Enjoy the debate. It’s not like anything is at stake, right?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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the Lester Holt Fan Club thread starts here…
We will need to send his suit to a good cleaner to get the tire tracks removed.
That should be a short thread.
I’ll probably watch the C-span coverage…nonbiased.
And taking some antacids.
I literally can’t watch…this whole Trump ascendancy is making me almost physically ill. What seemed like an almost sure win and possible Clinton blow-out 1 moonth ago now seems like a close (2000) Trump victory. With 3 small children (2 girls), I can’t stomach a generation or more of a conservative Supreme Court + general global and national instability due to a Trump presidency.
In other words, I’m closing my eyes and ears. Someone please tell me she won the debate so convincingly that the polls bury Trump.
I feel you. I. Have grand children and I cannot bear the idea of Trump
My wife banned debate watching for the same reason. Anxiety and all. Mostly I find myself calm.
The whole thing about the debate is WHO WINS THE IMPRESSION WAR. Is it disordered (Trump wins) or orderly (Clinton wins). If Trump can get her down in the gutter, he’s ahead.
At this point, I score it as a tie pretty much. She’s more coherent. Coherence is over-rated in debates however. It is the overall impression. She hasn’t rattled him.
OOOh, he just played the “super-predator” card. That’s a good one.
Clinton doesn’t believe trickle down. That sounds grat to me.
not yet as bad as i expected.
I haven’t heard Trump say anything. But we know his,fans don’t give a shit.
he’s interrupting
he’s already starting to raise his voice
scowling
bad body language
Trump is an attack dog. She has to stop it.
starting to just spew words
he said “bigly”. Fucking speak English you freak!
did he say bigly or big league from the context is wasn’t clear
sure sounded like “bigly” to me!
What’s a transcriber to do?
Where the fuck is Lester Holt.
Shouting match now going on.
i can’t believe Lester actually asked about the taxes, and it did fucking set him off.
Richard Nixon was a crook, but he released his tax returns.
Trump is in his game, really.
The uncomfortable truth that cannot be said (as yet) is that the big businesses are responsible for works going abroad massively, for the sorry state of small businesses and the middle class. Pandering or cutting taxes to them will not solve anything, thanks Reagan.
Well, Sanders said it pretty directly…
But yes, our political elites and establishment figures are quite reluctant to lay the blame for our inhumane economy where it properly lies. Largely because they have been complicit in permitting Corporate Power to destroy first Labor Power and now, Government Power.
The reality is Corporate Power is now effectively unopposed. CEOs do what they like. And multinational corporations by definition do not have any country’s best interests at heart.
I get the feeling it is near impossible to break through his shouting.
control over a switch to cut either candidate’s mic when one attempts to “win” by shouting over both opponent and moderator, ignoring all the established rules.
Then use it.
She should have talked about his scams. Trump University would be nice.
she missed the chance to mention his fraudulent foundation in the tax discussion.
Trump is correct on the issue of business taxes. Our statutory tax rate of 35% is too high. His notion that cutting the tax rate makes sense. We need to get the rate down to where we get no inversions, where we can get multinationals to return trillions in profits from overseas. He is also talking about cutting the carried interest loophole, which also would be a huge deal, and would greatly inconvenience Wall Street. So, does he propose flattening the business tax situation and cutting special deals?
so you’re a believer in the Laffer curve?
No, but a 35% rate is too high. Do you know what an inversion is? Do you know why inversions are bad? Do you know why Apple has $2 trillion dollars overseas?
The rate should be at 22.5% or so with no exemptions.
See that’s been tried but those loopholes are important too.
Inversions happen because they are written into the law as loopholes. It would be very easy to close those loopholes and stop the inversions completely.
A 35% rate is not bad if it reduces the marginal propensity to stiff labor. Rates were higher earlier and resulted in higher wages, which created more individual tax revenues and balanced budgets.
A comparable corporate and individual rate prevents the corporate sheltering of individual taxes.
The 35% means that Apple pays taxes in some countries but not in the US. Many multinationals pay no taxes here because of inversions. And the crap about stiffing labor is truly ridiculous. What does that mean?
It is the primary cost-cutting tactic of businesses to stiff labor. If the amount gained from that is taken away in taxes, there is less incentive to do it. The 1940s and 1950s were periods in which the marginal gains from stiffing labor were in fact taken away by taxation.
In a global economy your corporate tax rate cannot be higher than other nations.
If it is, Corporation will simply not repatriate earnings from foreign subsidiaries.
Their needs to be a global treaty, because absent that you get a race to the bottom.
Why should global corporations repatriate earnings from foreign subsidiaries? Why should not taxes be on the earnings made within the US alone? What is happening with inversions is sheltering US earnings in foreign entities. Aggressively pursuing transparency of transfer of funds through legal entities makes more sense than trying to incentivize honesty.
Of course, that likely requires some changes to state corporation laws (or a national corporation law) to limit proliferation of legal entities.
US tax law taxes foreign subsidiary earnings. We are one of the few countries that do. When companies invert they still pay taxes on us earnings but they pay much lower rates on foreign subsidiaries
There are things to strip earnings from the us sub after an inversion but the main reason is us taxation of foreign subs
US companies get a tax credit for foreign taxes paid.
It’s less than they would owe if they don’t repatriate because the rate is lower
Sure. In most cases, at least with companies hoarding large piles of cash overseas, they do want to repatriate this money.
I think this would all be addressed in a serious tax reform package but that likely isn’t happening unless there’s some give with respect to raising revenue or cutting certain rates.
interesting discussion on NPR about this last spring: guy pointed out that unlike the lower tax rate countries we bear expenses that benefit the others – mostly, he mentioned, military. not necessarily a good thing unquestioned, but his point was the tax rate per se compared by country is misleading especially since other countries, European anyway, have a much higher personal tax rate.
No company with competent tax accountants pay anywhere near a 35% rate. Trump wants a 15% rate.
The point is to get a clean (no exemptions) but lower rate. The rate is too high. We have a high rate, but few companies pay it. Reduce the rate to the effective rate of 15-22%.
Wasn’t the rate more than twice that under Eisenhower? Those were pretty good times, as I recall.
And both issues are being conflated in this discussion
1a) Statutory corporate tax rate. At 35% the US statutory corporate tax rate is too high and the people that actually hurts the most are small and medium enterprises that don’t have an army of tax attorneys and accountants to take advantage of the vast array of loopholes in our tax code. Our statutory rate should be more in line with the rest of the Western world – low to mid 20’s.
1b) Tax loopholes. Our tax code is chock full of loopholes that need to be closed. One that happens every new tax break needs to include a sunset provision. What is today’s tax break to encourage investment for the greater good is tomorrow’s loophole
2) Territorial versus worldwide tax system. This is actually the reason for most of our tax inversions. Unlike most of the developed world the US has a worldwide tax system where we tax profits of American companies on goods sold anywhere in the world. In a territorial tax system, companies are tax for what they sell just in that country. Most of the developed world has a territorial tax system. That is what we need to move to.
But then, I’m a rational member of the Reality-Based Community.
Therefore, I also fully expect the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media to spin it otherwise.
A few hours after the debate, a CNN guest who specializes in facial expressions and their deep hidden meanings was freeze framing Hillary’s face to analyze deep, troubling anxiety tell tale signs. The so called expert looked more like a Target shelf stocker than a bonafide facial interpreter, if there be such a profession.
GIF tweet yet? (courtesy ql at atrios’ place)
It’s like they just can’t help themselves.
And it’s killing us.
decided to label this sort of remote amateur “diagnosis”.
(Actually, I’d be surprised if that’s really original, i.e., nobody thought of/coined it yet. But if someone already did, I’m not aware of having seen/heard it.)
She’s eating him alive.
We’ll see if that’s enough. But it’s ugly.
he’s ugly. She’s politely shredding him.
Trump just lost the fat vote.
I find this focus group readout very interesting. It looks like 15% of people are totally true believers regardless of any information.
If it’s that low, we’re in better shape than I ever imagined.
It’s mainly the folks giving Trump the benefit of the doubt (and not Clinton) that has made the polling close. There is no different Donald Trump.
If it were a representative sample of voters, it would be absolutely fantastic. But I’m pretty sure it’s a sample of undecided voters. Still a very good result.
At the end it’s always 27%.
I would vote Trump. His shouting is effective.
Why does he get so much time?
If we are paying 75% of NATO costs, that is too high.
We are indeed over-extended internationally. We pay billions to defend very rich countries and get nothing? That is totally crazy.
I say send France the bill to deport those 11 million illegal immigrants.
France should pay to build the Mexico wall, too.
I thought HRC would be the one on the defensive in this debate. She did a good job putting most of the pressure on Trump.
>>She did a good job putting most of the pressure on Trump.
to be fair, he did a good job of blindly walking into traps
Take it from my wife, she cleaned his clock. Me? I’m thinking.,
possibly wishful thinking, but this is my favorite comment so far
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1574744/63614555#comment_63614555
My operative theory of this race has been the debates will allow Clinton to close the deal with Millenials and cause the third parties to collapse.
This is why I have always thought Clinton will win by 10.
I think she completed step 1.
But I never ever ever thought it would get this close.
I really didn’t expect that Trump would actually melt down, but he kind of did. He lost on both style and substance. And I expect the media to amplify it.
to see them amplify something true for a change.
did to that.
At least they stated clearly and unequivocally that multiple Trump claims/statements were simply false.
Which was indeed refreshing given their flogging of trite “expectations game” pre-debate CW over the last couple days.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Personally I am not surprised that he did melt down. Unless he is getting his way, he just cannot handle it. For all the alt-right whining about trigger warnings and safe spaces, the truth is these geezers need them more than anyone else. Trump is only okay if he can be in a place free from fact checks and reality. Otherwise his fee-fees get hurt.
The worst part of reasoning with a conservative is that they’re so deluded and living in their own delusional reality, that you often get caught up trying to prove that the past 8 lies were lies, and you let a few slip by which become the new fallback/goalpost-moved argument.
One way that I am able to avoid missing obvious lies and delusions is to remember that conservatism is nothing but projection and cognitive dissonance. Never mind the lies buried under word salad and pseudo-nuance. I call out their meta-bullshit right up front, and disallow them to use their projection, by holding a mirror up before they can start retreating into the new fallback lie.
For example, when conservatives are bitching and moaning about “political correctness”, “triggers”, and “safe spaces”, they’re projecting their own fear and shame of appearing to be openly bigoted onto libruuls. Conservatives are “triggered” by a libruul bringing up and describing objective, observable reality, and the inane bullshit argument that follows is just physical and emotional cognitive dissonance manifested into typical conservative projection d.b.a reasoning.
Hence, whenever some delusional conservative is playing the victim card, I just deflect their projection right back onto them. I call them a coward and tell them to go find a safe space to cower in. I then usually follow it up by apologizing for triggering them with an accurate description of reality.
Whenever I’m holding up that mirror to a conservative so they an see just how grotesque they and their “ideas” are, I’m not going to convince them to stop being a scumbag, but I do enjoy making conservatives feel uncomfortable with their own thoughts.
A guilty pleasure, I’m sure. But a tactic to get the lurkers to realize just how full of shits these pseudo-tough-guy blustering morons really are.
That was unfuckingbelievable.
If there are any people out there who have a problem with constantly interrupting and sneering at the other debater, well….
Letting Trump rant about Sean Hannity and not bothering to reply was good.
Guardedly optimistic. Hillary hit her marks, now we see how the American public feels about it. If the Obama coalition watched, it is more likely they will vote. How much of a swing matters.
Contrariwise, if the American people in their great wisdom watched that and choose Trump, then God help us, for we surely need it.
then not even God (even if she exists) can help us.
Don’t forget the sniffles. Trump appears to be suffering from a serious medical condition that he is hiding from us. He really needs to be more forthcoming about his most recent physical.
Probably he has Parkinsons. Or maybe Shingles.
Cocaine is one helluva drug
Damn, beat me by one minute!
Trump clearly lacks the stamina to handle a debate, let alone the Presidency. The RNC needs to get him in rehab and find a replacement, stat.
DBAD. Nobody would question Hillary’s health if all that had been seen were some sniffles. She coughed throughout her primary debates and there were no questions.
If Trump had had an extremely odd and unnatural head bobbing moment and fainted and had to be carted off by the Secret Service, there would be just as many legitimate questions about his health.
Hillary was given a pass on prior blood clots, a prior fainting incident that led to a concussion and a brain blood clot, and a prior public fainting incident because those incidents were almost four years or more in the past.
Wow! Your hate is eating you alive.
Seriously. I didn’t realize there were actual conspiracy theorists posting here.
Oh, so now people that have questions are automatically labeled conspiracy theorists?
I always question things that don’t add up. If more people had done so in 2002-early 2003 and been willing to suffer being called conspiracy theorists by people like you, maybe that disastrous war could have been prevented. Nor does the official 9/11 story add up, but that doesn’t mean the “Truther” concoction adds up either (IMOH it’s far more ludicrous than the official story).
the interesting fact about Hillary’s health condition, for which she considers releasing a full medical record “unnecessary”, is that trolling about it won’t make it go away. And don’t bother insulting those of us who want our president to be in good health. – comment for Rover also
Lynn Dee, You’re pulling my leg. Of course you have always known there are conspiracy theorists here. You’re one of them yourself.
Hate? Since when is challenging grossly false equivalence a measure of hate?
Also note that my response comment was made after I posted my brief and objective comment about the debate which you apparently didn’t see fit to respond to.
>> Nobody would question Hillary’s health if all that had been seen were some sniffles.
the internet amateur doctors diagnosing Hillary from videotape have been one of the stupidest things about this campaign, and they have fully earned the mockery.
the phenomenon you describe (and rightly deplore; just as deplorable — though in- or less-consequential — when the wannabe Dr./Sen. Frists here engage in it).
As in “Hillary’s getting Fristed” by those internet/media amateurs. (Being careful to make sure not to commit the typo of forgetting the “r”, cuz, well . . . )
Thank you for your concern.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
That it is. He’ll need a fake nose to go with the fake hair.
Trump lost it. And I doubt he can do better in the next two debates for three reasons.
On optics Hillary also scored higher. She may have been wearing ten pounds of artfully applied make-up, but that doesn’t show on TV cameras; so, she looked young and vibrant. Trump’s hair makes him look artificial and insecure.
I’m going to add something else. Most of the comments in this thread are as juvenile as Trump was in the debate. Not surprising from Trump, but very disappointing from those that claim to be adults and reality based.
In our defense, we’re not the ones who badmouthed Rosie O’Donnell and “400 pound” hackers on stage.
Your defense is that you’re as intemperate as Trump?
Trump’s feud with Rosie is old — and it was foolish of him to reprise that in this debate.
OTOH, while concluding his comment with the “400 pound hacker” was unnecessarily crude (but crude is Trump’s middle name and not being PC is one of the things his supporters like about him), the complete comment was one of his better ones.
You vill haff fun! You vill enjoy!
I don’t understand all the nonsense about Trump sniffling. He just had a cold, fer chrissakes. It’s not as if he had a truly disqualifying illness such as, say, polio, so that he couldn’t walk and got lifted into and out of automobiles.
He wasn’t sniffling. It was how he breathes. I’ve heard it many times before. He makes a lot of noise when he refills with air through his nose. Go back to any speech and you’ll hear the same thing, especially when he has long sentences.
I guess the allusion to polio should have been marked with BOLDFACE CAPS. Polio…can’t walk…lifted into and of automobiles…somehow FDR won four terms in office nonetheless. But Hillary Clinton has a bad day and some folks here want her to be replaced as the candidate.
well, you’r right; the polio didn’t affect his effectiveness at the G8 and such, opening of the UN, travel to meetings with foreign leaders in China Singapore and Japan, perhaps somewhat affected his effectiveness at Yalta
And, to reply more constructively, yes, i know ppl make that argument and imo it’s utterly ridiculous. 1 the world is different now 2 the presidency is different now 3. we should have a full multipage health disclosure so voters can judge. does she have polio? i don’t think so, I don’t think anyone thinks so. as far as health disclosure goes, difficult to say what is most effective for winning for the dems non disclosure or disclosure. playing w fire imo
I think Trump accomplished what he set out to do in this first, stage-setting debate. Hillary’s main claim as to why anyone should vote for her is that she is a woman, the aspiring “first woman president”. So the main thing that Trump needed to do in this debate was to take that advantage away from her, by not doing anything that would suggest that he was using his maleness to reinforce the patriarchy. And I don’t think he did. As liberal observers of the debate say, “Hillary was in control the whole time.” But maybe this appearance will reassure women voters that Trump is just a man, and not a male chauvinist pig, so that they should not take his being male as a point against him when deciding whether to vote for him or Hillary.
Huh?
I mean, that’s a smoking hot take!
Yeah, I think that what Dem commentators aren’t taking into account is that this is a completely new game, in that your candidate is up against a woman. So your (male) candidate has to demonstrate himself to be a gentleman, in the first round at least.
I get the sense that the Trump team is running their political campaign using the guiding principle that Russians use to fight wars: know your enemy.
Will grant you that Trump didn’t fall into the trap of looking as if he was bullying a woman. Necessary in this first debate but hardly sufficient. Particularly as he had thin-skinned moments and displayed far too much ignorance.
I’m not sure if it wasn’t sufficient. Trump comes across as (New York) folksy. Folksy is a standard way of having Republicans get elected against more technocratically credentialed Democrats, see Dukakis and Gore.
And you know me too.
I factored that in. Recognize that his simplistic language and speaking style has appeal. I can’t recall how Dukakis spoke in ’88, but have never shared the view that Hillary speaks like a technocrat. She just uses a lot of words to speak platitudes. ie. I’m going to create ten million new jobs by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Same load of crap that Obama spouted in ’08. OTOH, Trump saying he’s going to create new jobs by the magic of cutting taxes to keep jobs here has after over thirty years lost its superficial rationality.
A majority in this country has desired hope and change for a decade. Hillary and Trump are both offering the same old same old that is now less appealing than warmed over mush.
get your snark detector into the shop for service. Appears to need some tweaking.
Jus’ sayin’.
A newbie, welcome at the pond. Looking forward to learn more, tell us about yourself.
A Nordic name Adalbrand, a clergyman mentioned in the Icelandic Annals in discovery of Nyja Land (the Newfoundland) east of Iceland.
You know me. We’ve talked on MoA.
But thanks for the welcome. I think there are interesting things going on in this election, so I would like to have the opportunity to talk with you guys.
(As in how Marie2 wanted to continue as Marie3. But I am not good at counting myself.)
I like that. I like that a lot. ” not doing anything that would suggest that he was using his maleness to reinforce the patriarchy.” I guess you read a piece of vaguely feminist criticism once upon a time and remembered a line. Or perhaps you just Googled “patriarchy” 30 seconds before you wrote that. Also, by the way, “male chauvinist pig” is such outdated jargon.
If you’re going to troll for the Trumpenfuehrer, give it a bit more thought first.
Billmon:
The 43% that called the debate before it happened and didn’t let reality interfere with their opinion. Wouldn’t be surprised that the percentage of Democrats that thought Obama won his first 2012 debate was much different.
possible also that the media won’t try to spin it for Trump – they’ve made their $ on the election, maybe they can commit journalism for 6 weeks
hmm. A media spin for Trump was probably never in the cards regardless of his performance. They played it straight in ’08 and ’12. Easy enough considering that their preferred candidate was better in all but one of the six debates, but on that one they didn’t cover for Obama.
They want both of the to spend a lot of money on TV adverts in the remaining six weeks. Trump isn’t spending nearly as much as they’d like to see; so, they aren’t about to offer him undeserved debate praise. OTOH, it doesn’t benefit them to overpraise HRC. She took some solid hits but not as many as Trump took and unlike Trump, none of her hits were self-inflicted.
Hey guys, Get a load of this. I have no idea where it’s coming from. Definitely not from Hillary Central anyway. It’s probably another conspiracy theory like those we’re always being warned of, even on this thread, imagine that.
https:/worldwide.vote/hillary-vs-trump#/results
Why can’t I get the link to work?
https:/worldwide.vote/hillary-vs-trump#/results
I pasted it in, link didn’t work
At best, looks like a worthless poll. Possibly fake. Perhaps by a guy sitting on his bed with a laptop.
As disinformation, would seem to favor HRC because whatever the world is for, Americans are against it.
Well, that’s truly an insightful way to look at it!
who knows, could be trolling, though I tried to write about this in June and no one here understood what I was trying to explain, but yes, the small sample of highly educated ppl I spoke with preferred Trump. the 2 points ppl made: 1 – he may be more flexible than HRC, whose FP is a known quantity; 2- usa elects buffoons regularly and the world survived (Reagan, Bush and Carter, viewed as a buffoon by one person I spoke with). there’s a lot of dislike of HRC’s FP out there, and not much detailed understanding of impact of R win on our domestic situation
Have any MIddle Eastern friends? A lot of them didn’t survive GWB. We created several failed states because of the Iraq invasion followed by a shift of focus (and troops) to Afghanistan.
yes, I know. Did you understand my comment? I was reporting what some non-usaians said and why they prefer Trump. do they have MEstern friends? no doubt some of them do. Your comment, compassionate yes, but not pertinent to what I am trying to communicate, is why I gave up trying to write about this in June,
but to be fair, they didn’t say GWB had no destructive impact. I guess in a way they were giving a FP version of lesser evilism
Spam.
AG
Anyway someone got out their crayons and filled in the countries very artistically.
My conclusions:
I doubt Trump gained many voters. Hillary might have gained some undecided voters.
If Trump does this same level of debate in #2, I’d say “Game over”.
I heard that the Democrats are making a big push to get illegal aliens registered to vote based on Hillary’s performance in the first debate.
I was very concerned heading into last night. Not so any more. Trump looked for all the world like a bad high school student whose only goal was to get a solid D+ on the final exam. I have to believe that my fellow Americans, with all of their issues, are not prepared to elect a president who wings it 24/7 and looks like a fool 99% of the time.
I agree that for the first 20 minutes or so, he seemed to be effective in channeling voters’ frustration/anger about the state of the economy and past trade deals (without putting forward any concrete plans of his own, since they don’t exist). I think that she should try to be more compelling on that issue next time – her answers were overly technical and didn’t feel like they had any emotion behind them. After that, though, his meds/cocaine wore off and it should have been obvious to everyone watching that he was a con man and a buffoon.
“a president who wings it 24/7 and looks like a fool 99% of the time”
Line of the thread award!
Also agree with substance, although the qualifier “it should have been obvious” is the weak point for about 40% of the citizenry…alas
I’ve read elsewhere – on blogs I trust – that even though Trump lost steam after about 20 minutes, that whatever he said throughout the debate probably satisfied his fan base. I don’t know bc I confess that I didn’t watch.
It’s clear that HRC won the debate, but I’m not so sure that Trump voters care about this. They don’t care that he has no policies; they don’t care that he has no real plans; they don’t care that he’s woefully unprepared for this job; they don’t care. They just want to be white supremacists beating up on liberals/Democrats, minorities, women and Muslims (not necessarily in that order).
So I’m not entirely clear that this debate makes much of a difference to his voters. I think they’re locked in, no matter what.
Will this outcome of this debate tip the scale for some possibly undecideds and/or maybe leaning towards third party voters? That’s the question. It might. I have no idea.
It’s not “the Trump voters” that are in play, RUKidding.
It’s the undecideds.
And there are a lot of them.
Bet on it.
Hillary did herself a solid last night.
Bet on that as well.
AG
You write:
I am sorry have to mention this, rfahey, but:
They already did.
Not so very long ago, either.
AG
Well, yes, but Trump made Bush look like Stephen Hawking. There has to be a bottom, damn it!
I would like to believe we have hit that bottom. But I think the Trump bottom will not come for years.
.
Well said.
Also, Bush was stupid, and he was also dangerous because of the people around him; Trump is stupid, but he is also dangerous because of who he is. I know, splitting hairs, but to me it is a big difference.