2012-10-20 18:00:49 -0400

Jennifer, you really do need to calm down a bit before posting. The constant shouting and vitriol do not help you make points, particularly when it’s clear that your argument isn’t holding.



When you say there was a “trial on c span”, you’re being disingenuous. A trial in this case means that people were in a courtroom being charged and prosecuted for a crime. It is not the same thing as someone like Darrell Issa or GOP members in Congress holding a hearing so they can yell at whoever they like. There’s a big difference between the two ideas. So I repeat my question to you – where and when on C- SPAN did you see a trial where the perpetrators of this attack were prosecuted for their crimes? And I’ll give you the answer – you did not, because no such event took place. I wasn’t being sarcastic in pointing out the facts – I was trying to correct your statement so that people would not think a non-existent prosecution had taken place.



Regarding the video, you really need to look into when all these riots began happening across the Middle East, not just in Libya. The riots began when that video went viral, and the situation is quite similar to when the anti-Mohammed cartoon riled people in the area up a few years back. You are apparently assuming that the attack in Libya was an event happening completely in a vacuum. If only the world worked that way. You are also continuing to try and parse the President’s words in the Rose Garden. I’m not sure this strategy is working so well for the GOP – the last time it was tried, it resulted in the GOP candidate twice being humiliated on national television. I strongly doubt he wants to experience that again on Monday night.



As for your repeated use of profanity and vitriol, they do not constitute anything that would convince me that you truly understand the chaos that video caused. Real people were killed as a result of it. Real people were badly injured. Real people had their lives ruined. Trying to ignore to make a cheap political point is truly an unfortunate choice. And you referred to the Ambassador as “chris”. Do you know him personally? If not, why are you referring to him by his first name and not by his title?



As for the right wing meme that the President is not attending his security briefings, that’s a matter of right wing opinion rather than fact. Certainly neither you nor I are national security experts, nor were either of us present during any of the times daily that the President reviews this information. I would strongly recommend that you think a little more carefully before cavalierly referring to the President as a liar and repeating right wing opinions about the way he conducts his office.



Regarding the debate performance, insulting me will not prove your point. You tried the idea that Romney was chastised more than Obama, but I pointed out that this was due to Romney trying to talk over the moderator more than Obama. Misbehave more, and you get more chidings – it’s not that hard to figure out, and that isn’t a matter of bias toward one candidate or another. You say that you’re neutral, and yet you have just spent multiple posts spinning for Mitt Romney and calling the President names. I find it difficult to believe you are truly neutral. It is more likely that you would like us to believe you are neutral, so that the spin won’t be as obvious, but only you know the truth on that count.



As for Candy Crowley, you seem to have missed the part where I noted that she corrected both candidates. Please re-read before assuming things like that, as it diminishes your argument. And she was absolutely right to point out to both candidates at that moment what was the factual record. (And to be clear, nobody is saying that everything that either candidate said was true. Obama was off on several of his statements as well.) The Libya moment was particularly important because Romney was trying to confront the President on a non-factual basis. Romney’s desperate move to do this was practically stopping the debate, and the President was quietly asking him to move on by saying “Proceed, Governor”. When Romney persisted in the attempt to bully the President, Crowley made it clear that Romney was off on one part of what he was saying, and correct on another part. You seem to assume that the moderator should just stand there if one candidate says an outright falsehood. That depends on the moderator, but usually a good reporter isn’t going to just stand there and have a national audience get blatantly lied to.



As for the Lily Ledbetter Act, you are cherry-picking your statistics, which indicates again that you are anything but neutral in this situation. Obama supported the Act both as a Senator and as President, and signed it into law early in his administration. Almost all of the GOP members of Congress voted against the bill that passed in 2009, and it was their opposition that killed the earlier version. So yes, President Obama supported the Act, and he has been proud to note that he signed it into law. Further, the GOP opposed it, and they don’t get to rewrite history about that. These are facts. Please don’t confuse them with GOP talking points about the Act. If you want to take the President to task for not resetting the pay rates at the White House, we can certainly have that discussion separately, but that doesn’t change the fact that he supported and signed this Act into law.



As for Candy Crowley, you seem to think she was “desperate” to keep Romney from making his points. That’s not what neutral, non-right wing people saw. Neutral people saw Romney trying to repeat his points and hammer at the President whenever he could, and multiple times, he got called out for this. When the President called to Crowley, he was asking her to enforce the rules that both men had agreed to follow for the debate, and which Romney seemed to think no longer applied to him. By the end of the debate, it seemed clear that both Crowley and Obama were frustrated with Romney’s behavior and attitude. But the end result speaks to how that worked out for Romney – which wasn’t very well.



I appreciate that you’re saying you’re independent and not attacking anyone’s personal views, but you’ve presented several posts here, full of anger and attack statements aimed solely at Romney. Logically, it follows that you support Romney, which is absolutely your right.



As for whether the debate was a tie, that’s something that most polls did not indicate. I would have thought it a tie had Romney not repeatedly committed unforced errors, culiminating with the public humiliation that wound up happening in triplicate within the last ten minutes of the event.



As for Rasmussen, you should be aware that he is known as a Republican pollster whose reports regularly favor the GOP candidates and positions all the way up to the last minute before an election happens. At that point, he suddenly reins it in and starts showing the accurate numbers, which can be a heck of a seesaw for his fans. By showing the accurate numbers during the last week of a campaign, he can claim to be a very accurate pollster. But that doesn’t obviate his behavior for the prior year in each case. Among his tactics has been to release polls on the same day as a major release by another polling firm – specifically to drag down the average. For example, if an NBC or ABC poll is about to come out and it’s expected to show a large Obama lead, Rasmussen will generate a poll showing either a much smaller Obama lead or even a Romney lead. When RCP averages the numbers, presto, the numbers for Obama appear to be down. I strongly recommend you turn to Nate Silver’s excellent aggregate blog 538, if you’d like a more dispassionate and neutral source of polling information.