Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/16/watch-the-most-midwestern-moment-in-the-history-of-televised-senate-debates.html
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I don’t think I had ever heard Joni Ernst speak before watching this clip last night. I am 90% sure she is an AI developed by deep in the Koch Network in conjunction with Hoover Institute.
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Ask her about the rate of return from her stock portfolio and you’d get clear answers.
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Yeah, that’s just insane that the Senator from Iowa is not able to rattle off corn and soybean prices. That, the trends for futures, hog prices, export numbers, she should be able to rattle that stuff off without a second thought while talking about the ag report from that morning and what she had for lunch the last time she talked with the Secretary of Ag.
To borrow a phrase from a different kind of farm, you’re all hat and no cattle, Senator.
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That frozen rictus of a smile is a dead giveaway.
If they’d asked her about December-delivery frozen pork-belly futures, she might have had a better answer.
Maybe the soybeans are $5.50?
They wanted the breakeven price for soybeans, but she gave the price for corn - about $5.50. It sounds like they had asked her opponent about corn, and she didn’t realize they changed it to soybeans for her.
Hilariously, I think this is closer to the actual price of soybeans.
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Coulda been. Either way, in addition to knowing the price of locally produced commodities, I think listening is a valuable skill in a politician. Anyone listening to the moderator could hear what she was being asked about.
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Then there was her toddler-like whataboutism response when called out; “But my opponent didn’t answer the question, either!”
REPLY: ‘She did actually, but her question was about corn.’
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She has all the emotional affect of Lisa Kudrow in Web Therapy.
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The moderator clarified that point several times, but the Senator was either refusing to listen or pretending not to understand the question because she knew she couldn’t answer it.
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“No fair! You didn’t ask a question I had already heard the answer to!”
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Breakeven price $10.05, market price: $10.6225. Approx ~5.7% proft. Not exactly the highest margin business, farming…
Sources:
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True. Margins are so tight that Soybean farmers have to monitor their crop’s moisture content religiously since its sold by weight. Missing a crop delivery by one day can sap away an entire year’s profits
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The full clip is even more telling: Theresa Greenfield totally nails her question (on corn), and Joni Ernst totally evades hers:
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