"Versatility is one of your outstanding traits"
… in between the sheets.
The plate I’ve been getting is white rice, kung pao chicken, teriyaki chicken, and sometimes super greens. Plus an egg/spring roll or two to take the edge off on the way home to eat the rest.
It’s debate night. I’ve saved up enough bandwidth to watch from home.
I want it to tire me out, because I’ve got to be up very early to make the first other-campus class of my career in this district.
The path takes me through the county seat, where the Recorder’s office is, and I’ll be switching my affiliation to Dem there, just long enough to vote in the Dem primary.
Who for, Vairtere?
(You know better than that by now.)
A week or so ago I openly soured on Yang for lying.
A day or so ago the same happened with Warren.
Best I can tell, her attack is completely calculated and cynical. I might be wrong, and I’m willing to tentatively love her again, but consider judgment very reserved on that part. In the moment, I’m very skeptical of her play.
There’s only one candidate left who is unequivocally worth a damn.
Leaving this window open for any live bits that come up in the next couple of hours.
It seems to be getting harder and harder to find live streams of these damn things on the YouTubes. Right now early on I’ve found some tiny pirate channel with 18 other people watching as the best available (without some shithead commenting over the top of the feed).
Warren supports the Mexico/Canada trade deal. Sanders opposes it because there’s nothing in it about climate change as it relates to trade. This is a real contrast between them, and the mods deserve credit for framing it to highlight that.
Warner Brothers is actively smashing streams that are pirating CNN Live. I’m jumping around ahead of the flyswatter, and filling the gaps with one guy who is routing the feed through video editing software on a delay to evade the greedy corporate bastards who are trying to monopolize access to the debate.
Steyer is the only one who agrees with Bernie on climate being more important than trade deals.
Shockingly, that moves him to my number two slot. At least until I catch him lying too, and I’ll be hawking that.
A little later on though, he "agrees with Biden" on Medicare for All. So I’m free to hate him rationally again.
Later still, he hugs Bernie verbally and shits on the insurance companies … I don’t know where this guy really stands, to be honest, on anything except climate, maybe.
45 minutes in, Trashgate pops up inevitably. The mods serve bullshit bait, and Warren bites and doubles down. Her underlying point is to elevate identity politics to the top of the list of important things, and this is cynical, tactical, and profoundly dismaying. Oh well.
It all slides by pretty easy though, compared to how the drama critics would like it.
Amy, apparently, is not taking big cash from big pharma, because she’s a Bernie Bro on drug prices. A shame she doesn’t feel the same about the insurance vultures.
Mr. Peter has a good riff on poverty, but he’s for means-testing too, and his point about making every tax dollar count didn’t address the military-industrial complex that sucks up fifty cents of every single one.
Steyer pulls in a Marxist phrase about redistributing income. I wish I could be sure he would even come close to walking his intermittently sharp talk.
Later: Ditto on his climate talk. I wish and wish.
Pete’s race problem is going to chase and haunt him to his political grave. This year at least.
His time at Bain Capital is just icing on the poison cake.
Biden is having an above average and uncharacteristically coherent night.
Closing the Deal
Amy: Trumpity trump. Gun safety and I’m a winnah. Insulting is easy. Pie in the sky. Governing is hard. Join me.
Steyer: I played sports. America is my team. Trumpity kick in the face. We save the world.
Peter: Trumpity dustbin. Washington mindset. Are you exhausted? Join me. Are you black? Join me Pllllease?
Warren: Shit is so broken round here. Send me your poor. Hope. Hope! Change! Pride. By the way I’m a woman.
Sanders: Why is shit broken, though?? Let’s think big about that. Guess what, it’s greed; fuck the one percent.
Biden: Character. We’re not racists like Trumpity. Trumpity disaster. Restore the soul maybe. USA! USA!
Post-game at TYT. As I’m tuning in, the topic is whether to trust Steyer. Heh.
The pro-Bern punditry is sad about Warren, too. Apparently there’s video from the stage afterwards of Bernie offering his hand and her refusing. God she’s killing herself in real time. Here’s the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBudoExhElc
Enough. It’s early bedtime and I’m shuttin’ my brain off now.
Coming back here to check on whether I called Liz a liar. Turns out I didn’t, at least not in so many words, but …
I don’t know who said what in a private meeting.
The lie that definitely did get told, by her campaign and then endorsed by her, was not about that meeting. Round one of this shit was her saying that Sanders was telling his doorknockers to diss on Warren. That was not true, and the Warren campaign knew it wasn’t true–there was some post on one of his forums that immediately got removed by the mods, about what to say to current Warren supporters to try and turn them. And the removed post, by the way, only told the truth about her.
It was only after that tactic failed hard that she had anything to say about the meeting part.
They tried an untrue smear and it failed. So they, she, backed up and fired again about some comment that may or may not have ever been made.
At the very least the incident in total looks like a greasy, dirty ploy that smacks of desperation, and her retreat into the I’m a Woman stance doesn’t help either.
I hope that’s all I have to say about it ever again, because as the smartest people on the progressive side are saying already, it’s a petty distraction that the good fight cannot afford to waste any more time and energy on.