Live Blogging The Final Presidential Debate

OK, here we go. Against my better instincts and my desire to watch the Dodgers-Cub game, I am going to live blog the last (thankfully) Presidential debate. For Hillary Clinton, the goal will be to take the high road, talk about her positive policies, and try to keep looking Presidential. Everyone knows that Trump needs to hammer Clinton on trade and immigration and stay on message but, in the same breath, no one believes he can do it. And even if he does, it is probably too late in the game to have the impact he needs.

First question is about the Supreme Court, originalism vs. living document. Clinton leads off with what country we want to be and the Court needs to stand on the side of the people, for women, LGBT communication, against Citizens United, for marriage equality and Roe v. Wade. Want Court to stand up to powerful. Wants Senate to do their job. Trump responds by criticizing Justice Ginsburg, stand up for the 2nd amendment which is under siege, be pro-life, and will interpret that Constitution the way the Founders intended. Follow pursues 2nd amendment. Clinton supports 2nd amendment but want to keep guns from people should not have them via background checks and reasonable restrictions. Discussion devolves into details of a DC case to restrict guns. Clinton wants people to come together to safeguard 2nd amendment but restrict guns in a way to save lives. Trump is happy to have NRA endorsement and says Chicago has incredible gun violence. We move on to abortion. Trump refuses to answer whether he wants Roe v. Wade overturned but it will happen because he will appoint pro-life justices. Hillary, of course, supports Roe v Wade and points to restrictions. Points out that Trump advocated punishing women who have abortions. Asked why she supported late-term abortions, she responds that it is the life and health of the mother need to be taken into account. Trump says that Hillary supports being able to rip the baby out of the womb up until the day before birth. Hillary goes back to the health issue.

9:20 - On to immigration. Trump says Hillary wants to give amnesty and points to those killed by illegal immigrants; Hillary wants open borders and goes back to his fictional ICE endorsement. Points to heroin and drug problems. He will build the all. He will get the drug lords and get them out. Once the border is secured, he will decide what to do with the illegals that are left. Hillary does not want families ripped apart and notes Trump says that every undocumented immigrant will be deported. This would require a massive police and legal effort. Wants to deport violent criminals. Gives Trump a dig about going to Mexico and not even talking about the wall, saying he choked. Trump responds by saying Hillary wanted the wall but she never gets anything done. He will build the wall. Hillary wants to bring undocumented workers into the formal economy and goes after Trump for using undocumented workers to build Trump Tower. Trump says that Obama has already deported millions. Wallace asks Trump about her "open borders" comment from WikiLeaks. Clinton says that the full quote shows she was talking about open border for electricity transmissions. Pivots to Russian hacking and asks Trump to admit Russians were doing this. Trump reiterates Hillary wants open borders, she will let in Syrians and she won't say "radical Islamic terrorism". Putin has no respect for Clinton. Clinton says she will not be a Putin puppet. Trump insists we don't know whose hacking us. Clinton says our top officials agree Russian was responsible for hacking and Wallace backs her up. Trump says Putin outsmarted Hillary and Obama everywhere. Clinton goes after Trump over his wish to expand nuclear powers and then hits Trump about not being trusted to have the nuclear codes. Trump claims that everyone is ripping us off on defense. Trump says Hillary is a liar. Hillary says Trump will rip up our alliances.

9:37 The economy. Wants to grow the middle class. Clean energy, small businesses, raise the minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, college debt free. Will go after the wealthy who have made most of the recent gains. Her plan will create 10 million new jobs. Trumps plan will cost jobs and raise the debt. Trump claims Clinton will double your taxes. Goes back to why we are protecting rich countries like Japan, Germany, and Saudi Arabia when they are so rich. Will renegotiate trade deals like NAFTA or terminate it. Will cut taxes massively and businesses will hire people. Clinton says Trump's plan gives three times more in tax cuts to the rich than Bush. She will not raise taxes on incomes under $250,000 and will not raise the debt. Wallace says the Obama stimulus has created the slowest GDP growth (a totally bogus question, btw) and is Clinton's just more Obama stimulus. Clinton says we need to invest from the middle out and not from the top down. Wallace says Trump's numbers don't add up. Trump responds that India is growing at 8% and China is growing at 7%. Says latest jobs report was terrible (it wasn't); we're losing jobs and back to NAFTA. Says Hillary supports TPP and she lied about it. Clinton says she is against TPP. Donald is the only one on the stage who has sent jobs overseas and has given jobs to Chinese steelmakers instead of US ones. Trump asks why she didn't get this done earlier. Talks about $6 billion missing from State Department. Hillary says the $6 billion has been debunked. Goes through her accomplishments and compares her public service with his business career. Trump responds he built a great company and if we could run our country the way he runs his company it would be great. Says Hillary created ISIS.

9:52 Presidential character. Wallace talks about the women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment. Trump claims that the women's stories have been debunked and blames Hillary for them coming forward. Totally denies everything. Says they either want fame or Hillary got them to do it. Claims Clinton campaign is inciting violence at his rallies. Hillary goes after Trump for saying that the women were not good looking enough for him to have abused. Trump even denies that. Clinton says that Trump enjoys belittling women. Wants the country to celebrate our diversity and it is up to all of us to make that true. Trump says nobody has more respect than he does. He then segues into her destruction of 33,000 emails and said he doesn't know what happened to the FBI and then says Hillary has lied to everyone including the FBI. Clinton says Trump never apologizing for anything reciting his mocking a disabled reporter, the Khans, John McCain, Judge Curiel. This is a pattern of divisiveness and that is not what America is about. Trump says Hillary incites violence and then says he would love to talk about  something else. Wallace moves on to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary has said that everything she did was cleared by the State Department and is happy to talk about the wonderful things the Clinton Foundation has done. Trump says the Clinton Foundation is a criminal enterprises. Wants Clinton to give back the money from countries who abuse gays and women. Trump was in Haiti, actually Little Haiti in Miami, and says they hate the Clintons. Clinton defends Foundation's work in Haiti. Trump says his Foundation gives 100% to charity. Wallace says that some of the Trump Foundation money went to pay some of his legal fees. Trump says it went to a charity. Hillary breaks in to point out that Trump has not released his tax returns and have not paid taxes and then blames Hillary for leaving these tax loopholes for him to exploit. If you don't like what I did, you should have changed the law.

10:06 Trump refuses to say he will accept the result of the election; says he will look at it afterward. Goes into media bias and millions of people who are on the rolls who shouldn't be; says Hillary shouldn't be even allowed to run because she is criminal. Wallace presses him and Trump says he will keep us in suspense. Hillary chimes in to say that whenever Trump loses he always says the system is rigged against him - the Iowa caucuses to the Emmys. She quotes Obama as saying that all Trump's whining shows he is not up to the job. Trump talks about the conspiracy between the Justice Dept and the FBI in exonerating Hillary on the emails.

10:11 Middle East issues. Hillary will not put American troops on the ground, talk about an intelligence surge to focus on ISIS and protect us at home; wants no-fly and safe zones in Syria. Trump says we lost Mosul because Hillary gave it away. Then goes back to the idea that we have given up the element of surprise by announcing we are attacking Mosul. The only reason we are attacking Mosul so that Hillary will look good for the election. NAFTA was the stupidest deal of all time until just now when it is the Iranian nuclear deal, and Iran will now take over Iraq. Clinton goes after Trump for saying he didn't support Iraq war. Trump denies that once again.  Clinton points out that Mosul is in Sunni territory. Trump says Podesta and Sanders both said Clinton had poor judgement and Trump agrees. Clinton says to look at who Sanders is supporting.

10:19 Aleppo. Wallace says Trump said Aleppo has fallen when it hasn't and Russians are fighting ISIS when they aren't.  Says Aleppo is a disaster, Hillary underestimate Assad, and we don't know who the Syrian rebels are. This is why the great migration is occurring and they are ISIS aligned and are flooding into our country. Wallace asks Hillary about no-fly zone and will it will lead to a war between Russia and the US. Hillary says that we will have to negotiate with Russians on no-fly zone. Will vet all refugees for terrorist tendencies. Trump says Hillary says she will defeat ISIS but she created ISIS. Putin has outplayed us - no one can believe how stupid are leadership is.

10:25 Debt to GDP; Pete Peterson group says Hillary will increase ratio to 87% and Trump's plan will increase it 105%. Trump says that won't happen because he will create jobs and the people who make trade deals are political hacks and he will great this great economic machine. Hillary says Trump has always criticized what government has done, citing an ad Trump took out in the 1980s under Reagan saying we were terrible and losing all our jobs; says her plan will not add a penny to the debt. Trump says he disagreed with Reagan about Trump. Wallace cites Pete Peterson about the need to save Medicare and Social Security and asks about a grand bargain. Trump says we need to repeal and replace Obamacare and he will grow the economy so SS and Medicare will be fine. Clinton says she will raise payroll cap to raise more money for SS and will not cut benefits. Says Obamacare reduces stress on Medicare and repealing it would make Medicare situation even worse.

Final statement. Hillary wants to reach out to all Americans to pull them together to rebuild America. She will stand up for families and children. Trump says she's raising the money from the people she wants to control; we need to rebuild the military; law and order; inner cities are a disaster; he will do more for minorities; Hillary is all talk. We can't take four more years of Obama.

An so it ends.