Another beautiful early morning here on California’s northern coast, still again with bright stars twinkling in the sky — after weeks and seemingly months of fog, these last few days have been neat.
And warm, too, causing me sometimes to forget were I’m at.

Beyond this euphoric weather, the big story this morning is what occurs tonight — President Obama and Mitt Romney go eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose and bullshit-to-bullshit in their first of three debates this month, this one in Colorado at the University of Denver’s 7,200-seat Magness Arena.

(Illustration found here).

This event will be Mitt’s life in a few minutes, like what happens as you drown.
Or maybe twist and snap into weird creepy: Republican strategist Matt Schlapp outlined Romney’s multiple goals this way: “Romney’s strategy is to pierce the thin skin of the president and still find a way to improve his favorables. Like Mr. Rodgers with a knife under his cardigan.
What favorables?

In the last few days it’s been reported Romney’s course of action against Obama is use of the ‘zinger,’ the little snap-phrase that endears to visual/sound bytes, sort of like crying, ‘Burn!’ after a well-executed put down.
The puff-candied Zinger treat is in reality a mouth-sugar-stomp deeply coated with its commercial phrase, “…to lay it on thick.”
However, all you really get is a nasty,  sweet buzz which eventually opens up the bowels at the most-inappropriate time.

From the New York Times last Friday:

Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August.
His strategy includes luring the president into appearing smug or evasive about his responsibility for the economy.

Dana Milbank culled some pre-debate zinger practice from Romney at a rally on Monday, and the best: “We’ve had 43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent, and what does the president have to say to all this? He says ‘forward.’ I think ‘forewarned’ is a better term.”
Or maybe this one: “He’s out of ideas, he’s out of excuses, and on November 6th you’re going to put him out of office.”
Wham-bam, thank-you ma’am!

The Tampa Bay Times’ PolitiFact group will again monitor the lying-bullshit quota, though, the process this year is a full-blown, full-attention task.
From Poynter:

“The debates are like the play-offs for us,” Editor Bill Adair told Poynter by telephone.
“We will have a Twitter widget on the website so people can follow our fact-checks live.
We will put up links very quickly to fact-checks we’ve already done, and by midnight or 1 a.m. we should have several more fact-checks published on the site.
We’re going to be working into the wee hours and continue publishing new truth-o-meter items and then finish off on Thursday morning.
This is really a big event for us and we’re going to be covering it in lots of ways.”

Background info here.

However, one must remember the Romney camp doesn’t give a fat-rat’s ass about facts: “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said at a panel organized by ABC News.

The debate tonight is going to be fun to watch.
I don’t see how Romney can survive — his inability to face facts will cause some problems in responding to questions, and if Obama can pepper him with facts, he’ll stagger around and collapse.
A lot of funny, neat shit have come out of debates in the past, but it’s all just perfume sprayed in an outhouse — there’s just no real covering up the smell.