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Third 2012 US Presidential Debate Tonight: Discuss Here
Tonight marks the third and final U.S. Presidential debate in the lead-up to the election on November 6th. It starts at 9PM ET (6PM PT, 0100 UTC), and it's taking place at Lynn University in Florida. The topic this time around is foreign policy, including discussions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, America's role in the world, "The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism," and China's rise as a superpower. You can livestream it from the usual suspects: (C-SPAN, ABC, PBS, CNN). Politifact has posted an article fact-checking statements the candidates have made about foreign policy. Both they and Factcheck.org will be using Twitter to verify statements in real time. This presidential debate again excludes the smaller U.S. political parties. If you're interested in hearing other voices, you'll be able to see candidates from the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and Justice parties in a debate tomorrow with Larry King moderating. As before, we're doing a separate post for the debate in the hopes that political talk won't clutter other stories tonight. Tell us what you think as the debate unfolds. For live conversation, remember: context helps. And, as reader Ryanator2209 keeps pointing out, you can entertain yourself by playing Logical Fallacy Bingo while you watch.
Nice try Anonymous Coward.. But most of the Slashdot readers here are educated enough to know that Obama is only slightly less authoritarian than Romney and 'socialism' is just a word used in the wrong context to demagogue Obama. Further, most Slashdot readers are smart enough to see that Romney changes his rhetoric for whatever crowd he's entertaining and either candidate just continues the march towards facism.. It's just that Obama seems to want to march slower.
I'll be voting Gary Johnson. Even though I think Obama is the slightly lesser of two evils, I am sick of voting for evil.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There is going to be a debate at 21:00 EDT on October 23, hosted by Larry King. The candidates taking part are the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, the Green Party's Jill Stein, the Constitution Party's Virgil Goode, and the Justice Party's Rocky Anderson.
I was thinking, after seeing clips from the previous debates, that the debate's host should include a real-time fact-checking panel of about six people seated behind the audience, with computers so they can contact their support staff and get quicker results. Then the debators could say "I'd like a fact check on that", and the audience (local and remote) would get a near-instant "vote" from the panel as to whether the purported fact is correct.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Our current president has an agenda to redistribute the wealth from the smart, capable, entrepeneurs to the fat, slobby, freeloading welfare moms.
Meanwhile the smart capable entrepreneurs have an agenda to redistribute all wealth to themselves. A healthy society needs that balance.
. His blatant attempt to inject government control into all facets of our lives (not just health care - where it has no business anyway) is the culmination of decades of left wing planning and if we don't stop this power grab now, we may never be able to.
a) The republicans grab power just as aggressively at every opportunity.
b) The government absolutely has a role in healthcare. I do not want healthcare allocated according to who can pay the most for it; nor which insurance companies can model who is likely to get sick and exclude those people, or deny care to people who are already afflicted (pre-existing conditions). Capitalism is not the right model.
Whether or not it should be a federal program vs state is certainly a legitimate discussion, but healthcare is a government mandate that the majority wants in some form.
If you are a true patriot and love this country that we call home, you must vote for Mitt Romney next month and preserve the dream that anyone can come from the most humble of beginnings and succeed in this melting pot we call the United States of America.
Only an idiot should fall that nonsense. Your odds of going from humble beginnings to success are increased if you are given a leg up while in the 'humble beginnings' stage; if you aren't deprived an education because you can't afford it, if you aren't financially wiped out because someone in your family tripped and broke a few ribs, it gets a lot easier to become a productive member of society, to save up a nest-egg, to strike out as an entrepreneur, to become a -gasp- "job creator".
How exactly does the argument that government wealth redistribution prevents people from succeeding work? Bearing in mind that all the evidence shows that the wealthy are doing just fine, and indeed are getting wealthier by the day.
The rich have always been against anything that would make life better for regular people. (living in luxury while being surrounded by squalor apparently makes the rich feel special or something) Our society had to fight like hell to get rid of the company stores/housing, get a standard 40-hour work week, OSHA regulations, public education, etc. Hell, the rich were even opposed to the poor having running water and bathtubs at first because the rich thought the poor would just use the tubs to store coal.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
No, what is sad is how people judge a "winner" of a debate. I've seen honest conservatives who thought the first debate was a draw while the vast majority of people thought Romney won based on being "aggressive". Apparently the Romney ape beat his chest harder than the Obama ape, and that is enough for the rest of the tribe to decide that Romney is alpha and Obama the beta.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No.. Third party votes do count. When the Republicans and Democrats are working together to divide the people in half as evenly as possible, and only winning by small margins, a small-margin of third-party votes has a huge effect.
The only problem is that "huge effect" is, usually, negative for the interests they represent. They "steal" votes from the candidate that is near to their interests making the other win. So, you have a real disincentive to promote a third party.
It is sometimes your duty as a thinking individual to choose between two evils. No one wants to have to, but it is sometimes the choice that is in front of you.
Relevant quote from Douglas Adams's So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish:
you have a lot more power than you think
but your power is counterintuitive
in 1992, ross perot voters meant bill clinton won
in 2000, ralph nader voters meant gw bush won (well, al gore actually won, but he lost the bullshit filter we call the electoral college by a hair's sliver that nader voters greatly outnumbered)
in 2012, you guys may again decide who wins since the election is so close
third party voters come from a disillusioned left, or a disillusioned right. it seems to me that this election cycle has more disillusioned voters on the right. meaning: obama wins, as the right is fractionated to some extent by voters for someone other than romney
unfortunately, we live in a system where you have to vote strategically, not idealistically
1. for those of you who vote strategically (not the guy i like the best but the guy closest of the main parties), you get someone closer to your ideology in the white house
2. for those of you who vote idealistically (screw the guy who could win, i like THIS guy), you get someone further away from your ideology in the white house (see 1992 and 2000 above)
now, other systems where more than two parties dominate: is that really such a rosy world? ask someone in parliamentary systems where coalition governments form: you have people close to you ideologically, getting into bed with ideologies that are extremely odious to you, to stay in power. coalitions of perverse arrangement
in other words, other countries are not better than the usa if ideological purity is so important to you, they are just compromised in different ways than the american system
such that, an ugly truth for you: you will NEVER, as long as you ever live, have someone you love ideologically in power. you will ALWAYS have someone who is kinda sorta like you, as your best bet. this is true no matter what your ideology, right or left. why? because that's EXACTLY what politics is: compromise, in order to lead. that's what politics always was, what it is, and what it always will be. and only an ideologue is angrily allergic to compromise. and thank god, therefore, your man will never lead in a sane country. because the leader who champions rigid ideology over compromise is dangerous
politics is a game to appeal a lot of people weakly, than a few strongly. get used to it. the candidates who have the best chance to lead, always, FOREVER, will appeal to you ONLY weakly
you should accept this truth, and always vote strategically instead of ideologically
or help elect the guy further away from you ideologically by voting idealistically
your choice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't get me wrong, I approve of a lot of Gary Johnson's platform, but the idea of eliminating the IRS, income taxes, corporate income taxes...I'm sorry but I think that's insane. Not even Ireland has 0% corporate income tax, and consumption (sorry, "expenditure") taxes are regressive.
I'd love to support Mr. Johnson but I rather like the civilized society that we live in and I know that taxes are the price we pay for such a society.
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The only problem is that "huge effect" is, usually, negative for the interests they represent.
This is true in the short run. But in the long run, voting for a third party causes the major parties to move in that direction to win these voters back. The popularity of the Socialist Party in the early 20th Century caused the Democrats under FDR to move significantly to the left.
Since neither the Libertarians nor the Greens get many votes, the major parties are under little pressure to champion personal liberty and/or stronger environmentalism. By supporting one of these parties, you can change that. Unless you live in a swing state, your vote is meaningless anyway, so voting third party is the only way to make a difference.
They are both the same? Not to me. As a cancer patient who has gone from unemployed to a semi-well paying job, I can now get insurance that I couldn't get/hope to afford before Obama.
You close your eyes and ears and say it all looks/sounds the same. Your an albatross around the neck of this country, and if you truly feel that way, brush up on your Mandarin and move to China where it really is all the same.
Son of BOSS is a real tax shelter, believe it or not. BOSS stands for Bond and Options Sales Strategy. Son of BOSS cost the US treasury billions in taxes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Boss
And Mr. Romney's IRA is something I'd like to know more about, too. Did you know IRA contributions such as his are limited to $30,000 a year? His IRA has at least 20 million and as much as 100 million, but let's be conservative and go with 20 million. It would take over six hundred years for 30k contributions to add up to 20 million. But Romney only worked at Bain for 15 years. This means his contributions cannot exceed $450,000. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-15/the-secret-behind-romney-s-magical-ira.html
That means Mr. Romney got a return of at least 44 times his initial investment. If you don't think that's suspicious, maybe you're the one wearing a tinfoil hat...
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But Nader wouldn't have received all the non-Bush votes, just as Perot wouldn't have received all the non Bush Sr./Dole votes. But the inverse is true. Gore would have received nearly all (I would guess 99% with the remaining 1% just not voting) of the Nader votes and Bush Sr./Dole would have received those Perot votes.
There's historical precedent for this conclusion: The elections of 1912 is a particularly good example, where the Republican vote was split between Theodore Roosevelt running independently and Howard Taft the defending Republican incumbent.
The biggest problem is that our system of government is outdated, inefficient, and ineffective. But to criticize the U.S. Constitution is taboo (funny how the most staunch defenders of this antiquated document know the least about it). Voting for a third party candidate is just voting against one's interests and will continue to be the case as long as our government is run by this ridiculous bicameral legislative system and selects the head of state through an electoral college. The only hope for this to happen is for the average citizen to become better educated and thus better able to see through the nationalistic bullshit of worshipping the U.S. Constitution and the men who founded this country. That's why I'm voting for Obama - I don't think he'll enact the specific changes I would like to see, nor do I think he'd have the power to do so if he wanted to - but he does prioritize education, which sets America on the path to overcoming the chains of our federalist system. In an era when technology is steadily making manual labor less necessary, this country cannot afford to have as many uneducated, unskilled people running amok as it currently does.
It doesn't matter if people think in the terms of the 'lesser of two evils' or not. The average voter is a moron. It doesn't matter what they think. Statement votes to third party candidates will do nothing to better this country. Voting for Obama does.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
well, one is a lot more publicly religious than the other. I don't like that. I actually hate that! its a showstopper for me.
the other keeps his religion in check.
this is not just them, either; its representative of their parties.
vote NO on american taliban.
that one issue will get in our way of so much progress. please don't send us backwards again! we had that with bush and the other republicans since reagan. enough with the christian bullshit, already! we are a mixed nation and we like it that way.
now, bring republicans back about 20 or 30 yrs and we might have something. before they got all preachy and holier than thou.
but the current R crowd, makes me sick. physically sick. that says a lot.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."