VP by DQ

Serious.  And brilliant !  Will it break through?

Sequence

Didn't we just say that?  Next week will be it; but last week was all preventable.  The suspense, the drama, and then the reality. 

Ya think? (2012)

No F'n sh*! Sherlock, how's about recognizing it WHILE THAT SH*! is happening instead of a week later, when the damage has been done?  Where was the light-bulb then, you couldn't see what you were doing?  How about any recall: the fact that you have asked us to help fight too, to be the agents of change too, right there standing beside you, did all that slip your mind for 90 minutes while you were too distracted to bother standing up for yourself?  Or did the brain freeze also extend to forgetting everything that Romney has been saying all year!?  How could you not see that the guy who showed up last week was completely different, I mean, he's right there next to you! 

I can understand the collective freak-out and group-think, as I am still in denial (coupled with anger) over the President's performance. Romney was his own enemy, his campaign was a joke.  But you don't take anything for granted in a zero-sum game when the fate of the nation is at stake.  The other side doesn't care about policy, or substance, or facts.  Obama wins on all of that.  Remember: 50+ million Americans still voted for McCain & Palin because the other guy was black! Haters gotta hate.  All Obama had to do was 'politely' point out a couple of the lies, and things would have gone on as before.  So yes, if Obama had bothered to defend himself once or twice in front of 60 million people, the R base would still be demoralized; the D base would still turn out. And Obama would still be well on his way to re-election.  Welcome to reality.
 

The larger problem is the state of this country's politics -- and thus its overall future -- when a politician can get away with lying his way to the White House. [Check out our new nicknames by the way, see if any stick: the Mormon Manipulator!  The Latter-Day Liar!  Romney the far Right(-eous).]  He knows he's lying; his advisers know he's lying.  Fact-checking is a nuisance that can be ignored. 

 

Sure Obama tanked, and sure the election should not be this close because 1 debate should not have mattered as much as it has.  But of those 60 million who watched the debate, how many were still undecided? As Bill Maher pointed out last Friday, if that many low-info voters are still out there, this is not a place worth saving.  That is the sad reality of all this. That is why social justice is so hard to achieve. If we can no longer know hope, then we should fall back on keeping the faith.

The Big Letdownski

Or, as I tweeted this morning (didn't know I had a twitter acct, huh, J?):  Clint Eastwood feeling vindicated after last night's debate. New score: Invisible Chair 1, Empty Suit 1.

Talk about a case of mistaken identity?!  All of our links to the right say Romney "won" this 1st debate, because Obama played it too safe.  J's own version goes something like this:  'professorial…presidential…grown-up…intelligent'.  None of these adjectives and no amount of spin matter right now. O sh** the bed big time…what a pussy!

He needs to throw Mittens under the bus with all of the right wing nut bars that comprise the Republican party...make him own that ship of fools. He also needs to refute this garbage that he can’t “work across the aisle”…that is complete horse hooey….especially when it has been so widely publicized and overtly obvious that the repukes were doing everything to sabotage his agenda and legislation...just look at the freakin votes and filibusters!!'

J continued -- 'The way O kept looking down and taking notes last night made him look ashamed and small. Can he possibly believe that he is going to win again on passionate and lofty speeches delivered from teleprompters. I hate to say it, but he is playing right into the hands of the people that hate him and want him out. I agree 100% about the “fight” issue. He has to show that he wants to win and that he is passionate about his beliefs and what needs to be done to fix the current state of affairs. “That’s not my view” simply doesn’t cut it. Romney challenged him on so many things last night that went completely without response…..was he just unprepared? [Rollah note: a President would be prepared for a debate].  Does he not think well on his feet? Obviously he is a smart guy, but maybe he is someone who really needs time to collect his thoughts before he responds. Unfortunately, debating often doesn’t allow for that kind of long, deliberative and thoughtful response.'

I didn't even watch, and I still felt the same way last night.  What little sleep I got did not help me feel better this morning.  Continuing with all of the boxing metaphors, the President could have ended this fight once and for all.  He could have scored the knock-out, but he didn't come to fight.  He let a guy who was beaten get up off the mat, while he danced around the ring. Now he better pray he wins the fight on points. It's going the distance.  But you know what makes me less nauseated at his lack of fight? The fact that Obama's never been a fighter!  That's our problem, we keep wanting to project our own traits on to the guy and he's not us.  Americans like fighters; you stand up to bullies.  Obama didn't do that.  So he lost a debate.  Americablog.com has a good take. 
 

The other part about winning v. losing that had me so worked up was the fact that Romney got away with so many lies.  If someone lies, you call them a liar.  Romney was either lying to the remaining undecideds [really? who the F still doesn't know?!?] & hoping he'd fool them into thinking he's a moderate, or, he was lying to the base about everything else up to this point. 

The only real fall-out to this 3-round BS-fest will happen if Obama doesn't bring it to the next 2 debates; if he can't be bothered to break a sweat, he will lose.  TPM, though, already has 2 quick entries up today about what Team O recognizes they need to do.  Sure, it would have been nice to see it last night, live, as the debate was going on.  But I'm not moving to Canada just yet.  Speaking of our northern neighbor, there's a reason this stuff matters; it's called our physical health!  Mental health, that might be next. 

Update, finally - J (and pdm3), read this.  Money quote:

Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies. Probably the best way to understand Obama’s listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones. Obama, perhaps, was not prepared for that, and he certainly didn’t think quickly enough on his feet to adjust to it.

J & Charlie Brown, or is it J & Paul [Krugman]?

J is sometimes late to the party, but he brings good stuff once he gets there:

that freakin GOP convention and the diarrhetic excrement spewing from the giant sphincter that is the Republican party makes me want to yak! The thing that continues to piss me off the most however (going on 12+ years now), is the deplorable lack of credibility and the pervasive ambivalence of the MSM. They are the real enemies here…..lazy, ratings-motivated, narcissists, who make millions of dollars pandering to whatever makes them more money. This brings me to the enlightened American citizenry…….all of whom fall into one of 4 categories:

1. Those who are well off and want to keep it that way

2. Racist assholes whose opinions will never change, regardless of their standard of living, because they simply will never get over their bigotry and hate.

3. High-minded, intellectual elites who think they know better than everyone else about how to solve all of the problems and believe everyone else is a moron.

4. Intellectually vacant couch potatoes who gobble up the excrement fed to them by the MSM and believe what they are told. They find someone (usually Bill-O, or Sean or Rush) who tells them who to blame and what to think and they hook themselves up to the IV of lies and deception, without any idea that the opinions they have and the votes they cast are so completely contrary to their own self interest.

5. People like us….people who see through all the B.S. and find it increasingly difficult to live amongst these mouth-breathing morons, pseudo-patriotic bloviators and compassionately- vacant douche bags.

Seriously……what kind of person……

a. Wants to ban abortions at the same time they want to cut funding for Planned Parenthood and prenatal child care?

b. Believes in the sanctity of life for an unborn fetus but is ready to pull the switch when it comes to executions?

c. Wants to lower taxes when the economy is broken and wants to lower taxes when the economy is booming?

d. Wants to create more jobs by cutting government spending which in turn makes more people unemployed?

       e. See, a-d, repeat.

Good grief…..I can’t stand it anymore!
/
More?  Geez, nothing for months on end, but now we can't shut him up!  Maybe the blog should start asking for ID.  This easily sets a record for J's longest entry. 

The last news cycle has been so much fun…….oh how I love to see “Mittens” squirm! The man is truly robotic, saying or doing anything that his audience desires in an effort to garner their vote or money.  It’s pretty interesting how Faux News continues to marginalize themselves and how the meat-and-potato repubs are distancing themselves from Romney and that fat-shit Ailes. All of this has me a bit worried now that it looks like Romney is going to self-implode. What means will be employed by the bat-shade Right to take down O? There are so many wackos out there, almost anything could happen. Maybe they punt Romney and get behind Eddie Munster ?

 

You know things are going bad for your party when George “stick up his rectum” Will starts breaking camp and heading for the station wagon…..

Check out these George-Will-ian quotes:

The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

“O” could very well win a second term…..the problem is that too many of these elected officials, dems and repukes alike, are completely bought and paid for…….we need comprehensive campaign finance reform, and a gigantic legislative enema to rid the country these bile-ridden, parasitic congressmen.

Ahhhhhhh, that felt good. 

RY-pocrisy

That was easy: as if we needed more (or any) evidence to prove our point; see below post. 
J, we have a new item for the Glossary, whenever you're ready.

capitalizing the subject header, for the same reason as this: because we can. 

Americans are big, dumb animals

No quotation marks, no links, just a statement of fact.  OK, not all of us, maybe 50+ million.  And not just the ones who disagree with us.  No screeds against the corporatists, the complete and utter failure of the 4th Estate or our usual HIGHpocrisy sightings (reference: RNC convention)... just a morning cup o' reality: Americans are big, dumb animals.  Proceed with caution.