So, the debates are over.

Obama 1, Romney 1.

Tonight proved again that Presidential candidates simply cannot differentiate strongly on foreign policy.

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This Land Is Your Land

Overall, Obama was well ahead on points tonight, but Romney made no mistakes and avoided being cast as a typical Republican "big stick" candidate.

This debate will have made no difference to the voting intentions of the only "state" that really mattered tonight - the state of Ohio.

That's the last sensible discussion of the issues at hand - now it's wall to wall advertising, talking points and spin, all the way until November 6th.

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This Land Is Your Land

Hey what's his strap line this time ' more change you can believe in but quite a lot the same'?
They obviously employ the same script writers we do for our Punch and judy show
http://youtu.be/-FnmnuDiVno

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How do you sleep at night?

Thanks John.

The Obama line about also having fewer horses and bayonets was very good but you could bet your life was crafted well in advance – you could probably hear his back room team high-fiving when he delivered that. When they talk about ‘preparing for the debate’ you tend to imagine it as being like cramming for an exam, mugging up on facts & stats etc. but in reality it’s more about show than substance. So thinking up a line like that, one that can be delivered as if it’s a witty off-the-cuff put down that also neatly shifts the candidate away from addressing a genuine awkward attack – well that’s gold. Someone got a bonus for that one. Hell, now I’m sounding as cynical as with-menace!

If I stop being cynical then you know the terrorists have won

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How do you sleep at night?

To be honest I'm not sure who the terrorists are any more

Messages from the white house indicate a cover up, something very ugly happened over the murders of Chris Stevens and his aides. Calls for help were ignored and a CIA team close by told to stand down. Now it appears the story put out by the white house that the attack was because of the internet clip was a smokescreen and Obama knew it was a terrorist action from the off. Suspicions are that arms were being channeled through Libya to the rebel groups trying to overthrow Assad in Syria.
In short, if true the US would be allied with the terrorists like Al Qaida against a Sovereign state. Maybe, the Russians and Chinese have been right all along and our media have been telling us porkies all along.
If this is proved to be true it could be very bad for Obama

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/10/was-a ... d-him.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -down.html

The Daily Mail quotes Fox News who, in turn, quotes one of the CIA rescue-soldiers who is now... er... "conveniently" dead.

Yeah. Sounds totally believable.

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GET HEN!


"Look out Mr T, they're coming for you!"

Yes I’d take those two sources with a huge pinch of salt. The Daily Mail is , well, the Daily Mail and uses Fox News as its main source which given the current election fever and Fox’s rabid anti-Obama stance isn’t going to be exactly balanced. That’s not to say it’s wrong but even then it’s still a leap from incompetence to conspiracy. Also Jihad watch is a notoriously controversial organisation that’s well known for its deeply Islamophobic slant, is partly funded by right wing Israeli groups and (according to Wiki) even said the English Defence League “deserve the support of all free people” – which if true blows its credibility clean out of the water.

Having said that the US has a long, long, record of backing appalling groups and regimes that it perceives to be furthering its own interests. Throughout the cold war it was often shockingly cynical – Roosevelt famously said of a particularly brutal Nicaraguan dictator “he may be a son-of-a-bitch but at least he’s our son-of-a-bitch”. I’m sure the Obama administration has better motivations but could end up creating an even bigger mess. They are genuinely appalled at the atrocities that Assad is committing, sees the on-going civil war as a threat to the region & the world and wants him gone – maybe so much so that they are covertly arming groups that are very shady and might be even worse if they got into power? It’s a real moral dilemma – do you stand back and watch acts of genocide or help the disparate opposition groups without knowing who they are or where it could all lead? Not an easy answer – but should at least be debated & done openly. I wouldn’t give the Russians and Chinese any credit though. They are the ones adopting that same deeply cynical Roosevelt line & really don’t give stuff about the suffering Assad inflicts because they believe it suits their interests to keep him in place - simple.

I don't think we are talking incompetence here. The raid on the embassy in Benghazi took 6 hours, all that time Obama was apparently aware of the seriousness of the situation and could even see it on the ground developing, due to the deployment of a drone. He did nothing to help the American service personnel there, even refusing back up when desperately called for. If all this is proven to be true then he alone allowed those deaths to occur.

You mention Assad's regime. What happened to turn what was a stable country where Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze lived peacefully side by side for years? (admittedly under an authoritarian regime, secret police included), Nonetheless, by Middle east standards it was a safe haven and a stable country that took in about half a million refuges from Bush and Blair's catastrophic blunder in Iraq.

What turned this stable country into the hell hole it is now, ah yes, the much promoted Arab Spring that our media have been selling us so ignorantly. The Arab Spring was never about wanting democracy, it was all about a resurgent Islam creating Islamic states, and a resurgent Islamic Caliphate. Sure, they told us they wanted democracy and we believed them, because we are like children, clueless about what is happening. Democracy was never going to happen, nor has it, Islamist parties now control much of North Africa as Jihad Watch repeatedly warned, and no one listened, still JW was simply right because they understood what was going on, whereas our stupid secular media did not. Oh by the way, many atrocities our media projected on Assad were caused by the rebels, in one Alawite village men, women and children were all all slaughtered and then it was recorded as propaganda and given to a clueless western Journalist as a sign of Assad's brutality. A German Media team only later discovered the truth, but no retraction was ever given by our media, and so the damage was done.

You mentioned about Jihad Watch being biased and Islamophobic well frankly that term was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood organisation to stop any criticism of Islam,—just call it Islamophobia so you don't have to think about it anymore. I prefer Islamorealism.

I really don't care how Jihad Watch is supported, it certainly doesn't get arab or Saudi money. It is one of the few websites I check everyday, Faith freedom International, and Barnabas fund being the others. Yes, I'm a friend of Israel so I don't care if it receives jewish money or not. That said, Robert Spencer is a Catholic and his team remain independent. As with FFI their aim is not cause hate, or incite it, if it was I would not be interested—but to warn of the spread of Jihad and Islamic supremacism and what that means for the rest of us. They never advocate hate, yet in return they themselves are the recipients of much hate from those who would like them dead, just as they would like Pat Condell dead, or Ali Sina, or Salman Rushdie, in short anyone who offends or is critical of Islam—so that would be me as well then, or anyone who will not in the end accept islamic dominance, and I do not.

Jihad Watch in the end covers all the stories that the BBC and other mainstream media, do not, or will not, and for me personally that means the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world and even here in the UK. So when the Gand Mufti of Egypt warns Christians not to make trouble or be wiped out, The King of Saudi wants criticism of Islam to be a criminal offence, or that Children's textbooks in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia teach kids hatred of non muslims, then this is something I believe we should all be concerned about.

But back to Obama, it's a short sighted strategy to say if we arm those guys that hate all that we stand for, then maybe they might hate us a bit less. Yeah that'll do it.

Sorry t_green I should have remembered. As much as I usually enjoy your intelligent, thought provoking and articulate posts I forgot about your knee-jerk and anti-Islamic tendencies and shouldn’t have gone there. That’s what scares me about religion. I genuinely respect your religious views but I don’t admire how it seems to twist even people like you so quickly into an us-and-them rant.

Why can’t you entertain the idea that Muslims living under authoritarian rule might want something different, something more liberal, democratic even? There are 1.7 billion Muslims in the world and they’re not all children or sheep and their religion doesn’t turn them all into fanatics. The vast majority want the same us – to go about their lives in peace and raise their families with some degree of dignity. But No. The Arab Spring must be a world-wide plot by those Islamic monsters because a bunch of Christian fundamentalists at Jihad watch (happy to take dodgy extreme right wing money and who apparently consider the EDL kindred spirits) - because they say so.

There have been plenty of reports in “our media” about appalling crimes committed by the rebels in Syria – there is no conspiracy of silence. I just typed “Syrian rebel atrocities” into Google and got a shed load of hits – not from a few campaigning Christian groups bravely fighting the conspiracy - but in the first two pages from the BBC, ABC news, the NY Times, the Telegraph, the Mail even the Daily Star (honestly!!), and a load of stuff from youtube etc. I didn’t think I dreamt having to turn off Newsnight a few months ago when they showed some appalling footage of rebel interrogations and eye witness accounts.

But there has also been an undeniable reign of terror by the Assad regime since his power has been threatened. I believe that because of “our media”, which is not one monolithic lump but thousands of independent sources and journalists from dozens of countries, have shown me the evidence. Do you honestly deny it? Do you think “our media” has been duped by or are in cahoots with the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ (are they like Bond villains in some underground cavern plotting world domination hypnotising western journalists?). Assad’s forces have done far worse than the rebels – but that may well simply be because they can, because they have the power and the weaponry that the rebels don’t. The rebels are not a monolithic lump either - but consist of various factions, views & attitudes and won't be all Hell bent on our destruction. Like I said it’s a dilemma as we don’t know how it will turn out. Better the devil you know or help people have the chance of changing for something better and risk creating something worse? I don’t know, and I don't think Obama does either – but I won’t look to JihadWatch for the answer.

Reasoned response as always Ave-it, and I guess maybe I get too personally involved with the fact that fellow Christians mainly (and some other minorities) are enduring severe persecution at the moment.

As always, you raise good questions which I will try my best to answer shortly, however, it's late and I'm tired.

I really do appreciate your counter arguments because they ask serious questions about my own understanding. I do apologise if my posts come over as a rant though because that's not the intent. Nor is it my aim to demonise ordinary peaceful Muslims en mass, but to address serious issues with Islam as a divisive ideology, particularly in it's more fundamentalist forms.

Anyway, I'll leave it there for now and get back to you soon with hopefully a measured and considered post

Good night:)

Whaaa??

So this campaign basically boils down to the economy, stupid. If Barack does manage to win a second term he will do so with the highest rate of unemployment for a successful incumbent.

Mitt the monied mormon magic-underwear wearing Twit couldn't actually win, could he??

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Yeah well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man.

are you answering me or a voice in your head???

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How do you sleep at night?

I didn't realise you had asked a question? I was merely highlighting your rather odd statement and then proffering an Opinion on next week's race.

That ok?

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Yeah well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man.

precisely , I hadnt! yet you seemed to answer a question no one had asked?? not to mention the fact it's rambling nonsense. Why did you quote me?? your 'reply' has absolutely no relation to what I'd said.
Very odd indeed

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How do you sleep at night?