I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

Tomboto and Lion's arguement has me thinking that its actually a great idea to have the president Inaugurated nearly two months after the election. The AG could start an investigation right after election night and the new prez might be getting subpoenas while (s)he's unpacking boxes, while issues of partisan pressure had been avoided.

http://time.com/4506963/donald-trump-gennifer-flowers-debate/

No Flowers, apparently

bummer

You don't bring me Flowers
You don't swing Wisconsin

Once again, Trump fails to bring home the D-List celebrity bacon...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOV6bf6DzVs

\m/

David Fahrenthold is promising something big coming tomorrow about the Trump Foundation. Cautiously excited.

Don't those related tweets indicate perhaps criminal tax evasion, albeit mitigated by his "ignorance *is* a defense" note? That is, perhaps Trump Inc. was truly up to illegal stuff, but he was following the advice of council, which perhaps led him astray?

I saw someone on twitter say that if the moderator of the debate aren't supposed to have fact checking authority, then... why should it be a journalist? If they're just there to keep the thing going, get Ryan Seacrest to do it.

Stay safe, America. The world is fucked up.

No, get Oprah!

Someone on twitter

It was Ryan Seacrest

No, it was Oprah!

I don't know whether moderators should intervene or not. Partly I think no, that's the whole point of the debate, for the two people up there to go at each other. But as What's A. Mook said on one of the shows this morning, if Clinton has to spend the whole debate fact-checking Trump, she won't have time for anything else.

obviously there can't be an expectation that the moderator is Arbiter of Right and Wrong but there's a huge gulf between asking for that and asking the moderator, you know, to at least *question* the obviously wrong thing that was just said (ie "well now, actually Obama wasn't President in the 60s so he couldn't have been at fault for Bay of Pigs", not "I think you'll find trickle down economics don't work!").

https://twitter.com/victomato/status/780119655423676416

Maybe instead of a moderator trying to fact check, the network should just do the CNN chryon thing and state facts on the screen so that the viewers get some helpful details but the debate itself doesn't get bogged down.

"Trump says he will take the oil (this doesn't make sense)"

Lawn Sign Update: I was walking through my neighborhood this morning, seeing a number Trump signs. I know a few specific homes with Hillary bumperstickers, but Trump yard signs are much moore common. Expected this, as it's a pretty Republican neighborhood within a majority Dem zipcode, but depressing regardless. Finally came across a home with a Clinton/Kaine sign and it brightened up my day. Then I noticed their lawn jockey.

same shit in 2012

Lots of Clinton signs in my neighborhood plus a few Johnson signs, no Trump. I'm in suburban Austin, so my neighborhood is probably more republican than the city overall.

Anderson Cooper back to his old glasses. He had these weird ones on the other night with a wire nose bridge.

during the eagles game today again during halftime they ran two political commercials - a pro hillary ad (the one where she's championing children throughout her life) followed by an anti-mcginty ad (and also in like the first quarter there was an anti pat toomey ad). no trump advertisements.

The view from 96:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/my-nineteenth-presidential-election-and-the-most-important

Happy to report that Clinton/Kaine yard signs are EVERYWHERE in my town as of this week

A stray Trump/Pence sign here or there

I stick at a different moment—the lighthearted comment he made when, in early August, an admiring veteran presented him with a replica of his Purple Heart and Mr. Trump said, “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” What? Mr. Trump is saying he wishes that he had joined the armed forces somehow (he had a chance but skimmed out, like so many others of his time) and then had died or been scarred or maimed in combat? This is the dream of a nine-year-old boy, and it impugns the five hundred thousand young Americans who have died in combat in my lifetime, and the many hundreds of thousands more whose lives were altered or shattered by their wounds of war. I take this personally, representing as I do the last sliver of the sixteen million Americans who served in the military in my war.

My lunch walk route leads me past what I've always taken to be a fairly conservative household; a weathered minivan sits out front, wearing bumper stickers that make clear where the owner stood in 2004, 2008, and 2012.
It'll be interesting and instructive to see if a Trump/Pence sticker surfaces there. I'll keep you posted.

y'all don't have to rub it in, ok?

http://i.imgur.com/sXUleQH.jpg

Someone I work with posted this on Facebook over the summer, something he photographed about 30 miles outside of Toronto.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/sign_zpszg3xckx6.jpg

"How far did I cycle today? And I thought I was riding north."

probably placed by the folks in charge of trump's push to win ontario; you know it's never been done by a republican candidate yet.

Ontario's in play!

Newfoundland is a long shot tho

I see tons of Clinton signs and and a couple of Johnson things, like the t shirt on a guy sitting near me at the playground. I wanted to ask how he enjoyed the taxpayer funded public facilities but didn't want to voluntarily start a conversation about libertarianism with an Idahoan.

I also finally saw a shitload of trump signs last week on the way to Seattle, all in the cascades where the rugged individualist ranchers don't have to worry about pissing off all of their Mexican neighbors like the farmers a couple miles east.

only two trump houses in town that i've found but one is rly going above and beyond: at least a dozen signs, many homemade/handlettered, one giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN banner

Last night I saw a 6'3ish drunk young blonde man yelling make america great again repeatedly right in the face of a late 40's diminutive Hispanic woman. I hate this election so much.

Can we give prohibition another shot

I'm sure we've discussed this already but I watched A Face In The Crowd at the weekend and its a great movie but there's no way the ending would pan out that way for Trump - his fans are too invested in his grift, he could spit in their faces and call it champagne and they'd lap it up. I just don't know how you get past that level of blind idiot devotion, beyond retroactive education. I mean, this election proves that the Dems/the Left's best hope for the future is to invest heavily in education, esp civic education, so people know better than to vote so hopelessly against their best wishes (full disclosure, I am a British and yes still scarred from Brexit)

That's sickening, Clay.

I just heard Robby Mook spinning a Trump-performed-better-tha-expected-so-what angle... before the debate. That's the Thrillary campaign in a motherfucking nutshell.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/how-important-is-the-first-presidential-debate.html

New Yorker journos hub-bubbing about wtf will happen tonight. If nothing, I was interested in how much they repeat points we've already made in these threads.

....
Jonathan Chait: One more thing about Trump: He has trouble filling up his allotted time. Has to repeat himself and still doesn’t use it all. I think that becomes more glaring ina two-person debate. In a multi-candidate debate, the 10 second insult works okay.

Eric Levitz: Yeah. to this point, the debates were designed by television networks with an eye towards entertainment value. Now Trump is in a format that isn’t crafted for spectacle, but some stuffy notion of the civic good.

Rebecca Traister: One other thing about this debate and its possible implications: will there ever have been a more watched debate?

Ed Kilgore: The first 2012 debate drew 67 million, which was a record. They’re thinking 100 million for this one.

Jesse Singal: It’s such an interesting inversion of the basic dynamic all election, which has been that cameras chase Trump around everywhere and he puts on whatever show he wants to put on. Now he has to show up at a set time for a set span and, in theory, act a certain way and answer certain tough questions

Rebecca Traister: But I think this goes back to the core question here: What does it look like when he’s in that situation, speaking in public with a woman who is much much smarter than he is?

And this seems appropriately dumb:

NBC is going to stream all this shit in VR

They’re thinking 100 million for this one.

No one would give a shit about this endlessly repeated turdoid if this wasn't 100% showbiz, suckers.

Well, yeah. Personally, I can't wait to talk about the ads!

at least the Super Bowl only inflicts brain damage on the participants

^

New Yorker journos

New York Magazine, not New Yorker

It's showbiz except it affects billions of people? I'm sure everyone here would be happier if this debate wasn't meaningful.

i don't get "except" there, AF.

the debate isn't meaningful in any sense of the word