Final Debate happening now.

It's on.

@golguin said:

It's on.

Hasn't it been on for a while?

I'm at a coworkers birthday party. We're drinking pabst blue ribbon and watching the detroit/chigao game... id rather be home alone watching the debate. I need better friends... :-(

I'm not even American and I'm watching it. American politics are so much more entertaining than ours :(

Indeed it is

Every debate. Ever.

I think President Obama literally told Gov. Romney, "The 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back" in reference to the geopolitical threat and Russia comment.

So far:

Governor Romney:"I agree with the President on US foreign policy."

President Obama:"Thanks. I agree with you more."

Governor Romney:"Pretty sure I'm agreeing the most."

President Obama:"No, -I- agree with you, but stronger. Presidential-like."

Governor Romney:"Okay, well, I agree. Israel."

President Obama:"Yeah, Israel. Agreed."

"American is the one indispensable nation" -- Obama

Either Obama didn't mean to say the rest of the world can go fuck themselves, or Romney's not the only crazy one...

Did Obama just sneak in a burn on Dick Cheney? =o

"I want world peace...I also want more guns"

@TruthTellah: Yeah, I don't know if I really need to watch this debate anymore.

I really can't see how either Obama or Romney are going to "win" this one.

Why the fuck doesn't youtube support scrubbing back during live events? They clearly support pausing and buffering. Why not let me go back 30 minutes.
 
Even Gamespot's E3 coverage was more technologically advanced than Youtube's live shit.

ahah we also dont have bayonets and horses

Horses and Bayonets comment is good. We now have submarines.

Foreign policy....I agree situations....schools.....5 point plan...ur a lie.....back to main topic.....business.....

I don't know if Obama's death stare while Romney is talking is effective or creepy.

@zoozilla said:

@TruthTellah: Yeah, I don't know if I really need to watch this debate anymore.

I really can't see how either Obama or Romney are going to "win" this one.

heh. Yeah, this is more of a battle over nuance than totally competing foreign policies.

President Obama:"You bastard! I clearly agreed before you did, and our foreign policy is amazing. God bless the USA."

Governor Romney:"Slanderer! America is the best country in the world!"

President Obama:"Oh come on. America is the only indispensable country in the world. In fact, it's the best."

Governor Romney:"We haven't mentioned Israel in a while."

President Obama:"Right. Israel. We gotchya back."

Governor Romney:"Word."

@zoozilla said:

I don't know if Obama's death stare while Romney is talking is effective or creepy.

yeah, hes normally a pretty cheerful looking dude, but he's looking intimidating as shit tonight.

I don't know if Obama's death stare while Romney is talking is effective or creepy.

you skipped Israel! HOW DARE YOU!

@Clonedzero said:

@zoozilla said:

I don't know if Obama's death stare while Romney is talking is effective or creepy.

yeah, hes normally a pretty cheerful looking dude, but he's looking intimidating as shit tonight.

I keep getting the feeling President Obama is going to go all Assassin's Creed 2 "Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh!" on Romney soon.

The youtube/abc stream has called it for the "horses & bayonets" comment. It's the new debate meme.

"I don't speak in hypotheticals", goes on to speak in hypotheticals. This guy is a joke.

"I don't speak in hypotheticals", goes on to speak in hypotheticals. This guy is a joke.

Romney knows what's up. #ChinaDon'tCare

@MariachiMacabre said:

@crazyleaves

"I don't speak in hypotheticals", goes on to speak in hypotheticals. This guy is a joke.

I didn't hear that. Who said it?

Romney when asked how he would react if Israel said they were moving against Iran.

Fuck Israel. Straight up.

Who doesn't love teachers?

@golguin said:

Who doesn't love teachers?

Teachers? They get summers off, and get to go on strike for more pay!

They're just spoiled brats!

/sarcasm

@MariachiMacabre said:

@crazyleaves

"I don't speak in hypotheticals", goes on to speak in hypotheticals. This guy is a joke.

I didn't hear that. Who said it?

Could probably be either one.

I can't even watch it! Even on the lowest quality setting the buffering makes it impossible. Clearly a roommate is streaming Netflix and downloading porn.

Romney just agreed with everything Obama said on foreign policy and crap just veered back into domestic policy. Boring.

http://cavalrymenforromney.com/

Obama campaign works fast.

I'm watching WWE and the Debate and there was more fighting going on in the debate than on Wrestling.

@MarkWahlberg said:

"American is the one indispensable nation" -- Obama

Either Obama didn't mean to say the rest of the world can go fuck themselves, or Romney's not the only crazy one...

If you want to get elected in the US, this MUST be your foreign policy:

If you missed it, both candidates have said many times that the USA is the greatest country on Earth. Both advocate an American hegemony. If they don't, they aren't viable candidates. As was stated in the debate, the US spends more on military than the next 10 countries on the list combined. Why then does the idea of increasing military funding conceivable at any time, especially during a financial crisis? Because it further establishes the US as a hegemon. Americans still seem to believe that we're superior to the rest of the world.

The dirty truth: Spending on military is just as "bad" as stimulus on public projects.

@golguin said:

Who doesn't love teachers?

"We all love teachers"

Foreign Policy during this election cycle is rather pointless I think. It's all about the economy. That's sorta why I feel this debate was rather pointless.

I feel like whoever gets elected this year will lead to the other party will winning in 4 years anyway, and it won't be close either. I don't see the economy getting stronger. I don't see international affairs getting better. People in this country are fucking sick of negativity, and, to be honest, are looking for a President to guide us out of that negativity. But I don't think either of these chucklefucks know what they're doing. Nor do I think they care.

Neither won this one.

And with US foreign policy in the major Parties today, that's hardly too surprising. Both of them barely disagreed at all when it came to real foreign policy; they simply disagreed on word preference. But they made it sound like their policy difference was a chasm between success or utter destruction for the nation.

I think it would be ridiculous to say either won on this. If you look at the history of foreign policy debates, incumbents traditionally try to get under their opponent's skin and make them look unfit for office, but that didn't happen here. Governor Romney clearly didn't set out to win on zingers or command the debate; he just wanted to keep his cool, be agreeable, not agree -once- with the policies of George W. Bush(which he eventually took one instance to directly disagree with), and seem like he's strongly in support of Israel.

Governor Romney didn't really lose his cool, and he time and time again sounded about as peace-minded as Clinton in his debates. I don't think it was a strong debate for him, but I think it was what he felt he needed. His polls numbers have been slowly improving for a while, and all he had to do was keep things as they are. I think that's how things will be after this debate. Foreign policy is one of the least contentious areas of American politics right now, and as this debate showed, it probably won't end up causing much of an impact on the election.

@TruthTellah: If you look at the polls here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

The general election results are pretty back and forth, there was a brief slant toward Romney after the first debate but its kind of swung back to neutral. However, Ohio is pretty clearly showing a slant in favor of Obama and while Romney has a chance at capturing the popular vote if he loses Ohio he pretty much can't win the presidency no matter what due to how the electoral college system works. I wouldn't call the election a foregone conclusion but it's looking like a close victory for the President, Romney having a 20-30% chance of success.

If there's one thing I despise about American politics, it's how no one is willing to talk about how fucked it is that we waste (yes, I said waste) so much money on the military. Will taking just 10% of the military's funding and redistributing it amongst more important things like education really affect our military's strength? Fuck no. We don't need a military that can take on the whole world at once, we need one that will keep us safe. We should give up much more than 10% (I'd say at least 50%) of the military's funding, but at least that 10% would be enough to make everything else at least a little better. The fact that no politician is willing to at least say that because they fear losing votes is what makes me sad about our current state of affairs. I come from a family with a lot of military ties and I support us having a strong military, but there's a point when it's just too much.

I'm ranting about politics on a video game forum, but goddamn, where has the common sense gone?

@Fredchuckdave said:

@TruthTellah: If you look at the polls here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

The general election results are pretty back and forth, there was a brief slant toward Romney after the first debate but its kind of swung back to neutral. However, Ohio is pretty clearly showing a slant in favor of Obama and while Romney has a chance at capturing the popular vote if he loses Ohio he pretty much can't win the presidency no matter what due to how the electoral college system works. I wouldn't call the election a foregone conclusion but it's looking like a close victory for the President, Romney having a 20-30% chance of success.

I agree that Ohio's the heart of it. And the electoral college is awful, but that's a different matter. ha. Governor Romney absolutely has a tough road in Ohio, but it's still within grasp. I think it's incorrect to assume a 20-30% chance of the President losing. If you look at some of the other battleground states, they could still swing to Romney, and you might see a scenario where it's quite tight for 270. With Ohio where it is right now, I'd say it's more like 45% to 55% in favor of President Obama on winning the whole thing. It's still leaning toward President Obama, but a foreign policy debate wasn't going to sway Ohio for Romney whether he did stronger or not. It really comes down to these last two weeks and the major push we'll be seeing. And, there's still plenty of time for something to happen or some new issue to pop up. Two weeks, at this point in the election, is like an eternity. We're in for a nail-biter.

The US needs to go back to using only the popular vote. The Electoral College system is not democratic.

@Ocean_H said:

The US needs to go back to using only the popular vote. The Electoral College system is not democratic.

Emphasis mine. The US has never used a popular vote model for the presidency. Heck, until 1913, we didn't even directly elect US senators, and it wasn't until John Quincy Adams was elected that there was even a popular vote statistic in presidential elections (Adams actually lost the popular vote, too).

The Electoral College is an extension of our system as a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, so I would argue that it is democratic. I agree that it's garbage, though. It thoroughly biases the system toward a two-party hegemony and makes my vote, as a New Mexican, worth hundreds of times less than that of someone from neighboring Colorado or nearby Nevada. It's the same for the big states; a Democrat in Texas or a Republican in New York are, according to national political calculus, worth less than anybody in Florida or Ohio. Super lame.

The reason we have the electoral college is so that every state has a prominent part in the Presidential Election process. If the electoral college didn't exist, most campaigns would ignore trying to get votes in states where hardly anyone lives, thus leaving them out of the process entirely.

The electoral college has effectively the same problem. With a direct popular vote, there is theoretical equal value in each person's vote for president. As it stands, each election cycle is not a contest of achieving broad support, but rather campaigning heavily in five or six states (which admittedly vary from year to year) while ignoring anything with fewer than five or six electoral college votes (or those states practically guaranteed for one candidate or the other). Even if the campaigns merely shifted focus to population centers instead of toss-up states, the value proposition of a person's vote would remain equal (Edit: That is, remain equal to any other person's vote, under a direct election system), even if they aren't being expressly courted.

Yea, Foreign Policy as a topic was a bit pointless. Not that it's not important, it's just that it wasn't going to bring about any actual debate; this is one field they're equal on, and Obama has the slight edge just by already being deep in it.

Romney constantly changing the subject to domestic policy was both dumb and smart, since it gives him some ground he can actually (theoretically) fight on.

I'm just sad that social policy never came up in the debates. The GOP has a constitutional ban on gay marriage as their official party platform; that has to be brought to the public stage before the election or we have failed.