chasfh

I think that’s better for Kamala. It doesn’t give him the chance to change the lingering impression of him that everyone who watched the debate took away from it.

Well, I don’t really buy into the concept of “good” and “evil”. Those are religious concepts that suggests some otherworldly spirit is involved. I think people’s behavior have more prosaic explanations than that. Trump is a ****ed-up person not because God or Satan caused that in him, but because of his upbringing and his experiences as they relate to whatever physiological issues he has in his brain. Whatever it is, he is constitutionally unable to change or otherwise control it, so he has to be dealt with as a bad actor based on his track record.

I’m thinking we might be at the point where people start waking up and paying attention to the race, which will help Kamala, because once people see or are reminded what a ****ing horror show Trump is, that should only accrue to her benefit.

I don't see any way Loomer is not a Kremlin plant, born in that part of the world and sent here as a handler of Trump working on behalf of Putin. Her bio on Wikipedia reveals almost zero about her early life or background. Nothing about her parents or family or anything, the only thing it says is that she was raised in Arizona, and the attributing link attached to that is dead.

Wow, now this is a thing.

Yes, in addition to being a pathological lair, he is also a narcissist, as well as a sociopath. It all works to come together in one package that's horrifying almost beyond belief.

Also #6. Even if an investigation were to reveal enough of a ... ahem ... smoking gun to actually prosecute such a case, the idea of such a conspiracy-come-true is so fantastical that it is actually risky for any party to suggest that a major party presidential candidate might actually have engaged in a faked assassination attempt, complete with uninvolved people who honestly support him likely to die, because the very suggestion of it comes off as completely unhinged, and untethered from any sense of reality. The moment it comes out, the country would go completely bonkers, and there could be no way such a case could be seriously prosecuted. That's part of why, as a conspiracy, it's essentially ... ahem ... bulletproof. The perpetrators already know going in that nothing would happen, could happen, to make them responsible for it, because it would be seen as just too ****ing wild to be true.

A cost-benefit analysis could easily conclude that the winning of a presidential election on the strength of assassination sympathy would be well worth the revenue lost from losing a single taxpayer, and that the tax revenue lost, if they were to lose the election, would not be debilitating enough to the overall economy to forego the operation. This is not at all to say that I believe this to be the case. I'm only saying that hypothetically, it is short of impossible, especially considering the crew we're talking about here.

Counterpoint: the former Projector-in-Chief is actively promoting a conspiracy that the Biden-Harris administration was behind the shooting.

I agree that Trump is a pathological liar, that he is fundamentally amoral and unethical, that his entire life revolves around himself to the exclusion of everyone else, and that he will say anything, true or untrue, to further his ends. I also believe it's likely that he truly believes whatever lie he is telling at any given moment, as opposed to holding both true thoughts and the lies based on them in his head at the same time. I think it's likely that he holds a single thought, true or not, in his head, and that this thought can be discarded and replaced with a different, opposing thought when it's convenient at the time. And further to this, I don't believe he deserves any kind of pass at any level for his behavior simply because he might actually believe the nonsense he spews.

Not to get all psychobabble on you, but mental health experts have established that compulsive, pathological liars do tend to believe the stories that they tell, which is what makes them so effective at lying, at least when it comes to bamboozling their disciples. They don't hold two opposite thoughts in their head—as in, (1) I'm saying something I know is wrong, and (2) I know the truth in my head is different from what I'm saying—because it creates all kinds of mental stress from which they would eventually break down before long as a result. On the other hand, they have no trouble replacing an old inconvenient truth with a new convenient truth, and then discarding the old one while embracing the new one completely. The key is having only one story, one "truth", in their head a a time. Calling it a form of task-switching, I suppose. But I have no doubt that Trump believes whatever truth he has in his head at any given time, and that he couldn't reason or logic his way out of it even if he wanted to, which he doesn't, because he's mentally ill rather than evil.

114

No interest.

He got smacked around a bit in the third inning. I actually saw something this game. I’ve never seen before: the same guy driving in two runs on routine infield singles, in back to back at bats. I would bet good money that’s the first time that has ever happened in over 200,000 major league games

Our system went into the toilet because of that, and we never even got one ring out of it.

@CMcCosky

lol geese

Where's it playing?

Lots of pundits can say what the spotlight should be on. I'll be interested to see where the spotlight ends up.

That’s not the vote, though. That’s who won the debate. One of CNN‘s “uncommitted voters“ last night said she was already leaning toward Trump coming in, was also leaning toward Trump winning the debate, and said she’s not voting for someone to stand up in her wedding, she’s voting for someone to lead the country. That’s how a lot of this is going to land, I think, with Republican voters begrudgingly agreeing that Kamala is the better debater, while also forcefully disagreeing that makes her a better leader. I’m not saying she (and Taylor) didn’t pick up any votes. She almost certainly did. I’m saying she may not have kept any Trump voters home last night which, despite protestations to the contrary, has got to be part of her formula to win.

I understand what the spotlight should be on, Steve.

That’s fine, and we’d all love to see a repeat performace, although I can see where Trump agrees to it only if they have it hosted by Fox in front of a handpicked MAGA audience, which would force Kamala to either accept those terms as is, or look like a chicken for rejecting or even trying to negotiate them. And if she did accept those terms, that would also give Fox the chance to constantly fact-check Kamala the way ABC did last night, except while using Trump’s lies in place of facts, as the braying morons in the audience hoot and holler, with no one there to correct the record, and the zone gets completely reflooded with confusion and drivel and just nonsense in general. Something like might actually serve to reset Trump as a serious candidate with a 50-50 chance to win, at which point if he falls short in the count, they can try to use lawfare and the Supreme Court to put him back in the White House, and there’s at least a ghost of a chance that would work. If that’s the direction it goes, Kamala will have to figure out how to prevent this from happening without looking like she’s ducking him, for which she’d get roundly criticized by the horse race-loving MSM.

I do have a concern that the MSM will follow the RWM’s lead and focus not on the fact that Kamala crushed Trump with a combination of calling him on his horse**** and then burying him with facts, but rather, that she merely figured out how to get under his skin, which would constitute a lower order of victory that easier to dismiss. I’m already seeing that as the main takeaway this morning in NYT and WaPo and VOX.

And yet, 37% of voters still told CNN they thought he won.

The new Republican hubris will be to use “meme” in place of “lie”, as in, “nobody in the media cared about the issue of 20,000 migrants in a small Ohio town until we memed* about migrants kidnapping dogs and cats and eating them.” * - i.e., lied.