Be Part of the 2008 Presidential Youth Debate 513
We participated in this project back in 2004. This year it's hosted by Walden University, and the format is a little less cumbersome than it was four years ago. So go ahead, ask some questions you'd like to see McCain and Obama answer, and they'll go into the pot along with questions submitted through other channels. Later this week you'll have a chance to help moderate the final questions chosen from all sources, and on October 20 you'll be able to see video responses from the two major party candidates. Please limit to yourself to one question per post, and note that questions must be posted no later than 4 p.m. US EDT on Monday, September 29, to be considered.
Varying royalty rates for offshore drilling (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently the Minerals Management Services in the Department of the Interior has companies pay between 12.5% and 18.75% royalties to use United States public land, depending on the mineral being harvested. Senator, do you believe that the amount of royalties they pay should also vary depending on environmental sensitivity, such as when drilling offshore?
This is not a question as to whether we should, and it is addressed to both candidates.
Evolution/Creationism (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gun Control (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Very telling Slashdot editor (Score:5, Interesting)
question: (Score:4, Interesting)
Where is the congressional accountability for the subprime loan mess? The Bush administration, as well as democratic members of congress, pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to make more loans to poor people, inner city hispanics, african americans, etc. Not surprisingly, they defaulted (maybe that's why they weren't given loans in the first place?) and everyone is suffering as a result.
All I hear is complaints about greedy wallstreet types. What about the people who signed up for loans they couldn't afford? What about the congress that ignore Allan Greenspan's 2005 testimony that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were a serious problem? What about the congress that didn't believe poor credit meant an increased risk in defaulting on a loan?
I'm too old you insensitive clod (Score:1, Interesting)
That site limits questions to those 35 or under. I'm wondering if that 35 year cut off is coincidental. (A US President must be 35 or older).
But anyway, here is the question I would ask
Copyrights terms (Score:5, Interesting)
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, states:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Currently, copyrights last 50-70 years after the creator's death. How does this advance Science and useful Arts?
Voting system (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you plan on making changes to the antiquated voting system, especially its tendency to give minority voters (whether third party or just the unfavoured party in their state) no ability to influence the outcome of an election? Do you think the voting system does or does not have an influence on the feeling of disenfranchisement among voters and the low voter turnouts?
The Iran Issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Iran is the second most vibrant democracy in the Middle East, and the USA's invasion of Iraq has allowed Iran to make a shot at becoming a regional power. How do you plan to broker friendship between Iran, the USA, and Israel?
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hard Questions for Senator Obama (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hard Questions for Senator Obama (Score:2, Interesting)
Debates (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you believe that including third party candidates - such as the Constitution, Green, Independent, Libertarian and Socialist parties - in the presidential debates would improve the debates and make our election more democratic?
If no, why not? If yes, why have you not announced that you support the inclusion of third party candidates at any point in the primary or presidential campaigns?
Mandatory National Service (Score:5, Interesting)
To both candiates:
At times both of you have expressed support for the idea, and organizations promoting the idea, of Mandatory National Service, whereby all adult citizens under a certain age would be forced to work for government agencies or government-approved entities for a certain period of time. Senator McCain, you've stated your agreement with the idea that we should re-institute a draft to go after Osama bin Laden.
Could you both please clarify, for the record, the conditions under which you believe a government has the right to conscript its citizens, and the degree to which your administration would do so?
Re:In the long term (Score:3, Interesting)
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It strikes me that adherence to this would obviate a substantial chunk of the problems besetting the polity.
Touché (Score:3, Interesting)
Barack Obama, for four years in the 1990s, you were on the executive board of an education foundation named the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, founded by ex-Weather Underground Organization [wikipedia.org] leader William Ayers. In a spring debate, you claimed [go.com] he was "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis", and just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood". Given that you launched your presidential campaign from Mr. Ayers home, how do you explain this discrepancy?
Barack Obama, records show that you have received the second largest [mediacircus.com] amount of monetary donations from the now bankrup Fannie Mae mortgage lender. In 2005, you were praised by Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd [youtube.com] because of your work in congress on Fannie's behalf. Was the praise because of your vote against the Housing Reform Act of 2005 [google.com] that would have prevented the 2008 collapse of the lending institutions?
Barack Obama, you have often touted your experience as a community organizer in the streets of Chicago as evidence of your qualifications to lead. You have worked extensively with one such group, ACORN, which recently endorsed you for president [barackobama.com], where you acknowledged your work with ACORN in Project Vote in 2004. Given that ACORN members are frequently convicted [rottenacorn.com] of committing voter fraud, can you please explain your relation to this organization?
Signing orders (Score:5, Interesting)
The Constitution says that a President shall sign or veto a bill (or not sign it, and it will become law after ten days). Since it says nothing about "signing orders", do you promise to comply with the Constitution by either signing, vetoing, or refusing to sign all bills that come before you and nothing more? Will you refuse to issue "signing orders" since they are not a power specifically given to the President by the Constitution?
Re:Very telling Slashdot editor (Score:4, Interesting)
(in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards).
nice, trying to sneak this by.
MSM has a bias toward corporations, but is otherwise neutral.
If you think the MSM has a liberal bias, I refer you to the colbert quip about reality having a well-known liberal bias.
Fox deliberately distorts, and often times fabricates, the stories they present. The obama muslim kick, the deliberate mischaracterization of palin's crusade against the library as false, simply because she didn't do it as mayor (but as city councilwoman), the oreilly factor's invented statistics, the "balance" of the dingbat-right hannity and the cowed, confrontation fearing moderate, colmes.
The list goes on and on.
Fox news is a propaganda arm of the extreme right, it is NOT to be compared with the MSM, which is center-right because it's neutral on social issues and parrots corporate and political press releases whenever it can to avoid actual investigative reporting.
Re:Very telling Slashdot editor (Score:2, Interesting)
so a former CEO is automatically corrupt? how very leftist of you.
Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html [nytimes.com]
Hi Mr Pot, meet Ms Kettle.
Liar. (Score:2, Interesting)
Take, for example, the Fannie/Freddie debacle. Consider that Obama had 2 corrupt former CEOs of Fannie as economic advisors, one of which was the head of his VP search committee.
The truth [go.com] is that although Jim Johnson was a CEO at Fannie Mae before becoming a leader of Barack Obama's VP search committee, [google.com] he has not been convicted of any crime, but Obama accepted Johnson's resignation from the Presidential campaign anyway. In June, you hypocrite. Jim Johnson has also not been even accused of any crimes, just smeared for being associated with a corporation which operated in the lawless environment introduced by Gramm-Leach-Biley. [senate.gov] Compare to Carly Fiorina, who was personally responsible for making a mess out of Hewlett-Packard. Johnson didn't sign Gramm-Leach-Biley into law. Measured by stock price, Fiorina was, in the eyes of the investors with enough previous financial success to determine stock prices, personally responsible for Hewlett-Packard's problems. [cnn.com] If we're going to spend $700 Billion bailing out the country's wealthiest investors, we had better trust their judgment enough to uphold their verdict on Carleton S. Fiorina: [hp.com] as toxic as a portfolio full of foreclosed mortgages.
Former Fannie Mae executive Jim Johnson, who was a leader of the vice presidential search committee for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, resigned from that unpaid position today amid criticisms that Johnson represented a world of influence and special interests that stood in stark contrast with what Obama's campaign purports to stand for.
...
"We don't need any lectures from a campaign that waited fifteen months to purge the lobbyists from their staff, and only did so because they said it was a 'perception problem,'" said Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton.
And Franklin Raines was never any kind of adviser to Obama at all. [washingtonpost.com]
The Obama campaign issued a statement by Raines on Thursday night insisting, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters." Obama spokesman Bill Burton went a little further, saying in an e-mail that the campaign had "neither sought nor received" advice from Raines "on any matter."
[If Raines offered Obama advice that was not sought, a lying sack of excrement might argue that Obama nevertheless "received" that advice, but unless that advice was the basis of subsequent action, we use the colloquialism that the advice was not "taken," thus anybody describing Raines as an advisor to Obama is a lying sack of excrement.]
Unless you have proof that Raines' statement above is a lie, you committed libel by asserting that he had ever been one of Barack Obama's "economic advisors."
So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth.
99% cloth, but not completely whole cloth. The "supposed Obama-Raines connection" is not quite pure fabrication by the same standard that the statement "you are a violin" has a basis in fact, when addressed to a person calling itself "Stradivarius." The only connection to fact is extremely tenuous, and we all know that the statement "you are a violin" is a falsehood. Your accusation is no more honest, just less humorous.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that
Showstopper questions on drug policy... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/ACTIVIST/showstop.htm [druglibrary.org]
I have here a list of every major study of drug policy in the last fifty years. Every one of them recommended decriminalization. Do you agree that the overwhelming weight of the scholarly evidence on drug policy supports decriminalization?
How do we know you won't abuse the office? (Score:3, Interesting)