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[palsch]

But there are things I'm kind of terrified he'll show support for (like CISPA.) Republicans would fall over each other to endorse CISPA, but if I'm basing my opinion of CISPA on principles, I can't vote for Obama with a clear conscious.

I don't think CISPA is even an issue yet. For one thing it's being significantly changed even before it's brought to the House floor and opened to amendments. For another the real action on the serious cybersecurity provisions has been happening in the Senate, with the Lieberman/McCain duelling bills. It's massively, massively boring and bogged down in details, but at the same time is critical to how the US government can respond to external and internal threats to internet infrastructure in the future.

Also an entirely separate version was introduced into the House on Tuesday which I haven't even started trying to read yet. So it looks like we have two competing House bills and two competing Senate bills, all with their own takes on the information sharing requirements and all with potential IP law significance (although I believe only the initial Rogers-Ruppersberger House bill had direct references to IP violations which are all being stripped).

My big push here is simple; NUANCE!!!!! There are a lot of complicated issues at stake here and people panicking over vague, far from written bills is starting to turn me off those groups. There should be an effort to understand the goals, explore the problems and issues and push and lobby for sensible and acceptable solutions. Or at least make a significant argument on the merits of the underlying bill, rather than a vague concept or principle that may or may not actually be represented or violated by the actual bill itself.

[nenjin]

There are a lot of complicated issues at stake here and people panicking over vague, far from written bills is starting to turn me off those groups. There should be an effort to understand the goals, explore the problems and issues and push and lobby for sensible and acceptable solutions. Or at least make a significant argument on the merits of the underlying bill, rather than a vague concept or principle that may or may not actually be represented or violated by the actual bill itself.

Just so we're clear here, my decision not to vote for Obama amounts to panic in your opinion? I.e., the rational thing is to vote for the man in spite of my misgivings? I think they call that hope.

[Heron TSG]

reversing himself on Guantanamo

Executive Order 13492 disagrees. The only problem is that Congress has to decide what to do with them... and it won't.

I'm voting for Obama. I think that if he wins, the Republicans will have less of that 'one-term-president' furor going on, and maybe some good bills can be passed. Right now they're all posturing for the crowd in an attempt to make Obama look bad, and fucking everything up in the process.

[scriver]

He put industry people in charge of the bail out to fix a problem the financial industry created. That was my main gripe with it to begin with. As to what the "best" we could have achieved is, it's business as usual in America again as far as corporations are concerned. I don't call that a resounding success, unless success for you was the status quo.

Success was avoiding a full blown depression.

You can argue that the banking collapse should have been used as an excuse to destroy the banking system and create a new socialist order, and I had friends online and IRL who genuinely thought we were heading into a revolutionary phase (but then some of them thought that about the London riots...). But from the point of view of the man trying to keep people alive, in their houses and out of bankruptcy, further disruption was something to be avoided.

The actual banking reform bills that were fought for alongside the bailout are robust and they needed to come from industry faces to have any sort of chance of getting through. Their enforcement has been largely blocked by congressional forces outside Obama's control. He has used the workarounds available to him but there are drastic limits to his powers in financial areas.

See the Swedish banking crisis of the 90's. Looking back, it was basically a crisis drill for the American situation, all set up so the US government would know what to do when it hit.

As an Australian, a citizen of a country that generally has very strong ties to yours; I beg you, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not let another republican in power soon. The last time you guys did that, we ended up in a war on the other side of the world, that we're only just now pulling the troops out of.

Pff, you think that's bad? Sweden ended up in a war on the other side of the world, and broke our record of more than 200 years of peace. And we're not even pulling out our troops yet.

I'm bitter about it.

[palsch]

Just so we're clear here, my decision not to vote for Obama amounts to panic in your opinion? I.e., the rational thing is to vote for the man in spite of my misgivings? I think they call that hope.

No. I'm saying that at least some of your misgivings are due to the current climate of panic around bills like the NDAA, SOPA/PIPA and others that does not reflect any actual actions of the Obama administration. The vague anger at government (which is entirely justified and to be expected) is being directed towards Obama without any analysis of the actual reasons people are getting angry.

And yes, I realise this sounds somewhat arrogant, but when people say that SOPA is a reason to vote against Obama when he opposed the bill I'm thinking the reasoned opposition often isn't.

In any case, that particular paragraph was targeted at those screaming about CISPA without addressing the actual details of the bill, or people screaming about attempts to enforce copyright law without any discussion of copyright reform.

[mainiac]

See the Swedish banking crisis of the 90's. Looking back, it was basically a crisis drill for the American situation, all set up so the US government would know what to do when it hit.

The nice thing about the Swedish experience is that it lead to Sweden being completely prepared when things hit the fan the next time.  At some point in the future, apologists for the people who fucked this up will muddy the waters and say "no one could have done better".  And Sweden will be there to provide a perfect example for how a country could very much do better.  Having this counter example should be useful in preventing the death of rational thought in economics.

[scriver]

...Are you sarcasming at me or is my meter broken?

[RedKing]

I like the status quo.  My formative years for politics were 2000-2006, during which things kept going from bad to worse.  Incremental progress is as good as it gets in my experience.  Status quo looks pretty good from my perspective.  Status quo means we are succeeding at running out the clock until the demographics of the country change.

Warmongering facist dictatorship run off slave labor ftw!

Hyperbole much? 

Even in the worst of the Bush years, that wouldn't have been an accurate label. (It was a lot closer to that label, but thankfully did not reach that level.)

[PTTG??]

...preventing the death of rational thought in economics.

Hmm... perhaps we can use some similar technique to prevent the sinking of the Titanic, or the second world war.

[mainiac]

...Are you sarcasming at me or is my meter broken?

I'm a big fan of the Swedish response to the 2007 crises.  In particular the prudent way that you maintained a budget surplus in the good years ahead of time so that you could take timely action when things went south.  Sweden hasn't shredded it's social net but will still had a budget surplus last year.  Yes you weren't completely unexposed, but you have managed the pain far better then the rest of Europe and North America.

...preventing the death of rational thought in economics.

Hmm... perhaps we can use some similar technique to prevent the sinking of the Titanic, or the second world war.

Hey just because they're ignored in many places doesn't mean there aren't a lot of rational economists still out there.

[kaijyuu]

To be honest, I find it difficult to call any economist rational or irrational. They're all mostly pulling from magic 8 balls.


Economics are chaos theory incarnate. It's like asking the weatherman whether it will rain 4 months from now. They can make a weak prediction based on seasonal and geographic conditions, but no hard answers.

[scriver]

...Are you sarcasming at me or is my meter broken?

I'm a big fan of the Swedish response to the 2007 crises.  In particular the prudent way that you maintained a budget surplus in the good years ahead of time so that you could take timely action when things went south.  Sweden hasn't shredded it's social net but will still had a budget surplus last year.  Yes you weren't completely unexposed, but you have managed the pain far better then the rest of Europe and North America..

...I'm still not sure whether you are sarcastic or not

Nonetheless, it should be noted that both the EU the "Alliance" (the coalition of the four main right parties - excluding the neonazis) have been busy dismantling or undermining parts of the social system this last decade.

[jester]

I like the status quo.  My formative years for politics were 2000-2006, during which things kept going from bad to worse.  Incremental progress is as good as it gets in my experience.  Status quo looks pretty good from my perspective.  Status quo means we are succeeding at running out the clock until the demographics of the country change.

Warmongering facist dictatorship run off slave labor ftw!

Hyperbole much? 

Even in the worst of the Bush years, that wouldn't have been an accurate label. (It was a lot closer to that label, but thankfully did not reach that level.)

Meant that was where you would end up if the downward spiral continued

[Lord Dullard]

I like the status quo.  My formative years for politics were 2000-2006, during which things kept going from bad to worse.  Incremental progress is as good as it gets in my experience.  Status quo looks pretty good from my perspective.  Status quo means we are succeeding at running out the clock until the demographics of the country change.

Warmongering facist dictatorship run off slave labor ftw!

Hyperbole much? 

Even in the worst of the Bush years, that wouldn't have been an accurate label. (It was a lot closer to that label, but thankfully did not reach that level.)

  Bush was worse than Obama, but Obama hasn't exactly done anything to reverse the damage. The government has, for the most part, remained just as opaque. And the laws introduced during the Bush years that have trampled on the individual rights of Americans have been pretty much full retained (or even extended) under O.

He hasn't dragged us into any more major wars (yet, we'll see what happens with Iran if he's re-elected) or been as RAH RAH AMERICA, but the practical difference other than the 'no more wars' thing has been pretty much nil. I don't even think McCain would have brought us into another war anyway, since our economy couldn't have handled it.

[palsch]

Bush was worse than Obama, but Obama hasn't exactly done anything to reverse the damage. The government has, for the most part, remained just as opaque. And the laws introduced during the Bush years that have trampled on the individual rights of Americans have been pretty much full retained (or even extended) under O.

Obama certainly doesn't get a pass from me on civil liberties or openness, but in some areas he has been better than Bush. Sort of.

For example, in the case of extra-judicial killings using drones overseas the Obama administration has published legal memos and given speeches outlining their legal justification. Bush relied heavily on secret memos and legal reasoning hidden behind the state secret act executive privilege for his expansions of executive power. So at least we know what and why Obama is doing what he is doing.

So... yay?