Karma

This whole election feels like a punishment.  A cruel punishment too.  After eight years of having a smart and decent man in the White House, we're forced to give him back and choose between Pantsuit Nixon and Orange Mussolini.  Is it because we re-elected George W. Bush in 2004?  Come on!  That's so unfair.  We were scared and John Kerry sucked.  Is it because we elected Reagan in 1980?  I agree that was a very punishable offense, but it was so long ago.  I was zero years old at the time.  Why punish us now?  And isn't the damage Reagan did to our economy punishment enough?

Is it something not even related to politics?  Is this punishment for the Kardashians or American Idol or Burger King putting mac and cheese inside Cheetos?  That seems so unfair.  This punishment does not fit those crimes.  Why are the election karma gods so mean?  Why is this happening to us?

Cable news has been pre-gaming all day.  At one point, Fox did two consecutive segments on why it isn't the moderator's job to point out when Trump is lying.  Then Eric Bolling called Hillary's claim that she didn't send any classified emails "the ultimate lie".  Since Eric has no sense of perspective or proportionality, I have no problem asserting that Eric is exactly as bad as Hitler.

Anyway, let's hope the election karma gods agree that Hillary is punishment enough.  I certainly think she is.  Let's hope they're just using Trump as sort of a cautionary tale so they don't have to go through this with us again.  Live, from the 13th floor lounge in Estabrook Hall, or possibly the 8th circle of hell, it's the first debate!!!

8:53PM: Rabinowitz is talking during the final minutes before the debate.  I feel like he'd be a Trump guy.  Rachel Maddow kept criticizing him for talking too long and getting behind schedule.  It was pretty great.

8:55PM: I was going to have an exclusive for the debate tonight.  Gary Johnson was going to be right here in my apartment with me, giving commentary.  Unfortunately, Gary wandered outside like an hour ago to get high and I haven't seen him since.  I don't think he's coming back.

8:56PM: I decided to watch tonight's debate on MSBNC just for fun.  Brian Williams was all over the pre-debate coverage because nobody remembers anything.

8:57PM: I get why we need the crowd to settle down.  We're supposed to be hearing the candidates talk about what kind of President each of them would be.  I don't need 45 minutes of clapping and booing out of a 90 minute debate.  But honestly, if the crowd has to remain completely silent, why are they there?  Why not just have Lester Holt sit in a quiet room with the candidates?  I have so many good ideas.

8:59PM: Brian says we're starting at 9:03:30.  Thanks Brian.  Meanwhile, Rachel was just explaining the rules and they sound pretty loose.  I've heard the campaigns didn't actually sign an agreement about the rules, so this should be really messy.  I don't know much about Lester, but he seems friendly and a little soft-spoken.  I'm not sure he's the guy for this.  I guess we'll see.

9:02PM: Our friends at MSNBC are taking these extra three minutes to make sure we all know that the expectations game leading up to this debate has been totally unfair to Hillary.

9:04PM: Lester says each 15 minute segment will start with the same question to both candidates, and then they'll have two minutes to answer.  After that, roughly 11 minutes of open discussion.  Let's see how that goes.

9:05PM: Hillary is wearing a bright red suit.  She looks ridiculous.  That's not a sexist comment.  If Trump was wearing a bright red suit we'd never stop laughing at him, and rightfully so.  She looks like a tomato.  If Hillary was wearing a black suit, or a grey suit, and someone said she should dress up a little more and she looks boring, that would be a sexist comment.

9:08PM: The first question is about jobs.  Hillary is going through the Democratic laundry list of paid family leave, sicks days, making the wealthy pay their fair share.  Meanwhile, Trump looks less orange than usual, but his hair still looks like cotton candy.

9:09PM: Trump says Mexico is building some of the best plants and America..."not so much".  Then he seemed to indicate that he agrees with Hillary on paid leave, or sick days, or both.  Then he promised tremendous tax cuts (for businesses, don't get excited).  Trump's ability to brag about things he hasn't done yet is actually kind of amazing.

9:11PM: Hillary called Trump's economic plan "Trumped Up Trickle Down".  Hillary needs to focus on doing things she's good at.  Jokes are not one of those things.  Then she took a swipe at Trump borrowing money from his dad to get started.  That one landed clean.  Point to Hillary.

9:13PM: Trump says his father gave him a "very small loan" in 1975.  I think we'd all be pretty surprised by what Trump thinks is a small amount of money.

9:14PM: Trump randomly asked Hillary if it's OK to call her Secretary Clinton.  Then he said he wants her to be very happy.  That was weird.

9:15PM: Trump's proposal for bringing jobs back from Mexico appears to be, essentially, tariffs.  Someone should point out why that is a bad plan, and why it won't work.  Hillary is apparently not that someone, because she wants to talk about other stuff.

9:17PM: Hillary says Donald believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.  I have to say I've never heard him say that, but it sounds like something he'd say and it was a funny line.

9:19PM: For all the talk about Trump being different and being an outsider, his economic plan is pretty cookie cutter Republican.  He wants to bring back jobs and create incentives for companies to expand, and he plans to do that through the magic power of tax cuts.

9:21PM: Trump is yelling about how Hillary's husband signed NAFTA.  Instead of saying something like "I'm not my husband, and the first lady doesn't get a vote on signing trade deals", Hillary decided to defend NAFTA.

9:22PM: Trump won't let Hillary finish a sentence.  If only there was some kind of moderator around to reign this in.  Hillary also took a minute to plug her new book.  So far this is bizarre.

9:24PM: Trump keeps saying Lester's name like he made a black friend.  Also, the first 15 minute segment has been something like 19 minutes long.

9:26PM: Now they're literally yelling at each other about fighting ISIS.  Trump said Hillary's been fighting ISIS her entire adult life.  Wait, I thought Barack Obama founded ISIS.  Hillary was already like 63 years old when that happened.  Is that when women become adults in Trump's mind?  I'm so confused.

9:28PM: Trump stopped talking for a minute and Hillary made a really coherent point about building the middle class instead of working from the top down on the economy.  When she was done, Trump, instead of actually waiting for Lester to ask him a question, just started talking and launched into some bizarre attack on the Fed and how they're going to raise interest rates as soon as Obama leaves office.

9:31PM: Lester finally got a question out and it was about Trump's tax returns, which he still won't release.  Trump says he'll release his taxes as soon as the audit is over.  Lester pointed out that the IRS says he can release his tax returns during an audit.  Then Trump said he'll actually release his tax returns when Hillary releases her 33,000 deleted emails.

9:34PM: Hillary says maybe Trump isn't as rich as he says he is, or maybe he's not as charitable as he says he is.  She also said he must be trying to hide something really important, or even terrible.  She's really hitting hard on the something to hide point.  Hillary's poking the bear and trying to get it to attack.

9:37PM:  Trump, interestingly, isn't really saying he doesn't have anything to hide.  He's just saying you don't learn anything from tax returns.  Then he rambled for a minute about being underleveraged and then I think he called us a third world country.  Are we sure he knows what country he's running to be President of?  He doesn't seem to be a big fan of this one.

9:40PM: Hillary has an architect in the audience who built a clubhouse at one of Trump's golf courses and didn't get paid for it.  Trump says maybe he did a bad job.  That's such a con man answer.  Everybody who I stiffed just did bad work.

9:42PM: Trump's essentially arguing that if there's a law that allows him to stiff or short change contractors he's going to take advantage of that and there's nothing wrong with it.  Honestly, this whole election is bizarre.

9:44PM: Lester wants to talk about race.  I'm going to go ahead and say that Trump's handlers are feeling a little apprehensive right now.

9:46PM: Hillary gave a pretty standard liberal answer on race and police and communities, but she also talked about guns, but she didn't really go into it and I kind of wish she had.

9:48PM: Trump said Hillary won't use the words law and order.  She said law at least twice.  Trump also went into his support for stop and frisk as a policy.  Lester pointed out that stop and frisk was deemed unconstitutional, which is true.  Except is Trump's mind, where that's not true and it was just one liberal judge and if DiBlasio wasn't such a pussy he'd appeal and he'd win and then we could do it again.

9:51PM: The face Trump makes whenever someone says the word unconstitutional is the same face a dog makes when you try to give it a command that it hasn't learned yet.  Fascists don't spend a lot of time worrying about constitutionality.

9:54PM: Trump agrees that people on watch lists and no-fly lists shouldn't be able to get guns.  Not that you can enforce that policy without universal background checks, but whatever.

9:57PM: Hillary said crime and murders are still going down since DiBlasio took office.  Trump says she's wrong and murders are up.  Again, if only we had some kind of moderator who could look this stuff up.

10:00PM: Lester asked Trump about the whole birther thing.  Trump said he succeeded where Hillary failed and he got Obama to release his birth certificate.  Lester correctly pointed out that the birth certificate was released in 2011 and Trump kept going with it for five more years.  Trump really didn't answer that part, but he did point out that black people and Obama should be grateful that he got to the bottom of the birther issue.  Seriously, that's a thing that just happened.

10:03PM: Hillary just said Trump has a long history of racist behavior, going back to the 70's.  Trump's general argument seems to be that racism is OK when everyone is doing it.  Hillary was mean to Obama too.  And lots of companies got sued for racial discrimination in the 70's.  Such a good point.  Racism was all the rage back then.  Now he even lets black people into some club he owns.  What a swell guy.

10:07PM: Lester asked them who is responsible for cyber attacks.  Hillary seems to be zeroing in on Russia.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Trump is getting ready to blame China.

10:08PM: I'm sorting drifting in an out at this point.

10:09PM: Trump took the first half of his cyber attack answer time to list a bunch of people who are endorsing him.  Then he said we don't know it's Russia, maybe it was China (points to me) or maybe it was a 400 pound person on their bed.  I suppose we couldn't really expect Trump to get through 90 minutes without some fat shaming.  Also, Trump has a 10 year old son.  Yikes.

10:12PM: Can't one of them just admit that the government is run by people who need to have their grandkids teach them how to use computers and that's why we suck at cyber security?

10:14PM: Trump says we should have taken the oil out of Iraq when we left and then there would be no ISIS.  I'm not an expert on international law, but I'm like 101% sure that's not legal.  Also, how do you take the oil?  It's not just like sitting in a warehouse.  Oil comes from under the ground.  We would have to occupy the country, ya know, forever.  

10:18PM: I got distracted by Trump's insane taking the oil plan and when I drifted back in Trump was declaring NATO obsolete.  Except now it's not obsolete because they're going to deal with terror and Trump is taking credit for that.

10:20PM: Trump and Lester are arguing about whether or not Trump was for the Iraq war.  Trump swears he told Sean Hannity that he was against the Iraq war.  Trump just keeps saying "nobody calls Sean Hannity".  JUST ASK SEAN HANNITY DAMNIT!!!

10:22PM: Trump got a good laugh from the audience when he said he has a much better temperament than Hillary.  The question was why is his judgment better than Hillary's.  His answer was, because it is.

10:23PM: Hillary pointed out that NATO had our back after 9/11.  That's a good point but we've already been through how Trump doesn't really make good on his debts so that's not really an argument that's going to work on him.

10:24PM: Hillary criticized Trump for saying that he'd start a war by blowing Iranians out of the water for taunting us.  Trump didn't say he wouldn't do that, he argued that it wouldn't actually start a war.  I feel like that's a risk we probably shouldn't take.

10:27PM: Apparently we're heading into the last segment.  I thought we had abandoned the schedule a long time ago.

10:29PM: Trump is not a fan of the Iran deal.  It is, apparently, one of the worst deals that any country has ever made.

10:30PM: Hillary had to stop the debate for a second to assure other countries that they shouldn't listen to this maniac and the United States will still honor the agreements we have with them.  We really are hitting rock bottom, aren't we?

10:32PM: Trump keeps insisting that his secret plan to defeat ISIS is fantastic but he's definitely not going to tell us about it because, as he said about an hour ago, Douglas MacArthur would not approve of that.

10:33PM: Lester asked why Trump thinks Hillary doesn't have the look of a President.  Trump claims that he meant she doesn't have the stamina.  Of course, what he actually means is that she's not a 10.  And why would we want some broad who's not a 10 running the country?  Am I right?  Ivanka's a 10 and if you elect me you'll get to see her every day, believe me.

10:36PM: Trump says that many of the things he's said about women were directed as Rosie O'Donnell and everyone agrees that she deserves it and no one feels sorry for her.  Then he said that Hillary isn't being nice to him and he could be very tough to Hillary and her family but he isn't doing that but he could.  That's a killer grown up answer.

Final question.  Will they each accept the final vote as the will of the voters?  Hillary said yes.  Trump rambled for a minute about making America great again, but then said yes.

What a goddamn nightmare.

Lying Is Hard

I watch Chris Matthews most days if I'm home at 5PM.  I used to flip between him and Fox News, but since Fox let Glenn Beck go, their 5PM show is still just as stupid (thanks in large part to Eric Bolling, who is an absolute clown), but about 1000% less funny (Eric's more of a sad clown).  Matthews, on the other hand, remains as loud and entertaining as always.

Recently, one of the best parts of Chris' show is his almost constant befuddlement at the hands of Mitt Romney.  Every time Romney says something that doesn't make sense, or just doesn't sound exactly right, Matthews reacts as if Romney just ate an entire wheel of cheese and pooped in the refrigerator.  He's totally baffled by it.

This shouldn't be surprising.  Matthews has spent his whole life in politics.  He knows what a polished politician is supposed to sound like and he knows how polished a major party Presidential candidate should be.  Romney's inability to consistently, well, sound like a person, is an enigma for Chris, but not for me.

I was in a couple of plays in high school, and when I got a little experience with it, I realized that just memorizing your lines is stupid.  Lines are important, but it seemed like it was more important to actually understand what the character is trying to say.  That way, if you forget your line, you still sort of know what's supposed to be said, and you can get through it.  If you just memorize lines and then forget them, you're totally lost.

One of the simplest things about life is this, lying is hard.  At least harder than telling the truth.  The consequences of the truth might be less desirable, but telling the truth is always easier than lying, if for no other reason than the truth is easier to remember.

When Mitt Romney opens his mouth and something incomprehensible comes out, it's because he's out there playing Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man, and sometimes he forgets his lines.  So, when Brian Williams asks him if London looks ready for the Olympics, he doesn't just say what he thinks.  He thinks, "what would Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man have to say about that?", and then he tries to say something that sort of sounds supportive but also reminds the world that America is the best and fuck you. 

But Mitt isn't always playing Generic Ultra-Conservative Presidential Candidate Man.  Sometimes he's playing Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People.  Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People might show up in Michigan babbling about how the trees are the right height, because Mitt can't exactly remember Guy Who Can Relate To Regular People's lines, but he knows that regular people care very deeply about tree height.

But then sometimes Mitt has to play Bat-Shit Crazy Foreign Policy Lunatic.  Bat-Shit Crazy Foreign Policy Lunatic says things about how we'll always support Israel no matter what they decide to do, and how Israel has a better economy than the Palestinians because the Israeli culture is inherently superior.  He's just trying to say things that sound strong and tough and supportive of Israel while also appeasing the base of his party by sounding vaguely anti-muslim, and in this case it's less about him forgetting his lines and more about the people writing his lines being dumb.  Either way, it's a mess.

And listen, my problem with Mitt Romney isn't that he made the Palestinians angry.  My problem is that this man who wants to be in charge of our foreign policy thinks it's OK to add another ring to the million ring circus that is the middle east in an effort to do some least common denominator pandering for votes at home.  Mitt Romney should have to wear a sign whenever he leaves the country that clearly states he doesn't speak for the rest of us.  In fact, a lot of people should.  Can I be the one who decides who gets a sign?  I'd be really good at that.

Anyway, I can only conclude that Mitt Romney's actual self is too unlikeable for him to be honest with us and still win.  I suspect that I would probably like actual Mitt Romney.  He's probably one of those guys who makes mean jokes and everyone laughs while he's in the room and then when he leaves everyone talks about what a jerk he is.  I usually like those people, but other people usually think they're mean and probably wouldn't vote for them.

I work with college students, and when I give them interview advice one thing I always say is be yourself, because if you get the job people are going to expect to work with the person they interviewed, and if you don't get the job, at least you gave it your best shot.  You don't want to go on an interview, be fake, and then not get the job and be left wondering what would have happened if they had met the real you.

So I'm wondering if we're going to look back on this election and wonder what would have happened if we had met the real Mitt Romney.  And I'm wondering if there even is a real Mitt Romney.  And if there isn't a real Mitt Romney, that really worries me.  There are times when a caretaker President who doesn't have much in the way of his own opinions/values/personality will do just fine.  This doesn't really seem like one of those times.