Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton held it together during Sunday night’s debate, speaking intelligently and passionately about policy, despite having to endure her rival Donald Trump and his team trying to deflect his on-tape admission of sexual assault by throwing two decades of right-wing conspiracy theories about her husband at her for two days.

Trump, on the other hand, made it through a 90-minute debate without grabbing anyone’s pussy, though he stood menacingly close enough to Clinton that there were some concerns. Sadly, this plus his ability to get a little closer to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin levels of coherence — though still falling short of the mark — was enough to score Trump rave reviews from some corners and even some claims that he won the debate.

But make no mistake: By any reasonable measure, Trump lost that debate. In many ways, his performance was worse than the first time around. Trump repeatedly exposed that he knows less about good governance than a 5-year-old who has watched some “Schoolhouse Rock” videos.

Take, for instance, this bit of babble from Trump:

One of the greatest provisions for people like me, I give up a lot when I run because I knock out the tax code. She could have done this years ago. She’s a United States senator. She complains that Donald Trump took advantage of the tax code. Well, why didn’t she change it? Why didn’t you change it when you were a senator? The reason you didn’t is all your friends take the same advantage that I do.

Well, no. The reason she didn’t do it is literally because, as a senator from New York, she didn’t have the power to do it. Which led to Clinton having to explain how our Constitution works to Trump because he doesn’t understand it.

More: http://www.salon.com/2016/10/10/hillary-clinton-cant-win-the-debate-she-showed-grace-and-intelligence-but-he-won-because-he-didnt-grab-anyones-junk/

I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin seems to believe.

An email from Blumenthal—a confidant of Hillary Clinton and a man, second only to George Soros at the center of conservative conspiracy theories—turned up in the recent document dump by Wikileaks. At a time when American intelligence believes Russian hackers are trying to interfere with the presidential election, records have been fed recently to Wikileaks out of multiple organizations of the Democratic Party, raising concerns that the self-proclaimed whistleblowers group has become a tool of Putin’s government. But now that I have been brought into the whole mess—and transformed into Blumenthal—there is even more proof that this act of cyberwar is not only being orchestrated by the Russians, but that they are really, really dumb.

The evidence turned up thanks to the incompetence of Sputnik, the Russian online news and radio service established by the government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya.

The documents that Wikileaks unloaded recently have been emails out of the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s election campaign. Almost as soon as the pilfered documents emerged, Sputnik was all over them and rapidly found (or probably already knew about before the Wikileaks dump) a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal.

The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012. Sputnik even declared that the email might be the “October surprise” that could undermine Clinton’s campaign.

To understand the full importance of the story—and how much Putin and his Kremlin cronies must have been dancing with delight—I have to quote the top few paragraphs:

http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-benghazi-sputnik-508635

A former Miss New Hampshire told BuzzFeed News last spring that Donald Trump strolled through the dressing rooms backstage at the 2000 Miss USA pageant and stared at the naked contestants.

In May, his campaign issued a blanket denial, calling Bridget Sullivan’s story and those of several other beauty queens “totally false.”
But Sullivan’s story has now received support from an unexpected source: Trump himself. The presidential candidate, who owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants until last year, told Howard Stern in 2005 that he made a habit of busting into the dressing rooms even when the contestants were not dressed.

“I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed,” Trump told Stern in recordings released Saturday by CNN. “No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it…. ‘Is everyone OK’? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”

As with many of Trump’s stories — about his business success, his sexual prowess, and now his proclivity for sexual assault — it can be hard to disentangle reality from Trump’s exaggerations and braggadocio. But Sullivan’s words suggest that Trump’s behavior toward the pageant women is more than just talk.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/we-were-all-naked-when-donald-trump-walked-in?utm_term=.hvY06eoyD#.yoO5Bvdrg

Co-host Robin Quivers then asked Trump if sleeping with the contestants could be construed as a conflict of interest.

"It could be a conflict of interest," Trump said. "But, you know, it's the kind of thing you worry about later, you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on."

Stern then put on a fake foreign accent, saying that "some of these foreign girls" say hello "with vagina."
"Well, what you could also say is that, as the owner of the pageant, it's your obligation to do that," Trump said, before discussing how he got away with going backstage when the contestants were naked.

"Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I'll go backstage and everyone's getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it," Trump said. "You know, I'm inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good."

"You know, the dresses. 'Is everyone okay?' You know, they're standing there with no clothes. 'Is everybody okay?' And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I've been very good," he added.
Later in the episode, Stern asks Trump to assure his audience that "the chicks will be almost naked" at his pageant, saying to Trump that before he bought the contest, "they were starting to take women who were educated over women who were hot."

"They had a person who was extremely proud that a number of the women had become doctors," Trump explained. "And I wasn't interested."

More details from the voluminous court filings:

Trump was heavily involved in marketing. It’s unclear what else.

Some of Trump’s lawyers have tried to distance him from Trump University, claiming that he had little to do with its daily operations. But in depositions, both Trump and Trump University President Michael Sexton indicated the real estate magnate was hands-on with at least one part of the business: marketing.

Trump said in a deposition in the California case, recorded in 2012 and released in part last year, that he sometimes reviewed advertisements and testimonials for Trump University. And Sexton said Trump reviewed print ads. Some Trump University advertising alluded to Trump’s success with “The Apprentice”; one promised potential enrollees a chance to “learn from the master."

“Any time we had a new ad, we would discuss it,” Sexton said. The conversations happened “fairly frequently” — each time there was a new batch of print advertisements for Trump University, according to Sexton. In comparison, Sexton said he only occasionally reviewed financial documents with Trump.

Meredith McIver, who co-wrote Trump tomes including “Trump 101: The Way to Success,” also works as a ghostwriter for Trump and worked with him on blog posts and Q & A's for Trump University, according to Sexton.

“Certainly Miss McGiver [sic] created content for our newsletter and our blog, but, you know, it was fairly collaborative. Mr. Trump was always — he would come up with often the topic and then ultimately would approve the — the copy as well,” Sexton said in a deposition.

Trump referred all kinds of questions about the business and its operations to Sexton, including what students got in exchange for an apprenticeship program and whether Trump University instructors had to have college degrees. Trump also said in his deposition he didn’t know the last name of one of the “two girls that work in the office” and help schedule appointments and check emails.

But Jill Martin, a Trump Organization vice president and assistant general counsel, told POLITICO that though Trump “was not involved in the day-to-day operations, he was very much involved in developing the content of the courses,” which she said incorporated many of Trump’s business and real estate strategies and provided students with real-world examples based on the billionaire’s own real estate successes.

Trump’s deposition for the California lawsuit contradicts this: Asked about who developed the course materials, he said that “the different professors created their own material” and Sexton oversaw the process.

Trump University told staff to avoid the media — and the attorney general.

More in link: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-university-lawsuit-documents-220181