![\"Bring-out-your-dead.jp_\"](\"https:\/\/c5.staticflickr.com\/9\/8589\/30355578892_445fcd9cb9_m.jpg\")
During October’s visitor onslaught, one of our guests came packing a cold. She passed it on to Donna, then her own daughter, then me, then another guest. The only one to escape was our granddaughter Taylor, whose visit coincided with the weekend Typhoid Mary was away\u00a0on a side trip. Donna’s better now, as am I. Our other guest, now home in Florida, is busy\u00a0coughing, blowing her nose, and infecting Tampa Bay.\u00a0Vectors for plague,\u00a0we humans.<\/p>\n
This morning I put the Sudafed, Flonase, and Afrin back in the medicine cabinet, then put\u00a0out the amoxicillin so I won’t forget to take it\u00a0Monday morning\u00a0before seeing the dentist about my sore tooth (taking antibiotics before medical and\u00a0dental procedures is a must\u00a0when you have an artificial joint).<\/p>\n
A couple of days ago I employed\u00a0my toothache as an election season\u00a0metaphor. A hacking, snot-filled cold would have done just as well. Which brings me to\u00a0the third and last debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
Unlike seemingly everyone else, I wasn’t shocked when Trump refused to say he’d accept the results of the election. Remember\u00a0the first Republican debate, when the moderator asked all 16 candidates to pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee? In case you forgot, Trump refused.<\/p>\n
Nor was I shocked when Trump\u00a0praised Putin and rejected the conclusion of 17 national intelligence agencies that the Russian\u00a0government is\u00a0trying to interfere in our presidential election. He’s been doing that all along, too.<\/p>\n
Lately he’s taken to calling Hillary Clinton\u00a0a criminal. That\u00a0should\u00a0shock me, but it doesn’t. What it does is dismay, because it telegraphs what Trump and his faction of the GOP will\u00a0do when Hillary Clinton takes office.<\/p>\n
Here’s part of what he said during\u00a0the third debate:<\/p>\n
So let me just give you one other thing. So I talk about the corrupt media. I talk about the millions of people\u2014tell you one other thing: she shouldn\u2019t be allowed to run. It\u2019s crooked\u2014she\u2019s\u2014she\u2019s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it\u2019s rigged, because she should never\u2014Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with emails and so many other things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
No one\u00a0challenged or questioned that\u00a0statement. I understand why Hillary didn’t rise to the bait, but someone<\/em> should have waved the bullshit flag. Sure, people who hate Clinton call her a criminal, but that doesn’t make her one. There’s\u00a0been no charge, no trial, no conviction. On the contrary, her actions with regard to Benghazi, the deleted personal emails, and “so many other things” have been exhaustively investigated\u2014by the press, by Congress, by the FBI\u2014and\u00a0no one has turned up anything criminal. The FBI, for goodness’ sake, actually exonerated her.<\/p>\n
If you can get on the national stage and slander\u00a0your rival as a criminal based only on malign wishes and rumors, then isn’t turnabout fair play? You wanna talk criminal,\u00a0Trump’s\u00a0facing a trial for raping a 13-year-old girl, and he’s in the middle of an actual trial for defrauding Trump University students. But his rival is taking the high road, letting Trump hang himself.<\/p>\n
Trump may not be conventionally\u00a0smart, but he’s cunning, and I’m beginning to see the strategy behind calling Clinton a criminal. Trump was a major player in the birther attacks on Obama, an important part of a\u00a0GOP campaign\u00a0to thwart a Democrat president. Because of birtherism, a significant number of citizens and elected officials never accepted\u00a0Obama as a legitimate president.\u00a0Trump is telegraphing the outlines of the campaign he’s going to lead against Clinton after she’s elected: call her fitness for office into constant question with charges of criminality.<\/p>\n
Just as President Obama has, President Clinton will weather the storm. But what about you and me? How will America be affected by\u00a0another four to eight years of insinuation, questioning, undermining, and obstruction\u00a0at the highest levels of government?\u00a0No wonder so many people lose themselves in West Wing\u00a0reruns, a far more appealing reality\u00a0than the one we actually live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During October’s visitor onslaught, one of our guests came packing a cold. She passed it on to Donna, then her own daughter, then me, then another guest. The only one to escape was our granddaughter Taylor, whose visit coincided with the weekend Typhoid Mary was away\u00a0on a side trip. Donna’s better now, as am I. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,16,8],"tags":[1124,1984,982,88,2024],"class_list":["post-19473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-media","category-politics","tag-birtherism","tag-clinton","tag-debate","tag-obama","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19473"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19491,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473\/revisions\/19491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}