October 9, 2020: Pence and Harris Go Toe-to-Toe in Debate - with Fly Making Cameo

 

10/9/20: While my wife and I were driving across the United States, and back again, we missed several important stories.

 

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The only law ever to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions.

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We did see the Pence-Harris vice presidential debate. We thought both principals did well enough, but we were drinking wine in a motel room and couldn’t be sure. A fly landed on Vice President Pence’s head at one point, but neither of us noticed.

 

Wine, no doubt.

 

Sadly, in one recent poll, more Americans (62%) had heard about the fly than had heard about Sen. Kamala Harris’s response to a question on healthcare (60%).

The Fly.

 

It’s no secret that President Trump will orgasm if he can destroy Obamacare once and for all. It’s not because he cares about healthcare for Americans, whether they have it or not. It’s that he hates everything his predecessor did. Obamacare is the only law ever to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from discrimination by insurance companies. Trump doesn’t care.

 

Many of his fans don’t even realize they’re benefitting from the law.

 

Sen. Harris was blunt. “If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you,” she warned the debate audience. There’s a case already before the Supreme Court, as Republicans try to undo the law.

 

Now Trump and Mitch McConnell want to rush a confirmation vote for the seat left open by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. They need just one more vote on the court to smash the law for good. “If you love someone who has a preexisting condition, they’re coming for you,” Harris reiterated. “If you are under the age of 26 on your parents’ coverage, they’re coming for you.”

 

In any case, I missed the fly, heard Harris, and noticed that Mr. Pence was wobbly when it came to admitting that climate change was real. Since my wife and I had just driven through thick clouds of smoke from forest fires burning in southern Wyoming, I thought he sounded clueless in that regard.

 

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“Proof-point testament to climate change.”

 

IF YOU READ THIS BLOG, you realize I follow the news with maniacal zeal. For that reason, I can tell you this past September was the hottest on record. Scientists at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe report that September 2020 replaces September 2019 in the top spot, and September 2016 is pushed to third. If you see a trend, you’ve got Trump and Pence beat.

 

“As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense,” Copernicus senior scientist Freja Vamborg noted. Think: California. Think California drying out as temperatures rise every year. Think massive forest fires. Consider what Gov. Gavin Newsom said a few days ago. One fire this year, the August Complex, has charred a million acres in his state. That’s more damage done than by all the California fires recorded from 1932 to 1999.

 

“If that’s not proof-point testament to climate change, then I don’t know what is,” he told reporters.

 

The scientists at Copernicus also warn that there will be more periods of intense rain and increasingly powerful storms, as the planet continues to warm. Think: Louisiana. That unfortunate state was battered again this week, when Hurricane Delta made landfall. It was the sixth hurricane to blast the Gulf Coast in 2020, an unenviable record for one year. Some areas had barely recovered from the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Laura which struck on August 27.

Smoke near Rawlins, Wyoming, 4:30 p.m.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: It sounds like there will be no more presidential debates, after the two sides could not agree on changes to format for the third and fourth debates. But we should note, the president was positive that Vice President Pence won his debate against Sen. Harris. In a call to Fox Business, he warned host Maria Bartiromo that Harris not only lost, but she was a “monster.”

 

For good measure, he insisted she was also a “communist,” in case there were those among his fans who thought “monster” wasn’t sufficient reason to vote against the Biden/Harris ticket.

 

In fact, Sen. Harris is neither a monster nor a communist and polls show she won the debate, albeit narrowly.

 

Trump has also insisted that he banged on Biden like a tambourine in their first debate. Still, the president found a need to complain that the moderator was against him – and complain because someone had been messing with his microphone to make it sound like he was a boisterous boor.  

 

In terms of a winner, the polls seemed to indicate otherwise. A CBS survey found that 48% of those who watched, gave the “win” to Mr. Biden, 41% to Mr. Trump. In a second survey, only 32.9% of listeners rated Trump’s performance as “good.” The other two thirds ranked his efforts as “poor.” Biden had a “good” score of 59.7% and a “poor” score of 39.7%. A third poll found 53% of likely voters said Biden beat Trump. Only 29% felt Trump triumphed.

 

A whopping 77% agreed that the chaotic first debate, featuring 145 nutty interruptions by the President of the United States, did not make them proud to be Americans.