141–150 of 199 posts
If this is meant to be taken at face value, and it's at least plausible given how the US government seems to operate, how can Obama not follow it up with at least a strong commitment to making the American security apparatus more clear and transparent?
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This statement was made pre-9/11 - an event that changed many things. But even this wasn't a dramatic shift in his views. If anything, Bush's reaction to 9/11 reinforced the image he presented prior to his election. Whether you agreed with his views or not, few would argue that his reaction came entirely out of left field. By contrast, this NSA/Obama issue proves that we simply don't know the person that is sitting i…
Imagine a presidential candidate making promises and saying a lot of things that he believed in about spying and how the agencies involved should work. Then he gets into office and finds out that things are much worse than he could have possibly known before getting into office. Would you prefer he keep to the path he laid out in campaigning or deal with reality as it is, even if it goes against his beliefs? I try to…
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Your comment reads like some kind of passage from scripture, offering humble ignorance of reality and blindly placing trust in some entity to take care of your best interest. In the real world, it's clear that institutions become corrupt. Enron is one example. So is GroupOn. So is the NSA. I suppose you think we should not let our faith be shaken by the revelation that corruption has been found in some NSA programs.…
You haven't actually considered that the system is reasonable as it is. Which is the hubris that I'm talking about. I don't blindly trust institutions. But I also don't blindly distrust institutions when the system they perpetuate has merit. Life is quite good in America if you're in the middle class as compared to the standards of living in the past and around the world. I'm careful with my judgements as I understan…
> I can only look at the result, which from my perspective is quite good relative to what I know about the world today and in the past.
You are judging the state of the entire system by the level of personal comfort you experience and your heavily biased view of history.
It sounds to me like you are judging America's actions to be morally superior simply because America enjoys a high standard of living. I'd argue that a high standard of living out to result in a high moral standard for our institutions and officials.
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> What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course. Vote. For for better people. That is the basis of any democracy. You don't blindly follow your leaders, and you don't blame them for their mistakes and carry on as if there's nothing you can do about it, because you can do something about it. You can vote them out, and vote better people in. The fact that those three hundred million Americans…
> Vote. For better people. Obama was the best option was he not?
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> It is fascinating how people lay blame. Oh, yes, very much so! For example, you seem quite effortlessly to lay blame on three hundred or so million people, and that's only counting those alive right now, with no consideration for those who've predeceased us, at least some of whom presumably could be expected, in your formulation, to have had a hand in creating the situation you so readily decry. But laying blame, w…
Wiggle out of what? I didn't say blame is bad, I said it's fascinating how people lay blame, and specifically what / who they choose to blame (anybody but their own self typically). I have absolutely no problem taking my share of responsibility as an aware American, for the state of the country (I never said otherwise, you merely incorrectly inferred it). I don't see a very large percentage of people willing to do th…
This will be a bit of a stretch, but nations are kind of like equation solvers. You start with ICs (form of government, economic views, population diversity), BCs (neighbours, trade, media), source terms (research, development, legal activism) , ect... and then start moving through time, trying to solve for a converged social state that's stable. Some of that junk just isn't stable and diverges spectacularly. Some are only locally stable, so you get periodic upheaval. And some are stable solutions and converge well. Almost every IC for America is one that favors absolute personal freedom over the welfare of the group. Our government rewards people for thinking locally and voting in their self interest. Our economic model is one which absolutely rewards people on self-interest. The idea model (touted here and elsewhere) is to develop the minimal effort product, market it extensively, build a loyal following, and then go public so that early backers / founders can cash out. At which point...who cares? Next big project and the public can get soaked. Even our population distribution favors it. "The land of bounty and opportunity where anyone with enough determination and drive can be a millionaire!" what kind of folks is that going to attract?
And like I said, it all converges. The media used to balance some of this, but as the iterations have continued, the bankruptcies, the buyouts, and the new investors, they've gotten more infected, to the point where they're now largely just mouthpieces for whatever self-interested individual or group speaks through them.
Are we divergent? Hard to tell. We could be a convergently stable Rome, stagnating as we develop ever more robust home tofu delivery visualizations. With the core of extreme individualism, we could theoretically be explosively divergent. However, I'm hoping for locally stable, so that we can get enough upheaval to kick us over the nearby hill and maybe find a better minima, where we once again aren't risk averse, dare to build big projects that change the world, and possess a government that does more than go into spasmodic seizures every two months.
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I'm agains the NSA spying as well, but saying they haven't cited anything isn't the same thing as proving they haven't stopped terrorist attacks. Please don't read more into this than what I said.
The NSA existing in a state that doesn't stop terrorist attacks is the status quo (it's the same as them not existing at all). It doesn't need proving. If they want to spy on everyone in the world all the time and their reasoning is that it makes Americans safer, then the burden of proof is very much on them.
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If so it took about 3 days. http://c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/transcript/transcript.ph... See the question and non-answer at 17:36. The first time I saw that live on C-SPAN my heart actually sank. It was huge wasted opportunity for the people, through their direct donations to a candidate, to make things better. In that moment the President-Elect proved one of two things: he had no idea what was going on, or he wil…
You realize The President got his very first intelligence briefing the day before that press conference right? http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/05/obama-to-rec...
Barry, that's what happens when you get caught lying almost every time you open your mouth. Clearly your mother didn't teach you much.
The headline might as well be a more Onionesque "After gaining power, politician turns out not to actually hold the strongly principled views he expressed while campaigning". I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power. Generally speaking, the vast majority of power holders agree that aggressive spyin…
Promises kept: 45%
Compromised: 25%
Broken: 22%
Stalled: 1%
In the works: 6%
not rated: 1%
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>Even the much-maligned George Bush generally acted in keeping with the fundamental beliefs that he told the country he held prior to his election. Bush promised a humble foreign policy with no nation building. He had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious prob…
This statement was made pre-9/11 - an event that changed many things. But even this wasn't a dramatic shift in his views. If anything, Bush's reaction to 9/11 reinforced the image he presented prior to his election. Whether you agreed with his views or not, few would argue that his reaction came entirely out of left field. By contrast, this NSA/Obama issue proves that we simply don't know the person that is sitting i…
Bush surrounded himself with PNAC members before 9/11. All that 9/11 did was give them the opportunity to initiate regime change in Iraq, which they had been calling for ever since PNAC was first formed. Yet he promised "no nation building" while campaigning.
I don't see much difference between Bush and Obama's level of honesty.