Jim (Con't): Let's get started with a shift that took place last week. Tuesday, Stan wrote "She lost me" and he's not supporting Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate any more. Stan?
Stan: I'm tired of her. Betty's done a good job, since last year, of noting that the Green Party has a lot to prove after two embarrassing presidential runs in a row. Cynthia McKinney can call out Barack all she wants today -- and did during the assault on Libya -- but she's got blood on her hands. She and Rosa Clemente refused to call out Barack in 2008 when they supposedly ran against him. They called out John McCain that year. And 2004 was the 'safe state' strategy. Where the Greens wanted your vote -- if you lived in a safe state!
Jim: Betty, let me bring you in since Stan's mentioning you.
Betty: Sure.Stan's summary is correct. And I've stated I'd bail on Jill's campaign if it started feeling fishy. I'm not there yet but I'm close. She's about to lose me as well. I don't see any taking on of Barack Obama. If you're running for president and you're serious about it, you call out the sitting president. You use that person to contrast and compare your campaign with. But Jill's apparently just another faux Green. Like I said, I'm close to ditching the campaign.
Jim: And you're absentee voting.
Betty: Right because I'll be at my folks on election day. A family celebration is around that date. So Jill better get it together real quick or I'll be doing what Stan's doing.
Jim: Stan, that is?
Stan: I'm voting Romney-Ryan. That's my protest vote. I want Barack called out for what he's done. That should be coming from Jill Stein. It's not. With all he's done, she can't say a damn thing. So I'll grab Romney-Ryan.
Jim: There is Gary Johnson. And he is a strong critic.
Stan: He is. But I'm not even sure he's on the ballot in my state and I feel like I've wasted enough time on third parties with Jill Stein's crap.
Jim: Jess and Ann, you're Greens. What do you think of that?
Jess: I understand Stan's frustration. I'll be honest, I'm there too in terms of about to ditch Jill. For the same reasons. What I'll do, if I don't vote for Jill, is just not vote in the presidential race. But I understand Stan's protest vote and have no problem with it.
Ann: It comes down to whether or not Jill's going to do a damn thing. She most likely will not make it into the White House. So she needs to be fighting right now the way she would for four years if she was in the White House. Her blog or campaign site or whatever the f**k -- yeah, I'm not pleased either -- is run by morons who created this problem for her about three weeks ago. Jess and I were talking about it before.
Jess: Right. Before the campaign started posting those attacks on Romney and Ryan, Ann and I were already asking each other, "Where's the criticism of Barack?" It's become muted as the election loomed closer. And we know too well the fake out that the Green Party does. So we were talking about it and then the campaign's website began being used to attack Mitt Romney and promote Barack Obama. I'm still waiting for criticism of Barack.
Jim: Is anyone able to say firmly that they will vote for Jill Stein come election day?
Trina: I will. She's from my state. Her campaign's crap, the website and I'm really honestly appalled that they want to promote "Hey, we're women! Girl Power!" while they let a man run the website. There are no women who can do that job? And I blame that man for that crap going up at the website. I do that because I've seen her other campaigns. That's not me saying, "Stan, vote Jill!" I respect Stan's desire to lodge a protest vote, a serious one. And for him, that means voting for Mitt Romney. I respect that. I would respect him if he was voting for Romney because he believed in Romney's programs. Stan's not making a snap decision. He's carefully thought out how he wants to use his vote.
Ruth: And this is the kind of voting, please remember, that I.F. Stone recommended this sort of thing. I agree that it is Stan's vote and he should use it as he wants. My only regret is that this is another presidential election and it would have been nice if we had a Republican in the mix for these roundtables.
Jim: True. Libya. Senator Lindsay Graham and House Representative Darrell Issa made the morning talk shows. The comparison is being made of the lies from Barack to the ones from Bush. Sam Stein (Huffington Post) huffs, "There are problems with all of these points. The Obama administration has never said al Qaeda was defeated, the United States commitment to Libya is tiny compared to the amount of resources Bush devoted to Iraq and the pretenses for getting involved in each scenario were vastly different."
Elaine: Sam Stein is an idiot. Barack has given one speech after another in the last six weeks alone boasting that al Qaeda is on the run. It's exactly that sort of crap that ensures Huffington Post will never be taken seriously as a news outlet.
Wally: I really can't believe how the Libya issue has been so minimized by the press. 4 dead Americans doesn't appear to mean much. I guess we need to get Barack getting blown in Benghazi for the press to be outraged.
Marcia: Amen to that. It really is disturbing to watch this nonsense and grasp that the press either ignores the hearing last week or offers minor details from it.
Ty: I would argue that the video footage, fifty minutes of the attack, denying that video, keeping it from the American people, keeping it from Congress, goes to the lies the administration told and the cover up that continues.
Kat: Ava, C.I., Wally and I were at that hearing and to be at that hearing and then catch the press on it it was to be appalled. The video, the fact that the State Dept.'s Patrick Kennedy was telling Congressional staffers September 12th that it was a terrorist attack. Or the idiots who want to discredit the critiques by pointing to Eric Nordstrom's prepared remarks.
Wally: Right. That had to go through the State Dept. That is why it is so different from his remarks under oath. And no one wants to talk about how the State Dept. hit the roof when Nordstrom was talking to Congress and ordered him to stop talking to Congress, to stop answering their questions, to stop returning their calls.
Mike: Like Libya, Iraq's out of the media loop.
Jim: Thank you for the transition.
Mike: Your welcome. I searched in vain for the English language report on how Nouri's floating the idea of dissolving the Parliament. I found none. There's so much that's being ignored and it's why Joe Biden was able to lie in the debate last week about Iraq.
Rebecca: Right, claiming he was against the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War. That was ridiculous. But notice how there's no rush to ridicule him for lying. And he lied. In so many ways.
Mike: I just thought he was out of control. I thought he was rude and combative and I felt like he was on steroids and having some roid rage or something.
Jim: Anyone else bothered by Biden's debate performance?
Isaiah: I would agree with Mike's comments and with the ones Tom Brokaw made about how Biden shouldn't be grinning and chuckling while talking about Iran and nukes. He just seemed really disconnected from what was being discussed.
Jim: Cedric?
Cedric: I wish he would have calmed down a bit. I know he had to be out there because Barack refused to be but I do think he over did it.
Jim: Okay and there are three takes on Biden's debate performance. We're closing on that. Dona, Ava and C.I. didn't speak and have indicated they're okay with that. This is a rush transcript.