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Politics

At The Last Presidential Debate: Romney Told 24 Myths In 41 Minutes

1) “Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” Romney has his geography wrong. Syria doesn’t share a border with Iran and Iran has 1,500 miles of coastline leading to the Arabian Sea. It is also able to reach the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal.

2) “And what I’m afraid of is we’ve watched over the past year or so [in Syria], first the president saying, well we’ll let the U.N. deal with it…. Then it went to the Russians and said, let’s see if you can do something.” While Russia and China have vetoed multiple resolutions at the U.N. Security Council on Syria, the United States has also been working through the Friends of Syria group and other allies in the region. Obama’s approach “would essentially give U.S. nods of approval to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters.”

3) “Former chief of the — Joint Chiefs of Staff said that — Admiral Mullen said that our debt is the biggest national security threat we face. This — we have weakened our economy. We need a strong economy. We need to have as well a strong military.” If Romney is worried about the national debt, why does he want to increase military spending from 3.5 percent of GDP to 4 percent? This amounts to a $2.1 trillion increase over a ten year period that the military says it does not need and Romney has no plan to pay for it.

4) “[W]hen — when the students took to the streets in Tehran and the people there protested, the Green Revolution occurred, for the president to be silent I thought was an enormous mistake.” Obama spoke out about the Revolution on June 15, 2009, just two days after post-election demonstrations began in Iran, condemning the Iranian government’s hard-handed crackdown on Iranian activists. He then reiterated his comments a day later in another press conference. Iranian activists have agreed with Obama’s approach.

5) “And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay.” The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.

6) “[W]e are going to have North American energy independence. We’re going to do it by taking full advantage of oil, coal, gas, nuclear and our renewables.” Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.

7) “[W]e’re going to have to have training programs that work for our workers.” Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney has fully endorsed, calls for spending 33 percent less on “Education, training, employment, and social services” than Obama’s budget.

8) “And I’ll get us on track to a balanced budget.” Romney’s $5 trillion tax cut plan and his increases to military spending could explode the deficit.

9) “Well, Republicans and Democrats came together on a bipartisan basis to put in place education principles that focused on having great teachers in the classroom.” Education experts have faint praise for his proposals while he was governor. “His impact was inconsequential,” said Glen Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. “People viewed his proposals as political talking points, and no one took Romney seriously.”

10) “So I’d get rid of [Obamacare] from day one. To the extent humanly possible, we get that out.” Romney cannot unilaterally eliminate a bill passed by Congress and his plan to grant states waivers may also be a non-starter.
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Alyssa

Yes, Kirsten Gillibrand and Wendy Long Got Asked About ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ At A Debate

I wish I could say that I’m shocked that two female candidates for Senate got asked in a debate whether they’d read Fifty Shades of Grey, but sometimes, everything is weird and terrible and this kind of nonsense does come to pass:

I’m willing to give the moderators a pass for asking about culture in general, both because the questions were meant to warm up the debaters, and because I think that asking substantive questions about culture is an interesting way to get at what public figures value and the extent to which they’re inclined to pander. But asking a yes or no question about whether Kirsten Gillibrand and Wendy Long have read a book that, as of August, had sold more than 40 million copies, doesn’t actually reveal any meaningful information about their tastes that distinguishes them from other women.

The reason people think reading Fifty Shade of Grey indicates anything at all is because people think it’s weird for women to publicly admit to being interested in sex, much less in books that involve women figuring out what they like sexually. Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t actually a particularly good book if you want to have a discussion of sexual self-knowledge, given that it’s a big proponent of the idea that all women have magically effective vaginal orgasms, that if you haven’t had sex before that it will automatically be terrific as long as your partner is a charismatic and kinky industrial tycoon, and that its knowledge of BDSM and power dynamics in sex appears to have been gleaned from a vigorous read of Wikipedia. But it’s still treated as if it’s some sort of scandalous text—people literally write articles about how to avoid being caught reading Fifty Shades of Grey in public. Asking Gillibrand and Long whether they’d read the book isn’t a way to learn more about them, or to start a discussion about sexuality, or to see if they’re in synch with female readers, or to warm them up: it’s in part to catch them out on something that shouldn’t be a titter-worthy issue in the first place.

NEWS FLASH

ThinkProgress Will Liveblog The Second Presidential Debate | ThinkProgress will live blog tonight’s second presidential debate, starting at 8:45 PM. Stay tuned for our reporting and real-time fact checking. But as we wait for President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney to take the stage, here are 5 facts you should commit to memory and 8 important economic questions town hall audience members should ask that have nothing to do with taxes or the deficit.

Security

Paul Ryan Criticizes Former Bush Pentagon Chief For Warning Against Attacking Iran

Paul Ryan

GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan criticized former Defense Secretary Robert Gates during the vice presidential debate this evening for warning about the consequences of attacking Iran over its nuclear program.

Gates — a Republican who served as Pentagon chief in both the Bush and Obama administrations — last week reiterated his warning that attacking Iran could be “catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.”

When ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Vice President Biden and Ryan about Gates’ assertion, Ryan said it “undermines” American credibility:

RADDATZ: What about Bob Gates’ statement. Let me read that again. “Could prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.”

BIDEN: He is right. It could prove catastrophic if we didn’t do it precision –

RYAN: What it does is it undermines our credibility by backing up the point when we make it that all options are on the table. That’s the point. The Ayatollahs see these kinds of statements and they think, “I’m going to get a nuclear weapon.” When we see the kind of equivacation that took place because this administration wanted a pre-condition policy so when the Green Revolution started up they were silent for 9 days. When they see us putting desperate — when they see us putting daylight between ourselves and our allies in Israel, that gives them encouragement.

Watch the clip:

Ryan was repeating a Romney campaign talking point that warning about the consequences of war with Iran only encourages the Iranian regime to move forward with an alleged nuclear weapons program (the Romney team doesn’t like discussing those consequences). Yet many experts and current and former U.S. and Israeli officials have echoed Gates’ warnings that attacking Iran would give leaders there incentive to weaponize and it could spark a regional war.

Politics

ThinkProgress Liveblogs The Vice Presidential Debate

Welcome to ThinkProgress’ live coverage of the vice presidential debate, hosted by Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky.

We’ll fact-check both candidates’ claims in real time and offer a wide range of multimedia content. Tonight’s debate is moderated by Martha Raddatz, Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent for ABC News.

LATEST UPDATE
10:53 pm

Watch Our Google Hangout

Watch ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser discuss the ins and outs of the VP debate along with the staff of Roll Call, Christian Science Monitor, and Reason:

10:41 pm

Biden's 'malarkey' tops Google search

On CNN, Soledad O’Brien reported that “malarkey” became a top search on Google after the vice president used the word during the debate.

10:40 pm

Even conservatives think Biden did well

10:31 pm

Ryan's budget guts social programs for lower-income Americans

Biden just brought up the fact that Ryan’s budget really hurts low-income people. Sixty two percent of the cuts are from programs that benefit low-income people.

10:27 pm

Catholic leaders have denounced Ryan's policies

Ryan’s policies have been widely criticized by Catholic scholars, nuns, and bishops. The Nuns on the Bus, who have traveled around the country to advocate for economic justice, have denounced Ryan’s budget as “immoral and unjustifiable” because it “will be putting the burden on the poor.”

Read the full live blog

Climate Progress

Obama Talks (And Tweets) Climate Change. Will Biden Tonight?

On Tuesday, President Obama tweeted out a short version of his convention comments on climate to his 20 million twitter followers.

Today, Obama added a slightly tweaked version of his convention riff to his stump speech at his University of Miami speech in Coral Gables (full video here):

Yes my plan will reduce the carbon pollution that is heating the planet.  Because climate change is not a hoax.  More drought and floods and hurricanes and wildfires, that’s not a joke.  That’s a threat to our children’s future.  And we can do something about it.

And yes, as semi-delighted as I am that the president is talking about climate change (at least to university audiences), I really wish he would stop repeating the “hoax” myth in trying to debunk it. So let’s call this “modified rapture.”

Will Biden bring up this issue in tonight’s debate even if the moderator does not? He will if he looks at the polls and public opinion analysis (see Krosnick: Candidates “May Actually Enhance Turnout As Well As Attract Voters Over To Their Side By Discussing Climate Change”).

LGBT

The VP Candidates’ Stark Differences On LGBT Issues

Biden and RyanAs Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan meet in Danville, Kentucky tonight for their lone head-to-head debate, millions of LGBT Americans are celebrating National Coming Out Day. While it is unclear whether issues relating to equality will be among the topics discussed tonight, it is worth remembering that Biden and Romney have starkly different views on LGBT civil rights.

Here’s where they stand:

Paul Ryan Joe Biden
Marriage Ryan is a fierce opponent of granting any legal rights to same-sex couples. Ryan twice voted for a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. He supported a same-sex marriage ban in his home state, and claimed that preventing same-sex couples from getting married was a “universal human value.” He even voted to prevent any funds being used to implement or enforce a domestic partnership benefits law passed by the DC City Council to give health care benefits to same-sex couples and voted for a 1999 amendment that would have overruled the District of Columbia’s elected city council and prohibited any funding for the “joint adoption of a child between individuals who are not related by blood or marriage.” Biden supports marriage equality. In May, he explained on Meet the Press “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”
DADT Ryan voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the policy which prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces. Biden campaigned for repeal of the policy. He was one of just 33 Senators in 1993 supporting a resolution against codifying the discriminatory policy.
Hate Crimes Ryan voted against hate crime protection for LGBT Americans. Biden co-sponsored and supported hate crimes protections for LGBT Americans.
ENDA Ryan believes that employment discrimination protection for LGBT people should be left out of the hands of the federal government. While he did (after much hand-wringing) once vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007, the fact his congressional office employment policies do not include protections for sexual orientation is worrying enough. Saying that it “changes the equation,” Paul Ryan indicated his support for gay and lesbian discrimination protection would diminish if it also included for transgender employees. “It makes it something you can’t vote for,” he said. Biden voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate in 1996 and co-sponsored the 2003 version of the bill.

Earlier this month, Ryan told Focus on the Family president Jim Daly that if elected he and Mitt Romney “will protect traditional marriage and the rule of law and we will provide the Defense of Marriage Act the proper defense in the courts that it deserves.” Obama and Biden have a section on the White House website highlighting their support for LGBT civil rights.

Watch Biden’s It Gets Better video:

Election

What Everyone Needs To Know Before Watching The VP Debate

1. Romney and Ryan would eliminate health care for 31 million people who are poor or disabled. Medicaid, which helps poor Americans, some seniors, and children afford health care, is right in the crosshairs of Paul Ryan’s House budget. He proposed cutting $1.4 trillion from the program, a move that would kick about 11 million people off Medicaid over the course of ten years. The Romney-Ryan plan is even worse, and is estimated to force about 44 million people off the program.

2. Ryan considers Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme.” In the Fall of 2011, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” and Paul Ryan agreed. Ryan wants to privatize the program.

3. 62% of Ryan’s budget cuts come from programs that benefit low-income Americans. Ryan’s budget proposes “$5.3 trillion in nondefense budget cuts.” 62 percent of the reductions would come from programs that specifically help low-income Americans:

4. Ryan voted for future defense cuts he now blames on Obama. Though Ryan claims Obama somehow orchestrated the sequester, a series of across-the-board spending cuts triggered if Congress can’t produce a better plan, the VP pick himself was a supporter of the mechanism. Not only did he vote for legislation to establish it, he peddled the plan to his Republican colleagues and proposed a similar initiative in 2004.

5. Ryan and Romney cannot cut taxes across the board by 20% and lower the deficit because it’s mathematically impossible. Ryan claims they will achieve these twin goals by closing loopholes and getting rid of deductions for the rich. But, as the Tax Policy Center points out, even if they got rid of every single deduction and loophole, they would still need to find more revenue. That means they’d need to start raising taxes on the middle class.

6. Ryan voted to increase the debt ceiling by $4 trillion under Bush. During the Bush years alone, Ryan voted with his party’s leadership to increase the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. In total, he has voted six times to raise the debt ceiling, increasing it by $5.8 trillion.

7. Ryan wants to kick 1 million students off of Pell Grants. As part of his budget, Ryan proposed cutting Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students. Seventy four percent of Pell Grant recipients in 2011 came from families with incomes of $30,000 or less. There is no evidence that these cuts will curb rising college costs.

8. Ryan’s budget included the same $716 billion in Medicare savings included in Obamacare. The $716 billion that Obamacare takes out of Medicare will almost definitely come up in tomorrow’s debate. Ryan has claimed that Obama “raided” Medicare to pay for his health care reform. In fact, Ryan wants to make Medicare a voucher program and proposed taking the same cuts out of Medicare in his budget. But whereas Obamacare uses those funds to eliminate fraud and increase efficiency, Ryan proposed taking that money to pay down the deficit.

9. Ryan supported economic stimulus under Bush. If he’s going to follow the lead of his running mate, Ryan will invoke Obama’s stimulus plan, the Recovery Act, as failed legislation that wasted taxpayer money. But when George Bush was president, Ryan was supportive of a stimulus, and actually made a rousing case for infusing the economy with money, saying that it helped create jobs. Watch it:

10. Ryan used to supports a key aspect of Obamacare. Ryan will likely say at the debate that the Affordable Care Act is government overreach. In fact, he might even invoke “death panels,” as he has done at recent town halls. But Ryan proposed something extremely similar to these so-called “death panels” in 2009 — twice. In December of 2010, Ryan also asked the Department of Health and Human Services for an Obamacare health care grant “for the Kenosha Community Health Center, Inc to develop a new facility in Racine, Wisconsin, an area within Ryan’s district.”

11. Ryan opposes abortion access for rape victims. When it comes to abortion rights, Ryan is among the most extreme anti-abortion members of Congress. He believes rape victims shouldn’t have access to abortions and co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a human, thus outlawing not just abortion but also in-vitro fertilization and some forms of contraception.

12. Ryan supports a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Ryan is vehemently opposed to marriage equality for same-sex couples. He has twice voted to amend the constitution to that effect, supported a same-sex marriage ban in his home state, and claimed that preventing same-sex couples from getting married was a “universal human value.”

Election

KitchenAid Jokes: Obama’s Grandmother Was Lucky She Died Before He Became President

The company KitchenAid is primarily involved in the business of making cakes. But their Twitter account stirred up some political ire last night when it tweeted a “joke” about President Obama’s dead grandmother.

The senior director of KitchenAid brand and marketing, Cynthia Soledad, spent the morning furiously apologizing and taking questions from reporters after the account last night tweeted, “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president.”

During the debate last night, Obama told the story of his grandmother’s ascent from secretary to vice president of a local bank. The tweet from KitchenAid was likely the result of a staffer mixing up his or her personal and professional accounts.

KitchenAid is owned by the company Whirlpool. Whirlpool’s corporate Political Action Committee gave about two thirds of its funding to Republicans this election cycle.

Update

Soledad sent ThinkProgress a statement saying, “This person will no longer be tweeting for us and appropriate actions are being taken. That said, I lead the KitchenAid brand, and I take responsibility for the whole team. I am deeply sorry to President Obama, his family, and our consumers for this careless error.”

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