***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[david bowman]

?

I don't understand.

You are trying to bring logic into this, average american doesnt care about policies and facts

 

[david bowman]

chris mathews from MSNBC even said obama lost...da rest of ya need to just suck it up, and hope big O put up a better fight for round 2.

Almost every liberal said obama lost. It happened. There's nothing to argue about.

 

[WASPS ANDD ASPS]

[=][/]

Black Dynamite

 

[sreggie101]

Dude is blaming Obama for the lack of bipartisan basis. LOL. 

obama care was a party line vote though....

Do you know why?

Thats why that claim is such ********.

Of course in MA Romney could work along party lines. People weren't trying to put their feet out to trip him up. 

Are you blind to how much **** Obama went through just to pass the initial bill? 


It BECAME Romneycare...which is a late 80s republican idea. It started as universal healthcare.

I don't even like Obamacare because it falls short of where we need to be. 


Its damn near apart of the party platform to NOT work with Obama. 

Do you know who Grover Norquist is and the vice-grip he has on the balls of all those elephants in congress?



AND THEN...


When asked about it, Romney says well the ONLY difference is that some people with (D) next to their name voted for my plan.

HE IGNORED THE FACT THAT THE PLANS ARE THE SAME...OBVIOUSLY THE GLARING OMISSION.

obama has no one to blame but himself on why da public option didn't survive da affordable care act.

No. You can thank the Tea Party for that. 

isn't of taking those blue dog democrats feet and put em in da fire PERSONALLY he just fell back and let pelosi and reid crave out da framework of da bill

and he fell back.

That has nothing to do with the public option, and frankly they weren't responsible for the loss of the public option either. 

democrats had a supermajority in congress AND senate. and his OWN PARTY gutted da bill because they didn't have da cojones to stand up

to da GOP fillerbustering and conservative democrats playing hard ball asking for kickbacks to vote yes when they should've just did so without da drama.

Wait. Now you're saying Obama should have just accepted an even WORSE deal? 

The fillerbustering(sp?) has happened at an UNPRECEDENTED level and you're telling him to just suck it up?

The GOP is the reason we have a crappy healthcare bill in the first place...but its better than NO healthcare bill

thats ALL obama's fault because he lacked leadership in those instances.

then those same blue dog dems got SLAUGHTERED in 2010 with da tea party wave getting swept in.

Holy hell you're being daft.

Is your memory that short?

Lacking leadership?

The dude went to congress and damn near begged them to try and work with him and they still said no.

the GOP is NOT interested in working across the aisles. Stop acting like this was even going to happen. 

being srs...thank you. idk why people choose to ignore all of this, one need only watch the news.

 

[essential1]

FiveThirtyEight blog

"My own instant reaction is that Mr. Romney may have done the equivalent of kick a field goal, perhaps not bringing the race to draw, but setting himself up in such a way that his comeback chances have improved by a material amount. The news cycle will be busy between now and Nov. 6, with a jobs report coming out on Friday, a vice-presidential debate next week and then two more presidential debates on Oct. 16 and Oct. 22.

According to one prominent offshore gambling site, Pinnacle Sports, Mr. Obama’s odds of winning the election declined to about 73 percent after the debate from around 80 percent beforehand."

 

[ayodude]

Dear Gawd, I have to stay away from Facebook for the next couple days. This is nothing against our president but his band of loyal followers... Nevermind I will leave it at that, if you have a Facebook account scroll down your wall and last night I am sure you will see some interesting post. Like I said before many black Americans support Obama only on race and skimming through Facebook last night it was obvious.#Obamaleggo"Obama bout to knock dis n_ out""Obama lookin down cuz he playin angry birds"#Obamachangeswag

 

[ninjahood]

I read through 13 pages of this thread and most say Romney won but no one posted about what his actual plans are.

When da economy is this bad, Romney shining a light on Obama's record was

Hurting his debate.

 

[beh235]

Dear Gawd, I have to stay away from Facebook for the next couple days. This is nothing against our president but his band of loyal followers... Nevermind I will leave it at that, if you have a Facebook account scroll down your wall and last night I am sure you will see some interesting post. Like I said before many black Americans support Obama only on race and skimming through Facebook last night it was obvious. #Obamaleggo "Obama bout to knock dis n_ out" "Obama lookin down cuz he playin angry birds" #Obamachangeswag

That is just....sad. I had a friend who said she had to stay away from FB last night. It's no different than a social media version of Jerry Springer with the show being a live event .

 

[cj863]

Even after the POTUS's less than enthusiastic performance last night, I don't think the American public is fooled. Most news outlets are doing a good job of displaying the facts and pretty much just keeping it real. Many of the comments I've read echoed the same sentiments. The public knows Romney is a fraud for the most part, and we see that he's pretty much trying to leave us at the will of the private sector. With that said, Biden is going to come out swinging but then again he was going to do that anyway

 

[sreggie101]

excerpt from huffpost...


Romney pointed out, rightly, that Obama didn't get behind the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction bill -- which his vice presidential pick, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), voted against -- even though he admitted he doesn't support it either.

"The president should have grabbed that," Romney said of deficit reduction, specifically citing the plan.

"Do you support it?" moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS countered.

"I have my own plan," Romney responded. "I think the president should have grabbed it. If you have some adjustments, make it, take it to congress, go for it."

 

[lyonbc1]

Some Fact Checks;

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-presidential-debate-fact-check-who-lied.html

Romney: “Health-care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family.”

Factcheck.org, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s accuracy policy, say this is false. They cite a Kaiser Family Foundation survey (PDF) that found that between 2010 and 2011, the average health-insurance premium cost for families increased by $1,300, not $2,500, and point out that even between 2009 and 2011 the increase in average cost was only $1,700.

Obama: “I put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. It’s on a website. You can look at all the numbers. What cuts we make and what revenue we raise.”

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler argues that this statement isn’t exactly true. First of all, $1 trillion of the $4 trillion the president says his budget plan will cut from the deficit was already reached a year ago, so that’s $1 trillion that’s already cut regardless of who wins the election. Kessler also points out that Obama’s $4 trillion figure includes $848 billion saved by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—money that, since ending the wars have been in the works for a while, the administration had never intended to spend in the first place. “Imagine someone borrowing $50,000 a year for college—and then declaring that they have an extra $500,000 to spend over the next decade once they graduate,” is how Kessler explains it.

Romney: “I’m not going to cut education funding. I don’t have a plan to cut education funding.”

Trip Gabriel at The New York Times notes that, contrary to this statement, Mitt Romney has suggested in the past that he would, in fact, cut the education budget. Back in the spring, reporters heard Romney tell a group of Florida donors that, as president, he would merge another federal agency with the Education Department, “or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller.” While the Romney-approved House budget does not specify how cuts would affect particular federal programs, the White House’s own study (PDF) on the budget finds that it drops 200,000 children from Head Start as well as other early education programs, and gets rid of 38,000 teachers and aides at underprivileged schools as well as 27,000 special-education teachers.

Obama: “Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts, so that is another trillion dollars. And $2 trillion in additional military spending that the military hasn’t asked for. That is $8 trillion.”

ABC News’s Amy Bingham and Jon Karl point to Mitt Romney’s own campaign website (PDF) to counter the president’s argument here, calling it “mostly fiction.” Despite Romney’s repeated insistence that his tax plan would be “revenue-neutral,” the only real reason Obama’s claim that his opponent would add $5 trillion to the debt isn’t exactly true is because Mitt has never specified how his tax plan would be paid for. So, as Bingham explains, “Romney’s tax plan could add $5 trillion to the deficit. But that is an estimate on an incomplete tax plan ... The issue is that no one knows what those provisions are just yet.”

Romney: President Obama brought up a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center Study (which has been declared mostly true) that says Mitt Romney’s “revenue-neutral” plan to cut taxes for all Americans by 20 percent is impossible without raising taxes on the middle class.

In response to this, Romney claimed five other studies prove the legitimacy of his plan.

The Washington Post, Salon, and Politifact all say this claim is false because these so-called studies are not exactly studies. “One was a Wall Street Journal article from Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist and an adviser to the Romney campaign; one was from Harvey Rosen, an economist at the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies at Princeton University; one was by Matt Jensen, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; and two were Wall Street Journal editorials,” Politifact explains.

Obama: Romney will turn Medicare into a “voucher program.”

Factcheck.org disputes this. “The fact is, [Romney’s plan] is structured the same as the system Obama’s health-care law sets up for subsidizing private insurance for persons under the age 65,” the site argues.

Romney: “On Medicare for current retirees, [Obama’s] cutting $716 billion from the program.”

PolitiFact says this claim—a major talking point in the Denver debate—is half true. While $716 is not a made-up number, it refers to how much the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, would take away from Medicare spending—mostly to hospitals and insurers—over 10 years. Obamacare does not, as Romney insinuated, take $716 billion away from current Medicare recipients.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82002.html

Here’s POLITICO’s guide to sorting through some of the edgiest claims, and what the independent experts off the stage have had to say about what the two candidates claimed:
The $5 Trillion Tax Cut
Romney: “I’m not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut…. I won’t put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That’s part one. So there’s no economist that can say Mitt Romney’s tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan….I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.”
Obama: “Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut….For 18 months he’s been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he’s saying that his big, bold idea is, ‘Never mind.’”
Independent analysts say Romney’s numbers don’t add up. The rate cuts and other changes he’s proposing would indeed total almost $5 trillion over 10 years, and though he said Wednesday he’d pay for those cuts by reducing deductions and credits, a study by the Tax Policy Center found that it was “mathematically impossible” to cover the $5 trillion reduction by eliminating tax breaks solely on high-income taxpayers.
In an interview earlier this week, Romney said he might cap deductions at $17,000. During the debate, he suggested such a cap might kick in at $25,000 or $50,000. However, it’s not clear how those limits would get around the problem the Tax Policy Center study noted. The Romney camp contends that study is biased and points to others with different results. Romney acknowledged Wednesday that the bare numbers of his tax plan might not be revenue-neutral, but he said growth and new jobs created by his policies would generate added revenue to cover the gap.


Simpson-Bowles
Obama: “We’ve [taken the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan,] made some adjustments to it, and we’re putting it forward before Congress right now, a $4 trillion plan.”
Obama made the deficit-cutting plan he’s offered sound comparable to the plan from the chairmen of the Simpson-Bowles debt cutting commission. But it’s not: His proposal doesn’t save as much money as Simpson-Bowles and doesn’t offer the kinds of detailed entitlement cuts the panel’s leaders did.
The president’s $4 trillion plan, including $3 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in tax hikes from allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire, is spread over 10 years — a year longer than Simpson-Bowles. It sounds like a minor difference, but cuts and spending balloon in the so-called out years.
Also, Obama doesn’t touch Social Security in his plan. And the tax changes and war spending are accounted in ways that make Obama’s plan substantially less aggressive.
“The president’s budget falls well short of the savings claimed by the [Simpson-Bowles] commission,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The committee, the kind of wonky group Obama loves to cite, said Obama’s plan provided only about two-thirds of the savings Simpson-Bowles proposed over a comparable period with comparable assumptions.




Pre-existing conditions
Romney: “Pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan.”

Romney’s health care plan covers “individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.” That’s an important caveat: It doesn’t help sick people who have had a break in coverage or couldn’t get it before. It’s also fairly close to what the law already provided before “Obamacare” — people who moved from job to job were already covered.
Romney’s advisers have said he would expand those protections to the individual and small group markets, so his plan would go beyond current law. But there’s another significant issue his plan hasn’t addressed: Coverage can be expensive for people with pre-existing conditions, and he hasn’t said how he would make sure they don’t get charged premiums they can’t afford.




Dodd-Frank
Romney: The Dodd-Frank financial reform law “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.”
Romney has said he’d repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank reform law. Wednesday he argued that this was in part because he didn’t think the law was tough enough because it’s actually a gift to big banks by setting up a system that could bail them out in the future.
But Dodd-Frank provides no promise that too-big-to-fail banks will be bailed out. Only Congress could take such a step by passing a new law like TARP — and there is almost no chance of that happening, since the law has remained politically unpopular since it passed in 2008.
Romney seems to be hanging his argument on the idea that big banks do get some benefits under the law by virtue of new regulation. The law singles out large banks for increased regulation and oversight by regulators. This special treatment includes a new process, run by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., for liquidating the biggest banks if they were to run into trouble outside of bankruptcy courts. This translates into lower borrowing costs for these banks, the argument goes, because markets believe that if one of these banks wobbled, the government would ultimately step in and bail out investors as Washington did during the financial crisis.
But critics of Wall Street say Dodd-Frank actually does crack down on the big banks — and want the law kept in place for that reason.
On Wednesday, though, even researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said investors increasingly believe that the new law will not lead to bailouts and big bank funding advantages are lessening.




Gas prices
Romney: “Gasoline prices have doubled under the president”
There’s no doubt that a gallon of gas costs twice as much as when Obama took office in January 2009: $1.89 a gallon then to $3.87 a gallon now.
But context matters. Gas prices actually peaked at $4.11 a gallon — an all-time high — in July 2008 but had fallen in late 2008, due to the financial meltdown, before Obama took office.
Most energy experts agree that there’s not much any president has to do with gas prices, and Obama has tried to make that point himself while under fire for the rising prices.
During the debate, Romney said he’d get both energy projects moving, while Obama noted his own efforts to increase domestic energy supplies. “Oil and natural gas production are higher than they’ve been in years,” he said.




Green energy loans
Romney: “I think about half of [the green energy projects the federal government has] invested in, have gone out of business. A number of them happened to be owned by people who are contributors to your campaigns.”

Not quite half. Not even close. Of the 26 winners of Department of Energy loan guarantees under the stimulus, a total of three have gone belly up: Solyndra, Abound Solar and Beacon Power.
Several of the others, in fact, have thrived, including the maker of a Kansas cellulosic ethanol plant and one of the world’s largest wind projects in Oregon. About a dozen of the companies just got their awards in the fall of 2011, so the projects are still getting off the ground.
Romney’s campaign explained that he was including other troubled stimulus grant winners in his claim, including Raser Technologies, a Utah company that filed for bankruptcy protection despite winning $33 million in stimulus grants and ECOtality, an electric vehicle charging station manufacturer and developer that has acknowledged its under an SEC investigation.
Then there’s Solyndra. Not only was the loss huge — $535 million in taxpayer money to the now bankrupt California solar company — but the ties to the Obama campaign are deep. One of its private investors, George Kaiser, was an Obama ’08 bundler, though none of the internal emails released by the administration have showed favoritism toward the Tulsa oil billionaire. Other campaign contributors landed jobs handling stimulus money for the Energy Department, but they weren’t owners of any of the winning companies.



Out-of-work college grads
Romney: Obama’s economic policies are “not working….The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can’t find work.”
That’s an oversimplification. Romney was probably referring to an Associated Press analysis from earlier this year, which found that 53.6 percent of people under age 25 with bachelor’s degrees were unemployed or underemployed.
But, according to the AP report, only about half of those 1.5 million young college graduates had no jobs. The other half were considered underemployed, which isn’t the same as saying they “can’t find work” since they were, by definition, employed. And although the term underemployed is sometimes used to mean people who can’t find enough work, the AP research considered graduates underemployed if they were working in a job that doesn’t normally require a college degree.
While the statistics may seem grim on their face, a substantial percentage of recent college graduates have trouble finding work even during economic booms. In 2000 — at the height of the dot-com bubble — 41 percent were unemployed or underemployed.



Rising Medicare costs
Obama: The Republican Medicare plan “would cost the average senior about $6,000 a year.”
This might be a stretch. Obama covered himself by pointing out that this estimate applied to Paul Ryan’s original Medicare plan. At the time, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimated that the plan would shift nearly $6,400 in costs to seniors. But that plan had a hard limit on how much could be spent on Medicare each year — and Romney’s campaign says his plan has no such limit.
Obama doesn’t buy Romney’s argument that competition among private plans alone will bring down costs. He argued that “Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurance does,” and that “if you are going to save any money through what Governor Romney’s proposing … is that the money has to come from somewhere.” But he did acknowledge that Romney’s plan is different from the Ryan plan — and that “in fairness, what Governor Romney has now said is he’ll maintain traditional Medicare alongside it.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82002.html#ixzz28L40apUH

 

[big j 33]

 

[jjs07]

You remember back in HS and college when you had a presentation to do, you weren't prepared, and just went up and "winged" it? That's what Obama looked/sounded like to me during the debate last night.

 

[datznasty]

Dear Gawd, I have to stay away from Facebook for the next couple days. This is nothing against our president but his band of loyal followers... Nevermind I will leave it at that, if you have a Facebook account scroll down your wall and last night I am sure you will see some interesting post. Like I said before many black Americans support Obama only on race and skimming through Facebook last night it was obvious. #Obamaleggo "Obama bout to knock dis n_ out" "Obama lookin down cuz he playin angry birds" #Obamachangeswag

If Romney was black, and Obama was white, do you think black people would vote for Romney?

Tired of yall repeating this less than thinly veiled insult, like black people don't vote over 90% Democrat anyways, even when it's Kerry or Gore or like black people don't typically dislike (R) Allen West of Florida.

 

[shannonscrooks]

^^That and he didnt have a teleprompter.

 

[rashi]

 

[b smooth 202]

did not watch

 

[Ace Ready]

Sucks that Barack let Romney lie throughout the debate but he'll be just fine.. will the polls tighten? maybe. But I dont see all these swing states where Romney is behind all of a sudden go for him ,people can see through the ******** and its not gonna pay off on Nov 6th. Obama will need to be more agressive in pointing out how Romney lied the majority of the time up there Plus Obama looked old as hell for some reason isn't dude 10 years younger than Romney? lol

And are dudes still obsessed about Obama and the Black support he gets? Man yall need to get a life foreal Romney has so many anti black man in the White House votes its not even funny so stop bi#chin.

 

[kingsin]

Sucks that Barack let Romney lie throughout the debate but he'll be just fine.. will the polls tighten? maybe. But I dont see all these swing states where Romney is behind all of a sudden go for him ,people can see through the ******** and its not gonna pay off on Nov 6th. Obama will need to be more agressive in pointing out how Romney lied the majority of the time up there Plus Obama looked old as hell for some reason isn't dude 10 years younger than Romney? lol

And are dudes still obsessed about Obama and the Black support he gets? Man yall need to get a life foreal Romney has so many anti black man in the White House votes its not even funny so stop bi#chin.

Maaaaaaan, U get a rep point for that! Government Gridlock/Federal Paralysis ring a bell for anyone? If the people running the country (house) move like that, you know the guys on the ground level are snarling at the teeth to get him outta there lol.

Thank god he's getting support from somewhere (hope its not for naught tho)

 

[kingsin]

You dudes are too much

 

[futuremd]

^ Scary. I'm not voting this election, but I sure as hell do not want to see R-Money as president.

I'm utterly afraid to know what other opinions you have.

Just appalled 

 

[futuremd]

Tax plan: Cut PBS, Save the Military. 

 

[futuremd]

Obama's approach is no different than it was 4 years ago

I still think Mitt's over aggression could put him in trouble later, we'll see though

Thats not even true.

Both candidates were running for an empty seat so the debate tactics are completely different. 

Obama is running as an incumbent so facts and stats are more important to him. 

When two people are running for an open seat, style matters, but at some point or another, AGAIN, details and specifics matter. They matter so much that people think Obama OVER promised people. 

Thats how much he offered to the public. 

 

[elpablo21]

Fair point

 

[futuremd]