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United States Democrats Republicans Politics

US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here 706

The second U.S. Presidential debate kicks off in about a half-hour (9PM ET, 6PM PT, 0100 UTC) from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney will take questions from an audience of allegedly undecided voters. A live stream of the event will be available from a number of sources (C-SPAN, CNN, ABC, and PBS), and it will be broadcast nationally on the major networks. The flash-less and television-less can use rtmpdump to catch the debate from C-SPAN. It won't preempt the more important telecasts, like playoff baseball. Candidates from smaller parties again went uninvited (e.g. Gary Johnson from the Libertarians, Jill Stein from the Greens, Virgil Goode from the Constitution Party, and Rocky Anderson from the Justice Party). In fact, Jill Stein was arrested for attempting to enter without credentials (her side of the story). Assuming she's out of jail by Thursday, she and Gary Johnson will be participating in an online debate hosted by IVN.us. While tonight's debate is in progress, Politifact will be fact-checking the candidates in real-time (while CNN has demonstrated their journalistic capabilities with a debate drinking game). Feel free to weigh in with your commentary on the debate below — it would be helpful to provide timestamps or other context when referring to particular statements. As before, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. If either of the candidates spontaneously concedes the election or catches fire, we'll do our best to update you.
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US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here

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  • by Ryanator2209 ( 1577631 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @07:36PM (#41676385)
    Posted this last debate but, still relevant. Logical Fallacy Bingo [lifesnow.com]
    • by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @07:41PM (#41676429) Homepage Journal

      Which evil wizard do you want to ravage the kingdom?

      "I want the evil wizard who CARES about the little people he devours!"

      • by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @07:49PM (#41676505)
        Don't blame me, I voted for Saruman.
      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2012 @03:56AM (#41679085)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @08:04PM (#41676647)

    That is the question that the great majority of Americans need to be asking themselves
    in the privacy of their own minds.

    Most people get health insurance as part of a package of benefits from their employer.

    If you lose the job, you lose the health insurance coverage.

    Romney will let you die in the gutter. Obama is a genuinely decent man and he wants to make
    sure that no one will suffer a lack of health care because of their personal circumstances.
    If you think that you could never be "one of those people", you don't have much life experience,
    because for most of us, the shit can hit the fan any time.

  • by klingers48 ( 968406 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @08:12PM (#41676705)
    I've love to see someone challenge Romney on the concept of tax cuts for the rich leading to Job creation.

    A great example was this banned TED talk [youtube.com] released by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer where he put in really simple, easy-to-understand terms the concept that giving money back to middle class families means they will buy more stuff leading to more job creation than giving tax breaks to a millionaire. This comes from the first non-family investor in Amazon by the way.

    Considering this is Romney's whole ideology, I'd love to see an audience member nail him and get an on-record comment on the subject.
    • by Dahamma ( 304068 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @08:25PM (#41676811)

      Romney has been perfectly clear about how his tax plan works. You can read all of the details here: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/ [romneytaxplan.com]

    • by UpnAtom ( 551727 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @09:16PM (#41677293)

      A smart non-partisan FBriend of mine wrote this

      Business Doesn’t Create Jobs

      The misconception everyone seems to have is that businesses create jobs. That’s true in the sense that business provides the mechanism for people to contribute to making goods and services. But businesses don’t create jobs.

      A good businessperson tries to reduce costs and run as efficiently as possible. That’s why automation so revolutionized the world—we could do more work with far fewer people. That’s why businesses pursue productivity, so they can scale up their production faster than they need to scale up their headcount.

      Any businessperson who is acting in the interest of the bottom line should be trying to slow job growth or actively shed jobs within their company.

      Jobs are created when a business experiences so much demand that it has no choice except to hire more people to cope with the demand. The demand drives the business to create more jobs.

      Someone with the business experience of presiding over a growing business does not know how to create jobs; they know how to create demand for their specific products and services. This is a great skill for growing an individual business.

      Growing a business isn’t the same as growing an economy. As Apple grows demand for its products, it grows demand in no small part by taking business away from its competitors. Apple does well, but Microsoft does less well that it otherwise would. Getting one business to do better is not the same thing at all as growing an overall economy so everyone does better.

      http://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/2012/10/business-finance-and-jobs/ [steverrobbins.com]

  • by thegreatemu ( 1457577 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @08:56PM (#41677117)

    I think at this point I would vote for any candidate who would just answer the questions that are being asked...or at least address them tengentially.

    There also needs to be a buzzer or something to shut them up whenever they want to discuss their opponent's plans, i.e., put words in their opponent's mouth.

    • Robert McNamara had a good quote about this in the Fog of War. If I remember he listed it as a "rule" for a life in politics.

      "Never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you."
  • by bigdavex ( 155746 ) on Tuesday October 16, 2012 @10:32PM (#41677779)

    They need a mechanism like a chess clock . When a candidate presses his button, his microphone turns off and his opponent's clock starts running. If a candidate runs out of time on his clock, then he can't talk for the rest of the debate.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. - Voltaire

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