***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[utvol23]

For all the people who claim that all Romney did was lie during the debate please also post along with the articles the subsequent artricles of all the factual incorrect statements that Obama also made.

There is a constant chorus in here of people saying Romney is a liar but little to no affirmation that Obama did the same thing

 

[7thave btn 31stn33rd st]

I'm voting for Jill Stein, so I don't care about these debates. This dude Future is in denial. Obama is another person when what he says isnt scripted. He came at Romney yesterday because that's what the teleprompter said.

 

[samuel jackson]

 

[smokedout]

I don't care why they think he won.

Debates are worth only when considering whats being discussed. Its not a damn beauty pageant. 

DUH ITS THE MEDIA... they are controlled by lobbyist and the government for manipulation purposes... they tell the world romney won so that they can try to get support for this crooked white piece of pig

 

[futuremd]

You sound naive and foolish claiming a debate has no winner. Like really

How do you win a debate?

Please tell me. 

 

[futuremd]

I'm voting for Jill Stein, so I don't care about these debates. This dude Future is in denial. Obama is another person when what he says isnt scripted. He came at Romney yesterday because that's what the teleprompter said.

I was actually considering voting for her. I dont know how that has anything to do with Obama or Romneys debate performance though. 

 

[futuremd]

You're still talking about the some damn "winner"

What is WRONG with you dude? 

There is no WINNER.

There are two dudes talking to each other and one of those dudes had WAY more lies and WAY more inaccurate comments than the other dude.

I don't care if the dude looks like JESUS CHRIST himself, his arguments were replete with LIES, MYTHS, and DEBUNKED CLAIMS.

Just admit that you don't care about the facts and Romney's smile matters to you more.

Stop being a political science pundit and focus on the validity of the institution itself.

The arguments matter, not the appearance. 







Lets read the transcripts. 

First thing you have to do is stop spinning everywhere. Second thing stop YELLING.

Romney's smile matters more to me? When did I applaud Romney's physical attributes? When did I say his physical features were important? What are you talking about?

I said his performance on the debate stage, the way he carried himself, his aggressiveness, assertiveness mixed in with Obama's lack of standing up for himself, disengagement, lack of aggressively defending himself (for yes, the lies Mitt Romney was spewing) was the reason Mitt Romney got the better of the debate. The Live debate matters in a Presidential election, not the debate's transcripts, get out of here with that weak argument.

There is no Winner, in your opinion. We get it, you keep saying that. You're the biggest broken-record I've ever seen in my 10 years of NT therfore for some reason you're the only one in here thats continuously making me repeat myself because you can't seem to grasp the bigger picture - which is (drumroll please) WINNING THE ELECTION.

You'll understand the interpretation of winning a debate when you see the amount of percentage points Obama drops in only one week. You'll get it then (hopefully), I'll show you the numbers. I'll want an apology but I know you won't.

You equate all caps with yelling? 

Good. Because i'm using it for the remainder of this post:

I DON'T CARE WHAT ROMNEY LOOKS LIKE, WHAT HE SOUNDS LIKE, OR HIS ABILITY TO FRAME ARGUMENTS.

THE CONTENT OF HIS POINTS WERE FACTUALLY INACCURATE AND DEVOID OF ANY SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION.

THERE IS NO WINNER HERE ONLY BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE COLOR OF ROMNEY'S MAKEUP THAN YOU ARE ABOUT THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF HIS MOUTH. 

PERCENTAGE POINTS MEAN NOTHING TO ME IN RELATION TO A DEBATE.

I DON'T CARE IF ALL THE CHANNELS ARE PROCLAIMING THERE WAS A WINNER. THERE WAS NO VOTE TAKEN. THERE IS NO MEANS TO DETERMINE WHO WINS OR LOSES.

ITS A DEBATE.

ITS A REALM WHERE IDEAS ARE SHARED AND COMPETE. THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE ABILITY TO WIN

THERE ARE ONLY GOOD ARGUMENTS AND BAD ARGUMENTS.

EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE, ROMNEY'S ARGUMENTS WERE CHOCKED FULL OF ERRORS, MYTHS, AND LONG DEBUNKED CLAIMS. THE MORNING AFTER, ALL THE NEWS OUTLETS WERE CALLING HIM ON HIS LIES.

BUT SOMEHOW, ROMNEY'S ATTITUDE WINS? 

THATS THE PROBLEM HERE. 

YOU ALL CARE MORE ABOUT HOW SOMEONE LOOKS THAN WHAT THEY ACTUALLY SAY. BLAME YOURSELVES FOR THE FLAWS IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. 

I REFUSE TO BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS SORT OF SOPHISTRY ABOUT "SWAGGER" WHEN THE COMMENTS THEMSELVES WERE COMPLETEL AND UTTERLY LACKING. 

 

[futuremd]

For all the people who claim that all Romney did was lie during the debate please also post along with the articles the subsequent artricles of all the factual incorrect statements that Obama also made.

There is a constant chorus in here of people saying Romney is a liar but little to no affirmation that Obama did the same thing

Well post them. 

 

[ironchef]

You equate all caps with yelling? 

Good. Because i'm using it for the remainder of this post:

I DON'T CARE WHAT ROMNEY LOOKS LIKE, WHAT HE SOUNDS LIKE, OR HIS ABILITY TO FRAME ARGUMENTS.

THE CONTENT OF HIS POINTS WERE FACTUALLY INACCURATE AND DEVOID OF ANY SIGNIFICANT INFORMATION.

THERE IS NO WINNER HERE ONLY BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE COLOR OF ROMNEY'S MAKEUP THAN YOU ARE ABOUT THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF HIS MOUTH. 

PERCENTAGE POINTS MEAN NOTHING TO ME IN RELATION TO A DEBATE.

I DON'T CARE IF ALL THE CHANNELS ARE PROCLAIMING THERE WAS A WINNER. THERE WAS NO VOTE TAKEN. THERE IS NO MEANS TO DETERMINE WHO WINS OR LOSES.

ITS A DEBATE.

ITS A REALM WHERE IDEAS ARE SHARED AND COMPETE. THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE ABILITY TO WIN

THERE ARE ONLY GOOD ARGUMENTS AND BAD ARGUMENTS.

EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE, ROMNEY'S ARGUMENTS WERE CHOCKED FULL OF ERRORS, MYTHS, AND LONG DEBUNKED CLAIMS. THE MORNING AFTER, ALL THE NEWS OUTLETS WERE CALLING HIM ON HIS LIES.

BUT SOMEHOW, ROMNEY'S ATTITUDE WINS? 

THATS THE PROBLEM HERE. 

YOU ALL CARE MORE ABOUT HOW SOMEONE LOOKS THAN WHAT THEY ACTUALLY SAY. BLAME YOURSELVES FOR THE FLAWS IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS. 

I REFUSE TO BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS SORT OF SOPHISTRY ABOUT "SWAGGER" WHEN THE COMMENTS THEMSELVES WERE COMPLETEL AND UTTERLY LACKING. 

 

[utvol23]

Well post them. 

I dont need too because I have read both inaccuraces spoken by Romney and Obama and I am not in here making a statement that one side is a Liar. The people harping on Romney is such a liar are just showing their bias by not also posting Obama's inaccuracies.

Pretty much all the fact check sites i read had the inaccuracies stated by both candidates. Why not post those articles instead of the one that just highlights what Romney said was inaccurate.

 

[obeahmyal7]

Future, at this point you and I are beating a dead horse. We differ from others in that we evaluate debates not in terms of winners and losers, but in terms of the ability of a candidate to provide substance rooted in some form of fact. Others decide who wins and loses based on appearance, facial expressions, etc. No need to continue to ask how one win's a debate because you won't find the answer that satisfies your criteria. 

Job's report just dropped. At 7.8%, the jobless rate is at its lowest since January 2009. I think the debate should be not whether people are employed, but whether they receive the wages/salaries/benefits necessary to do more than survive. I fear that a large number of those recently employed are in low-end service work with few benies. Politically, the jobs report is a win for Obama and should "crush," in the words of Romney, most of the worries from Obama's alleged weak performance the other night. 

 

[Kimchi Papi]

This thread needs some levity...Snoop's list of reasons why he's not voting for Romney & why he's voting for Obama...

 

[futuremd]

Well post them. 

I dont need too because I have read both inaccuraces spoken by Romney and Obama and I am not in here making a statement that one side is a Liar. The people harping on Romney is such a liar are just showing their bias by not also posting Obama's inaccuracies.

Pretty much all the fact check sites i read had the inaccuracies stated by both candidates. Why not post those articles instead of the one that just highlights what Romney said was inaccurate.

Oh ok. So NOW you're just above the fray huh? Can't be bothered with the details. 

I didn't say hasn't Obama fibbed. I acknowledge that he has, and that he did, however in comparison to Mitt the guy was just steamrolling with NOTHING to lose. Thats ridiculous. You don't lie as much at Romney did and then have people proclaim you as a winner in something you can't "win" 

Get out of here.  

 

[osh kosh bosh]

This thread needs some levity...Snoop's list of reasons why he's not voting for Romney & why he's voting for Obama...

This is gold.

 

[futuremd]

Future, at this point you and I are beating a dead horse. We differ from others in that we evaluate debates not in terms of winners and losers, but in terms of the ability of a candidate to provide substance rooted in some form of fact. Others decide who wins and loses based on appearance, facial expressions, etc. No need to continue to ask how one win's a debate because you won't find the answer that satisfies your criteria. 

Job's report just dropped. At 7.8%, the jobless rate is at its lowest since January 2009. I think the debate should be not whether people are employed, but whether they receive the wages/salaries/benefits necessary to do more than survive. I fear that a large number of those recently employed are in low-end service work with few benies. Politically, the jobs report is a win for Obama and should "crush," in the words of Romney, most of the worries from Obama's alleged weak performance the other night. 

I agree with you completely.

Dudes in here really talking about "mitt was more aggressive" as if that matters. 

This **** ain't boxing. I don't see mayweather out there.

This is a debate about topics and the nuances of those subjects. 

 

[sawyer]

The other main fact Future and other Obama supporters keep down playing is the fact Obama lied as well.  If you're going to call out Romney for lying, then it's only fair to call out Obama's lies as well.. 

So according to Dems or Obama supporters. Romney told nothing but lies, Obama didn't tell lies, or his lies weren't as big or he didn't lie as much as Romney's.. Last I checked a lie is a lie..

Then Obama is going to give a speech (yesterday) and say American's what the truth.. after he himself lied.. Pure definition of Hypocrisy. 

But you can't tell the Obama supporters that because they won't be honest with themselves and admit the simple fact, no matter how big or small or how many, a lie is still a lie.

So if you want to say you're voting for Obama because he lied less than Romney, I can respect that a heck of a lot more then, "I'm voting for Obama because Romney lied and Obama didn't".  But lets be fair and admit Obama lied just as did Romney. 

i'm sorry, what exactly did obama lie about? i'd thoroughly enjoy an exchange with anyone on this allegation, especially with someone actually making it up right in front of me. this is an open invitation to my question for anyone to answer. i'll even give whoever help: deficit reduction, tax policy, obamacare, job creation, and social security are all topics i noticed obama wade into with less than factual information

but unless you can come with concrete evidence showing what you're claiming, what you're doing is called slander.

 

[crcballer55]

Here. Let me make it easy for everyone so we can stop this nonsense.

And while the lies may have been more noticeable for Romney, don't forget that Obama practiced law and any good lawyer will use half truths so there is plausible deniability if someone confronts them on the matter.

http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/

We found exaggerations and false claims flying thick and fast during the first debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.

• Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true. Romney proposes to offset his rate cuts and promises he won’t add to the deficit.
• Romney again promised to “not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans” and also to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” but didn’t say how he could possibly accomplish that without also increasing the deficit.
• Obama oversold his health care law, claiming that health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” That’s true of health care spending, but not premiums. And the health care law had little to do with the slowdown in overall spending.
• Romney claimed a new board established by the Affordable Care Act is “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. The board only recommends cost-saving measures for Medicare, and is legally forbidden to ration care or reduce benefits.
• Obama said 5 million private-sector jobs had been created in the past 30 months. Perhaps so, but that counts jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t add to the official monthly tallies until next year. For now, the official tally is a bit over 4.6 million.
• Romney accused Obama of doubling the federal deficit. Not true. The annual deficit was already running at $1.2 trillion when Obama took office.
• Obama again said he’d raise taxes on upper-income persons only to the “rates that we had when Bill Clinton was president.” Actually, many high-income persons would pay more than they did then, because of new taxes in Obama’s health care law.
• Romney claimed that middle-income Americans have “seen their income come down by $4,300.” That’s too high. Census figures show the decline in median household income during Obama’s first three years was $2,492, even after adjusting for inflation.
• Obama again touted his “$4 trillion” deficit reduction plan, which includes $1 trillion from winding down wars that are coming to an end in any event.

Romney sometimes came off as a serial exaggerator. He said “up to” 20 million might lose health insurance under the new law, citing a Congressional Budget Office study that actually put the likely number who would lose employer-sponsored coverage at between 3 million and 5 million. He said 23 million Americans are “out of work” when the actual number of jobless is much lower. He claimed half of all college grads this year can’t find work, when, in fact, an AP story said half either were jobless or underemployed. And he again said Obama “cut” $716 billion from Medicare, a figure that actually reflects a 10-year target for slowing Medicare spending, which will continue to grow.
[h2]Analysis [/h2]
The debate was held Oct. 3 inside a huge sports center at the University of Denver. It was the first of three scheduled debates between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. It was carried live on national TV networks and radio.

$5 Trillion Tax Cut

The president said Romney was proposing a $5 trillion tax cut and Romney said he wasn’t. The president is off base here — Romney says his rate cuts and tax eliminations would be offset and the deficit wouldn’t increase.

Obama: Governor Romney’s central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut — on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Romney: First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about.

To be clear, Romney has proposed cutting personal federal income tax rates across the board by 20 percent, in addition to extending the tax cuts enacted early in the Bush administration. He also proposes to eliminate the estate tax permanently, repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, and eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends for taxpayers making under $200,000 a year in adjusted gross income.

By themselves, those cuts would, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, lower federal tax liability by “about $480 billion in calendar year 2015” compared with current tax policy, with Bush cuts left in place. The Obama campaign has extrapolated that figure out over 10 years, coming up with a $5 trillion figure over a decade.

However, Romney always has said he planned to offset that massive cut with equally massive reductions in tax preferences to broaden the tax base, thus losing no revenue and not increasing the deficit. So to that extent, the president is incorrect: Romney is not proposing a $5 trillion reduction in taxes.

The Impossible Plan

However, Romney continued to struggle to explain how he could possibly offset such a large loss of revenue without shifting the burden away from upper-income taxpayers, who benefit disproportionately from across-the-board rate cuts and especially from elimination of the estate tax (which falls only on estates exceeding $5.1 million left by any who die this year). The Tax Policy Center concluded earlier this year that it wasn’t mathematically possible for a plan such as Romney’s to cut rates as he promised without either favoring the wealthy or increasing the federal deficit.

Except for saying that his plan would bring in the same amount of money “when you account for growth,” Romney offered no new explanation for how he might accomplish all he’s promised. He just repeated those promises in some of the strongest terms yet.

Romney: My number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. … I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. … I will lower taxes on middle-income families.

But he didn’t say how he’d pull off all those things at once.

‘Six Other Studies’

When the president referred to the Tax Policy Center’s criticisms, Romney claimed it was contradicted by several others.

Romney: There are six other studies that looked at the study you describe and say it’s completely wrong.

That’s not quite true, as we previously reported when the count was at five. We found that two of those “studies” were blog items by Romney backers, and none was nonpartisan.

The only one of those “studies” by someone not advising Romney was done by Harvey Rosen, a Princeton economics professor who once served as chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Rosen concluded that Romney could pull off his tax plan without losing revenue assuming an extra 3 percent “growth effect” to the economy resulting from Romney’s rate cuts. That’s an extremely aggressive assumption, and in conflict with recent experience. Despite Bush’s large tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, for example, real GDP grew by 3 percent or more for only two of his eight years in office. The average of the year-to-year changes was just over 2 percent.

Furthermore, Bush’s cuts reduced the total tax burden on the economy because they were not offset by base-broadening measures. In theory, at least, Romney’s revenue-neutral rate cuts would have even less of a stimulative effect than Bush’s cuts did.

Overselling the Health Care Law

Obama wrongly said that over the last two years, health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” That’s true of health care spending, not premiums. But even if Obama had worded the claim correctly, he still would have been off in suggesting the Affordable Care Act had caused the slower growth in spending.

Obama: And the fact of the matter is that, when Obamacare is fully implemented, we’re going to be in a position to show that costs are going down. And over the last two years, health care premiums have gone up — it’s true — but they’ve gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years. So we’re already beginning to see progress.

The growth in employer-sponsored family premiums has fluctuated in recent years. It went up just 4 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, but it increased 9 percent the year before, a big jump from the mere 3 percent increase between 2009 and 2010. Clearly the growth rate over the last two years isn’t a 50-year low — it was sitting around 5 percent from 2007 to 2009. However, the growth of health care costs is at a 50-year low for the past two years.

President Bill Clinton used this statistic, correctly, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, also implying that the federal health care law deserved credit. But as we said then, most of the law hasn’t even been implemented yet. And experts say it’s the sluggish economy that’s mainly responsible for the slower rate of spending. As the Washington Post reported, experts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that many lost employer-sponsored insurance when they lost their jobs, and other individuals chose to “forgo health-care services they could not afford.”

The New York Times quoted experts saying that consumers’ and medical professionals’ behavior could be changing in anticipation of the law, but it was still the economy that was the leading factor.

As for that increase in health care premiums, experts told us the federal health care law has had a limited impact on those, too, but the impact was to increase costs. They said the law was responsible for a 1 percent to 3 percent increase last year because of more generous coverage requirements.

Treatment Denied?

Romney repeatedly claimed that a new government board was “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. It could make some binding recommendations about such things as what drugs or medical devices would be paid for by Medicare, but it has no legal power to dictate treatment or ration care.

The board is a 15-member panel that’s tasked with finding ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending. So, its work concerns Medicare, not everyone seeking health care. And, according to the law, the board can’t touch treatments or otherwise “ration” care, or restrict benefits.

What’s officially called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, made up of appointed health care experts, medical professionals, and consumer representatives, would make binding recommendations to reduce the growth of spending. Congress could override them with a three-fifths majority in each house.

An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation determined that the IPAB was limited to finding savings from “Medicare Advantage, the Part D prescription drug program, skilled nursing facility, home health, dialysis, ambulance and ambulatory surgical center services, and durable medical equipment.”

5 million jobs?

Obama claimed that “over the last 30 months, we’ve seen 5 million jobs in the private sector created.”

Obama’s figure is nearly half a million jobs short, according to current Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. But he’s including in his count a preliminary revision of jobs figures that BLS will not finalize until next year.

The current BLS numbers are based on monthly surveys of businesses and government entities and count how many workers are on the payroll. Those figures show that the number of private-sector jobs grew by 4.63 million between February 2010 and August of this year.

But BLS often revises those figures. Each year, the agency looks over companies’ tax records in an effort to get a more accurate number, a process that takes several months. In late September, BLS released a preliminary estimate for its revised numbers, adding 453,000 private-sector jobs to its count for the time period between April 2011 and March 2012. BLS will release its final numbers in February.

The addition of the preliminary estimate brings the number of private-sectors jobs to more than 5 million.

Obama ‘Doubled’ Deficit?

Romney: The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it. Trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years.

It’s not true that Obama “doubled” the deficit. He inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit and deficits have remained at or above that level, as Romney said, every year since then. Romney is right, however, that Obama has not kept his promise to cut the deficit in half.

Here’s the budget history in brief: The 2009 fiscal year began Oct. 1, 2008, when George W. Bush was president, and ended Sept. 30, 2009 with Obama as president. By the time Obama took office in January 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that the federal government would end fiscal 2009 with a $1.2 trillion deficit because of higher spending and lower revenues.

Obama added to the 2009 deficit, but not by much. We found that Obama was responsible at most for an additional $203 billion. The government ended $1.4 trillion in the red that year. The deficits were about $1.3 trillion each year for the next two years, and this fiscal year just ended with a shortfall of nearly $1.2 trillion.

So, Obama didn’t double the deficits. But the president did pledge to cut them in half by the end of his first term during his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, 2009. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the president’s latest budget plan doesn’t show the deficit being cut in half until 2014.

Same Rates as Under Clinton?

Obama repeated a favorite talking point, saying that his tax plan would return rates for the wealthy back to where they were during economically prosperous times under President Bill Clinton. But those making over $250,000 a year would actually pay more than they did under Clinton due to new taxes imposed on upper-income people to pay for the health care law.

Obama: But I have said that for incomes over $250,000 a year, that we should go back to the rates that we had when Bill Clinton was president, when we created 23 million new jobs, went from deficit to surplus, and created a whole lot of millionaires to boot.

Obama is referring to his plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for higher-income taxpayers. The top federal income-tax rate would be allowed to rise from the current 35 percent to 39.6 percent, which was the rate that prevailed after Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, and before Bush’s tax cuts. The next-highest rate would go back to the Clinton-era 36 percent, starting with family income over $250,000 (or $200,000 for singles), up from the Bush rate of 33 percent.

But Obama did not account for the new taxes on those same upper-income taxpayers included in his Affordable Care Act. Starting next year, there will be a new 3.8 percent tax on “unearned” net investment income — such as capital gains from the sale of stocks or real estate, dividends, interest income, annuities, rents and royalties. Also starting Jan. 1 is a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on top of the current Medicare payroll tax. Both taxes apply to taxable compensation that exceeds $200,000 for singles, or $250,000 for couples filing jointly. Those two taxes combined are projected to bring in nearly $210 billion over the next seven years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Income Loss

As he has done a number of times recently, Romney inflated the loss of income for middle-income Americans under Obama.

Romney: Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a — this is a tax in and of itself. I’ll call it the economy tax. It’s been crushing.

Romney didn’t clarify whether he was talking about household or family income, but either way, the number is inflated.

The latest figures from the Census Bureau for 2011 show that real household income (inflation-adjusted) fell by $2,492 during Obama’s first three years in office. Real family income (again, inflation-adjusted) fell by $3,290.

There’s also some reason to think the income decline bottomed out a year ago. Sentier Research, which Romney has in the past cited as his source, says in its latest report — issued Sept. 10, that household income rose in the year since September 2011, when Sentier’s Seasonally Adjusted Household Income Index hit its lowest point. (See Figure 1, Page 10.)

As part of the same riff on the hardships facing middle-income Americans, Romney also noted that “gasoline prices have doubled under the president.” That’s true, but as we have noted before, the price of gasoline was unusually low when Obama took office due to the recession and financial crisis.

The average price for regular gasoline was $3.80 last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a bit more than double the $1.84 average the week Obama took office. But the average exceeded $4 a gallon for seven weeks during the summer of 2008, and it has never reached $4 under Obama.

Obama’s $4 Trillion Reduction Plan

Obama: I’ve 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.

Nonpartisan and bipartisan budget analysts have been critical of the methodology Obama employed to get to the $4 trillion in cuts outlined in “The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction.” Specifically, the plan’s inclusion of “more than $1 trillion in savings over the next 10 years from our drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq,” was  criticized by Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, as a “gimmick.”

“Drawing down spending on wars that were already set to wind down and that were deficit financed in the first place should not be considered savings,” MacGuineas said. “When you finish college, you don’t suddenly have thousands of dollars a year to spend elsewhere – in fact, you have to find a way to pay back your loans.”

And as we have noted, even if you accept Obama’s $4 trillion claim, the president’s own Office of Management and Budget projected annual federal deficits would never be lower than $476 billion. That’s higher than any year of the Bush administration except for the $1.4 trillion shortfall for fiscal 2009, for which Obama himself bears some responsibility. And under Obama’s plan, deficits would again rise during the last three years of the 10-year period, reaching $565 billion in 2021 (see table S-1).

20 Million ‘Lose Their Insurance’?

Romney said “the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year.” The Congressional Budget Office said that may happen under a very pessimistic scenario. But the agency said it is more likely that about 3 million to 5 million fewer people, on net, would obtain health insurance from their employer under the law. The CBO also said that it was possible that more people would be covered by employers, not fewer, under a more optimistic scenario.

What’s more, these individuals wouldn’t necessarily “lose … insurance” entirely. Many would qualify for federal subsidies to buy policies offered through the new state exchanges established by the law, or qualify for Medicaid.

23 Million ‘Out of Work’?

Romney overstated the number of unemployed Americans when he said that there were “23 million people out of work.” There were 12.5 million unemployed Americans in August, the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Romney meant to refer to the unemployed, plus those working part-time who want full-time work (8 million) and those who are considered “marginally attached” to the labor force because they have not looked for work in the past four weeks (2.6 million). All of that adds up to 23.1 million. Romney got his talking point closer to the truth when he said, “We’ve got 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work in this country.” But he still left out the 8 million who are working part-time for economic reasons.

Jobless Grads

Romney said that “50 percent of college graduates this year can’t find work.” That’s not correct. Romney is likely referring to an analysis of government data conducted for the Associated Press that found that — in 2011 — 53.6 percent of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 were unemployed or underemployed that year. But it’s not correct to say that a person who is underemployed — meaning that they have a part-time job, or a job for which they were overqualified — can’t find work. It’s also a figure that applies to last year, not “this year” as Romney said.

Romney continued to repeat his misleading claim that Obama’s Affordable Care Act “cut Medicare $716 billion for current recipients.” That’s a reduction in the future growth of Medicare spending over 10 years, not a $716 billion slashing of the current budget.

$716 Billion, Again

Romney went on to say, “I want to take that $716 billion you’ve cut and put it back into Medicare.” But the fact is, the money isn’t being taken away from Medicare. Instead, Medicare would spend it, but over a longer period of time than was expected before the health care law. The law extends the solvency of the Medicare Part A trust fund.

As we’ve explained before, most of this reduction in spending comes in Medicare Part A, or hospital coverage, through a reduction in the growth of payments to hospitals. Medicare payroll taxes, which fund Part A, are either immediately spent by Medicare as they come in, or they’re put in a trust fund. Medicare gets a bond for that tax money from Treasury. And any time Medicare wants to cash in that bond, it can. Treasury has to pay it — even if Treasury already spent the original money on something else.

Cutting the growth of Medicare spending is a good thing — without these $716 billion cuts, Part A’s trust fund is expected to be depleted in 2016. But with them, that date is pushed back to 2024. At that point, Medicare’s payroll tax revenue would only be enough to cover 87 percent of benefits.

That’s if the reductions in spending growth are actually instituted as the law envisions. Medicare’s actuaries are skeptical. They have said that many experts believe the “price constraints would become unworkable and that Congress would likely override them.”

Romney said: “Some 15 percent of hospitals and nursing homes say they won’t take any more Medicare patients under that scenario.” That’s close to what Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, said in congressional testimony in January 2011. Foster said that his office’s economic simulations “suggest that roughly 15 percent of Part A providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period as a result of the productivity adjustments.” He added: “Although this policy could be monitored over time to avoid such an outcome, changes would likely result in smaller actual savings than described here for these provisions.”

 

[sawyer]

i will certainly reply to this later. however, the fact that you use someone else's words are quite telling...

factcheck.org has earned itself a rather authoritative position on these matters, haven't they? but even they are susceptible to outdated and misinformation! even if i am to offer clarity on these alleged 'lies, false truths, and misrepresentations', who would be there to defend them as such?

copy & pasting, even if you cite your source, is no substitute for original thinking and genuine interest.

i'll be back later.

 

[futuremd]

---

[h2]Editorial: Romney wins on style, Obama on facts[/h2]
 http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/15535810-474/editorial-romney-wins-on-style-obama-on-facts.html

Editorials

Last Modified: Oct 4, 2012 02:25AM

Mitt Romney came loaded for bear. Barack Obama found himself on the defensive.

If you score Wednesday’s debate largely on the basis of which candidate for president exuded a rambunctious energy, it was Gov. Romney all the way.

For 90 minutes, he rattled off facts — more about that in a moment — proposals and scolding criticisms. And while he struck a confident gaze when the president was talking, Obama in turn had an unfortunate way of looking down while nodding his head. We saw a lot of his gray hair.

If, however, you score Wednesday’s debate on substance — accurate facts and honest arithmetic — Obama more than held his own. He drove home the false promises and dangerous ramifications of Romney’s proposed tax cuts, which would surely raise taxes for the middle class by eliminating breaks, such as the home mortgage deduction, and require the elimination of essential programs, such as student loan subsidies.

“I believe Gov. Romney genuinely cares about education,” Obama said. “But when he says [students] should borrow from their parents to go, many . . . just don’t have that option.”

The president was especially strong in picking apart Romney’s ill-conceived plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, which independent analysts say would leave elderly Americans down the road at the mercy of private insurance companies. Maybe those vouchers would cover the bill, but quite likely they would not over time, even as traditional fee-for-service Medicare would wither away.

When Romney emphasized, as he often does, that his Medicare plan would not affect benefits for Americans pushing 60 or older, Obama looked straight into the camera and caustically said: “If you are 54 or 55, you might want to listen.”

Romney looked good, even sounded good, but was as bereft of specifics as he has been for the last 18 months. He said he would replace Obamacare, but he did not lay out his plan. He said he would end deductions and loopholes without hurting the middle class, but he would not say what those cuts would be. He said he would replace the Dodd-Frank regulations of Wall Street, but he had no specifics.

“Part of being a leader is being able to describe what you’ll do, not just say, ‘We’ll sit down’” with the other side, Obama said.

This much also was clear from Wednesday’s debate: Both Romney and Obama are enthusiastic cheerleaders for American free enterprise.

We couldn’t spot a pinko in the room.

The former venture capitalist and the former community organizer simply have profoundly different notions about how well that free enterprise system is working and what’s to be done to make it work better.

For Romney, the solution to our nation’s economic troubles is to unleash the power of the free market by lowering taxes across the board and easing regulations on Wall Street and Main Street. Get out of the way, Uncle Sam. “The private market and individual responsibility always work best,” Romney said in discussing health-care reform.

For President Obama, the solution lies in recognizing that America’s free enterprise system is terrific in concept but half-broken in practice, rigged to favor a fortunate few. Government’s job, the president believes, is to level the playing field of capitalism so that real merit, not the luck of birth or insider connections, is commensurately rewarded. More Americans deserve a shot at the top.

For Obama, that means higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and preserving a host of federal programs serving the aspiring poor and middle class, such as student loans.

“The genius of America is the free enterprise system,” Obama said. “But as Abraham Lincoln said, there are also some things we do better” collectively.

---

Copyright [emoji]169[/emoji] 2012 — Sun-Times Media, LLC

 

[futuremd]

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, use the Reprints tool at the top of any article or visit: www.reutersreprints.com.

[h1]White House in sight, Romney steers a more moderate course[/h1]

Thu, Oct 4 2012

By Samuel P. Jacobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A beaming Mitt Romney made a surprise visit to a meeting of conservative activists in Denver on Thursday, telling the group that his debate with President Barack Obama the night before had given voters "a choice between two different visions for America."

During the first of three debates between the two presidential candidates, Romney himself appeared to have made a few choices, less than five weeks before the November 6 election.

On issues from taxes to Medicare to financial regulations, the former Massachusetts governor steered a more moderate course than he did while wooing conservatives during the Republican primaries this year, even embracing parts of Obama's record that have been targets for conservative Republicans.

At one point, Romney suggested that he would not change the amount of taxes paid for by high-income Americans. That contrasts with the plan Romney has touted for months - which would cut all Americans' tax rates by 20 percent - and is more in line with Obama's plan to give tax cuts only to those with annual incomes of less than $250,000.

Romney also stepped onto more moderate ground after Obama questioned why big, highly profitable oil companies should get massive tax breaks. Romney said he would consider cutting tax subsidies for oil companies.

He cast himself as a defender of Medicare, the government health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, by saying he would restore $716 billion in spending to it - a move that analysts say would require dramatic cuts to other federal programs.

Romney - a wealthy former private equity executive who has touted his record in business - also said he liked parts of the Dodd-Frank bill, a 2010 law that increases the government's oversight of the U.S. financial sector, and which Romney has vowed to repeal.

During the primaries many conservative Republicans were suspicious of Romney's conservative credentials, largely because of his moderate record in Massachusetts.

But no Republicans seemed to be complaining Thursday, after Romney's aggressive performance in the Denver debate gave new life to his struggling campaign and raised the prospect that he could come from behind and defeat Obama next month.

Political analysts said it was clear that Romney's new positions threw off Obama during the debate, and they wondered whether conservatives might eventually have some regrets if Romney means what he said on Wednesday.

Romney "has to worry that his conservative base will wake up from their celebrations tomorrow and ask, 'Did Romney really say that about Medicare, taxes, and Dodd-Frank?'" said Larry Berman, a political science professor at Georgia State University. "Romney took positions that are in stark contrast to where his base thought he stood."

DODD-FRANK, RECONSIDERED

Romney's hedge toward the middle was particularly intriguing when he discussed the Dodd-Frank law, which many Republicans say is an overreach by government that will hurt the economy.

He complained that it offered too much protection to big banks, a populist-sounding argument that surprised many in the banking industry. Romney also praised various aspects of the law, including a section that sets mortgage-lending standards.

"We are not going to get rid of all regulation," Romney said. "You have to have regulation and there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world."

While Romney has softened his tone, his vice presidential running mate, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, has continued to bash the Dodd-Frank law.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, last week, Ryan used the name of the bill's co-author, Democratic Representative Barney Frank, as a punch line.

"You ever heard of a guy named Barney Frank?" Ryan asked. The crowd booed.

SEEKING 'COMMON GROUND'

Romney, toning down the rhetoric he uses before crowds of conservative Republicans, seemed to make a point of sounding conciliatory during the debate.

He said that if elected he would meet with Democratic leaders in Congress to try to find "common ground."

Republicans may take solace in the fact that Romney's calls for bipartisanship come as he tries to reach a different audience than the more conservative voters he courted during the primary campaign.

"I think there's a lot of Democrats he was talking to last night that voted for Obama and want something done," said Keith Nahigian, who managed Republican Representative Michele Bachman's presidential campaign.

Charlie Gerow, a former aide to Republican President Ronald Reagan, said "conservatives are going to give him a fair amount of latitude" to move toward the political center in this election.

Why?

"Because they want to win," Gerow said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Sam Youngman in Denver; editing by David Lindsey and Mohammad Zargham)

[emoji]169[/emoji] Thomson Reuters 2011

 

[futuremd]

---

October 4, 2012
[h1]Romney’s Sick Joke[/h1][h6]By PAUL KRUGMAN[/h6]
“No. 1,” declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday’s debate, “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” No, they aren’t — as Mr. Romney’s own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.

Was Mr. Romney lying? Well, either that or he was making what amounts to a sick joke. Either way, his attempt to deceive voters on this issue was the biggest of many misleading and/or dishonest claims he made over the course of that hour and a half. Yes, President Obama did a notably bad job of responding. But I’ll leave the theater criticism to others and talk instead about the issue that should be at the heart of this election.

So, about that sick joke: What Mr. Romney actually proposes is that Americans with pre-existing conditions who already have health coverage be allowed to keep that coverage even if they lose their job — as long as they keep paying the premiums. As it happens, this is already the law of the land. But it’s not what anyone in real life means by having a health plan that covers pre-existing conditions, because it applies only to those who manage to land a job with health insurance in the first place (and are able to maintain their payments despite losing that job). Did I mention that the number of jobs that come with health insurance has been steadily declining over the past decade?

What Mr. Romney did in the debate, in other words, was, at best, to play a word game with voters, pretending to offer something substantive for the uninsured while actually offering nothing. For all practical purposes, he simply lied about what his policy proposals would do.

How many Americans would be left out in the cold under Mr. Romney’s plan? One answer is 89 million. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Foundation, that’s the number of Americans who lack the “continuous coverage” that would make them eligible for health insurance under Mr. Romney’s empty promises. By the way, that’s more than a third of the U.S. population under 65 years old.

Another answer is 45 million, the estimated number of people who would have health insurance if Mr. Obama were re-elected, but would lose it if Mr. Romney were to win.

That estimate reflects two factors. First, Mr. Romney proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act, which means doing away with all the ways in which that law would help tens of millions of Americans who either have pre-existing conditions or can’t afford health insurance for other reasons. Second, Mr. Romney is proposing drastic cuts in Medicaid — basically to save money that he could use to cut taxes on the wealthy — which would deny essential health care to millions more Americans. (And, no, despite what he has said, you can’t get the care you need just by going to the emergency room.)

Wait, it gets worse. The true number of victims from Mr. Romney’s health proposals would be much larger than either of these numbers, for a couple of reasons.

One is that Medicaid doesn’t just provide health care to Americans too young for Medicare; it also pays for nursing care and other necessities for many older Americans.

Also, many Americans have health insurance but live under the continual threat of losing it. Obamacare would eliminate this threat, but Mr. Romney would bring it back and make it worse. Safety nets don’t just help people who actually fall, they make life more secure for everyone who might fall. But Mr. Romney would take that security away, not just on health care but across the board.

What about the claim made by a Romney adviser after the debate that states could step in to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions? That’s nonsense on many levels. For one thing, Mr. Romney wants to eliminate restrictions on interstate insurance sales, depriving states of regulatory power. Furthermore, if all you do is require that insurance companies cover everyone, healthy people will wait until they’re sick to sign up, leading to sky-high premiums. So you need to couple regulations on insurers with a requirement that everyone have insurance. And, to make that feasible, you have to offer insurance subsidies to lower-income Americans, which have to be paid for at a federal level.

And what you end up with is — precisely — the health reform President Obama signed into law.

One could wish that Mr. Obama had made this point effectively in the debate. He had every right to jump up and say, “There you go again”: Not only was Mr. Romney’s claim fundamentally dishonest, it has already been extensively debunked, and the Romney campaign itself has admitted that it’s false.

For whatever reason, the president didn’t do that, on health care or on anything else. But, as I said, never mind the theater criticism. The fact is that Mr. Romney tried to mislead the public, and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

 

[futuremd]

[h2]Traditional & Social Media Collide Over Obama/Romney Debate[/h2]
byDracowyrmFollow

 7521    

[table][tr][td]PERMALINK[/td][td]15 COMMENTS[/td][/tr][/table]

This'll be brief, but it's interesting to me, and...well, this is where I write about stuff that's interesting to me.

Today, in the digesting of the first Presidential debate, we are confronted with the collision of two nearly independent media realms: traditional broadcast, and the newly-risen social media, which have orders of magnitude more penetration, sophistication, and response speed than they did in 2008. And what we're hearing from those two media realms is, for perhaps the first time ever, sharply divergent in relation to the same single event.

Traditional broadcast media:  "Romney won!!!!!"

Social media:  "Romney lied like a rug on every major topic he addressed, and here's documentation."

Now, don't get me wrong: Romney swung for the rafters because he had to, Obama played it cautious because he could—but too  cautiously, in the end— and so the "optics", as pols and pundits like to say, were clearly in Romney's favor. This, too, was noted in the record-breaking avalanche of tweets, liveblog streams and Facebook posts that tracked the debate in real time and continued after it.

But let's face it: the traditional broadcast media has turned strictly into entertainment, and it needs a competitive horse race. So it was nearly impossible for Romney to lose this debate in their eyes, given how badly they needed him to win it.

What is interesting to me is that the sense I am getting of the emerging gestalt of the debate—the narrative understanding by the mainstream public—is a merging of these two story lines.

In other words: "Mitt Romney won by lying."

So while Romney's team feels momentarily invigorated, and the likes of CNN and ABC News happily chatter about a "game changer", what is percolating into voters' consciousness is a validation of Obama's core messages: Romney is untrustworthy. He'll say anything. He's Machiavellian, just as he was in business. You'll never really know what he stands for. You can't trust him can't trust him can't trust him can't trust him.

It takes awhile for fact-checking to catch up to felt sense. In some ways it never does. But what Romney gave Team Obama last night was a bonanza of tailor-made "after" clips for devastating "before, he said this, but now he says this" spots. Instead of having to reach back to dusty campaign footage no one cares about, now they have Mitt Romney lying his *** off in front of 67 million people...yesterday.

Meanwhile, his "win" doesn't appear to have moved the needle at all...except among those who were supposed to be his base. And he still has  nearly no possible roadmap to 270 electoral votes.

Take a breath, friends.

 

[futuremd]

So now I have this morbid curiosity. Since Romney apologized for his 47% comments, what about the people that originally agreed with him? Where do you all stand now? 

---

by Mamiverse Team  |10/*****12

In an interview with Fox News  on Thursday night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told Fox News correspondent, Sean Hannity, how he would have responded to some topics that weren’t brought up during the first presidential debate  on Wednesday. After doubling down  on his statements made during leaked video footage of a private fundraiser on the 47 percent of the United States  population, who from Mr. Romney’s perspective, pay no taxes and rely on government dependence, here is a transcript of what Mr. Romney stated he would have said when asked of his remarks:

"Well, clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question and answer sessions, now and then you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right. In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong."

 

[sawyer]

Here. Let me make it easy for everyone so we can stop this nonsense.

And while the lies may have been more noticeable for Romney, don't forget that Obama practiced law and any good lawyer will use half truths so there is plausible deniability if someone confronts them on the matter.

http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/

We found exaggerations and false claims flying thick and fast during the first debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.

• Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true. Romney proposes to offset his rate cuts and promises he won’t add to the deficit.
• Romney again promised to “not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans” and also to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” but didn’t say how he could possibly accomplish that without also increasing the deficit.
• Obama oversold his health care law, claiming that health care premiums have “gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years.” That’s true of health care spending, but not premiums. And the health care law had little to do with the slowdown in overall spending.
• Romney claimed a new board established by the Affordable Care Act is “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. The board only recommends cost-saving measures for Medicare, and is legally forbidden to ration care or reduce benefits.
• Obama said 5 million private-sector jobs had been created in the past 30 months. Perhaps so, but that counts jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t add to the official monthly tallies until next year. For now, the official tally is a bit over 4.6 million.
• Romney accused Obama of doubling the federal deficit. Not true. The annual deficit was already running at $1.2 trillion when Obama took office.
• Obama again said he’d raise taxes on upper-income persons only to the “rates that we had when Bill Clinton was president.” Actually, many high-income persons would pay more than they did then, because of new taxes in Obama’s health care law.
• Romney claimed that middle-income Americans have “seen their income come down by $4,300.” That’s too high. Census figures show the decline in median household income during Obama’s first three years was $2,492, even after adjusting for inflation.
• Obama again touted his “$4 trillion” deficit reduction plan, which includes $1 trillion from winding down wars that are coming to an end in any event.

 

[lobotomybeats]

So now I have this morbid curiosity. Since Romney apologized for his 47% comments, what about the people that originally agreed with him? Where do you all stand now? 






[rule]




by 
Mamiverse Team
 |
10/*****12

In an interview with 
Fox News
 on Thursday night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told Fox News correspondent, Sean Hannity, how he would have responded to some topics that weren’t brought up during the first 
presidential debate
 on Wednesday. After 
doubling down
 on his statements made during leaked video footage of a private fundraiser on the 
47 percent of the United States
 population, who from Mr. Romney’s perspective, pay no taxes and rely on government dependence, here is a transcript of what Mr. Romney stated he would have said when asked of his remarks:




"Well, clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question and answer sessions, now and then you’re going to say something that doesn’t come out right. In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong."

Admitting you are wrong is not an apology.