Hillary outperformed The Donald.  She will probably be the one to sit in the Oval Office for at least the next 4 years at least.  In a way I’m glad of that, and in another way, it scares me.  It’s long past the time when the US should have a woman President, so that makes me happy.  This particular woman, however, was present for most of the poor decisions of Bill’s presidency that led to the economic crash – the loosening of regulations, repeal of the Glass-Steagel, and beyond that, her early support of the Iraq War (regardless of what she says now in hind sight)  and the regime change in Libya.  The main Republican “issues” like the email server and Benghazi  to me seem  bogus.

At the time when the Clintons were running the Apple Mac email server on a G4 machine in their basement, they had what could arguably be called the most secure system available for their purposes.  Having run Mac servers in the same period myself, both for web sites and email, I had to study the security of the system vs the Microsoft server software run on PC’s which was never very secure from hacking.

It’s been my experience that most people don’t even know what a “server” is, or how it operates to send and receive emails and serve up web pages.  Users just want to know that the system works for them to get their communications done.  Most of us have come to take for granted that we can freely send and receive messages and web pages over the Internet, and we don’t bother ourselves with how it works, unless we have been stung by one of the many viruses that attack PC systems and even then we hand the “broken” box to an “expert” technician expecting it to be completely fixed in a day or two.  Offices, commercial or government that do not spend for technical assistance, updates and firewalls suffer the consequences of “penny wise, pound foolish” spending.  Recent scandals (Yahoo! and the GPO) prove my point.

What none of the reports, FBI or media, tell us is how reliable or easy to use the State Department servers were at the time.  Were they “down” for lengths of time that made it inconvenient to use them for busy diplomats and their assistants for work that was time critical?  Since Secretary Powell also had used another server during his time as Secretary, it’s quite possible that the government servers were not as reliable as they might have been in which case Clinton’s use of her Mac server would have been common sense.

In any case, Hillary and The Donald didn’t get into all that during the debate, thank goodness!  That’s just me letting off steam.  They didn’t touch on the Benghazi tragedy either. The person or persons who sold our government officials on the rosey possibilities of regime change from autocratic rule to democracy by force of arms from outside the countries involved are responsible for the many and continuing tragedies of Iraq, Syria and Libya.  There was only a brief argument about leaving troops in Iraq where The Donald showed himself to be ignorant.  George W. Bush signed the status of forces agreement with Maliki which required the withdrawal of all US troops between 2007 and 2011, not either President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

I’m afraid I’m not an gung-ho supporter of Hillary for President, but I do think she’s the best deal we’ve got as a country at the moment.  Donald Trump brings on unpleasant and scary memories of Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s, and I’m not at all comfortable with the the prospect of him as a possible President of the USA.  I can only hope that American common sense will prevail one more time and save us from a terrible fate.

Note:  On the email controversy. please read this article:  It says some of what I mention above and more.