More Opinion by The Springboard
Bringing back American manufacturing is critical to American society in more ways than just economic ones. In order for America to succeed it needs the ability to make things, not only for the stability and good jobs it provides, but for national security as well.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Ford's Long Road: Why its Consistency Keeps me Invested
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
There You Go Again, myLot: Can You Ever Just Stop Being Mean to Members?
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Well, What Do We Have Here? The FCC, CBS and Kamala Harris
Thursday, October 17, 2024
The Brett Baier and Kamala Harris Interview: My Final Take
He didn't do that. He challenged her on claims. He presented her former and current positions and gave her the opportunity to explain the contrast. He presented polling outlining voter sentiment on a variety of issues that are not favorable to Kamala Harris on the economy, the border and other issues and point blankly asked her why, if she has a better path forward, the majority of the American people seem to be indicating they disagree with her.
Look, I am going to give Kamala Harris at least some credit for sitting down with Brett Baier. She easily could have said no, and I am sure that she was prepared to be in an interview situation that would be unlike anything that she would ordinarily be accustomed to.
But she didn't pass the smell test. She didn't answer the questions, and I think a lot of her combativeness during the interview was more to stall it, present less time for real questions, and control the interview than to display a sense of command.
What she ultimately did was spend the bulk of the interview taking shots at Donald Trump and dismissing the dismal results of the administration she was part of for the past four years, taking no responsibility, acknowledging no mistakes, yet at the same time trying to distance herself from Joe Biden.
As you would expect, Harris was armed with an arsenal of talking points, and she wanted to get them all out in rapid-fire as best she could.
In the end, I don't think the interview did any good for the Kamala Harris campaign, but at the same time I am not sure if this close to the election, it changes any minds either. But it did present a glaring example of why a Kamala Harris presidency poses more danger to the American people than she wants to claim a Trump administration would be.
Again, we have results to go by. We have Trump's first four years, and we have Biden's last four years, and she is correct to point out that there is a stark contrast between the two choices, only all of the problems that have happened in the last four years were partially under her command.
Over and over again she lobbed accusations against Trump about the dangers he poses, from threats to democracy to weaponizing the military against the American people, yet at the same time completely dismissing the fact that 79% of the American people in polls say that we are headed in the wrong direction as a country.
That's her problem to own and explain, by the way, because Trump wasn't there to steer the country anywhere. And actually, Harris' attempt at an answer to the question why was actually a bit bizarre, if you ask me. "It's Trump's rhetoric for the past decade," she tried to assert. But as Brett pointed out, "You were in the White House. Not Trump."
The bottom line is that we are in the final throes of this election. I think we have all the information we, as voters, need in order to make a final decision. I tend to believe that decision is Trump. But of course, it's hard to tell when the media seems to want to point us in a different direction.
Like I have said before, I think any popularity or lead Harris has ever had has largely been driven by media spin much more than voter sentiment. Will the race be close? Who knows? It shouldn't be. But again, who knows?
All in all, I am going to give Brett Baier a thumbs up for a hard hitting, on point interview that I think touched on key issues and questions that gave us a better picture of the real Kamala Harris, unfettered by the usual media drooling over her or the left that we are used to.
We got to hear the right questions asked, and the American people got to see her unable to answer them with any conceivable substance. The left wing media will of course say Brett attacked Kamala Harris or was rude to her. But I'll just say that's because he didn't ask her what her favorite color is or what she plans to serve on her table at Thanksgiving.
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© 2024 Jim Bauer
READ ALL OF THE TAKES ON THE BRETT BAIER INTERVIEW WITH KAMALA HARRIS
Take One: Brett Baier and Kamala Harris on the Border
Take Two: Brett Baier Puts Kamala Harris Into a Deer In Headlights Mode with Immigration Question
Take Three: Brett Baier Continues to Lock Kamala Harris Up on the Economy and Her Campaign Slogan
Brett Baier Continues to Lock Kamala Harris Up on the Economy and Her Campaign Slogan
What? Where have you been?
Trump has talked about the devastating blow to American families that inflation has caused. He has talked about the border. He has talked about the economy. And he has talked about the need to reduce high prices at the gas pump.
"Donald Trump has no plans," she kept saying.
Only the reality is that Trump has had plans all along, including many of which he had already implemented during his first four years. Policies and plans that were mostly effective and worked, by the way, no matter how badly Harris wants to convince the American people they didn't.
Brett asked her specifically regarding the economy, "Why do you think most people say they trust Donald Trump more than you when it comes to the economy?" And once again she skirted the question, instead bashing Trump as well as citing Nobel laureates and the Wall Street Journal as sources to say, "They trust our plan."
Which is essentially, the same plan the Biden administration was wanting to pursue—Harris is really just an extension of that even if she somehow wants to try to separate herself from it, while at the same time telling The View she wouldn't change anything the Biden administration did during their four years in office.
Again, am I the only one completely confused here?
I go back to what I have said before. Who was in office these past four years? Was it Donald Trump? Or was it Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? She acknowledges we have all these challenges and problems that need to be fixed. But it wasn't Trump who was in the White House when they happened and now, she's the one with the better ideas to get us out of it?
Brett asked her another very poignant question about her saying over and over again that her presidency would turn the page. "You've been vice president for the past four years. What are you turning the page from?"
Where I find her "answer" is remarkable is how she framed it, basically trying to suggest we are needing to get away from divisiveness, pointing fingers and passing blame, and trying to take people down instead of lifting them up.
Wait a minute. Would that be like accusing a political opponent of crimes? Of insurrections? Of trying to jail him? Of having wall to wall endless negative coverage comparing Donald Trump to Marxists and fascists and Adolph Hitler himself?
She says Donald Trump's rhetoric instills fear in people's minds. So, what does saying that he will become a dictator, wanting to use federal law enforcement agencies to jail dissenters, take down democracy or whatever other evil plans he supposedly has—all of which are patently untrue, by the way—do to not instill fear in people's minds?
She is basically saying that we need to turn the page ahead against all the things her administration has been front and center of for the past four years, orchestrating all along.
At the end of the day, the fact is, Harris has nothing new to offer the American people and she's trying as hard as she can to erase the last four years and somehow pin all of America's woes on Trump. There's no other way of putting it.
The question is, who's really buying it?
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© 2024 Jim Bauer
READ ALL THE TAKES ON THE BRETT BAIER INTERVIEW WITH KAMALA HARRIS
Take One: Brett Baier and Kamala Harris on the Border
Take Two: Brett Baier Puts Kamala Harris Into Deer in Headlights Mode with Immigration Question
Take Four: The Brett Baier and Kamala Harris Interview: My Final Take
Brett Baier Puts Kamala Into a Deer in Headlights Mode with Immigration Question
"There's a lot of people that look back at what you said in 2019 when you first ran for president," Brett began. He reminded her that she supported allowing immigrants who were in the country illegally to apply for driver's licenses, that she supported free tuition for illegals at universities, as well as offering illegals free healthcare.
"Listen," Kamala Harris said, almost seeming irritated by the question by her body language. "That was five years ago."
She went on to convey her regard for the law and asserted she didn't advocate for these things while she was vice president. But of course, we all must remember, she was the vice president. Biden would have had to sign off on these things, and I contend even for him, these ideas would have been considered far too radical to take seriously.
Because of course, they are radical, and I think most Americans, including many Democrats, would be opposed to them.
She basically tried to throw out the notion that she would ever go back to her former position. But it was Brett's follow up question that was the gotcha moment. "If that's the case, you chose a running mate, Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, who signed those very things into state law. So, do you support that?"
Her pause was nearly 3-seconds long, which may not seem like a very long time. But clearly, she was taken aback by the question and immediately the wheels were spinning in her head. One could have pictured a sudden appearance of Will Robinson's robot in "Lost in Space" entering the frame warning, "Danger! Danger!"
The problem with her ultimate answer is the same as is the problem she has with most of her answers. She didn't answer it. She said her and Tim Walz are committed to following federal law. Yet clearly, Tim Walz had different interests as governor. So, which is it? She changed her position on the position and now Tim Walz has too?
How much more confused can the American people be made trying to figure out what Harris is actually for or against? Why didn't she condemn Walz' law or have further comment on it? Will she now, if elected, go to the courts to ask to challenge Walz' law on the grounds that it violates federal law? And will Walz, who enacted it, now side with her in the challenge?
Does this make sense to anyone?
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© 2024 Jim Bauer
READ ALL THE TAKES ON THE BRETT BAIER INTERVIEW WITH KAMALA HARRIS
Take One: Brett Baier and Kamala Harris on the Border
Take Three: Brett Baier Continues to Lock Kamala Harris Up on the Economy and Her Campaign Slogan
Take Four: The Brett Baier and Kamala Harris Interview: My Final Take
Brett Baier and Kamala Harris on the Border
She did not answer it.
What she did was completely go around it. She kept bringing up the bipartisan bill, and yet the question was not about what they wanted to do nine months ago. It was about what decisions they made on day one, within hours of taking their oath of office, that caused the border issues that have now become a top concern for many Americans, that were clearly a result of their decisions, not Donald Trump's.
She kept wanting to try to hammer it home. "We have a problem." Yeah, sure, that's great to recognize that. But why is it that you can't recognize that it was the decisions of the Biden administration that made the problems big problems? What she's talking about fixing is something that, it is clear, her and Joe Biden broke.
And what of the very stinging question Brett asked her about the border patrol and the bill? "They supported it. But they also just endorsed Donald Trump and said you've been—quote—a failure with border security. Why do you think they said that?"
"I think they're frustrated," Kamala Harris told Brett.
Yeah. Okay. But why? If your policies, as Harris suggests, were to address the border issues how come the border issue has only gotten worse? How many times, when even Democrat governors and mayors came out and said, "We've got a problem here," did Harris go out alongside Joe Biden and repeatedly tell the American people that the border was secure when clearly it wasn't?
They are her words. "I think they're frustrated." But Brett also reminded her that the Biden administration rescinded 90 Trump border patrol policies, and in the interview, she tried to make the claim that Trump's border policies did not improve things at the border. But the reality is, that doesn't seem to jive with what the border patrol believes to be the case.
If rescinding Trump's policies were an effective strategy on the border issue, wouldn't the border patrol then be endorsing Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump? Instead, they are "frustrated." But apparently not at the man whose policies they know would be reimplemented on day one if Donald Trump were to be elected.
She was literally talking in circles in spite of herself, and the reason is, she has no answer. And that's part of the reason she was trying so hard to dance around it. They rescinded Trump's policies because they disagreed with them. The plan failed. They are responsible for it. They lied repeatedly to the American people about the issue. And now they simply want it to go away and make it appear that Trump is playing poltics now with the border, when all along the very reason they nixed Trump's border policies was because of politics. Not what would have been in the best interests of the security of our border and the American people.
The bill was nothing more than a last-ditch effort to make it appear they were taking the border issue seriously. But of course, we know that was simply a trick. One that in other circles, she's been able to get away with performing. But Brett wasn't letting her have her "moment" to pour on the spin.
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© 2024 Jim Bauer
READ ALL THE TAKES ON THE BRETT BAIER INTERVIEW WITH KAMALA HARRIS
Take Two: Brett Baier Puts Kamala Into a Deer in Headlights Mode with Immigration Question
Take Three: Brett Baier Continues to Lock Kamala Harris Up on the Economy and Her Campaign Slogan
Take Four: The Brett Baier and Kamala Harris Interview: My Final Take
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
I'm Just Going to Stick with What I Know, Thank You Very Much: It's Columbus Day
Monday, October 14, 2024
The Role of Businesses in Society: It's More than Just Taxes
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Kamala Harris and the Illusion of Change
The truth is, it was one of the worst incidents of its kind at the time, and Jack in the Box nearly went under for good. Their name was tarnished, and no one would dare eat there. So, what did they do? They tried to rebrand themselves as Monterrey Jack's instead.
The problem is, it's essentially still Jack in the Box with nothing more than a new sign and name. The leadership, business practices, food sources, quality standards, and sanitary standards all remain unchanged.
Which brings me back to Kamala Harris. They've done nothing more than slap a new label on the same product. It's the same Kamala Harris as always, just with a different facade.
There was a time when you could be fairly confident that a rebrand wouldn't fool anyone. People would catch on quickly. "Hey, wait a minute, this is just a Sourdough Jack with a new name. What's going on?" But the difference is that the times we are living through now are probably the most politically divided as we have ever seen.
In times like these, logic and critical thinking go right out the window, and they have.
Yet, I can't shake the feeling that times might not be so different after all. Perhaps it's just hope, wishful thinking, or even naivety. But I want to believe that as a people, we haven't entirely lost our grip on reality. Can it be that now, when it seems like we've lost all sense, it's really still there? Lurking in the shadows. Just waiting for the right moment to emerge and bring back our faith in the system and what's right in the world.
When you look at the polls, there are so many things that point to this presidential race being a very close one. Based on what we know, it shouldn't be. Not if the elements that make up commonsense were working properly.
Moreover, the media should be falling all over itself over what the Harris campaign is trying to pull off. After all, they own the archives. All they have to do is rewind the tapes, and not all that far back, to see we're being lied to and badly.
The rebranding shouldn't work. Not only based on what they are trying to sell us as the new and improved Kamala Harris. But based on the last four years that Kamala Harris was part of. She went along with all of the policies Biden put into place, and when those policies failed, she went out and defended them.
The economy is humming along. The border is secure. Inflation's not so bad (hey folks, dontcha love this thing we call Bidenomics?)...
How could it ever be possible that the past four years could be in such stark contrast to the four years prior, that we could be lied to about the president's health, and that Kamala Harris could go on the view and tell the hosts she would not change a single Biden policy decision, and still be elected president?
If Kamala Harris pulls this off, take note Jack in the Box. If you ever need a comeback, she's your gal.
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© 2024 Jim Bauer