Thursday, October 18, 2012

DEBATES and REALITY

I wanted to do a blog on Alinsky's rules for radicals and another on Marx's Communist Manifesto for my next blog, but I will get to them, possibly in the next couple of weeks. But, I feel like I have to say something about Benghazi and the debates. I'll start with the debates.

The remarkable thing to me is that people wait so long to start paying attention to politics, while the country is in such dire straits. But, I guess that is reality. The debates, so far have cemented in my mind my theory about the polls and why they appear to be changing drastically. In national polls of likely voters which are not skewed by 5 to 9 over sampling towards democrats, Obama has been consistently below 50%.  The polls have shown a very close race, often with Romney a bit behind. Why, if the American people are generally satisfied with Obama's presidency, would he have trouble getting to and staying at 50%? And why then, if Romney is a viable alternative in the minds of the American public, would Romney have the same trouble? I believe the reason is that the American public has been subjected to the Obama show now for 4 years and pretty much know him. Those who are not addicted to the Obama koolaid pretty much know that Obama is a failure, that he has no clue about the economy and job creation. But, until the debates they have been smothered with the Democrats' story-line that Romney is a selfish, money-grubbing, tax-dodging, cancer-causing, woman-hating monster. It is a wonder that Romney was even close in the polls. The debates changed that perception.

In the first presidential debate, the public, apart from the koolaid drinkers, got to see that Romney is a human being with absolutely no similarity to the Democrats' pictures of him. He had facts, numbers, and reasonable answers to the nations ills. Obama came in, showing his real self to no one's surprise. Obama was arrogant and disdainful. He had no arguments, except that Romney is a rich guy who only cares about the other rich guys--rich women would be excluded, of course.  Romney cleaned his clock! Even the liberal media could not come to Obama's aid or explain it away The result was an immediate surge in the polls for Romney. The Obama answer after the fact was that Romney was lying about everything. No evidence, just the accusation. I guess money-grubbing rich guys who are not Democrats are automatically big-time liars.

In the vice-presidential debate we saw Biden doing his diabolic "Joker" impression while stretching the truth even more than he usually does. Biden was obnoxious and rude, trying hard to get under Ryan's skin, while Ryan was respectful and stayed on message. The result was even more clarity that Biden is an old fool who has a problem controlling himself when he is in front of a camera, and that Ryan is serious-minded and self-controlled. The public could see that Biden was as bad a twit as they knew he was and that Ryan was not the radical right-winger as he has been portrayed by the Democrats and liberal media.

On the second presidential debate, Obama came out swinging, declaring that Romney was lying about virtually everything, while Romney continued to rely on facts about the bad economy and the Obama policies which have failed. Obama was much more animated this time. He apparently realized that he was not necessarily impervious to facts and would have to more energetically call Romney a liar whose pants were obviously on fire. He also received a lot of help from the liberal moderator, Candy Crowley. If Romney was about to metaphorically knock Obama down, Candy would step in and ring the bell by changing the subject. Obama was given 10% more time to make his arguments. The most egregious interruption came during the give-and-take over the Benghazi fiasco. When Obama was about to get knocked out (metaphorically) over the question of when the president first acknowledged that the murders of the ambassador and three others in Benghazi were a terrorist attack. Obama claimed that he acknowledged it as a terrorist act the day after. As the blow was landing, Candy stepped in, with a transcript of Obama's speech no less, and deflected the blow by suggesting that the president's claim was true. What?!  What a hack she is. She later tried to excuse her meddling in and said that Romney was mainly accurate in his criticism of the president's declaration. Even with Romney having to debate both Obama and Crowley at the same time, Romney was able to perform at the same level of intensity and to continue to destroy the image of him that the the Democrats and liberal media have created.  The result will likely be firmer conviction by the folks in the middle that Romney is at least a better alternative.

Now, about the Benghazi debacle. The attempt by the Obama administration for two weeks to depict the Terrorist attack on the consulate as a demonstration gone awry against a silly you tube video is extremely troubling.  It has been revealed that there was real-time video and audio at the consulate to which the state department was tuned in as it occurred, which let the state department know that it was not a demonstration, but a direct, well planed terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9-11. Who would have thought that evil and wacky Muslims might try something evil and wacky on the anniversary of 9-11? Apparently not the Obama administration.  It has also been revealed that Ambassador Stephens was in fear of his life and that the embassy security team had requested several times for more security measures, only to be told that they would not get it. Why was Stephens in Benghazi, a known locality of terrorist infestation, on 9-11-12 with no significant protection? Why was the request for extra security ignored? Who decided that they would not get the extra security? That, incidentally, is the question put forth in the second debate that brought up Benghazi, which Obama avoided actually answering. Why did the Obama administration work so hard to write the event off as a demonstration against a stupid video, which was not seen by very many people to that point, when they would have clearly knew that the facts would not support it?  Why is the mainstream media, by and large, not asking these questions?  In my opinion, there is something going on here beyond the obvious answer, that Obama did not want his foreign policy to appear to be failing as the election looms ahead. To me, this obvious cover up is more significant than what happened in Watergate. FOUR PEOPLE DIED, including an American Ambassador, because of, at least, negligence! In it's best possible light, the administration tried to cover it up for political reasons. The Watergate cover up was about a fumbled break-in--a stupid act that would have gone away if it had been acknowledged--but nobody died as a result of it. Benghazi-gate is a cover up of the facts of events that resulted in the brutal murders of FOUR INNOCENT HUMAN BEINGS! Hopefully we'll get some answers. The main-street news media will not try to get to the bottom of it by themselves, but I know that the next debate will be on foreign affairs. I suspect it will come up again there. Hopefully, we won't have a debate moderator getting in the way this time. 

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