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Nora Skinker (Morton)
Thank you for setting me straight on that, Joanie. I understand your position, but in an election year everything is colored by politics & that may the point that YOU are missing. Platitudes fly high & mighty but mean little when they're agenda based.
From a fellow classmate, I received this article (below) which makes the point far better than I, that the Las Vegas Democratic debate was, contrary to Joan's declaration, not a debate at all but a colossal waste of expensive television prime time opportunity. It's by Michael Olesker, dated Feb. 22, for The Baltimore Post Examiner:
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE: WHO CARES IF YOU KNOW THE NAME OF MEXICO'S PRESIDENT WHEN PEOPLE ARE GETTING SHOT AND THE EARTH IS DYING
"I'm eating lunch with four smart guys, men of accomplishment, men with impressive college diplomas earned decades ago, and I toss them a pop quiz which I'm sure can be answered quite easily now by any school child in America. Or, at least, any candidate for president of these United States.
"The president of Mexico," I say. "What's his name?"
We're gathered at Jilly's restaurant on Reisterstown Road on the day after the Democratic debate in Las Vegas. Everybody remembers this question, because it's the one that Pete Buttigieg asked Amy Klobuchar, after he heard that Klobuchar couldn't recall the name in an earlier interview. Buttigieg loved Klobuchar's brain-lock embarrassment so much that he wouldn't let it go. He was a mongrel with a bone. He was a schoolboy taunting a girl who imagined she was the smartest kid in class, and he's got proof that she's not. In which case, she got lots of company - including the guys at my lunch table the day after the debate.
"The President," I say to them again, "of Mexico."
Blank stares. I haven't seen such empty looks since 10th grade geometry. Nobody's got a clue. They watched the same presidential debate, & saw the same bared fangs & the same extended sniping between Buttigieg & Klobuchar, like 33 million other prospective voters watched (and probably struggled to come up with the right name.)
"Ok," I say, "if you can't name the president of Mexico, how about the president of the Baltimore City Council?"
Nothing. The name's out there somewhere, but it's just beyond their reach. And so, on this basis, I guess none of these guys are qualified to be president of the city council, much less president of the United States.
Absurd, of course. But good to bring up because it's always fun to mock our political leaders' shortcomings & also good to poke fun at ourselves. But let's also ask why these Democrats were spending so much time on Klobuchar's momentary memory block when there were real issues out there which everybody seems to forget about.
Folks, they held this debate in Las Vegas, the scene of the worst mass shooting in modern American history, where 58 people were killed, 413 wounded & 869 injured in the panic that ensued.
The first one to bring up that horrifying 2017 bloodbath was Joe Biden -- in his closing statement.
the Las Vegas shooting was considered an aberration. In Baltimore, shootings are considered a municipal twitch. In the last 30 days here, we've had 23 homicides. Since January 1, we've had 44. Last year, we had 347. And that's just Baltimore. In 2018, the last year for which we have full figures, more than 16,000 people were killed across the country, mainly by gunfire. But we have a president named Trump who resides in the back pocket of the NRA & who's got a plan to break through that kind of political sell-out?
Then there's the climate change issue. The Democrats know all about this - or should, since this president denies the problem & calls it "a hoax." An entire planet trembles and this guy boasts of his own sheer ignorance. As the Democrats gathered in Las Vegas, voters across Nevada were polled on the most pressing issues of our time. And 86% of them said, "climate and the environment" were 'very important' or 'the most important' issue of 2020.
Folks, 2019 was the second hottest year on record, just behind 2016. The last decade since the 1960s has been hotter than the previous decade. We're hitting a five day stretch here in Baltimore, where the temperature's set to hover in the mid 50's. It's a February! We've had days in the 60's this month. The temperatures in February's supposed to be in the 30's or lower around here! Single-digit temperatures used to be pretty routine, but we haven't even approached such cold this year.
The polar ice caps are breaking off, and the glaciers are melting, & one day soon we'll have the shrunken remains of icebergs floating in this city's Inner Harbor.
In their 2 hours of debate, the Democrats gave 16 minutes to climate issues.
So, yeah, let's spend a lot of time talking about Amy Klobuchar's brainlock.
Just for the record, the president of Mexico is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And the president of the Baltimore city council is Brandon Stokes.
There now. Are we feeling any better about our American future?"
(A personal footnote: Interestingly, I'm not a Dem, but that debate made me mad. And this article indicates with good reason why you should be mad too.)
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