The Presidential Town Hall Debate

I think the camera shots of the audience behind The Romney and Obama were telling. While Obama was speaking, they looked engaged; they were smiling and attentive. While The Romney was speaking, they were bored, looking elsewhere, and fidgeting. The audience voted for Obama last night, and it was due to the differences in style and content of the two.

Candy Crowley was a decent enough moderator; The Romney's bulldozer tried to run her over and she would have none of it; one funny tweet last night was "Candy clearly was a nanny for bratty, spoiled children. She's putting the smack down on @MittRomney." But her best moment was the stuff about the consulate in Libya. That questioner was clearly a The Romney plant.

In our embassies, marines have one duty - to destroy records if the embassy were to be overrun; they are there to protect the documents, not the staff. [ See Marine Security Guard "The primary mission of the MSG is to provide security, particularly the protection of classified information and equipment vital to the national security of the United States at American diplomatic posts. "] Consulates have no such collections of documents, ergo they have no marines guarding them. Obama clearly knew the name of the State department official but did not wish to implicate her - Christine Lamb - who had turned down the request for guards at dozens of consulates in the region, not just Benghazi.

I thought most of the questions were less than brilliant, but what does one expect of an undecided voter? These are, to some extent, the mouth-breathers, the intellectual carp, the lazy. Obviously there are exceptions. We saw a couple last night: the woman who asked The Romney what differentiated him from Bush, the young woman who asked about gender inequality in the workplace, the question about automatic weapons. These were great questions with telling responses.

How on earth did The Romney segue from AK47s to pregnancy? That was so bizarre, but not the weirdest The Romney moment in the debate. "Binders full of women" takes that prize. That was too silly for even Sean Hannity.

I think the press corp found it difficult to maintain its anti-Obama stance, but it will do its best to make the Villagers - as Krugman calls them - seem like seers, not bozos. The Post struggles to find good things to day about The Romney. I am sure "both sides were wrong" will emerge as their main argument. In the Times, Peter Baker is, for a change, a bit more realistic. Jeff Zeleny, also in the Times, is his usual hateful self. He needs to work for Fox full time instead of faking it at the NY Times. He reminds me of Elizabeth Bumiller - aka Bu"LLShit"miller - during Bush and Kerry. We will see the spin doctors emerge in the next week, trying to say The Romney actually won.

I admired the way Obama never let The Romney steal a march. Obama was funny, witty, and engaging. The Romney was bullying, intellectually sterile, and humorless. The Romney retreated to his talking points so often I wondered if Ms. Crowley would complain about his lack of responsiveness, and to her credit she did.

This was a clear victory for Obama, but the Villagers and their minions will try to turn this, just as they did with Gore's sighs - they never happened - Naomi Wolf's alleged 'brown tones' clothes advice to Gore - never happened - the Love Canal lies, the internet lies, the 'Love Story' lies.

The media is pro-Republican because they are getting paid $250k a year, and they are voting for their guy who will protect the 1%.

In the meantime, Obama whooped some serious ass, and the audience last night knew it.