800th Post!

Excesses
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace hammered Vice President Joe Biden's excessive smiling and laughing during the debate, saying that he's never seen anyone be so disrespectful in a presidential or vice presidential debate. And Wallace said that he'd seen most of them — all but the first four in 1960. He called his demeanor "unprecedented." 

"I don't believe I've ever seen a debate in which one participant was as openly disrespectful of the other as Biden was to Paul Ryan tonight," Wallace said. He added: "It was openly contemptuous and disrespectful." (www.businessinsider.com, 10/11/2012)

Joe Biden's job in the VP debate last night was two-fold: continue the Dem party line that Romney/Ryan are liars and re-energize Dems by going on the attack. The liar thing is not - in our view - going to win independents to Obama. It just sounds like political sniping. And it could even backfire given Biden's comments on Libyan security (see below). 

On the second issue, Biden will be viewed by Dems as having succeeded. But once again, our view is that he turned off independents with his over-the-top histrionics. Kudos to Chris Wallace for being the first to call Biden's performance what it was.

Biden made the patently false and outrageous claim that no one in the Obama administration knew that requests for extra security had been made by our Libyan ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and other members of our consulate in Benghazi. To emphasize his lie, Biden actually said it twice. (Breitbart.com, 10/11/2012)

The State Department acknowledged Wednesday that it rejected appeals for more security at its diplomatic posts in Libya in the months before a fatal terrorist attack in Benghazi as Republicans suggested that lapses contributed to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. (Washington Post, 10/10/2012)

Given that the Liberal media had lost interest in the Libyan debacle (other than to occasionally repeat that Romney should not have spoken out), we have no expectation that they will pick up on the ....er, inconsistencies of Biden's comment, pre-refuted by the Washington Post no less!

For Mr. Biden especially, the night was his chance to relive past debates and unleash his inner barroom brawler. He had to be contained and courteous when he debated Sarah Palin four years ago, lest he look like a bully. This time he let loose. And unlike the courtly Mr. Bentsen in 1988, Mr. Biden turned his temperature up, singeing the young man across the table with patronizing grins, but mostly withering retorts. His interruptive barrage was as relentless as his silent mugging for the camera. (NYT, 10/11/2012)

Our guess is that this copy was written by Biden's aides and forwarded to the New York Times (an objective news outlet) who simply did a "cut and paste."


Campaign Ad We'd Like To See

Gas Prices on January 9 2009: $1.84/gallon

Gas Prices on October 11, 2012: $4.04/gallon

"I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this ad."