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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Romney looks to the future. Obama... just looks.

The state of the world and America's place explained.
The third presidential debate ended with Romney looking presidential.  Romney was consistently painting a large view of what we as a nation should do.  President Obama, meanwhile, nitpicked, contradicted and looked angry. For all that, Romney did not seem in the least bit put off his game.

In the face of Obama's planned military cutbacks, planned at a trillion dollars, Romney raised the concern that we will not be able to maintain our military capabilities. To that the president stated outright the sequster will not happen. Mr. Romney was concerned, and laid out his case:
"Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at 285. We're headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That's unacceptable to me.”

“I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts the president has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making our future less certain and less secure.”

Staring... staring... and more staring. 
Yes, indeed. Excellent, practical point... to which we get some silly Obama repartee for an answer:
“I think Gov. Romney maybe has not spent enough time looking at how our military works. We also have fewer horses and bayonets because nature of our military has changed. “There are these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."

“The question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships, it’s what are our capabilities,”
Battleship?!  What is he talking about?  And yet the Obamiacs thought that was a great moment for the great one. But lets look at it, perhaps more critically than the typical Obamiac would.

Sequestering is the term for mandatory budget reductions, which comes out in cuts:
The Defense Department makes up a disproportionate share of the cuts – $500 billion, at least $55 billion of which would go into effect immediately. It’s not clear yet how the Pentagon would put them in place
Obama claimed a sequster will not happen, but his White House was on the phone immediately afterwards walking the statements back:
White House senior adviser and 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe softened the Obama administration's language on the sequester after President Obama insisted that it would not happen.

"No one wants it to happen," Plouffe told reporters
Yes, well, that is not the same as saying it will not happen, and certainly the difference is very real to the people in the military whose equipment, supply and personnel end up on the wrong side of the contraction.

If the Navy says it needs 313 ships to complete its mission, it doesn't matter that Obama is aware we have things called nuclear submarines. The world is a scary place, with a lot of bad people out there. We face problems in the Far East. We face problems in the Middle East. We cannot project power in these areas with drone strikes, for cripe's sakes.

If the Navy says it needs 300 ships, the president cannot idly sit by while it is reduced to 200 ships - not and expect us to maintain our ability to protect ourselves and influence the world in which we live. The reality is the military will be required to reduce its size and capabilities if we do not fund it. There is no way around that. Mr. Obama had no answer except to suggest we don't need ships and planes and the like.

Weakness invites aggression Mr. President. After all your carrying on about what you've learned on the job, if there was one thing you should have learned while acting commander in chief, it was that.

16 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure Obama's condescending manner coupled with his disdainful stare didn't win him any points. Certainly not mine...nor I'm sure, a multitude of others.

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  2. What was the point of all that staring? I mean, he did not appear to be thoughtfully listening. He appeared to be glaring. If you tried that at local grocery store or restaurant a girl would be creeped out and a guy would figure you're an asshole looking for a fight. And sooner or later, you'd find one.

    Did he think he was going to intimidate Mr. Romney? If so he was sorely disappointed. Romney was no more disturbed by Obama's incessant glaring than George W was when super bore AL Gore got it into his noggin that standing right next George would make him president. Didn't work out for him as far as president goes, though he has made a fortune hocking doomsday scenarios.

    I don't know. I don't see how you could vote for Obama. Who would want more of this lousy economy he's crafted? And he's got more coming. As to Romney, he looked well reasoned, well informed, and comfortable speaking to the American people. He did not present himself as a man who would lower the sea level, thank God. You have the sense that the whole notion would be repugnant to him, as it would to any person grounded and with a sense of humility. Nope, he would never act that way. It's gonna be Romney for me.

    Thanks for stopping by, Astrid

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    1. Me too and I'm in a very, very, Democratic state. We've got a Republican running for Akaka's US Senate seat as well as a do-nothing Democrat. I've got this feeling that after Nov 6, this state may be a lot more conservative than before. I'm smiling, I'm smiling!

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  3. So he was trying to bait him... trying to get under his skin, irritate him, somehow try to get an angry outburst or some other gaffe... pathetic.

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  4. Yes, it really is amazing how obviously this man takes advice. I likened him last time to a boxer, coming out with a new set of instructions from his trainer each round. Just no subtlety whatsoever: blatant, and therefore useless, psychological tactics, and no consistency; a different man each time. The big question has always been how much is he a knowing, cynical, clever operator - because at times he really does look like he knows exactly what he's up to - and how much is he merely the sock puppet of such people. I'm leaning very much towards puppet again now: the debates have shown a side of him that is certainly sad and would almost be endearing if he weren't within a whisper of starting the third and last world war. A decision was taken to find the president that would be the hardest to criticise, the most likely to whip up college girl adoration and to have the most symbolic, iconic value - and then tell him what to do.

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  5. "We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."

    I can't take credit for this, but: A ship that's underwater is called "sunk" and a boat that's underwater is called a "submarine".

    Oops!

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  6. Well, when you have a record like Barack Obama has, you have to rely on tricking the voters. I think it became apparent to David Axelrod early on that they were screwed. They even tried to paint Romney as the incumbent at times, using some sort of circuitous logic that only Lefties can follow--or say they do. It didn't work.

    Yes, Obama was looking for Romney to treat him with disrepect--both personally and for the office of the President of the US. They would use that in the remaining days of the campaign. Romney is too skilled at debating to fall for silly tricks. Obama is a front for the new American Left that came together from the anti-Viet Nam war movement. Forged in the Easy Bake ovens on college campuses since, they've shown themselves to be the smartest generation ever. In their own minds.

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  7. @E

    Yes, that's true, isn't it? Sailors get really irked if you call their ship a boat, but the same is not true for the submariners. They all go to sea in boats. To them, ships are the things they sink. Just another target.

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  8. The only ship that Obama knows nothing about is leadership.

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  9. Sorry about my gut, Bedes. It must have been gas.

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  10. Man, those figures were close though, far closer than they seem to be at first glance when you iron out the kinks and fill in the potholes. And then, NOBODY voted for Romney because he wasn't black, wasn't cool, wasn't Stephen Colbert's choice, wasn't down with da kids... They only voted for him if they wanted him in the chair. But Obama's media ensured he was voted for for all of those silly reasons, and many more besides, by huge numbers of people who would never have been so galvanised otherwise. It's amazing how many people to whom I've said basic things like 'What about Fast and Furious?' or 'What about Benghazi?' haven't a clue what I'm talking about.
    I don't want to be a sour graper: I suspect the next couple of years will vindicate my position without me having to lift a finger. But - as every witless leftie who thinks they've just delivered the funniest putdown ever can't seem to resist just saying - I'm just saying.

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  11. Well, you've brought a smile to my face with that, my friend. 'Just saying'?! :)

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  12. I can't help thinking that the Democrats have just turned massive vote fraud into a science.

    A couple of things have bothered me. Obama continued to campaign nonstop since his inauguration. A couple of years later we were treated to newspaper stories about how Obama would be the first candidate ever with a $Billion warchest. But when the primaries ended, Barack was crying poormouth. How? He ran unopposed. Yes I know you pretend you are broke and behind to lure in new money. But I started to worry that a big chunk of that warchest went to fund a new kind of fraud effort. And with another win and complete control of the justice system, they were never be any investigations into the matter.

    All the signs were there--big energetic crowds for Romney, small crowds for Obama. Twenty people showing up for Democrats stunts like "The Million Puppet March" and "Sandra Fluke-Fest." Pollsters adding 11% more Democrats to the polling sample to make Obama look like he was only a point behind. Yet?

    The past is the past and the future is what counts. Let's hope there is one. We will see the national debt hit $Twenty Trillion and unfunded obligation at least ten times that. Coal-fired electrical generation will go away and we''ll get bills at least an order of magnitude higher. And that's just the start.

    Obama in his victory speech said "we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.

    One Family. One nation. One people"

    How many remember Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!? One people, one regime, one leader.
    Sure they reversed the order. Power through conformity and collectivism and the charismatic, visionary leadership of a transcendent man and his willing followers--Obama as the Father in the new family. We the needy children and worker ants to man the Occupy camps. Time for shivers.






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  13. Welcome to Europe. It's rotten here.

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