If Trump's record on women is fair game, then so is Hillary's, plus 5 more debate takeaways

1. Somebody forgot to tell the moderator that he was supposed to moderate and not debate Donald Trump.  Lester Holt, of the Nobody But Clinton network, was clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton. I suspect he was secretly auditioning to be her press secretary.  Just  tally the number of times Holt interrupted Trump and pressed him on follow up questions and then compare that number to Hillary’s. As we say in Dixie, Hillary got some home-cookin'.
2. Hillary Clinton does not hold the American people in high esteem. She previously referred to us as a “Basket of Deplorables” and irredeemable. But during the debate she accused us of having an “implicit bias” against African-Americans. She seems to believe the only way to redeem all of us gun-toting, Bible-clinging Deplorables is to shame us into submission.
3. If Donald Trump’s record on women is fair game, then so is Hillary’s. She needs to be called out for taking money from countries that treat women as second-class citizens. She needs to be called out for the terrible things she said about her husband’s “lady friends.” Hillary also took a swipe at Trump’s achievements. She said the only reason he was successful was because of his father. To be fair, Trump could argue that the only reason for Hillary’s success is because of her husband.
4. Trump needs to let go of the birther stuff – even if the mainstream media won’t. And he needs to either release his tax returns or come up with a better excuse for why he won’t.
5. There was no clear winner – but that does not mean Trump lost. In spite of the Mainstream Media’s disgusting narrative, millions of Americans tuned in to discover that Trump does not wear gold-lined bed sheets or burn crosses at Mar-a-Lago.
6. There is bipartisan agreement that Hillary should never do another shoulder shimmy on national television. Ever.

Trump: Campaign has raised nearly $18 million since debate

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told supporters Tuesday that his campaign had raised nearly $18 million since Monday night's debate against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Earlier, Trump had tweeted that he had raised nearly $13 million in the previous 24 hours through online donations and “National Call Day,” a challenge for top fundraisers rewarded for pulling in at least $250,000.
“We’re still going! Thank you America! #MAGA" (Make America Great Again), Trump also said in the tweet. He announced the updated figure at an airport rally in Melbourne, Fla.
Most polls have Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton virtually tied, with less than six weeks before Election Day.
Trump, who essentially self-funded his primary campaign, has largely trailed Clinton in general election fundraising.
Clinton last month raised $143 million, compared to $90 million for Trump.

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The announcement Tuesday -- the day after Trump and Clinton’s first debate -- was followed by a Trump campaign fundraising letter signed by Trump’s son and adviser, Eric Trump.
“I just learned that we’re only $1 MILLION away from raising a record amount of money in a 24-hour period,” reads the letter, which requests donations of $100 or less. “The press is reporting on it as we speak. But you and I both know that if we don’t break this record now, they’ll use that against us to boost Hillary.”
He also pointed out that both campaigns have just three days left before having to file their final, federal end-of-the-quarter fundraising report and that the second of their three debates is just 12 days away.
“We have to keep fighting, we have to keep pushing,” he wrote in closing. “We can’t get complacent and give up.”

Clinton, Trump trade taunts after testy debate

How the candidates' debate performance will impact the race

The day after Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded verbal jousts in the most-watched presidential debate in history, the Republican and Democratic candidates slammed each other while thousands of miles apart Tuesday.
At an evening rally in Melbourne, Fla., Trump said the former secretary of state was "stuck in the past."
"For 90 minutes, on issue after issue, Hillary Clinton defended the terrible status quo, while I laid out a plan to bring back prosperity for the American people," Trump said Tuesday. "For 90 minutes, she argued against change. I want dramatic change."
The real estate mogul added that he was "holding back — I didn't want to do anything to embarrass her." Trump previously said he held back to avoid embarrassing the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea, who also was in the debate audience.
Trump repeated several attack lines against Clinton and resurrected the "Crooked Hillary" nickname he gave her earlier in the campaign.
"The only thing she's succeeded at is helping her donors and covering up her crimes," Trump said.

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Earlier in the day, Clinton claimed Trump "didn't prepare" for Monday night's debate, the first of three that will take place over a period of 23 days.
"[He was] kind of digging me for spending time off the campaign trail, getting prepared," Clinton told supporters in Raleigh, N.C. "I'll tell you what else I'm prepared for, prepared to be President of the United States."
Clinton also repeated her debate speculation that Trump is refusing to release his returns because he goes years without paying any federal taxes. "That makes me smart," was Trump's coy response in the debate, but on Tuesday, Clinton insisted it was nothing to brag about.
"If not paying taxes makes him smart, what does that make all the rest of us?" she asked her supporters.
The next debate between Clinton and Trump will be held Oct. 9 in St. Louis.

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Clinton scores by staying on offense, Trump by sticking to serious issues

The tone was cordial at the outset, each candidate being polite to the other while hitting their talking points: she on equal pay for women, he on China and Mexico stealing American jobs.
Hillary Clinton said it was good to be with Donald Trump. Trump said he probably agreed with Clinton on child care. But it didn’t last long.
But Clinton, perhaps surprisingly, was the aggressor all night. She threw the first jabs, saying Trump’s father loaned him $14 million and that he was pushing “Trumped-up trickle-down” to mainly help the wealthy.
Trump came back by saying his dad gave him “a small loan,” made a show of calling her “Secretary Clinton” and said she should have started pushing for jobs years earlier.
“Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis,” she said.
“That’s called business, by the way,” he interrupted.

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Another jab: Clinton said Trump called climate change a hoax. Another interruption: Trump insisted he never said that.
When Trump insisted Clinton did nothing to create jobs for 30 years, she smiled and played the spousal card: “I think my husband did a pretty good job in the 1990s.”
It was 20 minutes into the faceoff when Trump finally went on offense, accusing Clinton of dropping her support for the Pacific trade deal to match his opposition.
“You called it the gold standard,” he said.
“Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts,” Clinton countered.
As the debate wore on, Clinton acted bemused at Trump’s charges, smiling and at one point suggesting he was saying “crazy” things. That seemed to aggravate the Republican nominee, who started talking faster and louder in pressing his case.
The good news for Trump is that he was debating serious issues with the former secretary of State, made no obvious gaffes and delivered no low blows.
His overarching indictment seemed to be that politics as usual had created a mess in the country: “Typical politician. All talk, no action, never gonna happen.”
The debate heated up when Holt asked why Trump wouldn’t release his tax returns. He gave his standard answer about an IRS audit but said he’d disclose them if Clinton would release her 33,000 deleted emails.
When Clinton gave an unusually crisp answer—it was a mistake and she would offer no excuses—Trump pounced. He said the private server wasn’t a mistake, that it was intentional, and noted that some of her aides had invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Just as he was getting a little traction, Clinton turned the debate to Trump’s business, saying she had met people “who were stiffed by you and your businesses, Donald,” and that “I’m certainly relieved my late father never did business with you.” Next thing you know, Trump was explaining his four corporate bankruptcies.
The differences were stark when the debate turned to crime. “We have to bring back law and order,” Trump declared. Clinton said it was unfortunate that he was painting “such a dire, negative picture of black communities.”
Clinton missed an opportunity to defend the police when asked if they are biased against blacks, saying many of us have to struggle with implicit bias.
The birtherism section did not go well for Trump. Asked why he had pushed the birther issue against President Obama, Trump blamed Clinton advisers Sidney Blumenthal and Patty Solis Doyle for first floating the issue in 2008. He deflected Holt’s question about why he continued to press the issue after the president produced his birth certificate. Clinton, ignoring his comments about her aides, accused Trump of pushing a “racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen.”
Trump was able to blame the administration for the rise of ISIS, repeating his refrain that American forces should have “taken the oil.” When she said Trump supported the invasion of Iraq (as she did in the Senate), he kept saying “wrong” as she was speaking—a microcosm of the debate.
Holt then declared as fact (which Matt Lauer did not) that Trump had supported the Iraq invasion. Trump called that "mainstream media nonsense," citing, as he has in the past, an interview with Neil Cavuto (in which Trump did not oppose the war) and private conversations with Sean Hannity (which Hannity has confirmed).
The bottom line: Clinton set the pace for the Long Island debate, and Trump spent much of his time responding. He scored his points, but often as a counterpuncher.
A final word about the moderator: Holt lost control of the debate several times. And he was more aggressive against Donald Trump. He asked Trump a hard question about not releasing his tax returns, but didn’t do the same with Clinton’s email mess, merely asking her to respond after Trump raised it in rebuttal. He pressed Trump three times on the birther issue, with no comparable attempt to pin down Clinton.
Holt's fact-checking attempts were all against Trump. He followed up on Trump’s call for stop-and-frisk tactics against crime, saying that in New York it was struck down by the courts. And he backed Clinton on Trump's lack of public opposition to the 2003 Iraq war.
Holt often let the candidates go at it, and go at it they did. But his role may prove to be as controversial as what the nominees said.

Agency probes whether California Dem Party funneled illicit oil donations to governor

What's next for Jerry Brown amid illicit oil money scandal?

California’s campaign finance watchdog agency is looking into allegations the state’s Democratic Party funneled millions of dollars from oil and energy companies to high-profile politicians, including Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2014 reelection campaign.
“It was a laundry machine for dirty energy contributions to the Brown administration, a slush fund of sorts, hiding big oil, utility and other dirty energy dollars in close proximity to officials’ actions,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, the group that brought the complaint.
A Consumer Watchdog report “Brown’s Dirty Hands” highlighted transactions between 2011 and 2014 that seem to show contributions from Chevron, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. were given to the state’s Democratic Party around the time the party gave Brown’s campaign donations of similar amounts.
“Twenty-six energy companies with business before the state greased the skids via $9.85 million in political donations to Brown’s gubernatorial campaigns, ballot initiatives, favorite causes ... and the California Democratic Party since Brown’s run for office in 2010,” the report alleged.
In all, the companies gave $4.4 million to the state party, which gave Brown’s re-election campaigns $4.7 million.
Galena West, chief of enforcement for the Fair Political Practices Commission, confirmed Friday it is now investigating the California Democratic Party “for alleged violation of the Political Reform Act’s campaign reporting provisions resulting from information contained in your sworn complaint.”

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However, West said the agency would not be investigating others named in the complaint, which would include Brown, at this time.
California Democratic Party spokesman Michael Soller told the Los Angeles Times his group has received the letter from West and they have “been cooperating fully with their inquiry.”
Brown over the years has sided squarely with environmentalists on issues like climate change, but also has sparred with them in other policy disputes.
Consumer Watchdog often has gone after Brown and other state Democratic leaders over the years.
In March, the FPPC opened an investigation into Brown’s executive secretary, Nancy McFadden, over a similar Consumer Watchdog complaint.
Calls to Brown’s office by FoxNews.com were not immediately returned.
A spokesman for the governor told The San Diego Union-Tribune, “The decision not to broaden the investigation speaks for itself.”
Consumer Watchdog, in its report, also questioned the timing of company contributions and alleged they were made the same time the governor was discussing California’s climate change initiatives.
“The timing on donations suggests that the Brown Administration used the Democratic Party as a pass-through to Brown committees as reward for legislative or regulatory action on behalf of these companies,” the report said.  “For example, at the end of December 2013, three months after weakened fracking legislation was chaptered, Chevron donated $350,000 to the Democratic Party. One week later, the party donated $300,000 to Brown for Governor 2014, while Chevron donated $54,400 to the campaign that day—the maximum amount allowed.”
A few weeks later, Brown came out against the oil severance tax that Consumer Watchdog argues would have produced billions for the state.
“Chevron had long opposed the tax,” the report said.
“Hopefully this will shed some light on what looks like a backdoor laundry machine for energy company contributions and probably extends beyond the energy industry,” Court said in a statement.

Trump questions Clinton's temperament, calls her 'out of control'

Donald Trump tried at Monday's debate to turn the tables on presidential rival Hillary Clinton, questioning her temperament and calling her “totally out of control” during a recent speech.
Trump, the Republican nominee, was referring to a video address Clinton, the Democratic nominee, gave last week to a union group in Las Vegas in which she touted her support for big labor, then loudly asked, “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead? … I need you to get Donald Trump’s record out to everybody.”
Trump said near the close of the 90-minute debate, “I don’t know who you were talking to, Secretary Clinton, but you were totally out of control. I said, ‘There’s a person that’s got a temperament problem. That’s out of control.’ ”
Clinton and others previously have called into question Trump’s temperament, with Clinton repeatedly suggesting it makes him “unfit to serve as president.”
On Monday, she said shooting Iranian vessels “out of the water” for approaching U.S. vessels in international waters in the Persian Gulf, as Trump recently suggested, would be tantamount to an act of war.
“I have better judgement,” Trump said. “I also have a much better temperament than she does. I think my strongest asset, maybe, is my temperament. I have a winning temperament. I know how to win.”

Trump goes after Fed Reserve's Yellen, claims she's 'more political' than Clinton

Fed Reserve Janet Yellen

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pulled Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen into Monday night's presidential debate, claiming she’s holding down interest rates to keep the economy humming while President Obama remains in office.
He also called her “more political” than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
“We have a Fed that’s doing political thing -- this Janet Yellen of the Fed -- by keeping interest rates at this level,” Trump said. “The day Obama goes off … playing golf for the rest of his life, when they raise interest rates, you are going to see some bad things happen.”
It was not the first time that Trump, a wealthy businessman, has come after Yellen and the Reserve about rates.
Last week, Yellen, the Reserve’s chairman, told reporters that “partisan politics play no role in our decisions” about setting short-term rates.
“We are in a very big, ugly bubble,” Trump said Monday. “The Fed is not doing its job. The Fed is being is more political than Hillary Clinton.”