Why I Didn’t Want to Watch the Presidential Debate Last Night

Last night was another presidential debate.  And I didn’t want to watch.

Maybe it’s an exaggeration, but I don’t give a rat’s petute about Syria at the moment.  And besides that, I’m confident that some clandestine combination of the Pentagon, CIA and the State Department will be making the decisions about our role in that part of the world anyway.

Watching President Obama and Mitt Romney go back and forth on issues related to foreign policy seems like some sort of high school geography laden, historically minded spelling bee.  What is our role in the world?  Why, it’s to defend freedom, of course.  And to do that, we must strengthen our military so we can wage war in order to create peace.

Got it.  We have to destroy the village in order to save it… roger that.

It’s foreign policy night but although each question starts out overseas, it ends up buried in our flaccid economy somewhere near Cleveland.  Romney points out that Obama can’t seem to buy jobs let alone create them.  He wants energy independence, manufacturing, training and education… and a balanced budget.  The president says Mitt’s math skills leave much to be desired.

The candidates then shift to kissing some bountiful Israeli tukhus. 

Both say we will stand with Israel, if Israel is attacked.  Jews throughout Florida breathe a sigh of relief.  Some don’t trust the goy, others the schvartze.  In reality, were Israel to be attacked, the only thing we’d be doing is begging them not to respond militarily roughly eight hours after the Israeli Air Force started transforming Tehran into overflow parking for a new Persian Disneyland in Whatthefuckistan.

Oman, is this boring or what?

Obama smoothly segues from the war in Afghanistan to putting our troops to work building roads and bridges when home from the war.  Romney gets stuck with Pakistan… but then he gets a triple word score by using the word “Pashtun,” in a sentence.  Obama grimaces as he stares at his tiles and contemplates his next turn.

They’re playing a game of “Babble.”

The president plays the China card but once again brings it right back home to the steel workers in Ohio, followed by a comment about Ohio’s auto industry that everyone knows Romney was itching to bankrupt.  Ugh.  Romney takes a buckeye on the chin.

But Obama won’t let up… he throws the “you-invested-in-jobs-going-overseas,” jab at Romney’s heritage as a private equity investor.

Romney tries to defend his commitment to the American auto industry as being unwavering, but Obama calls him “Governor,” as he says that the record is clear… he wavered.  Romney calls for a line judge to check the record.

Ohio’s groans are reportedly heard as far away as St. Louis.

But Romney gets his footing and comes out swinging with FOOD STAMPS… NO JOBS… LOWER MIDDLE CLASS INCOMES… Obama tries to push back with something about a plan to bring jobs back home from overseas… followed by something else about roads and bridges.

Then President Obama, staring directly at the camera, with that hope-and-change smile from 2008, says that he will always listen to our voices and fight for our families, causing me to throw up in my mouth a little.  I quickly stab a kitchen fork about an inch deep into my right thigh in an effort to stop the pain.  It doesn’t work.

Is that right?  That’s what he’ll always do?  Listen to our voices and fight for our families?  Will he really this time?  Because I’m not buying a word of that.  Not that I have any evidence that a President Romney would do much better in that department, but then… could he do any worse?

I wonder if either of the two solipsistic sycophants running for office know why I feel the way I do.  I could explain it to them in one word… the ‘F’ word… FORECLOSURE.  Is either one of these guys familiar with that word?  Don’t get me wrong… I feel like they should be familiar… but I honestly can’t be sure anymore.

Watching President Obama and Mitt Romney roam about the countryside campaigning, it occurred to me that it must not be easy to do that, while making sure that the word “foreclosure” is never even uttered in your presence.

Obama can’t bring up foreclosures for fear of getting pelted with rotten tomatoes from the audience, if not literally… then furtively.  His housing programs, as administered by Secretary Tim “Foamy” Geithner and the maleficent Baron Von Slummers, appear to have been modeled in the style of the Khmer Rouge.

Many of the programs created by the Obama Administration failed spectacularly, but on the other side of that coin, he spent very little on them.  I suppose the homeowners whose lives were torn apart by the failure of such programs can take comfort in the fact that it’s not so much that he failed… it’s more that he didn’t try.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, can’t bring up the foreclosure crisis because if he did, he might be asked to suggest something that might fix it, and his base wouldn’t tolerate any of that.  The personal responsibility crowd wants food stamps cut, and homeowners punished until there aren’t any left in this country.

It’s got to be frustrating for Mitt.  I mean, he’s got to recognize that he could take Ohio and Florida in a jiffy were he to even mention in passing that he plans to address foreclosures and keep people in their homes.  If Mitt gave even one speech suggesting that he had a plan to stop the deterioration of our housing markets and perhaps gave a nod towards mitigating the damage being caused by foreclosures, it would take about three seconds to predict a… ROMNEY LANDSLIDE type headline appearing the morning after the election.

Think about it… he can’t do the one thing… the simplest thing… the most obvious thing… the thing that would all but guarantee him the U.S. presidency because a bunch of right wing hatemongers and snake handling Christians can’t stand the idea that even one person not making a mortgage payment gets off with anything less than three years living in an apartment with a kitchen that smells like ass.

A large part of Mitt’s base believes it’s already compromising on the subject by not demanding the return of debtors’ prison.

And so it goes…

Obama’s super-secret press agents must be running around making sure that there’s no possibility of a rogue reporter lobbing an unscheduled question about his or her house while cameras are rolling.

While in his suite at the Ritz Carlton, Mitt Romney weeps as he pleads with his campaign manager to let him use the ‘F’ word.

And as the sun goes down on the U.S.A. and foreclosures continue to force working class people from their homes, it’s ironic to realize that just the word foreclosure will be keeping a guy who’s worth half a billion dollars from moving into the big white house he cannot buy.

While the incumbent politician whose programs failed at every turn to stop the flood of foreclosures wins a second term by not talking about what he did badly.

And you wonder why I didn’t want to watch the debate?  Really?

Mandelman out.