I think stiffing contractors is fairly common among unscrupulous businessmen. I contracted for a guy for whom it was routine. I kept working for him because he’d pay me for job N if I agreed to do job N+1. I finally sued the guy, won, and he negotiated the legal judgment down, daring me to hire another lawyer to get the money from the first judgment!
But Trump is the only “respected” billionaire I’ve heard of doing this.
IANAL, but such behavior fits my definitions of “fraud” and “criminal” whether he ends up in prison or not.
Hi, Flyer ! Can you indulge me by answering a serious question? I can imagine someone not liking Hillary. But if your criterion is dislike of “dishonesty” and “untrustworthiness” I find it flabbergasting that you’d prefer Trump! Flabbergasting! Explain? Is it just that Trump’s dishonesty is for greed and egomania while Hillary’s is … what? Is she a Manchurian candidate for North Korea??
Supposing that this factoid has some validity, is that your criterion? During an hour of incoherent buffoonery, the guy manages to blurt out a single valid factoid and you’re impressed?
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My pessimistic assessment half-way through the debate looks silly now with betting markets and, hopefully, polls moving toward Hillary. Two reasons for my blunder:
(1)
I guess the morons, racists, and angry-but-we-don’t-know-about-what have already gone for Trump. The remaining Undecideds actually have some brains.
(2) The betting on Trump reflects the possibility of a “surprise”, either an October terrorist attack or a major stumble by Hillary. By not losing her temper or having a coughing fit, Hillary passed her first test.
I agree. I don’t know if Holt planned it or just couldn’t get a word in, but I thought it helped out Clinton tremendously for Trump to spew out word salad.
For example:
His time probably ran out somewhere in his long answer about “the cyber”, but I wouldn’t have wanted that to be interrupted.
I think that very few voters consciously think “I don’t like here because she’s a woman.” Although there are some who genuinely think that a woman shouldn’t be president. But it’s undeniable that she and every other female politician get stricter scrutiny for a lot of things that men don’t get picked apart for. She’s gotten criticized for not smiling enough before, and then for smiling too much last night.
If you could find any female politician who hasn’t run into that problem, I would love to hear about it. I’m guessing that any female politician on either side has run into the same problems, just Clinton has gotten it more since she’s the first female presidential candidate on a major ticket.
this is about the only “girly” thing I see in mrs. Clinton’s manner. she did it when mr Obama said “likable enough” during their debate. it is kinda cutsy.
Hey, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Trump has said a Presidential thing in his life. I think he’s an uneducated buffoon who had no business being on that stage in the first place. But the stuff I’m talking about is the shenanigans he pulled during the primaries: Mugging for the camera, rolling his eyes and making faces at his opponents, calling them schoolyard names, etc. He didn’t do any of that stuff. And for apparently nearly half the country, that seems to be about where the bar is set for him.
Like many, I’m baffled and dismayed by the rise of Trump. I always expected a guy like him could get the Pat Buchanan/Ross Perot voters - about 25% of the electorate. But he’s polling close to Hillary, which says something terrible about America, or about Clinton, or both.
That’s the backdrop for my claim that he’d ‘win’ the debate if the disinterested voters saw him in the debate and changed their opinion of him from “reality TV star and rich guy” to “person who could be President.” Because that seems to be about the level of analysis the average American is applying this year.
We should not forget that Hillary said a lot of stupid things too, only these formed her actual economic policy. Half a billion solar panels replacing the entire fossil fuel production system? Free daycare and education for everyone? And she’s going to pay for all this by getting the ‘rich’ to just pay their fair share? America becoming a ‘green energy superpower’? This is fantasy, not serious policy.
I don’t question that females are judged differently from males to their disadvantage. For example, while male politicians who are dumb get criticized for their ignorance, female politicians who are not that bright get flamed so bad it’s just ridiculous. GWB could be super ignorant at times, and so is Donald Trump and Ben Carson, but I never saw them get the same level of hate as Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or Nancy Pelosi.
Women also fall victim to men being turned off by behaviors that remind them of their moms or wives that irritate them. “She’s overbearing” or “she’s shrill”.
Women also get judged more on their appearance than men.
But insincerity, plastic expressions, smugness and smarminess. Those are problems that will harm the candidacy of anyone. I don’t mind that she’s smarter than Donald Trump and I don’t mind her proving it. I just don’t appreciate the smug look after doing so. Reminds me of Al Gore’s behavior towards GWB. It’s kinda like poor sportsmanship in a basketball game. Yeah, you dunked on the guy, you don’t need to taunt. Just prove you’re better and let your performance speak for itself.
I would like to assure all that I do not make my decisions on who should be President based on whether they look ‘smug’ (or, for that matter sniffing and snorting every thirty seconds or so). I only base my decision on the important matters, such as whether their ass looks big in whatever they are wearing, and presence or absence of a flag pin.
I also wondered if that was what he was doing. if so, he gave up on that game plan with in a half an hour. interesting that there is commentary that he was doing well for the first 20-30 minutes, right around the time he gave up the sniffing and drinking; then started the interrupting and rambling.
I just wanted to quickly give my impression of the debate as someone who has always voted conservatively and had a fairly strong dislike for Hillary.
Trump looked bad. Hillary looked about as good as she could possibly have hoped for.
The one on one format just kills Trump’s previous debate strategy, which was to hit with short bursts of bombast. But sustained coherence for 75 minutes was a struggle.
Big picture impact? I don’t know. Every time I thought he’d take a hit in the past I was wrong.
I don’t think debates should be a factor in deciding at all, especially since it’s really just a joint press conference, not a real debate(although Holt let them actually debate more than usual).
Assuming you know the candidates’ histories and their positions, I can’t imagine anything said at a debate that should change minds. And what does actually change minds tends to be pretty non-substantive stuff. Clinton wouldn’t become more honest because she does well in a debate, and Trump wouldn’t become more fit to be President just because he kept his shit together for 90 minutes.
Would you be singing the same tune if Hillary did poorly? Just curious.
I think the debates are quite worthy of our attention, poorly formatted they may be. You get to see how candidates stand up when forced to face an adversarial position for an extended period of time. It’s one thing to be able to fire up a crowd of sycophants, it’s quite another to be challenged repeatedly in front of a (supposedly) neutral crowd. I don’t want to know who can preach to the choir, I want to know who can stand up to the heat of battle.
Debates are worthy of our attention, to be sure, but so are a lot of things that shouldn’t necessarily influence us much. I’m more interested in knowing what these people have done and how their talents and experience will make them good Presidents. And of course I want to know their plans. While being able to defend your plans and past is useful, they’d have to fail in a very substantive way for me to start rethinking their candidacy. Probably the only time I’ve ever liked a candidate and then disliked him at a debate was when John Edwards talked about getting our allies to help more in Iraq. The moderator asked him what he’d do if our allies would not send more troops. He said, “I don’t accept that premise.” THat signalled right there to me that his stance on the Iraq war was strictly a political calibration, criticize the war while supporting the war and promising to wage it better while not really having any real ideas on how to do it. But those moments are rare, and of course now we know just how insincere a person John Edwards is.
Me too, though that might be a little unfair to Perot. He was tapping into a partly similar feeling as Trump does, but without much if any racial implication (to what degree that’s just because it’s looked for more now or it really wasn’t there?). He was a loony toon though. On the plus side, a lot of Trump’s support in polls is people who just think Clinton is worse than Trump, not that Trump is good.
This relates to the point I made above which was kind of cutting Clinton a break. She says Sanders/Warren type stuff it’s doubtful she really believes strongly in, and anyway if she gets elected she’d very likely to have to work with the same Speaker as Trump would, Paul Ryan. So yeah, the ultra green and tax/spend stuff is fluff for the base, or some wishlist for a longer term future Democratic takeover of everything, besides whether it would really work in the real world.
The main negative point seems to be her smugness. I don’t think this is a sexism issue. Rather I think it’s at least in part a tradeoff. She had to try to annoy Trump. That worked at least to some degree, but there’s some blowback in looking the smug defender of the status quo to uncommitted’s who think the status quo is broken.
Gosh yes. Weight and clothes get brought up a lot, and does just general how-attractive-is-the-face. Now weight does get brought up for men sometimes, too, and I admit that. I can’t recall actual facial beauty being mentioned with men. My one and only memory of any significant comment on a male politician’s clothing is The Tan Suit.
Male politicians do get judged by their appearance, but it’s a little less tough on them. You can’t wear glasses or have a beard, you can’t be fat. ALthough guys do have one problem women don’t have. they can’t be short. Mitch Daniels was told by a consultant, “you debate Obama, you shake his hand, you come up to his chest. Election over.” Clinton’s tininess compared to Trump does not seem to be a problem for her the way it would be for a short male.
“You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.” Dumbest thing said in the debate? Dumbest thing Ever said at one of these things?
I thought Hillary looked smug some of the time, too. But I didn’t think it was a big deal. I laughed out loud many times at this debate, so Hillary’s smiling during those moments didn’t seem off at all.
My other question is the part where he said “… I have the endorsement of ICE …” I did not hear “ICE”, I heard “IS”. It will always be transcribed as the former, but it still sounds like he was starting to name that terror group.
