Is this election really more important than 2008, when we were on the verge of a potential great depression? Is it more important than the 1950's-1980's, when we were at the edge of nuclear war at any time and not exclusively the most powerful country in the world? More important than the elections around WW1 and WW2 and the great depression?
Once again, just looking at the variation since the last debate, not the actual numbers. Gallup 7-day tracking poll rises back to 52-45. This poll still includes 3 days of polling prior to the second debate, but with 4 days of polling taken after the second debate, the trend appears to be pretty clear. That is, no notable deviation in the trend established after the first debate and before the second debate. http://www.gallup.com/poll/157817/election-2012-likely-voters-trial-heat-obama-romney.aspx Rasmussen 3-day tracking shows Romney +2, which is unchanged from the morning of the second debate: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...ministration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll In the new NBC/WSJ poll, the race is now tied, compared to a 3-point Obama advantage in the poll taken the week before the second debate. This poll was conducted from October 17-20, entirely after the second debate: NBC/WSJ poll: Presidential contest now tied While there have been some minor vacillations in the polls over the past few days, it appear that the second debate did not result in any significant alteration in the trend established before the debate. In other words, there was no substantial bump from the second debate for either Obama or Romney.
Even the New York Times' Nate Silver is shying away from making the case for any appreciable bounce for Obama from the last debate:
Romney’s Proposal for More Military Ships Draws Skepticism How is Romney going to pay for this? Romney’s Proposal for More Military Ships Draws Skepticism http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/u...realistic.html?google_editors_picks=true&_r=0 GROTON, Conn. — Here in the Submarine Capital of the World, where the business of undersea warfare employs nearly 20,000 people, no one dismisses Mitt Romney’s plan to build three Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines a year instead of the two built each year under President Obama. But with each submarine costing more than $2 billion, there is skepticism about how to pay for them, even from Representative Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat who in 2007 successfully pushed to have the Navy build two submarines a year instead of one and has been known ever since as “Two Subs Joe.” “You can definitely make a case” to build three submarines a year, said Mr. Courtney, whose district is home to the Naval Submarine Base New London and to General Dynamics Electric Boat, both in Groton. Nonetheless, the Romney campaign’s math for how to do it, he argued, “is not realistic at all.” Whoever is right, building more military ships is at the heart of Mr. Romney’s plan to gradually increase military spending to 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, a major increase from the Obama administration’s budget. Mr. Romney has made what he calls the nation’s underfinanced military a centerpiece of his argument that Mr. Obama has failed to safeguard American strength abroad. Mr. Romney’s advisers say the nation remains woefully vulnerable to the maritime threats of China in the Pacific and Iran in the Persian Gulf. The Obama administration, which has already moved more ships to the Pacific, counters that Mr. Romney is proposing needless Pentagon budget increases when there is universal agreement that government spending has to be cut. How many trillions of dollars are at stake remains in dispute. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in his debate with Mr. Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, that the Romney plan would add $2 trillion to military spending, a figure that Mr. Romney’s advisers have rejected as exaggerated. But Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has calculated that even if a Romney administration slowly increases the military budget to 4 percent of the G.D.P. over two presidential terms, that would still amount to spending $7.5 trillion over the next decade — or $1.8 trillion more than the Obama administration plans for the Pentagon’s base budget in the same period. As part of his proposals, Mr. Romney would restore Mr. Obama’s cuts of about 100,000 troops in the Army and the Marines, which he says are vital to the battle-readiness of the nation’s ground forces, and would invest more in missile defense. But his most specific proposals are to increase the reach and power of the Navy, which plays well in the critical battleground states of Florida and Virginia, both home to large naval installations. Mr. Romney would build 15 ships a year, including 3 submarines, compared with Mr. Obama’s 9 or 10. John F. Lehman, one of Mr. Romney’s top advisers on the military, said the Navy was long overdue for an expansion. “It’s too small, and the world is too large,” Mr. Lehman said in a recent interview, echoing an argument he made when he was President Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary. Michèle A. Flournoy, a national security adviser to the president’s campaign and a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration, countered that it was the capability rather than the number of ships that mattered, and that shipbuilding in the Obama administration had actually increased from the administration of President George W. Bush. “Sure it’s gone up; I gave them the money,” Dov S. Zakheim, a Romney defense adviser and the Pentagon comptroller under Mr. Bush, told reporters this month. Mr. Zakheim’s argument was that ships take so long to build — a Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine takes five years to complete — that the money appropriated in the Bush administration is only now being realized in ships that are in service today. Ms. Flournoy’s central argument is that Mr. Romney’s plan to peg military spending to 4 percent of the G.D.P. is not based, she said, on a strategy, a threat assessment or what the Pentagon says it needs. “It’s simply ‘Let’s throw a figure against the wall and look tough on defense,’ ” she said in an interview. Since Mr. Romney is reluctant to put tax increases on the table to pay for the spending increase, she said, there would have to be “draconian” cuts to the rest of the federal budget, including entitlement programs. For the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, the Pentagon’s base budget is $525 billion. Under Mr. Obama, it is to grow only with inflation over the next decade, keeping military spending essentially flat. By 2022, Mr. Obama’s projected annual base Pentagon budget would be $629 billion. Mr. Romney’s military budget, using Mr. Harrison’s calculations, would be $986 billion. The figures do not include the supplemental cost of the war in Afghanistan, which is budgeted separately, at $88 billion for this fiscal year. That cost is projected to decrease and eventually disappear after the withdrawal of the bulk of American forces by the end of 2014. Mr. Romney would like to put the savings back into the Pentagon’s base budget; Mr. Obama would not. The current Pentagon budget, including money for the war in Afghanistan, amounts to 4.2 percent of the G.D.P. Without the war costs, military spending is 3.4 percent of the G.D.P. By 2022, Mr. Harrison estimated, Mr. Obama’s base Pentagon budget would be 2.6 percent of the G.D.P. In Groton, the numbers that matter are people. About 10,000 sailors, other military personnel and civilians work on the Navy’s submarine base each day. Electric Boat, which shares the building of the two submarines a year with the Newport News Shipbuilding division of Huntington Ingalls, employs more than 8,000 people at its facilities in Groton and across the Thames River in New London. As a result of the two submarines a year, Electric Boat hired more than 300 engineers this year and has plans to hire more than 300 welders, carpenters and other workers by the end of December. Advocates say that nuclear-powered submarines, which can get close to shorelines without detection and have highly sophisticated technology to intercept communications, remain crucial to gathering intelligence and waging war. “The drones are getting a lot of credit right now because they’re blowing up guys who live in mud huts,” said John B. Padgett, a retired rear admiral who is the president of the Naval Submarine League. “But a submarine will drive in 10 miles off the beach, take a picture of a missile and blow up the missile before it launches.” Still, there are reservations in Groton about ever more submarines. “Look, of course we’d love three subs a year,” said Tony Sheridan, the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, who identified himself as a Democrat. “But we’re also responsible Americans, and we know that we have to deal with the deficit.”
Romney will just pay for everything by closing some tax loopholes. He hasn't figured out which loopholes to close, but he'll get to it eventually and the math will all work out. He told us it would. We can take him on his word on that.
It's the most important election ever to a lot of people. Don't you know that Obama's a radical socialist black Nazi Commie sleeper agent trying to redistribute our wealth and permanently undermine American power? Man, times have never been this bad. I long for the days when nuclear war was a real possibility, and most people were just complaining about racial segregation in this country.
so basically Obama got no bounce after the 2nd debate. I guess all the liberals on the board were wrong about his performance. *snicker*
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If anyone cares about a science take, here is a joint letter from 68 science Nobel Laureates (e.g. Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine) endorsing the science policies of Obama over those of Romey/Ryan. It's pretty striking. The Romney/Ryan budget proposes to cut science research funding (long an American strength) by 25%, in favor of tax cuts to already historically low tax rates. http://www.americanprogressaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Obama-Nobel-Endorsement-Letter1.pdf Particularly striking is the range of ages and disciplines shown here. Charles Townes, someone I have met, is now 97 years old and a fairly religious and conservative individual. Townes invented the laser. Check out the letter, if interested in a science perspective.
B-Bob, please tell you're joking! We have already seen a decline in funding during the Bush Administration that President Obama has been attempting to reverse, a tough fight againt the "Tea Party" influenced Republican House. Here's an interesting graph of the Bush years. The President is trying to increase scientific research in general. I give him credit for that. What Romney is proposing would be a disaster.
I think we're saying the same thing, when I reread what I typed. (?) Yeah, Romney/Ryan's science funding plan would be a disaster for the standing of American Science. I'm sure Ayn Rand hated science and technology as well. Or maybe it's that, like everything else, the free-market fairy will sprinkle magic dust on science and help it thrive in the private sector.
B-Bob's posts are representative of the liberal base -- egghead professors who care more about buying bunsen burners for their labs than actually creating jobs in America. Simply out of touch.
What do you think drives economies if not scientific research and the technological innovations it brings about, Einstein?
No, Obama had a good debate. But we've seen him for four years. There was never much chance he'd get a big bounce. Romney? Well, most people don't pay attention til the last minute, and Romney's clever. He knew the first debate was his great chance to pull out the Etch a Sketch. Severely Conservative Mitt became Mildly Moderate Mitt. A lot of people saw F***face----I mean, Romney----for the first time on the first debate, so they weren't given the impression of the three-faced, say-whatever, lying, piece of crap that Romney is. "I'm pro-choice." "I'm pro-life." "I'll lower taxes for the rich." "I never said that." "Up is down." "Black is white." "This coal plant will kill you." "I suck big coal's d**k." Romney's the shiny new toy, in a way. Doesn't mean we need Gordon Gecko in the White House. Why a leveraged buyout expert and a tax cheat---Cayman Islands, Switzerland, et al---is this close to the White House is amazing.
Okay, so Romney's company puts up, say, $18,000,000 to buy a $300,000,000 company. Gets banks to fund the rest. Mortgages everything in the company as collateral. Saddles the company with extreme debt---consulting fees, etc. Fires many of the workers. Offshores the jobs. This is your jobs saviour? Keep on sniffing that glue, dude.
Is that a Sarah Palin quote you're paraphrasing? Fruit fly research? Who needs that stupid stuff! We need jobs at Home Depot, not jobs at NIH. God Bless 'merica!!11!!!!
