Debates: Obama vs Romney, Round 1

[boutons_deux]

Many commentators said the challenger often "wins" the first debate.

Barry's biggest problem was not challenging Gecko's repeated lies.

Gecko denied he'd cut taxes by $5T, but his 20% tax cut for all brackets does exactly that over 10 years. And alleged deficit-hawk Ryan's twice-passed budget plan increases the deficit by about the same amount.

[DarrinS]

How Obama was Clobbered

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-h...b_1938118.html

If you believe Barack Obama distinguished himself favorably in the first debate, you won't like the following rampage one bit. Those who judge debates on quality of information and truthfulness might have kept different score. But in the realm of making an impression, and in winning the lightning-quick emotional judgments that people make of each other, Obama suffered from ineloquence, hesitation, rambling, old material (the grandmother again, really?), and inadvertent signals of weakness.

Obama's painful defeat was foreshadowed by the president's first response, when he utterly ignored moderator Jim Lehrer's question and delivered a prepared opening statement. All political debaters bring prepared material to the podium. But without the slightest reference to the question in framing his answer, or allusion to Lehrer's topic within the answer, Obama's opening segment bristled with nonchalant disrespect for the audience. And Romney trounced him by buckling right down to his first volley of highly energized and precisely relevant bullet points.

The bizarre opening play could be forgotten if the president had snapped out of his rote recitation quickly thereafter, but Obama's entire performance conveyed the impression of a candidate whose staff had failed to inform him that the event was a debate. He appeared flummoxed by questions, baffled and wounded by his opponent's attacks, peevish, and overwhelmed by Romney's passion.

The body language was as unpresidential as it gets. Obama looked exhausted, and perhaps he was -- the man is running the country and managing responses to world affairs, while also struggling to keep his job. Governor Romney's only job is to prepare for campaign events. So it was understandable when Obama appeared to be performing a chore -- scowling, withdrawing, stuttering, going through motions.

Still, his job for 90 minutes was to perform in a nationally broadcast TV show that serves an important function in the democracy. If this had been an audition for a dramatic role as president, President Obama wouldn't get a call-back. He was sluggish; his responses amorphous and dissolute. Romney was quick and precise.

Memo to Obama campaign staff: Get a grip on your man and eliminate the following habits:
•"Wanna." First of all, he should stop saying "wanna" entirely. Failing to pronounce words is unpresidential. More important, in a debate, saying you want to do something is weak compared to saying you will do something. Obama is accused of failure. His assertions should be filled with "I did" and "I will do." Romney did not "want" anything in this debate. He intended. That is a presidential at ude.

•"Four years ago." This is whining. Whining is also unpresidential. Everyone knows Obama was elected at a difficult historical moment. Complaining affirms accusations of failure.


•Nodding. It is inadvisable to nod your head when the opposing candidate is blasting you mercilessly! Humility is fine, and so is acknowledgment that you're listening. But on TV, it looks like you are agreeing.


•Tighten the up. Does the president believe the eloquence myth? Because although Barack Obama is an outstanding writer, and a great orator when working from a script, he is not often an eloquent man off-script. Viewers had time to check scores on ESPN while he gathered his woolen thoughts in long preludes to halting replies. The president's sentences were strung together in wide, spacious nets of speech that allowed the viewer's attention to slip through and crash to the ground. Obama worked the game like a slow pitcher in baseball who walks halfway to the infield and back between pitches, trying to break the batter's rhythm. In this case, it just gave Romney time to reload.


•"I believe." Less theory, more declamation, please. The president's most potentially powerful remarks were undermined at the end by the repeated weak-kneed disclaimer: "That's not what I believe." Against Romney's passionate engagement and purposeful language, Obama's intellectual musing sounded as if a political science professor had taken the president's place on stage.


Obama's listless closing statement might be explained as a natural consequence of the thrashing he had just endured. Here, and at other times, the president seemed to credit Americans with the progress made during the first term. That is flattering, and of course everyone wants a president who doesn't get too carried away with himself. But constant deflection of credit invites people to muse over this question: "Well, then, what do we need you for?"

Here's hoping the president gets more sleep before the next debate.

[MannyIsGod]

Here is the cliff notes version

Wow Romney is such an amazing American. Check out that music. Now, bonus points if you can answer how many of the statements said by Mitt in that clip were flat out lies.

[CosmicCowboy]

Wow Romney is such an amazing American. Check out that music. Now, bonus points if you can answer how many of the statements said by Mitt in that clip were flat out lies.

Meh. The lies were pretty evenly balanced on both sides.

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

[boutons_deux]

You knew it was coming, but of course not from MSM


10 Most Shameless Romney Debate Lies -- Debunked

The verdict is in: Mitt Romney handily won last night’s debate, and did what he needed to do to have a fighting chance at winning the election. But what he didn’t do, predictably, was tell the truth.

Romney’s debate performance was chock full of lies, recalling his running mate’s address to the GOP convention, which was also chock full of lies. Hopefully, just as Ryan’s address was dissected and debunked by some media outlets, Romney’s claims are as well, so the debate can move to substantive issues instead of stylistic ones.

Here are ten of Romney’s fact-challenged claims from last night:

1. An ‘Unelected Board’ Controlling Your Health Care

Despite President Obama trying to push back on this lie, Romney made this claim a few times last night. Obamacare, according to Romney, “puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” In reality, as the Associated Press points out [3], the board that is tasked with bringing down Medicare costs is prohibited from “rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age. So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.” This Romney claim also hearkened back to Sarah Palin’s lie that Obamacare created “death panels,” which was a straight up lie.

2. A Bipartisan Record

Romney referred to his alleged “bipartisan” record in Massachusetts as governor during the debate. But what’s the real story on this? ABC News calls [4] the claim “not quite factual.” Indeed: Romney’s health care plan was enacted with the help of a Democratic legislature. But in general, the body was “frustrated” with Romney “because he wanted to govern like a ‘CEO’ and ‘didn’t pay heed to the legislature and they resented that,’” according to the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation’s Michael Widmer.

3. Dodd-Frank Labels Banks as ‘Too Big to Fail’

One contrast between the candidates that emerged during the debate was over Dodd-Frank, the weak Wall Street reforms and regulations passed after the 2008 financial collapse. Romney wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and part of the reason why is his claim that the bill designates banks as “too big to fail” and therefore gives them “a blank check.” But as ThinkProgress notes, [5]this is far from the truth: “the law merely says that the biggest, systemically risky banks need to abide by more stringent regulations [6]. If those banks fail, they will be unwound by a new process in the Dodd-Frank law that protects taxpayers [7] from having to pony up for a bailout.”

4. Obamacare Leads to Loss of Healthcare

Governor Romney claimed that the passage of the Affordable Care Act will lead to 20 million people losing health insurance. He based this claim on a Congressional Budget Office report. But according to PolitiFact, Romney “cherry picked” the CBO report and mislead viewers on why people would “lose” coverage.

PolitiFact’s final verdict on the claim is: “That number is cherry-picked, and he’s wrong to describe it as only including people who ‘like’ their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today ‘lose’ coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.”

5. The Failure of the Obama Economy

Romney hammered Obama on the economy’s performance over the past four years. One claim Romney made was this: “[We have] 23 million people out of work...The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work.”

But here’s the AP breakdown [3] of the facts on this claim: “The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.”

And on the college graduate claim, Romney was also wrong. Back to the AP: “A Northeastern University analysis for The Associated Press found that a quarter of graduates were probably unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, which means working in jobs that didn't make full use of their skills or experience.”

6. Obamacare Cuts Billions From Medicare

This was one of Romney’s favorite attack lines last night: the notion that the Affordable Care Act is siphoning off funds from Medicare. The specific claim is that $716 billion was cut from Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this claim is highly misleading. What the number refers to is money that is saved “primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies [8] under Medicare Advantage, not payments to beneficiaries. Paul Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts [9], but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction,” ThinkProgress notes. [5]

7. Gas Prices Increase

Romney said that “gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up.” This is true--but to blame it on the president is highly misleading. Gasoline prices have little to do with individual policies carried out by a president. Instead, as the Associated Press states, “Gasoline prices are set on financial exchanges around the world and are based on a host of factors, most importantly the price of crude oil used to make gasoline, the amount of finished gasoline ready to be shipped and the capacity of refiners to make enough to meet market demand.”

The AP also skewers Romney’s claim on electric rates going up: “Retail electricity prices have risen since Obama took office — barely. They've grown by an average of less than 1 percent per year, less than the rate of inflation and slower than the historical growth in electricity prices. The unexpectedly modest rise in electricity prices is because of the plummeting cost of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.”

8. Health Care Costs Rising Under Obama

Romney’s made this statement on the campaign trail--and if it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. Last night, Romney claimed that “health care costs have gone up by $2500 a family.”

But FactCheck.org was on this false claim back when Romney used it on the campaign trail in September. Their take: [10] “Romney says health insurance premiums have gone up $2,500 under Obama. The actual increase has been $1,700, most of which was absorbed by employers and only a small part of which is attributable to the health care law.”

9. Oil and Gas Production Increases Only on Private Land

The former Massachusetts governor said last night that “all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land...Your Administration has cut the numbers of permit and licenses in half.”

But ABC News says [4] Romney is playing loose with the facts. Data from the Bureau of Land Management shows that “the number of drilling permits on federal lands approved during the fiscal years President Obama has been in office has decreased somewhere between 20 and 37 percent compared to the years before he became president - not the 50 percent Romney claimed.”

10. No Tax Cuts for the Rich

To fend off the perception that he’s only concerned about the wealthy, Romney made sure to emphasize that his economic plan would not lower tax rates on rich people.

Think Progress has the details on that claim: “If Romney were to actually implement [11] his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans —will see their taxes increase.”

[MannyIsGod]

Meh. The lies were pretty evenly balanced on both sides.

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

Which is why no one should be saying either of these two assholes won. Its pretty sad how everyone just writes off that they were lied too for 90 minutes so they can cheer on their team.

[MannyIsGod]

Also, a video led "smirk" is hilarious. For a second there I thought that they might show Romney's face, too since he had a smirk on the entire ing night. At least then didn't le it uppity.

[CosmicCowboy]

Which is why no one should be saying either of these two assholes won. Its pretty sad how everyone just writes off that they were lied too for 90 minutes so they can cheer on their team.

I'm not voting for either one but Obama definitely got his ass kicked.

[DarrinS]

Also, a video led "smirk" is hilarious. For a second there I thought that they might show Romney's face, too since he had a smirk on the entire ing night. At least then didn't le it uppity.

I thought it looked more like Mitt was in love with Obama. Creepy, tbh.

[clambake]

i just hope all the voter fraud doesn't decide the winner.

[Th'Pusher]

Meh. The lies were pretty evenly balanced on both sides.

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

There is only one lie that people should be concerned with as it goes to the heart of Romney's economic campain. We are $16T in debt and Romney has an 'impossible plan" to pay for $5T in addition tax cuts unless of course you assume completely unrelistic growth rates. For that reason alone, I will vote for Obama.

$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.

[Juggity]

When Democrats lose elections particularly presidential elections, they get ass whooped by Republicans. Just sayin'. Republicans suck ass just as much as Democrats but Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 all won in land slides.

The demographic shift makes electoral landslides pretty close to impossible now

[MannyIsGod]

I'm not voting for either one but Obama definitely got his ass kicked.

But Romney ing lied his ass off! How the does one kick someone's ass in a debate when they lie their ass off? Off of style? If its a style based analysis that is swaying everyone then who really gives a ?

[LnGrrrR]

While I think Romney looked better, only an idiot would buy the idea that he will somehow cut he deficit while improving education, not cutting the military, keeping parts of Obamacare, increase jobs etc etc. does he have a magic wand? Has he even mentioned what en lements he would cut?

[LnGrrrR]

Also, that fact checker sucks balls too. As I mentioned in the other thread, if a politician is saying cut taxes but he'll "offset rate cuts", until he says which rate cuts I think it's fair to assume he's lying.

Romneys lies seemed to be of greater magnitude/importance.

[ElNono]

They both lied to the teeth... but that's seemingly standard procedure these days...

[Th'Pusher]

Also, that fact checker sucks balls too. As I mentioned in the other thread, if a politician is saying cut taxes but he'll "offset rate cuts", until he says which rate cuts I think it's fair to assume he's lying.

Romneys lies seemed to be of greater magnitude/importance.

+1. Romeys lies to to the core of his economic platform.

[z0sa]

Assuming Romney has lied because of a lack of information and him actually having lied are two different things, though I'm sure he is lying on some things (haven't been watching/listening too closely tbh). I'd like to see Barry bring it hard in the next debate concerning the many gaps in Romney's 5 part plan.

[jack sommerset]

Now that the dust has settled its been determined by most that Romney handed it to Obama. My brothers, Obama can't win a debate. Obama has history now. 4 years worth of it. He can't run or hide from it. Obama spoke a little longer than Romney and we are watching nothing but Romney clips on all the channels. All the channels including msnbc. Obama look like a deer in headlights. He made big promises and he was called on them, that shut him up. That would shut anyone one up. Obama looked like a fool. God bless

[jack sommerset]

Obama keeps blabbing about 5 trillion dollars. The msnbc fact checkers said both Obama and Romney are right and both romney and Obama are wrong. Silly. God bless

[Fpoonsie]

But Romney ing lied his ass off! How the does one kick someone's ass in a debate when they lie their ass off? Off of style? If its a style based analysis that is swaying everyone then who really gives a ?

You're talking about a nation that treats wiki articles as indisputable fact.

Of course Romney won. Stop ing kidding yourself.

[boutons_deux]

Here's a WHOPPER

“And these [clean energy] businesses, many of them have gone out of business, I think about half of them, of the ones have been invested in, have gone out of business.”

At a time when the U.S. clean energy industry is supporting thousands of innovative businesses in every state (many of them small businesses), hundreds of thousands of jobs (including tens of thousands in Romney’s home state of Massachusetts), and leveraging tens of billions in private capital, Romney casually tried to claim that “half” of businesses that received federal incentives have gone out of business. That’s not even remotely close to the truth.

Okay, let’s throw the Romney camp a bone. To the small number of people who actually monitor this topic, it was clear that he probably meant the loan guarantee program — a tool that provides government backing of private loans in order to leverage capital for “first of a kind” renewable energy projects

After numerous tweets last night calling Romney out, Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald confirmed today via twitter that the campaign was backtracking: “Now Romney camp tells me he misspoke, only meant to single out loan program.”

So let’s narrow Romney’s statement down to the loan guarantee program. Are we getting closer to the truth? No.

The loan guarantee program Romney referenced supported dozens of companies. Of those companies, four recently went bankrupt due to difficult market conditions. But that’s out of 33 companies that received loan guarantees or commitments for loan guarantees. That translates to a 10 percent failure rate representing roughly 2 percent of budgeted funds for the program — a big difference from the 50 percent failure rate that Romney claimed.

At the same time, the program has supported some of the largest wind and solar projects in the world, helping double generation of U.S. renewable electricity in four years.

In fact, an independent review of the loan guarantee program found that it will cost $2 billion less than actually budgeted for. (Yes, the program is designed to accept a certain level of failure, which is an important part of supporting innovative projects that need help accessing private capital).

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...-bankruptcies/

But Gecko refuses to touch any $Bs of tax breaks, subsidies for carbon companies, and says he LOVES COAL.

[boutons_deux]

Romney Doesn’t Dispute Plan To Increase Military Spending By $2 Trillion





OBAMA: Now, Governor Romney’s proposal that he has been promoting for 18 months calls for a $5 trillion tax cut on top of $2 trillion of additional spending for our military. And he is saying that he is going to pay for it by closing loopholes and deductions. The problem is that he’s been asked a — over a hundred times how you would close those deductions and loopholes and he hasn’t been able to identify them.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/20...tary-spending/

[DarrinS]

Dems put out video portraying Romney as a bully

[Winehole23]