"Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky..."

UPDATED 10-30-12: See the bottom of this article.

In case you've been totally ignoring the news (and this close to the election, who can blame you?) let me tell you there's a hurricane off the east coast.

Actually, as the storm comes ashore they're saying it's now a cyclone. Whatever it is, it's nasty. From what I hear, it's struck the Northeast the hardest, and damage is expected to be very serious, with storm surges very near the all-time record of about 10.6 feet (there will probably be a new record as you read this). Effects of this storm are expected to last as long as Tuesday night, November 6.

If that date rings a bell, it's election day.

Will this have any effect on the election? It's already had some effect; some states have suspended early voting, and transportation is going to be an issue (especially in places like New York, so dependent on public transportation and so likely to have its public transportation system disrupted, to what degree we can't yet say).

How much this storm will ultimately effect the election is anybody's guess. How it's going to affect the election after the fact is more certain. Whoever wins, expect the losing side to fall all over itself to blame the election results on the storm.

On the right, it's already started. Today I was shown a web page on which an amazing collection of right-wing posts about the storm, calling the weather everything from God's judgement on left-wing wickedness to a left-wing democratic conspiracy. (Check it out for yourself; I couldn't make this nonsense up!) But while conspiracy nuts on the right seem to dominate the pre-election blogisphere, I expect whichever side loses to try to blame their bad fortune on the storm.

This is what human beings do; blame bad fortune on circumstances beyond their control, on invisible beings that live in the sky or the ill will of monsters that live beneath the sea or on that malevolent statue that didn't get its virgin sacrifice last month or on a particularly disastrous alignment of the planets.

The truth is more likely to be far simpler; if the bad weather keeps voters home, it's probably because the weather was bad.

What concerns me is the prospect of this becoming yet another Never-Ending Election like we had in 2000. We were already facing the possibility of another constitutional mess, with a President who lost the popular vote yet won the electoral collage. Current polls show that this is not only possible, it's quite likely.

NOTE: The paragraph below contains errors, which I have noted in the red text at the end of the article.)

But here's what's happening now. I heard the Governor of New Jersey in an interview saying that they're trying to schedule a "make up day" for Friday (November 9), so that people who didn't get to vote early will vet still get the chance to do so. With the election being as close as it's expected to be, this could mean that the deciding votes won't even be cast until days after the election. It also means that the campaigns will continue to try to persuade voters for a few days after the election, a few days after we all hoped it would all be over with.

But the election isn't what we should be concerned with right now. There are a lot of people in danger. There are those who will place themselves in danger for the sake of people they do not know. Let's worry about them first and worry about the election second, at least for a day or so.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

UPDATE 10-30-12: This is what I get for writing something based on something I heard on the radio while I was driving. It doesn't appear now that New Jersey Governor Christie was actually proposing a "make-up election day" after the election, which was what I originally said. What was being proposed was extending early voting into this Friday night, November 2. Should I have listened more closely? Probably, but I was driving and that took up most of my attention. No apologies for that, but I do apologize for any misconception. My bad. BV

Romney trips over his own tongue...surprise, surprise

It seems that Mitt has stepped in it again.

I should be used to this by now.

Last night Romney made a campaign appearance in  Defiance, Ohio. (Nothing unusual about that; he's been spending most of his time in Ohio this week. He needs Ohio, and he's behind in Ohio.) While speaking he said something that he obviously thought would sway more Ohio voters to his side; something that turned out to be completely untrue. (Why am I not surprised?)

Here's what he said, a direct quote:

"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is now thinking of moving all production to China."

A bombshell, a shocking story that would frighten and anger Ohio workers...if it were true.

It wasn't true.

Here's what seems to have happened. Mitt seems to have gotten his information off a right-wing blog that seems to have gotten a false impression from a Bloomberg headline. That's it...just the headline. Or maybe he misread the Bloomberg article himself, without being referred to it by the blog. Either way, either Mitt or one of his people doesn't seemed to have bothered to read past the first line of the article (which line was, in all fairness, badly worded and misleading).

(Don't take my word for it; read it for yourself. If you don't read past the first sentence, you could get the wrong idea too.)

In any case, someone in the Romney campaign (Romney himself or not, the buck has to stop on the bosses' desk) screwed up, and quoted information that was bogus. I'm willing to give Mitt the benefit of the doubt and grant that he probably did not know he was spewing hokum. That doesn't let him off the hook for not knowing he was spewing hokum. Nor can he be forgiven for spewing hokum.

In short, he was spewing hokum.

Just to put the record straight, Chrysler is thinking about manufacturing Jeeps in China, but for the Chinese market. Jeeps for the US market will still be US built. Mitt wrongly stated that Jeep was thinking about moving all production to China; there was absolutely no support for this. Chrysler is apparently doing well enough to consider expanding its manufacturing base to more effectively cover emerging foreign markets. That's what they call "globalization."

Sounds like that auto-bailout thing is working, doesn't it?

(I have to admit that I was skeptical about the whole bailout thing, and said so back in '08.  I also have to admit that I was way wrong.)

(I should point out that I initially heard about this on The Rachel Maddow Show; I subsequently did a bit of web surfing to confirm what I'd heard. If you doubt anything I've said, try doing a Google search on "romney jeep china" and see what you come up with.)

Romney is so bloody bad at putting his foot in his mouth it's a wonder he doesn't have athlete's tongue. (Didn't I say that about John McCain once?) This is just another example. Romney doesn't need this. He's in the last two weeks of a close race, and he needs Ohio very badly. That he would make such an obvious misstep in Ohio, and one so easily avoided, is mystifying.

Someone wake up Mitt, and tell him that his slip is showing.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Suppose they gave a (political) party and nobody came?

Just how many parties does it take to make a two party system?

There was another debate the other day, and you missed it.

That's not a reproach; I missed it too. I think that nearly everyone missed it. I only heard about it a day or so after it happened. No network carried it. No analysts analyzed it. No biased news organizations hyperbolized about it. No pundits...well, no pundits did whateverthehell pundits do with regard to this debate. And I couldn't tell you who won. (I couldn't even watch it on-line and after the fact, since the only places with it archived have it in a version of Flash that this old Mac can't handle.)

This was the Third Party Debate, a misnomer if ever I heard one since there were four "third" parties involved. It basically involved four people you probably never heard of from parties that you never cared about. The four parties involved were the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Justice Party and the Constitution Party.

It's not surprising that the event went ignored by America, as it lacked star power; the only "star" involved was moderator Larry King. But even if no one was watching King still did his job, asking questions on topics that neither the Democrat Obama nor the Republican Romney (nor their minions Biden and Ryan) seemed to want to get anywhere near.

Topics like the War on Drugs. It's interesting to note that three out of the four "third" party candidates favored the legalization of marijuana (only the staunchly conservative Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party was against it).

Topics like the National Defense Authorization Act, which (among other things) allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process and which Barack Obama not only signed into law but fought for in the courts. (Not Obama's most shining moment, in my opinion, and not one that either candidate wants you to look too closely at. Obama doesn't want to have to defend what he's done, and Romney doesn't want to attack him for doing something that he himself would certainly have done.) To their credit, all four of the "third" party candidates came out strongly against the National Defense Authorization Act.

Now, I'd really like to go into this debate in more detail, but as I said I never saw it. I'm working from published news reports from other sources, and that's really no way to do this, but that's what I have to work with. And, as I said, almost no one else has seen it either. A pity, because a vigorous debate on subjects ignored/overlooked/deliberately avoided by the major candidates is something I'd really like to see and something noticeably lacking in any of the "major" party debates.

And it's in the airing of things that the Republicrats want kept out of sight that the "third" parties perform their best, most truely useful function. What a shame no one was watching...we need that kind of political dialogue in this country. We don't get it. We need to ask for it, insist upon it, else we stay in the uninformed dark.

Can I stop putting "third" in quotation marks now?

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Here's a link to the actual debate; I hope you can play it. I can't.
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Third-Party-Presidential-Debate/10737435220/

Here's a couple of news stories on the event:
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/the-third-party-debate/
http://www.wtvm.com/story/19899099/third-party-debate-offers-ideas-not-talked-about-by-major-candidates

Where's Paulie?

Out of sight, out of mind...they hope.

It's interesting to note what the campaigns are doing with their candidates.

Obama is campaigning in the "swing" states. All of them. Including a whirlwind swing through four of them in the last day or so. Romney is focusing on Ohio, a state he desperately needs but where he is (so far) trailing significantly. Vice President Biden has also been seen a lot in Ohio; he's been there for most of this week.

But what's really interesting is what the Romney campaign has been doing with Paul Ryan. (That is, not much.) With the election less than two weeks away, at a time when the Romney campaign really needs "all hands at the pumps," Ryan is attending fund raising events in Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama.

This is weird on a couple of levels.

First, there's the whole idea of the Romney campaign doing fund raising; the timing is odd, certainly, but the Romney campaign is better funded than any Presidential campaign in history. If there's one thing that the Romney campaign doesn't need more of, it's money.

Second, there's the locations involved. Think about it: Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Alabama. Does anyone think there's a chance that Romney won't win all of them? Easily? This is the South, and the Deep South at that; red states all. (Bad Joke Alert! Question: Why is Alabama like a zebra in a blender? Answer: It's black and white and red all over. Well, I said it was bad...)

One bit of speculation I've run across says that while the Romney campaign is doing well financially, the RNC might neet cash for House and Senate races. I'm nor sure I can buy that; the RNC isn't strapped for cash by any means, and never seems to be pressed for rich donors.

Another idea I've heard is that the Romney campaign is afraid that Ryan will do something dumb, or perhaps "go rogue" a la Sarah Palin. This is a more reasonable hypothesis, but it still doesn't quite hold water. After all, in the Vice Presidential debate Ryan held his own against Joe Biden, and managed to look better in his one debate than Romney did in all three of his (including his one undisputed victory, which resulted as much from Obama looking bad as from Romney looking good).

A better explanation is the ongoing series of Republican gaffs regarding rape, as well as women's rights in general. This makes more sense. Lately we've had Republicans from Senatorial candidates Todd Akin (he of the notorious "legitimate rape" comment) and Richard Mourdock (famous for his hard right comments on rape, pregnancy and abortion) saying dumb things in public. It could be that the Romney campaign is afraid that, holding much the same views as these two Senate wannabes, Ryan may be called to account for these views if he risks being anywhere he might get hard questions on the matter. Romney doesn't need to further alienate women; he's badly losing that demographic.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't make much sense (to me, anyway) for the Romney campaign, in a dead heat for the popular vote but still well behind in the electoral college, to (and it's football metaphores tonight) bench its star halfback so late in the fourth quarter, with the score close and a chance, not a great chance but still a real chance, of victory.

I can only think that they're afraid he'll fumble the ball. If that's the case, maybe Mitt Romney isn't the quarterback they need right now.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Don't it make you want to say "Huh?"

Tonight's debate was slated to be all about foreign policy, and for the most part it was. But if you hoped to learn more about Romney's foreign policy, tough luck.

Well, that was...odd.

I'm not entirely sure what to think about that (the debate, I mean). I would have expected Romney to be more the aggressor, but he wasn't. It was almost as if he didn't want to upset the President. Huh?

Romney played his old game of stating a position diametrically opposed to his previous stated policy, and flat-out denying that he had ever held his previous position. Moreover,  Romney often seemed to have given up on developing his own foreign police and adopted Obama's. Huh?

A bit of a dustup happened when they got onto the subject of the auto bailout, with Romney again trying to rewrite the record on his famous "let 'em fail" position regarding Detroit, claiming that he never had that opinion. Huh?

Romney accepted Obama's position on withdrawal from Afghanistan, even accepting Obama's stance on a firm withdrawal date, a position totally opposite the one Romney has taken in the past; a position directly contradicted by all of Romney's previously stated positions. Huh?

And Romney never challenged Obama on Benghazi, which was one of Obama's weakest positions in the last debate, essentially giving Obama a walk. This should have been Obama's Achilles' heel, but as it turned out Romney skipped over that point. It seemed like Romney didn't want to risk another gaff on this subject, even though I would assume Romney was better prepared to meet this than he was. Huh?

(OK, that was the last "Huh?" I promise.)

It was a well-mannered debate, a mostly civilized debate, and thus a more boring debate, but that was about what I expected. Like the first debate, Romney's sudden 180-degree turn on many issues seemed to throw the president, but Obama was more willing to challenge Romney whenever this occurred.

Overall (and remember this is coming from an Obama supporter) I would have to say that Romney looked the weaker of the two. His flip-flopping around like a fish stranded on the shore certainly didn't help him. I thought Obama looked on far more solid ground on most points, and gave the audience a grasp of what his foreign policy would be in the next four years. I got no such view into Mitt Romney's head.

Please forgive my return to boxing metaphors here: I thought Romney's "rope-a-dope" strategy didn't work so well, his jab-jab-clench often interrupted by a stumble that ruined his rhythm, his attempts to stay out of Obama's reach making him appear the weaker of the two. I would have to give this win to Obama.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Too late for the debate?

In a couple of hours, we go through it all again. But I'm wondering...do these things really serve a purpose?

Yes, it's that time again.

Tonight Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will make one last play for your votes. Especially if you're undecided. The problem with that is that there are fewer and fewer undecided voters at this point, so what they really need to do is to persuade some voters from the other guy's camp to cross over into theirs.

Good luck with that, guys.

Here's the deal; Romney needed to win the first debate to salvage his failing campaign, and did. Obama needed to win the second debate to stop the fallout from Romney's victory, and did. They both need to win this one, for those very reasons. Nothing has really changed. And here I sit, trying to give you (all twenty or so of you) some idea of what's going to happen. Sorry, I don't have a clue.

 But here's a question that's been nagging away at me...do these debate things serve any real purpose?

Think about it. These debates are designed to show quick thinking, fast reactions and the ability to perform instantly under pressure. Which is all well and good, except that the Presidency seldom requires those skills.

Tonight each candidate will be out there unsupported and without notes, without reference material, relying on their own snap judgement and their memories to provide correct answers. When the hell does a President ever do that?

In the real world, Presidents have a lot of support. They are advised by their cabinet and various advisors on diverse topics, and they have speechwriters and image consultants and make-up people to make them look good doing it. They never make an important decision without consulting a small mountain of research material (well, the good ones don't; some of them use their staff to sort through all of that stuff). No president really needs to be lightening-quick, nor as omnipresently aware as we seem to want our leaders to be.

And yet that's what a debate (at least what serves for debate in modern politics) seem to test for, seems to require of a candidate; skills that the President doesn't actually use all that much. I ask again, to what purpose?

And it's no good to say that these things help us to "get to know" the candidates. That's precisely what they don't do! Case in point: Mitt Romney. For the first debate, he stated flatly that certain things he'd been saying for months he never actually said, that certain views he had espoused for months or even years he had never held. It's no wonder Obama had such difficulty in that debate; he was trying to hit a moving target. But I digress.

(I am surprised at the reaction to "Movable Mitt" from the hard right; more to the point, I am surprised by the lack of reaction. I am surprised by their willingness to allow their candidate to back away so sharply from the issues they have called upon him to champion, just to defeat Obama. I wonder how they can be sure which Romney they'll be voting for...the moderate Republican that governed Massachusetts or the harder right-wing Romney we saw throughout most of the campaign. But I still digress.)

Perhaps we should go to a format for debates more like what I remember from high school; neutrally moderated, rigidly timed, with time given to research and prepare answers and with each participant allowed to bring enough research material to form cognizant, well reasoned answers. Such a debate would be thoughtful, insightful, intellectual and bloody damn boring. So boring, in fact, that hardly anyone would watch the damn things and we could all watch sports or reality TV without feeling guilty.

Like most of you will be doing in a couple of hours.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

UPDATED Responding to a criticism...

(UPDATED 10-20-12: See the end of the article.)

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend something I wrote, and I chose to do it here rather than to take up Facebook space. Anyway, it was here on this blog that I allegedly let my own prejudices unfairly color my objectivity. Funny...I don't think I ever claimed to have any objectivity. But here's my response...

Last night I posted my feelings on the debate. This morning I find out that the country (most of it, anyway) agrees with me. Yay for me.

Not everyone agrees, though, and not many locally (this may be a blue state but this is a very red county). One friend of mine, a staunch conservative,  asked me how I could possible think Obama won. My response was, "How could I not?" To me it seemed blindingly obvious. Pressed to say why, I said (among other things) that Romney's answers seemed a bit evasive.

This seemed to anger my friend even more. He defended his position ("No, he was not evasive!") and I further cited an example of Romney answering a question and not coming anywhere near to answering what had been asked. My friend's response to this was to flat out deny that this had happened. I have to ask, were we watching the same debate?

Judging a political debate is a subjective thing. People tend to view a debate based (at least in part) on their feelings for/against a particular candidate. We can't possibly judge a debate without at least acknowledging our own personal feelings and biases. But I do recall the question in question, and I hold to my position that it indeed did happen, and happened in the way I said.

Here's what happened in the debate. A young woman in the audience stood up to ask a question about women in the workplace, and the actual question, as best as I can recall, was this:

"In what new ways do you intend to rectify employment inequality in the workplace?"

(I should note that I am relying on my own memory for this quote. Please allow for brain damage.)

Romney's response was to launch into a story about how, back when he was Governor of Massachusetts, he had noticed that all of the candidates given him for important positions in his government were men, and launched an extensive search for qualified women to fill cabinet positions. (This is where the now famous "binder full of women" quote originated.) All well and good...but it didn't have anything to do with the question asked.

(There are indications that the "binders" story was inaccurate. It appears that the famous binders were actually prepared a year earlier by a group of women responding to the lack of women in prominent government positions. Was Mitt lying? Well, exaggerating would be a more polite way of saying it, but it appears that Romney was being disingenuous. Again.)

OK, that's my memory of what happened, and you can believe me or not. But a quick Google search on "binders full of women" turned up plenty of support for my position. Here's one source, from The Guardian (UK):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/17/romney-binders-full-of-women

Beyond that, you can do your own damn research (though I must say that most of the pages referenced in said search were about Mitt's comment going viral, and you'll have to wade through a bunch of these).

OK, I've defended myself. Can I have lunch now?

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(UPDATE 10-20-12: My faulty memory was a bit...well, faulty. I looked up the question asked, and here it is [according to The Daily Beast]: “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?” Well, I got the gist of it... BV)

Seven rounds Obama, one round Romney, two rounds even

Where the hell was this Obama two weeks ago?

It was a very different debate.

For one thing, in my opinion, Obama won. Decisively. It's not that Romney did anything all that wrong; in fact, he did pretty much the same things that worked so well for him in the first debate. The difference was Obama...he came to play this time. He wasn't afraid to call Romney on his false statements and exaggerations, not to mention his outright fabrications. When Romney's numbers didn't compute, Obama was not afraid to say so, and back it up.

And, to be honest, Romney let verbosity get in his way, much like Obama did the first time. Obama kept his answers/responses to the point and filled with as much specific information as you ever get in these things. Romney's answers tended to be short on specifics; big on big plans, but short on specific information about said plans.

It's worth mentioning that the moderator did her job well, that she wasn't willing to let either Obama or Romney get the better of her, and that neither her nor Obama were willing to let Romney get away with the same kind of bullying tactics that worked so well for Mitt in the previous debate. Romney's verbal strong-arm tactics, the same tactics that had served him so well the last time, failed him because neither Obama nor CNN's Candy Crowley (tonight's moderator) would stand for it.

Obama was good at working in his record where it favored him, while Romney was unable to score when and where Obama may have come up short; I put this down to Obama being better prepared. The advantage here was Obama's. Romney was unable to effectively use his experience as a governor, and whenever he tried to, Obama was able to counter with Mitt's record on multiple flip-flops on numerous issues.

One potential vulnerability for Obama should have been Benghazi, but Mitt made a serious error. I think he's been listening to too many right-wing bloggers, who have been going on and on about how Obama didn't say anything about Benghazi being a terrorist attack for all of two weeks after the attack. Unfortunately for Romney, while this may be "conventional wisdom" in the biased world of right-wing bloggers and pundits, it doesn't have much of a resemblance to reality; the fact is, Obama called it a terrorist attack, publicly, in short order. (This just goes to show you, you can't trust bloggers to get their facts straight.) Obama called him out on this; so did Ms. Crowley (correctly so, as it happens).

Just the same, I felt that Obama never did properly answer the Benghazi question; I scored that round even, despite Romney getting staggered early in the round. (So it's going to be boxing metaphors again, is it?)

If I were to score this like a boxing match...well, look at the title of this article. The whole debate looked to me like two kids in a schoolyard, where one is a bully and the other the smart kid in glasses, when the teacher puts them into boxing gloves and headgear and plops them in a ring with a timer and a referee, and the nerdy kid cleans the bully's clock. That's how I saw it, anyway...I imagine that Republican observers saw a different fight. But that's how these things go.

Now everyone gets their say, from the person-on-the-street to the self-styled "experts" and the obviously biased pundits (and I'll admit that I may fall into that category, however small-time I may be),  but none of it means much. We'll have to wait and see how the debate goes down in history to see how the debate goes down in history. Me, I think Obama won, and I feel good about that.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

"Once more into the breech..."

Another debate, and another chance for Barack Obama not to suck.

I couldn't blame you for saying "Here we go again!" and, to be honest, I'm kind of saying that myself. I know that a lot of you are dreading yet again listening to the candidates promote themselves at the expense of the voters. (But since none of those people are likely to be reading this, why do I care what they think?)

The truth is, this is more than that; it could well be Barack Obama's last chance. He needs to improve upon his previous performance. But then, his previous performance was so bad I don't see how he could do that badly again. If he were to blow it again, it could be the end of him.

I don't look for Obama to let Romney get away with blatantly lying like he did the last time. That may sound partisan, and I admit to being pro-Obama, but that's also the conclusion of damn near everybody that's fact-checked Romney's outrageous statements, his shameless back-pedaling to more moderate positions, on virtually every issue. (OK, that sounded partisan even to me. But I make no apologies, because as far as I can tell that's what he did.)

Romney can't expect to win by the same tactics (notice I didn't say "tricks," even though that's what I was thinking) that he used two weeks ago. Obama is no fool; don't expect him to treat Romney with the same degree of politeness and respect.

But this could backfire; Romney could be prepared to meet a more aggressive Obama by making the President look like a bully. If the Republicans had been prepared to do that during the vice presidential debate, Ryan might not have gotten so seriously beaten up.

(A word about that Biden-Ryan debate: I am not surprised that Biden was judged to be the victor, but I am surprised by just how one-sided public opinion turned out to be. I am surprised--though perhaps I shouldn't be--by how quickly, and how universally, Republicans have shouted "Foul!" and thus demonstrated that they, too, thought that Biden got the better of their boy. I honestly thought the debate was closer that that.)

Actually, imagining the amount of planning-counterplanning-countercounterplanning that must be taking place right now is making my head hurt. The stakes here are high, and along with this being a do-or-die time for Obama remember that it's Romney's best chance yet to finally pull ahead.

A few more points to ponder:

1. Romney is a better debater than Obama. Anyone who doubts this need only refer back to the first presidential debate.

2. This debate is to have a "town hall" format, which should favor Obama.

3. A lot could hinge on whether the moderator sticks strictly to the agreed-upon rules of the debate (like Jim Lehrer did, to his universal derision) or will use her position as moderator to move the debate along (as Martha Raddatz did, to praise from the left and sour grapes from the right). Early indications would seem to suggest that this time the moderator will be more pro-active, but we'll see.

Another important point is that the audience is to consist of "undecided" voters; who this ultimately will favor is anyone's guess at this point. I've heard opinions on both sides; I'm not going to jump in.

And in the end, the punbdit's opinions don't really matter. Once the audience has gone home, the reporters have abandoned their keyboards and the pundits have given their opinions (those that aren't waiting to here what everyone else says before they make their call) then the American people will decide who won, and in the end that's the only opinion that matters.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

UPDATED I really, really, REALLY hate doing this...

...but there's a total moron on Facebook who seems to be determined to make me kill him (at the very least), and I judged that venting in a blog post would be better than anything else I had in mind for him, much as I would have enjoyed performing complex oral surgery on him with a rusty chisel and a pair of vise grips.


(UPDATED on 10-12-12; see the end of the article.)

I'll lay out the entire story for you.

A friend of mine posted a meme that said, in part, "I don't laugh often, but when I do it's usually because someone fell." Innocuous, I'll admit, but Total Moron (whose name is scarcely worth mentioning) posted this:

"Especially old women. I don't know why but's it's so funny to watch them go down and if you can hear it crack it just adds to the humor. You just might get a little wee from me."

Personally, I found that in amazingly poor taste, and said so:

"Dude, if that's a joke it's an amazingly poor one."

To which he replied:

"My 77 year old mother often says this. Where has America's sense of humor gone? We're becoming more and more neurotic with each passing year."

Now let me get this straight...when someone writes something tasteless and offensive I'm not supposed to say anything? Who came up with that idiotic rule?

By this time, you might imagine, I was getting a bit testy. My response:

"My mother couldn't laugh at her broken hip; her Alzheimer's prevented her from understanding what was happening to her. She was terrified. Going into surgery she was terrified. Coming out she was terrified. I'm so glad you find this kind of suffering funny. By now you must have noticed that your very existence offends me, and I don't feel that it's fair to (Original Poster) to carry on this type of discussion in his Facebook space. Nor do I wish to continue this conversation with you in any fashion. Why don't you just go and amuse yourself by laughing at some elderly people in extreme pain and terror, since you find it so amusing. But don't go near their loving relatives. Yes, that was a threat."

(I should note that I had deleted everything I wrote between "loving relatives" and "Yes, that was a threat," and there was quite a bit and it was quite insulting and a bit threatening, before I posted that message. I meant to delete the "that was a threat" part as well, but mistakenly left it in. Still, a bunch was deleted that could only have exacerbated matters further.)

As you can see, I was done being polite to Total Moron and simply wanted to cease communication with him. But I was concerned that this whole exchange had occurred on someone else's Facebook post, and wrote a short apology to the original poster, who wrote back and said, basically, "these things happen." OK, I was perfectly willing to drop the whole matter then. I wanted to drop the whole matter then. Nothing would have made me happier than than to let the whole thing slide.

Some people, though, just don't know when to shut up:

"I'm sorry you are offended but since when is being offended a virtue? You know nothing about me other than the post. If you are the type of person that thinks it a virtue to find offense in the comment of a stranger and feel the need to attack them because they aren't like you then I feel sorry for. Your life must be filled with a lot of pain. Lighten up. Stop trying to control others. You have the right to be offended but your attack is just too much. It's your right and it's my right to defend myself from verbal attackes like yours. Learn to either accept the fact that people you find offense might just NOT be as offensive as you first make them out to be."

IS THIS MORON INSANE? It's obvious that he doesn't know me; if he did, he'd realize that he had just made a series of serious errors. Forget knowing me; if he had ever seen me I doubt he would have done it. No one can be that thick.

For my part, I had one more post to post before I was done:

"Which part of "nor do I wish to continue this conversation with you in any fashion" did you fail to comprehend? Let me be clear: I DO NOT WISH TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU, AND I DO NOT WISH YOU TO COMMUNICATE WITH ME."

..and I concluded with yet another apology to the original poster: 

"And (Original Poster), please forgive me again for getting back into this in your Facebook space, but this moron simply cannot keep from throwing gasoline on a raging fire and this was where he did it. If you would please warn this imbecile that he is taking his life in his hands. I AM NOT JOKING"

And I wasn't joking. Am not joking. Yes, this Total Moron has pissed me off that much. And I was not joking about the brutal dental work idea...I actually had that fantasy. I am trying not to have it now.

So I put it to you, you people who know me (most of you do) well enough to judge. Am I wrong? Did I overreact? Should I have just laughed this off? How the hell would I do that?

Most of you know, or at least have an idea, of what I went through in the last year or so of my mother's life, what it took out of me, that I have not (possibly will not) recovered. I'm not going go go into all of that now. But how should I have dealt with this? I really want to know.

I have tried long and hard to not be the kind of person that responds to this kind of goading with violence, but just now it's hard, damn hard, not to find this guy, rip his genitals off, stuff his balls in his mouth (I would leave his dick flapping in the breeze against his chin), set him on fire and set him running down the street while I followed closely behind with a cat-o'-nine-tails to keep him moving.

Is that a bit much?

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

UPDATE 10-12-12:

Original Poster has called a truce, and deleted the original thread (and rightly so). But not before Total Moron got in in one last shot, which I won't repeat here as Original Poster has claimed the last word, but by way of information here were OP's main points:

1.  I shouldn't have threatened him because he didn't do anything wrong.

2. I shouldn't have been offended by a joke; he didn't do anything wrong.

3. He served in the military defending my rights, and he didn't do anything wrong.

4. I shouldn't have been offended by his comments which were in defense of himself, and he didn't do anything wrong.

He concluded by saying that he was deleting his comments and I should just let it go. All in all, a poorly worded missive that cam only make a bad situation very much worse.

And you know...I am not going to respond. (Well...not much.) 

This has gone on long enough. If he wants to believe that I am running scared because of his military service, let him; it don't mean shit to me. And neither does he. 

He came remarkably close to reawakening a part of myself that I had long thought buried, and I sure as hell ain't gonna thank him for it. I have laid out the entire discourse here, and you can be the judge. 

So this is me, calling a halt before things get truly nasty. I will never reply to, or respond to in any fashion, any further communication from this person, nor will I comment upon it further, and I ask him to do me the courtesy of never attempting to communicate with me again. Not that I think he reads this. Not that I care.

Oh, and about giving Original Poster the last word...along with my deepest apologies, here was his Last Word on the subject:

"I have officially pulled this thread over, and I'm claiming the 'last word' on the subject--let's leave it be and let it go, okay?"

TBV

The Post-Game Show

A few immediate post-debate thoughts

The Vice Presidential debate was certainly a different beast that the first Presidential debate. For one thing, this one was far better moderated. For another, it was more confrontational. And for another, the Joe Biden (in my opinion) won.

I will concede that Republicans may view that differently. Unlike the first Presidential debate, which was clearly won by Mitt Romney, your view of the outcome this time is, to some extent, going to depend on your point of view going in to it. As the next few days unfold, we'll get a better picture of how the public at large sees the whole "who won?" question.

But I'm not sure that that's what matters. I think it's more important that neither candidate screwed the pooch. There were no "killer" lines, it's true, and I have to confess that that's what I was waiting for (admit it...you were too). Frankly, they both looked good.

I was heartened to see Biden going after Romney's flip-flops, something that Obama totally failed to do.  And I thought that Ryan failed to support Romney adequately at these times. But then, that's coming from a staunch progressive (are we not supposed to say "liberal" anymore?) and a more conservative observer would probably have a different view.

Biden was also more willing to go after Romney/Ryan for those "47%" comments Mitt made then tried to deny believing, something that Barrack Obama was unwilling to do last week, something that helped to cost the President that debate. Over all, I like the fact that both candidates came out swinging from the word "go!" and didn't duck (well, not much).

And this debate also dealt with the question of abortion, something that last week's debate didn't do all that well. Whatever your position, you at least got a clear view of where each set of candidates stood.

Actually, I got a far better idea of where Mitt Romney stood on several issues than I could ever have gotten by watching him cover all possible sides of every position, switching from one to the other as the occasion/venue requires, which so marked his performance last week. I found Ryan a much more forthright  advocate of his candidate than the candidate himself could ever be, or at least has ever been.

I watched the coverage on MSNBC, and as soon as it was over Rachel Maddow called it an hour-and-a-half that felt like five minutes (or words to that effect) and I have to agree. This debate was more of a debate. Not a high school argue-for-points kind of debate, I'll grant you, but two guys each defending their position to the best of their ability.

Frankly, I thought that the public got a much better, more accurate view of how each candidate/party stands on a number of issues. And wasn't that the whole idea?

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Junior Varsity takes the field...

The Vice Presidential candidates take the stage. Is it possible to take it away from them?

Tomorrow night Vice President Joe Biden and Vice Presidential Wannabe Paul Ryan get their turn at the nation.  Democrats are hoping to reverse their losses from last week's Presidential debate, while the Republicans are hoping to build on their decisive win. I think they might want to lower their expectations...I think each of them should be happy if these guys just don't screw up.

Both of these men have a habit of putting their feet in their mouths. (Not in each other's mouths...that would just be weird.) What this means is that both of them can be prone to saying something the other side can seize upon and use to their advantage in their press release the next day. This has got to be something that both sides are on the lookout for, and simultaneously something that both sides have to be dreading.

But if the potential exists for each man to embarrass themselves, it also exists for each man to get off that all-important one-line zinger that will be repeated for days in the national media. As will their faux pass. In other words, they stand an equal chance of embarrassing either themselves or each other. Maybe both.

Paul Ryan got off to a bad start in Flint the other day; he screwed up a question on gun rights (“I don’t even think President Obama’s proposing more gun laws”- he really said that) and made some disparaging comments about the poor (he said that they lacked "good discipline" and "good character"), and then stormed out of the interview (though perhaps "he was ushered out by his handlers" would be a better description). One commentator called it "hissy;" I would have called it "petulant." Either way, it didn't look good. He needs to look better if he expects to build on Romney's success, let alone improve upon it.

I keep hearing about how much better a debater Biden is than Obama (“Joe Biden is incredibly gifted when it comes to debating" said the Chairman of the Republican National Committee); for Obama's sake, he'd better be. An embarrassing show from the Democrats now might actually put the Republicans on top in a swing state or two.

I would say that I don't expect this debate to have much effect on the campaign except in the short term,  but it conceivably could. These are men who speak their minds passionately...the chance for one of them to screw up cannot be discounted.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

My brother Mark

An article I wrote more than three years ago, and never finished, and never posted.

(UPDATE 10-6-2012 - It seems that every year I dig this out, make a couple of changes, write a new intro, change the formatting and then don't publish it. I've played with it long enough; here it is. Unfinished. Which is appropriate, since my brother's life was ended way the hell too early. I'm never going to get over that loss, and working on this article occasionally has helped some, but it's time to call it done. At least for now.)

I wrote this about three years ago. I am not sure why. I think I just needed to say a few things about my late brother Mark, but not necessarily to have them heard since I never bothered to publish it. Or finish it; apparently I intended to write much more but I never did. I think that while I may not have said all I wanted to say, I said all I needed to. I think that was enough.

I began by promising a long post in five parts, but I only finished the first one. Then I said, "But I need to talk about my brother Mark, gone three years now..." (Five or six years, now.) And I needed to talk about myself along the way, apparently, so I did. And here it is. 

If any of this seems like overly sentimental whining, bite me.

Time passes and memory fades. My earliest memories go back to 1960, the year Mark was born, and as I write this fifty years have passed. My youth is starting to be a very long time ago, and with each passing year my memory gets more unreliable.

Those strokes I’ve had don’t help, either.

In writing this, all I that I can do is be true to what I do remember, whether what I remember is entirely accurate or not. And in the end, I think that how I feel about what I remember is more important that the actual details, so I’m giving it to you as it now just as it appears in my memory and if errors are there then errors are there. So there.

Mark William Rosecrans 1960-2008
I’m going to do something that I’ve been putting off for too long. I’m going to start off by talking about my brother Mark. Believe me, this ain’t easy.

Mark died suddenly and unexpectedly three years ago. His death certificate lists the cause as “undetermined” but I can’t help but feel that someone at the morgue was just a lazy-assed bastard. Mark had had heart problems and blood pressure problems and he was prone to self-medicate with whatever he had at hand, legal or not. I knew his health was on the edge, or at least I should have known, but I wouldn’t let myself think about it. Literally, I wouldn’t let myself even consider the possibility that he might die, not for a moment. I certainly never thought that he would go before me. When his death came, it was a horrible shock that I don’t expect I’ll ever get over. I miss him more than I can possibly relate.

Mark and I were very different people. As the years went by we reached a tacit understanding of our individual roles, with me cast as the brother that stayed with our mother as Alzheimer’s slowly destroyed her brain and with Mark as the brother who tried to provide for the family, not just me and Mom but Mark’s own son and his son's mother. I think the stress of Mark’s lot in life was one of the things that helped to kill him, and I can’t help but find fault in myself for contributing to his end at the all-too-young age of 47.

For the last few years I have taken care of our mother, right up until her death this last May (10-6-2012 - that was a few years ago now), and I keep hearing from people how wonderful a son I was, that I’m to be praised for everything I did for her in her last few years. Frankly, I’m not comfortable with that sort of talk. Let’s not forget that most of what I did for Mom was made possible by Mark doing what he did for us, giving us a place to live and support in so many other ways. Mark doesn’t get nearly enough praise for this.

My brother Mark was a year and a half younger than I was. He’s been gone now for three years, and I miss him terribly. Scarcely a day goes by without my saying, “Mark, I miss you” and “Mark, I love you”, usually to his picture but sometimes just to the house, this house, his house, the house I’m living in but cannot keep; I expect I’ll be out of here fairly soon. But more on that later.

Mark was born in Jackson, Michigan, in a hospital that isn’t there any more. Though I was only a year and a half old, I do have some memories of that time. I remember when Mom went off to the hospital to have Mark, and I remember (or was I told?) that I was inconsolable because of her absence, a new thing for me which I didn’t like one bit. In an effort to try and console me, my family took me to the hospital parking lot (apparently I wasn’t allowed to go up and see her, for whatever reason) and I was told which window she was going to be looking out of. Whether this did any good or not I don’t recall, nor do I recall if I ever actually saw her. I do recall that I waved to her, even if I didn’t really see her, and I’m told she waved back along with half the people in the hospital who just happened to be looking out at the strange little kid in the parking lot, waving idiotically. This is my first recollection of looking like an idiot.

I also remember going up to Mark while he was sleeping at home, long before he could speak, and trying to wrap my head around the idea that this was my brother (at least my parents had told me that he was, so it must have been true), and trying to figure out just what that meant. Fifty years later, with Mark gone and me feeling his loss more deeply than I can stand, I’m still not sure what it meant.

At that time, we lived in my paternal grandparents’ basement in East Jackson, in a neighborhood so under-developed that a few of the houses still lacked indoor plumbing (outhouses weren’t exactly common then, but they weren’t unheard-of in 1960 even in what passed for Jackson’s suburbs). I remember that Mark and I used to climb the stairs to Grandma’s kitchen every morning to have breakfast with her. I even remember what we usually had; Kellogg’s Special K. I remember bits and pieces about life with Grandma and Grandpa, and I wish I could remember more, but we didn’t stay there terribly long and it has been half a century. (I wish I remembered Grandpa better; he died of a bad heart about this time.)

I remember our first house, which wasn’t more than an unfinished basement for its first few years. I remember that by the time I was in school it at least had an upstairs, even if its unfinished interior kept us living in the basement until I was in fourth or fifth grade. (Or maybe third, but I don't think so…I do remember that I was reading Jules Verne about then.)

I remember family outings, vacations, meals, all the normal things one does with the family. I remember bike rides (I remember a lot of bike rides). I remember tricycles and I remember first bikes for me and my brother. I remember ice skates and sleds and snow so deep that if it fell today I’d probably have another heart attack. I remember BB guns and slingshots and Tonka toys and Erector Sets and Legos and Lincoln Logs and GI Joes and all that went with being a boy in the 1960’s.

I remember older boys’ toys. I remember the rowboats that Mark and I had and all of the boats Dad bought over the years, motors and life jackets and water skis and ropes and all that goes with boating. And fishing gear; there were rods and reels and hooks and bobbers and sinkers and nets and stringers. (Does anyone still use stringers?) I remember snowmobiles and I remember motorcycles, trail bikes mostly, nothing bigger than 150 cc. And my dad being the man he was, I remember shotguns and rifles and pistols and all the various ammunition and cleaning supplies that went along with them. I remember that I shared all of this with my brother.

I remember that there were some things we didn’t share, though. Friends, for one. Mark was always more outgoing than I was, and always made friends easier. Mark had a lot of friends; I didn’t. I was always the kid whose mother had to bribe the neighborhood kids to play with him, and even then they wouldn’t play with him. (Oh how I wish I were making that up.) I was old enough to realize the nature of the transaction, but I never resented Mom for it. After all, she’d tried to do something nice for me even if it was rather pathetic. It was the rest of the neighborhood I resented.

I don’t remember ever resenting Mark for his popularity, though. The truth is that no matter how well he got along with the other kids and I didn’t, Mark was the only friend I had in the neighborhood. He may not have found an incredible amount of time to spend with me, but when you live in the same house and sleep in the same room it’s hard not to socialize a bit.

(A certain amount of editing is necessary here, since I just typed, rewrote, corrected, and ultimately deleted a section regarding some of the nonsense that pre-adolescent boys get up to. Not because I’m trying to disguise the truth; if my main purpose in writing this is to exorcise some of my own demons then I do that by writing about it, but no useful purpose is served by making any of that public so it’s gone now. So sue me.)

(And I should point out that in spite of how friendless I may make myself sound, that wasn’t entirely the case. I did have friends, maybe not all that many but enough, but not really any of the kids from our neighborhood. But the neighborhood kids were all Mark’s friends.)

Did we always get along? Hell no. We had our share of fights over the years. All I can really say about that is that he could throw a punch much better than I could but I could take one much better than him. I’d have to say that throughout our boyhood years and on into high school we were closely matched, and we never had cause to fight as adults (if, in fact, we ever really had cause as kids). I guess that the only thing important about that aspect of out lives is that he didn’t fear me and I didn’t fear him, but that we always respected each other, always loved each other; we were brothers.

Mark was more athletic than I was. He excelled at baseball and football and basketball. I was a different story. I played football but not nearly as well as Mark; I sucked at basketball and was rubbish at baseball.

Mark loved to fish but in spite of growing up on a lake and doing a fair bit of fishing when I was a boy, I never really took to it. Mark, on the other hand, took to fishing like…well, like a fish takes to water. Especially ice fishing. Mark actually became nationally known as an ice fisherman, wrote articles for ice fishing magazines and taught a few classes in it at the Lansing Bass Pro Shop. He often went to various elementary school classes and taught the kids ice fishing; this was his way of giving back to a sport he loved.

Mark was a skilled hunter and this is another pastime that I never took to, in spite of the fact that I had a good shooting eye up until my eyes started going bad a few years back (diabetes does that). Mark never lacked for meat, and I still have a bit of the venison he left us in the freezer. He also bagged the occasional feral cow. At least I hope it was feral; in any case, I ate the last of it last summer.

Mark had a fine assortment of “big boy toys” as well. Boats, for example. He had a rowboat, a fishing boat, a pedal boat and a pontoon raft; he did so love the water. He loved it just as much when it was frozen; he had three or four snowmobiles not to mention a miniature one he’d bought for his son.

Motorcycles were another passion. Mark always had several, mostly trail bikes but a few notable street bike exceptions. Mark’s “pride and joy” (other than his son, of course) used to be his 1947 Indian Chief, all original and in great condition. Near museum quality, in fact, but Mark used it as his daily ride. I know it broke his heart when he had to sell it due to his worsening financial condition, about a year or two before he died. He loved his quad bike as well, and like he did with that miniature snowmobile I mentioned he bought a miniature quad for his son to ride.

(I’ve heard that Mark’s old Indian is now a permanent display in a bar out on US-127, fully restored and repainted. I’ve never been able to bring myself to go have a look.)

Golf should also be mentioned. Mark played golf but I didn’t. My father took us to the golf course once when I was twelve or so, soon after we’d moved literally next door to one. I didn’t much enjoy golf and never played again. But Mark enjoyed the game and played as often as he could while we lived in that neighborhood. When he died he was planning to put in a four-hole golf course on this property; he’d even started clearing land for it. Like so many things he left behind, it was unfinished.

Unfinished. That’s a word that describes Mark’s life in more ways than one, not just the golf course. I can look out the window behind me and see the basement he poured for the house he never built. There are still some of the windows and sliding doors about this place that he horded for that project. There’s an old derelict rowboat out back that he intended to convert into a shelving unit, but never did. When Mark died, the property was full of vehicles he intended to restore, furniture he intended to refinish, hundreds of things he intended to use or fix or clean or restore or just to have because he thought they were neat.

Mark was something of a hoarder.

But more important than that, Mark was generous. He was always helping someone out, with a job or a car or a place to stay or a handout or whatever. (This includes me and our mother, obviously.) Mark had the biggest heart and most generous spirit of anyone I have ever met.

Mark loved kids, none more so than his own boy of course, but there wasn’t a kid in any neighborhood he ever lived in for whom he wouldn’t gladly put himself out. He often took the neighborhood kids fishing or snowmobiling or any other outdoor activity that their parents would condone.

I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that Mark was some kind of saint; he wasn’t. Far from it. When it came to the law, he sailed as close to the wind as he could and he crossed over the line more than once and that mixed metaphor is about all I’m going to say about that. No details (for which read: “I just filled this page with details, corrected them, reread them and deleted them”).

Mark used to run a big ice fishing tournament every January. I didn’t see him for the week before his last tournament but I intended to go see him a few days after to see if he had any good stories from the event. I had no idea that I would never see him again; the day after his tournament he died.

Like I said, this was intended to be much longer. If the ending seems abrupt I can only ad this: Mark was a larger-than-life figure in my life, and facing a life without him has proved more difficult then I could ever have imagined. Years later I am still looking for ways to deal.  

And if this comes out sounding like Mark was some kind of saint, believe me he wasn't. But if you want details about that side of his life, look elsewhere. 

I planned to later go into my mother's life, but I think that nerve was a bit raw then. I think it still is...but I may still continue this someday.

(10-6-2012 - He's been gone nearly six years now. If you think I should have moved on by now, you may be right; but most of what I have of Mark is the loss that I feel, and I'm just not ready to give that up. So what if this is unfinished. So was Mark's life. For that matter, so is mine. If I were looking for a hopeful note to end this on, that may be it...my life may be crap, but I ain't done with it yet.)

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

"It's alive! ALIVE!"

Remember what I said about Obama not needing to go on the attack? Forget I ever said that. 

Well, the first debate is over. Analysts are taking it apart word by word. Pundits are listening carefully to the analysts to know what they should say. Spin doctors are seeing to their instruments, preparing to operate. Advisors are looking into what to do differently next time.

So who won? Well, it has to be admitted that Mitt Romney won. He dominated the debate by dominating the moderator, and because Obama let him. And he had a good tactic; everything he had been campaigning on, everything that Obama could reasonably expect to call him on, he denied that he had ever said that, had never campaigned on that.

Whether or not America lets him get away with that remains to be seen. Whether or not the powerful right lets him get away with a late-campaign turn-around is a better question; they may let Mitt slide on this, thinking that a victory at this point is worth it. Ultimately, it's going to be a couple of days before we see how this debate is viewed by the public at large, so for the time being how you feel the debate went is going to largely depend on which way you were leaning before it started.

My own feeling is that Mitt Romney won, not a resounding victory but a solid one. And he needed to. This keeps him in the game. Before the debate I kept hearing commentators saying that if Romney didn't hit it out of the park (baseball metaphors tonight?) it was all over for him. I never believed that, but it's a moot point now.

Obama was clearly off his game. He didn't make the points he needed to make, he didn't follow up when Romney left him an opening, he didn't look presidential. These are thing he's going to have to do in the next debate.

In the end, all Mitt Romney needed to do was not lose. And he didn't. Did he put himself back in the race? We'll know better in the next few days. In the mean time, not losing was enough; Mitt Romney lives to fight another day.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Mitt's last chance?

Is tonight's debate a last chance for Mitt Romney to shine, or is he entirely too dull?

(I just wanted to get something in pre-debate, to give myself a chance to seem either prescient or idiotic, depending.)

Tonight's debate just may be Mitt Romney's last opportunity to come across as presidential. So far in this campaign, he's been anything but. Elitist perhaps, evasive certainly, but hardly presidential. (Then again, it may not be the last opportunity...)

Look at the poles. He's badly behind right now, so badly that it's hard to imagine that he's got a realistic chance at the presidency. But he's still got a chance. And not a bad one, either.

Mitt Romney is a skilled debater. Many of us remember the endless Republican debates with a lingering horror, but we forget that when Mitt got on the ropes he tended to fight back and fight back hard. Gringrich et al found that out the hard way.

And he's got the upper hand. He doesn't have to win, he really doesn't even have to do terribly well, he just needs to appear competent and confident in order to survive until the next debate. Of course, not winning doesn't exactly knock Obama out of the fight, and Obama can still make a comeback if this thing goes the distance. And I'm sick of the boxing metaphors.

Remember that "other opportunity" I hinted at? If Romney does just tolerably well tonight, he could just give himself that opportunity.

For Obama's part, the President doesn't need to win either...he's so far ahead that nothing less than a clear Romney victory can really hurt him. He doesn't need to go after Romney, Romney heeds to come after him. Obama merely needs to come across as his own erudite and self-assured self, and wait for Romney to make a mistake. Which is kind of what I expect; Romney has shot himself in the foot so many times lately I'm surprised he still has ten toes.

Let's not forget that other candidates have been behind at this point and have come back to win the Presidency. But it's getting late...very late. If Mitt Romney doesn't win decisively tonight, there's still the next debate, but if President Obama wins decisively I don't see much chance for Mitt to make a comeback.

Like I said, look at the poles. But then, there are a lot of conservatives that don't believe the poles, not even the latest Fox News poles, and I could say something nasty about denial but I don't want to. (You may infer from that that I wrote something nasty about denial but thought better of it and deleted a couple of sentences.) If you don't believe the poles, you're not going to pay any attention to anything I have to say at this point anyway.

And I'll admit that none of this really matters; the candidates are already preped and the pundits poised to spin the results one way or the other, as is their purpose in life. Nothing I can say will have any appreciable effect on tonight's events.

Shake hands, boys, and come out fighting.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.