For some years now, I've watched how well or not well President Barack Obama has done — whether at a speech, the State of the Union, or like last night's debate — by looking at the expression on Michelle Obama's face, and last night even before the debate, and certainly after the debate, the look on Michelle Obama's face didn't look good. She either had a woman's intuition or a mother's intuition and even a lover of twenty years intuition on her face, with a wedding anniversary in her hands, that something bad was about to happen.
And it did.
She, we, the President, the nation, got Punk'd by Willard "Mitt" Romney.
It's partly our fault. It was slowly incredible to watch on live television. The talking heads on MSNBC for the most part, after the debate, looked like their heads were collectively about to explode. By now Chris Matthews' probably has.
We, as a country, were collectively Punk'd by a Republican nominee who has been playing for years now difficult to read — on the one hand a player as a once fairly moderate governor from Massachusetts, a Olympic committee figurehead, always a sharpie businessman, and during the Republican sewage of nominations and debates and clowns to tolerate, here came a hardcore leaning to the far Right new disciple combining Ken doll appeal-business savvy-zero transparency-hiring on for riding shotgun on this bewitched stagecoach arch conservative Paul Ryan to keep the Tea Party licking their chops, and putting to sleep the media thinking here were two similar whackos going up against cool as a cucumber and very likable Barack Obama. Who last night showed his terrific smile is all but the same whether he is confident, or very nervous, and last night he was looking nervous, as we were, watching a very brittle but Stepford wife-like Mitt Romney, come out biting at the bit and wanting to show his supposedly true self. As well-trained and coached bantam rooster.
With a debate moderator easy to roll over.
With chilling confidence Mr. Romney even told the moderator Jim Lehrer, of PBS, his job and station is toast if he is elected President. Watch that confidence, it's a killer.
Then there's a modest and well-mannered President to Punk and humiliate. The perfect storm to create a theater of true lies, and true lies is what we got from Mitt Romney, right before our eyes.
No one this morning has any idea, or even a clue, who Mitt Romney is and what to expect. Has he truly Punk'd the nation by playing the wild card businessman lost to the big mouths of Right Wing Nation for months on end? Or do we have the game changer, who reveals nothing if he doesn't want to, except he can be the former governor moderate-self at the flick of a switch if it means he gets the upper hand in a debate and throws everyone willy-nilly?
Remember, it isn't the "47 percent" like everyone has been extolling since the hidden video was revealed and there was Willard Romney making one more captain of the ship speech about the dregs and freeloaders of the nation living on the borrowed dime of the rich. Mr. Romney was born with the silver and lying-through-his-teeth spoon of the "1 percent" in his mouth, and always 1 percent. Don't be fooled this "1 percent" doesn't work hard and live 24-7 by the virtues they believe in: using people, their incomes, their land, their lives, neighborhoods and towns to get what they want: more and more power.
Mitt Romney Punk'd the "99" last night. He will now manipulate and power broker a good many of them to maybe vote him into the Presidency.
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