Who do you think won the debate last night, and what effect will this have, if any, on the individual campaigns?

Romney won but I expected that. Obama wasn’t a great debater last time. He needs to hang around with Bill and get some pointers.
I love Obama and I think those of us who support him are still with him but he needs to throw a few (lot) more punches next time. Why the heck didn’t he say “is this finally your etch a sketch moment when you change your position again?”
So many missed opportunities.

Clearly Romney did better in the debate. There were times when I was shouting at the tv about lies Romney was blatantly making, and waiting for the president to point them out… but then he never did.

It looked as though Obama came into the debate with the plan of playing defensive and “prominent-president”, and just waiting for Romney to stick his foot in his mouth, as he is prone to doing. But instead Romney came out swinging, and never stepped in a pile of sh*t during the entire 90 minutes. Too much of a reactive strategy by Obama, and then not even taking advantage of the clear openings/lies Romney left.

That said.. I don’t think it has a major effect. Romney may see a quick jump in the polls of a point or two, but he is way too far behind in the swing states IMO to really mount a come back… especially with 3 more debates to go… If he keeps it up though he could make it respectable rather than the blowout it was starting to look like.

Romney made jokes, smiled and was more aggressive (direct eye contact), and Obama seemed distracted, tired and kept making the hand boxes all night long. To me, Romney won this one.

As far as effect, I think that more Americans will see Romney as more human, more relatable. Obama may be perceived as weak or dishonest based on body language and repetition of disinformation (the $5 trillion plan) – Although to Democrats, it appears nothing he does weakens his leadership capabilities (it’s odd that.)

Romney did say ‘poor’ kids and quickly corrected to ‘low-income’ kids….another faux pas.

I think Democrats who are already voting for Obama wish he was more aggressive. And Republicans who are already voting for Romney were pleased with his forceful performance. I’m not sure how undecideds will break, though. They’re the only audience that matters when discussing “winning” the debate.

Romney did very well, and Obama seemed off-kilter. But Romney’s biggest problems are that voters don’t like him and don’t trust him. I’m not sure if his performance will remedy that situation. He was rather rude, and he lied a lot.

@KNOWITALL, I’m not sure why you think the $5 trillion tax cuts is disinformation. Romney has said he wants to lower rates by that amount. He has also said he will make up some of the money by getting rid of deductions. But there aren’t enough deductions in the tax code—let alone deductions just for upper-income people—to make up $5 trillion in reduced rates. Which was Obama’s point.

Oh Romney “won” it but that has to translate to movement in the polls. This was as good as it’s going to get for him, I think he’ll see a bump from this but not enough to switch blue leaning swing states to red. MI, WI, OH, NH, MO – all moved left over the last month I don’t think this will be enough to make up for that except perhaps in MO. We’ll see in the next few days what effect this had on them and others like FL, PA, NC, & VA but I find it hard to believe he said enough to cajole many votes from non-right leaning undecideds nor did it seem he did much to engender a much needed sense of trust.

I did think Romney was much more forceful and I was disappointed in Obama’s performance but it doesn’t change my opinions.

I wasn’t expecting either candidate to do well. Neither have a history of being strong debaters. Last night Romney was much more confident and assertive in his answering and interaction with Obama, who was either distracted or taken aback by Romney’s performance. in the end, it appeared Obama got his hiney handed to him.

The news media said their darling Obama won. I didn’t watch it. I literally can not stand the site of Obama. His voice or any images on the computer or newsprint. Oh he will be relected, the blacks will keep him is office. Sadly it is a slamdunk for him and a disasterr for america. God help us all.

Romney did better in this debate body language, vocal tone wise. His policies are still not for me. (lower class, working part time, going through college, no health insurance, have hard working gay friends who deserve the right to marry and I feel they are entitled to the same benefits that marriage reveals also some people in the gay community don’t care much for the financial benefits just the right to be recognized by their habitat or state as an official sealed couple would be swell, I also don’t believe in “Forcible Rape”)

@Roby we must follow different media outlets. I’ve seen nothing claiming Obama won. Washington Post, NYT, MSNBC, WSJ, Huff Post, CNN, even the Telegraph. Granted how it’s spun changes – plenty are calling this a reset for Romney or unimportant for Obama – but, really, no major outlet I’ve come across is holding this up as some shining moment for Obama.

@Roby, you said “the blacks will keep him in office.” Can you explain what you mean, exactly? Last i checked America is 12.5 percent black… and they always vote Democrat anyway.

Romney still didn’t touch up on health care & taxes. This thing is far from over.

@Roby You don’t sound ignorant at all

@Roby “the blacks will keep him in office”.

Oh god. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, I think both republicans and democrats would agree that that is complete and utter garbage.

@Roby: “The news media said their darling Obama won.”

Is this a typo? My kids will occasionally declare “opposite day” – everything you say must be the opposite of what you mean or is true. Is this what you’re doing here?

@Roby: “I literally can not stand the site of Obama. His voice or any images on the computer or newsprint.”

You can’t stand to look at an image of him? Why is this exactly?

@Roby: “Oh he will be relected, the blacks will keep him is office.”

Ok, this is too much. This has to be satire. Are you sure it’s the blacks that will keep him in office? I was thinking it might be the blacks and the queers (<- to be read in a thick Boston accent).

@Roby: “Sadly it is a slamdunk for him and a disasterr for america. God help us all.”

Cute. Psst…there is no god.

I listened to the first hour of the debate on the radio. From what I heard, Obama came across as too diffident, so I suppose Romney would have to be declared the winner. I did feel that Romney sounded overly aggressive, verging on menacing. And he said he was going to put the ax to Big Bird. Horrors! Too bad kids can’t vote.

I belive these points are what Roby was trying to say:

What these and other statements I’ve heard say to me is that Obama does not have to do anything at all to change things for the better and it does not matter if in actuality he changes things for the worse–the fact that he got elected–that he is a black figurehead is all he has to do for this population.

But the fact that the seeds of economic destruction have already been planted and in many cases born fruit and promulgated does not seem to have sunken in. For the past half century a Democratic presidential candidate has been guaranteed an automatic 85 to 90 percent of the black vote. This stands in stark contrast to rampant evidence that Democrats have sought for this same amount of time to keep minorities in poverty and in need purely for the sake of Democrat votes and power. The left, who has hijacked the Democrat party, seeks to do the same to the Hispanic population in this country. The destruction of the black family is a prelude to what will happen to the now strong and hard working Hispanic family institution. Case in point is the recent failure of the voucher system which sought to raise minority children out of failing public schools. It was the Democrat supported unions that kept this vote from going forward.

The Republican party has done more for the black population and family than the Democrat party has ever promised to do (and has not done). The lip-service and media hype for the left gives the “appearance” of helping the downtrodden but in actuality keeps minorities and the poor subjugated for its own gain.
http://www.redstate.com/chicagobluesgirl/2010/06/18/why-do-over-90-of-blacks-still-support-obama/

I was quite surprised at how well Romney performed, and I was disappointed in Obama’s lackluster style. The real loser, however, was moderator Jim Lehrer. I watched on CNN, and the face of the Obama Campaign Chair just following the end rather said it all.

Obama was not on form at all. He looked mentally and physically exhausted, he did not clearly explain things as well as he could have especially when he needed to unravel the BS logic of some of Romney’s ideas, and he didn’t take the massive openings Romney left when he mentioned things like his lack of bipartisanship or the “attack” on medicare, which can be factually proven false.

It’s frustrating that his great ability at speeches does not translate well to debate tactics.

If Romney won, he won on the virtue of not catastrophically screwing up. He’s got so much experience lying at this point that he can say that crap confidently and because he looks confident, people will believe he’s telling the truth.

@KNOWITALL, _“This stands in stark contrast to rampant evidence that Democrats have sought for this same amount of time to keep minorities in poverty and in need purely for the sake of Democrat votes and power.”

Wow. That sounds pretty horrible. Would you mind sharing this evidence?

RedState, a right-wing blog, is not evidence by the way.

@KNOWITALL You’ve got your stereotypes wrong. Democrats are the liberal commie socialist bastards that want to obliterate the upper class.

Though last I checked, voter fraud, surpression, disenfranchisement and intimidation is a distinct Conservative phoenomena because funnily enough the average middle to working poor minority voter tend to vote democratic.

I know this for a fact because that’s what the GOP is doing in my county right now. They’re subversively registering democratic leaning voters as republicans.

Oh, this guy is black btw….so apparently not all minorities believe in O. I was actually just trying to defend Roby’s statement, I don’t think he meant anything racist earlier.

And from Reginald Kaigler (Demcad’s Corner):
What has this guy actually done?

He hasn’t changed anything that really matters. If I had to listen to black people praise this clown, they’re going to have to listen to me point out the fact he hasn’t changed a DAMN THING!

I’m not mad at black people and I know that some of us see him for who he is. I just want my people to WAKE THE F&%# UP!
http://demcad.blogspot.com/2010/01/black-people-wake-up-obama-hasnt.html

@KNOWITALL, okay, I just don’t see how that sentiment is unique to Obama. As you yourself pointed out, black voters always vote overwhelmingly for Democrats—not just Obama.

It’s not mysterious to me that black voters support Democratic policies—many blacks are poor, Democrats favor social programs and tax structures that benefit the poor. And it’s not surprising to me that black voters dislike the GOP, based on its history of race-baiting and dog whistle politics.

So I’m just confused what Obama even has to do with this trend. Black people like him and see him as a role model (so do I, by the way, and I’m white), therefore… what, exactly?

Roby simply pointed out earlier that regardless of what O does, he will still get the black/ minority vote, and as even Mr. Kaigler said, that is more than likely true. Why it’s important, see link below.

As we approach November, minorities will account for a slightly larger share of eligible voters than in 2008. At the same time, white support for the Republican candidate may be greater than in 2008.

Scenario A, the best case for Democrats, assumes that the 2008 turnout and voting patterns again apply to new population. If that occurs, Obama wins with 29 states and 358 electoral votes. These are the same states he took in 2008—changing racial demographics did not put any new states in his column. As with the 2008 win, 10 state victories (representing 39 percent of his electoral votes) can be attributed to minority voters. These states put him over the winning 270 electoral vote threshold.

@Roby, are you kidding me? Did you hear Chris Matthews ream Obama out on his performance? I haven’t heard any media people say Obama won.

@KNOWITALL I like you…. you stand up for what you believe in and at least attempt to use logical arguments… Don’t stand up for this @Roby guy. He’s very clearly an idiot and a racist. Trying to use your viewpoints and twist them to justify his, makes yours look bad.

Okay okay, it’s just so rare to have someone fight the tide like I do that I couldn’t help but feel a little admiration, if he won’t defend his statements, I’ll stop although I did find the statistics I posted above interesting.

I kinda like you, too, Tedd. smooches

If the GOP wants more minority votes maybe they shouldn’t shit on minorities so often with both their rhetoric and their actual policies.

@KNOWITALL You gotta get jaxk and cruiser on here more often. lol

Romney.
As for the effect on the campaigns, it’s hard to say. I think the general public need a bit of time to decide. However, I am thinking that the Obama camp now have the notion that this guy won’t back down and is very articulate, even if some of his ideas are ass-backwards.
Is there any chance, this was intentional on Obama’s side… let him “win” round-one and skewer him the next 2 times?
@picante – Regarding Lehrer, are you implying that he had no backbone? Let the candidates drone on and veer off-topic (which is what politicians are masters at, anyway.) I was very disappointed that he didn’t put his foot-down a bit more.

I TL;DRed the responses because I had formulated something on my own, so sorry if someone beat me to the punch (if that is the case then I agree with that wo/man):

Romney went around flailing his arms and making a lot of noise and wearing that almost creepy smile the entire time. He was clearly on the hunt and on his game. Obama, on the other hand (and in a manner very suspiciously similar to a CNN article I read suggested he would do), Was calm and nonchalant, focusing on stats and facts, much as he does in relation to Romney. He probably hoped “math,” as he repeated often alongside Romney’s tax cut plans, would outgun the Romney Rampage. It didn’t.

Hopefully Obama realizes this and can take shots at Romney next time around. I’m very certain he is capable of decimating him. In fact, I wonder if Obama is just saving the best for last.

That bitch of a moderator didn’t help, either. With either candidate, as each got their fair share of “Excuse me, I’d like to spend another 10 minutes on why my competitor sucks.” Our family has yet to settle on a modernized solution; we are in between something as simple as a mute button for each microphone and something as complex as the slime bucket from Nickelodeon or the death trap from Poe’s The Pit and The Pendulum. The crowd leans forward in their seats as Romney’s gorgeous silver hair is sliced thinner, fray by fray…

I forgot what else I was going to say. It was something relevant. Oh well. :)

@Roby, even in Australia the media are calling this a Romney win.

I missed it unfortunately. When is the next one?

If nothing else, Big Bird and his millions of minions are mobilizing. One site

Our local NPR station is in the middle of a fund raising drive and announced on-air today that the donations are pouring in at an unprecedented rate.

@gailcalled Will Big Bird cost Romney the election?

@janbb, can’t you just see the headlines? That G** D$&-@d bird just cost me an election!

@janbb: What a lovely irony. If nothing else, it will add a little zing to the election. Last night was one big snooze for me.

When I contemplate Big Bird, even my knees feel better.

Support Big Bird on Twitter;

http://twitter.com/i/#!/search?q=%23SupportBigBird

Funny pic on FaceBook had Romney telling Obama: “I can lie faster than you can fact-check!”

Two points:
First, it was not a “debate”. I am not sure what it should be called but debate is not it.
Second, Who won is up for grabs but the biggest loser is the American Public for believing this pap.

One probably unintentional result of this may be more Obama voters. Things were beginning to sound well in hand and my take has been that many were getting complacent. With this debate, that complacency has been wiped out and there may be new intensity of purpose to get out the vote. Many who would have sat on their behinds will make the effort to get out and vote themselves, too, “just in case,” so there may be an unintended benefit from all this.

@Fred931 My friend suggests big red “liar” signs over each candidate that light up with each falsehood coupled with a running total of lies, falsehoods and exaggerations under each of them.
Personally, I favor a shock collar that both automatically shocks the crap out of them after the allotted time and whenver the moderator thinks they are getting off topic or question.

This is beginning to sound like the ‘Spin Room’. Obama got his butt handed to him on a platter. Not just style but substance. I see many of you have little left but to scream liar since that is what Obama has told you to say. It didn’t work in the debate and it won’t work now. The only thing Obama has had going for him is his ‘Likability Numbers’. The polls after the debate showed Romney came across as more likable than Obama. That may start eating into Obama’s likability figure. Obama has been milking that cow for 5 years now and the utter is going dry.

If nothing else, the debate will spur more money into the Romney campaign to uproot all the crap Obama has been pouring into the swing states. Obama will need to not only get his game face back for the next debate but he’ll need to bring more than just talking points. I’m not sure Obama has a good handle on the issues. Remember he is the guy that didn’t know what the national debt was when asked on Letterman and he’s the guy that considers himself ‘Eye Candy’. Not much substance there.

@Jaxk I will look into whether or not the polls after the debate showed the Romney was more likable than Obama (I have not seen a likability index) but while watching the little tickertape under the candidates that tracked the feelings of the “Undecided Colorado Voters” on CNN it certainly seemed to me to indicate just the opposite. Not saying that they were not on the plus side for Romney, just that they were higher and more consistant for Obama, particularly among the female voters.

@rojo

It’s late and I don’t feel like doing a lot of research right now but it was the CNN polling right after the debate. They hit a lot of different measures and Romney won them all. Likability was one of them.

I love Obama and I was pretty pissed at him after the debate.

What do you think of this as a political cartoon – Romney holding the head of Big Bird and saying, “Now we can balance the budget.”

@Jaxk The polls still showed Obama to be more likeable than Romney. However Romney’s likeability jumped by like 15 points to within striking distance of Obama’s. This one has Romney only jumping up to 31% likability (5 points from where it was Monday) vs Obama’s still current 48%. Though the CNN one I saw I believe had Romney in the low 40’s (to Obama’s 48% again), and just now searching I did find a CBS one that had him beating Obama by a point in likability.

In the end the only real poll result that matters is who people will vote for. I doubt this one debate will have the power to effectively change the race, and have a hard time not still rating Obama as very likely to win. But it is definitely a change of pace for how the race was going for the last month, and gives Mittens a chance to string a couple victories together rather than losses. If he could win the political chamber talk for the next 4 weeks, he has a legit shot of winning the election. But as Bill O’Rielly put it last night (and I’m paraphrasing) if the teams up by 5 td’s in the 3rd quarter and the losing squad scores a solid TD on the 2nd string defense… You really haven’t changed the outcome of the game…

and @Jaxk we scream liar Because Romney was lying through his teeth all night . Admittedly that is a left leaning site, but all over the web you can find the top 10 lies of the night and so on and so forth. We’re screaming liar because Obama didn’t do it the other night, even though Romney was lying so blatantly that I could have called him out on it successfully.

There was one CNN poll of undecided voters that reacted positively to Romney that, for some reason, was heavily skewed towards white southerners.

I don’t think anyone will deny that Romney did well and Obama could have done better—dude’s a slowtalker in general and it was particularly bad on Wednesday. His performance wasn’t disastrous by any means though. Keep in mind that about half of the people who are dissappointed with his debate performance are Democrats who (1) are already voting for him and (2) are crazy with bloodlust. In previous elections, undecided voters have not responded positively to aggressive debaters.

@tedd

I won’t debate the list you posted from your left leaning site. I simply don’t have the time to go through that much spin a correct the errors (lies are what you’d call them). If you wanted to pick one or two I’ll take the time. These left leaning sites love to throw out huge volumes so that even if they are erroneous, missing facts, or blatantly bad numbers, they make up for it in volume.

The reason that Obama didn’t scream liar, is because he couldn’t back it up. Every point in you reference has another side. We have enough oil in this country to become energy independent, even at our current usage. But most of these reserves are on federal land. I know liberals like to tout the number of leases that oil companies have that are not in use but there are no substantial reserves there. We need the leases and permits where the reserves are. The federal government owns about 30% of the entire land mass of the United States. That doesn’t even count the area the federal government controls off-shore. Opening the prime areas for oil would make a substantial increase in federal revenues just from leases and additional taxes. No one wants to count that new revenue. A good energy plan could have a substantial impact on the deficit.

Anyway, if you want to focus on what you think are lies, I’d be happy to do so. I’m just not ready to go through your laundry list of talking points.

@Jaxk The link I gave you lists at least one outside source for every single lie it caught Romney on. Some of them conservative sources, many of them official government sources (like the CBO).

Speaking specifically to the oil reference you’ve made… If we have enough oil to be energy independent, maybe you should yell at the Oil Companies to start drilling as they’re sitting on over 7000 permits to drill on federal lands, and haven’t even begun basic operations If there weren’t substantial reserves there, as you are claiming, then oil companies wouldn’t have bid on them. They’re not stupid. There’s no way they would pay for the right to drill somewhere if they thought it wasn’t worth their time, and then go and setup deep sea drilling operations at 10x the cost.

I think it’s pretty dumb to talk about energy dependence in terms of how much oil you’re sitting on to begin with. Oil is a commodity.

Are we going to advocate laws that ban selling American oil to other countries, and ban importing oil from countries we don’t like? No? Then this is a bullshit talking point to begin with. Yes? I wonder what OPEC and the WTO will have to say.

Anyway. Romney’s biggest lies were:

• “My plan doesn’t cut 5 trillion in taxes.” Oh yes it does. It says it will make up for those cuts by getting rid of deductions… which is mathematically impossible… and then he hasn’t even said what deductions he wants to cut to begin with.

• “My plan won’t screw over people with pre-existing conditions.” Absolute bullshit.

• “Half of Obama’s green energy investments failed.” More like 3%.

I don’t think these are minor or trivial lies. They’re important. They reflect the major pillars of policy that are up for grabs this election.

@tedd

You’re right, oil companies aren’t stupid. Many of the leases they own aren’t in production because the return on investment is just too low. Either the pools of oil are too small or the cost to get them too high. They buy these leases fairly cheap because of these problems but if technology advances to lower the cost of recovery, they become quite lucrative. A good example is the ‘Fracking technology. That allowed the gas companies to recover the gas in porous rock at a cost that made it profitable. If you had a lease that you picked up cheap, the whole deal is quite profitable. If you wait until the technology was in place the leases become much more expensive. There are very lucrative oil deposits that the government is not leasing but the oil companies would be able to exploit quickly or develop for long term such as the Shale deposits. With no prospect of a lease from the government development of those recovery techniques won’t get much action.

Of course there are other problems that could easily make the oil companies abandon the exploration such as environmental lawsuits. These can halt the exploration as well as the actual drilling. When we finally opened the oil fields in Prohue Bay Alaska, legislation was passed to restrict the export of Alaskan oil. If anyone is worried about drilling here and exporting, the precedent has been set to restrict that. Personally I don’t care if we export, It would be a helluva boost to our balance of trade.

First of all, I’m not a Romney fan nor am I an Obama fan.

I saw a very definite pattern in the economic approaches suggested in the debate, one was our country leaning toward socialism and the other was our country leaning toward capitalism. I know which made this country great and which I agree with. The economic bubble is fully popped. Socialism is a nice net to catch us at the bottom but it’s not the stairway back to growth and thriving for America. IMHO

On that note and the performance during the debate, Romney won a tremendous amount of clout with the independents.

The Obama campaign has to be very careful not to have a whiplash/gloves_coming_off reaction and look foolish as a result.

@choreplay can you tell us what you think the word “socialism” means?

I think that a lot of Americans confuse socialism with communism.

@Qingu, I can. I know the difference between capitalism, socialism and communism.

Socialism is an economic system where the means of production, such as money and other forms of capital, are owned by the state or public. Under a socialist system, everyone works for wealth that is, in turn, distributed to everyone. Under capitalism, you work for your own wealth. A socialist economic system operates on the premise that what is good for one is good for all. Everyone works for their own good and the good of everyone else. The government decides how wealth is distributed among the people.

In a socialist economy, there is no market as such. The government provides for the people. The taxes are usually higher than in a capitalist system. There may be government-run health care and a complete system of government-operated education. It is a misconception that people do not pay for these services. They do pay for them through higher taxes. Socialist systems emphasize equal distribution of wealth among the people.

Socialism is economically inefficient as it does not reward entrepreneurs. Instead of rewarding entrepreneurs for creating wealth, it punishes them by making them pay higher taxes. Socialism can actually lower the living standards of all by not rewarding work and by making public assistance available to more than the neediest.

Many countries have mixed economic system with elements of both capitalism and socialism. In the U.S., predominantly a capitalist system, there are still social programs such as social security and Medicare.

But this is thread jacking. has nothing to do with the original question.

@Jaxk There is not one single on-land oil drilling operation that is more expensive (or dangerous for that matter) than deep-sea drilling. That’s the stupidest argument I’ve heard you make in weeks.

Oil companies bought the rights to those lands and then sat on them because it keeps prices up for them to not pump oil. If you are too naive to see that, but immediately assume that Obama and the Big Government are in some conspiracy to get you…. then you are a totally lost cause.

@majorrich You did not describe a Socialist economy, but rather a Communist economy. They are very different. The United States has been a Socialist economy from the second we built a publicly funded road, or post office, all the way back in the late 1700’s, and we’ve become somewhat more socialist as time went on. A pure capitalist model is a pipe dream, and despite popular belief there has never been one in the US.

Socialism is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the economy works. Democracy is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the government works. “Democracy,” said Marx, “is the road to socialism.” He was wrong about how economics and politics interact, but he did see their similar underpinnings.

Communism is conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just the Party Secretary) have any say in how the economy works. Republicans are conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just people controlling the Party figurehead) have any say in how the government works. The conservatives in the US are in the same position as the communists in the 30s, and for the same reason: Their revolutions failed spectacularly but they refuse to admit what went wrong.

A common mistake is to confuse Socialism, the economic system, with Communism, the political system. Communists are “socialist” in the same way that Republicans are “compassionate conservatives”. That is, they give lip service to ideals they have no intention of practicing.

Communism, or “scientific socialism”, has very little to do with Marx. Communism was originally envisioned by Marx and Engels as the last stages of their socialist revolution. “The meaning of the word communism shifted after 1917, when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a repressive, single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies.”

I put a lot of time in absorbing economics in school (osmosis, I slept a lot) Still managed to major in it. But I took no poli-sci classes so may be a little off on some of the little details.
And we’re still waay off topic. :)

@majorrich *facepalm

You Said
Socialism is an economic system where the means of production, such as money and other forms of capital, are owned by the state or public. Under a socialist system, everyone works for wealth that is, in turn, distributed to everyone.

From wikipedia
Communism (from Latin communis – common, universal) is a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production, as well as a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of this social order.

The only difference in your definitions is that they list a goal of Communism as the “establishment of social order.”

And Communism is the polar end of the liberal spectrum. It is not conservative at all. Nazi-ism or Fascism is the polar conservative end.

And you take Wickipedia as gospel? I consider my case rested. lol.

@majorrich From Webster’s Dictionary…

Communism a : a theory advocating elimination of private property
b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed

@tedd

You’re really not thinking your argument through. Oil companies make enormous profits by drilling for oil rather than buying it from Saudi Arabia at close $100/barrel. Even in the more expensive off-shore drilling the cost is about $50/barrel so if they can harvest our own resources they make ~$40/ barrel pure profit, right off the top. The larger the deposit the lower the cost because finding it is more expensive than pumping it.

Most of the increase in oil production is on private property. So the oil companies are not reluctant to drill, they just don’t have access to the best areas.

The government is not trying to screw us, they are simply trying to make oil more expensive so that it will be more competitive with alternate sources. Obama has said that the rise in oil prices wasn’t a problem, it just rose too fast. He wants higher oil prices to achieve his agenda. There’s no mystery here. Just a political agenda. Make oil expensive so that people have to drive electric cars or develop bio-fuels. No one is making any secret of this agenda.

@Jaxk, please post the quote where Obama says he wants higher gas prices.

Here is the quote I found. Of course, it doesn’t say that at all.

Not only do we have to invest in mass transit, but we have also have to make sure that, we also have to make sure that people are making good decisions about cars. And their freedom—people are, you know, people are free to buy a [Chevrolet] Suburban if you want, it gets 8 miles a gallon but we can’t subsidize to make sure that you have—you are able to fill up your Suburban tank at a really cheap rate because that’s not the trajectory of oil prices worldwide.

@Qingu

From a CNBC interview

HARWOOD: So could these high prices help us?

Sen. OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.

Sounds like he wants them high to me.

@Jaxk I don’t think YOU are thinking your argument through. There is no possible way major Oil companies would have bid on drilling rights to Federal Lands that they had no intention of drilling on. There is no oil anywhere on land that is more expensive or dangerous to drill than the shallowest of Deep Sea drilling operations. If you attempted to tell someone in the oil business otherwise, they would laugh at your face. If the deposit was of such a small quantity to not be worth it to them to set up drilling operations, then they wouldn’t have bid on it.

More importantly… buy their oil from Saudi Arabia? Who do you think is doing the drilling in Saudi Arabia??? Mobil, Texaco, Shell, Exxon Mobil, etc… all have major operations set up in Saudi Arabia. There are state run companies in many Gulf nations, but almost all of them run joint operations with one or more of the major worldwide oil companies.

And I whole-heartedly reject the notion that Obama and company are doing things to purposely make oil more expensive. We’re drilling more oil in the US now than anytime during the Bush years and for nearly a decade before that. And even after the massive oil spill in the Gulf several years ago, which would’ve been more than adequate a disaster to take a major offensive on oil… nothing from the Obama camp.

Oil is going up because it has a very finite amount, and we are drawing more and more of it every day, whilst the supply of it becomes less and less and harder to acquire.

@Jaxk And wow…. You take the presidents words incredibly out of context, and then post the proof of it too?

Sen. OBAMA: Well, I think that we have been slow to move in a better direction when it comes to energy usage. And the president, frankly, hasn’t had an energy policy. And as a consequence, we’ve been consuming energy as if it’s infinite. We now know that our demand is badly outstripping supply with China and India growing as rapidly as they are. So…

HARWOOD: So could these high prices help us?

Sen. OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.

Sounds to me like he’s saying we had a piss poor energy policy under Bush that had us increasingly hooked to a finite fuel supply without any effort to broaden our energy sources, and that we need to begin using alternative energies… Also that this sudden shock of increased prices ($4/gallon of fuel cited in the article, suck on that Republican-BS-line about Obama doubling gas prices) should be blunted by the government as best as possible, while simultaneously stimulating private enterprise to explore these alternative sources more extensively and quickly.

And look what we have today, a 10-fold increase in natural gas drilling, the most oil drilling at anytime in the past 20 years, and First Solar (one of the 36 companies receiving federal money under the stimulus, all but 3 of which are still functional today) just signed a contract to produce the largest solar power plant in history….

Ah, @Jaxk, @Jaxk. Never stop doing what you do.

Is this from the same funhouse mirror universe where Obama saying “we don’t support the anti-Islam video” means he is apologizing for America and supports terrorists?

And by “funhouse mirror universe,” of course, I don’t mean to imply that you yourself inhabit this alternate universe. I think you know perfectly well what Obama actually said and meant.