Can anyone not see through the desperate stratagem of the quadrennial October Surprise: the American institution where either political party makes a calculated last-minute touchdown surge (or knife thrust) deep into its opponent's soft white underbelly -- generally based upon some calumny cooked up and disseminated by the lapdog media and their termite minions? As far back as 1968, we have witnessed these strange and portentous calculated last-minute revelations. Can one recall LBJ and the aborted bombing of North Viet Nam and Henry Kissinger floating the olive branch of peace in 1972? Remember the conspiratorial indictments against Reagan for the delay of the Iranian hostages that conjured the media images of George Bush the Elder whisking off in a secret SR-71, or Lawrence Walsh's supposed politicized indictment of Cap Weinberger in 1992? What about 2000's last-minute release by the Gore camp of Dubya's drunk driving incidents? Can any of us forget the stories floated about Arnold's womanizing and praising of Hitler before the '03 California Recall or that in 2004 the dip in the price of gasoline was somehow engineered by Saudi Prince Bandar, who enjoyed rapport in the Bush administration?

When it comes to the October Surprise, myth becomes reality -- and perhaps even pertinent and relevant facts are jaundiced by their close approximation to the election. Indeed, the hair should rise up off the backs of our necks when encountering revelations possibly tainted by convenient political necessity in the service of slandering one's mortal enemy.

Gloria Allred, who slithers in the rank lowerarchy of that special breed of prostitute-cum-advocate that in the grand scheme of things makes attorneys such as William Kunstler, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnny Cochran appear as if they were Daniel Webster, is back in the news with a rumored October Surprise to fling at Romney, much as a chimp hurls its own excrement. Her efforts, having proved fruitful in the character assassination of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, are now turning to bigger fish, as her fetid eye and rasping larynx are posed to unearth more swamp rot in service to the Progressive Unified Field Theorem of Politics and Cultural Degeneration. Whatever her slander turns out to be (or perhaps, to have been, little having been heard from her since the court decision last week) -- old or new -- there is little doubt that it will be picked up by willing and eager wire services stationed throughout the planet in their unceasing jihad to destroy Mr. Romney. One can only hope that the bottom-feeding Allred will reap the same justice one day that she has routinely perverted in her political and courthouse dog and pony shows.

In contrast, Barack Obama has not been without his own form of October Surprise, albeit this one has the well-deserved earmarks of his own administration whose sordid fingerprints literally blanket it. Unlike the Watergate scandal, which brought down a sitting president, Obama's handling of the Benghazi disaster and the heinous murder of an ambassador, an aide, and two military personnel has the true makings of a game changer -- had the mainstream media the integrity to report it as such. And like Watergate, it is the administration's playing fast and loose with both the facts and the official timeline in its coverup that reveals the rot inside reaching up unto the highest channels of Obama's decision-making matrix. Having proven himself congenitally incapable of accepting responsibility for negative events, the President has tap danced around the issue while hiding behind the skirts of his secretary of state, who either through some struck bargain or a strain of masochism has seen fit to throw herself upon the sword -- an action not wholly without merit or displeasing to me. Still, the callow Obama has equivocated and contradicted himself about the various angles of the tragedy, proving not only that he is mendacious but also without personal honor. That the Obama media organs have only given us the barest ephemeral treatment of the incident, in contrast to their haranguing nonstop Nixonian firestorm, only further reinforces the common judgment that their hearts and hopes have been purchased ideologically by the Democratic Party and that they are without shame in this incestuous marriage of politics, lies, and expedience.

I suppose that as long as there are democracies there will demagogic and partisan attempts to manipulate those who wield the votes through rhetorical mendacity and the promise of goods or gold for choosing one candidate over another. Indeed, Socrates, in his penetrating dialogues with the Sophists, spent his life fighting and clearing the obfuscating cobwebs of oily speeches and emotional appeals that targeted the demos, while countering with only with the unvarnished truth as he believed it to be. The brilliant writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn told us that before the USSR's one-party "elections," in decades where Soviet tyranny was ironclad and absolute, the prices of vodka and black bread would fall precipitously in the nation's shops as an inducement to creating a climate where a conscientious vote could be rendered in the spirit of democratic ardor. We are not so much different if one thinks about it. If one is honest and merely looks around at the people and places one knows, can the true unemployment rate be merely 7.8% where a 5% rate is considered structural full employment? Is not the current regime advertising its food stamps as a vehicle to purchase loyalty via dependency? Are not the news agencies telling you that things are getting better while the private sector's and even the government's economic indices tell us differently? Who are you going to believe, them or your lying eyes?

No American administration has ever proved so ill-suited to power as the current malignant regime. It has no credible record to stand upon and offers no viable future plan other than its threadbare slogans. In the shadow of such incompetence and malevolence, let us pray that we do not fall victim to the ultimate November Surprise: that on the morning of November 7, a man totally unworthy of our trust or our great legacy still smirks and bullies his way unimpeded through our hallowed mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, deconstructing America's vitality, honor and prestige -- piece by piece.