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Submit and Moderate Questions for Bush and Kerry
We're teaming up with the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate to ask the two major party candidates "the 12 previously unasked questions that most concern young Americans." This is different from the usual Slashdot interview because we're asking you to submit questions through the New Voters Project site instead of as comments attached to this post. Next week you'll have a chance to help select questions for the candidates from among the top 50 asked by everyone -- not just Slashdot readers -- by first winnowing those down to 20 through the Slashdot moderation system, then by voting on the "final 12" displayed on the New Voters Project site. On October 12 we'll post the answers, and on October 19 we'll post candidate-supplied rebuttals.
Note that the idea here is to solicit questions specifically from voters 18 - 35, because this age group tends to vote less than older Americans, plus questions from people 13 - 17 who will be voters before long. But the question selection process is not age-restricted, and it's where your comments and moderation become most important, because one great hope here is to avoid asking questions the candidates have heard (and answered) over and over.
The other question-selecting moderators are groups like Youth Vote Coalition, Earth Day Network, Rock The Vote, Declare Yourself, and 18to35.org, plus lead moderator Farai Chideya.
Anthony Tedesco, founder of the Presidential Youth Debates, has been doing this since 1996. 2004 is the first time an entire online community has participated in the moderation process. It's a logical evolution of the group-questions idea, and Slashdot is the obvious community to choose not only because of the wide range of political views held by Slashdot readers but also because the primary Presidential Youth Debates tech guy, Dan Collis Puro (AKA Hero Zzyzzx), is a Slashdot member himself (and would be happy if you volunteer to help work on their all-FOSS Web site).
Anyway, this is an interesting experiment. Ask your questions, prepare to moderate and comment next week, and to read the candidates' answers and rebuttals when we post them next month.
The other question-selecting moderators are groups like Youth Vote Coalition, Earth Day Network, Rock The Vote, Declare Yourself, and 18to35.org, plus lead moderator Farai Chideya.
Anthony Tedesco, founder of the Presidential Youth Debates, has been doing this since 1996. 2004 is the first time an entire online community has participated in the moderation process. It's a logical evolution of the group-questions idea, and Slashdot is the obvious community to choose not only because of the wide range of political views held by Slashdot readers but also because the primary Presidential Youth Debates tech guy, Dan Collis Puro (AKA Hero Zzyzzx), is a Slashdot member himself (and would be happy if you volunteer to help work on their all-FOSS Web site).
Anyway, this is an interesting experiment. Ask your questions, prepare to moderate and comment next week, and to read the candidates' answers and rebuttals when we post them next month.
Mr. President, Do you believe the government should decide who should marry who?
You have said that recent CIA estimates of the instability and dire situation in Iraq represent the CIA "just guessing." Since you are choosing to disregard the intelligence community's considered assessment of the situation, on what basis do you formulate your contrary assessment of the situation in Iraq?
What is the biggest mistake you made in the last four years? What were the negative repercussions of that mistake and what have you done to fix it?
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R .163:
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:S.8 9:
Hmmm.
Do you think that the two-party system is a good thing for America? Would you support voting reforms (instant-runoff, approval voting, etc.) that would make third-party candidates more viable?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Mr. President, Senator Kerry, why should Michael Badnarik, David Cobb, Michael Peroutka and Ralph Nader be excluded from the Presidential debates? After all, Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, John Edwards, etc. were all included in the primary debates.
-moitz-
Screw 'em...who cares what anyone thinks.
I'd like to ask both candidates: 1. Do you think it's right for China to have the "Most Favored Nation" status in foreign trade, even though they continually violate people's human rights. and 2. Do you fair trade is fair to the American worker when people overseas can live on less than half the money Americans need to survive here, and companies overseas have no labor laws. Isn't "Fair Trade" as it is championed today just an excuse for US businesses to get cheap, powerless labor?
But what is the difference between a man marrying a woman, a man marrying a man, and a woman marrying a woman? What real difference is there?
We're not talking about polygamy here, or animal husbandry - just the union of two people in love. Where does the government get off trying to interfere with that?
seriouslyexcited.net
How about the now century-plus old campaign to convince Americans there are only two choices?
They've screwed up the election process to make it extremely difficult to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Once upon a time, it was a write in ballot, not multiple choice.
After Perot appeared on the presidential debates, their media buddies helped them screw with those rules to make it virtually impossible for that to happen again.
For that matter, why are there no third parties in this "Youth Debate"? I'll tell you why, the last thing we want to do is have the youth find out that it doesn't have to be a two party system. Young minds are predetermined to see things in black and white anyways.
Go ahead slashdot, help brainwash another generation into believing in this complete perversion of representative democracy.
Of course, they're the same people with the same agenda. All these people screeching "We have to get rid of Bush! Vote Kerry because third party votes are wasted". Gah.
Kerry isn't going to end the war in Iraq, repeal PATRIOT, lower taxes, allow same-sex marraige, he's not going to do anything to change the status quo.
Presidential politics are purely smear campaigns, because there's no issue that they actually differ on significantly.
Futurama:
Jack Johnson "I say my opponents plan goes too far!"
John Jackson "And I say my opponents plan doesn't go too far enough!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I bet you will not have one reason that holds up to the constitution.
No shit. That's why they're trying to amend it.
How do you define victory in the war against terror?
Will this be like the war against drugs which seems to be perpetual and allow the government to fight both sides (Ollie North wasn't exchanging arms for jelly beans, was he)?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm sorry to say that the war isn't over
That's because we never officially started a war. Congress and the President conspired to take on a military action that they call a "war" when it suits them, but never to actually produce a declaration of war, a cessation of war, or any other legitimate status. Who wants the formality of Articles of War (as the Constitution requires) when a blank-check, do-what-you-want, whenever-you-want permission slip will do just as well? Especially when people might then be interested to see an official end of wartime status, so the people and courts know when to resume the normal order of protecting those inconvenient things like civil liberties?
"Inter Arma Silent Leges (In times of War, the Law is Silent)."
"We are at war with Eurasia, and we have always been at war with Eurasia."
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First of all, the government doesn't "prevent" marriage. People have marriage ceremonies without the government's consent, and it doesn't matter. The question is (a) should government recognize marriage, and (b) in what cases should government recognize marriage.
If marriage is viewed as an act of love, then government has not reason for involvement whatsoever. However, if you view marriage as the foundation platform for a family, then that view changes, for several reasons:
1) Stronger families mean that there is less need of government intervention in the general case. Strong families have less need of governance.
2) When children enter the picture, you have a lot of issues surrounding care, custody, etc., all for a child which has no real input into the matter.
When marriage is viewed as a foundation for a family, then there are legal reasons for the government to recognize or not recognize certain marriages (but again, legal recognition of marriage is not equivalent with marriage).
On a different topic, one could also point out the absurdity of calling anything between same-sex partners "marriage". Even in the past when same-sex relationships were viewed as being better than man-woman relationships, same-sex relationships were not considered, even for a second, marriage. Why? Because marriage is more about family than it is about affections.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Do you feel that all electronic voting machines in use in the United States should produce a verifiable paper record?
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
There are some things that are more important than others not because of their immedieate consequences, but because of the CONCEPTS behind them. I agree that for the welfare of the average American, marriage reform won't make much of difference any time soon.
The problem is that this is a slippery slope that we are in the process of sliding down and if we don't grab a branch soon we're gonna hit the bottom fast. If the government can tell me what marriage is about then it's not a huge leap to assume that it can tell me what a "friendship" is. After all, friendship could be a legally viable term: for instance, "friends" are the only people, along with "immediete family" that can come over to watch a movie before I'm illegally displaying it in my house.
Soon I can't be friends with someone officially unless I've known them for 3 months (and see them at least an average of once every 2 weeks with no more than a 4 week break). Maybe friends are people that agree with you... so you, legally speaking, can't have any outside of your political party.
Yeah, it seems pretty silly to me too, but then again so does the government telling me what marriage is.
If gay people are so desperate to be declared "normal" by emulating the rites and tradition of the patriarchal society that they reject by their lifestyle choice, then they should go see a mental health specialist instead of trying to have laws change to accomodate their insecurities.
Most gay couples I know just want the same legal guarantees as different-sex couples. Such as, if you have lived with your partner in a flat for 20 years and he dies, you don't want to get kicked out of the appartment overnight.
Or, if your partner had an accident and is in intensive care, you don't want to be told by hospital personnel that you can't see him because you are "not family". And that you can't make any decisions on his behalf when he's unconscious, and instead his parents get to make decisions (who maybe have deserted him 20 years ago because he found out he's gay).
Etc, etc.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Actually, your 'predictable copout,' is exactly WHY liberals have introduced the Draft. Today's all volunteer army is disporportionately made up of the lower income classes. The idea was to get a draft with fewer loopholes, so that *everyone's* kids would be at risk. It really has little to do with chilren of liberals vs children of conservatives. It has to do with putting some risk in it for the higher-income classes, when they start beating the War Drums. In that light, you can see why the Black caucus is behind the bill. Others get the idea to go to war, but a disporportionate number of Blacks pay the ultimate price.
OTOH, military service is certainly a way for lower income people to bootstrap their way into a better economic class.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Come play Moral Decay!
I'm currently enrolled in College, and I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by John F. Kennedy Jr, nephew of President Kennedy. Most of what he said was that President Bush is the worst president the United States have ever had for the environment. He also said that in a real free market companies do NOT pollute, and cited the case of 1100 coal burning plants to produce electricity which produce about 60% of the mercury contaminating the US's waterways today.
Mr. President, you say you share family values. In my family, one of the aspects my parents taught me was to not leave a mess behind me, and also how to take care of the environment. Shouldn't that be part of your plans too? Or do you favor the coal plants more because they donated over $100 million to your campaign? Also, according to Mr. Kennedy's lecture, the mercury contamination in water will be responsible for up to 30,000 deaths a year. That's more deaths than the ones that happened in the Twin Towers on sept. 11th! WHY are you letting American citizens die? And why do you appoint people that fake the numbers when it comes to science? Wouldn't the space shuttle Columbia disaster be related to your negligence in appointing people knowledgeable in critical positions?
Mr. Kerry, what will you do to support the environment? Will you re-open the lawsuits that our President has closed against the coal burning plants? Will you listen to the scientific community in general instead of a selected few that tell you what you want to hear instead of the truth?
Yes, I am a supporter of John Kerry in this campaign, but to be frank it is more because I fear President Bush more than Senator Kerry.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.