The second presidential debate Sunday October 9 was an epic
one, alright, epically nasty. The nation and the world to which this was
broadcast was on edge of their seats to see if Donald Trump would contritely apologize for the leaked audio and
video of his boasting of his conquests of groping and sexually predatory
behavior toward women. He did not. Instead he paraded before the world and
placed in the debate audience some of the women with whom Bill Clinton had had
affairs. Monica Lewinsky was not among the attendees. He justified his own behavior because Bill
Clinton had spoken or done worse.
That Trump stopped
the run for the exit door of evangelical and “establishment” Republicans
withdrawing their endorsement is yet to be seen. What he did, however, was claim that he “has
not groped” and he called the damning audios just “locker room” talk and awkwardly
tried to switch the topic to fighting Isis. He can only hope no “groped” women
come forward.
It is a good thing that Bill Clinton is not running for
president this go around. His actions over twenty years ago were worthy of the
consequences. The candidate, however, is
Hillary Clinton and, if anything, she showed remarkable composure, and exuded
dignity in the face of Trump’s attempt to rattle her or to paint her with the
sins of her husband. In the run up to the debate he had tried to make the point
that Hillary was the “enabler” because she showed no respect for women because
she dared to try to destroy the reputation of “the other women”. That must be some male fantasy to expect the
victim, the wronged wife, to take a kind and caring approach to the “other
women” because of some feminist ideology. Given the public focus on all of the
tawdriness, I imagine not many women would have had the self-control to invoke
Michelle Obama’s advice, “when they go low, we go high” as Hillary Clinton did
Sunday night. It is her steeliness and self control under such provocations that
stand in contrast to tweet happy Trump who reacts whenever his manhood or ego
is stroked or offended that makes him particularly unsuited to make rational
policy decisions regarding war and peace.
Donald Trump made some eyebrow raising comments, especially
regarding his differences with his own running mate Mike Pence over policies
toward Russia and Syria. Like a wannabe
tin pot dictator, he said he would appoint a prosecutor to put Hillary in jail
for her alleged lies on the email server because he disagreed with the FBI director’s
findings that she had no intent to relay material marked classified or had lied
to him. In the post-debate spin room, the
shock of Trump advocating to abuse legal and due process to get rid of an
opponent overshadowed his stock allegations of Clinton lies. Trump also openly admitted he had used a tax
loophole to avoid paying federal personal income taxes for years. She responded
by advocating an expanded version of the original Buffett Rule that would impose a 30% income
tax on income over $1 million with her proposed additional surtaxes on the five
million dollar earners. She then scored unrebutted points that Trump’s tax
proposals would give enormous tax cuts to the wealthy and raise taxes on some
in the middle class.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/pf/taxes/hillary-clinton-taxes/
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