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Algorithm Names Powell 'Ideal' Vice President Candidate
CWmike writes "Turns out the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama, according to a sophisticated online survey based on technology developed at MIT. Mr. Ideal? Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state. Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities. Affinnova calls this algorithm 'evolutionary optimization.' Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"
.. same as the old boss.
'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'
What? The Demopublicans and the Republicrats are all the same? That unpossible!
Unfortunately I doubt most people vote based on anything so scientific as biography and 1st term priorities. I bet they more likely vote for Mr Powell or not based on their gut feel about whether they like him as a candidate or not.
By the way - I think he would make a great candidate for Veep.
Nullius in verba
Powell strikes me as a vastly better civil servant than politician. But if Obama wins, he should definitely ask Powell to be Sec Def or Sec State. Hell, same with McCain for that matter. He was a good Sec. of State in an administration that didn't give two shits about him or his opinions, imagine what he could do if the President actually tried to make use of his experience and expertise.
The enemies of Democracy are
Ooooh! Job titles like that have TRUST written all over them!
Three Squirrels
is that their algorithm is severly flawed.
For example, most people - dem or rep - want responsible spending, national security, etc. Where the difference lies is in the road to take to get to that point. Any survey that says one of the primary party leaders would be the same person for either party is obviously in error.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Call me an elitist jerk all you want, but I think you should have to be a property owner to vote. Not physical property, but some kind of net worth. I don't even pretend to be able to create such a system, but you should have something invested in the government before you are able to decide what is best for "everyone".
Colin Powell was the face of the deception campaign the Bush administration orchestrated. He was the one who went to the United Nations, and made a whole bunch of claims that turned out to be false. He's damaged goods. Why on earth would someone suggest he'd be a good candidate in a year when the electorate is itching to repudiate everything about this war?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Shock and Amaze! A politician who has made almost no memorable positions known on any domestic policy beyond truism of cooperation is liked by everybody!
Of course he's a top pick by everybody--he's like Opera-- nobody knows what his actual beliefs and agenda is, therefore nobody disagrees with him. If Colin Powell were so audacious as to actually make his position known on a politically hot subject he would suddenly see his popularity plummet.
This is America. If you agree with me you're a good guy. If you don't, you're a muslim terrorist. The only way to be liked by everybody is to say nothing of consequence.
Yup, what the US really needs is a VP who has shown that he's willing to help out his boss by publicly giving excruciatingly bad "intelligence" to the United Nations.
How many voted for JFK?
Or Elvis Aaron Presley?
Or Santa Claus?
Or Dart Vader?
Or SpongeBob?
The better question is, how many of those would do a better job...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I keep hearing "McCain is too old" and then read other age-relative statements about VP selection and wonder who age really matters to. Yes, at the extreme, I worry about the ages of the candidates but only to the extent that it is extreme and has other impacts (eg, health or lack of experience).
But are there people out there who are like "Gee, he's too old" even when the candidate's age has no bona fide health impact? Do the same people think "Gee, he's too young" about someone younger? Obviously there's no health issue, but experience could matter a lot.
I don't think of age outside of physical health, but I worry from the way the media portrays McCain's age that we're falling a little victim to the cult of youth.
Bush/Quayle, Kennedy/Johnson, Eisenhower/Nixon, and Roosevelt/Truman seem to suggest that multi-generational winning tickets are not uncommon. Plus, Kennedy/Johnson even had an older VP, as I am guessing Teddy Roosevelt did.
But yes, Colin Powell is unlikely to be a VP, since he has said many times that he doesn't want to, and he is more believable than most when he makes that claim.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Including what is "best" for non-property-owners?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Well... JFK managed NOT to start World War III.
AND he did the sexiest movie icon ever...
And SpongeBob would probably do far better job than most.
Have you seen his work? That guy apparently can't do wrong.
Even when he fucks up it turns out great in the end.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Not to the rest of the world, he didn't. Everyone outside the US knew his presentation in the UN was a sham for the US public, and not for the world, since the rest of the world got to see the TV reports (funny how the US stations didn't carry them, hmmm ...) debunking his "findings" before he even presented them.
More like "Semi-Colin Powell" or "Up Your Colin Powell", since he's at best, a half-measure, and at worse, helped give everyone the shaft by presenting known lies as truth.
Kevin Smith on Prince
But won't those people that are allowed to vote likely vote for policies and laws that make it increasingly difficult for none-voters to qualify? Afterall the more people you allow to vote the less your vote is worth.
Colin Powell would have made a great vice-president for GWB in 2000 (or even a good presidential candidate), but now his reputation has been permanently tarnished by his association with the Iraq War and the Bush Administration in general. Since we are still in Iraq, I do not think his reputation will recover any time soon. Anyway, I do not think he would make a good Presidential candidate for Barack Obama. Let's face he (Powell) is black and so is Obama. It would be best to have a white guy to 'balance' the ticket.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
This is a good example of why even the best algorithms are poor predictors of human behavior. Powell probably IS one of the best, if not THE best, choices for McCain's VP. If only the world could fit neatly into the parameters considered by the algorithm. It's just not going to happen. Powell is on record saying that his wife has vetoed him being on a Presidential ticket. Period. She has personal issues around it and it's simply not in the cards. End of story. And end-of-line for El Algorithmo.
I guess everybody else thought he was the lynchpin of deciet. Shows what i know.
I was kind of surprised to see the difference in priorities for members of each party:
Given that none of them are the same in those lists, how can Powell be a good choice for both at the same time? Is it simply because he's a yes man like other posters are saying?
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Not only am I playing the Race Card. I'm dealing it from the bottom of the deck :).
At the end of Gulf Wars episode one, a lot of Americans were suggesting Colin Powell for president. Then I went online and checked around. Turns out that most of them did not even know he was black.
I don't know what is going the rounds in America but where I live (a Caribbean country where over 90% of the population is at least part black). The popular fear is that if Elected Obama won't survive to inaugeration.
Giving him a black VP would mean bumping him off would still leave America with a Black President.
That calculation of course would just ruin the plans of whichever secret organization conspiracy nuts like this week.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Divination through dancing retired politicians is no way to run a society!
Watery tarts throwing swords is clearly a superior methodology.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Well the fact is that he told his bosses the truth, and they didn't want to hear it. They told him to go speak a pack of lies, and he did. You can feel free to hold that against him, following orders is no excuse and all that. That doesn't change the fact that in the employ of an administration that wanted to listen to his honest opinions, he would be a tremendous asset.
The enemies of Democracy are
Gen. Powell was the only reason I considered giving the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. If Gen. Powell wants to go back into the military then I'd say that would be great and I think we'd benefit from that as a country, but politics is apparently not his thing.
What if we have an actual crisis and he's expected to explain to the country why we need to take some drastic action? I for one would have trouble buying his story after this Iraq debacle.
"Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again!" -George W. Bush, 2002
Why should I let a illiterate imbecile (snip) vote about my future?
On similar lines:
Why should I let a uncouth non-college-graduate vote about my future ?
If you aren't smart enough to get a PhD, how can you decide what good for the entire country ? We should allow only PhD's to vote.
The simple answer to that is because its not just your future they are voting for, its their own future too. If you live in city, should the president you elect not have any powers to make any changes in the rural areas ? Why should an urbanite decide a farmers future. etc. etc.
People will say they want the person with the best tax policy, yet vote for the guy with the nicest shoes or looks like a hero. The Governator is only there because he dealt to the bad guys in the movies, not because of anything he's done in Real Life.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Call me an elitist jerk all you want, but I think you should have to be a property owner to vote.
While what you're saying probably comes across as a step (or several) in the wrong direction to many people (it is very politically incorrect after all), I understand where you're coming from. It kind of reminds me of the political system at work in Heinlein's Starship Troopers. From that link:
I don't know how well it would work in our situation, even just considering the difference in scale, but I do find it interesting. I admit I wish we had a system where people who have no idea what the issues are or what candidates (supposedly) claim to support don't vote, but finding and perfecting such a system would be impossible I think. We're doomed to have our future chosen largely based on the candidate that's thrown the most buzzwords around and has the worst^H^H^H^H^Hbest MySpace page.
(Oh, and has the strongest lobbyists. You want to seriously try and fix the system? Start with getting rid of them.)
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
"...Usually a Pres. and Vice-Pres. are in the same general age range..."
Not entirely true. Look at Bush/Cheney: Dick Cheney, a known Vampyre, is dated to be at least 450 years old, making him nearly 20 generations older than Bush.
If you think
No. He's the ideal presidential candidate for either party.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
IQs under 90 points - you don't get to vote. (...)
Elementary education IS free AND mandatory.
You are old enough to vote but couldn't find time to learn to read yet?
Literacy rate is 99%+, so presumably those who haven't learned it, can't. In a poorer country I'd slap you silly for saying that though, do you think kids that can't read:
a) Have been just partying through their teens and never got around to it
b) Been forced to work from child age, and never got a choice
and that they might like to have a say in for example what the law says about that?
P.S. You do realize IQ tests get recalibrated right? So you'd always exclude the bottom 25%, no matter how high we raised the education level, not nearly that many are actually mentally handicapped. Not to mention such ugly things that IQ tests can be taught - sure there's a limit but without training you won't reach it. You'll have people studying for the IQ test instead of the SAT test, and oddly enough well educated people will come out on top. That kind of bullshit has been tried before to claim african-americans are less intelligent, but it's bogus. Now you want to take away their vote over it? Hell, I'd probably pass if you set it well past 100 and I still think it's a stupid idea.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The honorable thing to do in that situation would have been to resign immediately. Either he did what he was told by his boss, against his conscience, or he lied consciously, or he was duped. Neither looks good on his resume.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I think you're missing the point, which is that Powell in some sense falls into both parties and this is WHAT makes him (at least according to this) such a good candidate.
And I think you hit the nail on the head there, but there might ba a deeper insight there.
Powell has always struck me as an excellent choice for a presidential candidate: He has spent time 'on the inside' in the whitehouse, so he understands the job. He does not aspire to power (or he covers it far better than most), he is intelligent, and he does not seem tied too closely to the idiology of either party. In short, a competent guy who isn't a professional politician.
Now, if a VP candidate has qualities like this that are desireable to the public at large without a strong tie to the political left or right, they will of course be desireable to both parties. The interesting thing is that qualities that make Powell an good candidate (intelligent, honest, outsider) are the same qualities that Obama seems to posess.
McCain is a war hero, and a passable senator but I think hes going to get stomped in November. An interesting election would have been if the Republican had put up Powell.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There is only one problem: Colin Powell has publicly stated on numerous prior occasions that he will not stand as a candidate for executive office.
How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense.
Your straw man, he is on fire.
Obama and Hillary have clashed too much for her to be a good VP choice. Who can unite the Democratic party?
McCain needs someone who can help him portray fiscal responsibility. Who is the only recent President with a budget surplus?
Both parties should nominate Bill Clinton as VP. He can't run for President because of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Wikipedia says it's unclear whether the 12th Amendment would prevent him from becoming VP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Vote for Bill!
Please do not mod this as funny!
Aside from all the opinions on Powell's character, he's a Republican. And supposing Powell would take the job, why would a Democrat want to make a Republican the president of the U.S. Senate? Powell would tie-break for the Republicans every time.
As others have said, this algorithm is deeply flawed, if for just this reason.
It does not shatter my perceptions. The Lords of the first world love to lie to us, and we eat it up. I refuse to spout the party line and participate in murderous activities that reduce human life to a bar fight between two junkies. If I hear a lie like Weapons of Mass Destruction I call bullshit.
You know the rule of law has to mean something or it means nothing.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
I too wrote a similar program and was equally surprised to find that the ideal VP for both candidates was myself. Who would have thought...
Powell claims that he didn't know at the time all the caveats and questions and known faults surrounding the intelligence. In other words, that he was as much a recipient of white-washed intel as the U.N. council who received his speech. And of all the officials who were involved, his story is the most plausible by far. Already the Bush Cabal had started blocking him out of their decisions due to his tendency to disagree with them. As Rice later found out, the State Dept. had been fire walled away from Defense and the intelligence agencies. Any caveats that survived to reach the admin would have reached Powell only on the inner circles' say so. And the result is perfectly typical of the administration: Send the one guy who isn't "loyal" enough to agree with everything out to make the phony case and ultimately be the fall-guy for it.
I don't know for sure. It is possible that Colin Powell was a knowing and willing conspirator in the effort to push a war he had been against from the first ('the first' being when Rumsfeld suggested invading Iraq on 9/12/2001, if you believe Richard Clarke). If that's the case, may he burn in hell. On the balance of evidence, though, I simply find it implausible. I think he was a dupe and a patsy, and ultimately this is why he resigned, and called the U.N. speech a 'permanent blot on his record'.
The enemies of Democracy are
When the mainstream media inputs enough garbage into the American mind, garbage comes out?
I can't be the only person in the U.S. who was directed to foreign web sites like the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent during the drumbeat to war. Only a few days after Powell was waving his pencil around about the killer bioweapons at the UN, the Guardian had photos of the poultry plant the White House was calling the bioweapons factory. Same with the roving bioweapons labs aka weather balloons. A rational person, who I guess would have great difficulty relating to the American people, might think Colin "I vus only followin' mein orderz" Powell's honor and integrity would be hovering around Benedict Arnold territory.
When Condoleezza Rice took over the State Dept. after Powell's resignation, she found that State had been walled off from the rest of the administration. In order to find out anything or have any impact on what was happening in Iraq, she had to clandestinely circumvent both Donald Rumsfeld's and Paul Bremer's organizations and send her own unauthorized diplomats to Iraq. And this was Rice, one of Bush's trusted inner cabal (which is also the only reason she could get away with this).
How much more would Powell have been cut out of the loop of the inner workings of the Bush Admin and their desire to start a war which Powell was against? Why would they have shown him all the faults with the intelligence, knowing his opposition to the war and tendency to not be a yes-man (the whole reason he was so isolated) when they could instead just say "We're know you're against this, Powell, but here's our slam-dunk case that Saddam is an immediate threat and we just want you to present these facts to the U.N. as is your job."
I can't prove it. It's just given the obvious exclusion of Powell from the inner circle, Richard Clarke's consistent statements that Powell had argued against the war, the secrecy and readiness of the admins to withhold information, and even Powell's willing admission that regardless the U.N. speech is a permanent blot on his record, that he was in fact a victim of circumstances.
He did choose those circumstances, and stay in them far longer than one would think, for sure, and I think it's fair to hold that against him. War criminal complicit in the conspiracy? I just don't think so.
The enemies of Democracy are
The imaginary yellowcake in Niger would have come from the French company that mines it. Yes folks, the childish "freedom fries" slur was part of it IMHO. The ironic thing is that there already was quite a lot of yellowcake stockpiled in Iraq from the 1970s - what Saddam was lacking was a means to do anything with it. It really was a great big noise about a lie that would have been fairly irrelevant even if it was true.
I was really disappointed when I saw Powell loyally say what his master wanted said; before that I'd had some respect for the man. And as Secretary of State, he should have been seriously using diplomacy to build negotiations and prevent a war, instead of using his position as Bush's representative to prevent diplomacy from breaking out.
I was less bothered by Condi Rice doing much the same - she was always Bush's protege, and while she was clearly very bright and opinionated on her own, it was also pretty clear that she was using Bush to get power just as much as he was using her to exercise power.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bullshit. Dems deserve blame because they have squandered congressional majorities, and went along with the bullshit (PATRIOT Act for one) the Reps brought to the table. Crying 'Poor us!' then passing totalitarian legislation anyway isn't an excuse from blame, its just being a group of pussies.
I am absolutely sick and tired of this "white America is overtly racist".
Well, white America is overtly racist. I know you talk about social chastisement for being a racists white but I've never met a white guy that wasn't popular for making a black joke every now and then. You really just need to quit pretending that there is any other case. It's just a fact of life. People that think that a few speeches by Martin Luther King and a couple of segregated schools can change the attitudes of a nation in a generation are utterly stupid. Being racist, in many people's eyes, is that they aren't allowed to call black people n---rs any more, and so, because they don't do that, they don't see themselves as racist...
except that...
More white people, if they see a black guy in a Lexus getting pulled over by the cops, will assume that the guy was doing drugs or is some kind of a gangster than a guy with a business or an advanced degree. If alone, they'll cross the street when they see more than one black guy.. if with a bunch of people, they'll sing Sweet Home Alabama and make that black guy go to another block. How is it in America that we have major corporations investing billions of dollars in building up data centers in places from the phillipines to india and you don't as much as even a server placed in an inner city?
There's plenty of white people too, that say that would prefer a white quarterback to their favorite NFL team. There's more to white America than a few suburban towns. All you have to do is take a drive through the civil war museums and you'll find that Confederate flags and merchandise sells on par with that of the Union. If you go into prisons, you immediately find that whites all band up into neo-nazi gangs, and, if there is a criticism of the right wing these days about religion, it is that christianity, with its message of peace, has been used to pollute the white race.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that we'd see confederate flags -everywhere-, should Obama get elected. Like he's seriously going to get a lot of votes in the South.. Come on... where's all the black NASCAR drivers? I see confederate flags more now, than I ever have before. I live in a mixed neighborhood and you have the white side of the street with guys flying the Stars and Bars and on the black side of the street you have a bunch of black guy dressed up like gangstas. People do not talk to each other -at all-, and its no different than it was when blacks and whites were throwing bricks at each other during the race riots of the early 1980s.
If there's any institution out there that is -not- racist, it is the membership of pro sports teams, and the US military. There's plenty of white soldiers that don't like blacks and plenty of whites that don't like black, but, when a black man saves a white man's life, and vice versa, things like race just don't matter, and, in this present war, there's an aweful lot of that going on.
This isn't to say that whites are all devils (Farrakhan joke deliberate), or that blacks are angels. It is to say that racism is far from dead in the USA and quite honestly I do not think it will ever be. There will never be a day where we do not have to have some sort of affirmative action in university or even in some workplaces. There will never be a day where we do not have to constantly police ourselves to ensure that people are not being judged on anything different than their ability. Racism isn't like a disease that you cure, its a chronic condition that requires persistent and determined management by the nation, the government, companies and finally the people.
This is my sig.
I supported the war because Iraq never honored their obligations of the armistice agreement that ended the first gulf war. I also his whipping Clinton around and defying UN resolution after resolution with no real consequences as a major motivating factor in what gave Al Qeada the balls to hit innocent civilians instead of sticking to military targets. We demonstrated time after time that we were all bark and not bite. I seriously think If Clinton would have went in after the first time inspectors were removed, 9/11 and other precursors that lead up to what we have today would have never happened.
Sure, but that isn't a sign of not using overwhelming force. The force just moved on. Perhaps too soon or inappropriately but they moved on. The fact is that the Iraqi army more or less disbanded themselves from the role of an organized force.
Again, the force moved on. It isn't a sign of not enough force as much as an improper use of the force. Those calls were made in the field by leaders pulling the trigger.
And there is the famous story about the soldier standing there watching it who said to a reporter that he couldn't do anything without orders. The munitions depots locations probably weren't well known until after they were raided but an essential part of the plan was to allow chaos for a short period of time before order was restored to reinforce the notion that the old regime isn't in power. Don't blame faults of the plans or management of the plans on a lack of force. The simply aren't the same things.
Lol.. Down to name calling because of your ignorance are we? First, we went in with overwhelming force. Second, because we didn't properly use that force or in hind site not effective use that force isn't the same thing as not having it. Basically, the troops went too fast for the military strategists to analyze the situation. We had a point of information overload where a report was literally outdated by the time it took to proof rad it and print it up. The command structure grew too small for the tasks and soldiers were waiting on orders because commanders were playing catch up. The mismanagement of phases and transitions to other phases of the plan as well as problems effecting the command efficiently doesn't mean we didn't have enough force nor did it mean that the force wasn't there.
You see, what you have complained about doesn't mean what you want it to mean. This is especially true when you follow the events that were going on in Iraq as we were going in. I know some people who were in the position of aggregating the battlefield reports and they verify the few news report
It is important to remember three things: Colin Powell is a lying cocksucker who covered up a war crime in Vietnam. Seymour Hersh is a brilliant journalist who broke the story of that war crime.
Third thing: For almost a year, Seymour Hersh has been writing in the New Yorker about Dick Cheney's preparations for a war, possibly even a nuclear first strike, against Iran.
Fear.
I'm guessing that whatever rules you dream up to exclude other people from voting will always be framed in such a way that they cannot be used to exclude yourself. Basically that is the definition of an "elitist jerk".
Of course if I were making the eligibility rules, "elitist jerks" would be the first ones I would exclude....doh!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We finance damn near everything with fake (deficeit) dollars, the War is no different than anything else. The War in Iraq (first or second) has NOTHING to do with the credit cruch, housing downturn, etc. Bush actually CUT Taxes so your ideas have no basis in fact. Young men sent to Iraq? WTF? The US Armed Forces are 100% VOLUNTEER!! These men and women chose the military knowing they could be over in Iraq any day. I will agree that buying it all from China is a bad thing. Blame Wal-Mart but they will say that is what the consumer wants so we only have ourselves to blame, NOT, repeat NOT George Bush.
You don't even need to spell Alzheimer's correctly to Google your way to a reasonable and sympathetic discussion of Ronald Reagan's long decline, which began in the early 80s, and of which he was undoubtedly aware. People who knew people with Alzheimer's began speculating that he was suffering from this disease during his first term as president, and although it wasn't a discussion topic in the mainstream press, many citizens were aware of this possibility by about midway through his second term. As this article mentions, the condition remains difficult to diagnose today. Other articles I've seen indicate that a fully positive diagnosis isn't really possible without a brain biopsy (typically performed after the patient has died). Reagan's downward spiral
Look, anonymous coward, we don't exist to fill the enormous gaps in your knowledge of the world in which you live, nor to compensate for your laziness. It takes about 2 seconds for you to verify this for yourself. If you're going to snidely demand "references" whenever someone makes a statement that you are not directly familiar with, at least have the courtesy to do so using your login ID so the rest of us can filter you out.
Anonytard.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.