FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Big Bird has a -0.18 WAR ...

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Romney said a number of things that contradicted things he'd said throughout his campaign. Obama never called him out for it. That's the real weakness of his performance, not body language or any of that jive.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD




Unfund PBS. Please reset your watches to 1980.

The entire CPB budget, all in, is 1/8500 of next year's US budget.

Next week: Why the art of Robert Mapplethorpe can't be funded by the NEA. (1/32000 of next year's federal budget.)

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I guess I see that point. He didn't look like someone who was a complete fool but I also saw very little reason to think he would actually be able to explain and implement his changes. I thought he did have a good point about why he wasn't being more specific on some items, but overall, he is relying too much on "trust me" and I don't think he has enough political capital to play that card.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

If you don't make the easy cuts, you never get to the tough ones.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

In thinking about last night, I'm not sure Romney's strategy was meant to sway "undecided" voters, in the sense they don't know whether to vote for him or Obama. It was meant to sway "undecided" voters, in the sense of people who might be inclined to vote for him (or donate to him), and were increasingly looking like they might sit on their hands because of the direction of the campaign.

I didn't watch the debate (as I noted, I would follow it on Twitter until such time there was an Eastwood-yelling-at-the-chair moment), but the consensus seems to be that however tenuous or firm you believe Romney's grip on the truth -- or whatever he said previously in the campaign -- he came across as feisty, or if you don't like Romney, dickish. And that's what Romney needed to do if he was going to get people, at the least, motivated to vote against Obama, which has been an underpinning of his campaign.

I think if we're all waiting for Obama to lash out and fight back, we're going to keep waiting, because, for better or worse, that's not who Obama is, whether it's his personality, a fear of being the "angry black man" (that's why the Key & Peele Obama imitation, with Obama and his anger translator, is a great concept), a fear of giving material to be used against him, or whatever it is. I wonder, though, if Obama has to change his preparation to account for two things:

1. Romney is going to be as big a bastard as he can possibly be. (I'm not saying, politically, this is necessarily a bad thing.) So Obama has to use Obama-fu or something to turn that against him.
2. Romney is going to pivot and change positions, perhaps even in the course of a debate, because that's what he does. So Obama has to be ready to call him out on that.

The other thing is, what's worked for Obama is the corner of 47% and Bain. You would think he would want to pound this message home. Also, while it would be great to see Obama do a drug-PSA-style "I LEARNED IT FROM YOU!" on Obamacare, I'm not sure it would work, because Romney has already spent years explaining why "THAT'S DIFFERENT," and I'm also not sure Obama wants to make the election a referendum on that.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

So we'll pencil in defense cuts, tentatively of course, for say, 2089?

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

"Cutting PBS support (0.012% of the budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive." Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Cran, we can cut the military.

But, we need to have a debate about our role in the world.

Are we the world police? Are we the ones who need to respond to earthquakes and Tsunamis around the world?

Should we have troops in Germany and Korea?

In a world of smart bombs and drones, do we need so many ground Troops?

Do we hold our NATO partners accountable, and insist they pay for more of their own defense? As it is, we subsidize their defense and allow them to spend on social programs. (And they're still broke.)

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

This is nonsense even when judged against other nonsense.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I'd be happy if we cut the spending that the military doesn't want. That would save many many billions.