The General American Politics Thread

[Old dead account]

Sean should be the moderator there ;D

im sorry i'll leave...

Edited October 12, 2012 by The Lustful Lucario

[Patticus]

This is the point where the wind in Mitt's sails dropped and both sides were left drifting in positions not unlike those they occupied before the national conventions. Until next week, barring any major gaffes or breaking scandals, it'll probably stay that way. Next week's town hall debate is going to have both candidates under immense pressure to deliver for their respective parties, and I think we're going to see it show more on Mitt's face than Obama's because he knows that he probably won't be able to get away with the same shit he did before. It probably won't be as exciting as tonight's event, mind, but it'll be a sight to see nevertheless.

[Autosaver]

Sean should be the moderator there ;D..

What have you suggested?!

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Sean couldn't be a moderator there. He couldn't threaten them with strikes like he does here.

Edited October 12, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Tani Coyote]

There was still plenty of talking over eachother annoying the crap out of me. They need to invent shock collars or something that candidates must agree to wear during debates. If they speak while the computer has it as the other person's time, zzzzt!

Biden has a very deep, commanding voice for me, though it does make him come off as a bit of a jerk. I didn't watch much of it but it seems Ryan did genuinely dodge some questions and dance around them, whereas other times to me he seemed clear enough.

"This is a historic debate, the first time two Catholic candidates are debating." No, what'd be historic is if we had an election where religion had 0% importance on choice. But that's just me. :V

It isn't merely a "conservative congress" Obama has been up against, it's one in which half the GOP members were elected not because of what good they'd do, but because their agenda was "stop Obama from being re-elected." Obstructionism regardless of the cost to America, pure and simple. Without a filibuster-proof majority in the house, a great many good bills which might have made Obama look good come the election (jobs bills, veterans bills et al) have been blocked, and it was thanks to the Republicans last summer during the Debt Ceiling Crisis that America's credit rating was downgraded. It didn't have to be that way, but because they saw another opportunity to bitch about Obama, they decided the economic impact was worth it.

He wouldn't even have been able to pass bills and enact policies even if he had stolen them from the Tea Party itself! As their one goal is to get him kicked out of office, so long as they get it done, they don't care how much damage they inflict on the country as a whole.

Edited October 12, 2012 by TaniciusFox

[Patticus]

Biden was very aggressive, and yes he may have been a jerk, even disrespectful (both things which "won" Romney the first debate), but when an opposition campaign is built on brazenly lying to the electorate the way the RR campaign is, it deserves no respect and should receive none during debates.

[Tani Coyote]

Never mind Biden's fiery personality is a very excellent contrast to Obama's more pragmatic, reasonable demeanor. As we can see since whenever he wants to make a controversial remark, he usually has Biden do it as memory serves. Since Biden has no power - theoretically - Obama can deny any and all involvement if it goes sour.

Edited October 12, 2012 by TaniciusFox

[Patticus]

I don't doubt this, but I'm not optimistic to think a Democrat Congress would be much better.

[TheGerkuman]

There's a quote somewhere. Democratic administration is incompetent, Republican administration is sinister.

It's Thatcher (sinister) VS Kinnock (incompetent) all over again! The 80's never left!

But yeah, Biden did better than a lot of people expected him to. (I'd love to see Tornado's reaction to it, considering he was pronouncing doom)

Edited October 12, 2012 by Gerkuman

[Tornado]

(I'd love to see Tornado's reaction to it, considering he was pronouncing doom)

Like a true American (statistically speaking), I took part in the democratic process last night by watching a House marathon and playing RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 instead.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Tornado

[Dark Qiviut]

I must say, if the (general) Right is criticizing Biden for being overly aggressive (when Romney was basically doing the same thing), then they're being hypocrites.

Biden has the experience and the facts at his disposal, and he used most of them to back them up. He mentioned Romney's ignorant "47%" remark. The policy in Syria. The nuclear situation in Iran. Unlike what happened with his debate with Palin, he wasn't going to pull any punches. He was more relaxed with Palin because she wasn't experienced. Ryan is. Biden wasn't going to let misleading statistics and lies bypass him. That's why he interrupted. If he catches a myth, he was going to pounce on it.

You know why Biden was laughing and grinning? Because many of the statistics and claims from Ryan are "full of malarkey." He laughed because he was getting rather miffed, but he had to keep his cool. Yelling and scowling at Ryan wouldn't help his situation one iota. He had to keep his composure when Ryan kept bypassing and making ideological claims. Biden focused on the facts and common sense, and it's a shame that people in general who don't look at that enough.

There was one person from the MLP Forums who claimed that the auto industry will "plummet" if Obama is re-elected. Biden said these words about Romney: that the automobile sector in Detroit — the city which produces the most automobiles in the U.S. — would go bankrupt. Despite being more simple in words, Romney's managed bankruptcy solution that he wrote for the New York Times was much less viable at the time and, in conclusion, would have likely resulted in GM in Detroit to be liquidated. Here's the brief fact-checking article.

[Tornado]

That's not a fact checking article. That's "Romney is wrong, because some people I'm not going to bother to name say so." The "my older brother told me" of political arguments.

Particularly not when I'm not seeing anything wrong with what Romney actually said since that is basically what ended up happening anyway (the main difference would have been that GM would have sunk about a year earlier than it did because they were burning through something like a billion dollars a month before the economy collapsed; and there would have been no real difference from Chrysler since the majority of their debts were picked up by FIAT), so if Biden really did try to strangle Romney with his own words regarding that he would have just looked like a fool to anyone who was paying close attention to those two beforehand.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Tornado

[Patticus]

A good fact checking of last night's debate can be found here. Both candidates twisted some facts, exaggerated others and did some misrepresenting to boot, but it looks to me like Ryan did the greater share of that than Biden.

In any case, Biden did what was required of him: he re-energized the Democratic base and probably neutralized the RR campaign's momentum, although it could be argued that said momentum had plateaued a day or two before the Veep showdown anyway.

I want to see the swing state polls over the next few days. It'll be interesting to see if the debate has made any differences there.

Ninja Edit: Apparently, following the debate, MSNBC was happy to declare Biden the "winner", while Fox News had no such declaration for Ryan, instead complaining about the moderator and Biden's smiling. If you're looking for a debate winner, that's probably an indication that Biden "edged it", whatever that means.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Patticus

[Balding Spider]

For the second time in as many presidential elections, Joseph Biden got to debate a young, attractive Republican candidate who was demonstrably less qualified to to be president than I am to be chairman of the World Bank. Joseph Biden is a very lucky man. The Great Political Matchmaker in the Sky keeps handing him people who are trying — and failing — to fight above their weight class, and he keeps blowing through what can now legitimately be called the Bum of the Quadrennium Club.

There is a deeply held Beltway myth of Paul Ryan, Man of Big Ideas, and it dies hard. But, if there is a just god in the universe, on Thursday night, it died a bloody death, was hurled into a pit, doused with quicklime, buried without ceremony, and the ground above it salted and strewn with garlic so that it never rises again. On foreign policy, Ryan occasionally rose, gasping, to the level of obvious neophyte. (He was more lost in Afghanistan than the Russian army ever was.) On domestic policy, his alleged wheelhouse, he was vague, untruthful, and he walked right into a haymaker he should have seen coming from a mile off, when he started bloviating about Biden's role in the "failed" stimulus program, only to have Biden slap him around with Ryan's own requests for stimulus money for his home district back in Wisconsin. He also made it quite clear that a Romney-Ryan White House will do everything it can to eliminate a woman's right to choose. This should make for some fine television commercials over the next few weeks.

(A brief note here about Martha Raddatz, who's an old pal from our baby journo days in Boston. She did a fine job holding feet to the fire until her last three questions. She asked the two men to define their Catholicism only through the issue of abortion, which is not only insulting, but also limited a more interesting line of inquiry, given the open opposition of the Catholic bishops to the zombie-eyed granny-starving that is the hallmark of Ryan's career. And that closing if-you-were-a-tree question was simply embarrassing.)

Moreover, the battering that Biden gave Ryan brought something into sharp relief that the Republican party has been fudging ever since Romney put the zombie-eyed granny-starver on the ticket — that, for his entire political career up to that point, on critical economic issues, Paul Ryan was an extremist even by the standards of the modern Republican party, which are considerably high indeed. He was for full privatization of Social Security. He was for the absolute elimination of the defined-benefit Medicare and Medicaid programs. Since being selected, it has become clear that the Romney people have forced him to soften these positions. (His stance on Medicare, for example, has evolved from Kill It Now to Arrange for Its Slow Death Later.) On Thursday night, Biden dragged out the old Paul Ryan — and, I would argue, the real Paul Ryan — and put him on display, and he made the new Paul Ryan own him. For one brief moment, he almost got Ryan to commit to Social Security privatization again. You could hear the screams from Romney headquarters all the way up the Charles to where I was watching.

Ryan got hit on the stimulus. He looked ridiculous trying to defend his refusal to specify what "loopholes" he and Romney plan to close to make the magic arithmetic in their tax plan work; Raddatz treed him completely on the mortgage-interest deduction, on the elimination of which neither Ryan nor his running mate will commit to a position. He looked even more ridiculous when Biden started pounding him on his career-long quest to end Medicare and throw old people onto the tender mercies of large insurance companies. Biden kept saying "vouchers" until Ryan, at one point, said, "It's not a voucher. A voucher is a check you get in your mailbox." Wait. So if Paul Ryan gets his way, and Medicare as we know it gets eviscerated in favor of a pot full of offal on which Paul Ryan has slapped a label reading "Medicare," and my inadequate health-insurance allowance comes by e-mail, then it's not a "voucher" because it wasn't a check I got in the mail? And this is the issue on which Paul Ryan is supposed to be Genius on roller skates.

This was humiliating enough, but when they started talking about war and peace, specifically in Afghanistan, Ryan looked like a toddler trying to cross the Hindu Kush.

He stammered. He vanished into his syntax. He gave Biden the chance to ask him if he preferred that American soldiers carry the fighting in the worst parts of the country rather than Afghan troops, a devastating comeback for which Ryan had no answer. He kept rambling about maintaining the country's "credibility" until, if you closed your eyes, he started to sound like Robert McNamara in 1965. And when Raddatz asked him, deftly, what would be worse, another war in the Middle East or Iran with a nuclear bomb, he leaped in precipitously with the latter, while about 75 percent of the country, including the two other people on stage with him, looked at Ryan as though he'd lost his mind. He did, however, demonstrate a certain talent for pronouncing long foreign words that his briefers had taught him on Tuesday. Also, he explained winter.

For years, Paul Ryan has been the shining champion of some really terrible ideas, and of a dystopian vision of the political commonwealth in which the poor starve and the elderly die ghastly, impoverished deaths, while all the essential elements of a permanent American oligarchy were put in place. This has garnered him loving notices from a lot of people who should have known better. The ideas he could explain were bad enough, but the profound ignorance he displayed on Thursday night on a number of important questions, including when and where the United States might wind up going to war next, and his blithe dismissal of any demand that he be specific about where he and his running mate are planning to take the country generally, was so positively terrifying that it calls into question Romney's judgment for putting this unqualified greenhorn on the ticket at all. Joe Biden laughed at him? Of course, he did. The only other option was to hand him a participation ribbon and take him to Burger King for lunch.

You know what's the difference between Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan?

Lipstick.

http://www.esquire.c...2#ixzz296mdx5zx

[Tornado]

I made it this far:

And when Raddatz asked him, deftly, what would be worse, another war in the Middle East or Iran with a nuclear bomb, he leaped in precipitously with the latter, while about 75 percent of the country, including the two other people on stage with him, looked at Ryan as though he'd lost his mind.

Before my eyes rolled out of my head and I was unable to read any further (thank god I learned how to touch-type in school). It takes a specific kind of delusional thinking to not only boil down the answer of a Kobayashi Maru-esque question into being the obviously "wrong" answer, to not only turn a blind eye to the Obama Administration's actions so far regarding Iran so they could say Ryan had a gaffe, but to go so far as to say that "75 percent of the country" were shocked by the answer given regardless of what it was.

So... congratulations, article author?

Edited October 12, 2012 by Tornado

[Patticus]

Quick question: If he's elected, will Mitt Romney swear upon the Bible, or upon the Book of Mormon?

After all, he is a Mormon Bishop, and has sworn to uphold the Mormon Church's ordinances.

[turbojet]

Quick question: If he's elected, will Mitt Romney swear upon the Bible, or upon the Book of Mormon?

After all, he is a Mormon Bishop, and has sworn to uphold the Mormon Church's ordinances.

The seriously need to get rid of this custom. I do not want a leader that has some moral obligation and imperative to anything beyond protecting the state. Raison de'tat, bitches.

[Patticus]

They seriously need to get rid of this custom. I do not want a leader that has some moral obligation and imperative to anything beyond protecting the state. Raison de'tat, bitches.

I agree completely, but the odds that it'll go any time soon are ... well, they're about as good as the chances of getting rid of 'in god we trust' from currency. I was just curious really, religion plays a big role in a lot of people's lives, and if it's as important to Mitt as it seems, I'll be curious to see if he does use his Mormon book.

Obama's going to be hunkering down for four solid days of debate prep tomorrow (Saturday-Tuesday). Meanwhile, Romney has no less than four campaign rallies planned for the Buckeye State before the next debate.

Next Thursday, Obama's going to be on the Daily Show. That'll be fun.

[Speederino]

Quick question: If he's elected, will Mitt Romney swear upon the Bible, or upon the Book of Mormon?

After all, he is a Mormon Bishop, and has sworn to uphold the Mormon Church's ordinances.

The Bible is just as important to them as the Book of the Mormon, so I don't think they would seriously push for the latter.

[Autosaver]

If you google images "Completely Wrong" you get hundreds of pictures of Mitt Romney.

[Solkia]

oh my god it's true

that's hilarious

Now type in "worst president ever"

Edited October 13, 2012 by Solkia-kun

[Tornado]

If that's not a picture of my good buddy Nixon I will be severely disappointed.

Edit:

Oh god lawlz.

Edited October 13, 2012 by Tornado

[Conando]

It's funny but, also kind of sad how lightly the term is used then. (Worst President Ever)

[Stacy]

"Smell those rosey Right-Wing Mormon Corporate farts my dear!".

http://www.huffingto..._n_1954862.html

Suffice to say the Romney/Ryan camp is pissed about is photo.

Edited October 13, 2012 by BW199148

[Patticus]

It might be one of the best photos of a politician ever taken. If Mitt somehow manages to win the presidency, the photo might take on added significance and will be doing the rounds for years to come.