{"id":24267,"date":"2016-10-19T14:04:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T21:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=24267"},"modified":"2016-10-19T14:04:37","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T21:04:37","slug":"questions-for-the-circus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/19\/questions-for-the-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions for the Circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight is the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  I recommend you open at least a dozen giant, industrial strength barf bags in advance.  As the moderator is Chris Wallace from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise<\/em>, I expect him to join Trump in tag-teaming Hillary.  The New York Times has  composed a dozen prospective questions, two for each segment.  Here are the first three.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\"1019questions\"<\/h5>\n
Entitlements<\/h5>\n

Do you favor increasing or reducing Social Security benefits? If so, how would you do it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than 60 million people each month receive Social Security benefits totaling more than $74 billion. Polls show that retirement security is a top concern for Americans. Fewer people can count on traditional pension benefits, and some people do not have retirement savings.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump has said he would not cut Social Security benefits. Mrs. Clinton wants to make Social Security more generous for widows and for those who take time out of the paid work force to care for a child or a sick family member. She has said she would require the wealthiest Americans to pay higher taxes.<\/p>\n

But an aging population is a driver of rising government debt and of a budget deficit that climbed last fiscal year after several years of decline.<\/p>\n

What three steps would you take to improve Medicare?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The aging of baby boomers and the increase of medical costs will squeeze the health insurance program, which now covers 57 million older Americans. Medicare trustees say the hospital insurance trust fund could be exhausted in 2028 if no changes are made to existing law.<\/p>\n

Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump say Medicare should be able to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. Mrs. Clinton has proposed allowing people ages 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare, but has not said how the government or the new beneficiaries would pay for the coverage. ROBERT PEAR<\/p>\n

Immigration<\/h5>\n

Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children have registered with the government under President Obama\u2019s executive order that gives them work permits and guarantees they will not be deported. Will you honor those guarantees?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Frustrated by Republicans\u2019 refusal to overhaul the nation\u2019s immigration system, Mr. Obama used executive authority to provide opportunities for millions of law-abiding immigrants who are in the country illegally. But the Supreme Court has blocked some of his plan, and the next president will have the power to reverse the rest… [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From <NY Times<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

I urge you to click through to read the other nine questions.  While I would not ask them all, I can only hope that the Republican propagandist moderator will be half this responsible.  I doubt it as he has already promised Trump not to challenge his lies<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n

One question I want to see asked is, "If you lose the election, will you accept the results and bow out gracefully?"<\/font><\/p>\n

How about you?  What would you like to see asked?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight is the final debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  I recommend you open at least a dozen giant, industrial strength barf bags in advance.  As the moderator is Chris Wallace from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, I expect him to join Trump in tag-teaming Hillary.  The New York Times has  composed […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}