Archive for the ‘Debates’ Category

Gonzaga University’s ‘leadership’ rejected that school’s College Republicans’ chapter to invite Ben Shapiro to campus. According to Gonzaga University’s vice president of student development, Judi Biggs Garbuio, “Mr. Shapiro’s appearances routinely draw protests that include extremely divisive and hateful speech and behavior, which is offensive to many people, regardless of their age, politics or beliefs.”

Garbuio added that “Gonzaga University is committed to the human dignity of every individual. This is the core of our mission based on the teachings of Christ Jesus, and the foundations of the Society of Jesus. We stand in solidarity with vulnerable members of our community who may be targeted for discrimination, ridicule, or harassment by others.”

This is an old topic. This isn’t the first time so-called intellectuals have cited a ‘hecklers veto’ in preventing Shapiro or other conservatives from appearing on campus. These intellectuals are lightweights who are frightened by the thought of defending their ideas on a substantive basis. Put in more blunt terms, these intellectuals are a bunch of sissies.

What’s funniest to me is that the liberals who started the free speech movement at Berkeley would laugh at them for rejecting the opportunity to debate. Today’s progressives aren’t like yesteryear’s liberals. Can you picture Alan Dershowitz or Christopher Hitchens turning down the opportunity to debate? I can’t.

“Gonzaga’s events policy requires us consider whether an event would pose substantial risk to the safety occurred to any member of our campus community,” Biggs Garbuio said. “In light of what has occurred on other campuses, our security team has raised questions about whether we can adequately secure a campus venue.”

TRANSLATION: We’re too stupid to figure out how to have a clash of ideas while protecting our students. That’s too complex for us.

Last Tuesday night, Keith Ellison was elected to replace Lori Swanson as Minnesota’s Attorney General. In this post, I wrote about Skip Humphrey and Walter Mondale’s op-ed endorsing Ellison for the AG position.

Prior to that op-ed, I’d thought of them as terrible on policy but somewhat of a family legacy. After that op-ed, I’m forced to admit that they’re just like most DFL politicians. They’re a pair of political hacks who put the DFL ahead of what’s best for Minnesotans. They’re a pair of losers, too.

Skip Humphrey’s biggest claim to fame isn’t that he’s Hubert Humphrey’s son. Skip Humphrey’s biggest claim to fame is that he’s the politician who finished last to this clown:

Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura defeated Norm Coleman but he thrashed Skip Humphrey. After that thrashing, Skip had gone into hiding. He would’ve been better off if he’d stayed out of the limelight.

Walter Mondale’s biggest claim to fame is that he’s the only politician who’s lost elections in all 50 states. In 1984, he lost 49 states in President Reagan’s re-election victory. Mondale won Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes and DC’s 3 electoral votes that year. President Reagan won the nation’s other 525 electoral votes. After Paul Wellstone’s tragic death in a plane crash in northern Minnesota, the DFL recruited Mondale to run against Norm Coleman. That’s when Mondale lost in Minnesota. BTW, everyone my age and older remembers this moment:

Those moment have been eclipsed by Skip Humphrey’s and Walter Mondale’s endorsement of a man who has frequently supported cop-killers. Keith Ellison is a low-life who isn’t qualified to be Minnesota’s AG. It’s quite telling that the DFL hasn’t shown any remorse for endorsing a man credibly accused of beating his ex-girlfriend and who has begged the Castro government not to release Assata Shakur back into US custody.

Friday night, Tim Walz tried being the ‘I’m all things to all people’ candidate during his debate with Jeff Johnson on Almanac. On one of the first questions, Walz talked about single-payer health care being where most people finally arrive at. Then Walz went into a long-winded spiel about how preventive care drives down health insurance premiums, which is why we need single-payer.

That’s BS. What drives up premiums is aging. As we get older, we reach our high-use years. Preventive care is a worthwhile thing to do because, theoretically, it keeps us healthier longer. Still, it doesn’t drive down health insurance premiums. Then Walz totally stepped in it, saying “everyone knows that there’s no plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions unless you have the ACA in place.”

Johnson jumped in at that point, saying “That’s utterly ridiculous. We did it for 30 years in Minnesota before the ACA and we did it better before the ACA. But let’s be honest about what single-payer is. Single-payer means that everybody loses their insurance. There is no private insurance and we’re all forced onto one government plan.”

That’s true. I wrote about the DFL’s single-payer bill in this post. That bill has 31 coverage requirements for each policy. Think of it this way. It’s the ACA except that it’s totally run by bureaucrats. After the rollout disaster of the ACA, that can’t sound appealing.

Next subject up was immigration. Mr. Walz went first, saying this:

I spent 24 years on national security and numerous trips to the border to actually witness how we do security in-depth and how we do it electronically and with surveillance. Every sovereign nation has the right and the need to control its borders but the issue is about stoking fear and telling us we’re not stronger because of immigration. It doesn’t matter what your plans are. The next governor of Minnesota must have the capacity to bring people together to solve problems. Immigration has always been an issue that has bound us together and what we see is this fear of telling people that they are in danger instead of coming up with real solid plans like comprehensive immigration reform that passed in the Senate but was never heard in the House.

Notice that Walz criticized President Trump, criticized House Republicans, tossed out the Democrats’ favorite go-to phrase on immigration but didn’t actually tell the moderators whether he’d advocate for turning Minnesota into a sanctuary state. Eventually, Walz admitted that he’s for turning Minnesota into a sanctuary state before lying about what a sanctuary state or city is.

Jeff Johnson immediately highlighted the fact that “there are only — what — 5-6 states in the nation that are sanctuary states in the country. We’d be the only one in the upper Midwest and what that means is that we would prohibit our law enforcement officers from cooperating with law enforcement from the federal government in any way.”

Walz denied that description, insisting that violent felons would go to prison. That isn’t at question. What’s at question is what state law enforcement officials would be allowed to do when these violent felons are released from prison.

After hearing Walz insist that Republicans have been stoking fear amongst citizens on immigration, I’d love hearing how Tim Walz would “bring people together to solve problems.”

At other points in the debate, Walz’s answers were more word salad than serious policy prescription. At one point, I hit pause on the DVR and told my roommate that “this guy is ‘The Babbler’.”

I highly recommend you watch the entire debate. Tim Walz was all over the place. Jeff Johnson’s answers were short, concise and actually fixed problems.

WJON’s debate featuring incumbent John Libert and challenger Paul Brandmire was quite instructive. It exposed Libert as being mean-spirited and willing to attack people who weren’t there to defend themselves. Here’s what happened.

During the debate, Mr. Brandmire said that he didn’t like how the Council treated Jeff Johnson when he proposed his moratorium resolution. Mr. Libert replied by saying that Councilman Johnson’s resolution was a PR stunt. Attacking someone who isn’t there to defend themselves is just mean-spirited. Further, Mr. Libert isn’t even close to the truth.

I’ll stipulate that Councilman Johnson wanted to highlight the fact that the governmental agencies involved in the refugee resettlement program were about as transparent as a piece of granite. At the local level, I’d hope that people would put a high priority in transparency. Lutheran Social Services, aka LSS, the school district and the county haven’t told us what the resettlement program is costing us in increased taxes. Here’s Part I of the Libert-Brandmire debate:

Libert actually said “The moratorium was actually a publicity stunt by Mr. Johnson, plain and simple, because we’ve had 12 attorneys look at what he was trying to do and it was illegal and unconstitutional and all it would do is give the city of St. Cloud a reputation of being a hatred, racist community and it didn’t make any sense to do it.”

First, calling a resolution illegal and unconstitutional is BS. I’d love hearing Mr. Libert’s explanation telling me what part of the Constitution Councilman Johnson’s resolution violates. Further, Councilman Johnson notified the Council that he’d bring up the resolution at a future City Council meeting as new business. There’s nothing improper about that. Third, Councilman Goerger’s resolution was brought up for the first time the night it was voted on. It was an ambush. Period. People weren’t given the opportunity to read Councilman Goerger’s resolution.

Thanks to Councilman Masters calling the question, discussion of Councilman Goerger’s resolution was extremely limited. Clearly, the Council didn’t want to discuss the issue. That’s proof that Councilman Johnson’s criticism that this wasn’t a transparent process was accurate.

Frankly, Libert is a spineless politician who doesn’t have an ounce of integrity. It’s time to fire him next Tuesday.

I’m old enough to remember a time when Democrats knew how to substantively debate issues. I know that dates me but it’s worth mentioning. I even remember a time when Juan Williams was capable of participating in a substantive debate. Sadly, those days are gone.

Back in the good old days, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and even Bill Clinton were capable of participating in passionate, substantive debates. Juan Williams isn’t in Hitchens’ and Moynihan’s class. Greg Gutfeld is. Watch him utterly dismantle Williams’ shallow arguments in this video:

It was awesome watching Gutfeld say that he wouldn’t take criticisms about civility after Democrats ignored his book titled “The Joy of Hate” 5+ years ago. Gutfeld talked about how he warned that the pipe bombs would happen. He said that he “wrote 13 chapters on this. We talked about this on this show. I can’t take a lecture who ignored me about this concern.”

Greg Gutfeld’s argument was coherent. His predictions were right. Juan Williams’ arguments, by comparison, have utterly disappeared with time. The reason, in my theory, is that Democrats are great at reciting that day’s chanting points but they’re utterly inept at applying logic and data. The Democrats’ inability to grasp key principles is frightening.

This isn’t my dad’s Democratic Party. This bunch isn’t nearly as smart and considerably less patriotic.

Stephanie Dickrell’s article on Tina Smith’s St. Cloud visit should be laughed at. It isn’t because the article was poorly written. It’s that Tina Smith said some ridiculous-sounding things.

For instance, Tina Smith is quoted as saying “It’s such a visceral reminder of how we need to get back to respecting one another, even if we disagree. We need to tamp down the anger and we can disagree with one another, but we need to also respect each other.”

It isn’t that we shouldn’t respect each other. It’s that Tina Smith hasn’t practiced what she’s preached since she got to the Senate. When Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, President Trump nominated then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Within minutes, Tina Smith announced that she wouldn’t vote for Kavanaugh. When Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford was outed by Sen. Feinstein as having been attacked by Kavanaugh, Smith again said that she wouldn’t vote for Kavanaugh, saying that the charges were too serious. The charges were serious. The evidence wasn’t. The 4 people who were supposed to verify Dr. Ford’s story sided with then-Judge Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford’s best friend said that she didn’t even know Kavanaugh.

If Sen. Smith thinks it’s important to “get back to respecting one another,” why didn’t she bother showing up for the only debate that was televised statewide? I remember this disastrous picture:

Tina Smith’s words are nice. Unfortunately, her actions speak louder than words. That’s why I’m voting for Karin Housley. She’s a woman who gets things done. When she heard about seniors in nursing homes getting abused. Karin dug in to fix the problem. Unfortunately, she ran into a roadblock named Mark Dayton, who vetoed the bipartisan bill that would’ve fixed the problem.

Compare that with Tina Smith’s inaction. The problem happened while she was Lt. Gov. She did nothing. No investigations. No disciplinary actions, either. Many of the complaints weren’t in the Twin Cities so, to Tina, they didn’t exist. To Tina, land outside the Twin Cities exists only for photo ops.

When thinking about Kyrsten Sinema’s sudden slide, I’m reminded of the ancient Hee Haw song line “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” This week, Sinema suffered the embarrassment of having an endorsement rescinded.

According to the article, “An Arizona union that represents state public safety employees withdrew its endorsement of U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema this week after its members said the executive board voted on the endorsement without their input.” The article continues, saying “After members objected to the board’s actions, the Arizona State Troopers Association polled its members in an email Monday, asking whether they wanted to endorse Sinema or stay neutral, the Arizona Republic reported. The poll indicated ‘the membership has indicated a preference to stay neutral.'”

Things are spiraling out of control for Sinema. Here’s what started that spiral:

The race has gotten ugly in recent weeks, with McSally asking Sinema to apologize for comments she made during a 2003 radio interview about American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of a contentious Oct. 15 debate. The radio host made a comment about joining the Taliban, to which Sinema responded, “I don’t care if you want to do that, go ahead.” McSally, a former fighter pilot, accused Sinema of supporting treason and asked her to apologize.

During their recent debate, McSally went on the offensive against Sinema:

Since then, Sinema’s slide started and has continued.

On another note, NBC reports that early voting in Arizona favors Republicans this time.

Howard Root’s counterpoint op-ed highlights the one big mistake that might sink Tina Smith.

In his op-ed, he wrote “When the Star Tribune endorsed Tina Smith over Karin Housley for the U.S. Senate special election (“They’ll do nation’s teamwork,” Oct. 21), its editorial board had a major advantage over the voters of Minnesota — they got to hear Smith answer questions. While Smith couldn’t find 30 minutes the other evening to participate in the only publicly televised debate in this campaign, she somehow managed to find the time to sit down for a private interview with the newspaper.”

By not participating in the debate, Tina Smith essentially admitted what Minnesotans are increasingly finding out — that she’d her butt kicked in a substantive debate if she went up against Karin Housley. We also saw the terrible campaign being run by Tina Smith. The optics couldn’t get much worse than this:

What campaign manager thinks that having an empty podium sends the right message?

Why was Smith a no-show for the Oct. 21 debate that was broadcast live statewide on KSTP and its four affiliates? Five days before the long-planned debate, her campaign cited “a complicated schedule” that precluded Smith from participating and cameras were left showing Karin Housley on stage answering questions next to an empty podium.

This was the only televised debate in which voters could see and hear the candidates provide impromptu answers to questions asked by an impartial moderator — yet the unelected senator refused to show up.

Let’s state something fairly obvious. Tina Smith is pretending to know and/or care about parts of the state she knows nothing or little about. She doesn’t know anything about pipelines. She knows even less about agriculture. It isn’t like Tina Smith is winning over Trump voters in rural Minnesota.

If Tina Smith keeps running a terrible campaign and Karin Housley keeps running a positive, upbeat campaign, it’s likely that Mrs. Smith won’t go back to Washington.

In one of the most cowardly decisions of this campaign cycle, Tina Smith refused to debate Karin Housley. According to the article, “KSTP interviewed Karin Housley who is the Republican nominee for the special election for former Sen. Al Franken’s seat as part of its day of debates. Sen. Tina Smith declined the invitation to participate due to scheduling conflicts.”

That’s code for Tina not wanting to debate. If Tina had scheduling conflicts, she should’ve eliminated them to participate in the debate. By dodging the debate, Tina Smith sent the message that her other event, if it actually exists, is more important to her than informing Minnesota voters.

In one sense, it’s perfectly understandable. Tina Smith has been a do-nothing senator. She’s done what Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats’ special interests have told her to do. Why would Tina Smith want to defend that indefensible record?

That isn’t the question, though. The question is whether Tina Smith owes Minnesota voters an explanation of her record with her opponent asking uncomfortable questions. I think she does. I’d say the same thing if a Republican didn’t show up. Here’s the video of Karin Housley’s interview with KSTP:

This article highlights a couple of important things. First, it’s indisputable that getting President Trump’s is a huge advantage. Next, though it doesn’t talk much about it, DeSantis’ trouncing of Putnam at the Fox News debate has given DeSantis’ campaign much-welcomed momentum going into the final month of the primary campaign.

According to the article, “With just over a month ahead of primary day, Putnam is in the fight of his political life against primary foe DeSantis, a Jacksonville-area congressman pulling ahead in public polling in large part due to the support of President Donald Trump. The race has narrowed, and the momentum, a less concrete, but very important political metric, is decidedly at DeSantis’ back.”

It’s important to differentiate between GOP candidates this year and losing candidates in past wave elections. In 1994, 2006 and 2010, losing incumbents and candidates distanced themselves from presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama like they were toxic waste. This year, Republicans can’t wait to get President Trump’s full-throated, enthusiastic endorsement.

It’s worth noting, too, that this year, unlike past wave elections, the majority party isn’t defending something terribly unpopular. In 1994, Democrats were caught defending the House banking scandal and the House post office scandal. In 2006, Republicans got stuck in the impossible position of defending the Bob Ney scandal, the Mark Foley scandal and the terribly unpopular Iraq War. In 2010, Democrats didn’t have a chance after ramming the ACA down our throats against our will.

This election, Republicans ‘have to’ defend the extremely popular Trump/GOP tax cuts. Democrats will lose seats in the U.S. Senate, too. Wave elections happen when Americans develop a throw the bums out mentality about the Republicans or Democrats. That’s definitely missing this year.

At this point, things are looking good for Ron DeSantis. Based on his performance at the FNC debate, that isn’t surprising. At that debate, I thought DeSantis got in some shots that utterly knocked the pins out from under Commissioner Putnam. This is an example of such an exchange:

Game. Set. Match. It isn’t championship yet but it was definitely a momentum-changer.