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McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues
eldavojohn writes "Ars is running a brief article that looks at stances from Chuck Fish of McCain's campaign and Daniel Weitzner from Obama's in regards to technical issues that may cause us geeks to vote one way or the other. From openness vs. bandwidth in the net neutrality issue to those pesky National Security Letters, there's some key differences that just might play at least a small part in your vote. You may also remember our discussions on who is best for geeks."
Jack Johnson: It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: "I'm against those things that everybody hates".
John Jackson: Now I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man but, quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!
Fry: These are the candidates? They sound like clones. [He looks a little harder.] Wait a minute. They are clones!
Leela: Don't let their identical DNA fool you. They differ on some key issues.
Jack Johnson: I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far.
John Jackson: And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!
Fry: If I were registered to vote, I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.
My work here is dung.
I thought the Dems haven't selected a candidate yet.
I doubt either one of these guys has the background or passion for tech to really have well thought out, firm ideas on any tech issues. They likely had aides poll and give them pat answers on tech. In other words, don't expect them to stick to any positions they might articulate now. Then again, that probably applies to all issues, not just tech.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
One candidate has a lawyer/media executive as technical adviser, the other has a MIT computer scientist. Guess which is which
"Chuck Fish, an attorney for the McCain campaign and former Time Warner executive"
"Daniel Weitzner, an MIT computer scientist"
Who are you going to place more faith in there?
As usual republicans == corporate interests over technical or popular interests.
(BTW, before you accuse me of being a shill or a partisan or an idiot democrat, I'm not even USian and don't get to vote on this. I'm just calling it like I see it)
vociferous critics, and one of the Iraq wars biggest cheerleaders...nuff said.
Monstar L
If you have time there are some interesting points here:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
I'm not voting for Obama and I'm not voting for McCain. Despite the hot air coming from both their mouths to the contrary, they are both deeply in the corporate pockets. They have taken their corporate bribes and the corporations own them.
Obama and McCain want to put potsmokers in prison. A vote for someone who wants you in prison isn't just a wasted vote, it's a stupid vote. "Vote for me, I want you incarcerated! A gambler in every prison, a pothead in every institution, a hooker or a john in every cell!"
I want to know what the Green and Libertarian candidates stances are on tech issues. Why these two parties are not mentioned in the corporate-owned media is obvious; the question is why they are being ignored by slashdot?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Barak Obama consistently evaluates situations and sets goals in a dynamic and networked way. This is how his campaign has generated such a huge response from mostly small donors. John McCain has been labeled a maverick, but has closely associated himself with conservative players and the mindset that an authoritative leader can best set goals for others.
Virginia Postrel explores the differences between these approaches in detail in The Future and Its Enemies. Al Gore, for example, appears to be future oriented because of the many apparently progressive stands he takes on issues, but Al Gore uses a top-down evaluation strategy that locks in a particular view with little input before or after. As such the future is at odds with Al Gore, and will tend always to surprise him and chafe at the positions he takes which are based on a mostly static model of the world and the options for progress it presents us.
not their campaign promises or who is working for them currently.
Granted Obama doesn't have as much time in the Senate as McCain, and Clinton doesn't compare favorably for time either but still beats out Obaman, but what does their voting record say?
Considering the fact we can look at how these people voted on many issues why would you believe their promises without comparing the two? Turning over a new leaf is more fairy tale than anything
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And what you've said, that they aren't tech fanboys, is a good thing. Or do you imagine that, amazingly enough, they'd be fans of exactly the same tech you are, and see all the Correct Solutions exactly the way you do? Ha ha, huh? Do you really want a President who not only has the power of the Chief Executive but also the arrogance to think he knows what's best for your industry?
What you want from these guys is the wisdom to see that letting folks alone to work out stuff for themselves is the best default option, and government should step in only as the utter last resort. You want them to know their own limits, to realize they're not only not experts in tech stuff, but also not experts in farming, or energy exploration and transportation, or medicine, or housing, or education, or any of the other million and a half things people do to keep the wheels humming. They're just lawyers, and if they confine themselves to drafting (or if President promoting the drafting of) well-written, focussed, modest laws that address the relatively few issues that actually can be helped with a good law...well, they'll do a lot more good than any number of demagogues and wannabe Caesars.
Stuff White People Like says white people like Obama.
He's against trade, so if you want any equipment from overseas, you might have trouble. (On the other hand, some on his campaign say he's only pretending to be against trade to fool stupid voters.) If you want packets from overseas, he may be your guy.
I can't support any of the major party candidates or Ralph Nader because I care about freedom and liberty and all of them are anti-freedom. I can't support Bob Barr either because he has no effective foreign policy plan.
Technical skill is not even close to being on my radar of what I want in a president, nor necessarily even in his/her closest advisers. In fact, I worry when the ones at the top, be it a corporation or a government, think they know more than the underlings and specialists as regards any subject, including technology. In my mind, vision, scruples and the ability to see through BS are the leadership skills I look for in candidates. And as it happens, these are actually pretty easy to discern by simply examining their track records. The hardest way to determine these things is to listen to what they say.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Politics can get pretty shallow, but there's more to it than being a bitch for the polls. I think this little Q&A is a case in point. Not the answers themselves, but the people chosen to deliver them. McCain chose a lawyer with strong connections to a major media conglomerate that many of us have reason to loathe. Obama chose a computer scientist with connections to a university that played a big role in creating the Internet. That, by itself, should tell you where there respective priorities are.
What that means in practice is that tech jobs in the US will be largely filled by foreigners because is is cheaper for companies to pay employees with green cards than with cash.
That particularly cliche is arrogant, bigoted, and not even applicable here. For one thing, there are a lot of dedicated teachers out there who don't deserve to be lumped in with the clueless hacks. For another, this guy is not just a "teacher" (though I do hope he makes it to a classroom now and then), he's a scientist at a leading university, one where a lot of the technology we love so much originated.
The main-stream candidates are also more committed to maintaining the status quo. This may sound like a bad thing, but changing a lot of things all at once is much, much worse. It is a testimant to the supreme arrogance of man that almost everyone on this message-board believes they are intellegent enough to make radical, sweeping changes to the government and the economy without killing everyone.
No one in their right mind should vote for somone who advocates that kind of change, no matter how much they think it's a good idea. The only approach that works it making small changes over time and working toward your eventual goal. Libertarians should vote for the republican candidate, since he advocates deregulation and reliance on markets. This is not the same as making drugs and porn legal, but it's a step in the right direction.
Net Neutrality is very important and critical to preserving a free and open internet and we do badly need to make this a part of law. Barack Obama is more likely to do this. I am definitely a Obama supporter not only due to this but due to a wide spectrum of other issues as well.
The claims made by telcos are mostly lies and deception. The telcos always have been able to tier service based on overall speed, what they have not been allowed to do is effectively censor content by slowing down some sites or blocking access to them. They dont need any capability to censor content or to discriminate against certain content. The corporations agenda is simply a vieled attempt to control information flow over the internet and to block access to things they dont like and dont agree with.
Measures lesser than Net Nuetrality wont be enough to address this. Blocking access or making access more difficult to certain content is innately bad and has no place on what should be an open and democratic form of communication where everyone has equal opportunity to be heard, where things are not biased towards corporations and their content. There is no way to make discriminating against content an acceptable practice or tilting it in favour of powerful corporate interests.
It is little different from what is being done in china, It is different in name only, here we have corporations do the censorship, In china it is government, The US has a composite government consisting of corporations and the republican government which they elect and which represents their interests. The corporations are the republican constituents. When you here a republican talk about their constituents, they are usually referring to the wealthy corporate donors who got them elected and paid for their campaigns. Democrats while not always perfect are certainly have a greater propensity to represent the people and do what is in the best interests of the general population rather than of big corporations.
We complain about what China has done in censoring the internet however we would have the same situation here unless we do something to bolster the internet as a free and open medium where everyone which is open to everyone with no discrimination. The same sort of mentality and insidious objective behinds Chinas censorship and the desire of corporations to censor the internet springs from the same mindset. The corporations have been able to control the flow of information for so long, they have had a monopoly on the media and were the gatekeepers, they could control what people could see and hear and it was very difficult to reach a large number of people, very expensive, though traditional mediums, so it excluded many from being able to express their views. the internet is a democratic form of communication, it is the first time we have had anything approaching true positive free speech where anyone could broadcast their views to anyone else and everyone is on an equal footing, no matter if you are poor or are a millionaire. And if a you re a rich megalomaniac you just cant have a situation where the little people can express themselves and actually make their voice heard to millions, and where there is nothing you can do to stop this and where they basically are on an equally footing, yhou no longer have your built in advantage of traditional media which allows you to more effectively distribute your views. Thje rich hate this because they have been so long accustomed to setting the agenda and manipulating society for their own benefit. So the openness and democracy of the net scared them because they are losing power and the internet has moved us more in the direction of a democratic society, so they are now trying to find a way to desperately shut it down and turn it into some sort of corporate controlled outlet one way sort of medium just like television is, where only the corporations have any rights to express themselves and everyone else is a mindless consumer who pays their monthly satellite subscription bill to be brainwashed by c
What's up with his seeing dead people in crowds at his speeches? I know the dead vote in his town of Chicago, but I've never heard of them showing up at political rallies.
"On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong." Barack Oboma, May 26, 2008, New Mexico
Actually, I work for one of the world's biggest tech firms.
"So I'm pretty mystified by how you see it as conceivable that "corporate interests" are opposed to "technical interests."
See DRM, the multiple court cases over DeCSS, the whole DMCA and its restrictions over discussion of security, the massive abuse of the patent system (effectively cutting out or severely crippling many of your "thousand tiny tech start-ups you won't hear about".
I'm pretty mystified that you could have missed out on these themes over the past few years.
"Or are you thinking you still live in some quaint 18th century world where the individual inventor can do it all himself, and there is no real need to form large cooperating teams of technical folks and provide them with good support staff and plenty of capital investment -- i.e. found "a corporation"?"
I'm sorry if my use of the word "corporation" set off your hippie and/or student radar. Neither is the case here and I'm quite capable of backing up my previous comments without resorting to impugning the intelligence of those I argue against. I suggest you try the same, nice ad hominem though.
As for "popular" interests: the "popular" interests are what the vast seething market of consumers want
In other words the people of the United States of America, those that the POTUS is supposed to represent and to serve, right?
they don't give a flying fsck about technical interests at all, because they're not techies.
Didn't say they were, I said the likes of the republican's apparent tech spokesperson was against their interests.
"They want their tech stuff to Just Work and be incredibly cheap, if not free. They're not the least bit interested in coolness, or advancing the art in amazing ways, or any of those other geeky kinds of goals you might find among people who seek each other out and associate into a corporation so that they can spend the productive part of their lives advancing those technical interests."
Do you live in a fantasy world? Tech advances are a means to an end for some companies, not all, and not the only means. Large companies exist to make money. In fact for public companies that's a legal requirement or the board can face charges. Yes, a lot of tech comes from large corps, they are good for that, but please don't pretend that corporate influence, especially on politicians, is always a good thing. Especially given this person's prior record.
In the arena of copyright law, the likes of Time Warner are clearly directly opposed to what the people of the country want and are arguably going well beyond what's best for society and business in general. They don't respect privacy, they engage in campaigns of scaring the population into compliance with their take on IP...
Sheesh, get a clue. Or a job. Find out how the world actually works instead of regurgitating mindless slogans from the 19th century.
Back at you. You've swallowed the "money is always" right line a little too far there. Tell me, in your world, do companies always act in the best interests of the whole population?
Or are there no incidences of monopolistic behaviour, unethical behaviour, exploitation of cheap foreign child labour etc etc?
Obama wants to stop the manned space program for five years and give the money to education. .01% of the each of our tax bill. Yes I will pay that much more in taxes for the manned space program. Any money saved will be spent on the back side when they try and restart the program.
Well stopping it for five years will effectivly kill it. Anybody that is any good will leave for a new job. The total amount for education if any of it gets to education will be something like
All in all a REALLY BAD PLAN.
It will put thousands of people out of work in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and California and provide little to no help with education. The whole thing reminds me of a town near where I lived. They had a huge problem with drugs and prostitution. There solution was to close the strip clubs. Well that solved.... nothing but sure sounded good.
At this point I am hoping Clinton does get the nomination.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
On every point the "last word" is either left to Obama's side, or questioned/rebuffed by the author himself. Bleah...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As a white guy, I just want to vote for somebody who looks like me. Is that so hard to understand?
Dark Reflection
I have no idea what Chuck Fish's interests are but if you want to change the market, it might be best to do it with someone who knows the market--or even has the ability to change it from the inside.
In other words, he's a real go-getter -- it doesn't matter what he decides to get done, just that he's got the connections, the can-do attitude, and the shark skills to get it done!
Look, I can take the point that execution skills matter. The problem with this is that what we're talking about here are policy advisors, and when it comes to understanding the potential of technology, Mr. Fish is quite likely going to be limited at *best* to its value as a corporate asset. And there's little evidence McCain has the ability to pick anybody better.
By contrast, Obama's selection shows that he knows where to start for picking people who understand the underlying knowledge domain. And there's definitely evidence to suggest that Obama has the ability to pick people and build an organization that can get things done to supplement to work of policy advisor that knows what's up.
Tweet, tweet.
I whined about him stealing Florida thanks to badly designed ballots
Given that a democrat designed the ballot and that a democratic election board approved the ballot I think it would be far more accurate to say that the democrats gave away Florida.
This is somewhat of a tangent but you should realize that the "stole the election" theme is a political strategy of the democrats, not a historical fact. To be fair, the republicans would have done the exact same thing had the situation been reversed. However according to PBS, a somewhat left leaning organization:
"In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/recount_4-3.html
So... you look like Mc Cain ?
If the John McCain from 2000 was running he'd had a serious shot at my vote in spite of my support for Senator Obama.
The John McCain that we all know and loved seemed to have been replaced somewhere around the 2004 election. I stopped listening to him when he started kissing Jerry Falwell's ass and went on the campaign trail for the man that accused him of fathering an illegitimate black child to torpedo his chances in South Carolina.
(To be fair, I did start listening to him again when he stood against his party on torture -- but you don't hear him talking too much about that lately, do you?)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The simple fact is, if you kill off manned missions we'll pretty much never send a man to Mars, or colonize much (or at all) beyond the planet.
Obama has po-pohed the idea that any kind of problem can kill off everyone on earth. That I think in the long term, is a grave mistake.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look, a candidate who can write code obviously may not have an edge over one who can't -- in fact, given the aptness of Philip Greenspun's comparison of pilots vs programmers (see here: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/aviation ), it's entirely possible programming skill isn't a great test of broad intellectual ability. :)
But tech issues absolutely underly quite a few other issues of economics and liberty, and those are certainly have a weight equal to other big issues like foreign policy.
But I think there's an even bigger reason why tech workers *definitely* should be looking at how candidates understand and address issues they understand. Because this is the arena where *you* may actually know enough, as a professional, to really gauge a candidates policy acumen. I doubt most slashdotters are experts in military tactics or nation building. Most of us have a shallow grasp of economics -- yes, even most of you Austrian school autodidacts. Same goes for health care, education, criminology, etc -- Slashdot readers may be smart laymen, but that's all most of us are in those fields.
But lots of us are IT pros. And if a candidate seems to really get it in the area where you can tell buzzspeak and platitudes from real knowledge, that tells you quite a bit about their ability to reach into an issue, understand it, and formulate a plan to do something about it.
It's worth paying attention to.
Tweet, tweet.
Since you bring up Futurama, am I the only one who gets a Professor Farnsworth vibe from John McCain?
...and all politicians are liars so why not pick the new color option being offered in 2008?
Blar.
Oh really? Wow no mention of that on spaceref.com.
In fact, it seems he wants to explicitly *continue* the important programs.
But don't let a little thing like facts get in the way of your FUD campaign.
Hillary is a lying sh*thead. Obama is a well reasoned smart guy. Get over it.
The best judgment would have been not invading the country in the first place. So how did McCain vote on the authorization for military force?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Analyzing what they actually have to say is good, however is helpful to understand a person's motivation. Consider the following situations:
1. A very knowledgeable sales person who recommends an extended warranty seems to want to protect you from expensive repairs/replacements.
2. A doctor recommends a change in diet to help you reach a healthier weight and reduce your risk of heart disease.
The sales person has his own interests in mind and the doctor has your interests in mind. If you follow the doctor's advice you'll actually need him less. On the surface both seem to have your interests mind. How do you avoid being swindled if you don't judge the messenger?
There was a poll done on black americans and the large majority said they didn't know anything that Obama stood for, except that he was black. I don't see how this is any different than the white bigot who votes against him only because he is black.
Now what would have been interesting is if someone like a Powell or Rice had run. Would black Americans have blindly voted for a black republican?
Actually,
... sigh. I wish Obama had been a bit more rational. I don't mind him being left wing but his plans just put us deeper into debt. But I'm not all the way there yet. McCain's war plans put us deeper into debt too.
I see (in older and recent votes)
2 people who vote for things they can't pay for.
2 people who would at least THINK about national health care (but unfortunately not a rational plan)
1 person who has a tiny amount of fiscal restrait (not as much as Ron Paul... but some)
1 person who won't even consider national health care.
All three are in the pockets of corporations-- just a different set.
I'm tending towards McCain
Both political parties are destroying this country long term because neither has a any patriotism or backbone and both have sold out to corporate interests.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In fact, a corporaiton's charter and bylaws determine what the goals of the organization are. Most public corporations include shareholder value and profits among the goals of the organization (why else would someone invest?), but many privatecorporations are not-for-profit; some actually exist to *lose* money (such as some incorporated charitable trusts with a schedule for payout).
At any rate, it is not a legal requirement to try to make money; it is a contractual obligation, which is different. You can't face charges for steering a company poorly, unless your acts themselves are illegal. You can, however, face a tort action for violating the company's charter if some of the shareholders feel there was gross negligence or willful wrongdoing.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So... you look like Hillary?
I agree with Obama that open access trumps bandwidth. What's more, the loads of free content that open access naturally creates provide huge incentive to upgrade the network. Let's take the cell phone network vs. the Internet. The internet has gone from 2800 baud dial-up service on $2K+ 286 PCs accessing BBSs to Mbps service on sub $1000 computers with processing, graphics, and multi-media capabilities that far exceed what was available in professional video-editing houses just a few decades back. BBSs (much to some of our dismay) gave way to streaming video and interactive GUI applications. And not only have the prices of the devices dropped by huge amounts even in inflation-adjusted dollars, but I don't pay much more for broadband than I once did for dial-up. And today I can sign up without a contract and switch my service provider if I'm unhappy with the service (because we have competing technologies/infrastructure, cable modem and DSL, we have true competition). As for additional infrastructure upgrades, I predict people will start to ditch cable for on-demand TV via the internet. Content provides will innovate with interactive TV and targeted ads. Advertisers will get more for their money because consumers will be more willing to watch ads that they're actually interested in. These efficiencies will motivate and pay for infrastructure upgrades.
The cell phone network on the other hand started as basically your land line sans the wires and hasn't really come very far. Features added include caller ID, call waiting, text messaging, an address book and calendar on your phone that your forced to edit using the horrible UI of the phone itself. You're locked in to a contract, sometimes a multi-year contract. And your devices is tied to the service provider, so you can't take it with you. Where's the simple to implement and obvious features like being able to edit/sync/backup your address book, calendar, etc on a real computer with a full keyboard. Sure, there are better devices like the iPhone and crackberry, but they cost an arm and a leg. And you're still locked into a service provider, so why would I pay so much more for a better device when I have no control over the most important feature, namely coverage area and bandwidth. The cell-phone network is actually bunch of closed-access monopolies and though coverage area has become somewhat better, bandwidth and devices still suck eggs.
Imagine if you could just sign up for wireless access and connect any device you want to the network and switch providers any time you want to get the best performance. I think there would be a huge innovation in devices. Once more useful devices were available, content would follow. (Honestly, how many of you web developers bother with versions of your sites for mobile devices.) Once the content and devices where there, consumers would demand (and be willing to pay for) a better network.
I'm not saying the we shouldn't take caution on the legal definition of NN (I like the Limited Discrimination and Tiering one), but I think it's pretty clear that ensuring open access is the market-centric approach to this issue and letting ISPs get away with trying to exercise monopoly power by exploiting control of the infrastructure would be a huge step backwards.
Excellent point.
And then you get guys like me. I could personally care LESS about Barack Obama's skin color. Really. His ancestry is of no interest to me.
What is of interest are his positions defined by his voting record. Barack Obama's voting record is the single MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the Senate. More liberal than Ted Kennedy, more liberal than anyone. Even the redoutable Maxine Water of the House, who recently (and infamously) threatened to "socialize" all the American oil companies, isn't as liberal as Obama (and has endorsed Hillary Clinton).
So my vote goes to McCain. Not because I particularly like him, but because he is, by far and away, the LEAST vile and frightening of the available choices.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
But how many white Republicans would have voted for a black person? Carrying 13% of the national vote won't cut it (and that's assuming that every black person is eligible to vote (not true, esp. in Florida) and actually votes).
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
"Bush #2, economy in the gutter".
Umm Bullshit.
Unemployment below 5%, inflation below 4%, and up until the past 2 months, 3-5 percent annual economic expansion (down to something about 0.8% the past 2 months, but still expanding and unemployment still very low by historical standards).
And this has been sustained in spite of a partial war-footing draining the economy of productive workers and money, and trillions of losses fromt he WTC and subsequent economic shutdown.
So Economy in a gutter? Idiot. Did you eject your mind when you signed up for your political beliefs?
I dont like Bush all that much, but to say the economy is "in the gutter" is an out and out lie.
Its every bit as good as Clinton's good years in the mid 90's.
Seems it doesn't really matter who the president is in terms of economic growth - just keep the government out of the way of the economy as Clinton and Bush II have done, on purpose or by accident.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
It's bad enough when people mix their metaphors, but you're mixing your cliches. Neither spokesman is a "messenger" in the sense you mean. Neither is reading a script; each is considered by his boss to be an expert on technology. So it makes perfect sense to consider why they're considered experts.
Unfortunately, the larger problem is that most Americans vote nearly blindly in any case.
A voter is either voting for a particular candidate or against one or more candidates. There's nothing wrong with either approach; there are times when it is as important to keep a "bad" candidate from public office as it is to get a "good" candidate in. But how does the voter define good and bad, and determine at which point it is better to make a negative vote than a positive one?
And there's the rub. With the artificial polarization of the bipartisan system, the massive campaigning system and PR/media manipulation, there really is no way to define the candidates in such a way as to make a solidly informed vote. Candidates change their message to suit the target audience, and avoid giving concrete and unambiguous answers when they can. Promises are made which can't be backed up, mud is thrown in order to garner negative votes, and the media spins everything possible.
So in the end, how can a voter not vote blindly? I personally don't vote based on skin color, gender or age, but I can see why people do -- they are among the few facts which can't be changed as the political winds suit. And all of the candidates' personal attributes have the potential to affect decision-making. Whether or not they allow this to happen, and to what extent, is an important question.
Now, voting strictly along party lines? That's intentionally blinding yourself. And this applies equally to the candidates as to the voters.
This really bothers me.
It seems every election Slashdot has an article on which candidate is better "for the geeks." This is along with hundreds of articles about which candidate is better for X Y Z group.
This is a symptom of the sickness in our society today. Everyone thinks in terms of, "what's best for me," rather than, "what's best for our country." It is exactly the kind of thinking that led us into our current mess of endless war, deficit spending, a falling dollar and the housing crash. People voted for the candidate who said the right thing on a narrow issue rather than looking at the broad profile and thinking about how position and policy statements would affect us in the large.
It's easy to campaign to individual desires. It's much harder to campaign on the idea that together we are much stronger than we are as individuals. We've had some examples of this: Both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Lincoln. But ever since Goldwater, individualistic politics has ruled the day.
I see this attitude starting to change, but it's slow. I, along with other politically-minded people I know, have pledged to contribute our stimulus checks to funding a fall public event in St. Paul, MN that will bring this conversation to a larger group of people. The stimulus checks themselves are another symptom of the rampant hyper-individualism of our society. They send the message that you, as an individual, are more important to the economy than our combined efforts. Well, I reject that notion and what better way to make a point of it than using that money to collectively support an effort that works to restore balance among the needs of the individual and the needs of the community?
A vote for Hillary means we're putting a Clinton back in office again.
... but I'm also deeply concerned that he'd just opt for "stay the course" politics that continued in Bush's footsteps, only under a new name.)
Our country has been 4 years of Bush, 8 years of Clinton, and 8 years of Bush already. That means anyone younger than 21 can't even remember a time when one of those two families wasn't in power in our nation!
Given that realization, I'd have to give the nod to Obama over Clinton - just for the sake of "breaking the cycle", if nothing else! (Of course, a vote for McCain would accomplish that too
All too true. What scares me is that the "maverick" label of McCain has stuck. He's no maverick. Look at how he accepted the endorsement of nutcase pastor Hagee until he was finally called out on it. And even then, he didn't actually address the comments Hagee made.
McCain scares me because people actually believe he will be different than Bush. Remember how Bush put forth the image of his "common man" lifestyle and "compassionate conservatism." Hmm...how well does that hold up against the track record of the corporate corruption and lawlessness actively supported by his administration?
McCain has one of the most conservative voting records of anyone in the Senate but somehow people think he's a moderate.
Only Edgar Winter is that white.
I drank what? -- Socrates
LOL, the scale has been pulled so far to the right we're calling politicians "liberal" when they are not even close from a historical or global perspective. If this trend continues, your "conservative" politician today will be a "liberal" by future standards. Life needs balance. Ying and Yang. With too much on either side it becomes a recipe for disaster.
Supreme Court Justice John Stevens is considered one of the more "liberal" justices today. But when he was appointed, he was considered a "conservative" member back then.
I'll tell you in Ohio the african-american Democrats certainly didn't blindly vote for Ken Blackwell, an african-american Republican! He only garnered 20% of the african-american vote, which while high for a Republican is only 4% higher than Bush received in Ohio during his second election.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Wow, if that's the best dirt anyone has on Obama, he's cleaner than I thought!
:(
But I can't believe someone buys into that. Oh no! He can't find a magazine article that influenced him 20 years ago! What HORROR are we voting for!? He's trying to TRICK US! About ancient _MAGAZINE ARTICLES_! The EVIL DEMAGOGUE must be stopped! Won't someone PLEASE think of the MAGAZINE ARTICLES!?
Oh crap. I just hope there aren't any sarcasm terrorists to go with the cynical ones
I did a comparison a week prior that looks at Obama and McCain's positions (and actual voting patterns) on a variety of tech positions, following Obama's quite impressive outline of tech he gave at a presentation at Google and posted to his website. Of course, I also had to string in Apple and Microsoft, and how US corporations have taken an increasing role in subverting democracy in government:
While the United States prepares to elect a new president, candidates on both sides have made interesting comments about their affiliations with tech companies and their perspective on issues facing the tech industry.
Here's a look at Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain compare, looking first at how each relates to Apple and Microsoft, how corporations are leveraging money and political power to shape public policy to fit their own interests, and followed by a look at each candidate's stance on issues related to technology.
Obama's Apple, McCain's Microsoft: the Politics of Tech
Let me start off by saying that I am not here to mercilessly defense Bush. He's not perfect and I think he has his advantages and disadvantages. To blame him though for economic woes is both unwarranted and wrong.
The fact of the matter is that economies are cyclic. Both Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress of the 90's benefited greatly from both an upturn in the economy and the technology boom. To blame Bush for the economy at the beginning of his term is wrong as he and the rest of his administration has had to deal with both an economy that was slowing and the aftermath of 9/11.
We've actually been doing pretty well since the recovery of the technology bust and the rebuilt after 9/11, but the recent credit bust is another challenge. Likewise, it is not his fault as the bulk of the blame can be place squarely on both people irresponsibly taking loans and banks irresponsibly lending loans, both of which were facilitated by the Federal Reserve driving rates so low for as long as they did.
As for your point on food and energy, this is a mixed bag for Bush. Bush wants to get the drilling companies to work, but that is politically unfeasible and too unpopular in general. So we can't drill off of some of our coasts or in ANWR where we have plenty of oil and natural gas. This is a remedy to the energy problem that we have now, but people don't want it. He has also worked to push ethanol, which I think is a disaster. Corn-based ethanol is simply not viable because it doesn't really work from multiple perspectives. It's too hard to make from corn. Ethanol works so well in Brazil because they use sugarcane. Corn-based ethanol also takes food from the food supply for obvious reasons, causes farmers to plant corn instead of other crops, and then that drives up the cost of the other crops. This is a total mess and we need to do something about it.
If you want to cheer against the Republicans for this, don't bother. Both Clinton and Obama support corn-based ethanol. McCain is thankfully against it. Truthfully, I don't really have a problem with gasoline and diesel fuel being this high. I am able to afford it for the amount that I drive in and around Philadelphia. It's starting to get harder, but living in a city is just so much better because the amount of driving you need to do is drastically cut down. High fuel prices are fit punishments for decades of suburbanization and disregard of mass transit and freight systems like rail. Don't get me wrong, I love to drive, but we don't need to be so spread out. I do worry about how the high price of crude is going to squeeze people when the winter comes because of how expensive heat is going to be.
We can fix these problems though. The main issues are going to be whether or not we can fight a special interest groups and change our lifestyles. The reality is though that doing the right thing isn't easy typically. We need to make our choices better now so that we don't have bigger problems down the road.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
2. Most of what McCain wants to do is keep the current tax rates the same.
3. Think progress is not an independent website.
1. It has been proven over and over again that reduced tax rates equal greater tax revenue. Less shackles equals more work.
Therefore, if we reduce the tax rate to 0 we should have infinite revenue. GREATNESS!!!11!!
On the other hand, maybe some research on the Laffer Curve, which is usually the basis for the "reduced tax rates = greater revenue" argument, is in order. I do not think that it means what you say it means.
(To be fair, I did start listening to him again when he stood against his party on torture -- but you don't hear him talking too much about that lately, do you?)
I'm embarrassed to say I voted for McCain in 2000. Fool me once and all that.
McCain is good on two things: that the government spends too much money and that it shouldn't torture. However, he's the biggest socialist in the race, with plans to enslave all high school graduates for a period of one year in service of the government (. He's also against the first amendment, and has stated that he'd rather have a 'clean government' than the first amendment. Rah!, rah!, um, no, that's f-ing, Red China, not the USA.
Obama is only slightly to the right of McCain, hoping to engage in mass redistribution of wealth under threat of violence (paramilitary raids, imprisonment, possible death) for citizens who fair to offer up their dictated share of their personal property to the government and its 'mandatory charity' programs.
Who would have guessed a year ago that Hillary "Goldwater Girl" Clinton would be the rightmost candidate in '08?
None of the major candidates considers "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" a noble goal for a government. At least I can write in Ron Paul, but the odds are strong we'll have a real Socialist at the helm in 2009, which is astonishing. And deeply saddening to those who thought we might be able to undo some of Bush's policies in this go-around.
But to get back on topic, if anybody thinks the tech/internet sector has thrived based on government regulation, boy, there's gonna be some serious thriving ringing in the next decade.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ah - No.
Most industrialized countries run a system more efficient that what we have here, and there are a number of different ways to do so.
There is a quite useful Frontline that went over the benefits and trade-offs of several countries - Japan, UK, Taiwan, Switzerland, and Germany.
All of them had lower total healthcare costs, all of them took different approaches, and different trade-offs (and Frontline went into the deficiences of each system as well).
But yes, it turns out that systems that save you money, turn out to be easy to pay for - a strange financial that I've noticed often seems counter-intuitive to libertarians and conservatives, although I concede to having never entirely understood why.
I would suggest doing some research. You look like a putz when you make statements that something is inconceivable and stupid when people can point to obvious examples.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
The "thriving free market" of insurance co's is raping us. Much like the "thriving free market" of multiple private highways, police departments, fire departments, armies etc. was also raping us, before we centralized them within state, local and fed governments. History itself contradicts the notion of free markets = always automatically awesome. That's because it's simply wrong, even if it's comfortable.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
The National Journal, the szame rag that ranked John Kerry as the "most liberal" senator back around the previous presidental election? It seems pretty obvious to anyone who pokes around in their methodology that they only reason they publish these lists is to give the right some talking points. For example, there were only two votes they scored where Barack Obama took the "liberal" side, whereas Hilary Clinton took the "conservative" side, thus earning Obama two more "liberal" points than Hilary, On one of these votes, John McCain voted with Obama, so take that as you will. Here's a source: http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/02/what_the_national_journal_libe.html.
And here's the methodology: http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/votes.htm. Some of those are quite head scratchers, for example, voting for "94/SConRes21: Raise the tax rate on income over $1 million and use the revenue to increase funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. March 22. (38-58)" earns you conservative points. Who knew?
I do that set up now...I have a high deductible policy, that has reasonable montly premiums. I stuff the limit of money I can annually in a HSA, pre-tax...and I pay my Dr. and meds with that as needed. I find that with the Dr's and tests...when I tell them it isn't going to be paid by insurance....they cut the rate they charge me.
YOu can get a much better deal this way...and I can do to any damned Dr. I want to...without consulting any HMO books, etc...
The trouble with insurance is, it is being treated as a payment plan...not insurance against disaster...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And what the heck does it mean, anyway, to be the "most liberal?" Can you point out a conservative, so I can have a basis for comparison?
I want to: stop torturing, restore habeus corpus, get us out of Iraq, balance the budget, invest in alternative fuels, and invest some in our own infastructure. If advocating those things makes you "liberal" then sign me up for Obama. He isn't nearly liberal enough.
When "conservative" means torture, gutting habeus corpus, endless war, warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, the largest deficit in US history, censoring scientific findings to meet political agendas, etc, then you guys don't have much to sell anymore.