The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.

...

NYT: LONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE

Interesting read, finished it not long ago. It's still boggling to me the financial shenanigans business people can get away with compared with a worker much further down the ladder.

I'll be honest, I've been getting very upset as Trump slices away at more and more of what makes this country actually work as a country.

I believe he'll lose badly, both on Election Day and as the mail-in ballots come in. The problem is, he's willing to do anything at all to tip the scales. It doesn't matter to him that the use of power without principles is basically like wielding a double-edged sword with a grease-smeared handle. I'm sure he has never once thought about the consequences for what he does, and that's what makes him as dangerous as he is.

That being said, the Democrats in Congress are finally beginning to learn the lessons that the Republicans have been teaching them, I think. It's very late for them to do so, but I guess even being this late is still better than not at all. Too bad it took a full-fledged effort to suppress the vote plus actual talk of ignoring the outcome before they were willing to.

One thing I read is that the strength of people like Trump is that nobody actually believes what they say they'll do - they always assume it to be an exaggeration or whatever. So they always look like they're stealing a march on everyone else, when if you assume that they will do whatever it is they say they will do, you can take more accurate countermeasures against it. I made that mistake too at first, but it took less than a year for me to stop doing it. Too bad I'm not in any position to do anything about it.

I don't think they took him to get a burger on the way to the station.

I do think he's a dick but I thought that was OTT at the end of the video. He wasn't carrying any guns [unless he somehow had stashed one in his undies] and looked relatively calm.

$70,000,for hair cuts??? Mate, your no businessman, you where robbed! you could have had multiple hair transplants for a fraction of that, if your head didn't have enough doner follicles, it would be no problem for Putin to arrange a Russian doner.

Alan C wrote:I do think he's a dick but I thought that was OTT at the end of the video. He wasn't carrying any guns [unless he somehow had stashed one in his undies] and looked relatively calm.

It looked heavy handed to me also, but I read somewhere that there was an armed standoff at one point leading up to the full tackle takedown. Trump's sure knows how to pick campaign managers though eh?

Just getting to the end of the debate. I reckon Biden's done OK in the face of a fairly predicable deluge of bullshit from Trump.

CNN did one of those instant poll things about who won.

Biden: 60%
Trump: 28%

Is that...normal?

Biden's camp had a good fundraising result too, apparently.

Apparently almost identical to the viewer poll after the first 2016 debate.

Found it! Later 2016 polls from other sources gave it to Trump, apparently.

Can't imagine Trump's performance today would have appealed to anyone not already committed to voting for him.

I mean, the Proud Boys were happy, but it's not like they were wavering about whether to go for Biden.

The debates won't hurt Trump. As he said, he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue...

Look at his approval rating. After almost four years of fucking things up, his approval rating is almost 7 percentage points higher than after almost four years of fucking things up. It is as though an increasing number of US citizens approve of his fuck-ups. His racism, sexism, nepotism and encouragement of fascists are not fuck-ups to them. They love what he is doing, and shit like not paying taxes, riding roughshod over whatever he doesn't like makes him a strong leader. Rightwingers love strong leaders. Trump is their man, regardless of what he does.

A gathering of international perspective;

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/ ... den-debate

I caught perhaps half of the debate yesterday via a live Twitter stream of it. Normally I can't stand listening to that mango-faced maniac for more than a few minutes at a time but I tried this time, I was a little drained afterwards. I thought Biden did as well as he could, I think you'd need to be able to muster almost unheard of poise and calm to weather that firehouse of filth.

Chris Christie apparently thinks Twittler's problems from this debate can be fixed for the next ones, no, they can't. He is what he is, he is manifestly incapable of at least acting like a stable respectful adult for 90 minutes.

Well there was one result from the debate. Some folks who don't usually vote told me it was such a circus that they're going to vote Democrat. One's in a red state and doesn't even care.