Third Presidential Debate- 10/22/2012 – FULL TRANSCRIPT

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS., PARTICIPATE IN A CANDIDATES DEBATE, LYNN UNIVERSITY, BOCA RATON, FLORIDA
OCTOBER 22, 2012
SPEAKERS: FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS.,
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
BOB SCHIEFFER, MODERATOR
[*] SCHIEFFER: Good evening from the campus of Lynn University here in Boca Raton, Florida. This is the fourth and last debate of the 2012 campaign, brought to you by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
This one’s on foreign policy. I’m Bob Schieffer of CBS News. The questions are mine, and I have not shared them with the candidates or their aides.
SCHIEFFER: The audience has taken a vow of silence — no applause, no reaction of any kind, except right now when we welcome President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.
(APPLAUSE)
Gentlemen, your campaigns have agreed to certain rules and they are simple. They’ve asked me to divide the evening into segments. I’ll pose a question at the beginning of each segment. You will each have two minutes to respond and then we will have a general discussion until we move to the next segment.
Tonight’s debate, as both of you know, comes on the 50th anniversary of the night that President Kennedy told the world that the Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, perhaps the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war. And it is a sobering reminder that every president faces at some point an unexpected threat to our national security from abroad.
So let’s begin.
SCHIEFFER: The first segment is the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism. I’m going to put this into two segments so you’ll have two topic questions within this one segment on the subject. The first question, and it concerns Libya. The controversy over what happened there continues. Four Americans are dead, including an American ambassador. Questions remain. What happened? What caused it? Was it spontaneous? Was it an intelligence failure? Was it a policy failure? Was there an attempt to mislead people about what really happened?
Governor Romney, you said this was an example of an American policy in the Middle East that is unraveling before our very eyes.
SCHIEFFER: I’d like to hear each of you give your thoughts on that.
Governor Romney, you won the toss. You go first.
ROMNEY: Thank you, Bob. And thank you for agreeing to moderate this debate this evening. Thank you to Lynn University for welcoming us here. And Mr. President, it’s good to be with you again. We were together at a humorous event a little earlier, and it’s nice to maybe funny this time, not on purpose. We’ll see what happens.
This is obviously an area of great concern to the entire world, and to America in particular, which is to see a — a complete change in the — the structure and the — the environment in the Middle East.
With the Arab Spring, came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation, and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women in public life, and in economic life in the Middle East. But instead, we’ve seen in nation after nation, a number of disturbing events. Of course we see in Syria, 30,000 civilians having been killed by the military there. We see in — in Libya, an attack apparently by, I think we know now, by terrorists of some kind against — against our people there, four people dead.
Our hearts and — and minds go out to them. Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali by al-Qaeda type individuals. We have in — in Egypt, a Muslim Brotherhood president. And so what we’re seeing is a pretty dramatic reversal in the kind of hopes we had for that region. Of course the greatest threat of all is Iran, four years closer to a nuclear weapon. And — and we’re going to have to recognize that we have to do as the president has done. I congratulate him on — on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in al-Qaeda.
But we can’t kill our way out of this mess. We’re going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy to help the — the world of Islam and other parts of the world, reject this radical violent extremism, which is — it’s certainly not on the run.
ROMNEY: It’s certainly not hiding. This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat to our friends, to the world, to America, long term, and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of extremism.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?
OBAMA: Well, my first job as commander in chief, Bob, is to keep the American people safe. And that’s what we’ve done over the last four years.
We ended the war in Iraq, refocused our attention on those who actually killed us on 9/11. And as a consequence, Al Qaeda’s core leadership has been decimated.
In addition, we’re now able to transition out of Afghanistan in a responsible way, making sure that Afghans take responsibility for their own security. And that allows us also to rebuild alliances and make friends around the world to combat future threats. Now with respect to Libya, as I indicated in the last debate, when we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, that we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm’s way; number two, that we would investigate exactly what happened, and number three, most importantly, that we would go after those who killed Americans and we would bring them to justice. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
But I think it’s important to step back and think about what happened in Libya. Keep in mind that I and Americans took leadership in organizing an international coalition that made sure that we were able to, without putting troops on the ground at the cost of less than what we spent in two weeks in Iraq, liberate a country that had been under the yoke of dictatorship for 40 years. Got rid of a despot who had killed Americans and as a consequence, despite this tragedy, you had tens of thousands of Libyans after the events in Benghazi marching and saying America is our friend. We stand with them.
OBAMA: Now that represents the opportunity we have to take advantage of. And, you know, Governor Romney, I’m glad that you agree that we have been successful in going after Al Qaida, but I have to tell you that, you know, your strategy previously has been one that has been all over the map and is not designed to keep Americans safe or to build on the opportunities that exist in the Middle East.

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Presidential Debate President Obama and Mitt Romney – 10/16/12 FULL TRANSCRIPT

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY
PARTICIPATE IN A CANDIDATES DEBATE, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY,
HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK

OCTOBER 16, 2012

SPEAKERS: FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

CANDY CROWLEY, MODERATOR

[*]
CROWLEY: Good evening from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. I’m Candy Crowley from CNN’s “State of the Union.” We are here for the second presidential debate, a town hall, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

CROWLEY: The Gallup organization chose 82 uncommitted voters from the New York area. Their questions will drive the night. My goal is to give the conversation direction and to ensure questions get answered.

The questions are known to me and my team only. Neither the commission, nor the candidates have seen them. I hope to get to as many questions as possible.

CROWLEY: And because I am the optimistic sort, I’m sure the candidates will oblige by keeping their answers concise and on point.

Each candidate has as much as two minutes to respond to a common question, and there will be a two-minute follow-up. The audience here in the hall has agreed to be polite and attentive — no cheering or booing or outbursts of any sort.

We will set aside that agreement just this once to welcome President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney.

(APPLAUSE)

Gentlemen, thank you both for joining us here tonight. We have a lot of folks who’ve been waiting all day to talk to you, so I want to get right to it.

Governor Romney, as you know, you won the coin toss, so the first question will go to you. And I want to turn to a first-time voter, Jeremy Epstein, who has a question for you.

QUESTION: Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment. What can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?

ROMNEY: Thank you, Jeremy. I appreciate your — your question, and thank you for being here this evening and to all of those from Nassau County that have come, thank you for your time. Thank you to Hofstra University and to Candy Crowley for organizing and leading this — this event.

Thank you, Mr. President, also for being part of this — this debate.

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Mitt Romney Isn’t Telling the Truth – VIDEO

Published on Oct  5, 2012 by     BarackObamadotcom
Mitt Romney didn’t tell the truth about his tax plan, his plan for Americans with pre-existing conditions, his Medicare plan, nor the President’s Medicare plan.
Why would Romney not tell the truth about what he’d do as President? Because his real plans would hurt the middle class.

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Bill Clinton’s 2012 DNC Speech – FULL TEXT & VIDEO

Being Liberal

9/5/12

Here is the  text of President Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention as prepared for delivery and released by the convention’s press office:

We’re here to nominate a President, and I’ve got one in mind.

I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. A man who ran for President to change the course of an already weak economy and then just six weeks before the election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse since the Great Depression. A man who stopped the slide into depression and put us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that no matter how many jobs were created and saved, there were still millions more waiting, trying to feed their children and keep their hopes alive.

I want to nominate a man cool on the outside but burning for America on the inside.  A man who believes we can build a new American Dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, education and cooperation. A man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.

I want Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States and I proudly nominate him as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

MORE HERE

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This Seat’s Taken…

This seat’s taken. OFA.BO/c2gbfi, twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 31, 2012

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Paul Ryan Address: Convention Speech Built On Demonstrably Misleading Assertions

Huff Post

Ryan Grim

Posted: 08/30/2012 12:29 am Updated: 08/30/2012 11:52 am

TAMPA, Fla. — Paul Ryan pledged Wednesday that if he and his running mate Mitt Romney were elected president, they would usher in an ethic of responsibility. The Wisconsin congressman and GOP vice presidential candidate repeatedly chided President Barack Obama for blaming the jobs and housing crises on his predecessor, saying that his habit of “forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago -– isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?”

Ryan then noted that Obama, while campaigning for president, promised that a GM plant in Wisconsin would not shut down. “That plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight,” Ryan said.

Except Obama didn’t promise that. And the plant closed in December 2008 — while George W. Bush was president.

It was just one of several striking and demonstrably misleading elements of Ryan’s much-anticipated acceptance speech. And it comes just days after Romney pollster Neil Newhouse warned, defending the campaign’s demonstrably false ads claiming Obama removed work requirements from welfare, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.”

Ryan, for his part, slammed the president for not supporting a deficit commission report without mentioning that he himself had voted against it, helping to kill it.

He also made a cornerstone of his argument the claim that Obama “funneled” $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare. But he didn’t mention that his own budget plan relies on those very same savings.

Ryan also put responsibility for Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. government debt at Obama’s doorstep. But he didn’t mention that S&P itself, in explaining its downgrade, referred to the debt ceiling standoff. That process of raising the debt ceiling was only politicized in the last Congress, driven by House Republicans, led in the charge by Paul Ryan.

The credit rater also said it worried that Republicans would never agree to tax increases. “We have changed our assumption on [revenue] because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” S&P wrote.

Jodie Layton, a convention goer from Utah watching the Ryan speech, said she was blown away by the vice presidential candidate. But she said she was surprised to hear that after his speech about taking responsibility, he’d pinned a Bush-era plant closing on Obama.

“It closed in December 2008?” she asked, making sure she heard a HuffPost reporter’s question right. After a long pause, she said, “It’s happening a lot on both sides. It’s to be expected.”

Ryan has referenced the GM plant before, and his attack was debunked by the Detroit News, which called it inaccurate. “In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when President George W. Bush was in office,” Detroit News reporter David Sherpardson wrote earlier this month. “Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested.”

After the speech, CNN’s political commentators focused mostly on Ryan’s misstatements, demonstrating the degree to which they were evident.

MORE HERE

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Paul Ryan Fails — The Truth

The Washington Post

By Jonathan Bernstein

Posted at 11:56 PM ET, 08/29/2012

It was, by any reasonable standards, a staggering, staggering lie. Here’s Paul Ryan about Barack Obama:

He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.  He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.

“They.” “Them.” “Them.” Those words are lies. Because Paul Ryan was on that commission. “Came back with an urgent report.” That is a lie. The commission never made any recommendations for Barack Obama to support or oppose. Why not? Because the commission voted down its own recommendations. Why? Because Paul Ryan, a member of the commission, voted it down and successfully convinced the other House Republicans on the commission to vote it down.

That wasn’t the only bit of mendacity – lazy mendacity, incredibly lazy mendacity – in Ryan’s speech. Twitter lit up as soon as he started telling the story of the Janesville auto plant that Barack Obama didn’t save – a plant that, it turns out, closed before Obama was president. And of course there’s the infamous cuts to Medicare that Ryan lambasted Obama for without happening to mention that those very same cuts were in Paul Ryan’s own budget. Yes: absolutely everything in Obamacare is an abomination, says Paul Ryan, except for (as he forgets to mention) the cuts to Medicare that he supports – and yet he still singles that part out to use as an attack.

It isn’t even true in some symbolic or abstract way. The real truth is that Paul Ryan completely rejects the approach of that commission – because it includes tax increases along with spending cuts – while Barack Obama has, while not endorsing the exact plan that Ryan shot down, basically endorsed the commission’s approach. Nor was this a side point; Ryan’s complaint about Obama on the deficit was absolutely central to his case against the president.

And then there’s the logic of the whole thing. As Seth Masket said, it all comes down to arguing “we must cut entitlements! Obama cutting entitlements is un-American.”  There’s also, as many were pointing out, the plain fact that until January 2009 Paul Ryan faithfully supported all the tax cuts and spending increases which created the deficit problem he’s been so concerned about since January 2009.

But really, the proper response to a speech like this isn’t to carefully analyze the logic, or to find instances of hypocracy; it’s to call the speaker out for telling flat-out lies to the American people. Paul Ryan has had what I’ve long thought was an undeserved good reputation among many in the press and in Washington. It shouldn’t survive tonight’s speech.

Follow Jonathan Bernstein on Twitter and at his blog.

SOURCE

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Why It’s So Important For Rape To Be ‘Legitimate’

Todd Akin (R-MO): Legitimately creepy

Daily Kos

by Dante Atkins

Sun Aug 26, 2012 at 06:00 AM PDT

Unless you’ve been spending the past week or so living under a rock—and given the political climate these days, it would be hard to blame you for doing so—you can’t have missed the fact that Republican Congressman and newly minted Senate nominee from Missouri, Todd Akin, went on a St. Louis television station and proceeded to stick his foot so far down his mouth that his toes tingled his duodenum.

Akin’s comments, which have led panicked Republicans to call for him to drop out of the race lest his misogynist toxicity metastasize to infect the Romney/Ryan ticket and Republicans across the nation, centered around two atrocities: first, the absurd idea that female reproductive anatomy can shut down in response to rape and somehow prevent conception; and second, the use of the term “legitimate rape” to describe the circumstances under which a woman’s magic ovaries would somehow initiate the aforementioned shutdown of reproductive capacity. Taken together, the comments as a whole were designed to justify Akin’s opposition to any exemptions for abortion, even in cases of rape or incest: After all, per Akin’s logic, if a woman gets raped, she won’t get pregnant; so if she’s pregnant, well, no exemption is required.

The biological aspect of Akin’s comments seems to have drawn more scorn and outright mockery: After all, how can someone pretend to take a leading role in legislating women’s bodies without even knowing the basics of how they work? The comments about “legitimate rape,” however, were a different story, as seemingly every Democratic candidate and committee in existence sent an email to their lists seeking to raise money and respond to Akin’s outrageous implication that some rapes are okay.

MORE HERE

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Paul Ryan’s Jack Abramoff And Tom DeLay Connections Likely To Draw New Scrutiny

Huff Post

By- Jason Cherkis

Posted: 08/11/2012  5:58 pm Updated: 08/11/2012  6:02 pm

WASHINGTON — As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has served more than a decade in Congress, President Barack Obama and his allies will surely be scouring his extensive voting record, if they haven’t done so already. But along with key votes, the Democrats have begun to highlight some of the questionable relationships that Ryan has acquired during his time in Washington. Among them, expect to see a re-examination of Ryan’s ties to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The pro-Obama super PAC American Bridge has already unveiled an opposition research book about Ryan that documents the Republican’s ties to those symbols of Washington excess. Information pulled from the book and elsewhere shows that Ryan was an ardent defender of DeLay.

One year before DeLay was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges, Ryan called the attacks “gutter politics at its worst,” according to the Washington Post. And added: “You’re going to see a big rallying around Tom.”

For that remark, a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal wrote that Ryan had “put his head in the sand.” But Ryan only stepped up his defense of DeLay.

Six months before the indictment, Ryan called the investigation and ensuing public outcry over DeLay “an effort to ‘lynch him politically,'” according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Even after a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on October 3, 2005, Ryan still refused to return $25,000 in donations from the then-former House Majority Leader. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Ryan said he would only return the cash if DeLay was convicted.

Soon thereafter, Ryan, like others in Congress, had to deal with fallout over his ties to Abramoff. In January 2006, the lobbyist pleaded guilty to charges that he committed fraud, tax evasion and engaged in a conspiracy to bribe public officials. Ryan donated close to $2,000 to charity — the amount he received from a PAC for which Abramoff worked and from the lobbyist personally. Ryan said he wanted “to remove any shred of concern,” the Journal Sentinel reported.

A few months later, Ryan began to cut his ties to DeLay. The Capital Times reported in April that Ryan took a $27,500 donation from DeLay’s PAC and donated it to charity. Ryan said that he did so because one of DeLay’s former top aides pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. “I believe it is appropriate to donate these contributions to charity, even though these contributions were perfectly legal and appropriate,” Ryan said in a statement at the time. “I simply want to remove any doubt in this matter.”

A jury convicted DeLay on money laundering charges in November 2010. He was sentenced to three years in prison. He is free pending his appeal.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

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Obama Super PAC Waiting To Unload On Mitt Romney’s Embrace Of Paul Ryan Budget

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks in Milwaukee, Wis., on March 30, 2012, with House Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) looking on. (Steven Senne / AP)

Huff Post

Jon Ward

Posted: 08/07/2012 10:21 am Updated: 08/07/2012 10:54 am

Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes caused a stir this week when they encouraged Mitt Romney to pick Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his running mate.

The conservative Weekly Standard authors based their argument for Ryan on the premise that Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has endorsed the House Budget Committee chairman’s budget anyway, and is going to be attacked for it by President Barack Obama’s campaign no matter what.

“If Ryan’s budget is going to be a central part of the debate over the next three months, who better to explain and defend it than Paul Ryan?” Kristol and Hayes wrote.

Yuval Levin, a former White House policy adviser for President George W. Bush who has been one of the most authoritative conservative voices arguing in favor of fundamental reform of entitlement programs like Medicare, told The Huffington Post that he agrees with Kristol and Hayes.

“The fact is that you can’t choose whether to run on this or not anymore,” Levin said of the Ryan budget and of his Medicare reforms. “Obama will make [Romney] run on this because Democrats continue to think that they have a huge advantage by pushing the issue. And I think there’s going to be a kind of Medicare chapter of the Obama campaign that is going to be coming soon.”

A phone conversation with Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist who is now raising funds and consulting for Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Obama, confirmed that Levin’s conjecture was correct.

Asked whether Romney will have to campaign on the Ryan budget reforms or whether he should stick to his current jobs and the economy script, Begala told HuffPost, “they will because we’re going to require them to.”

“I promise you the Ryan-Romney budget is going to be central to this discussion,” Begala said. “This is not like some crackpot theory from some long dead Russian immigrant. It is now the official budget of the Republican party of the House of Representatives. This is not like just some kind of fringe deal.”

Begala declined to comment on when Priorities USA plans to unleash their criticisms of the Ryan budget. They are most likely waiting to see if Romney picks Ryan as his running mate, in which case those attacks could be coming sooner than later.

Super PACs like Priorities USA are forbidden by law from coordinating their activities with the Obama campaign. So far this year, the group has worked to reinforce the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s private equity career at Bain Capital.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt declined to preview strategic planning for the rest of the campaign, but said as far as they are concerned, Romney already is running on the Ryan budget.

“Governor Romney has not only fully embraced the Ryan budget, but he has introduced a budget plan that is a carbon copy — it makes seniors pay thousands of dollars more each year for their health care and severe cuts to programs essential to the middle class in order to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” LaBolt said. “Mitt Romney is campaigning on the flawed assumption that we can just cut our way to prosperity.”

HERE

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