You sank my battleship, Mr. President!

Long story short: Obama won a one-sided victory over Romney in tonight's presidential debate on foreign policy. It wasn't even close. This exchange says it all:

ROMNEY: Our Navy is old ... our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1916. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285. We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. ... And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts the president has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making -- is making our future less certain and less secure.

OBAMA: The budget that we are talking about is not reducing our military spending. It is maintaining it. But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We (also) have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships. It’s what are our capabilities.

Ouch. Romney gets schooled -- again. Or put another way: Game, set, match.

A flash mob with weapons

Nobody but the Republicans cares about the tea pot tempest they are attempting make over last month's Benghazi attacks. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius throws some much needed cold water on the Team Romney delusions about what really happened.

Ignatius writes:

The Benghazi flap is the sort of situation that intelligence officers dread — when politicians are demanding hard “yes” or “no” answers but evidence is fragmentary and conflicting. The political debate has focused on whether the attack was spontaneous or planned, but the senior official said there’s evidence of both, and that different attackers may have had different motives. There’s no dispute, however, that it was “an act of terror,” as Obama described it the next day.

Mitt Romney has shamefully turned the issue into a political football. After his drubbing by President Obama in the last debate, Romney would be wise to just let it go.

Obama schools Romney on debating

Yowzer. In the last debate, Obama was Mr. Magoo. In tonight's debate, he was Cicero, Churchill and Samuel L. Jackson rolled into one. So, what accounts for this head-snapping tale of the Two Obamas? In a word: engagement. In the first debate, Romney certainly aquitted himself well. But, for whatever reason, Obama was lackadaisical and never punched back. So Romney won it in a walk, at least stylistically. Tonight, Obama engaged -- and brought his presidential brass knuckles. The result: Romney got his brains beat out, repeatedly. I knew Obama was good. I didn't know he was that good. They'll be teaching the "Obama technique" in Politics 101 from now on. In fact, Mr. Obama was so good tonight, it's tempting to conclude that a deliberate, rope-a-dope strategy was at play. Feign weakness, feed your opponent's overconfidence, then deck 'em. That's how I'd script tonight's debate for a movie. But real life rarely mimics Rocky II. What actually happened is something more mundane, but just as lethal: Underestimate Barack Obama at your peril. Mitt Romney, the latest to do so, has just joined a long list of opponents who have had their heads handed to them on a plate.

The difference between 1858 and 2012

Biden Rattles Ryan. Night of Withering Ripostes. Passion Play. The Yin and Yang Debate. Notice anything missing from these headlines by our biggest news organizations? How about any semblance of substance. Here's Time's Joe Klein opening take on the Biden-Ryan debate last night: "This was a fine, fascinating, energetic debate. Joe Biden won — certainly on the substance, although he lost a bit on the body language. His frustrated smiles, head shakes, etc., etc., will become a Republican talking point and influence the post-game evaluations, even if they were sort of justified." Can you imagine such a content-free review -- one with so much focus on the "optics" -- for any one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858? Trust me -- I make no plea to return to the 19th century. And granted, neither Biden nor Ryan got anywhere near the elegance or power of Lincoln's "House Divided" soliloquy. Still, it is shocking how the concept of political seriousness has withered on proverbial the vine in the Third American Century. Modern presidential debates have become little more than the political version of American Idol. Given that sad state of affairs and our evident preference for entertainment over ideas, is it any surprise that the criticism of Obama's "bad" debate performance last week is almost entirely about style rather than substance? And never mind that the fate of the nation, and perhaps the world, will rest in the hands of the man who occupies the Oval Office for the next four years. Both Lincoln and Douglas -- not to mention the Founding Fathers -- are probably spinning in their graves.

Hope you're ready for Round 2, Mitt

The Economist: "MITT ROMNEY ran hard to the centre, and the president wasn't ready for it. ... Of course, Mr Romney has now opened himself up again to charges of sleazy, opportunistic positioning, of standing for nothing and everything. But not before chalking up an impressive debate win and making Mr Obama look a bit of a fool. This is not a wad Mr Romney can shoot again. And Mr Obama is a tough customer who does not make the same mistake twice. I feel sure he will come back with a vengeance—with the Etch A Sketch, the 47%, and a sharper, more aggressive version of last night's cornered, almost whingeing plaints about Mr Romney's shiftiness."

'The Crisis,' sort of

Damn. Long story short: My president, Barack Obama, performed dreadfully in last night's big debate with Mitt Romney. There's no escaping that fact. It was a drubbing, plain and simple. And the media of course is having a field day. Even worse, I'm obliged to offer a gentlemanly hat tip to that repulsive Republican chameleon. Clearly, neither Mr. Obama nor his team anticipated the return of "Moderate Massachusetts Mitt." Talk about Etch-A-Sketch. As New York magazine's Jon Chait correctly noted, virtually every word out of Mitt's mouth was a bald-faced lie. Nevertheless, it was a brilliant stratagem. Well played, sir.

When it was all over, I suspect Obama gained a new appreciation for the words of Thomas Paine who, in the darkest moments of the American Revolution, memorably wrote: "These are the times that try men's souls." These are the times, indeed, when I really feel for "Barry," the actual human being that inhabits Barack Obama. I mean, who among us can begin to imagine what it's like to get your butt kicked in hi-def, seemingly with the whole world (plus your wife, daughters and friends) watching? Politically, Obama's dismal night in Denver is not the end of the world. But for Barry, the guy, I'm sure it must have felt like it.

On the other hand, this is typical Obama, a man exasperatingly famous for choosing Robert Frost's "road not taken." It's never an easy route. Hopefully, the president is taking solace in the rest of Paine's soliloquy: "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

He loves me, he loves me not

Cosmopolitan just floors me. Flipping through the magazine at the dentist office is a laugh a minute. In the current edition, there's this gem: "Does He Love Me? 8 Signs He's Crazy About You." After several millenia, you'd think the ladies would have us guys figured out by now. They don't. But humorist Dave Barry describes the conundrum best: "Guys are simple ... women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically." Exactly.

Mapocalypse

New York Times technology writer David Pogue renders his verdict: "So Apple has written a beautiful, well-designed [map] app — and fed it questionable data. It’s as though you just got a $1,500 professional coffee maker and then poured moldy beans into it." Heh.

Are we special?

We humans love to think of ourselves as special. Very, very special. After all, that's why God, the Almighty Himself, takes a side in our presidential elections and roots for [insert NFL team here], right? Some of us have even advanced the idea that we earthlings could be part of the only biological life in the entire universe. To be sure, as living organisms, we are almost certainly special in terms of our biological uniqueness. But beyond that, we would be wise to temper our braggadocio. Science writer David Blatner explains why:

If you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we're speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.

That's a lot of grains.

But if you use a Hubble telescope and counted all the "distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we've ever recorded in the sky" you'd end up with "70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a 2003 estimate), so that we've got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars."

Kinda of puts things -- and us -- into proper perspective, doesn't it?

The Packers was robbed

For those of you who don't follow football closely, Atlantic writer Derek Thompson succinctly described what happened:

Last night on Monday Night Football, the Seattle Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson threw an interception in the endzone to lose the game to the Green Bay Packers. Then he gloriously threw up his hands, celebrated with ecstatic teammates, and watched his kicker put the extra point through the uprights, sealing a Seahawks victory.

Wait, what?

Yes, exactly. With the league's officials locked out due to a labor dispute with the NFL, the replacement referees called the interception a touchdown. Basically, the defender caught the pass, but the wide receiver put his hands around the ball to make it look like a shared catch, and under the tie-goes-to-the-runner principle, the refs called it a touchdown -- even after a video review. The TV announcers were apoplectic. Several appeared on the verge of tears. The Packers looked vaguely murderous. Even the prudish ESPN ran the indignant headline "Replacement refs decide game."

More here.

Keep your paws off my Google Maps, Apple

In the iconic 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston famously growled, "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" I now know how he felt. Per Salon, Apple’s new iOs 6 operating system — which it released with the new iPhone 5 — replaces the Google map app with its own. Bad move. Evidently, it is not "insanely great." iPhone 5 owners hate it because the Apple app is clearly inferior. Think I'll skip the upgrade and keep my iPhone 4.

White Woman's Burden

TO PARAPHRASE Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out (and done writing about Kate Middleton's breasts), they pull me back in. In a shameless bid to exploit the royal boobs story for eyeballs, Slate's "Explainer" columnist Brian Palmer asks, "When Did Bare Breasts Become Taboo?" You see, says Palmer, those topless photos of Middleton would have been socially acceptable in some eras. You know, about 3 millennia ago. So glad he cleared that up.

Anyway, it's the above photo that spun my head around (think Linda Blair in The Exorcist). And no, it's not a photoshopped fake. Shot by Mark Large of Getty Images, the National Geographic-like photo shows Prince William and his prim ladylove in Marau, Guadalcanal Province, Solomon Islands, earlier this week. But given the couple's relaxed, "just another day in the colonies" expression, it could have been 1899. But what really perturbs me is Slate's readiness to publish a photo of big-breasted, brown-skinned, indigenous women without batting an eye. I can't imagine the magazine posting a topless photo of any big-breasted "Western" woman, let alone the Duchess of Cambridge. Yet it's perfectly OK to display topless "native" women in their "natural habitat." I naively thought we were past this sort of unthinking, and frankly racist, double-standard. Guess not.

As for the "White Man's Burden" angle (captured in the above photo), BET.com writer Naeesa Aziz wrote: The royal trip "reeked of stereotypes and cast the royals as the gleaming white hopes whose visit gives the wretched 'natives' hope to carry on through the drudgery of their daily lives. It was as if they made the visit to take a survey asking, 'How’s life been since we stopped owning you?' ” Yes, that's probably overstating things a bit. The locals volunteered to put on a traditional welcome, including going topless. Still, Aziz isn't too far off the mark.

Don't ask, don't tell Romney

SOUND JUDGMENT and sagacity distinguish our best presidents. Those traits in President Obama were certainly tested during the debate over "don't ask, don't tell." Writing for Slate, UCLA scholar Nathaniel Frank reminded us that DADT supporters essentially predicted armageddon if the policy was repealed. It would do "great damage" to the military, said Sen. John McCain. It could “cost Marines’ lives,” said the commandant of the Marine Corps in a revealing "You can't handle the truth!" moment. "We'd be risking "our lives, property and freedom,” said one think-tanker. Franks noted there were dire predictions that "one-quarter of the military, or 500,000 troops, might quit in protest." Obama judged the protestations to be much ado about nothing. He therefore stepped up to the plate and repealed DADT a year ago this week. Guess what? Crickets. Nothing happened. A UCLA study, co-authored by Franks, found “no negative impact on overall military readiness or its component parts: unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.” Or as one straight solder put it: “It was a nonevent, like driving over a flat road. You don’t even notice a ripple.” Mitt Romney, to his credit, was not one of the DADT doomsayers. But he did say DADT was working and he would not change it. That means had he been president, the policy would still be place today. Let that sink in as you contemplate the notion of a Romney presidency.

Willard Milhous Romney?

Reuters columnist Jack Shafer warns: "Be careful about writing Mitt Romney’s political obituary before they fill him with formaldehyde and pour him into his mahogany condo. Like that other frequent Republican presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, Romney has a remarkable talent for stepping into it, sinking and soiling himself rotten as he extricates himself." Shafer then compares Romney and Nixon in terms of core beliefs (nonexistent), political style (awkward) and personality (stilted). Shafer does a good job here. It's scary how much the two men do have in common. There are even some political environment similarities. Shafer's bottom line: If Nixon could win, so could Romney. The trouble with this theory is that it's preposterous. Though the two men share some key traits, Romney is no Nixon. Romney is a stable, well-intentioned family man (albeit one stuck in circa 1954). Nixon was Darth Vader (see Watergate). They didn't call him "Tricky Dick" for nothing. Nixon's democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was no Barack Obama. Let's just say that oratory and retail politicking were not Humphrey's strong suits, and leave it at that. Lastly, America in 2012 is vastly different from what it was in 1968. The nation today is a bucolic paradise compared to 1968 when it nearly imploded from violent anti-war protests, race riots, and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and MLK -- just to name the highlights. Yes, anything is possible in this election. And that obviously includes grasping at straws.

No, the debates won't help either

AN INEVITABLE media narrative is taking hold as we approach October. It presumes Mitt Romney is still controlling his own destiny. It further presumes Mitt can save himself by excelling in the upcoming debates with Obama. I give you Andrew Sullivan: "The debates are Romney's best bet to turn this thing around, unless Netanyahu tries to help him out by blowing up the global economy. If Mitt's constantly on the defensive in them, as [Joe Klein] suggests he'll have to be, this could turn into a rout. Down-ballot as well. Has Obama now done to the entire GOP what he did to the Clintons, McCain and Romney? Make them somehow self-destruct?" Sullivan is right about the implications of Romney's defensive posture. But beware of pundits bearing predictions about Mitt's ability to pull a rabbit out of a hat with only 48 days left before Election Day. Short of Romney evolving into Winston Churchill -- like, overnight -- and Obama devolving into Homer Simpson, any notion of Romney turning the election around during the debates is laughable. Remember, Romney has not topped Obama in any poll. Not even once. In short, Romney is toast. The only question is how badly he and the GOP will get burned. My bet is extra crispy.

Do you throw like a girl?

THE VERDICT is in: If you're a girl, you probably throw like one. That according to a comprehensive study by Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In most things, men and women really aren't all that different ... except in two areas: throwing velocity and throwing distance. In those motor tasks, the difference is "very large," Hyde told the Washington Post. Apparently, the "overhand throwing gap" starts showing up at age 4. By age 15, "nearly every boy throws better than the best girl.” Usually, a lot better. And it's true in every culture around the world. Surprisingly, there doesn’t appear to be a muscular or structural reason for the difference, per the Post. It's all in the physics of throwing execution. For women, then, scientists suspect it's something neurological rooted in human evolution. Back on the African savannah, men threw rocks at prey or for self-defense. So did women, but they often threw with a baby in one arm. The good news is that girls can learn not to throw like girls. It just requires instruction and practice. But there's even better news, ladies. None of this really matters. Throwing like a girl won't stop you from kicking male butt in every other field of endeavor, especially if it involves brains.

Royal Boobs

In this case, "royal boobs" refer to the actual mammary glands, the woman baring them and the slack-jawed legions transfixed by their twin attributes. For some odd reason, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, thought sunbathing topless at a private French chateau was a winning idea. Even odder, Her Worshipfulness was expecting a decent measure of privacy. The result: Over one million mentions on Google about the Baroness' naked boobs, not to mention the countless images that will live forever. In a perfect world, respect for privacy is assured, the paparazzi are refined gentlemen, and telephoto lens do not exist. In the real world, the concept of privacy vanished the moment the Countess agreed to become Prince Willie's hot date a decade ago. Does Her Grace, Bearer of the Royal Breasts, not know that? As for the worldwide audience of salivating gawkers, you'd think that people (i.e., men) have never seen a pair of breasts in all of human history. Of course it doesn't help that every major newspaper (including the NY Times), magazine and television network have covered the story like an imminent, civilization-ending meteor impact. Albert Einstein was on to something when he said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Me neither.

On living well

Peter Lawler ponders the life and death of the late Christopher Hitchens: "Hitchens did not live as if he were a body. He did not, God love him, live in fearful attentiveness to every conceivable risk factor that might extinguish his biological being. He smoked and drank heavily, and he ignored his body to enjoy life. From the point of view of the health-and-safety puritans around these days, he was pretty much a madman. ... But we might say that his relative indifference to the body was one cause of his undeniable intellectual greatness, his courageous advocacy on behalf of human liberty everywhere. That indifference might be understood to be in the service of the truth, which is that a life without biological death couldn't possibly be one lived in personal freedom. Living well, after all, isn't all about living just a bit longer." Amen.

Gangnam Style -- Um, WTF?

For some reason, a short, pudgy, South Korean "rapper" is now a worldwide sensation. I no longer question these things, mind you. I simply bow to the absurd. Enjoy.

iPhotography in the iPhone Age

Last year, they estimate that people used their camera phones to snap some 380 billion images of cute pets, cute toddlers, beverages, food dishes, self-portraits and sundry body parts. 380 billion. Most of this photographic dreck ends up on Facebook. The upload rate is tens of millions of pics per day. Even as I wrote this, a Facebook friend shared a photo of the plastic cup he was using to consume a pint of Ranger India Pale Ale in a Columbia, Missouri bar. A white plastic cup. I've long since given up asking why. New York Times writer-photog James Estrin writes: "A photograph is no longer predominantly a way of keeping a treasured family memory or even of learning about places or people that we would otherwise not encounter. It is now mainly a chintzy currency in a social interaction and a way of gazing even further into one’s navel."

Man skydiving into Burning Man

Burning Man: An annual "experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance" in the Nevada desert. Translation: A pointless, overdone, week-long, pot-party by (mostly) middle-class white people pathetically trying (but inevitably failing) to reenact Woodstock who obviously have plenty of time and money to burn, man.

Schooling Romney on diplomacy

Friends, Romans, countrymen -- both here and abroad -- lend me your ears. Underestimate President Obama at your peril. In crisis diplomacy at the world-class level, you first bide your time to marshal all the facts, size up the adversary, and decide which tool to best bring him to heel. Then you act with overwhelming force. With that in mind, the New York Times is reporting that yesterday Obama made a late-night call to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Obama was blunt. That's diplomatese for "furious." It lasted 20 minutes. Obama did most of yelling talking. Long story short: Condemn the violence, protect our embassy or risk losing our friendship, our alliance and our money. Sweet dreams -- Click. By midday Thursday, Morsi (who had been conspicuously silent) was all over national television condemning the unrest. Guess he got the message. In fact, the Times added, the entire Egyptian leadership, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was scrambling on Thursday "to try to repair the country’s alliance with Washington." Guess they got the message, too. That's how it done, Mr. Romney. You don't lash out in blind outrage at a provocation. Nor do you wait for the 3 a.m. phone call. You wake the other guy up at 3 a.m. It's called peace through superior brainpower.

Landing on Mars in Ultra-HD

Just two words: Totally awesome.

They think you're stupid -- Ctd

If you've ever wondered what equivocation looks like in the wild, wonder no more. I caught the following specimen in its natural habitat, The Atlantic in this case. Molly Ball writes: "Romney's Libya blunder might be just a blip, a single news cycle lost in a campaign that still has nearly two months to go and will surely refocus on the economy before long. There's also the possibility that further developments overseas reflect badly on the administration and somehow make Romney's critique look prescient rather than crass." But to make these outcomes work, Ball is suggesting that: (a) voters have the memory of a guppy in a fish bowl; (b) voters are incapable of discerning the magnitude of Romney's flub; and (c) if Obama makes a mistake abroad before November, voters will discount all of his other accomplishments on the international stage to date -- including killing Bin Laden -- and vote Romney. Why? See points a and b. The mind reels.

A gratuitous blog post

OK, OK -- so I couldn't resist. Yes, HBO Newsroom star Alison Pill is the nude subject in the photo at left. Pill "accidentally" tweeted this digital self-portrait to the world, or so she says. "Yep. That picture happened. Ugh. My tech issues have now reached new heights, apparently. How a deletion turned into a tweet... Apologies," she later tweeted. But she didn't hit the delete button fast enough. The pic has gone viral. Just a few thoughts. (a) Meh, big deal. (b) I didn't know Ms. Pill wore glasses. (c) How does one accidentally tweet a nude photo of oneself? (d) Runaway narcissism, amour-propre and daddy issues aside, what motivated Pill to photograph herself in the buff in the first place? (e) This is what I get for visiting the Huffington Post.