Unasked Questions

The questions that should have been asked at the debate but weren't.

Sep 13, 2024

Issue #188

I expect to write quite a lot about politics in the months ahead, but not because I'm a partisan. I'd much rather live in a non-political world where individuals directed their own lives and politicians were irrelevant or nonexistent. But it's election season and this election will determine the fate of America, including the fate of your wealth and liberties.

For decades, we've always been told that this election is the most important ever. But now that the Man Behind the Curtain has been exposed, as the illusion of differentiation presented by the Uniparty has been dispelled, and as the elite 0.1% press their advantage to ever greater extremes and risks, the results of this election pose an existential threat to our country.

Here are my thoughts about the Trump-Harris debate the other night. I thought Harris was well prepared, sounded more presidential and inspirational, and performed significantly better than expected. By the end of the debate, Trump had lost the several point lead he had over Harris in the betting/prediction markets.

Harris skipped the first debate (hosted by Fox News) with no consequence. By the way, the Democrats have become masterful at creating and exploiting optionality. Don't like the political views of the voters? Import 20 million new ones! Is your presidential candidate trailing Trump in the polls? Dump him and get another one! Don't like the host of a debate? Skip it! Don't like how the election returns are coming in? Run more ballots through the machines after you send the poll watchers and media home for the night!

This week's debate was moderated by ABC News, which is owned by Disney—one of the wokest companies around. Trump is a political neophyte compared to the Deep State, which has become an expert in its craft of political/informational/psychological warfare. So Trump repeatedly finds himself in its setups and ambushes. It reminds me of Lucy luring Charlie Brown to kick the football. By this point, Trump should know better.

Unlike his debate with Biden—the purpose of which was to set Biden up to fail so the Democratic elite could stage a soft coup—the purpose of this debate was to Kambush Trump with help from the moderators. During the Biden debate, CNN's moderators wanted Biden to look bad, so they didn't fact-check Trump, which left more time for Biden to demonstrate his senility.

During the Harris debate, the moderators fact-checked Trump five times with none for Harris. I'm sure Trump didn't expect this, especially since I can't remember it ever being done in any presidential debate. BTW, here's the fact check that ABC didn't give Harris. The Legacy Media resemble the firemen in Fahrenheit 451: their purpose is not to report the news but suppress it.

When Trump claimed that the 20,000 Haitian illegal aliens in Springfield, Ohio had been eating people's pets, I was shocked by how quickly David Muir retorted that ABC had called Springfield's city manager, who told them there were no credible reports of that. Oh! OK, down the Memory Hole it goes. These aren't the droids you're looking for. I realize that a large news organization such as ABC simply doesn't have the resources to send a reporter to the town to learn the actual facts, so we'll just have to accept what one local politician said. All that's lacking is a letter from 51 former intelligence officers that this has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

Obviously, ABC anticipated that Trump might mention this, so were ready to debunk it with a “fact check.” But if they were really interested in the truth, it would have taken them less than a minute to find plenty of videos and eyewitness reports from local residents on X. This is why many statists want to ban that platform, because it makes it impossible for them to gaslight the population and control the narrative.

The questions the moderators asked (which may or may not have been provided to Harris in advance, like questions were provided to Hillary Clinton in advance in 2016; ironically, ABC had the same woman who leaked those questions as a debate analyst, along with RINO Chris Christie—who will not vote for Trump--to present the Republican view) were pretty much the same ones that were asked in the Biden debate, which seemed lazy to me. Of course the question about Climate Change was presented as if it was a scientific law instead of a theory.

As an aside, here's something else that makes me suspect that Disney knew how the debate was going to go down. Disney (which owns some cable channels) and AT&T (which owns DIRECTV) have been locked in a dispute over money, resulting in no Disney content for DIRECTV's customers. I happened to come across this article while researching another matter. Disney offered to allow DIRECTV's customers to watch ABC for three hours so they could watch the debate, but were turned down.

After watching most of the Democratic convention, it was obvious that abortion was the most important issue to them, so it was no surprise that it was about the third question asked, and I thought they spent a lot of time on it even though (1) I wonder how many women actually have an abortion during their lifetime and (2) even if it's not legally available in your state, it's almost certainly available in nearby states, and a number of employers will even pay for the additional expense.

That got me thinking about far more important questions that are relevant to many more people that could have been asked but were not, such as:

Do you believe that people have the right to say what they want?

Do you believe that people have the right to defend themselves?

Do you believe that providing weapons, intelligence, financing, etc. to another country so it could attack and invade Russia could potentially lead to World War III or a nuclear war?

As a “prosecutor president,” would you prosecute people who violated America's immigration laws, including Americans?

Which do you think is more important: capping the cost of insulin or helping Americans become healthier?

How would you replace hydrocarbon fuels with renewable energy, which even if it was reliable and could be stored would replace only a small fraction of the energy we already use, not to mention about the same amount of energy that will be needed to run AI?

If a buyer and a seller agreed to exchange a good or service at a certain price, would you use law enforcement to prevent them from doing so?

What do you plan to do about the $2 trillion+ budget deficit, the $35 trillion+ national debt, or the $219 trillion+ of unfunded liabilities?

Why is so much of the U.S. national debt in shorter term bonds, and how would you refinance that maturing debt if interest rates rose and stayed high?

Should the U.S. dollar continue to be backed by nothing, and created in unlimited quantities at will?

Is inflation theft? What do you think causes it? Corporate greed?

What would you do to prevent much of the world from no longer using the dollar for trade or as a reserve currency? And where would all of those dollars end up if you failed?

Do you support a central bank digital currency, the abolition of cash, or a debt jubilee?

Please describe how an “opportunity economy” would work with federal tax rates on ordinary income of up to 39.6% (and a 25% tax rate on unrealized capital gains for taxpayers worth over $100 million—which, due to inflation, will eventually be everyone).

In closing, I leave you with a quote by Chris DeMuth: “Confiscating unrealized capital gains isn't a tax policy; it is a declaration of war. It transforms the concept of private property. Nothing would be private and nothing would be your property. [This sounds a lot like the World Economic Forum's “You'll own nothing and be happy.”] You would be in a 24/7 partnership with the government that no amount of taxation would ever extract you from. America's founders rebelled against policies that were a fraction as expensive and invasive to our basic freedoms.”

Recommended

Reagan (in theaters now). This was very well done, highly recommended. Bring some tissues.

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FYI, I have set up a community on Locals, which has a large number of like-minded creators with great content.

Unasked Questions

The questions that should have been asked at the debate but weren't.

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