Vice Presidential Debate

[PopeyeJones]

The founders gave us 2nd Amendment rights to ward of and tear down an overreaching government. That is beginning to quickly take shape.

It's beginning to quickly take shape? As in it's imminent? Just between us, what's your rough estimate for when you and other military vets are going to overthrow the government to save the country? I won't hold you to it. Just curious as to what your guesstimate is.

[MarkItAZero!]

It's beginning to quickly take shape? As in it's imminent? Just between us, what's your rough estimate for when you and other military vets are going to overthrow the government to save the country? I won't hold you to it. Just curious as to what your guesstimate is.

Likely not in my lifetime. I'm certainly not holding my breath. But rest assured when it does happen, it will be most of those people with the means to do so and that's not really conducive to liberal minded people. Most liberals are fine with expanded government and believe the 2nd Amendment gives regular citizens far to much power with firearms and like products.

1/3 of this country is armed and armed well. The militar is roughly 75% conservative and voluntary. If you think they'll back the US government in any conflict with a unified American front as the opposition for reasons already mentioned, then clearly you're on the wrong side of the outcome already.

[CalgaryHawkFan]

Likely not in my lifetime. I'm certainly not holding my breath.

So then NOT quickly. Unless you were Sgt Mayfly.

[Breed]

Sigh....i'm guessing you have never been to Somalia, let alone any part of the world other than the US....so it doesn't surprise me to see hyperbole come spewing out.

Downtown Philly and much of the border parts of NJ are literally that bad. And yes, it's largely minorities. Nothing incorrect about either of those statements. The living conditions make a statement like that feasible.

I've never been to Somalia or Philly, but from what I've seen on tv and read about in books. It seems pretty bad. I once read in Life Mag I think it was (so you know it was a while back) about a part of town in Philly the police dubbed "Oz" and wore little decals or badges to signify that they worked in that area. It was terrible, like reading about war torn Libya or Iraq.

I remember when crack hit the scene in LA in the early/mid 80s and even before crack hit in the late 70s/early 80s . Places in south and east LA were literally like the wild wild west, Dodge City and OK Corral style. If you didn't live there or you weren't buyin or sellin dope. You'd literally get your ass tore up. Where the first words out a person's mouth was "What set you from?" or "What you want?" and you better not be hemmin and hawin when you answered or that was your ass. Times and areas when LA having the 2nd largest school district in the country, but less than 5% of all jr high/hg sch students. Rode the school bus because bus stops were the #1 place where drive-bys would occur.

Is it any wonder kids who live/grow up in areas like that say **** school and learning from books and whatnot.

[PopeyeJones]

I've never been to Somalia, but I don't consider downtown Philly to be that "bad" at all. I'm in Philly pretty regularly.

Some spots in SF and Oakland in the era Breed is talking about sure, but modern day downtown Philadelphia, not at all.

Edit: Also, all too frequently the the ethnic composition and income of a neighborhood get conflated with what's going on it or how safe it is. In example, my dad lived in Bayview/Hunter's Point in the mid-to-late 90s, and I walked around there as a young teenager all the time and it was fine, despite what people said about it. Sure, it was poor and black, but as a young white kid who didn't know anybody walking around by myself I never had any problems, and my dad never had any concerns. The Tenderloin on the other hand, was a friggin' nightmare. The difference was drugs, not race or class.

[Marley]

So I decided to watch Jon Stewart on his take of the VP debate. Now I understand how you guys formulate your opinions. Every network and cable outlet, maybe not MSNBC, portraited Hiden as being a buffoon.

By every network and media outlet, you really mean FoxNews.

[Vin Lombardi]

When you say lies...

Despite statements by Vice President Joe Biden, the State Department is about to begin formal negotiations over the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, a top State Department official said Tuesday.

Last week, U.S. and Afghan negotiators met in Kabul to talk about the Bilateral Security Agreement that will govern the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, when President Barack Obama said the combat mission in Afghanistan will end and the U.S. will complete the transition of the entire country to Afghan government control.

Also last week, Biden told Americans during his Oct. 11 debate with Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan that U.S. troops were leaving Afghanistan by 2014.

"We are leaving in 2014, period, and in the process, we're going to be saving over the next 10 years another $800 billion," Biden said. "We've been in this war for over a decade. The primary objective is almost completed. Now all we're doing is putting the Kabul government in a position to be able to maintain their own security. It's their responsibility, not America's."

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/po..._afghanistan_s

The White House is defending Vice President Biden over his debate statement that "we weren't told" about requests for more security at a U.S. Consulate in Libya before the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Biden was referring to President Obama, the White House and himself, as opposed to the State Department and other parts of the government.
...
As the Associated Press reported, a "State Department official testified before Congress on Wednesday that she had refused requests for more security in Benghazi (Libya) because the department wanted to train Libyans for the task. Another U.S. official testified he had argued unsuccessfully for more security for weeks."

Republicans have jumped on Biden's statement. Presidential nominee Mitt Romney said today that Biden's debate comments "directly contradicts sworn testimony," and Americans "have a right to know what's going on." Romney said that Biden is "doubling down on denial."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theova...-2012/1629941/

A smaller illusion he tried to pull: arguing for tax increases on $1M+, when it's $250k+.

"The congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for." - sure, but that had no effect on Libyan security. There is still over $2B in unspent security money for embassies this year.

"No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise...has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact." - In fact it's not, the "compromise" is just a semantics game and there's a reason Catholic institutions are suing because of it.

"It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card...I was there. I voted against him." - Nope, Biden voted for both wars.

"What we did is we saved $716 billion and put it back -- applied it to Medicare." - Nope, it's being used to pay for Obamacare. You can't put the same $716B back into Medicare and have it count as cost savings, so either it's not (and it's not) or the deficit spending of Obamacare goes up $716B.

And last but not least for this post:

In last week’s vice presidential debate, Joe Biden asserted that the United States was working to isolate al-Qaeda in Syria by ensuring that aid was directed to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition. “We are working hand and glove with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with the Saudis, and with all the people in the region attempting to identify the people who deserve the help so that when Assad goes — and he will go — there will be a legitimate government that follows on, not an al-Qaeda-sponsored government that follows on,” Biden declared.

Paul Ryan immediately challenged Biden’s claim, saying that the administration’s inaction has allowed al-Qaeda to get a foothold in Syria. “The longer this has gone on, the more people, groups like al-Qaeda are going in,” Ryan said, adding, “We could have more easily identified the Free Syrian Army, the freedom fighters, working with our allies, the Turks, the Qataris, the Saudis, had we had a better plan in place.”

Biden denied it, declaring: “We are in the process now — and have been for months — in making sure that help, humanitarian aid, as well as other aid and training is getting to those forces that we believe, the Turks believe, the Jordanians believe, the Saudis believe are the free forces inside of Syria. That is underway.”

Well, according to a report in this morning’s New York Times, Biden’s statement was not true.

“Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats,” the Times reports.

The paper quotes one U.S. official as saying, “The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” adding that “officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.”

[Vin Lombardi]

Oh, and while I've tried to only hit on the big ones, I did forget one important one given the attention they played to Medicare:

At the Vice-Presidential debate last week, Joe Biden claimed that the American Medical Association sided with him, and against Paul Ryan, on the merits of the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare reform. “Who do you believe?” exclaimed Biden. “The AMA [and] me? A guy who has fought his whole life for this? Or somebody [like Paul Ryan]?” Well, it turns out that the AMA’s key policy committee has come out in favor of premium support for Medicare, in a fashion that tracks closely with what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are proposing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/201...-for-medicare/