She is the moderator. If she is going to do that to ryan she should do the same to Biden. Actually I would like her to do it to both more often.

When I lived in Texas we had a really good moderator for the governors race a few years ago. Left Rick Perry looking bad. He went first and lied. She called him on it. From then on the candidates were better about the facts.

Well, in this case Ryan kept lying after being called on it

Or rather that would be "malarkying"

"So you oppose our country coming up with plans in case of war?"

Not at all. But when you talk nonchalantly about invading any number of countries, which we've been doing a lot of lately, it makes me a little queasy. It hasn't worked out very well, for either the invader or the invadees, has it? As for bombing China to cripple their military, based on our performance in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, that doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. We tried China on for size in Korea, and ended up ~300 miles south of where we were when they entered the war, and that was when their military was relatively primitive. They've come a long ways since then, which makes me suspect things wouldn't work out very well this time either. Personally, I'd like to see us give a little more emphasis to settling disputes peacefully, and use the money saved to take care of business here at home.

Tom,

Nobody is advocating invading any number of countries. I certainly am not at least. But the excistence of an invasion plan is hardly damning is all I'm saying. As a matter of fact, it is commonplace. So somebody making a big deal about it and using the plan as proof Bush wanted to invade Iraq well before 9/11 is just living in the dark or has an agenda.

You have to "build a case" one piece at a time

Any one peice of evidence, like invasion plan, means nothing

Michael identified factcheck.org as objective. VP debate:

■Ryan said Obama’s proposal to let tax rates rise for high-income individuals would “tax about 53 percent of small-business income.” Wrong. Ryan is counting giant hedge funds and thousands of other multimillion-dollar enterprises as “small” businesses.
■Biden exaggerated when he said House Republicans cut funding for embassy security by $300 million. The amount approved for fiscal year 2012 was $264 million less than requested, and covers construction and maintenance, not just security.

Biden rounded up from $264 to $300 - not a lie, very minor exhageration

■Ryan was wrong when he said a rise in the jobless rate in Biden’s hometown was “how it’s going all around America.” The rate nationally has sunk back to where it was when Obama took office. And in Ryan’s hometown, it’s more than 4 percentage points lower that it was at the start of Obama’s term.
■Biden seemed to question Ryan’s assertion that administration officials called Syrian President Bashar Assad “a reformer” even when he was killing his own civilian countrymen. Ryan was right. Early in the bloody Syrian uprising Hillary Clinton called Assad a “different leader” who many in Congress believe is “a reformer.”

Early on, Hillary said Assad was a "different leader" - trying to use diplomacy. If this is all Ryan has to support his claim that the administration calls Assad "a reformer", then it's reasonable for Biden to question it.

■Ryan claimed the Obama administration spent stimulus money on “electric cars in Finland.” Not true. Although the cars have been assembled in Finland, the money went for work in the United States.
■Biden quoted Romney as saying that he would not “move heaven and earth” to get Osama bin Laden. What Romney said was that he’d go after other terrorists as well.

Again, what Biden said was correct. No reason to mention other stuff Romney said.

■Ryan misquoted a Medicare official as saying “one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business” as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Not quite. The official said that many could become “unprofitable,” and the the situation could be monitored to head off bad outcomes.
■Ryan claimed that the ACA contains “taxpayer funding” of abortion. In fact the law provides no direct funding of abortion except in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life. And it’s a matter of interpretation whether subsidized private insurance would amount to indirect federal support for abortion.
■Ryan was off base when he said of a cost-saving panel created by the Affordable Care Act, “not one of them even has to have medical training.” Actually, the board must include physicians and other health care professionals among its members.

factcheck ran out of even these very weak "lies" for Biden and had to fill out their list with Ryan lies

factcheck bends over backwards to "be objective" and try to have Biden lies as well as Ryan lies.

factcheck had a bunch of real lies by Ryan, none for Biden

yeah, Biden was rude or whatever you want to call it, but it's worse for Ryan to lie so much

this is what the Romney campaign is based on - come up with a bunch of "stuff" that might convince people to vote for them - makes no difference is any of it is true.

we have no idea what Romney might actually do in office

Come on Jerry. Just rely on the call by factcheck and quit trying to trivialize Biden's lies to make yourself feel better.

I can argue multimillion dollar business are still small. Heck what company isn't doing a few million at least? I worked for a 10 person company and we did. still was a small business for sure.

There is still a lot up with the job reports. The difference between employer reports and the employee reports is huge.

Ah, so a lie is ok if hillary was being "dimplomatic"? Gotcha.

To some people an abortion is an abortion, no matter what. If somebody truly believes that life begins at conception then it doesn't matter how the child was conceived. A child is innocent and therfore killing it is wrong no matter the circumstances. ACA does pay for abortions. Not quite sure what the complaint is.

Etc...

I'm not going to break it all down as I just don't care.

I just copied all the main bullet points from factcheck - I didn't just copy the ones that proved my point

If you want to say Biden saying $300 instead of $264 is a lie, fine - technically it's proper rounding, but yeah, a bit of an exhageration - nothing compared to what Ryan and Romney say - and Biden's point is that it hypocritical for Ryan to criticize the administration for insufficient security when Ryan voted against it

and Ryan said the administration was calling Assad a reformer - Hillary said it once at the beginning - huge exhageration at the least - and that wasn't an example of Ryan lieing, Biden denying was the example of Biden lieing, but I think that Biden was way more correct than Ryan

those other things you mentioned weren't on factcheck's list - we could come up with a lot of other lies that Ryan made and Biden didn't

I thought Biden's comment about abortion was good - his religion says he won't do abortions but he's not going to impose his religion on others

" Ryan is counting giant hedge funds and thousands of other multimillion-dollar enterprises as “small” businesses."


Try sba.gov if you would like a definition of small business. You will also see that it varies by industry. A small business is not defined as the one owner coffee shop on the corner. However I wouldn't expect the current administration to have a clue by business. Why should they. They are career politicians.

BTW, I can't believe you are trying to defend Biden. Obama's best chance is to send him on a vacation for the next month. Next you will be trying to defend Pelosi and Reid.

Brad

Yeah, aren't Pellosi and Reid great!

Actually, Pellosi did pass a lot of good bills when she was speaker. She does seem like a "career politician" though. And she wears too much makeup but it's mean of me to judge her for that.

Reid, mostly seems too mild. Need someone more feisty like Biden. Wasn't it Reid who said that he had information that Romney paid no tax in the last 10 years that he won't release tax returns for? That was very clever. The only thing Romney can do is to release those returns, which he won't do. The fact that he carried forward capital losses on the one return he filed, indicates that in the previous year he offset all capital gains with losses - so he must have paid close to zero tax because most of his income is capital gain.

Romney released something that said in the last 20 years he averaged 20% tax. So, in the last 10 years after the Bush tax cuts he paid close to zero tax, and in the previous 10 years he paid closer to 40% so it averaged 20%.

The term "tax cuts for small businesses" is euphomism for "tax cuts for super rich and big corporations". Obviously they can't say that - nobody would vote for them.

They talked about "tax cuts for small businesses" before and what did we get? The top 0.1% or 0.01% get most of their income from capital gains so they pay 15%.

Brad, I believe you're a small business. And how have the tax cuts worked for you? I bet you pay like 35%, not 15%.

After they said tax cuts for small businesses before, and they just cut their own tax and not yours, I would think that you wouldn't fall for it again.

"So somebody making a big deal about it and using the plan as proof Bush wanted to invade Iraq well before 9/11 is just living in the dark or has an agenda."

In this particular case, the plan was backed up by intent from the beginning of the Bush administration, peopled as it was by Neocons in influential positions at DOD and NSC who had been advocating strenuously in favor of regime change in Iraq for years. Had there been no plan, the invasion might have been delayed long enough for serious opposition to arise and buy time for cooler heads to prevail. This is not to argue against planning for contingencies involving legitimate strategic threats to the homeland, as opposed to pseudo threats to economic or political "interests" that would be better solved peacefully or thru genuine joint action by international bodies. As it stands, when there are plans for non strategic threats already on the shelf, it becomes all too easy to very quickly execute them without due deliberation in response to political pressure. At least that is how I have come to see the situation over that past 3 decades, when the US stands out as the only nation to serially invade a distressing number of nations that posed no strategic threat. All too easy to do when the plans have already been made. The only other nation I can think of offhand that has invaded another in that time period is Russia, when it intervened in Georgia in support of Ossetia, and that was in response to a perceived threat on its border that we had a hand in creating. Judging from the sloppiness of their intervention, it is fairly obvious that they had no plan to pull off the shelf.
What I am trying to say is that when there is a large number of plans on the shelf for invading countries large and small, I begin to wonder whether intent is already part of the plans. This, in turn, leads me to wonder whether there is a, to me, troubling strategic intent here to dominate the world.

In any case, I am certainly glad to hear you are not an advocate of invasion as a routine part of our foreign policy.

"To some people an abortion is an abortion, no matter what. If somebody truly believes that life begins at conception then it doesn't matter how the child was conceived. A child is innocent and therfore killing it is wrong no matter the circumstances."

And at least as many, if not more, believe otherwise. What gives one side the right to impose their beliefs on women who believe there are situations where an abortion is the better choice? Best keep "belief" out of decisions involving a woman's body. To do otherwise will not end well for the nation. If ever there were a compelling reason for the separation of church and state, this is it, IMO.

A dilemma is, that if you accept that life begins at conception and it's murder to kill a fetus after this, then you can't make an exception for rape or incest

Romney, if he's in front of a hard right group will say no exception

If he's in front of a more moderate group will say exception for rape or incest is okay

He can't have just one answer and get elected

"A child is innocent and therfore killing it is wrong no matter the circumstances."

Interesting that so many that espouse this opinion seem to simultaneously have no qualms with children becoming "collateral damage" at the hands of the US Government in foreign lands.

"Interesting that so many that espouse this opinion seem to simultaneously have no qualms with children becoming "collateral damage" at the hands of the US Government in foreign lands."

Whayy, shucks, Brer' Bucktoof, ah thawt ever' wun new them kids is nuthin' but Tallyban in trainin'.

Jerry,

Reid just lied about Romney's taxes or maybe he paid someone off at the IRS. At the end of the day he didn't have a clue. You sure pointed out Ryan's lies, but you praise Reid. Double standard.. You just are just spinning things to support your view.

"The fact that he carried forward capital losses on the one return he filed, indicates that in the previous year he offset all capital gains with losses - so he must have paid close to zero tax because most of his income is capital gain."

To have a capital loss carry forward your losses have to be greater than your capital gains. Do you understand that? If means you LOST money on your investments for a tax reporting. You only PAY taxes on income. Also understand that if you have a capital loss you can only count 3,000 for a tax reporting year, but you can carry forward and use 3000 a year until exhausted. Again you haven't seen his tax returns, but this doesn't stop you and many others from spinning and lying. You call out Ryan for lies but I don't see that you are acting any differently.

By the way PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has stated in a letter that he paid 20.2% over the past 20 years. I love the fool that Reid makes of himself. Saying he had gains of 20million but losses of like 19 million, so he only paid taxes on the profit and not the 20 million in gains. Let me make this simple with an example:
Apple stock: he bought and sold for a 20 million profit
Facebook stock: he bought and sold for a 19 million loss.

So what should he pay taxes on? The 20-19, not the 20 million.

You keep asking me the same question about my business and taxes, but you never listen to my response. I benefit from capital gains taxes like everyone else that invests or has a retirement account. To say that the super rich and big corps get the benefit is just wrong. Sure I pay more taxes on the ordinary income every year, but if I'm ever fortune enough to sale my business the lower capital gain tax would benefit me. Understand this applies to every small business owner.

You keep spouting off about a lot of things (and correct on many), but business and taxes are not your strong point. Realize you are making comments like "wouldn't fall for this again" to a small business owner who also happens to be a CPA. I think i have a pretty good idea which party hurts or helps my business and personal finances.


Brad

Rape and incest account for less than 1% of all abortion. What if we take that off the table?

Brad

I don't mean to be annoying you Brad. I just hate sugar-coating things or beating around the bush.

I'm not a CPA but I'm pretty familiar with business and taxes. We'll have to disagree on that.

If Romney paid almost no taxes some year because of capital losses, I don't have a problem. Like you said, losses exceed gains so it's reasonable not to pay tax. But that would make Reid correct, not a liar. And if Romney doesn't release his returns, we won't know.

I think what's bad on Romney's returns that he won't release is that he paid only 15% capital gains tax which isn't fair. And maybe there are investments in the Caribean or wherever that might be hard to explain.

Price Waters said average of 20% over 20 years. So, Romney could have paid 40% the first 10 years and 0% the last 10 years. Again, this doesn't tell us whether Reid was lieing. And if this is correct, it shows the problem - in the last 10 years the super-rich have pushed through unfair tax laws.

You said that you benefit from capital gains in retirement account. So do I. As you know, this does not get the capital gains tax rate, it's taxed as ordinary income, either before (Roth) or on withdrawal (traditional).

You said that you benefit from capital gains in investments. What percentage of income is capital gains for the average small business person (you) or the average middle income person (me)? I think it's much less than half. The beauty of this, though, is that when I pay less for some capital gains, I go weeee..., this is great! But I ignore that only a small percentage of my income is capital gains.

This reduced capital gains tax benefits the super-rich much more than the rest of us.

"Rape and incest account for less than 1% of all abortion. What if we take that off the table?"

Not that it matters, but I think it should be up to the woman and whover she chooses to consult with. If the Fetus is viable outside the body, then every effort should be made to remove it and put in NICU. Like Roe V Wade - last 3 months states can regulate abortion.

But what I find interesting, like I said, was that if abortion is murder, then is it okay those 1% of the times it's rape or incest?

And if Romney says no exceptions he p...es off one constituency, and if he gives an exception even for that 1%, then he p...es off another constituency, so his solution is to say one thing to one group and the opposite to the other group.

Actually, I feel sorry for the guy.

Okay, you made me do it Brad

I looked at tax statistics from irs.gov

For one year that was convenient, 2000

the top 400 payers had, 64% of their income in capital gains

I think if you looked at the top 0.01% or 0.1% you'de get a similar percentage but I'm too lazy to find it

for the entire population, 9% of income is capital gains

if you want to give a break to the super-rich without wasting too much of it on the rest of us, then tax capital gains less