17 of the most ridiculous things said at the first 2020 Democratic debate
Some commentary on America's embarrassing political class.
The first part of the debate aired on Wednesday, 6/26/2019.
1. Elizabeth Warren: "Who is this economy really working for? It's doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. It's doing great for giant drug companies. ... It's doing great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere, just not for the rest of us who are watching climate change bear down upon us."
Ironic words coming from Elizabeth Warren given the countless donations she has received from many, many, many individuals tied to big corporations over the course of her career, including employees from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Google, Raytheon, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Comcast, and Bonanza Oil.
2. Beto O’Rourke: "We have a system that favors those who can pay for access and outcomes. That's how you explain an economy that is rigged to corporations and to the very wealthiest."
I can easily explain why the economy is rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy - because politicians like Beto take huge donations from individuals working for major corporations and then hand out favors to those corporations once elected.
Individuals from corporations who have supported Beto include IBM, Exxon, Microsoft, and Capital Bank.
3. Cory Booker: "It is about time that we have an economy that works for everybody, not just the wealthiest in our nation."
Booker took $75,000 from Goldman Sachs employees, $55,000 from JP Morgan employees, and $67,000 from Morgan Stanley employees, all in 2018.
If he wants to talk about an economy that works for everybody, maybe he could start by explaining those donations (along with many others) and what those donors are expecting in return from Booker for those donations.
4. Tulsi Gabbard: "And for too long, our leaders have failed us, taking us from one regime change war to the next, leading us into a new cold war and arms race, costing us trillions of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars and countless lives."
First, on the point of going from "one regime change war" to the next, Tulsi continues to spread the pro-war, pro-regime change narrative that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, even though all evidence points to Iran merely pursuing civilian nuclear technology. She has also called for economic sanctions against North Korea - sanctions being an act of war.
Additionally, Tulsi is a self-proclaimed "hawk" on the War on Terror. As she has said previously, "This is not a war that we chose, but it is a threat that continues and we cannot just turn our backs and pretend as though it doesn't exist. So when I say that I'm a hawk on fighting against terrorism, it is against these terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS."
Tulsi has made it a clever point to be against "regime change wars" while still supporting the failed War on Terror, a campaign that has created global animosity against the United States. The War on Terror includes drone strikes, many of which have killed innocent civilians; Tulsi supports drone strikes. The War on Terror has also included Guantanamo Bay, which Tulsi has also supported keeping open. Both drone strikes and Guantanamo have been cited as two of the primary driving forces for generating terrorism against the US, which begs the question: how is Tulsi going to fight the War on Terror when she supports policies that literally drive terrorism?
Second, on Tulsi condemning policies leading the US into a new "cold war" and arms race, here's a question: Why did she vote to limit funding for the implementation of a new START treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia? Here’s another question: Why did she vote for a bill that provided "counter aggression measures" against not only Iran and North Korea, but Russia as well?
You can't say you're against the implementation of a new "cold war" if your voting record shows support for policies that have helped instigate exactly that.
5. Cory Booker: "There are too many people profiteering off of the pain of people in America, from pharmaceutical companies to insurers."
And yet in 2014, Booker received $328,000 in campaign donations from the "pharmaceutical and health products" industry, according to Open Secrets.
6. Tim Ryan: "If you go to Guantanamo Bay, there are terrorists that are held that get better health care than those kids that have tried to cross the border in the United States."
First, calling those held at Guantanamo "terrorists" when not a single one of them has actually been tried, charged, or presented with any kind of evidence, seems a bit disingenuous. Second, it was only this week that the Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights released a report detailing widespread medical deficiencies at Guantanamo such as denial of care, patient distrust of medical professionals due to a history of medical complicity in torture, patient neglect, rapid rotation of medical professionals in and out of Guantanamo causing discontinuity of care, and denial to detainees of access to their own medical records.
7. Tulsi Gabard: "There are issues, like their missile development, that needs to be addressed. We can do both simultaneously to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and preventing us from going to war."
Iran has stated repeatedly it has no interest in building nuclear weapons. Iran also complied with the nuclear deal, even after Trump scrapped it.
Stating that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons is not preventing war - it is setting the stage for it by pushing dishonest, pro-war propaganda.
8. Beto O’Rourke: "When the United States presents a united front, we have a much better chance of achieving our foreign policy aims and preventing the kind of genocide to which you refer, the kind of genocide that we saw in Rwanda, the kind of genocide we want to stop going forward."
Because the US has a great record when it comes to intervening in foreign countries to spread stability and prevent genocide. Examples include:
Iraq, where upwards of 100,000 civilians were killed due to the 2003 US invasion, where birth defects from US munitions rival mutations seen after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and where suicide bombings and routine chaos are still the norm in 2019.
Libya, where ousting Muammar Gaddafi has led to rampant exploitation by international oil companies and the return of slave markets.
And Yemen, which is undergoing the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world" according to the UN. Here, the US is actively participating in prolonging this crisis through direct support to its perpetrator - Saudi Arabia - as it fuels their planes, supplies their weapons, and funnels untold amounts of money into the collective wallets of an immensely repressive government.
9. Tulsi Gabbard: "The greatest threat that we face is the fact that we're in a greater risk of nuclear war today than ever before in history."
Perhaps voting to limit funding for the implementation of a new START treaty between the US and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals wasn't a wise choice if Tulsi believes this.
10. John Delanay, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Tim Ryan: The greatest geopolitical threat to the US is China.
MSNBC asked the candidates what the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States was and asked them to answer in one word. Four candidates chose China, another chose Russia (DeBlasio), and we are left with no explanation as to why these answers were chosen because MSNBC had to rush off to the next Very Important Question, which was about the Mueller Report.
Nevermind that five possible presidential candidates just named two nuclear superpowers as the "greatest geopolitical threat" to the United States - let's quickly change topics and spend even more airtime on a discredited, over-hyped, non-story regarding the Mueller investigation.
It's worth noting that while the US continues building up its military along Russia's borders, Russia's military spending has actually decreased by 3.5% from 2017, and while the US spent $649 billion in 2018 on its military, China only spent $250 billion. The US military also continues its gradual encirclement of China.
Part II aired Thursday, 6/27
11. Bernie Sanders: "The issue is, who has the guts to take on Wall Street, to take on the fossil fuel industry, to take on the big money interests who have unbelievable influence over the economic and political life of this country?"
Who has the guts to take on Wall Street? The answer must be Hillary Clinton, since Bernie sold his soul and endorsed her even though she has basically built her entire political career acting as a spokesperson for Wall Street.
12. Kirsten Gillibrand: "Well, one of the worst things about President Trump that he's done to this country is he's torn apart the moral fabric of who we are. When he started separating children at the border from their parents, the fact that seven children have died in his custody, the fact that dozens of children have been separated from their parents and they have no plan to reunite them."
When Trump took office, the Obama administration was bombing at least 7 countries. The Obama administration used a drone to murder a 16 year old US citizen and his father. The Obama administration prosecuted a record number of whistleblowers attempting to expose government corruption, it force-fed inmates at Guantanamo Bay (and also failed to close the camp), it oversaw a massive spying program that targeted both the US and the rest of the world, it pandered to corporate interests, and worst of all, it pardoned Bush administration officials complicit in human rights abuses.
The Obama administration also deported at least 2.5 million immigrants, and even locked some of them in cages - just like the Trump administration.
The moral fiber of this country wasn't in great shape when Trump took office, and while he has done nothing to make things better, it didn't start with him.
13. Joe Biden: "President Obama did a heck of a job. To compare him to what this guy is doing is immoral."
Biden, who was VP during the Obama administration, doesn't think it's accurate to compare the Obama administration to the Trump administration, perhaps because somewhere deep down inside he actually knows how similar both administrations really are. Such similarities include:
- Trump's continuation of Obama's drone war
- Trump continuing to bomb the same 7 countries Obama bombed
- Trump continuing mass deportations of immigrants, like Obama
- Trump keeping Guantanamo Bay open - as Obama did
- Trump continuing Obama's mass surveillance programs
- Trump killing US citizens abroad - as Obama did
- Trump pandering to corporate interests - as Obama did
- Trump continuing the US occupation of Afghanistan - as Obama did
- Trump continuing to provoke Russia and China - as Obama did
- Trump continuing the failed "War on Drugs" - as Obama did
14. Andrew Yang: "I just want to agree that I think Russia is our greatest geopolitical threat, because they have been hacking our democracy successfully and they've been laughing their asses off about it for the last couple of years. So we should focus on that before we start worrying about other threats."
Russia has reduced military spending and US military spending continues to dwarf theirs (and the rest of the world), Russia is increasingly surrounded militarily along its borders by the US military and its allies, and there's still no evidence that Russia "hacked our democracy" to any degree that made a difference in what essentially almost always amounts to nothing more than a choice between a blue turd or a red turd.
Also, most of the world - when polled time and time again - doesn't see Russia as the greatest threat to world peace, but the United States.
15. Kirsten Gillibrand: "I have the most comprehensive approach, that experts agree is the most transformative plan to actually take on political corruption, to get money out of politics through publicly funded elections, to have clean elections."
The list of top individual contributors to Gillibrand working for various corporations includes:
16. Bernie Sanders: "One of the differences -- one of the differences that Joe and I have in our record is Joe voted for that war, I helped lead the opposition to that war, which was a total disaster."
Bernie voted against the initial US invasion of Iraq, yet repeatedly voted to fund the invasion and occupation once it was underway.
More on Bernie’s pro-war history here.
17. Kamala Harris: "But on the secure communities issue, I was attorney general of California. I led the second-largest Department of Justice in the United States, second only to the United States Department of Justice, in a state of 40 million people."
While Kamala led the "second largest" Department of Justice in the US, she used her time in that position to do things like oppose a bill requiring her office to investigate officer involved shootings, expand California's civil forfeiture policies and oppose a ballot measure that would limit the state's "three strikes" law allowing life sentences for non-violent crimes, refuse to support statewide standards regulating the use of police body cameras, and once said that the left "has to get over its bias against law enforcement."
Harris also openly supported keeping the death penalty.