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Seriously, Donald Trump is like the worst person in the world. It’s tough to imagine someone you don’t like offering to give money to charity, and you liking them less as a result, but kudos to Trump for paving the road to that particular place.

To be fair, we did enjoy your impression of Dr. Evil as you sat behind your very big desk and shouted into the camera, vowing to contribute “five mill-ion dol-lars!” to the charity of the president’s choice if he releases “to my satisfaction!” all of his college records and passport applications by, appropriately enough, Halloween at 5 p.m.

Seriously, Donald Trump, if you’ve got $5 Million to spend on charity, don’t play this game. Just give it to charity. Don’t waste the finite amount of time the President of the United States has on your paranoid nonsense. Just give the money to charity.

Also, passport applications? I’m pretty disorganized, but I’m not sure if I was better organized that I could just pull up all of the passport applications I’ve made in a week. And I’m not in the middle of, you know, running for president. Do you keep them? Would the government keep the passport applications of a 7 year old (or whatever) kid from Hawaii from when he went to visit his dad, like years after it had expired? That’s such a strange request. And really, can you imagine Obama using the last week of the campaign to argue with Trump about if that was really all, and the correct, passport applications to his satisfaction? That’s just bizarre.

– There ain’t enough fuck you in the world for this guy.

– Nepotism on full view on TV.

– At what point do the R-71 people give up their court case to keep their signatures hidden?

– It is ridiculous — RIDICULOUS — that we live in a society where it’s a good guess that a shooting in a place often frequented by women is going to be an extension of a “domestic dispute.”

– Family values.

– Bikers and walkers spend more money than drivers over time.

– Anyone interested in seeing a MST3King of BIRDEMIC tomorrow?

The last in a series of presidential debates is on tonight, featuring President Barack Hussein Obama II (D) and former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney (R).

This debate will focus on foreign policy. But since Willard has little foreign policy experience beyond a courtesy visit to London (plus Israel and Poland) so that he could totally avoid watch Ann’s dressage horse compete in the Olympics, be prepared for the candidates to twist everything back into domestic issues.

I’ll be at the Montlake Ale House liveblogging as I can. Please join me there, or have fun in the comment threads, if you prefer.

6:04: Romney wins!!!! (the coin toss.)

6:05: Mitt opens with a lot of babbling and proclaims, “We can’t kill out of this mess.” Uh-huh.

6:08: “Gov. Romney, you strategy has been all over the map.” Certainly is was based on his opening answer.

6:09: Mitt wants “Gender equality”. Does he really know what he is saying? But this second answer is so babbly it’s hard to know what he is saying.

6:12: Obama hits Romney HARD on his inconsistent positions on foreign policy.

6:13: Romney hits Obama back on the “after the election” comment to Putin.

6:15: After a short bicker-fest, Obama comes out with a pretty coherent positive agenda.

6:18: Romney doesn’t have a plan for Syria…he just regurgitates factoids about the situation. Then, when he gets down to “action” points, his plan is what the Obama administration is ACTUALLY DOING RIGHT NOW. Sheesh!

6:21: Obama complements Romney on supporting the Obama administration on Libya and then punches him in the nose on his “mission creep” statement.

6:23: Mitt Romney tells us what “we all hear intelligence sources saying”. Damn…I can’t say…left my national security briefing binder at home.

6:27: Mitt declares himself a peacenik

6:28: Both candidates work in domestic issues. Obama did a better job sneaking it in. Romney criticizes the sequestration cuts…as if that’s Obama’s doing!

6:30: Mitt gives a speech directed toward the Priests of the Military Industrial Complex.

6:31: Obama does it again—turning the debate into a list of his accomplishments.

6:32: Obama hits below the belt…”[Romney] praised George Bush for his economic stewardship and Dick Cheney for ….”

6:34: Romney said “teacher’s unions” and Obama looked down! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo……!!!!!!

6:36: We are now on the topic on whether class size makes a difference. In Afghanistan?!?

6:37: Obama gets surly while Romney babbles on about “his” education successes in MA.

6:39: No, Governor, we cannot afford to repeal Obamacare.

6:40: Obama gets his do-over from Debate 1: “five trillion dollar tax cuts…military spending that the military isn’t asking for…”

6:41: I’m watching NBC. Why is Obama on the right and Romney on the left? This is a conspiracy!!!!

6:42: Romney, “I balanced the budget for the Olympics”. Yes…Governor, with a little help of your taxpayer friends.

6:43: Obama finally defends himself against Romney’s bullshit of blaming Obama for sequestration cuts.

6:44: Obama lands a left hook with the “horses and bayonettes” zinger. Perhaps the best zinger of all three debates!

6:48: Mitt’s flaggey-flag pin is bigger. Obviously, he loves America more.

6:49: Mitt Romney thinks Ahmadinejad has committed more war crimes and crimes against humanity than George W. Bush and Dick Fucking Cheney???? Very curious.

6:51: We have about 20 folks at the Ale House who are, apparently, here for the debate.

6:54: Note to Obama…watch out for Tagg Romney running toward you….

6:55: Obama contrasts his visit to Israel with Romney’s…it seems pretty effective!

6:59: Mitt lets us know he has “a relationship with the Prime Minister of Israel.” No doubt he cultivated that relationship the same way he cultivated a relationship with the Prime Minister of the U.K.

7:01: Obama goes after Romney hard on his flip flopping. I noticed, he always ends those bits with a positive message. Good debate coaching.

7:04: Mitt just told all the terrorists when he will pull out of Afghanistan. Why does he hate our soldiers?

7:08: Bob: “Obama bin Laden”

7:10: I’ve heard Mitt say lots of things about Pakistan, but I am still not sure where he stands and what he would do?

7:11: Mitt drones on about his support for Drones. But, but, but, I thought we couldn’t “kill our way out of this”

7:14: Trending on Twitter (US): #horsesandbayonets

7:18: Via Twitter:

Abby Huntsman ‏@HuntsmanAbby
I’ve never heard two candidates agree more during what is suppose to be a “debate.”

7:17: Mitt wants to label China a “currency manipulator.” That will bring them to their knees.

7:21: Obama pushes the “Romney has bad political instincts” meme: outsourcing, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, etc.

7:23: Mitt: “I would do nothing to hurt Detroit.” Obama calls him out on that bullshit.

7:25: “Governor, you keep on trying to airbrush history.” Look up history here.

7:28: Romney keeps bringing up the same old bullshit about how much worse things are now then they were when Obama came into office. Two words: “Bikini Graph”

7:31: Mitt: “I want to see growing peace in this country.” Huh? This is the kind of thing that is said when politicians are on autopilot.

7:38: Promoted comment from Michael:

Moderate Mitt’s plans all seem to come down to being just like Obama, only white.

7:47: Debriefing: Michael nails it. Romney etch-a-sketched so far back to the center that he was, essentially, agreeing with Obama more than he was disagreeing. That ends up being a huge problem for him. After all, the power of incumbency is that given identical choices, the devil you know is better than the identical devil you don’t.

But, of course, the other problem is that by becoming The White Obama, he contradicts his past “non-Kenyan” self. You know, like most of the stuff he said in the G.O.P. primary. His strategy depends on potential moderate supporters not being disturbed by his total abdication of past positions. That may have worked 20 years ago, but in the age of The Twitter and a plethora of other social media…maybe not so much.

I’m not a fan of our nonpartisan election system here in Washington where we don’t have to register by party to vote in the primary. But I had thought when the national scandal about GOP operatives dumping voter registrations.

A campaign worker linked to a controversial Republican consulting firm has been arrested in Virginia and charged with throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster.

The suspect, Colin Small, 31, was described by a local law enforcement official as a “supervisor” in a Republican Party financed operation to register voters in Rockingham County in rural Virginia, a key swing state in the Nov. 6 election. He was arrested after a local business owner in the same Harrisonburg, Va., shopping center where the local GOP campaign headquarters is located spotted Small tossing a bag into the trash, according to a statement Thursday by the Rockingham County Sheriff’s office. The bag was later found to contain eight voter registration forms, it said. The arrest was reported Thursday night by WWBT-TV in Richmond.

But maybe not as tough as I’d thought.

In Virginia, where the Pennsylvania man working for the state GOP was arrested Thursday, Chesterfield County’s General Registrar Larry Haake was seen explaining to Richmond’s CBS 6 in late September that he had received complaints of Strategic employees discovered doing the same thing in a library last month.

“They were responsible for people that appeared in some libraries in Chesterfield County, supposedly to conduct voter registration drives,” Haake said, “but they were asking voters for whom they are going to vote.”

Haake says he informed the GOP of the incident at the time, but, apparently, no action was taken.

If, in fact, Small, or the workers he is said to have supervised, were using the same technique of misrepresenting themselves to voters about being a pollster, rather than being a registration worker, it’s likely he would have been able to glean whether those registrations he was allegedly seen tossing into a dumpster were for Democratic or Republican-leaning voters.

I think this is what you get when people keep screaming ACORN, ACORN, ACORN. They think they’re just leveling the playing field.

– This story about puppy mills in Lewis County will break your heart.

– The Burden of a Black President

– Before spending millions on Initiative 1240′s unproven charter schools that admit only a tiny fraction of students, with no guarantee of improved performance, let’s do what the state Supreme Court has told us to do

– Charming people watching the previous debate.

– I love this XKCD piece on presidential election conventional wisdom.

This is a terrible decision from The Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times Co. jumped directly into two of the state’s hottest political contests Wednesday, launching an $80,000 independent-expenditure campaign promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and announcing a similar effort in support of the referendum to legalize gay marriage.

I don’t like either of these, but the R-74 ad makes a tiny bit of sense on its own. They look like they might win a squeaker, so the Seattle Times can say, “oh look our ads made the difference.” I don’t think that’s good for the brand of independent minded fair people, but at least I could see a path to it working. But since McKenna is losing, and will probably lose, the pitch will be buy an add, it won’t help you? Or do they think it will turn it around?

Seriously, what is this?

The food had been served, the patrons were long gone, and the cutlery cleaned when Rep. Paul Ryan, his wife, three kids and photographers pulled up Saturday at a St. Vincent de Paul food kitchen in Youngstown Ohio.

Ryan and his wife put on aprons and washed several pans that already appeared to be clean, and then were off to the airport

I’d guess something on the order of 80% of photo ops are more waste of time than actual help. But at least the politician usually does something, even if more could be done without them. Oh, and by the way:

“We’re a faith-based organization: We are apolotical because the majority of our food is from private donations,” Brian Antol told The Washington Post. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.

…

“I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals,” he said. “If this was the Democrats, I’d have exactly the same problem.”

The Seattle City Council actually does something decent.

The Seattle City Council approved new campaign finance rules today. Under the changes, candidates for local office can’t roll over campaign funds from one election to the next and can’t start fundraising until Jan. 1 of the year before an election.

Vote was 7-2 with Council President Sally Clark and Councilmember Tom Rasmussen voting no.

Council members said they took the steps to limit the influence of money on local elections and reduce the amount of time that elected officials are fundraising at the same time they’re making policy.

They’ve still given themselves the chance to transfer their money into their next election, because of course they did. But over the long run, this is a positive step to getting good challengers who aren’t scared off by the large piles of money in the incumbent’s war chests.

– Yay for parks; boo for the accompanying picture that I can’t put my finger on it but creeps me out.

– No question about why these creep me out.

– The attempt to elicit sympathy for Romney by anecdotal proxy is a poor enough of a play. The decision to do so via an anecdote about a tragic car accident in a debate with Joe Biden means you’re either a sociopath or possessed of an idiocy of immeasurable power.

– Biblical family.

– Merry Christmas, Yakima.

– I would like to see some random questions from children in the next debate.

In the comment thread this evening, Serial Conservative asked me to comment on this:

Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, whose polls are aggregated into mainstream averages to show where the presidential race stands in the swing states, said he’s finished polling in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia because President Obama has no shot of winning those states.

“I think in places like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, we’ve already painted those red, we’re not polling any of those states again,” Paleologos said Tuesday night on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “We’re focusing on the remaining states.”

It pains me to have to admit…I’m with Bill O’Reilly on this one:

Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly seemed perplexed, and asked Paleologos if he was certain those three states were already in the bag for Romney.

Here’s Mr. Paleologos’ reasoning:

“That’s right, and here’s why. Before the debate, the Suffolk poll had Obama ahead 46 to 43 [in Florida] in the head-to-head number,” Paleologos responded.
“A poor place to be for a couple of reasons. Number one, his ballot test, his head-to-head number was below 47 percent before the debate, and it’s very, very difficult when you have the known quantity, the incumbent, to claw your way up to 50. So that was a very, very poor place for him to be.

“So we’re looking at this polling data not only in Florida but in Virginia and North Carolina and it’s overwhelming,” Paleologos concluded.

Whoa…hold on there a sec, Bucky! This poll?

Obama was LEADING in Florida. Not behind. Not tied. But leading by +3%.

A straightforward reading of that evidence suggests Obama was in the stronger position. But, Paleologos felt it was bad that Obama didn’t have 50%.

Two problems. First, 46% to 43% Obama lead did not include leaners. The poll actually did assessed leaners, though, and when you include them Obama is at 48%.

On top of that, the poll included 10 additional 3rd party or independent candidates! Those candidates got 2.5% of the “votes.” So…in a close state, where the scale for the two major party candidates goes from 0% to 97.5%, the middle of the scale is 48.75%, and Obama got 48%. That’s pretty fucking close to half the available votes.

Moreover, in this poll, Obama beat Romney in favorability 51% to 45%.

Really…this “theory” by Paleologos seem pretty fucking far fetched to me.

The story is not too dissimilar in Virginia. The last Suffolk poll had Obama leading Romney, 46% to 44%. With leaners, it was a 46.5% to 44.8% race. There were three third-party candidates on the ballot that took 2.2% of the “votes” away. And, again, Obama beat Romney in favorability, 52% to 42%.

Once again, it is pretty fucking bizarre to use this poll to argue that Obama will lose the state.

And here’s the bizarre thing about North Carolina: Suffolk hasn’t done any North Carolina polling. I don’t find them in my database, RCP doesn’t have ’em either. I’ve checked with a few online polling aggregation sites, and find no evidence that Suffolk has done any polling in the state. I guess this means he is relying on other people’s polls (OPP, as we say in the biz).

So let’s look at OPP in Florida for the past two months:

A plain reading of this graph suggests that Obama took the lead from Romney by mid-September and held a pretty solid lead until the post-debate period. And then it looks pretty much like a tie. My most recent analysis gives Obama a 54.9% chance of winning the state now, based on the last six polls in the state.

And now for some OPP from Virginia over the past two months:

Really, Virginia shows an identical pattern. Indeed, my Monte Carlo analysis puts the race in Virginia at a tie right at the moment.

And North Carolina with two months of OPP:

It looks like Obama led from mid-September to late September. The two October polls give Romney the lead, for sure, but a “certain win”? Well…Romney would have a 95% probability of winning the state in an election held now, according to my analysis of this polling evidence.

I can buy an argument the Romney is likely to take North Carolina. But he has a bit of work to do before it is a “sure thing.” For Florida and Virginia, only a fool could look at this collection of evidence objectively and find a “certain” win for either candidate. These two states are very close right now. More polling is needed, not less!

So I don’t know what the hell David Paleologos was babbling about. It seems illogical. You know…an opinion that is free from being encumbered by evidence.

The worst part: I’m still creeped out by finding myself in agreement with Bill O’Reilly. I mean, what the fuck?!?

That if you were reading The Seattle Times’ endorsement of Rob McKenna, and you came across this paragraph:

McKenna has an independent mind. He is willing to work with Democrats and he is willing on occasion to buck his party. He defended Washington’s top-two primary before the U.S. Supreme Court, despite pressure from his own party seeking to overturn it. And he won.

You might reasonably say to yourself that they got the bucking his own party bit out of the way, so it’s time for an example of him working with Democrats. The next paragraph will surely mention the vast amounts of working with Democrats he did.

No?

It’s just an awkward transition to complaining that Democrats have mentioned that he’s a Republican. OK then.

Liberal Viewer: Fox News lies about Libya attack response?

Thom: Right Wingers and the poll truthers.

Jonathan Mann: The Romney Shake It Up Song:

Thom and Pap: Koch front group seeks revenge against Florida Justices.

Debate:

• Ann Telnaes: Romney shapes up for the debate
• Jonathan Mann: Romney fires Big Bird:
• Mitt’s debate: Mostly fiction.
• Kay and Peele Luther on Obama’s first debate performance.
• Jimmy Fallon joins the debate
• Obama: Mitt was fact checked by his OWN CAMPAIGN! (via TalkingPointsMemo.)
• Young Turks: Advice for Obama’s next debate.
• Ann Telnaes: No mention of the 47% in first debate.
• MockitTV: Obama and Romney make America great again
• Young Turks: Why did Obama lose the first debate?
• Big Bird responds.
• Thom: Hey, Media, how can Romney lie all night and be “the winner?”
• Sam Seder and Ari Berman: Mitt lies his way to a debate victory.
• Mitt Romney: Protect big oil, fire Big Bird
• Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: Debate!
• Tweety and Louis Black: The day after the Denver debate
• Conan: Mr. Romney and Mr. Bird.
• The great Mitt Romney cheating conspiracy theory (multiple videos).
• Maddow: History favors the challenger in first debates
• Young Turks: Did Mitt cheat?
• Sam Seder: No mention on 47% in the debate.
• Stephen praises FAUX News for something important.
• Martin Bashir: The two faces of Mitt Romney and John Sununu’s ugly remarks
• Young Turks: Breaking down the debate.
• Health care: Out of luck.
• Ed and Pap: Republicans full of “Dog Hope” after debate
• Tweety unloads over Obama’s performance (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Nobody won!
• Young Turks: Some lies during the debate.
• Jon: The Debate (via Political Wire).

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA):Evolution, Big Bang ‘Lies straight from The Pit Of Hell’

Thom with some Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Romney flip flops on his 47% comment!?!

George Takei: “We’ve got to be actively involved in the electoral process.”.

G.O.P. Voter Suppression:

• Zina Saunders: Daryl Metcalfe Says You Don’t Deserve To Vote!.
• Maddow: US court forces Ohio to reinstate early voting
• Gavin Newsom with Rosario Dawson: Disenfranchised Latino vote is a major problem.
• Sam Seder: PA Judge blocks GOP voter ID law
• Maddow: Mixed messages on voter ID as Pa. slow to obey court
• Mark Fiore: Voting with Right Wing Ralphie.

Steve Martin, home crafts expert, makes an endorsement:

White House: West Wing Week.

Thom: Has the GOP/Right Wing Media Jumped the Shark?

TEH NEW TRUFERISM:

• The crackpot Jobs Numbers Truferism movement emerges. (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Maddow: Good jobs news drives right to delusion
• Young Turks: The unemployment rate ‘conspiracy’
• Romney campaign resists FAUX News’ Job Report Truferism (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Sam Seder: The Right Wing freak-out over jobs numbers.
• The politics behind the jobs numbers

Ann Telnaes: The Supremes begin a new term.

Sam Seder: Rick Santorum Rick Santorum wants to kill and eat Big Bird.

Mitt Romney’s Disdain For The Middle Class: He Said It, He Meant It.

Young Turks: Tucker Carlson makes a fool of himself over 2007 Obama speech.

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here (via TalkingPointsMemo).

– The federal investment in public broadcasting equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Elimination of funding would have virtually no impact on the nation’s debt. Yet the loss to the American public would be devastating.

– Romney Dominated Debate, Say Pundits Trying To Figure Out GOP Candidate’s Policies

– Rob McKenna wrote on Slog yesterday.

– Good jobs numbers. Also, it’s tough to find stories that don’t frame it as political (I understand why people frame it like that this close to the election, but still).

– In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.

– Bugs and poop are in our future.

I left my home in Redmond at 6:00 pm yesterday for a trip to a destination a little outside of the little town of Carbonado, WA. The timing was pretty good for debate listening, as the traffic on I-405 meant I would hear most of the debate without a whole lot of interference from 60 MPH road noises. I caught just over an hour of the debate, as my aural sense was required for other tasks shortly after 7:00 pm.

Listening to the debate didn’t give me opportunity to see Obama’s “big crash”. Aurally, things simply did not come off all that negative for Obama. What stuck out for me was Mitt Romney doing two things:

1. Back-peddling, flip-flopping, and pivoting away from the “severe conservative” positions he held during the G.O.P. debates. For the six or so years Romney has been running for President, he has given Americans a portrait of his positions that, oddly, differ greatly from his positions while running for Senate and while running for and being Governor of Massachusetts. Last night, the Etch-A-Sketch moment happened—Romney shook up the slate. He erased that mix of conservative, ALEC, and teabag-inspired positions that got him through the primary. Obama was dumbfounded—he probably was thinking what I was saying: “What the fuck, Mitt?!?”
2. Lying. Romney repeatedly said things that are factually false—and did so with conviction and, well…swagger! Although Obama sometimes pointed out Romney’s “erroneous” statements, I think he was caught off guard by it a bit. He was probably thinking what I was saying, “What a FUCK, Mitt!”

When I turned off the radio shortly after 7:00 pm, my impression was that Obama came off as too timid, and should have been nailing Romney MUCH harder on his Etch-A-Sketching and untruthful statements. Timidity in a debate isn’t good unless your opponent is self destructing. And Romney wasn’t acutely self destructing.

But he was undergoing a chronic self-destruction. I mean, the media isn’t going to let him get away with lying and wholesale abandonment of the positions and policies he used to get through the primary, are they? In other words, after hearing the words each candidate was saying, I was pretty convinced that Romney had created some self-inflicted damage.

I didn’t get home until about Midnight, when I did a quick scan of the news feeds, only to learn that Obama got clobbered. Devastated. Destroyed.

Alas, I had a busy morning, so I didn’t look into it too much. Later, an Obama-supporting friend of mine on the East Coast emailed me a scathing critique of Obama, starting with an, apparently, disingenuous tribute to his and Michelle’s anniversary.

Huh! That opening bit sounded warm and genuine from the right lane of SR-520.

While eating lunch today, I spent a few minutes exploring the media reaction. I think David Frum helps me understand things:

Romney, the multimillionaire, arrived in a suit, shirt and tie that looked like they’d been purchased at Macy’s. I doubt he’ll ever wear them again, but for one night, he looked the way most non-zillionaires look when they dress for business. His manner was warm, engaged, and respectful. He looked at the president when the president spoke, and his expression revealed no asperity or disdain.

Oh shit! No wonder I couldn’t clearly see Mitt’s victory…I just couldn’t see his cheap suit, and where his eyes and Obama’s eyes were pointing. (I’ve mentioned during the G.O.P. debates about Mitt’s habit of staring attentively—almost artificially so—at his speaking opponent, so I can picture that.) Apparently, if I had watched the debate with the sound turned down, Mitt would be the hands-down winner.

The only problem: there were words spoken, as well. And while I agree that Obama didn’t attack Mitt nearly as effectively as he could have, that hardly compares to lying at Americans, right in their own living rooms—or cars. Or “disappearing” his long-held controversial positions, as if they’d never “happened.”

The problem for Romney is that a victory on style is ephemeral. The debate has left behind a record in the form of words. Going forward, he can lose the cheap suit, but will still be left with all those words…and they cheapen the whole package.

– Michelle Obama came to town.

– Another anti-Inslee ad with someone who isn’t a great spokesperson.

– More Italians bought bikes than cars last year. Next year, Washington?

– I like the idea of Olympia as mighty metropolis.

– The Thurston County Chamber of Commerce opposes it. The Olympian opposes it. If that is not reason enough right there to support Thurston County Proposition No. 1, it’s time you turn in your Occupy Olympia underpants.

– Richard Conlin makes the case for Surface-Transit-I-5.

– Twitter has really given people the opportunity to pack so much wrong into so few words.