The Last Word on the First Debate
Most of you know by now that I
view the world sideways. When in the 4th
grade, my beloved public school teacher, Mrs. Clippinger, explained this to me
very nicely without giving me any negative thoughts about it.
So, I believe Der Mitt really
lost the debate the other night.
President Obama wasn’t at his best, for whatever reason. Perhaps, just perhaps, he was goading Der
Mitt into lying, although Der Mitt doesn’t need any goading to do that. It seems to be sort of spontaneous. But then these lies could be used in campaign
ads. This might be real because by the
next morning, the President’s campaign committee had ads up and running on Der
Mitt’s lying. One comment I heard, from
Martin Bashir, I believe needs repeating, and that is that debating Mitt Romney
is like debating a bowl of jello.
On to Der Mitt. Of course there have been innumerable
analyses, news stories, pundits, etc., which and who have commented on his
lies, so I need only mention here that he did.
Perhaps I don’t know the rules of debating, but it would seem to me that
straight out lying ought not to be allowed, much less just sort of discounted
in the final analysis of who won. On
this issue alone I would say Der Mitt lost the debate.
Poor Jim Lehrer has been on the
receiving end of much wrath over how he conducted the debate. Jim Lehrer is not only a gentleman, but he is
out of the tradition that in a debate, the debaters respect the moderator’s
instructions. I doubt very much that he
has ever had, over the years, someone who seems to actually believe that rules
do not apply to him personally. He is a
child of privilege, leads a privileged life, and rules are for those ‘losers’
over there. This total disregard for the agreed upon rules would have, in my
opinion, tossed Der Mitt out of the debate right there.
And then we have that god-awful condescending
smirk that Romney had during all of the time he wasn’t talking. He looked to me as though he were thinking, “Well,
those mooching 47%ers voted this guy into office. He isn’t very bright because he’s never made
a payroll, and I can run over him in time, but right now unfortunately I have
to be quiet and let him talk. But I don’t
have to like it!” President Obama, on
the other hand, was faulted for not smiling (so no smirk), smiling too much,
smirking while smiling, and on and on. I
have seen that Romney smirk on many people’s faces in different places. On men who think they are superior to women
when women are talking, on the faces of fundamentalists of any religion when
someone of another religion is talking about religion, on women who think they
are superior to whomever it is they are talking to. I doubt if smirks are part of debate scoring,
but I certainly found it quite offensive.
One point that no one else seems
to have picked up is when Romney compared the President to his own sons when
they were younger, saying that he used to tell them that no matter how many
times they said something, it didn’t make it true. That statement is correct, but by comparing
the President to his much younger sons, he was basically calling him “boy”. That didn’t sit well with me at all, and I am
a medium beige.
During the time in the debate
that Romney actually got excited, his voice went up a bit and he began to speak
very fast. The picture of a Macaque
Rhesus monkey popped into my head, calling out and sort of chittering up there
in the trees. It indicated a lack of
self-control on Der Mitt’s part, to say the least.
On the subject of taxes, when Der
Mitt denied ever having heard any law giving a company a tax break for taking
jobs overseas, he was technically right.
There are a series of them in the tax code that gives a tax break to
companies that take jobs overseas. To
start with, on the basis that a company must pay taxes in the new country, the
company is allowed to postpone paying taxes here, although the tax rate is
based on the amount of taxes paid in the new country. So the company searches out the countries
with the lowest tax rate. When it is
time to pay back taxes here, the taxes paid here are based on the tax rate of
the country there, so essentially the company is given a tax break.
Let’s compile these negatives
that I have written about above:
1. Lying,
2. Being above the mundane rules of the schedule
and moderator,
3. Condescending smirk,
4. Obliquely calling the black President of the
United States a “boy”,
5. Trouble with voice control,
6. Trouble with taxes.
Do we actually want a President
of the United States who lies, doesn’t think he has to follow the laws that
others do, feels superior to other human beings, denigrates the current
President by equating him to his sons when younger (Imagine what he might call
a Middle East head of state). The tax
issue is a bit more complicated. Perhaps
this is what is in Romney’s tax returns.
That he has gotten a considerable “tax break” by taking jobs overseas. I use a phrase from my youth regarding
pigs. (For those who are unacquainted
with pig anatomy, the best cuts of pork come from near or at the back bone.) By getting these significant tax breaks for
taking American jobs overseas, Der Mitt is living high on the hog, while he
begrudges the rest of us even pickled pig’s feet!
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