2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Xiahou]

Obama says he doesn't consider Egypt an ally, NBC's chief foreign correspondent is stunned...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXXToNNNoZc

So, is it unfair then for Romney to assert that the Obama administration mishandled/misjudged the fallout of Mubarak's ouster? Under what metric could we call this a positive outcome for the US?

[Lemur]

Under what metric could we call this a positive outcome for the US?
On the face of it, none. I cannot imagine why this would be worth saying, and am slightly shocked.

I guess Obama didn't want to leave Governor Romney all alone in the let's-say-something-stupid-about-foreign-affairs game. But this appears to be worse; Romney is just a candidate, and can be as stupid as he pleases. This is the PotUS. I'm not going to rush in and declare a debacle, but it does not look good at first blush.

[Lemur]

This can only end in glorious, unintended comedy (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/kansas_birther_kris_kobach.php?ref=fpa)

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an informal advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on Thursday he and his fellow members of a state board were considering removing President Barack Obama from the Kansas ballot this November.

Kobach is part of the State Objections Board along with Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, all Republicans. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that on Thursday the board agreed to consider whether to take Obama off the ballot because they said they lacked sufficient evidence about his birth certificate.

“I don’t think it’s a frivolous objection,” Kobach said, according to the Capital-Journal. “I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”

[rvg]

Kobach is part of the State Objections Board along with Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, all Republicans. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that on Thursday the board agreed to consider whether to take Obama off the ballot because they said they lacked sufficient evidence about his birth certificate.
I would love to see them try. Really, I would. Excellent pro-Obama PR.

[The Lurker Below]

Leaning Obama (but not a sure thing yet): ME, MI, MN, NH, PA totalling 54 electoral votes.


wait a moment. i thought i'd seen some video of a PA leader talking about how the voter fraud legislation took care of putting PA in the Romney column. has that been overturned? something changed?

[Crazed Rabbit]

So, regarding bank loans and the government: (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444023704577651592644841740.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#)

Banks have been widely castigated for causing the housing bust by lending too much to borrowers who couldn't repay, but now Eric Holder's Department of Justice has taken its antidiscrimination campaign to new lengths by whacking a bank for having been too prudent.

In a complaint filed Wednesday and settled the same day, Justice claimed that California-based Luther Burbank Savings violated the 1968 Fair Housing Act and 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act by setting a policy that had a “disparate impact” on minorities. Between 2006 and mid-2011, 5.2% of Luther’s single-family residential mortgage loans went to African-Americans and Hispanics, compared to an average of 41.7% for other lenders in the area. The complaint doesn’t cite evidence of intentional discrimination because there wasn’t any.

...

Luther Burbank wasn’t a fly-by-night operator that marketed those loans to any and all. The bank insisted on a minimum $400,000 loan amount and made loans with an average 680 FICO score and 67% loan-to-value. Over the period that Justice examined, Luther Burbank foreclosed on a mere 11 borrowers out of 629 loans outstanding—a loss ratio of 1.75%. In a normal world, Luther Burbank would get a medal from regulators for its risk management, having chosen borrowers even at the height of the housing mania who could meet their monthly payments.

But Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez has a different priority: He wants banks to meet lending quotas to minorities—regardless of whether those borrowers can afford the loans. Many minority borrowers have low incomes that make them riskier lending bets. Is that a bank’s fault?

Luther Burbank admitted no guilt and said it settled to avoid costly litigation, which makes sense for a small, local lender that has to worry about its reputational risk. The bank has agreed to ratchet down its minimum loan to $20,000 and will now commit $2.2 million to a “special financing program” for “qualified borrowers,” payouts for local community groups, and “consumer education programs.” Justice has the final say on who gets that money.

Marvelous.

CR

[Major Robert Dump]

Romney just shot himself in the foot with the leakage of his fundraiser video, about how the 47% of americans who pay no taxes are Obama voters whom he does not care about reaching out to. What an idiot. This guy has no policy, all he has is rhetoric.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Watch to see how Romney followers will defend his statements. "But, they don't pay income tax, they shouldn't even vote!"

[Major Robert Dump]

The statement is patently incorrect.

First, several of the top 10 states in the no-federal taxes bracket are Republican.

Second, people who use legal credits and deductions, who take their taxable income down to zero and get a full refund, are included in that 47%. This includes self employed people, and people will fairly high gross incomes before business expenses, itemized deductions and home/energy/medical credits..... the same credits Romney claims I am sure

Third, the 47% include senior citizens

Fourth, hsi statement presupposes that all people who pay federal taxes did not or will not vote for Obama, and that people who do pay taxes will vote Republican/Romney. Both of these are untrue.

Bascially, he just isolated a relatively decent chunk of his own voting bloc: poor and middle class crackers.

[Xiahou]

Romney just shot himself in the foot with the leakage of his fundraiser video, about how the 47% of americans who pay no taxes are Obama voters whom he does not care about reaching out to. What an idiot. This guy has no policy, all he has is rhetoric.
Almost as dumb as calling voters bitter people who cling to guns and religion. :shrug:

The people who will be most offended by that weren't going to vote for him anyway(GOP voters who that may apply to will largely shrug it off). Romney is generally winning among independents- this election will be about turnout.


So, regarding bank loans and the government:Huh, it's almost like the government was/is incentivizing bad loans. Weird, right?

[Major Robert Dump]

Yes, but we are less than 2 months from the election. Romney has yet to go into great detail about what he plans to do. At least with Obama, we know America will be destroyed. With Romney, it is still in question.....

I also tend to think, or at least hope, that with issues like gunbortionigion, people realize that these things take a long time to change through lawmaking and the subsequenst court process. There have been no major gun laws in decades, not have there been significant abortion or religion laws. Taxes and economic policies, on the other hand, come and go a little more quickly.

I happen to be of the camp that the incumbent should always go unless he is totally awesome to the max, and I have not thought that about a president since GHB, which shows what I know. Quite frankly I have no stake in this election, and don't plan on voting. I just like to sit back and throw stones and say I told you so. I welcome Anarchy, and Ron Paul was the last great hope for that. Maybe next election, Kinky Friedman will run again.....

[Lemur]

Romney is generally winning among independents
I'd love to see a source for that; polling this week seems to favor 44.

-edit-

Governor Romney is sufficiently concerned about the vids that he called a 10 p.m. presser on a Monday, which is not something you do if you think it's a pile of nothing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwptutZ4jPA

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Romney just shot himself in the foot with the leakage of his fundraiser video, about how the 47% of americans who pay no taxes are Obama voters whom he does not care about reaching out to. What an idiot. This guy has no policy, all he has is rhetoric.

That isn't what the video is about. He's talking about how almost everyone is set already and decided on who they are going to vote for and there's a few percent in the middle, and then he goes into the Republican theme about the main difference between the two parties being small government, free enterprise, you did build that, and big government, you didn't build that, you're entitled to such and such. It's not a statistical analysis of people who don't pay income tax. He sounds a bit like he's apologizing for why he isn't being super conservative and is reaching out to the center. Yes you get rhetoric at a fundraiser speech. The only place I worry about him having no policy is foreign policy.

******

I'm curious what people think of the Electoral College this time around. I'd always considered objections to it to be silly, especially the nonsense about "gore would have won" and "one man one vote".

But I'm not convinced anymore that the focus on swing states instead of rallying the base is good for the country. It seems like what happens is that the focus is on swing voters who are too often swung by nonsense.

[Lemur]

Worth noting that no less a theocon than Ramesh Ponnuru tried to warn conservatives off the 47% talking point (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/283265/freeloader-myth-ramesh-ponnuru?pg=3) a year ago.

[W]orrying too much about this number will lead conservatives down an intellectual and political dead end. According to the Tax Policy Center, provisions of the tax code that exempt subsistence levels of income from income taxes -- the standard deduction, personal exemption, and dependent exemption -- are the reason for about half of the tax filers who owe no income tax. Another large group of filers pays no income tax because its members are elderly and benefit from such features of the code as the non-taxation of some Social Security benefits. The tax credit for children and the earned-income tax credit, an effort to boost the pay of low-income workers, wipe out income-tax liability for other taxpayers. Those credits are "refundable," meaning that beneficiaries can get money on top of paying no income tax. Other provisions of the code account for the rest of the 47 percent: education credits, the non-taxation of welfare payments, itemized deductions, and so on.Also note that the non-payors of income tax are much more common in red states than blue.

https://i.imgur.com/Rr3zt.jpg

Link to data here (http://taxfoundation.org:81/article/states-vary-widely-number-tax-filers-no-income-tax-liability).

-edit-

Gah, we're talking about the videos, but nobody bothered to link. SHOW YOUR WORK!

Link to the original article containing the vids (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser).

[Fisherking]

Come on people!

You still act like this is going to make a difference. You are only voting for the face man.

Obama will win this one and in 4 years you can have a Republican. Maybe Jeb Bush. It’s not going to make any more difference in what is really happening than Obama did.

Liberal Obama bailed out Wall Street. The country is massively in debt. The Surveillance State is growing every day. After the election the real powers will continue to run government just as they have for such a long time. The face man will take heat on something and make point on others. Gas prices will go up and real earnings will go down. Congress will continue to vote on legislation without reading it and Corporate interests will continue to be served.

These guys are bought and paid for already. The difference is group A calls themselves by one name and group B by another. It works great! When you get fed up with one group you elect the other. Meanwhile it is business as usual and their everyone is happy, right?

Until such time as you elect people who will server the people and the founding documents and not the corporate interests nothing is going to change.

[Lemur]

Until such time as you elect people who will server the people and the founding documents and not the corporate interests nothing is going to change.
Do you have a party or candidate in mind when you say this?

[Hax]

So you're saying...Ron Paul, basically?

[Major Robert Dump]

I welcome anarchy.

[Fisherking]

Do you have a party or candidate in mind when you say this?

Not a one

[Xiahou]

I'd love to see a source for that; polling this week seems to favor 44.
Seriously? ~:confused:

Show me a reputable poll where Obama is leading among independents. As for one's showing Romney leading independents, it's pretty much take your pick. Here's the NYT/CBS poll (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/poll-obama-holds-narrow-edge-over-romney/) from Friday....
Independents: 50/44 for Romney.

[Lemur]

Thank you for the reference, Xiahou! That poll was conducted from September 8–12, and a little bit of stuff (Libya, 47% video) has happened since then.

It certainly looks like the game is changing, and I will be curious to see polling from the 17th on. Should be instructive in one way or another (in other words, the last two unforced errors had no effect, or they did, or something else entirely).

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

Oh, the heady days of yester-year.

[Major Robert Dump]

Thats is assuming they even know who is president or care...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Indeed, 86 percent of Democrats approve of Obama on foreign policy, compared with just 10 percent of Republicans. Yet in August, nearly twice as many Republicans -- 19 percent -- approved.

Still, in the current NBC/WSJ poll, only 41 percent of independents approve of Obama's foreign-policy handling, versus 53 percent who did so last month.

Hmm. Makes me wonder if that attempt at creating a scandal over romney "politicizing" the cairo deal really was media desperation after all. Though I suppose they actually believed it.

[rvg]

Hmm. Makes me wonder if that attempt at creating a scandal over romney "politicizing" the cairo deal really was media desperation after all. Though I suppose they actually believed it.
State Department (particularly our embassy in Cairo) really dropped the ball on the latest crisis. Obama's response was adequate, his administration's response was not.

[PanzerJaeger]

Mitt Romney was, of course, essentially correct. There is a whole portion of the population who coast through school with C’s. They party and drink their way through college (if they make it that far), finishing with some worthless communications or philosophy degree and no real skills. They put in the bare minimum effort required at some dead end job just to have enough money to support their social life. They have to have the latest Apple product, regardless of how empty their savings account is. Then they wake up at 45 and wonder why they have become such losers. They are entitled to their own interpretation of a ‘middle class lifestyle’ (whatever that is) and it is the government’s/successful people’s fault that they do not have it. It is always easier to blame personal failure on uncontrollable factors than personal decisions. The constant, monotonous droning on about the nameless, faceless ‘system’ and how it is rigged against the common man is just the latest incarnation of this phenomenon. At their core, people are either victims or fighters.

Just as with Reagan’s ‘welfare queen’ comment, Romney’s 47% will be held up by the media literati as proof of his heartlessness. However, those of us who live in the real world know all too well that he was tapping into a vein of truth. Welfare queens do exist, and they are legion. I used to evict them nearly every day. They were the people that ‘struggle’ to hold down a menial job in food service while caring for their three babies by three different men. The government paid for their food, diapers, and most of their rent, but they still couldn’t come up with the $50 a month their case worker asked them to pay to teach them ‘responsibility’. It never failed, though, that as they waited in my office to recount their sob story about how hard life had been for them, they would be texting on their iPhones. And when I told them to tell it to someone who gave a **** (in the nicest, most professional manner possible), they invariably gamed the system to live rent free for as long as possible. The truth is that these people are worthless dregs; their only value to the greater economy being raw consumption. It is high time that they are called out, instead of made to believe that their circumstances dictate their condition.

The realist in me sees this as very damaging and potentially fatal for the Romney campaign. However, my more optimistic side hopes that this may not be so bad. If you think about it, the people who will be offended by this are not going to vote for Romney anyway. Further, the comment will likely endear him to many Republicans. So we are left with the ~6% of people still undecided. Their interpretation of these remarks will likely be split somewhere down the middle – some agreeing with Romney’s fundamental characterization of the electorate and some not. So, essentially, this whole ‘scandal’ could be a wash, and may even help Romney with his ‘vision problem’. It certainly draws a sharp contrast with Obama’s view.

[Strike For The South]

Horseshit

Some people are born on 3rd base thinking they hit a triple.

Panzer, I like you, I would love to share a beer with you, but sometimes I want to hug you very tightly, this is one of those times

[PanzerJaeger]

Horseshit

Some people are born on 3rd base thinking they hit a triple.

Panzer, I like you, I would love to share a beer with you, but sometimes I want to hug you very tightly, this is one of those times

Simply by virtue of being born in America, one starts on third base. I have little sympathy for people who can't make it to home, especially when people who truly begin life in dire straights manage to overcome incredible barriers to make it here and achieve success every day.

I will take that hug, though. ~:grouphug:

[Strike For The South]

Simply by virtue of being born in America, one starts on third base. I have little sympathy for people who can't make it to home, especially when people who truly begin life in dire straights manage to overcome incredible barriers to make it here and achieve success every day.

I will take that hug, though. ~:grouphug:

It's all relative.

As someone who went to (and will be continuing) school with the the MBA grads and as someone who worked with the supposed 99%. I can tell you, Americans are very similar.

[Lemur]

Crucial thing, PJ, is that it's fine for you, a private citizen, to have contempt for a majority of fellow citizens. Hell, it's fine for all of us. We can openly loathe our fellow Americans. No repercussions, except people might call us things like "jerk."

For a national political candidate to express contempt for approx half the nation? Very different.

-edit-

I had to check for confirmation on this one, since it sounded suspiciously Onion-like. Romney campaign posts and then removes video titled "Mitt Doesn't Disdain the Poor." (http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/ann-romney-mitt-doesnt-disdain-the-poor)

[Major Robert Dump]

If Romney wants to lash out at the welfare queens, then let him.

But as I have stated here and elsewhere, plenty of people in that 47% bracket are middle and upper middle class earners who use deductions and credits to bring their tax liability down to zero. In the case of self-employed and small business owners, someone who grosses middle and upper middle but also spends tens of thousnds on business expenses (re:putting money back in the economy) can effectively itemize themselves down to zero tax liability.

If Romney wants to get rid of credits like that, and get rid of mrtgage insurance deductions, and healthcare deductions and deductions for having kids, then more power to him. I would not be against that.

But Romney should not demonize me (as being against change) for using the same credits and deductions his manicured, pussy face uses. This is what upsets me about his statement. If he wants to lash out at the welfare queens, I believe his percetage would have been more around the 20-25% mark.

Or maybe I am just taking all this the wrong way. Moar anarchy plz

[Strike For The South]

I thought we were an autonomous collective :(

[Major Robert Dump]

Yes, the autonomous bailout saved Detroit, now give me my free "We are all overpaid union employees" t-shirt

[Greyblades]

You know, for someone that's only recently started getting his :daisy: together, this is getting pretty depressing.

[Xiahou]

Wouldn't it be clever, and not creepy at all, if Obama supporters wrote why they support him on the hands in marker and then tweeted pics of themselves?

https://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3337/a3kjpjscmaawgm.jpg
No, nevermind- it is creepy.

..........
In other news, HHS Secretary Sebelius was cited (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/12/special-counsel-cites-sebelius-for-hatch-act-violation/) for violating the Hatch Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939) during a trip in February...

The Office of the Special Counsel on Wednesday announced it was citing Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for illegally making political comments at an official event, which is a violation of the federal Hatch Act.

The counsel found that she made the comments when delivering the keynote speech at the Human Rights Campaign Gala in February.

[Major Robert Dump]

Wouldn't it be clever, and not creepy at all, if Obama supporters wrote why they support him on the hands in marker and then tweeted pics of themselves?

https://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3337/a3kjpjscmaawgm.jpg
No, nevermind- it is creepy.

..........
In other news, HHS Secretary Sebelius was cited (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/12/special-counsel-cites-sebelius-for-hatch-act-violation/) for violating the Hatch Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939) during a trip in February...

I loved that dude in Powder.

[Sigurd]

But as I have stated here and elsewhere, plenty of people in that 47% bracket are middle and upper middle class earners who use deductions and credits to bring their tax liability down to zero.
Wasn't his message that any campaigning based on tax-cuts wouldn't appeal to these 47%? That's what I got out of the video.

[Fisherking]

I blame it all on Political Handlers.

I think that the Republican handlers are not nearly as good a their Democrat counterparts, for the most part.

Republican handlers should learn to keep their people on a shorter leash, like the Democrats do.

That way the public is spared more of those examples of foot-in-mouth disease.

[HopAlongBunny]

In this age where everyone is a walking media outlet, WTF were the organizers doing allowing any of the help in w/o surrendering their gadgets?

[Major Robert Dump]

Wasn't his message that any campaigning based on tax-cuts wouldn't appeal to these 47%? That's what I got out of the video.

That's a bad message. He does not know that one way or the other. Some of the middle classers who itemize down their tax liabiity would surely enjoy more tax cuts as they will get a bigger refund using refundable credits. And some, like me, would probably care less one way or the other, but if the credit is there I am going to use it just like the rich pukes do. But to suggest that the aforementioned people are somehow wards of the state and therefore not interested in benefits for actaully doing work and contributing to the economy, well, that's just silly. For someone who is such a successful businessman, Romney's math sucks.

[Fisherking]

People like Romney don't actually use twitter, facebook, or iPhones. They have other people who make their living doing that for them. People who almost certainly don't pay income taxes. :shrug:


I blame it all on Political Handlers.

I think that the Republican handlers are not nearly as good a their Democrat counterparts, for the most part.

Republican handlers should learn to keep their people on a shorter leash, like the Democrats do.

That way the public is spared more of those examples of foot-in-mouth disease.

As I was saying...

[a completely inoffensive name]

Mitt Romney was, of course, essentially correct. There is a whole portion of the population who coast through school with C’s. They party and drink their way through college (if they make it that far), finishing with some worthless communications or philosophy degree and no real skills. They put in the bare minimum effort required at some dead end job just to have enough money to support their social life. They have to have the latest Apple product, regardless of how empty their savings account is. Then they wake up at 45 and wonder why they have become such losers. They are entitled to their own interpretation of a ‘middle class lifestyle’ (whatever that is) and it is the government’s/successful people’s fault that they do not have it. It is always easier to blame personal failure on uncontrollable factors than personal decisions. The constant, monotonous droning on about the nameless, faceless ‘system’ and how it is rigged against the common man is just the latest incarnation of this phenomenon. At their core, people are either victims or fighters.

Just as with Reagan’s ‘welfare queen’ comment, Romney’s 47% will be held up by the media literati as proof of his heartlessness. However, those of us who live in the real world know all too well that he was tapping into a vein of truth. Welfare queens do exist, and they are legion. I used to evict them nearly every day. They were the people that ‘struggle’ to hold down a menial job in food service while caring for their three babies by three different men. The government paid for their food, diapers, and most of their rent, but they still couldn’t come up with the $50 a month their case worker asked them to pay to teach them ‘responsibility’. It never failed, though, that as they waited in my office to recount their sob story about how hard life had been for them, they would be texting on their iPhones. And when I told them to tell it to someone who gave a **** (in the nicest, most professional manner possible), they invariably gamed the system to live rent free for as long as possible. The truth is that these people are worthless dregs; their only value to the greater economy being raw consumption. It is high time that they are called out, instead of made to believe that their circumstances dictate their condition.

The realist in me sees this as very damaging and potentially fatal for the Romney campaign. However, my more optimistic side hopes that this may not be so bad. If you think about it, the people who will be offended by this are not going to vote for Romney anyway. Further, the comment will likely endear him to many Republicans. So we are left with the ~6% of people still undecided. Their interpretation of these remarks will likely be split somewhere down the middle – some agreeing with Romney’s fundamental characterization of the electorate and some not. So, essentially, this whole ‘scandal’ could be a wash, and may even help Romney with his ‘vision problem’. It certainly draws a sharp contrast with Obama’s view.

Personal anecdote != reality

Of those that don't pay income tax, the majority pay payroll tax as well as state and local taxes such as sales tax. Obviously, these people are lazy at their jobs because they are not making enough to be taxed. Of the remaining ~1/3 that don't pay income or payroll tax, it is composed of people making under $20,000 a year and senior citizens who are retired.

In other words, PJ is a cynical ass because he deals with the worst people every day and assumes that since he meets so many for his job that the actual statistics must be representative of his interactions.

I worked at McDonalds all this summer. I got called "uncivilized" due to taking too much time to provide change, I was able to memorize the names and orders of six different regulars who came every day at a specific time. I was cursed at, called names and once almost had food thrown at me. But I don't come home and say, "gee 90% of people who make things difficult are those 40-65 years old (which was true), **** all the Baby Boomers, who are so entitled."

[Major Robert Dump]

Personal anecdote != reality

Of those that don't pay income tax, the majority pay payroll tax as well as state and local taxes such as sales tax. Obviously, these people are lazy at their jobs because they are not making enough to be taxed. Of the remaining ~1/3 that don't pay income or payroll tax, it is composed of people making under $20,000 a year and senior citizens who are retired.

In other words, PJ is a cynical ass because he deals with the worst people every day and assumes that since he meets so many for his job that the actual statistics must be representative of his interactions.

I worked at McDonalds all this summer. I got called "uncivilized" due to taking too much time to provide change, I was able to memorize the names and orders of six different regulars who came every day at a specific time. I was cursed at, called names and once almost had food thrown at me. But I don't come home and say, "gee 90% of people who make things difficult are those 40-65 years old (which was true), **** all the Baby Boomers, who are so entitled."

You worked at McDonalds?? You are just like Paul Ryan!! When I saw that Paul Ryan worked at McDonalds, just like me, and that Ann and Mitt lived in their parents basement, just like my nephew that we lock down there, I totally knew I ws voting for these guys. Since we both worked at McDonalds, ACIN, we should totally hang out and tell McDonalds stories, but I am afraid with you and your liberal sensitivities you will think of me as an elistist because when I worked at McDonalds I was a Birthday Clown.

[Kralizec]

I worked at a Burger King for a couple of weeks...

[a completely inoffensive name]

You worked at McDonalds?? You are just like Paul Ryan!! When I saw that Paul Ryan worked at McDonalds, just like me, and that Ann and Mitt lived in their parents basement, just like my nephew that we lock down there, I totally knew I ws voting for these guys. Since we both worked at McDonalds, ACIN, we should totally hang out and tell McDonalds stories, but I am afraid with you and your liberal sensitivities you will think of me as an elistist because when I worked at McDonalds I was a Birthday Clown.

My McDOnaldsd got rid of the playground because the kiddies were getting burns on the equipment during the summer. Now my location acts like a 2nd, more hip, senior center. Where seniors can order a senior sized coffee and hang around talking to each other for 4 hours, getting free refills.

Of course, liberal sensitivities aside, you are an elitist. There is only one clown per location (if that). By definition you are the 1%.

[Greyblades]

My McDOnaldsd got rid of the playground because the kiddies were getting burns on the equipment during the summer. Now my location acts like a 2nd, more hip, senior center. Where seniors can order a senior sized coffee and hang around talking to each other for 4 hours, getting free refills.

Of course, liberal sensitivities aside, you are an elitist. There is only one clown per location (if that). By definition you are the 1%.

Well technically by going by a presumed average of 13 staff members he's the 8%

[Kralizec]

Well technically by going by a presumed average of 13 staff members he's the 8%

Snobbish clowns, with their upper class clothes, and their degrees from clown college.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Well technically by going by a presumed average of 13 staff members he's the 8%

My McDonalds had a total of 80 listed workers currently employed. If he is the only clown than 1/80 is 1.25%.

[Fisherking]

My McDonalds had a total of 80 listed workers currently employed. If he is the only clown than 1/80 is 1.25%.

So you are part of the oppressed masses?

Have you formed a soviet?

Are you supreme leader?

[Xiahou]

Here's a great article by Charles Krauthammer on the failure of the Obama administration's naive foreign policy, titled the Collapse of the Cairo Doctrine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-collapse-of-the-cairo-doctrine/2012/09/20/72fb7f62-035f-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_story.html).


It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.

The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and may not even exist.

What else can it say? Admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naive and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence?It's a good read and many of his claims are sourced with links- take a look. :yes:

[Major Robert Dump]

My McDOnaldsd got rid of the playground because the kiddies were getting burns on the equipment during the summer. Now my location acts like a 2nd, more hip, senior center. Where seniors can order a senior sized coffee and hang around talking to each other for 4 hours, getting free refills.

Of course, liberal sensitivities aside, you are an elitist. There is only one clown per location (if that). By definition you are the 1%.


A little OT,
But the district tried to recruit me to go to the super secretive "Ronald McDonald School." They explained that there were only a a couple of dozen RMs around north and south america, and that I would not be able to tell most people what I did for a living, and that on trips I would have handlers who would feed me, open doors for me and act as McD secret service to keep me out of compromising situations, presumably all this to keep up the illusion that RM is "magical."

As a 19 year with high hopes for myself, I scoffed at the idea

Sometimes, while parked outside a fraudsters home for 3 days, peeing in bottles and crapping in a box in the backseat, I scoff at my 19 year old self.

[Xiahou]

Moral of the story? People suck, you can either live with them or kill them. You can't pretend to do one while doing the other. Anti-Americanism is a problem entirely of our own making. The solution is simply to stop meddling, stop lying, and stop validating their fears. :shrug:Has US foreign policy contributed to Anti-Americanism? Sure. Is it entirely responsible for it? No way. That view is overly simplistic and dangerous.


*And by the way, naive? If Obama's foreign policy is naive, what was Bush Jr's?Yes, naive. Naive as in thinking that handing a plastic "Reset" button to Sergey Lavrov and abandoning missile defense plans would make Russia an ally. Or naive, in thinking that giving a speech in Cairo trumpeting a "new beginning" of "mutual respect" would yield either....

[Kralizec]

Has US foreign policy contributed to Anti-Americanism? Sure. Is it entirely responsible for it? No way. That view is overly simplistic and dangerous.

Yes, naive. Naive as in thinking that handing a plastic "Reset" button to Sergey Lavrov and abandoning missile defense plans would make Russia an ally. Or naive, in thinking that giving a speech in Cairo trumpeting a "new beginning" of "mutual respect" would yield either....

Those are touching, feel-good statements largely for the benefit of other countries that shouldn't be confused as being anything else.

[Goofball]

Here's a great article by Charles Krauthammer on the failure of the Obama administration's naive foreign policy, titled the Collapse of the Cairo Doctrine (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-collapse-of-the-cairo-doctrine/2012/09/20/72fb7f62-035f-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_story.html).

It's a good read and many of his claims are sourced with links- take a look. :yes:

I think it's too early in the story to be saying that. Another way to look at it is that there are now many more democratic governments in the middle east than there were when Obama took office. As democracy is a threat to the beards, they have redoubled their efforts to stir up the populace in an attempt to not let moderates who are currently trying to form stable, democratic governments become too entrenched. They see this as a crucial time: if they can't dislodge more or less (or at least relative) secular democracy while it is still in its fragile state, then they and their movement will become nothing more than an historical footnote by the end of this century.

If anything, I think it can be argued that Obama's approach is working, and the islamists recognize this and are staging a last ditch effort to derail it.

[Xiahou]

If anything, I think it can be argued that Obama's approach is working, and the islamists recognize this and are staging a last ditch effort to derail it.I'm not sure you'll find too many agreeing with you there. Here's another piece, from the CS Monitor (http://news.yahoo.com/benghazi-attack-why-white-house-changed-story-173746701.html).


President Obama has been forced to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the underpinnings of the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East and the impact of the so-called “Cairo doctrine” laid out by Obama shortly after he took office in 2009.


....and more...


But emerging information about the attack and the continuing protests, some of which have turned deadly in recent days, have contrasted the President’s lofty hopes for the region with the impact of that policy, and whether it really quells tensions by reducing hatred for the US and the West among radical Muslims. Favorable views in Muslim countries toward the US dropped from 25 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2012, according to a Pew Global Attitudes survey released in June.



Indeed, when you look at the data (http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/global-opinion-of-obama-slips-international-policies-faulted/), Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan & Pakistan have less favorable views of the US now than they did in 2008- which was under the Bush administration.....

[a completely inoffensive name]

A little OT,
But the district tried to recruit me to go to the super secretive "Ronald McDonald School." They explained that there were only a a couple of dozen RMs around north and south america, and that I would not be able to tell most people what I did for a living, and that on trips I would have handlers who would feed me, open doors for me and act as McD secret service to keep me out of compromising situations, presumably all this to keep up the illusion that RM is "magical."

As a 19 year with high hopes for myself, I scoffed at the idea

Sometimes, while parked outside a fraudsters home for 3 days, peeing in bottles and crapping in a box in the backseat, I scoff at my 19 year old self.

If you don't mind saying, what was the pay?

[Lemur]

Swing state polling is looking ugly for Team Boston (http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/09/24/latest_swing_state_polls.html).

Meanwhile, the approval/likeability thing is not going well for Boston. Note that both of these polls are pre-47%.

https://i.imgur.com/R0PLT.png

And not good with so-called "swing" voters. (Unclear on what defines that group.)

https://i.imgur.com/4wZxB.png

[rvg]

And not good with so-called "swing" voters.
The data for swing voters shows Romney with a huge lead on job creation and deficit reduction. Those two things are probably more important than all other issues put together.

[HopAlongBunny]

One question that does not get posed is pretty simple, perhaps even simplistic: Why is the house built by Democrats and Republicans so transparently built on bribes?

[Major Robert Dump]

If you don't mind saying, what was the pay?


It was @90k IIRC. That was 1993, though.

[rvg]

It was @90k IIRC. That was 1993, though.

Whoa. That was goooood money back then.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It was @90k IIRC. That was 1993, though.

God damn, that's equivalent to $134,000 in 2010 dollars.

Although, the job sounds like you would have had no personal life or privacy at all.

[Major Robert Dump]

God damn, that's equivalent to $134,000 in 2010 dollars.

Although, the job sounds like you would have had no personal life or privacy at all.

Oh contrare, no one would kow who you are.
Just think, your secretive life you could lead people to believe you were in the CIA.

[Fragony]

LOL at Romney, feels it should be possible to open the windows of a plane in case of fire. This can't be serious, can it?

[Major Robert Dump]

Well you don't have to be smart to be rich, despite what people here may say otherwise. Good thing Mittens can afford to pay someone to do his house maintenace for him, otherwise he may have killed himself long ago by spraying water on a gasoline fire.

[Xiahou]

Well you don't have to be smart to be rich, despite what people here may say otherwise. Good thing Mittens can afford to pay someone to do his house maintenace for him, otherwise he may have killed himself long ago by spraying water on a gasoline fire.If people really believe a Harvard Law honors grad who made millions reorganizing corporations and flying around on jets doesn't know why the windows can't open.... you probably also believe that Obama really thinks there are 57 states. ~:handball:

[Fragony]

Dunno I actually managed to convince a friend of mine that wind comes from windmills, she has a doctorate in medicine

[Kralizec]

Whoa. That was goooood money back then.

Yeah, it was. Nowadays it's about what I tip the waitresses at restaurants. Darn inflation.

[Major Robert Dump]

If people really believe a Harvard Law honors grad who made millions reorganizing corporations and flying around on jets doesn't know why the windows can't open.... you probably also believe that Obama really thinks there are 57 states. ~:handball:

There are 57 states. There are 5 US territories, plus Mexico plus Afghanistan, that makes 57.

The comment was made before I read anything on the matter, which is what I get for using Fragony as a source.

The comment was made in jest, they are saying. I do find it wierd that he made a joke about that sort of thing considering his wife was in a plane scare. I saw the video, his joke had some delivery problems and people failed to laugh. But he would get +1 for cracking a joke about a near death incident shortly after it happens. He should consider doing cancer jokes next

[Sigurd]

LOL at Romney, feels it should be possible to open the windows of a plane in case of fire. This can't be serious, can it?
Well they seem to think he made a jest.
But it is not so stupid as you might think. The airplane needs to be airtight at certain altitudes. If you could open the windows inwards, the pressure cabin would make sure the windows were pressed into the fuselage when gaining altitude. The current windows are too small for you to escape from, but newer planes are getting bigger windows. I think it is more a weight issue that windows are not fitted with hinges than security.
Worrying about people opening a window in high altitudes, would be the same as worrying about people opening the doors or emergency exits. It just can't be done.

[Fragony]

The comment was made before I read anything on the matter, which is what I get for using Fragony as a source.t

Me as a source? You must have missed the 'this got to be a joke right?' part

[Lemur]

Beer consumption correlated to turnout and party affiliation. My favorite brew (Guinness) has a slight Dem leaning, which I guess ain't surprising. I know charts like this are ultimately meaningless, but I still find them amusing.

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v489/Lemurmania/beer.png

-edit-

Sorry, forgot to link to source (http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2012/09/the-politics-of-3.php).

[Xiahou]

High turnout Republicans have pretty good taste in beer.... Honestly though, the only beers on the chart I'd be willing to pay money for are Sam Adams & Dos Equis. The rest are pretty much bottled/canned urine. :yes:

Where's Yuengling (http://www.yuengling.com)?

[Lemur]

Honestly though, the only beers on the chart I'd be willing to pay money for are Sam Adams & Dos Equis. The rest are pretty much bottled/canned urine.
Molson, Amstel, Guinness, and Stella are all "urine"? Surely a dark beer such as Guinness should be dismissed in some other fashion? Maybe you meant to say "bottled/canned diarrhea"?


Where's Yuengling (http://www.yuengling.com)?
Interesting, you don't see that brand out here in the Midwest. I see they make a dark-brewed porter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuengling). As an enduring fan of bottled/canned diarrhea, I will have to try to find it somewhere.

[Major Robert Dump]

What a bunch of Beer Elitists. Where is Pabst Blue Ribbon?

[Lemur]

Pabst Blue Ribbon
I had no idea you wore thick-rimmed glasses and quirky scarves (http://www.quora.com/Beer/How-and-why-did-Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-come-to-be-the-hipster-beer-of-choice). Now I know.

[rvg]

In the meantime, Romney's chances have just dipped a bit more (http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-romneys-support-among-seniors-collapsing/)...

[HopAlongBunny]

I have to admit I'm shocked at the Molson/Labatt divide.

I echo MRD's question. Pabst was the only thing that tasted like beer went I went to the U.S. on ski trips. Although, the mico's in Colorado are just amazing :)

[Lemur]

In the meantime, Romney's chances have just dipped a bit more (http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-romneys-support-among-seniors-collapsing/)...
Seniors, Catholics (http://ncronline.org/news/politics/poll-obama-surges-ahead-among-catholic-voters), independents, swing-state voters ... it ain't over 'till it's over, but things are looking bleak for Team Boston.

[rvg]

He has to crush Obama in debates if he is to stand a realistic chance of salvaging the situation.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Romney needs a big comeback, it's kind of sad when 538 is giving Obama an 83% chance to win before the debates even happen.

[gaelic cowboy]

He has to crush Obama in debates if he is to stand a realistic chance of salvaging the situation.

He will likely get a bounce on the first one debate but I bet Obama will get the bounce in the last two.

[Sigurd]

I heard that by the number of Halloween masks bought of either candidate, you can predict who wins the election. This has been true the last 20 years... so far Obama masks are in lead.

[Major Robert Dump]

Is wearing an Obama mask racist?

[a completely inoffensive name]

He will likely get a bounce on the first one debate but I bet Obama will get the bounce in the last two.

First debate is domestic policy (mostly the economy and medicare), which gives Obama a lot to work with. Granted it does with Romney as well, but it will probably be so many jabs back and forth that it comes off as a tie.

Second debate is a "town hall" debate, who knows what will come up there.

Third debate is foreign policy, which is arguably Romney's biggest weakness. Unless he steps up his game, Obama will look like the better statesman right before election day.

[Major Robert Dump]

Little John endorses Obama


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio

[Strike For The South]

Keep Obama In President

[Major Robert Dump]

From Bill Mahers show. A video from Alexandra Pelosi. Whats funny is she went to the welfare line in NYC the following week, and liberals crapped their pants and called her a racist

I believe voting God is more important than voting for a handout. Because, you know, those are the only two choices.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p0au3KJqNU

[Major Robert Dump]

She was called a racist for this one. Of course, there was a white lady amongst the crew


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL-Y3YEF6HE

[Lemur]

Is wearing an Obama mask racist?
Just asking is racist, you racist.

Those two videos you posted are old, but still hilarious.

This is going on (http://bcove.me/4qrlu4ei) in (where else?) Florida.

[Major Robert Dump]

Just asking is racist, you racist.

Those two videos you posted are old, but still hilarious.

This is going on (http://bcove.me/4qrlu4ei) in (where else?) Florida.

I LOVE IT

SOCIALISTIC MUSLIM

[Lemur]

I think we can all agree that some people take national politics entirely too seriously. Exemplum gratum:

Virginia Man Kills Family, Self Over Prospect of Obama Reelection (http://lawsonry.com/2012/09/virginia-man-kills-family-self-over-prospect-of-obama-reelection/)

Albert Peterson, a defense contractor from Virginia, shot his wife, Kathleen, and two children, Matthew and Christopher, before turning the gun on himself. None survived.

Peterson had recently lost a beloved uncle to suicide, and reportedly battled mental illness himself – including severe paranoia – for years. His acquaintances claim that in addition to those personal struggles, Peterson had become increasingly concerned with the state of the country and the prospect of President Barack Obama’s reelection as of late. He talked often of his worries that his two teenage sons would inherit the massive debt of an “irresponsible” government. A family friend revealed to the Daily Mail that he had begun sending frequent political emails that were increasingly paranoid, sometimes more than once per day.

Apparently, Peterson had also told this friend that he was under a lot of pressure at work. As a defense contractor, he felt that Obama’s reelection would lead to a drastic reduction of defense spending, which he feared would cause him to lose his job. The defense industry is facing half a billion dollars worth of cuts thanks to a bipartisan sequestration measure that cuts a percentage of each department if Congress cannot reach a budget agreement. [...]

A small percentage of mentally ill persons have the propensity for shocking acts a violence; it’s a reality that is unavoidable without proper and accessible care. But is amped up negative political coverage adding fuel to the fire?

[Major Robert Dump]

Aw, poor little guy lives in a capitalist society, hims job is through the government, which conservatives want to reduce (except defense of course) and he cannot live by the same rules he expects all the others to live by (adapt or die)....

Seriosuly, though, the dude sounded delusional and the politics probably just gave him an outlet. He sounds like the Japanese women throwing their babies of Suicide Point in Guam, brainwashed into thinking of what bad things were going to come.

I don't think ou can blame the election etc. If it weren't that, it would have been something else, like a book or an event or an encounter with a neighbor

[Hax]

In sixty years, we'll be saying that Republicans committed mass suicide in the prospect of a Obama re-election (cf. Wall Street suicides).

[Fragony]

In sixty years, we'll be saying that Republicans committed mass suicide in the prospect of a Obama re-election (cf. Wall Street suicides).

It isn't like Obama's staff isn't all Wall Street after all

[Kralizec]

In sixty years, we'll be saying that Republicans committed mass suicide in the prospect of a Obama re-election (cf. Wall Street suicides).

Republicans won't do that because they're all God fearing christians, and suicide is a no-no. So instead they'll move to Canada in an attempt to escape socialized healthcare and liberalism.

[Lemur]

Did you know the Obomination's mother was a PORN STAR? (Can't find link to raw video, but skip to 1:29 to see content instead of comment.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXcDj5J39kM&t=1m29s

[The Stranger]

1) so what.
2) few naked pics dont make a pornstar. many women have erotic photoshoots
3) this is really bad television

[Lemur]

It certainly feels like a desperation play. Found a little more detail here (http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/anti-obama-movie-mailed-to-1-million-ohioians); apparently the DVD was sent to approx. 1.5 million voters, mostly in Ohio.

[rvg]

It certainly feels like a desperation play. Found a little more detail here (http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/09/anti-obama-dvd-mailed-to-15-million.html); apparently the video was sent to 1.5 million voters, mostly in Ohio.

I suppose that puts the birther argument to rest then.

[Montmorency]

It would have been remiss of them not to send a copy to the White House. Did they?

A GOP plant on his staff could be used to devastating effect.

[Hooahguy]

Wow, Mitt actually seems to know what he is talking about. If the debates continue like this, I think Romney will be considered the winner.

EDIT: Though cutting funding to PBS wont go over well.

[rvg]

Mitt is overplaying his love for the middle class imho. Then again, that just might be my perception, since I don't like him.

[Hooahguy]

Romney clearly won that debate.

[Xiahou]

Romney clearly won that debate.That seems to be the early consensus. I'm surprised it seems to be such a unanimous decision. No thrills running up the leg of Chris Matthews (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7AzmXeZgGS0) tonight.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7AzmXeZgGS0

I thought Romney did well, but I think Obama is so vulnerable on the economy that I guess I expected more. :shrug:

[Hooahguy]

I thought Romney did well, but I think Obama is so vulnerable on the economy that I guess I expected more. :shrug:

Thats probably why. As for the next debates, Im expecting Ryan to crush Biden, and who knows about the presidential debates 2 & 3?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Thats probably why. As for the next debates, Im expecting Ryan to crush Biden, and who knows about the presidential debates 2 & 3?

Lol, you think Biden is as passive as Obama?

Get off the podium.

[Hooahguy]

I didnt say that Biden was as passive as Obama was, but I do think Biden a terrible speaker and that Ryan will mop the floor with him.

[Xiahou]

Lol, you think Biden is as passive as Obama?

Get off the podium.Actually, I think Ryan runs the risk of being seen as mean if he's too hard on Biden. It'll look bad if he's seen as picking on a senile old man. Biden can't seem to open his mouth without sticking his foot in it.

I'm not sure whether I get more of a kick out of Chris Matthews or Andrew Sullivan's debate analysis (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/live-blogging-the-first-presidential-debate-2012.html)... both are completely beside themselves.

10.29 pm. How is Obama's closing statement so :daisy: sad, confused and lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Actually, I think Ryan runs the risk of being seen as mean if he's too hard on Biden. It'll look bad if he's seen as picking on a senile old man. Biden can't seem to open his mouth without sticking his foot in it.

Biden is a good ole boy from the past. He talks very loosely in private ("this is a big ******* deal!") and in moments of legitimacy, but brings the guns to the table when the time comes to fight in public.

Ryan is a smooth talker but he brings no substance, only talking points. He can't even explain his policies because "it would take too long" or something. He is the John Edwards of the GOP, a golden boy who is at heart extremely hollow and fake to the core.


Hooahguy is just being a cheerleader, and that is understandable but I come here for more than that.

[Cecil XIX]

7333 (http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/10/03/top12.pdf)

1. Regardless of which candidate you happen to support, who do you think did the best job in the
debate -- Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Obama 25%
Romney 67%

2. Did Barack Obama do a better or worse job than you expected?
Better 21%
Worse 61%

3. Did Mitt Romney do a better or worse job than you expected?
Better 82%
Worse 10%

8. Overall, did tonight's debate make you more likely to vote for Barack Obama or more likely to
vote for Mitt Romney, or did tonight's debate not affect how you are likely to vote?
More likely to vote for Obama 18%
More likely to vote for Romney 35%

So, how about that debate?

[woad&fangs]

I read the transcripts instead of watching the debate and I have to say I am surprised most people think Romney won. Romney lied a lot. Obama did too but not to nearly as great an extent. The tax numbers Obama quoted in the beginning turned out to be true (based off of Romney's plan to extend the Bush tax cuts and give everyone another 20% cut). Obama mopped the floor with him in that section based off of facts. Both were very rude to the moderator.

The healthcare debate was a toss up. Romney did a good job articulating his ideas of what medicare/healthcare should be. However, his insistence on implying the $716 billion medicare cut hurt seniors was grating and implied something that has been debunked for a while. Part of the cut was negotiated by hospitals and insurers because it would be made up for by increased demand and part was diverting money from an inefficient private version of medicare. I also loved him bringing back the "death panel" meme :eyeroll:. Sooooo 2009.

[Major Robert Dump]

Facts are not important in a debate. Dating back to the very first televised debate, it is all about how you carry yourself and when you unload the zingers. Romney engaged Obama, and Obama seemed to be disinterested and dodgy. He should have stared the man down. He's the president FFS. I wonder if this is how he behaves when he meets with world leaders behind closed doors

[SoFarSoGood]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsFR8DbSRQE

Answer is yes.

[Lemur]

Didn't catch the debate, too much work, but I did appreciate this amusing hair swap. Who you gonna vote for now, huh? Follow the hair ...

https://i.imgur.com/nAhBg.jpg

[Hooahguy]

I wonder if this is how he behaves when he meets with world leaders behind closed doors

Thats what worries me. I wonder how he holds himself around Putin.

[a completely inoffensive name]

After sleeping on it, I have decided that the worst performance was by Lehrer. Whether you agree with Romney or not, the comes a point where the moderator has to say, no be quiet we have to move on to the next subject. Romney won because he forced his way into having the last line on the every single topic. Plain and simple. Obama wasn't really timid, he was calm and took time to say what he wanted to say. He only looks bad in comparison to Romney's rapid fire points and his determination to win the rhetorical positioning. This is not to say that Obama didn't blunder, because his big blunder was in allowing Romney to be the only one pushing Lehrer around for an extra 10 seconds.

All in all, I think this type of debate is toxic and should be abandoned. MRD takes the cynical route once again and misses the distinction between past and present. Debates used to be held by the League of Women voters who generally did the job of moderating properly. As in all debates, it is more of how you say it than what you are saying, that much is true. However, before we would have a synthesis of common facts and personal rhetoric blended to create two opposing view points that essentially gave interpretations from differing political ideologies. Now we have reached the point where the moderator is just a mouth to ask a question, and each candidate is entitled not just to their own opinion, but their own facts. The first 30 minutes of the debate can be summed up as:

Obama: Here are my numbers.
Romney: Here are my numbers.
Obama: Those numbers are wrong.
Romney: Your numbers are wrong.
Obama: No your numbers are wrong.
Romney: No, yours.

Repeat ad nauseum.

I might not even watch the third debate since it is in the same set up as the first. The second debate based on a town hall style might provide a more constructive outcome for the public discourse, but all the questions will be screened, so I doubt it.

[Xiahou]

I think overall, Lehrer did a fair job- although he did give Obama slightly more time overall (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/10/romney_makes_the_most_of_his_4.php). (Obama spoke for 4.5 minutes longer than Romney in total).

I think, in general a good moderator will let the candidates speak. I find it so silly when they employ bells, whistles, gongs, ect. to try to hold a candidate. How can they demand everything be boiled down to a soundbite while bemoaning the lack of details? (Again, Obama went beyond his 2 minute allotment more often than Romney.) Both candidates constantly offered platitudinous talking points and anonymous "studies" in place of detail- and Leher's biggest mistake is not pressing either candidate for specifics. I think the format itself also lacked structure- but I don't know that was Leher's call.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

After sleeping on it, I have decided that the worst performance was by Lehrer. Whether you agree with Romney or not, the comes a point where the moderator has to say, no be quiet we have to move on to the next subject. Romney won because he forced his way into having the last line on the every single topic. Plain and simple. Obama wasn't really timid, he was calm and took time to say what he wanted to say. He only looks bad in comparison to Romney's rapid fire points and his determination to win the rhetorical positioning. This is not to say that Obama didn't blunder, because his big blunder was in allowing Romney to be the only one pushing Lehrer around for an extra 10 seconds.

Lehrer did just fine, the moderation was just like most debates except the candidates had more time to talk. He's being unfairly scapegoated.

Obama had 4 more minutes of speaking time.


The first 30 minutes of the debate can be summed up as:

Obama: Here are my numbers.
Romney: Here are my numbers.
Obama: Those numbers are wrong.
Romney: Your numbers are wrong.
Obama: No your numbers are wrong.
Romney: No, yours.


Here's a microcosm of the debate:

ROMNEY: No, it can become out of date. And what's happened with some of the legislation that's been passed during the president's term, you've seen regulation become excessive, and it's hurt -- it's hurt the economy. Let me give you an example.

Dodd-Frank was passed. And it includes within it a number of provisions that I think has some unintended consequences that are harmful to the economy. One is it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that's been given to -- to New York banks I've ever seen. This is an enormous boon for them. There've been 122 community and small banks have closed since Dodd- Frank.

So there's one example. Here's another. In Dodd-Frank...

LEHRER: Do you want to repeal Dodd-Frank?

ROMNEY: Well, I would repeal and replace it. We're not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world. You need transparency, you need to have leverage limits for...

LEHRER: Well, here's a specific...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: But let's -- let's mention -- let me mention the other one. Let's talk...

(CROSSTALK)

LEHRER: No, let's not. Let's let him respond -- let's let him respond to this specific on Dodd-Frank and what the governor just said.

OBAMA: I think this is a great example. The reason we have been in such a enormous economic crisis was prompted by reckless behavior across the board.

Now, it wasn't just on Wall Street. You had loan officers were -- that were giving loans and mortgages that really shouldn't have been given, because the folks didn't qualify. You had people who were borrowing money to buy a house that they couldn't afford. You had credit agencies that were stamping these as A1 great investments when they weren't.

But you also had banks making money hand over fist, churning out products that the bankers themselves didn't even understand, in order to make big profits, but knowing that it made the entire system vulnerable.

So what did we do? We stepped in and had the toughest reforms on Wall Street since the 1930s. We said you've got -- banks, you've got to raise your capital requirements. You can't engage in some of this risky behavior that is putting Main Street at risk. We've going to make sure that you've got to have a living will so -- so we can know how you're going to wind things down if you make a bad bet so we don't have other taxpayer bailouts.

OBAMA: In the meantime, by the way, we also made sure that all the help that we provided those banks was paid back every single dime, with interest.

Now, Governor Romney has said he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank.

And, you know, I appreciate and it appears we've got some agreement that a marketplace to work has to have some regulation. But in the past, Governor Romney has said he just want to repeal Dodd- Frank, roll it back.

And so the question is: Does anybody out there think that the big problem we had is that there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street? Because if you do, then Governor Romney is your candidate. But that's not what I believe.

ROMNEY: Sorry, but that's just not -- that's just not the facts. Look, we have to have regulation on Wall Street. That's why I'd have regulation. But I wouldn't designate five banks as too big to fail and give them a blank check. That's one of the unintended consequences of Dodd-Frank. It wasn't thought through properly. We need to get rid of that provision because it's killing regional and small banks. They're getting hurt.

Let me mention another regulation in Dodd-Frank. You say we were giving mortgages to people who weren't qualified. That's exactly right. It's one of the reasons for the great financial calamity we had. And so Dodd-Frank correctly says we need to have qualified mortgages, and if you give a mortgage that's not qualified, there are big penalties, except they didn't ever go on and define what a qualified mortgage was.

It's been two years. We don't know what a qualified mortgage is yet. So banks are reluctant to make loans, mortgages. Try and get a mortgage these days. It's hurt the housing market because Dodd-Frank didn't anticipate putting in place the kinds of regulations you have to have. It's not that Dodd-Frank always was wrong with too much regulation. Sometimes they didn't come out with a clear regulation.

I will make sure we don't hurt the functioning of our -- of our marketplace and our business, because I want to bring back housing and get good jobs.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/03/transcript-first-presidential-debate/#ixzz28M2Dc69T

Romney makes his statement about regulation etc. Obama ignores everything romney said and goes into his pre-planned speech, the kind of thing that sounds great to his supporters when he's at a rally "does anyone believe the problem was too much regulation?" etc. He isn't able to counter Romney....why not contest romney's criticism of the dodd-frank act? That's why Romney seemed to get the last word a lot, not because of bullying, but because obama had nothing else to say, because his position was very shallow, and he wasn't up to debating. Call it "keeping calm and saying what he wanted to say" if you want.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The amount of time in itself doesn't mean much. It is obvious that Obama just speaks at a slower rate than Romney does. The problem of structure and not pressing either candidate is directly Lehrer's fault and I can't see why you would think he did a fair job. It was about 25 min or so that Lehrer tries to move on from taxes, claiming that he has already cut out a 15 minute segment due to the candidates taking too much time. Romney just goes right ahead and says "Obama was first to speak, I am going to be the last to speak." and then tries to end on an accusation that Obama can't let go uncontested, and thus the cycle continues and Lehrer just sits there.

Having a long back and forth is nice, but only viable when you have established from the beginning 1 or 2 narrow subjects will be discussed. You can't have a 90 minute debate try to cover both the economy and health care and then try to subdivide each subject into 15 minute chunks. That is what prompts politicians to make fast talking points. If the entire debate was about the economy from the start, more details and nuance and on the spot fact checking can occur and a constructive back and forth will be had.

[Lemur]

Still haven't seen debate, stupid "work" getting in between me and politics. But this struck me as off:


It is obvious that Obama just speaks at a slower rate than Romney does.
But debates are timed, or should be. So if one speaker is naturally slower, that's his own dang problem.

That is all.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I think overall, Lehrer did a fair job- although he did give Obama slightly more time overall (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/10/romney_makes_the_most_of_his_4.php). (Obama spoke for 4.5 minutes longer than Romney in total).

I think, in general a good moderator will let the candidates speak. I find it so silly when they employ bells, whistles, gongs, ect. to try to hold a candidate. How can they demand everything be boiled down to a soundbite while bemoaning the lack of details? (Again, Obama went beyond his 2 minute allotment more often than Romney.) Both candidates constantly offered platitudinous talking points and anonymous "studies" in place of detail- and Leher's biggest mistake is not pressing either candidate for specifics. I think the format itself also lacked structure- but I don't know that was Leher's call.

I'm not sure how, with the situation we're facing, we are letting both parties get away with pretending they will not either make serious cuts or raise serious taxes. To hear them talk it's all just a question of efficiency, cutting waste, or taxing donald trump. Probably it's political suicide to be blunt. But surely we can avoid taking "he's going to cut medicare!!!!" as a serious point.


I wonder if this is how he behaves when he meets with world leaders behind closed doors

"The tensions between Mr. Obama and the Gulf states, both American and Arab diplomats say, derive from an Obama character trait: he has not built many personal relationships with foreign leaders. “He’s not good with personal relationships; that’s not what interests him,” said one United States diplomat. “But in the Middle East, those relationships are essential. The lack of them deprives D.C. of the ability to influence leadership decisions.”

Arab officials echo that sentiment, describing Mr. Obama as a cool, cerebral man who discounts the importance of personal chemistry in politics. “You can’t fix these problems by remote control,” said one Arab diplomat with long experience in Washington. “He doesn’t have friends who are world leaders. He doesn’t believe in patting anybody on the back, nicknames.

“You can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish” with such an impersonal style, the diplomat said."

[a completely inoffensive name]

long transcript


But in that segment you posted, Romney is not really saying anything either. Saying three talking points without a plan on how he is going to change that other than "this isn't good." is not really a statement. Obama does a really bad job at replying, no doubt. But no one is really bringing up details. Lehrer lets the 122 community banks number slide without any challenge or follow up.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But debates are timed, or should be. So if one speaker is naturally slower, that's his own dang problem.

That is all.

Again, the fault is on Lehrer for not controlling the debate. The candidate is going to try and get as much time as possible and the moderator has to keep that in check. I am just saying that in terms of pushing for more time Romney seems to be the winner, in terms of talking time Obama wins because the moments that he got another chance, he naturally takes longer to say something.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

But in that segment you posted, Romney is not really saying anything either. Saying three talking points without a plan on how he is going to change that other than "this isn't good." is not really a statement. Obama does a really bad job at replying, no doubt. But no one is really bringing up details. Lehrer lets the 122 community banks number slide without any challenge or follow up.

The dodd-frank act is thousands of pages long and the question was a general one about "the level of regulation in the economy". He was asked about principles, the only details were to illustrate. And that's what the debates are for...in fact that's almost the entirety of what we elected someone based on. Because we don't know what's going to happen during the presidency, we don't know what situations are going to come up, we don't know what the legislative debate is going to be like, what will be possible and what won't, we don't even know which party will control the houses. Why do you think a debate is the place for detailed explanatory speeches?

My impression is that the debate was a shocker to a lot of the liberal pundits because they were amazed the president knew better than to use their dumb talking points in place where Romney could reply directly.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The dodd-frank act is thousands of pages long and the question was a general one about "the level of regulation in the economy". He was asked about principles, the only details were to illustrate. And that's what the debates are for...in fact that's almost the entirety of what we elected someone based on. Because we don't know what's going to happen during the presidency, we don't know what situations are going to come up, we don't know what the legislative debate is going to be like, what will be possible and what won't, we don't even know which party will control the houses. Why do you think a debate is the place for detailed explanatory speeches?
Because debates are worthless otherwise. We already know their principles Sasaki, we already know what they think in general about X law regarding Y. These are not the subjects that should be the highlight of a debate, because only the most clueless, ignorant, undecided voter has no clue about what each candidate stands for and what his principles are.

But then again, the debates are meant for the undecided in the first place. So maybe you are right.



My impression is that the debate was a shocker to a lot of the liberal pundits because they were amazed the president knew better than to use their dumb talking points in place where Romney could reply directly.

I try not to let my view paint how the debate went, I will admit that Obama did a very terrible job in this debate. However, I think also think it was a failure on some level on everyones part as well.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Because debates are worthless otherwise. We already know their principles Sasaki, we already know what they think in general about X law regarding Y. These are not the subjects that should be the highlight of a debate, because only the most clueless, ignorant, undecided voter has no clue about what each candidate stands for and what his principles are.



But it's not about the candidates saying what their principles are. That's all obama did, and that's why he lost. It's about the candidates challenging each other's principles. Candidates state principles all the time and the question is always "do they mean them?" In their regular speeches they can get away with just rhetoric. The media is supposed to challenge them but does a poor job. In the debate they can challenge each other--"if that's really your principle, then..." etc.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But it's not about the candidates saying what their principles are. That's all obama did, and that's why he lost. It's about the candidates challenging each other's principles. Candidates state principles all the time and the question is always "do they mean them?" In their regular speeches they can get away with just rhetoric. The media is supposed to challenge them but does a poor job. In the debate they can challenge each other--"if that's really your principle, then..." etc.

The only thing that politicians do when challenging each others principles is rhetoric. This isn't a university class where they are using logical arguments to come to conclusions about why the opponents views on X are bad. What good came out of Romney's attacks on Obama's principles (since Obama didn't do the same in return)? We had more talking points, "death panels" came up again, and some blatant lies in regards to Medicare. How is this a good purpose for debates?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

The only thing that politicians do when challenging each others principles is rhetoric. This isn't a university class where they are using logical arguments to come to conclusions about why the opponents views on X are bad. What good came out of Romney's attacks on Obama's principles (since Obama didn't do the same in return)? We had more talking points, "death panels" came up again, and some blatant lies in regards to Medicare. How is this a good purpose for debates?

Obama didn't do the same in turn because he couldn't. That was what was shown and that's the good that came out of it and that's why Romney won.

Obama's bland and sweeping "there's a choice between Republicans who are anti-regulation, and me who thinks that some regulation is good" is shallow and doesn't hold up to contact with reality. Romney doesn't have to say much to counter that, all he has to do is say that he supports some regulation, but that x,y,z of such and such are a failure, and that he knows how to have regulations without failures like that. He actually started with that and then Obama came in with his standard bit as a (non) response. Romney's challenge of Obama is claiming that Obama views regulations in a vague way as a cure all without having the know how to see how they play out--and Obama feeds right into that with his bit of narrative history, with his self-congratulatory "toughest reforms since the 1930's" etc.

It's not "just rhetoric" it's rhetoric getting shown up.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iNhUI8ktHuw

Pure genius.

[drone]

I would love to see a debate PTI-style. Topics on the rundown list, discussion timed with buzzers, and most importantly, a "Stat Boy" that points out the lies the candidates tell. :yes:

[a completely inoffensive name]

Obama didn't do the same in turn because he couldn't. That was what was shown and that's the good that came out of it and that's why Romney won.
That is reading into it too much. If Obama can't perform in the next two debates, then yes I will agree with this. However, one debate does not tell us something as general as that. Romney has had his fair share of stumbles this past 3 months, Obama played it way too soft and way too general because he may have been overconfident in his lead in polls or because he underestimated Romney's skills or any number of reasons.


It's not "just rhetoric" it's rhetoric getting shown up.

With more rhetoric. By my count, I am reading three different fact checking organizations throwing flags all over the field on most of Romney's statements. It is not really showing up some rhetoric if what you are saying is false and only sounds good to begin with.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That is reading into it too much. If Obama can't perform in the next two debates, then yes I will agree with this. However, one debate does not tell us something as general as that. Romney has had his fair share of stumbles this past 3 months, Obama played it way too soft and way too general because he may have been overconfident in his lead in polls or because he underestimated Romney's skills or any number of reasons.

Wishful thinking. He didn't "play it soft". He has a poor record and little to defend it with. That's even granted that I largely agree with the idea that much of the economy is out of the presidents hands.

Romney hasn't stumbled recently, that's just media noise. Pay less attention to the media.



With more rhetoric. By my count, I am reading three different fact checking organizations throwing flags all over the field on most of Romney's statements. It is not really showing up some rhetoric if what you are saying is false and only sounds good to begin with.

You think Obama didn't say false things? Are you sure you read the fact checkers?

Politicians scaremonger about their opponent, and gloss over or speaking in glowing terms about their own plans and actions. The fact checkers, incompetent as they, do show that obama and romney did that. But it's democracy in action. If you do a lot of "his plan might, in the worst case scenario, though it's not really certain and perhaps a more probable estimate would be..." you might get some vaporous points for honesty but you will bleed votes.The noise about "false-hoods" and "fact-check" is partisans trying to make hay out of criticizing what their own guy also did.

What is revealed in debate, for those didn't know it already or weren't sure, is the fundamental difference between the two candidates. Romney on the whole appeared as a businessman, someone who believes deeply in free enterprise, someone who believes that it's "immoral to spend massively", and someone who is willing to make cuts, except in the military. Obama on the whole seemed to be an intellectual, with broad ideas (or "vision" as some people call it), he believes in educating for the future, green energy for the future, things like a measured approach, a balanced approach, the rich paying their fair share which is a moral issue to him, he drops words like arithmetic and experts, etc.

The debate was a contrast between moralizing stories about the good guys and bad guys of government regulation and the moral victory of "toughest regulations since..." etc, and Romney's replies which de-moralizes the story and talks about problems in the bill in real world terms of the effects on business. It was between "I believe in the future of green energy" and Romney talking about the actual attempts--lofty sentiment does not look so good when it comes to reality, creating successful businesses is very difficult.

Obama presents the issues in terms of what's intellectual or enlightened, abstracted from the real world. Romney presents the issues in terms of what's practical and moral in a real world sense, a more traditional kind of morality. To win debates Obama would have to be able to cast Romney in moral terms as an evil rich man, only looking out for the wealthy, not caring about the middle class. That's what his campaign has tried to do, very hard, but I'm skeptical that it can be done in a debate without the media on hand to help. It's also much harder to sell yourself as an enlightened bringer of progress when you have a four year record as president that looks like his. His comments about reaching out the muslim world sound a lot worse than they did 4 years ago.

Obama didn't lose because of lehrer's moderation, or because he played it soft while Romney was aggressive, or because of the altitude (:p) or even because he was unprepared. He lost because he has a shallow intellect. He can get away with it in speeches, with his cheerleader groupies in the media, but in a debate it can be revealed as his actual self. Romney was able to do that effectively. Obama coming out and saying "Romney wants to repeal dodd-frank" after Romney has just criticized parts of it and praised parts of it, has just said that he would "repeal and replace it" makes Obama sound like an empty suit, or an empty chair if you will. Obama did not seem capable of actually debating with Romney, and that's because he isn't. It seems to me like that's a fundamental ability for a politician.

[Hooahguy]

With more rhetoric. By my count, I am reading three different fact checking organizations throwing flags all over the field on most of Romney's statements. It is not really showing up some rhetoric if what you are saying is false and only sounds good to begin with.
Those same fact checking organizations are also throwing flags on Obama's statements. According to FactCheck.org, the score is Obama 5, Romney 4 on lies and exaggerations.

[HopAlongBunny]

Those same fact checking organizations are also throwing flags on Obama's statements. According to FactCheck.org, the score is Obama 5, Romney 4 on lies and exaggerations.

So, since nobody held anybody to account, it was essentially an info-mercial not a debate. Complete waste of time.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Well **** it. I feel like I shouldn't even vote. **** both of them.

[rvg]

Well **** it. I feel like I shouldn't even vote. **** both of them.

Willard Romney thanks you in advance for your non-vote.

[Hooahguy]

Well **** it. I feel like I shouldn't even vote. **** both of them.

...and thats why Im voting Gary Johnson.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Willard Romney thanks you in advance for your non-vote.

Obama doesn't really represent me either. He hasn't helped student loans like I would want, he hasn't raised funding for NASA as much as I would want. He hasn't stopped enforcing the War on Drugs on medical pot dispensaries that are legal in their respective states.

The only reason I even try to support him is because he is not the GOP and doesn't inject fundamentalist christian doctrine as domestic social policies. But even there he hasn't done much other than repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, but he shows no promise of following up on anything else I would like him to focus on.

I live in California anyway, I very much doubt this state will turn red this election.

[Major Robert Dump]

And ACIN calls other people cheerleaders. You are apparently like one of seven people in the USA who thinks Obama did well.

The guy needs to stick his chest out and act like a ***** man. That is what he needs to do. He is the President. Maybe he could adopt that attitude he had in the gathering of back pastors from 2007 the media selectively released. That would gain him far more credibility than not looking people in the eye, holding his head down while he is being attacked, and pretty much in general actling like a toddler in trouble.

[a completely inoffensive name]

And ACIN calls other people cheerleaders. You are apparently like one of seven people in the USA who thinks Obama did well.

...You didn't read. Should I quote myself for you?

[Major Robert Dump]

What? Calling Hooah a cheerleader? Or stating that Obama was cool under fire and pretty much behaved th way he always does?

[Major Robert Dump]

dbl post

[Hooahguy]

What? Calling Hooah a cheerleader? Or stating that Obama was cool under fire and pretty much behaved th way he always does?

Yeah, Im not exactly sure how he figured I was a cheerleader. Im not a fan of either parties. Im merely stating the facts about the debates.

[a completely inoffensive name]

What? Calling Hooah a cheerleader? Or stating that Obama was cool under fire and pretty much behaved th way he always does?


I try not to let my view paint how the debate went, I will admit that Obama did a very terrible job in this debate. However, I think also think it was a failure on some level on everyones part as well.

Herp derp, what you want me to say? Yes, I have a bias. It's not some bombshell and I am surprised people don't call me out on it more. It comes out in a very hypocritical manner because I try to maintain cognitive dissonance on my guy being better despite him showing obvious flaws in the most important part of the campaign. Even worse, it's not even cleverly disguised like some others on this forum because let's face it, I am not that great a critical thinker and my writing skills are shit. That's what happens when I get to watch the Pride and Prejudice miniseries in English class instead of being asked to actually read it.

However, I try not to assert a view that Obama is the most wonderful man in the world, I just try to justify to myself that he is still better than the other guy by engaging in dumb and petty arguments online with people who have a better grasp of politics. I'm sorry I called Hooahguy a cheerleader, he isn't, I was obviously mad my team had lost the night.

[Hooahguy]

Though I really want to know why you consider me a cheerleader. I never once said that Romney didnt lie or whatnot. Nor did I say that Obama was flawless either.

If I had to be labeled a cheerleader, Im a cheerleader for the Johnson campaign.

[Major Robert Dump]

Actually, I think you ARE Obama, or at least on his staff, and you are here to sway Org opinion in your favor because The Org is an ever powerful entity.

I'm flattered, really, Mr President, but SRYSLY, you have work to do, bra

[a completely inoffensive name]

Though I really want to know why you consider me a cheerleader. I never once said that Romney didnt lie or whatnot. Nor did I say that Obama was flawless either.
If I had to be labeled a cheerleader, Im a cheerleader for the Johnson campaign.

I don't. Like I said, I was just in a pissy mood. I'm not mature as I like to pretend either. Again, I am sorry.

[Hooahguy]

I don't. Like I said, I was just in a pissy mood. I'm not mature as I like to pretend either. Again, I am sorry.

To cheer you up I think I will find a cheerleaders costume. Then dress up in it and take a picture. And post it for your enjoyment.

:2thumbsup:

[Montmorency]

The guy needs to stick his chest out and act like a ***** man. That is what he needs to do. He is the President. Maybe he could adopt that attitude he had in the gathering of back pastors from 2007 the media selectively released. That would gain him far more credibility than not looking people in the eye, holding his head down while he is being attacked, and pretty much in general actling like a toddler in trouble.

I can empathise with Obama. That's exactly how I would have presented, in the event.

As I have found a connection between us in this manner, perhaps I should give him my vote.

[Strike For The South]

To cheer you up I think I will find a cheerleaders costume. Then dress up in it and take a picture. And post it for your enjoyment.

:2thumbsup:

As someone who has seen real pictures of you

Please keep all your clothes on and don't delve into cross-dressing

I will derive much more enjoyment from that.

[Hooahguy]

As someone who has seen real pictures of you

Please keep all your clothes on and don't delve into cross-dressing

I will derive much more enjoyment from that.
Admit it Strike, you know you want to.

[Major Robert Dump]

@Montmerencey you said "presented" haha. Thats exactly what POTUS did

@ACIN Don't you dare ever call me cynical again. I prefer "Negative Nancy"

[Montmorency]

I don't get it.


Montmerencey

Ha! because I'm merely one more so-and-so in the crowd. I'll use that as my tagline. Good one!

[Major Robert Dump]

When one "presents", one manueavers the sexual organs into a welcoming position. It's what your cat does when he throws his tail up and sticks his junk in your face. It's what Hony the Orangutan did to the Ecuadorian miners. It's what a prisoner in San Quinten does when Bubba gets back from a hard workout in the gym.

[Xiahou]

Nielsen says over 67 million (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/presidential-debate-drew-more-than-70-million-viewers/?smid=tw-share) tuned into the debates- the most since the Bush/Clinton/Perot debates in 1992. And that's not counting online viewers.

[Lemur]

Sure, gloat in the fact that I still haven't seen the debate, although 67 million of my best friends tuned in.

Actually, I'm in an interesting position; I've heard all of the post-debate analysis and spin, read the conventional wisdom, and generally accepted the herd's take on the first debate.

What I should do now is watch it and record my reactions, and see how at variance from the hive-mind I am.

Of course, all of that would require time and effort. Let's nap instead.

[Goofball]

Those same fact checking organizations are also throwing flags on Obama's statements. According to FactCheck.org, the score is Obama 5, Romney 4 on lies and exaggerations.

That depends on which fact checkers you believe, I guess. The first one I saw yesterday had Romney "ahead" of Obama 3 - 1 on lies.

[Major Robert Dump]

My fave is Gore blaming altitude/jet lag whatever.

The lefty pundits are considerably less hard on tghe president on day 2#

Still doesn't change the fact that he did not respond to several Romney direct attacks which happended to be valid questions.

Surely in the national security debate he willl have some tricks, as he has access to facts and info romney will not.

[Lemur]

[Obama] has access to facts and info romney will not.
Don't presidential candidates start to receive briefings once it's down to two? Or is that only in the post-November period if they win?

I could Google it, but that would take effort.

-edit-

I am so deliriously happy this guy is back, singing about gay sex in the White House.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0PeBwzvQds

[Sarmatian]

To cheer you up I think I will find a cheerleaders costume. Then dress up in it and take a picture. And post it for your enjoyment.

:2thumbsup:

... and other people's nightmares.

Please, please, PLEASE, think of the children...

[Goofball]

25 best tweets of teh debate:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/social-media/debate-funniest-tweets/index.html?iref=obnetwork

My two faves:

'Obama better hope a Kicked A** is covered under Obamacare'

and

'Mitt: "I like coal" Poor people will find it in their stockings if I am President."'

:laugh4:

[Kralizec]

I am so deliriously happy this guy is back, singing about gay sex in the White House.

Arrrrrr train

[Xiahou]

25 best tweets of teh debate:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/social-media/debate-funniest-tweets/index.html?iref=obnetwork

My two faves:

'Obama better hope a Kicked A** is covered under Obamacare'

and

'Mitt: "I like coal" Poor people will find it in their stockings if I am President."'

:laugh4:
It's not on the list, but one I liked the night of the debate was...

"That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car. "

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Don't presidential candidates start to receive briefings once it's down to two? Or is that only in the post-November period if they win?

I could Google it, but that would take effort.

-edit-

I am so deliriously happy this guy is back, singing about gay sex in the White House.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0PeBwzvQds

I googled. Apparently the two major candidates are offered briefings by the CIA after receiving their parties' nominations. The preface I read suggested, however, that very few of the candidates manage more than one "overiew" briefing prior to the general elections because of the tight schedule of a campaign.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Sure, gloat in the fact that I still haven't seen the debate, although 67 million of my best friends tuned in.

Actually, I'm in an interesting position; I've heard all of the post-debate analysis and spin, read the conventional wisdom, and generally accepted the herd's take on the first debate.

What I should do now is watch it and record my reactions, and see how at variance from the hive-mind I am.

Of course, all of that would require time and effort. Let's nap instead.

I thought Romney did alright, as he usually does in debate. I also though Obama did better than I expected, as he was usually poor in debate. I was surprised by the reactions to the debate, but can see how a win by an under-rated candidate when 62 million Americans are watching can change peoples opinion (most of whom were probably not actually paying attention before). I believe that Romney is a bright guy and has good ideas and the right outlook for Government in an executive position. It makes sense that other people might see that, too.

[Major Robert Dump]

I do not understand the stink being made by certain pundits on the right over Obama having attended the VP Debate Mods wedding some 20 years ago. I wonder what Dick Cheney and Antony Scalia think of this.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I do not understand the stink being made by certain pundits on the right over Obama having attended the VP Debate Mods wedding some 20 years ago. I wonder what Dick Cheney and Antony Scalia think of this.

Tactics. Set up the "unfair moderation limited our guy's chances" explanation in advance. Never works as well as an excuse if you seem to be making it up afterwards. Moreover, you can still use it as an enhancer -- despite the moderator's obvious slant our guy still did well -- if Ryan does well. Pretty much a "no lose" gaming of the situation akin to both sides playing down their own candidate's debating abilities prior to a debate. Lower expectations enough and it all looks pretty good.

Plus, RW radio pundits love having a bash at the media

[ICantSpellDawg]

I have no idea how this debate is going to swing. Biden is an effective populist and Ryan is a bit wonky. I expect Ryan to be more competant than he is giving speeches, but still, you are talking to the American people - a horde of individuals who think sports are interesting and read "people" magazine. Don't bring up the CBO.

[Major Robert Dump]

I think Paul Ryan's homoerotic workout photo spread being released on National Coming Out Day is just absolutely epic.

I mean, you know what they say about men who wear their ballcap backwards... and what Lemur says about Republican closet cases.....

[a completely inoffensive name]

I am not going to lie, Biden is saying his fair share of bullshit, but his expressions make me lol.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I think that Biden is being effective. A bit unsettling to roam from hyena like hysterics, to irritated yelling, to solemn discussion, but the editorial press will eat it up.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Roles got flipped here. Biden was very aggressive, Ryan wasn't.

[ICantSpellDawg]

But Ryan wasn't seemingly dis-interested, he was alert. I'd say that Biden one this one, but his aggression went just beyond civil and Ryan's loss was one of experience. Intense composure is a valuable asset for a Presidential candidate, arguably less so for the VP.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But Ryan wasn't seemingly dis-interested, he was alert. I'd say that Biden one this one, but his aggression went just beyond civil and Ryan's loss was one of experience. Intense composure is a valuable asset for a Presidential candidate, arguably less so for the VP.

So he was alert but couldn't muster the strength to return aggression? His failure is no less than Obama's. You can't win the rhetorical battle if you can't fight back, whether you are wired like a mouse or in a coma. It all comes down to people sensing weakness, which is abhorrent to what you want in a high office.

[Xiahou]

I don't think this one was nearly as decisive as the last debate. If you are a Biden fan, you probably think he was great. Everyone else.... will probably think he's a jerk. He was smirking the entire time, make exasperated noises- basically everything they're told not to do. He also interrupted Ryan constantly, but that should play well among his fans.

I think most people will conclude that time spent watching this debate was pretty much a waste....

EDIT: This (www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/10/poll-by-wide-margin-democrats-want-biden-in-all-remaining-debates.html) is one of the best early reactions I've read.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I don't think this one was nearly as decisive as the last debate. If you are a Biden fan, you probably think he was great. Everyone else.... will probably think he's a jerk. He was smirking the entire time, make exasperated noises- basically everything they're told not to do. He also interrupted Ryan constantly, but that should play well among his fans.

I think most people will conclude that time spent watching this debate was pretty much a waste....

I agree that this debate was a waste. Biden did exactly what Obama's critics on the left have been demanding that he do all week since Obama bombed. This one will be back into the partisan back and forth like we're used to. I agree with your statement, people who dislike him will lose respect for him, Democrats who thought he was too middleground will eat up the red meat. Ryan is much better than anyone I've seen on explaining policy to beltway pundits who actually pay attention, but I rarely see Biden effective in that venue. Equally, the venue of getting sportsfans and blue collar hammer-heads to listen to veiled political argument is Biden's show.

[a completely inoffensive name]

People who try to write off Biden as acting bizzare or as a jerk, are just as silly as people like me who tried to write off Obama's ineptitude with words like "coolness" and "composure".

Biden actively reached out to people through the camera, he addressed senior citizens a lot. He told them to refer to AARP, which I believe does support Obamacare if I remember correctly. It was warm, Biden did over do it in places, that's what happens when you need to correct for Obama's terrible performance.

I think this will probably halt the polls swinging towards Romney, it won't reverse it back in Obama's favor though. VP debate just isn't as important.

[Xiahou]

People who try to write off Biden as acting bizzare or as a jerk, are just as silly as people like me who tried to write off Obama's ineptitude with words like "coolness" and "composure".From Politico (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82313.html):


Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway: “Joe Biden’s laughing through talking about Iran sanctions?”
Continue Reading

TIME’s Michael Scherer: “Not sure debate cameras have been light tested for Biden’s teeth. Best to watch with sunglasses.”

Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein: “Biden’s strategy seems to be to laugh at Ryan constantly. Will it work to infantalize Ryan, or backfire like Gore sighing?”

NBC’s David Gregory: “Biden’s smile is out of control.”

BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith: “So did Biden practice laughing at Ryan???”

ABC’s Rick Klein: “Biden on verge of breaking down in laughter when Ryan talks.”

Former Eric Cantor staffer Brad Dayspring: “Joe Biden needs to realize this isn’t a Senate Foreign Relations Hearing. His laughter and condescending attitude is a disaster.”

Radio host Neal Boortz: “Looking like Biden’s gameplan is to laugh his way through this.”

Townhall.com’s Guy Benson: “Will Biden laugh his ass off at the terrible economy, too?”

MSNBC’s S.E. Cupp: “Biden needs to laugh a little less through the Libya, Middle East, nuclear Iran segment.”

Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza: “Ok. I have decided. I find the Biden smile slightly unsettling.”

PBS’ Jeff Greenfield: “Biden has always had a smile that at times is really, really inappropriate.”

Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard: “Can’t tell yet if Biden’s smirking, laughs, eye-rolling, head shaking, works for him or not against the oh-so-young looking eager Ryan.”

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer: “Biden is at risk of having his laugh come across like Gore’s sighs. He should knock it off.”

The New York Times’ Ashley Parker: “Biden’s grin is Chesire Cat caliber.”

Republican strategist Ron Bonjean: “Biden laughing does not come off with the intended effect. It is actually hurting him. Looks very condescending.”

Movie critic Roger Ebert: “Joe! Stop smiling and laughing!”

Washington Times’ Emily Miller: “Biden laughing when he disagrees with Ryan is so annoying. Like a child in time out.”

Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “Biden’s laughing is losing the debate- obnoxious”

Comedy Central’s Indecision: “If this keeps up much longer, Joe Biden’s going to sprain his laugh muscles.”

There's a difference between being assertive and being an ass....

[ICantSpellDawg]

People who try to write off Biden as acting bizzare or as a jerk, are just as silly as people like me who tried to write off Obama's ineptitude with words like "coolness" and "composure".

Biden actively reached out to people through the camera, he addressed senior citizens a lot. He told them to refer to AARP, which I believe does support Obamacare if I remember correctly. It was warm, Biden did over do it in places, that's what happens when you need to correct for Obama's terrible performance.

I think this will probably halt the polls swinging towards Romney, it won't reverse it back in Obama's favor though. VP debate just isn't as important.

No, I agree with this for the most part, I think Biden won, just not by a landslide. I'm just saying that Obama's composure last time was contrasted with an alert candidate. Ryan's composure will be contrasted with an overly-flippant candidate. All personalities are not created equal. It's not as clear who will be the runaway favorite of viewers who are not used to seeing this stuff.

[a completely inoffensive name]

stuff

That's quite a mixed bag. Comedy Central need fodder, the Republican strategist will do his job. Others were neutral. It's going to be a talking point, and it will be talked about. Biden has a reputation with his words and expressions, it's not unexpected. You certainly can't call it bizzare and have Ryan reference his ability to gaffe a lot at the same time.

The question is not going to be resolved tonight either way, whether or not Biden went overboard will be decided from now until 16th when the next debate starts and we see how the polls are at that moment.

[a completely inoffensive name]

No, I agree with this for the most part, I think Biden won, just not by a landslide. I'm just saying that Obama's composure last time was contrasted with an alert candidate. Ryan's composure will be contrasted with an overly-flippant candidate. All personalities are not created equal. It's not as clear who will be the runaway favorite of viewers who are not used to seeing this stuff.

I agree with this statement. For some reason I don't see the thanks button.

[Xiahou]

That's quite a mixed bag. Comedy Central need fodder, the Republican strategist will do his job. Others were neutral. Look again...


"PBS’ Jeff Greenfield: “Biden has always had a smile that at times is really, really inappropriate.”"
"Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “Biden’s laughing is losing the debate- obnoxious”"
"Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza: “Ok. I have decided. I find the Biden smile slightly unsettling.”"
"NBC’s David Gregory: “Biden’s smile is out of control.”"


Don't get me wrong though. I still don't see this debate changing much- certainly not like the Romney - Obama debate. Obama's base will get some much needed energy from this, but I think some undecideds are going to be turned off. Probably a wash.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I think Ryan lost points in a couple places where he was being too slick. Exaggerating the differences between the two Afghanistan and Syria plans doesn't work very well, and the republicans are still trying to avoid saying that cutting the deficit will involve cutting things...the democrats are saying virtually nothing about cutting it and talking up a storm about republican cuts...if that stuff is based on their internal polling it reflects poorly on the American people.

Bidens laughing and folksy "who are you going to trust?" straighttalk will look stupid to some and look awesome to liberal intellectuals who imagine that kind of thing really wows the "common people". But partisans will like it for sure. I even enjoyed it myself. He probably overdid it. Less would have made it seem more sincere.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Look again...

"PBS’ Jeff Greenfield: “Biden has always had a smile that at times is really, really inappropriate.”"
"Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “Biden’s laughing is losing the debate- obnoxious”"
"Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza: “Ok. I have decided. I find the Biden smile slightly unsettling.”"
"NBC’s David Gregory: “Biden’s smile is out of control.”"


Don't get me wrong though. I still don't see this debate changing much- certainly not like the Romney - Obama debate. Obama's base will get some much needed energy from this, but I think some undecideds are going to be turned off. Probably a wash.

That's 4 out of a list of 20. Putting aside the problems that such a small sample size brings, I still hold that it was a mixed bag you brought to the table. I am not going to say if undecideds were turned off or not. Mostly, I think those milking the expressions are solid Republicans to begin with. If we want to talk about social media and impressions, it was very clear that "details matter" trended on twitter while Ryan was hammered for details on his policies, "Jack Kennedy" trended as well referring to that jab by Biden.

Like I said, the polls will answer the question over the next week.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Bidens laughing and folksy "who are you going to trust?" straighttalk will look stupid to some and look awesome to liberal intellectuals who imagine that kind of thing really wows the "common people". But partisans will like it for sure. I even enjoyed it myself. He probably overdid it. Less would have made it seem more sincere.

Are you admitting you are not a commoner?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

CBS insta poll of uncommitted says

50% say biden won
30% say ryan
20% say tie


If romney's gain in the polls was because of an enthusiasm bounce then any kind of straw or shift in the media story could deflate it. If it was a genuine shift this likely won't affect anything.

edit:


CNN-ORC post-debate poll of Registered Voters: 48% said Ryan won. 44% said Biden won. Sampling error: +-5%.

[Montmorency]

Why does ICSD disdain sports-loving Americans? Anyone watching these debates is looking for the same fix of "AYE"s and "NAY"s...

[Xiahou]

What do you mean "He probably overdid it."???

https://img211.imageshack.us/img211/1554/colorfuljoebidenuni.jpg

Early insta-polls show... inconclusive results... CBS? 50/31 Biden. CNBC? 56/36 Ryan.

[a completely inoffensive name]

What do you mean "He probably overdid it."???

https://img211.imageshack.us/img211/1554/colorfuljoebidenuni.jpg

Early insta-polls show... inconclusive results... CBS? 50/31 Biden. CNBC? 56/36 Ryan.

If the popular vote in the actual election was split by 56/36 or even more realistically 56/44 (lumping no's and i don't know together), that would be considered a landslide, no?

[Xiahou]

If the popular vote in the actual election was split by 56/36 or even more realistically 56/44 (lumping no's and i don't know together), that would be considered a landslide, no?In the CNBC poll, Ryan won 56/36. Biden won the CBS poll. Either would be a landslide in an election- but they have contradicting results- thus I said it's inconclusive.

The CNN instapoll doesn't help much- 48/44 for Ryan... within the margin of error.

EDIT: In summary, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0&t=16s) is pretty much how I feel about the entire debate.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I read the cnbc poll was online, which would make it useless.

[a completely inoffensive name]

In the CNBC poll, Ryan won 56/36. Biden won the CBS poll. Either would be a landslide in an election- but they have contradicting results- thus I said it's inconclusive.

The CNN instapoll doesn't help much- 48/44 for Ryan... within the margin of error.

EDIT: In summary, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0&t=16s) is pretty much how I feel about the entire debate.

Oh wow, an NBC poll that went in Ryan's favor. That's almost shocking for me. My mistake.


I read the cnbc poll was online, which would make it useless.

I would agree with this sentiment. I don't even bother to participate in an online poll unless it's for a new flavor of soda or something.

[Xiahou]

I read the cnbc poll was online, which would make it useless.If so, then it is garbage. :yes:

[Major Robert Dump]

Jimmy Kimmel stole my Paul Ryan coming out joke. I think I am going to sue. Can we pls ban him from the org???

[Lemur]

I know it has been entirely due to workload and family, but I'm kinda enjoying not watching any debates this time around. I may make it a tradition.

[rvg]

I know it has been entirely due to workload and family, but I'm kinda enjoying not watching any debates this time around. I may make it a tradition.

I'm actually planning to watch Obama's next debate performance for comparison and such. If he doesn't crush Willard in the foreign policy debate, then he really needs to lay off the weed.

[Xiahou]

I know it has been entirely due to workload and family, but I'm kinda enjoying not watching any debates this time around. I may make it a tradition.This should cover everything you missed in the first debate....
Jim Lehrer: Badass Moderator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67L20-tBBG0#!)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67L20-tBBG0#!

[ICantSpellDawg]

Candy Crowley called Romney a liar. She swore that Barack Obama called the attack in Libya a terrorist act, pretending to know when in reality he referred to 911 as a terrorist act (http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/12/transcript-read-president-obamas-remarks-on-american-deaths-in-libya-attack/). Obama was very cautious not to call the action in Libya a terrorist act specifically. That pissed me off seriously. Obama had a good night by my standards, but stacking the deck intentionally or just due to bias is way off of the mark. He called the attack on the consulate every name in the book, but never Terrorism specifically.

Not that this Libya issue is a big deal, but that kind of loaded garbage is disappointing.

[Greyblades]

Candy Crowley called Romney a liar. She swore that Barack Obama called the attack in Libya a terrorist act, pretending to know when in reality he referred to 911 as a terrorist act (http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/09/12/transcript-read-president-obamas-remarks-on-american-deaths-in-libya-attack/). Obama was very cautious not to call the action in Libya a terrorist act specifically. That pissed me off seriously. Obama had a good night by my standards, but stacking the deck intentionally or just due to bias is way off of the mark.

Not that this Libya issue is a big deal, but that kind of loaded garbage is disappointing.

...how is refraining from calling the lybian incident; stacking the deck?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Obama looked dreadful the first couple questions with his attempt to get tough. And overall very weak on the economy.


He also lied about his rose garden speech, and got backed up by the moderator, who even said that "people can check the transcripts"...disgraceful. She cut that right off too and went straight to the least interesting question (assault weapon ban) and gave Romney some BS about that as well. That was definitely the lowlight of the debate.

edit:

Even if she really thought that Obama called it an act of terror, it would just make it more noteworthy that the administration said the opposite later...


ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror.

It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you're saying?

OBAMA: Please proceed governor.

ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

OBAMA: Get the transcript.

CROWLEY: It -- it -- it -- he did in fact, sir. So let me -- let me call it an act of terror...

OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

CROWLEY: He -- he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.

ROMNEY: This -- the administration -- the administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction.

CROWLEY: It did.

ROMNEY: It took them a long time to say this was a terrorist act by a terrorist group. And to suggest -- am I incorrect in that regard, on Sunday, the -- your secretary --

OBAMA: Candy?

ROMNEY: Excuse me. The ambassador of the United Nations went on the Sunday television shows and spoke about how --

OBAMA: Candy, I'm --

ROMNEY: -- this was a spontaneous --

CROWLEY: Mr. President, let me --

OBAMA: I'm happy to have a longer conversation --

CROWLEY: I know you --

OBAMA: -- about foreign policy.

CROWLEY: Absolutely. But I want to -- I want to move you on and also --

OBAMA: OK. I'm happy to do that, too.

CROWLEY: -- the transcripts and --

OBAMA: I just want to make sure that --

CROWLEY: -- figure out what we --

OBAMA: -- all of these wonderful folks are going to have a chance to get some of their questions answered.

CROWLEY: Because what I -- what I want to do, Mr. President, stand there a second, because I want to introduce you to Nina Gonzalez, who brought up a question that we hear a lot, both over the Internet and from this crowd.

QUESTION: President Obama, during the Democratic National Convention in 2008, you stated you wanted to keep AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. What has your administration done or planned to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?

[ICantSpellDawg]

The candidate should have been allowed to make the point without being cut off by Candy. The President didn't call the act an act of terror. He called it brutal, he called it a number of things, but the statement that the Governor was trying to make was that the administration has been afraid to call a spade a spade. It took them 14 days to officially call the action an act of terror. It's part of a larger narrative that has been confirmed over the years whether you agree with them or not - that the administration doesn't like calling the war a war on terror, seeks alternate explanations other than terrorism and uses semantics to cover himself. I can't fault him for this tactic, we do it on our side quite a bit - but for a moderator to make a claim that was untrue to the disadvantage of my candidate - this is reasonably irritating.

[Strike For The South]

She interjected her own leanings and biases into the debate.

She is a moderator, not a fact checker. Telling people what Obama said and telling Romney to check the transcripts is crap

Disgusting.

[Xiahou]

1. Candy Crowley was the worst moderator of the three.
2. Romney fumbled his attack on Libya, but having Obama and the moderator tag team him didn't help....
3. Romney won on the economy, which is probably to more important issue to most voters.

[Hooahguy]

What is a moderator if not a fact checker?

I would say a moderators main objective is to keep the participants in line, not check facts.

[Hooahguy]

He also lied about his rose garden speech,

Can you clarify/back this up? Apparently he did make a speech on the Rose Garden the day after and he does say "terror" in it.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Can you clarify/back this up? Apparently he did make a speech on the Rose Garden the day after and he does say "terror" in it.

The speech:


The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. We're working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I've also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world. And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.

Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.

Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans. Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had died.

"outrageous and shocking attack"..."The killers"...talk about respecting faiths, not denigrating religious belief..."senseless violence"..."brutal acts"..."attackers"

If he was calling the assassination an act of terror, the work of terrorist, he would never phrase it this way.


Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi.

As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.

Talks about 9/11, general statements about america, general statement about acts of terror.

The debate:


ROMNEY:There were many days that passed before we knew whether this was a spontaneous demonstration or actually whether it was a terrorist attack. And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack, and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading or instead whether we just didn't know what happened, I think you have to ask yourself why didn't we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could of we not known?
...
OBAMA:The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror.
...
MR. ROMNEY: Yeah, I — I certainly do. I certainly do. I — I think it's interesting the president just said something which is that on the day after the attack, he went in the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror. You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed.
MR. ROMNEY: Is that what you're saying?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed, Governor.
MR. ROMNEY: I — I — I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Get the transcript.
MS. CROWLEY: It — he did in fact, sir.

There's a reason he's saying "please proceed" and why he's so happy when Crowley moves to the next question.

[Hooahguy]

Sorry, I dont think I follow. So the speech was not specifically calling the attacks acts of terror while in the debates Obama claimed he did?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Sorry, I dont think I follow. So the speech was not specifically calling the attacks acts of terror while in the debates Obama claimed he did?

The speech was claiming it was in some way a part of the protests over the video, a reaction to mohammmed being insulted. It took a couple weeks for the administration to admit it was a terrorist attack and had nothing to do with the video. Obama in the debate tried to claim that he had identified it as a terrorist attack the day after.

See here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/from-video-to-terrorist-attack-a-definitive-timeline-of-administration-statements-on-the-libya-attack/2012/09/26/86105782-0826-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html

[a completely inoffensive name]

Ehh, Obama has the plausible deniability there. By saying, "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve..." he is technically referring to the incident as a terrorist act, but tried to soften the blow by claiming it was an extension of upset caused by the video. It's embarrassing it took 14 days to admit the video had nothing to do with it, but he covered his bases there with the language if not the sentiment...

[Ronin]

What is a moderator if not a fact checker?

seems clearto me, if the moderator allows an obvious lie about facts to go by unchecked he/she is not doing his/her job.
to even pretend this is incorrect is just partisan hackery.

if the moderator can´t call out one of the debaters if they are being factually incorrect then you might as well not have a moderator, just set up a timing system and cuts the microphones on and off at appropriate times.

[Major Robert Dump]

He did not want to admit they were acts of terror because it hurt his image as having fixed everything in the middle east, and it made his administration look like buffoons for not having security at our embassy in a country we just liberated.

[Lemur]

As is becoming my tradition, didn't watch the debate, but enjoyed the histrionics on Facebook.

I find it interesting that when Obama had a bad night, in the first debate, my liberal friends denounced his performance and whined about the moderator.

Apparently Romney didn't have a great night, so my conservative friends are denouncing Obama and whining about the moderator.

There's a lesson to be had from these reactions.

[gaelic cowboy]

I dont see what the fuss is about seeing as it's there in black and white acts of terror Romney is not on strong ground here

[Lemur]

Meh, I appreciate the attempt to make this election about Benghazi, but the whole thing feels so manufactured I want to turn it over and look for the price tag.

Was Obama vague about the attack in the immediate aftermath? Yes. Did his surrogates send out mixed and confusing signals? Yes. Did the administration take a painfully long time to make any definite pronouncements? Yes.

That said ...

Did the Republicans vote to strip $300 million from embassy security? Yes. Did Romney jump on the riots and assassination too early (while attacks were ongoing, in fact), and goof his attempt to politicize the tragedy? Yes. Does the Republican critique rest upon a laughable "soft on terror" narrative, which bears no resemblance to reality? Yes.

There's more I could say, about the ambassador's denied request for more security, or the Republican congresscritter outing a CIA operation in his hearings, but why bother? The Benghazi thing is a red-meat issue for conservatives, and I have yet to see it taking root in the electorate at large. If you read a lot of Daily Caller or Drudge or watch a lot of Fox News, I suppose it's the Central Issue of the Campaign, revealing Obama to be the Anti-Colonial terrorist-coddler who wants to gay sex the muslins because he is weak and stupid. Whatever gets you through the day ...

-edit-

Goldberg (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-benghazi-embarrassment/263735/) does a good job of summing up just how artificial ("stupid" is his word) the Benghazi debate has been:

Does Mitt Romney actually think that Barack Obama doesn't believe that what happened in Benghazi was an act of terror? A larger question: Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama, a president who is at war in more Muslim countries than any president in American history, is soft on al Qaeda? And one other question: Does Barack Obama believe that Republicans somehow aren't allowed to raise serious questions about the Administration's response to the attack? Again, I wish the Republicans would frame these questions not to raise doubts about the commander-in-chief's innermost feelings about terrorism, but to ask what specific actions do we need to take, quickly, to try to prevent follow-on attacks?Another take (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/10/hoisted_on_their_own_petard.php) on the echo-chambered, navel-gazing, base-focused stupidity of this line of attack:

The Romney camp’s angle has been that Romney is Churchill incarnate because he’s saying terror, terror, terror and is too big a man to try to get a read on whether the video played any role.

Now Romney’s allies are trying to recover the fumble on his behalf by saying well, sure [Obama] uttered the word ‘terror’. But that’s just a word. Look at the context. He also mentioned the video. And videos don’t have anything to do with terror! In other words, but, but, but … the video!

Live by the buzzword, die by the buzzword. It’s been a nonsensical proposition from the start to imagine that foreign policy seriousness is defined by being the first one to hit the ‘terror’ buzzer like you’re a contestant on Jeopardy.

[Major Robert Dump]

It's very much a side issue and one that mose people will not focus on. While I think it is relevant, Obama will not be the first president to make a foreign policy or strategic blunder. I think it would help him immensely had he come out earlier and just said "Dayam Gina we ***** up!"

Obama really missed an opportunity with the Mitt-China thing. He barely scraped the surface there, as Romney now contradicts things he said and did (in relation to blind trusts) when he was running against Kennedy, and the timing of dumping his China assets or highly coincidental.

Mitt somehow managed to turn an argument about gun control into blasting single parents. While I think his broader goal was to perhaps address the 70% absentee father rate in the inner city, he was probably trying his darndest not to sound racist and it came off as an attack on single parents. It's also worth noting he is against gay marriage which would, ya know, create two parent households

Obama, meanwhile, managed to turn the issue of equal pay for women into a discussion on birth control.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Q: Can you — have you called it a terrorist attack before? Have you said that?
MR. CARNEY: I haven’t, but– I mean, people attacked our embassy. It’s an act of terror by definition.
Q: Yes, I just hadn’t heard you –
MR. CARNEY: It doesn’t have to do with what date it occurred.
Q: No, I just hadn’t heard the White House say that this was an act of terrorism or a terrorist attack. And I just –
MR. CARNEY: I don’t think the fact that we hadn’tis not — as our NCTC Director testified yesterday, a number of different elements appear to have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly in the Benghazi area. We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaeda or al Qaeda’s affiliates, in particular al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.





Uh huh...

Clearly Obama should fire his press secretary for misrepresenting him.

[rvg]

Gotta love the factcheckers (http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20121017/US.Presidential.Campaign.Fact.Check/)...

Some key moments in the debates...

In the rough-and-tumble of a town hall-style presidential debate, the facts took something of a beating Tuesday night.

Mitt Romney wrongly claimed that it took 14 days for President Barack Obama to brand the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya a terrorist act. Obama yet again claimed that ending the Afghanistan and Iraq wars makes money available to "rebuild America," even though it doesn't.

A look at some of their claims:

OBAMA: The day after last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, "I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."

ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."

OBAMA: "Get the transcript."

THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."

But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.

___

OBAMA: "Let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well."

THE FACTS: What Obama didn't mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus, using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.

___

ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters."

OBAMA: "Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my — the previous president was an oilman."

THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.

According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romney's point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last year's dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.

Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.

___

OBAMA: "For young people who've come here, brought here oftentimes by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And that's what I've done administratively."

THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young illegal immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which illegal immigrants with longstanding ties to the U.S. and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.

___

ROMNEY: "I know he keeps saying, `You want to take Detroit bankrupt.' Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it's important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened."

THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren't available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets would have been sold in pieces.

___

OBAMA: "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."

THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.

___

ROMNEY: "The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."

THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices — and gasoline prices along with them — had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as U.S. oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.

Other energy prices have fallen during Obama's term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. That's because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.

___

OBAMA: "What I've also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president."

THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obama's proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount — and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.

___

ROMNEY: "I'm going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now."

THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he can't achieve all of his goals under the budget rules presidents must follow.

The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden onto the middle class.

Romney's campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.

___

ROMNEY: "A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration."

THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.

However, Obama is not responsible for all of the deficits that have occurred on his watch. Most of the federal budget — like Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security — runs on autopilot, and no one in a leadership position in Washington has proposed deep cuts in those programs. And politicians in both parties voted two years ago to renew Bush-era tax cuts that have contributed to the deficit. Even under the strict spending cuts proposed by Romney, the debt would continue to rise, just not as quickly.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

There were no knockdowns in this round. As is typical, the chap wearing the belt is given the benefit of the doubt if the challenger does not clearly outscore him. Romney will have to do better in round three if he wants to win on all cards by enough of a margin to matter three weeks hence.

EDIT:

Currently, IF (and it is a big if) Romney gets 80% of the remaining undecideds in ALL of the battleground states, he will win. That assumes that undecideds break 4-1 in favor of the challenger in an race with an incumbent (the theory is disputed) and that those currently labeled undecided really are still undecided and not just saying that to get attention from pollsters. In addition, a major gaffe could torpedo either candidate at this point.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Jose Maria Aznar lost the Premiership in Spain because he blamed the Madrid bombings on ETA, rather than the salafist backlash to their participation in the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and Afghanistan which was the obvious choice. Instead of blaming terrorists with a history of unannounced terrorist acts, he blamed it on a domestic separatist group which would have been convenient to use as a scapegoat. This situation is nowhere near as serious as an attack on continental soil, but it illustrates a weakness and an unwillingness on the part of the Administration to deal with facts which cause the situation to look less nuanced and more black and white.

It is classical strategy to divide your enemy and make them fight themselves - it is equally important to attempt to turn your enemy's strengths into weaknesses. The democrats have been attempting to do this to Romney's business record. It would be political malpractice to cede foreign policy to the Democrats when they are so vulnerable in certain areas.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Jose Maria Aznar lost the Premiership in Spain because he blamed the Madrid bombings on ETA, rather than the salafist backlash to their participation in the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and Afghanistan which was the obvious choice.

No. Aznar lost (in part) because the Spanish had never been very keen on his zealous support of Bush, let alone the adventure in Iraq.

[ICantSpellDawg]

No. Aznar lost (in part) because the Spanish had never been very keen on his zealous support of Bush, let alone the adventure in Iraq.

How, in any way, does this contradict the statement that I had made?

[Tellos Athenaios]

How, in any way, does this contradict the statement that I had made?

In the obvious way. I pointed out that what you wrote is wrong.

[Kralizec]

Well, the Spanish were pissed off by Aznar when he pointed at ETA almost immediately and turned out to be wrong. Allthough I don't know wether it had a decisive influence on the election.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Here is the excerpt from Wikipedia (which is, of course, not infallible):

The socialists received more votes than expected as a result of the government's handling of the (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election,_2004)11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11_March_2004_Madrid_train_bombings). In the early moments following the attacks, the national government maintained the theory of the ETA responsibility; when evidence pointed to the possibility that an Islamic extremist group was behind the massacre, the ETA theory lost weight. If Islamic extremists were responsible, the attack could have been perceived by the electorate to be a consequence of the Spanish government's support of the invasion of Iraq. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_general_election,_2004)

The vote was so close and spread between so many candidates that this event could have been a deciding factor. I'm not saying that your understanding is wrong, in fact i agree with that, but my point was merely that a mis-step of this type could have a decisive or at least substantial impact on turnout and late decisions this late in the game. We need to use it and we need to use it now if ever.

[Beskar]

David Dimbleby style of moderating is my favourite, it keeps everyone one their toes.

[SoFarSoGood]

"THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."

Obama was wrong. To say ALL acts of terror are bad does not specificaly refer to any single event as an 'act of terror'. He did not specify that the Benghazi attack was a 'terror' attack just generalised about terror attacks.

[rvg]

Obama was wrong. To say ALL acts of terror are bad does not specificaly refer to any single event as an 'act of terror'. He did not specify that the Benghazi attack was a 'terror' attack just generalised about terror attacks.

He was speaking specifically in the context of the events in Benghazi. So no, it wasn't just a generalization.

[Xiahou]

Rosa Brooks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Brooks) has a lengthy critique (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/18/the_case_for_intervention) of the Obama foreign policy in Foreign Policy magazine....

Despite some successes large and small, Obama's foreign policy has disappointed many who initially supported him. The Middle East initiatives heralded in his 2009 Cairo speech fizzled or never got started at all, and the Middle East today is more volatile than ever. The administration's response to the escalating violence in Syria has consisted mostly of anxious thumb-twiddling. The Israelis and the Palestinians are both furious at us. In Afghanistan, Obama lost faith in his own strategy: he never fought to fully resource it, and now we're searching for a way to leave without condemning the Afghans to endless civil war. In Pakistan, years of throwing money in the military's direction have bought little cooperation and less love.

The Russians want to reset the reset, neither the Chinese nor anyone else can figure out what, if anything, the "pivot to Asia" really means, and Latin America and Africa continue to be mostly ignored, along with global issues such as climate change. Meanwhile, the administration's expanding drone campaign suggests a counterterrorism strategy that has completely lost its bearings -- we no longer seem very clear on who we need to kill or why.
She goes into quite a bit of detail, but her overall suggestions for Obama moving forward are:

1. Get a strategy.
2. Get some decent managers.
3. Get people who actually know something.
4. Get out of the bubble.
5. Get a backbone.

Sounds like a good start to me.

[SoFarSoGood]

He was speaking specifically in the context of the events in Benghazi. So no, it wasn't just a generalization.

If I say "No murder is right" I am NOT "saying this specific killing was murder"; a generalisation by definition does not label a specific case.

[rvg]

If I say "No murder is right" I am NOT "saying this specific killing was murder"; a generalisation by definition does not label a specific case.
When you are speaking at the press conference called specifically to address an attack in Benghazi, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together and logically presume that he had the events in Benghazi in mind. He wasn't speaking at the World's Forum Against Terrorism.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

We’re going to stand by our neighbors in Colorado during this extraordinarily difficult time. And I had a chance to speak with the mayor of Aurora as well as the governor of Colorado to express, not just on behalf of Michelle and myself, but the entire American family, how heartbroken we are.

Now, even as we learn how this happened and who’s responsible, we may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this. Such violence, such evil, is senseless. It’s beyond reason.

Is obama saying al-quaeda was responsible for the Aurora shooting?

Romney said:


And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack, and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.

And Obama's reply to that was to say that he had called it an "act of terror". That's an irrelevant reply...t doesn't rebut either of the two claims: that obama didn't describe it as a terrorist attack, and that he talked about demonstrations and videos instead.

It's the equivalent of "I didn't have sex with that woman". It's an intentional deception and Obama knew it was. And Crowley backed him up, and people on tv blathered about how it was debateable.

Shameful. Whether you like the guy or not, whether you dislike Romney or not, there's no reason to excuse his lying about something this important or his disgraceful foreign policy ideas.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think this argument over some ******* wording is dumb.

[Strike For The South]

I think this argument over some ******* wording is dumb.

I think deception and a biased moderator are "dumb"

Yet here we are

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think deception and a biased moderator are "dumb"

Yet here we are

I guess so. I will just wait out the current conversation.

[Ronin]

I think deception and a biased moderator are "dumb"

Yet here we are

well you know what they say....reality has a well known liberal bias.

[Major Robert Dump]

Anyone see Whoop Goldberg try to Gocha Ann Romney and look like a RETART in the process? Golden television.

Whoopi is turning into another Rosie. Yes, I watch the view, with the volume down, because Liz is hawt.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSbxBQhzk3M&feature=related

[Centurion1]

I would prefer a little girl like Jimmy Lehrer to a biased cow like Candy Crowley who destroys the pure nature of an unbiased debate with her manatee mumbles.

[Strike For The South]

well you know what they say....reality has a well known liberal bias.

A moderator is not meant to be a fact checker. When she says Obama called it terrorism she loses all credibility as a moderator.

The actual context of the speech shows Obama hedging his bets, which is understandable. You don't want to get out too far ahead in these foreign policy debacles as they are nightmares to walk back. An added bonus is the ambiguous language allows Obama to reference the speech in an abstract way.

Crawleys language was unambiguous, added with the perception of being fair.

[ICantSpellDawg]

A moderator is not meant to be a fact checker. When she says Obama called it terrorism she loses all credibility as a moderator.

The actual context of the speech shows Obama hedging his bets, which is understandable. You don't want to get out too far ahead in these foreign policy debacles as they are nightmares to walk back. An added bonus is the ambiguous language allows Obama to reference the speech in an abstract way.

Crawleys language was unambiguous, added with the perception of being fair.

I've never agreed with you more. This is exactly my thought process on the issue. You must be doing something wrong.

This is the kind of stuff that causes Democrats to call us liars more often than we are overtly lying about things.

[SoFarSoGood]

When you are speaking at the press conference called specifically to address an attack in Benghazi, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together and logically presume that he had the events in Benghazi in mind. He wasn't speaking at the World's Forum Against Terrorism.

Ok so if I say "I like eating fish" I am specificaly referring to the fish I ate yesterday? Not the one that made me ill two weeks ago? Clearly not: I am using a generalism and that is what Obama did. The point is that no matter when Obama said these words he did NOT say that the Benghazi attack itself was 'terror attack'. The moderator was wrong and perhaps Obama should learn to express himself better if that is what he meant because it is NOT what he said.

[Strike For The South]

I've never agreed with you more. This is exactly my thought process on the issue. You must be doing something wrong.

This is the kind of stuff that causes Democrats to call us liars more often than we are overtly lying about things.

I'm not even upset that Obama framed it the way he did, it is to be expected.

Crawley lost her cool and had a fantasy moment where she is some white knight fact checker when that is not her job

[Sasaki Kojiro]

This whole Bengazi thing is a text book case of Republicans politicizing a tragedy in order to paint the opposition as weak.

Pretty tired of it.

It's a political tragedy. A terrorist attack on a consulate, 4 americans killed. It doesn't make sense to talk about "politicizing" it. The NRA accuses left wing people of politicizing a tragedy every time there's a shooting, sometimes they have a good point but it's not the get-out-of-jail-free card they want it to be.

What you want to accuse them of is exploiting the tragedy. But you'd be hard pressed to make that case, and most of what the administration is being criticized for they brought on themselves by their response to the attack--and with their foreign policy of the previous four years. That was the substance of Romney's comment in the debate.



Wow. Only in this weird ultra conservative universe would calling someone out on a bold faced politically motivated lie be considered heinous.

Leaving aside the "bold faced politically motivated lie" part, most people from all sides would still say that if she was going to do it, she should have done it consistently and called out Obama's lies. "This is the guy who said let Detroit go bankrupt" what would the fact check on that have been? "Actually Mr. President, Detroit did go bankrupt, you seem to be confused"?

To believe that it would be good for the moderators to fact check you would have to be one of those people who has faith in the competence of journalists and the fact checkers in general. But it's obvious how misplaced that would be. At another point Obama said that Romney had called the Arizona immigration law "a model for the nation". Crowley could have fact checked him (as Romney did) and pointed to the transcript where Romney singles out the E-verify. But that would have been a stupid intervention because as far as I know Romney is not really against the other parts of the law. It's not really a bad comment from Obama--nothing like as idiotic, deceptive, and patronizing as the detroit bankruptcy comment. But the fact check bloggers have shown themselves incompetent at understanding that kind of thing.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I'm not even upset that Obama framed it the way he did, it is to be expected.

Crawley lost her cool and had a fantasy moment where she is some white knight fact checker when that is not her job

I'm not upset about it either - but it is a divergence from an American black/white understandign of foreign policy and needed to be exploited as an actual difference. The Obama administration is reluctant to call acts of terrorism terrorism (generally) and a Republican administration would take the opposite approach. Plusses and minuses to both, but to suggest that there is no difference would be to suggest that the administration's policy of nuance is no different than the Bush admins policy of "with us or you're terrorists". Clearly there is a difference, hence the point that Mitt Romney was attempting to make, until cut off by Cameron Mannheim Steamroller 2.0.

Again, I agree with you on your observation.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I'll concede all of that. Obama is no saint (i am specifically still pissed that he did not veto the NDAA), and lack of fact checking in general means these debates are worthless.

Ideally, i would want the moderator to step in every time there is a lie, a sly misdirect to avoid answering a question, or even when they keep repeating the same half true talking points over and over.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, lack of accountability and honesty is the problem. It has to stop for these debates to be anything other than a joke.

The debates are not worthless. They forced Romney's hand to introduce his "floating basket deductions cap" which accounts for approx 32% of the revenue in his tax plan. It is genius because it preserves the credits that voting Americans like while actually closing deductions for the upper class. This is a development and he is called to task in a way that a one way TV ad isn't going to do. I love the idea. I like that politicians are dishonest, but it is more important that there be transparency available to immediately call them on BS. People seeking anything will be dishonest. I don't need my political leaders to be honest or ethical men - I just need to catch them and ruin them if they screw me. To attempt to elect people who are not going to BS you and take advantage of your trust is naive. People are people and we elect them because we are too busy, ugly, corrupt, and/or irritating to run for office ourselves. They aren't running for Jesus, just trying to keep people working and avoid nuclear war. We also hire them to keep the high road while cheating our competitors, so honesty isnt the way to get that done.

Deception is key to governing masses of minimally intelligent animals. As people become more intelligent their leaders do too. Try talking sense to a burning theater full of people. try to keep them moving out of the theater in an orderly fashion after telling them the truth.

[a completely inoffensive name]

With all due respect, that's a load of crap. If your are okay with your leaders not respecting you enough to be honest and down to earth, then you deserve the figuritive anal violation they're going to give you in return.

Why not just come out and admit you want an authoritarian regime? Maybe some Oligarchy of pre-approved millionaires from the Fox News top 100 Douchebags list? If we aren't going to DEMAND more honesty and DEMAND more transparency and DEMAND Democratic progress then we should just give up any pretense of being an enlightened society and go back to killing eachother for whichever asshole happens to own the piece of land we're serfing on.
:wall:

Obviously we can never achieve the perfect, so we must never strive for the good.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Was that sarcasm? I think it was, but I'm notoriously bad at discerning it over the web.

But if it was, then I think you get it. Just because people are flawed creatures doesn't mean we can't try and be better. If we don't demand moral behaviour from the people we are electing to LEAD US, then we are an immoral society and not worth the effort. It is that simple.

I was indeed being sarcastic. Only by raising standards can we raise the aggregate performance. The failure of the public began with the failure of the people's institutions. The anger and rebellion of the 1960s policies was followed by the removal of faith in public institutions in the 1970s. The evangelical revival in the early 1980s then followed by gay scandals and general hedonism by some of its most prominent members. As the public grew tired of seeing failure, the 4th estate slowly dismantled its integrity for higher ratings.

I have been having a massive head cold that has me incapacitated in bed all day, so this is likely delirious, but by catering to base rhetorical arguments because it is "foolish" for modern society to provide real services that compliments or dissembles the message of politicians you are merely accelerating the end goal of having the public eventually distrust itself and stupidly reside its power in the hands of the few or the one.

[SoFarSoGood]

Ideally, i would want the moderator to step in every time there is a lie

If you want moderators to check facts; fine. If you don't want them to; again fine. The point is that if they are going check facts they have to be impartial and more importantly right. The Lady was wrong.

[gaelic cowboy]

If you want moderators to check facts; fine. If you don't want them to; again fine. The point is that if they are going check facts they have to be impartial and more importantly right. The Lady was wrong.

unfortunately for Mr Romney that doesn't mean by extension that he is right.

[Tuuvi]

Deception is key to governing masses of minimally intelligent animals. As people become more intelligent their leaders do too. Try talking sense to a burning theater full of people. try to keep them moving out of the theater in an orderly fashion after telling them the truth.

Bleh I think the belief that the average voter is stupid and needs to be lied to or have his/her voting rights taken away is a tad bit self-righteous. Aren't most of us average voters? What makes us so special? The funny thing is most people that you talk to about politics seem to think they're smarter than everyone else and only they should be the ones voting.