2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[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 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 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...

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 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.

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 has a lengthy critique 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.

[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.