Pretty vacuous debate

Post #365,446 by jay 10/22/12 10:45:03 PM Reply	Pretty vacuous debate I was flipping between the football game and the debate, but I saw a decent bit of the debate. The debate was as vacuous as I expected, with both candidates speaking in broad generalities but very few specific proposals. The round of "who can threaten Iran more" was expected but fairly disgusting. Romney tried to attack Obama on the general rise of Islamic governments but his tendency to speak in terms of what he would like to achieve without saying anything about how he would get there seemed particularly empty rhetoric when talking about putting moderate liberal pro-US democracies across the region. I think Obama came out ahead overall. No huge hits but Obama did get in some digs and Romney really had nothing. In particular, Romney tried to talk about China in the context of currency manipulation, combined with a few digs from Obama about Romney's investments in China, and Romney sounded like somebody trying to dig up a dead issue to evade the current issues. Jay
Post #365,447 by Another Scott 10/22/12 11:05:30 PM Reply	It was an obvious Obama win. Rmoney was trying to push a line that Obama wasn't strong enough, but he supported all of his policies. Rmoney just said that Obama should have done more, sooner. Obama smacked him down on a few things. 1) Rmoney: Our Navy will be smaller than it was in 1917!!! Obama: We'll also have fewer horses and buggies and bayonets than in 1916, too. Gov. Romeny may not know this, but now we have things like ships that carry airplanes, and ships that go under the sea. What matters is capabilities, not raw numbers... 2) Rmoney: On Obama's trip to the Middle East, he visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia and ... But he didn't visit Israel. And they noticed. Obama: When I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't go with lobbyists on the plane. I didn't go there to have a fundraiser. I went to the museum to learn about the Holocaust. I went to ... to meet with people who had rockets rain down on their bedrooms. And my Administration paid for Israel's Iron Dome that is protecting them from rockets. 3) Rmoney: What the president said isn't true. I said that the car companies should go through bankruptcy and get bridge financing from the government. I love cars, my father ran a car company. I was born in Detroit. Obama: That's not true. Everyone can check what you said about letting Detroit go bankrupt. There was no way for them to get private financing and you specifically rejected government assistance. Rmoney: That's not true... Obama: People can look it up themselves. 4) Rmoney: Syria is Iran's path to the sea. I guess he hasn't seen a map of something called the Persian Gulf. And so forth. Rmoney was spewing out his usual word salad, but clearly had little or no understanding of strategic issues. Schieffer was a poor moderator. He let Rmoney, especially, go off on tangents about food stamps and unemployment and education and how much he loves teachers. (Obama did some of that too, but at least he could answer the foreign policy questions.) But apparently (at least at some point in the proceedings) Obama had more total time. My $0.02. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #365,449 by pwhysall 10/23/12 4:10:57 AM Reply	As observed elsewhere Romney's policy is Obama's policy, but with MOAR AMERICA!
Post #365,467 by lincoln 10/23/12 4:18:59 PM Reply	And Obama smacking down that "Apology Tour" crap. It was about fucking time!!! "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #365,471 by Ashton 10/23/12 5:05:06 PM Reply	Charles Pierce sums up the 'man' and the Machine (+ madness) http://www.esquire.c...by_author/68/15;1 Sample: BOCA RATON, Fla. Â It was early in the proceedings here on Monday night when I was struck with a horrible vision. It may have been right about that moment in the final presidential debate when Willard Romney Â who, for most of the past two years, has been the most bellicose Mormon since they disbanded the Nauvoo Legion Â looked deeply into the camera's eye and, inches from actual sincerity, said, "We can't kill our way out of this mess." Or, perhaps, it was when, in a discussion of his newfound dedication to comprehensive solutions to complex problems, he announced his devotion to "a peaceful planet," or when he cited a group of Arab scholars in support of loosening the grip of theocratic tyranny in the Middle East. It was the horrible vision of John Bolton in four-point restraints. You have to give Romney and his campaign credit. They said they were going to do it. They telegraphed the punch five months ago. They told the entire nation that there would come a day in which everything Willard Romney had said about anything in his entire seven-year quest to be president would be rendered, in the memorable word of Nixon White House flack Ron Ziegler, "inoperable." They told us quite honestly that their entire campaign was going to be based on an ongoing argument between the Willard Romney who ran for the Republican nomination and the Willard Romney who thereupon would run for president. They told us he would renege on his previous positions, and he has. They told us he would reverse his field over and over again, and he has. They told us that the only real principle to which the man will ever hold firm is that he will be utterly unprincipled. They told us that, sooner or later, everybody who supported him through the primaries because he was the only Republican candidate who didn't sound like he belonged in a padded chapel would find themselves under the bus. [. . . . .]

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