The rest of this post was great, but the losing weight analogy out the starting gate was freaking laugh out loud fun!  Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

You need to read Romney's lips - He told Obama several times that that was not the case about taxes.  It's a distorted Obama deception. 

@ItsWhatEyeKnow - Thanks, I try : )

@Randy7777 - Actually it's about 80% accurate, the only thing incorrect about it is that obama did what every politician today does, say what something will cost over 10 years.  It's no less dishonest than romney saying obama cut medicare by over 600 billion dollars (which is more than the annual cost of the entire program).

i thought it funny that Romney said, you put your money where your heart is because it made me think immediately of the millions Romney has hidden away in the Cayman Islands and in Swiss banks in order to avoid paying income taxes....the avoidance of paying income taxes....exactly what he's accused 47% of Americans of doing. 

last night Romney reminded me of Dan Quayle in a VP debate with Al Gore. with a smirk on his face Quayle insisted Gore had written something in Gore's book. Quayle went as far as to tell him the page number it was written on told Gore, "You should read your own book". back then the internet was not what it is today and there were no fact-checking organizations like we have today but by the time the debate was over press organizations got their hands on copies of Gore's book and found Quayle's claim was a total fabrication.  

@TheSutraDude - It made me think of the 3% he gives to charity and the 97% he spends on himself.

mmm...bacon.

@agnophilo -  Obama did not challenge Romney's statement last night about medicare.  The main difference between Obama and Romney on Medicare is who is going to take care of it.  Obama -Federal and Romney -States.  Romney wants to put the 600 billion dollars back into Medicare that Obama took out and put it in Obamacare.  (Obamacare - Federal)

@TheSutraDude - Romney reminded me of Reagan.  His soft voice and sometimes the Reagan head tilt. 

@agnophilo - ha! yes. and that reminds me of something else. before the debate Chris Matthews held a short mock debate in which former RNC chairman Michael Steele (a decent guy) played Romney and Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent Eugene Robinson played Obama. playing the debate host Matthews asked Steele about Romney's pro-Vietnam War stance. he asked how Romney could justify actively demonstrating for the war while exempting himself from the draft. it was a funny moment. Steele, a Romney advocate playing Romney in this mock debate answered his religion makes him a conscientious objector. Matthews laughed and asked what kind of religion is that? your religion says you can't fight in a war but the other guys can? 

btw, Romney mentioned Solendra again. Solendra was actually vetted by the Bush administration but probably because of the economic collapse the Bush administration didn't have time to push the go ahead through. instead it was left as an item on the to-do list for the incoming Obama administration. Obama's only mistake was to not spend the time and money to re-vet Solendra and to instead take the word of the Bush administration. 

@Randy7777 - i can see that but i'm guessing you think that's a good thing. Reagan's economic adviser who talked him into trickle-down economics apologized after the 2008 economic collapse, admitting he was wrong and trickle down did not work and did not bring about its intended result. Alan Greenspan also apologized. Romney and Ryan still believe in the economic policy and want to bring it back. 

@Randy7777 - Romney intends to cut the marginal tax rate by 20%.  

@TheSutraDude - The Reagan years were some of the greatest years for America for economic growth. I don't think you'll find too many people that thought otherwise. 

@flapper_femme_fatale - Yes - & Obama intends on increasing taxes.  If Obama gets his way I will be loosing a couple thousand dollars on taxes because of not repealing Bush's tax plan.  I don't make that much. 

@Randy7777 - [The Reagan years were some of the greatest years for America for economic growth.] 

Not really. There was a terrible recession that began during the second year of Reagan's first term that crippled the manufacturing sector and slowed entry-level and management job growth to one of the worst rates in modern American history. His economic policies also increased the federal debt as a percent of GDP by 11.3%, which was an exceptionally high rate over the last 100 years. Also, for middle and low income Americans, the Reagan years were pretty awful. Interest rates on everything from cars to mortgages were exceptionally high, making it difficult for many people to live/work where they wanted to, further limiting their employment opportunities. For instance, my medical school loan rates shot up by 9% after Reagan's first 3 years in office, which formed me to stay in-state for medical school instead of attending one of the more prestigious schools I was matched at; furthermore, the lowest interest rate I could find in a car in Texas during that period was 19%. Those are both strikingly bad. Lastly, his pro-deregulation rhetoric was the basis for the Federal Reserve's non-interventionalist policies that directly and primarily contributed to the financial collapse in 2007-2008, which will likely cripple job growth for at least a decade. Some of his specific economic policies were successful, but his broad economic ideology has proven to be one of the most damaging in modern American history.

The only modern president who presided over an economy that had almost across-the-board economic prosperity was Clinton, and his general economic ideology is virtually the exact opposite of Reagan's. If we are going to use any president's policies as a framework, it should be his, not Reagan's.

@complicatedlight - 

@UTRow1 - Reagan was once asked about the critism he was recieving.  He replied, "History will remember my record correctly"  I don't care how much you want to change history you can't.  The Reagan years were very economically successful.  It was a great time to be an American.  It was a great time to be in the military. 

Cut taxes, move in the direction of a balanced budget. That's the plan.  How do you get spending increases out of that?

@musterion99 - Except that's what was tried under Bush, continued under Obama and still sluggish job growth. It's a huge myth, and someone like Mark Cuban made the point that very few entrepreneurs even worry about what their tax burden would look like based on what they do; they just try and make the most successful business they can.

@musterion99 - You're like Obama who is destorting the facts.  Obama needs to run on something and quit running on destorting what his opponent is saying and blaming the past.

@Randy7777 - Was that comment meant for me or cmdr_keen?