The economy sucks so who knows what it's worth.
UPDATE. The reactions at National Review suggest my analysis is correct. John O'Sullivan:
Romney is winning. Why? He is making his case on foreign policy to the American people, while Obama is trying to establish his own sense of superiority. As a result Romney, looks presidential and Obama looks quarrelsome and touchy — even when, as sometimes, Obama has the better case.First of all, "Romney is winning" because Graham works for National Review where that's the only acceptable answer; second, the "sense of superiority" to which he refers is established by Obama observably knowing very well what he's talking about, which is not a bad thing. Mona Charen asks, "Is it just me or is Obama once again taking up way more time?" Given the results, I can see why she'd think so. Jonah Goldberg assures us that Romney wasn't as hard on Detroit as Obama said he was and conservatives wish he was. And Michael Graham is spinning so hard he doesn't realize he's made himself dizzy: After claiming there's "lots of chatter in my Twitter feed that Mitt is debating like a guy who’s winning and President Obama’s debating like a guy who’s losing" -- well, that I can believe; also that Graham's Twitter feed consists mainly of guys with names like @LiburlsSuk and @TeaPartyHotTub -- he adds, "[Obama's] got to understand that, at best, he’s 'winning' an uninspired, low-impact debate. (And I actually think he’s losing.)" This is the kind of reasoning 10-year-olds apply in their rooms after they've been sent there without supper.
UPDATE 2. Oh Jesus:
Actually, we probably don’t have fewer bayonets now than in 1916. Back then, the army was about 108,000 men strong, and the National Guard boasted about 90,000 men. There are no reliable numbers on the number of bayonets issued...Similarly, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. [retucks shirt]
Go Giants!
ReplyDeleteSo, he's going to do everything the same as Obama, but awesomer. He must think his supporters are idiots, and I suspect he's right.
ReplyDeleteI just listened but didn't watch. Mitt didn't sound like he scored any points but Obama scored a couple. So... ROMNEY WINS!
ReplyDeleteVia Thundra we see discontent.
What about Libya, ya Lib?
ReplyDeletewhat happened? did i faint? what did he leave us? did he leave us any toys?
ReplyDeletePataki sounding desperate in post- debate commentary.
ReplyDeleteIf by "winning" they mean spouting a continuous stream of gibberish seemingly without needing to breathe, then yes, Romney is winning. I have a feeling that Romney owes whatever success he may have had in the boardroom to his mastery of the Blizzard of Bullshit technique to the point where people will sell him their companies, or their children, just to shut him up.
ReplyDeleteI'm just happy to know that we can shut down Iran's access to the sea by invading Syria! (If they don't take the opportunity to sail on Romney's pool of sweat!) I mean, it's not like Persia has a gulf or anything! And then we could cripple even more Iranians! Right after we indict Ahmadinejad for genocide!
ReplyDeleteGenocide he committed with his mouth! The worst kind!
ReplyDeleteHey, Romney promised an indictment. He wasn't suggesting Ahmadinejad is literally guilty of genocide. The Hague just needs to take a strong, incorrect stance to send a message, Romney argued, in order to get Ahmadinejad to stop saying things. Words are literally the gravest security threat our nation faces, and they should be fought, by the Hague, with other, weirder words. That's how you win things.
ReplyDeleteToo much weird European-ness with this Hague business! Not enough exclamations! Also, not enough breast-beating about American greatness! That's how you win things!
ReplyDeleteBoy, that was an ass-kicking. Obama is actually pretty good at being a smartass while sounding calm and serious. (The steady baritone helps.) Romney's going to do everything the same - but be more strong and manly doing it, or something. And we can't kill our way to a solution, apparently! Do his advisors and the rightbloggers know? (I was also heartened for Conor Friedersdorf by Romney's staunch anti-drone stance.)
ReplyDeleteNATIONAL REVIEW's vision of post-Obama diplomacy -
ReplyDeleteMitt: Kids, there's three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way and the American way!
The Citizenry: Isn't that the wrong way?
Mitt: Yeah, but faster!
Romney will weaponize word salad, using the Word Salad Shooter! (Made in a Bain-owned factory in China.)
ReplyDeleteIt's over: Bill Kristol just declared that Romney won the debate and the presidency. Celebrate, Democrats.
ReplyDeleteBill Maher tweeted something like: Romney's position: What the other guy said, except I'm a white man.
ReplyDeleteClearly the path to the sea runs through the Polish corridor from Iran to Syria.
ReplyDeleteRMoney got schooled so many times that I can't believe it can be spun as anything but a total victory for him. I mean he even brought up the apology tour and all I could do was say "You crazy bastard" but he kept driving his dog shit encrusted car right on down the highway to Jaysus Land.
ReplyDeleteWe may never see his like again my friends.
Also: While I agree with the Guardian crew (Richard Adams and Greenwald) that the questions and answers were pretty bad in terms of a serious discussion on foreign policy, it's not as if this is a surprise. The Villagers aren't going to suddenly start fact-checking or caring about substance, let alone questioning American imperialism. This was about Romney bullshitting once again and whether Obama would call him on it; it's not as if Romney was going to seriously criticize Obama on the merits, which would basically necessitate criticizing him from the left. (The quickly-dropped drone question was the only point that came close, and that came from Schieffer, and he didn't even press Obama.) As debate #1 clearly established – as did all 27 Republican primary debates – the chattering class does not feel that accuracy, honesty and substance are not prerequisites for seeking high office.
ReplyDeleteSyria, nothing - I've read Xenophon, so I know that the only route from Persia to the sea runs through Assyria and Armenia.
ReplyDeleteWhew, that's a relief!
ReplyDeleteI caught the tail end of the debate in a bar in Brooklyn. I was the guy yelling "talk about Sensata and outsourcing!" The general consensus was that the president should have tied Bain's outsourcing model around Romney's neck like a millstone, then he should have ridiculed Mitt about the Romneyshambles before pushing him off the boat, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as the debate was over, my friend insisted that the publican turn on the Bears' game. I'd have preferred checking out some of the postmortem, but her need was more pressing than mine.
I wish to dress this comment with a light raspberry vinaigrette.
ReplyDeleteBut... but... THIS IS SPARTA!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe LDS equivalent of the Gish Gallop, eh? I imagine he had to spout a whole stream of crap in one breath before those heathen Frenchies slammed the door in his face. Yeah, missionary work is just like war.
ReplyDeleteSnark and sarcasm aside, is Mitt Romney a stupid motherfucker or what?
ReplyDeleteI think TBogg was more than just snarky when he said that the Syrian/Iran sea line meant that Rmoney lost the geography portion of the pageant.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's much question that our foreign policy has sucked for a long, long time. Presidents only seem to make it worse, rather than better, so, yes, this debate is yet another event in a long, tiresome beauty pageant.
I take it that's a rhetorical question. A smart guy would have been able to understand about the Navy, for example, "fewer battleships, more aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines," and that would have ended that avenue of inquiry. As for his geographical imprecision, I doubt that hurts him much--most Americans would believe him on spec, since they don't have a clue one way or another.
ReplyDeleteFrom the bits of it I heard, it sounded as if Rmoney whined, and whined at length.
ReplyDeleteThat's evidence enough of his qualifications for office for the inside-the-Beltway crowd.
Good job everyone, know Iran is gonna find out that they have coasts. Bravo mapboys!
ReplyDeleteI was just trying to set the discourse to a level appropriate to a man of Romney's stature.
ReplyDeleteI think the appropriate level is at this moment being defined by Rmoney. He's in a hole, and he's digging hard.
ReplyDeleteMore to the north-east I think,
ReplyDeleteI just switched on NPR and heard Mittens swear to bring the boys home from Afghanistan by 2014. Funny, I thought that lots of wingnuts criticized Obama for publicly proposing a deadline for withdrawal, that it was broadcasting the army's plans to the enemy or some such. IOKIYAR, especially one that looks into the camera with a frozen rictus of a grin as if he's trying to tell a guy who's got a gun on him and has just cocked the hammer that, no, you don't understand, I've got a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteI caught the very tail end of the debate; was previously IMing with a potential new date who was telling me that she was trying to restrain herself from throwing things at the screen and screaming. She told me about Obama's line that yeah, we have fewer ships than we had just before WWI, and also fewer horses and bayonets; apparently Michelle Malkin (via Twitchy) was trying to spin that into "Obama hates the Navy." Yeah, try running that up the flagpole, along with your social media name that evokes images of someone furiously thumb-typing after having snorted a fat line of crank and cursing at autocorrect. (It does seem to have become an instant meme, but not all of it trending against the POTUS.)
The Achaemenid Empire had weakened itself through multiculturalism and political correctness, and was ripe for Alexander's picking. But, truly, the final nail in the coffin was the trans-Oxanian campaign which deprived the Persians the use of the Aral Sea. That, and their line of acromegalic, bisexual, negroid emperors.
ReplyDeleteFor chuckling: Obama, the 'oughties called; they want their tired joke back.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that he's stupid, but I think that he's got the same problem that I've seen in some actors and actresses who are very good looking: they aren't that good at acting because I think that they know in the back of their minds that they simply don't have to try very hard. (There are exceptions, of course, and you also have the odd rare case like Rob Lowe, who got a lot better after he became a pioneer in the celebrity sex tape field.) Mitt got extra credit and a huge bump in the polls for putting his back into it in the first debate (and was helped by Obama's low-key performance), but you could see in the second and third debates that he was visibly frustrated by the thought in the back of his head that, damnit, he could hire someone to do this for him.
ReplyDeleteLook, all I know is that the monolith told me that I should pick up a big-ass thigh bone and wail on the other dudes to get our water hole back, and that's good enough for me.
ReplyDeleteI want to toss this salad's salad.
ReplyDeleteCan we get a meme started that the way to choose a President is to decide whose voice you'd like to listen to for the next four years? I couldn't stand W's nasal whine, and Rmoney's voice is similar, without the fake shitkicker accent (and Ryan's even more of a whiner). Obama's smooth, low-key tones wear much better.
ReplyDeleteNow I have a vision of Mitt set up with a hidden earphone and transmitter (like the one that W was rumored to have in '04) that's accidentally set up with a text-to-speech feed from all the tweets from that post, and halfway through Mitt just stops in mid-sentence, grabs the side of his head, and shouts, "Shut up shut up shut up! My handlers told me that he'll already have a zinger prepped for Libya! LEAVE ME ALONE!" Obama leans over and whispers briefly to Bob Schieffer, then Vulcan neck-pinches Romney.
ReplyDeleteI was going to comment on Historian Goldberg's more recent Corner pontifications, but this piece by Charles Kesler is too, too precious. It begins:
ReplyDeleteMy wife, the very shrewd Sally Pipes, penetrated to the heart of the debate in a single sentence tonight when, only about 15 minutes into the exchange, she observed: “Romney’s flag pin is much larger than Obama’s flag pin.”
He's serious, and it gets much, much worse. Sometimes I can't believe how truly fucked our national discourse has become. I have acquaintances who are Fox/Limbaugh morons, so I should probably be used to unfathomable ignorance and beliefs that defy all logic and reason. But some part of me still wants or needs to think better of our intelligence. If such a thing as American exceptionalism exists, it's that we've willingly turned ourselves into a nation of mindless idiots.
So that's what infantilism looks like when it dresses up as intellectualism. I wish I'd waited until after lunch.
ReplyDeleteWe also have fewer Goobers and Raisinettes; is that a slur against chocolate, peanuts and raisins?
ReplyDeleteAhem:
ReplyDeleteI was going to comment on Histopractor Goldberg's
I don't think it's even that complicated. Mitt believes he's entitled to the Presidency, he deserves to be President, and that he should be President. What the fuck is this uppity black guy doing arguing with me? Why can't he shut up and get out of my way?
ReplyDeleteC'mon O'bam', America doesn't dictate! Well, except for
ReplyDeleteBatista
Duvaliers
Trujillo
Castillo Armas
Rios Montt
Somozas
Noriega
Pinochet
Botha
Mobutu
Museveni
Arap Moi
Mubarak
Papadopolous
Salazar
The House of Saud
The House of al-Sabah
Saddam Hussein
The Shah
Karimov
Musharraf
Chiang Kai-Shek
Ngo Dinh Diem
Lon Nol
Suharto
Park
Yeah, except for those.
Oh, so now inflammatory speech is to be forbidden again? Let me update my notes.
ReplyDeleteMonolith? That's old Europan thinking.
ReplyDelete"I'd have preferred checking out some of the postmortem, but her need was more pressing than mine."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I get that a lot, too.
I think it depends on what you mean by "stupid." I'll give him that you don't do Harvard Law and Biz at the same time without a lot of brainpower. Bain has a rep for being good at what it does (whether or not what it does is good is something else).
ReplyDeleteAnd trustworthy folks who've worked with him (like the MIT economist who designed Romneycare) have come away favorably impressed by his willingness to do reasonable things if you bring a good argument. And then have been pissed at his willingness to piss that away to become president.
My guess is that in a different political climate Mittens would not seem like such a fool. But Mitt's doppleganger (handsome moderate Mormon scion and former governor) tried to run as a Reasonable Republican, and got pounded like cheap veal. There's no way Romney gets through the primary without playing to the cheap seats, and now he has to spin back around and be a moderate (I was legitimately surprised that he mentioned "UN," "foreign aid," and "Islamic scholars" in one sentence, and it wasn't paranoid).
Tl;dr: he's not a stupid motherfucker, but cognitive dissonance makes anyone seem like a stupid motherfucker.
The very shrewd Sally Pipes, and also.
ReplyDeleteAnd Fielding Mellish.
ReplyDeleteI will make my Grandmother's special "Peppy Salad Dressing" for this comment.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, "Romney is winning" because Graham works for National Review where that's the only acceptable answer
ReplyDeleteDid you mean "Sullivan"?
Well, if we didn't prop up dictators, who would we eventually declare war on?
ReplyDeleteWhy shouldn't Mitt just stumble into the presidency? After all, he is one mighty and strong.
ReplyDelete"who would we eventually declare war on?"
ReplyDeleteThat should be "whom," so now I'm voting for Romney.
the only route from Persia to the sea runs through Assyria and Armenia.
ReplyDeleteOnly if you're not prepared to deal with a hostile Media.
After watching Romney in action in these debates, I finally absolutely get the wisdom of the Mormons in sending their kids out on two year missions. It is the greatest training you could have if your success in life depends upon you being first and foremost a salesman. You'll learn that though you get a hundred doors slammed in your face, you by God shine your shoes, put on your black suit and tie and white shirt and get back out there because that hundred and first just might be THE ONE. You'll learn to read folks quickly, and be able to instantly spot the chumps who might be ready to buy your spiel and sell their souls to the Angel Moroni. And you'll learn to tailor and fine tune your pitch on the fly if things seem to be going south on you. Young Willard learned his lesson well... he's the perfect soulless closer, ready to do what it takes to get you to buy no matter what it is, and if whatever it is he's selling blows up five minute after the warranty runs out, or poisons you and your family... hey, that's Capitalism, motherfucker. And he's so close he can taste it...
ReplyDeleteWhat the fuck was that anyway? Did they lock Bolton and Senor up? Or is this just more Straussian magic at work? Bush, after all, ran on a "humble foreign policy" platform before blowing up the whole fucking world. It'd be nice if people were actually reminded of this small detail.
ReplyDeleteAs I said quite some time back, the roles on Team R have reversed themselves over the past 30 years. Back in the Reagan era, Evil drove the bus; Stupid just paid for the gas. These days, Stupid is in the driver's seat, while Evil (in the form of Kochs, Adelsons, et al) pays for the gas.
ReplyDeleteWhen Stupid is behind the wheel, you play to Stupid, or you become a speedbump.
ReplyDeleteholding the sceptre of power in his hand
Oh, my.
his bowels shall be a fountain of truth
Do not want!
Great, now I've got the Goobers and Raisinets jingle stuck in my head, only now it's "horses and bayonets." Jerk.
ReplyDeleteDidn't your mother warn you about taking advice from giant polished black rocks?
ReplyDeleteThis is why they put Bolton and Senor on the payroll in the first place. I'll bet they'll be unavailable for comment until after the election, when whatever raving bullshit comes out of their mouths won't matter anymore.
ReplyDeleteBill Kristol? Isn't he the guy that is wrong about everything?
ReplyDeleteI don't think we are in danger of running out of Goobers! It is the imminent bacon shortage I am worried about!
ReplyDeletehis bowels shall be a fountain of truth
ReplyDeleteWell, it kinda makes sense that truth would come from his bowels, since what's coming from the other end is a fountain of unmitigated shit.
"his bowels shall be a fountain of truth"
ReplyDeleteThat sounds attractive.
He's Reverse-Cassandra.
ReplyDeleteNew mythical character! Ardnassac.
ReplyDeleteI saw Charles Cooke on a CBC news show. Bloke looks and sounds (minus the obvious Lancashire) like a lobotomized Graham Nash, but sounded almost sane for a NatRev shit-pusher. I think they have training courses for appearing on Canadian TV.
ReplyDeleteIs James Earl Jones still alive... or is that a little bit too Darth Vadery?
ReplyDeleteOoooo, I likey!
ReplyDeleteElland Road applauds this comment
ReplyDeleteSounds like a slightly misspelled run of the mill single malt.
ReplyDeleteWe've seriously lost our capacity for ocean-going steamships, too.
ReplyDeleteHe's got that same "dad-hector" that Bush had, as though he were lecturing some exasperating little boys.
ReplyDeleteTruly, some U.S. Americans do not have maps.
ReplyDelete~
Maps is from the Devul I tells ya
ReplyDeleteThat's a fairly comprehensive list... apart from a few missing Argentinian and Brazilian generals, Roberto D'Aubuisson, the current government of Honduras, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and how could we forget Alfredo Stroessner, who managed to keep Paraguay under martial law for 43 years, and whose secret service, largely trained at the School of the Americas, was legendary for its creativity in the field of torture (the secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party was dismembered alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened in by phone).
ReplyDeleteYup, we can pick `em.
Romney: Mr. President, I'd just like to say that I no longer have any problem with your Libya policy after getting my ass kicked last debate.
ReplyDeleteThe Corner: Romney's looking presidential!
Romney: All that stuff about withdrawal dates looking weak? I'm over that. You were right and I'll submit to your policy.
The Corner: Romney showing restraint!
Romney: If it's all right with you, I'd like to drop out of the race and be your Secretary of State, sensei.
The Corner: Obama's being lured into overconfidence!
Romney: Fine, if you insist. Seppuku it is. (kills self)
The Corner: Paul Ryan is winning this debate without even being there. How masterful is THAT?
The funniest thing about the post-debate spin is that the wingnuts are parsing Obama's "horses and bayonets" comments using pretzel logic, while using the same pretzel logic to defend Mitt's bone-stupid "Syria is Iran's route to the sea" comment.
ReplyDeleteOh, FFS: Cooke links to a Slate article to make his point, but misses the bit where the last time that U.S. forces made a bayonet charge was in 1951. Marines are still keen on bayonet training, but the article says that they're used in the field mostly for "keeping prisoners under control and for 'poking an enemy to see whether he is dead.'" I think that at one point early in the Afghanistan war, Special Forces also rode on horses (special horses?), but, you know, edge cases and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteAnd Cooke finishes off with: "I’ll give Obama the horses point, although quite how this serves as a
counterargument to ensuring the maintenance of American naval supremacy I
remain unsure." No shit, Chuck? How about we start with "simply having more ships doesn't necessarily make a navy supreme"? I'm sure I've got some hand puppets around here somewhere.
It's big, black and hard. What's not to like?
ReplyDelete"I'll give him that you don't do Harvard Law and Biz at the same time without a lot of brainpower."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it's like combining Ben Shapiro and George W. Bush into one towering intellect.
I wish to dress this comment with a light raspberry vinaigrette.
ReplyDeleteUm, I don't want to know how you get the raspberries in it.
Pretzels can be deadly, as Obama's predecessor learned.
ReplyDeleteRumproast points out that the Pretzeldent said "fewer" not "none". So yes there are fewer bayonets and horses. Don't get me started on the Airship gap.
ReplyDeleteRighties are obsessing over this to try and deflect from the ass kicking their guy got.
I would love to tour the southland with this comment in a traveling minstrel show.
ReplyDeleteHas the President heard of big explodey things that we call cannons? Numbers of those are down too.
ReplyDeleteWe have always been at war with Anabaesis.
ReplyDeleteI understand that "being an alpha male" and "coming up with zingers" are no longer a good thing.
ReplyDeleteDamn right. I've always been more of a Katabasis kinda guy.
ReplyDelete