PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE #2

The second of three Presidential Debates took place on Tuesday Night. This time it was at Hofstra University in New York in a Town Hall Format.

My take:

 

ROMNEY, THE BULLSH PEDDLER

The first question was about how do we make college more affordable and tackle joblessness among college graduates. Believe me; this issue concerns me, because I will be entering a slowly recovering economy when I (eventually) graduate from college.

Mr. Romney answered the gentleman’s question: “I’m going to make sure you get a job.”

Again, this is coming from a guy who said THIS:

College ain’t cheap.

I am fortunate that I had the Post-9/11 GI Bill to cover for the cost of school and living expenses. When those benefits were exhausted, I have the Hazelwood Exemption to cover my cost of school. As a Veteran that enlisted in the state of Texas, my tuition is waved. I only pay for the cost of service fees which comes out to about $300 (that’s still a great deal considering that the cost for 15 hours at UNT costs at least $4,000). I have used Pell Grants and other financial aid to help with paying for school.

I wish my family was a well off as Mr. Romney because we wouldn’t have to worry about money. Unfortunately, I lucked out of being born into money kind of like the majority of the American population.

Speaking of those Pell Grants, Romney supports them while his running mate voted to cut them. Seems like to me, Mr. Romney and Representative Ryan need to have a discussion about where they stand on this issue (among other things).

President Obama gets it about why it is important to build an economy based on tangible usage, like roads, schools, and manufacturing instead of building bombs.

Me thinks Obama has been reading some Eisenhower about how to grow the economy. It needs to be based on tangible things.#Debate
— Michael Watts (@mjwatts1983) October 17, 2012

I am finding myself more and more in agreement with Eisenhower’s policy around basing an economy on tangible usage and not… well to put it bluntly, crap (the crash of 1929, Savings & Loan, the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, the housing-mortgage-banking crisis of 2007-2008 that led to the recession)

In addition there has to be a taxation policy that leads to true wealth and prosperity for the middle class which in the end benefits the wealthy; not an economic “theory” based on the idea that the wealthy will create jobs if we give them the breaks and we too will become wealthy. This idea of growing the economy has worked before and will work again.

Still waiting for that wealth to trickle down from the top…

We experimented with “trickle-down economics” or supply side economics (or as George H.W. Bush called it in 1980, voo-doo economics) for the last 30 years and instead we have gotten to where the ratio between the average Fortune 500 CEO and the average worker is now 380-to-1. The last time there was such a large pay disparity between worker and business owner was at the height of the Great Depression.

One more thing… I hear people complain about how much politicians get paid. A Sailor, Marine, Soldier, Airman fresh out of boot camp with the pay grade E-1 makes $1500 per month, comes out to $18,000 a year. The pay for a member of Congress is about $200,000 a year. That comes out to 11-to-1. The pay for the President is $400,000 a year with a pay ratio of 22-to-1.

And the difference between a politician and a CEO… a politician can be voted out; CEO’s are in for life and get a huge pension when they retire. (More on that later)

If you read my piece on the Vice Presidential debate, I used an observation by Eisenhower about which truly grows the economy. I’ll say it again because it is worth repeating:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

Again, this wasn’t said by some Commie hippie… It was Eisenhower.

And I am certain that if someone called Ike a Commie, he’d kick their ass. And if someone called Ike a Nazi (like those in the Tea Party have called this President): dead man walking.

Back to the debate, I thought it was interesting that Mr. Romney tried to say that the President was the one who let Detroit go bankrupt.

New York Times, 18 November 2008, The Opinion Pages…

Whose name is on this article?

It says Mitt Romney, but who knows, maybe one of his underlings wrote it and he just put his name on it since Mr. Romney is so accustomed to taking credit for things he did not do.

That was the general feeling I got from this debate: Meet Mr. Romney, The Bullshit Peddler.

And it didn’t end there…

EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

A question came from the audience about what they would do to tackle the pay disparity between men and women.

President Obama highlighted that one of the first pieces of legislature he signed as president was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 in response to the Supreme Court ruling 5-4 against Ms. Ledbetter in her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire. There is more that can be done… such as passing the Paycheck Fairness Act… which was blocked by Senate Republicans (including 5 Republican Women Senators)… hmmm…. Me thinks we need more Democrats in the Senate as well…. More on that soon, trust me.

The President gets it by explaining that his grandmother and mother worked. I get it because my mother worked as a nurse growing up. My sister is a waitress raising a small child. All my aunts bring in some kind of income to raise their families.

President Obama: “These are not women's issues. These are family issues. These are economic issues.”

Mr. Romney’s rebuttal… just wow…

Here is Bill Cosby with his response to that rambling, if you want to call it that:

Again, this is a guy whose campaign staff gave Sam Stein of the Huffington Post this answer when asked about the Lilly Ledbetter Act back in April.

“We’ll get back to you on that.”

That should help Romney close gap he has among women… (#sarcasm #snark)

Speaking of women…

THE INTERNET IS WORKING OVERTIME

Binders full of women

Already the Internet is hard at work creating this meme.

ROMNEY FACT CHECKED

Again, foreign policy made its way into this debate. The Republicans are continuing with the lie that this President has been weak on foreign policy.

Here is what this President has accomplished in foreign policy

1.    Out of Iraq

2.    Continuing our responsible withdraw from Afghanistan

3.    Bin Laden: DEAD

4.    Sanctions on Iran

5.    New START Treaty with Russia

6.    Investigating what happened in Libya

7.    Strengthening our alliances with old and new allies

Republicans want to return to the “Shoot First, Ask Questions” later foreign policy of the last decade. I don’t and neither does the US. Not only does that cost money, but lives as well.

Mr. Romney claimed that President Obama waited two weeks before calling the murder of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya an act of terror.

That is not true.

The President called it an act of terror on 12 September 2012 in a Press Conference held in the White House Rose Garden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And the moderator backed up President Obama.

“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

-         President Obama on US Embassy attack in Libya, 12 September 2012

You want the transcript…? I’ll do you one better: video tape!

This also highlights Romney’s lack of knowledge of foreign policy. Because of that lack of knowledge, Mr. Romney is unfit to be Commander-In-Chief and thus unfit to be President.

ROMNEY, OUTSOURCER-IN-CHIEF

Mitt Romney again says that this President is not tough on China. Interesting considering that Bain Capital is outsourcing an American company in Illinois to China. The workers there are asking Mr. Romney to do what he can to stop this from happening.

The workers are training their replacements and are expected to be laid off on 5 November 2012.

Hmmm…. Who do you think they will vote for?

I AM RUBBER; YOU ARE GLUE! NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH…

Mr. Romney tried to turn the tables on President Obama on his investments and how much money he has.

President Obama has released 12 years of tax returns. Mr. Romney has released two returns.

Did Romney just reignite “Release the Returns”?

Question, who said this:

“One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.”

It was George Romney: Mitt Romney’s father.

In November 1967 George Romney, then governor of Michigan, released 12 tax returns prior to his run for the Republican Nomination for President in 1968.

Maybe the Son should listen to listen to Dad.

ANOTHER RAMBLING NON-ANSWER FROM ROMNEY

A question came up about assault weapons and I think Ms. Crowley expected Romney’s answer when she clarified what the question was about. Here is Romney’s answer in full directly from the transcript:

Yeah, I — I’m not in favor of new pieces of legislation on — on guns and — and taking guns away or — or making certain guns illegal. We of course don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.

What I believe is we have to do as the president mentioned towards the end of his remarks there, which is to make enormous efforts to enforce the gun laws that we have and to change the culture of violence we have. And you ask, how are we going to do that? And there are a number of things.

(The President) mentioned good schools. I totally agree. We were able to drive our schools to be number one in the nation in my state, and I believe if we do a better job in education, we’ll — we’ll give people the — the hope and opportunity they deserve, and perhaps less violence from that.

But let me mention another thing, and that is parents. We need moms and dads helping raise kids. Wherever possible, the — the benefit of having two parents in the home — and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone — that’s a great idea because if there’s a two-parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will — will be able to achieve increase dramatically.

So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity and bring them in the American system.

The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to gun violence, in some respects, is what is known as Fast and Furious, which was a program under this administration — and how it worked exactly, I think we don’t know precisely — but where thousands of automatic and — and AK-47-type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords. They used those weapons against — against their own citizens and killed Americans with them.

And this was a — this was a program of the government. For what purpose it was put in place, I can’t imagine. But it’s one of the great tragedies related to violence in our society which has occurred during this administration which I think the American people would like to understand fully. It’s been investigated to a degree, but the administration has — has carried out executive privilege to prevent all the information from coming out. I’d like to understand who it was that did this, what the idea was behind it, why it led to the violence — thousands of guns going to Mexican drug lords.

Wow… so single parent households are to blame for the spike in gun violence… I mean since 2011 there was an assassination attempt on a sitting member of Congress that left 6 people dead; a shooting in an Aurora, CO theater that left 12 dead; and many other mass shootings that have taken place. The response by our government? Nothing, maintain the status quo due to the influence the NRA has on our elected officials (more on that at another time).

Another thing, Fast and Furious was a W. Bush justice department operation. The Obama justice department shut that down because it was not working. Ironically, it was because of Arizona’s lax gun regulations are why weapons got into the wrong hands. Seriously… stop reading the chain e-mails from your buddies over at Fox “News”.

I find it interesting that Republicans and the NRA paint Obama as this anti-gun President. Quite the contrary actually. Ever heard of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence? It was founded by James Brady, Ronald Reagan’s press secretary. On 30 March 1981, President Ronald Reagan was leaving an event at the Washington Hilton when an assassin fired six bullets at him. The President was struck with one as Secret Service agents pushed him into the limo. Instead of returning to the White House, the Secret Service rushed him to the hospital where surgeons preformed life saving surgery on him. President Reagan made a full recovery. Two other men were struck with bullets; one of them was Brady. The incident left Brady partially paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Since that incident, James Brady has become an advocate for handgun control.

Do you know what grade the Brady Campaign gave Obama?

F

All this nonsense that Obama is coming to take your guns is exactly that: nonsense.

ROMNEY vs. ROMNEY

“That’s why I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay. It’s going to help Jeremy get a job when he comes a out of school. It’s going to help people across the country that are unemployed right now.”

-         Mitt Romney, Hofstra Debate, 16 October 2012

“Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.”

-         Mitt Romney, Hofstra Debate, 16 October 2012

And yet, you are running for President of the United States… a GOVERNMENT JOB!!

Moving on…

OVERALL

I could go more and more into this debate (such as Romney stating his support for the DREAM Act when he wouldn’t sign the legislation), but I would just end up repeating myself.

Here is what I posted to twitter:

Obama: A, he came out swinging, tore Romney apartRomney: D-, exposed himself as the entitled jackass he is#Debate
— Michael Watts (@mjwatts1983) October 17, 2012

I stand by those grades. President Obama gave his best debate performance in his political career. He showed the public that he is the grown up in the room and has a record to run on. Mr. Romney showed that if he is elected President, he will try to run this country like a business. We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work out too well.

One think I noticed was that Romney did not appreciate being challenged by the moderator. Being President is different than being a CEO; you have to listen to people, even those who will tell you are wrong. A CEO has to answer to his shareholders; not to those that are in your employ. As President, you have the largest constituency of any elected official. You can’t ignore a certain percentage of the population… let’s say 47%...

Speaking of that, President Obama made the best case for his re-election with this statement:

Another thing is that I notice is that you can tell who won based on who is complaining about the debate format.

In less than 29 hours these two will debate again. The final debate will be at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL and moderated by CBS’s Bob Schieffer. The format will be like the first debate where the two candidates and the topic will be on foreign policy.

I hope for a knockout performance by President Obama.