Illnois Senator Barack Obama
Who he is (via wikipedia): Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, he passed most of his childhood and adolescent years in Honolulu, Hawaii. At age six, he moved to Jakarta where he lived with his mother and Indonesian stepfather for four years. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for U.S. Senate in early 2003. The following year, while still an Illinois state legislator, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he cosponsored legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In the current 110th Congress, he has sponsored legislation on lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as his top three priorities.[1] He married in 1992 and has two daughters. He has written two books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.
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New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
Who she is (via wikipedia): A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student to deliver the commencement address at Wellesley College. She began her career as a lawyer after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. She was later named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979 and was listed as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America in 1988 and 1991. She was the First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 and was active in a number of organizations concerned with the welfare of children as well as sitting on the board of Wal-Mart and several other corporate boards. As First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval by the U.S. Congress in 1994. In 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a role in advocating for the establishment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. She became the only First Lady to be subpoenaed, testifying before a federal grand jury as a consequence of the Whitewater controversy in 1996. She was never charged with any wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband's administration. The state of her marriage to Bill Clinton was the subject of considerable public discussion following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998. After moving to New York, Clinton was elected as senator for New York State in 2000. That election marked the first time an American First Lady ran for public office; Clinton is also the first female senator to represent New York. In the Senate, she initially supported the George W. Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, which included voting for the Iraq War Resolution. She has subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the Iraq War and has opposed it on most domestic issues. She was re-elected by a wide margin in 2006. In the 2008 presidential nomination race, Clinton has won the most primaries and delegates of any woman in U.S. history.
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Arizona Senator John McCain
Who he is (via wikipedia): McCain's grandfather and father were the first pair of father/son Four-Star admirals in the United States Navy. McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying attack aircraft from carriers. During the Vietnam War in 1967, he narrowly escaped death in the Forrestal fire. On his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down, badly injured, and captured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. He spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released in accordance with the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. McCain retired from the Navy in 1981 and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st congressional district in 1982. After serving two terms, he was elected to the Senate in 1986, winning reelection in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain has established a reputation as a political maverick for his willingness to disagree with his party on several key issues. Surviving the Keating Five scandal of the 1980s, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, eventually co-sponsoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002. McCain lost the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush after closely contested battles in several early primary states. In the 2008 presidential election cycle, McCain staged a comeback after his campaign stumbled in mid-2007, and by the end of January 2008, he was the Republican front-runner once again. Following victories in early February and the withdrawal of his closest competitors, McCain gained enough delegates to solidify his status as the presumptive nominee on March 4, 2008.
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Stance on Technology: Well being that John McCain has been around long enough to actually witness the big bang, Senator McCain tends to shy away from discussions on technology (That is unless it involves two sticks to make fire or a kite and a key to make electricity.....HE IS REALLY FUCKIN OLD!). However he has taken time out of his day to make the internet generation cringe. John McCain is very much against Net Neutrality unless evidence would arise proving abuse (Ofcoarse, this evidence would only arise if the corporations abusing us would tell on themselves.). During the 2007 D5 All Things Digital conference John McCain stated "When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment." McCain has also added that he believes companies should be allowed to decide which sites customers view and regulate the speed of your connection. In other words if you have alot of money you would be able to enjoy high speed porn, if you don't make that much all you'll have access to is probably John McCains website at a loading bar an hour. Infact, in 2002, John McCain went so far as to introduce the Consumer Broadband Deregulation Act, a measure that keeps the government from requiring broadband providers to allow consumers access to competing ISPs...but only in the residential broadband market, ofcoarse.
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Worth your Vote?: Lets not bullshit ourselves, John McCain, if elected, would be the oldest president ever elected in U.S. history. We don't actually expect him to be too tech savvy, if it all. Our greatest hope with a McCain Administration would be that he would be too busy not understanding the economy, keeping us in Iraq for the next hundred years, stripping away women and minority rights, forcing Jesus back into schools, and pretending to be the next Ronald Reagan, then to pay attention to gamers and the digital age....ofcoarse, he'll always have Joe Lieberman there humping his leg to pay attention for him.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul
Who he is (via wikipedia): Originally from the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, Pennsylvania, he studied at Duke University School of Medicine; after his 1961 graduation and a residency in obstetrics and gynecology, he became a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon, serving outside the Vietnam War zone. He later represented Texas districts in the U.S. House of Representatives (1976–1977, 1979–1985, and 1997–present). He entered the 1988 presidential election, running as the Libertarian nominee while remaining a registered Republican, and placed a distant third. Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian.[2] He advocates a foreign policy of nonintervention, having voted against actions such as the Iraq War Resolution, but in favor of force against terrorists in Afghanistan. He favors withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations, citing the dangers of foreign entanglements to national sovereignty. Having pledged never to raise taxes, he has long advocated ending the federal income tax, scaling back government spending, abolishing most federal agencies, and removing military bases and troops from foreign soil; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve. He also opposes the Patriot Act, the federal War on Drugs, No Child Left Behind, and gun control. Paul is strongly pro-life, and has introduced bills to negate Roe v. Wade, but affirms states' rights to regulate or ban abortion, rather than federal jurisdiction. While Paul was a leading 2008 presidential candidate in Republican straw polls, he saw substantially less support in landline opinion polls and in various primaries. Strong Internet grassroots support was indicated by his popularity as a web search term, his lead in YouTube subscriptions, and, on December 16, 2007, the largest one-day fundraiser in U.S. political history, netting over $6 million in 24 hours through an independently organized effort.
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Ralph Nader
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Worth your Vote?: I typically use this section to round out the information above and allow you to make up your own mind on whether to vote for the individual or not, but when it comes to Nader I am going to have to throw my opinion in and say that he is not worth your vote. Being that this is the fifth time Nader has ran for president and the closest he has come was in 2000 while being backed by the Green Party I don't see Nader making so much as a dent let alone being elected president. Nader's campaign doesn't seem to be so much built of ideas and solutions, instead it comes off as just an anti-corporate attack organization. The shame in it all is that Ralph Nader brings up many great and progressive points but over the years he has solidified himself in history as just being a political gnat.