i got my cleaning and groceries done and i'm about halfway through the second debate, which i'm going to run through to get it over with. i should be back to work either tonight or tomorrow.

i don't expect my analysis to this point to be popular, but here it is.

i was expecting the second debate to be a complete disaster, and that's more or less what it is so far. what i'm watching is a lot of people throwing what amounts to a bunch of bullshit at biden, who is carefully trying to assert the actual facts of the matter. now, that's not to say i agree with biden - i don't. i think his policies are awful. - but he's at least trying to get an honest debate in amongst a bunch of people that appear to have no interest in such a thing.

and, i have to hand the entire thing very comfortably to biden at this point, but that means i have to curve everybody up. there's a catch on the curve, though. we'll see if somebody steps up in the second half, but, right now, i'm going to have to give biden a D- and everybody else a well deserved F.

also: it's easy to understand that tulsi gabbard got a lot of hits on this night, but i'm not sure it had much to do with what she said. you know who actually watches these debates, right? yeah. ok, moving on...

i just want to close the thought with an example, though, and it's about what obama did or not do regarding immigration reform.

i watched months - it may have been years - of whitehouse press briefings over 2014 and 2015, and i have a very clear understanding of what actually happened. obama was absolutely deadset on comprehensive immigration reform, but he had absolutely no support from the republican held congress, and this is an almost entirely congressional issue. after trying for years to get a bipartisan bill, what happened is that he finally gave up and passed an executive order regarding the dreamers that is, in truth, of exceedingly grey legality. the actual reality is that the dream act is probably unconstitutional, in the form it became law under (executive order).

so, of what value is there in sitting there and blaming the president for not passing something he had no legal authority to pass? the failure to get anything passed is fully the fault of the republican congress, and that's really simply all there is to it. and, the step that obama made was so drastic and desperate that it would probably be struck down by a proper court. what i watched unfold in front of me was consequently in a parallel reality where facts don't exist. and, biden was the only defender of reality on stage.

i don't think i'd vote for joe biden. but, i'm not going to support a bunch of dishonest politicians that are looking to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, either.

i'll say this again: what's happening at the border is not a failure of oversight, although there is a failure of oversight in motion. nor is it the result of specific cruelty by an insane president, or even just a cynical ploy to win votes. what's happening at the border is systemic, it's by design, and it's not going to be altered by anybody standing on that debate stage. the raids are part of a complicated and very purposeful system of state-managed labour for the transnational corporate sector.

if you don't understand the problem, you can't take steps to fix it, and nobody on stage understands the problem. maybe, for some of them, they're just ignorant. it's possible, it really is. but, for all of the talk about prison-industrial complexes, let me throw this question out there: how much money have each of these candidates taken from big agribusiness?

we'll see what else comes up.