Politics and The Almighty Buck

Here's an interview with Gore that seems blandly catering to Slashdot readers. Billionaires for Bush or Gore makes a good point. Open Secrets is tracking campaign donations. Last up is a really good article about Dick Cheney, The Only Hope which trashes lots of candidates. Also I've attached a note about politics story submissions on politics between now and the election.

• Don't bother submitting candidates official websites. They essentially are just press releases spouting bland dogma. We want some real content (although you should read Al Gore's "Open Source Website" bit and laugh your ass if you missed it when we posted it on slashdot nearly a year ago).
• We're trying to be impartial, but Nader's supporters don't seem to submit much more then links to the official website, and Bush supporters are nearly silent. We want a diverse story selection here, but a lot of folks would rather bitch in the comments that we're oppressing them then take 3 seconds to submit a story.
• There's lots of good stuff going on in these stories, but I'm sure gonna be happier when the election is over and the flames can stop. I suck, I know. Slashdot is trying to keep you down. I know. Of course I'm trying to force my political viewpoints on everyone (as I've said before I hate all the candidates, but I hate GWB most of all, so I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate). Fortunately this is is America, and I'm entitled to believe this. And you may believe whatever you want as well! And none of us are evil or wrong: we just have different political beliefs. And since this is Slashdot, we can talk about these differences in a mature manner: debate the issues. Try to make rational convincing arguments to back up what we believe, and perhaps try to convince others. Or we could bicker and fight and complain and flame about the various shadow organizations and conspirators trying to keep whatever viewpoint you have down. Its really your choice.
• And stop emailing me stories! Use the submissions form!

Comments

Arghghghgh!

[OlympicSponsor]

I know this is a flame, but I just can't help it: "its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate.

You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans!
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.

Re:Arghghghgh!

[Jason W]

This is not a flame. This is me trying to debunk CT's obviously wrong view of politics. :)

He'll bitch to the end of time about how stupid Bush is and how Gore's policies suck, but what does he do about it? And guess what? When the 2004 election rolls around, he won't be able to say crap about any candidate without being hypocritical, because its his own damn fault there isn't a third party candidate with as much funding. (Ok, I'm giving CT too much credit for the election results, but his vote is worth more than mine since he lives in Michigan).

Yeah, democracy is great. It lets you say what you want to say, and hopefully get something done. This is worth than voter apathy, its voter insincerity. Not only do you not get what you really want, you make the wrong impression with your vote, the impression that you want Gore to win. As much as you may applaud Nader and put Gore and Bush down, in the end only your vote counts.

And when you say that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, that just fuzzy math. Do you think of the Nader supporters more were originally Democratic or Republican supporters? Who knows? From a statistical point of view (and realistic pov too), its 50-50. So if everyone voted for who they really wanted, a vote for Nader would be a vote for Nader.

There is too much politics in government. We don't need politics in the way we vote!

Dear Taco

[festers]

so I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate

Is Gore who you really think is the best candidate? If so, by all means vote for him. But don't give me that crap about wasting a vote. The only vote wasted is the one for a candidate you don't think is best. How many times does this cliche need to be repeated until you get in into your thick, geek skull?


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Moore's Law or Gore's Law?

[Taliesin]

What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power, and yet the throughput capacity was hardly changing at all.

Gore seems to come dangerously close to asserting that he essentially came up with Moore's Law before Gordon Moore.

BTW, the article does say some good things about Bush compared to Gore, such as:

Bush also supported the controversial exportation of cryptographic technology, an issue on which Gore dragged his feet. In addition, Bush took a George père-type "Read my lips: no new taxes" stand on e-commerce and ISPs, whereas Gore supports the current moratorium but has indicated that Net taxes are inevitable.

And strictly anti-Gore fodder:

But Gore has a less consistent record on the kinds of free-speech issues that are important to many in the online community... Gore supported what became known as CDA 2, the Child Online Protection Act, a bill that First Amendment advocates find objectionable because it attempts to regulate speech on the Net.

Keep that in mind if you think Gore "gets" all technology issues better than Bush.

Stance on Net Issues

[envisionary]

Typically Bush stances have been modded down (but we won't get into that). On to the point, Bush seems to take a very laissez faire approach to how the government should approach the internet, which is good.

Governor Bush recognizes that our new economy is driven by the hard work and creativity of men and women in the private sector -- and not by Government bureaucrats.

I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is. Unfortunately he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas, which doesn't necessarily agree with another point of his to raise education in order to allow US citizens to meet the demand.

The high tech industry is in great need of highly skilled workers. Too many Americans are unable to fill these jobs because they lack the necessary skills.

However overall (apologies for a link to a homepage), he seems to be very technology oriented especially from what I saw in the last debate, as opposed to Gore that proposed filtering 95% of content at the ISP end.

However, I'm all about exploring both sides of the issues so to present both sides.
Warning: The last link is a slow load...