Ouze wrote:
When Ted Cruz refused to endorse Trump, I gained the tiniest shred of respect for him - a truly awful man who at least makes one really principled stand, you have to admire at least a little.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 jasper76 wrote:
Does anyone else feel that by flirting with the Trump Catasrophe, the United States citizenry is just throwing in rhe towel on world governance?

Gennifer Flowers
‏@gennflowers
Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!...

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Don't know if you read the same story as I did behind that, Whembly, but apparently Trump is bringing her along in response to Mark Cuban being in the front row in Hillary's section or something like that.

 whembly wrote:

Maybe he should also put the survivors of Benghazi, Jaunita Broddrick and Monica Lewinski.

 whembly wrote:

Edit: Being how fethed up 2016 is... we're so going to see at 269-269 Electoral College on election night... aren't wee?

 whembly wrote:
Oh gak!

Stupidest fething election ever:

Gennifer Flowers
‏@gennflowers
Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!...

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Oh gak!

Stupidest fething election ever:

Gennifer Flowers
‏@gennflowers
Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!...

Excuse me, Gennifer, but Andy Warhol called and said you've already used up your 15 minutes. Please sit down and fade back into the irrelevance from whence you came.

I think HRC should stock the audience with contractors, laborers and Trump U. "students" that got ripped off by the Big Orange...not Rusty Staub...and they should hold placards with the $$$ amount Donnie screwed them out of.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Edit: Being how fethed up 2016 is... we're so going to see at 269-269 Electoral College on election night... aren't wee?

I thought you predicted Hillary as a clear winner.

Spoiler:

Technology issues haven't dominated the US presidential campaign. But they're there.
Security and privacy. The health of the economy. Schools and research. Immigration.
In some way, all these issues are tech issues. That means the next president's science and technology policies will have long-lasting impact on the country.
"Tech definitely needs to be a part of the discourse when we choose the next president of the United States," said Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, because it's "involved in almost every aspect of our lives."
Ahead of Monday's debate, CNET and TechRepublic compiled a list of the most important technology issues facing the country to get a sense of what a Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump administration might mean for the field. We used the candidates' websites, public statements and interviews with other publications to research their positions.
We also contacted both campaigns for additional comment on their technology policies. The Clinton team sent us a detailed list of her comments on the issues and directed us to her website. The Trump team didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

Cybersecurity
Clinton
In February, Clinton called cybersecurity one of "the most important challenges the next president is going to face," citing the offensive advances of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. In the National Security section of Clinton's website, the candidate directly addresses risks posed by Russian and Chinese hackers.
Trump
Trump's campaign website provides scant detail on his cybersecurity policy. However, the candidate told The New York Times that "certainly cyber has to be in our thought process, very strongly in our thought process...Inconceivable the power of cyber...you can make countries nonfunctioning with a strong use of cyber." Trump also made a comment that seemed to encourage the Russian government to hack Clinton's email. The remark was criticized by FBI chief James Comey. Trump later said he was being sarcastic.

Privacy and encryption
Clinton
Clinton has a complex relationship with privacy and encryption. Her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state has dogged her campaign. She argued for compromise during the Apple-FBI standoff over whether Apple should be forced to help the agency crack into an iPhone used be a terrorist, and her policy position supports the formation of a commission to strike a balance between individual privacy and national security. "Hillary rejects the false choice between privacy interests and keeping Americans safe," says her position statement.
Trump
Trump hasn't issued a policy statement but his words indicate he isn't sympathetic to privacy concerns when public safety is involved. He's suggested the government should have access to encrypted devices, and he called out Apple during the tech giant's standoff with the FBI. "Who do they think they are?" Trump said. "They have to open it up."

ICANN
Clinton
The US should leave coordinating the domain name system that addresses internet sites to Los Angeles-based ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which takes over on October 1, Clinton says. The ICANN transition is "a critical step towards safeguarding the internet's openness for future generations," says the Clinton policy. ICANN is in charge of the Domain Name System (DNS) and is in charge of assigning IP addresses to top-level domains like .com, .net and .org.
Trump
Trump says the US should control the internet, end of story, and he objects to passing control to ICANN. "Congress needs to act, or internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost," said Trump National Policy Director Stephen Miller said in a statement Tuesday.
For a detailed look at the ICANN issue, check out our rundown here.

STEM
Clinton
When it comes to STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, Clinton's website enumerates a three-point plan with significant investments in such education, a proposal that's nested in a detailed economic proposal. "A new generation of potential scientists, engineers, coders, and mathematicians are learning in classrooms across America right now," she says. Her plan proposes spending and support in the private and public sectors at the regional and national levels.
Trump
Trump has no specific STEM policy but has noted on his website that "we graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs."

H-1B visas
Clinton
Speaking to a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in 2007 Clinton expressed support for H-1B visas, temporary visas for skilled workers. Her website states that Clinton would "staple" a green card to STEM masters and Ph.D.s from accredited institutions, enabling international students who complete degrees in these fields a path to permanent residence. Clinton also would support "startup" visas that let entrepreneurs from abroad come to the US to build tech companies.
Trump
Trump's policy seeks to increase the pay for people holding H-1Bs as part of a plan to steer more work to Americans. "Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give...coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the US, instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas," his policy says.

Innovation
Clinton
Clinton's nearly 7,000-word Initiative on Technology & Innovation uses technology as the center of a broad platform of economic issues. The proposal includes funding for classroom technology and spurring tech exports. Clinton's plan is supported by several major influential Silicon Valley technologists.
Trump
Trump hasn't expressed much on the subject of innovation and research. But Silicon Valley has weighed in on the candidate's potential impact. "Trump would be a disaster for innovation," according to a July open letter signed by nearly 150 tech leaders, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Atkinson, of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said Trump's background in real estate isn't "really geared toward innovation."

Taxes
Clinton
Clinton opposes tax inversions. A tax inversion is a legal tactic that allows companies to migrate their tax burden to a country with a lower rate, while keeping primary corporate operations in the originating country. The practice has been associated with biotechnology companies and pharmaceutical firms. "I call it a perversion, but under the tax code it's called an inversion," she declared on her website. "And we will make you pay for that with a new exit tax."
Trump
Trump wants to encourage US companies to build at home by instituting a 35 percent tax on products made outside of the US. He singled out Apple during a January stump speech saying, "We're going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries." Apple, which declined to comment on Trump's comments at the time he made them, designs many of its products at its Silicon Valley headquarters and has them assembled in China. If Apple products were manufactured in the US, the price of an iPhone potentially could rise to around $900 to offset worker wages.

 whembly wrote:
Both parties doesn't have a fething clue about ICANN.

I'd prefer to leave it alone... (I mean, seriously... what's the driving need to do this?).

 jmurph wrote:
The trend has been for Trump and with an unusually large number of undecideds, that creates a great deal of uncertainty. HRC has a lot more to lose than Trump in the debates as expectations are low for Trump and HRC has a lot more debate experience. HRC has the burden of articulating policy positions to sway voters while Trump can get away with bombastic nonsense. Even if Trump outright lies, it won't really hurt him, and might help if viewers see him as "a strong leader". At this rate, people seem unable to distinguish between a reality show and an actual election. Let's just have Simon Cowell head up the FEC.

 gorgon wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
The trend has been for Trump and with an unusually large number of undecideds, that creates a great deal of uncertainty. HRC has a lot more to lose than Trump in the debates as expectations are low for Trump and HRC has a lot more debate experience. HRC has the burden of articulating policy positions to sway voters while Trump can get away with bombastic nonsense. Even if Trump outright lies, it won't really hurt him, and might help if viewers see him as "a strong leader". At this rate, people seem unable to distinguish between a reality show and an actual election. Let's just have Simon Cowell head up the FEC.

But Hillary can't lecture TOO much, or else she'll seem condescending. She has to be able to respond firmly to Trump's nonsense, but not do it in a way that makes her seem unlikeable. In short...the pressure is on Hillary to thread the needle AND do a lot of things that aren't really in her usual wheelhouse. Meanwhile, Trump can do whatever he likes, because that's the space he's carved out for himself..."just Trump being Trump." If only debates had anything to do with substance...but they're very much the opposite of that in the eyes of the media and too many citizens.

I think history will record this as our nation's first true test with a demagogue (for POTUS), and I'm increasingly concerned that our citizens will fail this test. The media already has. Perhaps Trump is what our often-ugly, social-media-obsessed, attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly nation deserves right now.

Historically speaking, debates tend not to have a large amount of influence on Presidential elections...bounces are often modest and short-lived. However, in this case I think they're going to set the tone for the home stretch, and that if Trump can stay there or close just a little, we're liable to see some surprises on election day. By most accounts, Hillary does NOT have the electoral college advantage that Obama did. Her paths to victory are much more limited. This is not good, because one surprise can lose her the election. And this seems like exactly the kind of election where some shockers will occur.

Edit: Per the 538 blog, if the election was held today, they project Trump as the winner with 276 electoral votes and a dead heat in the popular vote. Their projection for Nov. 8 is in coin flip territory. Trump seems to be solidifying his hold on Ohio and Florida. Better strap in, folks.

 whembly wrote:
Don't do that Hil...

 gorgon wrote:


And regarding polls, note they seem to agree that Trump is leading in Ohio, and only twice since 1896 has Ohio failed to predict the winner.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


And regarding polls, note they seem to agree that Trump is leading in Ohio, and only twice since 1896 has Ohio failed to predict the winner.

Didn't I see in the news recently that the leading Ohio newspaper endorsed the Democratic candidate for the first time in a hundred years?

 Ouze wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Don't do that Hil...

... yikes. She looks and sounds like a wild-eyed crazy person there. This is exactly what not to do during the debate.

I don't understand where the feth she's been for the last, like, 3 weeks. Her support has been eroding and I haven't seen here anywhere at all.

What’s the degree of uncertainty?

It remains fairly high. This is the point that we really can’t emphasize enough, and it’s why FiveThirtyEight shows somewhat better odds for Trump than most other forecast models. Not all 2-point leads are created equal, and Clinton’s is on the less-safe side, certainly as compared with the roughly 2-point lead that President Obama had over Mitt Romney on the eve of the 2012 election.

Perhaps the most important reason for that is the higher-than-usual number of undecided and third-party voters. Clinton leads Trump roughly 42-40, based on our national polling average; late in the 2012 race, by contrast, Obama led Romney about 48-46. That means about 18 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to one of the major-party candidates, as compared with 6 percent late in 2012.1

The number of undecided and third-party voters has a strong historical correlation with both polling volatility and polling error — and in fact, the polls have been considerably more volatile this year than in 2012.

We also have a wider playing field of swing states this year — with states ranging from Georgia to Maine having been competitive at various points of the campaign. Thus, there’s a good chance that the polls (and the polling aggregators) will “call” several states wrong instead of getting 48 or 49 or 50 of them right, as they did in 2008 and 2012. That introduces important assumptions about how the errors between states are related. FiveThirtyEight’s model assumes these errors are somewhat correlated, especially in demographically similar states. If Trump beats his polls in Wisconsin, for example, he’s also likely to do so in Michigan.

Finally, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that we still have a fairly long way to go. With the party conventions held early this year, everyone’s sense of timing was thrown off, and the 44 remaining days in this campaign are going to feel like an eternity.

It’s important to underscore that this uncertainty cuts in both directions. We give Trump better odds of winning than most other models, but we also assign higher odds to a Clinton landslide.

 gorgon wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
The trend has been for Trump and with an unusually large number of undecideds, that creates a great deal of uncertainty. HRC has a lot more to lose than Trump in the debates as expectations are low for Trump and HRC has a lot more debate experience. HRC has the burden of articulating policy positions to sway voters while Trump can get away with bombastic nonsense. Even if Trump outright lies, it won't really hurt him, and might help if viewers see him as "a strong leader". At this rate, people seem unable to distinguish between a reality show and an actual election. Let's just have Simon Cowell head up the FEC.

I think history will record this as our nation's first true test with a demagogue (for POTUS), and I'm increasingly concerned that our citizens will fail this test. The media already has. Perhaps Trump is what our often-ugly, social-media-obsessed, attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly nation deserves right now.

 whembly wrote:
Trump Debate Invitees Include Benghazi Survivor, Gold Star Mom

Troll Status?

Spoiler:

NINJA!!!!!