In an astonishing segment on his show, Bill O’Reilly goes on a rant about ‘far Left’ elements in America that can only be described as an epic bout of cognitive dissonance. The segment starts with O’Reilly plays a clip of himself pre-election stating that:

“20 years ago, President Obama would be roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that this economic system is stacked against them, and they want stuff. You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama, overwhelming black vote for Obama, and women will probably break President Obama’s way”.

O’Reilly then argues that the Leftist media spun his words to make him look like a white supremacist. Of course, O’Reilly doesn’t explain what he meant by “They want stuff”, and goes on to accuse the extreme Left of a witch hunt. Hilariously, O’Reilly argues that there are ‘Entire media operations that exist solely to promote ideology’ – a statement so brilliantly hypocritical, it can only be described as Orwellian. I lost the will to watch any more after that one (when I stopped he was bringing out Alan Colmes to provide the Leftist perspective), but you can check out the segment below to get the gist of it:

As most of our readers know, I’m squarely in the Obama camp for the Presidential election. This isn’t because I agree with everything he has done or pledges to do in office – far from it – Obama has disappointed me on many, many issues to the point where my defense of him has been difficult to justify. I’m supporting Obama because generally speaking I believe he is tilting the country in the right direction, particularly from an economic perspective, whereas the Republicans would do irreparable damage to the economy and gut vital social programs that are a lifeline to many Americans.

I believe it is important that Obama is reelected next week so that the country can continue it’s (painfully) slow path to economic recovery, pursue a more nuanced and thoughtful foreign policy, and preserve the function of government.

However, Obama has shown a history of extreme willingness to compromise with Republicans on sacred progressive issues that should be defended tooth and nail, and he needs to be watched carefully in his next term for backdoor deals with Republicans that do damage to programs like social security and welfare. Obama has long talked about a ‘Grand Bargain’ with Republicans – a tax increase on the rich in return for cuts across the board for social programs. In his own words the deal would be “$2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending”. In an interesting discussion on The Real News, Professor William K. Black the former Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention warns the Left that it must hold Obama to account should he be reelected. Here’s Black discussing what the ‘Grand Bargain’ would actually mean:

This grand bargain is: we will weight this much more heavily towards killing social programs, or at least cutting them back significantly and raising taxes on the rich.Now, that’s got most of the attention from progressives, but note two other things that he was saying. One, he’s talking about austerity. He’s talking about following exactly the kind of model that Europe has followed that put them gratuitously back into recession, and indeed into a Great Depression……

You tell me what kind of grand bargain would put the economy back in recession, cost us jobs, increase the deficit, and begin the process of gutting Social Security. That’s not a grand bargain. That is a complete surrender. That is the great betrayal. And that is what Obama is telling us he intends to seek.

Obama is obviously betting that ensuring government has a more tax revenue coming in is better for him politically than funding social programs – and he is probably right. Raising revenues and cutting social programs could cut the deficit significantly, leading to a far safer political position for the Democrats. But cutting social programs in weak economic times and throwing the most vulnerable people into severe poverty is not only immoral, but economically counterproductive in the long run. The truth is that while the debt is an important issue, it takes second place to job creation and robust welfare system in times of economic uncertainty. Europe is deeply in debt and in the midst of a great depression, and it is cutting government spending as a solution. The results have been spectacularly bad with continued mass unemployment no end in sight.

Obama, in infuriating fashion, has already laid out the terms of the deal before negotiations have begun – and as always, he has started from a conservative position leaving him little room to maneuver. The Republicans won’t take the deal and they’ll force more an more concessions until it looks like a standard piece of Right wing social engineering; continued tax cuts for the rich and massive cuts to welfare programs for everyone else.

There’s no doubt a big bargain is needed over the next four years if the country is to pull itself out of the mess it’s in, but slashing the already underfunded welfare system shouldn’t even be on the table. You don’t negotiate from your opponents own perspective in the beginning if you want to achieve tangible results. It seems Obama hasn’t learned from the past, so it’s up to the Left to force him to.

Steve Clemons looks at the data and concludes one thing: Republicans love debt a whole lot more than the Democrats:

As the debates on who is responsible for the levels of federal debt continue to play out in the next 10 days before the election and the 66 days before the US hits a fiscal cliff, remember that the worst contributors to America’s debt load were mostly GOP presidents — with the single exception of Obama, who had a global economic tsunami crashing in on the White House and nation when he took the helm.

It must be remembered however that Republicans say they hate debt, so therefore it must be true.

 

By Ben Cohen: Romney campaign co-chairman John Sununu told CNN’s Piers Morgan on Thursday night that Colin Powell endorsed President Barack Obama not because of his policies, but because Obama was somebody of Powell’s ‘own race’.

Sununu served as the 75th Governor of New Hampshire and later White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush, and is now a top adviser in Romney’s Presidential campaign.

Here’s the exchange on CNN:

Sununu: Well, I’m not sure how important that is. I do like the fact that Colin Powell’s boss, George Herbert Walker Bush, has endorsed Mitt Romney all along. And frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.

Morgan: What reason would that be?

Sununu: Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.

The assertion, later retracted by Sununu, is incredibly offensive on several levels. Implying that Powell, a four star general who served under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is incapable of making a rational decision based on policies rather than skin color is simply wrong. Regardless of what you may think about Powell’s policies, he’s an extraordinarily capable man who fought for and served his country at the highest level for several decades. Powell is a moderate Republican who had serious reservations about the Iraq war and spent much of the time in the Bush White House trying to stop the Neo Cons enacting their disastrous plans.

Given Obama is a centrist himself (despite the loony accusations from the Right that he is a radical socialist), it’s no wonder Powell endorsed him as their outlook is decidedly similar. Here’s Powell on CBS news on why he is highly skeptical of Romney’s foreign policy vision:

“The governor who was saying things at the debate on Monday night … was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. I’m not quite sure which Gov. Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy.”

“One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal, same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern … is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have.”

And here’s Powell on Romney’s economic policies:

“As I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with respect to our most significant issue, the economy, it’s essentially let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things but that compensation does not cover all of the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense.”

Powell outlined his support for Obama stating his belief that the President is on the right track when it comes to the economy:

“When he took over, the country was in very very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment peaked a few months later at 10 percent. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, the housing was start[ing] to collapse and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.”

And on foreign policy, Powell said he saw the President “Get us of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars. And finally I think that the actions he has taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very very solid. And so, I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on.”

In short, Powell doesn’t buy into the new Republican thinking that every country in the Middle East should be threatened or invaded, and doesn’t believe that the country’s fiscal problems can be solved by cutting taxes for rich people. Normally, this would be considered a fairly conservative and sensible stance, but in today’s political climate it is judged as being a racially motivated betrayal.

What would happen if the question were reversed and every prominent white Republican was asked whether they were voting for Romney based on his skin color? Would Sununu admit that his support of Romney had nothing to do with his policies, but his racial background? Sununu would be offended on many levels, as should Colin Powell be for the exact same accusation.

Sununu should step down over these comments given their insidious and offensive implications. He won’t of course, as this is standard fare for Republicans who think nothing of whipping up racial tension to drive out the vote for their candidate. Sununu believes that Colin Powell’s political stance is based on race, but in reality it’s Sununu’s accusation that tells you who sees politics in black and white.

 

 

Ok, we’re off to a ripping start. Obama goes on the attack immediately accusing Romney of being completely out of touch with reality. He accuses Romney of thinking the biggest geo political threat is Russia! He then lambasts him for being wrong ‘every single time’ whenever he’s offered an opinion.

We’re going to be covering the Presidential debate in Boca Raton, Florida live tonight on The Daily Banter, so make sure you check in at 9pm ET/6pm PT for our up to the minute analysis! Tonight’s debate is an important one as the polls are showing a statistically tied race – will Obama continue to climb back after an epic performance in the second round, or will Romney find his voice again and take it to the President on foreign policy – a topic he believes he can score significant points in? Tune in to find out!!

Michael Tomasky on what the President needs to bear in mind when he goes into the debate with Romney tonight:

 

After several days of doing research, interviewing sources and writing up the two pieces we put out on Mitt Romney’s hidden fortune (part 1 here, and part 2 here), we received a fair amount of traffic on the site. The two pieces we put out generated in excess of 3000 views which isn’t too bad.

However, given youtube videos titled “i are cute kitten” generate over 42 million views and posts about Paris Hilton’s breasts become headline news around the world, 3000 hits for a considerable amount of research and effort (intricate financial data doesn’t exactly come easily to me), made me feel a little hard done by.

Anyhow, I was discussing this with a friend today and I explained I would probably generate more traffic if I put a headline up like “Mitt Romney Likes Cute Puppies”. It would of course be completely misleading as we don’t know whether Romney does like cute puppies (given he strapped his dog to the roof of his car for a 12 hour journey, he may well not), but I thought I’d run the experiment to see what would happen anyway.

I’m hoping when I go into the site stats later tonight that the majority of traffic comes from search and not from our core readers (seriously Banter readers, if you’re reading this, shame on you…), but it will prove my point if we generate a decent amount of traffic. This post took approximately 15 minutes to write and post as compared to three solid days for the serious pieces (or 96 x longer), so as a rough estimate it should only generate 31.25 page views.

Let’s see what happens….

Politicians today could learn a thing or two from JFK. In this excellent speech, the 35th President of the United States lays out a forceful defense of government and its positive role in society:

This is what we need to hear from Obama in the next debate. The poll numbers are really not looking good for the President and he needs to come out swinging big time. How does he do that? By appealing to his base and reminding everyone he’s a Democrat, not a centrist like the (again) re-tooled Romney. Instead of having Obama practice zingers, maybe his team should have him sit in front of JFK speeches for a couple of days in preparation for the debate. It may reignite some sorely missing passion.

The latest from Gallup:

The polling is still not quite settled, but there does appear to be a trend favoring Romney at the moment – and this should cause Obama to take note. Writes Nate Silver:

That’s an awful lot to accomplish in one night, especially considering that Mr. Romney’s chances had begun to look rather dire before the debate. He may have been a bit unlucky with the jobs report — no, the numbers aren’t rigged — but there is a lot of statistical variance in the month-to-month reports. But his prospects still look a lot brighter than they did a week ago.

I’m finding this extremely hard to monitor as readings on the public mood seems to be shifting on a day to day basis. The jobs report looked good for Obama, but this hasn’t been reflected in the polls thus far. Perhaps the bump will occur later in the week, but it’s hard to say.

Anyhow, the media is loving the ups and downs big time as they may finally have what they’ve wanted all along – a two way horse race they can milk to death.

In a thoughtful piece about the choice Americans have this election, Gary Younge concludes that despite Obama’s many flaws, a vote for Romney leads to quantifiably worse outcomes:

Insisting it makes no difference who wins is not tenable. Last year Chelsea Shinneman of Roanoke, Virginia, had a baby, Harrison, who was born with a congenital heart defect. Were it not for the new healthcare act, Harrison would have been destined for a lifetime of sky‑high insurance premiums.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, the head of the Homelessness Prevention Initiative, Sue Beck-Ferkiss, could point to 36 families in the area who had been helped by stimulus money. Had there been any Latinos at the table in Akron, they might have added to Obama’s achievements his executive order to halt the deportation of young undocumented immigrants. Had there been soldiers, they might have talked about the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.

Younge is no shill for Obama, but he understands that whoever is President is hamstrung by an increasingly corrupt political system that makes significant change extremely difficult. Obama may want to bring about change in America, but political reality dictates that he can’t. He must play the game and make adjustments where he can, or be replaced by a Republican who will not only play the game, but further rig it.

We keep hearing from the Glenn Greenwald/Jane Hamsher Left that a vote for Obama is an endorsement of all his policies – a position that simply defies logic. There will never be a candidate whose policies you agree with 100%, so unless Greenwald himself throws his hat into the political arena (and he’d last about 4 seconds if he did), voters have to face reality and go for the candidate whose policies net the better results. As Younge reminds us:

The case against the Republicans is not difficult to make. Their numbers don’t add up, their arguments don’t make sense, and their record in office contradicts virtually every one of their professed principles. During the eight years prior to Obama’s presidency they ballooned the deficit, crashed the economy, increased the power of the state over the individual, and sent America’s standing plummeting throughout the world. They built that.

In a corrupt political system you vote for the less corrupt candidate and you vote for the candidate who actually understands that the system is corrupt. Mitt Romney believes in the system – after all, it favors rich white men like himself – so he’ll do his best to maintain it. There isn’t a huge amount President Obama can do to change the system, but you get the feeling that if there was a window to do something, he’d at least try (and judging by the banking crisis, there’s evidence he already did).

Sure, the choice isn’t great, but it shouldn’t be hard either because of how serious the outcomes are.