Third Presidential Debate

So I jotted down some of the things they said while they were saying them to help me memory along.  Hillary was coming out strong against the "Gunshow Loophole".  Which sounds good, but there is no gun show loophole.  I bought a gun at a gun show some time ago, (Nice Marlin 30-30 lever action) and they did instant background checks on all of us purchasers. 
   The Donald said that his supreme court picks might well repeal Roe vs Wade.  I wouldn't have said that.  It offends about half the voters.  Roe vs Wade has been the law for nigh on 50 years now, and overturning it would cause as much commotion and bad feeling as imposing it did.  Then he got off on a riff condemning partial birth abortions. 
   They got onto building border walls.  Hillary suggested that we wait for improved technology.  Improved technology for walls?  They had wall technology down pretty good in Troy, and it hasn't changed much in the 3000 years since Achilles slew Hector.  If she is talking about electronic widgets, forget it.  We tried that in Viet Nam.  Didn't work.  Put your trust in a plain old chain link fence. 
   Hillary was selling the idea that Putin is trying to help Trump with his leaks to Wikileaks.  Why would Putin do that?  Hillary is a known quantity, she isn't very effective, she isn't very smart, she isn't very polite, her mandate from the voters will be weak.  As the dictator of a Russia competing with the USA, Putin would be much better off with Hillary.  As ex head of KGB Putin knows this.  It's been suggested that the reason they only leak Democratic dirty laundry is that the Replublicans have tighter security and the hackers were not able to break in.  If true, that's a good reason to vote Republican. 
   Hillary claimed that Obama cut the national debt.  That's a flat out lie, the national debt doubled under Obama. 
   Hillary derided all tax cuts as "tax cuts for the rich".  Well, since half the population pays NO federal income tax, tax cuts only benefit the taxpaying half of the population.  If paying income tax makes you rich, then I suppose so.  But cutting taxes is good.  It's good for the economy, it worked for both Kennedy and Reagan, its good for taxpayers.  And a mere 5% of the taxpayers pay most of the taxes. 
   The Donald failed to nail Hillary on what she has accomplished on all her years on the public teat.  The real answer is she accomplished nothing.  No bills, no laws, no treaties, no peace talks, nada. 
   And finally Hillary wants to forbid anyone on the no-fly list from buying guns.  The no-fly list is maintained by bureaucrats somewhere and is completely arbitrary.  Citizens get stuck on it and there is no way off.  I don't want to give faceless federal bureaucrats the power to take away citizen's second amendment rights on a whim.
  The Donald came on pretty strong.  He'd be better if he could stick to the subject, and not go rambling off about pet peeves that the voters either don't care about or don't like.  He did get in a fair number of solid slams on Hillary.  Hillary wasn't quite as good.  I'd give this one to The Donald, but just barely, a squeaker.

Leaf Peeping.

It was a lovely day, sun, warm, clear sky.  Leaves still bright.  I decided I had to get out and look.  So I drove over the Kancamagus to Conway, and back thru Crawford Notch.  Foliage was magnificent all the way.  Whole hillsides showing gold and red. Individual trees all bright red. I brought the camera, but I already have, and have posted, a bunch of pix of brightly color leaves, so I didn't take any more.  Plus a lot of really beautiful scenes don't photograph well, you have to be there and see them.
Good Trip.  At the right time of year. 

Selecting a "man-on-the-street" for inteview. NHPR style

NHPR newsie in Orlando Florida is interviewing a "representative" voter.  Didn't give his name.  It became clear listening to this guy that he is gay, and pretty much all his waking thoughts are about his gayness and how it effects his life, his relationship with his mother and family, and the world in general.  It's hard for me to take this guy as representative of the typical Orlando (or anywhere else) voter.  Real people have other concerns than their sexual identity in their lives,  stuff like jobs, sports, hobbies, cars, politics, computers, music and more.  All this guy could talk about was his sexual identity.
   Granted that being gay can bring unusual stresses.  But 95% of the population is straight, and has interests other than sex and sexual identity.
   I don't think this guy is representative of anybody except himself.  And the NHPR newsies were too dumb or too PC to figure that out.  Or they just wanted to put a gay guy on the air. 

Moderators, Presidential Debate type.

The last two presidential debates had dreadful moderators.  They asked dumb ass questions, they were profoundly ignorant of many simple matters, and they both tried hard to help Hillary and hinder Trump.   Chris Wallace ought to be better.  He is smart, knowledgeable and fair.
   Far as I am concerned,  Republican presidential candidates ought to be pickier about debate moderators.  They should veto any rabid democratic moderators like Candy Crowley along with other more ignorant newsies.  And since newsies are a fairly low grade lifeform, they ought to look for prominent Americans from other walks of life. 

Free College. We used to have it.

I got one back in the 1970's.  My Air Force hitch was up, after a tour in South East Asia, and I enrolled at the University of Delaware for a Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering degree.  I  had been stationed in Delaware long enough to qualify as a Delaware resident, entitled to resident's rates at the state university.  For residents tuition was super low, only a few hundred dollars a semester.  For a couple of semesters my text books cost more than my tuition.  My GI benefits covered tuition, books, and rent on my apartment.  Between that, and money I saved during my Air Force hitch, I graduated with no student loans to pay off and enough money left over to get married and take a honeymoon in England. 
   University of Delaware might not qualify as completely free in those days, but it was so cheap that anyone could afford it.   With Dupont and Hercules in the state, the engineering program at Delaware was good.  
   So when you hear Hillary campaigning for free college education, some one ought to ask her what happened to the ones we used to have. 

Words of the Weasel Part 48

"Bottle of flammable liquid"   That's what the cops called it on TV.   In real life, we call them Molotov cocktails.  

Words of the Weasel Part 47

Heard on TV this morning.  "I was self medicating myself with alcohol."   Sounds a helova lot better than "I drank like a fish."