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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 -;
I'll be playing Logical Fallacy Bingo against my friends. I personally expect it to be a fast bingo game.
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.
$Candidate intentionally lied to the public
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.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
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.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
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.
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.
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.
Can I mod this article "-1 Flamebait"?
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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"
Where the answers are made up and the points don't matter!
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.
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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..
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Oh.. I don't know the first passed health care reform in almost 100 years. ... http://lmddgtfy.net/?q=Obama+Accomplishments
Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Restarted the hunt for and killed Osama bin Laden.
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.
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.
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.
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
It's a first step to single-payer. It's about time the USA makes a step towards re-joining the First World.
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.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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
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.
Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Yeah. About that:
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
/used/ to have a fine tradition.
When you say stuff like this -- just makes me think that the GOP faithful are ideological fools. The conservative party
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Strange as it seems, not everyone on /. is a sociopathic Libertarian.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
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.
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
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
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.
-- QED
"He had filibuster proof margins in both house and Senate for 2 years,"
Look it up. No he didn't.
Need Mercedes parts ?
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!
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.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
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...)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
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.
I am officially gone from
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.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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)
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
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