US Election's Only VP Debate Tonight: Weigh In With Your Reactions

Tonight's debate between the two largest American political parties' candidates for vice president of the United States takes place at Danville, Kentucky's Centre College, starting at 9 p.m. Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will face each other on stage, and are expected to talk about issues "including the economy, foreign policy and the role of the Vice President," according to C-SPAN, which will feature a live streaming view of the event. (Criteria from the Commission on Presidential Debates means you won't hear tonight from other presidential candidates' running mates (like Cheri Honkala, Jim Clymer, and James Gray, of the Green, Constitution, and Libertarian party tickets, respectively). If you'll be watching the debate tonight, please add your commentary below. It would be helpful if you start your comment's title with a time-stamp (to the minute), too, for context. (Like this: "9:08: $Candidate just intentionally mis-repeated the Q on taxes.") And Yes, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. Update: 10/12 01:18 GMT by U L : If you don't have flash, you can use rtmpdump and mplayer to watch (incantation duplicated below, in case the site is slashdotted).

Via Don Armstrong an incantation to watch the debate without flash:
rtmpdump -v -r rtmpt://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--tcUrl rtmp://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--app live?ovpfv=2.1.4 --flashVer LNX.11,2,202,238 \
--playpath CSPAN1@14845 \
--swfVfy http://www.c-span.org/cspanVideoHD.swf \
--pageUrl http://www.c-span.org/ | \
mplayer -xy 3 -;

Comments

Re:Uh, how is this a subject for Technology and Ge

[Anonymous Coward]

They will surely be debating the finer points on Windows or Linux being better for government computing.

Logical Fallacy Bingo

[Ryanator2209]

I'll be playing Logical Fallacy Bingo against my friends. I personally expect it to be a fast bingo game.

Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo

[Baloroth]

I'll be playing Logical Fallacy Bingo against my friends. I personally expect it to be a fast bingo game.

I just feel I should point out that simply because someone is using a fallacy, doesn't make them wrong (the fact they are politicians does that... but I digress). Fallacies are commonly used rhetorical methods to convince... lets say, more emotional audiences... and practically nothing gets people more emotional than politics (religion can be more heated, but not nearly as commonly). Which is not to say it is acceptable to use them, just, well, using them shouldn't be taken as proof against the position espoused by the person who uses them (doing that is, in itself, a fallacy, though I don't care to look up the name... guilt by association? Close enough).

Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo

[JustOK]

the fallacy fallacy

Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo

[nbauman]

During the Republican debate, I was with a bunch of Democratic activists.

Every time one of the debaters mentioned "Ronald Reagan", they had to take a drink. By the end of the debate, they were staggering.

When I look at our political options, a good choice is getting drunk until I pass out.

Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo

[dgatwood]

Actually, some things that are ordinarily fallacies cease to even be fallacies in the context of a political debate. For example, ad hominem attacks are not inherently fallacies in the context of a political debate because the desired outcome of the debate is not to decide whose stated position is right, but rather who would be the better choice for that office.

A classic example of a non-fallacious fallacy in political debates is the appeal to hypocrisy. Such an appeal is fallacious when used to evaluate the validity of the candidate's position. However, the appeal is not entirely fallacious with regard to the debate as a whole because what actually matters is the way the candidate will likely actually vote, not the way the candidate says he or she will vote.

In fact, to the degree that a significant number of appeals to hypocrisy can be made against a politician, it usually dooms the candidate in question, and for good reason. If you don't really know where the candidate stands—if he or she says one thing and does another—that person is a really bad choice for any office.

Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo

[cheekyjohnson]

In fact, to the degree that a significant number of appeals to hypocrisy can be made against a politician

Saying that their position is wrong because they're hypocrites is different than saying that you won't vote for them because you personally don't feel they can be trusted. It's not that they ceased to be fallacies, but that those things weren't fallacies to begin with.

The best Joe Biden speech

[mozumder]

Is this one where he talks about when his wife & daughter died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GwZ6UfXm410

His humanity is the opposite of Robomittens. /stupid onions.

Re:The best Joe Biden speech

[ThatsMyNick]

He is good speaker, no doubt. Connects with his audience. Debates are different though, thinking and speaking at the same time, does not come naturally for most people.

9:01, 9:02, 9:03, 9:05, 9:06, 9:07, 9:08, 9:09..

[OhANameWhatName]

$Candidate intentionally lied to the public

Re:Uh, how is this a subject for Technology and Ge

[Virtucon]

Windows in the Government? Naw, it'll never happen. It's too newfangled. I hear Ultrix 32 is the latest shiznit over at the IRS.

What's the value here?

[MooseTick]

Does anyone pick the president by the VP they choose? Do they think, "I like the other guy more for president, but I'm voting for this guy because he will be a better VP"?

Re:What's the value here?

[Virtucon]

You should expect that if something happens to #1, #2 will take over and if we have a lame idiot, we'll all be in #2.

But then again, Fox News takes great joy in pointing out the foibles of Biden.

Re:What's the value here?

[MooseTick]

I understand that, but does that actually drive anyone's choice for #1?

Were there people who were actually going to vote for McCain, but once Palin was selected they decided Obama/Biden was a better ticket?

Re:What's the value here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I'm one of them.

I was turned off by an empty platform of "hope and change" when I could select a candidate with more experience both as a representative and a reformer. I wasn't happy that he was starting to kowtow to the extremists a little too much but it was the early days of the Tea Partiers.

But he's an old man and not in perfect health. I'm not putting that woman one heart attack away from a presidency. Now 4 years later I'll be voting for Obama based on his performance and strong loathing of Mittens.

Re:What's the value here?

[lexman098]

If the 2008 election is any indication I'd say people at the very least will *avoid* a candidate based on the VP they choose.

Re:What's the value here?

[religious freak]

The role of Vice President has changed quite a bit over only the past couple decades. Vice Presidents take an active roll in policy implementation and even decision making. They also do quite a bit diplomatically and even a bit of PR.

Re:What's the value here?

[Nidi62]

Now 4 years later I'll be voting for Obama based on his performance

What performance? He took credit for a preexisting withdrawal timeline in Iraq. Gitmo is still open. He sent a surge into Afghanistan. He had a friendly Congress for half his term and got nothing done. You must have a really low bar when it comes to performance.

Re:What's the value here?

[Black Parrot]

Now 4 years later I'll be voting for Obama based on his performance

What performance? He took credit for a preexisting withdrawal timeline in Iraq. Gitmo is still open. He sent a surge into Afghanistan. He had a friendly Congress for half his term and got nothing done. You must have a really low bar when it comes to performance.

I think the logic is, it's not getting worse as fast as it was under the prior regime.

Re:What's the value here?

[LordLimecat]

He also started a new (unauthorized!) military action, after years of complaining about unauthorized military actions.

Going to Libya I might have possibly been able stomach, if it hadnt been for the utter hypocrisy of it all and the declaration that "UN approval is enough".

Re:What's the value here?

[gQuigs]

Oh.. I don't know the first passed health care reform in almost 100 years.
Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Restarted the hunt for and killed Osama bin Laden. ... http://lmddgtfy.net/?q=Obama+Accomplishments

As much as I wish he had actually been more "socialist". He has pretty much done the majority of the items he promised to do on election day. Yes, I'd prefer if he created a single payer health care system, reduced mandatory prison sentencing, doubled NASA's budget, seriously cut military spending, and tackled global warming.

Maybe I'm just young, but most of my adult life has been under Bush, and now Obama. Bush seemed to mostly screw things up. Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.

Re:What's the value here?

[Anonymous Coward]

The conservatives routinely reject scientific logic, bending toward religion, oil, war and the rich. President Obama has completed treaties, enacted historic Health care changes (Emergency rooms for all you'd rather have?), rejuvenated the Auto industry, enhanced the vision of America all over the world and kept the Second Depression from happening.

Re:What's the value here?

[Myopic]

Hmmm. I don't know.

* Gitmo is still open - good, it should be, he was wrong to say he'd close it and he was right to reverse himself
* Afghanistan - he increased the effort there in accordance with his promise to do so, which was good policy, and the most common criticism is that he didn't send more or leave them there longer
* Friendly Congress - yeah, totally, he got nothing done, except you know the culmination of 90 years of progressive activism

I suspect, though, that you were baiting, so I will return your wink. /wink

Re:What's the value here?

[VicVegas]

Huh? trillion dollar deficits EVERY year in office, drone "kill list", assassinated ambassador, muslim extremists taking over EVERYWHERE, extending patriot act, DOMESTIC use of surveillance drones, etc.

wake up dude...

And you think the deficits won't get larger with more tax cuts for the rich, the patriot act won't be extended again, drones won't be put into even greater use, and there won't be any more terrorist attacks in the world if Romney gets elected? The issues you pin on Obama won't get resolved with Romney. Methinks they will get worse. There are other issues besides these, which in my mind, trump the issues mentioned above. Obama wins hands down when it comes to women's rights, religious rights, gay rights, and compassion for the elderly and less fortunate, to name a few issues. vV

Re:What's the value here?

[Just Some Guy]

Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Yeah. About that:

The Obama administration objected Thursday to immediately ending the military's ban on openly gay service members, saying that an injunction to stop the "don't ask, don't tell" policy might harm military readiness in a time of war.

In a filing with a federal court in California, the Justice Department said that a judge who struck down the policy as unconstitutional should not enforce that ruling with a military-wide injunction banning the discharge of gay service members.

Kudos to him for coming around to the side of decency and eventually signing the DADT Repeal Act of 2010, albeit after ordering his Justice Department to fight it tooth and nail.

Maybe I'm just young, but most of my adult life has been under Bush, and now Obama. Bush seemed to mostly screw things up. Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.

Like Gitmo still being open. Like ordering the assassination of American citizens. Like fighting against the end of indefinite detention of unconvicted, untried suspects. Like the drones circling over the Middle East. This is the "better direction" you see America moving toward?

Note: I'm explicitly not supporting Romney, either. As Douglas Adams might say, they're both the wrong lizards. And given that Romney pretty much invented Obamacare, frankly, I can't really tell them apart.

Re:What's the value here?

[number11]

Normally no, and not this year, but four years ago there was a special exception. You could say that Palin was too scary to be that close to the Presidency, or you could say that picking her was an indication of McCain's terrible judgement. Either way, 2008 was an outlier. This year Ryan and Biden are both reasonably capable and highly informed individuals. Neither of them are terrible or dangerous.

What, Mr. "Whichever Way The Wind Blows" Romney isn't dangerous? Not through innate evilness, but through sheer amoral used car salesman "I'll say whatever it takes to become prez, and I'll do whatever benefits me and my friends if I do become prez"?

Ryan, he's more honest. But way to the right of what the American people want. Most Americans (even Catholics) don't want to throw the advances women had out the window.

Re:What's the value here?

[microbox]

It is interesting that Obama asked the pentagon to come up with a plan that would actually protect the citizens in Libya and work. And now the dictator has gone. There was hardly any political upside to doing this. But I believe that it was the right thing to do. It is possible now that Libya will have a democratic tradition in 10 or 20 years, less prone to war, and a strong ally -- there is now that possibility.

Re:What's the value here?

[Binestar]

You have valid points on some of these, but I won't give you Gitmo. There are clauses in funding for Gitmo in the budget that say "Money can not be used to transfer prisoners from here". There is no funding to close Gitmo, so they can't close Gitmo. That funding comes through congress. After fighting to the edge of default a budget was passed that no one liked. Obama has tried multiple times to close Gitmo.

Re:What's the value here?

[microbox]

He had a friendly Congress for half his term and got nothing done.

How cynical can you get? The GOP plays non-stop obstructionism, and then blames the Dems for not getting anything done. The Dems only had 4 months with a filibuster proof majority. The rest of those two years was perpetual GOP filibustering.

When you say stuff like this -- just makes me think that the GOP faithful are ideological fools. The conservative party /used/ to have a fine tradition.

Re:What's the value here?

[MightyMartian]

It's hard to tell now. He seems to have decided to start switching his positions.

Romney: "Okay, I kicked Obama's ass in the first debate, so how do I bring this baby home."

Campaign Team: "Yeah, Mitty-baby, we've been working on that. We've had our boys working with the focus groups and we think we've found the answer."

Romney: "Great! What is it?"

Campaign Team: "Okay, what we've figured out is that you need to take all of Obama's positions."

Romney: "What?"

Campaign Team: "Yeah. Now you like the other 47% and agree with a woman's right to choose, and even like bits of Obamacare."

Romney: <speechless>

Campaign Team: Yeah, and maybe you should change your name to something ethnic sounding, and start talking about "hope and change" a lot more.

Re:What's the value here?

[Daimaou]

Don't you think that the opposite side feels that Democrat faithfuls are ideological fools?

The fact is that both parties are corrupt (as evidenced by all the untruths spoken tonight). In my opinion, anyone who is faithful to either party is playing team-sport politics and needs to grow up and stop playing games.

Re:What's the value here?

[funwithBSD]

Hey at that rate, he just needs to be elected 4 times like FDR to straighten things out...

Re:What's the value here?

[ukemike]

The Dems only had 4 months with a filibuster proof majority. The rest of those two years was perpetual GOP filibustering.

This I don't get. When I was a kid I remember hearing the news using this weird word filibuster. They were showing this wrinkly white haired guy droning on about whatever. He looked a bit rumpled because he'd been at it for hours. It used to be if you wanted to filibuster you needed to hold the floor and have enough votes to prevent a vote to end debate. Filibusters were pretty rare and even a bit of a shocking tactic. It was not frequently done, because you had to both keep talking and keep enough senators supporting the filibuster in the room constantly. Now days it has morphed into something completely different. The senate republicans have used the filibuster for every single vote in the last 4 years. This is a level of obstructionism that literally has no precedence in our history. Effectively the senate rules have been changed to require a 60% majority to pass anything. There are hundreds of appointed positions that have gone unfilled for the entire Obama administration. The republicans used this power to hold our nation's economy and credit rating hostage on multiple occasions to force their minority positions through.

The senate rules need to change. Filibusters should actually be required to fillibuster.

Re:What's the value here?

[rs79]

"He had filibuster proof margins in both house and Senate for 2 years,"

Look it up. No he didn't.

Re:What's the value here?

[khallow]

Oh.. I don't know the first passed health care reform in almost 100 years.

My view is that it can't be health care reform because it makes the problems that it alleges to solve worse. For example, it greatly expands health insurance coverage and subsidizes a bunch of people, My view is that either you'll end up with a hugely expensive subsidy or people who can't get insurance even with the subsidy.

Or lower medicare payments without doing anything to make the underlying health care activities cheaper to perform.

And there's the unconstitutional aspects of the law.

OTOH, that does seem par for bills that have "reform" in the title.

Re:What's the value here?

[rs79]

Biden's been head of the Senate foreign relations committee for years and years. He's well liked and well respected around the world and is a decent guy. He's be a fine president and you can't in all good faith say this about mittens and vampire boy, there's just something wrong with their brains.

Re:What's the value here?

[drkim]

Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.

Huh? trillion dollar deficits EVERY year in office...

Yeah. I don't think he got that deficit from Clinton (who left us with a surplus.)

As I recall, that huge deficit came from Republican, former governor, big businessman Bush.

You remember Bush? The Republican president that wasn't even invited to the Republican National Convention?

Of course times have been tough for Obama. He's still cleaning up after Republican, former governor, big businessman Bush.

Don't worry though... you can vote for Republican, former governor, big businessman Romney. That ought to make things better!

Re:What's the value here?

[drkim]

If Gore had won, I guess President Lieberman would be leading us to defeat in Iraq right now.

If Gore had won, we probably wouldn't even be in Iraq right now.
We would be generating our own solar, and wind energy; and we wouldn't give a crap about Middle East oil anymore.

Re:What's the value here?

[fearofcarpet]

Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.

Huh? trillion dollar deficits EVERY year in office, drone "kill list", assassinated ambassador, muslim extremists taking over EVERYWHERE, extending patriot act, DOMESTIC use of surveillance drones, etc.

wake up dude...

Can we please put this deficit nonsense to bed. Bush waged two wars using "emergency appropriations" to keep them off-budget and, at the same time, passed a huge tax cut with a nine year sunset to keep it out of the ten-year accounting cycle and gave away a few trillion more in corporate welfare to pharma with Medicare Part D. He said it would pay for itself because tax cuts stimulate investment and job growth, but it didn't; instead, it created a trillion dollar hole in the budget representing all the government spending that not even Bush would cut. Repeat: Bush cut revenue by trillions and was unable to cut spending to make up for it. So why would Obama or Romney suddenly be able to? Someone please explain that logic to me!

So Obama walks into office, moves the wars into the budget, and spends 800 billion to stave off a depression. Every year since then, he has reduced the deficit; but suddenly republicans think that Obama should magically slash all the "waste" from the budget that not even Bush was willing to touch because for some reason it's only irresponsible for democrats to run deficits. Repeat: Obama has decreased the deficit, during a recession, every year that he has been in office. The US government, with the exception of part of the Clinton administration, has run a deficit every year since about 1960. The deficit exploded under Bush, who managed to increase it by more than any time since World War II, yet it is Obama's responsibility to turn it around over night? That is called the Two Santa Claus Theory; when republicans are in office, it's spend, spend, spend, and use accounting tricks to hide how bad it is and then, when a democrat gets into office, it's suddenly all about debt and deficits and getting spending under control.

Romney/Ryan are proposing more tax cuts; they want to reduce revenue even further. Why? Because, clearly, the problem with the Bush tax cuts and the reason Bush ended eight years with negative net job growth is because he didn't cut taxes enough! But don't worry, their tax cuts will be revenue neutral because they'll close "loopholes," but not the mortgage interest deduction, which is the second or third largest loophole in the tax code (depending on how you count it). No, they're going to do it by eliminating things like PBS, which comprise around 0.0001% of the budget. Capital gains? No, that loophole should remain because we can't "double tax" investors. As if you don't get double taxed when you pay sales tax after your payroll and income taxes. You tax actions and behaviors not money; money is fungible, you literally cannot tax the same dollar twice.

Seriously, watch the VP debate, the tax plan of Paul "Mr. Numbers" Ryan, the "intellectual leader of the GOP" and Mitt "I'll say anything to get elected" Romney, is: "Trust us, the math works out, but we're not going to give you specifics." Uh-huh, just like when you ran for governor and said "trust me, I filed my taxes as a Massachusetts resident," which you totally did, retroactively, after you were caught lying. Oh, but we're not supposed to talk about Bush or your tax returns--that's all in the past... except for when Ryan invokes Ronald Reagan and JFK in the debates; no, that is being serious.

Obama isn't perfect, nor is Biden. I'm not a democrat (or a republican), but I am so sick of this completely disingenuous nonsense about the deficit. I know, I know, you'll never go broke betting on the stupidity of the American electorate, but this is just basic f-ing arithmetic.

Re:What's the value here?

[turkeyfish]

"I can't really tell them apart".

Then, obviously you are not too discriminating.

Personally, I just couldn't look myself in the mirror if I voted for someone who literally stole people's pensions to make a fortune and who then stashed the loot in the Cayman Islands to shelter it from US taxes then have the kuzpah to run for president as the Mr. "Businessman" and savior of the poor 47%. There simply is no possibility that such a guy could possibly be honest enough to do anything other than turn the US into a banana republic. His recent quid pro quos to sell National Parks and US Forest land in exchange for campaign contributions only proves it.

The other guy may bumble from time to time, but at least he's far more honest and working on behalf of a larger share of the public.

Re:What's the value here?

[turkeyfish]

"And there's the unconstitutional aspects of the law."

Obviously, you haven't been paying attention. The Roberts court specifically found the law constitutional. That is all that is required besides the law being passed by both the House and the Senate and signed by the President to make it constitutional. What constitution were you studying in grade school?

Re:What's the value here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong

The Democrats took control of the entire congress two years before Obama took the white house.

Obama and Biden were in the Senate and their party was running it starting a year before the 2008 meltdown. Both of these men voted (along with every other democrat) to block the Bush administration from doing anything to stop the reckless home mortgage mess that was rapidly piling-up at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the two government home loan institutions at the core of the 2008 meltdown).

The democrat's had an approximately 2-to-1 majority in the House and a super-majority (fillibuster-proof) in the senate for the almost the first two years of the Obama administration (not 4 months) and they used that control to ram-through health care and the stimulus bill. They chose NOT to use that power to do anything about Gitmo, or the wars, or getting people back to work, or nation-wide high-speed internet or a new "smart" power grid, or immigration reform, etc.

Obama had more control of the government than any Republican president since Lincoln. Lincoln had that level of control at the end of the civil war because Americans at that time were as willing to self-identify as Democrats as Germans in 1946 were willing to self-identify as NAZIs

When Reagan was president, the Democrats had the House by 2-to-1 margins and the they held the Senate by narrower margins for most of his time. Reagan was a real leader, however, so he worked across the aisle with Democrats to get things done even though those Democrats had announced their desire to make sure Reagan only served one term. George H.W.Bush (41) worked with Democrats who controlled congress even though they used that process to force him to break a campaign pledge and lose re-election. After Clinton lost the congress to the Republicans, he was able to reach across the aisle to work with the GOP and get things done. Lyndon Johnson reached across the aisle to work with republicans (even though the democrats had the majorities) on a number of things like civil rights, nasa, etc. Nixon and Kennedy, similarly worked across the aisle to get things done.

Obama has famously not worked across the aisle. He has called Republicans up to the White House purely to insult them and then kick them out (he did this rather famously to Paul Ryan, the chairman of the house budget committee (now VP candidate). Any time he has been challenged to compromise and get things done his response has been some version of "I won, you lost". With that sort of arrogance, we will have four more years of trillion dollar deficits and gridlock if the man is re-elected. He will refuse to work with congress and he has given them every reason imaginable to gum up the works. The man behaves like a stupid teenager.

Don't blame the republicans and complain that they are obstructing him... EVERY party causes trouble for its opponent, and the opposition gets worse if the president goes out of his way to tweak them instead of constructively trying to work with them and give them some input. Do you really want to pretend that Pelosi and Reid were supportive buddies of George W Bush?!?!?!!? During the eight years of Reagan, the Democrats did everything they could do to beat him, including things that should have lead to convictions on charges of Treason (Teddy Kennedy funneled classified info the the communists in Nicaragua, for example) but Reagan never whimpered and whined about people not letting him have his way.

Re:What's the value here?

[squiggleslash]

Yes, I met people who would have voted Republican but for Palin, but the odd thing is it's obviously an exception. Terrible VPs seems to be a thing, Dan Quayle being another classic example. On the other hand, a smart VP can make a bad candidate palatable - I'm sure Cheney helped Bush in a way that a Quayle-Palin wouldn't have done.

Re:What's the value here?

[dkleinsc]

But don't worry, their tax cuts will be revenue neutral because they'll close "loopholes," but not the mortgage interest deduction, which is the second or third largest loophole in the tax code (depending on how you count it).

I'm still surprised Obama didn't pick up on this at the first debate: Either Romney's proposed tax cut reduces revenue, or it's not really something that can legitimately be called a "tax cut", because -$5 trillion+$5 trillion=0. My guess on what he's going to go after for "loopholes" is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which creates a sort of "negative tax" for people who earn less than the federal poverty line. In other words, it's the policy that creates the semi-mythical "freeloading" 47%.

Re:What's the value here?

[tehcyder]

My view is that it can't be health care reform because it makes the problems that it alleges to solve worse. For example, it greatly expands health insurance coverage and subsidizes a bunch of people

1. If you have a private health service, the vast majority of people will need insurance one way or another. Contrary to the sashdot libertarian group opinion, most people do not earn enough to save sufficient to cover potential costs of even tens, never mind hundreds of thousands of dollars.

2. Yes, the poor are subsidized by the rich. It is at least a nod towards egalitarianism and fairness.

3. At some point, you have to choose whether you want a selfish, rightwing, money-obsessed Randian society or a more equal, harmonious one.

Re:What's the value here?

[fearofcarpet]

I'm still surprised Obama didn't pick up on this at the first debate: Either Romney's proposed tax cut reduces revenue, or it's not really something that can legitimately be called a "tax cut", because -$5 trillion+$5 trillion=0. My guess on what he's going to go after for "loopholes" is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which creates a sort of "negative tax" for people who earn less than the federal poverty line. In other words, it's the policy that creates the semi-mythical "freeloading" 47%.

That is a nice, succinct way of putting it; that revenue-neutral isn't really a tax cut because +$5 million - $5 million = 0. I struggle with trying to explain what nonsense Romney/Ryan's tax plan is in very simple terms, but you put it nicely. Obama could turn to him and say "So, your 'tax cut' is revenue neutral? Then, by definition it is nothing more than income redistribution." And then watch Quantum Romney reply with his perplexing argument about closing loopholes so that "more of peoples' income is subject to tax" but that he isn't raising anyone's taxes.

Re:What's the value here?

[gottabeme]

...mittens and vampire boy, there's just something wrong with their brains.

You have won me over with your reasoned argument.

Re:What's the value here?

[peter_gzowski]

For the lazy (note "filibuster proof" means 60 votes in the Senate):

111th U.S. Congress
Senate: 58% Democrat, 42% Republican (although Democrats had 60 for about 4 months, if you count the independents and blue-dog Dems who didn't always vote along party lines)

House: 59% Democrat, 41% Republican (although there is no filibuster in the House of Representatives)

Re:What's the value here?

[LordLimecat]

After fighting to the edge of default a budget was passed that no one liked. Obama has tried multiple times to close Gitmo.

They had TWO YEARS to pass a budget while they controlled both houses of congress AND the executive. And dont say "filibuster", because you cant filibuster budgetary issues.

All the excuses in the world fall flat on their face when Obama had every opportunity in the world for two whole years.

Re:What's the value here?

[StatureOfLiberty]

I see you have email.
Don't forget: You also have a browser.
You can do useful things with a browser.
(like fact check political emails)

Ah, the 'executive orders' email. The number of people that take these emails as gospel just astounds me. This 'Executive Orders' baloney was forwarded to me by my dad. I never ever read a political email and just assume it is factual. And indeed, they are almost always not. This one certainly falls in the 'pants on fire' category.

So far, Obama has issued 138. That is less than 'W' and from a brief inspection everyone else all of the way back to Grover Cleveland (if you average the per term numbers for those with multiple terms). For example Bush issued 173 the first term and 118 the second for an average of about 145.

A couple of links for you:
American Presidency Project - Executive Orders
Snopes article

Re:What's the value here?

[An Onerous Coward]

By "two years" you actually mean "six months." Senator Al Franken's election was disputed until July 2009, giving the Democrats vote #60 (if you count Joe Lieberman, which I don't). Senator Ted Kennedy died two months later, and when Scott Brown took over in January 2010, it gave the Republicans 41 votes, the number needed to keep a filibuster going.

Also, there's no filibuster in the House of Representatives.

Also, senators don't have to vote along party lines, or even be members of a political party. Even a filibuster-proof majority doesn't ensure that the President will always be able to get whatever he wants done. Obama made a concerted effort to get Gitmo closed, and bring the prisoners back to U.S. soil for trial. But cowardly idiots from both sides of the aisle warned that doing so would lead to terror attacks inside the U.S. Too many Democrats chose to demagogue rather than risk being labeled "soft on terror."

And what was Obama doing instead? Fulfilling other campaign promises. Overhauling health care. Economic stimulus. Supreme Court appointments. Regulating the financial sector (over the mad howlings of Republicans, who even today are promising a "repeal and replace", minus the part where they actually replace). Expand CHIP, ensuring that kids get health care. Clean energy. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Singlehandedly snuck into Pakistan, put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's head, then lit a cigarette and said, "Don't fuck with America." *

Sorry, but the people who ask why Obama hasn't gotten more done seem to imagine that presidents hold Rasputin-like sway over Congress. I blame the Republicans for filibustering, the Democrats for not pushing harder against the filibuster, Connecticut for electing Joe Lieberman, and Republicans (again) for being utterly amoral and unwilling to compromise with either the Democrats or reality in general.

* I've heard there's evidence to disprove this account of events, but it's all hidden in Mitt Romney's 2005 tax returns.

Re:Waste of time

[Virtucon]

Just ask Lyndon Johnson? Harry Truman? Andrew Johnson? Chester Arthur? Gerald Ford? Teddy Roosevelt?

There's been 14 VPs who became president but not all became president when the incumbent died in office. That's why I believe the country was holding its breath that Dan Quayle didn't get the job and that GB Sr. Had excellent health care.

"Commission"... right.

[TheSpoom]

Commission on Presidential Debates

a.k.a. the Republican and Democratic parties. They will never allow a third party to debate; if they happen to meet the criteria, they'll simply increase the threshold(s).

This is one of the major issues preventing any real change from happening in the US federal government, simply because new ideas are being suppressed by the incumbents.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[steelfood]

The problem is, while the spotlight is on the national stage, real change happens from the bottom up. That means running for, and voting 3rd party at the city, county, or even state level.

For example, if you're interested in digital freedom, and curtailing "IP" laws, participate in and/or donate to your local Pirate Party (and many states do have such an organization). That's just one of the many numerous smaller political parties out there that might better represent your views.

If you're wondering what the immediate effects of doing such a thing are, since "IP" is a federal thing, the answer is that there are no immediate effects. But the extra help and/or money increases exposure. And like small businesses with an interesting product, getting the word out is the most important part. Only once people start hearing about it is the brand image important.

Sound too much like a business? It's because parties really are run like businesses, except as they don't make a profit, they're non-profit. But if you think non-profits aren't run like businesses internally, you've got another thing coming.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[TsuruchiBrian]

I say we make the criteria 50% so that only one person is allowed in the debate. Anyone polling lower than 50% is clearly going to lose, and why waste the American voter's time with losertalk? We can't have these fringe candidates messing everything up. They might spoil the election. /s Maybe if we are lucky a 3rd party can take enough votes from both major parties to ensure nobody meets the criteria, and we won't be subjected to these "debates". This system is fucked.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Anonymous Coward]

a.k.a. the Republican and Democratic parties. They will never allow a third party to debate; if they happen to meet the criteria, they'll simply increase the threshold(s).

Except in 1992, when Ross Perot was running for president, and there was a 3-way debate vs Bush and Clinton? http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/5532

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Sir_Sri]

This is one of the major issues preventing any real change from happening in the US federal government

I genuinely do not understand why americans, particularly the ones who frequent tech boards, think a third party would actually be helpful. Well I understand why it's on tech boards, there are the automated shills and a particular ideological attraction to a point of view, but in practical political terms it's silly. I live in canada, we've had at one point 5 parties holding federal seats, and now have 4. 60% of the population *doesn't* like the current government, but he has essentially absolute power (within the confines of parliamentary power) because he has a majority of seats. The 'extra' parties just divide the vote up, and whether you do that as a proportional representation and require pork project trading by MP's across party lines or do it at a smaller level of pouring resources into contested districts the net effect of bad federal policy (or at least inefficient policy) is the same.

Third parties, or more, simply lead to horse trading and pandering to try and bribe or coerce the smaller parties into a mainstream voting block, and in exchange they end up with something that's usually crazy or generally bad policy, but that's the price to be paid to govern at all.

Government only really can do 3 things, tax, spend and make laws. The vast majority of actual issues are either binary or on a 2 dimensional spectrum (you support the death penalty, oppose it, or you narrowly support it for certain things. You support a defence department somewhere on the spectrum of 500 billion dollars to 1 trillion dollars and no one serious is talking about anything outside that range, etc. I realize the tech community in general have latched onto some ideas about 'liberatrianism' but that is, in the US, on the slant of smaller government republicans.

The US government only spends money on a handful of things of any significance:
Defence related spending ~ 900 billion.
Healthcare/social security/social safety net stuff (broadly social programmes) ~1.7 trillion (not counting the healthcare spending done under defence)

That gets you to 2.6 trillion dollars. there's some interest payments on debt. that gets you to 2.8 trillion. And then there is

Coordination and support of things that effect multiple (or all) states or that are too big or variable to be left to individual states, insurance on education healthcare etc. (most of discretionary spending in the US, though I would count veterans affairs and homeland security as really defence related, the term 'discretionary' is a legal budget term, not a practical 'what is this spending supposed to be for' term).
Which takes another 400 or 500 billion. Over a lot of different programmes none of which are individually very big.

And lastly, what I would call 'other'. Stuff the government has agreed to pay for that isn't under the umbrella of any specific category, but people decided they want, and a lot of stuff here would be needed to be done somehow, it's matter of how you count it. Think agriculture, NASA, Energy, EPA etc. Again, lots of little pieces of things that have some national significance.

So you've only really got 4 things. No one sane (or who can do math) is going to toss ~230 billion dollars in interest payments off a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. So what do you want?

More or less defence? Republicans vs Democrats.
Social safety net stuff:
More: Democrats. Less: Republicans.
Pet projects or 'national significance' stuff?
Everyone wants more of whatever they stand for.

Except that neither of them really do much of that when they actually get into office, and no other political party in the world is much different. Democrats don't want to be seen as soft on terrorism so they waste some money on defence for theatre, republicans don't want to alienate the crazy old man with medicare vote so they won't actually cut medicare much, and well, that's pr

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't add the 15% support threshold until 2000. Presumably they added it because of Ross Perot.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[CityZen]

We don't want a 3rd party so much as we'd just like to get rid of the two we have now and have a couple of choices that don't stink so much.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[number11]

That means running for, and voting 3rd party at the city, county, or even state level.

without proportional representation they won't get in there either.

Not necessarily true. In the US, the Green Party has something like 135 local elected officials. About the same number of Libertarians. Two US senators (Sanders-VT and Lieberman-CT) are 3rd party, and after the November elections there will likely still be two.

Whether any of these parties can marshal the effort to escalate their victories to higher percentages (or offices) is not clear. But they might.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of actual issues are either binary or on a 2 dimensional spectrum

You've made an unwarranted assumption that everyone will either choose classical left-wing positions on all those issues, or classical right-wing positions. If that were the case, you'd only need two parties. Since it's not, though, you need 2^N parties to represent everyone, where N is the number of binary issues. For the four issues you identified later in your post, you need 2^4 = 16 parties to ensure that everyone can select a candidate who will represent them.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Sir_Sri]

The sad truth, if you look at literally every democratic country in the world, is that they all more or less evolve into the same basic sort of scumbag. The details are local, but they're not much different.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Sir_Sri]

As I said, you could construct a matrix of all of the different things you're for or against, and end up with hundreds of parties, but honestly, most of them don't matter, nor would it be sensible for the public, who can't figure out when *one* party is completely disregarding facts, to present them dozens of viewpoints they can't understand.

Also, it wasn't an assumption, it was an assertion. There's a difference. In the relatively narrow scope of what governments can do you don't actually have a lot of choices. That's why there are, in every democratic country basically two political camps of left and right. People who value equality more, and people who value liberty more. Local circumstances determine quite what that means, but that is the essence of government. They aren't all purely binary choices, but the choices are largely two dimensional, and the thing is, whether the US spends 700 billion dollars a year or 800 billion dollars a year or 600 billion dollars a year probably doesn't actually matter all that much. Whether or not the US has healthcare matters, a lot, but which, on the spectrum of the british - french health systems (cheap, accessible, and good enough, vs expensive and excellent) you end up with doesn't matter all that much, they're still both way better than what you have now.

And my point was that there are basically only two important parts of government and then various less important arrangements of 'other'. Wherever you sit on those spectra you're not going to get better policies out of the government by having more parties, your personal view may be better captured, but within political parties they run the spectrum as well. Unfortunately you can't have a system where people only consider one issue at a time in isolation, because they all do come down to either spending money, or not, and if so, how much.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[wgoodman]

I live in CA. It will go to Obama. I will once again vote for the leading 3rd party since that is the best way to make my vote count. Sadly, when people call me to ask me who I want to vote for, "neither" or any 3rd party answer is taken as "undecided".

Re:"Commission"... right.

[dkf]

Whether any of these parties can marshal the effort to escalate their victories to higher percentages (or offices) is not clear. But they might.

Unless everyone involved in those third parties or who might vote for them gives up because they won't get everything instantly, in which case it definitely won't happen. That's absolutely certain.

Getting real change isn't easy. Virtually nothing worthwhile is. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Just means you've gotta work for it.

Re:"Commission"... right.

[Rich0]

Even then, Perot certainly wasn't the only other guy on the ballot.

The insane ballot requirements for 3rd parties already filters out complete cranks. Why not just make the debates open to anybody who is on the ballot in a sufficient number of states to obtain an electoral college victory? Of course the reality is that with any significant 3rd-party vote Congress will simply end up selecting the president, as happens in any parliamentary system of government. If we simply allowed proportional election of representatives then we'd basically be a parliamentary system as a result. I'd consider that a change for the better.

Re:Waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney were the best assassination attempt prevention ever.

I'm thinking McCain was going the same route, but shot too far.

Biden

[kiriath]

Looks a bit like the Jack Nicholson Joker...

Mod article

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I mod this article "-1 Flamebait"?

So far Biden is doing really well

[HangingChad]

You won't read anything about Biden not being engaged tomorrow. So far he's making Ryan look like an amateur and he's not letting Ryan get away with lying.

Biden is crushing it.

Re:So far Biden is doing really well

[Anonymous Coward]

Too much eye rolling from Biden and big "Are you freakin' kidding me" grins. He's still doing better than Obama did, though.

Re:So far Biden is doing really well

[Anonymous Coward]

By interrupting, and cutting Ryan off, facial antics, etc... Moderator is not doing her job at all. Surprise surprise....

Re:So far Biden is doing really well

[Myopic]

You think? I thought she was more aggressive than I've ever seen a moderator at a Pres/VP debate. She cut off each one of them more than once. She visibly tried to divide the time and her questions were pretty specific. I was not familiar with that (probably very famous) journalist but I thought she was pretty decent.

Re:So far Biden is doing really well

[fearofcarpet]

You won't read anything about Biden not being engaged tomorrow. So far he's making Ryan look like an amateur and he's not letting Ryan get away with lying.

Biden is crushing it.

Don't worry, in a few hours the punditocracy will be lampooning Biden for smiling too much, or the wrong way, or having the wrong facial expression; anything to avoid addressing the actual content of the debate. The press is either at your feet or your throat and as the polls shift towards Romney, so will the press. They hate fact-checking politicians because it can cost them access, but they also hate transcribing lies, so instead they'll talk about Paul Ryan's hair or the performance of the moderator.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

It is always humorous to watch the political fanbois go at it from the sidelines. Seeing people become so impassioned about which set of crooks are going stuff the shirts this time around is a devil's belly laugh. As has been said so many times, when the boot of government is on your throat, it makes no difference if it is a left boot or a right boot.

Both sides may be "crooks", depending on the criteria, but I don't think you can say that it makes no difference who is elected. ie. The Affordable Care Act is an event on the scale of the imposition of an federal income based tax, or the start of the Social Security system. Regardless of your feeling of the act itself, its is highly significant, and its a certainty that it wouldn't have passed if McCain had been elected. So its petulant and intellectually dishonest to say that its "makes no difference"

Welcome to the Vice Presidentual debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the answers are made up and the points don't matter!

Vote against the bad guys

[Alien Being]

In the colonial Commonwealth of Massachusetts, my vote does not count. I'm not far from Plymouth Rock, the place where pissed-off subjects of King George landed after betting their lives that there was a better way to civilize.

I have voted for Republican candidates in the past but I'm done with them. GWB/Cheney/Rumsfeld fucked us hard. That bastard Romney came here to my state, where he doesn't fucking belong, and fucked us over. Now he's attempting to take over the Oval Office on the grounds that what he did to Massachusetts should not be done to the USA. He should be swimming with the fish in Boston Harbor.

If there was a candidate who ran on the platform of tearing off Romney's head and shitting down his neck, he'd get my vote.

I'm Alien Being and I approve this message.

Re:Obama versus Romney?

[Prof.Phreak]

John Jackson is way better than his clone Jack Johnson!

Something is missng

[skipkent]

where is federal reserve/monitory policy question?

Body Language

[Idetuxs]

What does it mean in body language terms to repeatedly tick the table whit the index finger, Biden is over doing it. Like reaffirming what he is saying. May be there is something else with that gesture, this is /. so I'm assuming someone will know (and that someone will answer to FTFG).

Ryan looks really calm about everything, he for sure know about non-verbal communication.

Lets get something straight now

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like Obama was put in the drivers seat just when the car we're in has come under attack by drug cartel because some idiot drove us into a warzone, so now when he's trying to get us out of there, the previous driver is in the passenger seat complaining about following the speed limit and all traffic laws and grabbing at the steering wheel and brakes. and the passengers in the car are saying..why aren't we going anywhere?! we're so mad we're going vote the original driver back in..

Re:Lets get something straight now

[nbauman]

"We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in."

Re:Lets get something straight now

[turkeyfish]

Biden did a good job reminding everyone that the mess we are in now didn't exactly happen by accident. As he noted it happened precisely because guy's like Ryan voted to put two major wars, the largest tax cut in history and the largest increase to Medicare in history on the public credit card, while leaving Wall Street so unregulated that credit default swaps sold like hotcakes.

Weak minds seem to also have weak memories, yet for the GOP in 2012 it's all so convenient.

What I liked best about the Romney/Ryan plan was just how by magic it's going to solve all of our problems and all I will have to do is pay more for health care coverage so that I can enjoy watching Mitt and friends laugh all the way to the bank. It makes one wonder if the magic was so potent, why didn't Mitt run for a second term in Massachusetts? I guess a few new wars have to be added to the mix to make it all work out. Just like last time.

Re:Lets get something straight now

[flyingsquid]

The 911 attacks were a result of eight years of capitulations by Clinton.

That's simply an outright lie. The Clinton administration actively pursued bin Laden. In 1996 the CIA created a special group tasked with tracking bin Laden. In 1998 Clinton ordered a Tomahawk strike against bin Laden's training camps. In 1999, the Clinton administration directed the CIA to train and equip 60 Pakistani commandos to take out bin Laden, but the plan fell apart after a military coup in Pakistan.

Clinton tried to take out bin Laden but never succeeded. But there's no evidence that the Bush Administration ever pursued bin Laden or even took much interest in him before 9/11, even with the warnings of an impending attack, and they dropped the ball after 9/11. They were too interested in Saddam. Of course, in the end, it turned out that Saddam no longer had an active WMD program. The reason? Airstrikes ordered as part of Operation Desert Fox had destroyed Saddam's weapons programs and with the sanctions in place, he was never able to get them started again. Those airstrikes, by the way, were ordered by Bill Clinton.

Re:Lets get something straight now

[Vinegar Joe]

Biden was in congress as was Obama........they helped create the mess.

Re:Lets get something straight now

[Magius_AR]

As he noted it happened precisely because guy's like Ryan voted to put two major wars, the largest tax cut in history and the largest increase to Medicare in history on the public credit card

You mean like the wars we're still engaged in, the largest tax cut in history that Obama extended, and an even _larger_ healthcare expenditure in the form of Obamacare? That didn't go on the credit card? How about the stimulus? Or the "no strings attached" bank bailouts?

Taxing rich people

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the defining issue is ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. If you watch Fox, they've tried all sorts of talking points to try to kill this issue and they keep trying new angles:

Remember, 'taxing job creators'? As if taxing rich peoples personal income will cause their companies to fire lots of people.
Remember 'dividing American?' i.e. claiming that singling out rich people for more taxes is dividing American!
Remember '53% vs 47%', the flip of dividing America, where they claim the majority are against the minority who don't pay direct fed taxes... that one died when it was pointed out a lot of the top 1% don't pay any taxes at all.
Remember 'the haves and the soon to haves?' i.e. you'll be rich soon, and then you'll get to pay less than 13%!
What about 'Robin Hood on Steroids'? The latest one, the 'income redistribution is bad', as if taking their tax cuts away from them is some sort of highway robbery!

You can see just from watching Fox, what the Republicans feel their defining issue is. It's tax cuts for the rich.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtless that someone always pays. The act changes who is going to be directly paying. That's significant.

And there's other examples, some of them quite easy. Gore likely wouldn't have put troops into Iraq, again supressing your feelings of the event itself. What would Carter have done with the air traffic controllers, and would it have precipitated or acted against the rise of anti-union feeling in the country since? Would Nixon have initiated the Great Society and all its culteral consequences?

Re:Name Your Poison

[timeOday]

I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.

Re:Name Your Poison

[CRC'99]

Even more concerning is the callers at the end.

Not being an American, it was rather a shock to hear a member of the military calling up after the debate that America should invade Iran and they they urge people to vote for a certain candidate so nobody touched the military. The justification? "We have to get them before they get us".

Great work America - fix your shit up by going to war. That worked so well last time.

Debates biased against third party participant

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Except for #1, the debate participant rules (http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=candidate-selection-process) do look biased in favor of the ruling parties:

2) Mathematical chance of securing a majority of the Electoral College votes. This doesn't take into account the possibility of say a three-corner fight where nobody gets the desired number of votes.

3) 15% popular support. Why is this set so high when a majority or significant plurality of Americans don't vote?

Re:Gangland Style

[fredgiblet]

You must be talking only about your own opinion, because the emperical evidence suggests that the amount of lies told by a candidate has no impact on their electability.

Does choosing a candidate based on whether they can mime to a song, make me a bad person?

It seems like as good a test as any we've devised so far.

Joe, stop!

[cplusplus]

I watched most of it, and the entire time I kept thinking that Joe Biden should stop beating up on that poor kid sitting next to him.

Re:Obama versus Romney?

[artor3]

Are you serious? You can't think of a single issue on which Obama and Romney differ?

How about taxes? Romney's official plan is a 20% across the board cut, at a cost of $500B/yr, which will be paid for by *handwaves furiously*. Obama's plan is ditch the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and bring capital gains taxes about halfway back towards where they were under Clinton.

How about healthcare? Romney's on the record saying things were alright pre-Obamacare, and he wants to go back to that. Obama, obviously, wants to keep Obamacare on the books.

How about military spending? Obama is trying to cut it by $100B/yr, while Romney's proposal is to raise it by $200B/yr.

How about Medicare? Obama wants to keep it mostly as is, making small adjustments to keep it solvent. Romney wants to make it a voucher system that would force senior citizens to turn to for-profit corporations for their healthcare.

How about abortion? Obama wants women to be in charge of their own bodies, Romney is on record supporting a life-begins-at-conception amendment and has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade. Considering that a few of the current liberal justices are getting up there in years, he would almost certainly be able to have abortion outlawed nationwide.

That's just off the top of my head. Sure, if you only care about IP law and drone strikes, the two candidates are identical. But there are lots of very important issues on which the two candidates couldn't be more different.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a first step to single-payer. It's about time the USA makes a step towards re-joining the First World.

Re:Interesting

[TheGratefulNet]

an experienced person who knows how the world works and wants to equalize what has been out of balance for quite a long time.

ryan comes across as a stupid, spoiled little brat who does not understand how the world works and simply insists his way should be the way for everyone. he has no sympathy or compassion in him, NONE AT ALL. soulless.

we would be in very bad shape if that child got control of the world.

biden has heart. I don't like many politicians, but I could tolerate him. ryan, I cannot stomach. just cannot, even a little bit. like nails on a chalkboard.

Re:Uh, how is this a subject for Technology and Ge

[mi]

But not a word about lasers!.. Much less sharks...

I heard a bit of it on the radio

[damn_registrars]

I caught ~20 minutes of it while driving home from work tonight. It did seem like Biden was more aggressive than the usual M.O. for this administration and Ryan was surprisingly calm. Considering how far outside the mainstream Ryan's ideas fall, I figured he would be more passionate about it. It seemed like the moderator didn't do much to stop them from addressing each other directly, yet it didn't seem to phase Ryan much.

That said, what I heard was towards the end. Attitudes of the candidates may well have changed along the way.

Re:Name Your Poison

[gslj]

Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran. If Obama wins, there may not be. That is literally a life or death difference to many, many people who would live or die according to that choice.

-Gareth

Re:Name Your Poison

[Vaphell]

the other team has a pretty high score too. I don't think people at wedding ceremonies blown up by the US drones see any substantial difference.

Jabs and politics aside...

[mi]

Jabs and accute politicking aside, the two men offer very different ideologies and views on life. Whereas Joe Biden says "privatization" like it is a bad thing, to Paul Ryan "government's control" is the worst curse.

Having grown up in the USSR with first-hand experience of government's control of economy, I would've preferred Ryan even if he did not look so persuasive and hands-on and even if Biden has not shone his uber-smile in such unsettling manner all the time.

Last, but not least, I still remember Biden's sequence of idiocies (no, not gaffes) from 4 years ago...

Re:Name Your Poison

[foniksonik]

We'll never know how many would have died at the hands I'd Saddam's son either (he was known for being a complete sociopath with homocidal tendencies, torturing multiple people to death because they displeased him).

Re:9:01, 9:02, 9:03, 9:05, 9:06, 9:07, 9:08, 9:09.

[gman003]

That was the commercial break.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

Jon Stewart vs. Bill O'Reilly.

The only political debate worth watching in this election.

End of story.

Re:Name Your Poison

[nbauman]

I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.

Enough Democrats (including Hillary and Kerry) voted for the Iraq war that GWB could get away with it.

Yeah, it makes a difference. The Democrats will be better than the Republicans. But the Dems have moved so far to the right that the difference is getting smaller every year. If you look at the issues, Obama is farther to the right on domestic policy than Nixon.

-- Instead of a single-payer health care system, or even a public option, Obama gave us a health care plan designed by the Heritage Foundation, for the benefit of the insurance companies that contributed even more to Obama's campaign than to McCain's.

-- Obama took GWB's No Child Left Behind, and added to it with Race to the Top, which forces states and cities to break their union contracts and destroy public education with charter schools if they want to keep getting their federal education money. It's destroying the unions.

-- Instead of prosecuting the people responsible for the worst financial crisis since the depression, including outright fraud, he appointed the very people responsible for the crisis to handle the crisis.

-- When O'Keefe made a fraudulent video about ACORN, instead of defending ACORN, the Democrats abandoned ACORN and let the Republicans destroy the most valuable voter-registration organization the Democrats had. Brilliant! Now who's going to register your voters?

-- When you ask Democrats why we should vote for Obama, they're finally reduced in desperation to saying, "Supreme Court." Yeah, we'll get Supreme Court justices who are merely "centerists" (conservatives) rather than getting far-right partisan justices who will brazenly ignore the Constitution as they did in Bush vs. Gore. Of course the Democrats would never consider a filibuster in a Supreme Court nomination.

"Vote for us, because the alternative is horrible" is not a very inspiring reason to vote.

------
I wanted an FDR and all I got was this lousy Obama.

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[gweihir]

Obviously your reaction isn't indicative of a typical American reaction, since all the post-debate polls showed Romney won hands down.

No surprise with Romney's tactics: Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact. That is a huge part of the reason your country is in such a mess now. A bit of humility and actually getting to grips with reality could place the US firmly back in the 1st world. (Forget about "world leadership". That is and has always been one of these illusions. The ability to destroy something does not imply you lead anything.)

Re:Name Your Poison

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an awfully boring fact that the number of people who die depends not so much on how great or terrible their ruler is, but on whether the mains power run, water flows, hospitals operate, etc. Even in a war like the one in Iraq, the number of people killed directly by bombs, bullets etc. is only ~110,000, compared to the ~1,000,000 who died from lack of air-conditioning, insufficient sanitation, etc. caused by the war, measured against the base death rate under Saddam's rule. (See list of casualty estimates; note the difference between "deaths" and "violent deaths".) Saddam's son could have tortured a hundred people to death every day, and it still wouldn't have mattered as much as whether he did a better or worse job of maintaining Iraq's infrastructure than the invading Coalition army did.

Re:Name Your Poison

[nbauman]

The best estimates of the number of people GWB killed in the Iraq war are between 150,000 (New England Journal of Medicine) and 600,000 (The Lancet).

Even Uday wouldn't have killed that many people. Indeed, we probably tortured more Iraqi prisoners to death than Uday did.

At least Saddam knew how to run a country. Everybody got a basic food basket. The electricity ran. Iraq had the best health care system in the Moslem middle east. Iraq had one of the best education systems -- they had a higher ratio of women college professors than the US. They sent graduate students to study medicine and engineering in London. Saddam was a secularist who suppressed the Islamist extremists. What did GWB replace it with? A third-world country in which armed gangs kill more people than Saddam did. In which Sunnis and Shiites kill each other like the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Greyfox]

Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.

Romney's promised to repeal Obamacare, but I don't think he actually wants to. It IS his health care plan, after all. Unless he has a super majority in the senate, he won't be able to, so he'll be able to keep it and blame the Democrats for not being able to get rid of it. That's textbook having your cake and eating it too right there.

All in all, if Romney is elected he'll be a mostly ineffectual president, being blocked by the Democrats on most of the things he promised during his campaign. If Obama wins, he'll be a mostly ineffectual president, being blocked by the Republicans on most of the things he promised during his campaign. Unless the numbers in the house and senate make a major shift, it doesn't really matter who ends up being president. Not that much, anyway.

Re:Obama versus Romney?

[microbox]

Can anyone identify an issue - not an opinion or a general feeling or a policy goal, but an actual issue - for which Obama and Romney are on opposite sides?

Firstly: pretty much any social conservative issue. Repeal DADT? GOP will do that. Stop women getting health insurance coverage for contraception through their employers? Yep the GOP want that too. Ban abortion -- if they could. They certainly will appoint the supreme court in such a way that Roe v Wade will eventually end.

Also, the Dems will almost certainly not promulgate the war on science that the GOP is involved in. You really want someone in charge of the EPA who is a paranoid anti-science conspiracy theorist (Inhofe). What about the guy on the house science committee who thinks that evolution and cosmology are lies from the pit of hell to make people think that they do not need Jesus as their saviour?

Also, the GOP will veto tax increases on the 1%. As for the dems, they caved once on this already. But this time, they may draw blood on the issue. So there's the whole trickle-down versus keynesian economics thing. I would argue that giving the rich more money will not spur the economy because there is already a glut of investment money. We have a deficit in demand.

So there are three *huge* and *stark* differences between the parties: gender equality, the place of science in society, and nigh on opposite views on economics. If the dems controlled the house and senate, Romney would veto this stuff, and vice versa.

It took me a long time to realise this, and it is both shocking and depressing. But politicians really do believe most of what they say. They even believe in their outright lies.

Re:Obama versus Romney?

[microbox]

The GOP have descended into an alternate reality -- and taken many with them. This will be lethal to them over time, as demographic changes clearly favour the dems.

The GP really did nail the issues, and the GOP will really need to remake themselves, and soon.

The only reason why Romney has a snowballs chance in hell is because the economy hasn't recovered so fast. It is utterly amazing the Obama is in the race at all given the economic figures. And the reason is that even the GOP faithful are starting to have doubts about their world of spin.

Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[goombah99]

Can anyone explain how the Romney tax plan works. We've all heard it doesn't add up, so I'll just summarize that below. What I'm looking for are explanations of how it makes sense. I heard Ryan not explain it. He talks about "broadening a base" via eliminating deductions. What does that mean?

Summary of the tax plan (taken from Romney website):
1) No AMT, no estate tax
2) No tax on Dividends, INterest or Cap gains.
3) cut maximum tax bracket by 20% from bush maximum: that is to say 15% on ordinary income.
4) Eliminate "most" deductions but keep home mortgage deduction.

Other bullet points (taken from Romney web page).

1) wont lower revenues
2) upper income earners wont pay a smaller "share". (unclear)
3) won't raise taxes on taxes on middle class. (presumably in aggregate).

Clear areas lacking explanation:

Consider that top teir earners pay most of the tax in the US right now and that they earn most of their income from Cap gains not Ordinary income like wages. If you remove the tax on cap gains, then they pay only a few percent on their combined income. This will drastically reduce not just their "share" but strongly imapct total revenue.

Note that lowering deductions barely affects this analysis. Even if you set the ordinary income tax rate at 110% on the wealthy, the fact that nearly all their income is cap gains means they still pay almost no tax. Furthermore since there is no estate tax, this situation does not correct itself at death.

SO how can this meet the claims about revenue neutral, not lowering the share of the upper income earners, or not push more taxes on the middleclass.

I'm looking for explanations not anti romney propganda. And what does "broadening the base" mean if there's no cap gains tax?

thanks!

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[GodfatherofSoul]

It's simple Milton Friedmann economics inspired by Ayn Rand. You cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and that magically fuels the economy. Never mind that it's got a proven track record of failing everywhere it's been used (read up on the WTO's Friedmann-conditioned loans to third-world countries).

It's an idealistic vision for how economies work that is very appealing to people with money or people who think they're going to be rich one day. In reality, in really bad economic times the rich just sit on their bank rolls and wait for things to get better because they can afford to. If the economy runs out of bargain hunters as capital dries up, you end up in a feedback loop as the economy spirals downward. Hence, trillions in government stimulus spending.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[mwvdlee]

the top 5% of the companies and investments that are considered job creators (the ones earning 250M+)

I really hate that term. If you'd ban any company over, say, 100 employees (absolutely not saying you should; just to demonstrate the point), the need for their products would not decrease, it'd just mean many, many more ~100-employee companies with many, many overhead jobs.
If anything, the consolidation of work in large companies destroys jobs.
Again, those excessive overhead jobs would probably be a drain on the economy, but they would be jobs that currently do not exist.
Calling large companies "job creators" is just a newspeak lie. The only companies you could reasonably call "job creators" are small to medium sized local businesses.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[mwvdlee]

From TFL: "The online magazine of the American Enterprise Institute"; a not-at-all partisan organisation. </sarcasm>
Just Google "aei romney" and "aei obama" and compare for yourself.
It's like trusting Pravda on an article about capitalism.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[cold fjord]

You should listen to Romney speak, he kind of gives it away:

- Eliminate NPR

I've selected just one of your bullets because it nicely captures overall flavor of your post, and the general level of accuracy.

Romney doesn't call for NPR, actually PBS, to be eliminated, he thinks there is no reason for the Federal government to supply it with 12% of its budget. If the Federal government no longer provides PBS with 12% of its budget, what happens? It either finds someone else to replace that money, or it continues to operate at 88% of current funding. So, your post is not only wrong, but grossly misleading. That is pretty much the picture for the rest of your post - false or misleading, at best. I don't know who finds that "informative", but you obviously duped someone.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[tbannist]

It would be more convincing if you cited the actual report rather than a political screed about the report. The bi-partisan stimulus package was broken into 3 parts. Economic stimulus, Tax cuts (a Republican demand), and mandatory spending (unemployment insurance, welfare, etc). Each component represented roughly a third of the spending. So The cost "to date" of the economic stimulus was roughly $92,500 per job. Or at the time $30,833 per job per year. Of course, it's important to remember that the stimulus portion wasn't exclusively spent on wages either. Parts of it were spent on materials and equipment, and further more some states took the State portion of the stimulus funding and used it pay down debt instead of as stimulus funding thus diluting the economic impact of the stimulus program. If we assume that it was equally spent on materials, wages and other costs, then you're looking at about $10,000 per job per year. I'm not sure that's the correct number but it's probably reasonably accurate for an off-the-cuff calculation. Notice, that by looking at the issue impartially we see that a number that at first seems unreasonable is not actually so. Mark Twain was found of saying "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics". You would do well to remember that if you don't know the full story, someone's probably trying to manipulate you.

Additionally, there is the consideration of whether the work done by the stimulus package was actually necessary work. Ideally, it should be infrastructure work which needs to be done anyway. That way, you're not putting on debt for uneccessary work, you're only really paying the interest on the debt to time shift the work to a point when it should actually be cheaper and more economically beneficial to have it done. Of course, that requires a political climate where surpluses are generated in the good years and used to pay down the debt accumulated during the bad years (a situation which may not be present in the United States). Additionally, an interest thing to note is that the amount of money actually spent on the jobs appears to be close to the taxes the government collects on those jobs. Which raises the question of how much less money the government would have collected if it had not saved those 2.4 million jobs. That would help pinpoint the actual cost of the program, by identifying what the alternative(s) would have cost.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[An Onerous Coward]

Translation: You're mad that the ARRA actually built things, rather than just handing out money to a handful of lucky Americans.

Sure, we could have just bought 2.4M spoons, and had every new "worker" go out, find an empty plot of ground, and spend their hours digging holes and filling them back in.

But if you want to actually build stuff, you gotta buy some actual backhoes. You've got to buy cement, and lumber, and steel, and nails, and wiring. The value of the things that actually got built by those jobs has to be accounted for.

And let's not forget that $288B of the ARRA's price tag actually did exactly what you're suggesting: handed money back to people in the form of tax credits. This was Obama trying to make the bill "bipartisan", giving the Republicans some of what they said they wanted. Result? Zero Republican votes in the House, two-and-a-half in the Senate.*

Obama's own economists told him that these tax breaks would have little stimulus effect, but the Republicans demanded that they be included in a bill that they had no intention of voting for anyhow.

There's also a lot of other "just give money to people" provisions, like unemployment benefits, food stamps, WIC, TANF, etc. These transfer programs incur very low overhead. There's $80B in direct giveaways under "aid to low-income workers, unemployed, and retirees," the aforementioned $288B given away in tax credits, and a couple of other nickely-dimey programs that amount to handing deficit money to people in the hopes that they spend it.

Given that the ARRA basically followed your source's "hand out money" plan for about half its budget, by The Weekly Standard's reasoning, the other $400B spent on scientific research, weatherizing buildings, energy efficiency, upgrading the electrical grid, building roads, and a laundry list of other things... all that may as well have been flushed down the toilet.

The point is, the ARRA did so much more than just put people to work. It invested in scientific research, improved the energy efficiency of homes and businesses, modernized health care records and information services, sent young men and women to college, and a bunch of other things that will pay long-term dividends.

* I'm counting Arlen Specter's vote as half a vote, because he switched to the Democratic party a few months later.

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you are both wrong. He is talking about eliminating budget for CPB. CPB uses its budget for NPR and PBS. Eliminating CPB would ultimately kill NPR and PBS. http://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/

Re:Tax plan-- please explain it to me.

[KingSkippus]

Romney doesn't call for NPR, actually PBS, to be eliminated,

He is calling for public subsidies to public broadcasting to be eliminating. This includes both PBS and NPR.

...he thinks there is no reason for the Federal government to supply it with 12% of its budget.

...And he's wrong. There is an excellent reason for the Federal government to supply them with money. These stations are non-profits specifically dedicated to public education. I get so sick of this attitude that it's not government's job to promote the general welfare of this country. Go re-read the Constitution sometime, it's in the first sentence.

Public radio and public television have done more to educate pre-schoolers than any other education program. Here's a list of bullet points that I ran across recently:

• PBS is the number one source of media content for pre-school teachers.
• The American public has named PBS the most trusted public institution for nine consecutive years.
• Children who watched Sesame Street in pre-school spend more time reading for fun in high school and obtain higher grades in English, math, and science.
• Kids who played the Martha Speaks app for two weeks had a 31% gain in vocabulary tested.
• Last year, PBS offered more than 500 hours of arts and cultural programming watched by more than 121 million people.
• While the federal appropriation equals about 15% of the system's revenue, that's an aggregate number. For many PBS stations, including those that serve people who may need it most, this counts for as much as 50%.

...And there were a few other bullet points, but you get the idea. Whether you're on the left or the right of center, almost everyone agrees that PBS and NPR are worthwhile.

But if you cut the federal subsidy, the end result is that a lot of the smaller stations serving poorer areas that can't raise as much money as those in more prosperous areas will go under. Of course, that seems to be the MO of Republicans these days--we want all of our benefits, and to hell with the poor people.

If the Federal government no longer provides PBS with 12% of its budget, what happens? It either finds someone else to replace that money, or it continues to operate at 88% of current funding.

As I said above, a lot of stations in poorer areas will go under. You seem to be under the impression that anyone who wants to can just cut their budget by 12%. If you're decently well-off, you probably can, but this is why people like me get so frustrated. You have no idea what it's like when people tell you, "Just cut 12%!" when you're barely scraping by.

So, your post is not only wrong, but grossly misleading. That is pretty much the picture for the rest of your post - false or misleading, at best. I don't know who finds that "informative", but you obviously duped someone.

No, the only thing that's misleading is your attempt to justify Romney's brilliant plan to solve our budget problems by eliminating the government subsidy to PBS and NPR. It will most definitely kill its availability in a lot of areas, especially more rural communities and poor communities, the very places where it's needed most.

You've also effectively proved yet again why people like me get so frustrated at Republicans. Look, I understand we have a large deficit. I'm not oblivious to the fact that we're overspending in this country. But why is Romney picking on public broadcasting? I've heard the rationale that, well, you have to go after everything--everyone has to tighten their belts. But it's just awful convenient that to Republicans, everyone having to tighten their belts means that poor and middle class people, p

Re:Name Your Poison

[clarkkent09]

Iraq Regime change policy was adopted under Clinton in 1998. Look up Iraq Liberation Act.

Re:Name Your Poison

[MightyMartian]

Strange as it seems, not everyone on /. is a sociopathic Libertarian.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Mitreya]

Romney's promised to repeal Obamacare, but I don't think he actually wants to.

Romney has an even better plan!
He promised to repeal the Health Care Act, but keep just the good parts that everyone likes (preexisting conditions/covering children/etc).
Consistent with his general budget plan of cutting taxes for everyone 20%, increasing military spending and remaining revenue neutral or even positive.

Magic.

MODS: parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Question!

I'd also like to know how this might affect the tech sector.

1) I note the following a few companies that are doing well (Apple I'm looking a you) have massive foreign earnings accumulating. Is this income or cap gains? If cap gains then is there is the possibility they would repatriate this to the US allowing higher dividends to share holders. They might also use their discretion to book more profit in the US if the max tax bracket was 15%? On the other hand, their a multi-national company so they would only do that if stockholders demanded it--they have no obligation to the US. They might even use it as leverage to get more favorable rates from other countries.

2) many start ups thrive on options. But with options come cap gains taxes. Look at Zuckerberg having to sell stock to pay for the options taxable value. Would this change how startups are financed?

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you're complaining about Romney's dog? What about Obama literally eating a dog???

What about it? It wasn't his dog, he had no more attachment to it than one might to a hamburger, porkchop, or whatever other meat product is served in a restaurant.

And yet there are people who keep all sorts of animals as pets. Including pigs and cows.

Yes, a lot of Americans freak out over the idea of eating dogmeat, but it's part of Indonesian cuisine, and given that Obama was a young child, I don't think we can ascribe to him any responsibility for any cruelty that might have happened to the dog which was eaten by him, if indeed there was any of substance. Which has never been alleged anyway.

The same cannot be said of Mitt Romney. That was his dog. He was an adult. He transported it on the roof of his car. What kind of person needs to be told not to do that? It's quite different from eating the meat you're served as a child, to which you have no attachment at all.

Of course, if you're a vegetarian and oppose the eating of meat at all, you're free to do so, however I doubt Mitt Romney is a better choice in that regard. I haven't noticed him favoring Vegetarian ideals, and since he's claimed some association with a certain Pizza company, well, he's actually profited over their work selling meat to the public.

You may wish to look elsewhere if that's the case with you.

But don't expect me to not be able to tell the difference between eating meat and how you treat your pet.

Re:Name Your Poison

[tragedy]

Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.

Umm. Didn't they release the hostages because the US, under Reagan, agreed to sell them weapons through proxies?

Re:Name Your Poison

[DigitalNate]

Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.

From most of the accounts of the Iran hostage crisis that I have read, it always seemed fairly clear that Carter did all of the negotiations to free the hostages, and Iran only waited until Reagan took office before releasing them to spite Carter for his support of the Shah. Unrelated events also put pressure on Iran to end the standoff, such as the USSR invading their neighbor Afghanistan and being invaded themselves by Iraq. That last part was probably the biggest driver for an end to the crisis, as Iran was fielding primarily American military hardware and hoped that by releasing the hostages they could secure parts and supplies to keep their military going.

RUN PAUL!?

[ThorGod]

Paul is a flaming idiot. He's taken bits and pieces of economic theory and moulded them to comport with his own agenda. Economic theory has the benefit of peer review and scientific method. Paul eschews all of that. His routine is to take the first two or three concepts from some economic theory and veer sharply in the direction of whatever point he wants to make (logical connectives be damned). When he's most honest, he's just 150 years out of date; when he's most dishonest he's just completely out of touch with reality.

He's actually worse than Romney in that respect. Romney's just flat out lying and no one knows his agenda. Presumably, Romney might be amendable to rational thought if he were to ever be in power. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is genuinely far out in right field. He's so far gone the stadium lights can't even locate him. Only Paul knows where he is at any given moment, and you can bet that's where he intends to stay.

Re:Name Your Poison

[photon317]

That this analysis is modded insightful is just sad. Are you seriously touting the virtues of Saddam's Iraq over GWB and US Foreign Policy. We might have a lot of internal disagreement within the US (and the wider Western world) about whether GWB was a good president and whether taking action in Iraq was appropriate at that point in history, but trying to make a case that GWB was more harmful than Saddam is quite the extremist stretch of the imagination. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq

Two parties don't offer enough choice

[200_success]

In Canada, you essentially vote for a party. Due to strong party discipline and the indirect way the Prime Minister is selected, it doesn't matter much who you actually send to Parliament, but rather which party he/she represents. In the US, the candidates actually matter a little.

Also, two parties are not sufficient for a healthy democracy. Suppose a politician of your preferred party does something corrupt while in office. When election time comes, do you vote for him/her anyway? Or will you vote for the opponent, whose values are the opposite of yours, just to toss the bum out? Politicians know that in a two-party system, they can get away with a lot of crap and still get re-elected.

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[drkim]

Now, we should remember that Al Gore "invented the Internet", and that Bush thought it was a "series of tubes".

...except of course that Gore never claimed he invented the Internet

...and the Internet "Series of tubes" remark was made by Republican Senator Ted Stevens

Re:Name Your Poison

[rs79]

Yes. Contragate. The hostages were released the day Reagan took office, which means the Reagan team was negotiating with America's worst enemy behind the back of proper diplomatic channels during a campaign, and whipped up the drugs for arms for Iranians deal.

And shortly after Reagan created the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5CKO400_7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY

Re:Obama versus Romney?

[thesandtiger]

The big one for me is this:

Romney/Ryan: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong and they want to change the rules so even if you aren't a member of their respective religions, you have to live by those rules.

Obama/Biden: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong, but they do NOT want to change the rules; if you are not an adherent of their faiths they won't try to force you to live by those rules.

What sickened me - I mean, absolutely sickened me - was when Ryan actually dared to try and say that his religious freedom was somehow threatened by the fact that abortion is legal in the US. How is my being able to have an abortion in any way, shape or form restricting his right to worship however he wants?

Yeah. By not forcing me to live by his religion's rules I'm somehow reducing his freedom of religious expression. He actually believes that. He actually said that. And people actually agree with him.

I won't say that the democrats are all about personal liberty either, but holy shit, at least 90% of their platform isn't basically the Christian version of Sharia.

Re:Name Your Poison

[Patch86]

That seems surprisingly low to me. Over the entire lifetime of Saddam Hussein's reign (25 years or so), 1 million died. During the course of the US invasion (8 years), up to 650,000 died (Lancet).

That's a hell of a comparison. 2/3 of the people killed in 1/3 of the time, in a war where the invader was genuinely trying to win hearts and minds. Tricky to take the moral high-ground with those figures.

FDR debated Romney best in 1936

[jayveekay]

http://browneyedgirl65.com/2011/07/10/fdr-predicts-modern-republicans/

Here is FDR in 1936 laughing at Romney in 2012:

Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says “of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die [laughter, applause] we believe in all these things. BUT, we do not like the way the present administration is DOING them! Just turn them over to us. We will do ALL of them. We will do MORE of them. We will do them better! And most important of all, the doing of them will not. cost. anybody ANYthing!” [much laughter, much applause].

Re:Name Your Poison

[cold fjord]

I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.

I'm afraid you're wrong. Saddam was a butcher that killed his people in peace and war - the Iraqi government is still finding mass graves of Iraqis killed by his regime. The rulers of Iraq's future, his sons, were more violent than he was - he had to restrain them. Think of that - mass murderer Saddam Hussain acting as a restraining influence, and what that would mean for the future of Iraq. The number of people that died from terrorist and insurgent violence under coalition occupation until the reconstitution of the Iraqi government and return of sovereignty to it was no worse than Saddam's long term average. As it is, the mass killing by the government of Iraq is done because Saddam was removed from power, although terrorism is still killing a few thousand people a year in Iraq. If Gore had been elected, and hadn't removed Saddam from power, as was US policy developed under President Clinton, Saddam would still be killing today. Would you feel better if he was still in power and still killing?

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[cold fjord]

Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact. That is a huge part of the reason your country is in such a mess now.

Spanish unemployment ~ 25%, Greece borders on revolt, the PIGS face economic collapse. The Eurozone is in danger of dissolving. Native European birthrates are so low that Europe is heading toward demographic catastrophe. Large percentages of the large numbers of immigrants brought into Europe do not accept European values and represent a long term danger of civil war. And yet, you cast stones. . .

A bit of humility and actually getting to grips with reality could place the US firmly back in the 1st world.

I think most Americans would rather move forward than back.

(Forget about "world leadership"

That would be taking the eyes off from the road. That doesn't end well usually.

The ability to destroy something does not imply you lead anything.

The ability of the US Navy to destroy the Iranian naval forces planning to block the Straits of Hormuz means that if the need arises, the US Navy will lead the naval task forces keeping the oil flowing to Europe despite the threats of Iranian generals to freeze Europeans in winter.

Re:Name Your Poison

[dkf]

you don't have to be a sociopathic libertarian to know that in the era of aging populations there will never be enough money for hc. The First World simply sweeps the problem under the rug with deficits.

The US's problems with healthcare spending were (and still are) entirely out of proportion with respect to everyone else's. When you're spending approximately double what anyone else is (as a proportion of GDP) and not getting particularly great outcomes for it, something's got to give. (I've also seen comments on slashdot which said that healthcare was being used to create effective indentured servitude; that's Just Plain Wrong if it is true.) Moving towards a universal healthcare system at least starts to align everyone's interests again, and encourage the use of healthcare solutions that reduce costs rather than increasing them.

The rising costs associated with an aging population are best addressed by requiring people to work longer; if the boomers were to retire at 70, there'd be much less of a problem as they'd be net paying in for much larger proportion of their lives. (OTOH, I can understand why this would be unpopular...)

Re:Waste of time

[dkleinsc]

Three other reasons the VP matters:
1. VP's can end up being the heir apparant after somebody's second term is up e.g. Richard Nixon and Al Gore. (Also off your "died in office" list: Harry Truman)
2. Vice presidents can and do get involved in the administration of the country, at the direction of the president, and almost always have the presidents' ear if they want it. e.g. Al Gore had a lot to do with Clinton's computing technology initiatives, and Dick Cheney had a lot to do with George W Bush's foreign policy.
3. For non-incumbents, the VP pick is the first major decision that the candidate makes. Seeing who they pick goes a long way towards seeing how they'd actually govern, rather than how they say they'd govern.

Re:Waste of time

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Unless, of course, congress ends up in a 50-50 split on an important issue. Like, for example, abortion...

Re:Name Your Poison

[Quila]

Enough Democrats (including Hillary and Kerry) voted for the Iraq war that GWB could get away with it.

And Biden. But he wanted you to forget that when he chastized Ryan for voting for the wars.

which forces states and cities to break their union contracts and destroy public education with charter schools if they want to keep getting their federal education money. It's destroying the unions.

1. Break union contracts, good. They are often very costly to the schools. I remember one complaining mid-career 5th grade teacher making over 85,000 in pay and benefits.

2. Destroy public schools, no. Charter schools are public schools, just not government-run schools, but held to the same standards of education.

3. Destroying the unions. I note your sig saying "I wanted an FDR." FDR absolutely opposed the concept of public sector unions, and did not allow them to happen during his tenure. Public sector unions are the union bosses negotiating with the politicians they help put into office how to put more taxpayer money into union coffers, which goes back around to reelecting those same politicians. Do you see the kids anywhere in that equation? It isn't. As one famous teacher union boss said, they'll start looking out for kids when the kids start paying union dues.

Sounds like you're more pro-union than pro-education. You've moved to the left.

Instead of prosecuting the people responsible for the worst financial crisis since the depression

You can't put lawmakers in jail for how they vote. Dodd is retired and Frank will soon, so we won't be able to fire them for preventing the higher oversight sought by Bush. And it would be politcially impossible to prosecute all those bad-credit homebuyers who wanted something for nothing.

the Democrats abandoned ACORN

Because ACORN was obviously willing to help people engage in criminal enterprise. He did do some selective editing, but overall the evidence is quite damning.

Of course the Democrats would never consider a filibuster in a Supreme Court nomination.

Yes they would. They're capable of any underhanded tactic, even racist. They filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC appeals court (first time ever at that level) because he's Hispanic. He was being groomed to be the next Supreme Court justice, but staff notes got leaked that the Democrats did not want the Republicans to appoint the first Hispanic justice to the court. The Democrats wanted that honor for themselves, and were willing to push that date back by years in order to get it. There would be an Estrada instead of an Alito or Roberts.

"Vote for us, because the alternative is horrible" is not a very inspiring reason to vote.

That's true, and applies to the particularly uninspiring Republican side too.

Re:Name Your Poison

[An Onerous Coward]

By that reasoning (which I'd only slightly dispute), the massacre in Iraq began long before we invaded. The sanctions on Iraq were undermining its infrastructure since 1990.

Which is something I think about every time Obama brags about how tough the sanctions against Iran are, and every time Romney brags about how much tougher he'd make them. The whole point of sanctions is to make life under the sanctioned government so awful that they have to either do what we tell them or risk open revolt by the common folk of the country. In other words, they use the suffering of the masses as a political weapon.

Something ain't right there.

Re:Name Your Poison

[An Onerous Coward]

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

--John Donne

Re:Name Your Poison

[Nidi62]

It's destroying the unions.

As someone who works in an industry rife with unions (and thankfully not in one), you say this like it's a bad thing....

Re:You want to be treated like a human being?

[thesandtiger]

Your entire argument is based on your belief about what constitutes a human. I disagree with the premise of your argument and thus the conclusions you draw from it. The thing is, it's so clear that you cannot even fathom someone would disagree wi your premise, and therefore they must be doing things that, to them, are inconsistent and wrong.

And I did not say Christian rules and Sharia are the same, I said that they want to implement the Christian version of Sharia, implying that they are not equivalent (since if they were I would not need to specify Christian version) and within the context of what I wrote it is clear I am talking about them wanting make sir religious beliefs translate into the law of the land.

You then say I am being intellectually dishonest after putting on a great example of it yourself. What does your book say about pointing out specs in someone else's eye while ignoring the plank in yours?

Re:Name Your Poison

[flug]

"Vote for us, because the alternative is horrible" is not a very inspiring reason to vote.

I dunno, "the alternative is horrible" inspires me pretty well . . .

Re:Name Your Poison

[Just Another Poster]

And shortly after Reagan created the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

This is, of course, a lie. The mujahedeen in Afghanistan that was supported by the United States became the Northern Alliance, whose leader was murdered by the Taliban the day before 9/11.

Re:Why is this on slashdot?

[quacking duck]

You're right, I meant to include "overly religious" as a factor in higher birth rates.

Half the world kid - and irrelevant

[dbIII]

Look kid, when somebody points out that the US economy is not in fantastic shape just now it's not fair to cherrypick Spain, Greece or even fucking North Korea when more than half the worlds population live in places where the economy is growing.
What we have here is somebody projecting an image of boom times while your economy is struggling (hence the guy above writing "Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact"). It's being done just to make people happy and win votes and has nothing to do with reality. So that's Romney, and maybe Obama too, but either way it's a lie.
The posts above are the stupid kneejerk reaction to somebody pointing out that lie. It was pointed out in a pretty blunt way but still the reaction of deflecting things to places that are experiencing what the USA went through in 2008 (plus more in some cases), really has nothing to do with Romney pandering to a feeling that everything is going to be fine without anyone doing anything. I agree with gweihir but would have substituted "voters" for Americans to be both more accurate and avoid the over-patriotic backlash from people turning their brains off the second they think somebody is insulting their nation. Your news and entertainment monopolies are more to blame than apathy on the part of citizens - you are being trained to be apathetic and xenophobic. All you guys can do is get your parents to look after your kids as much as possible so the next generation is less of a writeoff.