Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

What were the views of last debate by other countries??

Foreign commentators

Cristina Silva, International Business Times Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Hillary Clinton sighed and rolled her eyes through the final presidential debate Wednesday night, emerging the winner largely by ignoring Donald Trump's bait about her husband's many alleged affairs, his accusations that she created ISIS and any probing questions about her use of a private email server as secretary of state."

Rituparna Chatterjee, Huffington Post India Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "What's the Trump dictionary definition of a woman who is prepared, earnest, ambitious and ready to move past mistakes? Oh yes, nasty."

Anthony Zurcher, BBC Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "[A]fter roughly half an hour of something resembling an actual policy debate about the Supreme Court, gun rights, abortion and even immigration, the old Donald Trump—the one who constantly interrupted his opponent, sparred with the moderator and lashed out at enemies real and perceived—emerged."

Tim Stanley, The Telegraph (UK) Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Trump came off as a sore loser conceding the inevitable. A sad, pre-emptive end to a remarkable, charismatic candidacy."

Nick Allen, The Telegraph (UK) Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Disaster for Donald Trump. He undermined his own composed and reasonably effective performance in one moment, when he refused to say that he would accept the result of the election if he loses. That overrode any good work he did during the debate."

Across these 15 commentators, the tally ends up like this:

Clinton: 14 wins, 1 loss
Putin: 3 wins, 0 losses
Wallace: 3 wins, 1 loss
Obama, McCain, Romney: 1 win, 0 losses
Trump: 2 wins, 13 losses

So, it's a landslide for Clinton, with Vladimir Putin taking the silver, and Chris Wallace the bronze. Trump, of course, does not accept these results, and suspects that most of Clinton's support may have come from dead black voters in Philadelphia and Chicago.

We (and everyone else) predicted that the big story of the night would be Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results. But Trump knows that when he's stepped in it he should quickly change the topic, so that the story doesn't live on for days and days, dominating multiple news cycles. No, wait. It's Barack Obama who knows that. Trump's the one who makes it his mission treat his screw-ups like cats, making sure that they each have nine lives. So yes, the story did dominate Thursday's political coverage. And, as usual, Trump did his part to keep it front and center, telling a rally audience that, "I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election ... if I win." Needless to say, many people on both sides of the aisle are not pleased to have something so important treated as a subject of merriment.

That wasn't the only storyline, though. Clinton made a few headlines with a possible screw-up of her own, namely that she may have let slip a bit more information about America's nuclear arsenal than she should have. A few observers wondered about her observation that roughly four minutes elapse between the president's order to fire nukes, and having actual missiles in the sky. This fact is not exactly a state secret. Well, actually, it is a state secret, but not a very well-kept state secret. Certainly, any 20th century military historian or nuclear policy analyst worth their salt already knew this. Nonetheless, if Clinton knew it because of classified briefings she has received, then it was a no-no for her to share it. Thus far, both civilian and military spokesmen, including Secretary of Defense Carter Ash, have declined comment on the situation. Luckily for Clinton, she said it on live tv, in front of only 70 million people. If she'd put it in an email, one that might literally be seen by dozens of people, then there'd be big trouble.

Now, the careful reader might have detected a wee bit of a sardonic tinge to the last few paragraphs. Well, at this point in a wild election cycle, that's where everyone seems to be at. Wednesday's event may have been the most Twitter-friendly debate ever. Heck, it may have been the most Twitter-friendly event ever, instantaneously producing at least a half-dozen memes. There was Clinton's white pantsuit, which inspired a tidal wave of Twitter users to post pictures comparing her outfit to other notable all-white-clad individuals: Luke Skywalker, John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, and "every chef ever" among them. Trump's #badhombre and #nastywoman trended for hours, as did the counter-hashtag #nastywomengetsh**done. Comedian Chelsea Handler even posted a poll, asking respondents if they considered themselves to be more of a "nasty woman" or more of a "bad hombre." "Nasty woman" won, 60% to 40%.

The very best meme of the night came from St. Louis mayoral candidate Antonio French (D), who tweeted that, "Trump's foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn't read the book. 'Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!'" This promptly led to thousands of #TrumpBookReports, like these:

Those poor heights. They were wuthering. Wuthering so bad. Bigly wuthering. I'll make them great again.
Charlotte's Web...Spider dies at the end...no stamina. What a loser.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, worst cabin in the inner city.
It took Low Energy Harry Potter 7 books to defeat Voldermort. Sad! I would have beat him in the first book!
We're gonna catch so much rye, you won't believe it. We're bringing those rye catching jobs to America.
Juliet. Such a nasty woman. She made Romeo kill himself. And believe me he could have done better. Look at her.

But while those are pretty good, the person who may have done the best job of selling his bit is George Norman Davis. He said he'd rather die than see another Clinton-Trump debate. And then, he did.

The debate also had something of an epilogue on Thursday night, when Clinton and Trump were onstage together again at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner, a fundraiser for Catholic charities. It is customary for the presidential nominees to appear, and to make a few lighthearted jokes at each other's expense. Clinton seemed to grasp this, making a joke or two about Trump's net worth and his views on women, like "Donald looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4." Trump, by contrast, apparently missed the "lighthearted" part of the memo. And the joke part, for that matter. He launched into a harangue with "one-liners" like, "Hillary is, and has been, in politics since the '70s. What's her pitch? The economy is busted, the government is corrupt. Washington has failed. Vote for me, I have been working on these problems for 30 years, I can fix it, she says." Similarly, "We've learned so much from WikiLeaks. For example, Hillary believes it is vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private." Ha! Gotcha! The Catholics were not amused, and eventually booed Trump off the stage.

Anyhow, for better or worse—almost certainly for better—the presidential debates of 2016 have come to an end. 17 days until the election. (Z)

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http://www.electoral-vote.com/#item-3



Clinton=350 Trump=188 -- http://www.electoral-vote.com/ Oct. 21