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Overwhelmed by what’s to come on Election Night 2012? We’ve got you covered with The Week’s guide about what to watch for as the votes come in, when to expect big news, and some of the options for how to watch coverage of the results.
What’s at stake? Aside from the big race for the White House, all 435 House seats are up for grabs, as are 33 Senate seats (though only about a dozen are considered competitive). At the state level, there are 11 gubernatorial races (only four of which are truly competitive) and several notable ballot measures dealing with same-sex marriage, legalizing marijuana, and other issues with national implications.
What’s the best way to watch the election unfold? There’s no lack of options. Fox starts its election coverage at 6 pm (all times are Eastern Standard); NBC, ABC, and CBS jump in at 7 pm; and PBS starts at 8 pm. On cable, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC all begin their election specials at 6 pm, while Univision and Current TV start at 7 pm. Most of those networks, plus CSPAN, will also stream their coverage live over the internet, along with several national newspapers and politics sites. (See this guide from GigaOm for online options.) The Week will also be covering the election in real time, providing news and analysis.
Read the compete viewer’s guide to Election Night 2012.
(Source: theweek.com)
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- The myth: Obama has played more golf than any president in history
The reality: This isn’t even close to being true. Now, there’s no question that he plays on a regular basis: 104 rounds from January 2009 through Aug. 4 of this year, the last time he played, according to Mark Knoller, the longtime White House correspondent for CBS Radio. That puts him about in the middle when compared with other duffers-in-chief. It’s less than Bill Clinton, and a lot less than Dwight Eisenhower, who played more than 800 rounds over eight years — four times as often as Obama plays.And why is it an outrage if the president, who heads one of three branches of government, golfs 104 times in three-and-a-half-years, but the head of another branch of government, the Speaker of the House, plays four times as much? You heard correctly: John Boehner once told Golf Digest that he plays upwards of 100 rounds a year. Seems like a double standard, no?
Columnist Paul Brandus, of the West Wing Report, debunks the 5 most ridiculous myths about Barack Obama
Photo: Edward Linsmier/Getty Images
(Source: theweek.com)
- The myth: Obama has played more golf than any president in history
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Cartoon of the day — A swift transition
KEN CATALINO © 2012 Cagle Cartoons
More cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
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Cartoon of the day — The truth hurts
DANA SUMMERS © 2012 Tribune Media Services
More cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
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Cartoon of the day — Winning rhetoric
NATE BEELER © 2012 Cagle Cartoons(Source: theweek.com)
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![The final Obama-Romney debate: Who told the biggest whoppers?
Obama: Romney was “very clear that [he] would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies, even if they went through bankruptcy. You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn’t true.”The verdict: Partly trueObama overreached here, say NPR’s Mark Memmott, Scott Montgomery, and Mark Stencel. In a famous November 2008 New York Times op-ed, Romney said if the government bailed out GM and Chrysler, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” but he did propose a “managed bankruptcy” in which the federal government provides “guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing.” The problem is, according to auto executives and outside experts, there would have been no post-bankrupt GM or Chrysler to help, says Jeremy W. Peters at The New York Times. In late 2008, credit markets were frozen and no private firms — not even Romney’s own Bain Capital — were “looking to invest to the tune of the $80 billion the car companies needed at the time.” That means “the only path through bankruptcy would have been Chapter 7 liquidation, not the more orderly Chapter 11 reorganization that the company ultimately followed” under Obama. “In the tangled debate over whether the auto industry would have survived under Romney’s bankruptcy plan, Obama has the edge on the argument,” says Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post.
Romney: Upon taking office, Obama “said by now we’d be at 5.4 percent unemployment.” The verdict: Mostly falseThis claim stems from an economic projection two Obama economists laid out before he took office, to predict the effects of a $775 billion economic stimulus bill. The economists, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, added “numerous caveats and warnings” to their analysis,says Kessler, “because, after all, it was merely a projection,” based on an unwritten bill. But yes, a chart on Page 4 of the report did foresee unemployment dropping to 5.4 percent by mid-2012. “The chart is now infamous, but it was never pitched as a promise,” says PolitiFact. And the caveats were there for good reason: “The economy was, in fact, much worse than economists knew.”
Obama: Romney “said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day.”The verdict: Half trueRomney didn’t really contest Obama’s narrow point, that he thinks we should still have combat troops in Iraq, says Kessler. But ultimately, “Romney has the better part of this argument,” because as he points out, Obama tried to keep troops there, too. The Obama administration attempted to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would keep roughly 5,000 troops in Iraq, but the talks fell apart when Iraq declined to put the agreement to a parliamentary vote and the Obama administration decided that would expose U.S. troops to Iraqi prosecution. The upshot is that Obama now “stresses the fact that he has removed all troops from Iraq, while knocking Romney for supporting what he originally had hoped to achieve.”
More fact-checking](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mccmwnck791qdjbb7o1_1280.png)
The final Obama-Romney debate: Who told the biggest whoppers?
- Obama: Romney was “very clear that [he] would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies, even if they went through bankruptcy. You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn’t true.”
The verdict: Partly true
Obama overreached here, say NPR’s Mark Memmott, Scott Montgomery, and Mark Stencel. In a famous November 2008 New York Times op-ed, Romney said if the government bailed out GM and Chrysler, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,” but he did propose a “managed bankruptcy” in which the federal government provides “guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing.” The problem is, according to auto executives and outside experts, there would have been no post-bankrupt GM or Chrysler to help, says Jeremy W. Peters at The New York Times. In late 2008, credit markets were frozen and no private firms — not even Romney’s own Bain Capital — were “looking to invest to the tune of the $80 billion the car companies needed at the time.” That means “the only path through bankruptcy would have been Chapter 7 liquidation, not the more orderly Chapter 11 reorganization that the company ultimately followed” under Obama. “In the tangled debate over whether the auto industry would have survived under Romney’s bankruptcy plan, Obama has the edge on the argument,” says Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post.
- Romney: Upon taking office, Obama “said by now we’d be at 5.4 percent unemployment.”
The verdict: Mostly false
This claim stems from an economic projection two Obama economists laid out before he took office, to predict the effects of a $775 billion economic stimulus bill. The economists, Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, added “numerous caveats and warnings” to their analysis,says Kessler, “because, after all, it was merely a projection,” based on an unwritten bill. But yes, a chart on Page 4 of the report did foresee unemployment dropping to 5.4 percent by mid-2012. “The chart is now infamous, but it was never pitched as a promise,” says PolitiFact. And the caveats were there for good reason: “The economy was, in fact, much worse than economists knew.”
- Obama: Romney “said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day.”
The verdict: Half true
Romney didn’t really contest Obama’s narrow point, that he thinks we should still have combat troops in Iraq, says Kessler. But ultimately, “Romney has the better part of this argument,” because as he points out, Obama tried to keep troops there, too. The Obama administration attempted to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would keep roughly 5,000 troops in Iraq, but the talks fell apart when Iraq declined to put the agreement to a parliamentary vote and the Obama administration decided that would expose U.S. troops to Iraqi prosecution. The upshot is that Obama now “stresses the fact that he has removed all troops from Iraq, while knocking Romney for supporting what he originally had hoped to achieve.”
(Source: theweek.com)
- Obama: Romney was “very clear that [he] would not provide government assistance to the U.S. auto companies, even if they went through bankruptcy. You said that they could get it in the private marketplace. That wasn’t true.”
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Cartoon of the day — Clinton’s common ground
MARSHALL RAMSEY © 2012 Creators Syndicate(Source: theweek.com)
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“Mitt Romney. Taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest.”
A new Obama ad mocks Romney for his focus on Sesame Street instead of Wall Street.
(Source: theweek.com)
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Medicare, and the inherent promise our government gives to its citizens, must be preserved. But to preserve, we must modernize. It will take a national debate. It will take leadership from our president. It will take ideas from both Democrats and Republicans. But it must be done. And America knows.
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One of the most contentious exchanges in this week’s closely watched presidential debate came when Mitt Romney forcefully defended his tax plan. President Obama and independent economists have warned that Romney’s promise to slash income-tax rates for everyone — including the rich — and wipe out popular deductions and loopholes so as not to increase the deficit would wind up giving the wealthiest Americans huge breaks while saddling the middle class with a higher tax burden. Romney swears his critics are simply wrong. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,” Romney said on Wednesday, “and… I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families.” So, what, exactly, would Romney’s plan mean for taxpayers? Here, a brief guide:
What does Romney want to do?
He plans to keep tax benefits for savings and investment, eliminate the estate and alternative minimum taxes, and slash everyone’s income tax rate by 20 percent, across the board. That includes small businesses whose owners report profits on their individual returns, instead of paying corporate income taxes. As Obama and others have pointed out, the lower rates would slash nearly $5 trillion over a decade from what taxpayers would otherwise have to cough up. Obama says that will add to the federal deficit. Romney denies that, saying he’ll make up for the lost revenue in other ways.
How would Romney make up for this lost revenue?
Romney wants to cut back on deductions, exemptions, and credits that many Americans use to reduce their taxable income and tax bills. Romney has taken a lot of heat for not disclosing which loopholes he’d eliminate, but he said earlier this week that he would put a $17,000 cap on annual deductions — such as mortgage interest and charitable contributions. The thing is, that won’t be enough to make up for the cost of the tax breaks, says Brookings Institution economist William Gale, who co-authored a study of Romney’s tax plan for the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. “It doesn’t come close to paying for the $5 trillion.”How far does the plan fall short?
(Source: theweek.com)
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The 8 best captions for this priceless picture of Mitt Romney posing with Chipotle staff
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Here’s the longstanding state of the race: A virtual tie nationwide, and mixed signals from the battleground states. We have achieved nothing over the last five months except an extended period of stasis, interrupted by gaffes and stumbles that have proven relatively meaningless.
—Edward Morrissey says that despite the media’s many premature post mortems, the presidential race is actually still quite close: How Mitt Romney can win the debates
(Source: theweek.com)
