Well, this is going fine for the vanishing American middle class and the working poor and the no-benefits laborers and everybody -- if by "fine" you mean, "Ha ha!" Mike Huckabee just noted that if the GOP can't even pretend to give a damn about the "Reagan Democrats," the other Democrats will be handily winning in 2008. Not news, but it's good to see somebody on this stage follows politics. And now they're talking about who owns what percentage of the NASDAQ stock exchange, because that's a huge concern to unemployed auto workers. Let's continue the live-blogging action.
(Part One is here, and Part Two is here.)
3:38 -- Duncan Hunter is basically the only one still concerned about Dubai companies owning parts of the international stock exchanges, because somebody mailed the Nuclear Trigger to Lex Luthor.
3:39 -- Close your eyes when Brownback talks. Sounds just like Al Gore, doesn't he? Or like a 25-year-old Al Gore. You want to punch him, don't you?
3:39 -- Tom Tancredo is selling Wal-Mart to Dubai.
3:40 -- So boring. You guys are so boring. There hasn't been applause for 20 minutes.
3:40 -- Fred Thompson doesn't accept the idea that the government losing $100 billion in revenue means that the government has lost $100 billion in revenue.
3:41 -- Hollywood Fred also maybe did a line or two before the debate? It's not helping him look or sound more alive, but he does have the coke sniffles.
3:41 -- Commercial break! So maybe just one beer ....
3:45 -- Fred doesn't have any idea what's going on in Iraq, either.
3:46 -- Hahahahahah he said "Islamic Fascism." Too bad we invaded a secular Ba'athist country set up by the British that was a long-time ally of Washington. What a cunt.
3:47 -- Okay, here's Walnuts McCain on his favorite topic: "A cause greater than themselves." Join a neighborhood watch, call in a suspicious Arab, join the military, send a million McCains to Iraq, let war bloom forever like a fictional character in a Cold War comic book.
3:48 -- Ron Paul should just hire somebody else to be Ron Paul because, Jesus Christ .... You know, Dennis Kucinich has a nice voice, a pleasant manner, don't you think? Plus, that hot hippie 9-foot-tall wife! Why, o why do the Interweb Paultards gravitate to an annoying little guy nobody else likes? Oh, wait ....
3:50 -- Sam Brownback wants you to know that he has no idea why we invaded Iraq, either. But it was kind of close to 9/11, so what the fuck, why not?!
3:50 -- First applause in 35 minutes: Short little polite round for Brownback's "I love the military" line.
3:53 -- God, Fredneck really doesn't have his heart in this, at all. His wife should just run. She's the one who wants it.
3:54 -- Yeah, Mitt, it's "outrageous" that the UN lets leaders of countries in the UN go to the UN.
3:55 -- The extra-lame part is how utterly fake Mitt is, even when trying to pretend to be all "I'll blow up Iran." Smiling and preening through your "nuke Iran" threats is just fucking pathetic.
3:55 -- Duncan Hunter, on the other hand, is very grim when threatening Iran.
3:55 -- Okay, honestly, who does Ron Paul sound like? It's a cartoon character but I can't place him. But the unemployed don't care! They gave him a big round of applause for that!
4:00 -- Ha ha ha, Rudy took a whole hour to get in his first "September 11," but he's making up for lost time by saying "September 11" like forty times in one answer. Now he's threatening Hillary.
4:01 -- Rudy is now just reciting a list of energy forms. He is going to put the Islamics on the Moon.
4:02 -- "You can't do everything," says Rudy.
4:02 -- Yeah dood, Giuliani wants us to be just like France ... in terms of nuclear energy, at least. And probably the Can-Can.
4:03 -- Brownback also has Al Gore's eyebrows. He's clearly just Gore's slightly younger doppelgänger employed by Gore to throw the election to Hillary ... wait, what?
4:04 -- Is it Don Knotts? Is that who Ron Paul sounds like?
4:05 -- Ha, there are "countries that want to kill us." Is it the more mountainous ones, you think, or tropical ones, or?
4:06 -- Yeah, it's Don Knotts. Check it out.
4:08 -- Huckabee at least narrows it down to "people" who "want to kill us." And then he praises JFK.
4:08 -- NASCAR is our NASA, says Huckabee. This must be playing to the working poor because there was a laugh.
4:09 -- HAHAHAHHAHHAHAH we totally posted that YouTube from Andy Griffith before Huckabee mentioned it and Fred Thompson bizarrely acted like he had no idea about the Andy Griffith Show? Isn't he the fake southerner?
5:14 -- (Shhh, somebody figured out Detroit's also in the Eastern Time Zone.)
5:14 -- Mitt Romney: "I spent my life in the economy."
5:15 -- Fred Thompson just spouts off a bunch of dumb bullshit. It's really incredible how underwhelming this guy is, after all the pointless Great White Hype. He's not even going to be the president of teevee.
5:16 -- Rudy thinks he's so far ahead of these guys, he's just debating Hillary Clinton, who isn't here.
5:17 -- It's a pretty good strategy, considering nobody even knows these other guys' names. Might as well pretend you're somewhere else, debating Hillary! Hell, Rudy should probably run backstage and return dressed as Hillary, and then he can debate "her."
5:18 -- So this ends at 5:30, right? Because I need to walk the dog, and stop at the grocery, and pick up some heroin.
5:18 -- Brownback on America: "This place rawks!"
5:23 -- Wow, Fred was asked to answer a specific question about how he would "save" Social Security (which doesn't really need "saving," just continued investment and good management, in about 40 years) and he just jabbers dumb bullshit that MAKES NO SENSE. He is talking about National Parks! He's proposing "paying benefits to inflation." He is so freakin' high. The Money Honey is audibly grumbling.
5:25 -- Tom Tancredo, having earlier said that deporting illegal aliens would make all Americans rich, is also angry about immigration-related issues in trade bills.
5:26 -- Romney, who created government health care in Taxachusetts, is now attacking Hillary Clinton's government health care proposal from like 20 years ago, which never happened.
5:28 -- By using the government to force the markets to give health care insurance to everyone, Mitt Romney will stop the government from getting involved with health care.
5:29 -- Ron Paul didn't see anything in the Constitution preventing you from being in a labor union, so go ahead.
5:30 -- Huckabee warns that unions are coming back in "roaring form" because working people are starving -- well, not "starving" because they are all fat -- and he's sort of warning of class warfare and probably a labor revolution. Really, that's what he's basically saying, and that you can't argue against the reasoning.
5:31 -- McCain doesn't care about your stupid union, or job.
5:32 -- Ha ha, Fred Thompson's a screen actor union man! I think Sally Field is the president of the actors union, right? Who is the SAG boss these days? We'll ask Defamer.
5:33 -- Oh jesus ... oh no.
5:33 -- Whew ... Chris Matthews almost got Rudy to break into a showtune, the "Look for the union label" song from the '70s. And you could see the twinkle in Rudy's rat eyes. He wanted to do it, so bad, so friggin' bad ... but his wife must have called again, and his phone's on vibrate, probably stuffed in his thong. Anyway, crisis averted. For now ....
5:34 -- Tom Tancredo is insulting Sam Brownback's mother. He is truly a dick. Sam's about to cry!
5:34 -- Sam Brownback is now woodenly mumbling about how "My mother is not an illegal alien."
5:37 -- McCain's sleepy.
5:37 -- Chris Matthews just insulted poor old Lonesome Fred Thompson.
5:38 -- Now Matthews wants Rudy to "police the Internet socially." WTF?
5:38 -- Rudy will not tax child molesters on the Internets. So, he won't tax Mark Foley. But he will start a "task force"! Oh, exciting! Also, "they attack from the outside ... to be penetrated." Get a room, task force!
5:39 -- Hey Chris Matthews, how about stop with the big ideas about starting new regulatory agencies for the freaking Internet, okay? Let's start a new agency to shut down MSNBC, the channel.
5:40 -- McCain is going to "go after the money" in child porn.
5:45 -- LIGHTNING ROUND.
5:45 -- Huckabee is protesting the format of the lightning round instead of answering. Fail.
5:45 -- The buzzer is broken, or there isn't one, or maybe Ford made it so it never worked to start with.
5:46 -- Huckabee's answer to the health care crisis is to let people "own" not having insurance.
5:46 -- Finally, a question about the Muslims in Dearborn. Mitt's answer is .... they will be followed into the mosque. But they are welcome. Wait, what countries are we "battling around the world" again?
5:47 -- Ha ha, Thompson totally does that "repeat the question back to the questioner" thing to fill time, like Miss Teen South Carolina.
5:47 -- Rudy knows that most of the foreign debt is owed to him, and his law firm. He will sell more of America to the foreigners.
5:48 -- Brownback doesn't have any idea about economics, and doesn't know Alan Greenspan's name. FAIL.
5:48 -- What is a "one handed economist"?
5:48 -- McCain is deaf. He can't answer anything about whether the very dramatic rate cut that totally turned around the entire stock market plunge of the summer was the right cut. He wishes interest rates were "zero." He doesn't know the markets have completely recovered from the summer credit-crunch mini-crash, and actually are higher today. He doesn't follow U.S. economic news? He's a buffoon. It's a good thing his wife has the money.
5:49 -- Ron Paul will give gold to the poor!
5:50 -- Tancredo will not vote for any Republican.
5:51 -- Duncan Hunter knows that Abe Lincoln was the president of unborn babies.
5:53 -- Ha ha, Thompson knows the last name of the Canadian prime minister! He is ready for this job!
5:56 -- McCain is going to establish some international crime fighters organization from some book he read when he was eleven years old, and that's how, uh, Osama bin Laden will be brought to justice or whatever.
5:57 -- Well, Mitt's full of shit but "optimism" does have a huge impact on markets, if not the underlying economy.
5:58 -- Brownback is right that single-parent families have way less money and education and mobility and way more crime and drug abuse and etc., but he can't figure out how to say it without jabbering about abortion or something. Hold up a vague chart, like Perot!
5:58 -- Rudy will bravely allow Canadians who can afford U.S. health specialists to continue to travel to Canada and spend money on such things, even though they have state-provided health care in Canada, but Hillary may try to let Americans have guaranteed state health care so that they, too, could also spend money on other specialists.
6:00 -- Jesus christ somebody kick Larry Kudlow in the cunt and shut him up.
