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Social Sites Offer 'New' Way To Experience Presidential Debates
News.com notes that the social sites have been burning up in the wake of the debates, as users create more content than it's possible to follow. Facebook specifically set up an area for debate viewers to post messages and take surveys during the events. Some participants found it a bit worthless, and the article refers to the experience as 'information overload'. "No doubt, the political twitterers must've felt empowered to know their Soundboard comments were being beamed out to an audience of potentially millions of Facebook users, and, if plucked by ABC's designated Facebook-monitoring reporter on TV, millions of offline viewers as well. Still, it's a little unclear whether the comments will prove all that useful for campaigns looking to boost their candidates' standing."
facebook is (used to be?) mostly college students, eg, those who are old enough to vote.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Yes, I have heard stuff like this repeated a lot too. This may be true, but I do not think that it is all the politician's fault. I think it is partly the fact that the population of the USA was probably a fraction (~120 million) of what it is today. It is simply not reasonable to have any contact with any meaningful fraction of your electorate. I think the candidates DO, given their security and time limitations, make an effort to go out there and shake people's hands.
:p
Think about your state -- this is probably analogous to the USA quite a while ago. I have shaken my state governor's hand (I went to Boys' state) and got to talk to him a bit. I dated a girl from a small country in Europe, and she had met their president numerous times (and he knew her father by first name). It is partly just a function of the US becoming very large that this is not possible.
P.S. Back when Slashdot was starting, me and 'Taco were really tight, PM'ing every night, but now he doesn't even answer the emails I send to him...
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
I think it is partly the fact that the population of the USA was probably a fraction (~120 million) of what it is today. It is simply not reasonable to have any contact with any meaningful fraction of your electorate.
That's exactly why the US system is designed for the federal government to have very little power, and the states to have most of it, so people can interact at a more local level... and Ron Paul is the only one advocating the return to this.
== Jez ==
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Ron Paul is the only one advocating the return to this
;-)
Correction: the only one who's running for president that advocates this. There are several tens of thousands of supporters, too.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First of all, your comment demonstrates you know nothing about monetary policy. Second, while he favors the gold standard and advocates abolishing the Federal Reserve, he advocates two different policy steps in the direction of sound money. One is to legalize competing currencies, in order to force the Federal Reserve to be responsible with monetary policy, since poor monetary policies would result in people storing their wealth in non-dollars. Another is to force the Federal Reserve to back the dollar with a commodity by tying the dollar's value to a price range of that commodity -- not necessarily gold -- to restrain politicians from endlessly printing money to finance their overseas adventures and welfarism at home.
Just what is it about either of these two schemes that isn't plain old common sense?
First of all, the obvious policy step is to abolish the IRS and return to a flat tax, the fairest tax of all. (Switzerland has one of the biggest welfare systems in the world, and somehow manages to balance the books with a flat 11% income tax.)
Second, we spend more on the illegal wars and illegal foreign aid every year than the income tax brings in. Doesn't it make sense to end all of it at once?
If you want radium water and collodial silver, what business is it of the government's to prevent you from having it? Is it the same business that prevents you from importing prescription drugs and using herbal remedies that are legal everywhere besides the US, driving up health care costs by handing the pharmaceutical companies a monopoly? The same business that prevents alternative low-calorie sweeteners used around the world from being used in food products in the US?
Actually, reducing the FDA to a labeling and testing organization sounds like a damn good idea. And without the monopoly power handed to the FDA, private labeling and testing organizations could coexist and eventually render it unnecessary.
Advocating a Constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship is not in conflict with the Constitution in any way.
You've gone off the rails, considering he is the only one advocating that we have a free trade policy with all nations with a uniform tariff, as opposed to selectively embargoing nations like Cuba and NK, or employing "managed trade" policies like CAFTA and NAFTA that favor certain industries and countries. It doesn't need to be said that any form of trade is better than sanctions or bombing.
States cannot violate the Constitution. As for your concerns, read Article IV and the 14th Amendment.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web