Geez, These Kids

TPM:

Eric Trump on Wednesday joined Donald Trump's surrogates in applauding the Republican nominee for not bringing up Bill Clinton's sex scandals during the Monday debate, even saying that the moment is "something I’ll always remember."

"Gee - I'll always remember that time on national primetime TV, seen by 70 million Americans plus maybe twice that many around the world - I'll remember my dad deciding not to be a giant gold-plated monument to Total Douchenozzlery" .

First time for everything, I guess.  But indeed, Eric , how proud you must be - as are we all, of course.

And if you open that window just a bit, you can hear me rolling my eyes so hard I can see what's left of my brain after having to acknowledge that even people like Donald Trump are allowed to breed. 

A Quickie

hat tip = Tweeter @djred678

Keith Olbermann

Who is Carter Page?

Watch this video on The Scene.

Today's Gotcha

25 solid rational reasons to vote for Donald Trump

What They Say

Repubs - the ones with most of the money and power - love to lead the bitch session about Dems and Libruls who're busy spending "Other People's Money".  What they always conveniently neglect to mention is that the reason it's "your money" is that they don't contribute much at all, and they're always busy pimping us into helping them pay even less while getting a bigger and bigger share of the benefits.

All the little grey areas and loopholes in our ridiculous Tax Code; an economy increasingly tilted in favor of wealthy people - none of this happens if we stop allowing guys like Donald Trump to play us for suckers.  

   

You Can Quote Me

Trump is that guy - kind of a passing acquaintance - who just shows up at the friendly neighborhood poker game, where he mooches everybody's beer, he bets with IOUs, and he has to be reminded to ante up every.fucking.hand.

--mike

Today's Chart

And for anybody still insisting on being hung up on the "Yeah, but she's still lying so it's OK for me to sit here doing nothing but pining over Bernie", spare me the purity crap.

Governments lie. Politicians lie. Insurance Salemen lie. Cops lie. Your wife and kids lie.

You lie.

The point is that we can sift thru it; we can make a fairly accurate determination as to what the lie seems to be about vs what the lie is really about; we can test the statements in various ways to assign values to the lies and the liars - we can, to an extent, quantify the rhetoric. We can then put all this on a spectrum, and we come up with an assessment - which gives us reasonable rationale for flipping a coin or just going with your gut feeling.

Yeah, hey, I'm funny.  But, there are facts here. 

Fact 1: 

Hillary lies a little less than 30% of the time, while Trump lies more than 65% of the time. 

Fact 2: 

Hillary makes true statements more than 50% of the time, while Trump makes true statements less than 20% of the time.

Fact 3: 

Hillary tells the truth more than twice as often as Trump, while Trump lies more than twice as often as Hillary.

Fact 4: 

More is more, and less is less.

Look, I don't really know, but I hafta say this again - Hillary's been raked over the coals for 25 years, and she's standing tall.  Trump spent 90 minutes on stage with her last nite, and he's a mass of welts and bloody blisters today.

Political Reality

From Vox:

Donald Trump is great at doing the seemingly unimaginable. He won the Republican nomination over 15 other potential nominees who looked better on paper, with a thin ground game, little cash on hand, and not much buoying him in the early going beyond his celebrity. On that level, maybe he’s a political savant?

But when he’s asked to do something that’s fairly standard campaign ritual — host a political convention, say, or compete in a debate — he very rarely pulls it off. He’s just not that good at the basics of politics, and that only underscores how flimsy and empty most of his policy proposals are.

And if there’s one big takeaway I have from his first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, it’s that Trump failed almost as much as a performer as he did a candidate.

Turns out that real live politics is just not the same as hosting a game show.

Attempting A Modified Dahmer Defense

Trump: 

Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials, some of it said in entertainment, somebody who's been very vicious to me, Rosie O'Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree she deserves it, and nobody feels sorry for her. I was going to say something 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, but she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue.

The guy is a 6-year-old who throws himself on the floor kicking and screaming if you don't tell him what a good little boy he's been because he didn't take a shit on the dining room rug and then wipe his ass with the cat. 

Today's Tweet

"#TrumpWon!" - Said no one with eyes, ears or rational judgment - EVER. pic.twitter.com/ogzIn5GCNG

— Pin Head (@PiercedSkull) September 27, 2016