What Donald Trump's former ghost writer says about him - Independent

The ghostwriter of Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal remarked earlier this week that "most negative things he says about others are actually describing him".

Tony Schwartz, who wrote the bestseller with Trump in 1987, said that people should bear that fact in mind when reading the Republican nominee's insults on Twitter.

And, well, Trump sure does like an insult. With the help of the New York Times' extensive collection of his outbursts, we've put together a list of bad things he's said about other people... with some slight edits:

1.

Donald Trump should not be given national security briefings in that he is a lose cannon with extraordinarily bad judgment and insticts.

2.

I'm unfit to serve as President of the U.S. My temperament is weak and my opponents are strong. BAD JUDGEMENT!

3.

Truly weird Donald Trump of New York reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!

4.

Crooked Donald will NEVER be able to handle the complexities and danger of ISIS - it will just go on forever. We need change!

5.

I would be a disaster 

6.

Crooked Donald Trump, perhaps the most dishonest person to have ever run for the presidency

7.

I'm just a 3rd rate 'gotcha' guy!

8.

I'VE DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!

9.

I have no idea what my strategy on ISIS is, and neither does ISIS (a good thing).

10.

I have a nasty mouth. 

11.

No focus, poor level of concentration

12.

Trump will NEVER Make America Great Again! 

13.

All I do is go on television is talk, talk, talk, but I'm incapable of doing anything.

14.

A world class LIAR

15.

A total phony and con man.

16.

A dopey clown

17.

One of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics

18

I have a major inferiority complex

19

Dumb as a rock

20

Donald Trump is terrible at business. The last thing our country needs!

21

I just realised that if you listen to Donald Trump for more than ten minutes straight, you develop a massive headache.

How Hillary Proved She’s an Economic Progressive - TIME

How Hillary Proved She’s an Economic Progressive Posted: 29 Jul 2016 08:01 AM PDT I couldn’t help but think last night, watching Hillary’s triumphant nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, that she had finally felt the Bern. In sharp contrast to President Obama’s sunny speech the night before, which focused on mainly the good economic news about falling unemployment and high stock prices, Clinton managed to be both optimistic, and realistic. She said exactly what the progressive wing of the party wanted to hear: that she’s going to make creating better jobs with higher wages her number one priority while in office. And that she understands that our economic recovery, the weakest and longest of the post World War II era, has exacerbated an already growing wealth divide in which the richest Americans have done better than ever and the poorest are stuck in low-wage jobs.. By focusing on wage hikes, the economic struggles of millennials (the class of 2016 is the most indebted in history), and the divide between Main Street and Wall Street, she went some way towards bridging the divide in the party between centrists and progressives, the latter of whom feel Democrats took a wrong turn during the Clinton years. (I’d agree with them.) Earlier in the day, I moderated a panel touching on that topic at the DNC for the Roosevelt Institute, whose chief economist Joseph E. Stiglitz was one of those who argued in the 1990s (along with others in Bill Clinton’s administration, like former labor secretary Robert Reich) for a greater focus on the growth-destroying inequality rather than a continuation of Reagan-esque laissez-faire policies. The fact that the trickle down camp won is a key reason the 1990s boom didn’t last. Both Stiglitz and Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg argue that acknowledging all this in a message of economic realism would actually play better than straight-forward optimism amongst millennials, minorities, working moms and other groups that Clinton needs to court to get enough of a win to create a mandate for serious economic change. Certainly, it’s more in line with the felt experience of those voters. Based on last night’s speech, it seems that Clinton has taken much of the progressive playbook to heart. She talked about the need to make sure that giant companies aren’t flying 35,000 feet above the problems of local populations, hording wealth abroad, while outsourcing jobs and profits. She talked about the need to create a financial system that lends to small business which create the majority of American jobs. “Too many dreams die in the parking lot of banks,” as she put it. She talked about making tuition free for not just the working class but also middle class students–something that’s crucial to creating more growth. Harvard academic work has shown that when the quality and availability of education outpaces technology, jobs are created. Unfortunately, that link has been broken since the 1970s. Fixing it is key to getting back to trend growth, and making sure the gig economy doesn’t become a zero sum game. Of course, all this will require bipartisan support. But as Clinton made quite clear in her speech, bringing people with different ideas together under one tent is her wheelhouse. Last night at least, she went some way towards unifying her own party.

Consumer survey shows Clinton will win - Bloomberg

A new question added to the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumers could turn out to be more accurate than ordinary opinion polls in predicting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

In June and July, respondents to the monthly survey were asked who they expected to become the next president — rather than who they intended to vote for. The results belie the horse-race nature of the campaign that's being implied by most polls of voter intent.

58 percent of the households surveyed by the University of Michigan said they thought Hillary Clinton would emerge victorious, relative to just 37 percent for the real estate and reality TV mogul Trump. That presents a very different picture to aggregations of voter intention; as is shown by Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight, which has Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency at 53.3 percent versus Donald Trump at 46.7 percent.

A report published by Ludwig Maximilians University Research Fellow Andreas Graefe in 2014 found that asking voters who they think will win has proved a better crystal ball than asking them which candidate they themselves are likely to support.

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"Across the last 100 days prior to each of the seven U.S. presidential elections from 1988 to 2012, expectations provided more accurate forecasts of election winners and the final vote shares," he wrote, relative to benchmark methods like intention polls, prediction markets, expert judgments, and quantitative models. "Gains in accuracy were particularly large compared to intention polls: on average, expectations reduced the error of intentions by more than half."

Graefe explained that expectations-based surveys offer insight on both an individual's own voting intention, but also incorporate the information that person has on how other people in their family or social circles are likely to vote.

Richard Curtin, director of the Michigan survey of consumers, indicated that respondents who saw a Clinton victory as more likely had a "significantly higher" Expectations Index (+9.7 points).

However, respondents were generally agnostic as to which candidate would be better for their personal finances or the economy as a whole, despite immense differences in their platforms and rhetoric.

According to the report, when it comes to personal finances, most people said it shouldn't make a difference who ends up winning in November. While 25 percent said Clinton would be better and 26 percent said Trump, 48 percent thought there was little difference. The same goes for the economy as a whole, with 31 percent saying Clinton would be preferable and 30 percent naming Trump, while a higher share said they didn't see either having a significantly more positive impact than the other. 

It should be noted that most existing polling on the candidates predates this week's Democratic National Convention, whose effect on voter sentiment has yet to be fully assessed.

Donald Trump is leading in the polls - Intelligencer

DAILY INTELLIGENCER

July 25, 201611:32 a.m.

Donald Trump Is Now Leading the Polls in the Race to Be World’s Most Powerful Person

By Ed KilgoreFollow @ed_kilgore

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Don't look now, but Cleveland worked for Donald Trump. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

So, does a presidential candidate in a highly polarized environment get a "bounce" from a disorganized and divided convention that struck many of the nominee's enemies as reminiscent of certain 20th-century authoritarian spectacles? Apparently so. The first batch of post-convention polls universally shows Trump making gains. He now has a 0.2 percent lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average. But while some polls show a definite change in the two candidates' standing attributable to the convention, others suggest Trump was making gains going into Cleveland that simply continued (e.g., an L.A. Times/USC six-day poll showing Trump up 45-41).

The source of Trump's gains varies by poll. A CNN/ORC survey gives Trump a 48-45 lead (44-39 with third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein included), a six-point improvement over the mogul's performance in that outlet's last survey earlier this month. It shows the support for Trump spiking among independents and non-college-educated white voters (where he has a remarkable 62-23 lead). A CBS poll showing Trump up by one point indicates a slight consolidation of Republican and conservative votes for Trump, and a spike in HRC's unfavorables. According to that survey, at least, all of the Clinton-bashing in Cleveland had an effect, though the pollster did not ask if respondents wanted to "lock her up."

These findings will surprise some observers who thought this was one year when voters were so polarized that a convention "bounce" was unlikely, and will clearly shock Democrats who watched the show in Cleveland and found it repellent. Given the unhappy convention-eve developments on the Democratic side (Politico is running one of those "convention chaos" stories from Philadelphia that echoes the Cleveland coverage), the natural assumption that Clinton will get a corresponding or even superior bounce is in question, though Democrats do have a significant advantage in rhetorical firepower.

Whether they persist or not, Trump's post-convention gains are another sign that this is likely to be a close presidential race. That could be because of what the candidates are and are not doing, or simply because the country is so polarized that absolutely any nominees, however monstrous, are going to get in the neighborhood of 45 percent of the vote. It's also important to keep an eye on the "fundamentals"; the president's job approval rating has sagged a bit in recent weeks. There's no reason for any kind of Democratic panic at this point. But complacency about Trump being a self-destructive pushover is clearly no longer rational.

Pokémon Go Couldn’t Save Nintendo’s Quarterly Results - TIME Business

Pokémon Go Couldn’t Save Nintendo’s Quarterly Results Posted: 27 Jul 2016 06:24 AM PDT TOKYO (AP) — Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co. sagged into a loss of 24.53 billion yen ($232 million) for the fiscal first quarter through June, despite the global success of the “Pokemon Go” augmented reality game. The result Wednesday was worse than the 673 million yen ($6.4 million) profit forecast by analysts surveyed by FactSet. The manufacturer of Super Mario games and the Wii U console had an 8.3 billion yen profit the same quarter a year ago. The Kyoto-based company’s quarterly sales fell 31 percent to 61.97 billion yen ($586 million). Nintendo has warned the “Pokemon Go” perk will be limited. The Pokemon Co., a Nintendo affiliate, will get licensing fees and other compensation for the mobile game distributed by Niantic Inc., but that won’t have much impact on Nintendo income, according to a company statement last week. In one disappointment for “Pokemon Go” fans, Nintendo and Pokemon said Wednesday that the release of “Pokemon Go Plus” is being delayed by two months until September. “Pokemon Go Plus” is a device that can be used when playing “Pokemon Go,” which lets players know when Pokemon are around. The “Pokemon Go” game became available after the first quarter ended, anyway, and to play it basically is all free. But some investors are expecting a boost for Nintendo as the Pokemon craze encourages other types of sales, such as games and other content of not just Pokemon but other Nintendo products. Nintendo’s shares have see-sawed since the game’s release earlier this month, as markets flip-flopped between hope and disappointment for the biggest hit in games in years. It closed at 22,305 yen, down 5.5 percent in Tokyo. Nintendo’s earnings have suffered from lagging sales of its game consoles, including the Wii U and the 3DS handheld. The new console it has promised, codenamed NX, hasn’t gone on sale yet. After years of scoffing at the threat from smartphones, Nintendo did an about face last year and entered that sector. Pokemon Go is definitely the first success it has scored since that decision, and it underlines Nintendo’s potential. The game, which has players looking for Pokemon creatures in their real-life wanderings, is a good match for the classic Pokemon story. Nintendo kept its full year forecast unchanged at a 35 billion yen ($331 million) profit.

Apple's I phone sale down for a third quarter - Reuters

As iPhone sales declined for the second straight quarter, Apple CEO Tim Cook peeled back the curtain ever so slightly on its work in artificial intelligence and augmented reality, aiming to reassure investors that the company is ready to ride the next wave of technology.

Raving about hit smartphone game Pokemon GO, Cook stressed that Apple is “high on [augmented reality] for the long-run” and investing heavily. Augmented reality, in which computer-generated content is overlaid on the real world, is one of the latest fixations in the technology business, with Pokemon GO among the first applications to catch on.

Cook also highlighted Apple’s investment in artificial intelligence, which the company now uses to recommend content to users and even spot usage patterns to improve a device's battery life. 

It was a small glimpse of the future from the notoriously secretive tech giant, which fiercely guards its product pipeline. But analysts said Cook must do more to show his cards as sales of the iPhone slow.

Augmented reality and artificial intelligence are often regarded as an uneasy fit for Apple, a hardware maker that tends not to embrace new technology until it matures. And Apple’s habit of keeping quiet until it has a finished product to show – in contrast with rivals such as Google and Facebook (FB.O), which iterate products in the open – doesn’t help, said analyst Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. 

“They’re in this weird position where they want the world to know that they are working on it, but they have nothing to show for it,” he said. 

As rivals such as Google and Facebook double down on augmented reality, Apple has made no public display of its aptitude in the field. But Cook stressed that the company is hard at work behind the scenes.

“We have been and continue to invest a lot in this,” Cook said. “We think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity.”

Apple has more to show for its efforts in artificial intelligence, where it was an early pioneer with its Siri digital assistant. But the company has been dogged by doubts that it has fallen behind rivals such as Amazon (AMZN.O) and Google and will be hard-pressed to catch up due to its strict privacy stance. 

“They are running behind, and they are trying to catch up both in perception but also in fact,” said Oren Etzioni, who is CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a professor at the University of Washington.

Cook maintained that Apple had found a way to strike the balance between progressing in artificial intelligence and maintaining users’ privacy, detailing features in Apple’s latest operating system. 

“The deployment of artificial intelligence technology is something that we will excel at because of our focus on user experience,” he said. 

Ultimately, Cook argued, phenomena such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality will only reinforce the importance of the iPhone. He said the company was working to make sure its products worked well with third-party products like Pokemon Go. 

“That’s why you see so many iPhones in the wild right now chasing Pokemons,” he said. 

(Reporting by Julia Love; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Stephen Coates)

Elon Musk Just Unveiled His New Vision for Tesla - Fortune

Elon Musk Just Unveiled His New Vision for Tesla Posted: 21 Jul 2016 05:53 AM PDT Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk published his “master plan part 2” on Wednesday night that disclosed a wide-ranging vision for his companies including new future Tesla vehicles, car sharing, urban planning concepts, and a combined SolarCity and Tesla that would sell solar panels and batteries. Musk, who is the largest shareholder in both Tesla and SolarCity, emphasized that the companies must be joined in order to efficiently make and sell solar panels and batteries. A month ago, Tesla announced that it was seeking to buy SolarCity for $2.86 billion. While shareholders initially reacted negatively to the deal, causing Tesla’s shares to drop dramatically, in recent weeks Tesla’s stock regained their lost value, indicating investors could now be more comfortable with the merger. Musk told the Wall Street Journal this week that he expects a two-thirds majority to approve the deal. Musk also said that the only reason that the companies weren’t combined from the beginning was because of “an accident of history.” Musk clarified in a tweet that the companies “should have been done under the same corporate umbrella from the beginning.” The post wasn’t just a merger pitch, but in Musk’s usual grandiose style he ticked off the goals and driving forces behind all of his business decisions. His over arching ambition, he said, is to deliver “sustainable energy” and end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. He published the first part of his “master plan” a decade ago during the very early days of Tesla and SolarCity. In Musk’s blog post, he revealed plans for new future Tesla vehicles, including a semi truck (Tesla Semi), a future compact SUV, a new kind of pickup truck, and what he described as “high-density urban transport,” or a bus. The company has hinted about most of these cars before over the years, but this is the first time I’ve heard about a possible Tesla bus. Musk said that the semi and the urban transport system are in “early stages of development” and could be ready to unveil in 2017. The “Tesla Semi” would lower the cost of transporting cargo and would also make cargo transport safer, said Musk. Musk also described a more well-designed urban bus that would be smaller, autonomous, free of passenger aisles, and would take riders all the way to their destinations. Bus drivers would be fleet managers, wrote Musk. Musk’s transport vision also includes car sharing, which analysts have speculated that Tesla would pursue for some time. Tesla customers could add their cars to a “shared fleet” by tapping a button on a Tesla phone app, wrote Musk. That could lower the cost of ownership of a Tesla, because it could generate income for you, he said. Autonomous cars were also a major theme laid out by Musk as way for cars to travel more safely and to be managed as a group. In May, a Tesla car crashed while its autonomous car software was enabled, marking the first known fatality in an autonomous car. U.S. regulators are investigating the accident. Finally, Musk also discussed his concept of making his factories more efficient and innovative, which he calls “the machine behind the machine.” (Read more about his industrialization plans here). Next week Tesla will hold a customer party at its “gigafactory,” a massive battery factory under construction outside of Reno, Nev. SolarCity is also building a factory in upstate New York with a plan to churn out highly efficient solar panels. This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Apple’s Next Huge Project Has Been Delayed - Fortune

Apple’s Next Huge Project Has Been Delayed Posted: 22 Jul 2016 06:27 AM PDT The Apple Car doesn’t even technically exist, but it’s already been delayed, according to a new report. In a look at brothers working on Apple’s ultra-secret car project said to be called Project Titan, technology site The Information revealed that Apple has delayed its vehicle to 2021. Several rumors have claimed Apple had planned a 2020 launch for Apple Car, but The Information’s sources say that the project has “run into challenges,” and that a person who had worked on the Project Titan team confirmed Apple has pushed back its target launch from 2020 to 2021. Over the last couple of years, reports have surfaced saying Apple is working on an electric car that could come with self-driving features. While the company itself hasn’t acknowledged those claims, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been coy when talk of an Apple Car has popped up, leaks have come fast and furious from the Project Titan team, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has described Apple’s car project as the “worst-kept secret” in Silicon Valley. He’s even called Apple “Tesla’s Graveyard,” a place where Tesla engineers go when they can’t hack it at Musk’s company. Analysts, too, have chimed in, saying that Apple, which experienced its first revenue decline since the iPhone’s launch in 2007 last quarter, is in need of a major new innovation. A car, they suggest, would fit that mold. However, developing a car is much different than making a new smartphone or computer, and it’s an entirely new industry for Apple. The company has reportedly hired a countless number of engineers with experience in vehicle technology and its chief of design, Jony Ive, has reportedly been doing research on car design. That all comes before Apple bundles electric vehicle technology, safety standards, and all the other features required to get a car on the road. Indeed, some that have worked in the automotive industry for years have criticized Apple’s idea. Last year, former General Motors CEO Dan Akerson said Apple shouldn’t even build a cardue to high costs and low returns. Another former GM executive, Bob Lutz, told CNBC in September that Apple is looking down the barrel of a “gigantic money pit.” “Apple has no experience,” Lutz said. “There’s no reason to assume Apple will do a better job than General Motors,Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota or Hyundai. I think this is going to be a gigantic money pit.” Regardless, if The Information’s sources are right, Apple is still moving ahead with the car. It just might not reach the roads nearly as soon as some, including Apple, might have liked. Apple declined Fortune’s request for comment on The Information’s story. This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

IMF Head Calls for Quick End to Brexit Uncertainty - TIME Business

IMF Head Calls for Quick End to Brexit Uncertainty Posted: 22 Jul 2016 12:27 AM PDT BEIJING (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund called Friday for quick action to end uncertainty over Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, which she said is dampening global economic growth. The IMF cut this year’s global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points to 3.1 percent in a report released this week due to the shockwaves of the British vote, said Christine Lagarde. Lagarde spoke after meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, and leaders of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and other bodies ahead of this weekend’s gathering of finance officials of the Group of 20 major economies. “Our first and immediate recommendation is for this uncertainty surrounding the terms of Brexit to be removed as quickly as possible so that we know the terms of trade and the ways in which the United Kingdom will continue to operate in the global economy,” said Lagarde at a news conference. Lagarde said that before the British vote, the IMF had been preparing to raise its global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points due to improvement in Japan, China and the 17-country euro zone. “Unfortunately, the United Kingdom decided to go for Brexit,” said Lagarde, a former French finance minister. “This is disappointing.” Investors are watching the G20 meeting for any sign the United States, Germany, China and other major economies may agree on joint action to accelerate a weak global economic recovery. A similar meeting in February in Shanghai ended with a joint statement that said coordinated action was impossible because major countries were at different points in their economic cycles. Some investors believe envoys in Shanghai agreed secretly to weaken the dollar to spur trade but there has been no official confirmation of that. The final statement from this weekend’s gathering in Chengdu in China’s southwest “will be under scanner for any hints of policy coordination — monetary or fiscal,” Citigroup economists said in a report. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, speaking to reporters in Athens before flying to China, downplayed the likelihood of joint action. “I don’t think this is a moment that calls for the kind of coordinated action that occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009,” said Lew. “It really is a moment where we each need to do what we can to ensure that where growth is soft it gets stronger and that prospects for the medium- and long-term are improved.” Lew appealed for close integration of Britain and the EU in the event of a split. “The best outcome is one that maximizes the integration of the UK and Europe and — because it’s likely to be a process that, at best, goes well beyond weeks or months — to have the nature of the discussion to be characterized by amicable, pragmatic engagement where the focus is on maximizing integration and cooperation.”