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This article talks about Obama's and Romney's responses to the recent violence in Libya. Obama is criticized with not speaking forcefully and being too apologetic in regards to the recent situation as well as some of the recent stuff going on in the Middle East. The article then goes on to say that despite the foreign affairs news, the economy is still the pressing issue of the election (not sure if I agree with that fully).

If things continue to escalate in the middle east, as they have been lately, than foreign policy will continue to be a major issue in the election. Danielle, I feel like you are right and that most americans will focus on the economy, but the two issues are intertwined, and bad news for one is bad news for the other if things continue to escalate. How much money are we willing to spend dealing with other countries? We already have out of control spending, but if things get worse then we will have to decide what is more important to our country: security, or money.

What seems frustrating to me about this whole situation is that both sides seem to be using Libya as an excuse to say "look at me, look at how good I am at foreign policy!" I wish that they would work together to actually solve problems instead of trying to prove what good problem solvers they are.

Romney criticizes Obama for not speaking out against the attacks on the US Ambassador in Libya. The article uses this to make Romney seem hasty, because Obama did condem the attack eventually. This just seems like another attempt of Romney's to gain the upper hand by nitpicking everything about the Obama administration. Numerous senators are also quoted in the article saying that this isn't a time for political division and Romney needs to be more careful before he says something stupid and insensitive. 

The first thing that stands out to me in this article is that the attack is described as a test of crisis skills rather than an actual thing that happened. I think that Obama is right in saying that "Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later", especially with his comments. He's trying so hard to appeal to people that he doesn't always think about the effects of what he says. I don't think that Romney understands that sometimes apology is the best way to handle things.

I think this is a time where criticizing the other party is not effective and should not be the main concern. I agree with you Sabrina, that sometimes an apology, or even acknowledgment, is the best way to handle things. But Obama has been criticized for less harsh action on foreign affairs so I'm surprised he didn't condem the attacks first. I guess he won't waver on how he feels he should approach these acts of terror.

This article is more about Iran than the election, but it brings up the prospect that the Obama administration chose not to release the information until after election day for political reasons. I don't think it's important whether he did or not, but I come to the question: how much does a political agenda sway what a media outlet or any entity that publishes information chooses to cover? Beyond tone, rhetoric and biased descriptions, could entire events have been passed over in the way of allegiance to one party or the other?

I believe that a political agenda has great influence on what information is released to the media and what stories are hidden from the public's eye. An example of this is the attack in Benghazi and the significant delayed release of information pertaining to the attack. It seemed that Obama's administration attempted to keep the details of this attack in the dark, in an attempt to preserve its reputation. I believe there will always be a political agenda behind what is and isn't released and I do believe that there have been events in the past that have been passed over in order to preserve someone's reputation but in this modern time with the interent, I believe it to be impossible for significant events to be hidden from the public and I believe that there will now be more events covered and talked about than there have been in the past.

James, I do not believe that Obama's "political agenda" delayed the release of the information pertaining to the attacks in Libya, or that the information was intentionally delayed. I do agree with your opinion that the government does have sway over the media, but I do not believe that this was one of those situations. Obama, himself, released the information and he did not receive the complete story.

These are graphs that show the different demographics that voted for which presidents.  It also shows the results to which states both Obama and Romney won. I think it's interesting that this year Florida did not play much of an important part as it usually does. 

The question about about handling medicare, the economy and the deficit are really telling. The implication of such a vast majority of voter agreeing with their candidates view on these specific issues is that a vast majority of voters based their choice on these issues.

I find it shocking that the african american community voted significantly more in favor of Obama than any other community combined. I side red with a ton of these issues. I'm still a little confused why people think that Obama's foreign policy is considered as being good considering that he completely covered up the fact that they CIA had been to libya two weeks before the attack and requested help, yet nothing was done. This is infuriating to me. I do not trust Obama to handle foreign policy, he is far to loose with Ahmadinejad, Iran's nuclear program has skyrocketed since 2008. Nothing about that seems 'successful' to me.