AN "ABCD" SPEAKS

By William L. Garvin

I am an “ABCD—Anybody But Clinton Deplorable.”  This presidential election is regarded by myself and many others as a choice between “Horrible Hillary” and “Terrible Trump.”  Be that as it may, I think Horrible Hillary won the first presidential debate but to use her own words, “At this point in time, what difference does it make?”  Of course I am only referring to a relatively inconsequential exchange of words but she was heartlessly referring to the murder of four Americans in Benghazi.  Naturally, in typical mainstream media fashion, that travesty was not discussed.

While I say Hillary may have won, that can only be said in the context of suspending the reality of history and ignoring her hypocrisy and the strident irony of her many pronouncements, all accepted at face value by the “moderator,” Lester Holt.  For instance, too much time was spent on whether or not Trump supported the Iraq invasion based on a minuscule quote Trump made during a Howard Stern radio show.  There was no mention made of the consistent opposition he made in writing and on videotape shortly thereafter.  NOTHING was noted about Senator Clinton actually voting FOR the invasion and also supporting the “premature evacuation” of American troops that made possible the genesis of ISIS!

It was almost impossible to listen to her speak about “cybersecurity” and how important it was given her absolute ignorance in fact and behavior about safeguarding intellectual property and state secrets.  Tangentially, she made many innuendoes about Trump’s need to “hide” his tax returns because of many possibly nefarious motives.  This is similar to Harry Reid lying on the Senate floor about Mitt Romney’s tax returns.  As usual, the sequel is even worse than the prequel.  You see, every possible motive she attributed to Trump could be applied to the Clinton Foundation and to her deliberately setting up several private servers (which no Secretary of State has ever done!) thereby compromising our country’s most sensitive communications.  This was not a “mistake” for which she has accepted responsibility; this was an egregious error in judgment for which others who are not above the law would be and have been imprisoned!  Lost in the bureaucratic shuffle and the incomprehensible refusal of the FBI to recommend prosecution, is the fact that she let many of her personal lawyers have access to, review, and delete many of the public records even though none of them had a security clearance of even the lowest level.  Despite her extensive “experience” in government at both state and federal levels, she obviously has failed to master even the fundamentals of document security or safeguarding secret government information!  She has however mastered the fundamentals of wiping her numerous servers clean with BleachBit (not with a cloth) and smashing some of her many cellphones with a hammer!!  Now let me ask you, who has something to hide?  It is public record that the Clinton Foundation had to “revise” years of tax returns to include donations from foreign entities that they “forgot” to previously list.  Naturally none of her deleted emails from her “personal” server would include communication with those foreign entities that contributed to her personal foundation, would they?  And just as an aside, why would any foreign entity or person contribute to a foundation that only spends about six percent in actual charitable donations?  But let’s not worry about that…let’s argue about who started the ”birther” controversy, Trump or Hillary’s campaign when she was running against Barack.  Maybe that’s why Barack aired a campaign ad in retaliation that said Hillary would “say anything and change nothing.”

In the debate, with typical glib responses and no regard to truth, she denied support for NAFTA and the TPP trade agreements (because she desperately needs union votes).  As Bill Clinton’s First Lady (sic) she vigorously supported NAFTA on her whistle stops and CNN clearly documents her support for the TPP:  "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.”  But again, the Clintons have never been in favor of a level playing field in word or deed!

As a Yale educated lawyer (who flunked the Washington D.C. bar exam!) with a lifetime of experience in political double-speak and a plethora of experience in presidential and primary debates, she should have wiped the floor with Donald, the political ingénue.  She didn’t.  She won a split decision in style according to political pundits who similarly have no regard for substance but prefer syntactically correct albeit meaningless phraseology.  However, her mean spirited personal attacks and smug arrogance changed neither hearts nor minds.  It did reinforce however that Barack was right: “She’ll say anything and change nothing”….just like Benghazi.