The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    SING A SONG OF SIX PENCE

    Trump at lectern before backdrop with elements of logo "TRUMP DonaldJTrump.com"

    My pc froze whist I wrote this the first time.

    So we shall try again.

    Pence is Pensive

    Kaine is Intensive

    But VP's are ineffective

    ha

    Just ask John Nance Garner.

    Pence helped

    the Pence candidacy in 2020. 

    If he hadn't ended with his moving right- to- life statement he might have also  provided a small gain for the ticket but,unfairly,  that sincere discussion will detract more from the Trump campaign than he assisted it with his polished performance. Fortunately.

    jollyroger's picture

    the fall of a great house

    It could turn out to be a mistake if one has skeletons in ones closet to invite scrutiny of the same.

     

    Notwithstanding his gargantuan appetite for publicity Donald Trump may have, through his  profound vanity, underestimatedthe criminal and financial exposures accumulated in 30 years of playing fast and loose.

     

    Donald Drops the Mic

    Seems Donald's falling back on the "sun was in myeyes, rock in my shoes, moderator up my ass" level of excuse making. While it's possible someone screwed up the audio levels, it's also possible that someone just doesn't know how to talk into the mic (or put it close to their mouth) - see pic below. (I presume he or his team checked the podium before the debate - my real guess is he wasn't yelling as assertively as usual). Unforced error #14.

    Hillary & the Paradox of Teamwork

    The trend towards greater teamwork has been extolled in business & management schools for well over 2 decades now, But still when we consider executive pay, leadership, innovation and other qualities, we're laying on sparse praise to the team, hard praise to the leader. It's not the team that makes Facebook - it's Zuckerberg (at the exclusion of even his co-founders). The ghost of Steve Jobs still hovers over Apple, but it's Tim Cook that reigns, not some more amorphous "team". When we talk about Microsoft's success, it's what Bill Gates and Paul Allen did, and what Steve Ballmer and later didn't do.

    Shoutout to Maiello: Wrestling

    [Meant to post this days ago, but may be better now]

    Okay, Devega made the claim that Trump's modeled himseslf on the badguy wrestler (who the crowd cheers for) - so we need the Maiello deconstruction of 1) what to expect, 2) how Hillary can counter it, and 3) whether wrestling motifs are the future of all American political contests. (And of course anything else you want to riff on).

    Trump Punts on Administration

    When asked by Fox who he'd invite to be in his Administration, Trump responded "Menstruation? That's disgusting. And I'll have you know I have no problem with women, do really well if you know what I mean, really well, without having blood come out from wherever. That's for these sad sack losers, I don't have to get all soft and sensitive to have lots of beautiful women. When they have that time of month, I'll be on the golf course driving the wood, if you know what I mean"

    Hillary was good enough

    and Trump won't have lost any of the people who are currently supporting him. 

    She may have won some of the undecided. He won't have.

    CVille Dem's picture

    No Comment. No Policy. No Reaction. No Eye Roll. Np Push-back. No Sigh, No Bulshit...I could go on, but why?

    I have had the tired job of watching the TV today after a weekend of camping and I am very tired,  I have to say that all the hubbub and BS that has preceded this event makes me wonder how The Trump Con Show expects this to make it happen.

    This absurd effort to make truth a joke is only one effort to the Trump Familiy is yet one more example of their patheticaness 

    ONWARD. 

    Richard Day's picture

    THE DEBATES LIVE; 100 MILLION CANNOT BE WRONG!

    Composite image of Lincoln & Douglas

    (Hillary is on the left)

    In less than three hours, we shall witness HISTORY!

    Issues abound!

    Is slavery wrong?

    Should rich folks be able to vote?

    Is Hillary a traitor?

    Richard Day's picture

    QUOTE OF THE YEAR

    Cody-Buffalo-Bill-LOC.jpg

    I just ran across this at the New Yorker. I cannot even remember why I ended up at the New Yorker. hahhah

    TOLEDO (The Borowitz Report)—At a campaign rally on Friday, Donald Trump warned that Hillary Clinton is scheming to “rig the debate by using facts” in their first televised face-off, on Monday.

    jollyroger's picture

    When invited by HRC to google in rebuttal of Trump Truthiness, may the moderator accept the invitation along with the public?

    Somewhere or other I have urged google access, and now I see that HRC is seeking such by proxy.

     

    How Stupid.

     

    Why are not all three, moderator, Clinton and Trump on a three way hookup that is itself on a jumbotron, so everyone is playing in the same sandbox, everyone can see the questions (and answers) and link trails in real time.

     

    Digit up, people!

    Japanese Whispers: The Swift Boating of Hillary

    In 2004, after losing the post-9/11 2002 mid-terms, the Democrats fielded a decorated Vietnam veteran against an incumbent president who was revealed to have gone AWOL on his National Guard service, a service in itself that was a bypass of the regular draft.

    Instead of accepting the stacked deck, conservative Republicans immediately went to work reframing - parading a group of veterans to call into doubt Kerry's service, while finding a magic unicorn forged document to derail the otherwise overwhelmingly compelling evidence that Bush had failed to complete.

    jollyroger's picture

    Why is there a live audience at the debate on Monday? Should there be?

     

    Mark Cuban, as an honored guest of HRC, will be in the front row Monday night.

     

    Prediction markets place the likelihood that he will heckle Trump if things are not going well for Hillary at 72%..

     

    I make it a lock.

     

    On a larger note, it certainly was not historically a "given" that there would be any audience at all.

     

    I think it gives Trump too much opportunity to dodge and duck.

     

    I'm against it.

    Richard Day's picture

    T-RUMP REX

    Tyrannosaurus Rex Holotype.jpg

    T-Rump Rex


    I usually depend upon Slate or Washpo for truthiness but Politifact had me laughing so hard:

    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/lists/people/comparing-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-truth-o-met/

    jollyroger's picture

    Cherchez la femme...

    New details mention a trip to Quetta, Pakistan (parenthetically the seat of the Quetta Shura...) by Rahami, where he met and GOT MARRIED TO a local girl.  (well, the way they do it, he got married to and then met...)

     

    After that trip, say his compadres, he became markedly devout, you know the rest of the story.

     

    jollyroger's picture

    Donald Trump, Low T Candidate

    One of the few "hard facts" (see what I did there?) that snuck out from Trump's recent foray into medical transparency, was his total blood testosterone level, viz:

    441

    In his smirking interchange, Trump evinces satisfaction in being informed by Mehmet Oz (who I will not dignify with the customery honorific...) that this is "very good."

    Orion's picture

    Why Trump and Why the Alt Right

    I'm gonna say some things here that perhaps you won't want to hear, especially in a venue like this. I will say it never the less.

    There's a reason why Donald Trump made it this far, why he is gaining in the polls and why he could even win.

    Orwell Described Today's GOP 70 Years Ago

    Trump campaign: Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.

    George Orwell 1946: From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.... Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.

    Richard Day's picture

    WHO IS THE MOST PHAT & STUPID, RUSH?

    Limbaugh Award cropped.jpg

    PHAT

    The term derives from African American Vernacular English as a deliberate misspelling of the word fat.

    Flagging Relief

    I've never quite gotten the flag, and growing up, I thought that was part of the point. Didn't everyone else sit through history class and learn how country after country had followed jingoistic rhetoric, crass manipulative symbolism and other tricks of the trade to go get slaughtered? I once read the final chapter to "Johnny Got His Gun" on air - at one point, that was required reading, no?

    Richard Day's picture

    POST HOC ERGO ...

     

    NEVER ASSUME
    Never assume, it makes an as out of u and an ass out of me
    (Some ass wrote this a long time ago)

    Hillary takes a shit

    Faced with condemnation from David Axelrot for not being more forthcoming about her pneumonia, Hillary Clinton's team has put the traveling press corps on notice that they will be receiving regular updates on bowel movements, including floaters vs sinkers, as well as any gassy bloated moments, painful urination, drowsiness, irritability, and other possible flaws of human nature and physiology.

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