Debate one part two

Noonan’s take on the Debate

The impact of the first debate is going to be bigger than we know. It's going to affect thinking more than we know, and it's going to start showing up in the polls, including in the battlegrounds, more dramatically than we guess. 

It wasn't just Mitt Romney's strong performance. It was President Obama's amazingly weak one. He's never been punctured before. But by debate's end Wednesday night, if you opened the window this is what you could hear: Ssssssss. The soft hiss of air departing from a balloon.

And—amazingly again—he did it to himself. He didn't fight, he didn't show, he wasn't awake and hungry. He just said the same-old-same-old and let it go. He couldn't even meet Mr. Romney's gaze, never mind his arguments.

Debate Prediction that really missed the mark

Sidney Barthwell, a district court magistrate in Michigan who attended Cranbrook with Romney and Harvard Law School with Obama predicted Obama would smoke Romney.  

When they debate, Barack will smoke Romney,” Barthwell, 64, told the Daily Mail.  “Mitt Romney is smart,” he said at the time. “Having said all that, I still think he’s going to get smoked. The best he can do is hopefully come out not looking like a fool. Mitt will find out the hard way as soon as they have their first debate: You don’t debate Obama.”

Afterwards Barthwell explained what happened by saying Romney must have prepared for the debate.  Ya think?   But Barthwell’s comment reminds me of a prediction a sportswriter admitted to many years ago.  Covering the high school football team he predicted a game involving Orrville High School.  He said, “How many points will Orrville score?  Maybe 50, maybe more.”  Orrville lost 6-0. 

What did the Debate tell us?

BarackObama was revealed to be the empty suit with a great gift of gab and a talent only for appealing to the nation’s guilty conscience. Some of us recognized the empty suit four years ago. Like all great salesmen, he can charm prospective customers when he tries, but without a teleprompter he’s hopelessly lost at sea. On Wednesday night, he forgot whether he was selling rubbing alcohol or ladies’ corsets, and it showed.

Like all presidents, he’s accustomed to watching everybody swoon when he steps into the room, and the only tune on his iPod is “Hail to the Chief,” which he plays often. When Mitt Romney confronted him with something less than a genuflection, the president was rattled for the rest of the evening. Life outside a bubble is tough, particularly for a president.

Romney is America’s hope

This is who Romney is, a man who is not mean-spirited, a man who, like Reagan, has core values that are so deeply ingrained a light shines inside him like Lady Liberty's torch.

This is his time. This is America's hope!

I was recently with a very prominent Democrat who spoke of his working with Romney during the Olympics. He spoke of Romney's humility and grace while they were working together. Another friend of mine who was head of security of the Olympics also spoke to me years ago of how terrific a person Romney is.

I met Romney on several occasions, and he is a gracious, genuine person. I also met President Barack Obama who is also gracious and genuine. But while both men have nobility, Romney has the path we need as a nation and a people.

It is no secret what the progressive agenda is - it was no secret four years ago, and it is more evident today. Last night we saw someone who instilled confidence back to a nation in crisis! A nation which has incrementally been mismanaged by both political parties!

Romney communicated to the American people a clear, definitive difference. I think back when I was

a young man as I watched the Reagan/Carter debates with tremendous anxiety. There was the moment when I felt we would be OK.

Last night, that happened again.

Obama identifies who’s to blame for his performance

Surprise!  It isn’t Obama.  It’s Romney.  Obama reinforced what Dr. Goebbels said.  “If you tell a lie often enough pretty soon you start believing it yourself.”

Campaign finance scandal for the Obama campaign?

President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.

A disengaged President

Bob Woodward’s new book The Price of Power shows it as do stories from the NY Times.  And on Wednesday night we all got to see.  Obama is disengaged and living in a comfortable cocoon. 

The president is more comfortable, it seems, campaigning and schmoozing.  Neither requires real engagement, and speaking to worshipful audiences roaring their approval is a great salve to the ego.

How disengaged was Obama?

In the debate on Wednesday, President Obama spoke for 4 more minutes than Romney did, but Romney said 541 more words than Obama did.  It appears Obama kept taking a knee and was trying to run out the clock.  The problem was he was way behind at the time.  

Best line I’ve seen about the Debate

“Never bring a community organizer to a CEOfight.”

The 10 top quotes by Mitt Romney in the Debate

I especially liked this one explaining the difference between Romneycare and Obamacare.

We didn’t raise taxes (in Massachusetts). You’ve raised them by a trillion dollars under “Obamacare.” We didn’t cut Medicare. Of course, we don’t have Medicare, but we didn’t cut Medicare by $716 billion. We didn’t put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they’re going to receive…

5 disingenuous, pathetic, weak, and desperate excuses for Obama’s performance

These aren’t just bad; they are so bad they are funny.

Factcheck:  Will Romney raise taxes on the middle class?

It’s almost an article of faith by the left.  But is it true?

The “nonpartisan” report Obama refers to came out in August from the left-wing Tax Policy Center, or TPC, purporting to show that Romney would have to eliminate $86 billion in middle-class tax breaks to pay for his 20 percent across-the-board rate reduction.

Its authors — one of whom is a recent Obama employee — have subsequently admitted that in the absence of details about Romney’s tax plan, they simply made them up. They also admitted their numbers came out wrong because they guessed which tax breaks Romney would eliminate and which ones were “off the table.” 

Fact checkers who have to make SWAGs aren’t really fact checks.  They are spinmeisters.  

Employment:  Perhaps Obama is the Messiah

Back in 2008 Obama supporters talked about him as if he were the messiah.  It appears now he is doing miracles like Christ did with loaves and fishes.  As Christ feed the multitude with 5loaves and 2 fishes, according to the BLS the President Obama has gotten 873,000 people work when only 114,000 jobs were created in September.  It’s a miracle!

If you don’t buy the miracle explanation, my guess is that it has something to do with November 6^th.

Security at Libyan Embassy

ABC News has obtained an internal State Department email from May 3, 2012, indicating that the State Department denied a request from the security team at the Embassy of Libya to retain a DC-3 airplane in the country to better conduct their duties.

Copied on the email was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in a terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012, along with three other Americans. That attack has prompted questions about whether the diplomatic personnel in that country were provided with adequate security support.

No one has yet to argue that the DC-3 would have definitively  made a difference for the four Americans killed that night. The security team in question, after all, left Libya in August.

Those last four words do not bode well for the Obama Administration.