Tuesday, October 16, 2012

NUMBER TWO. I expect mostly what people will remember about this "debate" is Romney trying some shit on Benghazi and making an ass of himself*. Soon wingnuts will be accusing Crowley, the fat guy with the question, and maybe Alger Hiss and Romney himself of a set-up.

And they'll remember that because the rest of this thing has been a festival of pandering and platitudes. Romney lies, of course (Mitt Romney, small businessman! Good Christ), but that's like saying the cock crows and the sun sets. Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him, but the President seems to think the winning strategy is to blather about the middle class and families and the free enterprise system etc. until they drag him off the stage. Sigh. I miss Harold Ickes.

* John Podhoretz disputed this with a link to Fox News, which was my second favorite moment of the debate. Be sure and read the ensuing shirt-tucking Twitter conversation.

93 comments:

  1. M. Krebs10:45 PM

    Somebody shoot me. Please.

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  2. Spaghetti Lee10:50 PM

    Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him


    That's like the political version of Zeno's paradox. You can't get halfway through factchecking Mitt before he lies again.

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  3. Now David Brooks is complaining about the "coldness" of the debate "atmosphere". I'm almost looking forward to debate #3 just to hear what new, even more ridiculous intangible is scaring off the silent majority of independents.

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  4. BigHank5311:10 PM

    You'll need more powerful tools than just philosophy, too. I'd recommend cramming Willard into the CERN collider in an attempt to discover the fundamental particle of lying, the Higgs boguson.

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  5. Maybe they should hold the next debate in Brooks's house, I'm sure he has room. I'm sure that there's nowhere else on Earth that can capture the Broderian atmosphere necessary for Brooks to acknowledge that his guy got smoked.

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  6. Both Sides Do It11:18 PM

    Everyone's having lots of fun with the "binders full of women" thing, but it wasn't a gaffe. It's a carefully thought-out policy proposal that ties into the rest of Romney's campaign.


    Dating services can make use of these binders full of women, which
    would create thousands of jobs. And the marriages resulting from those
    dates would prevent gun violence. And crack down on China’s
    manipulation of our mail-order bride markets.



    And this isn't something new, or him putting his foot in his mouth. He said this in multiple primary debates. Mitt Romney believes in binders full of women. Mitt Romney thinks binders full of women will work for America.




    Romney ’12: Every Binder Full of Women. For America.

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  7. AGoodQuestion11:25 PM

    If nothing else, Willard's "more in sorrow than in anger" schtick is wearing fatally thin. Like microsopically thin, as both sorrow and anger are exposed as patches over smug opportunism.

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  8. hells littlest angel11:28 PM

    Hardly anyone remembers that Bain Capital started small when Young Master Mitt took over some poorly performing lemonade stands. Once he'd gotten the other kids to take out loans from their parents, and he substituted Asian-produced "Remon Fravor Dlink"for ridiculously expensive California-grown lemons, he was able to re-sell the stands that didn't belly-up for a handsome profit.

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  9. I'm going with a different conspiracy theory: Clearly, President Obama was buffing LAST time, laying at 10% capacity, so that THIS time, he could play at 60% and look great in comparison.

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  10. M. Krebs11:33 PM

    A woman in every binder!

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  11. The next debate will be lacking in umami and fahrvergnugen.

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  12. It's not a binder - it's a cookbook!

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  13. BUT JEREMY STILL HAS NO JOB!!!
    I thought that Roy had written "shirt sucking Twitter conversation" and was bemused by this Americanism.

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  14. Another Kiwi11:44 PM

    BUT JEREMY STILL HAS NO JOB!!!
    I thought that Roy had written "shirt sucking Twitter conversation" and was bemused by this Americanism

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  15. LOL, Althouse:
    "CANDY CROWLEY INSERTED HERSELF INTO THE DEBATE, OUTRAGEOUSLY, to break up Romney’s most dramatic moment, when Romney was questioning what Obama said the day after the attack in Benghazi. Obama had said he’d called the attack an “act of terror” and Romney was staring him down about it. Crowley broke up the showdown, saying “He did in fact call it an act of terror,” which took the wind out of Romney’s sails. We were advised to check the transcript, but the dramatic moment was lost. The transcript shows Romney was right, and Crowley and Obama were wrong.
    "ADDED: The phrase “acts of terror” does appear in the remarks: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” As Patrick Brennan says at NRO: “One could take that as a reference to acts which include the tragedy in Benghazi, obviously, but there was clearly no effort made to label it an act of terrorism. One reason why this might be: According to U.S. law, acts of terrorism are premeditated. The Obama administration’s line for days following Obama’s Rose Garden statement suggested that the attack wasn’t premeditated.”

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  16. admiral.naismith12:28 AM

    Completely OT but holy shit I had no idea that the PUMAs at HillaryIs44 are still going! Their website design is still godawful, and they're still morons. So, basically, nothing new.

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  17. synykyl12:31 AM

    Obama did well in this debate, but the Honey Boo Boo endorsement is the big news. Game over Mitt. Game over.

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  18. You know, as soon as I read Obama's actual Rose Garden remarks after the debate, I knew the wingnuts would try to pull a "you didn't build that" with them, despite their context:




    No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.




    http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/remarks-president-deaths-us-embassy-staff-libya




    Reading Podhoretz being smacked around is priceless. All in all, Crowley was pretty nice to Romney over this, giving him a bit of an out. Her live fact-checking was awesome, and made up for some stupidity before (when she sorta defended Romney's bullshit math… but I need to hear that section again).

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  19. Brooks will say that independents want to hear Obama endorse "centrist" conservative policies, of course!

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  20. this. this comment.

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  21. PulletSurprise12:57 AM

    "To Serve Women"

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  22. DocAmazing1:04 AM

    Oh, I thought he was talking about foot-binders.

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  23. But remember, Althouse isn't a conservative or Republican! She's an independent, just like her pal Glenn Reynolds!




    (And her opposition to fact-checking is principled, dammit, just like a libertarian's love of plutocracy and hatred for the poor!)

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  24. Fats Durston1:19 AM

    Are you saying that a firm that manages more than 60$ billion in investment capital is not a small business? What are you, a commie?

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  25. Fats Durston1:29 AM

    Most awkward Obama moment that I remember through the scotch: "We're not going to eliminate everybody who is mentally disturbed." (Taken out of context to revive Death Panel talk by righties?) Of course, this was right on the heels of Romney saying that the children of dykes and fags tend towards being automatic weapons mass murderers.

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  26. J Neo Marvin2:20 AM

    Be sure and read the ensuing shirt-tucking Twitter conversation.

    "He said it's an act of violence instead of an act of terror"! What is this angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin shit?

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  27. Now all I can think of is Fritz Leiber's uber-bizarro short story 'A DESK FULL OF GIRLS.

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  28. That's a Giuliani specialty. 'You didn't use my exact pet phrase when discussing terrorism, so it doesn't count! Tag, you're it, no backsies!'

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  29. And a binder full of women in every pot.

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  30. montag24:26 AM

    Even Harold Ickes couldn't revive these debates. To really liven them up, and still maintain the character of the proceedings, perhaps they need to invite David Icke.

    Hey, it would make for good television to see Icke try to tear the fake skin off Rmoney to reveal the lizard alien underneath (and wouldn't Icke be surprised to find only gears and solenoids and leaking hydraulics?).

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  31. GregMc4:39 AM

    Romney/Ryan: Binders Full of Women
    Obama/Biden: Loose Women

    The choice has never been clearer, America.

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  32. GregMc4:44 AM

    I fell half-asleep on the couch watching the debate on CNN International. At one point Wolf said something about a group of undecided voters in Ohio then I think I faded out then I was thinking "what an idiot this particular undecided Ohioan is! So much vapidity and wrongness!" and then the mental clouds parted and I recognized the voice: David Gergen. Of course.

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  33. chuckling6:40 AM

    Again, I didn't watch the debate. Due to mental health reasons, I'm rarely able to watch debates. But I did put together a focus group of independent, though not undecided (big Obama fans), voters and future voters, and have just now gotten their report. Of course it's only anecdotal, nevertheless, the focus group reports that Obama did better, but essentially it was just more same old same old. The MSM seems to be reporting more or less the same; a narrow Obama victory. The lefty blogs, Alicublog excepted, are reporting that Obama ritually carved up Romney and made victuals of his internal organs in a mad orgiastic celebration of total victory that was gargantuanly totalic in it's totalism. Kinda makes me want to dance around the campfire if I don't think too hard. I'm guessing conservative touts feel their guy won handily as well.


    As an undecided independent, I suspect the most enlightening aspect of the debate was that the opposition party candidate was arrested. Not that that's really news, nor that it will be treated as such. Getting arrested has always been the only way a dissident can make the news in a one party state. So I think my focus group got it about right. Same old same old.

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  34. hells littlest angel6:44 AM

    Now I'm hungry.

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  35. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:44 AM

    Shorter Brooks: I couldn't fap to this.

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  36. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:47 AM

    So, he was playing three-dimensional chess instead of eleventy-dimensional chess? Intriguing...

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  37. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:49 AM

    Needs more "9/11!!!!"

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  38. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:50 AM

    Oh, internet, how I love thee.

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  39. AGoodQuestion8:36 AM

    I saw a post from them weeks ago about how bad the Charlotte convention sucked. That's pretty funny, considering the show's most memorable speaker was Hillary's husband. Something tells me mission creep has snuck in, and they're all about punishing the nasty black man now.

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  40. tigrismus9:14 AM

    I would, but my parents were married. Sorry!

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  41. mortimer9:19 AM

    Not only did Governor Romney have binders full of possible women for his administration, but the rubber band could barely hold the black guy.
    (The Hispanics chose to self-deport.)

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  42. John D.10:03 AM

    But Mitt has Lindsay Lohan in his corner!

    Lindsay Lohan, people!!!!!

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  43. This comment has to be a performance art piece.

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  44. Ellis_Weiner10:56 AM

    OT: How did You People manage to appear here under your familiar nyms? I was using a different name on the old alicublog but I can't figure out how to post under it here. Come back, JS-Kit, all is forgiven, mostly, is my view. TIA.

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  45. JWH you are my new hero. I laughed so hard I couldn't get my breath. I laughed so hard I couldn't think of any funny way to talk about this comment.

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  46. Halloween_Jack11:03 AM

    He'd invite her over to the mansion, but Ann hasn't found a hiding place for the jewelry yet.

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  47. Halloween_Jack11:04 AM

    Translation:


    Q: What's the difference between Candy Crowley and Jim Lehrer?


    A: A pulse.

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  48. I guess Chuckling's "independent" debate drinking game got out of hand.

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  49. "Be sure and read the ensuing shirt-tucking Twitter conversation."

    Jeebus, they're arguing about what words and trite phrases a politician used in a speech, and what order those words were used - and claiming because of some arcane symbolic mysticism clinging to one word as opposed to the other word, it indicates some profound meaning about the politician's approach to international affairs. Are these fucking people crazy?

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  50. Romney's approach to inequity for women is that the magical free market will fix it.

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  51. Actually, I read somewhere that both campaigns want the airconditioning cranked up so far because neither of them want to sweat on camera.

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  52. Oh, fuck, these people are in denial. So the phrase DID appear in his speech, but nevermind because it didn't have the proper suffix.

    In their universe, certain magical phrases must be said just exactly so, in just the right order, or the spell won't work. They've descended into witchcraft now.

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  53. It's like witches chanting the right spell.

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  54. Leeds man11:25 AM

    I went into my gmail account and put my nym in the "other name" box. Then it started appearing here. It's magic of some kind.

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  55. Budbear11:43 AM

    Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

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  56. Budbear11:49 AM

    Being so independently independent and so undecidedly undecided in such a scientifically scientific manner is so impressively impressive.

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  57. This is like watching a fourth grader try to give a book report after skimming the liner notes a few minutes prior.

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  58. whetstone12:08 PM

    "Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him"


    I'm actually semi-impressed that the president figured out that an excellent strategy with Romney is to needle him about being rich, about paying low taxes, and occasionally even pointing out that he's full of shit. It's clear that under Rmoney's smooth surface are strong undercurrents of being a huge dick, and by the end of the evening he was shook.


    The tell was when he brought up Fast and Furious: a dogwhistle, but a dogwhistle for help. Run, Lassie, I'm stuck in a well!

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  59. "Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him, but the
    President seems to think the winning strategy is to blather about the
    middle class and families and the free enterprise system etc. until they
    drag him off the stage."

    Unfortunately, he may be right. On Benghazi, the President schooled Mitt, complete with finger wagging, in terms that make it pretty clear that Mitt's got a truth problem. After a certain point, as Spaghetti Lee has noted, you're doing nothing but play defensive Whack-a-mole, since almost everything Mitt said was a lie. Obama was faced with a roomful of people who supposedly hadn't figured out whom to vote for yet, so he talked up the middle class as a positive contrast with Mr. Monocle. At least he didn't break out the hand puppets.

    In the meantime, the campaign will continue to bombard the swing-state airwaves with the fact-checking. Sure, it might be ignored, or just be thrown into a "He said, she said" blender, but that's just as true of the debates. (Candy Crowley did her job, for once, on the Benghazi thing, and we're still all astounded.)

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  60. Derelict12:11 PM

    The problem with doing so is that Mitt is actually a container of anti-knowledge. Whenever he comes in contact with a knowledge, the two annihilate one another in a burst of pure stupiidity.

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  61. synykyl12:21 PM

    They don't really believe the phrasing matters. They are just desperate to make Romney look like less of an ass. Good luck to them.

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  62. BigHank5312:55 PM

    One question, chuckling: after you typed your first sentence, why didn't you just hang up and go do something useful and/or interesting, like iron your socks?

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  63. chuckling1:06 PM

    Shhhhh, you'll scare the rhinoceros.

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  64. Halloween_Jack1:08 PM

    Lassie's reply: fuck you, Timmy, you went moderate in the last debate so I'm getting busy with the German shepherd next door.

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  65. wileywitch1:18 PM

    I thought he did pretty well. He was talking to a lot of different people--- the bleary undecideds and all manner of democrats. "Herding cats" describes working for/with liberals all too well. It makes sense for him to go for broad appeal.


    My favorite part was when Obama told the audience what was up with the permits for drilling on federal land. That was short and sweet. It would be great if he could explain most things that easily to deflect the bullshit, but in a "debate" with Mitt Romney the bullshit is seldom that specific and refutable--- it's a wall of bullshit built upon a foundation of bullshit. I don't blame our president for being able to cut the Gordian Knot every time the Robot asserts a lot of bullshit and does the Presidential Preen.


    Fact-checking as a whole is not a good way to reply to whatever a pathological liar wants to throw your way. Mittens doesn't care about the truth, at all. No amount of facts thrown his way will alter his effort to "look presidential" and to put Obama in his place. All he wants is to be POTUS, by hook or crook because that's what he wants.

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  66. Bizarro Mike1:20 PM

    Oh, fuck you. Winning the comment thread in the second comment isn't very sporting.

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  67. PulletSurprise1:45 PM

    >>>Obama was faced with a roomful of people who supposedly hadn't figured out whom to vote for yet

    Operative word "supposedly." Watching the focus group that MSNBC had on afterwards, it was apparent to me that a plurality of these electoral blue-ballers have figured out that the shortest path to proclaiming mad love for Romney on the teevee is to convince the nearest pollster that they're oh-so-confused about the respective programs... but "somehow" this here one debate convinced them that Romney's five-middle-finger exploding heart recession killing plan is the most detailed and therefore most plausible solution and therefore Romney gets their vote.

    Undecided my ass. If that's the extent to which they're paying attention? Fuck them with a slide hammer. I simply cannot believe that there are that many people weighing this decision so heavily, or taking the decision so quote-seriously-unquote.

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  68. gocart mozart1:58 PM

    Gentlemen, we must not allow a binderwomen gap.

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  69. gocart mozart2:06 PM

    Well there were less than 50 employees and they were all the right height.

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  70. BigHank532:31 PM

    Not to mention they'll need to come up with a good excuse to keep her from test-driving Rafalca.

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  71. bstar2:38 PM

    How else are you going to find women whose sexual characteristics are of a highly stimulating nature?

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  72. Yeah, that came through with the actual townhall group, too: "I am a low-information, undecided voter, and I have a question regarding gas prices and sinister Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1976, and is a Pisces."

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  73. John D.2:55 PM

    Well, well. As per usual, it's funny to watch the Rethugs trampoline from position
    to position and then back again with all the consistency of an alley cat in heat. Mitt apparently 'won' the first debate by virtue of being the alpha male asshole in the room, but Biden lost his debate because UNCIVILITY! Now the scum are claiming Obama lost again due to being insufficiently deferential to Big Daddy Mitt, who evidently wasn't enough of an asshole last night. Are these clowns shameless, or what?

    As for Obama, it's a damned good thing he pulled his thumb out of his ass and didn't go into yet another rendition of his patented Little Miss Bipartisan Betty routine. One Republican onstage was enough, thanks.

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  74. PulletSurprise3:52 PM

    >>>insufficiently deferential to Big Daddy Mitt, who evidently wasn't enough of an asshole last night

    Romney was in full metal dickhead mode last night, and Obama did well enough not to tell him "now go home and get your fuckin' shinebox" after Crowley set him right* on the Benghazi altercation. From my viewing, a ticking off of that magnitude would have been commensurate with the level of respect that Romney was affording the audience and the sitting President of the United States.

    * despite her immediately walking it back after the broadcast, unfortch.

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  75. PulletSurprise4:01 PM

    This introduces images than cannot be unseen.

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  76. John D.4:12 PM

    Well, of course Rmoney was in full dickhead mode last night. One can hardly expect the man not to be himself, no?

    When I said "evidently," I meant it from the perspective of the mouth breathers in the GOP base. They need to cobble together some rationale for him doing so well the second time out. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

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  77. John D.4:13 PM

    Ahem. For him doing not so well is what I meant to say. Heh, heh. "Whoops!"

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  78. montag25:01 PM

    "Are these fucking people crazy?"

    You have a gift, it seems, for the rhetorical question.

    I admit that it does seem strange that approximately 25% of this country--including the linguistic Jeffrey Dahmers that populate the right's punditry and exhort that 25% to further pathological aberration--is really, truly, clinically bugfuck nuts, but, yes, it is likely so. Unfortunately, this is not a case of semantics being the last refuge of the pedant, but, rather, is a pitiable attempt at defending the indefensible in service to a particularly psychotic Podhoretzian politics, the intent of which is to make us crazy, too.

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  79. redoubt5:20 PM

    Romney ’12: Every Binder Full of Women. For America.

    Now available at Staples. Of course.

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  80. redoubt6:10 PM

    Binders Full of Women

    Jane Swift: "Da fuq???"

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  81. XeckyGilchrist8:14 PM

    I think the mission crept to that about an hour after it was conceived. Maybe an hour before.

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  82. wileywitch8:21 PM

    There is wonderful edit button after post. No worries. put "not" in post.

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  83. If it's cold, they can overclock Romney's CPU.

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  84. Romney's still having to play along with the explanation he once gave his staff: "Binder: Trapper Keeper. That's all I meant when I wrote "BTK" on my notepad."

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  85. I enjoyed it when a BBC radio guy covering America noted that undecided voters are often deeply stupid, in words to that effect. One example was an undecided voter who thought that if we'd kept the space program going, Al Qaeda never would have messed with us.

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  86. Substance McGravitas10:36 PM

    My favorite part was when Obama told the audience what was up with the
    permits for drilling on federal land. That was short and sweet.


    I was impressed. He knows his shit.

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  87. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume12:38 AM

    Undecided my ass.


    They've decided they don't want to own up to being in either party--especially Republican--so they pretend to not having made up their minds yet in order to get on TV.

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  88. smut clyde6:24 AM

    It's from Fear & Loathing, AK. "He said nothing: Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on it. A very gross tableau."

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  89. Halloween_Jack7:57 AM

    "I totally don't take all my cues from Rush Limbaugh, even though he's the most insightful and perceptive political commenter in the history of ever IMO."

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  90. Halloween_Jack7:58 AM

    yo dawg I herd u liek independence...

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  91. gocart mozart11:38 AM

    May he be known from now on as Milo Binderwomen

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