Obamanation Re-election MegaThread

[StrangeSox]

This snippet from Andrew Sullivan's live blogging of the convention made me laugh:

That speech was bizarre. Romney is a gear leader because one time this Olympian carried a 9/11 flag?

[kev211]

So Mitt Romney wants to invade Iran and doesn't care about the environment or the planet? And he openly said this tonight.

 

Why again should this man be the president? Those two things right there are enough to eliminate him from consideration.

[Reddy]

So Mitt Romney wants to invade Iran and doesn't care about the environment or the planet? And he openly said this tonight.

 

Why again should this man be the president? Those two things right there are enough to eliminate him from consideration.

 

not to the gay-hating, anti-abortion crowd that doesn't actually understand anything beyond what the talking heads at Fox News tell them.

 

[StrangeSox]

I don't think there's anything more annoying than this Bootstraps Mitt myth they've been trying to pull together. Dude was born on third base if not already at home plate. Stop insulting people who have actually struggled in life by trying to pretend that you went through some struggles, too, because you had to sell some stock to make your way through college.

[RockRaines]

He is saying Obama said he would keep the plant open and he didn't. Ryan didn't ay it would have been a good thing if he used stimulus to keep it open, or any such thing. And it doesn't matter what you infer. Just that Obama broke a promise. And you can cry about 'effective' dates all you want, factually it closed in 2009, under Obama, after he said he would keep it open for 100 years. Same with the debt commission. It doesn't matter how Ryan voted, Obama set up this commission then ignored everything they said. Defend it with a reason WHY he let the plant close or WHY he ignored the commission, not your old 'well they did it too' argument.

Whoa wait a minute. He said if he had his way it would stay open, of course he is t the CEO of the company that had to shut it down because of his predecessor's economic collapse.

[RockRaines]

And btw whose idea was it to have Clint Eastwood give a speech? One of his key points was the war in Afghanistan and yet he apparently has no idea his candidate wants to stay there longer. Second he did an ad for Chrysler, a bailed out auto manufacturer that has actually been a success story, then condemned the bailout while giving a speech for a guy who TOOK a bailout.

[Balta1701]

And btw whose idea was it to have Clint Eastwood give a speech? One of his key points was the war in Afghanistan and yet he apparently has no idea his candidate wants to stay there longer. Second he did an ad for Chrysler, a bailed out auto manufacturer that has actually been a success story, then condemned the bailout while giving a speech for a guy who TOOK a bailout.

Everyone knows that all hollywood elite are Democrats, so it's still exciting when the Republicans have one they can use.

[StrangeSox]

The Afghanistan part was just baffling. Not as baffling as lecturing an empty chair, but still baffling. He seems to think that Obama time-traveled to 2001 as President and decided to invade Afghanistan. And he thinks Romney wants to bring the troops home "tomorrow morning" instead of at some pre-determined date in the future. Didn't anyone vet this speech to see if it made any god damned sense at all?

[Balta1701]

The Afghanistan part was just baffling. Not as baffling as lecturing an empty chair, but still baffling. He seems to think that Obama time-traveled to 2001 as President and decided to invade Afghanistan. And he thinks Romney wants to bring the troops home "tomorrow morning" instead of at some pre-determined date in the future. Didn't anyone vet this speech to see if it made any god damned sense at all?

They had this guy vet the speech:

[RockRaines]

The Afghanistan part was just baffling. Not as baffling as lecturing an empty chair, but still baffling. He seems to think that Obama time-traveled to 2001 as President and decided to invade Afghanistan. And he thinks Romney wants to bring the troops home "tomorrow morning" instead of at some pre-determined date in the future. Didn't anyone vet this speech to see if it made any god damned sense at all?

He was hitting on points that were the direct opposite of Romney's policies. Maybe Ryan got in his ear before the speech and told him his views? It was puzzling at best. The whole bailout thing is laughable to me. You literally have a guy whose company apparently took a bailout standing behind you.

[StrangeSox]

Texas' Voter ID law was blocked, as were their redistricting plans (that's four decades in a row of running afoul of the Voting Rights Act!). One notable fact is that 81 of Texas' 254 counties do not have facilities that issue the requisite ID's. Many people would have to travel over 100 miles to obtain their ID's, and Texas also refused to waive the document fees that may be necessary to procure the "free" ID.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

He was hitting on points that were the direct opposite of Romney's policies. Maybe Ryan got in his ear before the speech and told him his views? It was puzzling at best. The whole bailout thing is laughable to me. You literally have a guy whose company apparently took a bailout standing behind you.

He also criticized him for not closing down Gitmo? And praised him for opposing Iraq? At the Republican National Convention? WTF is going on

 

And people were applauding at the line about bringing home the troops for Afghanistan tomorrow morning. My mind has been blown.

 

edit: and criticizing politicians and how they come around begging for votes. At the convention where they're nominating their presidential candidate. I cannot make sense of one part of this speech.

 

lol some good tweets here:

 

Jamelle Bouie @jbouie

This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.

 

 

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/31/clint-.../#ixzz258QrRiF4

 

Edited August 31, 2012 by StrangeSox

[RockRaines]

I'm still waiting for Romney's actual plan to better the economy. Believe in America, aka taking Obama's slogan from 2008 and adding words isnt enough for me, I need actual facts. At least the Godfather of Pizza had an actual though terrible plan before the PAC's outed his secrets.

 

 

Also, I just hate party politics, I feel that Obama as well as other first term presidents spend too much time plodding forward with their party's agendas in anticipation of the reelection campaign. This is why I think the second term is so much more indicative of who the president actually is. I see Romney bringing a VP with him who really doesnt believe in much that he is trying to do just because his party wanted to appease a certain population. I f***ing hate that concept.

Edited August 31, 2012 by RockRaines

[bmags]

I'm still waiting for Romney's actual plan to better the economy. Believe in America, aka taking Obama's slogan from 2008 and adding words isnt enough for me, I need actual facts. At least the Godfather of Pizza had an actual though terrible plan before the PAC's outed his secrets.

 

 

Also, I just hate party politics, I feel that Obama as well as other first term presidents spend too much time plodding forward with their party's agendas in anticipation of the reelection campaign. This is why I think the second term is so much more indicative of who the president actually is. I see Romney bringing a VP with him who really doesnt believe in much that he is trying to do just because his party wanted to appease a certain population. I f***ing hate that concept.

 

Eh, for me electing Obama to his second term is defense. He'll have no leverage in congress to pass anything, and will likely coast on a steadily improving economy. But our hardfought gains will be safer if he's there so I'm going to keep him there. Funny enough, Romney would bring more stimulus with his cuts and defense spending, but obviously the deficit would explode again.

[StrangeSox]

ezra klein on Ryan's "not-very-truthful speech"

 

A not-very-truthful speech in a not-very-truthful campaign: Honestly? I didn’t want us to write this piece. The original pitch was for “the five biggest lies in Paul Ryan’s speech.” I said no…. I wanted us to bend over backward to be fair, to see it from Ryan’s perspective, to highlight its best arguments as well as its worst. So I suggested an alternative: The true, the false, and the misleading…. An hour later, the draft came in — Dylan Matthews is a very fast writer. There was one item in the “true” section.

 

So at about 1 a.m. Thursday… I sat down to read it again… with the explicit purpose of finding claims we could add to the “true” category. And I did find one. He was right to say that the Obama administration has been unable to correct the housing crisis, though the force of that criticism is somewhat blunted by the fact that neither Ryan nor Mitt Romney have proposed an alternative housing policy. But I also came up with two more “false” claims. So I read the speech again. And I simply couldn’t find any other major claims or criticisms that were true.

 

I want to stop here and say that even the definition of “true” that we’re using is loose. “Legitimate” might be a better word….

 

But Ryan’s claims weren’t even arguably true. You simply can’t say the president hasn’t released a deficit reduction plan. The plan is right here. You simply can’t say the president broke his promise to keep your GM plant open…. You simply can’t argue that the Affordable Care Act was a government takeover of the health-care system. My doctor still works for Kaiser Permanente, a private company that the government does not own. You simply can’t say that Obama, who was willing to follow historical precedent and sign a clean debt ceiling increase, caused the S&P downgrade, when S&P clearly said it was due to congressional gridlock and even wrote that it was partly due to the GOP’s dogmatic position on taxes.

 

Oh, and here’s one we missed: “You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation, and nothing else, his first order of economic business. But this president didn’t do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.” The stimulus — which was the administration’s major job creation package — came before health care. It was their first priority. That’s simply inarguable.

 

After rereading Ryan’s speech, I went back to Sarah Palin’s 2008 convention address. Perhaps, I thought, this is how these speeches always are. But Palin’s criticisms, agree or disagree, held up. “This is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state Senate.” True. She accused Obama of wanting to “make government bigger” and of intending to “take more of your money.” That’s not how the Obama campaign would have explained its intentions, but the facts are the facts, and they did have plans to grow the size of government and raise more in tax revenues. Palin said that “terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay” and “he wants to meet them without preconditions,” which was true enough.

 

This has been a central challenge during this election. The Republican ticket, when it comes to talking about matters of policy and substance, has some real problems – problems that have nothing to do with whether you like their ideas. Romney admits that his tax plan “can’t be scored” and then he rejects independent analyses showing that his numbers don’t add up. He says — and Ryan echoes — that he’ll bring federal spending down to 20 percent of GDP but refuses to outline a path for how well get there. He mounts a massive ad assault based on a completely discredited lie about the Obama administration’s welfare policy. He releases white papers quoting economists who don’t agree with the Romney campaign’s interpretations of their research.

 

All this is true irrespective of your beliefs as to what is good and bad policy, or which ticket you prefer. Quite simply, the Romney campaign isn’t adhering to the minimum standards required for a real policy conversation….

 

I don’t like that conclusion. It doesn’t look “fair” when you say that. We’ve been conditioned to want to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame, and the fact of the matter is, I would like to give both sides relatively equal praise and blame. I’d personally feel better if our coverage didn’t look so lopsided. But first the campaigns have to be relatively equal. So far in this campaign, you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can’t be both.

 

emphasis mine. maybe this is what will finally wake the media as a whole up from their dumb "he said, she said, both sides!" insistence on "balance" over objectivity.

Edited August 31, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Y2HH]

ezra klein on Ryan's "not-very-truthful speech"

 

 

 

emphasis mine. maybe this is what will finally wake the media as a whole up from their dumb "he said, she said, both sides!" insistence on "balance" over objectivity.

 

AKA -- I'm fair to MY side because MY side is right, and YOUR side is not. Issue is, they're the SAME side disguised to look like different sides. Obama has been nothing short of 4 more years of GW. I'm somewhat surprised nobody sees it...but that's probably because they don't want too.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Y2HH

[Soxbadger]

AKA -- I'm fair to MY side because MY side is right, and YOUR side is not. Issue is, they're the SAME side disguised to look like different sides. Obama has been nothing short of 4 more years of GW. I'm somewhat surprised nobody sees it...but that's probably because they don't want too.

 

In some ways its true.

 

But not on social issues.

 

No way does GWB pass health care reform, no way does GWB publicly support same sex marriage and Im pretty sure GWB is pro-forcing families to have babies.

 

Thats why I dont really care about economic arguments. Both sides are going to spend excessively. Neither side is going to want to compromise on spending cuts.

 

And its ultimately why the Democrats should win because I refuse to be part of a platform that will be viewed as historically backwards.

[CanOfCorn]

In some ways its true.

 

But not on social issues.

 

No way does GWB pass health care reform, no way does GWB publicly support same sex marriage and Im pretty sure GWB is pro-forcing families to have babies.

 

Thats why I dont really care about economic arguments. Both sides are going to spend excessively. Neither side is going to want to compromise on spending cuts.

 

And its ultimately why the Democrats should win because I refuse to be part of a platform that will be viewed as historically backwards.

 

Herein lies the problem. A candidate for any office isn't going to change your or probably most of America's opinion about social issues. They are beliefs that people are raised with and ultimately will change only on their own, not by a stump speech. But most of America doesn't understand economics, if I cut taxes, X will happen or if I raise taxes, Y will happen. Because of this, arguments today HAVE to be about economics, jobs, housing, taxes, etc. Because the masses minds CAN be changed. Now I'm not saying most of America is dumb. I just think that our current economic system is too complex for most people to have the time to sit down and understand. I have a basic knowledge, but if you asked me what Obama's or Romney's plans would do to the economy, I have no stinkin' idea. But I am smart enough to know this...neither one is going to solve the problem in 4 years.

[Soxbadger]

Herein lies the problem. A candidate for any office isn't going to change your or probably most of America's opinion about social issues. They are beliefs that people are raised with and ultimately will change only on their own, not by a stump speech. But most of America doesn't understand economics, if I cut taxes, X will happen or if I raise taxes, Y will happen. Because of this, arguments today HAVE to be about economics, jobs, housing, taxes, etc. Because the masses minds CAN be changed. Now I'm not saying most of America is dumb. I just think that our current economic system is too complex for most people to have the time to sit down and understand. I have a basic knowledge, but if you asked me what Obama's or Romney's plans would do to the economy, I have no stinkin' idea. But I am smart enough to know this...neither one is going to solve the problem in 4 years.

 

Two points.

 

1) Maybe I am naive, but I believe most people in the United States think that all people are created equal and deserving of the same rights and protections.

 

2) Even economists disagree on the best positions to take. There are a few things that most economists agree on (not restricting immigration), but most people dont really want to talk economics on immigration, they want to use a pseudo-social argument of protectionism (they took our jobs).

 

I have no illusions anymore, on the current course the US will fail. The US must remain the freest county in the world, because it simply can not beat other countries who dont play by the same rules (minimum wage, quality controls, etc).

Edited September 4, 2012 by Soxbadger

[CanOfCorn]

Two points.

 

1) Maybe I am naive, but I believe most people in the United States think that all people are created equal and deserving of the same rights and protections.

 

2) Even economists disagree on the best positions to take. There are a few things that most economists agree on (not restricting immigration), but most people dont really want to talk economics on immigration, they want to use a pseudo-social argument of protectionism (they took our jobs).

 

I have no illusions anymore, on the current course the US will fail. The US must remain the freest county in the world, because it simply can not beat other countries who dont play by the same rules (minimum wage, quality controls, etc).

 

1) I guess the question is, who are you asking? I believe that if you took a poll of everyone in the US, they would agree with your statement. But words and actions are totally different things. If that were the case, this gay marriage/civil union argument wouldn't be an argument at all. It would just be, "Hey, you are in a committed relationship, then you should have all the rights granted to opposite sex couples." But it's not.

 

2) Agreed. But every economic policy affects every other issue, even if it's as simple as spending money on one thing will take that money from spending it on another. The average Joe doesn't understand the ramifications of even one spending or taxing difference. And like you said, sometimes the economists don't either.

 

 

[bmags]

Romney's plan might actually offer some short-term love. Unpaid for dramatic tax cuts and huge spending on defense will provide a boost to the economy. Of course, it would be atrocious for the deficit, but that's never been a concern now has it?

Edited September 4, 2012 by bmags

[Soxbadger]

That is why you absolutely need to focus on the long game.

 

Immigration should be 1,2,3,4 and 5 on that list. One of the few things economists can agree on is that restricting immigration generally screws your economy.

 

After the US starts to increase its tax base and also adds more competition to the workforce, you should see immediate gains in all areas. Once these gains occur the US can then see what the new budget will be and begin to 1) increase taxes and 2) cut spending.

 

If you put those 3 things together its feasible to fix the US economy. But until you fix the labor supply issue, youre going to have artificially increased price of products, which leads to US products costing more than they should, ultimately leading to inefficiency.

 

There are other areas, but they are more sacred cows, so Im not going to go after them to start.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Soxbadger

[greg775]

Here comes the national media love fest, the Democratic convention. No longer do the media pundits have to act interested (a little bit at least) in what the evil Republicans have to say. The media pundits don't have to sneer and look for any misplaced sentences anymore. Ah, their beloved Democrats hit the big stage.

Here comes the (second) lovefest with Obama and Michelle. The least the Prez could do is throw a shoutout to his White Sox again during his speech.

 

The pundits do face a problem in one area, however. They are not big on war and acts of violence so they may not want to dwell on Obama's impressive missions to seek and destroy evildoers. And they can't point to his doing anything positive of note in the homeland since the economy sucks. And they certainly can't point to his leadership since he can't get the evil Republicans to back any of his ideas.

 

What the pundits will do is point to the fact the experts think there will be an economic upturn for sure in the next four years under Obama and the fact he just needs more time to "complete the deal."

 

Ah it's going to be a fun lovefest the next few days. Bring it on.

Edited September 4, 2012 by greg775

[Soxbadger]

What do you want the media to say?

 

We are anti-gay rights, even though a bunch of our friends are gay.

 

We are anti-forcing life, even though most of us our pro-choice.

 

If you want unbiased coverage the social platform needs to move into the 21st century, because the 19th was a long time ago.

[Balta1701]

Here comes the national media love fest, the Democratic convention. No longer do the media pundits have to act interested (a little bit at least) in what the evil Republicans have to say. The media pundits don't have to sneer and look for any misplaced sentences anymore. Ah, their beloved Democrats hit the big stage.

Here comes the (second) lovefest with Obama and Michelle. The least the Prez could do is throw a shoutout to his White Sox again during his speech.

 

The pundits do face a problem in one area, however. They are not big on war and acts of violence so they may not want to dwell on Obama's impressive missions to seek and destroy evildoers. And they can't point to his doing anything positive of note in the homeland since the economy sucks. And they certainly can't point to his leadership since he can't get the evil Republicans to back any of his ideas.

 

What the pundits will do is point to the fact the experts think there will be an economic upturn for sure in the next four years under Obama and the fact he just needs more time to "complete the deal."

 

Ah it's going to be a fun lovefest the next few days. Bring it on.

The pundits are ****ing huge on war. Was I the only one alive in 2003?