Romney 2012?

RYAN: Point number two is this money creates jobs. When people invest in riskier propositions, meaning invest in businesses, they don’t know if they’re going to succeed or not. So you want to have more capital that goes to more businesses, especially small businesses like this one, so more people can go back to work. That creates economic growth. You know what we learned about Mitt Romney in his tax returns? He’s a successful businessman. That’s a good thing.

The problem with Ryan’s logic is that there is little evidence that the capital gains preference increases job creation. As the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon notes, the capital gains rate was higher during sustained periods of economic growth in the 1990s, while the 2003 cut to the capital gains rate was followed by weak investment and growth. After the rate dropped in 1997, growth rates hardly changed.

As this chart from professor Leonard Burman, a former economist at Treasury and the Congressional Budget Office, shows, there is no provable correlation between changes in the capital gains tax rate and economic growth:

[go to source for chart, I don't know how to make it smaller in a post)

That chart, Burman told Congress, “should dispel the notion that capital gains taxes are a very important factor in the health of the economy. Cutting capital gains taxes will not turbocharge the economy and raising them would not usher in a depression.” Other economists came to similar findings. The Tax Policy Center found no correlation between the rate and economic growth over the last 50 years, and the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod found that “there is no evidence that links aggregate economic performance to capital gains tax rates.”

Romney has cratered on InTrade - he's down to a 25% chance to win. His share price has fallen by 40% there in the last two weeks.

Cycloptichorn

In an Associated Press article from earlier this month, national affairs writer Jesse Washington posed the question, "Does racial bias fuel Obama foes?" "The question of whether race fuels opposition to President Barack Obama has become one of the most divisive topics of the election," Washington continued. "It is sowing anger and frustration among conservatives who are labeled racist simply for opposing Obama's policies and liberals who see no other explanation for such deep dislike of the president."

It's impossible to believe that race is fueling every so-called "Obama foe," some of whom are black themselves, and many of whom certainly just don't like the president's policies, regardless of his race. Even some people who vociferously dislike Mitt Romney are finding themselves unable to cast a ballot for Obama because of all the innocent blood drawn under his command. That said, if conservatives are finding themselves angered over the accusations that there are in their ranks a number of outspoken racists, perhaps they should direct that anger toward the outspoken racists in their ranks.

Here is an abridged list of some of the most prominent racist attacks on Obama in the last year (several have come in the last few weeks). Note that these are just the ones the press found out about, and then ask yourself: "Might race be fueling some of the opposition to President Obama?"

1. Using a terrible Clint Eastwood bit as a launching pad, "chair lynchings" have become a minor trend. Chastised for the racial connotations of stringing up a black man's effigy in his front yard, one Texas man replied, "I don't really give a damn whether it disturbs you or not," Johnson reportedly told Haenschen. "You can take [your concerns] and go straight to hell and take Obama with you. I don't give a ****."

While Mitt Romney relies heavily on massive amounts of cash held by the Republican Party and interest groups, Obama has more funds in his own campaign coffers. That allows him to make decisions about where and how to spend the money and to take better advantage of discounted ad rates, which candidates receive under federal law.

In one Ohio ad buy slated to run just before the election, for example, Obama is paying $125 for a spot that is costing a conservative super PAC $900.

They feel that the White House somehow belongs to their party and any Democrat is in for non cooperation.

Because our politics don’t necessarily have anything to do with our beliefs. Politics, and presidential politics particularly, are instead dictated by nodes of sympathetic inclination. My note: I like this description.
Nothing else can explain the bizarre and historically unprecedented phenomenon of evangelical Christian voters willing to support a candidate whose religious beliefs are a product of one of the most successful, and recent, heresies to emerge from within Christianity. Conservative Christian “values voters” are supposed to be citizens for whom religious faith is an unbreakable ballast, the moral line that shall never be crossed. How, then, can they in good conscience vote for Mitt Romney, whose church rejects two thousand years of orthodox Christian thought?
Barack Obama, meanwhile, despite the Right’s relentless caricature of him as a secular Islamist Marxist racist and foreign-born Chicago community organizer, took a grave step beyond the previous administration’s extrajudicial war on terror policies. For the first time in American history, an American president sanctioned the assassination of American citizens merely suspected of terrorism. How can this policy not horrify and trouble self-described liberals? How can it not shatter their trust in President Obama? If George W. Bush had signed off on such an assassination program, there would have been talk of war crimes, impeachment, and constitutional degradation. There has been some such talk on the Left, to be sure, just as some conservative Christians are troubled by Romney’s faith, but not nearly as much or as many as one would think.