US Election's Only VP Debate Tonight: Weigh In With Your Reactions 698
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 -;
Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Interesting)
The best Joe Biden speech (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this one where he talks about when his wife & daughter died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GwZ6UfXm410 [youtube.com]
His humanity is the opposite of Robomittens. /stupid onions.
What's the value here? (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Uh, how is this a subject for Technology and Ge (Score:2, Interesting)
If you stood them side by side, I'd have to guess Biden is the MS guy and Ryan is the Mac guy [cadenhead.org]
Re:What's the value here? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll be playing Logical Fallacy Bingo [lifesnow.com] 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:"Commission"... right. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Why is Gitmo still open? (Score:1, Interesting)
Gitmo is still open because you voted in Republicans into the House:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/8/congress-deals-death-blow-gitmo-closure/?page=all
The fix is to stop voting in these GOP morons.
The stuff they couldn't block, like killing Osama Bin Laden, he did. When they held the Presidency, they didn't even try to get him. He was too useful as a bogeyman.
He muddled through Health Care Reform in exchange for no rich people taxes, I'll give you that.
To me the biggest triumph was the Republican 'lets kill Americans bill' (akak National Defense Authorization Act). He was supposed to reject it, and GOP/Fox would label him as being a terrorist sympathizer. Instead he rejects it 'because it isn't tough enough', and then gets them to put in safeguards against Americans, and rules it shouldn't be used by his administration.
So the Republicans didn't get their talking point, and now if you vote Republican, you're voting for a party that WILL USE this law they pushed through against Americans. He turned their bill into a poison pill against them.
Skillful politics, but he would never have had to do that if you hadn't have voted in the Republicans into the House.
Re:Name Your Poison (Score:5, Interesting)
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:"Commission"... right. (Score:4, Interesting)
That means running for, and voting 3rd party at the city, county, or even state level.
without proportional representation [wikipedia.org] 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:Name Your Poison (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]; 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:What's the value here? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Body Language (Score:2, Interesting)
lol.. Did you just have to push something in there because you thought I bashed your side or something? I'm not going to bother getting into what woman's rights in this context actually are because you know as well as I do, framing it as woman's rights is only a ploy to make it sound less ugly then killing your unborn baby or taking money from someone to support their sex habits by providing birth control.
Re:Obama versus Romney? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
MODS: parent up (Score:2, Interesting)
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:Name Your Poison (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What's the value here? (Score:4, Interesting)
"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? (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Name Your Poison (Score:4, Interesting)
And Biden. But he wanted you to forget that when he chastized Ryan for voting for the wars.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's true, and applies to the particularly uninspiring Republican side too.
Re:"Commission"... right. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.