Chris: I want to drill right down.... like an oil rig in fragile, shallow Arctic waters. No audience participation will be tolerated. What -- you thought this was a participatory democracy and the debates weren't funded and controlled by the corporations that own the place? So shut up already, and let these two plutocrats spew their dreck at the enthralled TV audience.
First topic, Supreme Court. Will you let the Founders lead the country from their graves?
Hillary: You know, what kind of country is this going to be? We need a Supreme Court that will stand up for women's rights and do away with the kind of dark money that my campaign has had absolutely no qualms about accepting.
Chris: Trump, same question.
Donald: I love all the amendments but mostly the Second, which is under trauma.
Chris: Clinton, what's wrong with everybody having a gun?
Hillary: Nothing. I love guns and I love gun-owners. Arkansas and Upstate New York, which I represented, are chock-full of the yahoos with guns. But I sure wouldn't want someone to kill us with one. Especially a redneck toddler. We have to keep guns out of the chubby little hands of toddlers living in trailer parks in Arkansas and Upstate New York.
Chris: Trump?
Donald: Hillary is very strongly against the Second Amendment. She was very angry about the Heller decision. People were angry about her anger.
Hillary: I hate it when hordes of toddlers go around shooting each other. Their deplorable parents don't lock up their guns.
Chris: Trump, you support national open-carry.
Donald: Chicago has the toughest gun laws and the most violence. Just thought I'd get the obligatory racist dog whistle out of the way early. I will appoint only Second Amendment lovers to the Court.
Chris: Now that you mentioned violence, let's naturally segue into the hot button issue that wasn't a hot button issue until I said it was. Abortion. Trump, will you overturn Roe v Wade?
Donald: Let the states decide. For purposes of this election, I am pro-life. I have no other choice as a Republican.
Hillary: I love Roe v Wade. Donald hates cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. He wants to punish women who get abortions.
Chris: As a loyal Fox News employee, I will now gratuitously bring up the constitutional rights of Fetuses. Why, Clinton, are you against fetuses?
Hillary: I am for the health of mothers.
Donald: I think that is terrible! Hillary just wants to rip babies right out of wombs! In the final day of the ninth month!
Hillary: That's not what happens. You should meet with the women I've met over the course of my life. The government should stay out of wombs.
Chris: Since climate change is never an issue at Fox News, let's move on to immigration. Trump?
Donald: In the audience are four parents of kids killed by illegals. You have thousands of relatives all over the country. Drugs are pouring in. The border patrol endorsed me. Hillary and Obama cause heroin addiction. We have some Bad Hombres here and we have to get them out.
Chris: Clinton, is he wrong?
Hillary: When he was talking I was getting my next talking point lined up. I met a girl in Vegas named Carla whose parents are going to be ripped away from her the way Donald's imaginary full-term fetuses are getting ripped out of wombs. I don't want to rip. I am not a ripper.
Donald: Hillary wanted that Wall!
Hillary: I only want appropriate walls.Trump exploits undocumented shadow-workers.
Donald: Obama deports record numbers of my undocumented shadow workers!
Hillary: I do so too want borders! Why can't Trump be more like Saint Ronald Reagan? And my other Republican icon, the great George W. Bush?
Chris: But in $260,000 WikiLeaks speeches, you said you wanted open borders!
Hillary: But not for people. That was only for capital. Read the whole WikiLeaks why don't you. Oops, on second thought, don't, Because it's a Russian plot to rig the election. Why can't Trump just admit that he is a secret Russian agent?
Donald: That was a great pivot from open borders.
Chris: Hold on a minute. This is getting out of my express control. Silence!
Trump: Putin has no respect for Hillary.
Hillary: He'd rather have a puppet president.
Donald:You're the puppet.
Hillary: No you're the puppet.
Donald: Am not!
Hillary: Are too! The Russian plot is deeply disturbing to the secret heads of a multitude of secret American agencies which collect all your emails and phone records without your knowledge or permission.
Chris: Hey, what about me? Trump - will you condemn Putin or won't you?
Donald: Sure. I have no idea.
Chris: Wait, this has nothing to do with immigration!
Hillary: He wants to put his short fingers on the nuclear button in a very casual fashion. I am terrified. It would take Donald Trump only four minutes to blow up the whole entire world.
Donald: I have 200 generals and admirals and Medal of Honor recipients. Am too!
Hillary: The United States has kept the peace! The only way to keep the peace is enlisting many other NATO countries to spread the war around.
Chris: Now the economy. I hope you handle this as well as you handled immigration. I'm gonna drill down in your icy cold shallow waters a little bit more now, and hope the blow-out preventer gizmo works better than it did in the Gulf. So, Clinton, what about jobs and growth?
Hillary: If I can believe in more middle class Ladders of Opportunity, so can you. Think lovely thoughts. Donald doesn't believe in Ladders. He only believes in Chutes. He's a sore loser.
Donald: Saudi Arabia must pay. Also too Germany and South Korea and Japan, not to single them out, but why aren't they paying for our free college tuition? We're going to cut business taxes on massively rich people very massively. We're dying at One Percent GDP.
Hillary: Let me translate that if I may, Chris.
Donald: No you can't.
Hillary: I will not raise taxes on poor struggling people who make only $249,000 a year. When my husband, on whose coattails I am riding, was in office, we had a surplus caused by the bubble economy that was pumped up and later blown apart by deregulation. So we know how to control hot air. Obama's austerity measures for the middle class and poor then cut the deficit by two-thirds. Hooray for the plutocracy! We have to invest in people to make money off of people. Free-market neoliberalism with a happy face works for the One Percent!
Chris: So more Obama stimulus? Since I work at Fox News, let me get the usual dig in and falsely assert what a total drag it was on the economy.
Hillary: I've never seen plutocrats so physically distraught from an economic catastrophe as they were in the Bush administration. It was touch and go for the poor things for a couple of months. President Obama simply doesn't get the credit he deserves for ensuring that more than 90% of the gains have gone straight back to them. It was a terrible recession for them.
Donald: The economy is so bad I should be winning. Clinton can brag, but the results of NAFTA didn't kick in until they were out of office. Now she wants to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She lied, they fact-checked, and I was so honored.
Hillary: When I saw the final fine print of TPP when I announced my candidacy I decided to be against it. Unless it "creates jobs, increases national security and raises incomes" I'll be against it after I am president too. And that is being deliberately vague and pragmatic. As I said in my leaked speech to bankers, there is a public stance and a private stance. And Donald built his Tower with Chinese steel.
Donald: You had a chance to stop me for 30 years and you didn't. You're a mess.
Hillary: When I was working for the Children's Defense Fund for a minute, Donald was kicking children out of their homes. When I was going against teachers' unions in Arkansas, he was inheriting millions from his Daddy. When I wore a soft powder pink suit to China as the consort of a president, he was fat-shaming Miss Universe. When I was curled up in the Situation Room, watching the violent porn of the Osama bin Laden execution, Donald was taping Celebrity Apprentice. Oh the humanity. Oh the things I have endured for this country.
Donald: You're fired. Go directly to jail.
Chris: Clinton?
Hillary: He never says he's sorry for anything. At least I admit that mistakes were sometimes made and I might do things differently all over again if I possessed even a smidgen of insight. But Donald even went after my war-mongering Republican friend John McCain. Ugh. Very, very dark. That's not who America is.
Donald: I'd love to talk about ISIS and stuff.
Chris: Okey-dokey. What about the emails and the corrupt Clinton Foundation, Clinton?
Hillary: Everything I did, I did for America. I'm thrilled to talk about it. So let me dodge the question and say that the Trump Foundation is for the enrichment of Donald Trump.
Donald: We put up the American flag at Mar-a-Lago.
Hillary: Release your tax returns!
Donald: It's because of people like you that I can avoid taxes. You could have changed the laws when you were a senator. Your donors are just like me and even worse than me.
Hillary: Chinese steel.
Chris: Will you accept the result of this election, Trump?
Donald: I see dead people. Voting. Stay tuned. It's rigged because Hillary should be in jail and never have been allowed to run.
Chris: But tradition, tradition!
Hillary: Horrifying to only now pretend to discover that Trump is not a gracious person. The FBI investigated me for a whole year. What more can you ask of a candidate? What's more, he complained he was cheated when he didn't get an Emmy for Celebrity Apprentice.
Donald: I should have.
Hillary: His mindset is funny, yet troubling. He's a big fat loser. This is not how democracy works. Democracy is a game and, as Obama said, you should not start whining before the game is even finished. Donald is rudely denigrating and talking down to a sporting event.
Chris: Hold on, folks. This kind of straight talk is no good to anyone at the top of the heap. So on to Foreign Hot Spots. What's hot and what's not? Give it your best Michelin Guide ratings. How's about Mosul?
Hillary: So glad there are boots on the ground and I will forever object to boots on the ground. And then on to Syria! We desperately need an intelligence surge. And a no-fly zone with lots of collateral damage and death in order to humanely protect Syrians.
Donald: So sad. MacArthur and Patton are rolling in their graves.
Hillary: Donald went on the Howard Stern show to support the invasion of Iraq.
Donald: Did not.
Hillary: Did too. I got audio. He thinks he's better than me just because I voted for a sham war. I watched bin Laden get brought to justice with a hundred bullets while he was doing stupid Celebrity Apprentice. Nonny nonny boo boo. He's unfit every time he talks.
Donald: No, you are. John Podesta said some horrible things about you, and he's right. Bernie said you have bad judgment.
Hillary: Bernie really likes me and he really hates you.
Chris: Let's go to Aleppo! Trump, you falsely said it had fallen.
Donald: No, I said it was a catastrophic mess. Heckuva job, Hillary.
Chris: A hotshot general said your no-fly zone would mean war with Russia, Clinton.
Hillary: War saves lives and makes wars end. But maybe we can strike a deal. Rome wasn't built in a day. And I am not letting any Syrian refugees in without being vetted. Even that little boy in the ambulance with the blood and dirt all over his face who we use as propaganda. We rely on Muslim Americans to spy on other Muslim Americans. And let me gratuitously add that the Muslim American who shot up the Orlando gay nightclub was born in the same New York borough as Donald! We have to up our war games and be smarter.
Donald: ISIS is in 32 countries. Don't make me spell them out.
Chris: OK. Now let's move on to the false claim that Social Security and Medicare are going broke. Why are you both ignoring this totally non-existent crisis?
Donald: I am going to create tremendous jobs.
Hillary: Back when Saint Ronald Reagan was president, Donald took out a full page ad and said America was the laughingstock of the world. I don't add to the national debt, which is indeed a very serious problem of the very serious people. We are going to politely beg the wealthy to pay their fair share. I want to invest in people and make them grow just like commodities. Donald's father was a millionaire and my father was only comfortably bourgeois.
Donald: I'm going to stick with the lie that cutting taxes on rich greedy bastards will create more jobs.
Chris: But what about entitlements for greedy widows, orphans and retirees?
Donald: Repeal and replace Obamacare. I'm not saying with what.
Hillary: Replenish the Social Security trust fund by taxing Donald Trump more -- unless he can figure a way to get out of it.
Donald: Such a nasty woman.
Hillary: Means-test Social Security, which is a sneaky way of turning it into a welfare program ripe for future cuts, instead of the social insurance program it is at the present time. I am euphemizing this for debate purposes as "harder decisions."
Chris: On a lighter note, let's end with some funny unrehearsed closing statements on why people should elect either one of you president. Clinton, it's your turn first.
Hillary: It's my turn. Awesome, incredible, mission, life's work, children, families.
Donald: She's raising money to control people. Me, I want to Make America Great Again.We have to take care of the military better than we take care of immigrants. We need law and order in mainly black inner cities. I will do more for them than she can ever do in ten lifetimes.
Chris: That brings to an end this series of corporate-controlled sham debates to which third and fourth party candidates have been barred because of low poll numbers caused by deliberate lack of coverage by the mainstream media. Now, America, the decision is up to you.
(Cheers, applause, spin, mainstream media becomes uniformly aghast that Trump thinks the whole process is rigged at the very same time they keep spreading the fear that Russia is trying to rig the election.)
Thank you. I was busy downloading pictures of my trip, with my lovely wife, to the Bread & Puppet Museum in Glover, http://breadandpuppet.org/museum, having a quick lunch at the Busy Bee Diner, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Busy-Bee/148519892015272 and, before heading back to the Champlain Valley, checking out the Museum of Everyday Life. http://museumofeverydaylife.org/
ReplyDeleteIt was a lovely, Indian Summer Day in Vermont, although peak leaves are gone in the NEK. And the after glow was not really ruined either, although I did watch maybe 20 minutes before I walked away and moved onto better things. I also picked up a small book, at the Bread and Puppet, "Daisy Dopp's Vermont" published by the Orleans County Historical Society. Reading parts of it, does make me wish for a simpler time of hard work on the farm, but alas, those times have vanished like the jobs to Mexico and China. And pretty sure that after yesterday, the warm weather we have been enjoying has headed south to Mexico with those jobs. I thank you for spending your time watching for me and reporting back. Later that night I sat in my favorite chair and read Chapter 32 of "Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton, and finished a chapter of "In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck. Talk about cognitive dissonance. It seems the Clinton/Trump imboglio would have created the same feelings, but I think my blood pressure was better controlled by relaxing and reading Wharton's elegant prose and appreciating Steinbeck's impassioned speechifying for the common man.
Karen, you nailed it! NYT should give you a column.
ReplyDeleteI watched and listened to some of it via Jill's Facebook feed. Trump landed some good ones. HRC is so infuriating with her finger-pointing at Russia (and China), repeated assertions that Trump and Putin are in cahoots, and assurance of a no-fly zone. She has no cred whatsoever as a feminist or progressive, yet she is supported as such by self-proclaimed feminists and progressives. The cognitive dissonance is so thick, and the MSM provides a cover for this continued judgment lapse. I do love reading the occasional testimonials of people who were pro-HRC, even voting for her in the primaries, but have since changed their minds upon learning of the corruption.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely LOVED reading this, Karen. Made me laugh out loud, and I am still grinning. I am going to share it widely and read it over and over.
This transcript is a scary, funny, crazy, appallingly true tour de force. You've conjured Oscar Wilde. Brilliant.
ReplyDelete"War saves lives and makes wars end."- Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteIt's tough to do a parody of this stuff. It sort of transcends anything you can say about it. This was a fun read, though, and would actually have saved me a couple hours of my life had I just waited and read it instead of watching the debate. I certainly laughed more than I did during the real debate.
ReplyDeletejk said...
ReplyDeleteThank gawd its the last one! For the past 14 months I have been mesmerized by this spectacle, wondering how it would all break bad, hoping for the Hindenberg explosion (where the Donald is overcome by an unexpected moment of clarity and self awareness about the colossal nature of his imbecility that he either goes into exile or offs himself), or waiting for a deafening high impact vehicle collision accompanied by a ball of flames (where the GOP renounces him and stops campaign funding when he is convicted of tax fraud). But no...there is no functional GOP, and there will be no spectacular ball of flame, no self awareness accompanied by public shame. That's what we're all waiting for, right? No, this campaign is the car careening off highway 1, bouncing down the hillside, wheels flying off, top and hood crushing roll-overs, fenders flying off in never-ending end-over-end pitches until there is no sight of the car...no spectacular ball of flame, just silence, no sight of broken Donald. Ahhh, silence. I'll take it gladly.
Karen... love your brilliant script. Get some of it into Times comments.
ReplyDeleteHeckuva job, Hillary? Now there’s a useful phrase for the future. I didn’t watch the debates, just read reports. But this one, I couldn’t even stand to read about it.
Trump is perfect for Halloween---the political Frankenstein monster. With just a little make up he’d be perfect.
We need Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder to do a remake of their Frankenstein spoof, starring Trumpf, and he'd probably love it. Get Hillary in there as the one who will protect the townspeople from the monster, somehow.
TCM showed just showed the whole chain of Frankenstein movies. To watch those and then the debates soon after is too big a dose of horror!
Anyway, maybe she’ll let the wealthy and corporations decide how much tax they will pay. They know best. And means testing is the easiest way to polarize various groups, using resentment to play them off each other, then win elections by budget cuts.
The media lives off these debates and then endless star pundit ‘analysis’.
From Alternet:
CBS Exec Brags How Trump Is Great for Ratings.
Les Moonves---
“They’re not even talking about issues. They’re throwing bombs at each other....Most of the ads are not about issues; they’re sort of like the debates. They’re saying, he did this or he did that. Doesn’t say what I stand for.
I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going.
Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? This is pretty amazing…. Who would have thought that this circus would come to town?
But, you know—it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.”
Any comment on the Al Smith dinner on TV, with Trump/Clinton & everybody smiling and joking? Saw a glimpse, and it looked unappetizing.
ReplyDeleteA friend told me he believes he has the symptoms of a cocaine user. Remember he demanded that they have drug tests before the last debate accusing Hillary of being on drugs as a result of the intensity of her arguments. But definitely something wrong with him, especially at the Al Smith dinner. Hard to watch.
ReplyDeleteHere's Obama back in 2008 admitting voter fraud and rigged elections exist, contrary to what he's saying now in response to Donald Trump's identical assertions.
ReplyDelete“Well, I tell you what it helps in Ohio, that we got Democrats in charge of the machines,” Obama said regarding the threat of election-rigging.
He continued, “Whenever people are in power, they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction. That’s why we’ve got to have, I believe, a voting rights division in the Justice Department that is nonpartisan, and that is serious about investigating cases of voter fraud.”
“That’s why we need paper trails on these new electronic machines so that you actually have something that you can hang on to after you’ve punched that letter—make sure it hasn’t been hacked into,” he added, admitting that even Democrats have "monkeyed around" with election results:
"I want to be honest, it’s not as if it’s just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too."
Recorded by C-Span which is linked in this article:
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/obama-speaks-rigged-elections-2008
We are trapped in the Age of Absurdity. Crowds running off cliffs are absurd; but so are saints kneeling in their holy corners living individual lives free of fault. Highlighting the absurd is a reasonable thing for writers to do at this point in history, and Karen's report is an exemplary description of how absurdity itself, as a distinct agent, is on the verge of seizing great power to push us deeper into confusion and absurdity.
ReplyDeleteElsewhere a father, with whom I am remotely acquainted, and his son recently entered into an email conversation about the absurdity of our times and the available correctives. This father might fairly be classified as a long-time and radical low-consumption architect/city planner. Father and son have shared their conversations with a circle of acquaintances about what is to be done as we wade through the absurdities. Here, edited by yours truly, is the father's closer.
__________
What can we individuals do?
We've all heard those sixties expressions, ‘save one person, and you’ve saved the world.’ Be content with depth, not breadth, acting locally, as you do so beautifully, and thinking globally. I’ve been thinking about this and have reached a depressing conclusion. If I do ALL the things that lie within my power to limit my greenhouse gas emissions, it will be utterly inadequate in the face of the problem.
I don’t see anything individuals can do that are adequate. Only the President and Congress have the power to make adequate changes.
Clearly neither Trump nor Hilary will do the right things. Hilary is a hawk, beholden to the corporate elite. Her administration will increase fracking, offshore drilling, tar sands development, cars, oil, wars, militarization of the police, further elimination of our rights. Climate change will worsen under a Hilary administration. Voting for her is ecological suicide.
In stark contrast, the Green Party platform states that humans are not separate from each other and not separate from the Earth. Here are some points of her platform.
Recognize that climate change is the single greatest threat facing life on Earth. If we continue business as usual, the life that remains on Earth will be nothing like what we’ve known. Imagine a 6 billion person die-off. Imagine 90% of Earth uninhabitable by mammals.
A Jill Stein/Green Party administration could initiate exercises for the nation that will empower people now desecrating nature to come to the realization they are desecrating themselves, and to stop.
Stop all burning of fossil fuels by 2030, switching to renewable energy. Enact an emergency Green New Deal, creating 20 million new jobs well worth doing. Cut military spending by at least 50%, and close the 700+ foreign military bases. The military is the worst polluter, the most wasteful part of the USA. (JS: employ the military to do good instead of killing.) Her platform includes many other life-giving parts: education, health, food, women’s rights, minimum wage, etc. etc. etc. Check it out:
http://www.jill2016.com/platform
If enough voters choose not the lesser evil but our only hope for survival, we have a chance.
Love you,
Dad