I guess I can start the ball rolling with comments about last night.

I thought that the argumentative nature of too many dialogues kind of drew too much Oxygen away from things. Nikki Haley was part of the problem, attacking Vivek in an over-relentless manner and doing the same to Scott.

But the worst arguer was Tim Scott himself. I think he destroyed his "nice guy" reputation for sure, by bitterly attacking Vivek and THEN talking over the man when he was trying to reply, and just acting very "out of control" in my opinion.

Part of the silliness of the Scott attack was that it was NOT based upon something Vivek said last night, but what he had said one month ago at the first debate.  Evidently Scott holds grudges and seethes about things and plots his 'revenge' for later. NOT what a good leader should do!

The exchange between Nikki Haley and Scott was also getting very nasty and very very petty.

Even when his name had not been mentioned, it was all too often that Scott's voice would "boom in" with his baritone register before the moderators' could pose their next question.

Mister Tim Scott now appears as a Hilliary like phony: all sweetness on the surface hiding some impatience and resentment inside....

Most of the time, the issues brought up during shouting matches are never clearly resolved. Is Vivek really a staunch supporter of Tik Tok and of the Chinese or have his actions been reasonable? Did Nikki Haley really put a tax on gas or not? Is it really reasonable to accuse Scott of too little action to improve the country during his time in DC? Shouting matches did NOT resolve any of these things

Maybe this was partly the fault of the moderators - they should perhaps find a way to step in and "halt the melee" when things get too heated and the audience can hardly tell what is being said anyway, since they're talking at the same time.

I agree with what one of the candidates - Governor DiSantis - said to Sean Hannity afterwards: viewers watching these crazy shouting matches would be well justified in just changing the channel to watch something else on television.

DiSantis himself was much more cool about things - when Nikki Haley was bashing him, he just smiled and then gently responded and used his response to build into what positive things he would do in office....

As these debates go on - next one is November? what date in November does anyone know? - I sure hope that the "shouting matches" will subside and these people will just calm down so we can actually hear smart coverage of the issues....

Another topic: the economy and oil prices.

Larry Kudlow remarked afterwards that there was too little discussion attacking Bidenomics.

While I agree with Kudlow that the weird claims of Biden about boosting the economy ought to be called out there was a more glaring omission.

In this debate and also in the last debate, I think that nothing was said about high gas prices.

The opportunity came in the first debate when the topic of the economy came up, but Pence, and I think Nikki Haley both spoke only about "too much Washington spending" and they said not a word about the gas prices.

But the high gas prices are not only bad in themselves but they then lead to inflation across the board, as commerce all depends upon moving goods from place to place.

The lack of mention of gas prices and how to correct the problem was a glaring error, I think.

And I believe that a big part of the cause was the killing of the pipeline by Biden and also  the restrictions on American drilling and finally the arbitrary requirements for EV production and restriction on gas vehicle production.

All this not only squeezes oil supplies and the oil sector but discourages investors with the inevitable result that gas prices will skyrocket like they did.

Not one word at either debate?

I know that crime and the influx of illegals is extremely important, but why no mention of oil prices? Are the FOX moderators and candidates all too ignorant to be aware of this fundamentally important issue?

Are there corporate sponsors of FOX who were censoring the questions? Or did the head honchos at FOX have some reason to avoid this crucial topic?

The winner of the debate: Joseph R. Biden. His opponents look like the keystone cops ( with the possible exceptions of DiSantis and Christie and Burgum who were a bit more dignified. Pence was alright too, but a bit "invisible"? He seemed to fade off the stage for me, with too little chance to talk).

Thanks for listening!

Doug