It wasn't just Shuffle, there were tons of clowns on Twitter just positively gleeful that the combined forces of Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean and Lester Holt were SO MEAN to Trump last night that now the gloves really get to come off and Trump and his Idiot Brigades are going to ...get to call Bill a philanderer and say Clinton is terminally diseased, which they have just been holding back on and which America hasn't heard about yet. Like now it's going to get ugly, the gloves are coming off, everything is an option, says people who have been hosting a veritable Mardi Gras parade of Clinton conspiratorial paranoid gibber floats down America's Main Streets and back alleys since like 1992.

It's sort of like the return of "Obama has never been vetted" which was like the cherished fantasy all the right-wing idiots held so dearly about Obama kept winning elections, that if SOMEONE could just VET him then the entire Obama machine would come crashing to the ground and Mitt Romney could be President.

It's just that idea all over again. "We haven't used our best attacks yet, that Clinton has marital problems and is sick, just wait, NOW we destroy the Clintons!!!" despite the fact they've been raging on about this same nonsense for literally decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP2c...ature=youtu.be

I agree that we do not have a strong view by Trump on the record before the war. What we do have is that he opposed it ("perhaps we should wait") in January of 2003.

Would you agree that is opposition?

To me that is clearly opposition, though not strong opposition.

Next, what to think of the fact checking during the debate? Holt, as the moderator, clearly tried to call Trump out in a straight-up fact checking/you're lying way. I think Holt shouldn't have behaved the way he did given Trump opposed the war publicly before it started. Makes me think Holt was biased against Trump. No surprise to me, regardless of whether he is a registered Republican.

This is either a terrible memory or pure sexism. Palin was bad, but let's roll some transcript:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/pr...al-debate.html
That is a selected at randomish answer from the middle of the 2008 debate. It's written at 7.9 grade level according to the Flesch Kincaid test.

This Trump quote is NOT selected at random, it is his very first answer before he got flustered:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ipt-annotated/
4.6. It's very simple writing, totally devoid of any specifics. Just compare the two. Palin's answer looks like boilerplate GOP hawkishness on the surge. Trump reads like a drunk guy at the bar.

And that was his best answer. Later in the debate his answers starting looking like this:

We just need to buy more cybers. I read the Strategic Cybers Reserve (SCR) is half empty. Hidden at Area 51 is a giant pool of cybers which the CIA has designated the SCR. Killary and her ilk have let it get half full.

Trump was losing most online polls to harambe three weeks ago, so I agree that they mean a lot.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...53f_story.html

Asked and answered.

Given the realities of modern media and misinformation, I think a more active moderator role is needed. I think Holt's fact checking on the birther conspiracy, for example, was well done. I probably wouldn't have premised the question about the Iraq war in the way he did. I don't believe it represents some egregious failure due to bias.

I would have no problem with moderators treating Clinton similarly, except I can't really think of any claims she has made that could reasonably be subject to the same treatment.

Maybe Holt is biased against bumbling, unprepared fools....I'm pretty sure Holt is a lot more knowledgable about the news than Trump is. Trump can continue to lie and deny but everything he says is recorded. I know a ton of the voting public doesn't care about this fact but it's amazing that you think, after the previous Republican debates, that some one would be gunning for Trump based on him being the Republican candidate and not because Trump is terrible on the debate stage.

Sorry rara, numbers are bigger here, I guess my lone anecdote TRUMPs yours.

Another nice piece of his ME policy was saying that Iran was about to fall because of sanctions as if that were a good policy objective. In some context the fall of the regime could of course be good, but in this case the consequence, which he obviously hasn't even thought about, would be an expansion of war, chaos, and terrorism.

It's such a delusion to believe a significant number of Trump supporters are racists. But you guys have no interest in understanding where his support comes from.

If my first post today I stated that she won on points and he won on the important issues in this election. She didn't score a single point on the economy, terrorism, or trade. At best she may have motivated her base to some extent on those issues but did nothing with the undecided. There is really no point in arguing who won and lost. No one's mind here will be changed. What is interesting is discussing the possible political implications going forward. I don't think Trump had a great night but he hung in there. Do you think she changed the race? I don't. We will know by the weekend.

HRC was pretty bad as well.

Lol TRUMP tripling down on Mexican miss universe is a stupid fatty stuff. Also Palin is Kasparov now.

Maybe Dean is right

A skunk (aka Trump) has a coke habit It's from Huff PO, A safe space

Oh, now I see you did answer. Sorry if I'm being repetitive, but I just think you have to think twice about whether "perhaps we should wait," is opposition. It seems clear to me that it is weak opposition, though opposition nonetheless.

I don't have a problem with Holt fact-checking. I agree that he did well on the birth certificate thing. Trump looked horrible on that. I hate his whole stance/history on that.

But, re Trump's pre-war position, the facts are clear. Given that Trump said "perhaps we should wait" in January of 2003, Holt's statements show bias against Trump.

This is fair. But if you're going to attack someone you're biased against, you should have your facts straight.

Trump opposed the war before the war. Holt should have let this one go.

Trump is a blowhard idiot who took his KKK father's fortune and turned into less money than he would have had if he just kept it in an index mutual fund and he did it by being a cheap celebrity and creating a brand as classy as a gold plated toilet seat.

Sarah Palin grew up in a middle class family and rose to be a State Governor.

She wins on accomplishments. This is a very very low bar, but she's also more coherent on policy.

Venezuelan*

Let's split the difference and agree that they're both morons.

@pokerodox, you seem to be missing that the challenge is not about whether Trump at some point voiced tepid opposition to counter his tepid support.

The challenge to Trump is that he is an inveterate liar NOW about what he said then.

NOW he says these things about his historical position:

That his bull****. He never, at any time, voiced "strong opposition" to the war. The only thing you've been able to find is his suggestion that perhaps we should wait while the UN participates. There is no "loud" and "strong" and "bold" opposition to the Iraq war. It never happened. Yet he built, to a large degree, his primary campaign around this lie.

You keep focusing on the weird issue that maybe he was kind of against it after being kind of for it. Fine.

The question that matters is: was he strongly against it, ever? Did he voice that opinion, ever?

No. The answer is no. He is a ****ing liar, and you are failing to even take up the issue when you talk around it to conclude that his latest comment before the invasion was weak opposition, at best. And you ADMIT that his latest comment before the invasion can MOST CHARITABLY be interpreted to be nothing more than weak opposition, at best.

You've admitted you're wrong, but you continue to post as if you're right.

He's a complete con. Stop arguing about tangents to pretend he's not.

Someone who specializes in determining legal competence should take a look at this.

And I have to say it is completely exhausting when people either misunderstand what argument they are even talking about, or just intentionally lie about what the debate is about, in order to avoid inconvenient facts like "the best he ever said is 'perhaps we should wait,' but that's still opposition!" in the face of the complaint that "Trump is lying because he says he was hollering from the mountaintops about how bad the Iraq war was."

That never happened. You can just admit that, man, you don't HAVE TO defend him against the completely true allegation that he never did what he says he did. You've already admitted it.

It's hard to believe you're even operating in good faith in making the (asinine) argument that he DID oppose it. That's not the issue, at all!

Uh, we have a ton of interest in it. We've been talking about it for years.

It's racism. There's other ****, too, but it's mostly racism.

And here's the thing. Here's what's so ****ing funny. You need a Safe Space. Trigger warning, American race relations being discussed by educated people.

If your country ass had something more than whiny petulance that liberals somehow figured out the Muslim ban and national stop-and-frisk candidate has racist supporters(****ing ace detective work, you guys!) you would've said so.

We contradict you and your kind all the time, you just whine that we're rude when we do it. Head asplode, indeed.

Which is to demonstrate the point that it is NOT a valid critique of politifact's bias to say that they take Trump to task about lying about his opposition to the Iraq war. They are accurate in that fact check. That's not "bias." That's Trump is a ****ing liar getting his comeuppance.