Afterglow

by 5:57 pm. It has 16 Comments.

My feelings about the debate all day.

yes





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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Make America I DID NOT SAY THAT

by 5:12 pm. It has 78 Comments.

I’m beginning to think that’s not pancake makeup, it’s tinted spackle covering the dings in Trump’s very, very, very thin skin.

Apart from some well-earned gloating, what’s on the agenda for the evening?


National Voter Registration Day: A Reminder From An American Hero

by 4:10 pm. It has 13 Comments.

Register to vote or check your registration here.





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Hillary Preparedness Guide

by 3:06 pm. It has 221 Comments.

hillary-preparedness-guide

Because Chuck Todd is a tool and Balloon-Juice commenters rock, here is my version of the Hillary Preparedness guide.

H/T to Corner Stone, Punchy and to Wapiti for the list.


Secretary Clinton Rally in Raleigh, NC

by 1:17 pm. It has 153 Comments.

Here’s the live feed:

(they’re replaying the debate as a feed within the feed while waiting for the rally to begin)


Make it rain

by 11:59 am. It has 30 Comments.

Goal Thermometer





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Stop your messing around

by 11:26 am. It has 209 Comments.

I don’t think one-on-one debates are a good forum for Trump. His debate strategy is to show up unprepared and make a few “LOOK AT ME” comments that gets attention from the media. That worked great with ten people because preparation matters less when you’re only answering ten minutes of questions instead of 45 and because getting people to look at you with ten others on stage is a challenge whereas with two the whole goddamn world is looking at you anyway. Also too, his fuse is too short to deal with prolonged mano a mano conflict.

So this didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I predicted last night to friends that Trump would try to skip the other debates:

“If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised the journalist would act like a journalist, and not an ignorant fact check,” Giuliani said late Monday night in the post-debate spin room, according to video provided by Bloomberg.

Establishment journalists are such cucks that they might give into this bullying and let Trump do a 2 hour informercial in place of a debate, but they really ought to tell him to fuck himself, that if we wants to bargain, their offer is this: nothing, not even the money that they usually pay Corey Lewandowski, which would they would appreciate if he would put up personally.





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Hershey barred

by 10:45 am. It has 9 Comments.

Some interesting news on hospital merger and anti-trust enforcement.

Via Metro.US

A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked the proposed merger of the two largest hospital systems in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area.

By a 3-0 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ordered a preliminary injunction against the combination of Penn State Hershey Medical Center and PinnacleHealth System.

The court said the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the merger would be anti-competitive.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had a string of losses this spring at the district court level when they sued to stop mergers in Central Pennsylvania and Chicago. They lose in both cases at the district court level as the judges used (according to relevant healthcare economists) an obsolete standard of assessing market impact.

The FTC is one of the major administrative levers to break up consolidated provider pricing power and as long as the courts are willing to use the FTC’s preferred methodology of determining anti-competetive action, there is a lot of space for the FTC to act on new mergers.


I never said that

by 9:37 am. It has 183 Comments.

You know the crazy dream where you just did something with potentially catastrophic consequences and you beg the universe for a chance to take it back*? Apparently Donald Trump thinks you really can do that. Probably that is what growing up in a gilded little box does to you. Let’s say that young lord Fontleroy declares that he never called the cook awful names and daddy pointy hat backs him up. Who can say it ever happened? If your character bends that way already (#notallrichpamperedshits) then starting his work life as the rich boss would just make it worse.

How many times has this guy flatly denied he said something that you could easily find on tape or in writing? The debate added three, maybe four more examples to the list (I had a hard time keeping up). There was the one about the interview where he complained about employees getting pregnant. I predict Trump will especially regret the one about never paying income tax. That was the fatal rumor that scared the hell out of the Romney campaign. It really rubs ordinary voters the wrong way, and explaining it just makes the disconnect between you and them even worse. Instead of parrying the question and answering with transparency like Romney eventually did, Trump bragged about it like an eight year old who found a loophole in the literal terms of his curfew (“It makes me smart!”) and then he telegraphed how stupid that was by denying that he said what he clearly just said on live TV. This is such a gift to the opponent that you almost don’t know where to start. Maybe just stitch the exchange and his denial into a thirty second ad and run it without commentary.

Here’s a question that I dropped in the comments last night – does anyone have a comprehensive list of how many times Trump has denied saying something he is clearly on record having said? This is the sort of thing I used to count on from Steve Benen when he wrote the Carpetbagger blog. Any suggestions appreciated.

(*) If this means I should talk to a professional immediately, I never had that dream.

***Update***

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Trump insists ‘there was no sniffles’ during presidential debate

For the record, yeah, he sniffled a lot during the debate. Maybe he buried his face in coke in the green room, or maybe he’s just sick. Who knows. He should get that checked out.


Tuesday Morning Open Thread: YES SHE DID

by 6:20 am. It has 295 Comments.

If you didn’t watch last night, rest assured: Hillary did a fine job, and Donald Trump… repeated all his Greatest Hits from the Rallies bits. He didn’t lose a single member of his devoted “base”, but he sniffled, lied, talked over the woman on the stage, claimed that America is a job-leaking hellhole which every filthy brown terrorist can’t wait to invade, lied some more, contradicted the African-American moderator (while lying), sniffled, called President Obama “your president”, took credit for “settling” the birtherism issue, and by every metric and “optic” looked like a coked-up, aging con artist in a bad suit rambling about “the nuclear” and “the cyber”. Vox has a full transcript up, and I’m guessing one of the other front-pagers will be able to post a video later this morning.

But this is the Big Fat Gaffe that will probably attract the most attention…


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Dark of Night Open Thread: Trump Has the European Fascists’ Votes, Too

by 12:49 am. It has 115 Comments.

Rep. Steve “Pig Muck” King, he of the “calves like cantalopes” slur, is happy to share:

And before his ‘spokesmen’ start making excuses, yes King does know who these people are:

So tonight, after his man Trump got smoked…

Really, Iowa? Really?


Post-Debacle Open Thread

by 11:47 pm. It has 186 Comments.

Professional Republican ratfvcker:

Flash update, from a conservative HRC-hater who’s nevertheless #NeverTrump:


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Post Debate Open Thread

by 10:52 pm. It has 321 Comments.

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The happiest man in America right now is Paul Manafort.

I think Hills wiped the floor with him, and I honestly thought he was on blow. But it terrifies me that this man could still be President. He knows literally nothing. He doesn’t even have soundbite knowledge that Rubio or Palin can muster. It’s fucking horrifying.





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We May Not Get Through All of the Debate Questions and Beyond Open Thread

by 10:34 pm. It has 179 Comments.

There was a request for a new open thread to deal with the debate. So let this take you through into the post debate discussion.


More Debate Debacle Open Thread

by 9:34 pm. It has 552 Comments.

Trump’s stressing the BE AFRAID BE AFRAID (Stolen jobs! ISIS! Financial Bubble! Negro Thinks-He’s-President Playing Golf! We’re being ripped off by every country!) meme — it’s his go-to move but I don’t think it’s gonna impress anyone but his base.

Right now he’s explaining — again! — that he can’t release his tax returns because he’s being audited “very unfairly”.