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So... I haven't seen any political orientiated discussion threads anywhere on the forum, so I thought, hell, I'll make one. So, feel  free to discuss both last nightsdebate (as of this post) and the first presidential debate. Small talk about the election in general is also welcomed. :)

There was a thread on this but CovElite unintentionally ruined it (if you check out his profile you'll notice the page not showing up - it's some weird bug and the same thing happened when he posted in the forum thread).

Anyway, this is a good resource if you want to see Obama and Romney's stances all in one place (you can hover over squares for more information). As far as I can tell it's unbiased.

As for the Vice Presidential debate, I think Biden obliterated Ryan. I've only watched some highlights, but the fact that Biden managed to make his opponent directly contradict Romney (saying that they won't increase the military budget) and a whole host of other things had me in awe that somebody in such a high political position could be owned so much.

From what ive heard Al Jazeera has been know to be sympathetic to terrorist, so I am not sure I trust them a whole lot. 

I only watched bits and pieces of the debate but from what I saw, Biden did destroy Ryan. though my brother who wathed the entire debate said Ryan broke even towards the end or something like that.

Now lets see what happens to the thread :D

RYAN GOT FUUUUUUCKED OVER so very hard.  OUCH.  I think that he had alot of holes, so Bi-sexual-den managed to whoop the his ass.

(JK he's perfectly straight.)

I've seen some poles that state Ryan narrowly won the debate, and I agree. Not only did Biden kind make an ass of himself on there, He contradicted himself a lot and brought up untrue facts about the Republican campaign (which Romney did the same thing in his debate, so I'm not pretending Biden's the only one who did it). That being said, if Ryan hadn't started actually asserting himself and not letting Biden take his time as badly, he would have lost. I just think both he and the moderator were caught off guard by Biden's ass-holery :P

Romeny and Obama was a pretty one sided debate, in my opinion. I just didn't get the feeling that Obama really cared about what was happening, and he was simply walked over. It's something that I (in my opinion) think that Obama doesn't really consider Romeny as a adversary, but a bug. Which annoys me.

the VP debate was annoying, since it seemed that Ryan was debating Biden and the moderator. 

I was more under the impression that Obama needed to memorize the note cards in his hands more than he felt like he needed to listen to what Romney was saying. There was more than one rebuttal where I felt like Obama wasn't really sure what Romney had said...

I really hate that I missed the VP debate. I've been sick this week and I ended up managing to pass out on the couch and sleep through the whole thing until my dog decided it was time to drool on my face at 2am -_-

I consider Obama smart, but relativley arrogant at this stage. I feel people are underestimating Romeney. 

The VP was boring. You already know how Biden is moronic, just add being a complete ass. I think there was a video with all of Biden's interruption of Ryan. And the Moderator was allowing Biden, and gave him the last word every time. (nearly)

Oh yeah, there is no doubt Obama is intelligent. He just doesn't seem to be very good at speaking without a teleprompter... I mean, I understand needing to glance down at a few key talking points. But, it seemed like he had a whole speech or something down there... The only other thing he could have been doing was just staring at his fingers....<.<

I remember Obama at a conference and stopping since he went ahead of his Telepromter. 

This reminded me of a Cracked article i read earlier this week.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-reasons-we-need-to-reexamine-how-we-elect-presidents

^Not sure if the link works. But i think it sums up some parts of the election process pretty well.

Yeah, I do agree with the premise. Most presidents are crazy. 

I was actually used to Biden's gaffes, and I was too young to be interested in the last VP debate (I think I was in the 7th grade) where he stomped Palin, so I wasn't expecting Biden to do well. He actually surprised me with how much he knew (even without what he lied about), and did way better than I thought he would. Then he started dicking around and I got turned off, but still.

With the Presidential debate, I felt Romney won, but I was disappointed with how much he lied about his campaign. Even though Romney cut off Obama a lot, Obama took a lot of time at the end of his speeches (I love how he told the moderator he had 5 seconds before he was cut off and then spoke for a minute and a half), and at the end he had about 5 minutes more than Romney in speaking time.

From an article I read, apparently it caused Romney to gain ratings because he came off as more likable and confident about his plans. Ryan also gained approval ratings because his calmness and (comparative) politeness made him look more intelligent and responsible, especially when compared to Biden's rudeness.

I don't usually follow VP debates. I can't remember whether I watched the Pailin and Biden debate, since I wast as crazy about politics. So i was very annoyed with biden, since he acted like he was much smarter then he seemed to be. But that's probably my Conservative bias. 

Well, according to another article (I thought my bias could be clouding my judgement as well, so I just googled the debate), in the 2008 VP debate, Biden was calm, cool, and collected while Palin was being her derpy self. It made her look idiotic, and by comparison Biden looked freaking amazing. This time, his advisors told him to capitalize on Ryan's lack of debate experience and be aggressive but when he tried, he just came across as offensive.

That does make sense. But I'm surprised they wanted Biden to be aggressive. He tends to go a bit over board when he's on the offense. "They are going to put y'all back in chains" comes to mind.

Yeah, that's one of the gaffes I was expecting in this debate.

If you ask me Obama seemed to be referring back to his convention speech a lot. I mean who starts a debate thanking his mother. He didn't look good either. He almost looked older then Romney and he made many mistakes that I would not expect him to make.

Now Romney did lie a lot but he did what he needed to do and steam rolled obama on the economy which was the area Romney should have won.

This also could be a strategy by the Obama campaign to get Romney cocky and overconfident. So he falls on his face in the next one.

Any way I am back now mostly because of the election and I missed you guys.

Yeah, that's always a possibility. The Obama campaign planners are very good at those kind of tactics, though losing the first debate is a big thing.

and i missed you too cool. Good to see you're back

That would be a freaking terrible strategy. haha

Yeah well it could also be that they just accepted a loss on this debate and are hoping to school Romney on the Welfare one.

I dunno, Obama had a lot of attacks he could have made but didn't. I guess it's possible that he was pulling his punches, but I guess we'll see for sure at the next debate.

I agree, Obama was very disappointing. I don't think he was pulling his punches, I think he was just tired and unable to show enthusiasm. Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came into office by calling for change and he was enthusiastic and energetic. By the end of his leadership (our current Prime Minister took over as the Labor Party leader) he was dull and serious.

Obama needs to be more upbeat, and he needs to actually attack Romney across the board rather than debating passively. He's not communicating effectively at the moment.

Yeah, that's one of the things Obama had going for him in '08. I believe it was John Stewart who said (this is paraphrased, sorry if I screwed up the slogans) "It seems the Obama campaign has gone from 'Change we can believe in' to 'meh, why change now?'"

One way of looking at Biden's performance: if he wasn't constantly interrupting Ryan to point out inaccuracies, he would have had to wait until his turn to speak and spend all of his own time correcting Ryan rather than putting forward his own agenda. I think it was a great tactic to stop Ryan while he was speaking - it made him look like he didn't know what he was talking about.

I haven't watched the whole debate, mind you. Biden laughing while Ryan was talking would usually seem very arrogant and even insulting to me, but considering that (from what I've seen anyway) he was right (ie. Ryan was lying about something) it seems justified.

Well, considering the fact that not all of the interruptions were legitimate corrections, and a lot were just either insults or irrelevant (IE, "Oh, you're Jack Kennedy now?"), and so it turned me off. I mean, you have to admit that 87 interruptions in a 90 minute debate is a little excessive. Also, I didn't catch that many lies from Ryan, but I did from Biden. Ryan did a good job of pointing out the lies, but I wish he did a better job with the contradictions. 

The issue I think Ryan did the worst on (remember I'm doing this from pure memory, so I could be wrong)  was on relations in the Middle East. He was floundering around and started just becoming redundant, so everybody could tell that he wasn't prepared on the issue. What I think he did best on was his attack on the President's claim that the rich have to pay "a little more" to get the economy back on track by stating that even if he raised income taxes on that demographic to 100%, it couldn't cover the Obama administration's spending.

I didn't commit Biden's portions to memory as I was observing Ryan (I wanted to see how he could handle himself in his first debate) for the most part, but if you bring up a few things I can tell you my opinion by memory.

Wow, that is a little excessive. I personally prefer that he made those interruptions if at least some of them yielded results, or protected his own reputation (eg. "who's cutting it [the military budget] by a trillion dollars?" as if to say "we're not doing that") like in the video below, but still, an interruption a minute on average is a bit over the top. I've heard that Ryan was the more likeable candidate in the debate (positions and debating skills aside), so that probably explains it.

I haven't seen the part where Ryan (apparently) does bad regarding the Middle East but I did see him deny an increase to military spending (which goes against what Romney said). I'll put the video below. But yeah, very nice point regarding the excessive spending by the Obama administration - even though I agree with progressive taxing it's a very valid point that Obama will be spending too much money.

Haha don't worry about forgetting parts of the debate, I haven't even watched the whole thing so you're probably doing better than me in regards to that :D

Edit: Oh yeah, the video:

Ohyeah, that was what I was talking about. I knew it had something to do with the military :P 

This debate is much more enjoyable.

Meh, that one wasn't too good. Abe Lincoln almost saved it, but Obama and Romney's rap sucked too hard.

Abe Lincoln was awesome. Overall rap was OK.

That was bordering on horrible rapping at least to me but the Lincoln part was much better compared to the rest of the video.

Also Mormons gave up the polygamy thing a long time ago and they only did it because their husbands kept getting killed. Seriously, people need to at least keep up to date on a religion they don't like if their going to bash it. 

I don't think he was bashing it, just making a clever joke.

Oh, they used an offensive joke in a rap battle? And it was slightly inaccurate? Oh lordy lordy, what are we gonna do now?

Riot, and kill the maker? :P

lol agreed. xD