I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

xxp lauer could have stayed home and thought up more money saving travel tips. fuck nbc for propping him up as if he's some kind of journalist. what the fuck kind of world are we living in when a morning talk show host is tasked with posing questions to a reality TV star about if he's ready to be president. fuck this election

https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/773851435477762048

Aleppo was one of the minor Marx brothers iirc

Meanwhile, there was this fun moment with Gary Johnson, who doesn't know what/where Aleppo is

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/gary-johnson-asks-what-is-aleppo-760358979962?cid=sm_fb_msnbc_native

oh, xpost paws

In a way, I almost find the second part more distasteful, where he goes through a wellknown and well rehearsed spiel on how Syria is a mess because we supported regime change. The absolute authority and selfassurance he brings to a subject he's just admitted he knows nothing about. He knows nothing of the specifics, but the outcome was still 'inevitable'.

Goddamn, dude running for president. I'm ignorant as shit and I know what an Aleppo is.

What the fuck is happening in this country?!

Lauer's getting all sorts of hell this morning, just like Stephanopoulos did in 2008, so I wouldn't worry too much about Trump getting a pass. It could even help Clinton in the debates. She can be as aggressive calling him out as she needs to be now--the moment has passed where he was going to go into the debates with an absurdly low bar to clear. The bar should still be absurdly low for him, but because of the polls and because of last night, I don't think it is anymore.

I can't remember which perennial 80s/90s sitcom supporting actor Gary Johnson reminds me of, but it's all I can think about whenever his Droopy Dog ass is being interviewed and it drives me nuts.

In those days there was a fifth Rutle, Leppo, who mainly stood at the back. He couldn't play the guitar, but he knew how to have a good time, and in Hamburg that was more difficult

Trump about "cyber" last night:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrwzbmoXYAAe-sh.jpg

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/018/489/nick-young-confused-face-300x256_nqlyaa.jpg

Wait...seriously? That's seriously something the GOP presidential candidate said, and he hasn't been definitively shut out of the race and perhaps moved into a group home for the mentally handicapped?

Good luck, humanity.

idk what else lauer could have done

I dunno call out the dude who is blatantly lying to you for one

Maybe a press a little so the dude running for president actually has to answer a straight questions

Like he wouldn't even walk back his "I know more about ISIS than the generals do" comment, how the hell do you just let that pass

holy shit at gary johnson's blank-eyed, vacant 'aaaannnnd what is aleppo?'

time for the libertarians to be taken over by that fat guy who stripped on stage during their convention

Clinton can score a big 2X point bonus in debate #1 if she says "I'm going to hold you accountable for your lies since they [waves dismissively at moderators] won't."

this is pretty amazing too on a number of levels - mika holds an iphone showing video of gary johnson attempting to clarify his ignorance of aleppo with an incoherent series of run-on sentences

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/johnson-seeks-to-clarify-aleppo-remarks-760369731559

http://d158ejkbvy3pxw.cloudfront.net/wp-poricontent/uploads/2016/03/Time-2.jpg

yeah I mean all things considered I was pretty impressed by Clinton last night and I kinda get the impression she can't wait to lay waste to Donald J. on the 26th

the debate prep should be remarkably easy. you know exactly what Trump's going to say. you know he won't back down on any of the ten-thousand dumb comments he's made and you know exactly what he's going to lie about. and yeah if nothing else this is at least going to let her team know that the mods can't be trusted to fact check him.

If the cyber comment is any indication he won't directly comment on anything, though if you're lucky he might vomit out at least one word that has some relation to the question that was asked.

why can't she do w/ him what christie did to rubio and just be like "dude has nothing intelligent to say. he just rambles word salad stream of consciousness hoping you won't notice that he is a total ignoramus." "...and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future." "there he goes again."

She can and should

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/johnson-seeks-to-clarify-aleppo-remarks-760369731559?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

haha he tries to make it better and makes it 100x worse

Hilldawg giving another press conference right now, she's just kind of standing up there shaking her head

oh mannn at gary johnson. what a clown.

He reacts as if he's being chastened by a coworker for not keeping up with current events. Yeah, he probably should learn more. Preferably before running for fucking president of the United States.

I don't get how this election is even a contest.

Christopher Hill, ex US-ambassador in Iraq, someone who really should know better called Aleppo "the ISIS capital" in response to Johnson's remarks.

I don't know which is worse.

didn't watch the lauer thing but yea that whole equivalence bullshit has been happening this whole election. NPR has been uniformly terrible at this, has anyone else noticed how bad they've been? they were talking about the "cyber" comment last night and were ridiculously generous, like "there is still a little of the stream of consciousness tendency but trump is really trying to push that he will be the tougher commander-in-chief"

this election is so fucking depressing.

This election = last 20 years

one takes small comforts, like watching joe scarborough having a blowhard breakdown in response to mika brzezinski pushing on johnson's pathetic performance - http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/stunning-mortifying-johnson-unaware-of-aleppo-760387651580

didn't watch the lauer thing but yea that whole equivalence bullshit has been happening this whole election. NPR has been uniformly terrible at this, has anyone else noticed how bad they've been? they were talking about the "cyber" comment last night and were ridiculously generous, like "there is still a little of the stream of consciousness tendency but trump is really trying to push that he will be the tougher commander-in-chief"

― marcos, Thursday, September 8, 2016 8:57 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't remember if it's an explicit directive but IIRC NPR tries to maintain as unbiased a stance as possible wrt politics because of government funding. So, as is the case with pretty much all television news media, I basically pay zero attention to any of their political coverage.

btw I guess this will hardly be mentioned with all the other craziness but Trump did admit that he doesn't actually have a plan to defeat ISIS

Lauer: So, is the plan you’ve been hiding this whole time asking someone else for their plan?

Trump: No. But when I do come up with a plan that I like, and that perhaps agrees with mine — or maybe doesn’t — I may love what the generals come back with…

A second grader would get an F- for that sentence construction.

MAKES NO SENSE, TRY HARDER NEXT TIME!!

No. But when I do come up with a plan that I like, and that perhaps agrees with mine

wut?

He probably doesn't know what Aleppo is either

I'd bet my life savings on it

it's one of those spotted big cats, right?

Fingers crossed that a 'concerned' Trump is involved in an industrial accident while checking out the troubled Alpo situation and winds up being canned and fed to dogs.

why do you hate dogs

Trump: so healthy it'll make your dog's head spin, I promise you.

he's got previous form in the dog food industry

https://cmgpbppostonpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/acc-trumpsteakpix-1-1.jpg

Really how hard would it be to get Trump to claim that he'd be made into only the greatest dog food?

Npr is an embarrassment

drudge is going with a conspiracy theory that hillary was wearing an earpiece at the forum last night

i know he never went anywhere but HE'S BACK BABY

To be perfectly honest, my initial response to the gaffe was 'how can he not know the capital of Syria?' which is wrong as well. Nor is it the capital of ISIS, as the NYT, or someone writing in the NYT, said in an article attacking Johnson. I'm not running for president either, though.

I can totally see Clinton messing up a freebie like the debates. The problem she (everyone?) seems to have is in treating this like a normal election, even though there have been umpteen examples to the contrary. So maybe she goes hard the first debate and Trump Inc. derides her for being shrill, or she is adult/docile, and he steamrolls her with BS. Or worst of all, they are both on their best behavior and nothing comes of it at all thanks to lame (which is to say, likely) moderators. As long as no one publicly calls out Trump to his face for his lying and bullshit and ignorance, he can apparently get away with saying literally anything, which puts the burden on Clinton to alter the dynamics of the debate. Which means being fast and loose and funny and smart and basically any number of variables that can lead her to fumble, since it seems she's being held to a superhuman standard of perfection against the human stain.

the rest of his answer is pretty good

A stunned Barnicle replied, “You’re kidding?” before having to explain to the presidential candidate on-air that “Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.”

“Got it, got it,” Johnson said, before outlining his policy on the Syrian civil war, which includes “joining hands with Russia to diplomatically bring the civil war to an end.”

ah Barnicle, the plagiarist

it seems increasingly obvious that trump is mentally challenged -- that he lacks some basic cognitive apparatus that most adults have. whether that's a deficit that's always been present or it's something that's come on more recently, i wouldn't know.

his entire candidacy really is some kind of ghastly punchline to a sick joke, something like, "what would happen if we ran a belligerent, mentally-handicapped man for president?" happily the answer is likely not "he'd win" but it's been much too close to ever again reside comfortably in the illusions we all appear to have indulged prior to this summer.