Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

People are weird.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans in disarray!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The revolution will be supervised.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

The lights are all blinking red.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Last Debate (If It Happens)

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Last Debate (If It Happens)

by | 276 Comments

This post is in: ,

Still a non-neglible chance, IMO, that the Squatter-in-Chief either can’t or won’t step up come 9pm.

I’m too old and my blood pressure is too high to watch this charade, but no doubt there will be plenty of social-media repartee to share afterwards.

For those of you with more stamina, the Verge has the info:

… The debate will air on every major news network and be live-streamed online by a range of channels. On YouTube, you can find debate streams from C-Span, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and PBS, among others…

[Moderator Kristen] Welker has named the following six issues as the general topics for the debate, to be given roughly 15 minutes each.
– Fighting COVID-19
– American Families
– Race in America
– Climate Change
– National Security
– Leadership
 
The first debate was widely criticized as unruly and unpleasant, driven in large part by persistent interruptions by Trump. In response, debate organizers will now give candidates two minutes of uninterrupted time to address each of the major topics, during which time their opponent’s microphone will be silenced. The opponent will be able to respond at the close of those questions, and crosstalk will be allowed after the opening statement has been completed.

Side note, FWIW: Edward Snowden has just been granted permanent residency in Russia, so it looks like at least one interested observer doesn’t expect Trump to have pardoning power much longer.

Reader Interactions

276Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    FWIW: Edward Snowden has just been granted permanent residency in Russia, so it looks like at least one interested observer doesn’t expect Trump to have pardoning power much longer.

    Or Trump requested a roommate ahead of time.

  2. 2.

    SoupCatcher

    I only care about one thing: Joe Biden is as healthy at the end of the debate as he was at the start.

  5. 5.

    germy

    – Race in America

    And the president will pivot from that to LAW AND ORDER.

    Wallace, the last moderator, actually linked the two topics. Didn’t even wait for Trump to do it.

  7. 7.

    mrmoshpotato

    Third debate, Brother Charlie? Did fate mercifully make me accidentally miss one of these piles of orange excrement?

  12. 12.

    mrmoshpotato

    The first debate was widely criticized as unruly and unpleasant, driven in large part by persistent interruptions by Trump a shitshow because of a traitorous orange manbaby shitstain that the human garbage that runs our networks jerked off during 2016 for ratings and because we’re democracy-hating fascists who have a hard-on for hating Hillary Clinton.

    Fixed.

  13. 13.

    Kay

    Sherrod Brown is doing some kind of conference call/zoomy thing at 8 so I’m going to listen to that.

  14. 14.

    germy

    Trump aides have been telling people that the big surprise in store for tonight's debate is he's bringing Tony Bobulinski, the former Hunter Biden business associate, as a guest tonight. They're hoping to spring this on Biden, the way he brought Bill Clinton accusers in 2016

    — Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 22, 2020

  18. 18.

    Jay

    Reveal immigration reporter Aura Bogado came across a scrap of information last year: A girl from Honduras had been in U.S. immigration custody for six years, longer than any case she’d ever heard before. She didn’t have much information to go on, besides the girl’s full name, the name of the town where she grew up and the first name of an aunt who had raised the girl.

    In this episode, Bogado does what the government didn’t: She tracks down the girl’s family members, who have been desperately trying to figure out what happened to her. As she does that, Bogado unravels the story of how a 10-year-old girl could get trapped inside what’s supposed to be a short-term system for much of her childhood.

    And, after a lawsuit against the U.S. government, we discover that tens of thousands of children have been held in custody for months, instead of days, and that nearly 1,000 have spent more than a year in shelters.

    https://revealnews.org/episodes/an-adolescence-seized/

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    Mara Liason helpfully tells me that tonight is Donnie’s “last best hope”.**

    To the Pain, Joe. To the Pain!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    ** – Somehow I think she’ll have some other ‘helpful’ advice for Donnie, and brilliant insights for NPR ATC listeners, after tonight as well.

  25. 25.

    germy

    Donald Trump’s single, core conviction is that he always deserves praise and admiration, and anyone who criticizes or even just fails to praise him (especially if it’s a woman) is doing something objectively wrong and probably criminal. https://t.co/nrQwxleXz0

    — Mollie W. O’Reilly (@MollieOReilly) October 22, 2020

  26. 26.

    mrmoshpotato

    @kindness:

    Can we please get Greenwald to follow Snowden to Russia? I’m so sick of that guy. 

    Before or after we fire Spleenwald into the Sun?

  29. 29.

    dmsilev

    I don’t profess to be any sort of political strategy genius, but I’m not seeing much of a ‘surprise’ in something that you announce hours ahead of time. Not to mention, even as a political junkie, my first reaction is ‘who the fuck is Tony Bobulinski?’.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    Darren Samuelsohn
    @dsamuelsohn
    ·1h
    SCOOP: Jared Kushner has been talking up the idea of starting a Trump-themed news outlet or some other media company, possibly as soon as after the election,

  37. 37.

    germy

    The talkies came along in 1927 with The Jazz Singer… or did they? Victorian Music hall star Lil Hawthorne sings 'Kitty Mahone' in this extract from the earliest surviving 'sound film', made in 1900 (!) and preserved by @BFI National Archive pic.twitter.com/MXXOYpi8qF

    — Robin Baker (@robinalexbaker) October 22, 2020

    And here's the chorus, in case you wish to join in:

    "My pretty Kitty Mahone, I’m tired of living alone,
    Do have some pity Kitty, say that you’ll be mine.
    I love you Kitty I do, and if you will be true,
    I’ll save up my wages for you, my Kitty Mahone"

    — Robin Baker (@robinalexbaker) October 22, 2020

  39. 39.

    piratedan

    @mrmoshpotato:  I’d be happy to let Greenwald off the hook, but only after he’s read three pages of why he’s an irredeemable fuckwit with that lede buried mid-paragraph mid-page after he’s paid his outstanding IRS balance and legal judgements against.

  40. 40.

    germy

    @Immanentize:

    Bolsanaro was told by Putin to leave Glenn alone.

    He stirs up shit from the safety of his gated community and sometimes Tucker’s show while servants pick up dog shit from his compound.

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: Cage-match News Network?

    What CNN trash will be slobbering all over Dump afterwards?  Will tonight be the night Dump becomes President, Van Jones?

  46. 46.

    jl

    If we’re going to have Russian assets among us, I’d prefer Snowden’s mumbled platitudes and chin stroking, to Trump’s antics and crimes. Not sure to what extent Snowden is a Russian asset, I haven’t follow that affair that closely. Might be a deluded self-righteous goofball.

  47. 47.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud: 
    Trump just invited him as a guest, right? Do we know if he accepted? What kind of person would accept Trump’s invitation in the first place, imo?

  48. 48.

    The Moar You Know

    Edward Snowden has just been granted permanent residency in Russia

    We will never know, and likely the USG doesn’t know, but he must have given them an absolute treasure trove. Russians hate foreigners. Residency is not something lightly done.

  53. 53.

    Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    unfortunately, the Transit KKKops are too busy going after half a dozen fare-jumpers robbing transit of $27.80 in fares every day, to enforce the mask mandates,

    spitting is classed as an assault, might even be classed as a hate crime due to the young man being BIPOC,

    But as she was retreating, his response was probably not “reasonable use of minimal force”, which is required for a self defence, defence.

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    The shirt is problematic for technical reasons so Dolt 45 will dramatically step away from the lectern to reveal Superman Underoos.

  55. 55.

    Wolf

    For your enjoyment and Van Jones everlasting shame:
    Less than an hour after Trump honored the widow of a slain NAVY Seal, the Democratic commentator suggested that the commander in chief had officially begun to look the part.
    “He became President of the United States in that moment, period,” said Jones, after the evening’s most emotional point was replayed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
    “That was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics,” Jones added.
    This comment has not aged well for him.  But is funny as hell as a meme.

  56. 56.

    Yarrow

    @Kay:  How is this a “scoop” in any way? It’s been obvious that some version of Trump TV is their next step. Possibly beginning with turning OANN into Trump TV.

  62. 62.

    Elizabelle

    So: Borat is counterprogramming the debate.

    LATimes: Amid Giuliani controversy, Borat is hosting a live watch party. What could go wrong?

    Coinciding with the last presidential debate, the comedian’s “Borat Live Internet Presentation in Associate with Kazakhstan Televiski” will begin at 6 p.m. Pacific on Amazon Prime Video. It’ll be followed by a live Q&A and “very good dancing party with Top DJ!!” that can be accessed here (password: passwerd) after the movie concludes.

    Fans are invited to “make RSVP please” ahead of the three-hour show on Eventbrite, which reads, “This is an internet presentation, please you will meet me on the internet!” Only people with an Amazon Prime account (or free trial) who RSVP in advance will be able to view the film.

    “There will be Presentation of my moviefilm on Thursday in town named Internet,” Borat, a fictional Kazakh journalist, tweeted earlier this week. “I will travel there to answer questions from you and then we have dancing party totally nude!! #everybodydancingnow Please you look on this.”

    …. The new “Borat” movie will be available to stream Friday on Amazon Prime Video.

  64. 64.

    jl

    All your base are belong to the Dutch.

    @joshtpm
    Trump’s Twitter account hacked after Dutch researcher guessed password
    https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1319312818701819905

    My Dutch friends periodically remind me of their humble saying ‘If it ain’t Dutch it ain’t worth much’.

    Google translate says “Als het niet Nederlands is, is het niet veel waard”  So, maybe that saying is only in English. Seems to apply to Dutch hackers, official and unofficial, government, academic and freelance.

  69. 69.

    jl

    @mrmoshpotato: The original or the remake starring Giuliani? In in the original it was the damsel in distress in the bed, in the remake it’s Giuliani, an interesting artistic re-imaging of the piece.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Wolf: Wasn’t that moment the “Your dead husband knew what he was getting into.” moment?  In other words, horrible, heartless and ghoulish.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @Yarrow:

    It’s a scoop because it says so :)

    I was just glad they’re making (other) plans after the election. The conservative grift sector is huge. Plenty of room for the Trumps. They can bleed the marks dry for all I care.

  74. 74.

    Kent

    This debate is going to be all Hunter Biden character assassination.  That’s all they got left since ANTIFA and anarchy cities didn’t push the needle last month.

    Ultimately I think it’s a poor play for Trump because to make Ukraine stick you have to convince people that Joe Biden is actually corrupt and that he was running a Ukranian influence-peddling and bribery ring out of the office of the Vice President.   That just doesn’t remotely comport with anyone’s image of Joe Biden.  And his finances are completely transparent.  If they actually had any evidence it would have been dragged out a year ago during impeachment.

    Trump’s secret Chinese bank account from which he paid more tax to China than to the US is going to be fun to talk about when Trump starts talking about Biden’s corruption in China.

    This debate is gonna be lit.  I hope Biden has his game face on and is prepped to answer all this bullshit.  He has a good team and seriously listens to them so I expect he is.

  75. 75.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @jl:

    I’ve seen some people saying to be skeptical of that Dutch researcher’s claims; that Twitter is disputing it. Honestly though, wouldn’t surprise me if Trump had such a laughably easy password for his twitter account

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @japa21: You need to ask yourself, “Is there anybody Baud DOES trust?”

    I’m hoping to gain his trust so that I can manage the campaign funds and PACs for the Baud! 2038! run. I have some brilliant innovations in mind.

  77. 77.

    burnspbesq

    @germy:

    How very un-Canadian.

    That’s probably misdemeanor assault under B.C. law. It’ll be interesting to see how the “I feared for my life cuz she wasn’t wearing a mask” plays out.

  79. 79.

    HumboldtBlue

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I watched that in 6th grade after-school movie club and thank goodness it was during the afternoon cuz he creeped me the fuck out and I do not like horror movies of any sort.

    Great movie though.

  81. 81.

    dmsilev

    @jl: The best part about that story was his password: maga2020! I guess 12345 was reserved for the lock on his luggage.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    A person in the county party just called me “I assume we’re just going to listen to Sherrod?”- annoyed.

    Yeah, we were all coming on to listen to you. So disappointed.

  83. 83.

    HeleninEire

    Hi all. So generally I don’t watch debates. They’re often cringeworthy without assholes like Trump.

    But I’ve had a great day. Was onboarded for a job, that quite frankly fell into my lap (although it’s with the City of NY so the paperwork was mind-boggling).

    But..back to the topic. I’m contemplating getting myself a bottle of wine ALL FOR ME. So if you see me in the debate thread later beware….I’ve had a few. ?

  88. 88.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    That just doesn’t remotely comport with anyone’s image of Joe Biden.  And his finances are completely transparent.  If they actually had any evidence it would have been dragged out a year ago during impeachment.

    Seriously. Where WAS Rudy with that laptop with child pr0n and evidence of Biden’s Ukraine corruption during impeachment? He supposedly had it for over a year, right? This is such a joke

    Trump’s secret Chinese bank account from which he paid more tax to China than to the US is going to be fun to talk about when Trump starts talking about Biden’s corruption in China.

    This debate is gonna be lit.  I hope Biden has his game face on and is prepped to answer all this bullshit.  He has a good team and seriously listens to them so I expect he is.

    I hope Trump’s mic gets cut off and he keeps going. I think I’ll bust a gut if I hear him faintly screaming in the background

  93. 93.

    Benw

    There’s a non-zero chance the plan is for Ivanka to wheel a portable amp + mike onto the stage so Trump can talk over Biden, anyway. If that’s true, Jared and Rudy are squabbling over it right now because they can’t get the bluetooth to connect

  95. 95.

    Kay

    Tom Winter
    @Tom_Winter
    ·2h
    It’s been 4 days since NBC News requested a copy of the hard drive Rudy Giuliani asserts he has that belongs to Hunter Biden.
    It is a copy his attorney says they currently posses.
    They’ve yet to turn it over.

    Someone alert Glenn Greenwald. The information doesn’t want to be freed.

  97. 97.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Immanentize:

    Is it wrong that I want Bolsonaro to personally see to the violent incarceration and oppression of Greenwald, and for his pleas for relief to the United States and the western world to be ignored because “gosh, Glenn, we don’t want to be neoliberal imperialists. That application of soft power is off limits.”

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I voted for Nixon because I was sure that if this Watergate rumor thing were true it would be plastered everywhere, and there was a time that I liked Van Jones.

    Bless me father, for I have sinned…

  99. 99.

    jimmirabob

    Why do I get the feeling that tonight will be like watching the obnoxious old drunk guy at the bar trying to pick up suburban housewives at closing time?

  100. 100.

    Yarrow

    @Baud:  Agreed. She seems to take their statements and claims at face value and repeat them as fact. I like her less since they’ve promoted her to the weekend Today anchor position.

  104. 104.

    gene108

    @Jay:

    The immigration system needs to be rebuilt. Too much inhumanity for next to no gains in any societal metric like safety.

  106. 106.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): A good smear works best when it is plausible and it is 90% true.  Like the Hillary emails thing.  She did have a private email server for government business in violation of State Dept. policy, and it was secretive, and it is plausible that she used it for secret government communications, and the Clintons are sort of secretive.  The fact that other before and after her have done the same thing isn’t really an answer.

    This Ukraine thing just ridiculous.  Biden running a pay-to-play bribery scheme in the Ukraine?  No one has plausibly even explained what he got paid and what the actual play was….the favor he did in exchange for cash.  Best as I can tell, he somehow did some undisclosed favor for Burisma so his son could cash in or something.  It’s just all ridiculous.

  107. 107.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: I (and I’m sure Rebecca is too) am mocking the fact that Dump is having a seemingly random guy in attendance to try to rattle Biden.

    As I said @22,  (I wonder if this guy had a reputation to uphold before tonight.)

    I don’t have a clue who this guy is, but am assuming he’s an alright guy who got roped into this shitshow.

    I am definitely not mocking him.  Now the Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby – soon to be 2-time loser of the popular vote…

  110. 110.

    Yarrow

    @Baud:  Since Van Jones is buddies with Javanka he can always get a job at Trump TV. He can take his other buddies, Kim Kardashian-West, Kanye, and Tulsi Gabbard with him. Traitors of a feather flock together.

  111. 111.

    piratedan

    @burnspbesq: I’d pay to see that tbh…. greenie has always been one of the most disingenuous bastards out there dealing in bad faith arguments.  I would have to admit that I would relish the opportunity to have someone withdraw a pound of flesh from him for his misdeeds.

  113. 113.

    Dan B

    Bannon announces scoop that Christopher Wray will be replaced with Ghouliani.

    I feels sad for agents.

  114. 114.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @The Moar You Know:

    Russians hate foreigners. Residency is not something lightly done.

    Russian residency is being granted with increasing ease, on account of the population decline.

  118. 118.

    gene108

    @Nina:

    Phlebotomist had trouble finding a vein to draw blood. Stuck him multiple times. Mitch bruises easily.

    That’s my best guess.

  122. 122.

    HumboldtBlue

    @WaterGirl: 

    It’s definitely mockery. It’s another stupid stunt from the people who make it a daily routine of stepping on their dicks.

  124. 124.

    Citizen Alan

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Didn’t some poor kid get sent to prison for “hacking” Sarah Palin’s account by correctly guessing that “Wasilla” was the answer for “where did you meet your spouse?” Even though in the process, he exposed her as having illegally used private email for government business for government business for which she paid no penalty?

  125. 125.

    Kent

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:Is it wrong that I want Bolsonaro to personally see to the violent incarceration and oppression of Greenwald, and for his pleas for relief to the United States and the western world to be ignored because “gosh, Glenn, we don’t want to be neoliberal imperialists. That application of soft power is off limits.”

    I want him to try to fly to Russia but then get his visa denied, so that he is like that Tom Hanks movie The Terminal where he is stuck the rest of his live in limbo in a backwater international airport in Ukraine taking sponge baths in the bathroom and sleeping on the airport terminal carpet because he can’t go on or go back.

  127. 127.

    mrmoshpotato

    @HumboldtBlue: You watched Spongebob Squarepants in an after-school movie club in 6th grade? ?

    Scene below deck where Nosferatu rises stiff as a board!  Ekk!

  128. 128.

    Elizabelle

    @Yarrow:  Lovely to see you back.

    And yeah.  I am no Kristen Welker fan either. She seems … complicit.  Plus NBC.  Do not trust that network.

  131. 131.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: My friend Robin Atlas tried to tell me but I just didn’t believe it.  We had the punch ballot voting back then and I always thought it might have been better to have stabbed my hand by accident instead of voting for Nixon.

    Robin was older than I was, and she always had the best dope.

  132. 132.

    HumboldtBlue

    @burnspbesq:

    I think it was self-defense because that nasty woman spit on him and that’s assault and generally people will respond to a physical assault with physical means of their own.

  134. 134.

    Emma from FL

    @Kent: The Hillary email thing wasn’t even close to 50% true. She had to use a private email because the security of the government email servers was notoriously shit. She did it on the advice of at least one previous secretary of state. Her server was the ONLY ONE never hacked during the Russian attacks. And she turned over everything to the investigators. AND the jerks never found a damn thing.

  135. 135.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay: 
    Gee, it’s almost like that hard drive doesn’t exist. Again, why was Giuliani sitting on it during impeachment?

  138. 138.

    mrmoshpotato

    @HeleninEire:

    They’re often cringeworthy without assholes like Trump. 

    Exception for when Elizabeth Warren slapped Michael Bloomberg all over the DNC debates. :)

  141. 141.

    HeleninEire

    @WaterGirl:  Nice to be here! Yeah. I do very few things well but getting jobs…dunno what I have, if I did I would bottle and sell it. I think the fact that I’m in a niche business helps.

  143. 143.

    Kent

    Wow….best and brightest.   Over 1/2 million in cash is the eye-opener here.  Child porn on 8 different electronic devices?  That seems more in profile.  About as bright as the woman who carved a backwards B on her face to accuse Obama thugs of disfiguring her, because she did it to herself in the mirror.

    https://www.wbtv.com/2020/10/22/man-arrested-kannapolis-with-van-full-guns-explosives-researched-killing-joe-biden/

    The order said a search of the van found “approximately $509,000 of U.S. currency (believed to be Defendant’s inheritance), books (about survival, bomb making, improved weapons and Islam), drawing of swastikas and planes crashing into buildings” and five more guns.

    When Treisman was arrested, the order said, officers found drivers licenses from three different states. The order said agents also discovered he had purchased the various weapons in states across the country, including Washington, Kansas, New Hampshire and West Virginia.

    The order said agents found child pornography on eight different electronic devices, along with other pictures and posts related to plans and ideas for possible terrorist acts, including the following:…

  145. 145.

    burnspbesq

    The Chinese bank account is a minefield for Trump. He’s likely to admit to a felony (willful failure to file FBARs, which is what Manafort went down for).

  146. 146.

    jl

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka): IIRC, the thing is a huge pdf of the email texts. No meta data at all, none of the info that you would see in real email files.

    And, I am no techie, but the idea of storing emails on huge scanned pdf files seems bizarre. Even assuming there is a hard drive, it probably just has this big pdf sitting on it, and bunch of random stuff.

    Would be nice if there were a hard drive, if Trumpsters were in charge of a lot of the mechanics, I doubt they wiped it properly.

  149. 149.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I hope Trump’s mic gets cut off and he keeps going. I think I’ll bust a gut if I hear him faintly screaming in the background 

    Walks to the edge of the stage and starts yelling at the moderator about how he’s being treated so unfairly, unbigly and definitely untremendous.

  150. 150.

    WaterGirl

    @HeleninEire: Speaking of bottles, if the debate gets rally bad I will have to break out a bottle of wine and some potato chips.  For some reason, crunching potato chips is helpful when I am stressed.

  151. 151.

    Kent

    @Emma from FL:@Kent: The Hillary email thing wasn’t even close to 50% true. She had to use a private email because the security of the government email servers was notoriously shit. She did it on the advice of at least one previous secretary of state. Her server was the ONLY ONE never hacked during the Russian attacks. And she turned over everything to the investigators. AND the jerks never found a damn thing.

    Point being, they were able to make the scandal stick because most of the facts were not in dispute, just the context.   It was just benign ordinary stuff, not malicious.  In the case of Joe Biden taking bribes, NONE of the facts are true.  There is not one single thing he has been alleged to have done that is true.

    And, of course it still took Comey to seal the deal.

  154. 154.

    Roger Moore

    @Kent:

    Biden running a pay-to-play bribery scheme in the Ukraine? No one has plausibly even explained what he got paid and what the actual play was….the favor he did in exchange for cash.

    The Republicans are stringing together three actual facts: Hunter worked for Burisma, Burisma was corrupt, and Joe encouraged Ukraine to fire their chief prosecutor, one of whose jobs was to investigate official corruption.  The key problem with the story is with #3.  The Republicans are trying to spin that into Joe Biden personally bullying Ukraine into firing their prosecutor to protect Burisma, but

    1. The US, together with the EU, were pushing for the prosecutor to be fired, not Joe Biden on his lonesome.
    2. The reason they wanted him fired is because he wasn’t doing enough to investigate corruption.
    3. It was his successor who exposed corruption at Burisma.

    So if Joe Biden was trying to protect Hunter and some kind of nefarious Ukrainian shakedown operation, he went about it exactly ass backward.

  156. 156.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Benw:

    There’s a non-zero chance the plan is for Ivanka to wheel a portable amp + mike onto the stage so Trump can talk over Biden, anyway. 

    One of those playschool megaphones that can record.

    “WRONG!” “SAD!” “LOSER!”

  157. 157.

    Emma from FL

    @Kent: Oh, I agree with you. But it pisses me off and it will piss me off forever into my afterlife what the fucking media did.

  158. 158.

    HeleninEire

    @burnspbesq: Ugh. I remember Manafort’s lawyer’s defense “Oh they are sooo arduous to complete.”

    I completed them for the 3 years I was in Ireland. The questions were:

    1. What’s your name and address?

    2. What’s your bank’s name and address?

    3. How much you got?

    And they even provided a calculator to convert Euros to USD. Yeah. Super hard.

  159. 159.

    Raven

    Our friends are doing a porch concert on YouTube and Facebook live. It’s old time but we can here it from our screen porch!

  161. 161.

    J R in WV

    @burnspbesq:

    How very un-Canadian.

    That’s probably misdemeanor assault under B.C. law. It’ll be interesting to see how the “I feared for my life cuz she wasn’t wearing a mask” plays out.

    How about “I feared for my life when she spit on me with her infected mask-free snot!”??

  162. 162.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore: Right, but I guarantee that’s not what Trump is going to say tonight.  It’s going to be some weirdo Q-anon conspiracy shit linking Biden, Ukraine, and China into some convoluted child trafficking for profit thing.

    You and I know what the actual argument is, but they don’t actually ever lay it out like that because it is so easily laughed at.  So they go off in bizarre tangents.

  165. 165.

    Kent

    @Emma from FL:@Kent: Oh, I agree with you. But it pisses me off and it will piss me off forever into my afterlife what the fucking media did.

    Enrages me too.  I’m just explaining (to myself) why the Hunter Biden thing is NOT Hillary Emailz 2020 and why I think this is a losing play for Trump.

    It all depends on people believing that Joe Biden is corrupt.  And that’s an incredibly hard sell, for which they have laid no basis.

  170. 170.

    different-church-lady

    Apparently they’re so desperate now that they’re trafficking photos of devices showing photos of yet other devices showing misspelled messages where supposed-Hunter Biden is telling someone that his father said “NO” to something, and the device in the first photo is a BlackBerry connected to a Russian cell network, and somehow this is a gigantic GOTCHA!

    What the everlovin’ hell? Are they actually this crazy?

  173. 173.

    jl

    @Kent:  Seems to me that the whole Biden smear depends on him running an under-the-table freelance political hit job on the Ukrainian prosecutor for money. But that fancy can be debunked in one sentence. HRC’s email and server problems cannot, even if they were not nefarious.

    HRC, for some reason I do not understand, hunkered down into a defensive, but also I think passive-aggressive angry, stance over it. That did not help. Biden stands up and says it’s a total lie. So, a difference there.

    And Trump has thrown so much BS against the wall to see what might stick, and so publicly, not much credibility in what the Trumpsters say. I guess after the Biden Ukrainian scandal, we’ll investigate the Biden Chinese slush fund scandal, and then the infamous though completely undefined Warren Chinese bribery scandal. Then the Obama spy ring that harassed the Trump campaign. What have I forgotten?

  174. 174.

    CaseyL

    @HeleninEire: Hey, great to hear from you!  Best of luck at the new job!

    I’m not going to watch the debate.  It sounds like it’s going to be a Shitshow to End All Shitshows.  Trump is gong to spend the entire time accusing Biden of whatever occurs to his gangrenous imagination.  I hope Biden just laughs at him.

  176. 176.

    sanjeevs

    @Kent:

    approximately $509,000 of U.S. currency (believed to be Defendant’s inheritance), books (about survival, bomb making, improved weapons and Islam), drawing of swastikas and planes crashing into buildings” and five more guns.

    All the hallmarks of economic anxiety.

  177. 177.

    Kathleen

    @Baud: The first time I was eligible to vote I voted for McGovern. I was raised to believe Richard Nixon was the devil incarnate. I was sick when he won in 1968.

  178. 178.

    mrmoshpotato

    @James E Powell:

    I just want Lesley Stahl to show us every page of that book. 

    SAME!  Oh!  Lesley Stahl and Leslie Jones could team up.  It would be hilarious.

  180. 180.

    different-church-lady

    @jl: It didn’t help Hillary at all that it actually was a screw up (even though extremely minor).

    Whereas the Biden thing is just utterly loony-tunes fabrication.

  181. 181.

    dmsilev

    @WaterGirl:

    Only it actually said Debate instead of debacle. I was disappointed.

    You know how news orgs pre-write obits for famous people and every once in a while accidentally publish one while the person is still alive? Might be the political news equivalent.

  185. 185.

    jl

    @different-church-lady: Fuzzy pix of Biden walking around with ‘I take bribes’ stamped on his head, with vaguely Kyiv-esque buildings in the background.

    Secret video of Obama and Biden walking into a Ukrainian lunch joint, and Biden peels a bill off a billion $ roll of hryvnia for some cheese pancakes and borscht.

    The truth will out.

  186. 186.

    Kay

    They’re gonna do a huge (virtual) GOTV in Ohio. Explaining the program. Dry run Sunday. That’s not a lot of time to get ready! :)

  188. 188.

    jl

    @different-church-lady: I don’t know that it was definitely a screw up. But having dealt with oddities of institutional IT and security, both public and private, in large organizations, I have my own opinions.

    But key issue was, couldn’t be debunked in one sentence. I wish HRC would have said loud and proud “The IT services we inherited from GW were such crap, I had to create my  own system. F them and quit lying about it.’ To the news media as well as to the GOP.

  189. 189.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: That was my hope!  Alas, I looked and found debate instead of debacle.

    Has Trump’s team already put out the word that he won tonight?

    I was just setting up Tivo to record the debate on C-SPAN and they were saying that Bauer (I presume Bob Bauer) was playing Trump for tonight’s debate and that the Biden campaign is “worried” that even the muted mics won’t help with the disruption Trump will bring.  No surprise there.

  194. 194.

    LuciaMia

    Pre-debate chatter on CNN. My God, they’re practically giddy! You’d think this was the red carpet before the Oscars.

  196. 196.

    Kent

    @jl:HRC, for some reason I do not understand, hunkered down into a defensive, but also I think passive-aggressive angry, stance over it. That did not help. Biden stands up and says it’s a total lie. So, a difference there.

    I never for the life of me understood why Hillary didn’t just go on Leno or something at the start of the whole thing with an example of the clunky stupid State Department blackberry that they wanted her to use and her actual iPhone and they could all have a good laugh trying to use the clunky ancient thing that the *government* issued her and then explain why, like every other damn American, she preferred to do work and personal email on the same phone that actually worked.  But that she still did all the top secret shit on the correct phone.

    Laughing at yourself is always a good way to diffuse things.  I don’t think they ever really came to grips with the notion that emails could cost her the election until it was too late.

  199. 199.

    jl

    Grainy  video of Joe and Hunter listening to a Ukrainian cover  of C.R.E.A.M. That would seal it, and any  jury would send the whole US news media to  treasonous not covering it enough super jail.

  201. 201.

    NotMax

    Contemplating outrageous stunts which are not outside the realm of possibility.

    Dolt 45 pulls out a piece of paper and a pen and announces he’s, live on-air, signing an Executive Order rescinding Biden’s citizenship.

    (Before anyone chimes in, yeah, of course it has no validity. Validity isn’t the point of such stunts.)

  202. 202.

    Barbara

    @Citizen Alan: It’s no joke. Don’t try to do to do this, or if you succeed, step away and don’t go snooping. Worked on a matter where someone went to federal prison after doing exactly that. If some dumbfuck uses 123456 as a password, his stuff is still protected from unauthorized third party access.

  203. 203.

    different-church-lady

    @WaterGirl: What’s Trump gonna do, shout across the stage? Throw food? Spit? Can anyone think of one new disruption Trump can pull that doesn’t make him seem even worse than the first debate?

  205. 205.

    jl

    @Kent: HRC had (still has?) a habit of randomly swerving into defensive angry (at least some anti-HRC folks told me they interpret it as angry) hunker on certain issues.  I could see no pattern. When she was loud and proud, her popularity could, and did, rise. But at critical moments and on critical issues, she did not do that.

  210. 210.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: Yeah, WTF?? I busted my ass that year knocking on doors for McGovern in fucking Dundalk, fucking Dundalk** that even in 1972 had more DINOs than Jurassisgrassic Park!

    ** Working-class mostly-white suburb of Baltimore, 1950 population 82,000. Also home.

  211. 211.

    trnc

    @germy: 

    Mara Liason is a republican tool disguised as a tote bagger.

    I haven’t listened to NPR (or any radio) nearly as much as I used to, but Liason was way more willing than most radio personalities to savage DT and go after other republican BS. She seemed like the radio version of Jen Rubin.

  212. 212.

    WaterGirl

    @mrmoshpotato: I don’t believe they do.  But I have discovered a pretty good chip made by Boulder Canyon, with Coconut Oil and sea salt.  Good crunch, salt but not so salty that they are inedible, like some brands.

  214. 214.

    dmsilev

    @NotMax: The proper response would be straight-up derision. ‘You’re such a fool, you actually think that piece of paper means something.’

  218. 218.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: I have no idea.  I have clue who this dude is.  I was just clarifying that we weren’t mocking an innocent man; we were mocking the flailing of the Soviet shitpile mobster conman and his shitbag band of grifters.

  219. 219.

    trnc

    @Kay: Jared Kushner has been talking up the idea of starting a Trump-themed news outlet or some other media company, possibly as soon as after the election,

    I’d say Murdoch wouldn’t like the direct competition, but I guess it doesn’t matter much, given DT’s and Kush-dog’s ability to run businesses into the ground.

  223. 223.

    jl

    @trnc: As the election approaches, I hear less talk about not accepting the result, and anti-democratic SCOTUS tricks,  and more talk about plans for Trumpster post administration wingnut media grift. I hope that is good sign.

  224. 224.

    burnspbesq

    OT: in the most Apple thing ever, the case for my iPhone 12 has arrived at least a week before the scheduled delivery of the phone.

  225. 225.

    mrmoshpotato

    @LuciaMia:

    Pre-debate chatter on CNN. My God, they’re practically giddy! You’d think this was the red carpet before the Oscars. 

    Are any of them “tucking in” their shirts or just out-in-the-open masturbating?

  226. 226.

    catclub

    @Roger Moore: 

    Hunter worked for Burisma

    Actually, Hunter worked for Burisma because he worked for a high powered law firm, and said HPLF wanted board representation on Burisma.

  228. 228.

    jl

    @dmsilev:

    ‘ The proper response would be straight-up derision. ‘You’re such a fool, you actually think that piece of paper means something.’ ‘

    Biden should just scratch his head and chuckle, shaking his head good naturedly at any such stunts. Good comedy teams know that you never explain the jokes.

  230. 230.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    TRUE DAT. And I still want MSNBC to give Joy, Nicolle, and Rachel a weekly show of their own (in addition, of course, to their individual daily gigs). The three of them have a rare and wonderful chemistry. They can ditch BriWi. He adds nothing to the ensemble.

  236. 236.

    Roger Moore

    @Kent:

    You and I know what the actual argument is, but they don’t actually ever lay it out like that because it is so easily laughed at. So they go off in bizarre tangents.

    Yeah, because whatever convoluted mess QAnon has made out of the basic facts is so much easier to understand and more credible than the stuff about Hunter running a crooked business with Burisma.  The real reason the Trumpers are going with the QAnon stuff is because they’re so deeply enmeshed in it that they just don’t recognize how bizarre and incomprehensible it is to people who aren’t obsessive followers.

  245. 245.

    mrmoshpotato

    @burnspbesq:

    OT: in the most Apple thing ever, the case for my iPhone 12 has arrived at least a week before the scheduled delivery of the phone. 

    Now you can box up your phone right away.  I had my current phone for a couple weeks before my Otterbox arrived.  Had to be really careful with it.

  249. 249.

    Sure Lurkalot

    So if Joe Biden was trying to protect Hunter and some kind of nefarious Ukrainian shakedown operation, he went about it exactly ass backward.

    Like we said, he’s senile and barely sentient.

  250. 250.

    Roger Moore

    @different-church-lady:

    Can anyone think of one new disruption Trump can pull that doesn’t make him seem even worse than the first debate?

    Drop trou and shit on the floor.  ETA: sorry I misread that and thought you wanted something that would make him seem worse than the first debate.

  255. 255.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    When I must shop for a replacement keyboard I look only at those which come with or make available software allowing me some control. First thing is always to disable the Caps Lock key. Second is to disable the Windows key. Other alterations beyond those are welcome but optional, IMHO.

  259. 259.

    Roger Moore

    @catclub:

    Those kinds of details don’t matter.  If you’re explaining, you’re losing.  If the company was crooked, then people will assume the law firm that was tightly enough tied to it to demand board representation was also crooked, especially since a lot of them assume all lawyers are crooked to start with.

  260. 260.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I confess Don Quixote has always been on my to-be-read list, and I have only vague memories of a teacher showing us the musical in high school for the good pedagogical reason that she liked it, but I suspect there’s a metaphor somewhere in there for Kimberly Strassel picking up the floppy stick she thinks is lance after Bill Barr, Richard Burr, the guy from Connecticut, Lindsey Graham and even Fox News couldn’t be bothered with it. Look out windmill, here comes a crazy lady.

    Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel · 1h
    WSJ edit page also obtained the Bobulinski emails/texts; we’ve been through them all. My coming column–online v. soon–will relay a disturbing story of Hunter, Joe and the Chinese. It’s quite something. Hold tight..

    from the Senate Intel Committee to a paywalled column by someone that even the Murdoch WSJ should be embarrassed by.

  265. 265.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore:Can anyone think of one new disruption Trump can pull that doesn’t make him seem even worse than the first debate?

    He can stalk Biden like he did Hillary and breath covid on him.

    Oh wait, you said DOESN’T make him seem worse….

    Nope.

  267. 267.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:I confess Don Quixote has always been on my to-be-read list,

    I tried to read it in the original Spanish when I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala way back a lifetime ago.  I labored maybe a chapter in until my Guatemalan counterpart saw what I was reading and said “are you crazy?  Even I can barely get through Cervantes and Spanish is my first language.

    So I set it aside and read Cien Anos de Soledad instead, which was a lot easier.

  268. 268.

    Tenar Arha

     

    @Emma from FL:  Yep.

    @Kent:
    It’s worse than all that. It literally wasn’t wrong because there was NO, NADA, ZERO rules, policies, or regulations regarding the Secretary’s personal &/ not secret emails (in any form) other than the requirement to archive certain official “letters” (thus the additional “scandal” of providing paper copies to the National Archives, which was all that was required) until after Clinton was Sec State.

    WORST moment for me was realizing that both Colin Powell & Condoleezza Rice, literally both used free internet email accounts for their correspondence, & they recommended it to their successors!

    It was all manufactured scandals from the beginning.

  272. 272.

    trnc

    @Kent: A good smear works best when it is plausible and it is 90% true. Like the Hillary emails thing. She did have a private email server for government business in violation of State Dept. policy, and it was secretive,

    Something that’s 90% true doesn’t sound like much of a smear.

    Hillary had a private server for personal use because she didn’t trust the commodity email servers. Some of the conversations drifted into work discussions, and at least some of those actually included messages like “We shouldn’t discuss this here. Let’s move to the work accounts.”

    To me, a lot of trouble could have been avoided if the guy managing her server had tried to verify the calls from the FBI instead of just assuming it was a phishing attempt.

  274. 274.

    jl

    Serious charge from Trump: IF you are guilty of crimes, then you aren’t innocent. Many people are saying….

    I don’t see how Biden can answer that.

  275. 275.

    tam1MI

    @burnspbesq: That’s probably misdemeanor assault under B.C. law. It’ll be interesting to see how the “I feared for my life cuz she wasn’t wearing a mask” plays out.

    Dead thread, but I do have to say that I have a feeling this guy will have no problems getting contributors to a GoFundMe to pay his fine…

  276. 276.

    The Fat White Duchess

    @WaterGirl:  Apparently so. Lots of discussion of that on Facebook, with at least one person commenting “because you can’t always go hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

    I’m old enough to still prefer “firing the Surgeon General.”

Comments are closed.