Slashdot Mirror
Be Part of the 2008 Presidential Youth Debate
We participated in this project back in 2004. This year it's hosted by Walden University, and the format is a little less cumbersome than it was four years ago. So go ahead, ask some questions you'd like to see McCain and Obama answer, and they'll go into the pot along with questions submitted through other channels. Later this week you'll have a chance to help moderate the final questions chosen from all sources, and on October 20 you'll be able to see video responses from the two major party candidates. Please limit to yourself to one question per post, and note that questions must be posted no later than 4 p.m. US EDT on Monday, September 29, to be considered.
Compare the real Walden with modern Doonesbury's Walden and you have a treatise on the condescending joke that is american politics as related to entertainment and education
Do you believe that a supreme being has influence over your day to day affairs?
Currently the Minerals Management Services in the Department of the Interior has companies pay between 12.5% and 18.75% royalties to use United States public land, depending on the mineral being harvested. Senator, do you believe that the amount of royalties they pay should also vary depending on environmental sensitivity, such as when drilling offshore?
This is not a question as to whether we should, and it is addressed to both candidates.
I think the most important question, the one we all want to hear the answer to, is: How do I patch KDE2 under FreeBSD?
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
As president, what forms of alternative energy will you be advocating, if any?
Why do you consider yourself qualified to be President of the United States of America?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
You also won't get that impression by listening to his running mate.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
John McCain, you've voted for a law to legalize torture for suspected enemy combatants. Do you regret that decision? Does your decision imply that the actions of your captors in North Vietnam were appropriate?
John McCain, you were neck deep in what was up till now the biggest banking scandal and bailout in US history. Does this experience give you any special insight into the current credit crisis?
John McCain, in a recent interview you apparently did not know that Spain is a European country and a close ally. You spoke as if they were some kind of potential enemy in Latin America, even though you were reminded three times that you were discussing Spain. Later, your spokesman said that your dissing of Spain was intentional. Is either interpretation of the interview correct?
What kind of man calls his wife a "cunt" in public?
Play Command HQ online
Don't you feel that elections in the USA are a sham these days, and that for the most part, there is no real difference between the two major parties - beyond superficial ones that get blown out of proportion in an effort to make it seem like people actually have a choice?
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President . The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle.' Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle.'
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. 'You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb idiot put her up there to begin with.
So my question is: Sen. McCain, why'd you put that turtle on that post?
As a member of several public school fine arts groups, I know the value they have and how positively influential they are to developing children. My question is: how will you ensure that fine arts (bands, choral groups, theatre, et cetera) both remain in public schools and are sufficiently well-funded to function at a high level? This question is directed to both candidates.
Senator Obama, you voiced limited approval for the Supreme Court's Heller decision, overturning the handgun ban (as it related to self defense in the home) in the District of Columbia. You stated, "As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne."
Given that the streets of Chicago were deadlier this summer than the streets of Baghdad, is the handgun ban 'working' in Chicago? And, is it Constitutional?
...but the only real, honest answer you'll ever receive from ANY politician will be while he's at gunpoint. Can we make it a job requirement that their genitalia be wired up to electrodes for the entirety of their political career?
Change has had a major spotlight in this campaign, and I think it is obvious everyone in the country is hungry for "change" in politics. What, specifically, will you do to bring noticeable, positive change to the office of the President of the United States of America?
How would you help break the deadlock on the Get Up/Get Down issue?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
When did yelling "bias" become the automatic first move for you guys? All news channels except Fox News, all newspapers except the wall street journal (and then sometimes), education at all levels, educated people, any author, republicans who disagree with the administration, people with above average intelligence, blue states, slashdot, Reddit...
Or is it maybe not intentional? You're so far right that everything looks left?
In the long term, since FDR, the country has moved in the direction of socialism.
At what point should this drift be made explicit via Constitutional Amendment,
to shut up the cranks like me
who think that Social Security is a 10th Amendment violation?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Do you support the inclusion of creationism alongside evolution in high school curricula? If so, how can you justify teaching a science class with creationism's Christian slant? Also, how can you justify the potential unequal representation of Christianity's story when compared to creation stories told by other major religions?
We've seen and heard the repetition of your various slogans ad nauseum. They truly are brilliantly composed as they manage to be both bland and offensive while informing the population of nothing. Its campaigning via emotion about nothing. I truly hoped that Sen Obama and Sen McCain would gain the nominations of their respective parties as I thought they would institute a more substantial election on the issues themselves. That hope has been thoroughly extinguished. Democracies are dependent on the vote of an educated voter.
So my question is this: What would you do as president to help the average citizen make a more informed vote?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Hear, hear! It always annoys me when my choice of candidate doesn't get the bias he deserves. I am a registered [pointless political affiliation], and I will of course be voting for [same recycled trash seen every four years]. I mindlessly eat whatever my comrades feed me and stand on that as my own principles. Without divisiveness, what else could we devote our time to in this great country? Science, education? Why? The TV contains all knowledge! Thank [Object/deity I worship] that they put the little letter beside the name. Otherwise, I would collapse in the voting booth from actually applying my brain.
What will you do to change the balance of copyright to be more in favor of the average citizen and less in favor of the large media companies? Will you work to overturn the DMCA and the PRO-IP acts (and other, similar legislation)?
In your time as President of the US, will the US military presence be increased and expanded globally or will expect to see a decrease in deployed armed forces?
The two of you, like almost every presidential candidate I can recall, vow to curb government spending. Please list some of the cuts you would make, and what percentage of the budget would be saved by their elimination or reduction.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
For both candidates:
In the past 10 years, the Internet has brought consumers more options than ever for communication and entertainment. Our current laws regarding copyright and intellectual property don't adequately describe or encompass intangible digital content which can be infinitely copied with out impacting originals. Do you support the massive entertainment lobby in effecting legilsation that promotes the erosion of consumer rights and choices of a free market or do you believe that the market itself should decide which business models are successful?
They're using their grammar skills there.
Do you believe that the two party system is good for the American people?
Do you support net neutrality, and if so, what are your plans to ensure that the internet remains neutral?
I am conservative and even I am irritated at those two posts. If they are not intended to be trolls, they shouldn't feel the need to post anonymously.
And clear the way for Ralph Nader?
On second thoughts, don't bother answering, just fuck off.
Shouldn't we be a little more lenient concerning flamebait concerning this story?
Where is the congressional accountability for the subprime loan mess? The Bush administration, as well as democratic members of congress, pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to make more loans to poor people, inner city hispanics, african americans, etc. Not surprisingly, they defaulted (maybe that's why they weren't given loans in the first place?) and everyone is suffering as a result.
All I hear is complaints about greedy wallstreet types. What about the people who signed up for loans they couldn't afford? What about the congress that ignore Allan Greenspan's 2005 testimony that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were a serious problem? What about the congress that didn't believe poor credit meant an increased risk in defaulting on a loan?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
-What measures would you support on the state and/or federal level to enhance K-12 science, math, & engineering-geared education?
-Given that recently, the government stopped subsidizing student loans for graduate students... How would your administration help encourage research & continued education in colleges/universities (undergrad AND grad school)?
-Would your research initiatives refuse funding for programs such as stem-cell research that some religious groups find immoral?
And by the way: Don't think it's just minorities getting those need-based loans... my family & I paid for every bit of my engineering education via subsidized student loans + unsubsidized parent loans. There's no other way to pay for >$100k in 4 years.
... that for a party that is supposed to be the party of acceptance and tolerance, why does most of the hate and vitriol come from the left view point?
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
What do you intend to do about the apparent econ^H^H^H^H Slashdot political troll crisis, and what specific amendments do you have in mind for the bailout p^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H moderation system?
What will you do to re-instate the Banking Act of 1933? If at all.
Eat sleep die
That site limits questions to those 35 or under. I'm wondering if that 35 year cut off is coincidental. (A US President must be 35 or older).
But anyway, here is the question I would ask
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
I'm saddened by the initial slate of questions proposed here. Instead of sending rhetorically-charged questions about the hot button issues that will assuredly be addressed in any debate (spending, healthcare, the economy, gun control, abortion, the war/military, outdated ideological labels, and vague issues of credibility, change, responsibility and accountability), why don't we mod up questions about issues that affect the kinds of news stories we see on this site each and every day? I'm talking about issues of copyright, net neutrality, science funding, patents, the FCC, e-voting, space exploration, and open source adoption in governmental agencies.
Granted it's not the *most* important question to ask them, but boy would it be fun to watch them squirm!
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Do you think that the American public should be satisfied with a Congress with a 20% approval rating? If not, what changes would you propose to create a Congress that works more effectively for the American Public?
Senators McCain and Obama;
Will you demand the inclusion of other candidates in the remaining presidential debates, as the majority of the American public does? Namely, the ones with sufficient ballot presence to win are; Cynthia McKinney (Green), Ralph Nader (Independent), Bob Barr (Libertarian), and Chuck Baldwin (Constitution).
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, states:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Currently, copyrights last 50-70 years after the creator's death. How does this advance Science and useful Arts?
Do you support the FairTax? Why or why not?
Do you plan on making changes to the antiquated voting system, especially its tendency to give minority voters (whether third party or just the unfavoured party in their state) no ability to influence the outcome of an election? Do you think the voting system does or does not have an influence on the feeling of disenfranchisement among voters and the low voter turnouts?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
A lot seems to be done for the short term in the USA - either to make quick money or as a stop gap solution to a problem. What I would like to know is what you have planned which will benefit my children and grand-children. What policies do you have which will give a noticeable and lasting change for generations to come?
Iran is the second most vibrant democracy in the Middle East, and the USA's invasion of Iraq has allowed Iran to make a shot at becoming a regional power. How do you plan to broker friendship between Iran, the USA, and Israel?
Senator Obama, in the debate you said you "actually believe we need missile defense" but every speech up until then you promised to cut spending on our best-in-class missile defense system, calling it "unproven." Likewise Biden has consistently voted against Missile Defense systems going back to the Regan era.
So my question is: besides basic R&D, which is already on-going, how specifically will you support development of Missile Defense?
Who would make the more dangerous president:
1) A senile "maverick' who thinks a hockey mom would be america's best defense against bin Laben if he himself croaks
2) A hockey mom who got her first passport last year, and thinks dinosaurs are 6000 years old
Senators McCain and Obama by your actions in the last year to two years you have demonstrated that campaigning for President of the United States is a full time job. So what is your justification for not resigning your Senate position and allowing another person from your State to devote their full attention to the duties of a Senator?
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
No, that's not how it works -- even if I wish that it did.
This story is categorized in the Slashdot backend as Interviews; the other topics named for it (in order) are Politics / United States / Republican / Democrat. (And there's no way to put topics *next* to each other, or I'd be happy to.) There's honestly no significance to the order (other than the top-level section topic, in this case Interviews) that topic icons appear. It's just an artifact of the way icons are displayed that you see the Democrat icon on top; don't take it for more than what it is.
Of course, Slashdot's [left-liberal / arch-conservative / phoney-progressive / ...
anarcho-libertarian] slant is obvious to anyone with eyes
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It's pretty clear that corporate monopolies run everything now, and to the detriment of humanity and all other living things. Which candidate is going to do something so that small business can replace the corporate behemoths that have already destroyed the economy, democracy, ruined freedom of the press, are actively destroying the environment, ruining public health, and also destroying education?
Is either candidate going to fight against AOL/Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, Bertelsmann, and News Corp to get REAL information, news, and education to the public?
Are you finally going to eliminate the Federal Reserve and go back to the gold standard so we can eliminate inflation and have a vibrant healthy economy, or are you going to allow the large corporate banks to continue to fleece and enslave the populace?
Are you going to finally allow individuals to broadcast and share information, or is the death grip the FCC has on the airwaves solely for corporate monopolist benefit going to continue?
Are our elections going to continue to be rigged by Diebold, both major parties, and the corroboration of corporate media, or will American's votes be counted again?
Why did both candidates pick unqualified pathological liars as running mates instead of Ron Paul, or Dennis Kucinich, or another candidate who might actually represent the will of the people?
Who killed JFK? It's been 45 years, don't you think the American public have a right to know? /me waits patiently to be modded into oblivion by the corporate drones.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Given that 'talking points' are very much in fashion and I've yet to see either candidate answer a question in a straightforward and to the point way.
If they are going to answer questions without resorting to bullshit then this would be mine:
"What are you going to do to ensure that the two party deadlock will be broken and would you be willing to do that anyway if you knew your party would eventually diminish in power because of this?"
follow up:
"Are you willing to swear that you will not break your campaign promises and vacate the office you will be elected to if you do break those promises?"
It would be a sure way to identify the candidate that would put country before themselves.
An election should be like a binding contract, instead it is more of a bait-and-switch.
MP3 Search Engine
I'm not a fan of either of these guys, or their parties. But I'd be much more interested (and possibly eager to vote for one of them) if McCain (ha!) or Obama (ha!) would say something about ending -- or at least mitigating -- the proudly silly ("zero tolerance") drug policies which result in crowded prisons, a bootlegger's market, intolerance for private property and decisions, and lowered respect for the law.
So, John, Barry, do either of you even care to address the low-hanging fruit, by lopping off a corner (let's say, for now, growing and / or possessing small amounts of marijuana) of this giant cancer on the country? Or will you just bloviate as usual on the "scourge of drugs" despite the discretionary nature of many aspects of the so-called War on Drugs?
I'll be waiting for your answer in my fortified bunker ...
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Do you feel that the winner-take-all system of the Electoral College is fair to voters, especially minorities?
I believe that treating Russia like it's still the USSR is not the way to go about improving world security.
I see the US provoking Russia in a lot of ways, from building missile defence systems on their doorstep (can Russia build one on Cuba?), to totally ignoring that Georgia starting shelling Russian citizens in South Ossetia *before* Russia entered Georgian territory and treating it like they 'invaded' with no reason.
So based on that I ask, how will you go about improving relations with countries like Russia? Right now we're doing the opposite of that, so I'd like to see a plan of how to reverse this trend.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to restructuring Social Security into a system of private accounts, insured and invested very conservatively, so that people can actually own the retirement funds they produce, instead of the current system in which workers are robbed to pay current retirees with the remaining surplus being spent by the government?
Senator Obama, given that Medicare is an even bigger drain than Social Security and will go bust along with it as the Baby Boomers retire, why are you proposing to nationalize the health coverage of the entire country in a style similar to Medicare?
Senator Obama, wouldn't your proposal to nationalize health coverage simply encourage people and companies to drop their current coverage and pile on to the government plan?
Senator Obama, would your proposal to nationalize health coverage cover non-citizens and thereby represent an additional incentive for illegal immigration?
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to Health Savings Account plans, which would protect people from catastrophic illness costs while giving them a monetary incentives to seek treatment early and stay healthier?
Senator Obama, do you think that soaking the so-called "rich" alone will allow for the funding of your indulgent domestic spending agenda, and what makes you think that you won't be punishing incentive and encouraging the "rich" to work less and even hide more in order to avoid excessive taxation?
Senator Obama, will you commit to balancing the federal budget?
Senator Obama, you claim to want to give the "middle class" a tax cut, but at the same time you propose to raise capital gains taxes, the death tax and corporate taxes, among others. Wouldn't your tax scheme harm many small businesses and small investors, indeed much of the "middle class" you claim to want to help?
Senator Obama, are you familiar with the Laffer Curve?
Senator Obama, given your radical connections (Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Flager) and your past radical Chicago politics, as well as your younger days in which you gravitated to Marxism, why should voters believe you when you claim to be a moderate?
Senator Obama, will you repudiate the leftist radicals represented by the sites like dailykos?
Senator Obama, do you support coercing the Israeli government to make more suicidal concessions to its avowed enemies, thereby continuing the failed "Peace Process" initiated under President Bill Clinton?
Senator Obama, if diplomacy fails with Iran, would you allow the country to produce nuclear weapons?
Senator Obama, do you find it problematic that you have been endorsed by the Al Qaeda Arab terrorist network?
Senator Obama, since the surge has worked and has led to the fulfillment of most of the benchmarks set by Congress for its success, is your reluctance to recognize that success based primarily on political expediency?
Senator Obama, will you ever admit your party's culpability in the Sub-Prime crisis (i.e. Clinton's Community Reinvestment Act; Barney Frank declaring the GSEs sound in 2003; Democrats resisting reform of the GSEs in 2003 and 2005)?
Senator Obama, what do the terms liberty and freedom mean to you in political and economic contexts?
Let's see any of these get asked!
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I've submitted the following: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a legally binding set of basic rights for minors (http://www.unicef.org/crc/). The only two countries which are not signatories to the CRC are Somalia and the United States. Somalia has not had a functioning government for some time. As President, would you seek the ratification the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
As an Australian, there's a common feeling in our country (particularly amongst those old enough to remember World War II, but not exclusively) that Australia owes America a great debt for its assistance during that conflict. Specifically, the battle of the Coral Sea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea).
Due to this debt, Australian forces have followed United States forces into military action in Korea, Vietnam, and both Gulf Wars. With our forces currently in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a growing feeling that we have repaid our debt and, given that the most populous Muslim nation is right outside our doorstep, that we should not further antagonize the Muslim world.
What action would a McCain/Obama government take in regards to an ally such as Australia ending their commitment to the so-called War on Terrorism?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
I'll address this one only to McCain, since Obama's made his confiscatory tendencies clearer:
Mr. McCain: Would you strongly consider a flat national sales tax proposal (even one with "Fair Tax"-style exceptions and give-backs) as an alternative to payroll taxes and nesting layers of loopholes? If not, please explain your reasoning.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
As a professional in my mid-twenties, I pay a large portion of my paycheck to social security benefits for an ever-increasing elderly population. While I understand that I have a civic duty to assist those in need, I often wonder if tomorrow's youth and government will be able and willing to help me in forty-some years when I need it. Do you believe that Social Security, in its current form, will be available for my generation, and if not, what specifically do you see wrong with it and how will you address it?
If it was a smart 5th grader, Palin would still probably lose, but at least it would be a whole lot more fair and entertaining than the stuff we'll have to watch.
What would you have done to prevent the economic crash if you you had been President for the last 8 years?
Senator McCain: how many malignant melanoma lesions have you had removed, what was the thickness and stage of each malignant melanoma lesion you have had (including the biopsy taken in July of this year), and do you have any malignant melanoma now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma
The last section here is from a May 2008 New York Times; McCain had another biopsy done in July 2008 about which no information has been released. You'd think that if the biopsy were good news, they'd release the data, right? Note that the survival rate for metastatic malignant melanoma is between 9 and 60% over 5 years: if any of McCain's cancer lesions were metastatic, he'd be so sick before he died that during his presidency he'd be useless.
= = =
But buried in 1,173 pages of medical records that McCain's campaign released before the conference call was something not previously made public: Two pathologists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology who examined the melanoma specimen from McCain's left temple in 2000 suggested there were two melanomas on his temple, not one, as his doctors had said publicly at the time.
McCain's campaign and doctors did not respond Friday to a request for clarification of the Armed Forces pathology report and the classification of the melanoma.
This space intentionally left blank.
If you both believe in the free marketplace, why does that not apply to political ideas as well?
If you both love America so much and celebrate its freedoms, why aren't you both willing to allow third parties into debates? Furthermore, why won't you ease up restrictions and groups that actively prevent third party candidates from appearing on ballots?
Obviously that's a loaded question, which is why you recieved your downward moderation. The bible doesn't say that non believers will go to hell. It does say that those that do God's work will, even if they don't know they are doing God's work. A lot of people will pretend to know what the bible says, and some Christians will pull out a single verse out of a book that sounds like what they want it to mean, but very few understand the whole thing. I think that would be an interesting question, just to see the pandering. Its quite Ironic really as there are many situations depicted in the Bible where the Pharisees try to trick Jesus in a similar fashion. I'm guessing the Politicians wouldn't be up to the task of formulating a response that turns the tables.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
During the Foreign Policy debate, I was saddened that Jim Lehrer did not bring up one of the most important issues of our time. Genocide or "ethnic cleansing" is occurring right now in Darfur, just as it has before in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. As President of the United States, what level of commitment are you willing to give to the world that the United States will intervene in the case of genocide to protect targeted ethnic groups?
Was getting rid of Glass-Steagall act a good idea. This act meant banks and brokerages were separate entities. Banks could not deal in risky transactions (such as underwriting corporate or municipal securities), keeping private money safe.
I'd like to weigh in and say that I'm AGAINST having youth in 2008. If we can't eliminate them I at least want them off my lawn!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
3) given that on a clear day sarah palin has extraordinary vision ( ~ 60 miles), would she not be more use on the front line?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I always thought Walden College ("America's safety school") was something made up for Doonesbury.
To both Senators,
The nation needs talented graduate professionals, in particular in the engineering and pharmaceutical industries. International students obtaining US degrees face tough immigration procedures, since some of the current policies focus on "demographical" immigration (i.e., filtering offers by nationality) as opposed to "skilled" immigration (i.e., filtering applicants by talent). International students currently in the US under visas pursuing degrees in key areas are being left out because of their country of origin (examples include Mexico, Russia, and Iran.) Notice that international grad students have probably benefited from US funds while pursuing their studies. It seems self defeating to train skilled people and then deny them immigration.
What are your concrete observations concerning skilled immigration and retention of talent?
This compares civilian deaths in Chicago to US troop deaths in Baghdad. It ignores the deaths of Iraqi civilians (probably in the thousands), insurgents, Iraqi troops, Iraqi policeman, and citizens of other countries.
Given that both parties advocate government control over the airwaves, roads, medical industry, banking industry and housing industry, how can you say that there's any real difference between the parties ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Additionally, which of the candidates believes that a well-informed and well-educated voter base constitutes a boost, rather than a threat, to your job security? How much money will you put where your mouth is?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Given that the US Military is already involved in IRAQ (Whether you agreed with it or not), and if we leave the country it could disintegrate into a full Civil War and millions could die, what is your plan for removing the troops without this occurring?
Let's make sure not to mention the elephant in the room...
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You really believe that? If Congress is willing to try to pass restrictive legislation, then the President does indeed have more power in that regard than what you have stated, since the President has veto power.
Your post was so banal, it made me write this.
While I like the subject matter of your question, the wording is hopelessly slanted. I even agree with your obvious free-market bias, but unfortunately that bias is all too apparent.
Do you believe that including third party candidates - such as the Constitution, Green, Independent, Libertarian and Socialist parties - in the presidential debates would improve the debates and make our election more democratic?
If no, why not? If yes, why have you not announced that you support the inclusion of third party candidates at any point in the primary or presidential campaigns?
Property is theft.
The correct answer to the question, if you're an evangelical Christian, is to say, "yes, I believe that," (or risk being theologically dishonest, since both candidates profess adhering to evangelical protestantism), but then support with full force Jefferson's presupposition that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," chief among these being the absolute freedom of religion, and separation of church and state (for the foremost purpose of allowing people to worship [or not worship] as they see fit).
Any other answer will no doubt please a minority of people and piss off everyone else. It's the reason why I don't like religion being a part of the election cycle.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to restructuring Social Security into a system of private accounts...
Social security is secure because it's not tied to the volatile open market.
Senator Obama, given that Medicare is an even bigger drain than Social Security...
Our system is horrible because it is run by lobbyists and big pharma, not because state socialized medicine is bad.
Senator Obama, wouldn't your proposal to nationalize health coverage simply encourage people and companies to drop their current coverage and pile on to the government plan?
They already do... Walmart purposefully pays their employees poorly and refuses to hire them as full time, while providing counselors who can tell them how to get welfare. Why aren't you asking to fine companies like Wal-Mart to actually address the problem instead of turning this issue into a political stunt?
Senator Obama, would your proposal to nationalize health coverage cover non-citizens and thereby represent an additional incentive for illegal immigration?
I'm sorry as hell that your grandfather got in.
Senator Obama, why are you opposed to Health Savings Account plans...
He's opposed to plans that are taxable.
Senator Obama, do you think that soaking the so-called "rich" alone will allow for the funding of your indulgent domestic spending agenda, and what makes you think that you won't be punishing incentive and encouraging the "rich" to work less and even hide more in order to avoid excessive taxation?
McCain is pro military. That's one trillion dollars per year. But it's not actually about the money, is it? And let me say, if you're upset because you'll be required to pay more tax than the less fortunate, and cause you to drive a 5 series instead of a 7 with the 18 inch rims, you're welcome to seek to run your business in another part of the world where the non-rich are the ones who are funding the infrastructure that allow you to live so comfortably.
Taxing the rich more than the poor is fundamental to the health of a relatively open market, otherwise capital only flows upward until you have the type of situation that caused the French Revolution.
Senator Obama, will you commit to balancing the federal budget?
Has anyone done that since the Republicans pledged to, and failed, in the early 90s?
Senator Obama, you claim to want to give the "middle class" a tax cut, but at the same time you propose to raise capital gains taxes, the death tax and corporate taxes...
If major corporations had to pay the full amount of tax, instead of reaping billions of dollars in profit through loopholes, there could be more ways to help small business. The death tax is for assets over 2 million, if I remember correctly. Is that middle class in your book? Must be nice.
Senator Obama, are you familiar with the Laffer Curve?
Ask Palin... please! The comic world is begging you.
Senator Obama, given your radical connections...
Did Hannity shit in your brain? McCain has Falwell, Palin has herself, and Obama knows some black people who feel like they have been screwed by the system. If guilt by association works, why don't you have a problem with Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia?
Senator Obama, will you repudiate the leftist radicals represented by the sites like dailykos?
Will McCain repudiate Fox News?
Senator Obama, do you support coercing the Israeli government to make more suicidal concessions to its avowed enemies...
Coerce? Does that mean we can say, stop killing Palestinians, arresting them, torturing them, and taking their land with the guns, tanks, helicopters, and jets that we give you, accep
To both candiates:
At times both of you have expressed support for the idea, and organizations promoting the idea, of Mandatory National Service, whereby all adult citizens under a certain age would be forced to work for government agencies or government-approved entities for a certain period of time. Senator McCain, you've stated your agreement with the idea that we should re-institute a draft to go after Osama bin Laden.
Could you both please clarify, for the record, the conditions under which you believe a government has the right to conscript its citizens, and the degree to which your administration would do so?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This question examines how you would handle a national disaster of such magnitude and scope that there is no precedent on which to rely. This question tests many important qualities of a leader, including the ability to make difficult choices of great consequence and how to rapidly organize a large scale response to a problem.
For this theoretical question, let us assume that bird flu, which currently has a 65% mortality rate, suddenly acquires the ability to transmit efficiently among humans. Let us further assume that it is extremely contagious, as new strains of human influenza invariably are, capable of circulating through entire communities within a few days of the first incident of infection.
In the hypothetical situation, some normally reliable sources report a rapidly spreading disease tearing through a remote region of China, with accounts of huge numbers of people becoming sick and dying. The director of CDC calls you and warns that the worst fears about bird flu may be coming true. Without totally sealing off our borders, the disease is expected to arrive in the United States within days, if it hasn't in fact already arrived on a transcontinental flight.
If you immediately cancel all international flights and bar all ships from entering our harbors, the economy will undergo massive shock and thousands of citizens will be stranded outside of the country. But if you don't, you risk seeing at least half the population of the United States become deathly ill and probably die in short order.
What do you do and how long do you wait to be certain that the reports are true before doing it, keeping in mind that even a short delay could result in the disease reaching US soil?
Finally, if isolation fails or is initiated too late, what do you as president do once it is discovered that an infected traveler has arrived in a major metropolitan area and now a dozen of his family and friends have come down the disease?
I watched the debate, and neither candidate seems to want to scale down government spending: Obama wouldn't admit to wanting to cut anything, and McCain paid some very unconvincing lip service to the idea. Why are we stuck with choosing between two candidates that both want to increase the scope and cost of the federal government?
Senators, what is the internet?
Here's my question:
As an independent (not affiliated with either major political party), I'm often told that by not voting for one of the two candidates from the two major parties, I'm throwing away my vote. At the same time, it is often the thin margin of independent and undecided voters that turn a presidential election. Do you think the current political system is fair to independents? If not, what would you do, and have you done, to change it?
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
What economists do you most closely align yourself with, what school of economics do you adhere to, and do you believe that there is a link between freedom and liberty, and the type of economic system in place, presently or hypothetically? What economic system would be ideal to you?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
And is the slashdot demographic really youthful?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You are voting for a candidate who believes that Sarah Palin is qualified to fill his shoes. Just sayin'.
OMG! Wau!
Senators,
I live in the Atlanta area and, recently, have been forced to deal with a gas shortage. This has prompted me to consider the question: what happens when we run out of oil? Given how dependent our country is on a limited resource that is held mostly by countries that hate us, what is your realistic solution to this problem? Drilling will only delay the problem, ethanol is horribly inefficient when derived from corn, battery capacity is too limited for electric cars to attain the necessary range, and hydrogen power is not yet viable. Boone Pickens has recently suggested Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a bridge fuel until a technology such as hydrogen power is fully developed. What solutions do you have for a bridge fuel and, ultimately, a gasoline replacement?
Senators Obama and McCain, How can you defend your support for the recently passed telecom immunity bill which provides cover for the illegal actions of companies who are incorporated (as all companies are) by the will of the PEOPLE of the United States?
It's even more important to know with Palin.
You are voting for a candidate that has less executive experience than Sarah Palin. Just sayin'
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
> Senator Obama, you claim to want to give the "middle class" a tax cut, but at the same time you propose to raise capital gains taxes, the death tax and corporate taxes, among others.
For starters, that tax cut refers specifically to his income tax plan. Here, read this comparison.
You have a very strange idea of what "small businesses and small investors" are if you think we're affected much by those taxes. All of those taxes affect primarily the rich. I have some decent investments but those taxes are nothing compared to income tax.
But that's probably because I work, rather than living off investments...
One distinguishing feature of the Bush presidency has been an increase in claimed power for the executive branch from signing statements to bypass legislative decisions to NSA surveillance of Americans without judicial approval. How do you view the role of the executive branch in relation to the legislative and judicial branches? Are there specific ways in which you think executive power should be decreased or increased?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Barack Obama, for four years in the 1990s, you were on the executive board of an education foundation named the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, founded by ex-Weather Underground Organization leader William Ayers. In a spring debate, you claimed he was "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis", and just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood". Given that you launched your presidential campaign from Mr. Ayers home, how do you explain this discrepancy?
Barack Obama, records show that you have received the second largest amount of monetary donations from the now bankrup Fannie Mae mortgage lender. In 2005, you were praised by Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd because of your work in congress on Fannie's behalf. Was the praise because of your vote against the Housing Reform Act of 2005 that would have prevented the 2008 collapse of the lending institutions?
Barack Obama, you have often touted your experience as a community organizer in the streets of Chicago as evidence of your qualifications to lead. You have worked extensively with one such group, ACORN, which recently endorsed you for president, where you acknowledged your work with ACORN in Project Vote in 2004. Given that ACORN members are frequently convicted of committing voter fraud, can you please explain your relation to this organization?
As a non-Christian, the last 8 years have been quite worrisome for me. As President, how will your faith play a role in leading America?
To both:
The state of electronic voting in the last eight years has been a state of uncertainty. Amidst accusations of scandal and neglect, the American people have lost faith in the idea that their votes are being handled properly. The current administration has done little to ease these tensions, and current prospects are disappointing.
As president, what will you do to restore voters' confidence in the integrity, privacy, and accuracy of their votes?
lol
OMG! Wau!
Senator Obama, you know full well that the failed policies of a Democratic-run Congress created the sub-prime environment that led to the current financial crisis. You know that you and Chris Dodd are the two highest recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in Congress since 1989, and you achieved that second place spot in only a few years in the Senate. You know that Barney Frank was a few years ago saying there is no problem with FM/FM, while Senator McCain said there was a problem and cosponsored legislation to prevent the current crisis. You also know that legislation was killed by the Democrats.
With all that in mind, how hypocritical do you feel when you blame the current crisis on the Republicans?
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Would you push for laws that block frivolous lawsuits, such as those brought forth by the Recording Industry of America?
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
I am the first to admit that conservatives tend to hyperventilate about media bias more than they should (in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards). But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this is one of those times.
Take, for example, the Fannie/Freddie debacle. Consider that Obama had 2 corrupt former CEOs of Fannie as economic advisors, one of which was the head of his VP search committee. We didn't hear about that until McCain ran ads about it. And then, did the media focus on the story? No - they attacked McCain for supposedly running a racist ad (apparently you can't mention close associations with corrupt CEOs if they happen to be black).
You could also consider the media's attacks on some of McCain's more dubious ads (e.g. sketchy claims about Obama's sex ed bill). The media went on for days about how McCain was such a scoundrel. And hyperbole notwithstanding, he deserved some serious criticism for those ads. But then when Obama played equally dirty (e.g. scaring Florida seniors with falsehoods about McCain's Social Security plans) you barely hear a peep from those same folks (with the notable exception of Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post).
I don't doubt many in the media are trying to be fair, because they are aware that they and their colleagues are overwhelmingly liberal. A handful succeed in being neutral. But for the rest, the prospect of an eloquent, black, highly liberal senator (the anti-Bush as it were) becoming President is such a seductive dream that they can't help but look more critically at his opponent. Love really is blind.
To both:
The Constitution says that a President shall sign or veto a bill (or not sign it, and it will become law after ten days). Since it says nothing about "signing orders", do you promise to comply with the Constitution by either signing, vetoing, or refusing to sign all bills that come before you and nothing more? Will you refuse to issue "signing orders" since they are not a power specifically given to the President by the Constitution?
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
If "when does life begin" is "above your pay grade", how can we trust your judgement on anything else?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
From the article headline: "125 Shot Dead In Chicago Over Summer - Total Is About Double The U.S. Troop Death Toll In Iraq"
Never mind the sub-human Iraqis eh? - It's just sickening to read such jingoistic crap in the media. Most of the troops sit in their bunkers or hang around in the green zone precisely because the current administration want to prevent any number of casualties on their side. Of course starting the civil war there is no reason for them to get involved.
Just take your stupid question and shove it up your ass.
Just showing up at a debate is not a sign that you'll get support - just ask Richardson, Dodd and Kucinich. It would make as much sense to have Hillary join the debates, since she got far more votes than all the independents will combined.
Obama,
Why did you vote in favor of the FISA bull which gives retro active immunity to the telco's even though it goes against the constitution?
Do you feel the violation of the constitution is necessary in times when the nation seeks protection?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
What's your excuse for being two of the most corrupt candidates ever to run for president of the United States of America?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Harping on Freddie Mac and Fannie May is a gigantic red herring. The problems were:
1) banks were allowed to push loans on people who couldn't afford them
2) deregulation allowed too many mergers and destroyed old firewalls that limited economic damage
3) banks took way to many liabilities on the amount of assets they had - 30:1, 40:1
4) banks sold insurance on bad mortgages to each other
5) the amount of this insurance/credit swap market was more than the GDP of the ENTIRE WORLD
Freddie and Fanny weren't the cause of the problem, they were the result. Blaming the collapse on minorities is straight up racist bullshit, as those loans were a fraction of a drop in the bucket.
This is a two part question for Sen. McCain.
Sen. McCain,
In the 60 minutes show that aired on Sept 21, you said that we would go into Iran if they developed nuclear weapons and certain conditions are met. What are these certain conditions and what steps will you take to ensure that false intelligence reports will not influence your final decision.
I am dreaming if I get a response to this question.
What do YOU think Ayman al-Zawahiri was doing in Russia in 1996-97?
I assert that taxes are a necessary part of our political system; especially in this time when our government needs to act to actively stabilize the economic system. Cutting them at this time would be a mistake. Do you agree? If not what alternative do you propose to garner funding for economic stabilization?
I don't think palin is fit enough to be doing her current job. Just listen to her speak. It's instant facepalm.
Given that you launched your presidential campaign from Mr. Ayers home, how do you explain this discrepancy?
That talking point is crap, but lets go ahead and play the associations game, jackass. John McCain is good friends with G. Gordon Liddy, who has hosted fundraisers for McCain that McCain has attended. Liddy said this in response to the fiasco at Waco:
Now, imagine for a second that Obama attended fundraisers hosted by a Black Panther who advised people to shoot federal agents in the head. That's right, the world would blow up. Or how Hannity, who can't talk about Ayers enough, it good buddies with the white supremacist Hal Turner.
Barack Obama, records show that you have received the second largest amount of monetary donations from the now bankrup Fannie Mae mortgage lender.
Liar. He didn't receive donations from Fannie Mae, he received them from employees of Fannie Mae. Big difference.
You have worked extensively with one such group, ACORN, which recently endorsed you for president,
Ah, the associations game again. You forgot Rev. Wright! How can you post a bunch of pathetic smears and leave out Jeremiah Wright? Bad wingnut, no cookie.
Well, I think it's impossible to argue that the media is anything near perfect. I also don't think that liberals in the media is the cause of that. They've been over-covering Sarah Palin. She probably has more name recognition at this point than McCain. And while a lot is negative, it's certainly taken attention away from Obama and any meaningful debate. And no press is bad press.
(in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards).
nice, trying to sneak this by.
MSM has a bias toward corporations, but is otherwise neutral.
If you think the MSM has a liberal bias, I refer you to the colbert quip about reality having a well-known liberal bias.
Fox deliberately distorts, and often times fabricates, the stories they present. The obama muslim kick, the deliberate mischaracterization of palin's crusade against the library as false, simply because she didn't do it as mayor (but as city councilwoman), the oreilly factor's invented statistics, the "balance" of the dingbat-right hannity and the cowed, confrontation fearing moderate, colmes.
The list goes on and on.
Fox news is a propaganda arm of the extreme right, it is NOT to be compared with the MSM, which is center-right because it's neutral on social issues and parrots corporate and political press releases whenever it can to avoid actual investigative reporting.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
let's see, time in the US senate vs time as mayor of a town of only 6000 people.
I could probably install my dog in that mayoral office and get the same result, plus some free fertilizer for the farmers!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
so a former CEO is automatically corrupt? how very leftist of you.
Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html
Hi Mr Pot, meet Ms Kettle.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I absolutely hate to say this, but the gun is to OUR heads as tax payers.
we HAVE to pay this, or the economy will collapse in the same way it did when the banks went bust in 29.
It took 3 decades to recover from that, and I consider anything, including a trillion dollar government bail-out, preferable to that.
What I will not stand for though, is a return to reaganomic policies of supply side tax cuts and a refusal to regulate after this mess.
They need to impose tight regulations again, and abandon the neo-liberalism which led to this mess, and many others.
Stiglitz declared reaganomics dead, for the second time, earlier this year. (the first time it was declared dead was the end of the bush administration, yet democrats still acquiesced to and even helped republicans in their bull-headed efforts to continue)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Mayor > "Community Organizer"
Governor > Senator
McCain's Experience >>> Obama's Experience
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I'm getting really tired of right-wing media deliberately fabricating crap for those incapable of thought to spew.
What, they think reporting deliberate lies is the same as the normal, moderate MSM simply forgetting a few questions?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
the topic was a Debate for Real Children
Having the mind of a child does not count.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Yeah.. because..you know.. when the seeds for this were sown in 1994.. the congress wasn't.. you know.. republican controlled, and shutting down the government over petty political disputes.
Maybe the democrats put the republican heads of senate and house under the imperus curse?
I mean.. damn those democrats, who had no control over congress, and who could not even so much as requisition new styrofoam coffee cups at that time because of the revenge republicans were dishing out for actually pursuing nixon for real criminal actions.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Cue the Brittney jokes,
it's gonna happen you know it in your heart. Even if it doesn't it's going to be in people imagination.
Funny that she showed up about the time McCain brought up Paris and Brittney. This is not a coincidence.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
This is particularly pointed and relevant, it evokes the current financial crisis and bail-out.
It draws particular attention to the inequities of laws which continually give more and more power to content cartels not only to persecute the defenseless, but to regulate and smother new technology which could have been developed to produce real jobs.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Mayor > "Community Organizer"
Governor > Senator
McCain's Experience >>> Obama's Experience
wow, how subjective and wrong.
Governor Senator.
One person governed a state with a very low population, a massive influx of money from the oil trade, and the least divisive population in the US. Governorship of Alaska is a sinecure.
The other was on the floor of the most important legislative house in the country, debating affairs which affected the entire nation from mundane budgetary concerns to whether or not we send troops into another nation and kill other human beings.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Basically, there is some room to debate the role of legislating morality but the natural law should always be obeyed. So Murder and Theft should still be illegal, not just from our beliefs but also because they are against natural law. Basically you should have other reasons for making things illegal, other than " its in the Bible ",but just because some things are considered Sins in the Bible doesn't mean they can't be legislated.
Ok, I'm not that smart. Exceprt from Gadieum et Spes
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Yeah.. because..you know.. when the seeds for this were sown in 1977 the Congress was Democrat controlled and it was signed by a Democrat president. In 1995 President Clinton made regulatory changes (no need for the consent of the Republican Congress) that put the program on steroids, paving the way straight to our current crisis. It was after this that FM/FM started taking on the risky loans to comply with the heightened standards.
Bush tried to fix this in 2003, but the Democrats killed it. "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis." -- Barney Frank D-MA, while opposing stricter oversight.
Electronic voting machines have, time and time again, been shown to be inaccurate, insecure, and untrustworthy. In particular, those from Premiere Election Solutions (formerly Diebold) do not leave a verifiable paper trail, making a recount impossible.
What will you do to ensure that my vote will be counted in this election, or the next?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Senator McCain.
In your last debate you said you would take care of Vets. What were your specific reasons for voting against the last GI Bill? Would you commit to increased educational benefits for Vets that are amputees that might be unable to work traditional physical labor intensive jobs?
The bias annoys me too... But if you read Slashdot or Reddit you won't get that impression at all, due to the biased story selection and editing.
Who mandated Slashdot or Reddit to be neutral?
After reviewing the comments, I began to wonder: Is it possible that the article itself here is a troll with the purpose of generating a deluge of opinionated argument?
Then I went back to trying to level on http://www.overthewire.org/wargames/vortex/
As a nation dependent on imports to sustain our lifestyles and livelihood it is important to keep in mind our role in the global economy. Name a major US export of your choice and explain why this industry would fare best under your administration. Preferably choose an export that accounts for a net profit: i.e. though we do produce oil we consume far more.
Frannie and Freddie are only part of the problem. The real issue is that we removed the firewalls put in place after the Great Depression, and forgot some basic rules about the market.
1. Self-regulation works as well in Wall Street as it does in the Mafia.
2. Loaning to people who are unqualified is only a problem if the originator is liable in some way.
3. In an unwatched open market, heads of corporations are not geniuses worth their hundred million dollar bonuses. They are white collar thieves with friends on the board and in high places.
Hopefully the next generation will be smarter than us and stick with the basics. Make the loan originators responsible for the loan. Keep the heat on corporate America so they know they will be in jail if they break the law.
Maybe they'll get even smarter and remove the corporate veil for any publicly traded company. That should keep good corporations honest and dishonest corporations small.
What's wrong with the Fannie/Freddie CEO? There was no fraud... just insolvency (maybe not 100% honest but who is). They were big lobbyists, as you might expect from a trillion dollar government-sponsored corporation, but to both dems and repubs.
I wouldn't say that there's a corporate bias... per-se. I'd say that there's a bias towards people paying bills but they're not untouchable, and there's a lazy bias. Why bother writing an article or putting a piece together if you can just crib right from a press release?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
One of the reasons that I never use my /. mod points is that I'm not sure if I'm able to moderate in a biased manner. I do my "help" via metamoderation and that seems to be easier for me. I'm pretty sure that it is impossible for a human to be completely without bias even when striving to remain completely objective. As a liberal (not Democrat) the bias upsets me to some extent but I figure it is perfectly normal and as this is a site for communication more than unbiased news I really don't mind it that much.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
When, if ever, do you foresee the U.S. converting to the Metric System?
Reality has no bias. But I do, and I think Stephen Colbert is overly worried about bear threats.
Take, for example, the Fannie/Freddie debacle. Consider that Obama had 2 corrupt former CEOs of Fannie as economic advisors, one of which was the head of his VP search committee.
The truth is that although Jim Johnson was a CEO at Fannie Mae before becoming a leader of Barack Obama's VP search committee, he has not been convicted of any crime, but Obama accepted Johnson's resignation from the Presidential campaign anyway. In June, you hypocrite. Jim Johnson has also not been even accused of any crimes, just smeared for being associated with a corporation which operated in the lawless environment introduced by Gramm-Leach-Biley. Compare to Carly Fiorina, who was personally responsible for making a mess out of Hewlett-Packard. Johnson didn't sign Gramm-Leach-Biley into law. Measured by stock price, Fiorina was, in the eyes of the investors with enough previous financial success to determine stock prices, personally responsible for Hewlett-Packard's problems. If we're going to spend $700 Billion bailing out the country's wealthiest investors, we had better trust their judgment enough to uphold their verdict on Carleton S. Fiorina: as toxic as a portfolio full of foreclosed mortgages.
Former Fannie Mae executive Jim Johnson, who was a leader of the vice presidential search committee for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, resigned from that unpaid position today amid criticisms that Johnson represented a world of influence and special interests that stood in stark contrast with what Obama's campaign purports to stand for.
...
"We don't need any lectures from a campaign that waited fifteen months to purge the lobbyists from their staff, and only did so because they said it was a 'perception problem,'" said Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton.
And Franklin Raines was never any kind of adviser to Obama at all.
The Obama campaign issued a statement by Raines on Thursday night insisting, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters." Obama spokesman Bill Burton went a little further, saying in an e-mail that the campaign had "neither sought nor received" advice from Raines "on any matter."
[If Raines offered Obama advice that was not sought, a lying sack of excrement might argue that Obama nevertheless "received" that advice, but unless that advice was the basis of subsequent action, we use the colloquialism that the advice was not "taken," thus anybody describing Raines as an advisor to Obama is a lying sack of excrement.]
Unless you have proof that Raines' statement above is a lie, you committed libel by asserting that he had ever been one of Barack Obama's "economic advisors."
So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth.
99% cloth, but not completely whole cloth. The "supposed Obama-Raines connection" is not quite pure fabrication by the same standard that the statement "you are a violin" has a basis in fact, when addressed to a person calling itself "Stradivarius." The only connection to fact is extremely tenuous, and we all know that the statement "you are a violin" is a falsehood. Your accusation is no more honest, just less humorous.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
wow, how subjective and wrong.
Governor Senator.
One person governed a state with a very low population, a massive influx of money from the oil trade, and the least divisive population in the US. Governorship of Alaska is a sinecure.
The other was on the floor of the most important legislative house in the country, debating affairs which affected the entire nation from mundane budgetary concerns to whether or not we send troops into another nation and kill other human beings.
And managed to a do a fine job of avoiding voting on controversial issues. In an executive position, you can't vote present. You actually have to make a decision. One is a leader, and the other is a follower.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
If you honestly think another Republican president is what we need, you don't know shit about Republican presidents. Ford, Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2, for longer than most slashdotters have been alive, Republican presidents have meant massive budget defecits and massive debt increases. Now, under a Republican president, we're looking at another 700 billion dollars ON TOP OF budgets which make the current president the biggest spender in American history -- a Republican!
They say reality has a well-known liberal bias. I disagree with this. Reality has a well-known anti-Republican bias. Conservatives have been crying for decades that these spendaholics are going around redefining conservative as "reckless and irresponsible to the point of bankrupting the nation".
And if you think it'll be any different because it's John McCain, you're an idiot. McCain is running on a platform that's substantially similar to the platform that the spendaholic Bush 2 ran on in 2000. He's ducked his tail between his legs on many positions in order to get the nomination, and once he's behind the desk, he's going to continue to be a weak leader.
It's been a long time.
You've inadvertently brought to surface the contradictory nature of beliefs on this site. People like government control when it is convenient for them and will not impact their existing services that are the result of government control, and people hate government control when it inconveniences them. You'll see this in any forum. Here, people are for net neutrality, public science funding, etc, but are also for reducing the power of the FCC, space flight privatization, etc.
What you've got to realize is that any government control of economic markets like this is going to be detrimental in the long run, regardless of how convenient it is right now. What you also must realize is that if people merely demand better service, they will get it, completely without government control (provided that government restrictions don't exist to prevent those better services from coming about). Net neutrality should be inevitable, however it is not going to happen under the current system, whereby government restriction maintains draconian monopolies.
Hey, don't blame me. I voted for [Guy who has no chance of winning]. If only [Guy who has no chance of winning] got in, things would change, but America is [prejorative], and will never have a leader like [Guy who has no chance of winning], and arguably doesn't deserve one.
It's been a long time.
It's not so bad! I know she like cookies and hates terrorism and Barack Obama!
I know this because that's her response to every question.
Q:"Please tell us about what you did as governor of Alaska."
A:"I hate terrorism, and Barack Obama, who isn't experienced enough to be president!"
It's been a long time.
It costs about half a million dollars to put a single drug user in prison, which includes $150,000 for arrest and prosecution, about $150,000 for a new prison cell, and about $30,000 per year times at least five years. For the same cost we can provide treatment or education for more than one hundred people. Which do you think is the better deal?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
The White House has committed egregious violations of the Constitution and democratic principles vital to the republic including wiretaps without warrants, withholding classified documents attached to those directives from House Congressional representatives including those on the Homeland Security Committee [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ByoqZqDGaA&feature=related], and approval of torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit torture even of terrorists. [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-interrogate25-2008sep25,0,1828234.story] The Bush Administration's instructions to commit torture are violations of any participating Executive Branch officials' oaths to uphold the Constitution.
What will you commit to doing to hold Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, David Addington, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and any other participants accountable for this crime? Will you consider charging any or all with treason?
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
If it were me the answer would be simple: The Bible may or may not be the 'Word of God' but either way it was written by man.
Note also that only Peter out of the Apostles wanted an organized Church with central power. None of the rest thought that Jesus would of wanted that.
I don't care if your Atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever. Everyone can appreciate what Jesus Christ allegedly came down to Earth to teach:
Everyone love each other, and care for each other.
The world would be a *far* better place if they did that rather than kill each other over how he said it or kill each other because some paragraph could possibly be twisted into saying "homosexuals must die" or something.
I'm not particularly religious anymore, but I used to be. Some sorrows are too deep for a bit of Atheism to wipe out, and just because someone believes a story to be fact when it might not be doesn't mean the moral of the story isn't a good one.
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/ACTIVIST/showstop.htm
I have here a list of every major study of drug policy in the last fifty years. Every one of them recommended decriminalization. Do you agree that the overwhelming weight of the scholarly evidence on drug policy supports decriminalization?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
do you think we ought to put prison for drugs in order to have the best results?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I am the first to admit that conservatives tend to hyperventilate about media bias more than they should (in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards). But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this is one of those times.
Ah ha. Ah ha. Ha. After the last decade, still claiming that the media has a liberal bias is as laughable as Nader continuing to say that there really wouldn't have been a difference between a Bush presidency and a Gore presidency. As laughable as a Miramax exec still thinking passing up on Lord of the Rings was a good decision, after Peter Jackson brought New Line eleven oscars and a few billion dollars.
If the media has such a liberal bias, why did they hate Al Gore's guts back in 2000, while giving Bush a free pass on his business failures, especially Harken Energy (a mountain next to the molehill of Whitewater)? They were so busy inventing Gore "fib factor" stories they didn't pay any attention to when Bush took credit for passing HMO legislation that he actually vetoed as governor of Texas:
If the media has such a liberal bias, why was it so gung ho on the Iraq war? In 2002-2003, the media conversation was dominated by neocons and pro-war hawks. What has changed since then, long after the public has turned against the war? Now the conversation is dominated by pro-war hawks, some of whom now think "mistakes were made" in the occupation, not that invading was a mistake in the first place. Those who were right that the war would be a disaster are as excluded from the media narrative today as they were in 2003.
And finally, just to put this turd to bed once and for all, compare representatives Gary Condit and Joe Scarborough. In May 2001, Gary Condit's aide, Chandra Levy, went missing. For months, the press obsessed over it, the allegations that he was having an affair and that he might have had something to do with her disappearance. Her body turned up in a park, and while no connection to Condit was found, he eventually admitted to having an affair with her.
In July 2001, Joe Scarborough's aide Lori Klausutis turned up dead, in his office, of blunt force trauma to the head. Dead. In his office. OF BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA TO THE HEAD. No scandal, no media obsession.
Now, try and tell us again with a straight face that the media has a liberal bias.
No - they attacked McCain for supposedly running a racist ad (apparently you can't mention close associations with corrupt CEOs if they happen to be black).
Um, because it was? The CEO in the ad has no connection whatsoever to Obama, but is black. The CEO that did actually have a connection to Obama is white, but was not in the ad. So do, please, explain how that ad was not racist. McCain's ads are littered with code and dog whistles. Watch his "The One" ad and pay attention to the subtext of Obama being a false prophet - aka the anti-Christ. No, I'm not kidding. Or his celebrity ad, which juxtaposes footage of Obama, two pretty white girls (Britney Spears and Paris Hilton) and phallic symbols like the Washington Monument and the Tower of Piza. Now, you might be able to make a case for the Washingto
At least Barack Obama knows what "Bush Doctrine" is.
For Sarah Palin NOT to know what it is, she must've skipped her own party's debates! Is the sort of person who would skip the presidental primaries for her OWN PARTY really the sort of person we want running the country?
It's been a long time.
Senator Obama,
I am a middle class American taxpayer. I believe I spend my money more intelligently than a Government, so I'm voting for the candidate who will really lower my taxes. Both yourself and your opponent pledge to do so.
My question is, how can you lower taxes while drastically increasing funding into socialized health care?
More importantly, why did you vote for the FISA bill when you clearly and explicitly stated that you would not vote for any bill that gave telecom companies the possibility of immunity from repercussions for their illegal actions?
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Considering the abuses of power that George W. Bush has committed during his time in office, why should I believe that either Obama or McCain won't abuse the office as Bush got away with doing? Why should I trust either of you?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Why did you vote for the FISA bill when you clearly and explicitly stated that you would not vote for any bill that gave telecom companies the possibility of immunity from repercussions for their illegal actions?
I was actually convinced that Obama was for change in government. I thought he wanted to hold all politicians accountable for their actions. But then he showed that he was just saying these things with no intentions of actually following through by voting for a FISA bill for which he expressly denied he would ever vote. I'm not stupid enough to think that McCain is a better pick, but clearly Obama is just more of the same politician-type: Say whatever they want to hear, and then do whatever you want.
I want to hear his response to my question, because it may get him my vote back.
Until then, I'll probably write in Ralph Nader.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
But that's probably because I work, rather than living off investments.
As John Edwards said, Republicans believe in taxing work, not wealth.
Please mod this as funny.
I don't think Palin is qualified for her job as Governor of Alaska.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Proof text?
Lev 19:18 "Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD."
Matt 22:36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Lev 20:13 "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
The idea of capital punishment for homosexuality is definitely subject to debate considering what Jesus said about the coming Kingdom, but no "twisting" of the text is required.
I'm just reproducing the text; no flames please. In the USA, we're still allowed (for now) to post excerpts from the Bible without being prosecuted for committing thought crimes... er, I mean hate crimes.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Do you feel that the 20 or so different gasoline blends is partially to blame for our high gas prices?
Senators, both of you have advocated getting more people to serve and to reform government of waste. I would like to know how you plan to get the smart people into government? What incentives are you going to put there in order to make government jobs not just for people that can't do anything else?
Except that intelligence people know that Fannie and Freddie didn't have anything to do with our current problems.
They were just in trouble because their assets (aka, all the home loans they own) declined in value.
They aren't even having a high level of foreclosures, because all their guaranteed loans are prime. They were just unable to back all their promises to repay the securities if their loans fail, and this fact was screwing up the market.
They are not the causes of the current problems, they are not even major players in it. They're basically victims of the housing bubble...we created them to hold good mortgages, and apparently didn't realize that they'd be SOL if housing prices ever decreased rapidly, that they'd end up in a legally untenable position where they couldn't cover their guarantees.
There's certainly no malfeasance on their part. (Actually, one of the former Freddie CEOs is under investigation, IIRC, but it's unrelated to anything that's going on, it's for minor corruption like not reporting gifts or something.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Attention mud slingers of the world:
You know that really intense feeling you get when someone says something that is obviously a pile of bullshit? You know that other feeling you get when someone points out how stupid someone else is? Guess what, your pre-frontal cortex is not involved in either feeling. It's just a feeling, not the TRUTH that you are mystically plugged into.
The world is not black and white (nor is it red and blue). These "questions" don't deserve answers and if you would open your mind and investigate these claims honestly you would discover plenty of culpability to go around.
I have a suggestion that I suspect would actually make the world a better place, but requires work. Everyone should hold their own party to the standards they accuse the "other" party of violating. I'm serious.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Former CEOs are not automatically corrupt. Read up on Franklin Raines before you accuse me of knee-jerk leftism.
When federal regulators take you to court for accounting irregularities, including the shifting of Fannie Mae's losses so that you and other executives could "earn" large bonuses, and as a result you pay millions in fines and forfeit millions of your previous compensation... I think it's safe to call that a case of corruption.
Regarding your NY Times article - sure, McCain has a lobbyist working for him who also worked for Fannie/Freddie. But it's one thing to be a hired advocate for a firm - that's what lawyers and lobbyists do. It's another thing to be running the company.
To both Senators.
Many students just entering college are presented with easy access to credit and credit cards, in fact, lending institutions are usually present on campus and offering prizes to anyone who signs up with them. The may be an understatement, but often students don't understand the serious consequences of the debts accrued with credit. Should anything that should be done about these practices or should we hold students entering college to be responsible for mistakes made out of ignorance?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Nothing happens in an approximate 50/50 Senate unless one of the following situations exists: Both parties want it to happen, or approximately 1/3 of one party defects to the other side to create the supermajority needed for cloture.
You only need one out of 100 senators to set the stage for the kill, then only 2/3 of his own party to go along in order to kill it. A filibuster isn't necessary, just threaten. None of this even counts committees. After the Democrats took over in 2006 they killed a McCain attempt to reform in committee.
It's irritating especial when this is blamed on Bush. The Bush administration has pressed Congress for reform of this system every year he's been in office except 2006, over a dozen pleas to Congress ignored.
Lev 20:13 "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
The idea of capital punishment for homosexuality is definitely subject to debate considering what Jesus said about the coming Kingdom, but no "twisting" of the text is required.
No twisting of the text is required but twisting of the context definately is.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
As the President of the United States, do you anticipate difficulty making ends meet on a 400,000 dollar salary?
or
How do you reconcile Congress's 25% approval rating with their yearly self appointed pay raise?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-01-09-Raise-me_N.htm
Do you expect a similar adjustment to their pay in the coming year?
here's one:
In the light of the current credit crisis, it is often stated that we have to bail out our financial market, or terrible things will happen. Can you help us understand, in terms of human lives lost per dollar saved, the decisions behind Katrina, universal health care, Iraq, immigration reform, and the bailout of the financial sector?
Yea yea, I violated the one question per post rule, but I doubt they'd post these anyways.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Please describe any objections you have to the citizens of Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico having no voting representation in Congress and any remedies you propose for those objections.
I'm Abram Bender. You're not.
I don't recall the media hating Gore's guts. But they were certainly skeptical of many of his claims, and not completely without justification, given his involvement with Clinton's scandals. Though in hindsight we might wish they gave Bush a harder time.
If the media has such a liberal bias, why was it so gung ho on the Iraq war?
Because whatever biases it has, the press also tends to be gullible about any sensational claims about risks to public safety. They don't tend to question the "authorities" when said authorities are providing a good story. This will generally override any liberal leaning they have - which IMO is why news stories about "warrantless wiretapping" quickly morphed into stories about the "terrorist surveillance program", and from there into obscurity.
So do, please, explain how that ad was not racist
Because taking note of Obama's celebrity is not racist. It is traditional for Republicans to paint Democrats as elitists. Obama's own words and actions have played right into that elitist stereotype. There's nothing wrong with highlighting that in an ad, and certainly nothing racial. Showing him in places like Washington and foreign countries is meant to reinforce this "out of touch" image.
Taking Obama's campaign to task for their "disrespectful" treatment of Palin is not racist. It was a response to Obama's belittling a Governor as being just a "small-town mayor". These ads were not racial in character - if anything, it was an attempt to connect with women who saw Obama's primary campaign against Hillary Clinton as sexist.
I think we need to be very careful about throwing charges of racism or sexism around. I had hoped that the ugliness of the Democratic primary would have shown everyone that. It was almost comical, except that it was so sad, to see Hillary and Obama's partisans throwing accusations of racism and sexism back and forth, with very little basis in reality. I really don't think either one of them was trying to be racist or sexist, but their partisans seemed to think so. Which makes me think these ads are somewhat of a Rorschach test - how folks view the ad is more a function of their personal sensitivities than of the ad itself.
Just one problem.
In 1995, the Congress changed the Community Reinvestment Act, requiring bakers to make a certain percentage of their bread to sell to people who couldn't otherwise afford it. We'll call it waybread. Congress said, don't worry about the risk, we'll buy whatever waybread doesn't go, but we have to do it through a shell game, so we'll get our friends Fanny and Freddy to buy it all.
But that's not all. If Bakers wanted to merge, or open a new storefront, or just buy more yeast, they had to meet that percentage, or the Regulators of Baking wouldn't let them.
Now, you could sell this waybread on a market. So if you made more then you needed to meet the percentage the Regulators of Baking demanded, you could sell it.
Some bakers didn't operate in areas where people bought waybread at all. So they bought big lots of this waybread, which drove demand for it up and made it more valuable then it should have been. Even foreign Bakers bought it up, knowing they could resell it for more than they bought it for.
But then, the waybread started going bad. Really bad. So everyone looked for Fanny and Freddy to buy it. But they couldn't afford to, the Congress had demanded too much be made.
The lesson is, when you want your Congress to make an industry behave by Communist central planning, be ready for it to flop like a centrally-planned economy. It's kind of hard to blame the Bakers for doing what they were required to do by Congress. Especially since they've been fighting it all along, and were criticized by the nut-gathering group Acorn, and others, for fighting the standards. The Bakers, you see, understood the risk involved.
It's not the cookies and loaves of bread that are rotting, it's just the waybread. And now we're stuck with a whole lot of rotten waybread.
What do you plan to do about global poverty?
The Fannie Mae CEO in the ad that McCain linked to Obama was not associated with Obama's campaign. They had like one conversation before Obama even started running. He was black though. And since James Johnson the (white) head of Obama's VP Vetting committee had closer ties to Fannie Mae, it made no sense for them to try to pursue this tenuous connection when there was a much closer one there. Some people saw this is racism, but Obama never said as much.
McCain's campaign has Fannie Mae's former head lobbyist (Aquiles Suarez) and many others with much more direct connections, so his charges against Obama are pretty lame and he's lucky that he didn't get called out more so be careful what you wish for.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
Too bad Raines has nothing to do with Obama's campaign.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
Dear Presidential Candidate McCain,
If a bill making abortion not associated with incest or rape a federal crime were to come across your desk as president, would you sign it into law?
when (I'd assume) the average age of Slashdotters is well above any idea of "youth"? Or are we talking about mental ages (sorry, cheap shot =)
Isn't online involvement seen as spanning most ages? Or has Slashdot claimed itself as some kind of nerdy teen haven, just to get some questions into the debates?
this isn't just some lobbyist, this guy is his campaign manager. Bit of a difference.
This guy is a lot closer then just an employee
Thick as thieves is an apt description.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Will you form a non-partisan cabinet? Will you cabinet have members not only from the Republican and Democratic parties, but also from the Green, Independent or Libertarian parties?
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Yah, just take it out of context.
Hint: the Law (Leviticus, the Old Testament in general) is binding on Jews, it is NOT binding on Christianity. Christians got a new deal with God. Hence the phrase "New Testament".
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The deregulation we need is to stop regulating finance with political correctness. There's a reason why you charge a higher interest rate to a poor family living on the wrong side of the tracks -- they are a higher risk. Seriously, duh. But Clinton put the CRA on steroids, highly pressuring banks to make loans in very risky areas just because they had black demographics.
But we do need more, or at least much better, regulation to prevent fraud and dangerously insufficient assets.
Eisenhower was the one who coined the phrase "military-industrial complex".
Richard Nixon was for at least some price controls, and a guarenteed minimum income.
Ronald Reagan once said that persuit of higher profits was much more likely to really screw up the economy than persuit of higher wages.
The pendulum has swung very far to the right already, that all of those individuals now seem positioned to the left of it.
Who is John Cabal?
Hi,
...why do you think so?
Great thread - it's refreshing to read so many insightful and/or amusing posts!!
I realise this is a little bit off-topic, but I need some help.
I'm with an online business TV network called yourBusinessChannel, and we're looking to collect opinion on Obama and McCain's performances as persuasive communicators during the debate on Friday.
Ask yourself - politics aside, who would you buy a used car off?
yourBusinessChannel produces short internet business TV shows providing advice to business people and entrepreneurs on all aspects of business.
We are currently producing a series which focuses on how to be really persuasive when making business and sales presentations.
I've been reading the comments thread on this blog and have been impressed with the level of discussion here - so I'd love any or all of you to reply to this post with your views and opinions...
I want to know - in your opinion - which candidate:
- Had the most persuasive tone of voice?
- Made best use of body language?
- Seemed genuinely passionate about their message?
- Used humour to good effect?
- Showed total mastery of policy details?
- Rebutted his opponent most convincingly, and dealt best with criticism?
- Was relaxed and confident in making off the cuff comments?
- Avoided major faux pas and screw-ups?
- Came across as a real human being, not a robot regurgitating talking points?
cheers,
Steve Kerr
I don't recall the media hating Gore's guts.
So you are either very young or didn't pay attention to the media's coverage of the 2000 election. At all. And yet you were convinced that there was a liberal bias in the media. Huh, interesting.
But they were certainly skeptical of many of his claims, and not completely without justification
Their justification was: they didn't like him personally. And we've suffered enormously because of their high school click mentality.
given his involvement with Clinton's scandals
Such as.
They don't tend to question the "authorities" when said authorities are providing a good story.
They manage to question Democrats just fine. And if there aren't questions to be asked, they'll invent them from whole cloth, as they did with the Gore "invented the Internet" story, the "Love Canal" story, the "Love Story" story, and so on.
Because taking note of Obama's celebrity is not racist.
Straw man. No one was saying McCain's attacks on Obama's "celebrity" is racist, but it is massively hypocritical given McCain's popularity with the press and making cameos for 24 on Fox.
Obama's own words and actions have played right into that elitist stereotype.
[Citation needed]
Taking Obama's campaign to task for their "disrespectful" treatment of Palin is not racist.
It absolutely was, ask a southerner about it some time. More so since they were flat-out lying when they said Obama's "lipstick" comment was in reference to Palin.
It was almost comical, except that it was so sad, to see Hillary and Obama's partisans throwing accusations of racism and sexism back and forth, with very little basis in reality.
Racism, yes, sexism no. Hillary attacked Obama for not "winning white, blue collar workers" when he cleaned her clock in overwhelmingly white states like Iowa, Utah and North Dakota. They also joined with the rest of the hack media and Republicans in obsessing over the Rev. Wright nontroversy. Whereas I haven't yet met a Hillbot that's been able to point out a single media meme attacking Hillary's candidacy based on her gender.
Right, because all Obama brings to the table is "cool". Seriously, I know it is easier to not think and just vote along party lines...but I am really tired of seeing someone I didn't vote for ruin this country. McCain is just a continuation of the neo-cons failed philosophy. Bring back the old Republican party :(
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Instead of enriching criminal enterprises and failing to keep drugs away from children, why don't we abolish the Federal Controlled Substances Act? It would (at least) halve the murder rate, and generate billions of dollars in tax revenue -- not to mention alleviating the most racist policy failure since slavery.
Tax and regulate drugs -- for the children!
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
Let's skip all of the nonsense...
If "when does life begin" is "above your pay grade", how can we trust your judgement on anything else?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What are the key objectives for the first 6 months in office, that's my question.