StrangeSox

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:36 AM) I'm sure Trump is not easy to work for...but people work for him because he has capital. Look at Apple, for instance. They throw their weight around to force vendors to sell them components at virtually no margin - because they can. They take advantage of existing tax law because that is what results in them keeping more of their revenues. This is called business, people. I am sorry, but I simply cannot fault the guy for being a shrewd businessman. Trump took over $100k in money for 9/11 recovery funds even though none of his property was damaged. He takes a property tax credit meant for low income people in New York City. The list of ways Trump runs nickle-and-dime grifts is pretty long.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:34 AM) Its Trump's business model. Even with the Trump tower in Chicago he screwed a bunch of people by canceling their contracts. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-01...hotel-contracts He then changed parts of some contracts to make them less lucrative. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-02...p-trump-project Trump ran a scam "university" to hard-sell people out of tens of thousands of dollars for useless pre-packaged real estate "advice" from people with little or no knowledge. He's always been a grifter.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:31 AM) See my post above yours. These people are absolutely looking for reasons to vote for Trump - that can be the only reason he is actually the Republican nominee. Trump offers something different. Things have gotten so bad in the state of American politics that a large percentage of voters are willing to overlook all of his flaws because they believe the possibility that he might bring something different to the table outweighs those flaws. If Hillary starts exhibiting those same type of flaws, it only makes it easier for folks considering whether Trump's flaws may be overlooked to make the decision to vote for him. Or a large percentage of white voters are willing to overlook all of his flaws because they're all-in on his white grievance nationalism, and the Democrats absolutely should not be chasing those votes.

Anyone seriously considering voting for Trump at this point who isn't already locked in is just looking for an excuse, and I can't imagine how Clinton could persuade them no matter how she comported herself during the debates. Her best hope isn't to try to convince those people anyway, but to make sure her own voters turn out. If the demographics look like 2008/2012 or better, she crushes it. If they look like 2004, we're in for a long night with a very real possibility of President Trump. The short version is that the mythical "undecided" voter doesn't actually matter because anyone who can't decide between these two at this point is very unlikely to vote at all anyway.

They did the same thing in NYC, too. s*** like intentionally building overpasses *just* low enough so that public buses, which black people relied on much more heavily, couldn't easily leave different neighborhoods while cars had no problem. Racial segregation as public policy was the whole thrust of TNC's "The Case for Reparations" article a few years ago, and that focused on Chicago's awful legacy.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:25 AM) Lusitania too. Boats. LOL. People still use boats. That should have been Trumps angle, not B-52s. "We're still out here, using boats! It's an ancient technology! The greeks, they were going around, they had boats, people made faces, Splat, they would kill them, and democrats, they don't want to try, and we're still on boats!" Haha I didn't even think of that one, I was just thinking Spanish-American war, Vietnam, and Pearl Harbor. The list of "wars started by blowing up someone's boat" is ridiculous.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 09:59 AM) Or in the case of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a war started even though the incident DIDN'T happen and it was just claimed to have happened. REMEMBER THE MAINE!

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:37 AM) And how many of those were one on one? That's right...Zero. Man, Trump is completely incapable of actually handling someone one on one? That's not really a good quality in a leader. online polls rushed by /pol/ and r/the_donald are the true indicator of the political atmosphere of this country!

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:25 AM) I just think it's akin to complaining about not tipping someone. I've stiffed s***ty waiters/waitresses on tips in my life. It's a rare occurrence but if someone wanted to they could claim i'm a s***ty person because i don't tip people for their hard work. Unless you go example by example, it's an unfair accusation. The guys been in business for 30 years working with probably tens of thousands of contractors. If you're talking about a handful of them getting "stiffed," is that really a "history?" Unless it's happening the majority of the time I don't think it's a sign of anything. And I haven't heard of THAT many examples. And i'm not sure why it can't be both. Despite your best efforts you can get stuck with a s***ty contractor or sub-contractor. Doesn't mean you don't know how to build or operate a building. But then he turns around and hires these people again. This is part of his operating plan and not based on legitimate complaints about the workmanship. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/...or-decades.html

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:18 AM) Yeah, black people are so stupid they became a part of a party and advocated for policies to help their community with their own representatives! Didn't want to dig into it too deep but yeah that "democratic plantation" nonsense isn't exactly well-received by black people.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 10:06 AM) Most of you have echoed my thoughts in one way or another. 1) i'm embarrassed as a citizen of this country that these are our choices to be the leader of the free world: a narcissistic blowhard with no experience and a career bulls***ter with little to show for being in positions of power for 30 years. He is an unqualified moron and she is an unlikable fake person. Ugh. Ok but "unlikable" versus "unqualified moron" seems like a pretty easy call? Agreed. I'm pretty confident that that line of attack has been tried by Republicans many times in the past and it always fails for pretty obvious reasons. We don't know how much he paid in taxes but his answer implied yesterday that it may be as low as 0%. It's almost definitely a much, much lower rate than any of us pay and that's a key part of the Democrats' tax message. No, he's got a long history of doing this as standard operating procedure to line his own pockets. Painting the guy who's trying to be the champion of the white working class as a guy who routinely screws over the white working class for his own gain is a decent move, politically. Since his only qualifications are his business experience, bringing up shady business practices is relevant. He's a delusional narcissist. I thought he did okay and did that "fact checking" part the way it should be done, challenging candidates to support their claims when they fly in the face of reality and to answer the question that was asked. Debates typically don't matter too much, but I think we'll see some Clinton supporters re-energized and some soft Trump supporters demoralized in the next week or so. I agree that you won't see too many people changing their votes from Trump to Clinton or vice-verse, but that's not what the game is about.

Trump doubled down on calling a former Miss Universe fat on Fox & Friends this morning, so that'll be the #1 thing talked about coming out of this debate for a little bit. I have a feeling (hope) that we're about to re-enter the early/mid-August period of things actually mattering.

Something that's not been getting a lot of play but really, really should was Trump saying that blowing up other nation's military boats over taunting wouldn't lead to a war. Multiple wars started literally that exact way (or at least that was the cause given on the surface).

I'm not really sure how else Clinton or anyone is supposed to respond to a stream of incoherent nonsense especially in a debate format. Dismissing it as the steaming plate of BS that it is is the quickest and easiest way to both undermine your opponent and move on to your own message.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:33 AM) Followed by 60 people arguing over emails and birthing and murders and guns when will websites learn that nested comment threads are a clearly inferior form of posting

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:24 AM) It's obvious he isn't disciplined enough to execute, because he cannot have any perceived slight made against him without answering. That's why he makes his mouth into a butthole and says "WRONG" on things that will obviously come out to be right. I'm surprised the idea that clinton was rude when she was constantly interrupted by him, and verbally screamed at. Her dismissiveness of his word salads are what I believe will energize dems. They are people, like any other, they don't like constant weeks of pneumonia stories and clinton foundation non-stories. They want to see the person saying everything is terrible on the defensive. THey want a candidate standing strongly for ideals. I haven't heard it mentioned, but I thought her answers on policing were inspired and home runs. But the stuff that will get play is the end. Him going on tv and talking about how the model gained weight is the stuff that is so absurd it just demoralizes trump leaning voters to stay home and move out of that likely voter model. I think this group is underrating how this will get talked to death until the next debate, and she didn't "hit home runs", but there are so many moments that are going to get played to death. In a normal debate between normal candidates, a simple line like "you've been fighting ISIS your entire adult life" is so patently stupid that it would dominate. There is a lot here. We still haven't reached "Please proceed, governor" levels of stone-cold destruction yet imo.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:21 AM) He isn't able to execute because she got under his skin immediately. He was expecting another Jeb! or Rubio, not a shark out for blood. She had multiple psychologists on her debate prep team for exactly this reason.

Google searches for ‘registrarse para votar’ hit all-time high during debate QUOTE (iamshack @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:14 AM) Well, he did reply later that he "followed the laws of the nation," which, to me, is a better way to reply to the tax issue. I am quite certain that the Clinton's take advantage of tax law and tax loopholes to avoid paying excess taxes as well. They haven't really, but that's entirely because first Bill and then Hillary wanted to win the White House and were playing the long game.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:23 AM) It doesn't really matter though. Trump just pretends he didn't say it. He denied saying not paying taxes was smart when Jake Tapper interviewed him later. He's Orwellian af, but his supporters don't care. Yeah but like I said mid-debate, it ain't about convincing his core supporters that give him a floor of 35-40%. It's about making sure people remain energized for Clinton, peeling away some of the soft millenial voters saying they're going to vote Johnson or Stein or not at all, and deenergizing some of the soft Republican supporters. If she keeps him in the 40-42% range and keeps herself 45%+, she coasts.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:15 AM) Trump was trying to follow a general script - he didn't really do much preparation and that was obvious - and got Clinton a couple of times (she really doesn't have an answer for why she reversed her position on the TPP), but she started talking (factual) s*** after a couple of rounds and she IMMEDIATELY got in Trump's head. He never actually denied that he didn't pay taxes or that he shafted all those Atlantic City contractors, and if anything, he bragged about it. He got visibly angry and started melting down. He started interrupting her and talking over her, audibly sighing (one time he did this after she said he was painting an overly negative picture of black communities), grunting, etc. His answer to the first use policy question was gibberish, he clearly had no clue what that was. After about 20 minutes into the debate, Clinton was in Trump's head and everything he did or said was at her will. I think he's dumb enough to fall for this at the next debate too. He actually bragged about it, said "that's called being smart." I'm thinking that Trump's going to spend a decent chunk of the next debate relitigating this one because he can't let anything go.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 08:07 AM) After Lester Holt asked Trump about what made him change his Birther stance a second time and he still didn't even come into the vicinity of answering, I would have like to see Holt just keep asking the same question over and over and over again. Not that either of them gave entirely direct answers on other stuff either, but most answers were at least in the zip code of the topic. Anyway, this... ... is my take as well. There were a few moments when she could have hit the jugular, but she didn't. She did what she needed to do, it will play, but nothing special really happened. We saw what both of them already are and have been all along, just in the same room at the same time for the first time. I'm surprised she didn't manage to hit him on the "I took advantage of the laws as they are" line in response to her bringing up him stiffing small business owners/working class people for decades. "You took advantage of the little guy for your own gain" popped into my head immediately, but she never really went after that.

QUOTE (brett05 @ Sep 27, 2016 -> 07:39 AM) Hillary wins the debate. But even Donald would have said that given that she's done this what, 17 times and this was Donald's first. There were over a dozen debates in the Republican primary. wrong.

I will admit to being wrong in my prediction of how the media would respond to the first debate, but I also didn't expect that poor of a performance.

Nobody calls Hannity! I don't care if this actually mattered, it was still cathartic in the same way the Biden Ryan debate was.

Donald Trump, endorsee of the NRA, supports illegal and unconstitutional stops and searches to seize guns.