Politics and Culture

Individual performance:

In style, Bill Richardson came off as Gilligan. Physically, the Skipper. In substance, he was probably closer to Dr. Phil, with ego-soothing nothing-talk that was tough on people not in the audience.

Hillary Clinton had an odd-looking, sour, school-marmish mouth. She may have hurt herself when she joked, during the pearl or diamonds inanity, that she has trouble answering questions; that sort of cements the image and validates her critics. And, she did have trouble: We should give merit pay to whole schools? NAFTA is bad to the extent that you don't like it? On Social Security, she wants a commission. Throw us a bone, Hillary. We've had tons of commissions and studies. Can you decide on one general course? Her whole dance on male-bullying was sly and unintelligible which is why she's winning, I guess.

Biden was funny, but he clearly didn't care. At the beginning, I thought he was drunk.

Dodd seemed the most serious. He was the first to articulate a realistic policy towards Pakistan.

Obama is a slender sliver of stardust. The only thing he managed to do was drive another nail in his coffin. His semi-stuttering blather is very annoying. Oh, and he shouldn't criticize Hillary for not giving a strait answer on driver's licenses for illegals and then give a more opaque one himself.

Kucinich is a dangerous nut who only talks tough to his own side like a parent who tells his own kids to behave while the neighbor's kids are beating them up. He, like Hillary Clinton, can't answer a question. He changed the subject multiple times on several question, especially on teachers' unions. Does he really believe that when people say somebody's “illegal,” they mean that their existence is against the law (“nobody's illegal”)?

Everybody was scared of Hillary Clinton.

General points:

Follow up:

I worry about my brothers and sisters in the Democratic party. It's clear that they have more animus towards Bush than they do for nations like Iran. At one point, the audience, having not reacted to Hillary's semi-tough talk on Iran thirty seconds earlier, exploded in applause when she attacked Bush.

Democrats' solutions predicate a world that doesn't exist. In foreign policy, they think that negotiating with enemies is like a crisis session on MTV's the “real world.” News flash: We just don't have “disagreements” with them. They're not just mad, like Kucinish suggested, because we're there. They want to accomplish something at our expense.

From what I gathered, when countries that help us, like Pakistan, institute emergency measures, we have to be tough and demand accountability from them. But, when countries murder our troops and threaten to destroy nations with weapons they're trying to acquire, like Iran, we need to negotiate without any pre-conditions. Several candidates even suggested we don't say anything about Iran for fear of angering them. Does that make any sense at all?

They also think that only reason we have wars is because Bush wants them. If we stopped talking about wars, they'd just go away.

Richardson said that if we we're an example to the world by reinstating Habeas Corpus, for example, potential terrorists would like us better. First, how many Americans have ever even heard of Habeas Corpus? What makes you think that the people in Al Qaeda have heard of it or would even care about it if they had? As far as I know, they only concern themselves with Corpus, as in producing as many of them as possible.

And seek help from Russia and China? OMG! If they do help us, it won't be because they want to see a resolution advantageous to us.

On energy, Democrats don't think that we should invest in proven technologies like nuclear. Instead, we need to dump billions on solar and wind and see what happens. Barak Obama became upset when somebody suggested that it may not be possible given our current technology. Hope, for Obama, overcomes physics.

On education, the Democrats have no evidence to back their feelings. Dodd said that the nation looks to Washington for help with education. Shouldn't they bring up their concerns with their school district or state? And Richardson's idea that the FEDERAL government guarantee 16 years of school is just wacky. Is there any evidence that Head Start works? Is there any evidence that any amount of federal funding anywhere improves schools? Is the nation hurting for college graduates? For liberal arts majors? Europe has tuition-less college: how are they doing? If the whole country goes to college, colleges will just become tracked high schools that nobody will appreciate because it's “free.” And, why is college the only service, along with health care, whose cost goes up faster than inflation despite information being virtually free?

Nevertheless, to Dodd, education (spending) will fix everything else.

On immigration, Richardson said that we should tell Mexico to give their people jobs. Like Mexico can and just hasn't thought of it; or worse, won't.

I've come to the conclusion that whenever anybody asks a candidate for anything, the Democrats will give it to them. If somebody asks for assistance in wiping ice cream dribble from their chin, the candidates would start a federal agency. Please, can one of them just tell somebody, "well, why don't you do it yourself."

The candidates admitted that telling the truth and character issues doesn't matter and that we should focus, instead, on the issues. What was all that noise about the “culture of corruption.” I'm livid that for eight years, we had to endure their self-righteousness for something, it ends up, they don't care about.

Biden was right on merit pay. When there's no profit incentive, merit pay is a popularity-obsequiousness contest.