States and not speaking with anyone. Not “to,” you have to do lots of “speaking to” people, but “with,” as in having a conversation, an exchange. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have been trying that for the past month and a half but finally caved to the reality that they would have to speak with someone and choose the softest target they could find that the public would accept. And the whole thing went about as well as you’d expect when the candidates hold the public in complete contempt.

Yes, that’s right: Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the entire left-wing establishment hold you, the American people, in contempt. They treat you with a twist on the old saying about children – you are to be preached to, not heard. You don’t treat people you respect like they are unworthy of addressing you, having their questions answered, or talking at them like a condescending kindergarten teacher. 

Yet, that’s what these people do.

When they finally sat down for an interview, it was with CNN because going to MSNBC would have been dismissed as the partisan hackery it clearly would have been. Since NBC News has literally no one who could pass for a journalist, the campaign chose Dana Bash because she’s on the team but can still ask a semi-serious question. However, questions to politicians are only as good as the willingness of the person asking them to follow up and insist on an actual answer. The person asking them has to know or have a rough approximation of the answer to hold them to account. 

But for any of that to happen, you must be interested in getting an answer, not simply getting through it. Bash was not.

Her time was limited—just 20 minutes was allotted. Imagine a campaign holding the American public in such contempt that they would only allow 2 minutes shy of a sit-com, which is 22 minutes long, for anyone to question their candidates. Bash ended up getting 27 because no campaign in their right mind would stop the tongue bath Harris and Walz were receiving, but if it had been serious, staff would have stepped in.

They went as far as they felt comfortable – dumb people and frauds can only hold it together for so long, even during a massage session where the interviewer asks leading softball questions without threat of follow-up.

What did we get? Not much. Kamala still couldn’t articulate a single priority for “day one,” even though that question was so obvious Stevie Wonder could’ve seen it coming. There is no pressing on any of her egregious flip-flops on fracking, the border wall, socialized medicine, etc. Bach simply lumped them all together into a question that any strip mall lawyer would have objected to as “leading the witness.” 

Bash asked, “Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes you've made that you explain in your policy? Is it because you have more experience and have learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now will be your policy moving forward?”

Pathetic, but not surprising.

The whole thing went like that with Kamala. She still offers up meaningless word salads like, “I am so proud to have served as vice president to Joe Biden and to I'm so proud to be running with Tim Walz for president of the United States and to bring America what I believe the American people deserve, which is a new way forward, and turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been, contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”

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Considering Democrats controlled the White House for 6 of the last 10 years, that’s quite a slam on what Barack Obama clearly started, isn’t it? 

Tim Walz, the coked-out college mascot, wasn’t any better. He was, in fact, worse. Fraudie Murphy got one question tangentially related to his decades of stolen valor, but it was couched in the friendliest terms possible, of course. 

He asked about his “weapons of war I carried on war” lie, and he brushed it off as bad grammar. Is it bad grammar that only one of the people he served with in the National Guard for over 24 years came forward to speak favorably about his character? ONE! Dozens have gone the other way, and the silence of the rest speaks volumes. 

But Bash didn’t bring it up. She just let him adopt the cowardly Hamas tactic of hiding behind children. Fraudie said, “I said we were talking about, in this case, this was after school shooting, the idea of carrying these weapons of war. My wife, the English teacher who taught me grammar, is not always correct. But again, if it's not this, it's an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it's an attack on my dog. I'm not going to do that. And the one thing I'll never do is I'll never demean another member's service in any way. I never have, and I never will.”

He can’t demean another person’s service because, unless they abandoned their men right before a deployment, lied about their rank for 20 years, and pretended to be a combat veteran, there’s no way they are even as bad as, let alone worse than Tim Walz is. 

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What do his kids have to do with anything? Like all sewer water, he seeks the path of least resistance and kids offer that. No one attacked his kids, they simply pointed out how his son appeared to have lost control of his entire body at the convention, screaming, “That’s my dad!” I’ve heard his son is autistic and non-verbal, which seems odd since he was screaming that, but whatever – he’s not the awful candidate; his father is, so I don’t care either way. But that’s hardly an “attack on his children.” 

They’re both frauds; they’re both awful. The idea that Kamala is simply rushed in her candidacy is undercut by the fact that she’s plotted for this moment most of her adult life, and definitely the last 5 years. And she’s been Vice-President – “ready on day one” to be president, just not ready on day 39 to answer questions about, apparently.

Walz is just a liar about everything. He tries to “awe-shucks” his way through his public appearances, bouncing around the stage like a coked-out college mascot for a team that sucks – prancing and dancing, pointing and clapping, desperate to get the wave started in a stadium out 20 percent full. You almost feel badly for him until you realize he’s a bad person. 

The final question – and imagine having what may well be the only chance to ask someone running for president questions, and you waste time on something like this (have you ever heard a softball question remotely close to this asked of Trump or Vance? No.) – was, “And last question, Madam Vice President, the photograph that has gone viral, you were speaking one of your grand nieces that you were just talking about was watching you accept the nomination. You didn't explicitly talk about gender or race in your speech, but it obviously means a lot to a lot of people. And that viral picture really says it. What does it mean to you?”

First, there’s no such thing as “grand nieces.” There are nieces and great-nieces. Kamala is not a grandmother, nor is she a mother. She is childless by choice (you can decide if you think she’s had abortions or how many, but you can’t deny she sure loves them) and only became a stepmother when her husband’s kids were in their late teens. How much time do you think California's Attorney General spent “mothering” teenagers who mostly lived with their real mothers? None? Less than none?

Second, what a stupid question. What should the audience get from any answer that could be offered in response to it? Is some pointless rambling about “historic” or whatever doing to serve as a 25 percent off coupon at the grocery store or gas station? Do you get a discount on your rent, mortgage, or electric bill if you sit through it? No. Are you even remotely more informed about what Kamala Harris would do as president? You are not. 

It was just a final example of how to waste an opportunity. The whole “interview” seemed to be conducted to get more future access by being nice to them. Journalists should conduct every interview with a politician like it’s the last time they will ever be allowed to speak with them, so they’d better ask tough questions.

I know the mentality; I’ve dealt with many people who do it on both sides. They suck up to the people they like hoping to get them back later. They all insist they’re tough, that they’re not friends with these people, but love telling their audience how close they are to them. And you come away with nothing as an audience except the inflated sense of self-importance from the questioner.

Dana Bash didn’t give her audience anything of use Thursday night, but she also didn’t allow Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to hurt themselves, which was more important to the left. The public knows nothing more about either of them or what they’d do in office other than they want to make things better. If the truth were on the side of Democrats, they’d be eager to tell it to anyone willing to listen. That they hide tells you all you need to know. 

Democrats view the public as a feckless mass of humanity in desperate need of leadership in every aspect of your life. They hold you in contempt. Return the favor.

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The Electoral College is So [not] Stupid

 

There can be many different ways of choosing a country’s chief executive.  America’s Founders created a historically unique one called the “Electoral College.”  It is debatable whether it is the best system, but it has worked well enough in American history.  The Left hates it because it elected Donald Trump in 2016, even though Hillary Clinton received the most “popular votes.”  However, if the situation had been reversed—Clinton won the EC and Trump the popular vote—I doubt you would hear a peep out of the Left about it.

As noted in several previous articles, our Founding Fathers were not believers in democracy.  “Democracy is the vile form of government,” wrote James Madison, the man given most credit for producing our Constitution.  Yet, a legitimate government must come from “the consent of the governed” because “all men are created equal.”  That doesn’t imply democracy is the best form of government, but it does indicate the people should have some say in how they are governed.  The Founders gave a share of government to democracy at the local, state, and national levels.

Political theorists in Western Civilization have largely recognized three “forms” of government—monarchy (from the Greek “rule by one”), aristocracy (“rule by the few”), and democracy (“rule by the many,” or people).  There are offshoots of those forms (e.g., oligarchy, timocracy), but the basic structure of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy exists.  In America, the Presidency represents the “monarchical” form of government; the House represents “democracy,” and the Senate the “aristocracy.”  Don’t give any one form of government total power, or tyranny will result.  A monarchy will degenerate into a dictatorship, an aristocracy will become an oligarchy (ruled by the rich), and democracy will devolve into cruel, uncontrollable mob rule, the worst of all.  Thus, the Founders set up a system with all three forms of government included as part of the “checks and balances” they created.

Since it was designed to select the President (the “monarch”), the Electoral College has elements of the other two forms—democracy (the people vote) and aristocracy (the state representation numbers limit pure mob rule).  In American history, the “majority” of the people have usually voted for the man who won the Presidency. Still, there have been cases when the candidate who received the most popular votes (“democracy”) didn’t win the Electoral College majority.  That happened, as noted, in 2016, and the Left is scared to death it will happen this year.  And it might.  But that was the Founders’ idea—protect against democracy, the “form” of government they despised the most.

It’s not that “democracy,” as an ideal, is any worse than monarchy or aristocracy.  The problem is that the more um stupid, decadent people who are allowed to vote, the greater the possibility they will create chaos.  “We may appeal to every page of history...for proofs irrefragable, that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel as any king or senate possessed by an uncontrollable power.  The majority has eternally, and without any one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority” (John Adams).  Mr. Adams further wrote:  “The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true.  They are the worst conceivable, not keepers at all:  they can neither judge, act, think, or will as a political body.  Individuals have conquered themselves; nations and large bodies never.”  It is, historically, impossible to refute what he said.

“Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%” (Thomas Jefferson).  This, of course, has happened frequently in American history, nationally and on the state level.  But it is also why the Founders delegated most government power into the hands of the states.  If a state becomes tyrannical (California), you have 49 other states to choose from—which many Californians are now doing.  If the national government becomes tyrannical, where do you go?  Thailand?  

What is fascinating is that one of the major goals of the Constitution, in the eyes of the Founders, was to protect against democracy:  “the purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's [democracy’s] ability to harm a minority” (Madison).  The Electoral College was a major part of that plan.  

“Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant” (Madison).  “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths” (Madison). “Remember, democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.  There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide” (John Adams).  Do you get the point?  Our Founders did not establish a democracy, and it was deliberate.  

But, besides checks and balances, what can be done?  I talked about their solution in a couple of recent articles (here and here):  “The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate” (Jefferson).  “A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny” (Jefferson).  “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty” (Madison).  People must be educated in virtue and self-government.  The more people who aren’t—and democracy runs the greatest risk of this—the more probable bad government and tyranny will arise. Patriotic Americans must retake the educational system if the country is going to survive itself.

Our Founding Fathers would agree 100% with the following assessment and, indeed, say, “we warned you”:  “In the U.S., [just over a century] of full-blown democracy has resulted in steadily increasing moral degeneration, family and social disintegration, and cultural decay in the form of continually rising rates of divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and crime.” (Hans-Hermann Hoppe).  Chaos leads to tyranny—exactly what the Left wants.

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New Rules for Radicals—How to Reinvent Kamala Harris

 

How do accomplished radicals elect a mediocre far-left presidential candidate?

The task might at first seem impossible.

Kamala Harris is currently a radical incumbent vice president. For more than three years, she was second in command to an unprecedentedly unliked Democrat president, his failed policies, and his unpopular record.

Harris herself had compiled a hard-left trail over her own entire career while loudly boasting indiscreetly to leftist audiences of being proudly “woke” and “radical.”

Most challenging for a Harris candidacy makeover was the long, entrenched Democratic Party’s reluctance to remove a debilitated President Joe Biden from the Democratic ticket.

Why?

Because Harris was deemed such a liability that she had become a Spiro Agnew-like insurance policy for a failing Biden.

Until just recently, Democrats had considered an unpopular and enfeebled Biden nonetheless far preferable to an incoherent, lightweight, and widely ridiculed potential replacement Vice President Harris.

After all, she had never before entered a presidential primary. She never won a single delegate by voting. She failed miserably as a candidate in 2020.

And she co-owns the unpopular record of an even more unpopular president.

The complete Harris makeover requires 15 radical rules followed to the letter:

1. Remake Harris as an entirely fresh happy face. She’s about joy and vibe—which trumps position papers and policy statements. Banish all thoughts that she is an incumbent vice president and co-owns the last four years of the Biden administration.

2. Ignore/deny that Harris as vice president could have long ago enacted her new makeover proposal—or could do so right now in the remaining five months of her administration’s tenure. She was the last person out of the room when Biden made those awful decisions.

3. For the next 70 days, reinvent Harris as a moderate. Xerox much of Donald Trump’s current more popular agenda. Have Harris claim it as her own. Reboot her as a border hawk, a China hawk, a defense hawk, a budget hawk, and a law-and-order hawk.

4. The word-salad Harris must not do a single unscripted media interview, live town hall, extemporaneous chat, ambush hot mic, or lecture without a teleprompter.

5. Harris must not offer any policy proposals such as her harebrained price controls that deviate from her 70-day new centrist image and teleprompted scripts.

6. Do not mention Biden at all. Harris is not to be seen with him in photos or at events. Create a vaguely joyful but completely imaginary, “Harris record.” Separate it from the miserable Biden-Harris administration. Leak that she was unhappy with Biden.

7. Call Trump a mobster, criminal, insurrectionist, and dictator nonstop. Never provide any evidence to support such charges. When challenged, double down and let loose with worse invective.

8. Talk about abortion nonstop. But never dare mention the word. Relabel abortion “reproductive rights.” Falsely reinvent Trump as a radical anti-abortionist who wants a federal ban.

9. Follow the 2020 successful Biden “basement” strategy: keep out of the public eye, silent on the issues, reliant on 70 percent of the ballots not being cast on Election Day, and outsourcing the campaign to the fusion media and billionaire class.

10. Harangue about race and gender nonstop. Define the election as a stark binary between a “young” oppressed but dynamic black woman and an old oppressor racist white guy.

11. Reinvent the “journey” and life “story” of Harris—the child of two PhDs—into a hardscrabble, lifelong struggle against poverty, systemic racism, and greedy “billionaires” like Trump. She is always to be from Oakland—never Berkeley.

12. Talk about transparency nonstop. Feign a willingness to have three or four debates. But agree to hold only one—and only on a left-wing network. Promise interviews and town halls endlessly. Enter into discussions about them. But always delay, stonewall, and evade for the next 10 weeks.

13. Meet privately and endlessly with the megarich donor class that helped to remove Biden. Assure Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley grandees that banter about wealth taxes, taxes on unearned income, and higher corporate taxes are mere campaign posturing. Then outraise Trump again 3-1.

14. Privately assure leftist activists and Democrat politicos that any backslidings from supporting lifelong left-wing advocacies are temporary and necessary 70-day pretexts. Instead look at what Harris actually does after Nov. 5, not anything she must say before then.

15. Control and modulate the street. Anti-Trump protests are a legitimate “movement” that are “not going to let up. And they should not.” Any violent anti-Trump demonstrator should be bailed out immediately.

All anti-Democrat, anti-Harris demonstrations should be deterred. A large police presence must be proactive with as many arrests as possible, with barriers, and plenty of backup. Protest leaders should be given private concessions and incentives to tone down their people.

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