Jane would be good, but Frans de Waal Wrote the book.
I agree with you here. But this is the thing. Sometimes you gotta get your monkey on. Sometimes, you really do. This was one of those times. He should dominated that stage better. He should have taken more control. He can do that and still present a reasoned argument. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
As Barbara Walters said to Sheri Shephard when she said, “I don’t know whether or not the world is round. I’m too busy putting food on the table for my kids!”
“Well you can do both.”
Just mimicry. You know, primatologist see, primatologist do…
At least once a week!
Interesting that a guy who “lost” the debate has no problem using commercials that use the debate:
OMG – one month to go! :eek:
Just to be clear-- from factcheck regarding the debate:
“Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true.”
Just to be fair- The Tax Policy Center vouches for Obama’s interpretation of Romney’s plan. And let’s get real, every Republican tax scheme involves cutting taxes for the wealthy. It’s the reason the party exists.
It’s true that Romney has been “less than specific” about which loopholes (aka, deductions) he would close, but the TPC looked only at the tax cut part of the plan, which they figured as costing $480B in 2015. Obama’s team simply extrapolated that number out 10 years and rounder up.
Emphasis added
Great game elements!
I saw about the middle third of a late-night rerun of the debate that night. So tell me how which of the drinking cues came true. (For all I know, maybe all of them?)
But that, I thought, was precisely Obama’s point. He talked about the tax cut only in order to say that the proposal was currently imbalanced, that there was no way to “pay” for it. I understood him to mean that there were no specific offsets for the specific rate reductions. Without specific offsets, it would cost $5 trillion; the offsets will pay for that cost, but we don’t know how specifically Romney will offset that cost.
Honestly I couldn’t figure out what factcheck’s objection was to Obama’s argument.
Here’s the relevant lines from the debate:
So, Obama specifically acknowledges that Romney’s plan would supposedly be revenue neutral. His point is that, without those offsets, it amounts to a $5 trillion tax cut, and, let me quote him again, “The problem is that he’s been asked a — over a hundred times how you would close those deductions and loopholes and he hasn’t been able to identify them.”
You see, if he tells us the details of how this is all going to work, he’d just be playing into Obama’s plan. Despite the excruciating attention to detail and scrupulous avoidance of the usual “gimmicks”, if he releases the details he will be criticized! And that would be unfair, because he has already told us that it all works out perfectly, so what is our problem?
Wait, that’s rather different. What he appears to be saying is that the Dems are attacking Romney for not releasing the details, but if they do release the details, then the Dems will attack him for releasing the details. The supposed grounds for this attack is a detail they are not going to release, because that would be telling the Dems what the Dems are going to do.
Crafty! If you don’t tell your opponent what he is going to do, he may not know what he is going to do until he’s done it, and then its too late!
Romney was pretty clear at the debate – it isn’t his job to come up with the cuts – that’s up to congress. Romney will just set the outlines “You guys have to come up with $5 trillion in cuts”, then let a broad bipartisan consensus of congress work out the details.
Paul Ryan was asked “what if they can’t come up with the cuts, what is most important, your tax cuts or keeping them revenue neutral”. He didn’t even need to think – “tax cuts”.
I think we can all see where this is heading…
They didn’t seem to like it much when Pelosi said we would have to pass Obamacare before we knew the details. But it is OK now!
I’m going to use this at the bank: “You loan me 1 million dollars and I’ll pay it back. Don’t you worry about how I’m going to pay it back! If I told you, you’d just pick it apart.”
Drinks are on me when I’m a millionaire!
Which is, needless to say, bullshit. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Let’s have an ice cream and cod liver oil party! I’ll bring the ice cream, you bring the cod liver oil.”
He wants credit for lowering tax rates in a balanced fashion, but he doesn’t want the blame for the hard choices required to balance those lowered rates. Sorry, man. Nothing doing.
Obama was, I think, very clear in calling Romney out for his weaselling. Perhaps he wasn’t hooting and baring his teeth or whatever, but his words were clear.
Sure, but Romney said it better than Obama, and that’s what’s important, right?
(i.e. contributes the points needed to “win” the debate)
What’s emerging as important is that Mitt Romney wants to kill Big Bird.
“A chicken in every pot!”