I am an independent voter, who will most likely vote for Obama.  However, I only heard the debate on the radio and I like the manner in which Romney answered his questions.

Romney answered more directly and with more assertiveness.  And I like how he kept going back to the whole issue of jobs.  It was a simple message repeated many times.

Any good impression I got out of Obama was muddled in his circuitous replies and scrounging for background material before answering the question, verbally.  Obama’s replies seemed more appropriate for a classroom setting where his nuanced policies about the middle class, and building America could be digested.  I felt Obama’s message did not come across as crisply once juxtaposed against Romney’s smoothness and simple jobs message.

I’d give the edge to Romney on debating-wise (as opposed to content), and I think Obama should spend more time making bullet point slides in Microsoft Outlook, if only to make his speech more assertive.

 I was sitting home alone watching and recording the debate and I have to
say I have never felt prouder of a President (any President) than when
President Obama made his followup response on the Libyan question.
Sitting alone, I actually started clapping when he finished. If Romney
knows what is good for him, he will leave this alone in the future. charles a. bowsher 014417102012

I’m beginning to think his first name isn’t really Mitt:

Mitt Romney ‘Binders Full Of Women’ Claim Misleads

In fact, Romney did not direct women’s groups to bring him female candidates,Boston Pheonix reporter David Bernstein points out. A non-partisan collaboration of women’s groups called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP)was responsible for the effort in 2002, when the group’s leaders realized that women held only 30 percent of the top appointed positions in the state.

Romney boasted that during his term as governor, Massachusetts had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. “Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort,” he said.

This statement, too, is misleading. While 42 percent of Romney’s appointments during his first 2-1/2 years as governor were women, the number of women in high-level appointed positions actually declined to 27.6 percent during his full tenure as governor, according to a 2007 MassGAP study.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/romney-binders-full-of-women_n_1972425.html

Hey, you all are a bunch of smart people out there.

Can any of you answer this?  I was browsing through a Civics text book from the 1930′s or 1940′s last night and I ran across this section on the Post Office where they talked about the Post Office Banks where you could invest your money and receive either 2% or 4-1/2% return on your account.
Question is, When and why did they disappear?  Would bringing them back help revitalize the Post Office?  It is of course a Constitutionally mandated entity, one that like the military should never be privatized or should I say “Profitized” as the Repugnicans seem to like to do.  I know in many countries in Europe the Post office does do banking and financial type things.

“Profitized” and “Repugnicans” are copyrighted by Charles A. Bowsher as of 2011 and 2009 respectively.

“Profitized” is when the Repugnicans (see below) push for dismantling a function of government so that private entities can handsomely profit instead of allowing government to do what it does best, (large programs that benefit large swaths of the population {like the post office}), or outsourcing security overseas to firms like Blackwater or Haliburton.

“Repugnican” refers to Republican politicians who think it is more important for their party to prosper than for the United
States to prosper and they are willing to block any piece of legislation which would have a chance of succeeding if it is proposed by a Democrat or President Obama.
Charles A. Bowsher 020217102012

In this weak’s New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote this about the debate in Denver: “By the end of the ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relieffor the middle class.  All of these claims are spectacularly false; all went entirely, or mostly, unrefuted.”

Say what you want republicans, but Romney is a greasy politician and Obama took some of that polish off his touch-of-gray hair job this time around.  …Or in republican lingo: Romney’s teleprompter must have shorted out.

If this was a baseball game Obama won 9-5 with a couple of home runs. Stole a few bases, too.

Obama tried to take credit for the natural gas increases and drilling. Unbelievable. Romney didn’t stand for it and called him out. Obama had no answer and it was clearly shown he was lying. 

Obama had the gall to say he called the Benghazi attack a terrorist attack on day one. Here’s what he said:

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America.”I looks to me like he carefully crafted the words so he did not call it a terrorist attack. Then he sent Susan Rice out to say it was a protest over a video. Then he went on the view and flat out refused to call it a terrorist attack.

http://freebeacon.com/sept-25-obama-refused-to-describe-benghazi-attack-as-terrorism/

Romney pinned him down to clarify that it was an act of terror and Obama STILL couldn’t say it.  He would not answer and told Romney to “proceed”.

It was stunning.

Romney made a brilliant pivot from the Assault Gun question to “Fast and Furious”. He laid it out and said  “For what purpose it was put in place, I can’t imagine”. Obama never addressed it when he got his turn. Devastating. 

I expect the polls to continue to widen in favor of Romney, we’ll see.

The best part of the debate when Obama said that he does not think about his retirement plan because it’s not has big has Romney’s retire plan.

He is the USA President but he does not make a lot of money compared to the 1% and Romney.

It means that President Obama is part of 99%.

“In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday night’s debate, the liberals on MSNBC gave enthusiastic praise to both Obama’s performance and Crowley’s handling of the debate. Rachel Maddow said the president had given the best debate showing of his entire political career, Ed Schultz said Obama was “stellar” and Chris Matthews was so ecstatic that, as I said on Twitter, he was “wetting his pants in joy, gibbering like a meth freak on laughing gas.”
  By Robert Stacy McCain on 10.17.12 @ 6:11AMRobert Stacy McCain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current). He blogs at The Other McCain.

The Second Presidential Debate featured repeated claims by each candidate that the other was not telling the truth–as well as at least one claim of fact by the moderator that turned out to be false. There were even questionable claims by the audience itself.
�
Here are the top ten worst lies told during the Second Debate:
10. “I told you I would cut taxes for middle-class families, and I did. I told you I’d cut taxes for small businesses, and I have.” President Barack Obama has made this claim repeatedly during the campaign, but it is not true, as even the liberalHuffington Post acknowledges. The few tax cuts that Obama did enact–such as the temporary payroll tax holiday–were short-term, or conditional. Furthermore, as the Romney campaign has often pointed out, Obama has raised many taxes on the middle class, including the infamous Obamacare “penalty,” and his taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” would hit small businesess.
9. “…[H]e was asked, is it fair for somebody like you, making $20 million a year, to pay a lower tax rate than a nurse or a bus driver….And he said, yes, I think that’s fair.” Obama was referring to Romney’s recent 60 Minutes interview. But the transcript reveals Obama was not telling the truth. Romney was not saying it was fair that higher income should be taxed at a lower rate. He was referring specifically to the principle that capital gains should be taxed lower than other income because it has been taxed once already–a principle, incidentally, that Obama agrees with in his own tax policy.
8. “He called the Arizona law a model for the nation.” Obama tried to knock Romney’s immigration policy while at the same time accusing him of flip-flopping on the issue. But as Romney pointed out, he was referring specifically to the e-Verify part of the law–the requirement of instant verification of workers’ legal status. That provision is even favored by unions. Obama made it seem Romney praised the law as a whole–which he had not. He went on to say that he himself objected to the provision that allowed police to check suspected illegal immigrants’ documentation–but that provision survived a challenge at the Supreme Court.
7. “I want to make sure our timekeepers are working here.” For the third debate in a row, the Democratic candidate complained that he is not receiving as much time to speak as the Republican. And for the third debate in a row, the Obama/Biden ticket actually spoke for longer–much longer–than the Romney/Ryan ticket, a testament to the ability of the incumbents to pressure the moderators, and the susceptibility of the left-leaning moderators to such pressure. Obama received a full three minutes more time in last night’s debate–and the percentage difference was even higher at one point in the proceedings.
6. “They rely on it for mammograms.” Obama attacked Romney’s proposal to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood by claiming that the organization provides mammograms to women to help prevent breast cancer. It’s been a repeated claim made by the left for months. The problem is that it’s just untrue–and even left-leaning mainstream media fact-checkers have acknowledged that. What is perhaps worse than Obama’s misleading claim about mammograms is the unsupported implication that Romney wants to deny life-saving health care to women–a cheap shot to which Romney was given a real chance to respond.
5. “You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it.” We have heard the same lie for eight years from Obama. In 2004, he ran for U.S. Senate from Illinois on a promise to end such tax breaks. He did it again when he ran for President of the United States in2008. And yet he has never done anything about it–because there are no such tax breaks. There is merely a deduction that companies can take for moving, even within the U.S.–and which helps offset the double taxation of U.S. businesses abroad, which would make American companies less competitive. Repealing it would ship jobs overseas, actually.
4. “And the production is up….What you’re saying is just not true.” Obama contested a claim by Romney that production of oil and gas is down on federal lands. He even accused Romney of not telling the truth. But Romney was right–exactly right, down to the percentage decline. Furthermore, Obama’s claim that he has been increasing oil and gas production on federal lands flies in the face of recent policy decisions, such as closing offa large part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to further development. Obama has tried to take credit for expansion on private lands, while opposing expansion wherever possible.
3. “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?” The false premise from a member of the audience was especially egregious because her question had been selected in advance by the moderator. The supposed wage gap between men and women for the same work is largely a myth. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth pointed out: “Women make about 95 percent of what their male counterparts earn, if the male counterparts are in the same job with the same experience.”
2. “He wanted to take them into bankruptcy without providing them any way to stay open.” After Obama accused Romney of wanting American auto manufacturers to go bankrupt, Romney pointed out that Obama had, in fact, taken the auto companies through bankruptcy. Obama’s retort was to accuse Romney of wanting to take the companies bankrupt in order to put them out of business–a blatant lie. Romney actually suggested in his famous 2008 op-ed: “In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.”
1. “He did call it an act of terror.” The worst untruth told by a moderator in presidential history. Candy Crowley’s intervention in favor of Obama caused the president’s cheering section to burst into applause, in violation of the rules, and there was little that Romney could say in response. But she was wrong–Obama’s reference to “acts of terror” in his Sep. 12 statement was in a general, abstract sense, and came long after he had described the 9/11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions as demonstrations against an anti-Islamic video. Even Crowley seemed to realize what she had done: it wasn’t long before she walked back her own comment.
�
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/17/Top-Ten-Lies-of-the-Second-Presidential-Debate

Romney changed again on Pell Grants

I was horrified once I noticed that Romney seemed to be answering all the questions from women in the same kinda weird almost hushed half whisper voice but answered questions from men in a normal deeper tone. Did anyone else notice this?! I’m not sure if I can bring myself to sit through the dvr recording again, but I could not
quite believe it was happening!!

I don’t know if other stations showed it, NBC caught it sotto voce in his corner, about the second time Romney was doing the tornado action and Candy Crowley wasn’t having any luck controlling things, but Obama said, from his seat, as if oh, I can take this in stride:  “It’s all right; I’m used to being interrupted.”  (Take that, pundits who say whoever occupies the presidency is used to being worshipped and never challenged.)  Someone is now saying about lack of deference as foreign to president mindset.  Another time, later, after Crawley had had tried more times to get Romney to back off, Obama too, stole some from the format, and said, “This is important,” and stood pretty near to her and laid something out, and people said he went too far, but I noticed that after that, Romney didn’t claim the last word on everything anymore.  Where the moderator couldn’t make Romney stick to form, somehow Obama did it, by stepping too far himself.  It seemed to work.

Candy Crowley: Romney Was Right about September 12th Rose Garden Speach

http://freebeacon.com/candy-crowley-he-was-right/

On the Benghazi attack, the Obama administration was looking into it as a terrorist attack from the start, as the Boston Globe reported on Sept. 13. Yesterday’s New York Times report shows how confusing the truth is, adding to the facts that the attack DID seem to have the film as a motivation.

Below is the Sept. 13 Boston Globe article by Bryan Bender:

“US looks for terrorist plot in deadly Libyan assault:

Obama vows justice in killings of four”

Document Text

WASHINGTON — US officials said Wednesday that they are investigating
the four-hour -assault that killed the ambassador to Libya and three
other Americans as a well-orchestrated terrorist attack, not a
spontaneous reaction to an inflammatory movie about the Muslim prophet
Mohammed.

  President Obama, who huddled with State
Department advisers and ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff,
called the killing of American diplomats outrageous and vowed to track
down the assailants….

…. The film was initially blamed for both the Cairo protest and the attack in Libya.
   But
Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who
was briefed by administration officials, told the Globe that the Libya
attack appeared to be premeditated.
“The evidence was that attack was very well planned and very well structured,” he said. “This was not a mob.”
But
exactly who it was, or whether the attack was linked to the anniversary
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, remained unknown Wednesday.

     A senior Obama administration official described a running
gunbattle at the Benghazi complex, which included an outlying annex
where between 25 and 30 officials were working. The facility came under
fire around 10 p.m. local time Tuesday and was secured with the help of
Libyan security officials.
“Many details of what
happened in Benghazi are still unknown or unclear,” the administration
official said, adding it was “clearly a complex attack.”…
 

“I know how to create good jobs”
WHEN is Romney going to tell us his secret?
 

They both missed the bus with the college students question.  Neither asked what the young man’s major was.  How could they not have asked that and geared their answer accordingly?!

Ah, the Weekly Standard guy calls it a draw.

Study question: What’s the worst that the Weekly Standard correspondent will ever say a Republican did in a debate?

ROmney was ‘insolent’ according to the Left.  of course, when Biden snapped at Raddatz and mocked Ryan, it was Joe being Joe – and the liberals went wild with approval.  And btw all that crap thrown at W back in 2004 was called ‘truth to power’.

To help our readers follow the path to tragedy on September 11 and its aftermath, below is a chronology of key events:
April 6: IED thrown over the fence of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
April 11: Gun battle erupts between armed groups two-and-a-half miles from the U.S. Consulate, including rocket-propelled grenades.
April 27: Two South African contractors are kidnapped by armed men, released unharmed.
May 1: Deputy Commander of U.S. Embassy Tripoli’s Local Guard Force is carjacked, beaten, and detained by armed youth.
May 1: British Embassy in Tripoli is attacked by a violent mob and set on fire. Other NATO embassies attacked as well.
May 3: The State Department declines a request from personnel concerned about security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya for a DC-3 plane to take them around the country.
May 22: Two rocket-propelled grenades are fired at the Benghazi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, less than 1 mile from the U.S. Consulate.
June 6: A large IED destroys part of the security perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Creates hole “big enough for 40 men to go through.”
June 10: A car carrying the British ambassador is attacked in Tripoli. Two bodyguards injured.Late June: The building of the International Red Cross attacked again and closed down, leaving the U.S. flag as the only international one still flying in Benghazi, an obvious target.
August 6: Armed assailants carjack a vehicle with diplomatic plates operated by U.S. personnel.
September 8: A local security officer in Benghazi warns American officials about deteriorating security.
September 11: Protesters attack the U.S. Cairo embassy. U.S. Embassy releases statement and tweets sympathizing with Muslim protesters/attackers.
September 11: U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans are killed.
September 12: Secretary Clinton and President Obama issue statements condemning both the video and the attacks.
September 12: U.S. intelligence agencies have enough evidence to conclude a terrorist attackwas involved.
September 13: Press Secretary Jay Carney condemns video and violence at a news conference.
September 14: Carney denies Administration had “actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
September 14: The bodies of slain Americans return to Andrews Air Force Base. President Obama again blames the YouTube video.
September 16: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appears on Sunday talk shows and says the attacks were provoked by the video, exclusively.
September 16: Libyan President Mohamed Magarief says, “no doubt that this [attack] was preplanned, predetermined.”
September 17: State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refuses to call attacks an act of terror.
September 19: CNN reports having found Ambassador Stevens’s diary, which indicates concern about security threats in Benghazi.
September 19: Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen tells Congressthe attack in Libya was “terrorism.”
September 20: Carney tries to back up Olsen, says it was “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
September 20: Obama refuses to call attack terrorism, citing insufficient information.
September 21: Secretary of State Clinton, at meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister, says, “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”September 25: On ABC’s “The View,” Obama says, “we don’t have all of the information yet so we are still gathering.”September 25: To the U.N. assembly, Obama blames “A crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.”September 26: Libya’s Magarief on the “Today” show says, “It was a preplanned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.”September 26: Published reports show U.S. Intel agencies and the Obama Administration knew within 24 hours that al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist were involved.September 27: Innocence of Muslims filmmaker Mark Basseley Youseff (aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) is arrested and denied bail on the charges of “probation violation.”September 28: Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr., issues a statement backing the Obama Administration’s changing story about the Libyan attack. Says facts are evolving.October 2: Carney declines to comment on reported requests from diplomats in Libya for additional security, citing the State Department’s internal investigation.

At some point people need to realize that the ebbs and flows of the economy are driven more by the business cycle than the white house.�
A second point which seems to have been lost is that congress not the executive has the “power of the purse.” If folks want to complain about deficits than blame the people who vote for the deficits like the GOP house elected in 2010.

“It’s getting a bit old with people” blaming the state of the economy on GW Bush.

Economists have talked about the historic collapse of 2008, and have revised the GDP to incredibly bad numbers, even worse than we thought then back when the sky was falling. Pollsters show that people still blame G. Bush for the ditch the economy was in.

Can Ruth Marcus have gone the last four years without being subjected either of these things? Perhaps she should do less “intuiting”.

Ruth mentioned the voters are running thin on obama’s policy…?

We are talking about an economic meltdown that is worse than the 1929 crash! do you think you can return an economic catastrophe in 4 years??!!!

i don’t think so. if some american voters do not have patience… then they should ask themselves why they have patience to give GW 4 more years when he did NOTHING in his first 4 years except giving unnecessary tax breaks and built a real estate bubble that nearly bring this country to its knees.

there is no way we can simply ignore blaming GW for what happened in 2008… this country nearly went down to its knees.

Obama did everything he can to prevent another depression. that is not an easy feat.

It took Romney just a few hours to blunder and say that the President of the U.S. was supporting terrorists! What a desperate man!
“But in the hours after the death of the first U.S. ambassador killed in
decades, Mitt Romney — panicked as his poll numbers have slipped —
punched hard against the president, unleashing an unwise, inaccurate and
unpresidential attack on the Obama administration.
No wonder a wide array of Republican foreign policy experts rose to condemn Romney’s comments, including the longtime speechwriter and senior aide to Sen. John McCain, Mark Salter, who wrote: “to condemn (Obama) for policies they claim helped precipitate the attacks is as tortured in its reasoning as it is unseemly in its timing.”

The Pres found his backbone! About time.

After listening to the debate on VPR last night, I was finally able to summarize my feelings about these two candidates this way:  If the American economy is a bus and all the people are trying to get on,  Romney would arrange to have all the rich people stay on the bus and throw those that don’t fit under the bus.  Pres. Obama would find another bus for the regular American people.

How can Obama hatch a definitive economic plan, if, God help us, he’s stuck with the same congressional obstructionism?    

Romney’s “Blind Trust”

He may not know exactly what is in it but his tax rate tells us that he is directing it toward heavily tax advantaged investments, not start up companies that create jobs.

I’m shocked that so many people think that Romney will be better for the economy.  All the growth, jobs and housing numbers are getting better.  The stock market is up.  I can’t believe that people expected the president to fix everything in less than 4 years after it took Bush 8 years to destroy the US economy and the world economy!

Romney likes to tout his ability to “work across the aisle”, as evidenced by his tenure as governor of MA.  In fact, his MO in MA was to issue over 800 vetoes that were overridden by the Democratic majority in the state legislature.  His one bipartisan effort, Romneycare, he now vilifies.  Why has no one asked Romney how he would deal with a congress that votes in lockstep against every program and nominee he puts forward?

Obama should just run commercials of Mitch McConnell’s comment on making sure Obama is a one term president/we are working for ourselves, not the people.

does Brook pay for her own insurance or does it come out of her paycheck?
 

Those of us who are self-employed and cut a check every month for overpriced healthcare and rarely use it would like to see the reform from the Affordable Healthcare act be allowed to take place.

I think it will be a judgment on the American people if we fall for the Super Offer proposed by the Republicans, and some will get horrendously rich, and do we envy them?  In my opinion, that kind of power — “corrupts absolutely,” as they say — probably functions as an addiction and like alcoholism functions as a brake upon the evolution of the human personality.  There will be emotional pigeons at the helm.  I know I overstate, but that seems to be the objective.  One worships them.  I’m thinking of North Korea.  It is the exception not the rule that such plutocracies create humane and wise leaders.  What did Jesus say?  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?  Hmm.

Regarding health care… it is bankrupting us.  In the 1960′s, it consumed 5% of our GDP.  Now it is consuming 17% of our GDP.  This is a bottom-line argument for fixing this broken, expensive system. 

We pay the most among industrialized countries, but do NOT have the best outcomes.

Pharmaceuticals benefit from government-sponsored research on their drugs, but they charge U.S. citizens THE MOST, world wide, for our medications.  Why is that? 

The whole notion of employee paid health care is an odd artifact from the Truman era, resulting from wage freezes.  Is there any other country with this unstable and uneven way of providing health care?

Our health care system is killing us. And what Obama did was the most lame, republican-endorsed plan.

 Thanks

Can Romney really make China behave the way he wanted? Or is this another of his arrogant thought that he is the CEO of the world and everyone just follow his instruction?

When Obama mentioned Big Bird, I expected Romney to respond with his campaign rejoinder that Obama is trying to “make a big election about small things.”  Here’s why Big Bird is NO small potatoes.

Romney’s goal is to reduce total fed. spending to 20% of GDP while at the same time increasing defense spending by $2 trillion and implementing a $5 trillion tax cut providing most of the relief to the wealthy by dropping the top income tax rate from 35% to 28%, repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, repealing the Estate Tax, and decreasing the corporate rate from 35% to 25%–a recipe that most independent analysts view as impossible to achieve without ultimately removing deductions, exemptions and credits benefiting primarily middle-class taxpayers (effectively raising their taxes) and/or exploding the national debt.

It’s also worth noting that if we actually did reduce spending to 20% of GDP, the U.S. would then lag behind nearly every other advanced, industrialized country in the world in terms of public spending as a share of GDP–something we cannot afford to do if we hope to remain competitive in the global economy.  Moreover, we know what such irresponsible, supply-side tax cuts under Reagan and Bush produced:  inadequate revenues, record deficits, ballooning national debt and draconian cuts in discretionary spending for programs like Big Bird and Educational TV that benefit mainly the middle-class and working poor.  And even if discretionary spending were slashed to the bone, the trajectory of our mounting debt would remain unaltered because there is simply not enough savings in those line items to make a real difference.

History teaches that the economic growth promised by “trickle-down” snake oil salesmen like Romney is never sufficient to offset the loss of revenue to the fed. govt., and invariably leads to a so-called “fiscal crisis” that cynical, right-wing opportunists use as a smoke-screen for advancing a radical agenda, which would be politically impossible without a manufactured “fiscal crisis.”  What is that radical agenda?  It’s shredding our social contract, gutting our social ins. and safety net programs, and reducing our investments in education, job training, infrastructure, research & innovation–all of which are vital to a thriving middle-class and to our competitiveness in a global economy.  And if we dig more deeply into history (e.g. the Reagan/Bush recoveries), we also find that without sufficient public investment, economic growth alone is no cure-all and can be accompanied by increasing income inequality and declining economic mobility.

Think of Romney’s attack on Big Bird as a metaphor for what America loses if the oligarchs win.  For all his posturing about closing tax loopholes to prevent the wealthy’s tax burden from shrinking too much, Romney still leaves the biggest loophole intact, namely, the reduced rate paid on capital gains & carried interest that, for instance, allows the earnings of hedge-fund managers (and coincidentally much of Romney’s own income) to be taxed at the lower rate of 15%.  It’s estimated that if the earnings of the top 13 hedge-fund managers in 2010 had been taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would have been enough to pay for the salaries & benefits of approx. 300,000 teachers, which underscores another lesson from Big Bird.  Most of us probably agree that 300,000 teachers are of greater value to society than 13 hedge-fund managers, but not Mitt Romney (see his post-Wisconsin recall election stump speech).

Finally, remember that in a futile effort to stem the red ink flowing from all of his ill-conceived tax cuts for the rich, Reagan froze the fed. min. wage and wound up slashing Food Stamps, Education, Medicaid, Aid to Cities & States, Public Housing and Sect. 8 Subsidies.  The Romney/Ryan budget would be MUCH WORSE because it would not only eviscerate these and similar programs, but also end Medicare and Social Security.  Reagan, in spite of his delusional supply-side thinking, preserved Medicare and SS because he was willing of compromise with his ideological  opponents to get things done unlike the intransigent Tea Party wing-nuts who hijacked the GOP and created Congressional gridlock in a transparent scheme to “make Obama a one-term president.”

Finally! The details of Lord R’s tax plan:

http://www.romneytaxplan.com/

Looking at the replies I received 400 comments ago, I am astounded folks are actually saying Obama said this was a terrorist attack from day one. He jumped through hoops to not say it. He still won’t say it. He even distanced himself from it last night when Romney called him on it. “Proceed”. What a joke. I try not to get personal but you guys are idiots if you think Obama was truthful to the American people. He lied and he sent others to lie. Even his Rose Garden appearance is a lie. He said an act of terror would not be tolerated but he can’t even call it what it is, it’s tolerated. Ft. Hood, Underwear bomber, Times Square bomber, etc. were ALL terrorist attacks or attempts. The word was never used. The lack of out rage is astonishing. Don’t ever call me an ideologue again. 

You make me laugh. Watch the polls.

Mitt the misogynist? …He’s proud of his idea to put women in “binders”? …What’s next? I can hear him now stumping along the campaign trail: “a chastity belt and an iron maiden for every woman in America!” …Of course, his admiring base will cheer at anything…

Romney has tried to make hay out of Obama’s being away from the WH, on several occasions. Last night he did so, as well.

Here’s Romney’s record when he was governor of MA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/politics/mitt-romney-often-away-when-he-was-governor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Romney’s “binders full of women” comment does indeed say something about how he sees women in the workplace, as does his comment about working women needing to hurry home, fix dinner, and take care of the kids.

However, that “binders full of women” comment ALSO says something about how Romney sees American workers in general… not as people, but as pages from a report, to be used or discarded at will, as his discretion sees fit.

THIS IS WHAT HAS DESTROYED EARNINGS FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS!!

A CEO sees a number on a page, like how much the company will save if it cuts pay or fails to raise salaries, say for all cashiers in a store like STAPLES.
Cashiers make up a vast number of the workforce in a company like STAPLES, so the dollar amount on the page will be HUGE if you cut their pay, and the CEO gets a “big woodie” from that “BOTTOM LINE” number, knowing how it will affect the value of his stock options that year.
He then sees a number showing how much he’ll save if he cuts pay for a handfull of corporate headquarters jobs instead… the number is relatively small, compared to the savings of cutting pay for those thousands of cashiers, so he goes with the big number that gave him a “woodie,” and leaves pay for the people at corporate alone this quarter, especially as he actually SEES those corporate workers in person every day, as he walks to his upstairs office.

Now, imagine this same dynamic happenning over and over again, quarter after quarter, for years on end.

… pretty soon, you’ve got a MASSIVE wage disparity between the vast numbers of workers who ACTUALLY work hard every day in the stores, and those who get paid much more, simply because they’re walking through doors at corporate headquarters instead of walking into a brick and mortar retail outlet.

I see this in MY company, where I’ve seen AN ENTRY LEVEL, NO SPECIAL SKILLS REQUIRED job at corporate pay TWICE what a full-time worker of twenty years gets paid at the store level.

The ONLY reason this has happened, across America over time, is because people like Romney DON’T consider fairness, or how American business needs a healthy middle-class FOR THE COMPANY’S OWN LONG-TERM HEALTH… instead, all the Romney types consider is what will be good for thier own pay compensation and that of investors, NEXT QUARTER!

This thinking has KILLED THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS, the original “goose that laid the golden egg” for American business, and the disappearing wealth of the middle-class IS WHAT HAS REALLY DESTROYED JOB GROWTH IN OUR COUNTRY!!!!

I’m not sure anyone else caught this, but Romney contradicted himself to the point where he was disagreeing with himself. Response to the question from a college student(Jeremy).

ROMNEY: “2014. When you come out in 2014, I presume I’m going to be president. I’m going to make sure you get a job. Thanks Jeremy.”

ROMNEY: “Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.”

OK Mitt, which is it going to be, when you’re going to be president you will be creating jobs or you wont…

Another posting error. sorry

The debate should be about who is going to cut government spending more and more quickly; not about who is going to confiscate more of American’s hard-earned wages, but Obama wants to grow the government and have all of our earnings go to the government in the hopes of trickling down prosperity to all.  If he only had a payroll to support or had to deal with government regulators making his business more inefficient, he wouldn’t have so much faith in the government and would see it as the solution to all.  I guess it doesn’t help that the public and private employee unions are giving his campaign hundreds of millions again this election.

And for all you communists who don’t know how private equity works:  if they are issuing debt, sophisticated bond buyers are making a reasoned decision that they will be paid back; if not, the leverage would not be possible.

This is Tom Ashbrook at his finest. I’m a long time listener and this ranks as one of his best moderating jobs.

The first debate focused on domestic policy. Last night’s debate included both foreign and domestic policy. Romney has soundly won the day on the domestic side, everybody knows it. IMO he struck a fatal blow on Libya too. Romney elicited the “deer in the headlights” face from Obama when he held him to his own words as Obama tried to imply he didn’t say what he just said he said he said. Here’s the moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzdWnigWY0o

“I want to make sure we get that for the record…”

Yep, we did. Now the question becomes: “Why did he lie for 2 weeks?” The next debate is solely on foreign policy. It’ll be saucy.

I’ve seen nasty, sarcastic, disrespectful from bloggers across the political spectrum.  We are seeing it here in increasing intensity.

This is clearly reflective of a disrespectful and antagonistic attitude toward people we don’t agree with.

It is the same poison that makes Congress dysfunctional.  We all have to try hard not to take the bait and join in the mud slinging.  I think this is really a troubling trend.

Oh..and for the poster whose name currently escapes me…we’ll stipulate up front that “anec” is not a prefix for data.

On Point has basically become Fox News Lite. I can’t stand Tom or Jack anymore, after listening to you guys for a decade, I’m done. Good luck. 

You continue to reinforce the illusion of a democratic 2 party system in the US, so I will continue to remind the reader, that they are living in a special interest-controlled prison. I only wonder if Tom is aware of this fact, but chooses to play the game for the sake of taking a paycheck and being a part of it. Or if he is actually oblivious to the reality of the political system we have today? Since I know he is an intelligent and informed person, I refuse to believe the latter. So I can only assume that he knows very well that his job, and that of the MSM, is to perpetuate the illusion, which serves to keep the American people down. I welcome any comments.