2016 Oct 16^th

Mr. Trump just keeps on digging…and digging. His skin is getting thinner and thinner; now he finds it necessary to tweet criticisms of Saturday Night Live’s parody of his last debate. Nothing said about him is too trivial to produce an outraged response. Prioritizing is not a possibility for Trump and it is showing as his poll numbers decline.

The esteemed 538, a blog that amalgamates various polls and comes up with an election forecast that can change daily, gives Clinton an 85 percent chance to win the election and Trump a 15 percent chance. The Trump people will dispute this and claim that it massively underestimates their chances. The Clinton people are delighted with this approach because while the Trump people are arguing about the reality of the polls they are doing nothing to change them.

While 538 is interested primarily in accurate prediction, Paddy Power, a Brit betting outfit is concerned entirely with getting the odds right. For them it is entirely about money, principle plays no part at all. There have been some interesting changes in the odds Paddy Power has provided over the last month. On Sept 15^th Clinton’s odds of winning were close to 1 to 2, specifically, 8 to 15. Those are good odds. The numbers mean that you must bet 15 dollars on Clinton to win and if she wins you’ll be 8 dollars richer. On Oct 15^th Paddy Power changed Clinton’s odds to 1 to 6; now you must risk 6 dollars and if you’re right you will be one dollar richer. On Sept 15^th Trump’s odds of winning had been 1 to 1.5. Now, a month later, they are 5 to 1. In short, Paddy Power now believes betting on Trump to win is a much riskier business than it was just a month ago.

There have been several obvious changes: foremost is the tape of Trump’s comments about how he perceives his entitlement to assault women because of his wealth and fame. As a result of that tape nine angry women have come forward to accuse Trump of doing exactly what he said he could do. They came forward because they didn’t want to see a sexual pervert become President of the United States. Others whom you would think might agree with that, fundamentalist preachers like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell Jr. and others, don’t care.

There might be even more women willing to come forward but for the venom hurled at them by Trump surrogates. One of these surrogates, just yesterday, Lou Dobbs, published the phone number and email address of a 74-year-old woman who was abused by Trump on an airplane over thirty years ago. That kind of treatment will inhibit all but the very courageous from complaining about Trump’s perversions.

One very interesting criticism of the stories these women tell is that there are no corroborating witnesses. That criticism is absurd: if you are a sexual predator is it likely that you will be grabbing women by their genitals in public? I doubt that even the rich and famous Donald Trump could get away with that. Of course he does his assaults out of the public eye.

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