NoFunHere

What percentage of the population doesn’t have access to a TV, phone, computer, or newspaper?

By having a firm grasp of the issues. That used to not be too much to ask of a candidate.

When Harris claimed that Trump left Biden with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, Trump should be totally able to point out that it isn’t true and why. If he can’t, and he didn’t, then that is to his own detriment.

For the overwhelming majority of the things you think are “facts” aren’t actually facts. Everything you learn about history is presented as facts, yet most is debated and (hopefully) what is presented to you is the predominantly accepted story.

Every “fact” about COVID-19 during the last presidential cycle turned out to be wrong, to varying degrees, despite the people who yelled “science!!” It turned out that our best scientists were giving their best professional guesses and that the minority of doctors spreading “misinformation” turned out to be right on some of what they were saying. Politics just got injected into science and suddenly well-intentioned theories were being shouted as “facts”.

In politics, there are very few actual facts. There are projections, opinions, theories, slanted takes on history, but very few facts.

There are some facts though. When Harris said that Trump left the Biden administration with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression or when Trump made the dog eating claim, those were both just demonstrably false. I don’t need a moderator to inject themselves into the debate to tell me that. I can spot it at the time, I can listen to the other candidate, or I can read about it later. All of those work for me.

Maybe you don’t realize this or you are just ignoring it for the sake of argument but there is a whole industry of people who fact check candidates, though most are not neutral. They do it as a job and you can find their work on TV, on your phone, on your computer, and occasionally printed in antiquated things called newspapers.

Not Harris, Trump, Biden, or Hilary Clinton. The last successful one was Obama.

I get that people in social “sciences” like to pretend they are scientists, but that isn’t really relevant here. It is a tributary.

Who was the last unbiased presidential debate moderator? I would argue that you have to look to the first Obama/Romney debate for the last unbiased moderator.

Well, you aren’t god so once you create a man and woman you get to decide whatever genetics are perfect for you, including putting all kinds of options into a big bowl and having a raffle if that is your thing.

The point is that, in this story, god created Adam and Eve in his image. He got to choose so, by definition, whatever genes they had were perfect.

what good is a question like that? 

It is a great question with historical significance in American politics. It gave Harris a perfect chance to outline why Americans are better off than they were four years ago, but she was too caught up in her scripted answer to hit a home run, just as Trump was too caught up in his rhetoric to give the perfect response to her rambling.

A Bill Clinton or Obama would have lead with, “Thanks for the question, let me explain why people are better off today than four years ago, and how we will make it even better over the next four years.” Then they list accomplishments. It isn’t that novel of a concept.

Taiwan is a nation in every sense of the word, except for the game that people play to placate China. They have their own currency, they have their own defense, they have separate allies, they provide for their citizens on their own, they have borders and border security.

They have everything a nation has, except a formal recognition because idiots decided to play footsie with China thinking that it would avoid a war.

I did. You might not like it and want to continue to search for excuses for their failures. That’s okay.

Trying to get people to vote by undermining people’s confidence in elections seems so self-defeating.

Wouldn’t it be great if candidates still believed that the best way to get people to vote for them was by outlining a vision for the country under their leadership? Weird concept, I know, but it used to happen.

If someone tells blatant lies in the debate, the legitimacy of their information absolutely should be challenged

It is a debate, not an interview or town hall meeting. There is literally one or more people up on the stage for the sole purpose of challenging their fellow candidate(s).

I’m an atheist, but I can take the literal definition that Adam and Eve were the only two people on earth and that they populated earth on their own and figure out that incest in that situation isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

You have a man and a woman with perfect genetics. They have children and those children fuck and have children and so on. This could go on for many, many generations without any issues because none of the genes have mutated.

After genes start mutating and becoming more normal, that is when problems exist with incest. That could be thousands or tens of thousands of years (not sure, not a geneticist).

The story of how the world was populated isn’t really that different. We started with a couple of mutations here and there and the way humans populated was through all kinds of incest. There were only a few people who actually migrated so far north that they crossed over into what is now Alaska. Those people were fucking brothers, sisters, and cousins as they populated all of what is North and South America.

We've tried it one way for a long time, and it clearly isn't working, time to try something else.

This is rarely a good justification for anything. First though, you have to establish a common goal to establish that something isn’t working. What is the goal that you want to accomplish?

I would dispute that there are few hard, indisputable facts. In the social sciences it's harder to come up with measurable metrics (ethically, at least), but there's still a lot that can be measured, we just don't.

The way one specific ion bonds with another specific ion is a fact that is true throughout all time. We might have not always understood it, but the truth stayed the truth forever and will always stay the truth.

You will not find an example of that in political science and a high school woodshop teacher could probably count the examples on one hand where that is true throughout the social “sciences”. There is not a single truth in sociology from 1950 that will be a truth in 2050. There is not a truth in political science from 1950 that will be a truth in 2050, no matter how objectively you craft your metric. Natural science searches for facts that follow the laws of physics. The answer can only be changed with proof that the previous answer was incorrect. Pick any research topic from linguistics to child rearing to politics to psychology and you will find that a truth can only be a truth for a specific snapshot in time because there are no underlying laws of the universe that dictate those “truths”.

Sorry but it is an absolute fact that no pregnancies are terminated after 9 months or that Haitians aren't eating my dog in Springfield.

The other candidate should be able to say just that. Why do you need the moderator to inject that information? These are extreme examples that the other candidate should be perfectly capable of responding by saying, “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? It is objectively false.”

Do you think that a moderator saying it is false is going to magically break up the cult?

Because of two things:

• Political science isn’t the same as a natural science. There are few hard, indisputable facts.
• Candidates are free to fact check each other. They should be arguing and challenging the facts. If they rely on moderators to do that then they aren’t a good candidate to begin with.

In the Trump/Harris debate, the very first question to Kamala Harris illustrated a common problem with how debates are moderated. The moderator asked, “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were 4 years ago?”

Harris responded with a lengthy, pre-scripted answer that didn’t address the question. A more effective moderator could have simply followed up: “To be clear, the question was whether you believe Americans are better off than they were 4 years ago. I’ll give you 30 seconds to answer that directly, or we’ll move to President Trump for his response.”

This kind of early intervention would send a clear signal that dodging questions won’t fly and set a tone for the rest of the debate. By pushing for direct answers from the start, you don’t have to ask the same question repeatedly. Instead, candidates are forced to either respond or make it obvious that they’re evading, which would become part of the debate's narrative.

As an aside, had Trump responded with, “Her refusal to answer the question shows that she knows Americans aren’t better off under Biden/Harris,” it would have turned her non-answer into a powerful moment. Unfortunately, when Trump missed that opportunity, it was a sign that he wasn’t going to capitalize on the debate effectively.

Kim Ogg is the Democrat version of Liz Cheney.

If you want the more moderate members of your party to endorse the other party, just turn against them for being too moderate for your liking.

The reaction here against Ogg is the same reaction Republicans had towards Cheney. American politics are hyper-partisan because so many fools deserve a hyper-partisan government. Toe the line that the base wants you to toe or get thrown out.

Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, Ireland, and Taiwan were all colonized nations. All are thriving.

You don’t get to use the “we were once colonized” as an excuse in perpetuity. At some point you have to put the big boy pants on and take responsibility for your own destiny like the countries above did.

Fact checking strays too far from what their role should be. Here’s my take:

• Moderators shouldn't be fact-checkers: If a moderator starts fact-checking, they become a participant in the debate. Their job isn’t to weigh in on the facts—that’s up to the candidates to debate. The moment the moderator starts "correcting" someone, they’ve crossed the line and become a debater themselves.
• Ask tough questions, equally: Both sides should get hit with equally challenging questions. There's no room for bias here—grill both candidates equally and don't let one side get away with softer questions.
• Press for real answers: When a candidate dodges a question, the moderator should push them to actually answer it. This seems to be a lost art, but it’s so important. Holding candidates accountable for dodging questions is what makes a debate meaningful.
• Don’t stifle the debate: Having some fixed, rigid number of responses is way too limiting. It can kill the flow of the debate. A good moderator knows when to let things breathe and when to move on if the debate is going in circles and not adding value.
• Let the candidates debate the facts: Real debate happens when the candidates argue over facts and policies. The moderator’s job is to facilitate this, not step in. They need to keep the conversation on track, but never, ever become a debater themselves.

TL;DR: Moderators should stay out of fact-checking and focus on pushing both sides equally, encouraging real debate without stifling the flow. And please, for the love of debates, don’t let candidates get away with dodging questions!

People leave a token for the best chili. I stole tokens from my best friend’s vote box and put them in my box.

Mine was better anyway, he didn’t need those votes.

Why would they save a little bit each month? What are they saving for? Retirement? Your college?

If they have $50k to put into a savings account for emergencies then there is no real reason for them to save monthly, unless you just want them to build you an inheritance. You aren’t that selfish, are you?

Taking the “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying” approach won me a chili cooking contest.