US Town Hall Debate |OT| When is the election? What are the names of the candidates?

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Watched it all. Mitt came off as such a mean, nasty, asshole. He was outright rude in a way that Joe Biden would think was a bit much. He has fallen into the same trap that Hilary and McCain did. He was rambling on while straight up bowing up to Obama with a very tense tone while Obama stood there with his troll face on. I can't believe no one has said anything about how Romney was physically trying to cut in the way of Obama multiple times. When they'd both be up and walking and Romney would walk straight into Obama's path like they were about to throw down. That shouldn't be acceptable at all in a presidential debate.




I can't see how anyone could spin it as a good night for Romney. And in fact, I feel like this election is the first election where you can see the media is completely made up and full of shit with how they are covering these. 2004 was pretty bad, but I've never truly felt such a massive disconnect from what I see and how it is reported to me. It's like being in a movie where the character realizes he's in a movie and everything is fake, but no one believes him. Except it is a ton of people, even ones who lean right. It's so fucking weird. I hope someone can articulate what I'm feeling better than I can. It's some weird 1984 "We've always been at war with EastAsia" bullshit. And it is all the networks and outlets. It's not just a FOX NEWS thing. At all. What the fuck is going on? I feel like I'm losing my mind for real. Am I crazy? I feel like I'm living in a completely different world than what is being portrayed back to me.

Reality has a conservative bias.
 
Watched it all. Mitt came off as such a mean, nasty, asshole. He was outright rude in a way that Joe Biden would think was a bit much. He has fallen into the same trap that Hilary and McCain did. He was rambling on while straight up bowing up to Obama with a very tense tone while Obama stood there with his troll face on. I can't believe no one has said anything about how Romney was physically trying to cut in the way of Obama multiple times. When they'd both be up and walking and Romney would walk straight into Obama's path like they were about to throw down. That shouldn't be acceptable at all in a presidential debate.




I can't see how anyone could spin it as a good night for Romney. And in fact, I feel like this election is the first election where you can see the media is completely made up and full of shit with how they are covering these. 2004 was pretty bad, but I've never truly felt such a massive disconnect from what I see and how it is reported to me. It's like being in a movie where the character realizes he's in a movie and everything is fake, but no one believes him. Except it is a ton of people, even ones who lean right. It's so fucking weird. I hope someone can articulate what I'm feeling better than I can. It's some weird 1984 "We've always been at war with EastAsia" bullshit. And it is all the networks and outlets. It's not just a FOX NEWS thing. At all. What the fuck is going on? I feel like I'm losing my mind for real. Am I crazy? I feel like I'm living in a completely different world than what is being portrayed back to me.
I totally agree, the news networks are afraid of the conservative echo chamber and being labeled as liberal. The post debate coverage on NPR was atrocious last night, the pundits went out of their way say it was a tie!
 
I'm wondering when Bulbo will finally have his "Kosmo moment". He's very careful but bubble conservatives can't restrain it all the time.

Isn't gonna happen. Bulbo is trolling you. I mean, he's actually conservative and occasionally serious, but it cracks me up how many people take him seriously when he's obviously joking.

Kosmo was just...I mean, the fact that he came back as a junior in literally days should tell you something about his need for PoliGAF.
 
I just read this headline on Yahoo:

"Obama wins the second debate. Too bad it’s not the one that mattered."

The article is saying how the first debate is the only one that matters and Obama will lose the election because he lost the first debate, and it doesn't matter if he destroys Romney in the second or third debates.

Da fuq? I understand that more people probably watched the first debate more than the second, but this isn't 20 years ago. We have social media now, where momentum is more often than not effected by that rather than how many people watched the debate.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/no-guarantee-of-obama-rebound-in-second-debate/

Nate Silver said:
There is no evidence, incidentally, that the second presidential debate is any less important than the first one. On average, it has moved the polls by 2.3 percentage points in one direction or another — almost exactly the same as after the first debate, which moved them by 2.4 percentage points on average.

The third debate, however, has often had a more muted impact.
 
Watched it all. Mitt came off as such a mean, nasty, asshole. He was outright rude in a way that Joe Biden would think was a bit much. He has fallen into the same trap that Hilary and McCain did. He was rambling on while straight up bowing up to Obama with a very tense tone while Obama stood there with his troll face on. I can't believe no one has said anything about how Romney was physically trying to cut in the way of Obama multiple times. When they'd both be up and walking and Romney would walk straight into Obama's path like they were about to throw down. That shouldn't be acceptable at all in a presidential debate.

You could definitely tell Mitt was pissed. He probably walked in that night thinking he'd have another debate handed to him. He was sorely mistaken.
 
Watched it all. Mitt came off as such a mean, nasty, asshole. He was outright rude in a way that Joe Biden would think was a bit much. He has fallen into the same trap that Hilary and McCain did. He was rambling on while straight up bowing up to Obama with a very tense tone while Obama stood there with his troll face on. I can't believe no one has said anything about how Romney was physically trying to cut in the way of Obama multiple times. When they'd both be up and walking and Romney would walk straight into Obama's path like they were about to throw down. That shouldn't be acceptable at all in a presidential debate.




I can't see how anyone could spin it as a good night for Romney. And in fact, I feel like this election is the first election where you can see the media is completely made up and full of shit with how they are covering these. 2004 was pretty bad, but I've never truly felt such a massive disconnect from what I see and how it is reported to me. It's like being in a movie where the character realizes he's in a movie and everything is fake, but no one believes him. Except it is a ton of people, even ones who lean right. It's so fucking weird. I hope someone can articulate what I'm feeling better than I can. It's some weird 1984 "We've always been at war with EastAsia" bullshit. And it is all the networks and outlets. It's not just a FOX NEWS thing. At all. What the fuck is going on? I feel like I'm losing my mind for real. Am I crazy? I feel like I'm living in a completely different world than what is being portrayed back to me.
It's all about RATINGS.

Romney is polling bad? if its within margin of error by 0.01%, call it STATISTICAL DEAD HEAT. Did Romney throw a debate performance devoid of substance? call it ROMNEY WIN, because God knows we want to keep this race close. Did Obama manhandle Romney in the 2nd debate? Call it a TIE, because calling everything a tie/dead heat means more voters tune in and watch our crappy ads.

Sorry couldn't express it better, but I've noticed this rubber-banding effect with media where they will pull a downward candidate towards the winning candidate in order make the race seem close and exciting.
 
I couldn't tell if Mitt was pissed or frustrated because of that perpetual sneer he has on his face during public appearances. That expression that makes him look like a cartoon villain.
 
I couldn't tell if Mitt was pissed or frustrated because of that perpetual sneer he has on his face during public appearances. That expression that makes him look like a cartoon villain.

It's his patented "pretend to smile but you're actually quite pissed" smile. More of a grimace, really.
 
Isn't gonna happen. Bulbo is trolling you. I mean, he's actually conservative and occasionally serious, but it cracks me up how many people take him seriously when he's obviously joking.

Kosmo was just...I mean, the fact that he came back as a junior in literally days should tell you something about his need for PoliGAF.

Kosmo is the goddamn Joker and PoliGAF is his Batman. He cannot help himself.

Also that look on Mitt's face all night was golden :jnc
 
'Binders,' cooking and equal pay: Did Romney undo gains with women voters?

President Barack Obama was quick to use the "binders" line against Romney on the campaign trail Wednesday.

"We don't have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women ready to learn and teach in these fields right now," Obama told supporters in Mount Vernon, Iowa.

roflllll

Man...haven't heard the word "binders" since like middle school. Mitt Romney singlehandedly resurrected a term from the dead. It's hilarious
 
It's his patented "pretend to smile but you're actually quite pissed" smile. More of a grimace, really.

Yeah, that's the look Romney has all the time when things aren't going well for him but he can't leave -- the kind of grin you would wear if you had to sell encyclopedias at your son's funeral. That missionary smile is wearing with age.
 
From Reuters (backpat to Black Mamba):

reuters said:
(Reuters) - Voters say that President Barack Obama performed better than Republican rival Mitt Romney by a substantial margin in their second debate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

Forty-eight percent of registered voters gave the victory to Obama, while 33 percent say Romney prevailed in the Tuesday debate, the online poll found.

The poll reflects the broad consensus of debate observers who said Obama's forceful approach gave him the upper hand over Romney, who was widely seen as the victor in their first matchup on October 3.

"Clearly, the debate was a bit of a turnaround for Obama. He put in a much stronger performance than he did in the first debate and it's showing in the numbers," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.

Obama's favorability rating climbed five percentage points after Tuesday's debate to 55 percent. Romney's favorability rating fell two percentage points, to 48 percent.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/17/us-usa-campaign-poll-ipsos-idUSBRE89G1JV20121017

Count it.
 
I totally agree, the news networks are afraid of the conservative echo chamber and being labeled as liberal. The post debate coverage on NPR was atrocious last night, the pundits went out of their way say it was a tie!

I listened to the post-debate on NPR. A lot of outlets were declaring it a tie, if not a slight Obama win. Ron Elving on NPR called it a tie. He's a pretty solid commentator on "It's All Politics."

I thought Obama won, but I wouldn't say NPR was atrocious. NPR's "Political Junkie" today had Ken Rudin say that Obama made his case "a bit" better than Romney.

GAF is an echo chamber. When you step out of the "binders of women" vortex, you'll see a lot of people thought Romney won. If there's that much disagreement, it might as well be a tie.

We really won't know until we see if Obama made gains in prospective voters. At the very least, Obama energized the base (look at this thread.) And in an election where most people are strongly decided, that matters a lot.
 
The Chinese investments / pensions thing seemed like a real illogical equivalence to me -- there's a difference between personally investing your resources and the incidental, indirect and non-democratised investments that your pension fund chooses to make. I personally wouldn't have known how to react to such a strange comparison, so Obama actually probably did well to make a joke of it..

I thought it was pretty disgusting the way Romney tried to politicise the Benghazi attack, but the fact he hadn't dared to try and implicate the government in causing it through some sort of failing, and instead verbalised some strange argument over what the administration said and how long they took to say it was even worse... not only was he wrong (boo Romney campaign fact checkers) but it's also just a shallow thing to try and make an issue of. It reminds me of that bit in Farenheit 9/11 where Michael Moore tries to make a huge thing out of George Bush spending 8 minutes waiting for further word from the 9/11 attacks and not alarming an audience of children -- except, well, more stupid. They called it an act of terror, and then when they realised there were revolts all over the world about the video they were more cautious about their language while investigations took place... what's not to understand there?

Anyway. Richard Dawkins has been chiming in on Mittens today. Ouch.

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That's actually probably quite insulting to any resident creationists and Mormons, if we have any I apologise - don't shoot the messenger!
 
What was that quote from a month or so ago, I think from a cable news anchor(?), that went something like "Mitt Romney is a corporatist trying to be a humanist acting like a robot...". That's not very close, but I remember the real quote just nailed him.
 
What I don't get is why Obama isn't pounding away at how much Mitt flip flopped on literally every single issue known to man.

Pell Grants, Tax cuts for the rich, immigration, hell...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyp2QIGejq4

there is a video like this for literally every single political issue known to man where Romney was on every side of every single issue. Why not make a series of ads about the etch-a-sketch candidate?

online poll

Sigh.

Online polls are bullshit, regardless of what they show.

I do think the vast majority of people saw this debate as an obama win, but not due to some online poll.
 
Sigh.

Online polls are bullshit, regardless of what they show.

I do think the vast majority of people saw this debate as an obama win, but not due to some online poll.

...it's Ipsos. The national tracking poll? Treated with the same respect as Gallup? It's a scientific poll, not a website space-filler.
 
I listened to the post-debate on NPR. A lot of outlets were declaring it a tie, if not a slight Obama win. Ron Elving on NPR called it a tie. He's a pretty solid commentator on "It's All Politics."

I thought Obama won, but I wouldn't say NPR was atrocious. NPR's "Political Junkie" today had Ken Rudin say that Obama made his case "a bit" better than Romney.

GAF is an echo chamber. When you step out of the "binders of women" vortex, you'll see a lot of people thought Romney won. If there's that much disagreement, it might as well be a tie.

We really won't know until we see if Obama made gains in prospective voters. At the very least, Obama energized the base (look at this thread.) And in an election where most people are strongly decided, that matters a lot.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone can construct a convincing argument for how Romney won that debate. His budget math is still fuzzy, he blatantly refused to answer one question (if his math didn't add up), he could barely differentiate himself from George Bush, he botched the Libya point, and the entire "binder" thing came across as tone deaf. His argument that Obama has presided over an awful four years was decent, yet superficial, because he's still trying to blame Obama for things that are outside the president's control. Yes, the debt has increased under Obama, but Romney didn't name a single thing Obama has done to increase it. Also, Romney blamed Obama for failing to pass a type of immigration reform in the first year that he himself doesn't even support.

Obama, on the other hand, hammered Romney on his budget math and often used Romney's own past words against him. Romney spent a good deal of time claiming that he would crack down on China. Yet in a single statement, Obama clearly refuted this by claiming that China has gradually stopped manipulating its currency as much. (Besides, who the hell actually thinks that a Romney administration would come down hard on China anyway?) Obama was generally good at refuting most of Romney's arguments, in fact. He was right that, based upon assessments at the time, GM wouldn't have been able to stay open without a government loan. He was right that gas prices were so low after he took office because we were in the middle of a recession. He also stole Romney's thunder on free trade by adding the enormous caveat that it must also protect American jobs.

I suppose it's hard for me to evaluate a debate on its own merits, because every time a candidate puts forth a bad argument, I can generally see through it. Romney's point that Reagan presided over a faster recovery was lame, because Reagan did not have to deal with a major financial crisis. Don't just take my word for it. Reinhart and Rogoff, experts on financial shocks, will say the same thing. I'm pretty sure that Romney had the last word on this subject, so it's not like Obama got the chance to respond.
 
Just watching the stream on youtube.

Holy sheeeeeiiitt at the Rose Garden section. Romney was about to try.

The CPU was clearly malfunctioning and someone had to quickly do an ALT+CTRL+DEL and shut down a few processes!

Obama looked mad as hell!
 
I was listening to NPR's replay of the debate and Romney's views on women came off worse to me than while watching live.

He basically stated that we will build such a robust economy that companies will even want to hire women. Meaning that he believes that companies prefer male employees (and he probably does as well) because they don't need that 'flexible' schedule to get home and cook and take care of the kids.

Its hard to believe he believes in equal pay with that kind of attitude. And its going to be real nice once all of these baby boomers go away with their outdated gender role views.

As for my views on the debate, I think Romney did well when he was attacking Obama, especially when that one audience member asked why should i give you another 4 years when the previosu 4 years sucked?

But when he talked about his actually policies, he was atrocious. Basically, you could boil it down to 5 point plan and i know how to get things done. His five point plan is crap and makes no sense, and just taking it on faith that you can get things done without the how is just silly.

I really dont understand people who say that Romney was more specific or that Obama lacks a clear plan for this country. Obama's plan is the same that it always was, and hopefully he will actually be able to implement it this time (get rid of the fillibuster, reid!) Romeny? Well, im sure we will found out his plan if he is elected
 
I was listening to NPR's replay of the debate and Romney's views on women came off worse to me than while watching live.

He basically stated that we will build such a robust economy that companies will even want to hire women. Meaning that he believes that companies prefer male employees (and he probably does as well) because they don't need that 'flexible' schedule to get home and cook and take care of the kids.

Its hard to believe he believes in equal pay with that kind of attitude. And its going to be real nice once all of these baby boomers go away with their outdated gender role views.
I was pretty low after that first debate, but the turning point came when I realized two things:

1. Obama would listen to the criticism and bring his A game. Its what he does when the pressure is on.

2. We still had a few more weeks where Romney was going to speak. Words would leave his mouth and voters would hear them, and the media would repeat them, and distribute those words far and wide. The greatest threat to Romney's chances has always been Romney himself.

ivvY38W3rGMn1.jpg


And that's an encouraging thought.
 
'Binders,' cooking and equal pay: Did Romney undo gains with women voters?



roflllll

Man...haven't heard the word "binders" since like middle school. Mitt Romney singlehandedly resurrected a term from the dead. It's hilarious

This tweet summed it up.

Wine Librarian ‏@winelibrarian
I'm still undecided which was more offensive: binders of women, single moms cause gun violence, or equal pay turning into cooking dinner.
Retweeted by PZ Myers
 
Except mathmatically Obama's goals were much closer to reality than Mitt's could ever be. When you actually examine his plans they completely fall apart under scutiny. The plan also makes no mention of anothe upcoming economic problem with social security solvency. And how exactly does Mitt plan on bettering education. Vouchers?

Not when Obamas goals included cutting the deficit in half in the middle of such a massive recession, bringing unemployment below 6%, closing gitmo, immigration reform, middle east peace and ending the bipartisan bickering.

Plenty of Obama's goals were pixie dust too. I'm happy that he managed to atleast achieve most of the ones that weren't pixie dust.

and to be fair, a couple of Romney's plans are achievable and something he might actually pursue, increasing oil drilling on govt land, opening more free trade with Latin America.

Too bad most of his plans and promises are complete and utter bullshit, and the three that aren't wouldn't do jack shit.
 
They had no problem declaring Romney the winner the last time around (granted this debate was a bit closer than the last) so why can't they declare Obama the winner? I think they are trying too hard to come off as fair but its doing more harm than good in my opinion.

I'm sure it's because Obama was in the lead. Any drama or comebacks is always ratings gold.
 
what's a kosmo moment?

When a Republican on GAF unwittingly blurts out what they really think and get banned because they've been in the bubble so long that they no longer recognize a statement that is highly offensive from something they believe to be obvious truth.
 
this dude really needs to learn how to make a point without being shrill

Agreed. I understand his point, but he lacks any class when he says this crap.

When a Republican on GAF unwittingly blurts out what they really think and get banned because they've been in the bubble so long that they no longer recognize a statement that is highly offensive from something they believe to be obvious truth.

I personally believe that Bulbo is a much smarter Republican than Kosmo ever will be. I also think he's trolls pretty damn well. I suspect he's not as crazy right as Kosmo either.
 
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