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Originally posted by Protein anchor:
Hill is an asshole (c word that can't be posted) with zero sense of humor or ability to joke about herself. Trump showed he is completely human and like the rest of us in spite of his wealth. Going on Fallon's show was a great move.

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Originally posted by FenderBender:

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Originally posted by Protein anchor:
Hill is an asshole (c word that can't be posted) with zero sense of humor or ability to joke about herself. Trump showed he is completely human and like the rest of us in spite of his wealth. Going on Fallon's show was a great move.

Classified?

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Election Update: Democrats Should Panic … If The Polls Still Look Like This In A Week
By Nate Silver


Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls has been declining for several weeks, and now we’re at the point where it’s not much of a lead at all. National polls show Clinton only 1 or 2 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, on average. And the state polling situation isn’t really any better for her. On Thursday alone, polls were released showing Clinton behind in Ohio, Iowa and Colorado — and with narrow, 3-point leads in Michigan and Virginia, two states once thought to be relatively safe for her.

It’s also become clearer that Clinton’s “bad weekend” — which included describing half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” on Friday, and a health scare (followed by news that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia) on Sunday — has affected the polls. Prior to the weekend, Clinton’s decline had appeared to be leveling off, with the race settling into a Clinton lead of 3 or 4 percentage points. But over the past seven days, Clinton’s win probability has declined from 70 percent to 60 percent in our polls-only forecast and by a similar amount, from 68 percent to 59 percent, in our polls-plus forecast.

That’s not to imply the events of the weekend were necessarily catastrophic for Clinton: In the grand scheme of things, they might not matter all that much (although polling from YouGov suggests that Clinton’s health is in fact a concern to voters). But when you’re only ahead by 3 or 4 points, and when some sequence of events causes you to lose another 1 or 2 points, the Electoral College probabilities can shift pretty rapidly. A lot of light blue states on our map have turned pink, meaning that Trump is now a narrow favorite there instead of Clinton:

nate-update-ss
When a candidate has a rough stretch like this in the polls, you’ll sometimes see his or her supporters pass through the various stages of grief before accepting the results, beginning with a heavy dose of “unskewing” or cherry-picking of various polls. In this case, however, the shift in the race is apparent in a large number of high-quality surveys, and doesn’t depend much on the methodology one chooses. FiveThirtyEight, Real Clear Politics and Huffington Post Pollster all show similar results in their national polling averages, for example, with Clinton leading by only 1 to 3 percentage points over Trump.

This potentially ignores a more important question, however. Sure, Clinton might lead by only a percentage point or two right now — with a similarly perilous advantage in the Electoral College. But is that necessarily the best prediction for how things will turn out in November?

Our various models differ on this question. Polls-only assumes that there’s still a lot of uncertainty about the outcome. But it also mostly assumes1 that the current condition of the race — Clinton ahead by around 2 points — is a statistically unbiased prediction of the Nov. 8 outcome. In other words, it assumes that Clinton is as likely to continue losing ground as opposed to regaining ground from this point forward.

Polls-plus, by contrast, discounts short-term shifts in the polls by hedging them with an index based on economic conditions. Even at this fairly late stage of the campaign, about 30 percent of the polls-plus forecast is based on the economic index rather than the polls. But this year, the economic index assumes the election will be very close. Thus, the recent tightening of the race is not much of a surprise to polls-plus, and it doesn’t differ much from the polls-only forecast at this point.

Another way to hedge against short-term swings in the polls would be to assume that polls tend to revert to where they’d been previously. Over the course of the campaign, Clinton has been ahead by an average of about 5 percentage points, although she has ranged between being virtually tied with Trump at her worst moments to being ahead of him by as much as 10 points at her best moments. In fact, the election has tended to ebb and flow between these boundaries like a sine wave:

rcp_0916
If we had a model like this — basically, a version of polls-plus that partially reverted the current polls to the long-term mean of Clinton +5 — it would show her as about a 70 percent favorite instead of a 60 percent favorite. But would that be a good set of assumptions? Does the fact that Clinton has usually led Trump by a larger margin than she leads him now mean anything?

This is a complicated question, and one that we might want to revisit over the next couple of weeks. But the short answer is… I don’t know. We know that many news events — most notably, the political conventions — produce short-term “bounces” in the polls that partly or wholly reverse themselves after a few weeks. There were also some examples of this in 2012. Mitt Romney’s position improved by several percentage points following his first debate in Denver against President Obama, but his gains soon proved fleeting. Media coverage of the campaign — which tends to rally behind whichever candidate is gaining in the polls until it tires of the story and switches to scrutinizing the frontrunner — could also contribute to such swings back and forth.

So it’s plausible that Clinton’s “bad weekend” could be one of those events that has a relatively short-lived impact on the campaign. As if to put to the question to the test, Trump upended the news cycle on Friday by relitigating the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. (Trump finally acknowledged that Obama was born here, but only after falsely accusing Clinton of having started the “birther” rumors.) If voters were reacting to the halo of negative coverage surrounding Clinton rather than to the substance of reporting about Clinton’s health or her “deplorables” comments, she could regain ground as Trump endures a few tough news cycles of his own. Over the course of the general election so far, whichever candidate has been the dominant subject in the news has tended to lose ground in the polls, according to an analysis by Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley.

All of this is tricky, though, because we still don’t have a great sense for where the long-term equilibrium of the race is, or even whether there’s an equilibrium at all — and we probably never will because of the unusual nature of Trump’s candidacy. Perhaps Trump isn’t that different from a “generic Republican” after all. Or perhaps (more plausibly in my view) he is very poor candidate who costs the Republicans substantially, but that Clinton is nearly as bad a candidate and mostly offsets this effect. Still, I’d advise waiting a week or so to see whether Clinton’s current dip in the polls sticks as the news moves on from her “bad weekend” to other subjects.

quote:

Originally posted by synthplayer:
Seeking a weekend break from his campaign rallies, Donald Trump jetted to his yacht, which was docked off the coast of Italy. He invited Pope Francis and the press corps on board for a Saturday afternoon cruise. It was a rather windy day. The Pope's little hat, his zucchetto, was blown from his head and into the water.

A crewman began lowering a boat to retrieve the zucchetto. Trump told the crewman not to bother. Trump climbed down the yacht's ladder, walked across the waves, picked up the zucchetto, walked back to the yacht, and handed it to the Pope.

The Pope and the press corps were amazed. Donald Trump could actually walk on water!

Speculation immediately began as to how ABC, CNN, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times would report this miraculous event to the rest of the world.

The next morning, The New York Times headline read . . . .



DONALD TRUMP CAN'T SWIM

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David Brock Offers Money for New Dirt on Donald Trump
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David BrockDavid Brock / AP

BY: Joe Schoffstall
September 15, 2016 5:22 pm

Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC.

Brock, founder of the left-wing Media Matters and operator of Correct the Record super PAC, recently posted the plea on Correct the Record’s website and is referring to the project as “TrumpLeaks,” NBC News reported.

Brock asked for video or audio of Trump that has yet to be released.

“One of the most important things for voters to evaluate in any election is the full measure of a candidate’s views, ideas, and temperament over time,” the website states. “In making a choice for president, voters must also consider how various candidates present themselves to the public and to the world. There are few things more important in that regard than access to video or audio in the form of prior television or radio interviews or more candid video from events a candidate may have attended.”

Brock’s super PAC goes on to say they can offer compensation to anyone who has new video or audio that has been obtained legally.

“TrumpLeaks is an effort to uncover unreported video or audio of Donald Trump so voters can have access to the Donald Trump who existed before running for president and before his recent affinity for teleprompters,” the website says of the project. “TrumpLeaks can provide some compensation to those who have usable, undoctored video or audio that has been legally obtained or is legally accessible.”

NBC News noted that the project is “highly unusual” and seems to “cross a new line” in modern day politics.

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Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC.

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Originally posted by olfuzzy:
Another shot at Hillary

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump revived another campaign controversy Friday night, sarcastically calling for Hillary Clinton's Secret Service agents to be stripped of their firearms before adding, "let's see what happens to her."

"I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm, right?" Trump asked the crowd at a Miami rally. "Take their guns away, she doesn't want guns. Take their — and let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away. OK, it would be very dangerous."
There was no immediate comment or clarification from the Trump campaign about the remarks. However, the Clinton campaign had a quick reaction. Spokesman Robby Mook released a statement Friday night saying Trump "has a pattern of inciting people to violence. Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of Commander in Chief.

"This kind of talk should be out of bounds for a presidential candidate," Mook wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Secret Service declined to comment.

The riff recalled a remark Trump made last month that many Democrats condemned as a call for Clinton's assassination. Speaking at a rally in North Carolina, the Republican nominee said his opponent wants to "abolish, essentially, the Second Amendment."

He continued: "By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Mook said then, "A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way."

Trump later disputed that criticism, saying everyone in his audience knew he was referring to the power of voters and "there can be no other interpretation."

Trump, who has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, eventually took to Twitter to say the Secret Service had not contacted him about the remarks.

While campaigning in South Florida, which has a large Cuban-American population, Trump also said that if he's elected president, he will reverse Obama's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba — unless the country abides by certain "demands." Among those, he said, would be religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of all political prisoners.

Trump says he'll "stand with the Cuban people in their fight against communist oppression."

The comment marks yet another reversal for the GOP candidate, who previously said he supported the idea of normalized relations, but wished the U.S. had negotiated a better deal.

Trump also said the U.S. has a broader obligation to stand with oppressed people — a comment that seems at odds with his "America first" mantra. "The next president of the United States must stand in solidarity with all people oppressed in our hemisphere, and we will stand with oppressed people, and there are many," he said.

He added that the people of Venezuela "are yearning to be free, they are yearning for help. The system is bad. But the people are great."

Trump has often cited the country as a model of a failed state, warning that if Clinton is elected, she'll turn the U.S. into Venezuela.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...-happens-to-her.html

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Originally posted by 46and2:
^ I bet if it were a requirement to implement all laws and restrictions top-down, starting with the President and his detail, then Congress, we'd see the rapid end to a great many rules and regulations and nonsense like this. Buncha double standard assholes, they are.