Political Mud Slinging

[Chubminnow]

Regardless of left, right or somewhere in between, I'm already tired of the political mud slinging (since Ryan entered the picture especially). I'm ready for the boy's to get down to some serious business and discuss the issue's and challenges facing the United States not only for today, but for tomorrow as well...I could careless about hearing how Romney hauls the family dog on the roof of his car. Let's get on with it and move forward!

[DJD]

Yeah it's already old.....it really sheds light on how important it is for each party to control that branch of the gubment. It's unfortunate because it has little to do with what's right and wrong for the country.it's all about the party agenda.

[apb]

Agree with both of you. Pretty disgusting behavior from both sides. Two big problems: election season lasts waaaaay too long and both sides are piling up more BS than a Texas cattle ranch. May be what is more unbelievable is that even after lies and distortions of the facts have been pointed out by various non-partisian groups, some continue to spew the same crap. About time they stick with the facts and the issues. Greatest nation on earth doesn't deserve to be run by clowns.

Got this from Fact Check.com. Figured it was a fitting summary here:

Thomas Hobbes’ oft-cited phrase from 1651, “nasty, brutish and short,” does not describe the 2012 presidential campaign — unfortunately. The contest so far has been nasty all right, and disregard for the truth has been brutish on both sides, in our judgment. But alas, it won’t be over until Nov. 6.
So many false and misleading claims have already surfaced that, once again, we are moving up the clock on our annual wrap-up of the campaign season’s worst political whoppers, as we did four years ago. We’d like to think there would be no need for a “Whoppers, Volume 2,” but for the record, we wrote a sequel in 2008.
We’re also permitting ourselves a rare bit of editorializing about the deplorable tone of this particular campaign. Besides being marked by a cavalier disregard for facts on both sides, the campaign also has become bitter and trivial. It is failing to engage the public in a fact-based discussion of the hard choices that will very soon be forced on Washington.
In its triviality, the 2012 campaign so far resembles the infamous 1988 contest that pitted George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis. The “issues” featured then included Dukakis’ support for a state prison furlough program and Bush’s knowledge (or lack of it) about aid to Nicaraguan rebels. Neither side said much about an unfolding debacle in the U.S. Savings and Loan industry, which eventually cost taxpayers more than $130 billion.
This time the real issues facing the country are much bigger: A lagging recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s, a string of $1-trillion-plus deficits, inexorably rising medical costs that burden both state and federal taxpayers, and a Social Security system unable to pay full benefits for more than another 20 years or so. Just to name a few.
And what are the candidates and their allies talking about?
In Chicago, the Obama campaign for weeks has been consumed with the date (1999 or 2001?) of Romney’s departure from Bain Capital, the venture-capital firm he founded. The reason? The Obama campaign wants to blame Romney for management decisions made after Feb. 11, 1999, at a few of the companies in which Bain invested. Romney did retain ownership and corporate titles listed in routine SEC filings after February 1999, but no evidence has yet shown that he exercised any active control over Bain’s investment decisions during this time. Romney was working 12-hour days, six days a week, as president of the 2002 Winter Olympics committee and was not actively involved in Bain.
Obama has even stooped to make a false claim that Romney favored banning abortion in cases of rape or incest, as though the contrast between their actual positions was not sufficiently clear. In doing so, the president mirrors the distortions of opponents who once accused him of favoring “infanticide.”
For his part, Romney has claimed to have created as many as 100,000 jobs while at Bain, happily taking credit for hiring that happened long after he left (and offering no actual accounting for the figure). He has accused Obama of waging a “war on women” based on job losses from a recession that started more than a year before Obama took office. He has falsely stated in a TV ad that an inspector general found stimulus contracts “were steered to ‘friends and family,’ ” when the IG made no such finding. And he has repeatedly misrepresented Obama’s new health care law.
Meanwhile the tone of the campaign becomes ever more nasty. Obama campaign aides recently suggested Romney was guilty of a “felony,” while a Romney surrogate said the president should “learn to be an American.”
And neither candidate speaks candidly of what he would actually do if elected. Romney won’t say how he plans to cut taxes further without losing revenues. Cutting or eliminating the deduction for home mortgages or for state income taxes? Obama says nothing about how Social Security is to be preserved. Raising the payroll tax?
Perhaps we’ll hear more in the 109 campaigning days to come. Perhaps the candidates will become less personal, more substantive, and more forthcoming about their plans for leading the nation. We remain hopeful. But, based on the facts so far, we’re not optimistic.

[Chubminnow]

Ok...I think that after having heard the mud slinging this week, and after reading Andrew's post here, I believe that I had a false hope over a period of a couple of days last weekend and earlier this week that things were looking up for the United States.

Ain't nothin' changed, ain't nothin' gonna change...just the same old song and dance routine.

[kygorski]

With the advent of the super packs, there is plenty of money to spend on mud.I'm sorry, this country may never get together again like it used to be. I'm begining to be less tolerant in my views.I'm sick of religion sticking its nose into political causes,I,m sick of not prosecuting the biggest criminals in the country.[the bankers], sick of illegal immigrants.And total ignorance of good manners.Chat sessions in busy aisles, full grocery carts in express lanes.But be of good cheer,us old guys are in our last hurrah, those of you who will be alive, will be a minority!

[RoadToad]

Agreed. This kind of thing makes you wish even more for a "none of the above" option to vote for.

[Chubminnow]

Sick of illegal immigrants and total ignorance of good manners.

As for manners...man if you wanna see a broad spectrum of people, manners, morals, etc...you should go to the Kentucky State Fair. I'm tellin' ya....they come from ALL walks of life. Saw this one young lady...her shirt was strategically torn/ripped horizontally in the back...was also torn in the same fashion in the front...she may as well of just worn her bra without the ripped shirt. The guy she was with wore a shirt that came to his knees and his shorts came to his ankles...and...he was pushing a baby stroller. I felt sorry for that baby.