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McCain Campaign Uses Spider/Diff Against Obama
Vote McCain in 2008! writes "McCain's campaign is doing everything it can to erase Obama's online advantage, this time they ambushed Obama by detecting edits to his website when he updated some of his policy positions. This isn't the first time the Republicans have shown up the Democrats with their web savvy — you may remember the previous reports about the Republican Web 2.0 Consultants and their online campaigning game. This just proves that old Republicans can learn new tricks." Assuming the spider adheres to robots.txt, this is clever and well done.
Okay, you can mod me OT if you want, but as the submitter chose to call himself Vote McCain in 2008! I'm taking license here. Apologies to those who still find it OT...
/soapbox rant
I hear one definition of insanity is repeating the same action while expecting a different result each time. How many times have we thrown our votes away on the major party candidates only to get the same old status quo, regardless of the promises made? It's high time we the people just say no to the corrupt two party system. It's time we got off our lazy asses and learn about the alternatives available outside the corporate-approved "choice" spoon-fed to us by Big Media. Oh sure, probably we'll get either McCain or Obama this time, but if enough people vote outside the box it will encourage others to do the same. Maybe we can even take back our government at some point. But it'll never happen by voting for one of the two "approved" candidates. We need a new meme -- don't throw your vote away. Don't waste your vote on the Republicrats!
Caveat Utilitor
Perhaps old Republicans should learn that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed since the early 1990s before we deem them worthy of learning new tricks?
Why is changing what you have to say a bad thing? If you have a different set of facts or a change in thought, why is it bad to change your opinions?
And are the edits that the Obama campaign making really significant? I had a look at the differences highlighted in the linked Wired article, and they didn't really look like a significant change in substance.
So fucking what? Are we really this stupid in our politics that it's now a game of crying "flip-flopper" when you just say more or less the same thing, maybe with a different emphasis?
Hello, where have you been the last 7 years ? Changing what you say makes you a flip-flopper. Real men stay the course.
The article concludes:
This is like comparing two drafts of James Joyce's Ulysses, noting that changes were made, and concluding, "If anything, the changes simply reflect that Joyce is just another writer." Keeping in mind that as it happens Obama is also a talented, best-selling author, we should be surprised that he prepares more than on draft, or releases more than one edition of his work?
In other news, the detection of edits in the latest kernel release prompted a clever Wired hack to print, "If nothing, the changes simply reflect that Torvalds is just another coder."
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yes, Obama is editing his web site and fine-tuning his message. BFD. That's what web sites are for. I don't see anything greatly inconsistent in what Obama is doing.
What is really going on is that McCain has a lousy record: he has been flip-flopping on positions and has a lot of history that he needs to hide from. This is a huge problem for the Republican party establishment, who probably would have preferred any candidate other than McCain.
So, what does McCain do? He tries to go on the offensive so that he can say "well, it's OK if I flip-flop because the other guy edits his web site, too".
Don't let McCain get away with this bullshit. McCain is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of both conservative Republicans and moderates in terms of his actual positions and record.
Then Obama flip-flopped on FISA and voted for a bill containing telecom immunity.
You know, I still don't get the huge deal with the telecom immunity. Yes the telecoms should be punished, at least as a preventative measure so that in the future companies think twice before following illegal government orders. And yet, the truly guilty party are the government officials who made those orders. Why are we so intend to lynch their stooges when the masterminds are getting away scot-free? Are we just settling because we know they're above the law? Isn't there a bit of a double standard here?
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records. The government obviously shows a disdain for the constitution and considers anyone who stands in their way to be terrorist accomplices. What's going to happen to you when you say 'No'?
Who came up with the Marshall Plan again ?
So fucking what? Are we really this stupid in our politics that it's now a game of crying "flip-flopper" when you just say more or less the same thing, maybe with a different emphasis?
New words scare people. Just a couple weeks ago, Obama said in a press conference that he'd be willing to "refine" his Iraq policy during his visit there, and a combination of the media and the McCain campaign jumped all over him for "flip-flopping" on Iraq. They were pretending that he had said that he was going to change his stance on the war, and so he had to give a second press conference later that day to emphasize that he had said nothing of the sort.
The media is trying to have a repeat of 2004 by painting the Democrat as a flip-flopper, when he has only waffled, as all politicians do. Even Obama's worst flip-flop, on the FISA legislation, wasn't a complete reversal: though he voted the final bill, he still voted to strip the immunity provision. He said that he thought the bill had more good than bad in it, and while we might disagree, that's just a matter of priority, not of position.
Meanwhile, McCain directly contradicts himself time and time again, and he has so far gotten off scot-free. We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media, we have a sensationalist media that caters to the lowest common denominator by trying to place the candidates into a pre-defined mold that has existed for the better part of three decades.
Everybody knows that if you're fighting an asymmetric war, you make your moves at the time when you can strike and minimize your losses, and you wait patiently at all other times. Anyone who thinks the violence against US targets isn't going to go back up as soon as the surge ends OR it becomes clear by observing US political and military statements and operations that the "surge" is permanent, is kidding themselves.
I'd also like to point out that it is very unfair and biased to measure violence "in the form of attacks, and the number of US casualties in Iraq" - what about Iraqi causalities? Civilian casualties? Shouldn't those be at least as important, if not more important, now that it's clear the war isn't being fought for WMDs?
-bugg
Depressing situation isn't it? Conservatism made the Republican Party an actual party rather than the me-tooism of the 40s and 50s. They win the House and Senate for the first time in forty years while running on an unapologetically conservative platform. Bush wins while running as some weird bleeding heart conservative.
So what do we get?
Vast increase in federal spending!
Vast increase in federal power!
They morphed into a me-too-but-more party.
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records. The government obviously shows a disdain for the constitution and considers anyone who stands in their way to be terrorist accomplices. What's going to happen to you when you say 'No'?
Congratulations, you have just outlined very concisely why fascism worked. Because everyone made that calculations for themselves, came up with the answer that compliance is the only rational choice, and complied with a system they knew to be evil.
Well, almost everyone. The rest got killed or exiled by people who were "just following orders".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm not American, so I don't know all that much about the whole thing. However, isn't part of the complaint against telecom immunity due to the fact that it may sabotage any effort to investigate and prosecute government officials?
You don't want the stooges to have immunity because you want to be able to apply pressure so they incriminate their masters.
Now all we need is a cable channel called MTV to start playing music videos for the first time, and we will be all set.
yeah it only took him months to realize what everyone else knew back in May. Now that all the surge troops are out of Iraq he has no choice but to change his position.
Also it's not just that he's changing position, it's that he's rewriting history to sound like he never argued the surge would have the opposite effect it actually has. His entire campaign is one of emphasizing judgment to compensate for his lack of experience, but this and other examples (wright, rezko, ayers, ethanol, chicago housing projects) seriously bring his judgment into question.
Because for the first time in 40 years there is a contender who isn't a rich old white guy. For the first time EVER there is a real contender who isn't white.
If you can't see that this is an astonishing departure from the status quo, then you really are blind. I'm not sure what kind of candidate it would take to impress people like you, short of a 35-year old gay atheist inuit liberatarian
If you think superficial factors make him a better candidate for president, then you're every bit as damned stupid as the racists who think that they automatically make him worse. Most of us recognize that the color of his skin is irrelevant. We judge him by his merits as a candidate. Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr., would have said, we judge him not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I, personally, have judged him by his worth as a candidate, and found him no different than any other politician. A lot of talk, nothing to back it up. Just look at the damn FISA bill if you want evidence. If that doesn't convince you that Obama is the same breed, just with a different skin tone, nothing will.
There's this idiotic attitude that is starting to pervade our society, where people figure that because a group of people was oppressed in the past, now they should get special regard. That's every bit as immoral and insulting as oppressing them in the first place! Judge them as the person they are, not as the color of their skin, whether positively or negatively.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I agree with all of what you are saying and I've railed against single-issue voters in the past. I can't bring myself to get over this FISA vote though. Beyond telecom immunity this bill guts the FISA court and gives the Executive carte blanche to wiretap without warrants or judicial oversight. Do you talk to anyone overseas on the telephone? Your calls could be monitored at any time without a warrant thanks to this bill. You as an American citizen have effectively had your right against unreasonable search and seizure taken away from you just because you want to communicate with someone outside of our borders.
Obama swore an oath to defend the Constitution when elected to the Senate. He has now violated that oath. Why should I believe he will take the Presidential Oath seriously? Call me a sentimentalist but I believe that such oaths should be taken seriously. They remind all of us (from the person serving on a jury or testifying as a witness all the way up to the POTUS) that we are a nation of laws and that no one person is above those laws.
Ironically enough Obama's own statement on this issue explains my concerns far more eloquently then I can: "It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses."
Indeed. Who knew that giving retroactive immunity for past violations of the law would weaken the deterrent effect of the law? His own statement provides ample justification for opposing this law -- yet he supported it anyway? WTF?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And everyone else is pretty sure you're stupid.
Funny how that works when you believe something there's no evidence for, and has never been any evidence of.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Who came up with the Marshall Plan again
Democrats did, and here's the thing. Most of the "Reagan Republicans" and their intellectual descendants fondly remember when Democrats actually did embark on big visions and big crusade to try and make the world a place for free trade, free from tyranny. That old, old conservative isolationist wing of the Republican Party is basically a small minority.
What really happened is that Democrats completely lost their nerve after Viet Nam. Instead of looking at the war, and saying that they made some mistakes in its execution, and in fact, had actually started to turn things around once Westmoreland was replaced by Abrams, they have instead enshrined an ethic that lacks any sort of faith in the very government to do anything other than redistribute wealth.
I mean, Democrats are to be forever saluted for what they did from the 1940s through the 1960s. A lot of their ideas didn't work, but some did, and, we got the victory in World War II, built a national infrastructure that we've been living off of for 50 years, and put a man on the moon. They built a framework to stand against Soviet aggression and deftly avoided a world war without undermining American resolve. But, today's Democrats tend to reject a lot of that. Back in the 1960s, the Democrats who wanted NASA cut to pay for the poor were squelched, now they run the show. Today, the very idea of going to the moon, let alone mars, is considered to be just a handout, when it really, it is a project that harnesses the finest minds of the country towards a peaceful, momentus, national goal.
I would be willing to bet that if, in fact, a more muscular foreign policy candidate, one who really could articulate the American vision of free trade through Pax Americana, expansively, in the way that FDR and his ideological descendant, Reagan could, I would certainly support them, and, in fact, just about every Republican I know -would-. But instead today's Democratic party is consumed with identity politics and redistribution, sorta trying to divvying up the spoils but without the old Dems that still saw a need to get spoils to divvy.
Unfortunately though, through a catastrophe of party rules, Dems have a process that continually nominates the candidate who kowtows to a group of people that are in the minority. Republicans have a similar problem too, but, they at least have the sense to tend to set aside other policy differences so long as the free trade expansionist vision stands.
This is my sig.
We should judge a candidate by their positions not their race. As far as I can tell in this regard Obama is 'just another democrat'. After listening to one of his speaches I discovered that (1) he is a very good rhetorician (that can be a good or bad thing), (2) he talks a lot about 'change' but never says from what to what, and (3) the few positions that he actually stated where just standard democratic positions.
I would be willing to stand corrected, but on the issues Obama looks like any other democrat. He talks slick, but that is about it.
That must explain why the national deficit has skyrocketed under GWB.
It's my understanding that tax cuts really do increase revenue, but I'm not insistent on either position. The big problem with GWB is that he never met a government program he didn't like. Say the tax cuts raised revenue 5% for sake of illustration. You can't then increase spending by 25% and then wonder why you're losing ground.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Not really. It's moreso simply a party centered on freedom. Put in enough basic laws to keep society running at a reasonable level (ie, theft, rape, murder are illegal) and besides that have the government butt the hell out of our lives.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats want to enforce their morals on us. Changing the party just changes the moral code.
For the Republicans, it's "immoral" to do drugs, engage in prostitution, generally speak against the Bible or do anything non-Christian, etc.
For the Democrats, it's "immoral" to own a gun, or to not open your wallet and support every other person in the country financially.
It's actually kinda ironic that you'd call me a "selfish republican", because the Democrat idea of social services IS one of the mroe tolerable ideas I have - the Republicans are far more annoying with their holier than thou attitude. That said, the Democrats still are generally anti-gun, and still tend to rear their ugly heads when it comes to things like banning video games and such (that spans both parties, but that just means both are guilty rather than canceling anything out).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I couldn't care less about that. I specify the lower case 'l' to distiguish myself from the party that denies the existence of market failures and coercive business deals.
So he updated his policy position when the facts changed?
Republicans are just recording that it changed. Why are people so upset they are recording the differences between what Obama used to say and what he says now?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow, you are one arrogant piece of shit aren't you?
Definitely a Republican.
Ahh, making elitist judgement calls as to the character of another without examining someone in depth. Definitely a Democrat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not inherently idiotic to imagine how tax cuts could in fact increase revenue
It's not "idiotic" but some of the more rapid free-market types repeat it as though it is a physical law of the universe. In the case of the last eight years we've tried to combine spending increases and the need to fund two wars with massive tax cuts on the rich. How well has that worked out for us?
How can we send our sons and daughters off to war while asking for no sacrifices from the civilian population? Well, other than the "sacrifice" of asking people to continue to spend and consume to pump up the economy that is. Can you imagine FDR responding to Pearl Harbor by asking people to go to the shopping mall and refusing to increase taxes to help pay for the war?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
To be fair, the libertarian rants on Slashdot typically center around how the weak should be left to die as they are nothing but parasites on the strong, which is not all that dissimilar from the justification Nazis gave for the Holocaust and their other atrocities, so I can see why people might confuse these two.
"I'd rather see you all dead from hunger or disease than pay taxes" might be a honest political view, but it isn't going to win you any votes :).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You would certainly be able to indenture yourself, if you choose to — to anyone, who would want such a thing from you.
Serfdom (and the outright slavery) disappeared, not because of laws or regulations, but because it was inefficient. Re-read your Marx-volume. As the means of production evolve, the uninterested slaves' labor falls further and further behind in value — despite being cheaper — than that of motivated free workers.
So stop this "slavery" fear-mongering, and smears. For decades the country's policy-makers have been moving away from Libertarianism despite most Americans being in the Libertarian corner of the politics. The results, to name the most obvious are:
And all you can say against that is nonsense like: "Libertarians want to bring back slavery"?.. Pathetic...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why the past tense?
So wait, that would be different from the current state of things how exactly?
I'm quite serious. Please, enlighten us as to why the current system isn't screwing over anyone who isn't already rich? Do you get a 7%-10% raise every year? No? Then you're not even keeping up with true inflation. And don't throw CPI at me, that doesn't include food and fuel costs and is not representative of actual inflation.
Anyone seen the M3 money report that gives the total increase of dollars in circulation? No? Oh that's right, that's because it was so horrifying that they (the Federal Reserve) stopped releasing that information.
At least the Libertarian party supports the Constitution. Show me a D or R who actually does.
The voting system needs to change before there will be real political change, until then people will still just vote for the lesser evil to keep the greater evil out of office, when really we should be voting all the evils off the ballot.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Qwest's legal problems predate the NSA's circulating access requests to the telcos in the Fall of 2001.
The insider case that Nacchio, Qwest's CEO, claims he's being punished for, goes back to the dot-com bust when Qwest execs realized they weren't going to hit revenue projections. They started dumping stock and fraudulently shifting revenue to cover up the shortfall. Again, this all happened prior to the NSA asking for data.
The company has a history of engaging in illegal activity. In 2001, they paid an additional $350,000 fine on top of the June, 2000 $1.5 million fine they paid the FCC for slamming users. The slamming complaints started in the 90's.
Nacchio's blowing smoke by playing the role of NSA's victim.
Isn't it a valid criticism that if you're free to "voluntarily" indenture yourself, you're also open to being coerced? If someone says "be my slave and tell everyone it's voluntary, or I'll kill your family," what will you do?
Whereas currently, if the government sees that you're not getting proper wages for your work, it's taken out of your hands. You don't have the right to give up your rights - they're "inalienable."
Sometimes taking away certain freedoms actually protect others. If I travel abroad with an aid organization, and they have a policy to never negotiate with terrorists, and I'm kidnapped, my supervisors don't have the freedom to negotiate. On the other hand, this policy will probably prevent many kidnappings, increasing the actual freedom of life and limb for our staff.
outlandish or not, it's a reductio ad absurdum for the whole libertarian notion that everyone can be completely equal (don't mean economically... ) and free.
Governments wield a lot of power. Take them out of the picture, and economics will self-organize to another group having a lot of power, if only by virtue that they make a lot of money and continue to make more until the point that they wield enough economic power to be de-facto government organizations
THAT'S your objection to libertarianism?! That someone might head a vast conspiracy to destroy your life?
You may want to invest in some tinfoil, my friend.
Besides, there are still social services available in a libertarian society. They're just provided by charity rather than government. And as organizations such as The Salvation Army and Goodwill show, it is quite possible to run such charities as non-governmental private organizations.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but don't the Democrats currently hold both houses? And haven't they been compliant, not to say willing participants throughout much of this? I don't disagree that the people currently in power are evil, but I don't think that Dems get to disassociate themselves from their cowardly compliance and active participation in the perpetration of the worst evils of their nominal opponent. Where was the fighting? Where was the resistance? We've had two years where the Dems have controlled both houses, and nobody has been impeached, nothing has been repealed, they might as well be Republicans. They came into office riding a demand for change, with a mandate to do something different. Instead, they've done nothing at best.
While I tend to agree with you, you should remember that the majority of BOTH parties voted for the PATRIOT act and BOTH voted to go to war in Iraq. If you think that the Democrats are a bastion of respect for the Constitution, you should recall that it was the Democrats who brought us such gems as the Clipper Chip, the DMCA, and the Civil Asset Forfeiture Act. They were also the first to set up a "free speech zone" at their convention in 1988, long before it was trendy with Republicans. The Republicans only seem evil because they are the ones who have been in power lately.