http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4

A reference to Psycho (the scene above, in particular), a 1960 American suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay by Joseph Stefano is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The novel was loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein, who lived just 40 miles from Bloch.

Freddy Krueger is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of A Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He appears in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as a disfigured serial killer who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in the waking world as well. However, whenever he is put into the real world, he has normal human vulnerability.

Uncle Fester, aka Fester Addams, is a member of the fictional Addams Family. He is depicted as a completely hairless, hunched, and barrel-shaped man with dark, sunken eyes and often a deranged smile.

This line is of note due to its importance in setting the tone for the rest of A Modest Proposal. The use of depersonalizing language here was calculated by Swift to (A) shock the reader, and (B) reduce the human beings spoken of within the proposal to statistical entities and economic commodities, and to animals.

A “dam” is a female form of any animal.

This is an allusion to Pan, the Greek god, said to be

… famous for his sexual powers, and is often depicted with a phallus. Diogenes of Sinope suggested that Pan learned masturbation from his father, Hermes, and taught the habit to shepherds.*

His cloven hooves link him to the Christian view of the devil.

Once more the line ‘far and wee’ is repeated, a refrain, with the same spacing as before, to reinforce the mood of joy. But note also that the balloonMan has a capital ’M', indicating perhaps that he is more than a simple seller of balloons; his importance is heightened.

*Vinci, Leo (1993), Pan: Great God Of Nature, Neptune Press, London

False

Iran, as most anyone knows, has direct access to waterways, we pointed out back then, with about 1,100 miles of coastline along the Gulf of Oman and the entire northern coastline of the Persian Gulf.

But worse yet, Iran doesn’t even share a border with Syria, so this “route to the sea” actually means going overland through Iraq and then Syria to get to the Mediterranean. The journey from Tehran to Damascus is about 1,000 miles.

Source: Romney won’t give on Iran-Syria ‘route to the sea’ on the Washington Post

This is in reference to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 in Libya at the U.S. diplomatic compound for the consulate which lead to the deaths of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other members of his diplomatic mission, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and U.S. embassy security personnel Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Two other Americans and seven Libyans were also injured.

Bob Schieffer is the moderator of the Third Presidential Debate of 2012. He is an American television journalist who has been with CBS News since 1969, serving 23 years as anchor on the Saturday edition of CBS Evening News from 1973 to 1996; chief Washington correspondent since 1982, moderator of the Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation since 1991, and, between March 2005 and August 31, 2006, interim weekday anchor of the CBS Evening News. As of 2011, he is one of the primary substitutes for Scott Pelley.