Lesson to be learned by all leaders from Trump's failed debate - New York Times

A big takeaway for leaders in all sectors. 

Among the many questions raised by Monday’s presidential debate – Who won? Was Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece? Why was Donald Trump sniffling? – was this one: Does rehearsing pay? Clinton reportedly rehearsed intensively, while Trump reportedly didn’t rehearse at all.

The most impartial judges of the outcome, markets in currencies, commodities, and stocks, declared Clinton the winner. Whether rehearsing pays in presidential debates may nonetheless remain one of those eternally unanswered questions, but in business the answer is absolutely clear. Rehearsal pays big, and most companies fail to achieve anything near its potential value.

Donald Trump at the presidential debate last night at Hofstra University. Photograph by Getty Images

A big takeaway for leaders in all sectors. 

Among the many questions raised by Monday’s presidential debate – Who won? Was Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece? Why was Donald Trump sniffling? – was this one: Does rehearsing pay? Clinton reportedly rehearsed intensively, while Trump reportedly didn’t rehearse at all.

The most impartial judges of the outcome, markets in currencies, commodities, and stocks, declared Clinton the winner. Whether rehearsing pays in presidential debates may nonetheless remain one of those eternally unanswered questions, but in business the answer is absolutely clear. Rehearsal pays big, and most companies fail to achieve anything near its potential value.

For an example, check out this Fortune article on the value of rehearsing your business’s response to a data breach. As it makes clear, simply bringing together your top executives plus key players from all major functions – IT, legal, communications, sales, marketing – and putting them through a simulated breach is guaranteed to reveal surprising gaps in your preparations. Diana Kelley, executive security adviser at IBM, cites new research showing how rehearsals can lower the costs of a breach.

More broadly, rehearsing crises that would be most damaging to your business, such as a deadly food-safety problem at a restaurant chain, will always pay dividends. Plenty of other skills can be improved vastly through rehearsal. Salespeople who relentlessly rehearse selling almost always outperform those who don’t. Some companies have even worked up highly realistic simulations of critical processes – such as packing and shipping high-value perishable bio-pharmaceuticals – in order to perform better and cut losses. The results have been spectacular.

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So here’s the strange part: Hardly any companies do this, even though we all know it works. We watch football teams that practice six days a week and play one day. We make our kids practice the piano or clarinet every day for a recital every six months. We know it works. But on Monday morning we forget all of it and do the exact opposite. I once calculated that Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in the history of football, spent about 3% of his football-related time actually playing in games. He spent the other 97% practicing. In business, we’re lucky if our ratio is the inverse and we spend 3% of our time practicing. Usually it’s 0%. We’re supposed to spend 100% of our time out there performing. And then company leaders are frustrated and baffled that the company isn’t performing better.

If you dare to raise the practice-to-performance ratio at your business, you’ll be out of the mainstream. You won’t be doing what your company’s peers are doing. Have the courage to defy convention. That’s one thing that distinguishes the best leaders from the rest.

Philippines' president Duterte's most contentious quotes - New York Times

Philippines has a reputation for frank – and frankly offensive – speechmaking that electrifies his constituents as often as it angers other countries. 

He has made the extrajudicial killing of drug dealers and users the cornerstone of his domestic policy. 

1. 1.“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
   Mr. Duterte drew international ire after issuing his latest threat against drug dealers and drug addicts on Friday. 

   The president – who underestimated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust; it was six million – said he was routinely depicted as being a “cousin of Hitler.” 
2. 2.“Son of a whore. I will curse you in the forum.”
   Mr. Duterte used the expletive, sometimes translated as “son of a bitch,” in a warning to President Obama about bringing up extrajudicial killings at an international forum held in Laos in September.

   Mr. Obama canceled the meeting and Mr. Duterte apologized. The two men met briefly a few days later. 

   
   
3. 3.“You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I’d kill you.”
   While running for president, Mr. Duterte, who had been mayor of Davao City and employed vigilante militias there, promised a similar national strategy against drug dealers. 

   He told voters: “Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor.”

   In the same campaign speech, Mr. Duterte said he would dump the bodies of slain drug dealers “into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there.”
4. 4.“Please don’t order me around. … Or would you rather that I declare martial law?”
   In August, Mr. Duterte warned Maria Lourdes Sereno, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, that if she tried to thwart his drug war he would declare martial law. 

   The threat was made after the judge responded to Mr. Duterte’s accusations that several judges were drug addicts. 
6. 5.“I was angry because she was raped. That’s one thing. But she was so beautiful. The mayor should have been first.”
   He joked at a campaign event in April about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary by inmates during a prison riot in Davao when he was mayor in 1989. 
7. 6.“I wanted to call him: ‘Pope, son of a whore, go home. Do not visit us again.’”
   Mr. Duterte complained that Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines, a majority Catholic country, led him to become snarled in a traffic jam in January 2015. 

   After bishops condemned him for his language, Mr. Duterte apologized. 
8. 7.“I was separated from my wife. I’m not impotent. What am I supposed to do? Let this hang forever? When I take Viagra, it stands up.”
   Addressing business leaders at a campaign event in April, Mr. Duterte bragged about his reputation as a womanizer.

Gallup Poll puts Clinton as winner of first debate by huge margin - CNN

Clinton beats Trump in first debate by a large margin

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Hillary Clinton won the first presidential debate by a huge margin of victory, besting Donald Trump in public perception by 34 points, according to a Gallup poll out Thursday.

Gallup found that Americans who saw the debate believed Clinton was the runaway victor, 61 percent to Trump’s 27 percent. That 34-point advantage is one of the highest margins post-debate since the 1960s.

Clinton’s debate victory was about as strong as her husband’s in his first 1996 debate with Bob Dole, but fell short of Mitt Romney’s first 2012 debate over President Obama, where the Republican nominee had a 52-point advantage.

Historically, however, winning a first debate doesn’t necessarily augur victory at the polls. President Obama overtook Romney in the following two debates in 2012, and while John Kerry was believed to be the clear winner of all three presidential debates, George W. Bush still won the election in 2004. 

Clinton’s popularity post-debate was boosted by her support among those in her own party. Ninety-two percent of Democrats said she did a better job than Trump, while only 53 percent of Republicans believed Trump came out the winner. Gallup also found that 59 percent of independents thought Clinton won, compared to the 30 percent who thought Trump did. 

Clinton also scored big when it came to the qualities she exhibited during the debate. On all the characteristics Gallup asked voters about, Clinton prevailed over Trump: she appeared to be more inspiring (46 percent to Trump’s 34 percent), was more likable (55 to 36 percent), appeared presidential (59 percent to 27 percent), and exhibited a better understanding of the issues (62 to 26 percent).

Gallup conducted the poll from Sept. 27-28 with 1,020 adults nationally, including 791 who said they watched or heard the debate.

Philippines president Duterte likens himself to Hitler to kill 3 million drug addicts - Reuters

By Karen Lema and Manuel Mogato | MANILA

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to liken himself to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on Friday and said he would "be happy" to exterminate three million drug users and peddlers in the country.

His comments triggered shock and anger among Jewish groups in the United States, which will add to pressure on the U.S. government to take a tougher line with the Philippines leader. Duterte recently insulted President Barack Obama and in a series of remarks he has undermined the previously close relationship between Manila and Washington.

In a rambling speech on his arrival in Davao City after a visit to Vietnam, Duterte told reporters that he had been "portrayed to be a cousin of Hitler" by critics. 

Noting that Hitler had murdered millions of Jews, Duterte said: "There are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I'd be happy to slaughter them.

"If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have...," he said, pausing and pointing to himself. 

"You know my victims. I would like (them) to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition."

Duterte was voted to power in a May election on the back of a vow to end drugs and corruption in the country of 100 million people. He took office on June 30 and over 3,100 people have been killed since then, mostly alleged drug users and dealers, in police operations and in vigilante killings.

His comments were quickly condemned by Jewish groups.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Digital Terrorism and Hate project, called them "outrageous".

"Duterte owes the victims (of the Holocaust) an apology for his disgusting rhetoric."

The Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish group based in the United States, said Duterte's comments were "shocking for their tone-deafness".

"The comparison of drug users and dealers to Holocaust victims is inappropriate and deeply offensive," said Todd Gutnick, the group's director of communications. "It is baffling why any leader would want to model himself after such a monster."

EX-PRESIDENT'S WARNING

Two days before the Philippines election, outgoing President Benigno Aquino had warned that Duterte's rising popularity was akin to that of Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s.

"I hope we learn the lessons of history," Aquino said in widely reported remarks. "We should remember how Hitler came to power."

Duterte has been scathing about criticism of his anti-drugs campaign and has insulted the United Nations and the European Union, as well as Obama, at various times in recent weeks.

On Friday, reacting to critical comments on his war on drugs by U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Benjamin Cardin, Duterte said: "Do not pretend to be the moral conscience of the world. Do not be the policeman because you do not have the eligibility to do that in my country."

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He also reiterated there will be no annual war games between the Philippines and the United States until the end of his six-year term, placing the longstanding alliance under a cloud of doubt. It also may make Washington's strategy of rebalancing its military focus towards Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China much more difficult to achieve.

Still, U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter, speaking before the latest remarks from Duterte, said Washington had an "ironclad" alliance with Manila.

A senior U.S. defense official, also speaking earlier, told reporters that the United States had a long enduring relationship with the Philippines regardless of who was president.

"It's going to continue to survive based on what we think are strong U.S.-Philippines common security interests, so we’ll be engaging President Duterte further," the official said.

Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said the U.S-Philippines alliance was not necessarily at risk, but Washington could seek to focus on ties elsewhere in the region.

"We are all in some sense becoming, by necessity, desensitized to Duterte's language," he said.

"Diplomatically, the U.S. would say they'll continue to work with him and the alliance is strong. But it's whether they'll continue to strengthen that alliance or not." 

(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Yeganeh Torbati in San Diego and Marius Zaharia in Singapore; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Trump's hair raising economic policy - Financial Times

It’s hard to take Donald Trump’s economic policy proposals seriously. Not just because it’s difficult to pin down what exactly they are. Not just because it’s unclear whether he would actually carry them out or is just trying to capture the voters’ attention. Above all, it’s hard to take them seriously because of the outrageous consequences that become apparent if we do.

A number of competent, independent economists have analysed parts of Trump’s policy proposals, so far as they can make them out, and modelled how the economy would be affected if he were to win and make good on his plans. The results are hair-raising.

Take Trump’s flagship policy of radically changing US trade relationships with the rest of the world. As a briefing by Peterson Institute economists sums up, he has threatened punitive tariffs on Mexican and Chinese imports (he has mooted rates of 35 and 45 per cent, respectively), and to unilaterally withdraw the US from major trade treaties. The Peterson economists have modelled the fallout for the US economy from the trade war that would probably ensue. The bottom line: the US would fall into recession and 4.8m private sector jobs would be lost. That’s about the same as the number of US factory jobs that disappeared in the decade after China joined the World Trade Organisation, the disruption that perhaps did most to create a constituency for Trump. While most of the jobs lost in the modelled scenario would be in the service sector, the largest proportional damage would, ironically, be in manufacturing, in particular in export-oriented capital goods production. (Read the Financial Times write-up of the analysis here.)

That’s just the beginning. Under a president Trump, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, signed but not ratified by the US, would be stillborn. (Hillary Clinton now says she is against the TPP as well, but her earlier wobbling on trade means the deal has a better prospect of surviving on her watch.) That would give up on the additional growth and jobs the TPP would create. Robert Lawrence, also at the Peterson Institute, has pointed out that while small in absolute terms, the TPP’s forecast boost to US GDP is equivalent to the return on $3tn of investment. It would also bring 128,000 more people into work than would otherwise be the case because wages would be higher. And while there would, as with any removal of economic inefficiencies, be losers, “the annual benefits from the TPP are likely to be between 12.3 and 114.5 times the costs”. More than enough, that is, to compensate the losers many times over. That would be the right policy; to jettison the TPP would be to forgo both the gains and the compensation.

Then there are the domestic policies. In his own words, Trump promises “tremendous” tax cuts. For once he’s not exaggerating. He proposes to reduce personal income tax rates, slash corporate tax rates and kill inheritance tax. That would blow a hole in the public finances. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has examined the two candidates’ tax plans, and calculates that Trump’s policies would add $5.3tn, or one-fifth of annual national income, to the federal debt by 2026 (and that is positively frugal compared with an earlier plan of his, which would have added $11.5tn). If nothing else, a president Trump would make the deficit great again. (Clinton’s plans, meanwhile, raise about as much in new taxes as they commit in new spending.)

Who would benefit? There is a lot of devil in the detail. The change to exemptions for dependants means that many families with children on low to middle earnings would end up paying more in tax than today. On corporate taxation, Trump boasts of getting rid of the disgrace of the “carried interest loophole”, which lets hedge fund managers pass off (more highly taxed) labour income as (much less taxed) capital income. It is true that the Trump tax plan closes this loophole. But he opens a bigger one by introducing an even lower tax rate on all business income, even earnings that are today counted as business owners’ personal income. That would allow hedgies and many other very high earners to pay even less than today’s capital tax rate.

In sum, the ones we can be most sure would benefit from all of Trump’s tax reforms are … Trump and his children.

Other readables

• Diane Coyle writes on how the shift from analogue to digital information radically affects received norms of ownership and the efficiency of traditional ownership structures.
• Reports of Opec’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. The FT’s commodities team explains.

Numbers news

• Lies, damned lies, and Japanese GDP numbers. Concerns about statistical flaws mean Japan’s economy may have been doing better than thought in recent years, and have sent officials on a hunt for better measures.
  

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Janet Yellen Should Stand Up to Donald Trump - TIME

Janet Yellen Should Stand Up to Donald Trump

Posted: 27 Sep 2016 12:46 PM PDT

There are many reasons that the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency worries me. I’ve outlined why his economic policy, for starters, is magical thinking. But after Monday’s debate, I have a new fear: I worry that if Trump were to be elected, Janet Yellen would resign from the Federal Reserve.
Trump’s comments last night that the “Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton” were not only unprecedented, they leave little room for a good working relationship. Indeed, the only person Trump has blamed as much as Hillary seems to be Yellen, whom he’s accused of keeping interest rates low for political reasons, and creating a bubble economy as a result.

The dangerous thing about Donald Trump, as I’ve explained in past columns, is that he embeds tiny nuggets of truth in a welter of lies. As I have been writing for years now, I think that the low interest rate policy of the last few years has created a disconnect between Wall Street valuations and the Main Street recovery. That’s what easy money is supposed to do: drive up risk appetite, raising the value of assets, with the hope that eventually the animal spirits will get the economy moving again.
For a variety of reasons, though, the money dump hasn’t worked as well or as fast this time (again, that’s not a criticism of the Fed—if it had not acted in the wake of the 2008 crisis, when President Obama was unable to pass more fiscal stimulus through a polarized Congress, the economy would have faltered). We’ve already seen corrections in emerging markets and commodities as the Fed pulled back on quantitative easing, and we’ll likely see more as rates ultimately rise.
Yellen herself worries about all of this. In fact, she keeps a careful eye on the balance between market risk and the risk that an early rate hike could derail the recovery. You can argue about the timing of when the Fed should (or should have) hiked rates. But nobody can argue that Yellen isn’t a data driven economist who’s looking at a variety of inputs while trying to make an unbiased decision about what’s best not for Wall Street, but for Main Street. (As she explained in a TIME cover story, she’s all about kitchen table economics.)
In fact, that’s a particular reason I worry about the possibility that Trump could drive such a competent person out of the Fed. With the recovery still fragile, it’s crucial to have a Fed chair right now that is most concerned with Main Street. I’m betting that anybody Trump would appoint to the Fed might actually keep rates lower, longer. After all, the people who benefit most from the current policy are investors like Trump himself, who can borrow huge sums at historically low rates and watch the value of their portfolios climb. Yellen has responded to Trump’s criticisms by saying that the “Fed isn’t politically compromised.” But one way to ensure the opposite would be for Trump to hound out a sitting Fed chair and appoint a lackey. Truly, I can’t think of anything more disastrous for the nation — or the world.
So, I’m calling on Yellen to stand up to what Hillary might call the “trumped up” charges of Fed politicization, and fight on, regardless of who wins in November. There is precedent. Chairman Marriner Eccles battled for Fed autonomy during the Truman administration. That fight led to the 1951 Fed/Treasury accord, which allowed the Fed to prioritize its own concerns about inflation over the then-President’s desire for a low-rate policy that would help the war effort.
This example couldn’t be more relevant today. The only reason that the Fed launched the unprecedented monetary policy of the last several years is that governments around the world were doing little-to-nothing to stop a new Great Depression. Trump should be lauding Janet Yellen (and Ben Bernanke) and the rest of the Fed governors for saving the markets when nobody else would. And he certainly shouldn’t try to falsely politicize the only institution in Washington that isn’t myriad in gridlock and anger.

Twitter Stock Surges On Disney Takeover Rumor - Fortune

Twitter Stock Surges On Disney Takeover Rumor Posted: 26 Sep 2016 02:25 PM PDT The list of potential Twitter acquirers continues to grow. In addition to recent reports that Salesforce and Google are interested in possibly buying the real-time news service, Disney is now said to be considering an acquisition bid as well. The news and entertainment conglomerate is “working with a financial adviser to evaluate a possible bid for Twitter,” according to a Bloomberg News report that cites anonymous sources familiar with the situation. In other words, Disney and an investment firm are going over Twitter’s financial data and looking at the potential benefits of combining the two companies, but that process could fall apart or be shelved at any point. Salesforce and Google are said to be in a similar situation, according to a number of recent reports, which also said that Twitter is working with Goldman Sachs to consider potential takeover offers for the company. That news helped push Twitter’s share price up 21% in mid-day trading on Friday. Until the latest takeover talk began, the stock had fallen by more than 50% in the past year, and even at its current level it is still well below the $70 it traded for after its initial public offering in 2013. CNBC also reported on Monday that a sale of Twitter could happen fairly quickly—within the next 30-45 days, sources said—and that Microsoft may be interested in making an offer as well. Although Disney may not seem like an obvious candidate to acquire Twitter, there are a number of reasons why it may be interested. Although the service only has about 300 million users, far less than Facebook’s 1.5 billion, it has a treasure trove of data on the interests and behavior of those users. From (high-up) people I've spoken to internally at Twitter, I've always heard Disney is the dream suitor. https://t.co/CBAqGaLe2Q — Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) September 26, 2016 That kind of data, which could be used to target advertising and other content to users, is undoubtedly part of what Salesforce and Google see as valuable about Twitter, and a media company like Disney would likely see that value as well. Disney also owns ABC News and sports giant ESPN, and Twitter has become both a real-time news source of remarkable power and a place where millions of users go to discuss both the news and in particular sporting events. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is also on Disney’s board of directors. Twitter has spent much of its time and resources recently signing deals with video providers such as the National Football League and Bloomberg to stream live content,including Monday’s presidential debates (which will also appear on Time Inc. websites including Time and Fortune, as part of a deal with Twitter). With its resources, Disney would be able to help Twitter improve its video streaming and possibly strike new deals with other content providers. As a result of a recent acquisition, Disney owns a stake in BAMTech, the digital arm of Major League Baseball, which runs streaming services for ESPN and others, including Twitter. Pixar. Marvel. Lucasfilm. If past is prelude, and this deal materializes, Twitter could be in good hands at Disney. https://t.co/xK0OwESCd6 — Jeff Weiner (@jeffweiner) September 26, 2016 With more and more TV content moving to mobile and digital services, Disney is probably also looking for ways to hedge its massive investments in traditional TV such as ESPN, and the real-time news service may look like a way to do that. One of the major sticking points for any possible Twitter acquirer including Disney, however, is the fact that a reasonable premium for the shares would put a deal for Twitter in the $20-billion range, and that’s a lot of money to pay for a company that lost half a billion dollars last year and is showing little or no user growth. Also, as Recode’s Peter Kafka points out, such a deal would be more than Disney paid for Pixar, Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm combined, and yet there is virtually no chance that Twitter would turn out to be as valuable as any of those investments. This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Here’s Why Twitter Might Finally Be Sold - TIME Business

Here’s Why Twitter Might Finally Be Sold

Posted: 27 Sep 2016 06:29 AM PDT

Ever since Twitter became a popular social network, people have been imagining it getting swallowed up by a bigger company. Back in 2009, some thought it a good fit for Google, or Microsoft, or Apple. In some cases, companies tried: Googleagain, and also Facebook, and even Al Gore.

It never happened for a few reasons. First, Twitter’s board, including current CEO Jack Dorsey, simply didn’t want to sell. Later on, questions emerged over how Twitter would monetize its network and keep users coming, dimming the company’s appeal as a takeover target. But the most vital reason why Twitter hasn’t been bought — or seriously considered as an acquisition candidate — has been its high price.

Twitter went public in late 2013 at $26 a share, valuing it at $18 billion. After Facebook shares began to rally, investors bid up Twitter’s price as high as $69 a share. But after Twitter’s user growth flatlined and multiple efforts to boost its fortunes fizzled, the stock sank as low as $14 a share last June. But even at that nadir, when Twitter’s value was around $12 billion, the stock was still seen as too pricey. Net profit was nowhere in sight, quarterly sales were sluggish to flat, and the company still had no clear turnaround plan in sight.

FindTheCompany | Graphiq

So potential buyers have been biding their time hoping the stock price would keep falling. If Twitter has another disappointing quarter, its stock would surely slump again — a prospect that analysts have been signaling as likely by downgradingthe stock. In that event, right now would be a prudent time to approach buyers. Twitter’s board has reportedly been considering a sale this month. And sure enough, names of potential buyers are being tossed around, starting with cloud computing firm Salesforce and Google parent company Alphabet. 

Twitter’s stock rallied 20% Friday on reports of the Alphabet and Salesforce rumors. One Salesforce exec fueled the fire by tweeting “why Twitter?” and listing four reasons — a bizarre move, given that the tweet made Twitter’s price 20% more expensive. Analysts quickly emerged to explain why a Salesforce-Twitter deal made little sense. The same day, another report cited Microsoft and Verizon as potential suitors.

Such takeover rumors are common in the tech market. But they frequently end up being little more than speculation. After all, leaking out word to the financial press of a potential sale of the company is often a quick way to temporarily push up a stock’s price or to prompt fence-sitting buyers to jump into the ring.

The problem is, outside of Google, none of the potential deals make much strategic sense. Salesforce is an enterprise company and Twitter is primarily a consumer-facing service. Microsoft, too, is moving toward the enterprise market; it also has its hands full with its $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn. Verizon, which itself is grappling with its Yahoo deal, has little potential for synergy with Twitter’s often unruly audience.

Things became even more interesting Monday when Disney was said to be working with an advisor to evaluate a possible bid for Twitter. A Twitter-Disney combo is intriguing. With Vine, Periscope and live video tie-ins with the National Football League, Twitter has been moving toward becoming a video platform for some time. And Disney offers just that, primarily in ESPN’s live sports broadcasts, but also with ABC’s news broadcasts and big events like the Oscars.

Such events are already big draws for Twitter users, but Twitter has been struggling to tighten the integration in a way that enhances both the video content and the conversation around it. Under CEO Bob Iger, Disney has had a strong track record of buying properties like Marvel and Lucasfilm and seeing them flourish. But Disney is also facing a crisis of cord-cutting in cable channels like ESPN, which has long been a cash cow. Twitter could help Disney transition its cable audience to an online format.

Of course, Google parent Alphabet also remains a strong contender and a logical partner. Twitter has excelled at branded advertising, but struggled with the more lucrative targeted ads that turned Facebook into a digital ad powerhouse. Google’s massive user data could help here. In return, Twitter could bring Google the social network it could never build itself. (Remember Google Plus?) YouTube, a key growth engine at Google, could also benefit from closer ties with Twitter. As socially gifted companies like Facebook and Snapchat push hard into video, YouTube is looking vulnerable.

But if Alphabet wanted to buy Twitter, it could have done so when Twitter traded at $14 a share. Since then, Alphabet has become more cost-conscious, scaling back initiatives like Google Fiber, Nest and robotics projects. And then there’s the question of how regulators in the U.S. and Europe would look at an Alphabet-Twitter deal. A Disney deal would likely win regulatory approval much more easily.

Thanks to the rally over the past couple of trading days, Twitter is again overpriced. It’s currently worth $20 billion, and the board will surely ask for more than that, especially if a bidding war breaks out. Yes, all of this remains speculative. What’s different is that, perhaps for the first time, the pieces are aligning to make a Twitter sale easier to imagine.

Trump 's disaster in first presidential debate - Huffington Post

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stumbled through the first presidential debate Monday night, losing his composure on multiple occasions, including during a heated exchange with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton about previously saying she does not appear “presidential” ― remarks that many observers regarded as sexist. 

On numerous occasions, Trump interrupted and spoke over Clinton. Quite a few viewers found his behavior inappropriate, if a Twitter search of the terms “Trump mansplained” is any indication. 

However, the universe conspired against Trump by drawing even more attention to this behavior. Every time Trump lowered his head, one word was perfectly framed by his hair: “Men.”

The word came from the Declaration of Independence, which was printed on the backdrop of the debate stage at Hofstra University.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it read. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men [Emphasis added], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

Trump’s woes were compounded by his unfortunate position on the stage. Debates are carefully planned events ― affairs that are hashed out months in advance by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Secret Service and the host university. However, as any good advance official on a campaign can tell you: It’s the problems you can’t anticipate that get you every time. 

Huffington Post Reporter Eliot Nelson’s new book, The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide to Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing and Sometimes Hilarious Government, is out now. 

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.