Liveblogging for Godot

I have decided to jump on the blogger bandwagon and dip my toes into liveblogging. It's not really liveblogging, because it's a re-run of a debate from this afternoon, but I have a job, so I couldn't watch it at 3:00 in the afternoon. Any time someone sits down to listen to Republicans talk economic policy for two hours, it should ideally be done with two pack of unfiltered cigarettes and a quart of Jameson's fine Irish whisky for anesthetic. However, I'm confident that none of these jokers will be president, so I'm running without the anesthetic tonight. All times are central standard, comments in italics are generally mine.

8:02: Fred Dalton Thompson: "Recession? I know no recession."

8:03: FDT makes the popular claim that we're borrowing from our children, when in fact we're borrowing from Communist China. Then he promises to stick with the Bush economic policies.

8:04: Mitt Romney is afraid of being taxed by Michigan. Because Michigan sucks, and it's not acceptable.

8:06: Giuliani: Capitalism is a good thing. So is Joe Torre.

8:07: Ron Paul: Recession is already upon us for anyone who doesn't make buttloads of money. Thank you.

8:08: McCain: What's the problem here? We've got rich people! That means America is wealthy!

8:10: McCain: Raising taxes on cigarettes means the government wants everyone to smoke. Wait, what?

8:12: Huckabee: Prostitutes don't pay taxes, and that's wrong.

8:14: So that's what Duncan Hunter looks like. And apparently, he doesn't like communist China, and he wants to rebuild the military/industrial complex.

8:15: FDT touts his record dealing with China's problem with sending us tainted goods. Yeah.

8:18: Brownback: technology is bad.

8:20: Tancredo: Medicare and social security are killing our budget. Fuck the old and sick!

8:21: Romney supports a line-item veto. Actually, good for him.

8:22: Giuliani claims to be a strict constructionist. Who likes the baby-killing part of the constitution.

8:23: Romney to Giuliani: You're dumb, but you're not dumb enough to disagree with me on key taxation and spending issues.

8:24: FDT apparently makes a great point, but his mic was off. Dummy.

8:25: FDT: Protecting certain jobs is "wrong."

8:27: McCain: The economy is different than it was in 1960. Also, the problem isn't pork, it's that the Americans don't have faith in Congress. If the American people would just pretend we didn't suck, everything would be fine!

8:29: Tancredo: McCain is right! The people hate the government, because the government doesn't hate Mexicans enough.

8:30: Romney: The average american family is $9000 a year richer because markets are open to American products. How the hell did he calculate that?

8:31: Mitt: We need to start signing treaties that help America screw all the other countries in the world.

8:31: Mitt: "Michigan is personal for me." Why?

8:33: Giuliani: Chiner and Indier should be seen as new customers. Or, as they say in New York, new "marks."

8:35: McCain: Reviving Hawley-Smoot will make China kill all the jews, or something like that. I'm confused.

8:36: FDT: We can't protect our corporate infrastructure, so we should do everything we can to protect our corporate infrastructure.

8:37: Duncan Hunter doesn't trust anyone in the city of Dubai.

8:40: FDT: If people pay less taxes, they have more money.

A break. Oh, thank god.

8:45: FDT: Bush has a good policy on Iraq right now. It sucked before, but it's good now.

8:46: Islamic fascism? Really? I thought that was just a haunt of the right-wing blogs Sadly, No covers.

FDT keeps not using up his time. Sounds like he doesn't have much to say.

8:47: McCain thinks people should join the Peace Corps. We still have a Peace Corps?

8:48: McCain thanks the people for not listening to him before when he said the Iraq war sucked, because it's awesome now.

8:49: Ron Paul doesn't like Iraq, but he sure does like the gold standard. I'm not entirely sure how he got from one to the other.

8:50: Sam Brownback: Went into Iraq to fight terrorists. Did he intend to bring all the terrorists to Iraq, or was that just a convenient consequence?

8:51: Brownback: Joe Biden's right about the soft partition. I still can't wrap my mind around Biden and Brownback getting along.

8:53: Romney doesn't like Iran, but he isn't stupid enough to want to go to war with them.

8:55: Ron Paul: Iran doesn't pose an imminent threat, so why the fuck should the president be able to start a war without a declaration? I fuckin' love this guy.

8:56: Huckabee: Congressional oversight is a "luxury."

8:59: Giuliani swats down Ron Paul. Guess why? 9/11. He's managed to go a whole hour without bringing up 9/11 though, so kudos to him.

9:04: Tancredo: The problem with the trade deficit is that we're importing too much oil, and all the money is going to countries "that want to kill us."

9:07: Huckabee: something about NASCAR and islamofascism Goober and Gomer and people that want to kill us and what the fuck is he even talking about?

9:09: FDT: Most economic downturns have been preceded by a spike in oil prices. But the economy is set to be awesome for the next ten years, yessirree.

9:10: Romney is talking about the Doha Round in Michigan? Seriously? Who the fuck talks to voters about the Doha Round? That's so worse than the arugula thing.

9:12: Huckabee: The lack of optimism in this country is a serious problem. I wonder what could have caused it? (McCain disagrees: it's a lack of faith and trust.)

9:13: Mitt: Republicans need to stop being all doom and gloom and put on the rose-colored glasses.

9:16: Giuliani: America needs to look not just to energy independence, but to selling energy to Chiner and Indier. "They need energy independence more than we do." Which means they're going to buy it from us?

9:18: Brownback: "This place [America] rocks!" No shit, he actually said that.

9:18: Tancredo: Republicans have been pandering too much, and immigrants are to blame for the economy.

Commercial break. I have come to the conclusion that liveblogging is a big fat waste of time.

9:23: Moderator: Senator Thompson, please get into the specifics of your social security plan.
Thompson: Social Security is a big problem, and it's borrowing from our grandchildren (I think it was literally designed to do that).

9:25: Tancredo: CAFTA is awful because it discussed immigration. It's impacting our national sovereignty because these treaties, which are approved by congress and the president, are changing the way we write and enforce our laws. Yes, Tom, I think that's how treaties work.

9:27: Mitt: Pawn the health insurance problem off on the states. "But we're not gonna tell'em how to do it." That's a policy?

9:29: Huckabee: Unions are the future, because the CEO's and hedge fund guys are making way too fucking much, and everyone else is taking it in the ass. Okay, he didn't really phrase it like that, but that's what he meant, and he's sort of right.

9:31: FDT, union member and champion of the working man: he's a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

9:33: Duncan Hunter: "The union is a receptacle of power." There's no better way to piss off a group of people than by calling them receptacles.

9:34: Brownback in response to Tancredo: "My mother is not an illegal immigrant!"

9:36: McCain: I have a glass of ethanol every morning before breakfast. That explains a lot.

9:38: Giuliani: We should not tax the internet. We should police the internet. This is pretty much Giuliani in a nutshell: more cops, less taxes.

I find it interesting that there are ads for professional wrestling (also, TNA wrestling? Really?) during the GOP debate.

9:43: Huckabee can't say whether or not he would've vetoed S-CHIP. That's not going to play well with the working-class types he's trying to woo.

9:45: The Mormon doesn't discriminate based on faith. I wonder why.

9:47: Giuliani agrees with Hillary on disliking our debt to foreign countries, but he can't say it, so he'll talk about the trade deficit instead.

9:48: McCain doesn't have the expertise to know whether or not Bernanke is doing his job right: that's why we have people like Bernanke to tell him what the chairman of the fed is supposed to be doing.

9:49: Ron Paul won't support a GOP nominee that sucks. All the other candidates will.

9:51: According to Giuliani, entrepreneurs wear hats.

9:53: Romney finally gets the shot in at FDT that he's been so obviously waiting for the whole goddam debate. The joke is so bad I'm not even going to repeat it here.

9:55: Romney: America has great schools. As a product of American schools, I can attest to the fact that it's very difficult, as a student, to make American schools not suck. I had to work had to get something out of public schooling.

* * *

That was miserable. I daresay it was even worse than Pearl Harbor. I'm entitling this entry "Liveblogging for Godot" because the debate had a lot of talking without anything really happening, and no one named Godot was there.

Now I'm going to go to bed listening to Throbbing Gristle or something like that, so it'll burn all of the horrible talking out of my ears as I fall asleep.