Obama: Finally Someone Wants to Crack Down on Big Bird
The consensus is that Barack Obama turned in lackluster performance during last night debate with Mitt Romney. But the president was back on stride today on the campaign trail with some zingers of his own.
First, Obama jumped on Romney's flip-flopping sales pitches on taxes, regulations, health care, education and Medicare, painting debate Romney an imposter.
"When I got on to the stage I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney," Obama told supporters in Denver this morning. "But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year, promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that."
Then, Obama came up with the perfect word to describe Romney's "same top-down economic policies that got us into this mess."
"It's not change, it is a relapse," the president told supporters this afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin. "And we're not going to do it!"
Obama also made fun of Romney's threat to cut PBS to make a serious point.
"He'll get rid of regulations on Wall Street but he's going to crack down on Sesame Street! Thank goodness somebody's finally cracking down on Big Bird! Who knew he was responsible for all these deficits. Elmo's gotta watch out!"
All good lines, but will Obama change his strategy for the debate?
The campaign says yes.
The president "made a choice last night to answer the questions that were asked … and not get into serial fact-checking with Governor Romney," said senior strategist David Axelrod. "We’re going to take a hard look at this and we’re going to have to make some judgments about where to draw the lines."
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Its really easy to see why Republican voters in the primary did not warm to Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is really almost an irascible bully filled with ego and hubris. He is a typical rich snob who is full of himself feeling that the public office of president is his by entitlement. I had never watched much of him other than five minute segments before. Now I have nothing but loathing and total contempt for this GOP jerk.
The number of undecided voters was amazingly small percentage of the population, especially in the swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin and others. Romney last night told whopper after whopper. Theatrics won't fix trillion dollar deficits nor will incoherence on public policy details. Let's go down the list of some real Romney "zingers" that make him a pathological liar.
1. Romney just plain lied when he said his budget proposals were revenue neutral. This claim is absolutely totally bogus. Romney failed to explain where the $5 trillion over the next decade will come from for his tax cuts for the rich. Romney showed no objective way of paying for his tax cuts that mostly help the wealthy. The Romney proposal calls for ending tax deductions for individuals but failed to give any details about these proposals. So Romney is in favor of $5 trillion in tax cuts, which he denied, but in fact when you call a 20% across the board reduction in government expenditures over the next decade its $5 trillion. Economists say that it is almost impossible for Romney to make his numbers work out to balance the budget in seven to eight years. Middle class taxes will go up about $2,000 more in taxes while millionaires and billionaires get many $100,000's worth of new tax breaks on top of the ones they are getting now.
http: //www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/1001631-FAQ-Romney-plan.pdf
http: //www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/08/01-tax-reform-brown-gale-looney
http: //www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004
2. Romney called for reducing corporate income tax rates from 35% to 25%. Again we see no rational explanation for how this action can be paid for. Whose taxes will we raise so we can afford these tax cuts? Where will the cuts be made in the budget? With Romney its all "trust me later after the election." No one needs every single detail but we do need much more specific information about what he proposes to cut. Until we see the plan Romney is nothing but horse manure on corporate taxes.
http: //www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romneys-confession/2012/09/15/863d2c14-febf-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_print.html
3. Romney wants to double down on trickle down economics of the Bush era that created barely one million jobs, most of them in government. Romney did not explain how he will create 12 million jobs. His ideas of tax cuts for the rich do not work because during the Bush era we did this for over ten years and all the jobs went to Asia and not to America:
http: //www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/mitt-romney-ad-jobs_n_1938583.html
http: //burke.patch.com/articles/romney-promises-defense-spending-12-million-jobs
4. Romney complained last night that the middle class had stagnant incomes and increasing expenses saying in effect that the middle class was being crushed. Actually the middle class has been deteriorating since the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the Arab oil embargo, and the stagflation in the 1970's in constant dollars. A big reason for this are supply side economic policies that cause serious and increasing wealth inequality. The richest one percent have seen their incomes increase by over 270% over the last three decades from 1979-2007. The bottom ninety percent of households have had stagnant incomes throughout this same period. 2010 showed sharp income gains of 21.5% for the richest 0.01% of households holds and 11% for the top one percent of households while the bottom 90% of households went down 0.1%. The reason for this inequality trend are public policies that favor the rich put in place by GOP proponents of supply side economics.
http: //blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/03/15/the-richest-get-richer/
5. Romney also seeks $2 trillion for increased military spending over the next decade. The Department of Defense has not asked for nor have the Joint Chiefs of Staff ever asked for such an extra amount of money based on their judgements of threats to the country. Mitt Romney has never seen one day of active duty in his life yet somehow he is an expert military strategist and military policy expert. What this extra money is used for and how it will be paid for are unexplained mysteries just like Romney's mysterious tax policy. Spending $2 trillion extra on defense when the Department of Defense does not ask for such sums based on real threats is totally absurd.
http: //www.outsidethebeltway.com/fiscal-conservativism-romney-would-raise-defense-spending-2-1-trillion-over-10-years/
http: //www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/politics/Romney-Obama-Post-Debate-Campaign-172676101.html
http: //www.journalgazette.net/article/20121004/NEWS03/121009772/1066/NEWS03
Romney also wants to "voucherize" Medicare destroying it as we know it. Seniors get to pay an additional $6,000 per year almost immediately. Most people like Medicare very much making one of the most popular of all government programs. President Obama's Affordable Care Act will reduce waste in Medicare by improving its inefficiencies. Romney seeks to repeal the Affordable Care Act that is proving more popular with citizens once they understand what it means for their lives in the real world rather than the fantasy world of Romney/Ryan. If you vote for Romney/Ryan, kiss your Medicare good bye.
http: //www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/10/dear-angry-white-men-of-professional.html
More propaganda.
Cowpie: When was the last time you listed a source to anything you have ever written? The Brookings Institute and the Center for Tax Policy are very good sources. If you ever read their work you might not sound quite so ignorant. Facts and sources listed for information never were your thing anyway. Better go stick to Fox news or Rush Limbaugh they are more your style.
www.irs.gov www.bls.gov www.cdc.gov
need any more?
Rex, As usual you said it all and got it right.
One of the Romneys {each a liar} showed up but where was Obama?
I think the media has missed the whole point, this was a Strategic move by Obama, in a race you never win the first lap...Obama was studying his opponent he was letting Romney say all his political statements.. and while Romney was busy hitting him...and talking all his rhetoric.. Obama was taking notes and not reading his notes with his head down like a loser like the media is saying.. watch the debate closely and then look at Obama the way he writes, while he writes he looks at Romney , he was getting a feeling with Romney studying him. you will see that in the next debate Obama then will hit Romney with everything..he will use it to attack him with his own words....trust me Obama ain't dumb...this was a smart move ...let your enemy believe your winning...lol while at the same time study his weakness... then go for the attack.
I just wonder who was controlling the cameras. It made Obama look bad, I'm sure the President wasn't playing tic-tac-toe. But why all the note taking just make a stand on the lies Woolard made and less note taking, its all recorded anyway!
Most successful generals and admirals in history, often use a form of defensive tactics with a mobile reserve, to let the enemy expose themselves while blunting their attacks. After the intentions of the enemy are known, his attack blunted, his reserves committed then the admiral or general attacks with his reserve force at some weak point driving back the enemy forces. Military history people know all about this type of strategy that has worked very well when employed by competent commanders. President Obama was doing a form of this last night. Romney said many stupid absurd things last night that will haunt him later. President Obama is very smart and intensely competitive. The second debate is going to not look like the first one. I think the average voter has to ask themselves can they really believe Mitt Romney and all of his chameleon changes or will they trust President Obama. If you read about Mitt Romney's proposals in detail his flip-flop changes send a shiver up your spine. I will take President Obama's calm consistency everyday.
O'Donnell is, of all things, correct. It was up to Obama and Romney to challenge each other. To the extent they didn't do it, it's their individual fault.
Leftists are used to seeing moderators buck up their candidates when they falter. Lehrer generally wouldn't do it, and the left should have seen it coming. Why? Because Lehrer only chose to come out of retirement to moderate one more debate because, in the words of a bitter syndicated columnist Peter Hunt, "the Commission on Presidential Debates accepted a format he lobbied for: a format with few formal questions, in which the candidates challenge each other."
I've been following the Wednesday morning quarterbacking about last nights debate all day. My impression of Obama's performance was that Rawmoney kicked his ass all over that stage and Jim Laher as a moderator was a total failure. That said today Obama has been back on the campaign trail and making some solid comments about Rawmoney but I have to question where the hell was he last night?????? During the debate he had the biggest audience that he will have and unfortunately he let Rawmoney get away with more of his LIES.
Mitt made a fool out of himself while thinking he was winning the debate. His lies will come back at him in the next debate and I wouldn't put it past him to run off the stage crying....
For letting Wollard get away with all his lies I want him to spend 90 minutes on this blog...
He did win.
Wake up already.
xxx ooo 32.1 now that I would pay to be a part of......
Mitt did not make a fool of himself. He did what he needed to do. His disdain of the middle class was in complete view, because he expects us to believe his lies. Unfortunately, he is right. Many people will believe the lies and he walked off the stage a winner, not a fool.
I hope the President can be the come-back kid, but it took so long for the President to act upon what the Republican Congress was doing (he did allow them to wipe the floor with him for years), I'm also hoping that the President does an immediate turn around on the debate stage, not just on the campaign trail.
He is reducing my taxes. He is the man for me.
I believe that Romney may have cheated. Watch the debate where he first arrives at his podium he digs in his pocket an pulls something out and places it on the podium with the blank sheets. He also appears nervous at that point. Then watch the end were they leave the podiums. Romney lingers for several seconds shuffling the papers, was he hiding a possible cheat sheet? Then before leaving he goes back again looking nervous and retrieves all the papers on his podium. Also he had his whole gang over in front of Obama's podium. It all looks really suspicious to me and I hope the press picks up on it and investigates. Is Romney not just a liar but a cheater as well?
Don't through cheating and paranoia conspiracies into the mix. The President blew it. Mitt is a good liar, but the President didn't call him on it and people will believe what they want to believe.
I hear a lot of "HOLY COW" this time. Next time will ED cry on Tv?
If you ever had a doubt that Mitt 'the Mendacious' Romney is a Bully and a Pathological Liar, you saw him in all his glory last night. His Mormon Church allows him to lie to infidels with impunity. He is after all a Religious Man. Romney pointed out that his Sons had a habit of lying and stretching the truth. I wonder where they learned that trait?
The Mendacious Mitt Romney
Lying For The Lord
No teleprompter, Flights to Denver 10,000, Motorcade to and from debate 5000, Watching Romney destroy Obama on stage PRICELESS!!
"He couldn't adjust to the altitude in Denver" AL GORE
LMFAO.....
By the way did you guy's see the meltdown last night on MSNBC!! I thought Chris Matthews was going to start crying!!! Ed was totally right about Obama !!! Way to go ED! You know you had a bad debate when the MSNBC crew is saying you sucked LMAO!!!!
The real Mitt Romney showed up. He's a great seller and a liar. Unfortunately, the President did not call him out on his lies so he left 60 million people with a lie left unchallenged. It doesn't do much good to go on the campaign trail and debunk the lies. When the President is on the trail, he's talking to his supporters and his base. That's an easy audience. Last night he had a lot of the undecided and American audience.
I've been advising people the check the facts, get help from their local library and watch the debates when they've told me their undecided. That strategy will not work if the President doesn't bring it. Undecided voters are not as engaged in politics and are not as willing to look for the facts, because their are so many lies available and it's hard to determine when you can trust the information that you uncover. This debate did not help those undecided and it did not help the supporters who are trying to persuade the undecided.
You remember the saying, "Cheater's Never Win", I would believe it but look at how Bush got into office, stealing Florida. Now, Romney and the republicans are trying to deny voting rights, in Florida, and he lies and flip flops on every policy issue. Romney is a nightmare, and people are actually considering someone who refuses to pay his taxes and won't reveal his taxes and loopholes, which he could use to reduce the debt he is so concerned about. If he would pay his taxes and stop using loopholes and offshore bank accounts, and tell his friends to pay their fair share, MAYBE, the debt wouldn't be a big issue, and the middle class could feel some relief from the tax burden that we are carrying!!!
I wanna play too. Why dosent Mitt like big bird they seem to share the same color YELLOW. ED I cant believe that you dont tell the AMERICAN people what mitt did when he was called to serve his Country.LEADERS DONT FLEE,and then talk about what he wants to do for the people of this Great Nation.Take a look at what shows he goes on,Hannity,Bill O,ON FOX take a survey and tell me how many of those tough guys on FOX served in our Military. I dont know but I would bet you could count them on one hand?
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for
personal gain or to damage another individual.
Romney’s message may have changed last
evening to appeal to the 47%, but his disdain for the 47% has not! DON’T BE
FOOLED BY ONE DEBATE. For 18 months he touted his ‘TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY” plan in order to get a few billionaires to fund his campaign. Last evening he disavowed his “tax plan.” Anyone dumb enough to be taken in by an overbearing rude, “desperate to win at any costs” candidate is foolish, gullible and ignorant of the facts. For months he praised Ryan’s plan and called it “marvelous” and now – FLIP-FLOP!!! We have learned that this man will say one thing today to appeal to the group he is speaking to, and the next day will contradict himself.
His aggressive and pathetic behavior is nothing more than that of a man overcompensating for his weakness as a leader and as a last resort in trying to appeal to people he has no respect for. His demeanor was frantic and anxious – not a good quality for a “leader.”
He lied about his tax plan, his deficit plan, Medicare and “Obamacare."
ROMNEY IS A LIAR AND A FRAUD – ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!!
His entire life’s work is one of DECEIT!
When he was governor of Massachussetts, under his “leadership” his state was 47th out of 50 in job creation though he claims he was a “job creator.”
The 2002 Olympics
While Romney deserves credit for turning the2002 Winter Olympics around, HE TOOK MONEY (A LOT) FROM THE GOVERNMENT - $1.3 billion in TAXPAYER funding! Mr. Anti-government, Anti-bailout, Anti-earmarks took an enomous amount of OUR money, and then took full credit.
This from a man who wrongly opposed government loans to
save the auto industry.
One day he’s pro-choice, the next day he’s not.
One day he’s for gun-control, the next day he’s not.
He claims he gets no tax advantages from putting his money into Swiss Bank Accounts, Cayman Island and Bermuda accounts. THEN MR. ROMNEY, PLEASE EXPLAIN: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF HAVING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OFFSHORE AND NOT IN THE UNITED STATES BANKS WHICH WOULD
CERTAINLY HELP THE DEFICIT IF YOU PAID YOUR FAIR SHARE OF TAXES!!!
MITT’S $100 MILLION IRA
From Jed Lewison – The Jed Report as reported in the Daily Kos:
Individual Retirement Accounts were designed as a tax-free way for middle-class Americans to plan for their retirement. The annual contribution limit is $6,000, but
somehow Mitt Romney managed to to build his IRA into a $100+ million treasure
chest. Without specifically naming Romney, House Democrats are saying they want a review of the loopholes that someone like Mitt Romney would need to exploit in order to generate such a massive amount of tax-free wealth in an IRA:
The Tax Policy Center already calculated that Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle-class, at the very least, to meet his stated goals.
Even if Romney broke no laws, the stated purpose of IRAs certainly is not to allow
people like him to build $100+ million fortunes without paying any taxes, so at
a minimum he exploited a loophole to gain an unintended benefit. That in itself
isn't an attractive quality in a president, but Romney doesn't just want to
game the system, he wants to preserve the system that he gamed.
And it ain’t gonna help the 47% or the 99%.
Well, Mr. Romney may think he “won” the first debate but the fact is that if he
“wins” the election, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE THE BIGGEST LOSERS!
Initially, I WAS disappointed that the president just wasn't himself. The man with smarts, soul, and vision. But, the more I think about it, the more I honestly think he had a plan. Let Romney 'hang himself'. I'll lay back, play the meek, and 'ignorant'. let Romney lie, deceive, and manipute. Not only has Obama learned a GREAT deal about the extent of Romneys lies, and ignorance about the American people, but has an entire data base to make an honest and powerful attack. Good strategy!
I think Obama in Debate #2 should ask the guy posing as Romney to produce ID !!!!! and
use his two minutees to show past video ! Period.
Let's see if I got this right. Romney totally smokes Obama so he is a Liar. He does not tell us how his numbers add up. Fact - My health insurance went up $250 a month and coverage went down. Fact- My business this year was worse then last. Fact- The higher income famalies pay more in Taxes period. Fact- We pay more for gas/energy because of government regulations. Fact- Our President had absolutely no experience running anything and has accomplished little since he has been in office. Fact - 40% are going to vote Dem. 40% are going to vote Rep. and the independents are going to decide this election. Go ahead and call Romney a Liar, spin it your way. The fact of the matter is Obama has done a poor job and no matter what you say about Romney to try and distract from it his record speaks for itself. Things will not change if the President gets a 2nd term. He will be a lame duck and he has already shown that he will not compromise. Former President Clinton worked with the Republicans and got things done and can take all the credit. Romney has worked with Dem's in Mass. We need both sides to work together or there will be no change! Obama had his chance! It's time to move on.
The real GOP/RNC "Romulian" was on his home planet of Romulus. The GOP/RNC "Romulian" at the debate was his body double. Before the debate on Wednesday. The fake "Romulian Romney" was created in the labs on his home planet of Romulus. The "Phony Romulian" was then programmed to be Liberal, Socialist, and is for all of America. After being programmed to be a pathological liar. Then the "Phony Romney" was beamed back to the debate in Denver on Earth. Now after the debate the "Phony Romney" is refusing to be beamed back to his home planet of Romulus.
re: Debate I: President Obama, you turned your cheek. Debate II --- TAKE OFF THE GLOVES and expose Romney's lies; look him directly in the eye and make him answer to the 47% as well as the "3%". NO apologies! You are The President, and we support you.