The Final Countdown: Who Wins, Who Loses?

Finally. We reach this, the final showdown. The last debate of the 2016 political free-for-all that's become so consistently embarrassing that it's now cliche to even call it a shit-show. So then, my thoughts?

• Moderator Chris Matthews opening with "None of the questions have been shared with the parties." Good. Makes for a pleasant change of pace, doesn't it, DNC?

Topic: Supreme Court

• Hillary, why are *you* against Citizens United and dark, unaccountable money? You wouldn't be standing there without it. 
• Trump's judges will be pro-life with a clearly conservative bent. There goes his chance with disenfranchised Bernie voters. 
• Hillary: "I support the second amendment." No, you don't. No further comment needed here.
• Roe V Wade: I'm with Her on this one. Not on the Planned Parenthood thing, but on Roe V Wade, definitely. Planned Parenthood has documented income outside the government, nearly half of it's income, and it could survive without it. Or better yet, incorporate it into existing health care structures. 
• Hillary on late-term abortion bans "When I voted as a senator I did not think that was the case." Did you not READ the case? 
• Trump, If they "rip the fetus out of the womb" 3-4 days before the due date, wouldn't that just be a cesarean, unless the baby turned out nonviable and a threat to the mother's health? 

Topic: Immigration

• Trump, there's a difference between a "path to citizenship" and amnesty. One actually involves making it easier for people to become citizens legally, the other just ignores the problem.
• He's not wrong, despite the meme of "Bad Hombres," about having some people that have crossed borders that need to be taken back. Have you seen Breaking Bad? I live in Albuquerque. I know people like that. It's practically a documentary. 
• Hillary: "I voted for border security in the senate." Yeah. A fence. Which acts much like a wall. 
• The words "Twitter War" just happened during a presidential debate.
• Trump: "Hillary Clinton wanted the wall." Called it. 
• Hillary: "New technology to protect the border." I read that as "drone strikes on the US/Mexico border by 2018. 
• Trump: "Obama has deported more people." Yep. He's right. ABC News even ran a story on this. 
• Hillary, stop manterrupting the moderator.
• OH GOD DAMN CHRIS MATTHEWS JUST QUOTED WIKILEAKS SPEECH BRAZILIAN BANK 225 THOUSAND DOLLARS HOLY HELL THE LOOK ON HER FACE
• Hillary's response to Wikileaks: "RED SCARE RED SCARE RED SCARE" 
• Wait, are we still on immigration? 
• Why *won't* anyone else say the words "radical Islamic terrorism?"
• Trump: "If Russia gets along with the US, that'd be good." Why is this a bad thing? I don't want another Cold War. Can we *please* make some kind of peace with Russia? 
• Hillary calling Trump a puppet is the only time I've ever seen "NO YOU" used as a valid defense.
• Trump, stop manterrupting the moderator.
• Both of these people want us to remain Team America World Police. Trump just wants us to get paid for it. 

Topic: Economy

• Hillary's not doing bad here. She's mentioned trades and apprenticeships, which is good because college degrees have been devalued over the last few generations. 
• Stop name-checking Bernie, Hillary. We haven't forgotten, and it's not making you look any better.
• So the basic difference here is Trump wants to invest in rich business owners, trusting them to spend that money to increase jobs. Hillary wants to invest in education and the middle class, trusting them to use that to better themselves. I think Hillary's got this one. With one caveat that she's ignoring. The income from being Team America World Police.
• I love Trump's strategy of "I've done all this shady shit, so I'm in a perfect position to identify it and remove it." He's not wrong, but god damn the balls it takes to say that. 
• Hillary: "Donald thinks belittling and attacking women makes him feel better." Hillary, Donald belittles and attacks everyone. Didn't you watch the RNC debates? Little Marco? Lyin Ted? Low Energy Jeb? He's not discriminating here. 
• "Make our country even greater" - Hillary Clinton, 2016
• "Nobody has more respect for women than I do." Still don't believe you, Trump. Neither does the audience.
• "Let's not be divisive, let's lift people up." Like you did Bernie, right, Hillary?
• "Took money to buy a six foot portrait. Who does that?" You trying to diss Copperhead's Biggie painting? 



God DAMN Luke Cage was good.

• Aaand we're back to tax returns.
• Trump has a good point here. How do we know Hillary won't protect her donors? 
• Trump: Media is corrupt. Media: TRUMP LITERALLY HITLER. 
• Hillary: "Media is fine." Media: SOMEBODY SAID WIKILEAKS CUT THE FEED.
• Trump says Hillary shouldn’t be allowed to run. So that makes two of you. 

Topic: Foreign Hotspots, or "What's a Mosul?"

• Do we want to put troops back to replace the troops we pulled out when we finished the job the first time? Ugh. But Trump is right about one thing: You don't telegraph your movements to your enemies. The people we're after probably *are* already gone. 
• Hillary: "You should ask Bernie Sanders who he's supporting for president" We would, but he's too busy In his third house. Which probably has a bathroom bigger than my flat.
• "What's an Aleppo?" A catastrophe. Have you seen it? Have you? HAVE YOU? 
• "If a Russian plane violates the no fly zone, does President Clinton shoot that plane down?" Oh boy. Here we go.
• "Women and children" Oh right. Women are the primary victims of war, right Hillary? Right? 
• It's swaths, Trump, not swatches. 
• GDP vs debt: "Why are both of you ignoring this?" God DAMN Christ Matthews you are a hero. 
• "I wonder when America really was great?" Comparatively speaking to the rest of the world? For a while now. Will both of you stop bashing the US? There's a hell of a lot of worse places to live than the US. 

Topic: Social security and Medicare

• What does Obamacare have to do with this? 
• In the middle of Hillary's answer Trump mutters "such a nasty woman." Oh Trump, we're gonna hear from VICE or Vox or Huffpo about that one. Or all of them. For a solid week. 
• Hillary please stop talking about HIS plan and start talking about yours. You've spent more time talking about his plan than yours. 
• "Emphasize wellness." Hillary, my right leg hurts. I have a nerve that misfires in my right thigh that causes pain, itching, numbness, whatever depending on its mood. I have a muscle in my hip that has me on a prescription for Valium because it tenses and squeezes another nerve. I have an ankle that was pulverized when I was 17 and still hurts, and I can't feel about 30% of my foot. Please tell me how wellness will help that, when my GP visits are 50% more expensive than they were a few years ago, and my insurance covers not even 20% of an MRI? 

I voted Obama. It's terribly conflicting when Trump says "You get four more years of Obama when you elect her" because that hope that was promised fizzled. But he's such a joke. This was surprisingly subdued for a final debate. Hillary is the ultimate culmination of generations of political breeding. She's the Apex Politician. Trump is a madman that's managed to calm down quite a bit. I still don't want either of these two. At this point, I can't help but lean more towards the mountain-climbing hippie pothead that doesn't seen to own a pair of slacks and sometimes randomly sticks his tongue out and forgets the names of cities and leaders. I feel like he'd do less harm to the country than either of these two.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to take a Valium to relax my hip muscle and a Vicodin to stop my thigh from burning and hope that whichever of these potential monsters takes over the country I can still afford them a year from now. Since this was the last debate, next week I'm going to take it easy and talk about a topic I enjoy and show you all something really neat I got.