Dear Commons Community,

At the recent Sloan ALN Conference held in Orlando, I was asked the question by Holly Rae Bemis-Schurtz :  Why faculty blog?  A number of colleagues here  at CUNY have also asked me this question over the past couple of years.  Below was my response to Holly.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Barack Obama and candidate Mitt Romney are beginning preparations for their last debate on Monday night. Every indication is that it will be another in-your-face brawl as was the last one.  After a week which saw the two candidates trade “fun” one-liners about each other at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner, the gloves have come off.   President Obama yesterday referred to Romney as having “Rom-ney-sia,” which Obama said presents itself as forgetting one’s earlier stances.

The comment came as the Obama campaign looked to tie Romney to his earlier, more conservative stands, including suggesting in a Republican primary debate that he’d be happy to sign a bill outlawing all abortion — even though he once supported abortion and his campaign says he supports abortion in the case of rape, incest or the health of the woman.

“He’s conveniently forgetting what his own positions are,” Obama said. “We need a name for this condition—let’s call it Rom-ney-sia…. If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose but you say you’d be ‘delighted’ to sign a law outlawing it in all cases, you’ve got Rom-ney-sia.”

The subject of Monday night’s debate will be foreign policy and Romney is sure to hammer President Obama on Libya.  One recent report has it that:

The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.

It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went. The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

The debate is scheduled for Monday night at 9:00 pm (EDT).

Tony