But the V.A. had gone even further, preventing G.I.'s from using the bill to take post-graduate courses or transfer from one course to another or to a new school or to resume an interrupted course. There had been so much objection to these restrictions, however, that the V.A. relented and abandoned them.

Still there were abuses and it appeared that it would take more legislation by Congress to eliminate them.

The Republican presidential nominee last night, in the second presidential debate of 2016, disgraced himself and for all time.

The performance in which he engaged is beyond words. Any words set down to describe it would be inadequate to convey the hypocrisy, dishonesty and utter contempt for this nation which this man routinely displays, reaching new depths last night, especially in the context of a debate. Never in the history of American politics has anything come close to this despicable performance.

The man wants to be your dictator, putting those who disagree with him politically in jail. He is dangerous, every bit as dangerous as Adolf Hitler was in 1932.

He will never be President, as the polls readily convey. We would be more outraged were he seemingly to gain from his outrageous conduct. But he is losing ground daily and will soon be consigned to the political ash-heap of history.

And there are only four weeks left until election day, thank goodness. Then the man can crawl back into the sleazy hole from which he crawled 16 months ago to dismay, taunt and disgrace the nation. To refer to him by such terms as "guttersnipe" does the guttersnipe community a true disservice. To refer to him as an "obscurantist" elevates his conduct to some level of seeming political tradition, even if an unsavory one. There is no precedent.

"Scum" is even too polite a word to convey his utter lack of decorum and sensibility to people, ordinary people, trying to make a living, not benefited by a "small" million dollar gift from his slumlord father at graduation from college or a fourteen million dollar loan from his father after that or forty million or more in inheritance, yet after that.

He is outraged by Secretary Clinton calling half of his supporters "a basket of deplorables" a few weeks ago for following his unrepentant xenophobia, misogyny, racism, religious discrimination, venomous utterances generally, disrespect for free speech, urging to violence, and other deplorable traits. But prior to that time and throughout his tawdry, ridiculous, pathetic campaign, he has referred to the former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State, whom millions of people in this country admire, as "crooked". He has said before that he would seek to have her indicted and "locked up" if he were to be elected. He said it again last night on the debate stage, quite out of context, in one of his rambling, incoherent diatribes designed to brainwash further his core supporters. Never mind the people who support Secretary Clinton. By implication, they are all crooks or sheep following a crook, too stupid to see through her veil, and should be locked up also.

Of course, his threat in that regard would assume that he, himself, if elected, were not impeached in early January by the new Democratic House for high crimes and misdemeanors occurring before his term, with regard to bribing the Attorney General of Florida to end the investigation into Trump University and for criminal fraud associated with that scam. There is, after all, thanks to the extremist Republicans of 1998-99, a precedent for that basis for impeachment. He would be lucky not to be thrown out of office by March. For he is the only crook in the race.

But that pretty pass will never come to be as he will never come close to election. He is finished. There was plentiful reason for him to be finished months ago, before he ever got the nomination. And there have been many reasons coming to light since the Republican convention for him to have been finished. But he will not recover now, not after his performance last night. His lies and hypocrisies are known well enough. He is done.

His tawdry, absurd statements from 2005 on a bus were not typical "locker room" chatter, unless the locker room were in a prison, a particularly scummy prison. Even that is probably stretching a point. "Scum" would be the best way to characterize such persons engaging in such talk. It sounds like the chatter among the least savory characters in a movie about organized crime, about scum of the earth.

And that is one of the glaring problems with this idiot. He, and most of his loyal followers, are unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy, between that which might elicit an ironic chuckle for its outrageousness, well portrayed, in a movie, and the reality of hearing such things said or acted out before you. The two are quite different. Movies are movies because they present something outside and beyond reality, not because they are or should be emulated in reality. Even the "storybook endings" are rarely, if ever, achieved for more than a few hours at a time, never permanently as implied in the movies.

And, of course, not only did he condone the statements he made in 2005 and, moreover, his openly admitted attempt to commit adultery with a married woman, with a non-apologetic apology, trying to persuade voters that former President Clinton had said to him things just as bad or worse—without any proof whatsoever or prior conduct to suggest such statements—, but he demeaned every adult in this country by suggesting that such talk characterizes private conversations among adults, another of his colossal lies.

This man is obviously pathologically ill, divorced from reality for many, many years, a sick man in need of mental help.

But for now, he is the presidential nominee of the Republican Party and so we have the right to carp, even in the face of his obvious mental illness. And we must go out on November 8 and do our duty therefore to defeat him. It is not as if we do not have a very good alternative choice in Secretary Clinton, a brilliant, able and dedicated public servant who has done only good for people throughout her several adult careers.

That brings up another despicable act by the Republican nominee yesterday, when he paraded before the cameras three accusers of the former President, whose accusations have never been proved and who have been shown repeatedly to be liars, persons who were dredged up by the worst scum in politics ever to surface outside Nazi Germany in any country in the world, and promoted by such unrepentant slaves to Mammon as Jerry Falwell during the 1990's—ultimately, because of one primary American character trait for which the Clintons have always stood since entering on the national stage in 1992, tolerance and diversity.

This utter hypocrite, the Republican nominee, who once, in 1998, referred to these three women as "ugly" and trashy looking, now dredges them up again, along with a prosecutrix in a rape case, the alleged rapist having been represented by Hillary Clinton as an appointed defense attorney early in her career as a lawyer forty years ago. That representation is the most honorable service anyone can do as a lawyer, done, for all intents and purposes, free of charge. She did her job and did it well, serving everyone in the society who values freedom and justice for all in its truest sense and not just mouthing the words as a parrot. (How many times have we heard, since the advent of DNA testing in the nineties, of falsely accused rape defendants or murderers being exonerated by non-matching DNA?—which, perhaps, in some cases, might have been unnecessary had the defense counsel done a more zealous job of defense in the first instance with the evidence then available, as did Hillary Clinton regarding a client who passed a polygraph.) Her private statement from over ten years later in the mid-eighties during which she laughed, was not about the alleged victim in the case, but rather the predicament unanticipated by the prosecutor when she brought in an expert from New York to testify regarding lack of physical evidence of rape in the case, leading to a plea bargain with the prosecutor. She did her job and did it well. Such private banter among attorneys and judges about past cases, "war stories" as they are called, is quite common in the legal profession. And only a crook pulls punches as a criminal defense attorney, leaves their client in the lurch to hang. It is why our good, though imperfect, system is adversarial and the burden of proof rests with the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

For this Republican nominee to bring this parade of persons from 25 and 40 years ago before the American people and to refer to them during the debate tells each of us the hole from which this crook, this despicable lying creep, crawled out. And of course it was all to try to divert attention from his own despicable talk and behavior from eleven years ago when he was a mere 59-year old boy on the bus bragging about being a "star" able to grab women's genitals with impunity and his attempt to commit adultery with married women. It was retaliation for a story originating with the Washington Post and the television show "Access Hollywood", from which the tape originated, having nothing at all to do with release by the Clinton campaign, though he stated repeatedly that Secretary Clinton had "brought it up" before and during the debate, further demonstrating his complete abandonment of reality for the sake of conjuring false perceptions among his core supporters, trying to extend their fascism born of ignorance more generally to the American people at large, in effect trying to transform a debate into one of his "rallies".

He would, quite perversely, ignoring his own criminal conduct, have a justice system where the accused is always guilty. He would organize a "People's Court" to streamline the system, just as in Nazi Germany, to bring about "law and order" as he describes it, as he illustrates repeatedly at his "rallies" with thugs, encouraged by the candidate from the rostrum, beating up anyone exhibiting mild protest.

The man needs to retire and go home. He is not informed enough to be dogcatcher, let alone President. He knows nothing of law, of diplomacy, of statecraft, of working with Congress, of working with any form of legislative process. He is sick. This race is a vanity for him from the start, a final feather in his cap, a dare to all those who he perceives have slighted him, sold him short, during his adult life, a race which any sensible person in this country would know not to begin without some basic understanding and experience in government. But not him. For he is too drunk with his own arrogance and self-love to be governed by such self-restraint. And he has brought out, in that process, the very worst, the most divisive aspects of this country over the last year.

Go home, stupid. Get out of the race. Get off the stage. You had your chance, boy, and you took it and threw it to the wild winds, an utter disgrace in every way imaginable, just as you have done with all the good fortune your daddy was able to bestow on you, none of which you ever honestly earned yourself.

You are utter garbage, the worst this country has ever produced on the national political stage. And that includes some pretty reprehensible characters.

Get out. Go home. You're done.

Anyone henceforth supporting this lunatic deserves the condemnation they will receive, especially elected representatives who, while expressing "outrage" at his recently revealed statements from 2005, continue, nevertheless, to endorse him. They all ought be defeated and sent home with him.

It is time to start anew anyway, with a new Congress, which, if you study the matter with any understanding of how our system works, you will realize to be the source of the worst faults in our country presently, as for many years, whenever we have been so fortunate to have a President, as now, trying to make progress. The President cannot do it under our system alone. We have not had in this country at least twelve consecutive years of Democrats in the White House since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, ending in 1953. Yet those two Presidents did a pretty fair job of transforming the society for the better.

We also have a glorious opportunity to correct the course of a Supreme Court, errant on many issues vital to our collective freedoms since the days of President Nixon, and, more recently, allowing big money back into politics with the Citizens United case.

We stand, in short, nonplussed over what happened last night. Secretary Clinton plainly won the debate and will win the election. That is a foregone conclusion at this point, provided the electorate turns out to vote. She remains focused, addressing the major issues, and, aside from the necessity to respond at least briefly to the redundant baiting and lies, refuses to be drawn into the gutter by the megalomaniacal, accusatorial nut whom she finds as her opponent.

Anything we have not said above is said amply well here, a statement with which we wholly concur.

Framed Edition

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