it's happened a lot here, a lot of seats have all female lists, the best politician on the planet wouldn't get elected even nominated if they happened to be the wrong gender / sexual-orientation

which is the way it should be, I am an Obama supporter, because I think he's the best guy for the job, not cos he's black - it was an open field and the best guy is winning - no problems with that

I'd say Obama, but a little part of me keeps looking for something sinister about him..

Everyone knows Hillary is running for office so that if she wins she can get her crotch munched by an intern and claim revenge for Bill's frivolities.

Positive discrimination is still discrimination and is wrong. Although it's also illegal.

 

You seem to miss the part where you live in a society that is so skewed towards men that 38 years after the passing of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 we still have a gender pay gap of 17.2% (mean), raising to 35.6% among part time workers, or if you look at individual industries it's over 40% in Financial Services.

 

Almost all positions of power are held by white men in our society - there are only 2 black female MPs in Westminster, so the notion that this 'positive discrimination' shit is happening a lot isn't really backed up by the reality.(I admit it happens in some places, but I don't agree with it)

It made me REALLY ANGRY when I heard someone on Woman's Hour the other day asking a black woman whether black women should vote based on race or gender. Vote on policies, fools!

 

While I'm pretty suspicious about Barack's motives and backing, he seems to be the least warmongering candidate, so I'd have to go for him.

Can't make myself care. I'm interested in it and been following it a fair bit but... I wouldn't vote for either of them. While symbolically it would be good to have a black or woman president, they're both cunts.

Not with /those/ legs :Y

I am depressed by the support for Barack Obama. Can any of the people who have voted for him please tell me what he stands for, apart from "change"?

He stands /as/ the only opposition to Clinton. That may be more important than what he stands /for/.

 

Other than that, I did hear/read some good stuff about foreign policy and other stuff, which sounded nice. But it was all too dull to remember. Nice, but dull.

Tonnes of stuff regarding marginalised people (in the US)
Supports public financing of political campaigns (I think this could make a huge (positive) difference to first-world politics)
Supportive of rural ecconomy (something that has been fucked up here) (articularly interested in his views on the relationship between big-business subsidies and the rural economy)
More regulation in finance.
Pro-union.
Against reductions in Federal spending.
Lots of stuff on education.
Lots of foreign policy/war stuff.


Plenty of other stuff but I forget.

Where'd you find all that out?

News.

I have since gone and read more about his actual views and stuff and if you ignore the stuff that all US politicians support ('capitalism' and that), he's actually not bad.

Mark is unlikely to consider supporting capitalism to be a bad thing.

I don't recognise capitalism as a system. It's just the natural state of society.

well, on a 1-10 scale, where 10 is good, i rate them this way:

 

Obama - 8: a little unknown, but policies leagues above anyone else

 

Mcain - 1: yes, he's a warmongering Bush clone, but still loads better than Hillary

 

Hillary - -8: Simply amazing, the only candidate in recent memory worse than bush... i dislike republicans greatly, but given the choice, i'd vote McCain over her.
Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a sexism thing... just look at her old record / hate campaign against Obama and especially her "think of the children!¬" pointless censorship attempts

 

It's all pretty pointless anyway, i'm 99% sure America will choose one of the two worst candidates and relagate itself to another 4-8years of bush-like rule :-((

The thing that really finally put me off Hilary was that deal with pretending she landed Kosovo (or whatever, fuck the Balkans, they fucking confuse me) airport under gunfire etc. and later had to admit that she 'mis-spoke' when video of her arriving in the normal fashion surfaced.

That and whenever she speaks she does this little point and wave to some imaginary friend in the audience.

I know it's a politician's job to lie which is exactly why they should be fucking any good at it.

Jon Stewart (well, actually John Hodgman) had a great sketch about this, but I've tried trawling and I can't find it.

well, teh voted pretty convincingly for Obama, and it looks like he's the guy, Clinton is trailing quite badly now

Is it cause he is black?

 

<gets goat wearing a coat>

 

To me he is a bit like David Cameron. Young, enthusiastic and wants to change his country. Does he really have any proper policies or ideas that can make America a better nation? He has a lot of work to do reversing the damage done by the bush team (as does Cameron from the Labour tax mongers) but he has got to be better than the other two fossils that are contending with him.