Nothing has been glossed over except the absence of mention of funding cuts. Context is important. Right-wing shock jocks have been taking words out of context for many years. Think of Lamebaughls perpetual $1m bet that no obe could prove he was lying about words he attributed to Clinton. He used Clinton’s words, just out of context.

You’re right. It is sad that there seems to be less and less middle ground. Most of us are not to the far right or left, but media and politicians seem bent on over-dramatizing differences.

The question was “Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?”

The President should have answered that it was the State Department, for who.

In answering why, he should have explained to the American people that it was because the House republicans cut embassy security funding by $128m in one year and by $331m the next.

That’s keeping it in context.

But since the context of the debate took a turn, let’s go there, as well. Romney said “I think it interesting that the president just said something which – which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.” He then challenged the assertion by wanting to make sure it got on the record.

Romney made a mistake. He goofed. He didn’t know what the president had said. He was ill-prepared. And he came off as looking like a baffune.

Candy Crowley did attempt to throw him a bone by saying he was right that it took about two weeks before the administration again called the attack an act of terrorism. But Romney played a bad hand too far. actofterrorism. But Romney playedssed a bad hand too far, and it

The question was “Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?”

The President should have answered that it was the State Department, for who.

In answering why, he should have explained to the American people that it was because the House republicans cut embassy security funding by $128m in one year and by $331m the next.

That’s keeping it in context.

But since the context of the debate took a turn, let’s go there, as well. Romney said “I think it interesting that the president just said something which – which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.” He then challenged the assertion by wanting to make sure it got on the record.

Romney made a mistake. He goofed. He didn’t know what the president had said. He was ill-prepared. And he came off as looking like a baffune.

Candy Crowley did attempt to throw him a bone by saying he was right that it took about two weeks before the administration again callled the attack an actofterrorism. But Romney playedssed a bad hand too far, and it

Thanks so much for your kind words, but lets give credit where credit is due. Your interpretive gloss managed to ignore the two subsequent weeks of the president’s administration essentially denying it was terror. Context is everything as they say except, it seems, when it isn’t convenient.

Regardless, my point ultimately was that the next so many presidential terms promise to be interesting in light of the ever diverging frames of reference that the two predominant political camps are moving in.

Be that as it may, I look forward to your obligatory rejoinder.

You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote you and others in the Rose Garden. That was wise. However, he did use the phrase “acts of terror” in conjunction with his other comments concerning that attack. It seems you’re opining something you’ve lost.

You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote what you and others now

You’re right. The President didn’t come right out and quote what you and others now ,

It’s fascinating how it has now become unusal to at least acknowledge that there may be good reasons for an opposing point of view, however unconvinced we may choose to be by those reasons. No room for deviation is allowed! Either you agree with my version or your a partisan hack!

So here we are arguing that the President proclaimed Benghazi an act of terror the day after the attack.

But did he say anything resembling the clear declarative statement: “What happened in Benghazi was an act of terror!”

No.

Did he talk about Benghazi then immediately afterward declare it an act of terror?

No.

He talked about Benghazi, then talked about 9/11, then talked about how we will not tolerate terrorism. Then his administration spent the following week referring to Benghazi as anything BUT an act of terror.

So fine. One side believes the statement regarding terrorism was intended to refer to Benghazi. And that certainly is one of a number of possible interpretations.

But, if the Obama administration chose to avoid making a clear declarative statement on something so critical, and then chose to spend the next week characterizing the events as something entirely different than terrorism, then it seems to me there is ample support to view the administration’s actions above as a deliberate choice to avoid characterizing these events as terrorism.

So while one can certainly force an interpretation that Obama said it was terror all along, the idea that after considering all the contextual facts above, one could insist that there are no grounds for any other interpretation than that of the Obama Administration’s version is by any objective measure, if objectivity has any meaning anymore, disengenuous at best.

Or perhaps our state of affairs has reached such a state of myopia that we are now occupants of very different and opposing interpretive universes in which case, it will be very interesting if and when Romney becomes president to see how his administration will govern when a third to a half of the country’s voters are willfully viewing reality one way, and the other third to a half another.

As a rule hermaneutical factionalism rarely ends very well.

That is to say that were all the oil produced in the US to remain in the US and consumed by us, even without the oil we purchase from Canada (from whom we get our largest imported supply) and Mexico, we would need no other supply. The trouble with that is that more oil is exported out of the US than is imported because oil companies make far greater profit in over-seas markets, even after the costs incurred in shipping.

Romney cannot possibly change that without either encouraging such high domestic prices that oil companies would profit just as much by selling US oil here, or by interfering with the free market of oil. Nobody seems to question how he would make us energy independent. He certainly doesn’t offer an explanation; even less than he does for his tax or Medicare schemes.