Gosh, I wonder what they’re going to talk about at the debate tonight.
It just came out. Anyone else feel like the Clinton campaign is gleefully waving a red cape at a bull?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I predicted before the first debate, all Hillary has to do is goad him a bit and he’ll totally lose it.
Especially with this just blowing up in his face.
It’s a great big “push to start” button to push.
The Hillary campaign comes out swinging, and i like it. Trump is the ideal target for this kind of ads, because you do not need to actually attack him. Just showing what he has said and is saying is enough.
If someone were to write Donald Trump as a fictional character then nobody would think it believable. Every editor the piece was shown to would say “come on, this is just a hackneyed mess of stereotypes. You can write a sleazy American businessman character without resorting to piling it on this thick”.
Is Trump exaggerating his flaws as some kind of refuge-in-audacity gambit? Hoping that the American public will dismiss all the revelations as overblown reality-tv style hype and vote from a position of profound bafflement at what is going on?
I think Hillary should play rope-a-dope. Say just a few things to set Trump off and then let him spew. He’ll light his own hair on fire.
It’s very good. The best aspect is how it blends Trump’s statements and attitudes with the attitudes and policy agenda of the Republican Party.
I think the HRC team is pretty brilliant right now – just show the world what a deplorable fruitbasket Trump is. Nothing more needed (hopefully).
I couldn’t see the Ad referenced. Turns out your Ad link is attempting to put tracking cookies onto my PC. Ten of them, no less.
Bad web site. Naughty, naughty.
Out of curiosity, I did some more checking and it turns out the trackers are coming from you, Freethought Blogs. Every blog I open on your site: zap! 10 tracking cookies come rushing down the wire. Really, PZ, you guys don’t need to be tracking my movements across the web. Please make it stop.
FtB isn’t. Google & Patheos, which provide our ads, are doing all that hinky stuff.
Am I the only one that thinks this?
The thing that upsets me most is that Trump is the culmination of 8 years of anti-Obama madness – and he isn’t being crushed. And I don’t mean simply losing, I mean, down to the 27% who will support anything.
We have, on stage Hillary Clinton – who regardless of what anyone thinks about drones or whatever is absolutely the most qualified candidate in my adult life (yes, better than Obama, and I’ll say that as a black guy), and on the other side, an ignorant, childish bigot in Donald Trump. He does not deserve to share a stage with her.
I want him to be crushed. I want him rejected, laughed out of the arena. And finally, for republicans to get serious, to deal with education costs, health care costs, and the like.
Maybe that’s asking too much.
azpaul3:
You can do that yourself by going ad-free. HATE ADS? Subscribe to FTB Ad Free is right there on the sidebar. I’ll even link it here.
One more message. Ive heard idiots say that Hillary was “over-prepared”
No. That’s not a thing. You cannot be “over-prepared”
mumbles — I think it’s more like 50 years of cultivating white, religious conservative voters, primarily in the South. Also, 70 or 80 years preaching to Americans that “liberal” is un-American. The more recent excesses roughly correspond to the advent of Fox News (1996) and the confusion of Murdoch’s tabloid crap as legitimate journalism.
This essay on HuffPuff by a fellow named Jeffrey Young makes a good point about the Republican party’s role in Trump’s candidacy: You Knew Who Trump Was When You Endorsed Him, Republican Leaders
Azpaul3, you apparently haven’t learned how the internet works yet. There are simple solutions to the problem you’re experiencing, and it’s not PZ’s job to take those baby steps for you.
Nice how they slip in an anti-choice quote from Pence–good reminder that goppish awfulness doesn’t end or even start with Trump.
the following NOT paid for by AdBlocker.
try AdBlock, might help
works for me, just jiggles the page around for a minute while blocking and repainting. Frequently I’ll go to click on one of the “recent comments” links and the screen will update as I’m dragging the pointer over to it, and I end up clicking a different link. oops.
still, much better than all the ads it blocks. don;t know if blocks cookies or just popups.
@10 – I’d also like him to be crushed and I’d have expected him to be. He isn’t though – and as a result I’m not surprised to see quick polls showing that he is still supported by three fourths of Republicans. People aren’t voting for Trump but voting to express rage or despair or disapproval, so what Trump does or says has limited impact. I think Clinton will win, but it is going to be a relatively close race.
I need a background app that will automatically substitute ‘ for the ; I often tpyo. oops
robro – there’s that, too. I recall folks saying that Obama’s election would mean the end of racial anger. My view was that 2012 would be the ugliest election in my life.
I got that wrong. It was actually 2011 when Obama had to give out his long-form birth certificate, at the whim of Trump. And that was when I began to seriously hate the DC press, as it stands today. It’s kind of funny that you can see folks on tv saying “that’s not significant”. It’s very significant to me.
And that’s another institution that I’d like to see cleaned up. Kick out the Chuck Todds, and whoever else. They are not doing their jobs right.
Quill – what terrifies me isn’t Trump. It’s the people who back him. The far smoother sellers, the Milo Yawhoever, that’ll show up in the next few years.
The thing is, as much as a liberal as I am, I’d really like to see an opposition that isn’t just based on racial/sexual nonsense. The dems are far from perfect, but as long as their opposition just hates me for my skin color, I have no choice. But as far as republicans go, I just see them getting worse and worse.
mumbles @ # 19: Kick out the Chuck Todds, and whoever else. They are not doing their jobs right.
I must beg to disagree. Their jobs are to distract and domesticate public opinion, and they do so damn well.
@20 – I agree completely. Trump’s flaws likely preclude his election, but he has blazed a trail for those equally unsavory but more skilled. And, as long as the Republican base views racism (and misogyny) as a positive quality, given the structure of the American system of government, we are not going to have two policy oriented parties. The Republicans will keep getting worse, because that will be the way to win the nomination.
re @20:
I’ll take that as my cue to repeat that which I’ve said quite a few times already.
Drumph (aka Trump) is merely a symptom. Not the cause of the Rethuglican Disaster.
*getting off my soapbox”
go about your business, continue your discussions amongst your selves.
Piece Bee Witch U.
mumbles @ #20 — Yes, the people behind him, and the entire Republican enterprise, like Andrew Mercer who actually has the money to pay to play in the back rooms of power.
Another good one on the culpability of the Republican Party for nominating Trump, knowing full well at the time what a sludge bucket he is. He starts by pointing out Paul Ryan’s waffle in his “sickening” statement: “I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.” So all Trump has to do is “demonstrate” greater respect, not actually have it. Perhaps he should ask for forgiveness, too.
He also quotes Reince Priebus from February: ““Winning is the antidote to a lot of things.” Right! All that matters is winning, to hell with principles, integrity, and the things we mere mortals value.
I don’t think that the Washington Post release is that big a deal, unfortunately, as far as the election goes. Trump is a complete shit. Since he first started promoting himself as a wealthy business mogul, he has always been a complete shit. As PZ says, everyone has known full well who and what he is. He has no shame, no sense of decency, no humility, no empathy, and no concept of civil service. This has always been as plain as day for anyone that cared to take even the most cursory glance at his background and his public persona, or to actually listen to the words which he speaks at his rallies. So the vast majority of the people that up to now have professed their love for him and who have put him so far up in the polls that he looks like a contender for the White House are likely to care not one tiny bit about this latest kerfuffle. The lewdness of his behaviour and his scummy personality mean absolutely nothing to them. That quacking duck they want to vote for? A video of him quacking 11 years ago is irrelevant to them, even if the noise is particularly obnoxious to most sensible people. The rest of us can be disgusted / appalled / outraged till cows sing Christmas songs, but his voter base is secure.
In my opinion, it’s not asking enough. I never want to see another
republicanthug elected (or appointed) to any office. I do not think they are capable of becoming “serious”, any seriousness they may once have had was evaporating by the time of tricky dicky, and pretty much completely boiled away once ron teh raygun was finished with his destruction of civil society. They are now infested with teabuggers, who don’t compromise, prefer to burn down everything, are immune to reality, and continuously invent “facts”. That is not a collection of individuals wanted in any office, ever.@Pierce R. Butler Well, if they think that their job is to tell “both sides” then we have to reject them.
Trump is a douchecannon. i have no respect for press that doesn’t call him out.
Unfortunately, most of the positions up for election this year in my area have only one candidate on the ballot. All the locals are Democrat-only and the US Senate has D+R+L options, but all the state positions are Republican-only or Republican+Libertarian. There is a Democrat write-in for US House Rep to replace Jody Hice, but not being listed on the ballot means Leonard Ware is even less likely than usual to get rid of Paul Broun’s even worse replacement teabagger in our gerrymandered district.
Think my write-in for all the others this year will be ‘Fuck off and actually go galt, you gerrymandering teabagger shitweasels’.
This is excellent timing for the Clinton campaign. They must be breathing a sigh of relief. Some hacked files alleged to be excerpts from her Wall Street speeches are becoming public, but the story seems to be buried deep under Trump’s “sex tape.”
Hacked emails appear to reveal excerpts of speech transcripts Clinton refused to release
In addition to AdBlocker, I also recommend installing Privacy Badger from the EFF to block all kinds of trackers, including social media widgets that appear on many websites.
Bulls don’t hand the matador a red cape to wave with.
And that’s just one thing.
I find the comparison extremely offensive to the bulls.
Reginald Selkirk, 29
Clinton telling wall street what they want to hear is not the least bit surprising. It is shitty for someone supposed to be running under the banner of liberal/progressive, but not criminal or immediately harming other people unlike cheeto chump’s sexual assault(s). Plus, sustained pressure can keep her moving away from those positions while chump change will just keep doing whatever the hell that roadkill on his head wants to do.
Fahrenthold has written a lot about Trump’s charities, businesses, and other money issues — he’s been extremely successful at it in part because almost nobody else in the press corps is even trying.
And now he’s got one (1) story about Trump saying awful things about women, which is the only dirt the other reporters ever really talked about. But isn’t what Fahrenthold ever wrote about.
I’m almost convinced the Clinton camp has had this video lined up for release, and strategically leaked it just at the right time.
I’m also suspecting they have worse in the bank, ready to release before the final debate.
#9 PZ:
No excuse. You folks contract with them and agree to their terms. If we don’t pressure you, you have no reason to pressure them. Ads are bad enough as big blinking gaudy displays of distraction but many of them are infested with viruses and malware. If content providers … you and your fellow bloggers … do not vet the Ads or require your host to vet the Ads or require your host to enforce the requirement that Ad providers vet their Ads, then you will continue to infect innocent users and lose Ad revenue to Ad blockers.
Tracking cookies are worse yet, recording where you’ve been so they can pigeon-hole you into a group of Ads their research indicates you may be sucker enough to click. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize the other nefarious invasive purposes that data can be put.
We, as sheep, are expected to just swallow this BS. I refuse, and so should you.
#11 Caine
Yes, of course. The modern Internet’s version of the protection racket.
“Pay us money and we will make sure our poisonous malware infested Ads don’t infect your device.”
I refuse to be a victim of this extortion.
#14 Artor
Yes, I have the Ad and cookie blockers. But, I disagree on the content provider’s responsibility. They ARE responcible to police their site and vet the Ads they allow to be displayed with their content.
azpaul3, 34
Extortion? WTF?! Servers cost money. Internet and cloudflare services for those servers cost money. Do you pay for a newspaper? A concert or movie ticket? Most companies are not exactly in a bidding war to get exclusive ads on websites as they do with dead-tree and tv. Don’t like ads, then pay directly to help keep FTB alive.
#35 Matt P
These are not generally recognized as possible disease vectors. Internet Ads are.
Expecting us to pay you so that you will not infect us is classic extortion, pure and simple.
Clean up the diseased and overly distracting Ads and Ad blockers will fade away.
We will not object to Ads and may well pursue them if we can be confident they will not infect our computers. Right now this site, like most others on the net, do not inspire this confidence.
Caine, Artor and MattP, I just subscribed because of what you said and because azpaul3 is cheap!
azpaul3, there is an easy fix for that…. don’t come to the site, then?
Anyone working on a Trump-related reality show had to sign a contract that stipulated a $5 million fine for leaking anything. There’s been mention of other tapes (even video) where Trump uses the n-word and says other equally atrocious things, but they just haven’t been leaked yet because of the fine.