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If you thought Chuck Tingle’s version of the Clinton-Trump debate last night was surreal, well, take a look at what Dilbert creator and wannabe master persuader Scott Adams has to say about it.
Unlike some of Trump’s superfans, Adams is willing to admit that, yeah, Hillary kind of won the debate, at least by normal debate standards.
Clinton won on points. She had more command of the details and the cleaner answers. Trump did a lot of interrupting and he was defensive. If this were a college debate competition, Clinton would be declared the winner.
But Adams thinks this “victory on the 2D chess board” doesn’t really matter, because in his mind, apparently, Trump is playing some kind of 95th Dimensional mashup of Chess, Cribbage, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, or something. And in this game, Trump is the clear winner.
“Clinton won the debate last night,” Adams explains. “And while she was doing it, Trump won the election.”
IS YOUR MIND BLOWN YET
On the off chance that your mind is not, in fact, blown, let’s look at exactly why Adams thinks Trump is the real victor in this game of 95th Dimension Chesscribbippos.
As he sees it, Hillary needed to prove to skeptical Americans (or at least to Dr. Adams) that she’s healthy. And she failed.
Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event.
Huh. This is your takeaway from a debate in which Trump sniffled so much that people started to wonder if he wasn’t hopped up on the cocaine?
Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage.
But that’s not enough for Adams, who raises the serious medical question: Is Hillary’s smile kind of weird?
Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. … My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.
CLEARLY UNQUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT
Trump, by contrast, was the perfect model of health and handsomeness! Well, not entirely.
To be fair, Trump’s physical appearance won’t win him any votes either. But his makeup looked better than I have seen it (no orange), his haircut was as good as it gets for him … .
But Trump didn’t WIN THE ELECTION LAST NIGHT just by being somewhat less orange than usual. He showed what a calm, cool, and collected customer he is.
Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.
Wait, what?
Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy.
MASSIVE WIN
And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals.
You actually think he lost the debate … on purpose?
In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.
As I put it in a tweet to Adams last night (you’ll have to forgive my typo):
Yeah, Trump throwing a tantrum as the same exact moment he was attacking Hillary for having a bad "temperament" was super duper reassuring. https://t.co/RQnRLxd66C
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 27, 2016
Trump definitely looked presidential, not at all like a giant petulant baby who shouldn’t even be in the same city as the nuclear codes.
BLINKING SARCASM.GIF
The most memorable moments of the first debate: Clinton laughs off Trump’s temperament barb https://t.co/NW6ToTCDFS https://t.co/IR90V9KcLc
— POLITICO (@politico) September 27, 2016
Ladies and gentleman, Donald J. Trump! https://t.co/H9Uy8yzNYZ by @RiosJose559 via @c0nvey
— FLOR DO DESERTO (@FlorDeserto) September 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/780607277938147328
https://twitter.com/CCW000/status/780897508310458368
Oh, wait, that last one isn’t Trump. Hard to tell sometimes.
And here’s the latest Pledge Drive capybara, with a friend:
@IP: Oh nooooes! D: I have the same 3DS download collection!
That’s not good. I haven’t seen if that’s a bug that my copy has or what. Have you tried getting in contact with customer service about it and seeing if they can get you a patch or something?
Though I am planning to get all the physical copies I can as well, because collecting is fun and I like to have them on a shelf where I can fawn over them. And I also recently purchased Spirit of Justice (Haven’t played it yet, I want to finish the other games first) and I have played and beaten Dual Destinies as well.
I also want to get the Professor Layton games as well for my shelf. Have you tried Phoenix Wright vs. Professor Layton or any of the Professor Layton games? They’re super fun! PW vs. PL is about witches and witch hunts, and it’s got really awesome blends of both of the games’ play styles!
Yeah – politifact have good, interesting information, but I don’t think you can trust their ratings.
For example – the investigation thing. Both Trump and Clinton said it was true – politifact rule it is true, so why does Clinton get the “truthful” rating?
Stop and Frisk:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/27/trump-is-right-stop-and-frisk-only-unconstitutional-because-of-1-rogue-judge/
I don’t think you can just say “Hey, fact check” and expect that to be the end of the matter.
Provide the information – once you start calling people a liar it’s never going to end – it becomes political unless it’s REALLY clear cut.
@Paradoxy
Honestly, I don’t know if I care enough to bother trying to fix it. I downloaded Dual Destinies a while back, and I only got the trilogy because I wanted to refresh my memory of the previous stories before getting into DD. When the trilogy crash happened, I just moved right on to DD instead. I’m secretly a little bit happy that I finally get to play a new PW game. :p
I didn’t know about Spirit of Justice until a few days ago, and I downloaded it earlier this week. But I won’t play it until I’ve made it through Dual Destinies.
I have played one Professor Layton game, a long time ago. Can’t remember which one it was. I liked it, but then I never played any of the other games in the series. I’ve made a mental note of checking them out eventually, though!
@Roger
Hahaha. “It’s only unconstitutional because it was ruled unconstitutional by a judge! NOT FAIR!!!”
Dude. You have to be a poe.
@Handsome Jack
Totally. Elephant Man is probably my favorite artist of all time, but he definitely deserves being publically humiliated by his kids.
@Paradoxy, I love your new gifs :3 My favourite character in the series there, too. She great. (I no longer have a DS, sadly)
@Roger, what’s untrustworthy about them?
Wait, wait, lemme guess, they have a liberal agenda, right?
Roger trusts the Daily Caller but finds Politifact suspect?
http://66.media.tumblr.com/ae62e1d77cdd55d97ab5b4b8e81ae49e/tumblr_inline_o01mmcYJaW1tnuzcc_500.gif
Kinda ironic that Trump, who goes on about “law and order”, just straight up denies the existence of laws he doesn’t like.
As indulgent as this is, I hope this one turns out alright.
You would give a job to the droll con man
Who brags about not paying his workers
And has naught a single blueprint nor plan?
To a man who’d only help top earners
While destroying our health regulations
“But she is bad because email servers”
To a man who’d wage war with all nations
and would threaten lives with nuclear hellfire
At the very smallest of provocations?
To a man who speaks like a blown out tire
When bullying doesn’t bring victory
With two faced ramblings like a drunk friar?
You ignore all things contradictory
Like him kissing butts of other rich men
Perhaps it’s not in your periphery?
Why is it with you again and again,
That you avoid anything specific
When posts cite sources you comedienne?
Well then Mr Mediocre Critic
With not a single fact in your brain pit
Explains why you’re a gullible cynic.
Scildfreja Unnýðnes –
Because the truth rating has to include (1) What the person actually meant (with all the ambiguities that involves) (2) What a reasonable person might suppose them to mean (3) Whether there is evidence for it (if we can find no clear evidence either way, does that make it “false”?) (4) *Importantly* which statements will be fact checked.
I mean with Trump – are we fact checking whether Bill Clinton signed NAFTA? If not, why are we fact checking whether Trump had a law suit (which he admits to having).
There are too many question marks for the rating to be meaningful.
For me this is a questionable “false”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/27/donald-trump/donald-trump-my-trans-pacific-partnership-oppositi/
They do not reply
When questioned about Clinton
Nothing of substance.
You got to prove it
Lazy talk is worthless fool
Without your reasons.
Or is arguing
Too hard and you would prefer
Us to smile and nod?
@IP
“Law and Order” means “keep the poors and [ethnic slurs] in their place with as much violence as necessary, and a little more just for funsies’. It has nothing to do with concepts like ‘Rule of Law’, despite sounding superficially related.
With the Daily Caller link, the pretense that Roger only decided to vote for Trump because of the debate has been dropped entirely, right?
“A rose by any other name”,
Tells us all about the game,
That we play when we choose,
To open mouth and let loose,
But if in some fit of spite,
I crept about in the night,
And changed the name of flowers fair,
To that of Mr. Maverick Hair,
(And orange glow,)
(Nose of pinnocio,)
Would you be so pleased to see?
A bouquet of Trumps, just for thee?
@Roger
Okay seriously, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you just saying random words?
@Roger
Your words lack substance.
A mishap of vagaries,
Lacking in prudence.
Ooh, classifiers. My favourite. Let’s see!
No, it doesn’t, and can’t. Perhaps you refer to the principle of charity, in which you interpret the intentions of your opponent in a strong form? This is a device for argumentation and self-improvement.
Any truth-check must examine the raw words of their statement and not the intention behind that statement. Introducing a subjective evaluation of intent is to introduce bias.
See #1. You can’t introduce what a ‘reasonable person’ might suppose them to mean when checking facts. This is a legal criteria, not for ascertaining truth. All you have are the raw words as they are. If the person being fact-checked wants to correct their words, great – but you can’t include that into your evaluation without biasing that evaluation.
Evidence is all you have. No impressions or assumptions. You do the best with it.
There’s no evidence for the invisible, intangible dragon in my garage (with apologies to Carl Sagan). If I go around claiming that there’s an invisible, intangible dragon in my garage, I’m wrong and it’s fair to call it false.
The number of things for which there is no evidence is infinite.
Sure, that’s fair! They have an email posted if you want to suggest one to them. Twitter as well I think.
Now that’s just silly. Some things don’t need fact checking – the signatories of NAFTA are public knowledge.
We’re fact checking Trump because he’s being vetted for President. Both he, and Hillary, should be thoroughly vetted. He lied, someone called foul, and evidence was shown that he lied. That’s how it works.
@Petal
I have no clue what he’s on about.
OoglyBoggles on point
Fingie is getting bored with Mark now.
Hilary has this “truth rating” right – but one of the facts she has stated *isn’t contested by anyone*.
If we’re going to compare the truth ratings of Clinton and Trump, we have to have some system to make sure that we’re comparing like with like.
I mean, I could *find* plenty of truthful statements that Trump has made. Presumably they aren’t of particular interest to anyone – that’s the big question mark – whose interest is determining which “facts” are checked and are we comparing like with like – from a brief look, I’d say not.
Let me try this poetry thing people seem really on about.
There once was a dude named Roger,
Who agrees with an overgrown toddler,
Their logic was none,
Convincing no one,
So people mocked them and the codger.
Ah, yes, awful. I did it. My work here is done.
http://img.pandawhale.com/54312-Mission-accomplished-gif-hkaS.gif
Yes, I’m sure that one time Trump said the sky was blue but that’s not relevant to, you know, politics.
Because, you know, politicians should be basing their policies on facts and not what they think is right, and not saying that what they think based on their own opinions is true.
@ IP
Yeah, apparently Roger is missing the idea that things mostly tend to get fact checked when there is disagreement about what is true.
Are we fact checking whether Donald called Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping”, Roger? No. Because he doesn’t deny it. He’s completely unapologetic about it, too. He harbors a deep racism, a deep misogyny, and he’s not bashful about it.
ETA: Roger, I don’t believe you watched PI’s link. But of course you didn’t.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/27/donald-trump/donald-trump-my-trans-pacific-partnership-oppositi/
So, on this one – they basically say “Um… Hilary did change her mind after Donald had said it first but there is no evidence that that influenced her and she said it didn’t so FALSE!”
And then that is proof that Donald Trump is a liar.
Sorry – the information is interesting – the “liar rating” lacks rigor.
@Paradoxical Intention
Franziska is *my* favorite prosecutor as well! I think that makes us besties now or something!