Who's your money on?Follow

Making someone who skipped out on some activity or job earlier have to do it later while those who already did it once get to sit and watch is pretty common. Both you and I mentioned a missed school assignment/homework. If you have siblings, I'm sure your parents at some point made the one who slacked off and didn't get their chores done when everyone else was working have to do it later, while the rest got to play or watch TV. I'm not speaking specifically of debate procedures, but general life. It's a pretty normal consequence for failing to do something when everyone else had to do it.



Again though, it's not about whether I agree or disagree with the method (I don't). It's that the other leading candidates all had to face this last time, but Trump wasn't there. So they decided to do the same thing to Trump that they did to the others. Right or wrong, that is "fair". I don't recall you getting all bent out of shape when they did this to other candidates last time, so I suspect this isn't so much about the method itself, but the appearance of Trump being singled out by it this time around. To which, my response is the same as the kid having to be the only one in the class to stand up and present his assignment today because he wasn't there when the whole class did it yesterday: That's the price for missing the initial assignment date.

Trump's a big boy. I think he can handle it. And again, I suspect that they discussed this with Trump prior to the debate and got his agreement to it as part of a condition for attending, because he didn't seem to have the same problem with it that you are having. Maybe that's a clue that it's not really a big deal.


As to the debate itself, I agree that I don't think Rubio won any points, but I think he did score some damage on Trump. How much that actually hurts Trump is pretty hard to tell. As I've mentioned many times, Trump seems to be immune to things that would normally be killers for a candidate. Personally, I thought that when Rubio said that all Trump does when asked to provide substance is attack the person asking while not actually providing any substance was a pretty good hit given that Trump proceeded to do just that exact thing like 2 or 3 times in a row after that. IMO though, the biggest one was when he was asked about whether he expected soldiers to carry out illegal orders. His answer made me think he doesn't understand the difference between Commander in Chief and Dictator in Chief.

I'm sure his supporters just thought he looked tough though.

Then stop cutting your quotes short:



I was saying that the method is not unprecedented "in other settings", so I don't see any problem specifically with using it in a debate. It's amazing to me that you somehow manage to ignore the core point I'm making here (that we do this in other aspects of our lives, so it's not really that strange to do it in a debate). It's like you go out of your way to find the most bizarre and nonsensical interpretation of what I write, and then insist that this must be what I meant all along.

My issue (which I also stated earlier) is with using the process at all, not that it's somehow unfair that they required Trump to deal with it by himself in this debate after the other front runners had already dealt with it in the earlier debate that he did not attend. If they're going to do it at all, then the way they did it is completely fair. He skipped out of the earlier debate, and thus didn't have to be subject to this, so it's fair that they do it now. I say that because we apply that same process to other cases where someone doesn't show up and have to do something everyone else has to do, and when he does show up and we decide to now have him do that same thing, we don't make everyone else do it a second time as well, do we?

So no. That they made only Trump deal with videos and clips questioning his past statements isn't a problem at all for me. That's perfectly fair and reasonable. To the degree that I have any problem with this at all, it's that the moderators chose to directly engage in this manner in the first place. And frankly, this is something moist moderators do to some degree in most debates. Fox just chose to use visual aids to make their point a bit stronger than most.




They only did this to the front runners the first time though. There were more people on the stage then. In fact, I don't think they did it to Kasich at all (although technically they did yesterday, with the whole bit he "refused to bite" on involving the attack ad on Trump). You didn't say "OMG! It's so unfair that they focused this only on Bush and Rubio and Cruz, and ignored Christie, and Carson, and <whoever was in at the time>". Heck. I'm reasonably sure you didn't even notice that they did it then. I did, because I thought it was wrong of them to essentially do fact checking in the debate (same issue I had with Crowley, although again, at least they were presenting video to back up their "facts"). I think that the candidates themselves should point out if someone says something that is wrong, or inconsistent, or whatever. It's a debate, right?



Wow. Um... You haven't been watching Hannity then, have you? I get that when you're used to sources like CNN and MSNBC and the mainstream media where everyone is required to adopt the official party position before they're allowed on air, but at Fox they actually do allow their folks to have widely differing views on things. And express them. And argue about them even! If all you're doing is looking just at the "anyone but Trump" folks on Fox you're only seeing half the picture. Probably less than half.

I think you'd be surprised at how many of the pundits on Fox are actually arguing that the GOP should be finding ways to embrace Trump and "evolve" as a party. Maybe try actually watching the news station you keep bashing some time? You might just learn something.

That part about the school paper was a joke, right?

I thought they stopped making those when Pontiac went out of business.

Alma's considered a literary savant among the YouTube commentator community.

Alma, I find it interesting that you think that the ability to write coherently about a technical topic, which you have studied and likely know a great deal about would necessarily directly translate into the ability to describe a position on other topics that are both different in nature, and not your area of expertise.

More writing etc will help, but you have certain ways of talking about topics in a specific field which are developed in large part by the instruction you receive, and as such are going to be understood by both you as you write and your audience who is in the same context as you, and likely helped form the way you think and talk about the topics in the first place.

In a new area, you do not have those patterns built and have to come up with them, and others will have different patterns, so assuming that the way your write about one topic will then translate into being clear in another area is not true. You also don't have the assumed context and assumptions here, so that's also going to leave a big gap.

Not trying to be rude, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You made a lot of assumptions, none which are true.

See above


See above

See post #7.

Seriously though, my first masters was in education. It was not technical in nature and all new to me. My second masters was in information management, quasi technical, but mostly in management. Again, mostly new. My Phd that I'm working on is in Computational Sciences and Informatics. It's exactly what it says, not technical. I have no experience other than my work in undergrad 10 years ago.

It sounds like you're saying that the problem is that others aren't thinking about topics in the specific way that I view them, which makes it hard for them to comprehend. If that's true, then the fault is not necessarily with me. I literally had to reread your post at least three times to even understand what you were saying. My lack of understanding is not your fault. If you don't understand a post, you either reread it or ask for clarification. Don't respond for 10 pages just to say that you never understand what was being said.

People have tried that with you, and then they get "see post #127" as a response.

She did say she prays though. That should have upset some people.

People may not realize they haven't understood it though. They may have simply understood something slightly different, or assumed that you had just made a weak argument. It goes both ways on your side as well. In the same way that you don't always write in a way that considers thought processes not specific to yourself, you also sometimes can read things as if they're written in your context. I can't really speak to this directly as I can't see inside your head, but it does seem this way.

you can certainly say, well it's others responsibility, not yours, but the hallmark of a good communicator is that they don't need to say that. finding a way to communicate effectively, especially without a common framework is hard.