the big debate

Stayed up past my bedtime, and I wasn't disappointed,  As I am sure you have heard the big girl did extensive preparation, the amber asshole not so much, or to be more exact nada.  It showed.

The split screen was deadly AA was all scorn and spite and couldn't sit still like a bad kid in the principal's office.  For her part she was all that phony smile and a bit smug, but overall she looked civilized next to the snarling beast,

The guy that actually wrote The Art of the Deal has been in the press a lot lately, had an article in the New Yorker, has become a big enemy of Trump, he says he's atoning for his sins in making Trump look good.  When he did the book he could never get Trump to sit still long enough to go through an interview, finally he had to just follow him around and jot stuff down.  He says that Trump has no attention span.

He didn't respond well to the questions, veering off to other subjects, getting lost in rabbit holes, asserting things that are generally known not to be true.  He went down peculiar rabbit holes, spending a lot of time talking about some conversations he had with Hannity that would prove he was against the Iraq war.  He had a hard time explaining the birther thing and not revealing his tax returns.

He was easily baited by the big girl and never had the concentration to mount attacks that could have hurt the big girl.

I would give Clinton the win and so did the CNN talking heads, and listening to NPR this morning so do they, but of course we have all been wrong about Trump on everything else so far, so we'll have to see what the polls say in a few days.


I think the situation of the peasants has gone up and down, probably, as Beagles observed they got better deals as time went on, probably as trade became more important and agriculture less.  There were a few peasant uprisings but they were all crushed brutally.  The king may have worried about some of his lords, but never about the peasants.  Mostly they were chattel.  I don't know about their having committed a crime before they ran off.  Anything that they did that the lord didn't like would be a crime

Machiavelli was writing during the renaissance when the peasants were probably a little elevated.  He was writing about the peculiar situation of the city states of northern Italy, and what he is saying is just common sense.  What was so sensational about his book was that nobody said things that openly at the time.  He was hoping to get a job as advisor to a prince