First Presidential debate thread

Voters are sick of Bush and Clinton.

The frat's over. Sorry, republicrats.

some bits from the transcript I wanted to comment (or snark) about:

TRUMP: Our jobs are fleeing the country. They're going to Mexico....
So Ford is leaving. You see that....
I'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses. That's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan. It's going to be a beautiful thing to watch.

I think my area is fairly typical of manufacturing dependent small towns and small cities. Here's the thing. Our county has 5 industrial plants left. Two of them are here for the clay (they make cat litter and oil-dry) and one furniture plant sources a lot of it's material from China including some preliminary building. The other two combine for may 500-600 jobs.

The rest of the manufacturing base, with one exception, moved out, mostly to over-seas locations, BEFORE there was a NAFTA and AFTER the Reagan tax cuts. That's fairly common, particularly in textile related industry. The place where I had my first (outside of family) job moved to Mexico in the late 80's, for example. Whatever one's view of NAFTA as a good idea or not, the trend line was established before it came along and I have yet to hear a proposal that sounds like it will reverse that. The reality is that we have an entirely different sort of economy, for several reasons, than we did 25 years ago and trade/tax policy isn't going to reverse that.

TRUMP: my father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assets in the world, and I say that only because that's the kind of thinking that our country needs.

from WaPost:

It's a riot how working-class folks act like he cares about then (hell he doesn't even pay the ones he hires) but this is a manifestation of something we see a lot in American politics. We've been indoctrinated into the myth that anyone can get rich if he works hard, and so they look at the rich guy and say "that's gonna be me someday" rather than seeing someone that probably fucked over a lot of little guys to get there.

TRUMP: Let me give you the example of Mexico. They have a VAT tax. We're on a different system. When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax. When they sell in -- automatic, 16 percent, approximately. When they sell into us, there's no tax. It's a defective agreement. It's been defective for a long time, many years, but the politicians haven't done anything about it.

Yeah, he's threatened to slap a massive tax on imported vehicles. But here's the problem: any conservative - and Trump - will tell you that if you raise taxes on corporations, they pass that on to the consumer, they don't take the hit themselves. Why doesn't the same apply here? If he's going to pop that car with a 35% tariff, is the guy who wants to pay $20k for a new car and has to pay $27k instead gonna be happy about that? When has that ever worked?

TRUMP: She's been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective. Just because of the tax and many other reasons, but just because of the fact...

Now we get to where he starts really going off the rails. Thirty years ago was 1986. In '86 she was a lawyer in private practice while Bill was Governor. She did not hold an elected position to any government office for another 14 years after that, and was not in a position to be "doing this" (whatever "this" was at any of the several times that he cited 30 years) on an official basis. First Ladies, however much they consult with their husbands, do not negotiate trade agreements or any other such shit.

HOLT: Back to the question, though. How do you bring back -- specifically bring back jobs, American manufacturers? How do you make them bring the jobs back?
TRUMP: Well, the first thing you do is don't let the jobs leave.

At no point in the following answer does he say anything at all about how his policies induce jobs which have left to come back

CLINTON: In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse.

TRUMP: That's called business, by the way.

CLINTON: Nine million people -- nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.

THAT should stick to him like skunk spray. There'll be a few more of these places where his true nature comes out. It's difficult to conceive how a voter, concerned about economic issues, can listen to a (professed) billionaire neither deny or show any shame - indeed pride - in wishing financial disaster on the little guy so that he can make money.

CLINTON: Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.
TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

His campaign staff rushed - but not fast enough! - to delete his 2012 tweet where he said precisely that.

TRUMP: You can't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt.
The Obama administration, from the time they've come in, is over 230 years' worth of debt, and he's topped it. He's doubled it in a course of almost eight years, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact.

File this one for later.

TRUMP: And, Hillary, I'd just ask you this. You've been doing this for 30 years. Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now?

Thirty years again.

TRUMP: See, you're telling the enemy everything you want to do. No wonder you've been fighting -- no wonder you've been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.

Again, off the rails. Isis hasn't existed in any form but 12 years and hasn't been considered a prominent threat but maybe 4 or 5 years at most. Clinton's "adult life" began 50 years ago.

TRUMP: We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful. And we have a Fed that's doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed. The Fed is doing political -- by keeping the interest rates at this level.

As recently as May Trump warmly complimented Yellen and specifically said he would be opposed to raising interest rates.

TRUMP: I don't mind releasing -- I'm under a routine audit. And it'll be released. And -- as soon as the audit's finished, it will be released.

IRS says it's not prohibited, DJT Jr. said they don't release them because they don't want thousands of independent people auditing them.

TRUMP: Well, I told you, I will release them as soon as the audit. Look, I've been under audit almost for 15 years. I know a lot of wealthy people that have never been audited. I said, do you get audited? I get audited almost every year.

And in a way, I should be complaining. I'm not even complaining. I don't mind it. It's almost become a way of life. I get audited by the IRS. But other people don't.

Do Americans really want to vote for this kind of paranoia? "Oh my god they pick on me so bad, I'm a special snowflake and no one has it as hard as me and yet somehow I'm still the greatest thing ever" Damn.

CLINTON: Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax.

TRUMP: That makes me smart.

This, in any sane world (i.e. something other than the one we're living in) would be the end of his viability right here. A self-professed billionaire BRAGS that he's smart to not pay taxes - after he's already bitched and moaned about the deficit, and on a night when he complains about all the unfunded infrastructure needs, and on a night when he says if rich people have more money (because they are taxed less) then that money will be invested in making more jobs for the little guy - jobs which he says now don't exist.

SO...he doesn't owe taxes because he's smart...people get rich by being smart...so rich people ALREADY don't pay much taxes (actually, they do as a percentage of taxes paid but I'm using his logic here) because they are smart...and yet...and yet...the American economy is shit according to him. Where's all that "money not paid in taxes will be invested in jobs" cash going?

If you analyze it, it's a big mess of contradictory bullshit - but you don't have to analyze it to see the political impact of a professed billionaire saying to the voters "I don't pay taxes because I'm smarter than you dumb fuckers"

Also, her list of potential secrets hiding in his taxes was her best moment all night. It's an open secret that the best way to fuck with him is to imply he's not as rich as he claims, she did that, then implied strongly he was lying about charitable giving, then trapped him into basically admitting he dodges paying taxes. It was masterful.
TRUMP: As far as my tax returns, you don't learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you.

"There's nothing to learn there, but I ain't showing them" - makes no sense. The only reason not to show them is because there's something to learn.

CLINTON: We have an architect in the audience who designed one of your clubhouses at one of your golf courses. It's a beautiful facility. It immediately was put to use. And you wouldn't pay what the man needed to be paid, what he was charging you to do...

TRUMP: Maybe he didn't do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work...

From basically admitting he doesn't pay taxes to essentially admitting he stiffs working class people who contract with him. Again, HOW can anyone who considers himself one of the little guys, working class people, let things like this slide? He's basically a walking personification of the mustache-twirling evil rich guy they all think is the source of all their problems - and they love him for it?

TRUMP: when you have 3,000 shootings in Chicago from January 1st, when you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns, from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama

So...there've been 4,000 in the last almost 8 years, total, and 3,000 of those in 2016?

TRUMP: I notice you bring that up a lot. And, you know, I also notice the very nasty commercials that you do on me in so many different ways,

Virtually all of which are simply video clips of him speaking, in his own words, mean and hateful things. You can't expect to spend 30+ years being nasty to people and then run for president and ask that none of that be brought up.
TRUMP: So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is -- it is a huge problem. I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough.

Whut?
TRUMP: Number one, the 28 countries of NATO, many of them aren't paying their fair share. Number two -- and that bothers me, because we should be asking -- we're defending them, and they should at least be paying us what they're supposed to be paying by treaty and contract.

Says the man who doesn't deny he pays no taxes on hundreds of millions in income.
TRUMP: And they're going to do that. And that was -- believe me -- I'm sure I'm not going to get credit for it -- but that was largely because of what I was saying and my criticism of NATO.

The man literally does think all of human civilization revolves around him.

CLINTON: He even said, well, you know, if there were nuclear war in East Asia, well, you know, that's fine...
TRUMP: Wrong.

CLINTON: ... have a good time, folks.

TRUMP: It's lies.

Yeah, he said exactly that.

TRUMP: You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials. Some of it's said in entertainment. Some of it's said -- somebody who's been very vicious to me, Rosie O'Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.

Oh THAT is gonna go over well...

TRUMP: But you want to know the truth? I was going to say something...

HOLT: Please very quickly.

TRUMP: ... extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself, "I can't do it. I just can't do it. It's inappropriate. It's not nice."

"I'm just saying, I could have been a much bigger asshole, I thought about it, I was tempted, but I regretfully decided not to - but I'm just saying, I wanted to go full asshole." Such a winning personality!

TRUMP: But she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue. They're untrue. And they're misrepresentations.

By quoting him in his own words.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/was...er-fact-checking-results-from-the-u-s-debate/

That is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen posted on the Internet.

You could tell when they called it the Skittles Meter, and everything else confirmed it.

Nobody hit a homerun, but the longer it went, the worse it was for Trump. And then there was the whole Hannity bit. That was flat out terrible. That and proudly admitting he didn't pay taxes because he' smart, thereby telling the rest of us that we're dumb. Then follow that with a complaint that the Fed gov doesn't spend enough on infrastructure.

He didn't look completely terrible, but in the end, I have to give a slight edge to Clinton. You are right, though, that people already in one camp or the other still are. Not sure how it will have played among undecideds.

Really? Maybe these are ongoing polls that are constantly updated or maybe you are just making shit up as usual.

I just had a look, Time has it running at 50/50 presently. Couldn't find a link to CBS but found the CBS commentary review which says Clinton won.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-won-trump-lost-and-heres-what-comes-next/

gturner lives in his own special reality.

Paul Joseph Watson shared an image about this:




Funny how 300k votes suddenly appeared and wiped out Clinton's 18 point deficit.

Prove it.

Well, a lot of people these days either trim or shave off their bush. Just look at the popularity of products like Nair.

I could post some images but the mods might not like it.

How about Jeb! you fuckin douche.

It's pretty funny to see people saying trump won - he came off as amateurish and really bumbled and messed up quite a few things while making very little sense. He was garbled and all over the place. He needs to do better next time. And I say this as someone who would like to kick Hillary in the balls.

Hillary did come off as more calm and polished and actually formulated steady answers that made sense but that sort of lends to her overal slimy politician persona. She needs to smile less, it's so smarmy. But she did look the more presidential of the two, unless the definition of that word is now changing.

I found it curious that Hillary, the Democrat, was wearing red and Trump, the Republican, was wearing a blue tie. Kind of the reverse of standard practice for the two major parties. Wonder if it means anything?

Obviously it means that Clinton has sided with the Bloods and Trump has sided with the Crips.

The GOP have been hitting Hillary for not smiling enough. She's not gonna win that one no matter what she does, so fuck it, let her smile when her opponent is fucking up.

There are lots of Bush's besides JEB.

That proves absolutely nothing.

All those other Bush's didn't just spend millions to get embarrassingly trounced from the republican leadership position by lol Donald Trump.

Case closed. Next.

Timing.

JEB Bush should've run four years ago.

Given that even a poor candidate like Romney was able to narrow Obama's election victory from 2008, a competent candidate could've done even better.

So the debate last night preempted "Lucifer".

How could the debate preempt Lucifer when she was on stage debating?

Irrelevant. You are wrong.

No evidence of that.

Wow. Trump repeated the "take the oil" thing. Nobody talking about that.

Holt it taking some heat. He asked Trump six follow-ups but he didn't ask Hillary a single one. He failed to ask any questions about immigration, the hot-button issue of the campaign, but blew 10 minutes on Donald's tax returns.

The Washington Free Beacon came up with some fairer questions for the next debate.

• Mr. Trump, you’ve referred to women, and I’m paraphrasing here, as fat ugly horrible disgusting pigs. Why do you think they’re expending energy complaining about this when they should be working to drop all that extra weight?
• Mrs. Clinton, how will you serve as president when you’re sitting in prison for all your email-related crimes? Does the Constitution allow you to pardon yourself for your wanton criminality?
• Mr. Trump, your hotels are fabulous and classy—really, they are the best hotels. Will you update the White House’s interior decorations? Will you save the American people money by stiffing the subcontractors who install all the gold lamé curtains?
• Mrs. Clinton, why did your husband cheat on you repeatedly?
• Mr. Trump, isn’t it ridiculous that people think Vladimir Putin—who you are friendly with and just wants to do right by the people of Russia, a worthy goal for a national leader—would hack Hillary’s emails? How would you apologize to him for the vicious slanders he has endured these past few months?
• Follow up for Mr. Trump: When you suggested in the last debate that a 400 pound hacker was behind recent hacks of the DNC and others, were you implying that Chris Christie was behind it?
• Mrs. Clinton, did you personally order the attack on the Benghazi compound, or did you just cackle with glee while it happened?
• Mr. Trump, which nation should we take the oil from next? Venezuela? Canada? The world is yours.
• Mrs. Clinton, how does it feel to steal jobs from hardworking Americans and ship them to foreigners that, I assume, chant “Death to America” on a regular basis?
• Mr. Trump, final question: How much do you love America?
• Mrs. Clinton, final question: How many souls did you consume to cure yourself of the “pneumonia” you were suffering from?

Trump only wants to bring jobs back to America so he can stiff 'em on the payments. China threatened to nuke him if he didn't cough up, and he was so worried he figured he should throw in a ton of sniffles as well.

IIRC George P. Bush is making good progress in his career. After four years of President Trump or President Clinton I am hopeful that he will be persuaded to run.

The great name of George Bush will be back in office once again.

I'll say a prayer for it.

A pretty good indicator of who lost the debate is whomever's supporter's whine the loudest about the moderator.

Or the mic.

Alicia Machado is getting a fair amount of play out of this, and good on her. So she got fat? She can exercise, Donald... but there's no cure for being an asshole.

This narrative that is becoming more and more prevalent among Trump supporters is pretty fucking disgusting, I have to say. Not a good look and will lose you more supporters than you gain.