Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renowned both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined rock, folk, and country music into a sound all its own. Its million-selling song “For What It’s Worth” became a political anthem for the turbulent late 1960s.
Formed in April 1966, Buffalo Springfield was plagued by infighting, drug-related arrests, and line-up changes that led to the group’s disbanding after just two years. Three albums were released under its name, but many demos, studio outtakes and live recordings remained and were issued in the decades that followed.[1]
Ed don’t want NONE of Stephanie Cutter.
LO ‘s REWRITE was SPOT ON!
Did Romney bring cheat notes into the debate?
My sister called and pointed this out.
She tells me the debaters are provided with paper and a pen.
You can see the paper on each of the debaters podiums at the start of the video.
They’re not supposed to bring notes into the debate.
It happens in the first 11 second of the video linked below
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251119479
Obama supporters arrived early, waited in long lines to cheer president
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/massive-crowd-greets-obama-on-uw-madison-campus/article_41720d20-0e5f-11e2-8027-001a4bcf887a.html
At 4 a.m. Thursday, six college chums huddled for warmth on a UW-Madison sidewalk just west of Bascom Hill, sharing three Badger blankets and arriving long before anyone else with the hope that later they’d see President Barack Obama close enough that, as Allison Berg of Chicago put it, “we could take a picture without having to zoom in.”
Almost half a day later, at 3:40 p.m. Thursday, Obama took the stage not far from where they kept their predawn vigil.
“Hello Madison!” Obama said, starting his 22-minute speech and drawing thunderous applause.
Much had changed since Berg and friends first arrived. Darkness was replaced by a postcard-perfect fall afternoon, with blue sky above and a bright sun that threaded through trees at the lower end of Bascom Hill, bathing Obama and the speakers before him in late-afternoon light.
An estimated 30,000 people packed shoulder to shoulder, filling the hill to capacity and turning in the largest crowd so far this election season.
oh snap!!
LOL Bashir cracks me up.
Look here; there’s no BIG BIRD I fear, you AREN’T safe in my arms, and MY LIES WILL GO ON & ON…
@Jethro_Aryeh:
#Mtt Romney is the Ron Jeremy of Politics, Every day he is in a different Position ” — Martin Bashir #MSNBC #Zinger #P2b
BWA HA HA HAHAAAAAA
@utaustinliberal:
#Obama2012 September fundraising topped $150M. Sets new record for monthly fundraising. Raised $114M in August.
****HOLLERING**** You and rikyrah are killin’ me!
from the comments at Balloon Juice:
Enhanced Voting techniques Says:
Something to consider with Obama’s performance – the Right has been screaming about they finally found The Whity® tape that shows Obama’s true inner angry back man. And there was Obama on national TV being polite to an abusive white man no one likes.
Dear Angry White Men of the Professional Left: Please Stop Yelling at the Black Guy
I watched last night’s debate. Stupid, silly me, I was watching it for substance, and from that perspective at least President Obama cleaned Romney’s clock. But right after the debate, which I watched on MSNBC, I found two angry white men screaming hopping mad at Barack Obama on my TV. These two men were venerated “news” man Chris Matthews and the self-appointed Liberal spokesperson and former Republican Ed Schultz. What did they get so worked up about? That Obama was “professorial” (why the f*ck is that a bad word these days, anyway?) and not as aggressive. The closest these screaming heads got to mentioning the policy matters the debate revolved around was lamenting that the President didn’t confront a schoolyard bully to a mano-a-mano over his “47%” comment.
Let me quickly summarize my thoughts on the substantive part of this debate, and then expand on them. First, I don’t know where the pundit world has been, but last night, President Obama got Mitt Romney to admit outright that he will voucherize and end Medicare as we know it, while he (the president) laid out the expanded benefits in Medicare under Obamacare. Second, Mitt Romney ran so fast from his own tax plan that he should get an Olympic gold medal. Third, President Obama presented a defense of his record in context, with Mitt Romney essentially agreed to the context!
If our media had any modicum of objectivity, this would be the headline: Romney admits he wants to voucherize Medicare!
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/dear-angry-white-men-of-professional.html
Shining a light on Medicare
By Steve Benen
Thu Oct 4, 2012 10:56 AM EDT.
There were quite a few numbers being bandied about in the debate last night, but one number in particular — $716 billion — came up literally 11 times.
At a certain level, it shouldn’t have. President Obama’s Medicare savings, which extend and improve the financial health of the Medicare program, are so uncontroversial, they were included in Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget plan — which Mitt Romney enthusiastically endorsed. For the GOP to condemn the savings is to condemn their own agenda.
But this nagging detail didn’t come up in Denver last night, and I suspect many Americans watching the debate, who probably haven’t kept up on all of the details up until now, weren’t sure what to think.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14222249-shining-a-light-on-medicare?lite
Akin reverses course on arrest disclosure
By Steve Benen
Thu Oct 4, 2012 12:35 PM EDT.
While Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin addresses yet another women’s-health controversy — he still believes doctors sometimes perform abortions on women who “are not actually pregnant” — there’s another problem just below the surface.
When I heard reports last week about Akin having been arrested at an anti-abortion protest many years ago, I assumed it wasn’t too big a deal. Demonstrators get arrested fairly regularly — civil disobedience as part of a political cause — and it’s hardly a disqualifier for candidates.
And so, when Akin promised he’d release the details of his arrest this week, it looked likely to be a minor footnote in the campaign. But then something interesting happened: Team Akin decided to break the promise.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14223747-akin-reverses-course-on-arrest-disclosure?lite
Florida Congressman Demands Bipartisan Investigation Of GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal
By Josh Israel on Oct 1, 2012 at 12:01 pm
In the wake of revelations that Strategic Allied Consulting, a controversial voter registration firm that has worked for the Republican National Committee, the Florida Republican Party, and the Romney campaign, is under investigation for turning in fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida, a Florida Congressman is calling for a bipartisan probe.
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) wrote Monday in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R):
In light of the large and apparently growing voter fraud scandal engulfing the Republican Party of Florida, I urge you to immediately appoint a bipartisan task force to investigate the accusations and ensure that the integrity of our voting rolls will not be compromised by Strategic Allied Consulting’s deliberately fraudulent voter registration operations. I also urge you to ensure that that false registrations submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting do not remain on our rolls, and that you immediately investigative whether any employees involved in this scandal are still working for the Republican Party to register voters in Florida.
Deutch observes that Scott’s silence and inaction on the scandal, to date, are “shocking and hypocritical” in light of Scott’s Ahab-like attempts to purge suspected non-citizen voters from the state’s voting rolls.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/01/935451/florida-congressman-demands-bipartisan-investigation-of-gop-voter-registration-fraud-scandal/
The Raw Story@RawStory
Romney surrogate John Sununu calls “lazy” Obama debate performance “the mess the president left on the floor.” http://goo.gl/Oq710
Seen in Ohio: Scary billboard about voter fraud in poor neighborhood
By Laura Conaway
Thu Oct 4, 2012 11:36 AM EDT.
Cleveland City Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland has been asking around today about a new billboard that reads “Voter fraud is a felony. Up to 3 1/2 yrs and $10,000 fine.” The councilwoman says she wonders if billboards like this are only in African-American neighborhoods. This billboard, she says, is across from one subsidized housing development, a few blocks from three other projects, and down the street from Cuyahoga Community College.
From Ohio’s lefty blog Plunderbund:
“This is blatant voter intimidation,” says Councilwoman Cleveland. “A direct attack in the heart of African American community meant to scare people and keep them from exercising their right to vote.”
The small print on the billboard says it was paid for by a “private family foundation.” Plunderbund points out that billboards with similar language turned up in Milwaukee before the 2010 election. If you see billboards like this where you live, let us know, OK?
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14222604-seen-in-ohio-scary-billboard-about-voter-fraud-in-poor-neighborhood?lite
TPM Livewire@TPMLiveWire
Gallup: Obama’s Approval Rating Reaches 54 Percent, Highest Mark Since ’09 http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/gallup-obamas-approval-rating-reaches-54-percent-highest …
Posted at 08:50 AM ET, 10/04/2012
TheWashingtonPost
Obama lost the first debate, but he will still win the election
By James Downie
In case you had not heard yet, President Obama had a poor first debate on Wednesday night. From the start, the president looked tired, unfocused and unprepared. His answers were rambling, his personal anecdotes were few, and his effective punches were even fewer. He never mentioned the “47 percent” video, Bain Capital or any number of other attacks that have hurt Republican nominee Mitt Romney both across the country and in swing states. Aside from two sequences — Obama getting Romney to concede that his Medicare plan is essentially a voucher and asking if Romney was “keeping all [his] plans secret because they’re too good”— the president was certainly outclassed.
And yet, the president’s supporters would be wrong to wring their hands. Fundamentally, Obama’s loss will not matter. At most, Wednesday night was a case of “too little, too late” for Romney. Yes, the polls will probably move a point or two in Romney’s direction after the first debate. But all the evidence suggests that for Romney, whether or not you believe he should be president, closing the gap and beating Obama is a bridge too far.
Consider the task facing Romney going into Wednesday’s debate: Nationally, RealClearPolitics’s poll average had him down three points; Nate Silver’s model had him down four. He had held a lead in a major poll exactly once since the end of August. The electoral college looked even worse for him: RealClear’s map gave Obama 269 electoral votes safe or leaning to Romney’s 181 (with 88 in toss-up states); HuffPost Pollster gave Obama a 290-191 lead; and Nate Silver’s model had Obama winning an average of 319 electoral votes to Romney’s 218, a comfortable margin. Even Karl Rove had 277 votes safe or leaning to Obama, with another 70 as toss-ups.
“Ah,” you say, “that may be true, but surely the gap is small enough to close? And wouldn’t the first debate be enough to bring this race back to a dead heat?” In a word, no.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obama-lost-the-first-debate-but-he-will-still-win-the-election/2012/10/04/9c3b7eb8-0deb-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_blog.html
October 4, 2012
Y’all need to chill! Seriously!
Mitt Romney is the living embodiment of a President from Hollywood central casting. His all-American good looks and patrician bearing are reassuring to some folk and harkens back to the halcyon days of yesteryear when times were simple and dark people, women and gays knew their proper places. Following the lead of Congressional Republicans in racializing Obama’s policy agenda, Mitt Romney’s strategists, conscious of their diminishing odds of winning this election, elected to frame their horse’s throwback candidacy in a way that intentionally stokes a sense of white racial resentment. President Obama’s every thought, word and deed is construed as a racial attack on God-fearing, taxpaying white Americans. Whites are cast as the victims in this alternate Republican universe and Mitt Romney is the savior they’ve been praying for. It is a lie, like everything the modern Republican Party stands for. It doesn’t matter how confidently Mitt Romney recites his lies. A confident lie is still a lie. Remain calm. There is nothing that transpired yesterday between the contenders to America’s throne that should disturb any Obama partisan.
Let’s review. In the span of 50 years, we’ve gone from, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” to the eleventh great grandson of the first enslaved African serving as President of the United States. God is speaking through this recent revelation in Obama’s family tree. Can you hear him? I believe in my sanctified soul that Barack Obama’s miraculous rise to the presidency was predestined. The African ancestry traceable through his “white” mother shatters the myth of white supremacy and cleanses the stain of chattel slavery. In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells his prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:10 states, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Every step this brotha has taken in the last thirty years has been ordered by The One Most High.
Eight years ago, Barack Obama was a minor state legislator nobody had ever heard of. He gamely took on the State Comptroller and a Multi-Millionaire Businessman for the chance to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Heavily outspent, he vanquished them both. Plucked from obscurity by John Kerry to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he electrified the nation. Two opponents, including his attractive Republican opponent, self-destructed in sex-scandals. Smears, misinformation and right-wing distortions, many of the same we hear today, were employed by an unhinged Republican to stop his rise. None worked. Four years later he went on to defeat the most formidible political dynasty the Democratic Party has ever produced to claim the Democratic nomination for President. The Clintons questioned his fitness for the Presidency and Bill Clinton dismissed his ambition as a “fairytale” and prompted Teddy Kennedy to endorse Obama after letting rip, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Oh, how the worm has turned. President and Mrs. Clinton both serve at Obama’s pleasure now.
We love him because he has always displayed the cool serenity and regal dignity that every child of God should emulate. This is the same president that shamed Donald Trump on Wednesday, punked his ass contemptuously on Saturday, and killed Bin Laden on Sunday. Don’t believe for one minute that an empty suit like Mitt Romney got under our president’s skin last night. Don’t fall for that. Obama set a trap and Romney took the bait. Romney shook his etch-a-sketch so hard that he broke it. This is the same president that allowed Republican extremism and obstructionism to trap them into the untenable position of opposing tax cuts, a grand bargain on deficit reduction and a debt limit extension. To hear some pundits tell it, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he always seems to come out on top.
http://skepticalbrotha.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/yall-need-to-chill-seriously/
BREAK IT DOWN FOR THE HAIR ON FIRE FOLKS, SB!
Wonder how Mr. Rogers would feel, if he were alive and heard Romney THREATEN PBS.
Orlando Sentinel@orlandosentinel
Report: #GeorgeZimmerman to sue NBC over 911 tape http://thesent.nl/QvAiOl
_____________
GTFOOH!
So this MOFO murder Zimmerman kills Trayvon and now wants to get paid for murdering him? I.AM.SO.DONE.
princss6@princss6
Well, when you cant get your legion of black friends to march for you, Plan B is to sue
LEHRER LOSES CONTROL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/jim-lehrer-debate-moderator-reviews_n_1937896.html#comments
“I’m not going to say I’ve done a poor job…”
That was Jim Lehrer’s assessment of his performance as the moderator of the first presidential debate of the 2012 election. Sadly for him, many disagreed.
______________
Al Roker tweeted: “I hope Jim Lehrer gets the license plate of the truck that drove over him in this debate.
LOL Jim was fearful of getting FIRED by Romney. He helped Romney show MORE of his true colors. lying and bullying. It’s all captured on video now.
You can’t make up this ish
Army veteran suing VA for $10 million for treatment that caused frostbitten penis
Michael D. Nash of Louisville says ice packs nurse used after surgery gave him frostbite, gangrene, and ultimately caused him to have part of his penis amputated.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-sues-frostbitten-penis-article-1.1173538#ixzz28LC1XQrU
FROM SMARTYPANTS:
So my first question last night was to wonder whether or not perhaps the Obama campaign knew exactly what they were doing. After about 5 years of watching this President and his team, I’ve learned to ask that question. Over and over and over again they have certainly proven that they know more than I do about how to win elections. But they’ve also proved themselves better at that than any of these pundits who CONSTANTLY get it wrong when assessing President Obama.
Then this morning I read a summary from a Priority USA focus group of undecided voters.
Both pundits and partisans relish the idea of attack politics. That’s what they want to see and that’s how they judge the debates. It just might be that the Obama campaign is smart enough to know that’s not the audience they’re playing to at this stage. Romney needs to win over almost 100% of the undecideds in order to have a prayer of competing in this election. Obama may have shut down that possibility last night.
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-real-question-is-how-did-last.html
Always good to question folks. It’s the hair on fire nonsense I abhor. Smartypants is great at getting that 360 degree perspective, and I repect her highly for this.
Top 7 Lies of the First Debate http://www.care2.com/causes/top-7-lies-of-the-first-debate.html …
That’s how you do it; CALL OUT ALL THE ROMNEY LIES
What? Mitt Romney promised to give Big Bird the ax?
BWA HA HA HA HA
At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/10/04/958801/at-last-nights-debate-romney-told-27-myths-in-38-minutes/
Pundits from both sides of the aisle have lauded Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance, praising his preparedness and ability to challenge President Obama’s policies and accomplishments. But Romney only accomplished this goal by repeatedly misleading viewers. He spoke for 38 minutes of the 90 minute debate and told at least 27 myths:
1) “[G]et us energy independent, North American energy independent. That creates about 4 million jobs”. Romney’s plan for “energy independence” actually relies heavily on a study that assumes the U.S. continues with fuel efficiency standards set by the Obama administration. For instance, he uses Citigroup research based off the assumption that “‘the United States will continue with strict fuel economy standards that will lower its oil demand.” Since he promises to undo the Obama administration’s new fuel efficiency standards, he would cut oil consumption savings of 2 million barrels per day by 2025.
2) “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about.” A Tax Policy Center analysis of Romney’s proposal for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut in all federal income tax rates, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminating the estate tax and other tax reductions, would reduce federal revenue $480 billion in 2015. This amount to $5 trillion over the decade.
3) “My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.” If Romney hopes to provide tax relief to the middle class, then his $5 trillion tax cut would add to the deficit. There are not enough deductions in the tax corde that primarily benefit rich people to make his math work.
more..
Was I Watching the Same Debate?
By mistermix October 4th, 2012
The reason I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan was the roller-coaster hysteria that ABL just pointed out. “Obama may even have lost the election tonight” my ass. That said, Sully is kind of the spastic colon of the DC media. He thinks he’s some kind of sophisticated, Orwell-like “in it but not of it” guy, but the reality is that he’s a creature of that town as much as George Will or Cokie Roberts. His gut just moves faster, so he craps out his response in real time while those old dinosaurs have to wait for their Metamucil to do its work.
Certainly on the surface Romney looked better because he spat out his laundry list of lies quite effectively, while Obama struggled to regurgitate his prepped lines and is so habituated to never appearing angry that he missed lots of opportunities to call Romney out. But, like the rest of the DC media, Sully’s sensors are not tuned to pick up bread-and-butter issues. And Mitt Romney totally fucked himself last night on a key one, Medicare. Mitt looked like the kid who just gave the teacher an apple and was waiting for the pat on his head as he explained that his Medicare changes would only apply to people under 55. In other words, most of the population, and their children, would get “vouchers”. People do not want this policy, no matter how nice Romney’s suit looked last night.
In general, “lies” isn’t exactly the right word for what Romney threw out last night. I like the term “confabulation” because they were sound-good statements that were mainly unrelated to the positions that he’s been running on for the last 18 months. When these get unpacked, the DC press will finally realize that Romney spit out a bunch of shiny, nice sounding nothings. Unlike the primary debates, which are basically beauty contests, the Presidential debates get analyzed to death. There’s more than a day of “who gaffed the most”, “who looked the best”. Romney clearly is winning that part of the cycle. The next part, the part that never happened last Winter and this Spring, is “what did these guys actually say”. And on that score, Romney lost. You can’t make up a whole Presidential campaign in two weeks of debate prep, and that’s what he did.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/10/04/was-i-watching-the-same-debate/
NYT Editorial: …. The Mitt Romney who appeared on the stage at the University of Denver seemed to be fleeing from the one who won the Republican nomination on a hard-right platform of tax cuts, budget slashing and indifference to the suffering of those at the bottom of the economic ladder….
Virtually every time Mr. Romney spoke, he misrepresented the platform on which he and Paul Ryan are actually running….
…..There are still two more presidential debates, and Mr. Obama has the facts on his side to expose the hollowness of his opponent. But first he has to decide to use them aggressively.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/opinion/an-unhelpful-presidential-debate.html?hp
NYT: Mitt Romney repeatedly questioned President Obama’s honesty at Wednesday night’s debate …. but he made a number of misleading statements himself on the size of the federal deficits, taxes, Medicare and health care……
Doubling the Deficit: Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama had doubled the deficit. That is not true….
Green Energy: Mr. Romney said that half the companies backed by the president’s green energy stimulus program have gone out of business. That is a gross overstatement. Of nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy…..
The $716 Billion Cut From Medicare: Mr. Obama first brought up Mr. Romney’s frequent criticism that the president cut $716 billion from Medicare, by saying the cost savings were from reduced payments to insurance companies and other health care providers. But Mr. Romney repeated the claim, suggesting that the $716 billion in Medicare reductions would indeed come from current beneficiaries.
While fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked this claim, it remains a standard attack line for Mr. Romney…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/us/politics/a-closer-look-at-what-the-presidential-candidates-said-in-the-debate.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&smid=tw-nytimes&partner=rss&emc=rss&
Posted at 04:10 PM ET, 10/03/2012
TheWashingtonPost
Mitt Romney’s Bush conundrum
By Greg Sargent
How will Mitt Romney differentiate his policies from those of George W. Bush tonight?
I noted here recently that Romney is caught in a trap. Americans don’t view the election as simply a referendum on Obama’s economic performance, because more blame the sluggish recovery on Bush and think we may be on track to recovery. This puts pressure on Romney to specify why his alternative would spark a faster recovery than Obama has. But Romney can’t be much more specific without reminding voters how much his policies resemble those of the aforementioned Bush, whom the public blames for the crisis in the first place.
Turns out new polling supports this notion. Politico reports that Obama is “winning the message war,” based on a new poll from the Dem firm Penn Schoen and Berland. The poll tested 24 leading Obama and Romney messages. And guess what: The two highest scoring messages turned out to be Obama messages describing Republican policies as a return to Bush economic policies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romneys-bush-conundrum/2012/10/03/b1d29776-0d90-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html
Have Another Thread
by BooMan
Wed Oct 3rd, 2012 at 11:27:41 PM EST
Old thread was full. My preliminary take is that the president did fine. Romney got away with saying too much crap without consequence, but as I noted yesterday, the male pundits like it when someone bullies the moderator and otherwise acts aggressively, but most women and many men don’t like that. I thought the president did very well for the first third of the debate when he was talking about taxes. I thought he did a good job of defending ObamaCare. Somewhere around the hour mark, he seemed to lose a little focus on one answer and he never really got back in full stride, although his closing argument was strong. I am going to take a look at the focus groups before I come to any strong conclusions about winners and losers tonight. Romney can certainly feel good that his only major gaffe was blurting out that he loves Big Bird. But if fact-checkers do their job overnight and tomorrow morning, Romney is going to get a lot of negative press coverage to go along with the stuff about how his held his own.
Update [2012-10-4 0:2:54 by BooMan]: I’ve seen some snap polls now that look very good for Romney. I’m not one to put my independent judgment over real-time polls, so it looks like Romney had a clear first-impression win tonight. If you want a little positive spin, a very large majority in these snap polls thought either that Obama was a more attractive candidate or that the debate didn’t change their opinion at all. Romney won a strong plurality of the people who’s opinions were changed, but that was still a minority. The flip side of that is that Romney helped himself relative to the president. He appears to have made a positive impression on a sizable number of people, and so he should expect to get some improvement in the polls from this.
However, the post debate debate will get underway in earnest tonight, and it will cut two ways. First, Obama’s debate performance will be criticized. Second, Romney’s debate performance will be scrutinized. Each candidate will take their share of hits in that process. It’s our job to help in the scrutiny part of that process. Unfortunately, I will be traveling to the White House tomorrow and it will be a very light blogging day for me as a result.
One last happy thought. By doing well tonight, Romney reversed the expectations game for the next debate, which will be a town-hall format. Relating to the common folk has been a constant challenge for Romney and the town hall format will be hard for him. So there’s a little bit of winning by losing element you can console yourself with.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/10/3/232741/690
The right’s own worst nightmare
David Weigel’s penetrating assessment of Tucker Carlson and the Daily Caller’s unappeased frenzy:
In this there’s something of a slo-motion breakdown, I think–an emotional collapse on the right, which, though chronic in the making, is now acutely symptomatic.
For years the right reveled in its ability to whip up national hysteria almost at will: hysteria about Bill and Hillary’s healthcare proposal, hysteria about a presidential blowjob, hysteria about an impotent Iraqi dictator and hysteria about John Kerry’s unpardonable crimes of latte-sipping and wind-surfing. Most recently–and as a kind of ego-booster and ability-reassurer–the right scored another hysteria victory about another (conservative) healthcare plan.
Still, Obama’s ’08 triumph was, obviously, a bitter shellacking for the right and all its very best, most skilled hysteria-manufacturing, which 2010 seemed to overcome, but here we are, again–another inexorable center-left triumph. In toto, the last five years have seemed to vaporize the right’s most self-comforting m.o.: that it could always just press a propagandistic button and the country would unravel in hysterical horror.
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/
October 04, 2012
Bad night, little difference
OK, I’m going to talk you down. But first you must promise you’ll do or decide nothing rash. You must say your Oms. You must recall that the pundits always overreact, that last night was only one of three presidential debates, and that we’re talking Mitt Romney here, who is way, way overdue for another blockbuster gaffe.
Actually the NY Times avoided the customary unsightliness of punditry-panic and took things in fairly reasonable stride: “Obama has the facts on his side to expose the hollowness of his opponent. But first he has to decide to use them aggressively”; as did BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith: “Romney’s core success was that he won by not losing.”
PowerLine, on the other laughable hand, boomed in its headline–“It’s over”–while retreating on second thoughts in its text: “This was a huge night for the cause of freedom, one from which, one hopes, Obama can’t recover.”
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/
Posted at 11:30 PM ET, 10/03/2012
A good night for Mitt Romney, but was it really enough?
By Greg Sargent
Mitt Romney had a very good debate tonight. Though debates often reinforce existing perceptions, Romney took steps towards reversing his image as an out of touch plutocrat. During the extended jousts of numbers crunching, he humanized himself in an unexpected way — by converting his boardroom aura from something cold and aloof into an aura of earnestness. He skillfully played the part of the technocratic centrist he used to be and whose balanced approach to policy and government he has completely abandoned. Romney also landed clear blows when indicting the Obama recovery. He seemed particularly on message in claiming that the proof that Obama’s government centric policies had failed could be found in the current state of the economy.
Obama missed key opportunities. When invoking Romney’s suggestion that kids should borrow money from their parents to pay for college, he was far too polite and discursive and didn’t make the moment stick. His defense of Obamacare took too long to make the point that Romney, in repealing the law, would take insurance away from millions without replacing it with anything.
That said, Obama won some understated victories. He won the battle over Medicare; Romney was effectively defined by that exchange as Mr. Voucher. Obama did a decent job in exposing Romney’s lack of specificity on many of the issues that were discussed tonight, and tied them together into a larger pattern of evasiveness on Romney’s part.
Obama marginally won the argument over the deficit and taxes. Romney was forced to ricochet back and forth between claiming he would not raise middle class taxes and claiming his plan would cut taxes on everyone without ballooning the deficit, without once explaining how this might work. Obama’s best moments of the night were when he ridiculed Romney’s math and when he tied Romney’s trickle down policies to those of Bush while contrasting the Bush/Romney approach with that of himself and Bill Clinton.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
The triumph of style over substance
By Steve Benen
Thu Oct 4, 2012 8:00 AM EDT.
One of the main drawbacks to televised political theatrics is that we tend to evaluate the events in an unconstructive way. We see players on a stage, after extensive rehearsals, playing to a packed house, and we judge them as if they are actors — who seemed “crisp” and looked “confident.”
In other words, we invariably value political theater on its theatrical qualities, watching to see who knew their lines and delivered them more effectively.
By this measure, when it comes to determining who “won” last night’s debate in Denver, I’d argue the conventional wisdom is right: it wasn’t close. Based on style and performance, Mitt Romney did all of the things a “winning” debater is supposed to do.
Did he know his lines? Obviously, yes. Did he deliver them well? Flawlessly. I argued last week that Romney’s “strength as a debater is wildly underappreciated” and “if Democrats expect Romney to falter in the debates, they’re making a big mistake.” Last night illustrated what I was talking about.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14219336-the-triumph-of-style-over-substance?lite
Seen in Idaho: ‘Bring your ID and vote’
By Laura Conaway
Wed Oct 3, 2012 6:00 PM EDT.
Ken Constant of Nampa, Idaho, sends this pic of the official new Idaho state voters guide. It says, “Bring Your ID and VOTE!” But that’s not the law in Idaho, not exactly.
In Idaho, the law you can show a photo ID to vote or you can simply sign an affidavit saying you are who you claim to be. You don’t have to have an ID to vote, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at this cover. The message is almost as confusing on the state’s website.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/03/14204409-seen-in-idaho-bring-your-id-and-vote?lite
You know the CNN poll folks were pointing to that showed Romney won? Well, looky here…
Thomas Schaller @schaller67
Perhaps a misprint, but CNN’s exit poll did not sample non-whites, people under 50 or people outside the South. Huh? http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2…
found this in the comments at POU:
Sepia
I’m listening to The Joe Madison Show and a couple of callers made an interesting observation. They said that PBO allowed Romney to say all those lies so that they’re on record and he can’t back away from them.
A very aggressive bully!
Unfortunate Staging Of Romney At Wings Over The Rockies Air Museum Rally Makes For Viral Photo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/unfortunate-staging-of-ro_n_1935743.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&ir=Politics
It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one might just be worth two letters. Sure, some could call this a cheap shot, but it’s really just a matter of a chance perspective that some audience members had at a Romney rally at Wings Over The Rockies Air Museum on Tuesday.
Romney = Total BULLSHIT! LMBAO
Morning, Chics!
Good Morning, SG2 & Eveyone! :-)
Good Morning, Ametia, SG2 and Everyone :)