for those who were paying attention.

clue he lied!!!! Perception is everything. Romney won the optics. I am sick, sick,sick to my stomach. My own mother said
Obama looked weak. She is of course going to vote for Obama but did not understand why he was looking down so much, and
why he sounded so hesitant. I couldn't even disagree with her. I am furious today. The Republican crowing is disgusting.

Sorry but there is no time to pull dumb tricks this close to the election. Exposing Romney has already happened with the 47%
tape. We need nothing further. Last night exposed a vulnerablity in Obama not Romney. Romney is a fraud and it needed to
be said out loud by Obama!!!!!!

I'm not sure why looking down is such a bad idea all of a sudden.

And I don't see why people think the President was so doggone "uncomfortable" up there. He seemed VERY comfortable to me. After all, he was discussing policy; which I thought was something he actually LIKED doing...

Moral of the story: don't let pundits tell you who won this thing. They tried to tell us that McCain won the first debate by a hair in '08. He didn't. While it would have felt good to US for Obama to--at every opportunity--scream at Romney "you're a goddamned liar, and let me tell you why!" it would not have helped his re-election chances. And may even hurt them.

This is CHESS, folks ... not checkers. When all the hand wringing is done, Mr. Obama will still be President on January 20....

This is just one debate. There are so many factors playing into this election. One debate is not the deciding factor. Not even close.

to me the prez seemed somewhat bemused. He may not have said, "there you go again," but it seemed pretty clear (to me, at least) that he was thinking it.

Obama wasn't actually saying "really, Mitt? You're THIS big of a jackass?" but the expression on his face said it loud and clear on several occasions. And if he took the time to call Romney on EVERY lie he told, the entire 90 minutes would have been absorbed by that exercise alone, and THEN where would we be...?

back to the tv. I know that the President did not know he was on split screen. The optics were horrible. My mother thought
he looked weak. This is not a good image. Did it change her vote or mine, absolutely not. I am thinking about the millions of uninformed voters that had no idea Romney was lying.

This is not chess for most, it is reality tv at best, and in that culture you must always be selling, always be closing. Closing the deal is the most important part of sales!!!

...they've only done it in EVERY debate since 1996.

But even that's beside the point: How is looking down and taking notes "looking weak?" I mean, I'm asking a serious question here. I just don't see the correlation here. Even dumb-assed GOP-ers aren't saying that. The word they're using is "disengaged." While that might not be the truth either, it's closer than "weak." For example, you might disengage in a condescending way because you've already figured out that your opponent is an idiot and not worth your time. I'll concede that you probably won't want to do that in a Presidential debate, but I'll believe that before I'll believe Obama is "weak" as your mom puts it or "lazy" as John "The Jackass" Sunnunu put it.

This IS chess, though. It always has been. As far as the debates go, the candidates have been playing it for a week or better BEFORE the first debate. And let's think for a moment: is a "low-information" voter REALLY going to watch the debates? While "American Idol" is on? Probably not. Yes, 62 million watched Wednesday's debate; but I'll bet at least 80% had already taken one side or another before the first question was asked.

I can't wait for those fools to realize they are cheering Obama2 on.

tho he certainly did toss them overboard. But he's hoping Ryan will bring a lifeboat along and pick em up...any of them who actually could understand the underlying message...

It will start off slowly with folks like the Redstate guy and Bill Kristol, but the less stupid ones will eventually figure it out.

Of course, when they DO point it out, the Tea Partiers will rip them to shreds, but that's GOOD.

Let them. The fools eating their own is very good for us.

it's possible...

...Romney painted himself as the MORE moderate of the two last night, promising to replace Obamacare with Romneycare, cuddle up to the middle class, and NOT HAVE ANY MORE TAX CUTS...

So much for being an "extreme conservative"...

And when their euphoria wears off, some of them will look at what Romney ACTUALLY said.

They were looking for their "WIN" and nothing else. Eventually, they'll discover the win came at great cost to them.

What I see happening is what Romney is already doing. When he suddenly switched up on Romneycare, the right did NOT explode. So, he thinks that line is good to use. And he'll use it more and more....pointing out to the idiots that he threw them overboard and now he's tossing them bricks.

the best line of all from the Margaret and Helen blog:

Romney needed a game changer and tonight he changed the game alright. He changed parties and became the liberal democrat we all knew he wanted to be.

The Tea Party nit wits claim to draw their name from a desire to return to the ideals of the founding fathers,who threw the Tea into Boston harbour to protest the fact that the Colonists paid all the taxes and the House of Lords owned the Corporations and were subsidized by the Crown, strong feelings on freedom of and from religion not withstanding. These stupid SOBs support taxing the middle class to subsidize the rich.

People who sleep through History Class end up repeating the course, unfortunately they drag those of who were awake with them.

The question remains, will rMoney now lose his base in an attempt to gain the middle?

Probably. That's what happened with McCain.

So, I am waiting a few more days to see how things go.
General consensus is that Mitt is lying big time but he won the debate.

However in the coming weeks, when things get digested, it is the highlights that keep at it.

Who knows, by the week's end the debate might be summed up as:

"Mitt Romney, fixing the deficit by firing Big Bird".

Daily I am disappointed by my previous estimate of the average intelligence! Would any Neo-Con on a given day go into a bank, sign a blank loan form, leave with a promise the banker would send him the loane proceeds without even a handshake, possibly? I think Romney/Ryan think the American public all listen to Squawk Radio and are Rush Devotees. Romney/Ryan may have deluded themselves to believe the public is all drunk on Tinkle Down Urinomics and stuffed with Rush's parrot poop.

Anyone with an ounce of sense is thinking. Romney/Ryan want me to vote to pay the Rich SOBs taxes based on a promise that they will make jobs? Wasn't the $12.3 trillion they ripped off to make the recession and the bailout they used to give themselves bonuses enough for a show of good faith "job making?" When trhe fuck will the job making begin and what has been holding them back?

There is an agenda afoot, it is teh privatizing of America, the eliminationl of any social contract. The Art of Selfishness that Paul Ryan praises will be the guide for the future if Romney and friends have their way. Romney's description of the factory in China he so admired where women workers are kept in hovels and worked 10 hours a day. I would love to see his Queen Ann working her ass off in that sweat shop. We have to stop these bastards.

In an effort to sucker the undecided, Romney is attempting to portray himself as moderate and more like Obama giving the closet prejudiced a white alternative. This is dangerous as he could loose some Tea Party screwball vote.

Since Neo-Cons believe as gospel everything their designated leader says, it will be interesting to hear how Rush, the prophet on loan from God spins Romney's lies to make them palatable to the extremists.



Once again Republicans fail to remember the words of Lincoln one of only two great GOP presidents, " you can fool some of the 47% some of the time but you can't fool all 47% all the time."