By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY NOV. 5, 2012) — Tomorrow, We The People go to the polls and pretend to elect the next president. The winner will pretend to govern us.

That’s the way of the ballot box exercise in these here Joonited Sticks of Americant. Big Money has made the individual vote irrelevant. The ridiculous Electoral College just piles on to that reality. Your vote is an open wound. Big Money and the Electoral College are the salt.

Your vote doesn’t count because no matter who wins tomorrow, Obama or Romney, the presidency will continue to be hostage to partisan politics of the worst kind. Even if some how that were not to be the case, on the basis of this campaign, there is no chance — absolutely none — that the next president will care to address the most serious threat to national security, which is, of course, the $16 trillion debt. Neither of these two will address the second most serious issue facing Americull: employer-provided health care. The ridiculous requirement that employers, and not national health, provide health coverage has stifled entrepreneurship and enterprise.

Debt is the poison that will kill this country. That fate became clear the moment the U.S. economy switched from an investment economy to a consumer economy (care to pinpoint it, anyone? THE PLANET would guesstimate the late 70s/early 80s). Aside from the huge moral evil of consumerism (the type of futility that makes Sisyphus look like Bill Gates), the problem with the way Americuss participated in consumerism guaranteed the predicament we are in today. “Consumers” didn’t indulge their needless acquisitions with their savings or earnings. They did it through debt. We haven’t looked back since.

Actually, the winner tomorrow will not be the person most deserving to be president. There are two people who would be equally good for that job: Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee. THE PLANET requests there you seriously think about casting a vote for either of these eminently qualified persons.

A vote for Johnson is a vote against federal tax collections, massive federal spending, and the federal debt. The Libertarian platform is loaded with solutions on crime and violence, the environment, the family budget, foreign policy, free speech, guns laws, health care, immigration, poverty and welfare, privacy, social security, taxes, and other issues. For more information, visit lp.org.

For the record, we predict a win tomorrow by Barack Obama. Two late developments pushed this close race to his side:

(1) Frankenstorn — Obama handled the crisis so well that even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention, gushed over the way Obama came through. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, bought some groceries and staged a photo op. Romney blew it big time.

(2) Benghazi — This seemed to be Romney’s best chance at plunging a foreign policy dagger into Obama’s heart. Now, the best Romney has done is cut himself shaving. It seems that the official response to the attack on the U.S. Consulate there came swiftly.

Here’s the story from the Associated Press. You may have missed it. This sealed a win for Obama:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just days before the presidential election, U.S. officials are striking back at allegations they failed to respond quickly or efficiently against the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, detailing for the first time a broad CIA rescue effort.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday that CIA security officers went to the aid of State Department staff less than 25 minutes after they got the first call for help from the consulate, which was less than a mile from a CIA annex. The detailed timeline provides the first in-depth look at how deeply the CIA was involved in the rescue attempt, and it comes amid persistent questions about whether the Obama administration responded as quickly and effectively as it could to the siege.

The attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 by what is now suspected to be a group of al-Qaida-linked militants killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Two of the four who were killed, ex-Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty, had been identified as State Departmentcontractors, but were actually CIA security officers who responded from the annex.

U.S. officials described the timeline in a clear effort to rebut recent news reports that said the CIA told its personnel to “stand down” rather than go to the consulate to help repel the attackers. Fox News reported that when CIA officers at the annex called higher-ups to tell them the consulate was under fire, they were twice told to “stand down.” The CIA publicly denied the report.

The intelligence officials told reporters Thursday that when the CIA annex received a call about the assault, about a half dozen members of a CIA security team tried to get heavy weapons and other assistance from the Libyans. But when the Libyans failed to respond, the security team, which routinely carries small arms, went ahead with the rescue attempt. At no point was the team told to wait, the officials said.

Instead, they said the often outmanned and outgunned team members made all the key decisions on the ground, with no second-guessing from senior officials monitoring the situation from afar.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss a CIA operation, as they routinely do. The anonymity was a condition of discussion even on a topic that has become highly politicized days before the presidential election.

The consulate attack has become a political issue in Washington, with Republicans questioning the security at the consulate, the intelligence on militant groups in North Africa and the Obama administration’s response in the days after the attack. Republicans also have questioned whether enough military and other support was requested and received. And presidential candidate Mitt Romney has used the attack as a sign of what he says is President Barack Obama’s weak leadership overseas.

Robert Gibbs, a senior Obama campaign adviser, said Friday on CBS’ “This Morning,” that it’s clear “the CIA was pivotal in responding to militants that were attacking the consulate in Benghazi, despite reports earlier that they had not been.”

In the first days after the attack, various administration officials linked the Benghazi incident to the simultaneous protests around the Muslim world over an American-made film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Only later did they publicly attribute it to militants, possibly linked to al-Qaida, and acknowledged it was distinct from the film protests. The changing explanations have led to suspicions that the administration didn’t want to acknowledge a terror attack on U.S. personnel so close to the Nov. 6 election, a charge Obama has strongly denied.

On Thursday, intelligence officials said they had early information that the attackers had ties to al-Qaida-linked groups but did not make it public immediately because it was based on classified intelligence. And they said the early public comments about the attack and its genesis were cautious and limited, as they routinely are in such incidents.

They added that while intelligence officials indicated early on that extremists were involved in the assault, only later were officials able to confirm that the attack was not generated by a protest over the film.

The Associated Press has reported that the CIA station chief in Tripoli and a State Department official sent word to Washington during the attack citing eyewitnesses as saying it was not a film protest but the planned work of armed militants.

Sen. John McCain and other Republicans insist that if the Obama administration didn’t know enough about the attack to discuss it clearly in the days that followed, it should have. They also say the response to the attack has been too muted to send a deterrent message to terrorists.

The officials’ description Thursday of the attack provided details about a second CIA security team in Tripoli that quickly chartered a plane and flew to Benghazi but got stuck at the airport. By then, however, the first team had gotten the State Department staff out of the consulate and back to the CIA annex.

As the events were unfolding, the Pentagon began to move special operations forces from Europe to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily. U.S. aircraft routinely fly in and out of Sigonella and there are also fighter jets based in Aviano, Italy. But while the U.S. military was at a heightened state of alert because of 9/11, there were no American forces poised and ready to move immediately into Benghazi when the attack began.

The Pentagon would not send forces or aircraft into Libya — a sovereign nation — without a request from the State Department and the knowledge or consent of the host country. And Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the information coming in was too jumbled to risk U.S. troops.

According to the detailed timeline senior officials laid out Thursday, the first call to the CIA base came in at about 9:40 p.m., and less than 25 minutes later about the team headed to the consulate. En route they tried to get additional assistance, including some heavier weapons, but were unable to get much aid from the Libyan militias.

The team finally got to the consulate, which was engulfed in heavy diesel smoke and flames, and they went in to get the consulate staff out. By 11:30 p.m., all of the U.S. personnel, except Stevens, left and drove back to the annex, with some taking fire from militants along the way.

By that time, one of the Defense Department’s unarmed Predator drones had arrived to provide overhead surveillance.

At the CIA base, militants continued the attack, firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The Americans returned fire, and after about 90 minutes, or around 1 a.m., it subsided.

Around that time, the second CIA team, which numbered about six and included two military members, arrived at the airport, where they tried to figure out where Stevens was and get transportation and added security to find him.

Intelligence officials said that after several hours, the team was finally able to get Libyan vehicles and armed escorts, but by then had learned that the ambassador was probably dead and the security situation at the hospital was troublesome. The State Department has said a department computer expert, Sean Smith, also was killed.

The second CIA team headed to the annex, and arrived after 5 a.m., just before the base came under attack again.

According to officials, militants fired mortar rounds at the building, killing two of the security officers who were returning fire. The mortar attack lasted just 11 minutes.

And less than an hour later, a heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived and was able to take the U.S. personnel to the airport.

If you’re smart and you live in Masachusetts, you will sleep in on Tuesday. You will go to work if you have a job. You will watch soap operas. But whatever you do, don’t vote.

It’s a waste of your precious time.

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BIG THINGS ARE STEWING AND MIGHTY PLANS BREWING. WE LOOK AT AETNA AND ASCEND. WE GET REAL ON THOSE WHO PRETEND.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.