Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday October 20, @10:30AM from the mo-money-mo-money-mo dept.
Here's an interview with Gore that seems blandly catering to Slashdot readers.
Billionaires for Bush or Gore makes a good point.
Open Secrets is tracking campaign donations. Last up is a really good article about
Dick Cheney, The Only Hope which trashes lots of candidates. Also I've attached a note about politics story submissions on politics between now and the election.
Don't bother submitting candidates official websites. They
essentially are just press releases spouting bland dogma. We
want some real content (although you should read Al Gore's
"Open Source Website" bit and laugh your ass if you missed it
when we posted it on slashdot nearly a year ago).
We're trying to be impartial, but Nader's supporters don't seem
to submit much more then links to the official website, and Bush
supporters are nearly silent. We want a diverse story
selection here, but a lot of folks would rather bitch in the
comments that we're oppressing them then take 3 seconds to
submit a story.
There's lots of good stuff going on in these stories, but I'm
sure gonna be happier when the election is over and the flames
can stop. I suck, I know. Slashdot is trying to keep you down.
I know. Of course I'm trying to force my political viewpoints
on everyone (as I've said before I hate all the candidates, but
I hate GWB most of all, so I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be
to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a
"Statement" on a 3rd party candidate). Fortunately this is
is America, and I'm entitled to believe this. And you may
believe whatever you want as well! And none of us are evil or
wrong: we
just have different political beliefs. And since this is
Slashdot, we can talk about these differences
in a mature manner: debate the issues. Try to make rational
convincing arguments to back up what we believe, and perhaps
try to convince others. Or we could bicker and fight and
complain and flame about the various shadow organizations
and conspirators
trying to keep whatever viewpoint you have down. Its really
your choice.
Don't have an account yet? Go
Create One. A user account will allow you to
customize all these nutty little boxes,
tailor the stories you see, as well as remember your comment viewing
preferences.
In the subtext to the post, the Slashdot helmer complains that very few Bush supporters are coming forward to make posts (other than the AnonCow posts to the Bush HQ site). But why would a supporter of Bush - even if he was misdirected to Slashdot - come out of hiding to admit that their candidate of choice doesn't even own a computer? Where Your Vote Should Go
Ah - but if you have enough money you pay someone else to do the boring stuff like mess with computers. Remember Bus - frat, not nerd.
Bush/Gore Gore/Bush Tweedledee/Tweeedledum
Re:In the Bushes (Score:3, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20, @10:49AM EST
(#35)
Umm - actually I am the network admin for the Bush campaign and he has a laptop on the trail with an email account that he setup in '94 that he checks pretty often. He also bought a nice new Dell for the Governor's Mansion last Christmas.
I'm not saying that he is gonna be hacking the Linux kernel anytime soon but you statement is not correct.
Insightful? Eh?
And why should we believe this person when they're posting as AC?
Oh, hang on, I've just realised that I'm probably replying to a very cunning troll. Please forgive me.
Re:In the Bushes (Score:1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20, @11:00AM EST
(#58)
Well this is not exactly the friendliest forum for me to be putting out my email address now is it? I could have come up with something much better if I were actually trolling.
<sarcasm>
He has a laptop and a dell computer, so that means he MUST be in touch with technology issues! What wonderful logic you utilize, sir.
</sarcasm>
And here all this time, I expected the Bush network admin to be above knocking down straw men. Whoops.
==
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. -Aristotle
But why would a supporter of Bush - even if he
was misdirected to Slashdot - come out of hiding to admit that their candidate of choice doesn't even own a
computer?
Please provide some supporting evidence for this statement.
What site have you been reading??? Almost any posting that does not say "Good" things abour Gore or Nader gets moderated down. And thanks to the new "improved" metamoderation systems if you try to correct those mods you will get punished because you do not agree with the majority of people who metamoderate. I Want It All
While I'm not a big fan of Gore, the man does have an edge over GWB. He's just such a little kid trying to be his dad that I'd like to puke.
Having lived in texas, I think I can openly say that he doesn't bring anything good to the table, other than tax benefits for the ultra rich. I'd like to pay less taxes on my midrange income, but that doesn't mean that I feel those tax cuts should be squandered on people making 7 figure incomes and up.
for that matter, I don't want all those cuts going to welfare cases either; they already pay low enough taxes and get enough free crap from the gov't that I pay for.
Where I currently live I pay over a grand a month in rent for a reasonable apt; my neighbours are on assistance and pay 200 for the same place. I like knowing that's where 800 bucks a month of my tax money goes.
Encrypted with ROT-26 - all attempts to decrypt are illegal under the DMCA!
While I'm not a big fan of Gore, the man does have an edge over GWB. He's just such a little kid trying to be his dad that I'd like to puke.
Guess you've never heard of Senator Albert Gore, Sr. then? Gore's father was in politics too, although I do not believe he ever made an attempt at the presidency. As for the tax issues you describe above, you just picked on one of my pet peeves: YES, ACROSS THE BOARD TAX CUTS BENEFIT THE RICH MOST OF ALL.
Let's examine why this is so. We have, in this country, what is known as a progressive income tax. The more you earn, the higher percentage of that income you give to the IRS.
Why is it "squandering" tax cuts to give the largest share back to the people who paid the largest share of the tax? ANYTHING else is what is unfair. No matter HOW much money a person makes, it is NOT right to feel you can dig a good chunk of it out of their pocket, because they can afford it.
Win95 /n/: 32-bit extension to 16-bit shell for an 8-bit operating system written for a 4-bit computer by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of competition!
No matter HOW much money a person makes, it is NOT right to feel you can dig a good chunk of it out of their pocket, because they can afford it.
Unless, that is, you have evidence that, contrary to what their daddy told them, their success, wealth, and income are dependent upon federal actions and infrastructure, like highways, foreign trade negotiations (NAFTA, anyone?), and so forth.
When Dick Cheney said that the government had nothing to do with his success, I suspect he was "exaggerating," as people have taken to calling the mistakes (simple errors) and lies (simple deceits) coming from Gore's mouth.
No matter HOW much money a person makes, it is NOT right to feel you can dig a good chunk of it out of their pocket, because they can afford it.
Yes, it is fair. The richest people in this country get to enjoy things like going on vacation, driving modern, reliable cars, living in warm roomy houses, having access to plentiful amounts of nutritious foods, nearly unlimited amounts of media, healthcare, long term investments, new clothes, home heating, medication, and so on.
Many of of take these things for granted. I know I definately do--last night I had a big dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, went home to install a $120 software package that I bought just for fun, and then later crawled into my nice warm bed. Last night I did not think of people less fortunate than me.
When I see posts like yours though I get kind of pissed off. How can you be so selfish that you think that it's unfair that you pay more taxes even though all of your life's wants and needs are seen to? Be serious! We have obligations to society, not just our own pocketbook. Part of that means that we give up a few extra dollars that we would have sunk into entertainment centers or computer upgrades and instead make sure that people who lack 'the essentials' have a decent quality of living.
That means medicare, public assistance, housing, and education. It means trying to give other people in our society at least the minimum amounts of those things we have in abundance.
I don't think that we should evenly redistribute all of the wealth, but we should make sure that every member of our society can access the minimum
essentials in life.
--snip-- If you punish people for achieving or
succeeding in life (whether in material gain or other) then people will stop wanting to achieve or suceed. If you FORCE
people to do things - you take away any spirit of voluteering or giving of one's self.
Money redistribution by a heavy handed government shouldn't be the mechanism of social change. The lack of volunteerism and community civic duty being considered for this role does truly trouble me.
My wife and myself are engineers. We donate about 40 hours a week (each) to various youth programs, although we have no children of our own. Many of the kids that we work with are underprivelidged, some even neglected by their parents who are more concerned with the nightly TV line-up than the lives of their kids. By donating our time, and some direct financial support, we often can accomplish more good work than any program funded by tax based wealth redistribution.
No, we don't provide food or shelter to any of these kids, but we do encourage them to make better lives for themselves and plan for their lives after high school. It's disheartening how many of our youth don't even look beyond their high school lives, at either higher education or a life vocation untill it's too late.
You are right - we do have responsibilities to society - but not all of those responsibilities should be FORCED on people.
From what you're saying, I understand you to mean that taxes should be voluntary. If this is not what you mean, please elaborate.
That is the problem with Communism/Socialism - it assumes that those in power know what's best for all and have the rights and ability to dictate what people do with themselves
If we *aren't* assuming that those that are in power generally know what's best for the population they represent, what is our government for anyway?
Would you like every person in the US to be FORCED to work in a soup kitchen? Sure it would help some people, but once again you get on a slippery slope of fascism.
Please note that a significant portion of the population is 'forced' into working two minimum wage jobs in order to try to make ends meet, and even then they fall behind. I don't support the idea of being forced to work in a soup kithen, but I'm curious about what you think of this contrast.
That being said I see little problem with having the more wealtht pay a higher percentage of tax - to a point.
I agree totally. This was the arguement that my post was attempting to support.
I can't understand how this community full of geeks and nerds refuses to recognize basic economic principles. It burns me up when I hear Algore say "How will we pay for these tax cuts?" and people nod their heads in agreement
First of all, a tax cut can't be squandered, because it is just the government taking less money from your pocket. In this case, having the government taking only what it needs, causes it to spend it's money (our money) more wisely, quite the opposite of squandering.
Second, there is no need to pay for a tax cut, as it doesn't cost anything! It is not a material posession, nor capital, nor labor or any other economic unit of value. It is a "rent" decrease for overcharged "tennants", nothing more or less.
You never hear ISP's saying that they found some way to pay for your reduced cost unlimited dial-up accounts, yet the fees get lower all the time (O.K. the free ones use advertizing, an "innovation" to control costs). In business, competition drives costs down, and improves efficiancy. In government, tax cuts are a mechanism to do the same.
> I can't understand how this community full of geeks and nerds refuses to recognize basic economic principles. It burns me up when I hear Algore say "How will we pay for these tax cuts?" and people nod their heads in agreement.
Yep. Me too. Because the answer is right under their noses, but they refuse to see it.
> Second, there is no need to pay for a tax cut, as it doesn't cost anything!
Of course it does. In the absence of a tax cut, that money would eventually be spent on something, so in order to have a tax cut, some kind of program or service needs to be cancelled. IANAEconomist, but I've often heard this concept referred to as the opportunity cost.
The question isn't "will it cost us something" because obviously it will. The question is "what will it cost," which is not only more appropriate, but highly interesting, imo.
> You never hear ISP's saying that they found some way to pay for your reduced cost unlimited dial-up accounts, yet the fees get lower all the time
What a disturbing analogy. Every ISP I've ever heard of or used existed for exactly one purpose: to make a profit. If it stops making a profit, it stops existing (at least stops existing as an autonomous entity). The U.S. Government ostensibly exists to maintain the quality of living of U.S. citizens, NOT to make a profit.
To address your analogy more directly, let me point out that when a business makes a profit, it goes into the pocket of the owners, so an ISP will charge whatever it CAN. The government (should) have no use for excess funds, so it (should) tax only what it NEEDS. In actuality, the government probably wastes a great deal of money, mainly on the military - in particular, on military contractors who turn around and pad their buddies in the legislature with the profit from fat military contracts for extravagant killing machines that we didn't need in the first place, but that's another rant.
The irony is that the programs that benefit people the most, like welfare, medica(id|re), the NSF, and so on, are going to be the first ones to have their funding cut. Social Security seems to be getting some attention, which is good, because it isn't sustainable but why don't Gore or Bush talk about moving to a peacetime economy?
> In business, competition drives costs down, and improves efficiancy.
Actually, waste hardly ever decreases as a result of decreased revenue. More often, it is quality that takes the hit. Waste will always cut into the profits, so there is always incentive for corporations to target it. When revenue actually decreases, quality is the next likely candidate for slimming down.
You may have a point here wrt government (NASA seems to have shaped up in terms of budgeting after getting hit pretty hard), but unless the budget cuts reach the pentagon, I don't really see the point.
Very good response. My previous post was primarily a rant, and I appreciate your illumination of the opportunity cost (O.K. it slipped my mind).
I guess that I'm a libertarian first and a conservative second. I feel disheartened when I read GAO or OMB studies that show that only about $.20 of every dollar spent by the government actually reaches where it was supposed to go. I know that this figure was generated through an investigation of Federal welfare programs (if you include the HUD, it gets worse). And yes, I would even offer that I think even less goes to the right place in defense, but at least there is an industry (work, jobs, and contribution to the GNP) associated with defense.
I'm frustrated with the large amounts of tax that I have to pay, and I'm not even in the top 25%. As a newly married, childless taxpayer, I saw my taxes as a percentage of my salary increase by 35% last year! In the same year, my raise was only 4%. I see no reason why the federal government couldn't streamline operations and do more with less.
I don't really believe that there is any surplus. As far as I'm concerned, it's an accounting slight of hand. Yes, they took in more money than they have budgeted to pay out, but that includes Social Security's Fraud Fund, which is supposed to be kept separate (it's not). The buzz from the hill is that both the Senate and House are planning to wipe out that surplus by the end of the year by going on a spree (Sen. McCain said this after the third debate),
As far as I'm concerned, there is no better way to keep a congressional opportunity from costing us anything, than keeping the excess money away from Washington in the first place.
The point of the poster wasn't whether Gore or Bush or Nader is 'better' than the other. It's simply that if you express certain political views, you get moderated up as insightful or down as flamebait or redundant, even though those moderations are extremely unfair.
What I find strangest is that, from what I've seen, the majority of posters here will vote for Nader. (I'm not saying you will, this is just a general observation that's somewhat offtopic.) However, whenever they post, they bitch about being in the "minority." (How having more people in the community constitutes a minority, I don't think I will ever know.) It's one thing to see all of them get modded up to +5 by saying the word "republicrats", as that just reflects the opinions of the moderators, but could they at least stop the whining?
I'd like to pay less taxes on my midrange income, but that doesn't mean that I feel those tax cuts should be squandered on people making 7 figure incomes and up.
Oh come on, haven't you people figured this out yet? You're not the only one spouting this drivel so I'm not picking on you on purpose, you just happen to be the highest up in the list of comments.
I would have thought that people on slashdot could figure this out, it's simple math. If you give a 1 percent tax cut to someone making a billion dollars you have to give a 10% tax cut to someone making 1 million dollars in order for them to have the same monetary value. The top 1% of people in the country make more money than the entire middle class combined. If the rich are given a 4 % tax cut, and the middle class is given a 20% tax cut then YES, THE WEALTHY WILL GET MORE MONEY BACK!!!
It is virtually impossible to give a tax break such that the wealthy get less money back than the middle class. Besides which, this really shouldn't be called a "tax cut". This is the government giving back the money that they shouldn't have taken in the first place. The wealthy gave more money, they get more back, there is no way around that.
Unless you happen to favor a completely unfair scheme of "tax cuts" such that for every 1% tax break you give the wealthy you give a 10% break to the middle class, you will never be able to give more money back to the middle class.
If you don't like taxes, don't pay them. There is no law requireing you to do so. The 15th amendment was never ratified, and beyond that the amendment very specifically allows for an "excise tax" aka, tarrifs. So quit bitching about tax cuts and think about how the system works before you go ranting about tax cuts being 'squandered'.
Almost any posting that does not say "Good" things abour Gore or Nader gets moderated down.
Don't exaggerate. Its the dumb posts that get moderated down. Many people are uspet with Bush because he claims to champion rights, especially gun rights, but he's out to limit rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of women, etc...
You're not one of those Bush-is-going-to-take-away-abortion-rights fanatics, are you?
He's not. He'd like to send the issue back to the states, where Constitutionally it belongs. A private homicide, justified or not, is still a homicide, and if a state wishes to exclude it from prosecution under the doctrine of self-defense (that is, justifiable homicide in this case, since it's a fatal procedure...) that's the state's business.
-- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad
Almost any posting that does not say "Good" things abour Gore or Nader gets moderated down. And thanks to the new "improved" metamoderation systems if you try to correct those mods you will get punished because you do not agree with the majority of people who metamoderate.
Here's a question for ya'll:
If the Libertarians come onto Slashdot and post that the invisible hand should be the only form of government, and they get modded down and out of sight, does that make them right or wrong?
(Incidentally, the metamoderation system is the reason I am no longer willing to moderate.)
(Incidentally, the metamoderation system is the reason I am no longer willing to moderate.)
Why? Even if you get bad meta-ers who judge your moderation in terms of agree/disagree instead of good/bad faith, at worst you just lose a few karma points. It's not like you can't get them back trivially by posting a good joke or just a weensy little bit of Sig11-style whoring.
C'mon, dude. Moderate!
Oh, and for what it's worth, you can post libertarian stuff. You just have to put forth the values themself, without actually using the word "libertarian." The mods-who-watch-for-keywords will never be the wiser.
...US presidential elections...only those who have the green can get eleceted, holding down those candidates *cough* Nader *cough* and parties that are trying to make it with their meager campaign contributions...This is why the US is currently a bi-partisan country, they have the money...
I bought some batteries, but they weren't included, so I had to buy them again
Wrong again. When Perot ran against Clinton and Bush, he *OUTSPENT* each of them, to the tune of a third again of the major spender.
(That's what I get for watching PBS instead of CNN this morning :)
Both of them got at least $1 million so far. It isn't known how much was soft money given to each party, but it's clear that Microsoft is the true "Billionaire for Bush or Gore" (as opposed to the the satirical one).
Software designers are so infatuated with the fact that they can, that they don't stop to think if they should.
What really frustrates me is that I can only donate a $1,000 to Harry Browne. This is so archaic. I'm sure there are bunch of libertarian software developer making 6-7 digits a year. We need to have this system changed.
You can donate unlimited (IIRC) "soft money" to the Libertarians, if they'll accept it; they cannot use it for advertising that says "vote for Harry Browne" or "vote for this particular Libertarian", but there's a LOT they can do with it. Or, if memory serves, set up a PAC; ISTR that PACs have a somewhat higher limit on 'hard' money donations to a candidate than an individual. But check the FEC site before you do.
-- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad
I have to say that I like the idea of non-partisan elections. Eliminate PACs, eliminate corporate money and limit donations to $100 a person.
If we can ban cigarette advertising for the good of the people, we should be able to ban political advertising!
Make 'em go door to door. Make them get up in the middle of town square and really debate with no moderators and phoney baloney rules.
Eliminate primarys. Make it an open election, one shot. Make it a ranked preferenced ballot.
If you do all these things, maybe we will get a quailifed person to come forward. Just don't make it e-voting. Some hacker would rig it and our next president and VP would be Natalie Portman and Hot Grits. I have seen the end of the world! I think it was an exit on the Jersey turnpike.
I have to say that I like the idea of non-partisan elections. Eliminate PACs, eliminate corporate money and limit donations to $100 a person. ... If you do all these things, maybe we will get a quailifed person to come forward.
Actually, this sort of proposal would have two effects:
- Dramatic restrictions on free speech. Sure, you can still say whatever you want, but don't try to say who you think should be elected in a pamphlet that costs more than $100 to publish or on more than $100 worth of TV ads. Spend "too much" money promoting something you believe (anti-DMCA, pro-Environment, whatever) and you're a PAC, and the government can put you in jail.
- Rates of incumbency (already well over 90%) would just go up, as incumbents have a huge advantage in free publicity.
I'm sorry, but it's simply wrong to say that banning political advertising is for "the good of the people" if you accept anything like the priniciples upon which our nation was founded.
If I want to spend a hundred thousand dollars of my money promoting an issue I believe in, or give that money to someone else who will promote the idea for me, the government should not step in to stop me. You can clearly see the conflict of interest here if the ideas I want to promote are opposed by that government!
Further, by blaming political advertising for a perceived lack of quality in our elected officials, you are subscribing to the notion that the American people are sheep who simply cannot think for themselves and will vote for whoever has the flashiest ads during ER. If you really believe that, I don't see why you support a system of democratically chosen representatives anyways.
If what you really want is a more democratic exchange of views, I think you should encourage more political spending, not less. I think it should be easy (read: unrestricted by the FEC) for a bunch of rich slashdotters to sell some stock options, set up a large pool of money, and buy political ads supporting candidates who are pro-fair use, anti-internet filtering...whatever. Go crazy!
I also think the best way to get the money out of politics is to get politics out of money! Why do you think the film industry, say, gives money to congressional and presidential campaigns? Because it is taken for granted that politicians will have power over the film industry (and its competitors). They can pass laws with favorable or unfavorable results to the film industry. If you believe in a far more limited role for the federal government, you no longer have to worry about most corporations "buying" influence: the influence won't be there to buy! Instead, it will be back where it belongs, with the public, who control the "influence" of corporations with their own purse-strings.
A recent article over at ZDNet had a story telling about how Bush said he was for "Innovation, not litigation." Microsoft may have donated an equally large amount of money to both the Democratic and Republican canidates, but I wonder just how much /more/ Bush has recieved.
I know this is a flame, but I just can't help it: "its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate.
You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans! --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
This is not a flame. This is me trying to debunk CT's obviously wrong view of politics. :)
He'll bitch to the end of time about how stupid Bush is and how Gore's policies suck, but what does he do about it? And guess what? When the 2004 election rolls around, he won't be able to say crap about any candidate without being hypocritical, because its his own damn fault there isn't a third party candidate with as much funding. (Ok, I'm giving CT too much credit for the election results, but his vote is worth more than mine since he lives in Michigan).
Yeah, democracy is great. It lets you say what you want to say, and hopefully get something done. This is worth than voter apathy, its voter insincerity. Not only do you not get what you really want, you make the wrong impression with your vote, the impression that you want Gore to win. As much as you may applaud Nader and put Gore and Bush down, in the end only your vote counts.
And when you say that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, that just fuzzy math. Do you think of the Nader supporters more were originally Democratic or Republican supporters? Who knows? From a statistical point of view (and realistic pov too), its 50-50. So if everyone voted for who they really wanted, a vote for Nader would be a vote for Nader.
There is too much politics in government. We don't need politics in the way we vote!
You are right for calling out CT, but I know what he means, because I feel the same way. If I voted for Nader and GWB took my state 49-46-5, I would be pissed off. I made my statement and all that good American stuff that my forefathers died for...and I ended up with a functionally retarded president who hasn't accomplished a thing in his life that didn't have to do with his name. For me, the most important thing about this election is the fact that the guy we elect is going to nominate between 2 and 4 supreme court justices. I am willing to vote for a man that I truly dislike just to prevent GWB from having that power. If Bush gets elected, you can vote against him in four years and try to kick him out. But those Supreme Court justices are going to be around for next 15 to 30 years.
-B "Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun" -Ash
Abortion is probably most people's central motivation when they talk this way about the SCt, but there are a lot of other issues which are tremendously important. In particular, an enormous amount of federal regulation is premised on Congress' power to regulate "interstate commerce." If the SCt took a narrower view of what constitutes "interstate commerce" than the present body of SCt case law does, it would have an enormous effect on the power of the federal government to regulate (which is good or bad depending on how you feel about that). The SCt continues to make decisions which will shape the future (if any) of affirmative action programs (again, which is GOBDOHYFAT). In short, it's not just about abortion.
Because that's not all there is to worry about. I'm more concerned that GWB would nominate pro-corporate and/or anti free speech justices. Then we'll be stuck with the DMCA and it's brain-dead successors for at least the next 10 years. I don't want my First Amendment rights given away by appointees of Mr "There ought to be limits to freedom". 0 1 - just my two bits
I'm more concerned that GWB would nominate pro-corporate and/or anti free speech justices...
I'm sorry, this sort of rhetoric is really starting to bother me. There is no reason I've heard to think Mr. Bush is either anti-free speech or pro-corporate. You can complain about him being bought if you'd like, but remember that wouldn't put him in any different boat than Gore. There's simply no evidence that I've heard of to suggest the man is purchased, or that he has anything against the average Joe or free speech. Point me to a real, live source that can confirm such a statement...
As I see it, conservatives seem to have a whole lot more respect for the constitution than their liberal counterparts, in that they tend to be (in my experience) a little more towards the viewpoint that it isn't a living and breathing document (and it isn't!). As Bush is a conservative, and since except for rhetoric I haven't heard anything to suggest otherwise, I'm going to assume your free speech is safer with George Bush than it is with Al Gore.
Wrong boyo. If Nader were not in the race, a lot of the Nader supporters would be GORE supporters. Why? A lot of the Nader vote is VERY green/environmental. The Republican party is VERY ANTI-environment (particularly if it means that some rich guy somewhere will be denied the ability to make MORE short-term money by cutting down trees, polluting water, wiping species off the face of the earth).
The Democratic party is a HELL of a lot environmental-friendly than the despoilers of the Republican party (a hidden planks in their platform is "the only good wildlife is DEAD AND GONE WILDLIFE" and "the only good space is OVER-DEVELOPED space"). It is simple really. A certain percentage of Nader voters would simply not vote if Nader weren't around, so they have no effect on the outcome anyway. Another sizeable percentage would go Democratic since that party is the only one of the two major parties with any chance in hell of winning the Presidency that even remotely squares with their environmental agenda.
On another note, I can assure you that the US public is conservative enough that it would NOT vote for an unmarried man and it would not vote to put a green in the Whitehouse. Some day, maybe, but in the present and near future? No. Way.
You neglect to mention that the stupid environmental policies also affect poor people too. Case in point, when I was very young my father dug a pond on our land. Several years ago we decided to sell off parts of the land to people wanting to build houses, and decided to fill in the pond so we could sell the half acre it was on as well. Guess what. We couldn't. Permit (what I have to get a permit to move dirt on my own property?) denied. Our man made pond is now considered part of the natural wet lands. So I guess we have to stay (relatively) poor. Hmm, maybe if the govt passed some more laws restricting our freedoms they could force us to depend on them for everything...naw they wouldn't want to do that would they?
I guess you could say a hidden plank of the greens and the dems is "the only good landholder is the govt", "the only good space is govt mandated space", and "cut down babies, not trees!".
Sheesh, both the major parties are in it for one thing. POWER. The only difference that I can see is that the republicans aren't so keen to lord it over the rest of us. And Nader can be pretty well summed up by the phrase "Nanny State".
How about limiting the FEDERAL govt to the powers granted to it in the US Constitution? Leave the rest to the states and the locals, the way the founders meant it to be.
Not really recent esitamtes put Nader supporters as first time voters and apathy (on-off) voters, not the backbone of the Democratic party.
Not to mention polls only focus on established voters, people who have voter 2-3 times before. At least one poll only considers you established if youve voted GOP before.
The Green party makes an effort to show that Gore isn't green. His broken promises on raising CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards)standards and not shutting down that huge incenerator right next to school are two of many. The promises made this year will also be broken, the man does not have a respectable track record.
What greens want to do is remove the corporate masters from politics, through publicaly funded elections and let democracy take place. Though i agree the GOP is much more harsh on the environment that the Dems, but they did start the EPA and have supported various pro-environ bills. The dems might have a slightly better track record but if their corporate masters come calling they must bow downto them. Right now Gore's occidental petroluem is drilling for oil on land claimed by a native american tribe.
Its should be democracy first, money later. Not the opposite. Not to mention Browne is the right wing version of Nader, whatever criticism about about vote siphening you put on nader you must put on him. If you believe your argument then they will probably cancel each other out, considering they're neck to neck in the polls.
Sorry, but wouldn't publicly funded elections merely make the current govt administration the masters? Are you sure you really want the govt to decide who gets funding so they can run for office?
I'd much rather just see a very modest cap put on all election spending. Say 1 Million. Then we could see which candidate was better at budgeting their money.
The government does decide who gets fudning, ever hear of federal matching funds? You simply put up rules (petitions, etc) like the 5% rule we currently have.
Nader is also for opening up the airwaves for less corporate programming and more free community access which will allow non-millionaires to get their voice heard and give the 1 million crowd equal time so we can have a real debate.
Which is why I'm against matching funds as well. It's the same damn thing, politicians picking the pockets of the people.
"Nader is also for opening up the airwaves for less corporate programming and more free community access which will allow non-millionaires to get their voice heard and give the 1 million crowd equal time so we can have a real debate."
free community access? Do you think anyone would actually watch? How much community access do you think people watch on cable (where available)? How much do you think people watch PBS? I guess Nader is for forced viewing too? Is he going to make sure we all have govt approved TVs?
People like that are just scary. Govt is not the answer, never has been the answer and never will be the answer.
But at least you're willing to make a decision and presumably vote. I'll give you props for that.
On another note, I can assure you that the US public is conservative enough that it would NOT vote for an unmarried man and it would not vote to put a green in the Whitehouse. Some day, maybe, but in the present and near future? No. Way.
Yea. Let's focus on getting a Jewish person to the position of Vice President first. It's an indicator of progress, right? =)
...but my vote is still going to Nader. I won't feel guilty if that dipstick GWB wins by one vote nationally because he wins by one vote in my home state. My concience won't let me live in a two-party plutocracy.
The Republican party is VERY ANTI-environment (particularly if it means that some rich guy somewhere will be denied the ability to make MORE short-term money by cutting down trees, polluting water, wiping species off the face of the earth).
You're right. When we aren't too busy clear cutting forests and shooting cute, furry animals, we like to get together and show off our new winter coats, made exclusively from the pelts of endangered species. And after a grueling day of coupon clipping, there is nothing more relaxing than dumping toxic waste into the local water supply and throwing rocks at the poor.
I don't think you can ever forget the real, tangible consequences of your actions. And at this point, a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.
Look at the polls. Ever the professional know-it-alls in the media have given up trying to predict this election. Meanwhile, Nader is sitting at 5%. The scenario that W. wins by less than 5% is a not only possible, it's probable.
Come November 8, many of you may experience a long, sinking feeling. Nader supporters have strong opinions about preserving the environment and reining in the corporations and they could be directly responsible for electing the man who is by far the most hostile to their agenda among all the current candidates.
It reminds me of when I lived in Canada. There, the conservative party split into two because many conservatives thought that the "official" conservative party wasn't nearly conservative enough. The result, of course, is that the liberal party has had a stranglehold on elections for the last decade and will maintain it for the foreseeable future. Those archconservatives must feel proud for bringing their people into the political wilderness.
So, by all means, make your statements, influence the agenda, make the major parties scramble to adopt your more popular positions, and then quietly change your vote to Gore on November 7th. This election is too close, and too important, to do otherwise.
The real problem is in the voting system. The electorial college doesn't go 50/50... its all or nothing. Example: 55% of the people in your state vote for Gore, 45% vote for Bush... your state has 30 votes in the electorial college, which means 30 votes for Gore. Any third grader can tell you what's wrong with that. The majority decides for the whole in that state. This is wrong, as the minority voice is not getting heard. I think that if we get rid of the electorial college, or perhaps change it from say "winner takes all" to a more accurate, "winner takes most", we'd be doing a lot better off. Also, it might make sense to poll using a borda count instead. Screw PGP! - Derek S. Wilson
I would like you to recount every single Presidential election where the Electoral College vote did not follow the popular vote. Go on, it won't take long.
The idea with voting is to give each individual voter as much power as possible. You only have power if you, yourself, with your vote, tip the election. The probability of your vote tipping the election is computable. It turns out that the electoral college system actually gives MORE power to the individual voter, and therefore a larger voice to the minorities. Unfortunately I don't have a link handy, but I'm sure they're out there.
I'm not too fond of the electoral system either, for the reasons you described. But since it only determines presidential elections, and the results are generally in line with the popular vote, I don't get too worked up about it.
What I'd really like to see is a method of preferential voting. I think they do this in Australia, though I'm not certain.
It works like this: you list the candidates in order of your preference. When the votes are counted, you take the candidate with the lowest number of votes and remove him from the election. All the votes for the eliminated candidate go to the second preference on those ballots. Repeat until you have a majority winner.
This would be perfect for this kind of situation. People could list the votes as 1. Nader 2. Gore 3. Bush. Then when Nader gets knocked out, the votes would go to Gore (for the sake of argument). This would allow people to express strong opinions for third party candidates, and maybe even let them win, since there would be no reason not to vote for one. But it would also prevent the "wasted vote" scenario -- all votes "count", even in the final run off between the two most popular candidates.
This is utterly amusing too me. It's the reverse of the situation GW's pop was in. Remember the '92 election? A vote for perot was a vote for billy the cigar sodomist.... and big bush lost by less than the margin of perot's support.
According to the exit polls, anyway, the second choices of Perot supporters were split pretty evenly between Bush and Clinton. Even approval voting would have gone to Clinton in that election, although Perot's numbers would have shot way up.
This situation is different. There may be a number of Nader supporters whose second choice is "not going to the poll", but you can be sure the rest of them would be 99% Gore over Bush.
"Come November 8, many of you may experience a long, sinking feeling."
I already have as much sinking feeling as I'll have on 11/8 because I already know the bad news: One of [Bush|Gore] will be president. That's why I'm voting for someone else. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
So, by all means, make your statements, influence the agenda, make the major parties scramble to adopt your more popular positions, and then quietly change your vote to Gore on November 7th. This election is too close, and too important, to do otherwise.
I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat, and I don't own a multimillion dollar corporation or chair a million+ member special interest group, so I don't get much representation in this country anyhow. But at least when the election results are tallied and displayed, I'll be able to look at the official record and say, "My voice has finally been heard." My vote for Harry Browne may be "wasted" in the sense that I won't have a chance to walk around telling everybody, "Lookie, the candidate I voted for won! Heehee!" but I will have the satisfaction of looking at the final tally of votes for Browne and knowing that there are others like me, others who may be disregarded by the current oligarchy as nonessential, unimportant, outside the target demographic, who also had the courage to go to the one place that we have left to make our stand, to have our say, to tell the politicians, the press and the citizens of the United States what we really believe: the voting booth.
I hope you enjoy the victory party and take plenty of time to pat yourself on the back for not "wasting" your vote; I truly do, that was not sarcastic in the least, because I'd like to think that when the election is over that everyone voted for what they wanted, and not against what they didn't, so if you truly want Al Gore to be the president of the country, then by all means cast your vote and make your support for his policies known. Like the man said: "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
On a side note, it is amusing how everyone complains about how there is too much negative campaigning; politicians aren't stupid, they realize that that's how people vote in this country as well, against candidates rather than for them. They're just playing to the crowd, giving them their bread and circuses like any smart would-be ruler would.
Deo
PS: The preceding was not an endorsement of Harry Browne for president; if you agree with his policies, vote for him. If you don't, then don't. All I ask is that you vote for something rather than against, that's all. You have to admit, it would be interesting to see the poll results if people actually did that for just one election in our lifetimes. :)
"Look at the polls. Ever the professional know-it-alls in the media have given up trying to predict this election. Meanwhile, Nader is
sitting at 5%. The scenario that W. wins by less than 5% is a not only possible, it's probable."
For people who agree with Nader, that is the best possible outcome. Sure, they would have to endure 4 years of Bush's 'leadership',
but in 2004, the Democratic party would have a platform that included many Green positions.
So many people get hung up on the question "Who will win?" that they forget to ask "Who will implement the policies I care about?".
The only way to convince the Democratic or Republican parties to offer any new platform issues is to show them that a lot of people want something else, something they didn't offer. Then
they will stsart offering those new ideas, claiming they have always supported them.
OK, I like in Massachusetts. There's not a chance in hell my vote will tip the balance from Gore to Bush, in fact Gore is certain to win by a landslide. We might as well hand those electoral votes over right now... which is essentially what the pundits do when they count electoral votes at this point in the race.
If you're a conservative who happens to think that Bush is a complete dolt (I know many who feel this way), AND you happen to live in a state which is solidly Bush turf, what the hell do you have to lose by voting Libertarian, The Constitution Party, or The Natural Law Party? It's not like you're going to hurt Bush by not voting for him, in your state he's going to win! This gives you some freedom to vote your conscience without potentially tipping the race toward the Democrats (who are the party I would vote for if my state were up for grabs).
My point is that only a few states are still undecided... if you live in one of then maybe it makes sense to vote "strategically". But for the most of us it's pretty safe to vote our conscience... me I'll be voting Nader because that's who I like. And I don't feel the slightest concern for the outcome.
BTW: the Reform Party main page is down right now, so I didn't exclude it out of any malice (though I do think Buchanan is a fascist); I assume that's because of the Buchanan rift in the party. Speaking of that, Buchanan taking over the Reform Party has only benefited the Republicans as it's basically killed a major contender party. Wonder if Buchanan was really a poison pill for the party... I guess we'll know if Buchanan re-joins the Republicans after gutting the party and leaving the entrails asunder...
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.--Bertrand Russell
I'll be voting for Bush because his ideas as presented in the debates seemed to make sense.
I won't deny that I'm also glad that I'll be voting against Gore.
And I could care less about Nader either way. He's a crank. I'd definitely actively vote against him if it seemed like he had a chance, but let's face it, nuts like him don't have a chance.
> And I could care less about Nader either way. He's a crank. I'd definitely actively vote against him if it seemed like he had a chance, but let's face it, nuts like him don't have a chance.
And people wonder why anti-Nader comments get moderated down.
Calling any of the candidates a "crank" or a "nut" is unnecessary and immature, but you don't even provide your reasoning for the thought. How arrogant are you that you assume we have any idea of what you're talking about?
Or is it just that you don't care about the thoughts of anyone who doesn't already agree with you? Perhaps it's because you believe, as those who are wrong frequently do, that any differing opinion must be flawed in some way, and moreover that even taking the time to effectively point out those flaws is already a waste of time.
Btw, anyone who doesn't already think Maggie here is a few ants shy of a picnic might want to check out that url of his. Ad hominem attacks, anyone?
Calling any of the candidates a "crank" or a "nut" is unnecessary and immature...
...unless the candidate's name is George W. Bush? Of course, those get moderated up, not down.
However, Nader's problem is that he wants to destroy corporations (read: the people who give us jobs, and thus a good economy) by means of the largest corporation in America: the Government. Is a bigger Government going to protect our freedoms more, you think, by destroying the companies we work for?
I'm not going to call any candidates cranks or nuts, but I wholeheartedly disagree with Nader's solution to a questionable problem. I don't hear a whole lot of that discussed here, though... people seem to support Nader because he's not one of the "evil" Republicrats. I know it's popular around here to believe neither Republicans nor Democrats can have good ideas, but I'd venture to say most people actually agree with the policies of either of these parties, and it isn't a matter of the populace being duped by purchased politicians.
Ya know how Bush kept talking about "accountability" in the debates?
Well THAT, my friends, is what Nader wants for corporations....accountability. No, he doesn't want to "destroy corporations" he wants to protect the public from a government-spawned monster that consumes everything in its path in order to profit. Think about it, you budding Libertarians; corporations exist, ONLY BECAUSE OF THE GOVERNMENT! In this government created organization, the individuals steering and making sometimes very serious decisions that affect thousands or even millions of lives are PROTECTED. 90 people get sick because of the toxins that have seeped into the groundwater near your manufacturing plant? No problem, your corporation *might* (if it gets caught) in a worst case scenario have to pay a 500 million dollar fine. Oh well, no biggie, just put that in your statement at the end of the quarter and it's a tax deduction. And, maybe you wont be able to take *all* the executives to Barbados this summer, just your favorite golf buddies. *shrug*
Corporations do NOT need more freedom.
People do.
Vote Nader. ~~~~I choose NOT to be a part of the dot-com bullshit, the good life ain't about selling your soul.....
Ahhh but see a system like that which you suggest will not ever even be considered unless we get some real PUBLIC (not corporate) servants in upper government. Bush and Gore are already in the pockets of big business, so a vote for either of them is a vote for the status quo.
Vote Nader if you believe INDIVIDUALS, not corporations, should be empowered and uplifted in America. ~~~~I choose NOT to be a part of the dot-com bullshit, the good life ain't about selling your soul.....
If he's not, he's pretending to be stupid, which is just as bad.
From some of the slips Bush has made when questioned about foriegn policy, it sounds like the man's entire knowledge of geography came from reading the menu at IHOP. Furthermore, I think anyone who talks about "nuke-yuh-ler" weapons is not qualified to command them. Call me crazy, but if someone is going to have the means to destroy life as we know it, I think he should at least know how to pronounce the name of the device, if not a basic grasp of the physics involved. 0 1 - just my two bits
God forbid the man have a Texas accent, and goodness me, you mean he sometimes fumbles up as he speaks? That certainly never happens to you, does it?
Intelligence can't be measured solely by one's ability to articulate those ideas. Eloquence of speech is not at all an indicator of intelligence of ideas. Let's understand that before we start calling Bush a moron. He's just not as eloquent a public speaker as some other politicians. But Politics really shouldn't be about image, they should be about ideas, don't you think?
Point taken, though personally I feel he does have some ideas. Privitization of social security, tax cuts... they might not be revolutionary, but who can say they're not ideas?
What bothers me is this awful habit of demonizing all of those you disagree with. Ideally, politics should be about different people disagreeing with other people in a reasonable fashion about ideas. They shouldn't be about calling your opponent a moron and evil, making him look like a person bankrupt of positive personality traits. If you agree with a candidate's ideas, great! Vote for him! If you don't, just move along. You don't have to write him off as an evil individual, you don't have to portray him as the death of a nation--you just disagree with a usually perfectly valid position that just doesn't match yours.
So that's what I'm responding to. If people disagree with Bush's ideas, great. But that's never what gets talked about here. People just character assissinate like there's no tomorrow. I know, I know, the politicians do it too, but when engaging in political discussion, couldn't we rise above that for once?
Alas, that's rather idealistic. Political discussion never really can be isolated to issues. But a guy can dream, can't he?
If the third party vote is large enough to swing the election one way or the other, than the parties will damn-well have to pay attention to the people who voted for that third party in the next election cycle.
Otherwise, they can just safely ignore them as too insignificant to matter.
One of the reasons (along with the good economy) that we finally managed to get the deficit under control is because a third party candidate wouldn't shut up about it, and got a lot of votes. He didn't win (thank God!) but the important thing he was talking about finally got noticed.
Nader's talking about the way corporations have bought the political system. If you want to get that issue noticed next time out, you have to give him enough votes to get the attention of the major parties. Otherwise they'll just ignore the issue as ramblings of unimportant voters.
To me, a real wasted vote is a vote for someone who will likely ignore 90% of what the voter stands for. Given the stands I've seen both candidates take on the issues that continually crop on /., I'd say that that is the majority here.
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. - Andrew Jackson
Gentlemen, Ladies, it's quite simple. Consider the leading third-party candidate, Ralph Nader.
Ralph Nader is the right guy to protect us from the bottom-line seeking soulless corporations which, out of nothing more than greed, victimize the people of the United States. He is an expert in this, a leader in the field. A great man, to be sure. I know nobody who disputes this.
He does not, on the other hand, know anything about how to protect the interests of the United States on the world stage. This is why people don't take Nader seriously as a candidate. The obvious interests of the consumer are not always synonymous with the long-term interests of the nation.
This all has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Nader is a third-party candidate. People who say he is marginalized because he does not represent one of the two major parties are willfully ignoring the fact that Nader, in the minds of much of the voting public, simply isn't the kind of guy one might want dealing with issues of international policy.
Remember Ross Perot? For all his flaws, he resonated with people as the kind of guy who could reasonably address the full spectrum of issues faced by the president of the United States. That is why he was such an effective candidate despite his lack of affiliation with the two major parties.
For example, I suspect people would view John McCain the same way, were he to run as a third-party candidate. Unlike Nader, who has effectively never dealt with issues of international relations, McCain has the experience and passion people look for in a presidential candidate.
It is not the system, but the candidates themselves who marginalize the minor parties.
> He does not, on the other hand, know anything about how to protect the interests of the United States on the world stage.
That's a very interesting criticism. Could you be more specific? Are you referring to his intent to move the government toward a peacetime economy? Do people think he isn't sufficiently charismatic? Hasn't visited China enough times? What is it?
He seems to have a strong stance on corporate globalization, which certainly qualifies as protecting MY interests on the world stage, and we have tons and tons of internal problems he's proposed realistic solutions to that would go a long way, I think, toward making it easier for future candidates to handle international affairs productively.
This article debunks the myth that 3rd party candidates are syphoning off votes from the Democrats or Republicans. Using statistics on voter turnout, the author shows that Perot drew in people who otherwise wouldn't have voted at all.
Think about one point. When the media say that this election is too close to call, they base that on polls of likely voters. The same author points out in this article how badly that biases the results in favor of Democrats and Republican. Non-voters are more likely to be sympathetic to 3rd party candidates. Given voter turnout at or below 50% in the past few elections, all it would take would be a majority of the people who have decided not to vote casting their votes for a 3rd party candidate and this nonsense of voting for the lesser of two evils would be over.
You're wrong on this one. Taco lives in Michigan, which is one of those so called battleground states. Since the race is close there, it would be a risk for Taco to vote for a 3rd party candidate.
Since the race is close there, it would be a risk for Taco to vote for a 3rd party candidate.
Bingo. This election is really scary close overall, and it's amazing how many states are within +/- 4%, which is a statistical dead heat. You can look up state by state poll results at Hotline scoop.
My home state is a total one-party lock, so I can safely vote for whatever Nth party candidate I feel like. I recently considered doing a write-in for the arch-conservative dream team of Alan Keyes and David Duke -- fun fun! But I'll probably vote Nader so the Greens can reach the magical 5% funding threshold.
If only the Debate Commission allowed 5% candidates instead of 15%...
-F.
A close race is the exact place to vote your mind on a third party candidate!
Imagine this: The race is won 46% to 45%, with 8% going to one third party cadidate, and 1% going to someone else.
You had better believe the 45% loser is looking hard and long at that 8%. Maybe if they had taken a platform that attract that 8% as well, they could have won.
In a state where the election is split 65/30/5%, no one is going to worry about that 5%. It would not have mattered.
Yes, voting for a third party candidate might swing the election one way or the other, but in four years, your vote is going to pay off when the two parties go after your "wasted" or "lost" vote, because they know that the candidate who gets those votes can swing the election.
In addition, the two cadidates are so similar when compared to a third party cadidate that either one can win and not make too big of a difference.
Imagine this: The race is won 46% to 45%, with 8% going to one third party cadidate, and 1% going to someone else.
You had better believe the 45% loser is looking hard and long at that 8%. Maybe if they had taken a platform that attract that 8% as well, they could have won.
Horsepucky. They'd evaluate if going after that 8% would cost them any of their current support, vs. going after an additional 1% from the winner without losing any of the current support.
Considering the radical differences between the Green platform and the platforms of either the Dems or Repubs, it's highly likely that they'd lose far more current support than they'd gain new support by trying to attract Green followers.
Considering the radical differences between the Green platform and the platforms of either the Dems or Repubs, it's highly likely that they'd lose far more current support than they'd gain new support by trying to attract Green followers.
Really? From the general sentiment I've seen here and elsewhere, it would pay off far more for Gore to try to pick up Green votes than to try to wrestle away some of Bush's support, as most of the folks who profess to support Nader seem to be saying that they are voting for Gore anyway, so it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch for Gore to nail those votes down solid with some subtle "wasted vote" rhetoric rather than letting some of those voters slip through and vote for Nader anyhow, especially considering how close it appears the election will be. Or perhaps its just wishful thinking on my part that a segment of society not affiliated with either the Republicans or Democrats could actually have some say in this nation.
True, but how many people would they loose to get that 8%? If Bush looses, do you really think there's a chance in hell that the republican party is going to do anything that could attract the 8% greens? What could they do? Not much that wouldn't push away their core, and they'll never do that.
Amarican presidential politics aren't about voting for the person you like best, it's about voting against the guy you like least. Does that suck? Yes, but untill election methodology is changed, that's the yway it's gonna be.
Well...actually they make me want to Browne ;) but it's not as good a slogan.
A quote from Browne's website asking if he can 'win'. If your a Nader supporter change it to dealing with the Environment, Corporate Power and Healthcare. Clinton/Gore haven't done much in the past 8 years? why will Gore in the next 4? Remember your not voting for this election (its already decided Bush/Gore) your voting for the next one in 2004 or the one in 2008.
Can I win?
Probably not. But if you vote for anyone else, you won't win either. Your candidate might win, but you won't get what you want. Government will continue to get bigger, more expensive, more intrusive, and more oppressive — and you will have given your approval to this.
No matter what your reason for voting for Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore — to keep Al Gore out of the White House or to ward off the Religious Right — your vote will be interpreted as an endorsement of every big-government proposal your candidate has made.
Even though we Libertarians may not win this year, every vote I get will be an endorsement, a statement, a declaration on behalf of smaller government. No one can misinterpret a vote for me as a vote for more government.
And if I get even one million votes, it could change politics in America forever. It could cause the press to pay more attention to smaller-government proposals, it could encourage other voters to abandon the big-government parties, and it could attract millions of non-voters who have given up on any hope of getting smaller government.
Please don't let the old parties destroy your future by scaring you into voting against someone this year.
Raise your sights. Vote in a way that could lead to a free America with a constitutional government before the end of this decade.
For once, vote for yourself instead of a politician. Vote for freedom.
Again, I would like to point out that it is our voting system that causes these sorts of dilemmas in the first place. If we would use a more sensible and fair system, such as the Borda count or approval voting, we could elect the candidate that is really the most desirable candidate to the most people. That won't happen now due to the way they screw with voting districts and the fact that a plurality vote is simply a bad way of electing someone when there are more than 2 people involved. I want to see a candidate stand up and point this out to everyone. I want to see him pull a Ross Perot and break out the graphs and pictures and explain it to everyone. This needs to be fixed.
I would vote for Nader if the situation wasn't what it is. There will be 3 Supreme Court Justice seats on the line in this election. Whom you elect is going to have a much further reaching impact than what would appear on the surface. If we as a country don't like who gets elected then 4 years from now the next election will roll in and the incumbent will be unseated. You say:
You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans!
But I have to say that making a statement may not be the most intelligent expenditure of your vote. Risking the outcome of this election and the ability of the winner to seat as many as 3 Justices is dangerous. Look at it this way: Bush is way out there. He is not pro choice. Right there I won't vote for him as adding 3 Justices to the supreme court that share his view will reverse Roe v. Wade. The appointment of a Justice is a life long kind of deal. They either step down or die but they will be powerful for much longer than the president that empowers them. Think about it. Do some real research on the impact of the outcome on issues that aren't in the mainstream media and then decide if your statement is worth taking away a womans freedom of choice and control over her body.
Not to start an off-topic flamewar, but so what? Abortion is not about choice and I can't understand why anyone thinks it IS. The religious right may not have the right answer, but they DO have the right question: Is abortion murder? Does a fetus have any right to life? This isn't about "a woman's body"--it's about a FETUS's body. Now, if you want to say that a fetus doesn't have any right to life, that's fine with me--I even agree, assuming we are talking about very very early in a pregnancy. But don't confuse the issue by talking about "a woman's choice".
And don't bother posting pointers to or arguments about how fetus's aren't people. That will only support my argument: In a rational discussion of abortion a "woman's right to choose" is irrelevant. The real issue is "a fetus's right to live". --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
/me don's asbestos suit...assuming your not just another troll lets go ahead and dabate this for a minute:Ignorance and the right 'question'. How dare you say it not about a womans choice? How many women are raped and impregnated every year? Should a rape victim have to live with the spawn of the horrificly violent act that propogates a child and forces the woman to endure the vision of the act every day, knowing that a child is born of the violence that came upon her? Is it not her right to decide what happens to her body and what she will endure in that situation? I know women who were raped. I know two who because of their familial religious beliefs had the children and now are complete basket cases. I know that the healing process for them is much harder than the girls I have known who were lucky enough to either not been impregnated or had the ability to abort.The issue of a childs right to life may be the core but there are many factors that elevate the need to have prochoice justices on the bench. I dare say late term abortion is wrong unless there is a medical need for the mother to abandon the pregnancy versus the casual 'I change my mind(like the wind blows)' crowd. I have my opinion there but I don't believe that my opinion should bear witness against someone elses belief, which is my whole beef with the antiabortion crowd. If you say 'hey thats wrong!' well fine but thats where it should stop rather than the extremes that the antiabortion zealots have gone to. To quote Voltaire "I may not like what you have to say but I will defend with my life your right to say it!" If you believe it to be wrong then walk your talk and never place yourself in that situation (pray to your God that your sister, daughter, mother or friends don't have fate befall rape upon them) where an abortion would be a need. Just don't expect me to have to live by your creed as my views are different and you have to respect that. I say No. None of us have the right to life unless the our parents decide it so, furthermore I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise. To take it a step further and venture off topic: its the same crowd that is not pro choice that would have cancer patients and the like suffer until they die in lieu of doctor assisted suicide or humane euthanasia. We are already at a point where our population is growing at a rate exceeding the worlds resources and as a species we will suffer these consequenses. Personally, my core belief is that the basic tenet of freedom is inherently the right to be left alone by your neighbor and your government provided that what you do is not affecting other people. The RTL crowd has completely forgotten or decided to ignore this. They can't even see the hypocrisy of thier actions when they kill doctors who preform abortions or bomb thier clinics.
"How many women are raped and impregnated every year?"
How many, indeed. And how many abortions are performed? If the latter is greater than the former your entire point is moot.
"I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise."
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
I am in favor of (some) abortion--but not because I'm "pro-choice". --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
"I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise."
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
Here here!
An even better question for you males out there in /. land: Why is the woman's right to choose paramount? Where is the man's right to choose? If a man says, "This baby was a mistake. I'm not ready for this, nor can I afford this. I want an abortion." and the woman says no, he's stuck with HER CHOICE! He doesn't get a choice. He can't say that she HAS to get an abortion because it will ruin HIS life. It's all about HER!
I'm a firm believer that if you believe in choice that you need to change the viewpoint of your own people.
All the following assume that a woman is pregnant and knows (or suspects) who the father is. If the mother wants an abortion and the father doesn't, the father must pay the mother a set amount of money for her time and trouble to have the child. Perhaps go by what host mothers are paid for people that can't carry a child to term. If the mother wants to keep the baby, and the father wants an abortion, the mother MUST renounce all claims against the father for financial support. In this case, the father will also never have custody of the child. Or for that matter even see it. If mother and father BOTH want an abortion, they split the cost 50-50. If neither wants an abortion, they do the civilized thing and either give the baby up for adoption or raise it.
There, that gives EVERYONE a choice, doesn't it?
(Where's the asbestos suit when you really need it... Oh wait, the government regulates that so much I can't buy one anymore...)
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
well... I didn't want to even go here but the mans choice is horribly ignored by the virtue of us not being able to be pregnant. I totally agree with your point. I know of one girl who was out to have a baby and make sure that she would not be completely financially responsible for it. Clearly this is entrapment but to my horror she almost succeded twice. (note: it wasn't me she tried to entrap for those of you who know me in the real world) Luckily for the two guys she tried to snare this way she miscarried. Neither of the guys wanted the child and one of them swore he had used a condom.My point in my post though was that 3 Justices will be appointed by the next president. The fact that today we can make a choice doesn't mean that after the justices are appointed we will have the same freedom.
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
I don't want to get into the process of insulting ones reasoning skills. However, your logic is flawed. If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there. The decision being made before hand as to which you action you will take. Killing your tenants to store your stuff is not an option (although at times it doesn't sound like a bad idea :P ) and you have to either wait until the lease expires or you find some legal grounds for eviction. A womb is not an apartment and its tenant (your implication) does not have the rights a real tenant would have by contract. My whole point is this: Your beliefs should not be able to prevent someone else who thinks otherwise from doing what they envision as thier own righteous legal actions in a free society. You have your point of view to which there is merit. This does not negate my right to have a different view. I already stated my personal view on late term abortion: no it should not happen unless there is a serious medical need for it. Other people feel different and think that late term abortion is ok. More power to them. I applaud them and you for sharing your views and hope that more people will develop at the very least an informed opinion. There are too many people who don't even have an opinion to begin with. What an absolute tragedy. Maybe that in and of itself is a case for abortion right there... I digress. When its all said and done I think that abortion should be legal and free. I am tired of my tax dollars funding welfare, prisons, public housing, food, and social security for society's unwanted and unintentional additional populous. If you want to have children fine. If you don't want to have them that is fine to. Make a choice and move along that path. When you pull the lever on election day remember the real, long lasting implications of your decision and the people that will be empowered by it. If you want to end up in a society where abortion is illegal then go ahead and vote for Bush and be happy when that happens. I'd rather not see that as the outcome because the mentaility of the RTL crowd is that what they believe I should believe and that is not right. In fact, it is very disrespectful to the tenets of freedom. This will only continue to foster intollerance of opposing views and lead to censorship on levels far beyond the scope of what the RTL agenda would have you think they are about.de cadir - to make a choice and eliminate or cut off all other scenarios.
This whole argument has absolutely nothing to do with women's rights. The real disagreement is about whether abortion is the same thing as murder. One side believes that a fetus, being human, deserves the same right to life as any other person. The other side doesn't believe that a fetus is really another person until after birth. Each camps positions are consistent with that central question.
Killing your tenants to store your stuff is not an option (although at times it doesn't sound like a bad idea :P )
Why isn't it an option? If you believe a fetus has the same rights as a newborn child, then you have no more option to kill it than to kill your tenants.
A womb is not an apartment and its tenant (your implication) does not have the rights a real tenant would have by contract.
After a baby is born, you still have no contract with it, yet killing it would still be illegal.
My whole point is this: Your beliefs should not be able to prevent someone else who thinks otherwise from doing what they envision as thier own righteous legal actions in a free society.
We don't have absolute freedom. Murder is a crime. Why shouldn't I have the right to track you down and murder you? Why should your belief that it is wrong prevent me from doing it? What gives you the right to try to deny me that choice?
"If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there."
And, except in rare cases, the woman is making a decision on what to do with her body, namely: have unprotected sex--an act well-known for introducing inhabitants. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
The pro-choice movement is misnamed, anyway, a choice will be made sooner or later.
I'd rather call it the pro-death movement, since I am for death, within limits, and not as dictated by the state (not capital punishment, for example), but that would never happen, for obvious reasons.
IMO, the mother should be allowed to make the choice ... but she should also know in advance what her choice would be, and have the conviction to make it as soon as she learns she's pregnant. I also think that this asks too much of many women, particularly impoverished ones, but the sorry state of our medical and educational systems is another two rants.
Asking whether an unborn child has rights is begging the question. The ONLY relevent question is does a WOMAN have a right to control HER OWN BODY.
In many forms of abortion, the child (or cells?) dont' die until AFTER they are removed from the mother. At that point AND ONLY THEN, is the question of whether the mother has rights or not can be ignored and you can focus your attention entirely on the rights of the child.
Of course, the child will die if it isn't a very late turn abortion.
So if you want to argue that the child, BEFORE BIRTH has the right to live, you have to also argue that he/she has the right to enslave the mother to HIS/HER needs until the time of birth.
Well, guess what, slavery is illegal and immoral. The choice here is, (as you people seem to always conveniently forget) a choice between two options BOTH OF WHICH ARE MORALLY WRONG.
In such a situation, the ONLY just thing to to is let the mother choose.
Oh, come on...none of the Justices have announced their retirement or their imminent demise. You don't know that 3 Justices are on the line.
And what if these 3 Justices make it through the next four years? Are you going to say, "I can't vote for my candidate this election, either, because those same three Justices are still on the line!"
In every election, ALL Justices are on the line, because they could all die or retire in the next 4 years (statistically improbable, yes, but it could happen).
Besides, Justices have a funny way of doing what's not expected of them; some very conservative presidents have appointed Justices that ended up being left of center on many issues.
If you support the Green Party, you've got to vote Nader in this election so that he can get federal matching funds for the next election!
If Nader doesn't get the support he needs this time, then the next election is going to go exactly the same as this one...two major party candidates receiving most of the press and a few third party candidates doing cartwheels on the sidelines trying to get attention.
We were all told here in Minnesota to vote for a third party because that would get matching funds in the next election.
Guess what? A crank known as Jesse Ventura walked in at the next election and won. On election night in his winning speech all he could ramble on about was how he felt like 'Rocky' (from the boxing movie). 'Rocky' was a profoundly individual achivement, and all Jesse-the-crank could do was act like he'd won the election himself and could claim it personally.
Giving legitimacy to a third party won't change anything. We'll just have three parties for political machines to take over and control.
"If you support the Green Party, you've got to vote Nader in this election so that he can get federal matching funds for the next
election!"
There are points to the Green platform that I agree with. Forcing others to help support their
campaigns is not one of them. Of course, I also don't like being forced to support the campaigns on the Democratic, Republican and Reform parties either.
I applaud the fact that Harry Browne turned down those matching funds. It demonstrates the fact that he believes in the principles he is talking about. If he had accepted those funds, I wouldn't be voting for him, and I wouldn't have contributed to his campaign.
Instead of pressuring people to vote for Nader so that the Green party can force others to support the Green party later, why don't you simply send them a contribution of your own now, and ask others to do so as well?
Is it because you don't think highly enough of the Green party to support them directly, or because you don't think they have enough support to succeed without forcing others to help them?
Your "If Nader doesn't get the support he needs this time, then...." is the same sort of fear-mongering that Nader argues against.
Vote your dreams. Support your dreams with your own dollars, not mine.
I am sick and tired of all the stories about "horrible" GWB and "lesser evil" Gore - because I remember Slashdotters crying about all those horrible laws that Clinton/Gore ushered in.
This is the biggest problem with the American public: 2 minute attention span and 5 minute memory. Anybody remembers CDA, son-of-CDA, DMCA, wiretapping extensions, war on drugs?!
There's a problem with voting for the "lesser evil" - Gore doesn't have to actually do anything positive, because he can always point to something that GWB or (God forbid!) Buchanan *might* have done.
In my opinion, this whole Republican/Democrat dichotomy is about Yale-Harvard Texas-South Texaco-Occidental Petroleum - it's not about any real issues.
The GREATER of two evils is even more evil than the lesser. That's why we use the words LESSER and GREATER!
What is so hard about this concept? There ARE degrees of black and white. Even Nader is just a whiter shade of gray.
If, by your actions you help to elect the greater of two evils. Then you are RESPONSIBLE for that act. And no amount of self-serving bullshit about making a futile, moral stand makes a bit of difference.
A vote for Nader may just be what it takes to end up with Bush a president. Which is fine if you don't think he's the devil incarnate. But it's NOT fine if you do.
Please tell me how Al "I want to ban in internal
combustion engine, keep your money and legislate
what time you should go to bed" Gore is better than
any of the other candidates? Personally, I'm
voting for Bush because I want my taxes reduced.
Everytime I look at my pay check stub and I see
how much is taken out by Uncle Bill and his cousin
Al I almost hurl. Then you hear about the department of education which cannot account for about 5 billion dollars because its books are so screwed up.
Why should we leave any tax surplus in Washington?
Hey, whoever modded this down, Unfair! This is just a pro-Bush comment. Nothing wrong with those. I'm for Gore but I would like to hear all three sides.
nice civic virtue there. at least you can admit that you're just voting for the candidate who's giving you the most money.
of course, how many big recessions have started under a republican? (1929, 1987...) feels like its about time for the republicans to start another one, huh?
Your forgot one: 1980-81 (Carter)
I'd say the 1980 recession was worse then the 1987. It was the only time my father has EVER been laid off. Eliminate duplicates from address to email me.
I'm all for tax cuts, too. That's why I want to see the national debt paid off, so we can all get a permanent tax cut. We'll also be doing right by the next generation, which is something the Republican party doesn't give a damn about. This will happen under Gore, it will never happen under Bush.
I checked and found out that I for my income bracket, I actually should get more from Gore. Unless you earned more than 130,000 and have no kid or going to have inheritance more than several millions, you probably will get similar tax-break from both of them. Check out Citizens for Tax Justice. It's a liberal leaning group. So, if you're in the higher income brackets, they'll only exagerrate your tax-break from Bush plan :).
Of course, if you're ideologically pro-tax break, Bush is still your man. But to me, it's reckless to spend over the estimated-surplus, which nobody knows whether it'll actually be there, for a large tax-break, expanded military, etc. Gore spends quite a portions, something like 1.9 out of 2.2 trillions but at least his book so far is balance. There is a large part of Bush's budget expenditures which hasn't been accounted for yet...
Unless you earned more than 130,000 and have no kid or going to have inheritance more than several millions, you probably will get similar tax-break from both of them. Check out Citizens for Tax Justice. It's a liberal leaning group. So, if you're in the higher income brackets, they'll only exagerrate your tax-break from Bush plan :).
Look at some of Algore's tax cuts a little closer. Take his version of eliminating the marriage penalty. You don't get a tax cut if you itemize your 1040. IOW, if you have a mortgage, like a HUGE number of married couples do( and you don't even need to be mindlessly rich to mortgage a home in most of the country ), you don't get a tax break. His tax cuts amount to government dictating exactly how you should live your life if you want to be blessed with a tax cut.
it's reckless to spend over the estimated-surplus, which nobody knows whether it'll actually be there, for a large tax-break, expanded military, etc.
There is no such thing as spending for a tax break. The government doesn't own the money, it belongs to the people whom paid it. Which is riskier when it comes to spending against an unknown surplus, a tax cut now which could be raised back to current levels if need be or creating $2-4.6 trillion( depending on who's study of Algore's economic plan you believe ) in new, permanent spending because once an entitlement goes into place, it's nearly impossible to get rid of it? If the economy slows and we don't get the surplus, we're either stuck with raising taxes back to where they are now OR raising taxes higher than what they are now to provide for the newly created entitlements. Which is the real risky scheme?
To the moderators: -1 Comment against Algore, -1 Truth about taxes and spending, -1 Flamebait against big government, -1 Didn't promote Nader, -1 Didn't promote class warfare. Maybe CT should suspend moderating on the politics articles comments since moderators like to mod posts down for not simply agreeing with them.
<flame>IMO, this is what makes a Republican a Republican. The most important thing to them is money in their pockets. Can you not see that there are far more important issues to deal with than your ability to buy that new Beamer? Racial inequality, environment going down the tubes, injustice in the judicial system, out of date drug laws, corporate control, just to name a few. As long as you've got an excess of money in the bank, to hell with basic human and civil rights, right?
"Who is 'General Failure', and why is he reading my hard disk?" -- Steven Wright
Not from what I've seen. Everyone I know that complains about taxes being too high (and that is a considerable amount of people) already has a nice car, plenty of savings, a "portfolio", kids already in school (sometimes) and doing well, etc. etc. etc... No, I don't want to live paycheck to paycheck. Yes, I have some savings. But there has to be a balance between caring about money and caring about the more important issues in our country.
"Who is 'General Failure', and why is he reading my hard disk?" -- Steven Wright
Okay folks, I'm going to jump on this yarf-fest right here and now. Just because a person, let's say me, wants a tax cut, it doesn't mean that I'm:
a) Against a clean environment
b) Ready to oppress the masses because I'm cruel and completely eeeeeeeeeee-vil.
c) Gleefully rubbing my hands together because I'm going to create dirty air and water and stupid people because I'll be taking all the school money.
I want a tax cut. Want to know why? Because I'm working two jobs right now just to pay my bills and because we've had almost eight years of "targeted tax cuts" that never have managed to target me. I'm working nearly 70 hours every week trying to keep a roof over my head, to pay my bills, and to be a responsible father and the only reply I've ever seen from Al gore is that a tax cut is only for the rich and that his tax cut is good because he'll be able to tell me just where I should spend the money in order to get my taxes cut. I don't have a "beemer" in the driveway, and I'm hardly wealthy, but right now, GWB's tax cut is the only one that will affect me much at all.
So here's the more fundamental question. What is it that I want? I want my government to be more responsible with the money that I allow it to have. let's not make a foolish mistake here. My government does not have the inalienable right to tax as much money from me as it pleases. Taxes are under the control of the people and we give the government only as much money as we allow. That we've allowed it to bloat to its current size and to do so with such ludicrous wastefulness (we're #1 in eduation spending, but #13 in education results? Huh?? Less money out of every dollar gets to a welfare recipient than it would if it were a "normal" charity? Huh???) is a shame and we should be changing that right now.
I'm voting for GWB, not because I think him the ideal candidate, but because, of everyone who is in the race right now, he's in the position to do more of the things I find important to my life.
Wow, okay, that sure ended up being more of a rant than I intended. Oh well. :-)
Okay folks, I'm going to jump on this yarf-fest right here and now. Just because a person, let's say me, wants a tax cut, it doesn't mean that I'm:
a) Against a clean environment
b) Ready to oppress the masses because I'm cruel and completely eeeeeeeeeee-vil.
c) Gleefully rubbing my hands together because I'm going to create dirty air and water and stupid people because I'll be taking all the school money.
I want a tax cut. Want to know why? Because I'm working two jobs right now just to pay my bills and because we've had almost eight years of "targeted tax cuts" that never have managed to target me. I'm working nearly 70 hours every week trying to keep a roof over my head, to pay my bills, and to be a responsible father and the only reply I've ever seen from Al gore is that a tax cut is only for the rich and that his tax cut is good because he'll be able to tell me just where I should spend the money in order to get my taxes cut. I don't have a "beemer" in the driveway, and I'm hardly wealthy, but right now, GWB's tax cut is the only one that will affect me much at all.
Uh, it sounds to me like Ralph Nader is your guy. If any candidate has a true interest in the lives of working people, it's him, not GW (who has never had to work a real job, got into Yale via the world's oldest form of "Affirmative Action," and wants to put more tax burden on the people who can afford it the least.) Gore has had 8 years to show some sort of cahones in the environmental arena, but he's been at the forefront of lowering EPA standards and giving the auto industry free reign over lowered fuel efficiency standards. He's been bought and sold so many times, he doesn't know who he owes what to.
Remember, GW is the guy who put $600,000 of his dad's money into the Texas Rangers, then coerced the "working men and women of Arlington" to cough up $125 million to build a new stadium, so his share's value could go up to $14 million, after which he sold out.
No wonder he "believes in the hard-working people of America"; their taxes made him $13.4 million richer.
If you honestly believe either of these two bozos will help you out, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.
Well, let me lead off by saying that I'm not offended in the least. Right now, I'm very much trying to change careers from the 12-year career I've had working for State Government as a Police Dispatcher (oddly enough, never the real recipient of all this government tax money they've been collecting). I'm moving because my expenses require it.
I recently had to buy a new car. I retired by 17-year old model and bought one that I'll be driving for 15 more years. I would rather have not done it, but my old car died, and that's how that worked. :-)
My children are....well...they require food, clothing, and care and the money I spend on them would never be enough, in my book. I also live in one of the most expensive areas int he country to live, on average, which doesn't help matters any. Perhaps I could move, but that doesn't solve the overall problem.
Here's what it comes down to. Cutting taxes has never one single time harmed our ecomony. Kennedy did it, Reagan did it, and in each instance, the money we gained in the Federal Treasury increased. The problem in both instances is that the proposed spending went up by more than the increase we saw from the new revenue streams. Giving me my tax mone isn't a bad idea, but overspending what we do have always is. That's been the problem since we began running deficits, and it's still the problem now.
What I'd ideally like to see is a real and honest top to bottom review of how our government spends its money and a genuine effort to rid it of waste and inefficiency. Trust me, I've worked in a government long enough to know that there's an almost indescribeable amount of waste involved. That money needs to go back to the people from whom it was taken. We all need the choice, every one of us, to spend our money where we see fit, not where the government dictates it's in our best interest to spend it.
And a side note about the Bush stadium comment. when last I saw, the new stadium in Texas had already paid for itself in the revenue it brought in. I would rather have seen that money go back to the people of the area before it went anywhere else, but sports stadia are unique in that there one of the few things a government can build that pays for itself and generates consistent revenue.
I'm not saying Bush is the perfect candidate, but for the issues that mater most to me, he's the man who will do what I most want to see done.
Because there's a huge debt there waiting to be repaid, run up for services you and I both use, provided by the government. Paying it back not only makes economic sense, it's the right thing to do.
"Science, seperated from Philosophy, is the opium of the suburbs." -Yeats
"Why should we leave any tax surplus in Washington?"
Because our nation is in DEBT and we need to eliminate it. Because our nation might need to have that money in a financial crisis occurs. Because we need to have responsible finanicial policy.
But don't just take it from me. How about Paul Krugman, a noted economist and columnist of the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/18/opinion/18KRUG.html
"I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me." -Slogan of the Free Speech Movement, 1964.
If Harry had a snowball chance in hell of winning
I would consider it. While I agree with a lot of the Libertarian platform, IMHO the only way that they are going to get them acted on is on an issue by issue basis and getting them in the platforms of the Republicrats.
Just like a bush supporter, always thinking about himeself.
I cannot help myself, I cannot help my fellow man.
If you have a debt large credit card debt (say >= 18%
interest) and you get some extra cash, what do you do with it? You pay down your debt.
That is what finincally intelligent (FI) person would do. Unfortunately, most of the people in the US are not FI and they take the wad of cash blow it on CDs, beer, or a new computer.
As for Gore paying off the national debt, it will never happen. Gore is the traditional Democrat, he will spend every dollar he can get his hands on and then some.
Remember, the US economy did not start its growth until the Republicans took control of the House in
1992.
It sickens me how much money is donated and spent on this bullshit that could be better donated to help people out.
It sickens me how *little* money is needed to buy a candidate. The press made a big hoohah about how Bush supporters raised US$70M to get him to run. That's what, one major movie or two Internet startups?
A politician is one of the highest-returning investments a business can make.
What, you think money just disappears once it's spent? No, it just gets moved. In this case, it gets moved from rich donors to campaigns to TV stations. Nothing really horrible about that.
so I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate
Is Gore who you really think is the best candidate? If so, by all means vote for him. But don't give me that crap about wasting a vote. The only vote wasted is the one for a candidate you don't think is best. How many times does this cliche need to be repeated until you get in into your thick, geek skull?
Suppose you don't like any candidate, but you think that Bush would be a disaster, and Gore and Nader would each cause more trouble than not but would not be as much of a disaster than Bush.
The question is now whether you are in a swing state; if you're in a swing state (e.g. Michigan), vote Gore, because if Bush wins you're really in trouble, but if you're in a NON-swing state (e.g. California or Alabama), you have a free vote and can afford to vote Nader.
As for me, I'm voting for Gore, because he's smarter than Bush, has a record of balancing the budget, and is not rabidly anti-business like Nader. All y'all who are planning to vote Nader need to think hard about his anti-free trade, pro-union policies; you may find that you don't have any markets overseas for your geek product because Ralph has forced us into pointless trade wars. And all y'all thinking of voting for Bush do need to consider the Supreme Court factor: one vote could not only overturn Roe v. Wade but also roll back our freedom in other important ways.
All y'all who are planning to vote Nader need to think hard about his anti-free trade, pro-union policies; you may find that you don't have any markets overseas for your geek product because Ralph has forced us into pointless trade wars.
What I find sad, is that we are expected to vote for the candidate that will benefit us the best *economically*, regardless of right and wrong. I'm sorry, NAFTA/WTO "free" trade is unethical. It is a free pass for multinational corporations to unfairly exploit labor, and other resources, without accountability. Unions (non-corrupt ones that is) are good, because they are the Right Thing. I don't give a shit if I "may find that I don't have any markets overseas for my geek product". Guess what? That's the price of being right. And I'll gladly pay for it. I'm not voting for the candidate who will screw the most people to put the most money in my pocket. I'm voting for what is right and what I believe in. And I suggest alot of you geeks wake up and realize that stock options and the large sums of disposable income to waste on the gadget-du-jour is not *everything*.
And about those Supreme Court scare tactics: in recent history, more liberal justices have been appointed in conservative administrations, and more conservative justices have been appointed during liberal administrations. And in any case, abortion is de facto prohibited because obj/gyns who do the procedure are harrassed and threatened with death, until they stop...so it's not like keeping it on the books is giving us that much anyway. Shame on you for falling for their scare tactics, you should know better.
In all but a handful of states, where the result is not yet "decided", progressives have a free pass to vote for a third party.
Ain't Fallin for that One Again
http://www.michaelmoore.com/aint.html
What I find sad, is that we are expected to vote for the candidate that will benefit us the best *economically*, regardless of right and wrong.
Well, we simply disagree about the role of free trade. Along with the vast majority of mainstream economists, I agree that open trade is the fastest way to prosperity for what we used to call the "third world," and is as such the right thing to do. Take a look at Southeast Asia: the "tiger" economies, 1997-8 crisis notwithstanding, grew largely due to exports and open trade. Autarkic countries like India, Cuba, North Korea, pre-Salinas Mexico, et al. have by and large stayed poor.
Now if you want the rest of the world to stay poor so US/EU union workers can enjoy their cushy jobs, that's fine. I just don't agree with that approach.
Back on topic, I also think that prosperity at home is a good thing, and the Clinton/Gore record is very strong here. They did what the GOP failed to do in 12 years in office: they balanced the budget. That, along with technological improvements, is the #1 reason why we have experienced the boom we are in now. For that reason alone I would recommend a vote for Gore. Both Nader and Bush would lead us back into deficit-land, the former by spending and the latter by tax cuts.
Along with the vast majority of mainstream economists, I agree that open trade is the fastest way to prosperity for what we used to call the "third world," and is as such the right thing to do.
You surely aren't saying that whatever is the "fastest way to prosperity" is the right thing to do? So therefore indenturing third world countries because it allows rich western countries to modernize them is "the right thing to do?". Letting large corporations exploit the natural resources, pollute the environment and displace the native people of third world countries is "the right thing to do"?
India has the second largest population in the world and I believe the highest population density. Cuba still faces harsh and juvenile sanctions from the United States dating from the sixties, North Korea is responsible for its own mess, and Mexico and much of central America has been embrioled in bloody revolutionary/terrorist wars and corrupt governments. I'd say "lack of Western exploitation" is just one of *many* other problems in these countries.
Sorry, sometimes the Right Thing isn't the thing that puts the most money in somebody's pocket (especially ours).
To be fair, I'd like to point out that it was a Republican congress, a Democratic White House, and a booming economy that balanced the budget. It's not all up to the executive branch.
I'll be voting for Gore, but I'm not fooling myself - he and Billy didn't balance the budget by themselves, and I'm not so sure it would have happened at all without the republican majority in congress.
I'm not in love with the Democratic economic policy, but I'm more worried about the Supreme Court and social policies. I don't think Gore will totally fuck up the economy, but I do think Bush will totally fuck up the Supreme Court and could easily severely fuck things up socially. He and his supporters ware just way to conservative for my taste and he's far to close to the "religious right" to make me feel safe voting for someone who won't be able to beat Bush.
And speaking of the dangers of letting religion have too much influence in government, here's your quote for the day:
"During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." - James Madison
PS - I don't think that voting for Nader is wasting your vote. However, I feel it could be a mistake to vote for Nader (esp. here in Michigan) if you'd rather have Gore than Bush. Give Cmdr Taco a break - he's voting for what he wants, and that's a White House without GWB.
I grew up in one of the big one-horse towns in the States... Flint, MI. Several decades ago, it was a very properous town. Now, after the giant Union/Corp. war between the UAW and GM, it's a hell-hole.
The UAW continually raised labor prices in the area, until GM decided to leave... Then the UAW would strike to stop GM from leaving... A lot of the jobs went to the South (not mexico), where there was a lower cost of living.
Why was there a lower cost of living? Because not everyone had cushy UAW jobs. Those in the Flint area who didn't work in a UAW shop (side-industries, mostly) got raped every time the UAW got their cost-of-living adjustment. Prices rose to match, exactly. Why? Because when 80% (guesstimate) of the people just got a 5% raise, you can afford to raise your prices 5%...
In the end, the UAW lost... They killed the town because GM just wanted to make a higher-quality product, using more technological methods than un-skilled labor.
The saddest thing was watching all these people graduating from high-school, beleiving that there was a job in the GM shops waiting for them, that because their parents, and their parent's parents worked their, that they were entitled to a job there.
Sorry, I got an Engineering degree, and am now somewhat comfortable, not as much as I'd like, but I'm not going to complain...
So how is this at all on-topic? I've watched first-hand people whining that $60,000/year with full benefits/401K wasn't enough... For a 40 hour/week job in an area where everyone can easily afford a _HOUSE_, a new truck every year (GM Option 1 Discount already applied to advertised prices), and those toys needed to go spend a week in the fall deer hunting...
Unions? That's ok, I don't want them. My skills are in demand. If they weren't, I'd acquire those that were.
I am so sick and tired of people saying "wasting the vote". Damn it, vote for who you believe in. What does it matter if Bush or Gore is in the office. The fact is:
They are both going to screw you over
They are both going to raise taxes
They are both going to distroy your freedom
They are both going to sieze your money
They are both going to keep with this insane social Security thing
They are both going to look for WAR in the world
They are both going to make bigger goverment
It's all of the matter of how much you want to get rammed up the ass.
And you are saying I would be wasting my vote? Fuck you!! Wasting the vote is voting for these two jerks. I'm going to vote for something better. I'm going to vote for what I BELIEVE IN.
I'm voting Harry Browne if you care to know, and I'm going to help them get 5% of the vote so I can have REAL choice in 2004.
Look damn it, this country was started by a few flakes that wanted freedom. This year, I will be one of the flakes.
I know exactly how you feel, but you can't let them get to you. (I made a similar post to this one yesterday, because I lost it... I just get tired of all the anti-freedom people out to ruin my life and everybody else's life.)
Remember, we're probably going to get a few representatives this year, despite everything this is a good year for the Libertarian party.
So, when your sitting home or at work reading all these arrogant, sanctimonius people on Slashdot, just remember its more important to stand up for your beliefs when it is difficult than it is when it is easy.
A person who will do that is worth ten of the people who make the easy choice.
Nader would so cripple the military and the US that we would become a pathetic little backwater while China moves into the HUGE hole we left behind.
Heh, one of those views that has always amused me. You have nothing to fear from outside invasion, as no country would ever be insane enough to mount a real attack against the United States, and our economy is not based in overseas interests but merely supplemented by them. No, this isn't blind patriotism, its simple numbers; the nuclear capability of the US is enough to turn China, or any other country on the planet, into a fine sheet of glass. And before you say that the US would never use nukes, even when directly attacked with troops marching across US soil, think for a moment; what is the only country in the world to ever exercise a nuclear attack on another nation, at a time when the only attack that had been directed at the nation itself had been a relatively small bombing incident at a naval port, four years prior? Any country that decides to try and invade the US had better send all of their troops and citizens and plan on moving in for life, because the only chance they'd have from being reduced to their component molecules would be to mix deep into the American populace and forget that their homeland was ever anything else other than a nuclear test site. Geez, we live in a country where less than 5% of the population seem to exercise most of the power and yet the fear of China is still invoked regular just because they have a bunch of people.
Don't worry; I'll leave the "wasted vote" portion of your post alone, as I've harped on enough about that previously in this thread. :) Although I must admit that I am saddened that you are so condescending to one of the few people in this country who seems to have actually taken a little time to become educated about his decision, despite what you think of his particular choice.
The most classic portrait of a cynic that I know is that of the French General Henry-Philippe Pétain. In World War I, Petain was a hero for fighting the Germans at the battle of Verdun. However, Pétain was a fatalist and a cynic, and when WWII began, he was convinced that resistance to the Germans was futile:
Because he thought it would be worse for the French to fight a losing war with Germany, he went so far as to collaberate with the enemy, becoming leader of the Vichy puppet state.
Was French resistance doomed, futile? Well, whether it was or not, I think it was worth trying, but that's just me. Better to die a hero than live as a Nazi stooge.
Pétain, however, felt that capitulation was the lesser of two evils.... and he has gone down in history as a traitor.
This has nothing to do with the current election, except for this:
Whenever I hear someone talk about how we must support the lesser of two evils (even if they are comparitively trivial evils like our two presidential tickets), I think of Pétain and the choice he made.
"How many times does this cliche need to be repeated until you get in into your thick, geek skull?"
He even admits it's a cliche. How.. amusing.
Voting 3rd (or 4th, or 5th) party is making a statement. That's all well and good, but you're not making an impact on who WINS the election. So, in the sense that by voting, you're helping decide the winner of the election, you're throwing your vote away.
You have a choice - make a statement, or contribute to one of the eventual winners or the other. I'm opting for the latter, but to pretend you can do both is a little silly.
==
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. -Aristotle
Unless you live in a state in which the results will not be close (I live in Texas) - the you can vote for whoever the hell you want, because it really has no effect on who will win. A vote for Gore in Texas would certainly be wasted, so might as well make a statement by voting for Nader and not waste it completely.
What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power, and yet the throughput capacity was hardly changing at all.
Gore seems to come dangerously close to asserting that he essentially came up with Moore's Law before Gordon Moore.
BTW, the article does say some good things about Bush compared to Gore, such as:
Bush also supported the controversial exportation of cryptographic technology, an issue on which Gore dragged his feet. In addition, Bush took a George père–type "Read my lips: no new taxes" stand on e-commerce and ISPs, whereas Gore supports the current moratorium but has indicated that Net taxes are inevitable.
And strictly anti-Gore fodder:
But Gore has a less consistent record on the kinds of free-speech issues that are important to many in the online community... Gore supported what became known as CDA 2, the Child Online Protection Act, a bill that First Amendment advocates find objectionable because it attempts to regulate speech on the Net.
Keep that in mind if you think Gore "gets" all technology issues better than Bush.
"What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power..."
I hope you cut and pasted this from Gore's site because if so it is absolutely classic. It's also self-refuting. On the one hand he claims to be so technologically literate and insightful that he figured out Moore's law before Moore did but on the other hand he doesn't know what "logarithmic" means. Tee hee! --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
Yes, it's a direct quote from the interview (on the linked ZDNet page, not Gore's page). And I didn't even catch the logarithmic thing, though I knew something sounded funny!
For the mathematically challenged, logarithmic functions grow very slowly. Exponential functions, like Moore's Law, grow quickly. The two are roughly opposites. Not only did Al Gore nearly claim to invent Moore's Law, but he got it backwards!
Strictly speaking, Moore's Law is neither exponential nor logarithmic. It is geometric: the rate of increase is 2x/18. There is no exponent or logarithm to be seen.
What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power, and yet the throughput capacity was hardly changing at all.
Do you think we should tell him that processor speeds are increasing expoentially, and not logarithmically? I personally don't have the heart...
That having been said, I'm voting Gore in 2000 anyways. He's at least a little more clueful than the other guys. Besides which, IMO, this race isn't just about who's in the White House for the next four years, but who's on the Supreme Court for the next 20. Roe v. Wade hangs in the ballance. But that's just my opinion.
Gore seems to come dangerously close to asserting that he essentially came up with Moore's Law before Gordon Moore.
What Gore said was, "By the time I got to Congress in '76, I began holding these hearings about the future. What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic inrease in processing power, and yet the throughput capacity was hardly changing at all."
Here is a paper which addresses the history of Moore's Law, and it clearly says that, though he first made the observation in 1965, the current manifestation of what "shortly thereafter, someone (not Moore) dubbed this curve", was delivered in a paper at the 1975 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. I don't know when this unknown third party dubbed Moore's Law "Moore's Law", but it's not a stretch to imagine that it happened somewhat later than Gore's 1976 Senate hearings. Gore is not saying that he observed the phenomenon before Moore did, he is just saying that at the time he did observe the phenomenon (by way of listening to tech-industry testimony at these hearings, I assume), it was not known as Moore's Law yet.
In my opinion, this does not by any stretch qualify as a Gore exaggeration.
I'm so sick of the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum debate that accompanies the "lesser of two evils" vs. "statement" debate.
Face it, you of both sides: your vote can make a (very small) statement, and can have a (very small) impact on the outcome, both in who gets elected and in how well the also-rans "show", potentially helping a future third party.
Problem is, you only get one vote. It's easy when someone like Ronald Reagan is running because you either buy that ideology or not. But when positions are in the fuzzy middle and the race is closer, the decision gets murkier. There is no right answer: you can spend your vote hoping to influence the "lesser of two evils" outcome, or you can signal a broader protest by moving to an extreme.
But what you can't do is convince me that there is just one way to go. It is obvious that there is merit to both sides of the argument.
If voting were an end in itself - if the purpose of voting were simply the expression of one individual's political perspective - I would agree with you.
But voting is part of a process. It is an action with consequences. To the extent that you can predict the consequences of that behaviour, your choice should be dictated by them.
I want to vote for Nader, and will if either the election has been decided before it reaches the West Coast at the end of the day, or if it looks like California is not going to be battleground state. Otherwise, I will vote for Gore for the reasons expressed elsewhere. Voting for Nader, even if he loses, could have positive consequences; if Nader gets more than five percent of the vote, the Green party will be eligible for matching federal funds for the next presidential election, and the entire Green agenda will become a strong counterweight to the implicit political consensus. However, if my vote has as a consequence a Bush win, that consequence will be less than the negative consequences created by his Supreme Court selections and his willingness for police-state enforcement in the War on Drugs. (I remain completely shocked that the fact that he enjoys a privilege of forgiveness for his wastrel youth, while happily jailing thousands of Texans whose only crime is drug use, hasn't been made a central political issue.)
good reasoning, but if you vote for Nader "no matter what", that might make his movement all the more likely to snowball next time even without matching funds, and if Bush is as incompetent as you think, a 2nd potential Bush presidency will sink the Republican's chances for many years to come. See? I'm simply saying that any "truth" here is unknowable, and while you may draw a conclusion for yourself, the "less filling, tastes great" debate that rages on Slashdot doesn't convince anybody.
I remain completely shocked that the fact that he enjoys a privilege of
forgiveness for his wastrel youth, while happily jailing thousands of Texans whose only crime is drug use, hasn't
been made a central political issue.
Because people from across the spectrum believe in forgiving transgressions of the past, particularly follies of youth, after they are in the past. Thus, Gore's illegal campaign finance behavior in the recent past looms larger than Hilary Clinton's illegal option trading of twenty years ago? Actually, what I really believe is that your latching on to the rumors of Bush's drug use really represents your ideological differences with Bush. Stick to debating the ideology and stop trying to find supposed hypocrisy in the mud of which there is plenty to go around.
Your interest in seeing a Nader candidacy compromise Gore's campaign is so obvious and transparent, it's sort of sad. Not unlike, I'll be first to admit, my glee at seeing Perot erode the support from the Republicans - but I never unctiously (and selectively) encouraged possible Republican voters to "vote their hearts" and support Perot. That sort of thing is self-serving intellectual dishonesty. I also do not expect it to work - I think you underestimate how much the left dislikes GWB and is willing to do quite a bit of nose-holding to protect choice. (By the way, has anyone tracked the record of the Supremes on geek-related intellectual property issues? My suspicion is that democratic-appointed justices are less beholden to corporate interests and more likely to protect fair use, but I could be wrong.)
And whatever the errors of Gore's finances, it should be noted that he has not personally boasted of jailing thousands of Americans for similar irregularities. I'm sorry, as far as glaring drive-a-truck-through-it hypocrisy goes, it's no contest. Bush's drug use isn't a rumor - it's grounded in evidence. This is a good summary for starters. The fact is that there are still people in Texas jails for pot possession charges that date back to GWB's era of "youthful indiscretions."
Besides, if we were worried just about Bush's incompetance, that wouldn't be enough to make us vote Gore. I'm sure that he'd be able to select a reasonably bright staff. Most Republican administrations do. (There's a saying that the Republicans pick idiots and back them with smart guys, while the Democrats pick geniuses and back them with dolts.)It's the Supremes, stupid.
Turn off the TV, or at least ignore their 15 seconds of blab. Most of that > $100 million that Bush raised was for television advertising. Ironically, the money contributed mostly by big business is used to scum votes from the most impressionable Americans who are in no position to benefit from those business interests. That doesn't stop the bottom-feeding vote scums from saying whatever's necessary to win the election.
Ironically, the money contributed mostly by big business is used to scum votes from the most impressionable Americans who are in no position to benefit from those business interests.
Thats not true at all! Every time you pop a top off that fresh brewed brewski, just say to yourself, "this bud's for you, and god bless America."
Seriously, as consumers, typically we benefit when businesses (even big business) also benefit. As stockholders (as most middle class people are these days) we also benefit when publicly owned companies benefit.
Get rid of 90% of the lawyers and 90% of our problems will disappear.
Seriously, as consumers, typically we benefit when businesses (even big business) also benefit.
Of course, trickle-down economics. However, the kind of influence that is buying our politicians is not usually the kind that will ultimately benefit consumers. The contributors often expect something in return for their favor: for example, de-regulation that would allow them anti-competitive power.
Soft money contributions, not consumers, decided which issues were heard in this year's campaign and which the Democrats and Republicans ignored.
LMAO...and who said he can't do humor without being coached.
I think he represented himself well, and I don't think Bush could have done as thorough a job in a live interactive interview. Bush is more an ideas person, which to me means he asks his advisors what ideas people like and then generalizes about them... dunno if id vote for Gore though, as i think it would mainly be voting against Bush and his idiotic inability to deal with actual figures.
Perhaps he should get a chance first. Actually given Bush's people skills I'd say he would probably do better. Also, are you going to vote for Gore's idiotic knowledge of what a logarithm is? Get real.
Like many other people my age, I didn't feel like I had a real choice. The difference between Gore and Bush was almost negligable (yes I know a flame commment) but at the time either candiate is a crap shoot for affecting issues I care about. Hence, I did not even register to vote (because of the number of calls/junk mail that I would get from the freely available registration lists). Why should I get harrassed at home more often just so I could flip a coin (with the edge of the coin being Nader).
Now, I'm a little regretful that I don't even have a choice. I should have registered, I should have voted. I wish that Bush had cooperated in this interview (damn did Gore come off well to a geek like me!) just so I could hear if he would bother to memorize some standard rhetoric.
Anyway, for those who did register, go out there and vote. Vote for whoever you think will do the right job for you, not your dad or your company or your community, but who you think is correct. You are not a Democrat just cause your parents are either. Make a conscious choice about what you choose....
Best way to illustrate it is the difference between Linux and AIX. Given a set of technical tasks defined by an IT department, these two operating systems might seem similar in nature. But only after you do a little research do you realize the strengths and weaknesses of each. From the surface, they seem the same. But if you can get past the tough kernel of linux and the gui of smit, you'd find which is the best for the job... and any unix person would agree that is the correct way to make any choice.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics won't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
My state (NH) closes registration 10 days before election day--but allows registration at the polling place. Check your local listings and see if it's really too late. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Vote Third Party to disrupt the process.
Yeah, I'm in Illinois, so I'm screwed cause it's 28 days before. damn laws.... too bad I don't live in chicago proper, where you can vote early AND often! `8r)
the worst part is that my voter registration card is sitting at home, all filled out, but I made a sentient decision of not sending it in. damn i feel dumb....
--
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics won't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Re:Makes me sad... (Score:1, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20, @11:16AM EST
(#96)
What's the deal with registering?
I just got my citizenship this year, and havn't been psyched enough about either candidate to really think about voting. However, after reading the Gore interview , it does seem that for people who care about the internet he may be a better choice...
Anyway, what do I need to do to vote? I'd always thought I could leave the choice to do so or not up until the last minute..
I just got my citizenship this year, and havn't been psyched enough about either candidate to really think about voting.
Jesus Christ, you just got citizenship and don't care about voting? What the fuck are you doing here? I can at least ignore the apathetic people who live here by accident of birth, but to go through all the trouble of becoming a citizen just so you can be one more apathetic statistic is unbelievable.
Anyway, what do I need to do to vote? I'd always thought I could leave the choice to do so or not up until the last minute..
You can still vote -- you don't have to register. You can show up, they'll ask for ID (proof of residence) and it doesn't matter if you don't have it. You are an American citizen and you have the right to vote and need no paperwork or proof to exercise that right. They'll have you sign a book that says "I am a citizen and this is where I should vote, and I attest to this under penalty of law" and you get to vote. You may only be able to vote in the national contests by doing this but you're ALWAYS allowed to vote for a federal election by virtue of being a citizen.
--------------------------------------------- Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Jesus Christ, you just got citizenship and don't care about voting?
So what's so earth-shattering about it? "When in Rome do as Romans do" ;-)
What the fuck are you doing here?
Living, probably.
I can at least ignore the apathetic people who live here by accident of birth,
Ignoring, what, at least 40% of the population is a mightly accomplishment. I congratulate you on your determination.
but to go through all the trouble of becoming a citizen just so you can be one more apathetic statistic is unbelievable.
People generally don't go through all that trouble to become a statistic. They go through all that trouble so that they can safely live and work in the US not depending on the whim of a bureacrat from INS. Voting has nothing to do with it.
Besides, can I vote against all? If so, I'll go. But I don't think I have this choice.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You're absolutely right -- we should encourage all new immigrants to completely ignore the political process of their new country. After all, we've established it's cleary an insignificant and annoying part of living here -- they should just bitch about jury duty and lousy candidates while watching reruns of "Friends" and complaining about how high taxes are (when you get nothing in return, goddamit!). Actually getting up off your sorry ass and doing something about it is just too much trouble. Pass the twinkies....
--------------------------------------------- Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Well gonz, your right. Voting for who you think best suits you is key. A note to readers: Don't let propaganda sway you. Mom and Dad may have a different view than you and when you step in the booth its your turn to express that view. I think that who I vote for is amongst the most intensly personal things I do. It is noone's business who that vote is for and once I step in the booth the power is in my hands.- Gov. Jesse VenturaI think that the apathy level of our voting populous is a sad statement. There are lots of people registered and it is a right given to US citizens that they take for granted. Many men and women have died to grant us the privelege and millions worldwide would kill for the ability to do it. It's the same sadness I feel when I hear people complain about being a Juror, if only for a day. In peacetime, this is an infintesimally small price to pay for the freedom we enjoy. Yes, its a right and a privelege, but one should consider it as a personal civic duty to exercise all of your rights to the fullest. Ironically, those to lazy to vote still wont see the light in the big picture: if you don't vote for whom you believe is the person that best represents YOU and your views you really have no right to complain because after all you really have done nothing about it in the first place. They will still bitch, they will say it is because so and so is in office and yet thier pathetic assess will not get up and VOTE. btw...Gonz stop by #nothing and say hi - Sandor
Typically Bush stances have been modded down (but we won't get into that). On to the point, Bush seems to take a very laissez faire approach to how the government should approach the internet, which is good.
Governor Bush recognizes that our new economy is driven by the hard work and creativity of men and women in the private sector -- and not by Government bureaucrats.
I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is. Unfortunately he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas, which doesn't necessarily agree with another point of his to raise education in order to allow US citizens to meet the demand.
The high tech industry is in great need of highly skilled workers. Too many Americans are unable to fill these jobs because they lack the necessary skills.
However overall (apologies for a link to a homepage), he seems to be very technology oriented especially from what I saw in the last debate, as opposed to Gore that proposed filtering 95% of content at the ISP end.
However, I'm all about exploring both sides of the issues so to present both sides.
Warning: The last link is a slow load...
It's funny how so many people complain about excessive "government intervention" on the tech sector, and complain about "bureaucrats" and such. Makes one wonder, where did the ARPAN... erm, the Internet come from in the first place?
Governor Bush recognizes that our new economy is driven by the hard work and creativity of men and women in the private sector
Which is why he's a member of the party that favors repealing overtime pay and labor laws in general, so that large corporations can get that hard work and creativity on the cheap.
-- and not by Government bureaucrats.
PLATITUDE ALERT!
he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas
Which is yet another way that large corporations can get hard work and creativity on the cheap.
As for his ideas on how to improve education, most of them consist of (through one channel or another) subsidizing private schools - yet another naked wealth transfer from the rest of us to the wealthy.
And to call Baby Bush technology-oriented is flat-out goofy. Content filters don't work, because they don't filter content, but text. You can screen out the word "fuck", but not the meme for fucking. OTOH, Gore's proposal (though still wrong-headed) is somewhat more feasible - ISP's do keep logs, and it would put the burden on parents to monitor and filter the memes their children consume.
Mind you, I'm not saying Gore's all that hot. He's not - in fact, I consider him merely a tool of different interests. This is strictly and anti-Bush rant, not a pro-Gore rant.
How do otherwise smart people get sucked in by a creature like W? I don't understand it.
Flame away, y'all.
OK,
- B Slashdot: Microsoft bad, Natalie Portman good.
Remove the obvious from my email address to contact me.
How do otherwise smart people get sucked in by a creature like W? I don't understand it.
Simple. Fear of Gore. Its pretty much certain that Gore is a crook, and all it would've taken was Janet Reno appointing a special prosecutor like Freeh recommended. We've had to live with 8 years of Clinton and Gore pandering to fill up the DNC coffers. I don't want to have to live through 4 more years.
Of course, then we come to legacy. Clinton wanted comprehensive health care, and peace keeping missions to be his legacy. Noble enough. There's a very real fear that Gore wants his legacy to be the draconian elimination of pollution at the expense of a modern industrial society, and zero pop g to be his legacy.
There's a very real fear that Gore wants his legacy to be the draconian elimination of pollution at the expense of a modern industrial society, and zero pop g to be his legacy.
So what's wrong with this? You don't think there might be a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in for a century? And I think zero population growth would be great.
Also, what do you think Junior's legacy would be? An end to social mobility in America?
Red posing as a green writes: So what's wrong with this? You don't think there might be a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in for a century?
I think there is probably a better alternative to the environmentally hostile industrial practices we've engaged in, I just don't think that the better alternative is us abandoning technology and relegating ourselves to a life of agrarian poverty (mind you, without the use of pesticides or fertilizers...products of an industrial society) experienced by much of the third world, which is what the outcome would be if red/green knee jerk liberals such as yourself had the opportunity. Personally, I think electrical power is a great invention, so fuck you if you disagree. Thats why I'm a member of the NRA.
Red posing as a green writes: And I think zero population growth would be great
Zero population growth is great! With the help of HIV, pandemics of malaria (made possible by the banning of that bad, bad chemical DDT), cholera, dysentera, and antibiotic resistant tuberculosis, we may get to see zero pop g in our life time.
I have to clear up this stupid misconception. Just because someone opts to send their children to private school does not mean they are rich. Actually, in my church, we help parents pay for private school if they need the help. I know several families that would be considered poor to lower middle class that send their kids to private school (most without our churches help) because they realize the value of a good education that's concerned less with how Johnny feels about himself and more with how well Johnny can think.
The whole bit about subsidizing private schools being transfer of wealth ot the wealthy is a bunch of bull.
Also, don't forget that a lot of private schools are against this plan because they know that as soon as they accept govt funds, then the govt and teachers unions will step in and try and make them just as bad as a govt run school.
Frankly, I don't think govt has any place in education whatsoever.
I know several families that would be considered poor to lower middle class that send their kids to private school (most without our churches help) because they realize the value of a good education that's concerned less with how Johnny feels about himself and more with how well Johnny can think.
The solution to the problems with the education system may lie in private schools replacing public schools, but that doesn't solve the problem of how to make sure that everyone has access to a good school. The problem is that we don't pay teachers squat compared to what they can make in other jobs, and schools constantly decide to spend vast amounts of money on their sports programs instead of their academic programs. If parents want their kids to play sports, there are plenty of sports organizations out there for them to join. We need schools to teach kids better than they do now. We shouldn't have to import our skilled labor. It comes down to how much we're willing to spend on educating our children. I think Gore is willing to spend a lot more than Bush, but I'm not sure if he'll spend it in a way that will maximize the benefits. Paying teachers more would help at least. Then there's Bush, who seems extremely shady to me given his reluctance to give a straight answer to a straight question. (If I had to listen to him babble on about being a uniter and bringing sides together to come to a solution one more time I was going to puke) I just have to wonder why he so unwilling to be straight and honest with us.
I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is.
Agreed, I think we have too much govt control now. Bush want to remove some control and give us back our right to chose, Gore wants to keep that choice for himself. The word "dictator" comes to mind. Ok, so we elect our president, but does that give him the right to chose our lives for us.
I send my child to a private school, but does my tax money still fund the pathetic public school down the street pumping out ignorant future welfare recipients? Yes it does. I'd like my tax money to go to something important. Free handouts to the lazy are not important in my opinion.
I'd never see a tax cut from gore...I make too much. Why can't I take the cost of the private school off my taxes?
I don't believe all the things bush or gore says, but bush has a better line than gore.
"I send my child to a private school, but does my tax money still fund the pathetic public school down the street pumping out ignorant future welfare recipients? "
Give me a break! Chances are you send your child to a private school so they can be indoctrinated into your belief system instead of being "corrupted" by viewpoints that don't match with yours.
I myself went to public school as did most of my co-workers. Amazingly enough we make 6 figures a year at a minimum. We also have the ability to think for ourselves instead of blindly following the rhetoric .
A lot of public schools, frankly, bite. I'm sure your workplace is really a representative sample... unless your HR people are seriously insane.
Now, I did attend one. It performed well -- but the demographics were a bit intriguing. In particular, the community as a whole was pretty upper-middle class, and fairly homogeneous at that.
For pretty much all the years that I competed in high-school-ish academic events, my school and a *very* few others were predictably, practically without fail, trouncing others in the metro area. Not all schools perform well. The same happened at the state level in most events -- certain schools would dominate year after year.
There's a pretty big difference between a school like, IIRC, Stuyvesant (which I've heard is public, albeit a magnet school of sorts) and its ilk, and the various schools that get thrashed by the former group.
For another sample, I once spent a summer at a research-intensive program (it's intensive enough that, for instance, helping interested members to win the Westinghouse, er, Intel talent search competition is an explicit priority. They usually claim multiple spots out of the top ten.) Of those that were from the US (roughly, hm, 75% if memory serves -- the others ranged from Singapore to Jordan and elsewhere), the vast majority were from private schools. That's pretty suggestive.
Among the best-performing schools in the country, if memory serves, are actually the pariochial schools... but we can't have parents directing their money in THAT direction, can we? Heh. -- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad
I went to a private school for 5 years (6th-10th grade) and public school the rest of the time.
Private schools have lots of things going for them that skews the debate unfairly.
1) In general, instruction is better at private school. Not because the teachers get paid more, because they don't (they actually make less than their public school counterparts on average), but because in general the kids are better behaved and this is more likely to attract teachers dedicated to teaching and not getting a paycheck and 3 months off a year.
2) Private schools are selective, public schools have to take you. When you are only taking applicants that score over the 80% on standardized tests, it makes you look a lot better than if you have to teach Joe Retard.
3) Private schools are smaller, and private school classrooms are smaller than public school counterparts. Its easy to be a demographic anamoly when your sample size is 200 individuals K-12 as opposed to 1400 individuals 10-12th grade.
4) Athletic programs aren't quite as important at private schools.
Any and all of these situations are correctible in the public school sector, but they won't be. The powers that be in school districts won't let them be.
1) In general, instruction is better at private school. Not because the teachers get paid more, because they don't (they actually make less than their public school counterparts on average), but because in general the kids are better behaved and this is more likely to attract teachers dedicated to teaching and not getting a paycheck and 3 months off a year.
Also, teachers who can't teach don't last as long. The teachers union has a lot more difficulty fighting private schools vs public schools.
NecroPuppy -- Just another example of Slashdot Arrogance.
Chances are you send your child to a private school so they can be indoctrinated into your belief system instead of being "corrupted" by viewpoints that don't match with yours.
Actually I send her to a private school because after playing all of the 5th grade she couldn't even do simple fraction. On the "parents visit school day" we sat in the class for 20 min before my child even notice we were in the room. She was daydreaming, as wer 90% of the kids there. According to the public school she passed the 5th grade. When we went to put her in private school she was tested on the basics of 5th grade, she failed miserably. She now goes to class with 16 other children and they have more tests in a week than the public school had in a month. They cover more subjects and have more work. Daydreaming isn't ignored there.
My child is in a private school to learn, not to be brainwashed. I want the best for my child, if she isn't forced to learn she will not. She, like allot of children, is quite lazy, and will avoid doing the work if she can.
I went to both public and private schools. A few of the publics schools are good, but a depressing few. And in Maryland you don't have a choice of public schools, you have to take the one that you are assigned. At least with private schools you have a choice.
And I work with quite a few people making 6 figures a year. So why is it I produce more work than they do and with less problems?
According to the ZDNet interview, the 95 percent figure refers to the number of ISPs that have agreed to Gore and company's plan to provide "parent protection pages." It's not a commitment to filter 95% of pages, regardless of user wishes. He didn't express this point well in the third debate, so I wonder how many other people are confused.
By the way, I found that ZDNet interview refreshing. I can't see the other candidates talking about how cool it was to get an advance Palm Pilot, or even discussing the technical issues in this much depth at all.
I don't see how Bush can sincerely try to paint Gore as an "8-track" candidate.
Yogurt
(Who would vote, if he were American, and might sneak across the border and vote anyway.)
I don't know about you but I'm rather sick of having the government meddle in my affairs as it is. Unfortunately he also seems to support MORE H1-B visas, which doesn't necessarily agree with another point of his to raise education in order to allow US citizens to meet the demand.
I think the point should be to raise the level of education to the point where there is no need to bring in foreign labour to fulfill the demand - not by creating a protectionist system where inferiorly qualified people are hired because foreigners can't be hired. The restriction on foreign nationals being able to work in the US is something imposed by the government. MORE H1-B visas == less intervention.
I think I need to also correct a common misconception, which is that H1-B visa holders are underpaid. According to the law, one of the criteria for being granted an H1-B visa is where your sponsor states that the person being hired is paid the normal salary for that position.
According to the law, one of the criteria for being granted an H1-B visa is where your sponsor states that the person being hired is paid the normal salary for that position.
Here in Tompkins County, the Green Party has a much larger presence on the ground than either the democrats or republicans. In fact, the only sign I've seen of the republicans are some signs for Rick Lazio for senator and an office out by the commercial strip.
Bush and Gore expect to win this election by television, so they're making no effort to activitate the population. In the post-Kennedy age, the role of the president is to be a political neutralizer. The aim of the game is to win the race with the fewest number of votes.
The Gore campaign has bullied a few labor unions and feminist groups to speak out, but Bush doesn't care about having an off-television voice. This is why the Bush supporters are so silent. They don't exist.
People who are voting for Bush are voting because they hate Gore. People who are voting for Gore are voting because they hate Bush. Bush and Gore don't step up and say "I'm a great guy, you should vote for me" rather they step up and say that you shouldn't vote for that other guy. Both Bush and Gore are aiming for a political absolute zero.
Bush will probably win because he's a more perfect zero. What kind of Republican proposes the first-ever legislation to restrict CO2 emissions? What kind of Republican has no position on affirmative action? What kind of Republican says he "supports a culture of life" (opposes abortion) but admits that "we're going to have to change a lot of minds before we can get there?"
Unfortunately, most of us Nader people aren't high tech, so a lot of them think that http://www.votenader.org/ is hot stuff.
I disagree with the idea, however, that the author is sick of politics and wishes the election season would end. What the movement learned in 1968 was that it isn't enough, possibly isn't even desirable to have state power. The Green Party got a student elected to city council here in Ithaca and he's been crushed, domesticated and turned into a Democrat by the old ladies, wives of real estate speculators, who currently run the town.
To get real change, the people need to be mobilized and put constant pressure on public leaders. People are sick of globalization and the economic boom and they're fighting back... You can read the latest at
http://www.indymedia.org/
The Nader campaign is building a Green Party that is going to get in the face of elected officals and corporations.
Bush will probably win because he's a more perfect zero. What kind of Republican proposes the first-ever legislation to restrict CO2 emissions? What kind of Republican has no position on affirmative action? What kind of Republican says he "supports a culture of life" (opposes abortion) but admits that "we're going to have to change a lot of minds before we can get there?"
The kind of Republican that this is the one that rears it's head only every 4 years, and tends to disappear within 6 months. Just the same as the rarity of the more-centralized Democrat.
During *any* campaign, you need to take what the candidates say with a grain of salt; Bush Sr.'s snafu with the "No New Taxes" bit plays heavily here, and the fact that Clinton, when first elected, promised health care coverage, fought with the Rep. congress for a while, then let it drop after a year is also telling. Obviously, you as the average voter can only check the validity of some facts so far; an unbiased media can help determine the truthfulness of various statements (NPR, for example, has had post-debate reports that discuss how truthful every 'promise' the candidates make is).
Past elections have had a definite media bias bent, which makes telling truth from fiction harder. Bush Sr. and Clinton were both press favorites at the time of their initial runs. This year, we're lucky that the media is trying to remain unbias (particularly after screwing up the primaries with McCain). However, because they are trying so hard to be unbiased towards Reps and Democrates, it's showing the weakness in covering anything 3rd party. The only two 3rd-party candidates that get named are Nader and Buccahan, and only maybe 1% of the time Gore and Bush get. What about the Natural Law candidate
(so infrequently mentioned that I can't recall his name at the moment?) The press may try to be unbiased towards Rep and Dem, but they fall into the same boat in that they try to protect the 2-party system.
And in such a case, it's makes it hard to get more truth from those campaign promises. For example, on the respective tax plans, Gore attacks Bush, Bush attacks Gore. Gore, for example, says that Bush's plan helps only 1% of the population (the wealthiest), Bush says they get the most benefit since they pay the most taxes. Both are right, as we recently covered here at /. But I know that Nader and other third party candidates are shouting that there's still flaws in these numbers; they should be looking at the benefits as a percentage of income, and in this regard, the rich are making out like bandits, upwards of 10-15% numbers (IIRC), with the middle class and poor only getting 2-3%. Gore's plan is no different, since it still helps the wealthy. A fair tax plan would have similar benefits per income across all income levels, but neither of the two main parties want to approach it that way, lest they lose their soft money.
So for myself, I listen to the debates, and I'm not listening for what they plan to put into place when President, partially because they still need to get Congress to approve of those plans and partially because of the above. I watch the debates to see just what their general attitude and stance is on various issues, including the consistency of their overall system. (neither have much, IMO FYI) Since I'm not a swing state, I know I'm voting 3rd party, but I want to be aware of what attitude will be prevelent after the election, so I pay attention now.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain
the rich are making out like bandits, upwards of 10-15% numbers (IIRC), with the middle class and poor only getting 2-3%.
Why don't you look at it as a percentage of the income they pay in taxes? The rich pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes while the poor only pay a much smaller percentage. Who's making out like bandits now? Yes, they're making out like bandits compared to where they are now, but by your own argument, they're being fleeced and robbed where they stand now and will continue to be so in the future. The top 1% of the population currently pays 62% of all taxes. With Bush's plan, they will pay 64% of all taxes paid. Hardly seems unfair to the poor the way I see it. Not only do they pay MORE in value than the poor, but also they pay a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of their income - that's almost a double crime. Do the rich get that much more advantage from government than the poor do? Why should they have to pay that much more to support it, then? No, I'm not suggesting things be changed - it's practical expediency where it makes sense for the rich to pay more than the poor. It's just annoying that everyone considers it the DUTY of the rich to do so!
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not rich - far from it. I just think it is unfair for the vast majority of people who are not rich to use that to try to screw the minority who are. That's what the communists did in Russia.
In a completely 'fair' system, if the top 1% bring in 62% of the income, and pay 62% of the taxes, with similar breakdowns in all other income catagories, then the tax system is fair to all. If they then, under Bush, pay 64%, then the plan is unfair to the rich. If they pay 60%, the plan is unfair to the poor.
The problem is, the top 1% have an income larger than 62% (income != wealth, so it's not as high as 90%), yet they only collectively pay 62% or less. The percent that they earn as income *ought* to equal the percent they pay as taxes (percents based on the total society) in a flat tax system. Even worse, in a progressive tax system, as we claim to have in the states, they should be paying a larger percent in taxes than what they collect in income.
There was a story at the NYTimes today that research showed about 200+ companies, many on the Fortune 500 list, do not pay any taxes in all. Some even got refunds back from the gov't. This is all because corporations, as well as the very wealthy individual, have tax shelters (and the knowledge of those shelters) that everyone else doesn't have, and that's where the tax system breaks down. I'm all for a fair tax system, one that neither penaltizes nor rewards the wealthy, and where the same tricks (if they exist) are accessable at all income levels. I'm happy people have made vast fortunes in life, and I'm against complete wealth redistribution. But I do feel that as fewer and fewer control the money, fewer and fewer will have control of the gov't, and *then* we go from a democratic nation to a implistic one. And like our freedoms of speech and other Bill of Rights rights that are trying to be taken away from us now, we need to fight this possible transistion now as well, and fixing the tax code is a big start.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain
You start with the assumption that it is 'fair' to pay proportional to your income. If you and I were roommates - you made $100,000 and I made $10,000 - would we pay for the trash takeout and the phone bill in proportion of our incomes? No. It's not as if the government is the reason for the income. From a strictly moral perspective, the government has no _right_ to tax income. It makes a lot of practical sense but don't pretend it's 'fair'. The rich are paying MORE money for defense, roads, education than other people who reap precisely the same (arguably) benefits from those things.
Corporations are an entirely different animal in this picture. Personally, I don't have a problem with corporations not paying any taxes at all because the shareholders are taxed for their personal share of any profits, anyway. However, corporations don't pay income tax - they are not among the top 1% or bottom 99% or any of the other parts of the discussion on income taxes. Corporate taxation is an entirely separate issue from this one.
Tax shelters are a very stupid concept imho. They are like the government telling you "We want you to have a wife, 2 cars and 2.5 kids and we'll reward you for being the model citizen we want you to be and tax the fuck out of you if you don't do that". I hate the concept. A flat tax would fix that. It would also make it more fair in the sense that those who couldn't afford expensive tax consultants would get precisely the same results and those who could.
How the hell is the tax code related to your Bill of Rights? You have to be smoking some of the stuff Nader is to believe there is any correlation. The reason why the rich are able to control the government is because of the way lobbying and campaign finance works in this country. THAT is the problem you need to fix, not the tax code.
Yes, income taxes are rather immoral. We are now a commerce-based society, I'm in favor of a national sales tax, with waviers for those that can't afford such taxes. (I loved Perot's idea of a .50/gallon tax that he proposed -- but everyone saw that as being a nutcase, and the summer gas price situation only solidified my opinion that the american public has no idea of how to plan for the future).
I'm not sure how well the roommate situation analogy compared to paying taxes, however. Thing is, you later support flat taxes, which is what I think will work as well. The roommate situation ends up being the same here too, with the more wealthy paying the bulk of the costs of living.
There's something lacking, I can't place my finger on it, however.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain
The only point I was trying to make (badly) with the roommate analogy was that it's not 'fair' that people pay according to what they make and it's not a 'right'. It's the only practical solution though and I'm all for practical solutions that work.
Let's see. The rich get a much larger share of their income from stock market gains. This is taxed at a lower rate than money I earn by working my tail off. Because tech workers get paid well I already am in the highest tax bracket. How on earth could the rich be paying MORE, as a percentage of their income, than I am?
Sounds to me like somebody's pulling statistics out of his ass...
Because tech workers get paid well I already am in the highest tax bracket
That, sir, is the definition of the word "rich". Btw, those statistics were talking about percentages of money paid as income tax - which does not include capital gains tax. So the richest 1% pay 64% of all income tax.
But they also want to take several million dollars from the gambling industry, which are one of the nations leading causes of crime, as well as being controlled by criminals on their own right.
As it turns out, they split them. Gore supporters include Apple Computer's Steve Jobs, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, and John Doerr, the venture capitalist who has backed many Internet companies. Bush's include Cisco's John Chambers, former Netscape president and CEO Jim Barksdale, and Michael Dell of Dell Computer Corporation.
Is it just me or does bush have the PHBs, and Gore have the "visionaries"?
Granted, they're all suits, but I like Gore's suits much better than Bush's suits. Andreessen or Barksdale? I'd go with Andreessen any day of the week.
Of course, I'd be more interested in Jamie Zawinski's vote...
well, I'm not going to read anything into it. I'd describe myself maybe as a "green libertarian". This doesn't mean green party, just that I'm mostly libertarian but favor regulations where the environment is concerned.
How arrogant is /.? Seriously, you think Gore woke up and said "Oh I need to cater to Taco and Katz this morning since their vote is more important then the rest". Voting is very important, and of course to get votes you have to cater to the public, just because Gore had a semi-frank discussion on eTopics (tm) does not mean that he is trying to sweeten /. readers up, but all techies.
Reposting this from previous article for the links (because supposedly Greens are only posting the official site). Lessee, add grassroots.com to that list (you know, Google is your friend). Also see bottom of post for debunking of Taco's lesser-evilism philosophy (you'da thunk that recent electoral college article would have made this obvious).
--
The existing system would like nothing more than for you to not vote, in "protest". You see, if people who care don't vote out of disgust, the two major parties (think of them as two subsidiaries of one big corporation) have their success solidified. They need only to pander to the right or left, and scare the weak willed into voting for them. So *not* voting is playing right into their hands. They would like you to relinquish your power.
Did you ever notice how many times each side says this election is about "issues" and "real differences". Imagine that! Unlike all other previous elections, right? Doesn't it make you curious as to why they feel they have to repeat this over and over to you? Well, it's because they *know* there aren't real differences. They *know* they agree on NAFTA/WTO "free" trade, propping up corrupt foreign governments because it is in our "national interest", prohibiting gay unions, gun laws, the environment, the most militarized democracy in history. Of course they will beat the drum of the Supreme Court and abortion to get you running scared and voting for them, despite the fact that in recent history conservative adminstrations appointed more liberal justices, while liberal administrations appointed more conservative ones. No wonder the Commission on Presidential Debates, which, you guessed it, is run by a Republican/Democrat duopoly, doesn't want third parties debating and bringing up real issues.
If you vote for Bush or Gore you are really voting for the same thing. Despite any superficial or character differences between them, either way you are voting for further corporatization and corruption of our political process.
The fact is, while many of us may seem very comfortable, this election is about a *lot* more than the Supreme Court, or whatever crisis-du-jour the Republicrats want to pull out of their hat. This election is about deciding whether you are going to hold government accountable to the people, or whether you will allow faceless powers pull the wool over your eyes. This is your chance to take a stand.
I am voting for Nader, among many other reasons, because he has a strong platform on social justice, and government accountability. He has a long history of fighting, and repairing the system. The Green platform addresses farmers, average working people. Those who have been "protesting" by not voting out of disgust, are the *real* majority. This is the real center.
Of course, many around this parts favor Browne and Libertarianism. I can live with that, I agree with some of the ideas of the Libertarian party, and I certainly respect their candidate above the two status-quo candidates.
Don't vote like you pick soda beverages. Vote your conscience, otherwise, greater or lesser, you will always get some sort of evil.
Don't be taken for granted. "If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you in very unpleasant ways."
Ain't Fallin' for that One Again
http://www.michaelmoore.com/aint.html
Bush and Gore Make Me Want to Ralph
http://www.michaelmoore.com/07192000.html
Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
http://www.billionairesforbushorgore.com
Who Do You Trust?
http://www.time.com/time/campaign2000/story/0,7243,58092,00.html
And if they have you scared about wasting your vote: the election is determined by the electoral college, not popular opinion (see recent Slashdot article on how this system is fscked). That means, in all but a handful of battleground states, where the outcome has already pretty much been decided (e.g., in NY Gore has a large lead), you can turn the tables on the same mentality that says your one vote can't possibly affect the outcome - and vote for a third party.
And on the risk of getting too squishy here:
"A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble." -- Ghandi
Interesting radio show with a 3rd party slant. They also webcast...you might want to listen. mrgoat
Day job -packetherder- Night job -body jewelry tester- Alignment -closet freak-
I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate)
Will you and Hemos please quit repeating this fucking lie? It's not "making a statement". It's "voting your conscience". Ever heard of that? It's where you select the person who is best for the job, not one of the big two "because they have a chance of winning."
I think I explained my position pretty well in this post, but I'll repeat the important thing here; the only true way to "waste" your vote is to pick someone just because you think they have a chance of winning, not because you think they'll do a good job. Even if your candidate gets no electoral votes, every vote is a sign of support the candidate and his/her party can build on, something they can point out to show they have supporters, people who believe there's a better way to do things. At the very least, 1/3 of the potential third-party supporters voting their conscience instead of the "sure thing" would probably take enough of a chunk out of the Big Two vote to turn some heads.
-------------
If the women don't find you (+1, Interesting), they might as well find you (+1, Informative).
It would be just as fair to call it 'being counted'. I intend to Be Counted voting for Nader- all other politicians in the US will be able to consult that number and know damn well what my agenda is and what will or won't get my vote. This is NOT GAME THEORY! It is power politics. It's not about winning one particular game, it is about defining the issues and concerns that politicians consider when taking action.
I heartily encourage libertarians to get out a huge vote for Harry Browne, even though I personally think he and they are lunatics: that doesn't matter, the point is that _whoever_ wins, even if it's Nader, I would want that President to remain firmly aware that there is a large power bloc stubbornly opposed to bigger government. This needs to be VISIBLE! Those people _must_ be represented, and voting for Bush is not going to do that.
By the same token, I'm damned if I'm going to vote for Gore because Gore has been... not adequate at living up to committments that he's made (such as the toxic waste burning facility in New Jersey), and because only Nader allows me to BE COUNTED as part of a large power bloc that is obviously, blatantly, stubbornly opposed to corporatism. Voting for Gore will accomplish nothing in this: voting for Nader will make it very obvious what my concerns and the basis of my vote are. It is not relevant whether the person wins- you think the President is God? The important thing is to establish the factions, to BE COUNTED in such a way that other politicians can tell what you really care about.
Politics is a damned busy job- polling, canvassing, trying to figure out what sort of actions will get people to support you and what sort of actions will produce a deadly backlash and knock you out entirely. The politicians are not going to concern themselves with the party faithful once the votes are counted- the sheep will be good and stay in line. The politicians will be grovelling over the numbers for all the third parties- "oh look, X% voted 'no big government', if I violate that they could produce a backlash and eat away at my constituency! Oh look, Y% voted 'anticorporate', they will go and tell my voters about the 7 billion in 'soft money' I got from Microsoft to swing that House vote! Dear oh dear, that will never do- and people keep finding out about these things- perhaps I'd better not do it this time if I want to get re-elected..."
Venal, but what do you expect from politicians? THIS IS NOT GAME THEORY. It is public relations. The politician who thinks it _is_ game theory gets unseated quite promptly because you have to appease the people, pay attention to the zealots because the zealots are the ones paying attention to what YOU DO. The Libertarians are the ones who can quote off the amount of government spending you authorised. The Greens (certainly the Nader supporters) are the ones who can quote off the extent of corporate abuses in current society, and make a good case for why this is a doomed, self-destructive path to follow, to end in another Great Depression. THESE ARE THE ONES THAT PAY ATTENTION. That write editorials. That get people to the polls, that go door to door, that talk politics with their friends. These are the ones that will kill your political career if you don't keep an eye on them and keep your nose clean.
CmdrTaco, I don't know if you are concerned with corporatism (Nader) or if you are perhaps vehemently opposed to big government (Browne) or whatever. I only know that if you refuse to pick a party to support based on what your genuine concerns are, you're being ignored- and I don't think you need to be ignored. Pick somebody who isn't Bush or Gore, unless you're oh-so-deeply-impressed with their wisdom and sincerity (ROFL! 'scuse me) that they truly are the ones that represent you.
One of the greatest reasons I see people supporting Al Gore is his environmentalism. I am think Al Gores' environmentalism is pretty trivial.
Yes, I think it will be a great loss if George Bush has his way with the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. (That phrasing makes it seem like George W Bush is about to seduce their daughters! And that is almost the emotional level this seems to be at.) And I do think Gore will be able to stop this from happening.
But a few national parks and national forests in this country are a trivial matter. The result of losing these is that a few yuppies may miss out on a chance to commune with nature.
The real environmental issue is the third world, and the corporate control of it that will lead to it's ruin. Al Gore and George W Bush both support turning the entire third world into a resource pool, and a market, for US goods, and support any military dictator who will uphold this.
So with Gore and Bush, we get environmental destruction of the 3rd world, but with Gore we get a few pretty parks saved to look at while the world burns.
First I agree, but hipocrisy has its value. Gore will not lead on environmentalism, but he will be much more susceptible to green pressure than Bush. He will also enjoy using his Veto Power to prevent Congress from neutering environmental regulation and he will probably appoint competent people to the relevant federal agencies. That doesn't make Gore my buddy, but it does make him less destructive than Bush --
look, cheese ahoy!
Arguing that Gore's environmentalism consists exclusively of preserving a few "pretty parks" is simple-minded and igonrant.
Gore has long been a supporter of international treaties to stop global warming, and promises to work hard as president to make affordable alternatives to fossil fuels a practical reality.
Bush and his oil-loving Texan friends, on the other hand, would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, which is one of the reasons America can't take a firm stand in violence in the Middle East, because pissing off the Arab nations would lead to another embargo.
Bush and his oil-loving Texan friends, on the other hand, would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil...
I think we all love oil, considering the fact we use it every day. Unless you gave it up. You'd certainly be in the minority if you did.
And what makes you think Bush would do nothing to decrease our dependence on foreign oil? I was under the impression he's made it clear he would reduce restrictions on domestic oil production, and thus, reduce or dependence on foreign oil. I'm afraid I don't follow your logic...
Promises to make affordable alternatives to fossil fuels are great... Bush has made some too, not sure if you caught that. His position, though, is that while alternative sources are important, they're not here yet. While they're not here, we darn well better give ourselves what does work, like oil, or we'll continue to have problems in the middle east. We can't ignore a problem while we look for a different solution, if looking for a different solution has an indefinite timeframe connected to it.
Al Gore and George W Bush both support turning the entire third world into a resource pool, and a market, for US goods, and support any military dictator who will uphold this.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Time was when U.S. leaders would support any third world dictator who claimed to oppose Communism. Now they'll support any third world dictator who will allow multinationals access to cheap labor and raw materials.
I guess some things change - under the old system, they at least had to pretend to be acting in the best interests of democracy. Now it's all about the Almighty Dollar. Upholding dictators in order to keep the world safe for democracy sounds more noble than upholding dictators so we can keep buying athletic shoes for cheap.
Well that is actually an impressive interview, and it sure makes it clear that Gore has his head on much straighter about the net than Bush.
However, I think that Gore's "vision" for the internet is not as pluralistic as we might want it to be. As you could only expect from somebody largely funded by corporations with vested interests, I think Gore sees the net more as an economic engine, than as some great democratizing force in which ideas can flow freely. Let's just be careful what we wish for, we might just get it.
Dick Cheney is indeed the most intelligent and the most balanced person in this race. He will be a very effective administrator. Unfortunatly that will be disastrous for everyone in the World who doesn't own a small oil company, and to the US in general.
Put simply, he is not a moron, he is the kind of evil genius that you usually only meet in literature. Cheney does not believe that politics and government has anything to do with morality, i.e. with difference between good and evil. Now, I am sure a lot of people share the cynical view that politics is about power and nothing else. But the moral pandering of politicians is part of this power game. Hypocrisy is underrated. A politicians that has committed himself to an idea of the public good is at least vulnerable to attacks on this ground. He is sometimes forced to follow upon this commitment even if deep inside he doesn't care (like Bush). It is even more so with a politician who actually cares but is too much a coward to do anything unless pushed by public opinion (like Gore). Cheney will simply work hard and smart to reward his friends at our expense.
I don't know of any particular view on technology, but there is no reason to believe technology is an exception to the Golden Rule( who has the gold makes the rules). He will not talk about censorship like Tipper and Lieberman, he will just find more efficient ways to get you to shut up if you get on his nerves.
In addition, his belief that power is the only value will isolate the united states further and raise the chances for future confrontations because it is at odds with the direction of globalization. Human rights, international fairness, environmental damage control are all parts of a global agenda that has increasingly affectet diplomacy. Cheney is the guy who voted against the US asking for the release of Nelson Mandela. He has cosistently maintained that genocide and other atrocities around the world are not our business ( except when we are the architects--as in Chille and now in Columbia). Cheney wants to go back to the good old days of the cold war. This is not in anybody's interest ( excluding amunition suppliers).
PS. if you put Cheney next to Gore and Bush on the table at www.billionairesforbushandgore.com you see immediately how well he fits.
Our American system was, metaphorically speaking, an early Napster-like political device to empower each individual citizen to draw upon the memory and experience of all other citizens and share in a collective control of the destiny of our nation. Our Constitution is a kind of software for linking every individual in the country into a political network that regularly harvests the insights and opinions in biennial and quadrennial elections to give a direction to the country.
This reminds me awfully of something Neal Stephenson might say. I wonder how many times Gore has read Snow Crash? Now THAT is an interview question I want answered.
Your vote is only truly wasted if you don't take the time to evaluate the real breadth of options out there.
Here is the SHORT list: sort @lastname;
Harry Browne (Libertarian)
Pat Buchanan (Reform)
George W. Bush (Republican)
Al Gore (Democrat)
John Hagelin (Natural Law)
David McReynolds (Socialist)
Ralph Nader (Green)
Howard Phillips (Constitution)
Since CmdrTaco is down on candidate's websites today, I'll just link to issues2000.org where you can find out what each candidate intends to do about your favorite topic. But it won't tell you much about the candidates personality and only indirectly about their charachter.
/.'ers, hackers, and others interested in keeping unconstitutional federal censorship away from the Internet should strongly consider voting Libertarian.
As part of various national movements to play this sim called Politics.gov which we appear to be trapped in, a number of people throughout the US are participating in an exercise to make sure that every vote is a useful vote.
Basically, the US has an Electoral College with winner-take-all spoils on a state by state basis, with the exception of Vermont (where they distribute the electoral college votes proportionally). So, to game the system, it behooves people to use wasted votes in Texas and other Bush states that Gore has no chance to win to take their votes and use them to vote for a presidential candidate from the Green Party (Ralph Nader) or another party (like Libertarians or Reform party). The reason is that if a third party can break the 5 percent vote threshold on a national basis, they qualify for federal matching funds in four years, and also qualify to appear on ballots as a major party for the next four years in that state.
So, groups like Greens For Gore have been established to help make sure that every vote counts.
Additionally, on the West Coast, we have a three hour time difference between when polls in the East close, especially states like Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio which are in contention and will make or break the election. So a lot of us are having parties and using web sites to find out who's winning there. Then we'll go and use our votes wisely at 7pm ourtime, since our polls close at 8pm.
Plus, on the West Coast, most voters are absentee voters - we can mail in our ballots at post offices up to midnight on election day - so those with absentee ballots are waiting until 11pm to send convoys of ballot stuffers off to designated post offices (like SeaTac Airport) which are open till midnight.
Hey, you back east may not like it, but tough. And here on the tech-heavy west, the real center of the US, we know how to design, play, and win games, and politics is just a game. Will in Seattle (at work)
Has anyone ever told you that your efforts are almost as sleazy as those of those bastards in New Hampshire and Iowa? You know, those states who made your primary choice for you and effectively prevented you from voting for Elizabeth Dole or any of the other candidates with superior visions but inferior fundraising ability?
Nope, but I resemble that remark. Face it, I live in the west, where we are underrepresented in electoral college counts due to the preponderance of one and two electoral vote states that are almost all back east and also due to the fact that our population has doubled since 1990 while the midwest has shrunk, but the electoral college counts are based on 1990 census data. So anything I do to maximize the West's electoral college sway is my right, due to the unfair system. Just think of me as a Black Hat Hacker, showing how insecure the Electoral College system is. You may not like me, but too bad.
I understand that in some countries there is a ban on election results reporting until all of the polls are closed. That's just what the U.S. needs, along with a single national primary date (perhaps during the convention, to heighten the suspense). I'm sick of being effectively disenfranchised because of living in a state with a late primary located east of the Mississippi.
And I'm tired of having ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS announce the election is over before I've even voted here in the West. So anything I do to exercise Freedom Of Information is my birthright, especially since I was born right next to the Alamo, with a rattlesnake in my crib (true story).
While they can black out our TV news, they can't stop us from visiting the RealAudio streams from radio stations back east, using CNN web sites, and other activities.
In the 1829 election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Kentucky's 2nd District, Jackson Democrat Nicholas Coleman defeated National Republican Adam Beatty 2,520 to 2,519.
In the 1847 election for the U.S. House of Representatives in Indiana's 6th District, Whig candidate George G. Dunn defeated Democratic candidate David M. Dobson 7,455 to 7,454. Also in 1847, Whig Thomas S.Flournoy defeated a Democratic candidate named Treadway 650 to 649 in the race for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 3rd District of Virginia.
In the 1854 election for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 7th District of Illinois, Democratic candidate James C. Allen bested Republican William B. Archer 8,452 to 8,451.
In the 1882 election for U.S. House of Representatives in the 1st District of Virginia, Readjuster Robert M. Mayo defeated Democrat George T. Garrison 10,505 to 10,504.
RECENT EXAMPLES IN NONFEDERAL ELECTIONS
In 1977, Vermont State Representative Sydney Nixon was seated as an apparent one vote winner, 570 to 569. Mr. Nixon resigned when the State House determined , after a recount, that he had lost to Robert Emond, 572 to 571.
In 1989, a Lansing, Michigan School District millage proposition failed when the final recount produced a tie vote, 5,147 for, and 5,147 against. On the original vote count, votes against the proposition were ten more than those in favor. The result meant that the school district had to reduce its budget by $2.5 million.
In 1994, Republican Randall Luthi and Independent Larry Call tied for the seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives from the Jackson Hole area, with 1,941 votes each. A recount produced the same result. Mr. Luthi was finally declared the winner when, in a drawing before the State Canvassing Board, a PingPong ball bearing his name was pulled from the cowboy hat of Democratic Governor Mike Sullivan.
In 1997, South Dakota Democrat John McIntyre led Republican Hal Wick 4,195 - 4,191 for the second seat in Legislative District 12 on election night. A subsequent recount showed Wick the winner at 4192 - 4,191. The State Supreme Court, however, ruled that one ballot counted for Wick was invalid due to an overvote. This left the race a tie. After hearing arguments from both sides, the State Legislature voted to seat Wick 46-20.
--------------------------------------------- Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
When I was protesting the unfair debates at wakeforrest University, there was this guy in a suit with a big "billionaires for bush or gore" sign asking for people to give him more money. Getting the message out there is fun.
Oh yea, on the same trip, I attented a seminar that the North Carolina Alliance for Democracy was doing, and they raised a lot of important points about campaign contributions... and even though most /.ers don't live in NC, they have a lot to say. Oh yea, Nader is the only candidate I know of who supports publicly funded elections.
OK, I'm Canadian, so I can objectively point out all the dumb things in the interview (and the article accompanying it; Gore isn't the only idiot out there!).
So here goes my shortlist:
George W. Bush and Al Gore both have flashy Web sites; each has high-profile backing by CEOs of Internet and technology companies.
News Flash! Rich people, even rich technology company CEO's support Bush or Gore! I bet some even support both! But we can do better: Six people you have heard of will vote for Gore or Bush!
To help our readers determine how the Net would fare in their respective administrations
Because obviously the President is the person most in charge of the future of the Internet.
revealed... a sly and unscripted sense of humor. Y-LIFE: Let's begin with a geek equipment check. Are you a PC or a Mac guy?
That's right, let's reveal the sly and unscripted sense of humour by making the first question a joke. I suppose if he said, "Duh?" they would have mentioned how serious and business-like he is.
Y-LIFE: So the Vice President of the United States jacks in his laptop in a hotel room every night, just like the rest of us?
GORE: [Smiling] No, I have a secure connection. I'm on the National Security Agency, and I communicate regularly on national security matters. But how I log on—hey, I dial up from a hotel room, too, if that's all there is.
So the secure connection is an encrypted hotel dial-up connection so he can communicate on sensitive matters. Unlike the rest of us, who don't use encryption when in hotels, but only when we are at work or at home. I mean, when I have sensitive matters to discuss, I usually write them on a big banner and have an airplane pull it across the sky for everyone to see.
But my own personal journey began when I was a kid of 10, watching my dad [Sen. Albert Gore Sr.] write law authorizing the Interstate Highway System.
I didn't get online until 1977, but I had the idea of going online when I was 10, before there were any computer networks. In fact, you could probably say I invented computer networks, but don't quote me on that.
What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power
But I did invent Moore's Law! Except no one would credit it to me because I thought that multiplying by two each time was logarithmic growth; it wasn't until Moore came along that we realized it was exponential.
when I heard my dad explain how the sudden proliferation of cars after World War II would overwhelm our two-lane highway system, and that's why we needed a superhighway system.
I always thought it was the other way around--that the superhighways brought about the proliferation of cars. Perhaps his dad was in the pockets of the auto companies.
"I took the initiative in the Congress"—and then I went on to say—"in creating the Internet."
That's right, he actually didn't invent the Internet. He just created it. That's a much more modest and accurate claim.
An aide interrupted to say that the vice president was due to leave Portland State University with his entourage for the airport...
Yes, we're talking to someone who is rich and powerful. Let's just remind everyone, in case they forgot.
Yeah, and they can block only some portals.
So, despite your efforts, people in China won't be reading your Yahoo! Life interview.
Distributed intelligence is a law of nature. It is more than a technology. It's also a law of culture and politics and evolution.
No, relativity is a law of nature. "Distributed intelligence" is a dumb phrase that Gore made up.
...The details as to how it's worked out, I don't know, but we'll figure it out.
Wow! It took long enough, be he finally admitted that he doesn't have all the answers. I'm impressed. Really.
Y-LIFE: Referring to the debate over explicitly giving permission for a site to use personal data—consumers opting in—versus assuming the data can be used unless a consumer declines—opting out—are you "opt-in" or "opt-out"?
GORE: I don't think it's fair to place the burden on the consumer. It's just not practical to assume that everybody's going to be able to make that kind of sophisticated choice, especially when people are pressed and harried and overworked and trying to pay the bills. It's impossible to require them to devote valuable minutes—and sometimes more—to working their way through some damn complicated decision tree that's not written very well. Why the hell should the burden be placed on them? I feel very strongly about that, and this is often a raw decision between commerce and human values.
On the other hand, this time he won't admit that he has no clue about opt-out or opt-in. But he's sure willing to try to please everybody!
Well, there you have it folks! The very reason party strategists don't want elected officials doing interviews. Why, with intelligence like that, we might as well put "Bill from Arkansas" in power. Oops, already done that.
Just for a laugh, i'm going to post a "babelfished" article from "Le Monde" (the largest circulation French newspaper). Perhaps the viewpoint of an international source would be interesting. I made a few corrections in the name of readability, and if you doubt that the original link is: http://www.lemonde.fr/article /0, 2320,89273,00.html and you can run it thru babelfish yourself and compare.
Here goes:
Gore counters Bush, a true choice
Updated Monday August 28 2000
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. The two principal candidates of the American presidential election of November 7, the republican George W Bush and the democrat Albert Gore, are, at the current moment, more or less equal in the surveys taken at the end of conventions of their respective parties; they both come out of it reinforced, more definite and more combative, ready for the long autumn stretch, which is the final playing field. In the two camps, one envisages a very tight election and no judicious political expert risks a forecast. For the voters, the landscape was cleared up considerably : they have in front of them a true choice. A choice, initially, between two men of the same generation, both sons of political leaders and of a centrist leaning but with the basically different personality. A choice, especially, between two visions of prosperity and of how to get there.
In Philadelphia, George W Bush, governor of Texas, made the republican convention swallow his " conservatism of the compassion " , a sort of human right which, while granting to richest a privileged role, does not want to leave anybody stranded.
In this vision, the role of the State inevitably is very limited since it is not him but the private sector which is at the origin of the longest cycle of growth of the American history ; in other words the private sector will make it possible not to neglect anybody, through the promotion of private teaching and the devotion of caritatives and religious works. All the aspiring members of the republican party were gelled together in Philadelphia to emphasize this message of optimism and fraternity ; the right wing faction was hidden and Mr. Bush succeeded in low presenting his plan of tax reductions like a plan favorable to the incomes, omitting to specify that it was definitely more favorable to the highest incomes.
George W. Bush proposes to devote a good part of the budget surplus, fruit of this prosperity of the Nineties, with tax cuts : it is the centre piece of its electoral device.
Another part of the "kitty" would be used to refund the national debt and to refinance the social security, of which a part would be privatized.
The vice-president Al Gore, intends to carry out tax cuts much more modest, whose principal recipients would be the incomes of the middle class, and to devote the major part of the budget surplus to the refunding of the national debt and the reform of social security. Mr. Gore is presented thus in the form of a guard of the budgetary policy of discipline which, since 1993, became the creed of the American Democratic Party and which it very largely contributed to benefit president Clinton. It is this policy, affirm the Democrats, who, while allowing to reduce the public loan, opened the way with the fall in the interest rates and supported the economic growth : to change policy would be likely to call into question all the dynamics of the current boom. The program that Al Gore envisages, in addition, has roles and appropriations more significant for the federal State than that of Mr. Bush, in particular in the areas of health and the environment.
Paradoxically, it is the candidate of the opposition, George W. Bush, who makes his campaign on the topic of prosperity ( " prosperity with a goal " , proclaims one of its slogans) whereas the candidate of the outgoing team, Al Gore, has all the evil of the world to capitalize on the eight last years expansion. In Los Angeles where the democratic convention was held , Al Gore even created a surprise while launching out in a populist flight on the topic " they are for the powerful ones, we are for the people " .
Can one reasonably make a left-wing speech in a country which is the middle of an unprecedented economic boom? Yes, answers Karlyn Bowman, of American Enterprise Institute, if the objective of Al Gore were to mobilize the democratic base, which showed lately worrying signs of undulation. Because a disenchantment of the democratic traditional voters presents a double danger to Mr. Gore : that of the abstention the day from the vote and that of a transfer of those voices to Ralph Nader, the candidate supported by the Green party whose campaign is against large corporations. Mr. Nader gathers for the moment only 2 % to 5 % of the possible voters, according to the States and surveys', but in such an open election, a hundred thousand voices can make the difference.
A CLEAN PROGRESSIVE
Al Gore must at the same time differ himself from George W Bush and leave the shadow of Bill Clinton. To counter the smooth and " light " image of the governor of Texas, he reintroduced policy into the debate, being presented in the form of a defender of the " hard hit families " . To come out from under the shadow of Bill Clinton, he refuses to be satisfied with this assessment of its two mandates and proposes to go further. (? -- dolanh)
For the moment, the strategy seems to pay : the increase of Al Gore in the surveys is striking in the female vote, which had deserted him these last months. But outside of these famous independent voters, are the moderates supposed to decide final victory ? Can they be allured by attacks against " the large oil companies, the giants of the tobacco and the pharmaceutical groups " ? All depends on the reading which one makes of the new tone of Al Gore. " the details count more than rhetoric , underlines a Democratic New-York banker . If Al Gore promised 400 billion dollars for such federal program, 400 billion for such other, one could worry, but it is not the case. It is its vision which counts, and it is a centrist vision. " Sociologist at the university of Boston and specialist in the middle class, Alan Wolfe also notes that in spite of the tone each word of the speech " was carefully calculated to stick to the ideas of the democratic Party. There was for example no criticism of globalization " : Mr. Gore even reaffirmed his support for free trade.
It remains to Gore to adjust this rhetoric not to give reason for " W ", who accuses him of again starting " the war of the classes " . Because the mood of the country hardly lends itself to it : " There are few indices, in the studies of opinion, of resentment with regard to the rich person " , notes Karlyn Bowman. With this nuance, introduced by Alan Wolfe : " What shocks people, it is that the money can buy the legislators through the financing of the campaigns. In other words, nobody has anything against the rich being rich, but people find it fundamentally unjust that they use their wealth to buy politicians. There is a real movement in favour of the reform of the financing of the election campaigns " - reform whose Al Gore promised to make a priority.
Other axis of the redefinition of Al Gore : the stress laid at the convention on morality and family values . Contrary to George W Bush, Al Gore had an exemplary youth, married and father of very young family, engaged in Vietnam in spite of his doubts. And contrary to Bill Clinton, he will not make a extraprofessionnel use of the oval Office. Didn't the Lewinski business thus form part of the past ? " It is interesting , note Alan Wolfe, that Republican convention hid the leaders of impeachment, whereas the Democrats left Joe Lieberman " , famous for his criticism of presidential control. That confirms the double assessment of this episode : the Americans rebelled against the inquisitor role of the process of impeachment , but they inevitably did not forgive Bill Clinton to have put them in the embarrassment. In the same way, Joe Lieberman, running mate of Mr. Gore, is a very religious man, which flatters the mood of the country, but it belongs to a minority religion, which draws aside the threat of interference of the religion in the public life. Savage partisan of the right to the abortion, the non-discrimination, the rights of homosexual and the separation of the Church and the State, Al Gore thus remains a progressive. But a clean progressive.
Sylvie Kauffmann
Le Monde dated *** TRANSLATION ENDS HERE *** du mardi 29 aoû t 2000
--sorry that the translation wasn't better, but my French is a bit rusty and Babelfish is even rustier :)
"Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness." -- Woody Allen
I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate
In North Carolina, votes for Nader really are wasted. Because of a technicality, the state isn't even going to count them. See a recent letter to the editor of the Raleigh News & Observer for the story.
as I've said before I hate all the candidates, but I hate GWB most of all, so I'll vote for Gore 'cuz its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate).
If the polls just before the election show a smoking crater in the ground where Gush's or Bore's campaign used to be, who would you vote for? /.
If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I've heard a lot of "not Bush!" comments on /. and in GIS, but no reason. Apparently Taco hates Bush because he hates Bush.
Really facinating...
I don't like Bush, I don't like Gore, I don't like Nader, I don't like Buchannan, and I LIKE Harry Browne -- and, believe it or not, I can articulate the reasons why I like/dislike them. Taco seems to be against Bush because, I dunno, somebody he knows said that Bush is an idiot, and he bought it hook, line and sinker.
Makes you wonder why he started using Linux... is it because he found it to be stable, fun, powerful, etc., or because it became "cool"?
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
--Walter Anderson
it seems than whenever anyone thinks 3rd party the name on their lips is Ralph Nader. It is time to focus some attention on Harry Browne, the Libertarian candiadte for pres. if you are truely interested in free tech policy then check out what Browne has to say in this wired article:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38748,00.html
here are a few choise things he has to say about bush-gore: "If you vote for a Republican or a Democrat, you're just giving up. You're saying, 'We never will have smaller government, so I'm just voting for whoever will take me to Hell at the slowest possible rate.'"
"Both believe they are best qualified to run your life. Neither one of them believes in freedom, neither one of them believes in the Constitution as a limiting force on government."
or the greens:
"The Green Party platform is pure fascism and socialism," said Browne. "It's either government regulation to the nth degree, or government taking over to the nth degree."
give personal resposability a chance. ------------------
conspiracy is religion for the paranoid
But my own personal journey began when I was a kid of 10, watching my dad [Sen. Albert Gore Sr.] write law authorizing the Interstate Highway System. He took me to meetings, and I remember how it all came to pass—the voting to make the signs green, how wide the lanes would be. Quite a lesson.
I seriously doubt this. The Interstate Highway System was established in the early 1950s, and the design decisions about factors like signs and lane widths were handled by members of the nascent Institute of Traffic (now Transportation) Engineers later in the Fifties. There might have been committee hearings in which lane widths or sign colors might have been discussed, but I strongly question whether they were issues that were put to a vote.
(How do I know this, you might ask? Because my stepfather was one of the transportation engineers who determined all of that stuff. And I never heard him say 'boo' about any congressional votes on the subject.)
Author of the article tries to prove his point of how Clinton sucks by taking yet another swipe at Israel.
Unfortunately, his interpretation does not have much to do with reality, being just a recycled Arab propaganda.
Oslo failed because Arafat has got a lot; he's got a de-facto state (Israeli don't go to the zone A at all, and Zone B is under Palestinian control), but Israel got virtually nothing, not even the words. And since arafat got control of the security and media, he has filled the territories with the propaganda of hatred and built himself an army. Current regime there is a corrupt "pocket state" of him.
If you decide to invest into unknown company, would you invest a billion ??? Probably not, you will invest a million and look at the quarter results for some time. Israeli investment into so called "peace process" has miserably failed because Palestinians don't want peace, they want to kill all Israelis and get all the land.
Clinton is an idiot; he is probably a covert fan of Ayn Rand with her "absolute values" BS. This is why he squeezes concessions out of Israel to make sure that "they are talking".
No lasting peace can be made until the attitude changes on both sides, but mostly on Arab side, since at least half of Israel is ready for compromise whether not many Palestinians are.
Bit'sia ne imeete prava!
You seem like a rational, thinking person. However your unabashed support of Gore is puzzling. How can you even know if he holds the same beliefs as you when he can never keep a story straight or tell the truth?
However your unabashed support of Gore is puzzling.
There is a disturbing proportion of likely Gore voters who aren't actually voting FOR GORE but merely think that a vote for Gore is the best way to vote "Against Bush" (most people in this category that I talk to say that it's because Bush is, in their opinion, "Scary".)
At the same time, there seems to be a subsection of Bush votes that are merely "against Gore" in the same way.
So long as people keep themselves trapped on this treadmill, the 'two parties' will continue to 'scare' you out of voting for anyone else who may happen to represent your views better. It will take a few elections of people actually voting for someone else to get the metaphorical snowball rolling on so-called '3rd party' candidates to make them 'electable'...(and even then, the electoral college can veto us...)
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
I'll admit that the cantidate who fires me up is Buchanan, but he has no chance of winning. The next best guy is Bush. In 1992, or 1996 I would have been willing to cast a "make a statement" vote, but this year's election is too important for me to do that.
The Bush Parody Site (http://www.gwbush.com/) isn't quite on the level, but it has links to a lot of info. I especially liked the Unauthorized Biography. It's a long read, but a real eye opener.
Please tell me you're joking. Regardless of who you vote for, I'd hate to think that people are actually casting votes based on the web servers that candidates are running. There are much bigger issues at stake, people! Realize that the web sites are probably contracted out, anyway. If any mandate did come from Gore to use Linux, it would probably be for political reasons, not technological ones.
Heheh I am just joking, but I really do like Gore because I agree with him on the issues. Especially since GWB is anti-gay on all the issues (since I'm gay its a big deal to me.) And ive always been a democrat anyway so :)
I'm curious which rights you believe he thinks he should have that you don't. The right to serve in the military? The right to see his partner in the hospital, should something bad happen? The right to adopt? The right to hold a job without fear of losing it just because of his sexual orientation?
I really hope that that's not trully how you made your decision. Based on the software that the web hosting company chosen by their web designer chosen by the candidates assistants son in law.
I also don't think i want either of them in office, but that seems fairly inevitable. Might as well vote Nader, then, and hope for an increased chance of a sane(er) politician come next election...
There really just isn't that much difference between the two. So, in hindsight, maybe choosing based on what their webservers run isn't so bad... Of course you could just bring a coin to the voting booth, too.
Look, that's not a troll. Taco said in the article that "...Bush supporters are nearly silent. We want a diverse story selection here..." and that he was going to vote for Gore as the lesser evil. I'm making the point with supporting facts that Gore is not a lesser evil.
I will give you that the post was not a troll, as per it was not an anti-statement posted for the purpose of "stirring up the ant-hill,"
That said, the post was not moderated correctly, it was PLAGIARISM (as it came from a source not of aclaudet's mind), it is lacking all manner of internal citation (where each statement came from), and finally, it did not rebut the very point it was trying to rebut.
CT is voting for candidate GORE because CT hates candidate BUSH more. aclaudet rebuts: this is the very reason you should not vote for GORE. Then as support Copy&Pastes a long laundry list of past purorted Gore lies. If point for point correspondance was made for GORE and BUSH in the list, then it would be a form of support (but not for the rebutal thesis)
Now here comes the really funny part. I'm chuckling. :)
By arguing in the support part with "hates candidate GORE more," aclaudet makes the argument: vote for candidate BUSH because aclaudet hates candidate GORE more. but then you must apply aclaudet's rebutal:
For the love of God, don't vote for Bush espically(sic.) for that reason.
which leads me to what i'll do about it.
a) metamoderate down those who moderated this up so high
b) reject any term papers submitted by aclaudet
c) go actually look up some of those quotes on the better known urban legend and quote web sites
d) partially agree that voting against a candidate is a horrible waste of your piece of democracy
e) once again post: In the pull down for formatting CT et al need to put a "Spell Check" that only works when you use the preview button, my spelling is attrocious.
US-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
Lot of fiction labelled fact and a lot of fact labelled fiction up there. I'm a Nader guy, so I don't know why I bother, but an impartial discussion of the "gore lies" thing can be found at this urban legends site.
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. - Andrew Jackson
Unfortunately, you're basing all of those assertions about what Gore did on statements made by the Republican party - in fact, you're copy-and-pasting them from an email circulated by the GOP, which I've seen making the rounds. Unfortunately, the GOP has made up those straw men out of whole cloth.
I don't really feel like rebutting this crap right now, but I think you'll find that if you investigate, everywhere you've tagged Gore with some "Fiction", the real story is that Gore told an absolutely truthful statement, which the GOP has tried to turn into a lie.
Don't take my word for it - investigate. Read the actual incidents. You'll find that all of those attacks on Gore are nothing but GOP propaganda.
--
Michael Sims - michael at slashdot.org
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=improveslashdot
. . . the real story is that
Gore told an absolutely truthful statement. . . . You'll find that all of
those attacks on Gore are nothing but GOP propaganda.
I dare say that the reality is that Gore's statements ring true from one point of view and are hogwash from another. The Democratic party promotes the former; the GOP, the later.
Your assertion that "the real story is that Gore told an absolutely trutheful statement" seems just as one sided as what you accuse the GOP of having done. If you have facts, post them. Otherwise, your assertion is just more one-sided political rhetoric.
How did this get modded up? This is not insightful. All he's doing is being argumentative. Whereas the first poster presented a list of evidence for his claim that Gore is a liar, this poster just says "take my word for it, those are wrong." Well, gee thanks. I'm sure if I post to a thread on a Microsoft topic saying, in effect, "Microsoft never acted as a monopoly. All those accusations are lies. I don't feel like presenting any evidence to the contrary, but I'm obviously of a superior intellect, so all of you should just believe me," I will find myself at -1 before I hit the submit button. Next time, if you're going to post, do 5 minutes of research and submit some evidence.
I got this list in my e-mail last week. I read the rebutal to it yesterday. Sure some of its true, some of its not. Thats the way of politics. Truth doesn't matter. All that matters is people believe that it is true. How about some supporting facts? Then I'll give some credit to this arguement.
It would be nice to see some sources for this unsubstantied list of tripe. I have received this email forward twice and it is pretty obvious to me that most of this is made up bullshit. Show me some sources and some 'actual' quotes and then maybe I'll buy it. But come on, do some research and think for yourself. Don't believe the crap spewed from some email forward.
The man has already stated that he hates Gore, why would you repond with more (or more likely the same) reasons that Gore sucks? Why would you not try and build your candidate up by showing how W is better?
As it is: FUD.
"It's sad how whole families are torn apart by simple things, like wild dogs"
"FICTION: Al Gore claimed responsibility for inventing the Internet in the 1990's."
FACT : Al Gore doesn't handle talking to the media well, never has. He was the principle backer of many bills that funded NSFnet -- the National Science Foundation Network (which later became the Internet) after the Pentagon decided it didn't want Arpanet running on DoD dollars. Without him, there would certainly have been little funding for networking between Universities. Leading to the loss of anything related to networked univerities (such as the original birth of the Linux kernel, etc).
This is very clever use of half-truths to change peoples' minds on the subject. A skilled troll. I hope the people reading this rememeber that no situation is as simple as one-line point/point rebuttals. Every situation has to viewed in its proper context before an informed decision can be made. -- Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
While I agree that the analysis of others is clear as to why this comparison is bunk (i.e. the candidates could know or care less about this particular issue). Ralph Nader was actively seeking a Linux-experienced systems person to work in his campaign. 'nuff said. :)
People are more than just their job. There are many aspects to anyone. Political candidates need to emphasize those in order show that they identify with their constituents.
But don't get me wrong, politicos also BS and kiss a$$, but would you vote for someone who is a total and complete a$$hole?
(If this is a troll . . . congrats, you got me) I had this sig, but Mr.Anderson broke it.
Guys give us a break. Tell us if you are running out of topics. We'll do the homework for you. But don't please let every other posting be something of only US interest.
Unfortunately, the US Presidential election is of more than just US interest. What will be determined is who will lead the United States. How much influence the United States has is debatable, but what can't be denied is that the US has international influence. Look some of the mainstays of our vocation/avocation. Intel: based in the USA. Cisco: Based in the USA. Sun: Based in the USA What these companies do extends far beyond the borders of the US. Yes there are some other players, but if you took these away, the high tech world would look very, very, different.
You can stick your head in the sand and act like the US presidential election doesn't matter. Your choice. But the world is a lot like the internet- connected in many different places in many different ways. This election will influence your life. Maybe not as much if you're not in the US, but it will.
Just six days later, Gore attended a fundraiser by Hollywood producers and radical gay activists where he told them that he would only pretend to "nudge them" if elected. He raised over $4 million.
This is actually a huge plus for Al Gore, not a negative. It's only a negative if you want the government telling you what you can read, see, and hear. I don't, but I think, despite this, that Gore does. This is one of the many reasons my vote goes to Browne.
The above statements of FICTION and FACT are all fiction. You only need to read the article linked to in this slashdot story to find detailed rebuttals of each and everyone of these misrepresentations of Al Gore by the GOP. The linked story has references (unlike the post I am responding to) and you can follow those to get a more detailed description of the character assasination that the GOP is attempting on Al Gore.
Let me get this straight. You think everything coming out of the Bush campaign is false yet you believe everything the Gore campaign is telling you? Are you really that dim? The rebuttals posted in that article are no more accurate than the accusations in the chain email. THEY'RE BOTH PROPAGANDA!
Every one of these so-called "facts" has been thoroughly debunked a hundred times over. This is RNC bullshit. But I'll debunk a few here:
FICTION: Al Gore said that his sister was the very first person to join the Peace Corps.
FACT: By the time Gore's sister joined the Peace Corps, there were already over 100 members.
REAL FACT: Actually, Al's statement was that his sister was "among the first" to sign up for the Peace Corp.
FICTION: While running for office, Gore's campaign literature claimed he was a "Brilliant Student".
FACT: Washington newspapers said he barely passed Harvard and consistently earned D's and C's.
REAL FACT: Al Gore graduated cum laude from Harvard. His freshman year, he had lots of C's and D's, but pulled up his grades in the last three years enough to graduate with honors. And the only "Washington newspaper" that said he barely passed was the right-wing Washington Times.
FICTION: Al Gore claimed responsibility for inventing the Internet in the 1990's.
FACT : Shocked scientists were quick to speak out, explaining that the Internet had been in widespread use by government and
educational institutions since the early 1970's.
REAL FACT: As reference hundreds of times before, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented" the Internet. His quote was "During my service in the US congress, I took the initiative in the creation of the internet". He was referring to his legislative work that led to the funding of the NSF which did lead to the commericalizing of the D.O.D.'s ARPANET into the Internet you right-wing nuts use to spread false propoganda today at light speed.
FICTION: Al Gore claimed the book "Love Story" was based on his life and Tipper's.
FACT: Author Erich Segal called a press conference to deny his claim. (Couldn't he at least lie about a love story where his sweetheart
doesn't die?"
REAL FACT: The author, Erich Segal, acknowledges that Gore was one of the models for the male lead in Love Story. Gore was referring to an article in a Nashville newspaper that claimed he and Tipper were the inspiration for the story...he never claimed it.
FICTION: Al Gore said he was the first to discover the Love Canal nuclear accident.
FACT: The incident was already discovered, being investigated, and covered widely in the press for many months before Gore was
aware of it.
REAL FACT: Al Gore was misquoted in the New York Times. He said that while he investigating another toxic waste dump, he did research to see if there were others like it. "I came across a place in New York called Love Canal. That was the one that started it all." The Times misquoted him as saying "I was the one who started it all." They later printed a correction, but the RNC and the right-wing nuts never let the truth get in the way of the misinformation they want to spread.
FICTION: Al Gore remembers his mother lulling him to sleep as a baby by singing the popular ditty, "Wear The Union Label".
FACT: The popular ditty was created by the unions when Gore was 27 years old.
REAL FACT: Al Gore made this statement at a union rally. It was deadpan humor that the participants laughed at immediately, and was obviously a joke to any who attended or watched it on videotape. Only right-wing nuts with no sense of humor took it seriously.
FICTION: Al Gore claimed to co-sponsor the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act.
FACT: The Act was not sponsored until he had been out of office for over a year.
REAL FACT: Another misquote. On Larry King Live in September, Gore said "I support McCain-Feingold. In fact, when I was in the senate, I sponsored legislation that would have led to public financing of national campaigns." To which Larry King said, "You co-sponsored McCain-Feingold?" To which Gore replied, "No, I sponsored legislationg concerning public campaign financing. I support McCain-Feingold."
The RNC pounced on the first part of this and twisted it into "Gore says he sponsored McCain-Feingold." Something Al Gore never even remotely claimed.
Personally, I think Bush is the better man. Regardlessof that though, Gore IS a bad person.
Anybody, like yourself, who knowingly spreads verifiable lies like this RNC spam you posted here, has no business calling anybody else a bad person. ----------------------------------- Linux: The Ultimate NT Service Pak.
Washington newspapers also reported that Al Gore wasn't even sure his mother-in-law was taking any medication and wasn't even sure she had arthritis. And, he doesn't know anything about his dog's "arthritis".
Perhaps true, but...
FACT: The same chemical is prescribed for arthritis in both humans, and some other animals (including dogs), and IS way more expensive for humans.
Listen, I've also got a lot of problems with the way many journalists have let the candidates throw around half and full lies (so much for the "keepers of the public record" idea!). But if you want to start hard talking about "FACTS" then you have to live up to a higher standard than they do. Make sure your claims are accurate and cite your sources. Several of these seem like blatant fabrications, or are at least so far out there that they need some evidence.
Fifteen minutes with a web-browser brings up some of the real "FACTS" behind several of your items. I don't have time to check them all -- I wish you had done it before posting:
FICTION: Al Gore said his father, a senator, was a champion of civil rights during the 1960's.
FACT: Gore's father voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was a racist who was fond of using the "N" word.
I assume you're refering to the Washington Post's article from back in April, though I've never seen any mention of Al Sr. being "fond of using the 'N' word"! Here's the full quote from the Post article:
Long before Bill Clinton came along, Gore lived in the shadow of another dominant politician, his father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee. Many of the deepest tensions of American race relations were played out during the long career of Sen. Gore, whose opposition to the segregated ways of his native South angered many of his constituents and eventually led to his political demise. With one notable exception, when he capitulated to regional sentiment and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the choices he made over more than three decades in Washington were courageous -- and they provided lasting lessons in the political education of the son. If there are as many ways of looking at Al Gore on the issue of race as Wallace Stevens found to look at a blackbird, the first views, shading all the rest, including his relationship with Clinton, come from the life and times of his parents.
(no longer available for free from the Post, but a reprint is available at http://www.jessejacksonjr.o rg/ issues/i042300173.html)
Hmm ... maybe that's why you didn't cite a source. Doesn't really support your argument, does it?
FICTION: Al Gore claimed the book "Love Story" was based on his life and Tipper's.
FACT: Author Erich Segal called a press conference to deny his claim. (Couldn't he at least lie about a love story where his sweetheart doesn't die?"
This is actually an older story that first started circulating in 1997. Here's the actual article from the time about Erich Segal's supposed "denial."
"When the author Erich Segal was asked about Gore's impression, he stated that the preppy hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled after Gore and Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones."
(Original from December 1997 NYTimes no longer available on-line. Similar article at the Chicago Tribune http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV-0008280152,FF .html )
Again, seems like Gore had a case here.
FICTION: While running for office, Gore's campaign literature claimed he was a "Brilliant Student".
FACT: Washington newspapers said he barely passed Harvard and consistently earned D's and C's.
What are these mythical "Washington newspapers" you keep citing? Give me an actual cite, ferkrisakes.
In this case, you're talking about this article from the March 18 Washington Post. Gore did get one D, some C's, and a B his first year, but his grades moved up from there, and he was generally an A and B student his senior year. He graudated cum laude (a far cry from "barely passing") based on the strength of his thesis. Here's a quote from the article:
In his junior year, he earned a B, a B-plus and an A-minus in three government courses, and he aced his senior government thesis on the impact of television on the presidency, a strong finish that made him a cum laude graduate. His devotion to the subject by then was so intense that he gave much of his time to a not-for-credit seminar with his favorite professor, Richard Neustadt, an expert on the presidency.
Both campaigns started spinning so fast that they took off and left earth long ago. The thing is, since the reporters have given up, no one's bothering to bring them back down. Go back and look at your claims: you've been spun. Bush's camp has had a pretty effective campaign against Gore's character going for over a year now. Look at an Oct. 15 NYTimes article called A Sustained G.O.P. Push to Mock Gore's Image for a story on it.
In Bush's case, the inability to speak MIRRORS his basic, innate stupidity. He practically flunked out of college...because he's an idiot.
If you look at him, you will also see that there is no room for a fully functional human brain in that head of his. His eyeballs actually touch in the middle, they are sooo close together.
The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been extensively and convincingly debunked. That you repeat it here pretty much destroys the credibility of your other claims - many of which are also debunked on the Red Rock Eater story already posted to Slashdot.
FWIW I think they're both scum and wouldn't vote for either even if I lived in the US, but there's no point repeating nonsense. --
Employ me! Cryptology, security, Perl, Linux, TCP/IP, and smarts.
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday October 20, @10:30AM
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