Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 400 posts

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#251

Post by BookmarkSaver »

dragonwriter wrote: post #236
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was almost a victorious Senate candidate in Texas, and it's no coincidence that the other person with the most was his opponent. Context matters.

> He was almost a victorious Senate candidate in Texas “He needed the fossil fuel money in order to almost (but still not) win his one campaign for statewide office” is probably not a defense the O'Rourke camp would be well served by when the issue, inevitably, arises.

He accepted donations from one of the most important and legitimate interest groups (or rather, just people that work for them) in his state, against an opponent that was also freely accepting them. I'm almost as environmentally radical as they come, and turning away all money associated with oil in a Texas Senate race is simply idiotic and honestly unprincipled.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#252

Post by kodablah »

gaze wrote: post #73

Why are all the articles about Beto about how cool and antiestablishment he is? Just absolutely nothing about what he really intends to do, how he intends to do it, and most importantly, how do we reconcile his conservative voting record with this contrary image he presents?

This is why he lost in Texas IMO. While from the outside looking in it can feel like it was unwinnable due to party-politics, from what I've gathered a lack of focus on issues also hurt (that and general disagreement with issues he did reference).

One can imagine at a national level his stance on issues would be more accepted, but he'll need to harp on them much more than focusing on who he's not. That "contrary image" is actually a positive and not a negative for many.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#253

Post by philwelch »

chrisseaton wrote: post #148
cronix wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when you're not allowed to, which happens a lot if you're registered as an Independent... > In a closed primary, only voters registered with a given party can vote in that party's primary. States with closed primaries include party affiliation in voter registration so that the state has an official record of what party each voter is registered as. https://www.fairvote.org/open_and_closed_primaries The system i…

I don’t understand arguments for open primaries. If you’re not a member of a political party what business do you have in voting who they want to represent them in the presidential election? What stops people voting for unpopular candidates in order to sabotage the party? Isn’t it basically the same as entryism?

This has happened before. In the 2008 primaries, Rush Limbaugh ran an "Operation Chaos" campaign where he called on his listeners to vote in late, open primaries for the then-losing Hillary Clinton in order to extend the Democratic primary season. In 2016, even in some closed primaries like West Virginia, a majority of voters who supported Sanders in the primary, according to exit polls, still planned to vote for Trump in the general election.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#255

Post by gglitch »

Varcht wrote: post #114
ratling wrote: post #45

I don’t believe this. The GOP is desperate to discredit him because he puts Texas into play a couple years early. This smells like a weak hit job. I’m not sold as Beto as the candidate but this is a weak meme. 2/10 be best.

If /ˈbɛ.toʊ oʊ.rɔːrk/ was R he would be buried on "TacoLand" alone.

What's with the strange serialization? Does that mean something I'm not aware of?

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#257

Post by dragonwriter »

allemagne wrote: post #250
dragonwriter wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was almost a victorious Senate candidate in Texas “He needed the fossil fuel money in order to almost (but still not) win his one campaign for statewide office” is probably not a defense the O'Rourke camp would be well served by when the issue, inevitably, arises.

To be clear, we are talking about donations from employees of the fossil fuel industry, who are just as much citizens and constituents as anyone else. When I donate to political campaigns as a private citizen who happens to be employed by a software company it does not suddenly make the campaign I donated to a shill for tech companies.

> To be clear, we are talking about donations from employees of the fossil fuel industry, who are just as much citizens and constituents as anyone else.

The usual approach to reporting political donations by firm/industry uses only PAC funds from corporate PACs controlled by firms in the industry, but OpenSecrets aggregates PAC and individual employee donations, which it justifies on the basis that “[o]ur research over more than 20 years shows a correlation between individuals' contributions and their employers' political interests and we have also observed that the donors we know about, and especially those who contribute at the maximum levels, are more commonly top executives in their companies, not lower-level employees.” [0]

In any case, I've been commenting on the political impact, not the merits, of the donations wet his candidacy.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/methodology.php

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#258

Post by freshm087 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #223
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences.

> He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences. The Democratic primary electorate is probably the segment of the population with the strongest negative impact around the 2016 election hacking that was evoked in the grandparent post, so while true your comment reinforces rather than negates the point.

Highly politicized voters tend to see things through a tribal lense: our tribe resists bad people with fists if necessary, their tribe does violence. Our leader has a freethinking stance to sex, their leader is sexual predator. There are of course a few of universally bad, and universally good things, but "hacker" certainly doesn't fall to these categories.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#259

Post by mruts »

dagw wrote: post #233
mruts wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By drunk I mean above the legal BAC. It’s pretty easy to have a few beers and be above the legal limit.

It's also pretty easy to have a few beers and not drive

I wouldn’t call it very easy. You drive to a place and have some beers. Then you have the choice of leaving your car or drive above the BAC. Most people choose the latter.

Re: Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group

#260

Post by zxcvvcxz »

Isn't this the guy who wants to dissolve the border between Texas and Mexico? Jesus.

Here's the difference borders make: check out Nogales Mexico vs. Nogales Arizona -

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/travel/nogales-arizona-me...

It's not race or genetics or even culture. It's the institutions separated by country borders that let almost otherwise identical cities have radically different outcomes.

Post reply on HN