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

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

The consequences are real, the debate are theater

is too

I assumed that's what Andrew was saying. Unless they've changed since the last ones I saw and the loser is now summarily executed. Which I might support.

I dunno with a projected audience of 100 million and a record # of undecideds I kinda feel like this one may in fact matter

I can't wait to see which candidate is tougher! Who will be the true American Ninja Warrior!

I dunno with a projected audience of 100 million and a record # of undecideds I kinda feel like this one may in fact matter

― frogbs, M

I love how the media and advertisers has created the conditions whereby the debate will get judged. If they say 100 million will watch, then it must be true!

enh. whatever.

538 now projecting this as a coinflip

why the fuck is this even happening, because Clinton took a tumble on 9/11?

I'm trying not to panic but there's something that feels inevitable about all this. I seriously wake up in a panic thinking Donald fucking Trump is going to be the next president and that a major economic crash may wind up as the best-case scenario

tbf we're probably going to get a major economic crash no matter what happens

I'm just going to keep this in an open notepad file so I can c+p when necessary:

Donald Trump will never be president of the United States.

Mainly because he's going to rip that stupid bible in half while being sworn in and declare himself Emperor Don.

welp, hope you're right

Kneel before Don

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?

fwiw this is how Martha Stewart ended up in jail

And I'll bet dollars to donuts that she has (or had) more money than Trump. Look out, Donnie!

All hosts of The Apprentice end up in jail

did martha stewart ever host??? she would be amazing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice:_Martha_Stewart

I had a disturbing flashback over the weekend to the Kerry/Bush debate. Kerry did a decent job of spelling out the poor justification and lack of international backing for the continued war on terror, followed by Bush taking a second, then quipping "you forgot Poland!"

for the life of me I can't remember a single thing Kerry said but I'll probably remember "you forgot Poland!" until the day I die

not sure I have the heart to watch these Clinton/Trump debates

"There is so much to know and so much to learn and so much diplomacy and kindness and introspection that goes with that kind of job," Stewart told CNNMoney during a luncheon for Andrea Bocelli's foundation Sunday. "And it does not exist in the world of Donald Trump."

For Stewart, the stakes are high and the only choice is Hillary Clinton.

"This is the most important election of the last hundred years," she said. "We have to be very certain that we elect a person who has experience, knowledge, a base of education in the world of world politics as well as domestic politics and so obviously I'm voting for Hillary Clinton. And we just can't have a country run by someone who is totally unprepared for what comes.

Stewart, 75, had a very public falling out with Trump in 2006, after he called out her NBC "Apprentice" spinoff show, "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," for low ratings. Trump created and executive produced the show along with Mark Burnett.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Real-estate mogul Donald Trump and domestic diva Martha Stewart fired back at each other in a prime-time-worthy battle of words.
"If I'd had my druthers, there would have been only one 'Apprentice' on the air at one time," Stewart recently told Newsweek magazine.

"The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," NBC's much-hyped new version of the popular reality show launched with Donald Trump, suffered lackluster ratings.

In an interview, she said that having both versions of "The Apprentice" air during the same season was "unfair" but added that "Donald really wanted to stay on."
Stewart said that she was supposed to start out her new show by firing Trump, so that hers would be the only version of "The Apprentice" left on the air.
Trump shot back in a published letter to Stewart on Tuesday, calling her a liar. "Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone," he wrote. Stewart was convicted of lying about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. (Research) stock and served five months in prison.

Trump also wrote: "Your performance was terrible in that the show lacked mood, temperament and just about everything a show needs for success."
"I knew it would fail as soon as I first saw it -- and your low ratings bore me out."

In a statement issued late Tuesday, Stewart said Trump's "letter is so mean-spirited and reckless that I almost can't believe my longtime friend Donald Trump wrote it."