You got what you deserve, Republican Party...

[A Black Falcon]

If you want proof of corruption and intentional illegal actions, there's plenty of that in Donald Trump's history. A decent article summing a lot of it up: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2...mp-corrupt From paying off lawmakers like Pam Bondi to his ties to the New York Mafia to his probably illegal scam of a charitable foundation, Donald Trump is incredibly, openly corrupt. And there's another thing that article missed, because it just broke: Apparently yet another way Trump broke the law was to do business in Cuba while the blockade was still in full force, back in the late '90s: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch...5347779553 Like everything else -- the foundation, etc -- this probably won't lead to charges because people seem to be afraid to charge him with anything during this election cycle though blatantly illegal activity has been uncovered time and again, but it's another criminal act of his to add to the pile. I hope he actually sees court sometime for some of them.

So yeah, while I agree that Hillary is not good at avoiding the appearance of corruption, and has not always fully considered how things she does will be viewed through the insane microscope everything she does is viewed through, I just do not believe that there's any real corruption behind it. There'd be some proof somewhere, instead of just endless fake scandals that amount to nothing.

Now again, you ask me to point to any ONE example of concrete corruption on Hillary's part, and I would say to you "show me ONE example of a police officer shooting a black person due to racism". That's a question that misses the entire point, because the racism is revealed as systemic, and can't exactly be shown in singular examples. Better yet, "show me ONE high temperature day that's absolutely caused by global warming".

I'm sure there are plenty of clear examples of officer-involved shootings done for racist reasons, though... and at this point, isn't pretty much every new record temperature almost certainly the result of global warming? I don't think these things are quite equal with Hillary's history of fake scandals that eventually turn out to have been either nothing (which is it most of the time), or at worst nothing more than misjudgements (Whitewater, private email server) that only are a big deal because the right despises her and makes mountains out of molehills. I think you under-estimate how much of HIllary's so-called corruption is the result of decades of right-wing media attacks, and not actually things she did.


Apart from that, though, the big news of this week of course was the first Presidential debate, and it was kind of interesting...

Biggest (silly) takeaway: Donald Trump didn't look orange. What happened, did he skip the spray tan before Monday's debate?

More seriously though, Hillary won the debate by a mile of course, in my opinion, in polling, in the press, and everywhere else except for blindly pro-Trump places. That's great, and she deserved the win because Trump looked lost, like he had no idea what he was talking about most of the time. It's much less of a joke than you'd wish it would be that I thought that one of the only things Trump sounded like he had a clue about was tax evasion... But on other issues, from nuclear weapons (Trump continues to be stunningly clueless on nuclear issues!) to global warming to the economy and beyond, he was hopelessly lost, while Hillary made one well-supported policy position after another. So yeah, it went pretty well for Hillary.

However, one big thing concerned me: that many people were saying Trump was winning in the first half hour, before fading later on as his attentions scattered and Hillary's attacks mounted up. Trump, winning in the first half hour? Really? Sure, he was more aggressive there, but he was scary aggressive! He came across as a mean, insulting, and constantly interrupting bully, a horrible person you'd want nothing to do with. That anyone would consider that attitude good is both sad and kind of scary.