Octopus Overlords

Hillary Goddamn Clinton.

Benghazi!

emails!

Charity!

Rip, I just wrote your next 4 posts. Go ahead and take some time off.

Hilarious - Secret Service paying Trump:

The line between ethical and Trump is routinely straddled by Donald Trump and his campaign, particularly when it comes to money. On Thursday, Politico reported, another murky move by the Trump campaign as Federal Elections Commission records show that the Secret Service has paid Trump $1.6 million in reimbursements for Secret Service agents who fly on the candidate’s plane. Politico points out it's standard practice for the agency to reimburse candidates for campaign travel—and the Clinton campaign has been reimbursed $2.6 million in Secret Service travel expenses—but since Trump owns the company TAG Air, Inc. that owns the plane he’s flying, the U.S. Secret Service is, essentially, making payments to Trump himself.

Of note:

What is problematic, particularly when it comes to the appearance of a conflict of interest, is the emerging trend that Trump repeatedly directs campaign dollars and, in this case federal taxpayer dollars, to vendors he owns. Politico ran the numbers on Trump’s of FEC records through August and found “Trump’s campaign has spent at least $8.2 million at Trump's own businesses, including to hold events at his hotels, buy food from his restaurants and rent office space for its headquarters in his Manhattan office tower.”

But he's not a public official, so it's all good.

I wonder if we will ever see a total of how much money he makes on this campaign. Has any candidate ever come out ahead before? I'm fairly certain he's going to be making huge profits of this. Of course, all under the table. No way will he pay any taxes on the money he makes.

I wonder if Tump already owns a construction company that would get the contract to build his wall.

Politico fact-checked every statement, speech, interview, tweet, and slogan issued by Trump and Clinton for a week.

In five days Trump lied 87 times. Trump's lies are listed (and checked) here. It's worth noting that this wasn't even a week where he made headlines for controversy or extreme statements; this was a comparatively calm week for Trump.

Over the same span, they say Clinton lied 8 times. Many of the items on her list are more on the order of exaggerations or technical untruths. (e.g. She lies when she says that Trump still doesn't say that Obama was born in America. Trump did make a teeth-gritting admission of the fact, but no one found his treatment of his own birtherism very convincing.)

But by all means, keep telling us that Clinton is the one who can't be trusted.

Holman wrote:Politico fact-checked every statement, speech, interview, tweet, and slogan issued by Trump and Clinton for a week.

In five days Trump lied 87 times. Trump's lies are listed (and checked) here. It's worth noting that this wasn't even a week where he made headlines for controversy or extreme statements; this was a comparatively calm week for Trump.

Over the same span, they say Clinton lied 8 times. Many of the items on her list are more on the order of exaggerations or technical untruths. (e.g. She lies when she says that Trump still doesn't say that Obama was born in America. Trump did make a teeth-gritting admission of the fact, but no one found his treatment of his own birtherism very convincing.)

But by all means, keep telling us that Clinton is the one who can't be trusted.

Sure, but how many more things did Trump say compared to Hillary? That was probably a week she was taking off.

TheMix wrote:I wonder if we will ever see a total of how much money he makes on this campaign. Has any candidate ever come out ahead before? I'm fairly certain he's going to be making huge profits of this. Of course, all under the table. No way will he pay any taxes on the money he makes.

Whether he comes out ahead on campaign donations/spending depends on whether or not his campaign pays back the money he loaned (rather than gave) to it. Trump has said that won't happen, but then he says a lot of things.

From the article:

Though Clinton spoke for less than half as long as Trump, extrapolating the frequency of her misstatements suggests that even if she, too, spoke for as many hours as Trump, he'd still surpass her nearly four times over.

Trump's PR people responded:

"There is a coordinated effort by the media elites and Hillary Clinton to shamelessly push their propaganda and distract from Crooked Hillary's lies and flailing campaign. All of these 'fact-check' questions can be easily verified, but that’s not what blog sites like Politico want people to believe. Mr. Trump is standing with the people of America and against the rigged system insiders, and it's driving the media crazy. We will continue to speak the truth and communicate directly with the American people on issues they care most about, and we won’t let the dishonest, liberal media intimidate us from speaking candidly and from the heart. A Donald J. Trump presidency will make America great again."

I am SO tired of every time the Republicans get caught red-handed in a lie or with some illogical bill (HB2), the automatic answer is "liberal media/propaganda" etc. Again, one of the reasons I finally got fed up with the party is their assumption that I'm a fucking idiot.

Oh, people say a lot of crazy things when they're Trump.

Yesterday the NYT endorsed Clinton in some of the most powerful terms it has used for a presidential contest. The whole thing is worth a read.

Today they followed up with a rare (maybe unprecedented?) editorial anti-endorsement: Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President.

YellowKing wrote:

"There is a coordinated effort by the media elites and Hillary Clinton to shamelessly push their propaganda and distract from Crooked Hillary's lies and flailing campaign. All of these 'fact-check' questions can be easily verified, but that’s not what blog sites like Politico want people to believe. Mr. Trump is standing with the people of America and against the rigged system insiders, and it's driving the media crazy. We will continue to speak the truth and communicate directly with the American people on issues they care most about, and we won’t let the dishonest, liberal media intimidate us from speaking candidly and from the heart. A Donald J. Trump presidency will make America great again."

Blog site? Is that supposed to be demeaning or something?

They're arguing that the press has no role in challenging politicians.

They're seriously arguing that.

I'll give Trump credit. He's created a situation where he can literally say or claim ANY ridiculous bull shit he wants, and the second someone calls him on it, all he has to do is scream "LIBERAL MEDIA!!" and the bill shit is completely validated in the eyes of his supporters.

That's an fantastic power for a supervillain to have.

Holman wrote:They're arguing that the press has no role in challenging politicians.

They're seriously arguing that.

Of course they are. Especially after Candy Crowley did so in the Romney-Obama debate in 2012. Crowley later admitted that Romney was "right in the main" in his argument that Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack. She admitted that she remembered Obama later saying that it was an act of terror and she "corrected" on that basis -- however she was wrong and her "fact checking" affected the dynamic of the debate.

If you're going to fact check on national TV between two candidates, you better be completely right.

Smutly wrote: Of course they are. Especially after Candy Crowley did so in the Romney-Obama debate in 2012. Crowley later admitted that Romney was "right in the main" in his argument that Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack. She admitted that she remembered Obama later saying that it was an act of terror and she "corrected" on that basis -- however she was wrong and her "fact checking" affected the dynamic of the debate.

This is incorrect, because Romney didn't say that "Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack". Romney stated that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.". And on this, Crowley and Obama were right, he did call it an "act of terror" the day after.

If Romney had said that Obama didn't called it a (pre-planned) terror attack for two weeks, that would have been true (AFAIK)

Defiant wrote:

Smutly wrote: Of course they are. Especially after Candy Crowley did so in the Romney-Obama debate in 2012. Crowley later admitted that Romney was "right in the main" in his argument that Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack. She admitted that she remembered Obama later saying that it was an act of terror and she "corrected" on that basis -- however she was wrong and her "fact checking" affected the dynamic of the debate.

This is incorrect, because Romney didn't say that "Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack". Romney stated that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.". And on this, Crowley and Obama were right, he did call it an "act of terror" the day after.

If Romney had said that Obama didn't called it a (pre-planned) terror attack for two weeks, that would have been true (AFAIK)

So ask yourself how it can be that I can find references on "facts" in one direction and you can find references for "facts" in the other direction coming to different conclusions. Once you have that answer, you then might realize why moderators should not be involved in 'fact checking' unless you want to play into the Trump mantra of the system being rigged.

Smutly wrote: So ask yourself how it can be that I can find references on "facts" in one direction and you can find references for "facts" in the other direction coming to different conclusions. Once you have that answer, you then might realize why moderators should not be involved in 'fact checking' unless you want to play into the Trump mantra of the system being rigged.

I've stated before that I only think statements that are easy to disprove should be fact checked during the debate. And while there are statements that are debatable, there are statements that are flat out false and can be easily and quickly disproven. Unless you start thinking that nothing is "fact" and everything is "opinion".

Smutly wrote:

Defiant wrote:

Smutly wrote: Of course they are. Especially after Candy Crowley did so in the Romney-Obama debate in 2012. Crowley later admitted that Romney was "right in the main" in his argument that Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack. She admitted that she remembered Obama later saying that it was an act of terror and she "corrected" on that basis -- however she was wrong and her "fact checking" affected the dynamic of the debate.

This is incorrect, because Romney didn't say that "Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack". Romney stated that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.". And on this, Crowley and Obama were right, he did call it an "act of terror" the day after.

If Romney had said that Obama didn't called it a (pre-planned) terror attack for two weeks, that would have been true (AFAIK)

So ask yourself how it can be that I can find references on "facts" in one direction and you can find references for "facts" in the other direction coming to different conclusions. Once you have that answer, you then might realize why moderators should not be involved in 'fact checking' unless you want to play into the Trump mantra of the system being rigged.

This happens because one side or the other takes only partial facts and takes them out of context. For example, this Candy Crowley article supports your position but you neglect to state Candy's entire quote:

“We knew that the president had said, ‘These acts of terrors won’t stand,’ or whatever the whole quote was. I think, actually, you know, because right after that, I did turn around and say [to Gov. Romney], ‘but you’re totally correct … they spent two weeks telling us this was about a tape and that there was this, you know, riot outside the Benghazi consulate, which there wasn’t.’ So [Gov. Romney] was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word.”

In fact, in the debate Candy DOES say:

He - he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take - it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.

The "You" there is Candy telling Romney that he was at least partially right.

So if you took the entire article as a whole and took Candy's entire admission as a whole you would (hopefully) come to the same conclusions as Defiant. This is why the phrase "The truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" is uttered in court swearings.

raydude wrote:

Smutly wrote:

Defiant wrote:

Smutly wrote: Of course they are. Especially after Candy Crowley did so in the Romney-Obama debate in 2012. Crowley later admitted that Romney was "right in the main" in his argument that Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack. She admitted that she remembered Obama later saying that it was an act of terror and she "corrected" on that basis -- however she was wrong and her "fact checking" affected the dynamic of the debate.

This is incorrect, because Romney didn't say that "Obama didn't call Benghazi a 'terror attack' for 14 days after the attack". Romney stated that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.". And on this, Crowley and Obama were right, he did call it an "act of terror" the day after.

If Romney had said that Obama didn't called it a (pre-planned) terror attack for two weeks, that would have been true (AFAIK)

So ask yourself how it can be that I can find references on "facts" in one direction and you can find references for "facts" in the other direction coming to different conclusions. Once you have that answer, you then might realize why moderators should not be involved in 'fact checking' unless you want to play into the Trump mantra of the system being rigged.

This happens because one side or the other takes only partial facts and takes them out of context. For example, this Candy Crowley article supports your position but you neglect to state Candy's entire quote:

“We knew that the president had said, ‘These acts of terrors won’t stand,’ or whatever the whole quote was. I think, actually, you know, because right after that, I did turn around and say [to Gov. Romney], ‘but you’re totally correct … they spent two weeks telling us this was about a tape and that there was this, you know, riot outside the Benghazi consulate, which there wasn’t.’ So [Gov. Romney] was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word.”

In fact, in the debate Candy DOES say:

He - he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take - it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.

The "You" there is Candy telling Romney that he was at least partially right.

So if you took the entire article as a whole and took Candy's entire admission as a whole you would (hopefully) come to the same conclusions as Defiant. This is why the phrase "The truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" is uttered in court swearings.

But that is why it takes half a day in court just to hear one side of one argument of truth. We don't have time for the whole entire truth. A debate isn't court, it is a trailer.

Holman wrote:Politico "fact-checked" every statement, speech, interview, tweet, and slogan issued by Drumpf and Clinton for a week.

Fixed that for Politico.

3. Drumpf’s “economic plans would ... include an estimated $4 billion tax cut for his own family just by eliminating the estate tax.” (the New York Times, Sept. 21)
The accuracy of Clinton’s claim depends on Drumpf’s net worth — a matter of dispute. Drumpf has claimed he's worth $10 billion. If so, the Wall Street Journal reports that applying a 40 percent estate tax rate (which applies to wealth above $10.9 million), Drumpf would have to pay about $4 billion in the estate tax. Analyses by Bloomberg News and other organizations, however, pegged Drumpf’s net worth closer to $3 billion, meaning his estate tax payment would be closer to $1.2 billion.
The Clinton campaign responded: “If Donald Drumpf admits he is lying about his net worth we will happily revise the estimate down.”

Politico - your editorial staff should be embarrassed for publishing this "content". It does not really matter if you carried the response, that analysis is plainly flawed. So if I followed that particular one "lie" right Drumpf makes claims to his net worth. The Clinton camp made an ESTIMATE of the effects of a tax plan Drumpf proposed based on his numbers. The Clinton folks carefully used the word ESTIMATE since they don't have access to the correct information. And Politico deems that a *lie* because someone else made a different guess to his net worth? I don't like Clinton but damn it if the media is just completely sucking at their job here - hang her for real things if you need to. This type of stuff is just awful.

*Edit: Late to the party on this one obv. - but this type of stuff really pisses me off and is all the more infuriating when you see the Clinton camp give point by point responses to this and Drumpf just yells LIBERAL MEDIA. It is incredibly lazy in comparison to someone who is actually trying. Too bad it is beginning to look like the American people don't give a flying fuck anymore.*

Politico is one of the worst, if not the worst, mainstream media outlet in terms of drumming up false equivalence between the candidates. The New York Times is probably second, though they've improved as of late.

Totally - I skimmed the rest - and similar bullshit just oozes out of it. Politico is bad but so many outlets are worshipping at the shrine of "objectivity" all the while making flimsy suspect subjective calls to achieve it.

malchior wrote:Totally - I skimmed the rest - and similar bullshit just oozes out of it. Politico is bad but so many outlets are worshipping at the shrine of "objectivity" all the while making flimsy suspect subjective calls to achieve it.

It's also a function of many campaign journalists' tradition of covering a presidential campaign as a "horserace" - "candidate X said this, candidate Y said that, how is this all going to play with the voters?" without delving much into the actual substance.

I actually fall on the "no fact-checking" side of the fence with debates. A moderator should be a neutral party, and I feel that it would be incredibly difficult to remain neutral while simultaneously trying to fact-check.

Things that could introduce a bias:

- Fact-checking one candidate more than another
- Misinterpretation of a statement
- Moderator not actually knowing the actual facts

There are probably a ton more. Let the candidates fact-check each other - it's a debate for crying out loud. It's kind of the whole point of the thing.

I don't really have a problem with the moderator asking tough questions that expose contradictions, but their job is really just to ask questions and keep the candidates within the debate rule boundaries. Not make judgments on the content.

I think this is the strangest of cases in which actually being called a liar reflects badly on the caller rather than the one being called out. At least to Trump supporters. The more direct the media is in attacking Trump, the more the kickback is against them.

I just don't know what to expect anymore.

YellowKing wrote:I actually fall on the "no fact-checking" side of the fence with debates. A moderator should be a neutral party, and I feel that it would be incredibly difficult to remain neutral while simultaneously trying to fact-check.

Things that could introduce a bias:

- Fact-checking one candidate more than another
- Misinterpretation of a statement
- Moderator not actually knowing the actual facts

There are probably a ton more. Let the candidates fact-check each other - it's a debate for crying out loud. It's kind of the whole point of the thing.

I don't really have a problem with the moderator asking tough questions that expose contradictions, but their job is really just to ask questions and keep the candidates within the debate rule boundaries. Not make judgments on the content.

I get that, and that makes sense. Part of the reason why I think there's been pressure on moderator fact checking this election is because Trump is so unbelievably brazen in his lies - he'll say stuff that is demonstrably false with like a quick google search or the like. But at the same time a lot of it is not transparently false if you're not following this stuff closely (like Trump's lie at the Lauer forum about opposing the Iraq War). So I do think it's important for Holt to be ready to press on stuff like that. It's not like Holt should do it in the form of "YOU LIE!" or the like, but be ready with follow-up questions.

A perfect example would be if Trump tries to push his lie about stopping pushing birthirism after Obama released his long-form birth certificate in 2011. That's exactly the type of plausible sounding but easily disprovable lie that Holt should properly push back on. Holt could just say something like "But what about your statement in 2012 [for example] questioning the validity of the birth certificate?"

And yes, the candidates should press each other on lies. But people aren't going to trust the same "but that's not really true, is it?" point coming from Clinton as it would from Holt, and that puts Clinton in the position of potentially having to constantly swat down endless lies.

Anyway, we'll see. I sure hope the Republic doesn't end tonight.

I wonder what color Trump will be for tonight's debate?

hepcat wrote:I wonder what color Drumpf will be for tonight's debate?

I'm going with highlighter orange. The xenophobic old white dudes love that color.

Tiger orange, for sure.

I made up one article that I read that stated he might go with neon orange in an attempt to distract Hillary.

"Brick in the wall" orange.

Rumors are that the Trump campaign is initially going to put a traffic cone behind the podium to throw Clinton and Holt off their game, before switching it with Trump mid-debate while the camera is panned towards Clinton.

Time to panic.

Polls over the weekend are apparently horrendous for Clinton, especially polls from Colorado (one of Clinton's firewall states). Clinton's at ~51% chance, and Trump is now a 55% favorite on the nowcast.

Jesus Christ. Not really sure what's prompted these poll results, since the news cycle last week wasn't bad for Clinton. Maybe the recent terror attacks have moved the electorate in a "kill the bastards" direction, who knows.

Clinton better do a great fucking job tonight.

Terrorist attack. It was covered relentlessly. Trump is the strongman the weak-minded crave.

I find the argument that moderators shouldn't fact check candidates to be kind of silly. It's the role of the media to keep politicians and those in power honest, and to inform the public. But we don't want the media to do that on the biggest night where they will have the most impact? Look at what Fox News did during the primaries. Chris Wallace was perfect. He would ask Trump a question, knew what lies Trump would respond with, and then exposed those lies with facts. Afterwards Fox News fell all over themselves with how brilliant Wallace and Kelly were that night. Now they are leading the charge for a weak moderator. I understand you want the candidates to do the heavy lifting on stage, but at some point the moderator has to present the truth. And no, the American public is not smart enough to inherently know the truth. We are a country of mouthbreathers, who don't want to take the time to actually learn things about stuff, unless it's the intimate details of who celebrities are boinking. Because that shit is important.

I still maintain the moderator should be neutral, and the only way to stay completely neutral is to participate as little as possible in the content of the debate aside from asking the questions and follow-ups. There is plenty of time for the actual media to fact-check after the debate.

You can't protect the public from themselves. Once you go down that road, then you open the door to some moderator with opposite political views from yours "fact-checking" your candidate. I know the temptation is strong to have the moderators call Trump out on his bullshit, but it opens a can of worms I don't think we want opened.

I guess I'm coming around to the view that the moderators shouldn't be saying "what you just said is incorrect" but they should follow-up on lies / non-answers. "E.g., you just said X, how do you reconcile that with you saying Y last week?"

El Guapo wrote:I guess I'm coming around to the view that the moderators shouldn't be saying "what you just said is incorrect" but they should follow-up on lies / non-answers. "E.g., you just said X, how do you reconcile that with you saying Y last week?"

Preferably with video of him saying Y. (IIRC, Megan Kelly did this in one of the debates?)

I believe that was because she was menstruating at the time.

Yeah I'm not saying they can't point out the obvious. One historical example often pointed out was Ford incorrectly stating there was no Russian expansion into Eastern Europe, and the moderator gave him a second opportunity to amend his statement. (Which he failed to do )