Blog Roundup!: Presidential Debate Style

It has hardly been two days since the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, yet the blogosphere and the news media are still analyzing and criticizing the event. The word is, Buzzfeed declared Romney the winner before the debate was even over - and the general consensus since has been that Romney won the debate.

However, as Mediamatters points out, an equally valid interpretation is that Jim Lehrer lost the debate.

Nevertheless, as Truthdig notes, the debate was definitely more style over substance.

Maddow also breaks down the numbers, further soothing the worries of Obama supporters who may be frustrated at the rather abrupt and widespread conclusion that he lost, to show that incumbents usually do lose the first debate.

Democracy Now! provided an alternative debate for third party candidates on Wednesday.

And besides Buzzfeed apparently calling the debate for Romney before halftime, it also declared "silly memes" the winner of the night. 

The Costs of Free Speech for Pastors: How to Serve both the Almighty and the Almighty Dollar

By Nathan Rothwell

An interesting experiment is set to unfold on the morning of Sunday, October 7.

Christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom has been promoting that day as “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” an event in which thousands of American religious leaders intend to spit in the face of IRS rules which limit the political activities of tax-exempt organizations. The event has been heavily promoted on Fox News via everyone’s favorite pastor-pundit Mike Huckabee, and appears to be a massive display of civil disobedience aimed at provoking a lawsuit against the IRS.

Proponents of Pulpit Freedom Sunday claim that their right to free speech was taken away from them by the so-called “Johnson Amendment.”  Weary of those who were using non-profit organizations to unduly influence elections, then-Senator and future President Lyndon Johnson helped pass an amendment to the United States Tax Code which specifically prohibits 501(c)3 organizations (such as religious institutions) from endorsing or opposing any candidate for public office, either directly or indirectly.

I will admit that a government edict which places restrictions on the right to free speech for non-profit organizations directly influences the separation of church and state, one of this country’s oldest and most firmly held ideas. According to Pastor Jim Garlow, a spokesman for the Pulpit Freedom Sunday movement, the IRS indeed has a wide brush to control or censor speech from the pulpit, or else threaten to revoke the tax-exempt status of a religious organization which defies the Johnson Amendment.

That being said, however, I and many others see an obvious solution to this problem: You want your right to free speech in full, like every other American? Then give up your tax-exempt status, which is a privilege afforded to only a chosen few. Of course this doesn’t sit well with Garlow and others, and for obvious reasons. According to former White House senior policy analyst Jeff Schweitzer, churches own an estimated $300 to $500 billion in untaxed property in the United States.  So while most pastors hold their service to the Almighty in the highest regard, they aren’t about to forget about their devotion to the almighty dollar.

The pastors who champion Pulpit Freedom Sunday seem to forget that tax-exempt status is a privilege in this country, guaranteed nowhere by the Constitution. I’m not so sure religious organizations should be afforded this privilege at all, for the following reasons:

Cartoon of the day: Don't let Obama turn you old

Cartoon of the day: The Empty Chair

By Joe Heller, Green Bay Press-Gazette  -  8/31/2012 12:00:00 AM

It's only class warfare when the poor fight back

“Class warfare” has been one of the prevailing themes of this election season. While nearly everyone agrees that our federal deficit is in serious need of address, there are sharp divisions between Republicans and Democrats on how best to go about it.

Both parties have acknowledged that the government needs to spend less money. However, the Democrats are alone in believing the problem also requires additional revenue in the form of tax increases.

This was the chief underlying issue in last month’s debate over the “Buffett Rule,” a proposed modification to the federal tax code designed to ensure that every American who earns at least $1 million per year must pay a 30% income tax rate.  Presently, those earning over $389,000 per year are supposed to pay a 35% income tax rate, but many are utilizing loopholes to redefine their earnings as something other than income, allowing them to be taxed closer to 15%.

Democrats presented a sound argument in favor of the Buffett Rule. The United States has relied on a progressive income tax code for hundreds of years, which taxes wealthier citizens at a higher rate than those with less income. When multi-millionaire Mitt Romney can get away with paying the same amount of his yearly earnings to the federal government as a fast-food worker who makes $9,000 a year, it is a blatant subversion of the progressive tax. After all, money functions the same no matter how it’s classified by the tax code – if you want to buy a Lamborghini, the dealer is going to sell you the car regardless of whether you pay for it with earned income or capital gains.

Santorum Suspends Campaign

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum announced he was suspending his campaign at a press conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His exit from the campaign all but assures that Mitt Romney will be challenging Barack Obama for the presidency in November.

It's unclear why he picked today as the day to step aside, although a look at the polls in his home state offer a clue. According to Public Policy Polling, Romney was leading Santorum in the polls among likely Pennsylvania voters by a score of 42 to 37 percent. Many people argued that Romney's campaign would not survive if he could not win his home state of Michigan, so perhaps Santorum saw the doom facing his own political future if he couldn't win in Pennsylvania.

Blog Roundup!

It's blog roundup time again:

Comedian Joe Mande sums up HBO's "Game Change" in 43 seconds.

Lawfare blogger, Benjamin Wittes, discusses his new project for the Brookings Institute, "The project, about which I am deeply excited, is at one level an attempt to bring to life the most important document in American history that nobody ever reads: [James] Madison’s Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787."

Alternet's Alex Henderson talks about the Bible Belt's love affair with porn.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of "Nickled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America" revisits American poverty 50 years later.

The GOP's Southern Problem

By Nathan Rothwell

Republican presidential candidate Rick Buttfroth picked up Mississippi and Alabama in Tuesday's primary contests. Although fellow candidate Mitt Romney has failed to pick up any southern states in this primary season (Virginia and Florida don't really count, in my eyes), Tuesday's results all but assured that Romney will eventually be named the nominee.

As many have already predicted would happen, the social conservative wing of the Republican Party, once their greatest asset, has now become marginalized within their own party. While they still exist in large enough numbers to propel Santorum and Newt Gingrich to victories in the southern states, they are practically voices shouting in the wind everywhere else. According to CNN exit polls on Tuesday, even in Mississippi Romney is still the preferred choice among Republican women, those making at least $50,000 a year, and anyone who identifies as something other than "very conservative."

Cartoon of the Day

Blog Roundup!

Crooksandliars explains how the GOP's infamous "magic asterisk," works.

Jay Ackroyd of Eschaton discusses the new political philosophy that pervades the Democratic party, referred to as "progressive realism." A brief analysis of why Democrats are no longer New Deal Liberals.

Balloon Juice delves into the tensions in small communities caused by fracking operations.

Amy Goodman's blog has this new interview up: Bloomberg Law interviews Goodman about the landmark settlement that followed her and the Democracy Now! crew's arrest outside of the 2008 RNC.

The Sandwichman of EconoSpeak goes into the "problem of unemployment."

Happy Halloween!




h/t Susan Gardner Daily Kos (trending on twitter)