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A Look At Joe Biden's Tech Voting Record
Aviran brings us an analysis of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's voting record on technology issues. CNet breaks down the issues by category and provides details on the tech-related legislation he's introduced in the past several years. Biden received a score of 37.5% on CNet's 2006 technology voter guide. We've discussed the technology stances of McCain and Obama in the past.
Why did Biden vote against the FISA bill, the one where Obama voted for? You know, the one that granted telecoms immunity against criminal prosecution.
How can a candidate running on a base of "change" justify picking a VP who has been in DC for 30+ years?
The only thing "changing" in January is the position DC is fucking me in...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Do Senators exist who can open a laptop without assistance and actually avoid drooling on the keyboard?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
That's the original post title and post by Aviran that's merely alluded to here... why the need to neutralize it? Would you have neutralized it for a Republican candidate?
Interesting. Is there a J. Edgar Hover wannabe there? Or is it just the current climate with this administration.
the trouble with this is, even though Obama would be the President if elected, Biden would be President of the Senate. So if there's a tie breaker for or against something that would further deteriorate our Civil Liberties, I can only assume Biden would vote in favor of less freedom. And if that should some to pass, maybe Obama would veto it. Then again, maybe not. This country is on a path of safety overrides freedom every time. I have lost hope.
Everyone has bias. Everyone.
The problem with voting records is not always apparent when you look at them and try to decide if someone is good for an industry or not. Industries are too complicated for any law to be truly pro or against the industry. Tech is especially so.
For me, the best voting record for a candidate is proven by those who halted BAD legislation by not just voting against more government intrusions into the market, but also worked to hold up bad bills from leaving committees. My favorite legislators are those who just shut down most bills before they're even really bills. The legislative committees is where the best work is done, or the worst work is done.
This is why I fully believe our campaign finance laws are to blame when it comes to voting records. Since the individual is greatly limited in who they can support, and how, it is always the large lobbying groups that end up writing the laws. McCain and Feingold knew this, and they knew that limiting the voice of the individual would end up limiting the power of the individual.
To wrap up, trying to look at voting records is bad because most of the work is done before the vote is even considered. We have no power, as individuals, to try to work in that process. The lobbying groups, which are always about MORE legislation to destroy competition and never LESS, are cozied up very nicely: to Obama, to Biden, to McCain, to whoever it is who is elected, might be elected, or was elected. And on that, all of them have terrible voting records which do nothing but restrict competition in every market they touch.
Biden wasn't nominated the VP because of his tech voting record. Just look at what the Democrats are talking about- Iraq, the economy, healthcare, the housing crisis, etc. Net Neutrality is barely on the radar, and you can be assured that NN isn't going to get a vote in the next two years (unless someone piles it in an omnibus) even with a Democratic majority.
Biden is a tactical choice to try to win the election; not a choice of "who would actually make the best VP once we win". All you have to do to realize that is watch Biden's acceptance speech, where he smacked the hell out of McCain. Regardless of which side of the aisle you're on politically; that "seven kitchen tables" line was gold. That's what Biden is there for- to attack McCain (and McCain's VP choice) while Obama is above the fray.
VPs are chosen as an attempt to win elections, not as an attempt to pick the best man for the job.
Care about privacy? Read this!
We have lost more freedoms than ever under Republican administrations and this user seems to question the ability of Obama/Biden before they even get a chance - as if its the democrats fault we're in this shit hole we're in today (or as if the parent accepts this shit hole as conservative progress)
Tell me ONE law, ONE goal, ONE ambition of the Obama/Biden ticket that will make "safety override freedom every time".
Obama/Biden isn't Clinton politics.
* Going Green is energy policy
* Creating Green jobs is Economic Policy
* Having a right hand mand to fill in the "DC politics" greed that voters will (for what reason i don't know) expect is a BOON.
* Healthcare is a great policy - a social insurance program that could have been funded for every human being if we hadn't been hell bent on WAR
I could go on and on what Obama/Biden can do for us but to people like you, its only what you assume they will do against you without regards for your fellow neighbors, countrymen and US citizens.
You're welcome to, but I never really found either of them particularly attractive. And I suspect my girlfriend would have a serious objection, too.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I guess we'd better hope voting records don't mean much, as it seems Biden is a firm friend of the *AA's
NEW YORK -- Joe Biden may have made his name in foreign relations in 32 years in the Senate, but his efforts against piracy have won him respect in Hollywood.
Biden was named Saturday as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate. The Delaware senator has got a long list of credentials, including chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee and experience on the world stage lacking in the top of the ticket. But the 64-year-old Scranton, Pa., native has been a strong advocate for U.S. intellectual property rights and an ardent soldier in the fight against piracy.
As a founding member of the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, Biden has helped the lead the fight against countries such as China, Russia, Mexico and India that need stronger copyright protections.
"When somebody holds you up on the street and takes your wallet, we call it robbery," Biden said in May 2007. "And when somebody steals your idea and creation, we call it theft, plain and simple." The MPA has lauded the work of the anti-piracy caucus as being essential to motivating the government to action.
(From http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i67f2ad037eba0dd6e4821ce39ce827a3?imw=Y)
All of them voted for the I-CAN-SPAM Act, except Obama. Obama didn't vote for the I-CAN-SPAM Act because he was not there to vote for it.
Fight Spammers!
It's not flamebait. There's a good 5% of the voting public feel exactly that way about these two. And they have very good reason. While their position on "high" tech is interesting and all, when you starting asking the real questions, it boils down to their position on our rights to use that tech as we see fit. Because none of them are "against" technology. We have to watch how it will used against us. So the questions become something like, Who's going to to reign in the FBI and their wiretapping? Who's going to stop the TSA from damaging our airliners, possibly causing a real disaster? When are we ever going to see real adherence to the Bill of Rights? Not that we ever had, but it's about time we make a real effort. If we want to see truly rapid development of high tech, we have to ask when are they going to put an end to near infinite copyright, and the idea of software patents.
Well, from both of these guys we are getting negative responses to all these questions and more. We are going to get more of the same thing that we have been getting since long before we were born.
So the AC is right
Fuck McCain
Fuck Obama
The only thing I could add is "!"
What?
When FISA came to a vote as HR.6308 on July 9, 2008, Biden voted against it, Obama voted for it.
--
make install -not war
Conversely, I would contend that if we don't do them, they will do us. Are you a "pitcher", or a "catcher"? :-)
What?
He's a repeat offender. That was a bit of a Google grab-bag link, but it's going to haunt him. Having "addressed" the issue doesn't alter his repeatedly having done the deed. It speaks to his need to always have something (at length!) to say. Couple that with, for example, lecturing someone in front of the Senate for an appointment review along the lines of, "my IQ is higher than yours," and you get a sense of how he relates to the rest of the world.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I would argue that it's not a slight difference, but past that: There's a time for idealism and a time for pragmatism. In 2000, I went idealism and voted Nader. I won't be making that mistake this time around.
...the system proved once again that it is an abysmal failure in promoting good leaders.
No, we have proven that we are abysmal failures at seeking out good leaders. It is we who are so easily distracted by their shiny trinkets. It is we who act so helpless when only we can make the needed changes.
Next time, vote your conscience.
I agree, but most are voting for the guy who brings it home. The system ain't broke. We are. We created this system, and we continue to feed it. Most are just just not uncomfortable enough to do anything about it. Lack of empathy and downright hate play a huge part.
What?
SO you leave it up to the rest of us? Your choice, just don't complain if the worst choice in your opinion gets in to office.
Voting isn't about getting your perfect choice into office. It's about choosing the best candidate from those available. you look at the candidates and select the one you think can a) make the biggest difference in your life and b) cause the least harm to everyone else
I voted for Bush twice because the other candidates opposing him were worse choices. John Kerry was a putz and Al Gore just wasn't a leader (a fine and good public servant but not a leader). He was at the times the better candidate - and I stand by those choices despite the results.
This year I'll vote for Barack both because I think he'll do a good job and because I think McCain would do a poor job. I'm lucky this year... one of the candidates is IMHO a good choice.
SO don't vote - but remember, I will. SO if you think McCain is better in any way than Barack - you could cancel out my vote... or alternatively if you think Barack is the least dangerous candidate you could help ensure his winning the election by voting for him.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Here are a couple of basic facts omitted by the submitter: Obama got a 50.00% rating and McCain got a 31.25% rating.
Given that that information was available via two clicks on the same page that yielded Biden's rating, and given that the positions of the presidential candidates is a lot more important than the positions of the VP candidates, one has to wonder why the submitter didn't find those details worth mentioning.
Additionally, Obama made it very clear before he announced his choice of Biden that he wanted a VP candidate who would engage him in discussions about issues, disagree with him, and challenge his assumptions. Here's an example, in Obama's own words:
I apologize if this reduces the number of McCain troll points for somebody interested in getting some McCain campaign schwag.
I added the bold text for emphasis in the Obama quote above.
Another thing: a voting record is useful for evaluating a congresscritter, but not via a simple number. It requires more careful analysis. This is because a congressvarmints will sometimes vote for positions he opposes when the defeat of those positions is assured, but the positions are popular with the congressvarmint's constituents (or the opposite: vote against a position he supports when passage is assured without his vote). And while both members of the House of Representatives and Senators both do that, Senators have yet another trick because of the existence of the filibuster in the Senate. An example is Senator Joe Lieberman, who voted with the Republicans for cloture (i.e., to end the Democratic filibuster) on the nomination of Samuel Alito the Supreme Court. Since it was known that the Republicans had enough votes to rubber-stamp Bush's nomination of Alito, the vote that mattered was the cloture vote. After that, Lieberman cast his vote against confirming Alito, so he could tell the voters in Connecticut, an overwhelmingly Democratic state, that he had voted against Alito. If you were just to look at the confirmation vote, you might think Lieberman had been against confirming Alito, but on the vote that mattered, he voted with the Republicans.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
There are legitimate reasons to vote against Internet gambling. There are legitimate reasons to vote against H1B visas. There are legitimate reasons to vote against free trade with China.
CNet is a news site. It shouldn't try to push a political agenda, even one that it thinks its audience shares.
But seriously, this is chilling. You'd think someone in Washington would understand the constitution. When we wake up someday in a police state, wondering how we lost the most important thing, the essence of our democracy, we'll look back and understand that all these seemingly minor bits of legislation gave up our essential liberty for a whole lot of nothing.
A domain ready for service to the cause - post your ideas.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
Saying there were only 5% of the voters dissatisfied with the choices seemed way too low to me.
Note the "Neither" column. Occasionally it dips down to 4%. I believe you are making the assumption that these two are somehow different from each other. I can assure you, they are not. They represent the same interests of power. If one votes for a person they are "dissatisfied" with, then they really aren't dissatisfied. It is nothing more than passing the blame.
What?
I just noticed that the top-scoring Republican on the CNet tech voter guide page is "Senator George Allen." Wha? Jim Webb beat him 2 years ago and has been serving in the Senate since January of 2007. So that made me look more carefully. This is a 2006 voter guide. So the numbers may have changed a lot since the page was created.
John McCain could have a COMPLETELY different rating by now, because there's almost no substantive issue on which he hasn't reversed his position at least once in the last ten years. For example, McCain was against using the military for "nation-building" (never mind that that was never the mission in Bosnia anyway) when Clinton was president, and was against the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy when they were proposed and passed, but has obviously completely reversed his positions on both those issues and a number of others. For example, McCain was for outlawing abortion before he was against it (when he wanted to be a "maverick," bucking the Republican Party's position) before he was for it again (when he needed votes from the "Christian Right" in the current presidential campaign).
So what do we have in TFS? The use of a flawed means of analyzing Biden's tech voting record; the omission of the more relevant comparison of Obama and McCain, leaving the Biden numbers in a vacuum, looking scarily low for us tech nerds, even if we put aside the flawed nature of the rating; and the use of a page from 2006 to make this argument.
Seriously, I hope the schwag is really good, and not just cheesy "McCain 2008" mugs or T-shirts or something.
I have to give the modern (post-Reagan) Republican Party credit. They have the most amazing, unbroken party unity I've ever seen. This year, Bush's deep unpopularity has some Republican members of Congress (e.g., Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon) running away from Bush and pretending they've been endorsed by Obama. And the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee told Republican members of Congress to run away from the Republican brand in this year's election. But still, when they need a vote in Congress for legislation a Republican president wants, they command party unity that would be the envy of the Chinese Communist Party of the 1970s. And this despite the Republican voter coalition consisting of at least three distinct parts whose interests are often at odds with each other. There's the Christian Right, which would have the government legislate their version of "what God wants," the libertarian Goldwater types, and the "Rockefeller Republicans," who tend to be socially liberal, at least in relative terms in the 21st Century USA, but conservative on economic issues. You would think this coalition would have fractured, but the Rs have managed not only to hold it together for a quarter-century, but actually strengthened it, taking over all three branches of government for about half of this decade. Meanwhile, the Democrats never seem to muster that kind of unity. Clinton and Carter, the last two Democratic presidents, had a lot of problems with Democratic-majority Congresses. Will Rogers famously said that he did not belong to any organized political party - he was a Democrat. As Homer Simpson would say, "it's funny because it's true." OK, there are signs that Howard Dean and Obama are transforming the party, but I can't imagine it ever being the complete lock-step monolithic voting the Republican Party has been for the last 20 years or so.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Saying there were only 5% of the voters dissatisfied with the choices seemed way too low to me.
Note the "Neither" column. Occasionally it dips down to 4%. I believe you are making the assumption that these two are somehow different from each other. I can assure you, they are not. They represent the same interests of power. If one votes for a person they are "dissatisfied" with, then they really aren't dissatisfied. It is nothing more than passing the blame.
You're right about the sameness of these candidates. We basically have a corrupt one-party system disguised as a 2-party system. And I wasn't making any such assumptions, just pointing out that they both suck, and a lot of people feel that way.
That poll shows nothing but which candidate people think is the lesser of 2 evils. Asked to pick between the two choices, most people will just pick one, rather than trying to stand up to some kind of ideal that they are convinced will simply be ignored anyway.
That doesn't mean people aren't pissed off about the candidates the parties have decided to put in front of them - they certainly are. But most will (misguided as it is) simply hold their nose and vote for the one they think likely to do the least harm over the next 4 years.
"Continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils means you are still choosing evil." I think it was Jerry Garcia who said that.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
They have to follow the Constitution before they can follow the Bill of Rights.
And so in 2006, you presumably voted Democrat, in order to end the War, stop illegal wiretapping, restore Habeus Corpus. Oh wait...
... that makes Biden the President of the Senate. So if there is a tie in the Senate, he gets to break the tie, as Cheney has done 8 times so far. What we need is enough pro-technology senators to ensure this doesn't happen. Still, he will be able to do a lot of damage with his powers to control the agenda. So what Obama needs to do is keep him busy on foreign affairs trips, sending him overseas, to keep him away from the Senate so the President pro tempore can take control.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Being a citizen is hard work if you do it right, and if you do it right you can have influence beyond your own vote.
Which doesn't mean waste your time arguing and confronting people, it means drawing them out about what matters to them and pointing out how the candidate you back can help. It means researching the under-reported local races and sharing the results with neighbors who want to vote but don't know the candidates. It means making get-out-the-vote phone calls, and registration drives in friendly territory.
I have heard this accusation a lot lately. Eventually, I went and actually looked up what happened. I have come to the conclusion that your accusation is dishonest. A simple google for "obama" and "rezko" turns up thousands of stories, but here is a representative one.
For those who, like me, tend not to follow all the political scandals, here is a summary. Rezko and Obama bought adjacent parcels of land. Obama's parcel had a house on it; Rezko's was undeveloped. These two parcels had previously belonged to the same person, who had decided to split their property and sell it in two parts. Some time later, Obama wanted to expand his property, so he bought a slice of Rezko's land. I have not seen any indications that Obama bought the land for anything less than a fair price; in fact, I read an article showing that Rezko made a decent profit on the land but I can't find that article right now.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
Nobody will just "vote their conscience" until there is a system that rewards that. Right now the system is setup to reward football politics, where people align themselves with the party instead of the individual. If you really like Dennis Kucinich, you still don't vote for him because everyone else is voting for Clinton or Obama so you feel like you need to pick the one of them who sucks less.
I think a really good solution is to use Instant Runoff Elections [1]. Then you can choose the candidate that you really like, and a second and third place candidate. Then if the person you really like doesn't get enough votes, your vote hasn't been thrown away.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
McCain's Vietnam experience does show grit and character, but your main point is sound.
Obama is not qualified. McCain is not qualified. Nobody who has a chance of getting to run is qualified.
There's a science fiction story called "2066: Election Day" by Michael Shaara. In it, the master computer chooses the President, because the voters have proven to do such a bad job. It is programmed to select the "best qualified man". The story hinges on a constitutional crisis that came up because the programmers coded "best qualified man" not as the expected "Select max(qualified) from candidates" but as "select max(good) from candidates where qualified=true". The computer refused to select a President.
This anti-tech/pro-tech chart is stupid and arbitrary.
According to the cnet's chart, anyone that's against piracy is anti-tech? Anyone that's for anti-porn filters in shcools is anti-tech? Complete bullshit. I'm sure almost everyone that voted for DCMA and internet filters consider themselves pro-tech, and have reasonable arguments despite being in disagreement with slashdot doctrine.
Same goes for most of the other bills that cnet arbitrarily decided would represent "tech" and arbitrarily decided whether yes or no on each issue was pro or anti tech.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
That is probably the biggest issue facing tech workers.
I know where McCain stands. McCain wants to rip the lid off any kind of a guest worker cap.
I get the idea that Obama wants to do the same, but Obama is not as brazen about it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You're welcome to, but I never really found either of them particularly attractive
Obviously you've never seen Senator Obama wearing his charisma +10 tie. I suggest you turn on the TV ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
our votes don't really count under the farce that is the electoral college.
Your vote counts just fine for selecting the electors from your own state. Lest you forget, the United States is a Republic made up of 50 states that retain their sovereignty. One of the points behind the Electoral College and US Senate is to prevent the domination of small/sparsely populated states by large/heavily populated ones.
You can have a debate about the wisdom of such a system but calling it a 'farce' seems to convey a pretty poor understanding of our system of Government. It's part of the Constitution. If the Electoral College is a 'farce' then I guess the Bill of Rights is as well.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Um, the Bill of Rights are amendments (read: updates) to the Constitution...
I think the main problem that's being talked about here stems from a near complete lack of critical thinking among the American public, which is why I think election campaigns are lower-levelled and politicians can get away with anything, i.e. "my opponent = Paris Hilton", "my opponent = terrist", "my opponent = cliché angry black man". I think that's pretty much the root of all evil the USA, a lack critical thinking, which makes the American public believe things that European publics would just scoff off, and that's why you realise you got owned when it's way too late. To put things in perspective, while both the American and the British government were for the war in Iraq, only the American opinion was favourable to it, while the majority of Britons were opposing it from the start. The very fact that the evolution and climate change debates are even taken seriously by most Americans is I believe a clear indicator of that intellectual gap between this country and most other countries you can decently compare them to.
I think it all mainly stems from the quality of education in the USA, and I think every cause of the current and future downfall of the USA can be traced back to educational issues.
You just got troll'd!
Sadly Bill Hicks pointed this out ages ago,with the dems and repubs you are just getting SSDD. The dems will kiss the *.A.As booty a little more,while the repubs kiss a little more defense contractor booty. I'll be voting Barr just because I'm so disgusted with both,not that I think he has a prayer. And so much for Obama and his "I'm for change" BS,since he picked the biggest corporate booty kissing insider he possibly could. After FISA and this I wouldn't vote for him if it was a choice of voting for him or not voting at all. In fact many of the folks I've talked to are so disgusted with him after FISA they have just decided to sit this one out. And frankly I can't say as I blame them. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
An electoral college that doesn't represent the popular vote is little better than establishing a monarchy by divine providence.
Repeat after me: The United States is a Republic. 50 Sovereign States get votes for POTUS. How you can compare this to a monarchy established by "divine providence" is beyond me. Your state gets X number of votes in the electoral college. Your vote helps to determine who those votes go to.
You can complain about the system or point out flaws but the comparison to monarchy is just absurd.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sadly you've hit the nail on the head. I "believed" in Obama, but after showing my support and even putting my money where my mouth is, he pulled my pants down and fucked me. FISA and Biden prove it. Don't get me started on McCain, aka Bush 3.0, aka Reagan 4.0. The truth is Bill Hicks and George Carlin were not comedians, they were philosophers.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
"We recognized the independence of Kosovo on the basis that the local population had the right to decide that they would not be part of Serbia any more."
I will be the first to argue to you that Kosovo was a massive mistake on our part, and I put the blame squarely at the feet of George W Bush. What he did was either open the door for every postage stamp territory in Europe to declare independence... Wales, Catalonia, Sicily, northern Greece; or if we don't let the Basques and every other minority in Europe declare independence, we end up looking like hypocrites that pushed Kosovo just to say "screw you" to Serbia one more time. I believe the invasion of Georgia was direct payback for Kosovo. That doesn't make it right, but I recognize it for what it really is.
"We should now recognize the exact same principle in Georgia. "
Actually, we should just own up to it and say "Kosovo was a mistake", but that's not going to happen.
"But Putin is certainly not an existential threat to the west or to any western government. There is not going to be a Russian invasion of Poland or Slovakia. "
History repeats itself, and disagrees with you. Russia invades its surrounding states when they think they can get away with it. And in the case of Georgia, they judged the limp-spines of Western Europe perfectly.
"Now we could embark on another wingnut fantasy exercise in wishful foreign policy. I don't think that we can risk ayet more neo-con naivety."
NATO's "wingnut philosophy" was created and implemented by Democrats, thanks. Furthermore, it was built on ideas that went back to that famous Republican, Woodrow Wilson... oh wait.
Georgia never agreed to let those territories split, and Russia still has no moral superiority on this, or they would have let Chechnya go a long time ago. They did this just to poke NATO in the eye... and to test them. Consider that test a failure for the alliance. They don't give a shit about the Ossetians any more than you do. That's a convenient excuse. The idea of collective security for free nations isn't a "wingnut fantasy" unless you're one of those Kissenger "realpolitik" types. Russia doesn't have a damned thing to fear from having nations on its border in NATO... unless they were planning on making vassal states of those nations.
This is guaranteed; leave those countries like Georgia out there alone, and sooner or later, Russia will swallow them up, and take it as a sign of western weakness that they were allowed to do so.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
...But, Clinton started out with a stellar academic career (you know, Rhodes scholar), wheras Obama went to a no-name college.
So you've never heard of those no-name colleges "Columbia University" and "Harvard Law School" (where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review)?
Reality has a liberal bias
The ones who remember how abysmal the past 8 years have been, and how much worse the next 4-8 would be with McCain keeping the Bush economy running.
George Bush - corn $6/bushel
Bill Clinton - corn $2.5/bushel
Yep, they really want to go back to the good old days of Clinton, and make less than half of what they are making now.
Especially those who know that Bush squandered every penny and ounce of respect this country had amassed in over two centuries.
Oh, you mean all that respect LBJ earned when he invaded Viet Nam? Or, that respect earned when Jimmy Carter let the Iranians bully us around for 444 days, or, turned the Olympics into a political event by canceling American participation?
And how, prey tell, do Democrats engender the respect of the world, when, as we speak, they complain that the Iraqis are actually making money and we shouldn't be spending money on reconstruction over there. Does the world really think that we shouldn't have to spend to build up a country that we blew up? OR, when, if we prematurely leave Iraq, and all of those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people that supported the USA in Iraq, get butchered, and Obama does nothing, then, will that earn the respect of the world? Or, when Obama waffles on Russian bullying of a NATO ally, say, Poland, will -that- earn the respect of the world?
The world may not like that Bush invaded Iraq, but I guarantee you that they respect Bush more for staying and trying to turn that situation around, then they will Obama, who plans on walking out.
This is my sig.
We use instant runoff elections in Australia (though we call it "preferential voting"). It basically works like a process of elimination - no candidate wins until they have more than 50% of the vote.
IMO, it is a lot better at letting people vote their true intentions. However, there are two problems with its implementation in Australia, which seem to counter its advantages:
1) We have compulsory voting. We all have to turn up to the voting booth and get our name crossed off, or we get fined!
2) You have to number all the boxes on the electoral sheet - you can't just vote for say, your top 3 candidates, and then have your vote extinguish (admittedly, this would the instant runoff calculations more complex, but there's no reason for this requirement).
And one of the most striking experiences of my political existence was listening to Biden deliver a speech only days after 9/11. I was a member of the Green party at that point as well as a college labor rights group. We'd made signs talking about how we were paying the Afghanistan government over $1 billion a year to stop drugs. We figured, being a senator, he'd just forget to mention it. Instead, he gave a 10 minute lecture on how the state of things came to be, including the billions in funding.
Biden is the chair of the foreign relations committee and was the chair of the judiciary committee. Look at this guy's votes and actions on women's rights, gitmo, FISAA, the US's role in the UN, and Bosnia. And he knows more about these than the senator in charge of commerce knows about "tubes".
Biden's first and foremost a diplomat (a strong internationalist...not a "coalition of the willing" kind of guy) and defender of civil rights/liberties -- Jesse Jackson even went on record saying his "clean" comment regarding Obama didn't make him a racist because of his strong leadership on the issue in the past. He's not well educated on tech law, but -- be honest -- how many of you could tell me who the president of Georgia was before this recent fiasco? Biden knows him on a first-name basis. Because that's his job and I dare say he does it well.
As a geek, tech is important, but isn't foreign policy and the US standing in the world more important this election? If you had a choice between hiring an expert in one or the other this election, which would you choose?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The history of that bill is otherwise. While the vote was a lopsided 68/29/3 (y/n/not-voting), one must remember that it was filibustered, and overcoming a filibuster takes a 3/5 super-majority (on the US Senate base of 100), so the margin was more like 8 votes than 18, and wasn't a sure thing at all. It had previously failed, and the supporters had to "deal" in ordered to get the votes they needed. One wonders what deal Obama cut in ordered to get him to change is vote after an original pledge to oppose it if it included telecom immunity.
By contrast, as one of the drafters of the original FISA this bill was updating, Biden was opposed to the bill with the telecom immunity provision from the beginning, and remained so. He pointed out that McCain's (and Obama's as well, after he switched, tho that wasn't pointed out) position on this put him in the company of both Bush and Nixon in taking the position that the President is above the law. Further, he quoted himself from the original FISA debate in 1978, "it is not necessary to compromise civil liberties in the name of national security", saying that's as true today, in a time of war, as it was then, and calling the bill including the telecom immunity provision "a false choice -- national security or civil liberties."
While Biden's record on civil liberties isn't perfect (while he voted to extend PATRIOT in 2005, bad for civil liberties, he did at least vote against reauthorizing its wiretap provision in 2006, and he sponsored legislation that unfortunately died in committee that would have banned torture and interrogation techniques not authorized by the US Army Field Manual, which is pretty reasonable), it's actually more good than bad, better than most, unfortunately.
See this article at the Daily Kos, from which I borrowed somewhat liberally for the above, for more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/23/112722/071
I'm on record as hoping Obama might either reverse himself or satisfactorily explain himself on this, so I could again support him. I had been as close as I'd ever been to donating to his campaign, before this, but that vote ended all thought of that, and I was seriously looking into third party candidates and even considering for the first time since I could vote, just saying home for this presidential election, as I couldn't vote for McCain, Obama wasn't leaving me reason to vote FOR him (as opposed to against McCain) either (tho as I posted in response to someone else on another story, I'd have probably voted third party, likely Barr, because altho I don't agree with much of that platform, it'd shake up Washington and the still dominant two parties would have killed anything too radical, at least the first term... and because I take voting as a duty and would have felt guilty not voting... but writing in none-of-the-above as a protest would have been an option as well). While I don't believe Biden was chosen primarily for his position on this, the choice /does/ start the process, or at least signal that it might happen. I'm still not all that hopeful, but it's possible, and at least I have the option of voting Obama/Biden now, where before it was beginning to look like my only options would be third party or a none-of-the-above write-in.
We'll see.
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
Yeah, I know, this is supposed to be a forum and not a speech park, but I don't particularly care. Our problem isn't in how we elect the President, it's in how much attention we give him. We expect the President to embody the entirety of the government and make the legislation to make the country work. The problem is that legislation should get debated in Congress, and we don't notice anyone in Congress, unless he happens to take bribes or calls the internet funny names. We don't care about policy, we care about personality, and that's most easily found in a President. If we started to focus on Congressmen a bit more, they might actually start to get something done.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
I say this as a guy with a Libertarian Party card in his wallet -- Bob Barr is worse than either Obama or McCain. He's fucking crazy -- seriously.
This is my major problem in this election.
I don't like Obama. His messages of "hope" and "change" seems to be hoping you don't realize the only change he wants is Democrats in office instead of Republicans.
McCain I have other issues with. He gets a little credit for knowing his weaknesses, but not enough.
I'm looking for a 3rd party candidate that isn't a complete fruitcake, and I haven't seen one yet. This is seriously frustrating to me.
Any suggestions?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Apparently, you have enough money to afford luxuries like a computer and an internet connection....
Or access to a public library.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
That's not much compared to Bill Clinton:
You've got that backwards. Being a Yale graduate is not much compared to being the head of the Harvard Law Review.
What's Obama done in comparison to -that-? Nothing, really. I mean, he becomes a state legislature, and blah blah blah blah
How to Market Obama to Your Republican Friends. A Republican lays out reasons why Republicans should vote for Obama, and cites issues like Obama working to secure loose nukes in the former U.S.S.R., brought major transparency with The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, and more. Try reading it, but feel free to keep spouting your cute little theories. I enjoy playing Jerry to your George Castanza.