Who won the Great Debate? Walt makes the call

Walt was over to Fort Mudge last night to watch the presidential debate on the TV in the store window. The whole 100 minutes. Damn near froze, in spite of a little pre-debate fortificatory libation.

Quite a different performance by the Prez from the first one, but the Inevitable Mitt held his own, I thought. Both combatants scored a couple of good points. Obama forced Romney to admit that his (Romney's) pension was bigger than his (Obama's). Imagine that. And Romney got off a good one by telling an African-American that he had every right to be disappointed in the candidate he voted for last time, meaning Obama.

But the biggest play was -- or should have been -- Romeny's calling out Obama when he told an out-and-out lie. Speaking about the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11,  the Prez stated cited remarks he said he made in the White House Rose Garden the next day, September 12th. He said clearly and unequivocally -- Walt heard him -- that he called the attack a "terrorist act".

That was after Romney said that it took Obama 14 days to call the attack "an act of terror" rather than just an overreaction to a stupid video. Well sir, Romney called the Prez on it, or attempted to. But  no sooner did he begin to say "That's not what you said just a moment ago" when the moderator, CNN's Cathy Crowley weighed in. [That would certainly be the appropriate verb, in her case. Ed.]

The idea of last night's "town hall" format was to allow Obama and Romney to spaker directly to voters, a representative group of same comprising the audience. They weren't supposed to be overtly partisan. Their role was to ask questions, which the Prez and Wannabe Prez would then answer.

The moderator wasn't supposed to be partisan either. She was supposed to be, errr, moderate. Time magazine somehow got a copy of the campaigns’ agreement over the debate’s terms. The deal was that the moderator would not ask follow-up questions. All she was supposed to do was choose which of the audience's questions would be asked, and introduce the voters who would ask their questions.

Did the lovely Cathy rein in her obvious lamestream bias in favour of Obama, the media's darling? Noooooo. When Romney said Obama was speaking with a forked tongue -- OK, not his actual words -- Al told him, "Get the transcript."

Then Cathy opened her large yap to defend her favourite. "He did call it an act of terror," she said.

Speaking on CNN after the debate, Crowley said her comment "was the natural thing that came out of me." Just like shit.

Romney supporters at the debate were irate. "Candy was wrong, and Candy had no business doing that, and Candy didn’t even keep the (candidates’ speaking) time right," said former New Hampshire governor John Sununu.

Added one of Mitt's senior advisors, Ron Kaufman, "At different times tonight, she in fact got into the game, and she wasn’t on the sidelines."

Indeed. In Walt's opinion Cathy played the entire front four for Obama. For her outstandingly partisan performance, second only to that of the NFL's replacement referees, Walt declares Cathy Crowley the winner, and awards her the first ever COW, the latest in a long line of prestigious WWW awards. COW stands for Combative Overweight Woman.

Footnote from Ed.: Cathy Jones of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, used to do a devastatingly accurate impression of the biased and ignorant CNN "personality". I'm looking for a video clip. If you have one, please send it to walt.whiteman@yahoo.com.