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

Xpost Wow, and that's just based on three pages from one part of 1995's return!

Honestly I'm most impressed by how it happened. Wonder who sent it?

The documents consisted of three pages from what appeared to be Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax returns. The pages were mailed last month to Susanne Craig, a reporter at The Times who has written about Mr. Trump’s finances. The documents were the first page of a New York State resident income tax return, the first page of a New Jersey nonresident tax return and the first page of a Connecticut nonresident tax return. Each page bore the names and Social Security numbers of Mr. Trump and Marla Maples, his wife at the time. Only the New Jersey form had what appeared to be their signatures.

The three documents arrived by mail at The Times with a postmark indicating they had been sent from New York City. The return address claimed the envelope had been sent from Trump Tower.

On Wednesday, The Times presented the tax documents to Jack Mitnick, a lawyer and certified public accountant who handled Mr. Trump’s tax matters for more than 30 years, until 1996. Mr. Mitnick was listed as the preparer on the New Jersey tax form.

Mr. Mitnick, 80, now semiretired and living in Florida, said that while he no longer had access to Mr. Trump’s original returns, the documents appeared to be authentic copies of portions of Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax returns. Mr. Mitnick said the signature on the tax preparer line of the New Jersey tax form was his, and he readily explained an obvious anomaly in the way especially large numbers appeared on the New York tax document.

that makes him smart

Trump has created many enemies. Oppo research teams know when to release their troves for maximum impact.

Sadly this may generate some sympathy for him but what a shitty week for that squinty melon-headed shitbeak.

“I spent 50 percent of my thought process working the mike.”

That makes him dumb

re: Sanders's college plan, we've been over this before but it might be worth revisiting his own language on it:

Today, total tuition at public colleges and universities amounts to about $70 billion per year. Under the College for All Act, the federal government would cover 67% of this cost, while the states would be responsible for the remaining 33% of the cost. To qualify for federal funding, states must meet a number of requirements designed to protect students, ensure quality, and reduce ballooning costs. States will need to maintain spending on their higher education systems, on academic instruction, and on need-based financial aid. In addition, colleges and universities must reduce their reliance on low-paid adjunct faculty. States would be able to use funding to increase academic opportunities for students, hire new faculty, and provide professional development opportunities for professors. No funding under this program may be used to fund administrator salaries, merit-based financial aid, or the construction of non-academic buildings like stadiums and student centers.

Vague? Sure, but not more than most policy proposals awaiting considerable fleshing-out. So it's not like it just never occurred to him that controlling costs would have to be an essential part of the scheme. The "meet a number of requirements" language there stands in for, one imagines, dozens or hundreds of pages of legislation hashing out the hoops the schools have to jump through. Comparing it to "build a wall" seems unfair to me.

Those darn Russian hackers

xp

and man, of all the things in that NYT tax scoop, this might be the best:

Because the documents sent to The Times did not include any pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 federal tax return, it is impossible to determine how much he may have donated to charity that year. The state documents do show, though, that Mr. Trump declined the opportunity to contribute to the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Fund, the New Jersey Wildlife Conservation Fund or the Children’s Trust Fund. He also declined to contribute $1 toward public financing of New Jersey’s elections for governor.

like seriously how cheap do you have to be, when you are writing off nine hundred million dollars, to skip on this stuff? like for real any normal person would just be like, "fuck it, check all of those boxes, i just won big and i'm buyin', folks!"

All this, and it's only October 1st.

The statement continued, “Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”

Lololol "@BarackObama who wants to raise all our taxes, only pays 20.5% on $790k salary. http://1.usa.gov/HFZJKH Do as I say not as I do."

Tweeted by...Donald Trump on 4/13/2012

Vague? Sure, but not more than most policy proposals awaiting considerable fleshing-out. So it's not like it just never occurred to him that controlling costs would have to be an essential part of the scheme. The "meet a number of requirements" language there stands in for, one imagines, dozens or hundreds of pages of legislation hashing out the hoops the schools have to jump through. Comparing it to "build a wall" seems unfair to me.

you can also imagine dozens or hundreds of pages of legislation hashing out 'the wall'. some cheap token 'wall' getting built under president trump seems closer to being within the realm of possibility than sanders' college plan ever was going to be under president sanders.

well for one thing 'the wall' is a fake nonsense solution to nothing, so further elaboration of its details makes it worse. free college is a good idea to solve an actual problem and has been implemented in one way or another before, successfully, so further elaboration of its details is a sensible thing to work on. it's a big bold plan, sure, but sanders flogged it to build a coalition for it, and a universe that actually produced a president sanders would be different from ours in enough ways that implementing some version of the free college scheme is, if not likely, not some utterly absurd non-possibility. trump is flogging the wall to trick and manipulate people, and a universe where he became president, from what we've seen so far, might well be one where nobody gives him a damn thing legislatively, least of all 'the wall.'

i don't get the comparison, and it's not just that i like the one idea and dislike the other.

tuition-free college exists in countries with higher education systems that are structured and funded in vastly different ways than they are here. and it existed in the past for some american schools when our higher education institutions looked almost nothing like what they do today. it wasn't 'implemented' as some top down policy solution for a problem, they just didn't have the problem.

I don't think sanders was constructing his platform to trick and manipulate people the same way that trump is. but anyone who did believe these things were remotely possible was being tricked and manipulated nonetheless. and he doesn't have the excuse of being naive here - dude's been in congress for decades and he knows how things work, especially today. obama also started out with the 'well in the theoretical universe where someone like me can get elected, our political institutions could work differently' plan.

btw Phil D, i have no saints, including youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

(say it like Pacino as Roy Cohn)

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/analysis-trump-may-have-had-worst-week-presidential-campaign-history-n658071

“You’re unsuspecting,” Trump said. “Right now, you say to your wife: ‘Let’s go to a movie after Trump.’ But you won’t do that because you’ll be so high and so excited that no movie is going to satisfy you. Okay? No movie. You know why? Honestly? Because they don’t make movies like they used to — is that right?”

Meanwhile, this reads like an incredible, and incredibly sad, short story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/finally-someone-who-thinks-like-me/2016/10/01/c9b6f334-7f68-11e6-9070-5c4905bf40dc_story.html

And that's ok. Posted upthread btw

Painful: Glenn Beck wildly caricaturing Malcolm X (or Glenn Beck even uttering the name Malcolm X).

Was this posted?

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/what-its-like-to-be-a-female-reporter-covering-donald-trump.html?mid=facebook_nymag

the spin this morning from the Trump camp is to amplify the "that makes me smart" answer he gave a while back - Giuliani calling him a "genius," Gingrich on the same lines, etc

And his 40% will buy that but I have to imagine the low info voters are going to be turned off on a guy that capitalized on the employees he failed

trump-s-long-list-tweet-shaming-taxes-n658061

Oops

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-s-long-list-tweet-shaming-taxes-n658061

Is the next debate tomorrow? Same time? I only just got my sleep pattern back to normal.

Mailing that stuff to the Times from Trump Tower is the best thing ever.

More best thing ever, Guiliani talking about Alicia Machado: "...she's had an unfortunate past, she was the driver in a bank robbery (stops himself mid-sentence)--never mind about her."

Lol, no she wasn't. It was an assassination.

I think the VP debate is next. I assume that will largely be about Trump as well, with Kaine/moderator making him defend Trump BS.

(And also, she got acquitted.)

Lol, no she wasn't. It was an assassination.

Who was she driving, Ted Cruz's father?

the spin this morning from the Trump camp is to amplify the "that makes me smart" answer he gave a while back - Giuliani calling him a "genius," Gingrich on the same lines, etc

I mean, does anything in the NYT article suggest that Trump actually lied or cheated on his taxes? What I gathered was that he (or his accountant) just knew the rules and benefited from a system that is (or was) very generous to millionaires in the real estate business? The situation is gross but I'm not totally clear on how people see the ethics of this: do people think he should have intentionally avoided declaring the loss (or understated its value) and increased his tax bill on moral grounds? (I'm not 100% opposed to that idea but I haven't heard anyone openly argue this as a general principle.) To what extent should someone do this? Until they pay the average national percentage? The larger problem would seem to be with the tax code, either way.

Who was she driving, Ted Cruz's father?

― (SNIFFING AND INDISTINCT SOBBING) (Tom D.), 2. oktober 2016 16:21 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Her boyfriend, who was trying to kill his brother-in-law at his wife's funeral, because he - the boyfriend/brother, not the husband/brother-in-law - blamed him - the husband/brother-in-law, not the boyfriend/brother - for driving his pregnant sister to suicide.

I half think that the journalists took one of her telenovelas to be real. And also, again, she was acquitted as there was no proof she even was at the funeral.

the VP debate is on Tuesday

I'm seeing a lot of Trump ads on TV all of a sudden, and I love it, because I live in NJ - he's basically pouring money down the drain if he's advertising in the NY/NJ media market. He's gonna lose this state like 85/15.

Xxxpost it isn't that he did anything illegal, but he has criticized others publicly for non-payment of income taxes and if true, he basically got to run companies into the ground and benefit from the lies he ruined.

But really...it's hard to spin this when you refuse to be forthright about it. Had he released his own return, he could have had a chance to control the narrative.

Now he can't and it will appear he was hoding the fact.

I mean this isn'even reason number 2,345 why people shouldn't vote for this idiot, but he can hardly paint himself as a man of the people.

*lives
*hiding
*albatross

It also runs contrary (on a superficial level) to his persona as a brilliant businessman, tho that shit has been public knowledge

Yeah, it's not necessarily that he did anything illegal, it's that the concussive impact of this fraction of a fraction of one year's tax return reaffirms every negative narrative of Trump as bad at business, personally greedy, uncharitable, eager to game the system, etc., and his steadfast refusal to release returns just magnifies suspicion and morbid curiosity.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtxVTtwW8AEaC_4.jpg:large

otm (also what a dweeb)

Oh well yeah, I was sort of assuming the rest of that stuff was obvious but fair enough. I always thought that he was a 'good businessman' in the sense of 'good at making himself rich'.
xp

He is (allegedly) good at making himself rich, but only at the expense of others: not paying bills, taking bankruptcy, letting everyone else drown while he floats on a life preserver of money. But there is every reason to question the veracity of his claims of extreme wealth, too. Which Clinton has done, to an extent. Plus this tax return leak opens the door for Clinton to basically say anything she want out loud about his returns, not terribly unlike what Trump did re: Obama's birth certificate and college records except well within the realm of reason and expectation. It also opens the door for more leaked returns, perhaps some more damning, which is not what anyone under various investigations wants.

Xpost this is really the type of thing that is targeted at low info voters. The rest don't usually get swayed by an October surprise unless it involves murder or cunnilingus

I have it on good authority that Trump eats shit.

Two other things that came up this morning: one panelist pointing out that the illegal immigrants Trump rails against pay 12 billion in taxes a year (don't know if that figure's accurate; I'm sure it's being checked out) while he may have paid nothing for 20 years, and footage of him from earlier in the campaign saying how awful it is that rich people he knows pay almost nothing in taxes.

Anyway, it won't matter to anyone already voting for Trump. But it will keep him busy for the next few days--agree with the idea that these stories matter less than his reaction to them.

Has he reacted, or did they take his phone away again?