Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

We still have time to mess this up!

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

The lights are all blinking red.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / In Case You Missed It: Beto Vs Cruz – the Debating!

In Case You Missed It: Beto Vs Cruz – the Debating!

by | 85 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

I didn’t know that this was tonight, or I would have put it up as a live stream. But in case you missed it, here’s the video of Congressman Beto O’Rourke debating Senator Ted Cruz at Southern Methodist University.

Beto and his family seem to thing he did well:

Also, apparently, Beto got his entire family’s allocation of human growth hormone!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  2. 2.

    Chetan Murthy

    Here’s a game: what could ol’ Rafael have said, as a nice thing about Beto, that wasn’t copying, and wasn’t ….. well, (c) Ted Cruz. Y’know, something actually nice?

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    I think the best tack would have been to compliment Beto for his musicianship.

    [and I do think that this sort of question is expected, so a candidate’s gotta game out two answers.]

  12. 12.

    tobie

    @Shrillhouse: I wish Ford would write something smug, “Dear Chairman Grassley, In keeping with your request, I herewith provide a written statement confirming that I will provide the Judiciary Committee with a full transcript of my remarks when I appear before the committee.” Grassley is both dumb and odious and deserves nothing more than this.

  13. 13.

    Suzanne

    So my colleague and I were driving back from a meeting and heading to a late lunch this afternoon, and we witnessed a man being beaten on the tracks at the light rail station by three late-teenage-looking kids. These kids were pounding him, kicking him in the head repeatedly. It was terrible. I was about to jump out to help when I realized they might be armed, so I called the police and reported it. I wasn’t able to pull over, either.

    So I called 911 and immediately heard “please hold for the next available operator”. Because I am sick and tired of all the winning. Are we great again yet?

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    I went to go see a lunchtime speaker at work today, and now my knee hurts like hell because I had to sit in a theater seat for an hour. But it was worth it, because it was blog favorite Luvvie Ajayi.

  17. 17.

    MagdaInBlack

    I stumbled upon this:

    Gabriel Sherman
    ✔
    @gabrielsherman
    Hearing Bill Shine rolling out media plan to build public support for Trump to fire Rosenstein
    1:58 PM – Sep 21, 2018

    Thoughts?

    (I can’t watch Cruz either )

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    @danielx:
    Wasn’t there once a Cruz campaign flyer or something a few years ago with a drawing of him looking like the prince from a Disney cartoon? I seem to recall that the very flattering depiction was much mocked, at least in these threads.

  20. 20.

    tobie

    @MagdaInBlack: I have little doubt that today’s leak came from the White House. They’re desperate and about all that’s left for them is to try to fire Rosenstein and shut down the Mueller probe. My guess would be Shine and McGahn leaked the material to Schmidt at the Times but it could be any number of bunker loyalists. I know people have been pointing fingers at McCabe but I don’t see how he benefits from this release one bit. Trump wants Rosenstein and Sessions gone and the Special Counsel’s investigation called off.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MagdaInBlack: My take since the NY Times story broke was that this was a hit. The Times story was thinly sourced. They didn’t have the memos, nor were their sources people who had seen them. Rather their anonymous sources were people who had been told about the memos by those who saw them or who had heard their content discussed at meetings. My initial thought was that this was done by one of the knuckleheads that Nunes has as investigators on his House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff. That he and some combo of Meadows, Jordan, and Gaetz were doing this to get back at the DOJ, and especially Rosenstein, because the DOJ and FBI on behalf of the intel community got the President to back down on the declassification order for the FISA materials, as well as of texts from Comey, Strozk, McCabe, and Page.

    Gaetz has already counseled caution. There are now three other news reports on this and all of them claim that Rosenstein was being sarcastic in an out of frustration response to McCabe, who was then the acting FBI director. Specifically: “what do you want me to do Andy, wire the President?” The question is going to be whether people like Kelly and McGahn can get the President cooled off enough on this and get him to recognize that the remark was a sarcastic push back against McCabe’s concerns that the President needed to be investigated over firing Comey and other issues; that Rosenstein was actually protecting the President. If they can, then Rosenstein will stay and the President avoids a major new political crisis. If they can’t, then this will get hot, fast.

    Now, as for Shine, this would not surprise me if he somehow orchestrated this. He’s close to Hannity and the people the President said counseled him to declassify the FISA warrant and FBI texts were Hannity, Dobbs, and Pirro – all of Shine’s former employees at Fox News. If Shine and Stephen Miller are on the plane to and from Missouri with the President, I expect them to wind him up over this, which increases the chance he fires Rosenstein. Remember, Miller was on the plane from Palm Beach back to DC and, according to the reporting, wrote the initial memo justifying Comey’s firing, which McGahn rejected because it was bizarre, horrible, and over the top. Which, perhaps, is a good reminder why not to let 31 year old white supremacists without legal degrees and very limited professional experience write memos providing a legal justification for terminating the director of the FBI. If Kelly is on the plane, then it is more likely he’ll be able to keep Shine and Miller away from the President and get him cooled down on this.

  22. 22.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman:

    a good reminder why not to let 31 year old white supremacists without legal degrees and very limited professional experience write memos providing a legal justification for terminating the director of the FBI

    I feel like if this isn’t self-evidently bad to you then you won’t benefit from a reminder.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: I had arrived at this part on my own earlier today, though I didn’t know the names of Meadows, Jordan, and Gaetz.

    That he and some combo of Meadows, Jordan, and Gaetz were doing this to get back at the DOJ, and especially Rosenstein, because the DOJ and FBI on behalf of the intel community got the President to back down on the declassification order for the FISA materials, as well as of texts from Comey, Strozk, McCabe, and Page.

    I am happy to see you affirm that thought — it seemed perfectly obvious to me, but no one seemed to be talking about that. And the rest of what you wrote was really interesting.

  26. 26.

    Doug R

    @Suzanne:

    So I called 911 and immediately heard “please hold for the next available operator”. Because I am sick and tired of all the winning. Are we great again yet?

    On the bright side, often when I’ve called 911, the operator explains that they’re getting a lot of calls for each incident.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    Carol Oft at CBC’s As It Happen’s interviewed Mad Max, ( Maxime Bernier) on his People’s Party and multiculturalism, and she ripped him a new one on his Fake Popualism and Fringe Nazism.

    It was beautiful to hear an actual Journalist do their job.

  29. 29.

    Mike in NC

    Spent a lovely day exploring historic Nantucket, including the excellent whaling museum and attending a couple of pre-wedding parties. Did a ton of walking, which was exhausting considering the cobblestone streets. Driving over them is also a challenge. But great food, great people, great times. We completely forgot about Putin’s treasonous puppet for most of Friday. Can’t really beat that.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @WaterGirl:

    Even Hannity isn’t buying it:

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    HOLY CRAP!!!!!
    https://splinternews.com/court-docs-allege-ex-trump-staffer-drugged-woman-he-got-1829233105

    The ongoing custody battle between former Trump campaign operatives Jason Miller and A.J. Delgado has taken another nasty turn: In an explosive new court filing, Delgado’s legal team alleges that Miller—prior to their own high-profile extramarital romance—carried out an affair with a woman he met at an Orlando strip club. Additionally, the court documents claim, when the woman found out she was pregnant, Miller surreptitiously dosed her with an abortion pill without her knowledge, leading, the woman claims, to the pregnancy’s termination and nearly her death.

    With these allegations entered into the court record, Delgado is asking the court to order Miller—whom the filing says has “unsupervised time” with their child—to undergo a psychological evaluation. The filing says that she fears for her and the child’s safety.

    According to the court documents—which were filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Sept. 14 and obtained by Splinter—the alleged relationship started in 2012, when Miller was working for prominent Republican ad firm Jamestown Associates. The filing alleges that Miller, whose Twitter bio states that he now works as managing director at Teneo Strategy and as a political commentator on CNN, brought clients to Rachel’s Gentleman’s Club in Orlando, where he met a dancer identified only as Jane Doe.

    Miller allegedly entered a sexual relationship with Doe, who Delgado says in the filing became pregnant. As the filing claims (emphasis theirs):

    Shortly thereafter, according to Joe Doe, Mr. Miller visited her at her apartment with a Smoothie beverage.

    Unbeknownst to Jane Doe, the Smoothie contained an abortion bill. [sic]

    The pill induced an abortion, and Jane Doe wound up in a hospital emergency room, bleeding heavily and nearly went into a coma.

    The unborn child died.

    Jane Doe herself was hospitalized for two days, the abortion pill possibly reacting with potential street drugs in her system at the time she drank the Smoothie.

    Upon leaving the hospital, a rightly enraged Jane Doe contacted the staffers of local politicians with whom Mr. Miller had been in attendance at Rachel’s the night they met.

    Mr. Miller then, in a panic, attempted to have Jane Doe sign a non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”), presumably in exchange for a sum of money.

    Delgado confirmed the document’s authenticity to Splinter but declined to comment further. “I’m concerned for my safety (more importantly, my son’s) with Miller and afraid of his reaction if I add comment,” she said.

    In a statement to Splinter after this story was published, Miller’s legal team strongly disputed the claims made in the filing, saying: “To be clear, there is no validity to the false accusations made in Ms. Delgado’s filing.”

    Much more at the link.

  39. 39.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    So this is my sense of the Kavanaugh nomination over the last week:

    The GOP is rapidly losing control of the entire process/messaging and is flailing trying to ram Kavanaugh through mainly because he’s most likely a sex offender. There are witnesses who had contemporary accounts of Ford telling them about the assault and Kavanaugh’s story has a bunch of holes in it. Murkowski has now said she won’t vote on the nom until Ford gets a full hearing.

    This is crazy and absolutely amazing that they’re still hanging with this guy. I know the reasons why they are, but this man has no business being on the Supreme Court. Violent, sexual assault is hell of a lot different than what Thomas did. And that’s leaving out his judicial qualifications and other questionable ethical decisions.

  45. 45.

    Mike in NC

    @Gin & Tonic: Crazy place. We hit a liquor store where there were lots of bottles of wine priced $250-300 and up. Not exactly Piggly Wiggly. Like all islands, everything imported is expensive; gallon of gas is $4 and up. I bought a few souvenir t-shirts and a sweatshirt and the bill was over a hundred bucks. $14 for a martini, huh?

  46. 46.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’ve also been wondering if we are seeing an internal fight playing out: those who want to fire Rosenstein NOW, versus those who know it will be a debacle for the election. That crowd is so crazy, though, on all sides, that it’s hard to game.

  48. 48.

    oldgold

    Blink.

    ChuckGrassley
    @ChuckGrassley
    Five times now we hv granted extension for Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w her desire stated one wk ago that she wants to tell senate her story Dr Ford if u changed ur mind say so so we can move on I want to hear ur testimony. Come to us or we to u
    10:27 PM · Sep 21, 2018

  49. 49.

    AnotherBruce

    Advice to Beto. The next time Cruz attacks Beto for being a socialist.Ask Cruz why he backs tax cuts for the Rich. Socialism for the wealthy, capitalism for the workers.

  50. 50.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @oldgold:
    Is that real? Did Grassely really just cave? Just like that? So much for his ultimatums. Amazing what a little bit of fighting will do (fingers crossed) to derail a nomination

  53. 53.

    Jay

    @oldgold:

    You can smell the fear and desperation,

    That’s what, his 27th “demand” being ignored.

    LMFAO,

    Impotent old men discovering their impotence.

  54. 54.

    tobie

    @Cheryl Rofer: I saw Matthew Miller’s tweet and the responses to it were brutal. Essentially know one sees what Andrew McCabe has to gain by leaking this stuff about Rosenstein. Isn’t he the subject of a grand jury inquiry at the moment? He may not like Rosenstein but I don’t see what he gains by trying to get Rosenstein fired, and possibly the Mueller probe shut down. His lawyer must have counseled him in no uncertain terms to keep his head to the ground. I gather it’s McCabe’s notes from 2017. Who benefits the most from this? Jared? Stephen Miller? Bill Shine? McCabe?

  55. 55.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @oldgold: Yeah, I mean we said 5:00, then 5:03, then 5:15, then 5:30… how many times are we going to move this deadline back?

  56. 56.

    Jay

    @bluehill:

    As the article notes, there’s ton’s of “inside baseball” and no confirmation.

    And if Ford and her Layer’s walk into a Maryland PD Station on Monday,……..

  57. 57.

    oldgold

    Chuckles is way too old to be playing in this fast moving – high stakes game.

    He is driving down the interstate at 40 mph with his left turn signal on.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    Christina Wilkie
    ‏Verified account
    @christinawilkie
    Follow Follow @christinawilkie
    More
    New: Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson believes the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations are part of a centuries old Socialist plot that began in England with something called the Fabian Society.

    I couldn’t be a Republican. It’s too complicated. This plot has been going on for centuries

  59. 59.

    eemom

    @Mike in NC:
    @Gin & Tonic:

    Honest question, not meant to offend: does not the disgusting wealth that defines that place bother you at all?

    I spent a summer on Martha’s Vineyard after my junior year in college (1983). Being a college kid, I had a great time. Seven years later, summer of 1990, I went back with eedad as a young middle class married couple…..and I was really revolted by the apartheid-like distinction between the unwashed tourist hordes that swarm the towns and the massive numbers of rich and famous that own beachfront estates there. Put it this way: as a tourist, you’d never be able to believe the place is big enough to hold all those beachfront estates.

    There’s disgusting wealth in every beautiful place, of course — including my beloved Outer Banks. But the caste system there is nowhere near as in your face as it is in places like MV, Nantucket, or, UGH, “the Hamptons.”

  63. 63.

    jl

    @Kay: ” Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson believes the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations are part of a centuries old Socialist plot that began in England with something called the Fabian Society. ”

    I read a sad story somewhere about Carson’s former medical colleagues wondering when and how and why he went nuts.

  64. 64.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Judge Kavanaugh I just granted another extension to Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w the statement she made last week to testify to the senate She shld decide so we can move on I want to hear her. I hope u understand. It’s not my normal approach to b indecisive

    With all the extensions we give Dr Ford to decide if she still wants to testify to the Senate I feel like I’m playing 2nd trombone in the judiciary orchestra and Schumer is the conductor

    LOL

  65. 65.

    trollhattan

    @Jay:
    Per Political Wire a few minutes ago:

    Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley agreed late Friday night to allow the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault more time to decide whether to testify before Congress, CNN reports.

    Grassley tweeted that he “granted another extension” to Christine Blasey Ford, saying “she should decide so we can move on. I want to hear her.”

    Republicans not exactly in lockstep on this.

  68. 68.

    B.B.A.

    @jl: The Fabian Society still exists. It’s roughly the British version of the Center for American Progress, except they used to actually accomplish shit.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @trollhattan:

    I want to hear her.

    I feel like someone told them to say that. That exact phrasing. I HEAR her, I want to HEAR, she must be HEARD. This isn’t how they talk.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    @trollhattan:

    Yup, ReThug’s are trapped in a leghold trap of their own making.

    There’s no way they can “win” this.

    All the possible outcomes range from bad to horrible.

    Special K could fall on his sword, and they will still lose the God Botherers.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @jl:

    Well, they should have known. He’s been a motivational speaker for a long time and many of his anecdotes don’t sound true. THINK BIG. That’s his advice. It’s an acronym. The G is God. That’s all I remember.

  75. 75.

    Mandalay

    @trollhattan:

    she should decide so we can move on. I want to hear her.

    she

    her

    That person with no name who needs to be diminished. A textbook example from Grassley of what the article I referenced in post #67 was pointing out.

  76. 76.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @Mike in NC:

    … gallon of gas is $4 and up. I bought a few souvenir t-shirts and a sweatshirt and the bill was over a hundred bucks. $14 for a martini, huh?

    Welcome to San Francisco.

    M. Colette and I went to an old-fashioned restaurant in the SF suburbs a few weeks ago. He went to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic – something he very seldom does. When he came back, he asked me how much a mixed drink usually costs. I said, “$12-14 for an ordinary well drink, $16-20 for a fancy tipple concocted by a mixologist in a hipster bar.” He was stunned – he had felt like his $9 g&t was expensive when it was actually a bargain.

  78. 78.

    westyny

    @Adam L Silverman: The Jason Miller story is a ghastly cooberation of Rick Miller’s dictum, Everything Trump Touches Dies,” and also of just how lowbrow CNN goes in bringing these creeps on for “balance.” There should be a tearful apologies from Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon for inflicting this swill upon us, and an immediate suspension of Hewitt, Santorum, Cucinelli, et al. for simply lying all the time. The “other point of view” has no moral compass and should only be brought on for ridicule.

  79. 79.

    Shalimar

    Isn’t it pretty obvious that McCabe can’t be the source, since their sources haven’t even personally read McCabe’s memo the story is based on?

  81. 81.

    Shalimar

    @Shalimar: To add to this, the story cites sources who have been briefed on the memo. What possible reason in the normal course of DoJ operations would there ever be to brief anyone on those meetings or that memo? It sounds like someone was looking through McCabe’s file for Trump’s document dump, found the memo, and then told House Intel Committee members about it.

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    The Fabian Society is most definitely real, and does indeed date back to the 19th century. But any connection between it and the Democratic party’s supposed machinations against Brett Kavanaugh is surely a figment of Ben Carson’s imagination.

  84. 84.

    Apocalipstick

    @Jay: Thing is, when you go around blowing up norms to get your way, people notice. Pretty soon they are ignoring your demands, since adherence to norms was the only motivation they had to listen to you.

Comments are closed.