Mitt Romney said that Obama won because he gave gifts to Hispanics, college students, gays, and single women.  Of course that would be like saying that the incumbent should always win because he is always able to use policies to buy votes.  In this case Obama was doing what he had promised.  If one believes that college students should not get financial aid or be covered under their parents' health insurance, they can vote against him.  It is like the Republicans promise tax breaks.  Every time the government gives a tax exemption to a corporation, it is just like writing a welfare check. Is that a gift to buy votes?  Why do you think the wealthy are willing to back the Republicans?  It is why defense contractors back the Congressmen on defense budget committee.  I don't think that Romney really understands the country and that is the main reason he and the Republicans lost.

With the economy not recovering fast enough, Romney and the Republicans should have won big.  But instead of focusing on the slowness of the recovery, they blamed immigrants and unions etc. for the problems of the country.  They also focused on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, issues that they cannot win overall.  Regardless of whether you believe that illegal immigrants are a net gain or net loss to the economy, you cannot say that they had ANYTHING to do do with the financial market collapse. But Romney moved way to the right on immigration during the primary and even though he tried to come back to the middle, it was too late.  It also seems insincere.  With the demographic changing, if Romney and the Republicans don't learn from this, it would be difficult for them to win in the future.

Well, it is 2 days left.  Time for my forecast.  It is no secret that there are only a few states that are up for grabs.  They are:  Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Iowa.  Out of these I will say that Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are going to go to Obama.  This will leave Obama with 247 votes needing 23 more.  I will give Florida and Virginia to Romney giving him 248.  So this leaves Ohio with 18, Colorado with 9 Nevada and Iowa with 6 each and New Hampshire with 4.  I predict that Obama will sweep these states and finish with 290.  So it is possible for Obama to win without winning Florida or Ohio (although not very likely).  But Romney must sweep these two and add New Hampshire to his column to win. Does my math look correct?  What is your prediction?

I think Obama again defeated Romney in today's debate.  I think this was Romney's weakest debate of the three.  He basically agreed with Obama on most of his foreign policies.  In an attempt to move more to the middle he now tries to paint himself as a peace maker!  He now agrees with the sanction on Iran, with military action only a last resort.  He agrees that we should be out of Afghanistan by 2014.  One commentator actually said that McGovern has come back to life in the form of Romney.  Obama rightly points out that Romney kept changing his mind.  I think the Republican conservative base must be shocked by what Romney said tonight.

I don't like to use one issue to decide on a candidate but Romney said something that show how much understanding he lacks on foreign affairs.  He said that Iran is our greatest national security threat. This is totally absurd.  If and when Iran actually gets nuclear weapons, it will still has lot less bombs than about 8 other countries in the world.  In truth no nation will attack the U.S. because it know it will be destroyed.  Russia is the only one that can destroy us but even they will die as a result.  So no nation will try to use nuclear weapons against us.  Even if you are trying to pander to Israel, it is still irresponsible to say Iran is our greatest risk.  I am surprised that no commentator on CNN called him out on it.  Obama said terrorism is our biggest threat.  It is a much better answer but still not right in my opinion.  I think cyber attack is the greatest unless you consider that a type of terrorism.  Cyber attack does not require a strong nation or lots of people.  Cyber attack can stop our traffic, communications, electric grid, financial system, even our water supply.  So I think greater resources need to be spent on preventing this.

Overall grades for the 3 debates:  Romney:  B+ B C+   Obama:  C- A- A-

Tomorrow is the big debate.  Due to the closeness of the race, it can have an effect on the outcome of the election.  But I don't think there will be a big swing like it did with first debate.  The first one established Romney as a solid candidate and unless he really bombs in the second, he will still be in better shape than 3 weeks ago.  Obama must stop the bleeding but I doubt he can regain the lead he had even if he beats Romney this time.  Obama already has 4 years of record so most people have already made up their mind about him.  So I think this debate can move the polls only 1 or 2 points either way, not 5or 6 points like last time.  Given the closeness of the race though, 1 or 2 points maybe significant come November.

Romney is obviously trying to be more centrist as the election gets near.  But one thing Obama can point out is that there are several advisers from the Bush era that Romney is using in foreign policies.  Among them are neocons that advised Bush in nation building and spreading "democracy".  While I don't think Romney is agreeing with these people and would get us into war like in Iraq, the fact that he is listening to them is dangerous enough.  This should be pointed out by Obama.  One can argue about which economic policy is better, but the bottom line is Iraq cost us thousands of lives and one trillion dollars.  These neocons are the people we certainly should not listen to.

I have not been writing because I have been away, not because of the Obama debate debacle.  So today we have the vp debate.  I think it was a draw.  Both Biden and Ryan did what they were supposed to do:  Biden attacking and Ryan showing that he is much more capable than Palin four years ago.  The vp debates rarely have any significance on the election and given the draw today, this one certainly would not make any difference.  How Obama responds in the next two debates will go a long way in determining who wins this close race.

I think it is easier to be the challenger in these debates because one can always attack the policies of the incumbent.  Like the Middle East policies.  The region is a mess and nobody can possibly make things look good out there.  The challenger can say things like being tougher on Iran.  But there is nothing tougher that can be done short of waging war.  When pressed about what would be his criteria to go to war, Ryan says only if the security risks of the country is a stake.  Well, I don't see how Iran having nuclear weapons is of security risks to the U.S.  Anyone who thinks that Iran will wage nuclear war against the U.S. is crazy.  I think that if Romney/Ryan are elected, there will be a greater chance that we will preemptively attack Iran and I think that will be a grave error.

The opening skit on Saturday Night Live made fun of the presidential election. Mainly it is about Obama feeling confident despite the fact that he should be in big trouble. His secret weapon is Mitt Romney who keeps getting himself into trouble. This actually is close to real life. There were great opportunities for Romney to gain ground this past week. The spat between Obama and Netanyahu, the crisis in the Middle East and the Chicago teachers strike are all gold mines that Romney should have exploited. Instead he makes a stupid statement about the crisis, and failed to attack more vigorously on the other two. Now he is caught on camera disparaging 47% of the population saying that they don't pay taxes and are dependent on government hand outs. Obviously this will be used by the Obama team to show that Romney is only for rich people and that he despises half of the population. Even if this does not hurt Romney directly, it will put him on the defense for a while and make it again difficult to attack Obama where he is most vulnerable, the economy.

Romney's attack on Obama as the violence unfold in Egypt and Libya is totally wrong. The statement put out by the U.S. embassy in Egypt was before the violence started. It was meant to defuse a dangerous situation. Romney claimed that the statement was made after the attack started and it showed U.S. weakness. The timeline put out by CNN showed that was not the case but Romney refused to back down. Regardless, it shows lack of understanding of the world. It is like a hostage situation. The police can say all they want about how powerful they are but that will not stop the violence or save the hostages. It is better to try to defuse the situation. This is not weakness but intelligence. Remember Bush apologized for the spy plane incident in China. Would it have done any good if the U.S. had threatened China? Would Romney have criticized Bush for being weak?

There will always be bad guys. How many ordinary people will follow the extremists will depend on how many openings we give them. A film making fun of Mohammad is just perfect for the bad guys. The film has been around for a couple of months but nobody paid attention until right before 9/11 when an Egypt extremist brought it up and it goes viral. Obviously this was an opportunity for them to cause trouble on 9/11. Just like the preacher who threatened to burn the koran awhile back, the makers of this film are just helping the enemy recruit more followers.

Just finished watching Obama's speech. It was great delivery as usual but short on substance. There was talk that he will be more specific after the Republican had nothing specific to say last week. This is a little disappointment for me and independent voters on the fence. I think both sides are afraid that anything specific will immediately be attacked by the other side. It is interesting to me that both sides gave a nod to Bowles-Simpson in their conventions but both sides had rejected it earlier. I think Obama should have promised to enact Bowles-Simpson which is very popular among independents. I think that is one thing specific about taxes, entitlements and deficits that would not become an instant target for the other side to shoot at.

The Democrats made a mess of their platform with God and Jerusalem. I thought that the Republican had the more vulnerable platform particularly with the extreme view on abortion. But leave it to the Democrats to not be able to copy the previous platform and cannot do a voice vote correctly.

I think Ann Romney and Michelle Obama fought to a draw. Biden, I thought was slightly better than Ryan. Also Castro is a rising star and his youthful and fit look trump Chris Christie. I know looks are unfair but Obama rode his keynote speech to eventual presidential nomination. Castro can well do the same in about 12 years. Obama beats Romney because of better deliverance but not in substance. So overall in head to head the Democrats win slightly in my opinion but if someone calls it a draw I will not argue.

Of course the Democrats had a trump card the Republicans did not have: Bill Clinton. Is there any more doubt that Clinton is the best American politician since Kennedy? He is one guy who can make deep political analysis enjoyable to listen to for nearly an hour. I don't think that the Democrats and Obama can possibly ask a better speech from Clinton or anyone else. If Obama gets reelected, he owes Bill a great deal. If Biden and Hillary run against each other in 2016, Obama may have to back Hillary because his debt to Bill.

So what is the result of these two weeks. As I said before, there are only 6-7% undecided and it would take a lot to move the needle. Certainly the Democrats did not lose ground in these two weeks. I think if the job report is bad tomorrow, then it is even. If the job report is better than expected tomorrow then the Democrats get 2 point bump, mostly due to Clinton's effort. This may not sound significant and may not even show up due to margin of error of polls but it would be a couple of points that Romney would have to make up with the debates. But even in this best scenario for the Democrats, it will still go down to the wire.

So the Republican convention is now over. I have not seen any new polls out yet, so it is hard to say what effect the convention had on the voters. Most of the time a convention gives its candidate a boost for a short period of time. I would expect that to be the case of here and then after the Democratic convention we will probably be at the same level again. This is going down to the wire for sure!

I think Ann Romney did her job the best among the speakers. She was supposed to make Mitt more likeable and I think she did that. Chris Christie fired away as expected but I don't think he did a good job for Romney. First of all he spent most of the first half of his speech talking about himself as if he is angling for 2016 already. After Ann had talked about love, Christie went on about wanting respect rather that love. This kind of cancel each other on Tuesday. Paul Ryan fired up the base and acted as the pit bull as expected. He had lots of inaccuracies as pointed out by neutral pundits such as Medicare cut backs and unemployment rate. So overall I think he was only B or B+ as best. Romney did all right but did not hit a home run as the Republicans claimed. He had nothing specific to say and I think he wasted time in the beginning introducing himself which others, especially Ann, had done for him already. He also started late and ran late thanks to Clint Eastwood.

Speaking of Eastwood, how did he aged so fast? This can't be the Dirty Harry we used to love! His effort of being a comedian was as successful as Jackie Chan would have trying to do romance. Was it not 6 months or so ago that Republicans were complaining that Eastwood was doing a commercial for Obama on the Super Bowl? Now we can see how paranoid they are given Eastwood is such a staunch conservative. On the other hand, if you are a conspiracy theorist, you may say that Eastwood did it on purpose to screw up Romney's big night. In that case, you would also have to say that the Romney campaign was not very good in not screening Eastwood to make sure he is not Dirty!

Now about minorities in the party. They did wheel out Rubio and Rice. I missed their speeches. I will assume they did well. But Rubio can only help with the Cuban vote which Romney already has. As I said before, he would not help with other Latinos, especially Mexicans who are different politically than Cubans. Before Rice spoke, a Republican analyst on CNN said that Rice proves to the country that the Republicans are not all white country club people. Well, Rice just got into Augusta, her expertise is Russian history, she played tennis and the piano, she was also a figure skater. I don't know if you can get any more white country club than her!

The convention is not just speeches. One of the most important thing that is done is voting for a party platform. This seems to be hidden out of sight. Nobody talked about it on tv. A reporter from the local paper (not LA Times) wrote about some of it. I don't have time to check if all of these are true but some are obviously true. Like against abortion without exception even in case of rape or save the life of the mother, same stand as Todd Akin. Some members have proudly call this the most conservative platform in history. It is so out of touch with majority of Americans that the Republican national chairman had to say that this is the party platform, not Romney's platform. This makes it important to ask: what parts of the platform is Romney against? Voters have the right to know? This should be asked by the Democrats next week. Also should be asked: Having said what he did not like about Obama's policies, what policies of Bush does Romney like or dislike?

Now it is the Democrats' turn. I am sure I will find things to criticize next week. On thing I can predict: that they will not send out an aging Hollywood star to speak without an approved script.

Tomorrow is the start of the Republican convention. So I like to talk about one big issue the democrats and republicans are fighting over. Taxes. To me the American tax system is terrible. The tax code is thousands of pages long and is criticized by both sides. Yet nobody really want to make it simple because it is the tax laws, loopholes and exceptions to the tax laws that give politicians the power. By making and amending laws and creating loopholes, powerful politicians can help the people who support them. These complicated laws also keep big accounting firms and tax law attorneys in business. So if I am king I would make the following tax codes.

I would propose a flat tax maybe similar to the 16% Hong Kong has. There would be a line below which those people would not have to pay. Anything above that line everybody pays the same percentage. In order for this to work there can't be any deductions and nobody can write into law new deductions. There will be higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Th flat tax usually favors higher income earner. To offset that there should be no sales tax for "normal" priced products. For example a chair priced at $50 will not be taxed. But a $5000 couch would be taxed. Cars will be taxed according its mileage per gallon and sales price. A $20000 first car for a family will be taxed free. A gas guzzler or a Rolls Royce will be highly taxed. Putting money into the Cayman Islands or Swiss banks will be highly taxed as well. Sorry Mitt!

There are kinks that need to be worked out but you get the idea. Since I am not really the king, there is also 0% chance of something like this ever passing.