Time not well spent

The wife really wanted to watch the debate (she doesn't follow things as closely as I do and still gets a good laugh out of the batshit crazy things they say) so I endured an overload of Republican smegma last night, and am feeling slightly hung over today as a result.  (No drinking games; I just don't tolerate stupid as well as I used to).

The high point of the evening for me was Ted Cruz doing his best Rick Perry imitation.

Four years ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry famously blew up his presidential campaign when he was unable during a Republican presidential debate to name the three federal departments he wanted to eliminate. In Tuesday’s Republican debate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz set a slightly higher bar for himself, promising to eliminate five federal agencies. He only managed to name four of them.

In answer to a question about his economic plan, Cruz mentioned “five major agencies that I would eliminate: the IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce and HUD.” 

Obviously, Cruz doesn’t like the Department of Commerce, but it hardly seems fair to count it twice. Still, what might have been an epic “Oops” moment passed largely unnoticed. 

Not on Twitter it didn't.

Why can't Texas Republicans count?  Is it because of what they've done for years to our textbooks, with the right-wing freaks elected to the State Board of Education?  The consensus seems to be that this didn't ding him; in fact the chatter again is that he and Marco Rubio helped themselves once more, while Jeb did not.  Trump and Carson, the co-leaders didn't hurt themselves; Carly Fiorina managed to be both victim to Trump's misogyny and Cruella DeVille again, John Kasich got mixed reviews, and Rand Paul was all but invisible again.  Kid's table for him next time, I'm predicting.  The little table was also stiflingly boring, even with Piyush Jundal going for everybody's throat.  The largest target of his rants was Christie, naturally.

It was nice to see that the mods' first question acknowledged the protests outside the Milwaukee venue, about raising the minimum wage.  Nobody on the stage said that it should be, of course, and their reasons for not doing so failed the fact-checking tests.  Trump actually said "wages are too high".

To use the bad-haired bloviator's word against him, I'm tired of these losers constantly preening, pandering, prattling and prevaricating.  (Yes, I know; avoid alliteration always.  Sometimes I just can't help myself.)

Update: Ana Marie Cox's review is best.