The who will you be voting for Poll and Discussion Thread

[Cleverness]

Obvious trollbait detected

[Siatdiat]

I'm cant vote but would vote for Romney. After living in country that went through communism Obama rubs me the wrong way.

Lol

[ronin sparthos]

Obvious trollbait detected

I wouldn't even say it's trollbait because people honestly know what the various "-isms" mean.

We use the terms "communism", "socialism", "fascism" and "capitalism" so loosely they basically take on whatever you want them to mean at this point.

[Melena]

Voting Obama in a non swing state, though honestly till fillibuster rules get fixed or the extreme nuts on both sides get voted out no matter who the POTUS is, it's going to be one side sabotaging the other unless it's for something that benefits both sides mutually in the pocketbook or a natural disaster. Hell in the news Gov. Christie was singing Obama's praise this morning with how quickly he was getting money out to Jersey due to Sandy bitchslapping the east coast.

[Jefe]

Romney, or neither... it's still up in the air for me. When Jorge Ramos asked President Obama about operation Fast and Furious, he was like 'whoa whoa whoa, we didn't have anything to do w/ it,' which is a blatant lie. Some say maybe he misunderstood the question, others that he was washing his hands.

[Dotsudoku]

This thread has been one of the most disappointing reads on this forum in many, many years.

Florida, voted Obama. Neither candidate is perfect, but Romney's potential federal court selections and austerity measure proposals frighten me infinitely more than anything Obama has ever said or done.

[quannum]

Romney, or neither... it's still up in the air for me. When Jorge Ramos asked President Obama about operation Fast and Furious, he was like 'whoa whoa whoa, we didn't have anything to do w/ it,' which is a blatant lie. Some say maybe he misunderstood the question, others that he was washing his hands.

In June 2012, a six-month long investigation by Fortune magazine concluded that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.[19] Agents interviewed during the investigation repeatedly asserted that only one isolated incident of "gunwalking" ever occurred, and was performed independently by ATF Agent John Dodson (who later appeared on CBS News as a whistleblower to denounce the gunwalking scandal) as part of an unauthorized solo action outside of the larger Fast and Furious operation.[19]

what was obeezy supposed to do here? magic?

[Cichy]

Obama to me is like Kim Kardashian, he may look good and talk well but bottom line is the bitch never did anything worth a shit.

[Kuya]

Giving those tortilla monkeys more ammunition to destroy themselves is A+ in my book, would vote for obama again

[Sunrider]

Obama to me is like Kim Kardashian, he may look good and talk well but bottom line is the bitch never did anything worth a shit.

http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/

[BaneTheBrawler]

what was obeezy supposed to do here? magic?

Yes.

[kuronosan]

Obama to me is like Kim Kardashian, he may look good and talk well but bottom line is the bitch never did anything worth a shit.

The fact that you can relate Obama to Kim shows you don't particularly understand shit.

[Demosthenes11]

It kills me how Obama simultaneously did nothing yet is ruining the country.

[Cleverness]

what was obeezy supposed to do here? magic?

He's never gonna reply to this now that you used facts, how dare you.

[Cichy]

rawr

[Cantih]

So, a Google researcher wrote up a piece regarding the election (and sundry other related issues.)
http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html
It's well worth a read, but I'm going to quote the section you lot can use for Cream Soda bait.

Is it rational to vote?

Yes. Voting for president is one of the most cost-effective actions any patriotic American can take.

Let me explain what the question means. For your vote to have an effect on the outcome of the election, you would have to live in a decisive state, meaning a state that would give one candidate or the other the required 270th electoral vote. More importantly, your vote would have to break an exact tie in your state (or, more likely, shift the way that the lawyers and judges will sort out how to count and recount the votes). With 100 million voters nationwide, what are the chances of that? If the chance is so small, why bother voting at all?

Historically, most voters either didn't worry about this problem, or figured they would vote despite the fact that they weren't likely to change the outcome, or vote because they want to register the degree of support for their candidate (even a vote that is not decisive is a vote that helps establish whether or not the winner has a "mandate"). But then the 2000 Florida election changed all that, with its slim 537 vote (0.009%) margin.

What is the probability that there will be a decisive state with a very close vote total, where a single vote could make a difference? Statistician Andrew Gelman of Columbia University says about one in 10 million.

That's a small chance, but what is the value of getting to break the tie? We can estimate the total monetary value by noting that President George W. Bush presided over a $3 trillion war and at least a $1 trillion economic melt-down. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) estimated the cost of the Bush presidency at $7.7 trillion. Let's compromise and call it $6 trillion, and assume that the other candidate would have been revenue neutral, so the net difference of the presidential choice is $6 trillion.

The value of not voting is that you save, say, an hour of your time. If you're an average American wage-earner, that's about $20. In contrast, the value of voting is the probability that your vote will decide the election (1 in 10 million if you live in a swing state) times the cost difference (potentially $6 trillion). That means the expected value of your vote (in that election) was $600,000. What else have you ever done in your life with an expected value of $600,000 per hour? Not even Warren Buffett makes that much. (One caveat: you need to be certain that your contribution is positive, not negative. If you vote for a candidate who makes things worse, then you have a negative expected value. So do your homework before voting. If you haven't already done that, then you'll need to add maybe 100 hours to the cost of voting, and the expected value goes down to $6,000 per hour.)

By the way, here's proof that voting is patriotic: If you think of the value of your vote to the country, $600,000, then obviously voting is the right thing to do. But if you think of the value to yourself, by dividing the $600,000 by 300 million Americans, then the benefit of voting is less than a penny, and the rational choice would be not to vote (since it costs you an hour of your time). So anyone who votes is patriotic, and anyone who doesn't is selfish (or irrational). Are you a rational patriot?

You can see a similar argument in a 23 page pdf article by Andrew Gelman.

This also suggests that election financing--all the contributions to pay for all the ads, etc.--is also a bargain. The total cost so far for the 2012 presidential election has been about 2.5 billion dollars. For that, we may get a return of several trillion dollars; a 100,000% return on investment, maybe more! The total spent on the presidential campaign plus all the house and senate campaigns will be about $5.8 billion; less than America spends on potato chips each year.

[Jefe]

He's never gonna reply to this now that you used facts, how dare you.

"Facts," lol.

The controversial Fast and Furious gun-walking operation has prompted members of Congress to take a closer look at the Department of Justice. An October 29 report on the Fast and Furious investigation reveals that Justice Department officials “failed to identify red flags” in the gun-walking operation.

Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-running operation led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), in which the ATF "lost track" of 1,700 guns. The operation resulted in the death of border patrol agent Brian Terry, and a number of the guns lost during Fast and Furious appeared at a variety of crime scenes. Investigation into the operation has been particularly incriminating for the ATF.

However, investigations into the Operation Fast and Furious revealed a number of startling items.

Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee that is leading the investigation into the operation, told ABC News’ Jake Tapper that pertinent e-mails revealed that the agenda of the operation was to advocate for greater gun control, not, as was alleged, to pursue criminal prosecutions of drug cartel members.

CBS had made the same determination in 2011. According to CBS, “ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called ‘Demand Letter 3.’ That would require some US gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or ‘long guns.’”

Likewise, allegations made in August by a high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative in American custody show that Fast and Furious was an agreement between the U.S. government and the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to help take down rival cartels. Likewise, the operative indicates that drugs were permitted to be trafficked across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009, incriminating both the Bush and Obama administrations, if proven true.

The findings did not stop there.

In the latest report from Rep. Issa’s and Senator Chuck Grassley’s final investigation into Fast and Furious, several members of the Department of Justice have been incriminated. Fox News reported Monday, “The 140-page report singles out five senior agency officials: Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein and Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Siskel.”

The first installment from the investigation focused on the role of the ATF. The latest installment addresses the role of the DOJ.

The report’s findings are based on testimony by senior Department of Justice officials.

According to the report, Grindler and Siskel were provided details about Fast and Furious during a March 2010 brief that dealt with the illegally purchased firearms that were recovered in both the United States and Mexico. The report notes that despite the evidence brought before Grindler and Siskel at the brief, they did not ask questions or “take any significant follow-up action to monitor and supervise the conduct of the case.”

“Officials in the Justice Department saw countless warnings and some even had the gun-walking information right in front of them, yet nothing was done to stop it, said Grassley, an Iowa senator and ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The report also states that DOJ officials did not take proper action when asked by the ATF to speed up indictments in the Fast and Furious scandal, with a greater focus on the press’ response to the indictments.

Issa contends that the DOJ has taken very limited action against the “negligent managers” and has not made any indications that they would see to it that a similar “disaster” is not repeated.

“The failures happened because of conscious decisions to encourage gun dealers to sell to known traffickers and avoid interdicting … all in the hope that would lead law enforcement to cartel connections,” the report concluded.

Congressional investigators had already determined that Attorney General Eric Holder had been trying to cover-up some of the necessary facts for the investigation of Fast and Furious and the DOJ’s role in the operation.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for failing to comply fully with the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious. The vote was 255 to 67 with 17 Democrats breaking from their party to vote in favor of the contempt measure along with Republicans.

A second resolution, the civil contempt charge that would authorize the House Oversight Committee to seek judgment in federal court requiring Holder to comply with subpoenas, passed by a vote of 258 to 95, with 21 Democrats voting with Republicans.

Congress has been investigating the Fast and Furious operation for well over a year, and has grown infuriated with Holder’s refusal to adequately comply with the investigation. The New York Post reported June 13:

Holder has provided 7,600 documents while the [House Government and Oversight] Committee has issued subpoenas asking for tens of thousands more over a botched federal program that resulted in guns getting into the hands of Mexican criminals.

Holder has defended his refusal to hand over documents for the congressional investigation by asserting that it would violate the “separation of powers.”

In fact, both President Obama and Attorney General Holder have been caught in lies about Fast and Furious, including assertions that the operation began under President George W. Bush.

Likewise, Patrick Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, plead the Fifth when he was issued a subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, prompting investigators to determine that the Justice Department’s integrity was seriously compromised.

"The assertion of the fifth amendment by a senior Justice official is a significant indictment of the Department's integrity in Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa said in a statement after receiving the refusal from Cunningham’s lawyers. “This is the first time anyone has asserted their fifth amendment right in this investigation and [it] heightens concerns that the Justice Department's motivation for refusing to hand over subpoenaed materials is a desire to shield responsible officials from criminal charges and other embarrassment.”

source

By DYLAN BYERS |
10/24/12 11:33 AM EDT

John Dodson, the special agent who blew the whistle on the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, is suing Time for libel, POLITICO has learned.

The lawsuit comes in response to a Fortune magazine article published in June that asserted Dodson had complained about the gunwalking in part because it was his fault guns had been intercepted, and because of a longstanding personal grudge with the ATF supervisor who had been tasked with overseeing the Fast and Furious operation. The article's principle thesis is that the ATF "never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels."

The lawsuit, "for an amount in excess of $75,000.00," calls the article "fictitious in the sense that it contains facts that Defendant [Time Inc., which owns Fortune] knew to be false prior to publication." It also charges Time with being "negligent, grossly negligent, willful and wanton" and says it "purposely avoided the truth" by failing to interview Dodson. The summons was issued on Oct. 15.

"[T]he Plaintiff has been libeled nationally and internationally by Defendant, injuring his reputation," the lawsuit states. "The falsities in the article subject the Plaintiff to hatred, ridicule and contempt by readers of the Fortune, its online article, and other persons. The defamatory statements are serious criminal imputations, unfavorable in the eyes of the Plaintiff’s fellow United States citizens, including the citizens of South Carolina where he lives."

Spokespeople with Time did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit.

In a letter to Fortune managing editor Andrew Serwer in September, Dodson's lawyer called on the magazine to retract the article, arguing that the article was "demonstrably false in many respects" when compared to a report from the Justice Department's inspector general.

But Katherine Eban, the reporter who wrote the piece, disagreed with that characterization. Following the release of the DOJ IG report, she argued that the findings "appear to corroborate a number of Fortune's findings: that there was no conspiracy to walk guns, no higher-up plan to do so and that walking guns was not the goal of the investigation, but rather a response to 'legal and tactical' circumstances on the ground, as the report states."

"The facts presented by Fortune do not appear to be in dispute, but on this point the Inspector General has drawn a different conclusion from them," Eban wrote at the time.

Fortune did not retract the article.

source

The U.S. government's botched Fast and Furious gun-trafficking operation left a trail of bullets and bodies in Mexico. In a special investigation by Univision News, which aired Sunday night, several new revelations came to light. Here are five worth knowing.

1. Fast and Furious Guns Used in Infamous Massacre

Mexican military reports show that at least three guns from North America were used in the Salvarcar massacre in 2010. A total of 15 people died in that incident, most of them teens. They were gunned down by the Juarez cartel, which mistook the group for rival Sinaloa cartel members. According to one document, the weapons entered Mexico illegally through a border point near Columbus, New Mexico.

2. 57 Previously Unidentified Weapons Surface

Univision cross-referenced the serial numbers off guns used in Fast and Furious against guns seized in Mexico. Nearly 100 of those weapons were used in crimes, and 57 of them were not mentioned in an investigation carried out by the U.S. Congress.

3. Mexico Knew About Fast and Furious

Andrew Selee, vice president for programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. says the Mexican government was aware of the gun-walking, in spite of releasing a statement saying they were not. William Newell, the special agent in charge of ATF's Phoenix field division and one of the supervisors of Fast and Furious, told Univision, via his attorney, that the Procuraduria General De La Republica (PGR) in Mexico was certainly aware of the operation.

4. U.S. Gun-Walking Operations Extended to Other Countries

Fast and Furious was not the only ATF operation of its kind that went awry. In Operation Castaway, Hugh Crumpler, a former ATF informant, told Univision News the ATF deliberately allowed guns to pass into Honduras, Puerto Rico and Colombia. Several of those weapons have already been found at crime scenes and in the hands of local cartels. In an email message, the ATF claims that they "found out about the weapons when they had already been shipped."

5. U.S. Agents Were Attacked with U.S. Weapons

Victor Avila and Jaime Zapata, two U.S. Federal Agents assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, were in the process of transporting surveillance equipment when their vehicle was surrounded by cartel members and shot more than 90 times. Zapata died and Avila was seriously wounded.

Prior to traveling into the region, Avila reached out to a supervisor expressing concerns over security that were backed by a U.S. State Department document which forbade U.S. Embassy employees from traveling in that area. The reason: It was heavily controlled by the Zetas cartel. According to an exclusive interview with Avila, the supervisor did not share his concerns. Three of the guns used in this shootout were also from a gun-walking operation, but not Fast and Furious.

Families for both agents say they still do not understand why the agents were asked to transport equipment through this region, or why the men who trafficked these weapons were not arrested months earlier.

source

[Cream Soda]

So, a Google researcher wrote up a piece regarding the election (and sundry other related issues.)
http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html
It's well worth a read, but I'm going to quote the section you lot can use for Cream Soda bait.

Ah, the P word, thrown around during elections and disasters, ignored the rest of the time lol.

[Fairy-Killer]

So, a Google researcher wrote up a piece regarding the election (and sundry other related issues.)
http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html
It's well worth a read, but I'm going to quote the section you lot can use for Cream Soda bait.

Norvig is a brilliant computer scientist (AI specifically); he has my vote.

[Xajii]

Jefe's sources are sound, but none of them can really prove whether or not Obama knew about what the ATF was doing. You realize how much he has on his plate? Fast and Furious wasn't exactly the biggest thing on his radar, at any point, ever. There's a difference between lying and not knowing the truth. If you can point me to a source that proves that the President himself was aware of this, then by all means - otherwise, your argument still holds very little water.

It's pretty common practice for subsections of the government to do things without the President's knowledge. In fact, that's pretty much most of what goes on.