Beware of those who try to scare us about the deficit. David Dayen exposes the agenda behind those who are pushing the deficit and debt as a huge problem and then use it to urge cuts in Social Security benefits. The people whom Social Security benefits the most are the less well-off, and cutting their benefits without raising the cap on contributions is just another way for the wealthy a way to achieve their goal of making life easier for themselves and harder for those who are not well-to-do. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton propose to maintain (and perhaps even increase) benefits and pay for it by raising the cap on contributions.
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For the benefit of those readers who do not live in the US and may be a little unclear about how the president is actually chosen, this post outlines the main details. The president is formally elected by something called the Electoral College, a largely virtual institution that exists just for the purpose of electing the president every four years. Each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia is allocated a certain number of what are called ‘electoral votes’ equal to the sum of the Senators and members of the House of Representatives that the state sends to Congress. You need to win a majority of those votes to be elected president.
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Although the title of this post was from Hunter Thompson’s famous book on the 1972 election campaign, it turned out to be prophetic when it came to the debate. Donald Trump tried to instill deep fear in the American people about the dire situation the country is in at present and how much worse it will get under a Clinton presidency, while Clinton warned us how dangerous it would be to have someone with the attitudes and temperament of Trump in charge of the world’s biggest economy and the most powerful weaponry. (You can read the transcript here.)
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Tonight we will see the final big-stage performance of the long-running production of Donald Trump: Unshackled!, when he and Hillary Clinton take part in the final debate. He and his advisors must know that they are running out of time and, going by the poll numbers, have to do something dramatic to avoid going down to defeat next month. Although it is not clear how much these big set piece political events influence the race, this will be the last chance for Trump to speak directly to a large nationwide audience and I expect him to come out with both guns blazing as he tries to unsettle Clinton as well as lash out at anyone whom he sees as working against him. His list of enemies is, of course, a long one by now and growing longer by the day as more reports emerge about his predatory activities.
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Despite a recent survey that showed that Indian Americans had some of the lowest levels of support for Donald Trump, he is not entirely without friends in that community. A Hindu nationalist group called the Republican Hindu Coalition held an event in New Jersey at which he received an enthusiastic reception when made a brief appearance and said, “I’m a big fan of Hindu, and I’m a big fan of India”, suggesting by his use of ‘Hindu’ rather than ‘Hinduism’ that he does not seem to realize that ‘Hindu’ refers to a person who follows the religion of Hinduism.
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