So I saw this and haha she's looking at a blank page, but plenty of books and documents have blank or mostly blank pages in the front material. In official government docs it will usually say, "This page intentionally left blank" (right under "ceci n'est pas un pipe") but do we know the entire book was blank?

1: I thought about that after I had sent the guest post to heebie, and it is possible that she happens to have opened it to a page near the front that happens to be blank and there is text on the others. Trump has pulled this blank-pages stunt before, though, so I think on balance it's still likely that the book was in fact entirely blank.

It could have just been something like every regulation issued on health in four years, which would include a lot of routine matter.

It's not the endpaper (which is often blank), and seems to be a couple of leaves in, approximately where the title page would usually be. We don't know for sure just based on the pictures I've seen, though.

Here we go:

The Washington Examiner has obtained a PDF of the contents, which shows its 512 pages contain 13 executive orders and 11 other pieces of healthcare legislation enacted under Trump. Further investigation confirmed that it matched the physical book's contents.

Likely that official formatting you see that drags the ACA to almost 1,000 pages, with huge margins.

There doesn't seem to be a title or any other text on the front cover or the spine (though not all of the spine is visible in the picture), which is also unusual but not totally dispositive.

If there were something in the book, they could have showed it to somebody else.

5: Not the most reliable source, but okay, fair enough, that is a plausible explanation.

Unless Leslie Stahl is like 4 foot tall, that doesn't look like a 500 page book either.

It's also curious that the Examiner didn't publish the PDF. If it really is just the text of legislation and executive orders the content would all be public record already so there's no reason to keep it secret. (Unless the formatting shows how ridiculous it is to print and bind it into a giant book, of course.)

There must be a nefarious reg in there, like the one creating these new policy civil servant jobs without civil service labor protections who can be fired for political reasons.

9: Then she'd be Leslie Stohrt.

I don't get it.

Wait. I had to read aloud. Make Megan read it.

I mean, he yelled at Wee Lesley Stahl for asking him what his health care plans were but even after she asked him four times he couldn't come up with even a bullshit "we've got to get out there and play hard" high school football coach answer and then thought this made them look good and released the tape, so Heebie's claim that they think everything is bullshit and cannot understand why anyone wants a non-bullshit response seems pretty on point.

Hey, that's my claim! Heebie was just agreeing with it.

They have an expression for this in Hebrew. "You discovered America!"

Literally no one here watching the debate, huh?

I'm just following journalists on Twitter who are forced to watch, ostensibly as punishment for the hubris of having gotten humanities degrees.

I just turned it on. I don't know how long I'll listen.

It's okay, I guess

I did get to hear Biden say, "malarkey."

Trump just throws out lies unchallenged. My worry is he's saying just enough that his team gave him to seem polite, complimenting the moderator, that the press will declare that this is the day Trump became presidential.

Trump seems to be acting, as if his personal charm will be enough to sell his claims -- he never offers evidence, he just says, "trust me.". I don't think that will work this year, but it is frustrating to listen to.

I'm surprised Trump didn't find a reason to flounce out of this one too.

I'll be interested to hear if they hit the mute button at any point as they suggested.

I had it on a couple times but I really can't stand to listen to that man talk.

Watched 20-30 minutes of it. Gave up when it became clear I wouldn't get to enjoy a mike-cutting scene.

I don't think this debate will change anyone's mind. How you feel about that depends on how you feel about the race. If you think Biden has a big lead, this won't change that. If you think FL and PA are frighteningly close, this probably won't reassure you.

I think Biden was solid, and clearly better than Trump, but it was still a fairly frustrating and uninformative debate. Biden was much better in the town hall last week (when he didn't have to split time with a petulant brat).

The press all agree the the moderator won.
Why do networks bring on hardcore supporters of each side when you know exactly what they're going to say? Are they hoping for an "at long last" moment where a paid shill admits their candidate sucks?

The whole thing is dumb, I say again.

I took a long walk so I would miss it.

I demand that 11 days before the election, Comey issues the biggest, most abject apology of his life to the nation, for this nightmare he plunged us into. He must stress how innocent Clinton was and how far more guilty Trump is of everything, and implore us to help him make amends.

Thank God for Alexandra Petri. No, sirs!

Did Biden really refer to Trump with "Abe Lincoln over there"?

TLOT. That Lincoln Over There.

30: I totally missed it because watching Money Heist. A better format for these joint press conferences would be to have a raw-meat Republican ask the questions of the Democrat, and raw-meat Democrat ask the questions of the Republican. Real questions, not stupid "What did you eat for breakfast?" softballs*. Would be much more fun and get higher ratings. Since currently both candidates lie through their teeth all the time and never get called on it, it's basically disinformation and therefore a net negative on educating the electorate.

* Money Heist, if you haven't watched it [you should], uses "What are you wearing?"

Since currently both candidates lie through their teeth all the time

Ah, the Frank Luntz focus group has chimed in.

Watched the whole debate. Not sure why. One thing that interests me is how Trump employs incoherence. You can watch him say something completely unintelligible, but your mind almost involuntarily fills in the blanks to make him make some kind of sense.

That's why I keep seeing Dave Grohl in my toast.

32: On my wife's prodding we watched Comey Rule (2 episodes). It was fairly well done (mostly covers the period of HRC emails through his firing). It tried to pack in a lot of small details. I went in having been over-immersed in the whole thing* so not lot new to me. Infuriating of course. My wife got interested in it when a podcast she listens to (with Renato Mariotti, a former AUSA) reviewed it with an insightful group, Billy Ray, Shane Salerno, Frank Figliuzzi, Barb McQuade, Asha Rangappa, and Mimi Rocah. I f you know the basic outlines I would definitely recommend the podcast even if you don't watch the thing.

*I am currently in the middle of Stzrok's book. He is a pretty interesting commentator (as is McCabe), Both tend to exhibit a bit much of the self-righteousness that comes with the FBI, but not nearly to the level that Comey does. Also more self-awareness. Strzok for instance now admits that the original sin was the July press conference. He led the HRC email investigation. However I suspect in their heart of hearts they are actually still somewhat more comfortable with William Barr than Loretta Lynch).

Sometimes from Nirvana days, sometimes recent.

Very stale toast is Moby's weakness.

38- Same here. I guess you could look at all Trump appearances as masterclass sessions in con artistry. I think you point out an important technique. He also contradicts himself frequently sometimes in the same sentence. The incoherence both; lets his followers believe that he's agreeing with them about something, and occupies their minds in a way that make critical thinking harder.

I don't like to waste bread.

I'm glad to see that the media are generally treating Biden favorably after the debate. That's important.

Biden's performance actually left me kind of cold for reasons I was unable to articulate until I re-watched a bit this morning. It was the exchange about the 500-plus kids in immigrant detention whose parents now can't be found.

Biden was very strong here. "It's criminal," he said. Trump praised the cleanliness of the facilities where the kids are imprisoned.

In the moment, I was unimpressed with Biden, and now I understand why. I really needed to see Biden pull out a crowbar and beat that fucker to death.

43- He was clearly told to say certain lines to avoid a pile on ("Don't endorse the KKK!") but immediately contradicted himself because he didn't believe what he said. I had captions on so I confirmed that he literally said, "I take full responsibility. It's not my fault at all."

45: I realized I had a such a hard time watching the debate (which I did because my kid insisted we should) and thought so little of Biden's performance (which, except when he stumbled on words and when Trump baited him into saying that he'd end the oil industry, was just fine) because I was infuriated that Biden wouldn't say to Trump, "You literally cannot stop lying, can you?" That's not something a politician can do, I guess, but it makes it very hard on the viewer.

I just cannot watch Trump without pain and, while I realize someone needs to do it, I don't see any advantage at all for me to do so.

Bernie is coming to town tomorrow. I'm not going, but it's nice to see a visit.

OT: More evidence on who was doing the violence.

48: An actual reporter friend of a friend posted a link to their article on the other place with the line, "I watched the debate so you don't have to."

We watched and it was much better at getting across clear answers. Not accurate answers, but at least a lot of the annoying crosstalk turning everything into [Incomprehensible] was toned way down.

I was a bit worried early on, when Trump was doing better and Biden was having trouble getting his cites out, but they both continued to be the people they are -- which Biden was smart to highlight at the end. I really liked Biden's closing argument: "You know who I am, and you know who he is. You know my character and you know his. The character of the country is on the ballot. Our character is on the ballot; look at us closely." It wasn't nasty... unless you know who the 2 people are, and even then it sounds fair.

Per the recent thread from heebie re: Texas and local early voting:

From Dave Wasserman who does alot of vote tracking:

Interesting: Hays County, TX just south of Austin is poised to be the first in the U.S. to surpass its 2016 total votes cast. So far, 65,819 voters have cast ballots, vs. 72,164 in all of '16.

It's also the likeliest county in TX to flip from Trump '16 to Biden '20.

FWIW, this is a function of population growth as much as increased interest. Hays's population has boomed more than 50% in the past decade - and most new voters aren't Republicans.

And now a bunch of Mike Pence's staff is infected.

Biden has enough money to blanket the airwaves with Meadows saying "we're not going to control the pandemic," right?

I was debating whether or not to send him more or whether I was done.

56: Send to the Senate candidates. I'm debating whether I should send some to Tina Smith (the current MN Senator) or the Senatorial candidate from Georgia Raphael Warnock, b/c Warren recommended him. There's another Democrat in the race.

I gave to Graham's opponent Jaime Harrison, and he sends the most obnoxious e-mails, at least 3 x as many as any other candidate. Warren was also asking for Bullock and Hickenlooper. Markey asked me for $3. He said it was to get him over the finish line and to help in other races; I think most of it would go for the latter (which isn't necessarily a bad thing.)

Yeah, I prefer giving to Senate candidates over the flush Biden campaign. I just gave to Cunningham in NC, since that's one of the states with especially ratfucked voting, and a presidential swing state, and Cunningham is only slightly favored to flip that seat.

The thing is, I don't shake when I think of America with President Biden and a Senate with only 49 Democrats. And I've been given to the DSCC on autopay every month since Kavenaugh.

59: I don't always trust the DSCC and want to push a bit to support the more progressive candidates who might have a shot at winning.