McCain Answers Science Policy Questionnaire

thebestsophist writes "A couple weeks ago, I reported that Barack Obama had answered a questionnaire by Scientists and Engineers for America. McCain has now answered that questionnaire as well. You can also compare their answers. Perhaps with help from the Slashdot community, we can get all the Congressional candidates as well?"

Innovation

In the "innovation" category, one of the first things McCain mentions is

"I am committed to streamlining burdensome regulations and effectively protecting American intellectual property in the United States and around the globe."

I'll leave it up to the rest of you to flame McCain for that! I believe that it is also worth mentioning that Obama didn't bring up "regulation" or "protecting intellectual property" at all, especially not in the first paragraph as McCain did.

Re:Innovation

Not surprised. McCain's made no secret of his desire to have Steve Ballmer in his cabinet [theinquirer.net]. Ballmer himself probably put those words right in McCain's mouth

Re:Innovation

It'll make a lot more sense when you realize that we only have one party, and both wings of the Commercial party are pretty much the same when it comes to issues like NAFTA and DMCA and copyright.

I don't believe Obama is "in", so I'm fairly sure he'll be neutralized. It will either be strange voting machine results or something worse...

Re:Innovation

Erm. The DMCA came to being under a Republican Senate and Republican House, and introduced by Republican Rep. Howard Coble. The only major part the Dems played was Clinton signing it into law, and his State Dep't helping to negotiate the treaties it's related to.

Which is what the OP said: "It was also democrats who proposed and extended copyright terms and signed the DMCA into law. There's no party that is inculpable here."
Copyright was EXTENDED in 1978(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Duration_of_copyright) when Jimmy Carter was President and Congress was controlled by Democrats. The DMCA was SIGNED into law by Bill Clinton.

Re:Innovation

John McCain is a puppet of the Jew.

Sure, but which Jew? I bet it's Woody Allen, since they have so much in common: They both used to be entertaining and relevant, but now they're just churning out derivative crap.

On the other hand, it could be Joe Lieberman. Lieberman's clearly got his head up McCain's ass, he might have his hand up there too.

Come on man, you can't leave us hanging like this: which Jew is controlling McCain?

Re:Innovation

This is Slashdot where almost everyone wants one of those nice R&D jobs. But yet they are against the ways of funding them. If you are going to spend 10 years of R&D and millions of dollars, more to fund the R&D that doesn't work, or product a commercial use. Then have competition use that Idea and make a competing product the next month, and able to product it cheaper because they didn't spend the millions for R&D themselves.

So what will the smart business man do. There isn't any money in R&D and more in blatant copying. So those nice R&D Jobs get reduced or killed. Leaving you to either take a boring job, or going back to the Education Sector and have 3/4 of your job begging for money, and 1/4 actually do real R&D.

When analyzing these laws you need to remember rule #1, IT IS AN IMPERFECT WORLD AND THERE WILL NEVER BE A PERFECT WORLD. IP Law yes protects those big heartless corporations, but without them you may not have a job. A heartless companies are not in it for the good of man kind, but to make money, if you can do both great if they conflict then the good of man kind will get shafted. IP Protection helps isolate the risks of R&D costs, and makes it possible for Greed and Humanity to work together for a common output.

Who really wrote the answers?

Come on, are we to believe that the candidates actually wrote their own replies to these questions? I wonder how many people came up with the answers.

Old Skool Science Mavericks

Palin is a Creationist [google.com]. McCain is a fossil.

Of course they'll talk a good science game (after farming that questionnaire out to one of the lobbyist lawfirms that make up their campaign) when the geeks ask during a campaign. Then these "Compassionate Conservatives" will just show they were lying once they're past the Election Day "accountability moment", and get the power to drag us all back to the Stone Age.

Re:Old Skool Science Mavericks

But Palin is a hot Creationist. It's like an equation. After hot, you can drop everything else.

Re:Old Skool Science Mavericks

She's not that hot, except compared to McCain and the rest of the politicians we usually see. She's no hotter than my next door neighbor (who's not that hot). Neither of them are qualified to be VP (or president, which is the only mandatory qualification for a VP).

And Palin's voice actually grates my nerves like the "blackboard fingernails" that everyone says Hillary Clinton has (Clinton's not hot, either).

Re:Old Skool Science Mavericks

So you're saying that Palin has more experience than McCain to be president. Why not reverse the ticket (other than basic sanity, because she is indeed even worse than McCain).

Palin's "executive experience", like McCain's non-executive experience, is bad experience. George Bush has loads more executive experience - and I expect that you, Anonymous Republican Coward, would prefer more Bush.

Oh, as for the rest of your zombie Republican talking points: When Obama said that deciding the moment when a collection of 46 chromosomes becomes legally a "human life" is "above his pay grade", he was referring to god. I thought you faithy Republicans went nuts for that kind of thing, not against it. And you've got a lot of nerve to whine about "voting present" when #1: Bush hasn't even been present for most of his catastrophic reign (though Cheney has no plans to leave the Cheney Bunker from which he's run the country the past 8 years). And #2: McCain has not even been present in the Senate for most of the past two years, even though Obama, Clinton, Biden, Dodd and the rest managed to do their jobs while campaigning.

And finally, thanks for admitting that you think that Barack Obama is a "secret Muslim". Though of course his Christian pastor hates America, too.

Being a Republican means never having to make any sense at all. Just stay scared and cowering at anything Karl Rove cooks up, and everyone will be OK. Except that after 8 years of Bush, ruling at the end of 12 years of the Republican Congress, every national institution is in a shambles. You personally are worse off than you were 4 years ago. Unless that is really you, Karl Rove, fat from your reign of terror, and sucking up yet more paychecks for yet another Republican campaign "gone wild".

You sick bastard.

HOT? I think NOT.

Seriously the standard of "hotness" is phenomenally low in US politics. We are talking here about someone who came 2nd in Miss Alaska (population 600,000) in a state where less than 50% of the people are female and isn't exactly known as the place where attractive people flock to. Hell this makes her less attractive than the 2nd most attractive person in DETROIT (population over 800k).

Never before has a media image of what you should think been so quickly accepted by people. Palin isn't hot, she isn't an ugly bird but she isn't a stunner. Lets concentrate on her madly insane political views (abstinence teaching working for you kids Mrs Palin?) and not listen to the media's view of attractive. Put it this way, do you think that Fox News would have her as an anchor? Of course not, a we know that hot is their only real criteria.

Hot in Alaska? Let put politics first.

On the other hand look at FRENCH politics if you want seriously hot politicians with incredibly well educated views.

Re:Old Skool Science Mavericks

Palin is a Creationist [google.com]. McCain is a fossil.

Does that mean that Palin believes that McCain was carefully buried by God to confuse the evil Darwinists?

Google cache link

Since site appears to be slashdotted, here's a Google Cache link:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:MqO2cs2K3EUJ:sharp.sefora.org/people/presidential-candidates/john-mccain-presidential-candidate/+http://sharp.sefora.org/people/presidential-candidates/john-mccain-presidential-candidate/&hl=ru&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=ua&client=firefox-a [64.233.183.104]

Hmm. Something's amiss.

I think he errs when he tries to establish a database connection.

I think it's a pretty common problem for older guys though.

I hate these; they are SOOO rigged

All of these kind of things are answered to encourage whatever somebody wants to believe. In the end, I think that we are far better off looking at the candidates voting record AND life. Look at W. He has bankrupted multiple companies; he mismanaged and lied on a number of items PRIOR to running as pres. Clinton, well known womanizer PRIOR to president. reagan, nixon, etc all had their issues before they got president (reagan ran up monster deficit in CA, and then got out of trouble because JFK started NASA).

What it comes down to, is these ppl already have their behavior in place. Just look at how they acted over the last 5 years and it will give you a better idea of what to expect.

Re:I hate these; they are SOOO rigged

All of these kind of things are answered to encourage whatever somebody wants to believe. (BIG SNIP) (reagan ran up monster deficit in CA, and then got out of trouble because JFK started NASA).

JFK started NASA? Really? I find that somewhat surprising given the dates involved. [wikipedia.org]

Who did you say was answering the questionnaire?

The only way something like this makes sense is if a candidate has to respond on the record in real time. Otherwise, they just farm it out to an underling, who will provide a nice, safe, reasonably accurate series of answers.

I want to know if the candidate himself could pass a grade school science exam before he gets to make calls on science policy. Even somebody who gets spoon-fed their information has to have enough basic awareness of the subject to know when he's hearing a line of crap from his advisers.

First question

Question #1: As president what will you do to ensure that our webserver doesn't die a fiery death when this article gets slashdotted?

The site

does not at all have what McCain feels about science. It's just alot of "according to" or "on this date" or "this Reporter reported" There's absolutely nothing saying where he personally stands.

How the heck???

McCain must have had some help with this, we all know he doesn't use computers, doesn't know how to use e-mail and admittedly depends upon his wife for that. Talk about out of touch with the 21st Century. How is he ever supposed to become a Cybernetic Overlord? I mean really!

Vote Cthulhu 08
Why vote for a lesser evil when you can vote for a greater one!

The null hypothesis of politics

No one believes politicians. Why should anyone believe them? From the city councillor to the President of the Benighted States, there is no punishment for incompetence or lying. If you bribe the right people, there's no punishment for crime, either. A pretty good game to play if you have cash and connections. Make billions for your circle, even if you kill millions of people in a far-away land where they don't even play baseball.

Political parties are organisms that thrive on cajolery and deception. They pick "leaders" but these leaders are really just pushed to the fore to take the spotlight away from the cunning monkeys behind the curtains writing the speeches and glad-handing the lobbyists. These leaders aren't really meant to change anything profound.

Civil servants also do their best to survive. Sometimes politicians and civil servants cooperate. Most of the time, it's a null hypothesis. Sometimes, you get a highly-motivated evil cretin in power and other evil cretins join in the convulsions. Then you have efficiency at the expense of freedom, justice, and maybe even life itself.

Listen to people everywhere speaking today. This is the age of Peter Pan. Everyone's a child, wanting other people to do the work and make the sacrifices and unwilling to grow up. Give me my ear-pod and home theatre with a screen full of high-definition retardation and don't ask me to learn about the world. Then I can spend all my time talking with my idiotic friends about about which plastic Hollywood dolls we would fuck if we had the opportunity... when we win the lottery.

And when we tire of that desperate chain of infantile hope and outright stupidity, we post on Slashdot. (o:

Re:The best answer to the science questionnaire

That would NOT be a good idea. The reason is simple, businesses almost NEVER do pure research. Its hard to turn the results directly into money, and (rightfully) that is all a business is there for. Taxpayer funded programs do the pure research, then businesses take the result and do the research needed to turn that into a product. Take the Fed out of research and a lot of innovation will come to a grinding halt.

Re:The best answer to the science questionnaire

They didn't use pencil because broken leads would be a big problem in zero G.

Re:Database Connection Error

...or their servers can't handle much of a load.

Oh, don't be silly. We all know McCain's/Palin's "science policy" is a huge load.