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US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here
The second U.S. Presidential debate kicks off in about a half-hour (9PM ET, 6PM PT, 0100 UTC) from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney will take questions from an audience of allegedly undecided voters. A live stream of the event will be available from a number of sources (C-SPAN, CNN, ABC, and PBS), and it will be broadcast nationally on the major networks. The flash-less and television-less can use rtmpdump to catch the debate from C-SPAN. It won't preempt the more important telecasts, like playoff baseball. Candidates from smaller parties again went uninvited (e.g. Gary Johnson from the Libertarians, Jill Stein from the Greens, Virgil Goode from the Constitution Party, and Rocky Anderson from the Justice Party). In fact, Jill Stein was arrested for attempting to enter without credentials (her side of the story). Assuming she's out of jail by Thursday, she and Gary Johnson will be participating in an online debate hosted by IVN.us. While tonight's debate is in progress, Politifact will be fact-checking the candidates in real-time (while CNN has demonstrated their journalistic capabilities with a debate drinking game). Feel free to weigh in with your commentary on the debate below — it would be helpful to provide timestamps or other context when referring to particular statements. As before, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. If either of the candidates spontaneously concedes the election or catches fire, we'll do our best to update you.
Posted this last debate but, still relevant. Logical Fallacy Bingo
I've love to see someone challenge Romney on the concept of tax cuts for the rich leading to Job creation.
A great example was this banned TED talk released by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer where he put in really simple, easy-to-understand terms the concept that giving money back to middle class families means they will buy more stuff leading to more job creation than giving tax breaks to a millionaire. This comes from the first non-family investor in Amazon by the way.
Considering this is Romney's whole ideology, I'd love to see an audience member nail him and get an on-record comment on the subject.
Romney mentioned no taxes to be paid for mutual funds and capital gains tax. Well guess what? Most middle class folks who have money invested in mutual funds and other investments have small actually irrelevant gains to pay taxes on
I'm already outraged at the current 15% rate. Why should people who get richer by sitting on a big pile of money all year pay a lower tax rate than some of us who work our butts off all year?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nick Hanauer interview (part 1, part 2) with Peter Schiff was THE reason why I bought a premium subscription to Schiff radio show.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: Nick Hanauer is the kind of an idiot that can make money while being absolutely ignorant on economics.
Consumers do NOT build businesses, businessmen build businesses. Consumption is the trivial consequence of production, and just like the case with every other business and product, the product has to be invented and built first and there is absolutely no clear way to know that the product or a business will be a success.
Growing an existing successful and profitable business into a more profitable one is much simpler than starting a new business with a new idea and an unproven track record. The only thing that can be said about demand is that if a business is already successful and profitable, then there is at least money to attempt and expand capacity.
Nick Hanauer is an absolute moron when it comes to economics, he thinks that the consumer appears first. As if the people appeared BEFORE the Sun and the Earth was here.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
What power does the President have to actually enact any tax related policy they have on their platform?
The president's veto and the vice-president's tie-breaking-vote (in the senate only) shift the number of votes required to pass/defeat a bill from 67/51 (without the white house) to 50/34 (with the white house) in the senate, and from 290/218 to 218/146 in the house, so you could say the white house has the power of 17 senators and 72 representatives.
A smart non-partisan FBriend of mine wrote this
Business Doesn’t Create Jobs
The misconception everyone seems to have is that businesses create jobs. That’s true in the sense that business provides the mechanism for people to contribute to making goods and services. But businesses don’t create jobs.
A good businessperson tries to reduce costs and run as efficiently as possible. That’s why automation so revolutionized the world—we could do more work with far fewer people. That’s why businesses pursue productivity, so they can scale up their production faster than they need to scale up their headcount.
Any businessperson who is acting in the interest of the bottom line should be trying to slow job growth or actively shed jobs within their company.
Jobs are created when a business experiences so much demand that it has no choice except to hire more people to cope with the demand. The demand drives the business to create more jobs.
Someone with the business experience of presiding over a growing business does not know how to create jobs; they know how to create demand for their specific products and services. This is a great skill for growing an individual business.
Growing a business isn’t the same as growing an economy. As Apple grows demand for its products, it grows demand in no small part by taking business away from its competitors. Apple does well, but Microsoft does less well that it otherwise would. Getting one business to do better is not the same thing at all as growing an overall economy so everyone does better.
http://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/2012/10/business-finance-and-jobs/
Mitt Romney was the governor of my state. He fucked us over and then quit to run for the presidency in 2008 in an attempt to FUCK OVER the whole country.
Why did you (as a state) elect him?
It's a serious question - did he renege on his promises or has he screwed up the implementation of what you actually wanted him to do or what?
The argument is that the rich will leave the country if you raise taxes, and you lose even the taxes you are currently collecting. The middle class and the poor are less likely to do.
I, personally, dont subscribe to this idea. The rich have very few places in the developed world to move to. I would say it is a bluff. Even if they move, the void will pretty soon be filled up someone else who starts a company (or whatever the rich were doing here).
They need a mechanism like a chess clock . When a candidate presses his button, his microphone turns off and his opponent's clock starts running. If a candidate runs out of time on his clock, then he can't talk for the rest of the debate.
-Dave
Getting stuff done was never in the design of the house or senate or the Presidency. Laws were supposed to be fought for with logic and majority viewpoints. While it is true that Presidents have acted as you say for ages, The The House was designed to be the people's voice and the Senate was designed to stop majority rule running over a portion of the electorate that needs a voice of it's own. The President's main functions after you remove the Madison Avenue style marketing tactics are still to appoint the judges of the Supreme Court and also to perform veto powers, as well as other obvious functions like national security, Commander In Chief, etc. But in the end, a veto pen does not lend itself well to "getting stuff done".
I can't explain how he got elected. Despite being a fairly liberal state, we do tend to choose Republican governors. He screwed us with Romneycare, increased fees and taxes, and he cut the hell out of the state college system's budget. He made the state books look better by burying the towns and cities. i.e. typical creative CEO accounting methods.
The key thing about Libya is that Obama exercised authority as President that he declared unconstitutional when he was a Senator.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Well, the context is there in plain english. Perhaps you can point out where I'm wrong.
You're not wrong. The proof is that several 0 administration figures (Carney etc.) refused to state it was an act of terrorism for around two weeks after that, instead claiming that it was a "spontaneous act" that arose from a "demonstration" outside the embassy over an "anti-Muslim movie".
Sadly for 0 and his cohorts, the actual facts have emerged, which do not involve any of the original scapegoats. Instead, it's clear that the administration dropped the ball and failed to recognize the threat from al Qaida on the 9/11 anniversary, leading to the murder of several people including the ambassador. That will not help on election day!
As is often the case, it's not so much the original act that gets you in trouble, it's the coverup. If it had been GWB in power, the press would have been all over it. With 0, not so much...but the truth is slowly coming out.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Except for the part where the president detailed his reaction and the moderator confirmed it.
Except both were wrong, with 0 continuing his track record of constant lying.
The moderater also completely violated her duties - she'll never moderate another debate.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait