That was one of several great moments.

Mitt Romney and my former business partner apparently went to the same school to learn how to bully and do that alpha dog thang … the stare-downs, talking-over, aggressive “chasing” to continue a conversation … I can’t believe folks can see this kind of behavior and still want Romney to be president.

Yeah, even better was when Obama stared at Romney and told him that his accusations of politicizing the tragedy were offensive. In writing, it doesn’t sound as forceful as it looked. I’m betting that none of those people has given Mitty one of those looks, probably ever. It was the single most obvious display of Obama’s alpha-male tendencies, which he is normally socialized (unlike Mitty) to keep under control.

Meanwhile, in the audience…

Woke up early in the morning to check out the pundits (jeebus forgive me). What stands out to me is not that most called it a draw or a close Obama victory (disappointing but not surprising). No, what stands out to me is the number of people that are hoping like hell for a Romney victory. I mean, it’s not even like you have to read all that closely–mainstream media types really want Romney to win.

What T said above about wingnuts claiming Obama didn’t say what he said? It’s not just the wingnuts that are parsing that exchange eighty ways to Sunday.

Forgive the double post but… AWESOME!

My coworkers are wondering why I’m laughing so hard.

BTW, check out Jesus’ General’s awesome letter of commiseration to Dinesh D’Souza.

I’m hoping that Mittens found the bottle of Jack Daniels one of the ‘boys’ left for him at the Marriott.

ROFL. Paul Krugman should get the Nobel for snark for this post.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/chicken-hawk-down/

The best caricature of Mr. Money yet.
Mitt Binderminder.

Heller created Minderbinder’s famous saying “What’s good for Milo Minderbinder, is good for the country” (M&M Enterprises for Milo Minderbinder) as a parody of Charles E. Wilson, who said “What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what’s good for General Motors is good for the country” during a hearing of a Senate subcommittee in 1952. Wilson was the head of General Motors in 1952, but became Secretary of Defense in January 1953, thus being an early example of the military-industrial complex, which the Minderbinder character well represents.

Obama’s statement:

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.

You can easily see that “acts of terror” doesn’t refer to the sentence immediately following it, but applies clearly and exclusively to 2001 which he brought up two paragraphs earlier.

If you apply Wingnut magic relative proximity language parsing that is, which is the same kind used to determine that “up on the roof” means “in the car”.

Truly wonderful to watch it play out last night. When Obama said, “Please proceed,” I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: keep talking, Mitt, just keep talking.

A Larson “kat fud” moment if ever there was one.

Among the GOP base/Fox News viewers, it definitely is a winning strategy. Among the marginally sane and minimally sentient segments of the population, not so much.

Four people were murdered at the consulate. You can call it good ole’ saturday night demonstrations by some frisky college folk or you can call it AQ or you can call it terrorism. Yeah that has a nice ring to it. In any case,we will look for justice. Now let’s not all go running for the guns. Lybia is not a really big place so we doesn’t have to kill them all. Let’s just find the muthas who done it. “please proceed”, as the man said.

I knew when he said that, he had him. Too bad Mittens is tone deaf.

Binders, yeah binders Mitt. That’s all ya need to keep them wimen folk happy.

Priceless!

http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/one_frigging_minute_mitt_binderminder/

“I like this one, but she has to go home and make dinner”

If you apply Wingnut magic relative proximity language parsing …

…and don’t forget to check the kerning!

When Obama said “please proceed,” it produced that sudden holy-crap-something-awesome-or-horrible-is-about-to-happen feeling that occurs whenever an NFL offense runs the flea flicker. Everyone leans forward and waits for the carnage.

It did not disappoint.

My wingnut pal was doing the HappyDance after the first debate, was offended (deeply, I’m sure) at Badass Unca Joe’s laugh-fest, but has been notably silent today.

Maybe there’s hope for him yet! Yah, right BWAHAHA!

I knew when he said that, he had him. Too bad Mittens is tone deaf.

Mitt gave him a look like he was thinking, “Whaaa? This is almost too easy!” Surely some warning bells were going off.

How many hours did it take for the wingnuts to scream that the Kos video was a fabrication. We have a family betting pool riding on this….

“Have some more rope, Governor Romney . . .”

Yeah, I think that may have been Obama’s strategy in the first debate: just relax, give the knucklehead enough rope, and the press’ll tear apart the resultant bullshit the next day. Sadly, this did not happen, and so plan B, a bit more, shall we say, confrontational.

That Obama, keeps wanting to believe in the brighter angels of our nature. Jeez, what a fucking Pollyanna.

See you guys dont fundamentally understand the fundamental insecurity of teh conservative low information voter fundament. How the hell do you think we get a hard-on at all if we cannot resort to blowhard bluster and he-man histrionics?

Obama and liburals want to take away our 1st Amendment Right to naughty-talk ourselves into becoming the Manly Men we desperately want to be so we can humiliate teh imaginary girly-man libural in our heads. See without He-Man Histrionics our inner girly man would be free to cavort like a slutty slutslut that is only allowed to come out on Daddy-approved and paid for National Review Caribbean Cruises and that is just wrong. Fundamentally.

As far as I know the only ones who’ve been pushing the “didn’t say ‘act of terror’ for 14 days” meme is right wing bloggers and FauxNoise. So obviously that’s the primary source of current events for the Willard campaign. I mean, Willard so thought he had Obama on that one. And Obama was so so happy to keep feeding him the rope.

If Fox really is all they’re paying attention to Romney deserves to lose on the stupidity factor if nothing else.

Entertaining as Romney’s pratfall is, it’s small ‘taters.

During the course of the debate, he said all women should have access to contraception, he admitted signing an assault weapons ban into law, came out in favor of giving out green cards to foreign college graduates, and was outed as a coal plant killing environmentalist.

When challenged on whether his tax plan adds up, he simply insisted “Of course it adds up! I’ve been in business!” Asked about equality in the workplace, he talked about letting women go home early to get supper on the table. Talking about gas prices, he called for a return to the low pump prices we had at the depths of the last recession.

It was a very, very bad night for Mr. Romney. His blunder on “acts of terror” was just the icing on the doughnut.

Another take on “please proceed”… if you spend enough time in courtrooms, you will eventually come across a lawyer who tries a desperate line of questioning with a witness who is not giving the answers he wants. Even the judge recognizes this as futile, but says “please proceed, councilor”, maybe as much to sip from the cup of schadenfreude as to allow the lawyer’s case to unravel.

I, for one, knew we would be feasting on schadenfreude as soon as President Obama said “please proceed, governor”.

I think the best quote of the night came from Romney really early on when he said, “Look! Everybody knows the conservatives in this country are vicious little bullies who want nothing more than to strangle humanity with their irrational fears and petty narcissism, but I am here tonight to disavow every vile thing I had to tell them to get their votes, but that’s okay because being a person with zero personal integrity makes me teh personification of everything they strive to be!”

And today’s reaction from the Conservabubble really brought that message to life.

Nobody can ever claim Mitt Romney doesn’t understand his constituency.

RMoney’s Boo Boo

TBogg, the Democrats need to hire you.

This was my favourite exchange of the night

Romney: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?

Obama: Please proceed governor.*

Romney: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

Obama: Get the transcript.

*Please proceed to hang yourself. You don’t need my help.

And of course all Mitt’s men are watching backstage going, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

The only warning bells this guy hears is when Calista is opening the door to his love nest.

I bet he played Santa to all the little elfs. Now who could be angry at a man like that. that bad man Obama made him eat shit. that’s just not right.

My 2 cents (worth every penny!) is that RMoney self-destructs when anyone challenges him. The problem with the first debate was that Obama didn’t challenge him. The joy of the second debate was that he did.

RE RMoney’s overall performance: I haven’t seen that much retrenching from a Republican candidate since fed up locals began telling the local conservatives that they wouldn’t vote for them unless the pot holes were filled in before the election!

The only thing that would have made that exchange funnier is if, after the Acme anvil landed on Mitt’s head , the President had looked at him and given him a qick “meep meep!”

I sorta thought the problem with the first ‘debate’ was Money Boo Boo’s peeps not believing they’d been played.

Will Mitt go RedBullScale*-dick in Round 3 (can he help himself) or dial it down a tad?

* not to dis RedBull, but they set a very (24 mile) high standard of ballsey….

All that PAC money couldn’t buy Mitt publicity like this:
http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/

I’m thinking it was part of the strategy all along: Phone in the first debate, let ‘em think they’re da bomb, then smack the hell out of him in the second. Certainly upped the media buzz! Or, maybe I’m fullavit. Who knows?

I had hoped that for the first debate that Obama would have smuggled an “Etch-a-Sketch” onto his podium.

It would have been fun to watch Willard’s head explode as he was being silently mocked by the President (shaking the toy every time he lied or flip-flopped).

Plus, we would get a good idea of how effective “Obama-Care” could be if the President was then successfully treated for the resulting repetitive stress condition from having to shake the “Etch-a-Sketch” so often.

My right-wing Facebook acquaintances thought Romney was “classy”. I kid you not.

Plus, both him and Ryan are now on record as favoring more belligerence in the Middle East, when most Americans don’t war yet another land war, there or anywhere, for a long, long time.