US Presidential Debate #2 Tonight: Discuss Here 706
The second U.S. Presidential debate kicks off in about a half-hour (9PM ET, 6PM PT, 0100 UTC) from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney will take questions from an audience of allegedly undecided voters. A live stream of the event will be available from a number of sources (C-SPAN, CNN, ABC, and PBS), and it will be broadcast nationally on the major networks. The flash-less and television-less can use rtmpdump to catch the debate from C-SPAN. It won't preempt the more important telecasts, like playoff baseball. Candidates from smaller parties again went uninvited (e.g. Gary Johnson from the Libertarians, Jill Stein from the Greens, Virgil Goode from the Constitution Party, and Rocky Anderson from the Justice Party). In fact, Jill Stein was arrested for attempting to enter without credentials (her side of the story). Assuming she's out of jail by Thursday, she and Gary Johnson will be participating in an online debate hosted by IVN.us. While tonight's debate is in progress, Politifact will be fact-checking the candidates in real-time (while CNN has demonstrated their journalistic capabilities with a debate drinking game). Feel free to weigh in with your commentary on the debate below — it would be helpful to provide timestamps or other context when referring to particular statements. As before, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. If either of the candidates spontaneously concedes the election or catches fire, we'll do our best to update you.
Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
Which evil wizard do you want to ravage the kingdom?
"I want the evil wizard who CARES about the little people he devours!"
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the QUESTIONS are lies.
"The main issue of security for the United Sates is Iran..."
The main issue of security is the outright theft of all meaningful government and control of public discourse by oligarchal, corporate wealth. And the creation of the largest, enslaved incarceration population in world history.
But these two puppets are already OWNED.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Interesting)
You hit the nail on the head. I don't agree with the entire Green Party platform, but their candidate was ARRESTED for trying to get into the debate. Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls. Why aren't they polling well? I expect it's because they cannot get media coverage for love nor money.
The whole damn political system is owned, rigged, and horribly corrupted. But because the worst of the corruption is legal, we're supposed to turn a blind eye to it.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Informative)
Out of interest, do you vote for them? Or another small party?
I'm not an American (I'm a NZer), and New Zealand now has a (semi-)proportional system now (so that if 34% of people vote for a party, they'll get 34% of seats in parliament), but we used to have a similar system which lead to just two viable parties.
Rather than voting for the lesser of two evils (whether you consider that Dem or Rep), if you think they're both bad, vote someone else. It won't be a wasted vote, because you're supporting the party you support - so what if they don't get in? If you don't want to vote for the Democrats or the Republics, the only wasted vote is a vote for one of them.
I think this is a message that the smaller parties should be pushing, even parties on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. It should also be emphasised to the "I don't bother voting, they're all crooks" crowd as they're a reasonable proportion of the population.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls.
The 15% polling number for inclusion is arbitrary and no 3rd party candidate has reached 15% anytime during the last hundred years (AFAIK).
The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, bi-partisan (with emphasis on the partisan) organization created by the two parties specifically to freeze out 3rd parties and to create a 'safe' space for the candidates to debate.
American politics has been a duopoly for generations.
The parties aren't interested in a free market of ideas.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4, Informative)
The bar was raised from 5% to 15% in 2000, as soon as it became clear that Ralph Nader (Green Party) was exceeding the 5% threshold, and would have to be included in the debates, along with Bush and Gore.
I suspect that this threshold will be continually raised as soon as there is a danger of a 3rd party breaking through, just as copyrights keep getting extended just as Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain....
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Informative)
You hit the nail on the head. I don't agree with the entire Green Party platform, but their candidate was ARRESTED for trying to get into the debate. Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls. Why aren't they polling well? I expect it's because they cannot get media coverage for love nor money.
The whole damn political system is owned, rigged, and horribly corrupted. But because the worst of the corruption is legal, we're supposed to turn a blind eye to it.
The polling threshold is set at 15%, which would have excluded all third-party candidates for the last hundred years. The debates used to be run by the League of Women Voters, who kept them open, transparent, and honest, and who set a reasonable threshold for third-party candidates, such as being on enough state ballots to be able to theoretically win.
Ever since Bush I stumbled at a town hall debate in 1992, the "town hall" debate format switched to pre-screened questions with no followups because the handlers fear letting their candidates out of their hermetically sealed rhetorical bubble. These days, they negotiate a contract [democracynow.org] that explicitly bars third-party candidates with the "Commission on Presidential Debates," which is chaired by party hacks-turned-lobbyists and funded by private corporations.
Bush I let Perot into the debate because his campaign thought that Perot would steal votes from Clinton, who didn't want him in. When the opposite happened, Clinton suddenly welcomed Perot into the debate. They even struck a deal to schedule one of the debates during a baseball game because neither side wanted to draw a big audience to the debate because it was too unpredictable. Now, third-party candidates are seen as wild cards, and are systemically excluded from the debates exactly because they might do something unexpected, put one of the major party candidates on the spot, or otherwise disrupt the carefully-choreographed kabuki theater that is presidential politics.
How many republican primary debates where there? 27? 28? So why only three presidential debates? Why no third parties? Why no spontaneity? It blows my mind how effectively campaigns manage to limit every discussion to the recitation of talking points, focus-grouped spin, and how effectively they manage exclude new ideas and substantive arguments.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is that the real policy setting and rules making which ultimately determine who becomes president is in the hands of a much, much smaller minority. The elections that really matter today are those for the "state central committee" of each political party who in turn (either through convention or in that committee meeting... it really doesn't matter as the rules are set in those committees anyway) who in turn select the national committee members.
In the case of the Republican Party (because I've studied it a whole bunch more) the real power to make changes and to set the national agenda for that party is in the hands of 110 "national committee members" (two from every state + territories including DC) who set the convention agenda, make the delegate rules, act as the "credentials committee" (aka those who recognize if you will be a delegate on a case by case basis), and really are where the actual political power in America resides. Note that these "national committee members" (they exist for both Republicans and Democrats) are not members of congress but separately selected for their positions in what is sometimes not a very democratic process in the first place. At best, they are selected during state conventions by state delegates... if those delegates even bother showing up to the vote as it isn't one of the sexy "presidential" votes or even deciding the nomination for the senatorial candidates. Often the place where these national committee members are selected is at a separate convention different than the main election year convention as well... leading to even fewer delegates being involved in the selection of these people.
Ron Paul found this out the hard way, as did most of the contenders for the Republican Party as Mitt Romney was able to get the support of most of these national committee members and definitely the support of most state committees as well. That is why Ron Paul supporters were tossed out into the cold, because they didn't have the internal support from within the party to get the job done. That is also why almost nobody gets the nomination unless they have been running for the Presidency several times: they need to get "their people" into those very important national committee positions in the first place.
In other words, those actually selecting who becomes President of the United States isn't even the 10% of the eligible voters who bother to show up to primaries or participate in neighborhood caucus meetings, it is instead that very select and largely self-appointed groups of just a few hundred people in both major parties who set the rules to decide who gets the job, or just 1 out of a million possible voters set up in a manner that is clearly not proportional by population either.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Why aren't they polling well? I expect it's because they cannot get media coverage for love nor money.
...or maybe ... just maybe ... some things are simply not as popular as others. It's not that evil, awful "mainstream media" that's at fault, it's that some things just are not what the vast majority of people are looking for.
And "the media" is going to report - shock horror - on the things people are actually interested in. I know it's a "chicken and the egg" scenario, and some things that deserve to be popular aren't ... but especially in the Internet age, well, let me put it this way: if "Gangnam Style" can gather tens of millions of hits, if your idea is good enough and well presented on the Internet, there's no excuse for saying "I'm not popular because nobody knows about me!"
Don't get me wrong, I agree that including some 3rd party candidates would have made this a MUCH more interesting debate... it would have been great! But there are dozens if not hundreds of small-base candidates out there, and the debate organizers wanted to give as much of a limited time as possible to the candidates voters collectively were most interested in. If a line had to drawn in where to include or not include candidates, ">40% of the US voting population vs. <3%" seems like a reasonable place to draw the line.
P.S. - just so you know, you can ALWAYS get coverage if you have enough money! You just buy your own TV commercials, newspaper ads, web banners, etc. "Love" - meh, not so much.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got no objection to corporate wealth as such, let alone the existence of corporations. What I have an objection to is the fact that the corporations and the individuals who own and/or run them essentially get orders of magnitude more voting power than anyone else does. It's not about whether corporations or wealthy people are entitled to free speech or whether they can petition the government, it's about the fact that if your "petition" comes with a million dollar check politicians listen. Government in the US is very much pay for play and so long as that is the case, we're all screwed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The press has ignored all kinds of major debacles from the Democratic administration that it is plain to see would have been pinned firmly, with a repeating nail gun, to the chest of a Republican president. From the invasion of Libya which really was war for oil (otherwise we'd be in Syria too since the same reasons we supposedly went into Libya apply only moreso), to sending guns to mexican drug lords (operation Gunwalker) to terrorist attack killing our ambassador in Libya, the press is trying to stay as quiet as possible instead of looking under rugs and in closets.
I actually see things exactly the opposite, that the press is going after all of these things and following the rants of the right-wing pundits as if they were credible rather than laughable attempts to create a scandal.
I don't know about you, but I remember a ton of hand-wringing over HOW DARE THE PRESIDENT AUTHORIZE THE USE OF FORCE IN LIBYA, which in constrast to the complaints about not acting in Syria seem a tad hypocritical.
As for the Mexican Drug Lords, why does nobody point out how they had plenty o
Re:Easy answer - the one you can see (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure why this was rated +5 insightful, must be the Kosbots. Allow me to explain the hand wringing, first the candidate Obama talked about how awful it was for the then President to unilaterally go off and start a war in the Middle East(despite having received an authorization for the use of force in Iraq, hey his VP nominee even voted for it). By contrast, Obama as President didn't even both to go to Congress to get an authorization for the use of force(hell he even pretended we weren't using force, merely "Kinetic Military Action"), then to add to the hypocrisy, didn't bother to comply with the War Powers Act, which lead to well known "conservative fire brand" Dennis Kucinich to label Obama's war action an impeachable offense.
Re: (Score:3)
It's true that Obama has gotten a lot of free passes from the press. But the Republicans have their own legions of mindless partisans. How many Republicans, after Obama's election, were suddenly shocked, shocked at the wasteful government spending and relentless attacks on our civil liberties... that had been going on under Bush for years. Both major parties are awful, and focusing on one to the exclusion of anything else will always give the 'other side' a free pass. That's the whole point of the system -
Re:Easy answer - the one you can see (Score:5, Informative)
The mainstream press is liberal almost to a (wo)man
Liberal - it doesn't mean what you think.
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Please find another word as your political term-of-abuse.
Same Difference (Score:5, Informative)
Air support and soldiers on the ground advising rebel forces and helping to call in air strikes...
A military action by any other name is just as significant, and the fact remains that whatever term you use for what we did in Libya is not being done in Syria where the same reasoning applies.
Re:Same Difference (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Same Difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Same Difference (Score:5, Funny)
So you see no Americans are in harm's way, it's just flying robots killing Libyans. You know, peace.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone else. I'm dithering between Green and Libertarian, but the main point to not to vote for either of those liars. (Even if whoever I vote for won, congress would ensure that they couldn't do anything.)
OTOH, I'm having trouble believing that Romney would be quite as bad as he's claiming he would be. I suspect that his backers would ensure that his more radical programs are dropped. Just as Obama's were and will be.
OTTH, both of them are liars through and through. You can't trust them to mean a thing they say. And each of them promises so many different things that they can pick and chose which promises to keep, and end up claiming to have kept their campaign pledges, even when they only did the things you were really hoping they'd forget.
Voting for either of them would REALLY be throwing my vote away, even in comparison to voting third party.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't decide between the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, you probably shouldn't vote for either... they are pretty much polar opposites as far as the government's overall influence in many areas.
That said, if you want to throw darts at a board, go for the Greens. They are probably less likely to shoot you for straying onto their proppity, and they make better lifeguards [imageshack.us].
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd vote Libertarian. They are more likely to let me shoot some strange indecisive Slashdotter wandering onto my property.
Good on GP for voting for another. I always feel awkward commenting about US matters, but I share the "someone else" sentiment
If you've got libertarian tendencies, then you probably shouldn't vote Greens. Although in NZ's experience, they were the only party who stop up against the 3-strike copyright, prove your innocence, MP3 downloading law - so I give them credit there.
Our Greens are a bit too watermelon. The advertise vagaries about the environment, but their policies all want to take more of the money you earn and spend it in ways they think are superior to you.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't decide between the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, you probably shouldn't vote for either... they are pretty much polar opposites as far as the government's overall influence in many areas.
However, oddly that doesn't discount one agreeing with the general core ideas of both.
I don't live in the US, so the current elections there aren't something I have any say in. However, since what happens there does tend to have some influence on the entire world (whether we like it or not), I do keep myself somewhat aware of what's going on.
Last time I described my politics here on Slashdot, I got flamed badly, so I expect that to happen again to this post. I describe myself as being strongly liberal in many ways and strongly libertarian in other ways. I don't see these as conflicting with each other since I don't consider either side to be an "all or nothing" approach.
For example, I am liberal in that I consider it important to have a strong government that will take money from me (and everyone else, fairly) in the form of taxes so that the common good can be maintained. I don't want to have to pay a different toll for every road I drive on - I want the govt to take care of that for me. This also applies to education, defence, "necessity of life" utilities; and so on ("and so on" being the sticking point for many people - it's hard to agree on what IS a "common good" and what is better handled by private industry).
On the other side of the coin though, I am against a government that interferes in my private life when it has no effect on others. They should stop me killing, stealing, and being a public nuisance (e.g. having an obnoxiously loud party in a suburban area that keeps people awake in the middle of the week when they have to work the next day); however I believe they should have no business telling me what drugs I am allowed to consume; whether I wear a bicycle helmet or not; what I can and can't do with information that I bought (e.g. ripping my own CDs to my computer as MP3s); and so on.
Here in Germany, the party that most closely aligns with my beliefs is the Pirate Party (I do disagree with them on some points though - for example: I'm in favour of continuing and improving nuclear energy use until we've got the infrastructure to cut over to "green" power. I am strongly against the idea of shutting off the reactors with no sensible replacement plan (and I consider coal to be a non-sensible replacement)). Were I in the US however, I would indeed have a hard time choosing between Green and Libertarian (I'd PROBABLY go with the Greens, but I'd be unhappy about their leftist nanny-state policies).
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)
Romney believes in a completely discredited world view on economics and the role of government. Barrack Obama is terrible at actually playing politics, so even if he knows what he should do he's usually incapable of doing it. He managed to win his previous elections by having stuck to reasonably credible policy proposals, and failing to really deliver, Romney is a compulsive liar, who is used to talking to people who drink the same intellectual kool-aid he does, so he panders to whomever is in front of him with whatever they want to hear, but nothing he says is based in reality.
Given the choice - and given the '3rd party' choices are basically in the romney camp of completely discredited or impractical world views your best bet is Obama.
And before you, or anyone else thinks that's somehow a sad statement about democracy, that is democracy, everywhere. In canada and the UK we have baby republicans Harper and Cameron, Cameron has been caught in a double dip recession precisely because he bought into the same nonsense the republicans have been spewing, while canada is saved by the price of oil. In France Sarkozy and Hollande were both looking at ways to radically cut the budget deficit, which in the first place is bad economic policy and hollande wants to do so with a 75% tax on the ultrarich, who can just move to switzerland or monaco. Angela merkel in germany is pushing for european federalism - which might be good policy- a completely untenable prospect politically in europe, and so on and so on. On the rare occasions politicians are actually capable of looking at and understanding evidence they usually don't know how translate that into actual action.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you misspelled leaked the sordid details of his opponent's divorce proceedings or work to have your only viable opponent thrown off the ballot.
Re:Logical Fallacy Bingo (Score:4)
He deeply believes in the same type of socialistic approach that's led the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to the brink of bankruptcy. Spain and Greece both currently have unemployment over 20%!
1. Several countries are far more socialistic than Spain or Greece and doing fine: Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Germany turned the corner a couple of years ago and are now slowly improving. See for yourself [google.com]
2. The reason Spain, Greece, etc are in serious trouble is well-understood: Basically, the big German and UK banks loaned them a lot of cash shortly after the Euro became unified, and after the financial crisis demanded all their money back. Spain is a particularly bad example if you believe that massive government deficits caused a crisis, because Spain's government was running at a surplus when the crisis hit.
Romney's economic ideas are a proven formula for turning around the economy.
Romney's economic ideas don't add up - the congressional staff that handle these kinds of proposals crunched the numbers and found that there was no combination of loopholes that would allow a 20% reduction in tax rates to have no effect on revenue (4% would have worked, 20% isn't even close to working). How is that a proven formula again?
I understand: Since 1980, every Republican running for president has tried to pretend that they were Ronald Reagan running against Jimmy Carter. But Barack Obama is not Jimmy Carter, Mitt Romney is definitely not Ronald Reagan, and the current economic problems are nothing like the problems we had in 1980.
Will you ever lose your job and need health care ? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is the question that the great majority of Americans need to be asking themselves
in the privacy of their own minds.
Most people get health insurance as part of a package of benefits from their employer.
If you lose the job, you lose the health insurance coverage.
Romney will let you die in the gutter. Obama is a genuinely decent man and he wants to make
sure that no one will suffer a lack of health care because of their personal circumstances.
If you think that you could never be "one of those people", you don't have much life experience,
because for most of us, the shit can hit the fan any time.
Re:there is jail / prison care or the ER (Score:5, Insightful)
The ER has to stabilize you. If you're dieing quickly- a stab wound, a heart attack, a bullet wound- they'll patch you up. They don't have to try to give you chemo, give you follow-up care for infections to the wounds (unless thhe infections become life threatening), or give you a bypass to prevent the next heart attack. That's not health care.
Re:Will you ever lose your job and need health car (Score:5, Insightful)
The only democracy in the world where sociopaths have their own party is the United States. Even better, that party has groups within it that variously argue both Jesus and the Founding Fathers approved of sociopathic policies.
Re:Will you ever lose your job and need health car (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will you ever lose your job and need health car (Score:5, Informative)
$1k per month for health insurance? Jeezus, what kind of policy is that? I'm in my 40's and BCBS quoted me about $250 per month (actually slightly less) for a moderate ($2,500 deductible) policy with prescription coverage. I could cover that with unemployment insurance, and not even have to touch the $30k plus in my savings. Do you have an artificial heart or something?
Anthem Blue Cross [anthem.com] health insurance for a 50 year old male:
$288/mo = $3500/year
$6000/year deductible
$3500 out of pocket maximum (after deductible)
As long as you don't need healthcare services, it's "only" $3500/year. But if you need to use your insurance, then you could be paying $9500 just to get to the deductible where insurance starts paying... then you could be paying up to $12,500 for the year.
I would love to see someone challenge Romney on... (Score:4, Interesting)
A great example was this banned TED talk [youtube.com] released by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer where he put in really simple, easy-to-understand terms the concept that giving money back to middle class families means they will buy more stuff leading to more job creation than giving tax breaks to a millionaire. This comes from the first non-family investor in Amazon by the way.
Considering this is Romney's whole ideology, I'd love to see an audience member nail him and get an on-record comment on the subject.
Re:I would love to see someone challenge Romney on (Score:5, Funny)
Romney has been perfectly clear about how his tax plan works. You can read all of the details here: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/ [romneytaxplan.com]
Re:I would love to see someone challenge Romney on (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely brilliant.
I suspect some of these (presumably) low-budget satires end up having more influence than most big-budget campaign ads.
Business doesn’t necessarily create jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
A smart non-partisan FBriend of mine wrote this
Business Doesn’t Create Jobs
The misconception everyone seems to have is that businesses create jobs. That’s true in the sense that business provides the mechanism for people to contribute to making goods and services. But businesses don’t create jobs.
A good businessperson tries to reduce costs and run as efficiently as possible. That’s why automation so revolutionized the world—we could do more work with far fewer people. That’s why businesses pursue productivity, so they can scale up their production faster than they need to scale up their headcount.
Any businessperson who is acting in the interest of the bottom line should be trying to slow job growth or actively shed jobs within their company.
Jobs are created when a business experiences so much demand that it has no choice except to hire more people to cope with the demand. The demand drives the business to create more jobs.
Someone with the business experience of presiding over a growing business does not know how to create jobs; they know how to create demand for their specific products and services. This is a great skill for growing an individual business.
Growing a business isn’t the same as growing an economy. As Apple grows demand for its products, it grows demand in no small part by taking business away from its competitors. Apple does well, but Microsoft does less well that it otherwise would. Getting one business to do better is not the same thing at all as growing an overall economy so everyone does better.
http://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/2012/10/business-finance-and-jobs/ [steverrobbins.com]
Re: (Score:3)
The best part about this shit is that Republicans apparently really believe that Bob Jobcreator will refuse to make $500,000 if he can't make $1,000,000. No, he'd rather do nothing at all and get $0 and let someone else who isn't allergic to paying taxes have the $500,000. Yessirree, welfare is so awesome Bob would rather live on foodstamps and sleep in the slums than work half a million dollars because he can't keep all of it.
It also assumes rich people will use the money they don't pay in taxes for something constructive, rather than sitting on it, gambling it on the stock market, or slipping it off to another country to avoid paying tax on it at all.
Re:Nick Hanauer's economic illiteracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll strive for brevity here and continue with the Grass,Zebra,Lion analogy: The big lie you're adhering to is that the grass is production, when in fact the grass is actually a combination of the zebra's hunger or demand (what it wants) and the zebra's fundamental ability to actually walk over to the grass (i.e. the consumer isn't so crippled with debt that it can't afford to actually buy what it wants).
I had in my head a quite long allegory about zebras and companies producing grass and then hoarding it or setting fire to it or hoarding it, but it's a waste of time continuing that line. I'll be blunt and very pragmatic in my final reply here: Entrepreneurship doesn't count for anything if your brilliant new idea doesn't have a block of consumers who have the disposable income. It doesn't matter how much someone wants something if they can't afford it.
The greatest intellectual dishonesty you can perpetuate is when you actually believe that you can keep actively sabotaging the prosperity of the largest block of your population that want to work and want to spend earned wealth within their own economy. Then funneling that wealth back to people more concerned with cutting costs by moving jobs overseas and topping up their offshore bank accounts is even more insane. It's that cut-and-dry.
Re: (Score:3)
Answer the damn questions (Score:4, Insightful)
I think at this point I would vote for any candidate who would just answer the questions that are being asked...or at least address them tengentially.
There also needs to be a buzzer or something to shut them up whenever they want to discuss their opponent's plans, i.e., put words in their opponent's mouth.
Re: (Score:3)
"Never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you."
Ignoring the moderator & clock (Score:5, Interesting)
They need a mechanism like a chess clock . When a candidate presses his button, his microphone turns off and his opponent's clock starts running. If a candidate runs out of time on his clock, then he can't talk for the rest of the debate.
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:4, Informative)
He may understand more about the economy, but I bet he's unwilling to fix it, because simply put, keeping it the way it is makes more money for big business.
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:4, Insightful)
A well run business employs as few people as possible
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:4, Insightful)
A well run business employs as few people as possible
But a well run country employs as many of its citizens as possible.
Re: (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment [wikipedia.org]
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:5, Insightful)
A well run business employs as few people as possible
But a well run country employs as many of its citizens as possible.
Errr....gov't jobs for all??? Hell no.
A well-run country maximizes incentive to provide sustained employment for as many of its citizens as is possible.
I never said the government needs to provide government jobs to citizens, but running a country is fundamentally different than running a company. When you need to cut costs in a company you can shed employees and trust that some other company or the government will take care of them. When you need to cut costs in a country, you can't simply shed citizens to save money - you're going to end up taking care of them one way or another. And sometimes cutting costs in obvious ways doesn't save any money at all. You can slash military spending by cutting expensive weapons programs and reducing troop levels, but then you have to find jobs for all of the ex-soldiers and ex-military contractors that are suddenly out of work.
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooooo... what explains the worse unemployment rates in much further-left Europe?
Austerity. Europe has actually been doing what the Republicans (Ryan in particular) have been wanting to do, and it's made things much worse for them.
Re:If Obama doesn't come out swinging, he's toast. (Score:4, Informative)
Greek debt: Bailout concessions not nearly Spartan enough [washingtonpost.com]
Under the bailout, Greeks must now work until they are 67 years old. Up until now, they have been able to retire with pensions at -- take a guess -- 65? Nope. 62? Lower. 57? Keep going! 53? Bingo!
Re: (Score:3)
At some point Americans are going to have to face the fact that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Higher taxes, one way or another, are going to be required. Surely by now there is no one out there that seriously believes continually cutting taxes is somehow going to produce this well stream of economic productivity.
One of the chief reasons this is such an idiotic idea in the current climate is that a good amount of the economic uncertainty has little to do with the US domestic economy, and a good d
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You call what the Yankees are doing lately "playing"? That's generous.
More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
The American system seems very weird. Well, on paper it seems reasonable but in practice it seems to operate in a way that ensures nothing 'difficult' gets done and that everybody has someone else to blame for the inaction.
Meanwhile....... [sbs.com.au]
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
Presidents are the de facto leader of their party. If Romney pushes a tax plan and the Republicans control the House (which they almost certainly will), then Romney's plan will pass. It could possibly get stalled in the Senate, but I don't expect the Democrats to have the balls to actually fight back.
Speaking of tax plans (Score:3, Funny)
That is, Romney's tax plans..
http://www.romneytaxplan.com/ [romneytaxplan.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
Stop repeating that lie. Between the GOP delaying Franken's entry to the Senate through frivolous court challenges, followed by by Ted Kennedy's sickness and death, the Democrats only had a few months of filibuster-proof majority. They used it to pass Obamacare.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Stop repeating that lie. It's over 6 months from Franken's TrunkO'Votes' seating on July 1 2009 to Scott Brown's seating on January 19 2010.
Obamacare was introduced to the House on October 26 and passed on November 8. Even though your concerns about Senate members don't apply here, what was done in July, August, September, most of October, most of November, and in December?
Working hard there, I see.
The Senate created a version of that bill inside another bill on November 18, and passed it on December 24.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
What the Senate was doing by month:
July: Kennedy was too sick to do his job
August: Kennedy was too sick to do his job, and died at the end of the month
September: Kennedy's seat was vacant until Kirk was finally seated at the end of the month. The rules of the Senate say even with 99 total senators, you still need 60 to break a filibuster, so an empty seat is essentially a vote to keep the filibuster going.
October: Intra-party negotiations trying to get the Democrats to unanimously vote for the bill. Lieberman and Nelson were the big stumbling blocks.
November: Lieberman agrees to support the bill in exchange for dropping the Public Option. This negotiation took a long time, as the Democrats tried to a lot of compromises (the "Rockfeller option", the "opt-out" option, the "opt-in" option, the "Medicare buy-in" option, etc.), but Lieberman wouldn't budge. Nelson keeps the filibuster going.
December: Slimebag Nelson finally bought off with the Cornhusker Kickback, which would have given extra money to Nebraska for no particular reason. Obamacare finally passes the Senate. The Kickback is later removed during the reconciliation process.
January: The Senate typically takes most of this month off. They convened on January 19th. Scott Brown took office a week later.
In short, the Democrats had three in-session months of filibuster-proof majority, all of which were spent trying to get Lieberman and Nelson to break the filibuster.
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of the whole "Obama had a filibuster-proof majority" line is to imply that the President had a free hand to institute whatever policies he wanted. Therefore, the thinking goes, the state of the economy can be blamed entirely on Obama's bad policies, not at all on Republicans stopping him from instituting his policies. Which is a load of crap. There are a lot of things Obama could have done had he actually had the Rasputin-like mind control powers over his congresscritters that Republicans seem to be blaming him for not having.
What is well-documented is this: Obama did not control Congress. Health care reform could have taken a couple of months, if only three or four Republican senators had been willing to take Romneycare national. It was originally the Heritage Foundation's idea, and something very similar was proposed by Republicans twenty years ago when Clinton was trying to pass his own health care legislation. How did such a right-wing friendly plan go from The Official Position of the Republican Party to something the Republicans were able to unite 40-0 against? Simple: back in 1992, Republicans actually wanted to increase the number of people with health insurance. Today, their number one goal is to deny President Obama any legislative victories.
And no, the fact that a few minor, "uncontroversial" bills managed to pass during that period doesn't change anything.
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Re:More importantly (Score:5, Informative)
Stop repeating that lie. Between the GOP delaying Franken's entry to the Senate through frivolous court challenges,
The court challenges were frivolous, but they did produce a Franken win - I'm surprised you aren't more enthusiastic. Maybe it was the tainted nature of the win?
York: When 1,099 felons vote in race won by 312 ballots [washingtonexaminer.com]
In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.
Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.
During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.
Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.
Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.
And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.
The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare. . . More . . . [washingtonexaminer.com]
Re:More importantly (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting stuff done was never in the design of the house or senate or the Presidency. Laws were supposed to be fought for with logic and majority viewpoints. While it is true that Presidents have acted as you say for ages, The The House was designed to be the people's voice and the Senate was designed to stop majority rule running over a portion of the electorate that needs a voice of it's own. The President's main functions after you remove the Madison Avenue style marketing tactics are still to appoint the judges of the Supreme Court and also to perform veto powers, as well as other obvious functions like national security, Commander In Chief, etc. But in the end, a veto pen does not lend itself well to "getting stuff done".
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Interesting)
What power does the President have to actually enact any tax related policy they have on their platform?
The president's veto and the vice-president's tie-breaking-vote (in the senate only) shift the number of votes required to pass/defeat a bill from 67/51 (without the white house) to 50/34 (with the white house) in the senate, and from 290/218 to 218/146 in the house, so you could say the white house has the power of 17 senators and 72 representatives.
Re:More importantly (Score:4)
Congress does not write the budget, the President makes a budget proposal that congress changes by less than 1% and then passes. Typically, the changes are just red herrings put in there for them to change.
Technically, congress passes an outline of a budget with total dollar amounts for each agency that the President fills in, but congress hasn't had a working budget process for about 10 years.
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More importantly (Score:4, Insightful)
WILL THIS BE A TOPIC FOR DEBATE? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they actually differ at all? [imgur.com]
Both candidates have the same platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't listen to what the candidates major party say, it is just a side show. Look at what they actually did in the past, and look at what they don't say. Has Mitt Romney criticized Obama for failing to demand that the TSA actually follow the law (seriously, how much more effective of a criticism can one make than pointing out their opponent's failure to uphold the law while serving in the highest political office in the country)? The debates are a waste of your time, designed to reinforce the view the the Democrats are "liberals" and the Republicans are "conservative" (both parties, in fact, are fascist, hawkish, and pro-corporate).
Re:Can't make heads or tails of it all. (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite simple really. Excessive taxation stifles economic growth reducing revenue and by the way reducing opportunity for all citizens to participate in the economy (meaning have jobs).
The Laffer curve has two sides.
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Not only that, the claim is laughable on its face: "I'd rather sit here and starve than do work if I have to give x% to the government" Go to anyone on the street and offer them $40 if they promise to give you $20 back. How many people do you think are going to turn it down because they don't get to keep the whole $40?
The reason that the economy ran so hot under high taxes (as high as 90%!) was because the people who wanted $40 didn't whine and sob and threaten to go Galt, they said "What do I have to do
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Then the 2000s should have been a huge boom with GWB's tax cuts. Oh, wait, it wasn't. Part of the reason the economy boomed under Clinton was caused by the tax increases first by Bush Sr and Clinton. This reduced the deficit and helped make cheap credit available for the economy to boom. Most of today's deficit can be blamed on GWB's tax cuts, two wars (one by choice) and the financial collapse of 2008 due in large part to poor financial oversight and deregulation.
Trickle down has been proven not to work. Y
Re:Can't make heads or tails of it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trickle down has been proven not to work.
I never understood how it was supposed to work in the first place. A company doesn't create jobs because it has money left over, it creates jobs when there is more demand for a product than it can satisfy with the current workforce. If you want jobs to be created, you should give money to the people most eager to spend it, which is the people who have the least amount of money.
Re:Can't make heads or tails of it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I understood "trickle down" was that rich people would have so much money that they would buy all sorts of items that would, in turn, create jobs to produce such items, lifting up the lower classes. I'm not saying I understood it correctly, because it sure looks like, "Let's give money to rich people."
Almost. The idea is that investors will have more money to invest in expanding existing business or creating new ones. This makes a certain amount of sense with a 50's style isolated industrial economy. If you wanted to make your money work for you, you pretty much had to invest in activities that created jobs in the US.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really work today. Globalization and various rent seeking oportunities ensure that, most of the time, it is more profitable to invest in ways that don't create American jobs. Opening a new factory is great but it doesn't help workers in the US much if that factory is in China. Investing in elaborate schemes to harvest money from regular investers in the stock market doesn't really help anyone.
Depressingly, "trickle up" doesn't work all that well either. If people spend their surplus buying foreign made goods, benefit to the overall economy is quite limited.
Re:Can't make heads or tails of it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
so let's sick kids be locked out is OK with you? (Score:3)
so let's sick kids be locked out is OK with you?
As that is the Romney plan when he kills the pre-existing condition law.
Re:Why do they call him governor? (Score:4, Insightful)
He's nothing but an opportunist. He's a prick
You don't say who "He" is, but since he's a politician I'm pretty sure you're right on both counts.
Re:Why do they call him governor? (Score:5, Informative)
He didn't even finish the term he was elected to.
Im not sure if you are lying due to lack of scruples, or are ignorant. According to wikipedia (and, im sure, public record),
Romney filed to register a presidential campaign committee with the Federal Election Commission on his penultimate day in office as governor.[225] His term ended January 4, 2007. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney#Tenure.2C_2003.E2.80.9307 , last line before the next section)
Heres the real irony / hypocrisy: Barack Obama really DIDNT finish out his term due to the presidential election. He was elected in 2005, and resigned in 2008-- only halfway thru his term. Normally, this really isnt a big deal, and noone I know (even republicans) made a stink about that because its not unusual for presidential candidates.
But I point it out because of the hilarity and hypocrisy-- you accuse Romney of something that not he, but Obama did. Its actually kind of like how Obama blamed bush for "unauthorized wars" (despite them being authorized), and then launched an unauthorized military action of his own.
Re:Romney bs (Score:5, Interesting)
Romney mentioned no taxes to be paid for mutual funds and capital gains tax. Well guess what? Most middle class folks who have money invested in mutual funds and other investments have small actually irrelevant gains to pay taxes on
I'm already outraged at the current 15% rate. Why should people who get richer by sitting on a big pile of money all year pay a lower tax rate than some of us who work our butts off all year?
Re: (Score:3)
Because they work in Congress?
Re:Romney bs (Score:4, Interesting)
The argument is that the rich will leave the country if you raise taxes, and you lose even the taxes you are currently collecting. The middle class and the poor are less likely to do.
I, personally, dont subscribe to this idea. The rich have very few places in the developed world to move to. I would say it is a bluff. Even if they move, the void will pretty soon be filled up someone else who starts a company (or whatever the rich were doing here).
Re:Spoiler (Score:5, Insightful)
what they lie about is what matters.
What they don't bother to talk about at all matters a lot more. Which candidate is brave enough to bring up the fact that America has more prisoners than China? Which candidate is brave enough to bring up the fact that the TSA is currently operating outside of the law? Which candidate is brave enough to bring up the fact that we are using drone strikes to kill American citizens without a trial?
See, there are some issues (some call them "the important issues") that neither major party candidate is even willing to mention. Which is why I do not vote for the major parties.
Re:Romney's Tax Plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Can somebody help me with this question I have had regarding the Romney Tax Plan?
From what I understand, Romney's tax plan is to drop everyone's marginal tax rate and then eliminate deductions, credits etc.
In his debate speech just now, he noted that the top 5% of people are still going to be paying 60% of the taxes.
If his plan is revenue neutral (meaning they still take in as much as they currently do) doesn't that mean, the lower 95% are still paying the same 40% of taxes that they are paying now? If so... how does that tax plan change anything? Whether you say it's through deductions or just a lower rate everyone is still paying the same amount of taxes no?
I suspect that the top 5% gather a lot more than 60% of the income.
Also, last I heard neither he nor his campaign have actually listed any deductions they would eliminate that would have more than the most trivial impact on revenues. Mostly they say they're *not* going to eliminate some particular deduction, when asked about it.
You know the drill -
Democrat: tax and spend
Republican: tax less, spend more, and also balance the budget
That kind of mathmagics is what got us into the hole we're in now.
Re:Romney's Tax Plan (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect that the top 5% gather a lot more than 60% of the income.
They don't. They make ~35% of the income.
Re:A farce (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a farce. 2 sides of the same exact coin are arguing about who is made of a purer metal. Give a fucking break, if you have half a brain cell for each 10 people, you still should be able to see through this charade.
Gary Johnson 2012.
Only an idiot would think that who you chose on election day doesn't matter. Neither side is "good", but that doesn't mean that they're equally bad.
Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate (Score:5, Informative)
A vote for third party is a vote for the incumbent.
No, a vote for a third party is one less vote for the candidate you would have otherwise voted for if you got off your high horse and realized government and politics are about compromise and practicality (and that "you" is not you the poster, I think we agree with the point that third party votes in this elections are basically making a statement at the expense of your future...)
Re:Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely it's evaluating the difference between the effect of an Obama versus a Romney win, and establishing what that is first. To some people it will be minimal.
As the Republicans say: "Are you any better off with Obama?"
It is hardly an "expense of one's future" to forgo a vote which would make minimal difference. What's the worst thing that could happen? The greater of two evils wins, and you're slightly more angry that usual?
Voting a third party will show the media that people vote and have interests in third parties. If a third party starts getting significant support, the problems with the electoral system will become clearer. You're making more of a change than voting for one of two effectively similar individuals.
Re:Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh, you are the same person who replied to me earlier - well, being from NZ you probably don't understand the US Supreme Court.
Given ages of current justices, whoever is elected will likely get to nominate 2 Supreme Court justices. If that's Romney that will likely mean overturning Roe v Wade (ie banning abortion), validating the Defense of Marriage Act barring same sex unions, overturning any possible attempt to ban assault rifles, allowing warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of US citizens, deciding on the legality of any immigration reform, and any chance at gender equality laws or affirmative action. And that's not just for the next 4 years, Supreme Court justices serve for life so it could affect individual liberties for a decade or more. (yes, you can see from my description which side I support. But if you hold the opposite opinions it's equally important, of course).
So, yes, that IS potentially at the expense of MANY peoples' futures. Not to mention the power of Congress to declare war has been completely subverted by executive order, so the current two futile and baseless wars the US are fighting are due to the actions of a single President over 10 years ago.
Calling these two candidates "similar individuals" is completely cynical and naive. Like it or not (and many Americans don't) the core beliefs of the US President has an inordinate amount of influence over both American domestic policy and many world events.
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And if you think the candidates are substantially similar, you are either a total hermit or delusional. And also don't follow history as far as 3rd party lasting popularity, as John Anderson and Ross Perot have already proved.
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Look this stuff up before you start calling people liars.
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Mitt Romney was the governor of my state. He fucked us over and then quit to run for the presidency in 2008 in an attempt to FUCK OVER the whole country.
Why did you (as a state) elect him?
It's a serious question - did he renege on his promises or has he screwed up the implementation of what you actually wanted him to do or what?
Re:Romney says top 5% pays 60% of the load (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't explain how he got elected. Despite being a fairly liberal state, we do tend to choose Republican governors. He screwed us with Romneycare, increased fees and taxes, and he cut the hell out of the state college system's budget. He made the state books look better by burying the towns and cities. i.e. typical creative CEO accounting methods.
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Tax Code is Government inefficiency at its best (or worst). Cutting rate and loopholes is good for the economy, because we (collectively) will spend less trying to avoid taxes, and just pay up (hopefully). Streamlining government is not something government wants to do. The bureaucracy resists. Just try to fire 10% of the government ... it cannot be done, yet this would be the best thing we could do.
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You gaffing as bad as Romney when he did missed the fact that Oboma did call it an act of terror the next day?
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Are you sure? All references I can find has Obama saying something of the sorts that America won't back down from acts of terror but not Obama claiming is was a terrorist attack. The transcript has "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nationâ but this isn't obvious that it was about the killing of the Ambassador or the attack on the embassy.
OF course if you are drinking the cool-aid, I suppose you could claim that as calling it terrorism, but then the government went around apol
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Upon some reflection after typing that, the two are not equally equal.. one of them is a psycho nutter, and he's not getting my vote.
But my initial Jack Johnson / John Jackson thought remains. It's just that one of them has a fatal flaw that the other doesn't have - or at least has been carefully hidden.
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Re:Binders full of Women (Score:4, Informative)
Turns out he was even lying about his Binder Full Of Women: http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/33756576903/mirror-of-mind-the-binder
The real story is that the binder was created by a bipartisan group of women BEFORE the Massachusetts governor election was decided. They planned to give it to whomever won. Mitt won so he got the binder. He didn't go searching for the women after decrying the lack of female candidates. It wasn't his recruiting effort at all. He's taking credit for someone else's work.