October's Oddities

It wasn’t enough that this past Halloween brought out the strangest, most creative and unique costumes ever. However, the entire month of October saw its share of odd events and scary people that would make the entire month Halloween-esque for all its nuttiness.

We had such unlikely events like a rogue blimp wreaking havoc along the Pennsylvania countryside. 

There was a wild inflatable pumpkin terrorizing residents in Arizona.

The Baltimore Ravens hadn’t won a home game through October (they won Sunday, though, to kick off November).  

Someone actually wrote a published letter to the Baltimore Sun bemoaning the large number of advertisements apparently oblivious to the fact that the media depends on advertising for revenue. 

After a devastating drought, Texas was pelted with flooding rains of biblical proportions.

And the stock market (Dow Jones index), which usually tanks in October, climbed a hefty 8.5 percent, the most in four years.

If these happenings weren’t sufficiently Halloween-ish in their strangeness, perhaps the GOP presidential debate broadcast on CNBC met that bar.  Setting the stage is the fact Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump are the frontrunners—a rightfully scary prospect considering how ignorant they are of government policy and mechanics.  Yet, that’s who the Republican voters prefer right now; it’s pretty Halloween-creepy.

But the greatest October oddity came from that very debate.  The rough and tough Republican candidates who boast they can “deal with” Russia, China and other potential or imagined adversaries as well as force the Mexican government to erect a wall along the border showed the chink in their collective armor, um façade. With all their bravado, they couldn’t cope with the line and manner of questioning put forth by the CNBC moderators. 
Led by the dreaded Sen. Ted Cruz, the candidates whined about those many “gotcha” questions. 

Heaven forbid they should be asked to comment on their record or things they have said and have done in the past.  Shame on the moderators for asking them to reconcile past conflicting statements made by the candidates! 

Accordingly, the “liberal media” have joined President Obama and Hillary Clinton as the ghoulish villains of October, playing to the party’s base.  Now these candidates want to scuttle the scheduled debate originally hosted by NBC and Telemundo in favor of more sympathetic and less probing panelists. 

We’ll see what turns up as the candidates are seeking relief and going over the heads of Reince Priebus, the RNC and the Republican “establishment” in search of softballs to hit out of the park.

The first question that should be asked by whoever moderates the next debate is, “How are you going to stand up to Vladimir Putin, if you can’t handle CNBC’s John Harwood?”