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

Obama Promises Disappear from Web

sunlightfoundation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 174 posts

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#151

Post by graycat »

dysfunction wrote: post #149
graycat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlawful detention? There is no such thing. We can hold any one for any length of time as long as it is in the national interest. It appears that you are referring to the people the US is holding in Gitmo. Uh, an issue here is the "lawful" part: A claim is that the whole Gitmo thing is part of the US military fighting a war. The Gitmo people are prisoners of war or some such. So, they are not to be handled in the U…

> The Gitmo people are prisoners of war or some such. So, they are not to be handled in the US legal system. So, for how they are being handled, "lawful" in the US legal system makes little or no sense. Prisoners of war have legal rights too, under treaties to which the US is signatory. The Gitmo prisoners are not receiving those rights either. They're in a legal no-man's-land.

Okay, there are some treaties. But what is the 'recourse'? Likely not the US legal system. Likely not any legal system.

The Gitmo situation is a mess, not the least because apparently it's costing the US $1+ million a year per prisoner. But while a mess, I object to calling it a legal mess. Laws, courts, justice, etc. just have next to nothing to do with it.

Maybe there are a lot of lawyers and they want to see every problem, e.g., the Gitmo problem, as a legal problem. Sorry, lawyers, it's not a legal problem; instead, it's something else, a problem of a different kind.

In part Gitmo is an example to Jihaders: Either we will kill you, and if they are physically close maybe your family, or we will ship you to Gitmo, and we will let you decide which is worse.

Some of the Gitmo Jihaders believe that it is just their natural, Allah-given right and mission to fight the US or go on a hunger strike. I'd say, that 120 days of hunger strike would be about right.

Whatever, I just don't see it as a legal problem.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#152

Post by pizza »

jasonlotito wrote: post #121
zdw wrote: post #7

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Whistleblowers are frequently viewed by people who disagree with them as whiners, complainers, disgruntled people with axes to grind, and frequently they are all those things, often with nothing more than circumstantial or spurious claims. Not everyone's a Snowden.

> One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. That quote also means that the man is still a terrorist.

only as a function of the observer

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#153

Post by smsm42 »

vl wrote: post #97
smsm42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He went against his promises many, many times. And he still was re-elected. Which drives me to the conclusion that his voters are gullible enough to still believe in "we're going to change Washington" - even though the person promising the change is has been in charge for years and the only change was to the worse. There was absolutely nothing to indicate that Obama is not a regular politician that would promise to c…

Well, to be fair Romney was confused by his own lies even before being elected. When the choice was between Romney, who clearly wiggled to satisfy every group and failed to take a stand for at least something, and Obama, who at least could articulate his position, many voted for known lesser evil. Radicalization of the right wing basically made republicans unelectable, and on top of that pushed mainstream democrats s…

You seem to claim both that Republicans are radicalized to the point of being unelectable (clearly wrong on the facts, as Republicans control the House and the difference between Obama and Romney vote results was not nearly large enough to deem Republicans "unelectable") and that both parties converge to the point of being indistinguishable. It seems to be pretty hard to reconcile both claims. Fortunately, if you look at the facts both appear to be wrong - Republicans are not more "radical" than they ever were unless you define "radical" as "disagreeing with a point of view I happen to support", they are plenty electable and the differences in parties' approaches can be clearly seen, even though important questions are not always divided along the party lines. For example, among people who favor expansion of government there are many Democrats and many Republicans, though they support it for very different tactical reasons probably.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#154

Post by smsm42 »

smsm42 wrote: post #148
unclebucknasty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he still was re-elected. Which drives me to the conclusion that his voters are gullible enough to still believe in "we're going to change Washington" There were actually many who were disappointed by 2012, and I am not aware of anyone (even Obama) who still discussed or believed that the 2012 campaign was about "changing Washington", as was the 2008 campaign. Even his campaign slogan had changed to reflect this. Th…

>>>> to the fact that he would be the first African-American president, Exactly. The only thing suggested that he's in any way different is his skin color. Take that away, and he'd be the most regular politician, with nothing to distinguish him from hundreds of others that can artfully read calculated words from a teleprompter. I purposefully did not mention that because I think being of unusual skin color for a pres…

>>> I think being of unusual skin color for a president is a personal accomplishment

I meant "is not a personal accomplishment".

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#155

Post by StevenRayOrr »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #142
jasonlotito wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once. Al Awlaki. I'll refer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107997 for the rest.

Once. Al Awlaki. As far as we know. Remember, we are now in an age where we do not know what our government is doing. In fact, we're not allowed to know what it's doing, or even why we're not allowed to know. Smart money shouldn't bet that this is the only actual occurrence.

We _know_ of one instance and that instance alone is bad enough that we should be alarmed, but "smart money" doesn't legitimize the claim that it has happened on multiple occasions.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#156

Post by jasonlotito »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #142
jasonlotito wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once. Al Awlaki. I'll refer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107997 for the rest.

Once. Al Awlaki. As far as we know. Remember, we are now in an age where we do not know what our government is doing. In fact, we're not allowed to know what it's doing, or even why we're not allowed to know. Smart money shouldn't bet that this is the only actual occurrence.

> As far as we know.

Yes, anything else is pure speculation. Wars have started because of speculation like that.

> Remember, we are now in an age where we do not know what our government is doing.

That's naive. We are not now in such an age, it has always been like this. We are now in an age where it's far easier to know what is going on. Things aren't getting worse. They aren't getting less transparent. Read your history if you think the government was more transparent in decades past. It wasn't.

We've done far, far worse than target Al Awlaki. Hell, if that's our biggest concern, we are doing well.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#157

Post by mortehu »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #69
rtpg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't going to be charged with treason.

How is he supposed to know in advance that they will not try to kill him if that legal option is on the table and they are known to be willing to make examples out of previous whistleblowers like Bradley Manning? And even if he is not threatened with outright execution, even slightly less radical but more likely punishments, like that of Manning, are sufficiently radical to justify defecting to the Soviet Union. Even…

> How is he supposed to know in advance that they will not try to kill him if that legal option

Well, in most countries it's illegal to deport someone if there's a risk of a death sentence, which is why US often cannot extradite people. Hence US has to convince the "host" country first, which I guess counts for something. That's what US is currently trying to do with Russia:

> "The charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional death penalty-eligible crimes," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Vladimirovich Konovalov.

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#159

Post by vl »

rayiner wrote: post #145
clicks wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make good points, but I think you overlook the fact that when you're in a climate where anything goes -- a climate that has come to be that way precisely because of a series of complex precedents where it had been unclear where the blame fell and so the real villains often went unpunished, a lack of drastic, disruptive action is probably ultimately much more disastrous than what slaps on the wrist of varying inte…

> As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence. By and large, black teens aren't incarcerated on "shakey evidence." That's the great thing about crimes that affect poor people: they're really easy to prove. The difference between an aggressive deal/outright fraud/honest mistake is difficult to prove. Who knew what? When? What w…

>My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout.

And I was thinking that in US companies can't make campaign donations at all, but what do I know...

Re: Obama Promises Disappear from Web

#160

Post by Bluestrike2 »

mortehu wrote: post #135
criley2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITT: Armchair psychologists confuse "psychopathy" and "sociopathy". The tops of government and business exhibit the signs of sociopathy, not psychopathy. Psychopaths generally exhibit many behaviors that makes them fundamentally unsuited for public life, such as poor behavior control. Sociopaths, on the other hand, have just the right mix of anti-social tendencies to turn their empathy on for the crowd, and off while…

If you're really a trained psychologist; in what diagnostic system do these categories even exist? Surely not ICD or DSM?

Outside the public consciousness, the term's only real professional use is limited mainly to some forensic psychologists because of the criminal justice system's rather peculiar requirements of psychology. Given the hoops it requires they bend through, I wouldn't look towards FP for diagnostic guidance. Robert Hare as well, but personally I tend to think of his work is sophomoric at the best of times and idiotic at the worst . He's also (in my opinion) a world-class prick, having used legal action to prevent the publishing of a critical paper that had already made it through peer review:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=critique-of...

But that's neither here nor there.

Anyhow, setting aside the lack of any diagnostic definition for either term, sociopathy has never been anything more than a synonym preferred by certain individuals. But if we're looking for some point of differentiation, one of the main reasons to prefer one synonym over another was to try and emphasize causation by social factors. Certainly not some sort of empathy switch.

Generally speaking, that confusion is part of the problem with both terms. They carry a lot of baggage and pop-psych definitions, but sorting through the muck and deriving some sort of diagnostic criteria is an exercise in futility.

Post reply on HN