Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
Can I mod this article "-1 Flamebait"?
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!
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
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".
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
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.
It's a first step to single-payer. It's about time the USA makes a step towards re-joining the First World.
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
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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
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.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!