***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[rocky437]

“I think the vice president very well knows, that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way,” Ryan said.
The reference is to Biden’s knack for gaffes. Owned.

 

[acemaster193]

The amount of disrespect Biden had for Ryan in that debate was hilarious. Ryan's a minor leaguer in a man's game. Dude had me rolling with his interruptions and bursts of laughter.

 

[acemaster193]

“I think the vice president very well knows, that sometimes the words don’t come out of your mouth the right way,” Ryan said.
The reference is to Biden’s knack for gaffes. Owned.

Yeah, but he means what he says. Burn.

 

[rashi]

I don't understand what these debates are about.

Foreign Policy - They both agreed that the US should police the world, and more drones
Medicare and SS - Both agree that young people should be taxed into oblivion to pay for choice A.) Government run or choice B.) Government mandated reallocation on money into "private" accounts
Unemployment - Both agree that the government should manage the economy
Taxation - Both agree they need them, semantics are just different. Both will just fiddle with the tax code to manipulate peoples spending behavior.
Syria/Libya - Both agree that innocent people need to be killed because leaders of foreign countries aren't their puppets.
Abortion - Both think the government needs to decide how peoples life are run. Democrats say they're "pro-choice", in which they are ok with the woman's choice to kill a child, but are not ok with an individual's choice to smoke weed. Got it. Republican's use 7lbs. z. baby jesus through government to dictate peoples lives. Got it.

 

[futuremd]

Yep you guys are right the facts clearly only support Biden or do they
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...ial-debate-fact-check-20121012,0,743796.story

Now, now.. you know you the dems aren't going to OPENLY admit Biden lied..  They'll swear up and down Obama and Biden only talk FACTS..  Or they'll rationalize it and say, "Well Ryan lied more than Biden" so it's ok..

We can play that game too. Lets look at your arguments. I'm pretty sure you'd love that.

Looking at bidens claims we see the following:

BIDEN: "Well, we weren't told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again. And by the way, at the time we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view."

RYAN: "There were requests for more security."

THE FACTS: Ryan is right, judging by testimony from Obama administration officials at the hearing a day earlier.

Charlene R. Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary for diplomatic security, told lawmakers she refused requests for more security in Benghazi, saying the department wanted to train Libyans to protect the consulate. "Yes, sir, I said personally I would not support it," she said.

Eric Nordstrom, who was the top security official in Libya earlier this year, testified he was criticized for seeking more security. He said conversations he had with people in Washington led him to believe that it was "abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident. How thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?"

He said his exasperation reached a point where he told a colleague that "for me the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

I'd love to know how its the STATE DEPARTMENT'S faul, when it was revealed by these same congressmen at the hearing that it was a CIA operation that being run out of that embassy.

How is that?

Those men were CIA and CIA related. Its already come out that they were the ones responsible for handling such requests.

Lets move on to the next one.

BIDEN: "We went out and rescued General Motors."

THE FACTS: Actually, the auto bailout of General Motors and Chrysler began under President George W. Bush. The Obama administration continued and expanded it.

Thats not what Biden was saying.

Biden was saying that the Government should bail out its crucial businesses. Thats why he was saying the GOP was continually betting against america and wanted Detroit just to go bankrupt. 

He didn't mean HIM, he meant the role of the government as a means of getting involved in the financial crisis.

BIDEN, when asked who would pay more taxes in Obama's second term: "People making a million dollars or more."

THE FACTS: Obama's proposed tax increase reaches farther down the income ladder than millionaires. He wants to roll back Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making over $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

No argument there. 

BIDEN: "What we did is, we saved $716 billion and put it back, applied it to Medicare."

THE FACTS: Contrary to Biden's assertion, not all the money cut from Medicare is going back into the program in some other way. The administration is cutting $716 billion over 10 years in Medicare payments to providers and using some of the money to improve benefits under the program. But most of the money is being used to expand health care coverage outside of Medicare.

Is this even serious?

This entire clause contradicted itself.

BIDEN: "Romney said 'No, let Detroit go bankrupt.'"

THE FACTS: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has gotten endless grief through the campaign for the headline put on his November 2008 opinion essay that he wrote for The New York Times. But his point was never that he wanted the auto industry to go down the tubes.

Romney opposed using government money to bail out Chrysler and General Motors, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. His prescription seemed improbable. Automakers were hemorrhaging cash and the banking system was in crisis, so private money wasn't available. Without the government money, it's likely both companies would have gone out of business. Romney did propose government-guaranteed private loans for both companies after bankruptcy.

If that isn't bankruptcy I don't know what that is. 

RYAN: "This one tax would actually tax about 53 percent of small-business income."

BIDEN: "Ninety-seven percent of the small businesses in America pay less — make less than $250,000."

THE FACTS: Both are correct, but incomplete, when sizing up the effect on small business of raising taxes for individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000, as Obama wants to do. Republicans say that would hit small-business owners who report business income on their individual income tax; Democrats say the overwhelming majority of small businesses would not be affected.

According to a 2010 report by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper for Congress, about 3 percent of people who report business income would face a tax increase under Obama's plan. That support's Biden's point.

The same report says those business owners account for about half of all business income. That supports Ryan.

Are you kidding me? 

 

[deleted]

I don't understand what these debates are about.

This thread has taught me that they're used primarily to incite arguments between voters.

 

[crcballer55]

By judging from the talking points of the Obama/Biden ticket, I would think that the "policies that got us in this mess" were the tax breaks for the rich. They're acting like Social Security and Medicare are solvent when they're scheduled to start losing money in the next 20 years. Like we've reigned in the large banks from being "too big to fail" when the top 5 are even bigger than they were in 2008. Like they're more transparent than any administration before when the story changes constantly when they're caught in a lie (Lybia? Solyndra? Fast & Furious?).

Whether they have directly lied or not, they are playing the role of a well trained attorney/magician. They tell you the story to lead you to the conclusion they want you to think so that when you catch them doing what you didn't expect they can simply say, "I never said that". If anything, that's where they will get Romney/Ryan because they are money guys used to laying out the facts to their clients/constituents and effectively tying their own noose when things don't go as they said.

 

[Kimchi Papi]

I don't understand what these debates are about.

This thread has taught me that they're used primarily to incite arguments between voters.

Yup...

 

[futuremd]

I don't understand what these debates are about.

This thread has taught me that they're used primarily to incite arguments between voters.

I don't see how thats a bad thing.

Its the reluctance to have people think for themselves instead of relying on talking points from polemicists 

 

[futuremd]

• •SUBSCRIBE
• •RENEW
• •GIVE A GIFT
• •DIGITAL EDITION

Print  | Close

[h1]How Critics of Obama's Libya Response Profoundly Misunderstand Intelligence[/h1][h5]By Aki Peritz[/h5]

Agencies still don't have all the facts about what went down in Benghazi, and interpreting them correctly will take time, a former CIA analyst explains.

The U.S Consulate in Benghazi burns following an attack in September. (Reuters)

High-profile  Republican  politicians  and their media  surrogates  are accusing President Obama and other top White House staff of "lying" to the public about last month's deadly assault on America's diplomatic post  in Benghazi, Libya.

This accusation not only misses the mark but also demonstrates how profoundly the accusers misunderstand how intelligence works. In fact, the White House's evolving timeline for what happened in Benghazi is proof of precisely the opposite of what the breathless accusers suggest -- it is a sign of a normal, healthy intelligence process.

To believe that the initial statements about what happened in Benghazi were a lie, one has to assume: (1) The administration had all the facts, even as the situation was evolving; (2) the administration chose to tell a deliberately false story about those facts; and (3) the story it told was consistent, with no administration official contradicting the official line. There is little evidence to support any of these three pillars of the Republican case against the White House.

To be clear, I don't have access to the raw or finished intelligence detailing the particulars of the Benghazi investigation. (If I did, I wouldn't be writing this.) But I did serve as a CIA analyst during the Bush Administration, and I authored dozens of finished products on terrorists and their strategies. I have seen how this process works. When intelligence from a conflict zone is assessed, the results are not clear, linear, or static. Rather, 21st-century intelligence analysis -- particularly when it is occurring in real-time and on something high-profile -- can be messy, obtuse and, above all, evolving.

So, here are four facts about intelligence analysis to consider before accusing any president (regardless of party) of lying during a crisis:

1. A lot of first-contact intelligence is wrong. When bad things happen, the intelligence (and the assumptions that flow from it) often is contradictory, fragmented, or flat-out erroneous. So, anyone reading the stream of "situation reports" about fast-moving events must take a cautious, measured approach before coming to a definite conclusion.

Moreover, if the intelligence on a fast-moving crisis contradicts an accepted narrative (e.g., that the attacks in Egypt and Libya were related to the offensive YouTube video) it can be hard for both the analysts and  their policymaking readers to overcome these early assumptions.

Here's an example: Ten years ago this month, D.C.-area residents were held hostage by the rampages of the Beltway sniper. Over the course of three weeks, the killer slaughtered 10 people and injured others, mostly at random. Based on reasonable FBI and local law-enforcement analysis, the killer was said to be a lone, white, employed, male gunman in a white van. It took additional information and some dumb luck to determine that, other than his gender, every one of these assumptions was totallywrong.

2. Intelligence analysts almost always hedge their language. Analysts don't own crystal balls, but they nevertheless are asked to comment upon the likely future status of current events. So it is a rare document indeed that authoritatively states an analytic judgment, and such statements are almost never made after a fluid situation like the Benghazi attack.

Instead, the vast majority of finished intelligence products are imbued with weasel words: "may have;" "possibly;" "perhaps;" "in part;" etc. The point in authoring intelligence analysis is not to be correct, it is to be not incorrect. This is because, once placed on paper or in the computer file, the analytic judgment stands nakedly till the end of time. As 40-year CIA vet Marty Petersen once explained, "Every time we publish, we go 'on the record' and the record is there forever, for the second guessers, the hindsight experts, and anyone with an agenda." No institution wants to be dressed down by its superiors, publicly shamed, or -- even worse -- subpoenaed by a hostile congressional committee.

In the famous "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US" Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, one of the major analytic points was that "Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently  maintains a support structure that could  aid attacks" (emphasis added). Notice that this analysis uses two hedges in a single sentence. Given the lack of certainty on the issue, such linguistic dodging made sense -- as it does in report after report where individuals are discussing information below the level of actionable intelligence.

In the case of Benghazi, it's even harder to see how analysts could have come to an immediate definitive post-attack conclusion. After all, the surviving consular officials left  Benghazi, pulling the plug on U.S. efforts to collect human intelligence. As of this writing, the FBI has yet to arrive  in Benghazi to begin its investigation. Analysts all want to serve the policymakers, but can't do so without basic facts. In the Benghazi case, the facts in the immediate aftermath of the attack were scarce -- or missing entirely.

3. The intelligence community's production timelines are ill-suited to our 24/7 news cycle.  Finished intelligence products must pass through multiple layers of bureaucratic review, which substantially slows the process of putting intelligence into policymakers' hands. But our era of instant comment forces policymakers to react in real-time. And the media sometimes garbles this message.

Case in point: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this on September 26:

 For some time, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other groups have launched attacks and kidnappings from northern Mali into neighboring countries ... and they are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions underway in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi.

Notice that she doesn't say that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb committed the attack. In fact, she doesn't ascribe blame to any particular group at all. But that's not what was reported on Fox News  orCNN.

Careful, reasoned analysis takes time to craft. Instant opinions -- the coin of today's media realm -- do not. Guess which one wins in our 24-hour media culture.

4. Arguing over what to call the assailants misses the point.  Were the Benghazi attackers "extremists," "militants," or "terrorists?" Some non-linguists really seem to care.

But those who criticize this lack of specificity are splitting semantic hairs. We don't know who carried out the attack with absolute certainty -- that's what the FBI investigation is for -- but what the group is called on the Sunday talk shows matters less than identifying the individuals who carried out the assault and then going after them.

Here's an example: During the Iraq War, according to most intelligence analysts, Sunnis attacking Americans were "terrorists" but Shiites were "militants." Of course, the result -- U.S. casualties -- was the same regardless of who was attacking, and American service-members went after both groups with equal ferocity.

***

So did the president and others concoct some vast scheme to mislead the American public? The facts indicate otherwise.

First, it's clear that Obama was presented with a changing and muddied intelligence picture. The administration still hasn't finished gathering the evidence, and it had even less in the hours just after the attack.

Second, the criticisms of the administration's response are limited to parsing, not refuting the facts as they've stated them. Were the assailants "extremists" or "terrorists"? Either way, America is committed to finding them and bringing them to justice.

Third, the evolution of the explanation itself is an indication of candid and careful re-assessment, not of a consistent lie. An administration forthright enough  to tell the world when its first findings were wrong should be applauded, not pilloried.

Finally, our government is too vast and far too leaky to support such a conspiracy. We aren't seeing a cover-up; rather, we are seeing the mundane workings of the intelligence community as it is attempting, however imperfectly, to keep up with fast-moving events.

Blaming the president for not having instantaneous and perfect information is a ridiculous political stunt. But it has consequences beyond partisan gamesmanship. Such charges against the intelligence community unfairly make our analysts into political pawns. These are serious public servants who are trying to get to the bottom of a dangerous situation. It's time for Republicans to get serious as well.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...profoundly-misunderstand-intelligence/263139/

Copyright [emoji]169[/emoji] 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

 

[3am scholar]

 

[7thave btn 31stn33rd st]

 

[futuremd]

10:00 pm[h6] [/h6][h6]Dylan Matthews[/h6]

[h2]No, six studies did not debunk the Tax Policy Center’s finding on the Romney tax plan[/h2]
Paul Ryan repeated his campaign’s talking point that six studies have debunked the Tax Policy Center’s claim that it is “mathematically impossible” for Romney to implement all his tax cuts, achieve revenue neutrality, not raise taxes on the middle class, and not raise taxes on investments.

I can’t believe we have to keep saying this, but no, six studies did not say that. One study, from Harvard’s Martin Feldstein, only found that the Romney plan is possible by fiddling with the definition of “middle class”, and confirmed TPC’s finding under the definition TPC used. Another, from AEI’s Matt Jensen, found that if you subject some investment income, namely interest on state and local bonds, to taxes, the plan need not raise middle class taxes. But that leaves TPC’s claim untouched. Another, from Princeton’s Harvey Rosen, relied on implausibly high estimates of the growth effects of the Romney tax plan, and even then confirmed the TPC finding when comparing the plan to a baseline where the Bush tax cuts expire. And another, from the Heritage Foundation’s Charles Dubay, is based on a misestimation of the cost of an obscure estate tax provision.

What’s more, not all of these are actual studies. Jensen’s critique, for example, came in the form of a blog post. That says nothing about its quality, just that the Romney campaign’s characterization is a bit odd. Only three working papers or studies – one from Rosen, one from Dubay, and one from Feldstein – attempt to rebut the TPC study, and none succeed in rebutting TPC’s actual points.

In short, the Romney plan is mathematically impossible. Biden is right. Ryan is wrong.

 

[futuremd]

[h1]http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/10/mitt-romney-taxes[/h1][h1]Mitt Romney on taxes[/h1][h3]Fudging the numbers[/h3]
Oct 11th 2012, 15:44 by M.S.




TUESDAY night on the fading dowager of cable news that is CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked Mitt Romney about his tax proposals. What specific deductions did Mr Romney propose to eliminate in order to finance his promise to cut income-tax rates by 20%, Mr Blitzer asked? Home mortgage interest? Charitable donations? No, Mr Romney said, he'd keep those. So how would he limit deductions? Would he institute an overall deductions cap of $17,000, as he's vaguely mentioned on the campaign trail? Well, Mr Romney said, a cap might be possible; it could be $25,000, it could be $50,000. (He appears to have backed away from the $17,000 figure.) "Would that add up to the $4.8 or $5 trillion it's been estimated your comprehensive tax reductions would cost?" asked Mr Blitzer. Well, Mr Romney replied, that $5 trillion number is wrong, because it doesn't take into account the elimination of deductions. "The president's charge of a $5 trillion tax cut is obviously inaccurate and wrong because what he says is, all right, let's look at all the rates you're lowering, and then he ignores the fact that I also say we're also going to limit deductions and credits and exemptions."

You see what he just did there, right? If the United States were a publicly-traded company and Mitt Romney were its CEO, and if that interview had been a conference call with analysts, shares in USA Inc would have dropped 5% in the subsequent minute. What Mr Blitzer asked was: do your proposed revenue enhancements fully compensate for your proposed $5 trillion in revenue cuts? And Mr Romney answered that it won't really be $5 trillion in cuts, because of the enhancements. Mr Romney is not mathematically illiterate; he's a former CEO who is very used to answering pointed questions about numbers. He understood what Mr Blitzer asked. His response is an acknowledgment that he can't make his numbers add up, so he's hiding behind a smokescreen of feigned incomprehension. The deduction caps can't make up for the tax cuts he's proposing. Either some of those cuts won't happen, or the deficit will go up.

We knew this, of course. Capping deductions can't make up for a 20% across-the-board rate cut, a corporate tax cut from 35% to 25%, eliminating the alternative minimum tax and the estate tax, and the other cuts Mr Romney wants. The same calculations theTax Policy Center  (TPC) made in August still hold. Suzy Khimm  points us to the TPC's calculations  of how much tax-deductible income is out there for Mr Romney to harvest in order to finance his cuts. (Brian Beutler  has a nicer version of the charts.) On average, people in the top population quintile took $37,673 in deductions in 2011, while those in the second quintile took $19,671; tax units in lower quintiles rarely took more than $17,000 in deductions. There are 22.6m tax units in the top quintile, and 26m tax units in the second quintile. That means capping deductions at $17,000 would give you an extra $539 billion in income each year that would be taxable rather than exempt, with the lion's share ($469 billion) from the top quintile. The cut-off income for the top quintile is about $100,000 per year, so under Mr Romney's proposed lower tax rates, most of that income would be taxed at either 22.4% or 26.4%; let's call the average rate 25%. That gives you about $135 billion in additional revenue, which is nowhere near enough to offset the $480 billion per year in 2015 that Mr Romney's cuts would cost. It can't even make up for the 20% rate cuts; federal revenue from personal-income tax was $1.09 trillion in 2011, meaning a 20% across-the-board rate cut would cost $202 billion. And Mr Romney isn't really even proposing to cap deductions at $17,000. He's now talking about $25,000 or $50,000, which would further slash the revenue he can expect to get. William Gale, who co-authored the TPC study, compares the debate so far to an attempt by Mr Romney to claim that he can drive from New York to Los Angeles in 15 hours without breaking the speed limit.

But it's the sheer tomfoolery that gets me. Mr Romney knows his numbers don't work, but he keeps insisting with bald-faced insouciance that they do, and using the most transparent used-car-salesman-style obfuscation to evade the question. He pulled exactly the same stunt during his debate with Barack Obama last week. Mr Obama charged that Mr Romney planned tax cuts of $5 trillion, and that his proposed limits on deductions could never make up for them. Mr Romney said the $5 trillion figure was wrong because it didn't include the limits on deductions. This kind of sophomoric mathematical double-talk wouldn't have fooled investors in Mr Romney's Bain Capital funds for a second. It does seem to be fooling a fair number of journalists and voters, though.

 

[futuremd]

[h1]At The Vice Presidential Debate: Ryan Told 24 Myths In 40 Minutes[/h1]
By Igor Volsky  on Oct 12, 2012 at 9:04 am

Paul Ryan spoke for 40 of the 90 minutes during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate and managed to tell at least 24 myths during that time:

1) “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that [the Libya attack] was a terrorist attack.”  Obama used the word “terrorism” to describe the killing of Americans the very next day at the Rose Garden. “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,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12.

2) “The administration was blocking us every step of the way. Only because we had strong bipartisan support for these tough [Iran] sanctions were we able to overrule their objections and put them in spite of the administration.”  Even the Israeli President has effusively praisedPresident Obama’s leadership on getting American and international sanctions on Iran, which have significantly slowed Iran’s progress.

3) “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.”  [T]he possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades  and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way  to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.

4) “The vice president was in charge of overseeing this. $90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors and special interest groups.”  Multiple reviews, including an independent review of all Department Of Energy loan programs by Herb Allison –- finance chair for McCain for President 2008 –- have found no “pork”  in the stimulus’ funding of green projects, concluding that the loans were not steered to friends or family, as Ryan claims.

5) “Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland, or on windmills in China?”  As PolitiFact has pointed out, the money for electric cars in Finland did not come from the stimulus. Rather, it originated with the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which predated the Obama administration. The claim about “windmills in China” is also inaccurate.

6) “When they see us putting – when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.”  The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything  that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”

7) “You see, if you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don’t change for people in or near retirement.”  Here is how the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan will affect current seniors: 1) by repealing Obamacare, the 16 million seniors receiving preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving $3.9 billion on prescription drugs will see a cost increase, 2) “premium support” will increase premiums for existing beneficiaries as private insurers lure healthier seniors out of the traditional Medicare program, 3) Romney/Ryan would also lower Medicaid spending significantly beginning next year, shifting federal spending to states and beneficiaries, and increasing costs for the 9 million Medicare recipients who are dependent on Medicaid.

“Obamacare takes $716 billion from Medicare to spend on Obamacare.”  Ryan is claiming that Obamacare siphons off $716 billion from Medicare, to the detriment of Medicare beneficiaries. In actuality, that money is saved primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, cutting waste fraud and abuse, and eliminating inefficiencies in the system. Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts, but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction.

9) “And then they put this new Obamacare board in charge of cutting Medicare each and every year in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”  The Board, or IPAB is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending, should Medicare costs exceed a target growth rate. Congress can accept the savings proposal or implement its own ideas through a super majority. The panel’s plan will modify payments to providers but it cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403  of the ACA). Relying on health care experts rather than politicians to control health care costs has previously attracted bipartisan support and even Ryan himself proposed two IPAB-like structuresin a 2009 health plan.

10) “7.4 million seniors are projected to lose their current Medicare Advantage coverage they have. That’s a $3,200 benefit cut.”  Enrollment is actually projected to increase by 11 percent in Medicare Advantage (MA) in 2013. Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, Medicare Advantage premiums have decreased an average of 10 percent and enrollment in these plans hasincreased 28 percent.

11) “This [Medicare premium support] plan that’s bipartisan. It’s a plan I put together with a prominent Democrat senator from Oregon.”  Wyden not only voted against Ryan’s budget, he also called the idea that he supported it “nonsense.”

12) “Eight out of 10 businesses, they file their taxes as individuals, not as corporations.”  Far less than half  of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business  who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.

13) “[Unemployment is rising] all around America.”  In August, the unemployment rate dropped from a year before in 325 of 372 metro areas  surveyed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

14) “The average tax rate on businesses in the industrialized world is 25 percent, and the president wants the top effective tax rate on successful small businesses to go above 40 percent.”  The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue  from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate  in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.

15) “He’ll keep saying this $5 trillion plan, I suppose. It’s been discredited by six other studies.”  The studies Ryan cites actually further prove  that Romney/Ryan would, in fact, have to raise taxes on the middle class if he were to keep his promise not to lose revenue with his tax rate reduction.

16) “You can – you can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayer. It is mathematically possible. It’s been done before. It’s precisely what we’re proposing.”  If Romney/Ryan hope to provide tax relief to the middle class, then their $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax code that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work. As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.

17) “So they proposed a $478 billion cut to defense to begin with. Now we have another $500 billion cut to defense that’s lurking on the horizon. They insisted upon that cut being involved in the debt negotiations, and so we have a $1 trillion cut.”  Ryan has frequently gotten in hot water for criticizing President Obama for the very same defense cuts that he voted for  in 2011.

1 “If these cuts go through, our Navy will be the smallest – the smallest it has been since before World War I.”  PolitiFact rated this claim as “Pants on Fire,” noting that “a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military.”

19) “Look at what they’re doing through Obamacare with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals.”  Religious institutions haven’t been forced to “violate their conscience” by paying for contraception. Houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt from offering birth control.

20) “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Try telling that to the 20 million people who are projected to lose their health insurance if Obamacare goes through or the 7-point million – 7.4 million seniors who are going to lose it.”  The Affordable Care Act would actually expand health care coverage to 30 million Americans and all seniors will keep their guranteed Medicare benefits, despite Ryan’s fear mongering. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that very few people will have to enroll in new coverage.

21) “We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people.”  In March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintonnoted  that “many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” However, she did not endorse their view.

22) “When Barack Obama was elected, they had enough fissile material — nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five.”  This is misleading and unproven. Iran now has enough fissile material, but has not yet enriched to the necessary level for a weapon. The Institute for Science and International Security says “it would take Iran more than two months to produce that amount if it started with 20%-grade uranium, and ‘several months’ to make enough for a bomb using low-enriched uranium. That would give the world community enough time  to detect the operation and organize a response, ISIS noted in June.”

23) “[Iran is] racing toward a nuclear weapon.”  Israeli and American intelligence officials aren’t so sure.

24) “We don’t want to do is give our allies reason to trust us less [by announcing a withdrawal timeline for Afghanistan].”  It’s unclear how our allies would trust us less since they too agreed to the timeline. As Biden pointed outed, “That’s a bizarre statement. .. Forty-nine of our allies — hear me — 49 of our allies signed on to this position.”

 

[basick]

jumpoff joe biden 

 

[basick]

 

[essential1]

Unless Obama wins the debate Tuesday... He will lose the election..

That's how bad he played the first debate in retrospect.

 

[lobotomybeats]

Unless Obama wins the debate Tuesday... He will lose the election..
That's how bad he played the first debate in retrospect.

Man, it's disheartening that a 'stylistic win' can sway voters in such a way.

 

[Betonblck]

Unless Obama wins the debate Tuesday... He will lose the election..
That's how bad he played the first debate in retrospect.

Idk, I do think Obama got smoked in the first debate but up until the Romney debate, Romney has not had a well run campaign. I don't know that one night was enough to change the election.

 

[essential1]

Idk, I do think Obama got smoked in the first debate but up until the Romney debate, Romney has not had a well run campaign. I don't know that one night was enough to change the election.

It's the truth.. I wish it wasn't, but it's the truth.

 

[lobotomybeats]

Idk, I do think Obama got smoked in the first debate but up until the Romney debate, Romney has not had a well run campaign. I don't know that one night was enough to change the election.

No, it looks like he got smoked due to not frothily spewing lies. Huge difference. If you muted the debate it would appear like Romney won. If you listen to facts, you know he didn't. Sadly, appearance will count for entirely too much.

 

[Coupé It]

Unless Obama wins the debate Tuesday... He will lose the election..
That's how bad he played the first debate in retrospect.

It's a tough call, Obama definatly went down an incredible amount of poll points in after the debate, embarrassing. He's not even up in the national poll but Obama has so many more outs to win this election.

Obama can lose Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Indiana (toss up states he carried last time) and still win just as long as he wins Ohio (which he still leads after that debate performance).

To be honest I don't see him losing all of those toss up states, even though they have Romney in the lead he's at least getting one or two of them (Virginia & Nevada most likely). I think Florida is now gone tho, I don't see him winning Florida.

Before the Debate Obama had a 76% of winning the debate, now it's 61% according to the New York Times. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/oct-10-is-romney-leading-right-now/.

Obama can afford to have mediocre debate performances and still sit on this lead (which isn't safe) but not another bad performance

*If Obama does lose, it will go down as the biggest Fail in political history. Their wouldn't be no running from that. Our grandchildren would talk about that first-debate.

 

[essential1]

Coup you're right... But if he doesn't go on the attack in the debate.. Similar to what Biden did (minus the hilarious facial reactions).. The polls will continue to swing toward Romney and it will swing the swing states...

And I don't like Obama's chances of growing balls, and giving logical thoughts without long pauses and stuttering

 

[Betonblck]

Way before the Republican primary, nearly 2 yrs ago, I thought Mitt Romney was the only candidate that would be a problem for Obama. Romney is a beast on business and economics. He may lie but he knows his stuff. This next 2 debates are going to be tough for Obama. I don't know that Obama can learn business and economics in time for the debates. Or well enough to speak confidently on those topics.

I don't anticipate Obama will have a good showing on the topics of taxes and the economy but he will shine on foreign policy.

I don't want Mitt to be President because I think this is the real Mitt