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Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

jonathanmh.com

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Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#311

Post by MicroBerto »

danenania wrote: post #300
MicroBerto wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is selling exactly what a serious amount of people in this country want. If you don't know that then you don't understand America. Go work in a factory for a year.

What a serious amount of uneducated racist people want. This has been tried before a number of times in history. It doesn't end well, for the working class or anyone else.

> uneducated racist people

You sorely overestimate anyone's intentions. Nearly all Trump types simply want productive jobs and to be left alone. I know this because I've worked in factories with them (non-Union).

If it's racist to not want to send my job to China, then you really need to check the definition of racism.

And why is it that so many legal immigrants are pro-Trump? Hmmm.....

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#312

Post by dredmorbius »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #224
jonesb6 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hundreds of bookmarks in chrome. I have so many bookmarks that I've essentially stopped making new ones because the back log is simply too large. That speech I bookmarked. Despite the terrible formatting that speech is a work of art applicable to every human being who holds power, whether it's POTUS or the office manager.

Terrible formatting? It's pure html. If it looks bad, you should adjust your browser to improve it, or hit the reader button if lazy.

The problem with "adjusting your browser" is that this requires creating a default style which is at odds with virtually every other site.

Which points to a significant problem with the Web: one reason we're inundated with crap styles is that the browser defaults are crap.

If the W3C and browser vendors set sane margins, padding, font sizes, etc., at least we could fall back to these rather than deal with the crap of current website design.

But the defaults are crap, and designers try to "improve" on them, and ....

That said, unstyled HTML (if that's what this is, I can't inspect the page) remains better in most cases than styled pages.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#313

Post by stillsut »

cromwellian wrote: post #131

Obama has a meta-point however that proponents of the absolutist position don't seem to want to face. Democracy relies on transparency. Many of the progressives who are rallying in support of absolute right to privacy are some of the same people who constantly criticize Swiss bank accounts, Cayman island financial shenanigans. But if companies were to implement the same sorts of impenetrable encryption, on every devi…

Absolutely right. Imagine a white man goes on a spree shooting with hate-crime elements. We are trying to find out if more of these attacks will occur

Now the suspect's money is in a Goldman Sachs account and the bank tells the gov't they couldn't just break into their client's financial records and find out who transferred them money. This is a "secret trust" account where nobody - not even Goldman employees - can recover transnational records. What kind of precedent would that set? What about if China wanted to find out bank transactions?

Some say this is hate-crime is one of the worst in decades and it's worth finding out if we are at risk for more. Opponents say banking privacy is an absolute right.

Can anyone tell me if they story ran in national news, the CEO of Goldman would not be facing charges of treason right now?

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#314

Post by coliveira »

MicroBerto wrote: post #310
coliveira wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that he cannot provide it. Most of his proposals would require to overturn centuries of laws and other American traditions. Promising that is akin to trying to sell the statue of liberty.

Building a border? Forcing existing immigration laws to be upheld?

I mean simple things like deporting 11 million people, killing families of terrorists, legalizing torture, and closing the US to China imports, just for starters.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#315

Post by jonathanmh »

jordanb wrote: post #86
tomlongson wrote: post #42

A key promise of Obama's campaign for the presidency was to run the “most transparent” government- however the only person to really deliver on that promise was a whistleblower. Secret courts, secret domestic spying, and now calls for weakening of the digital equivalent of the safe shows that he either was not honest about transparency, or has radically changed his opinion since becoming POTUS. Maybe it's that he dec…

I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…

> I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another.

I completely agree, I bet it's not a great job most of the time and a really different and isolated world.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#316

Post by coliveira »

MicroBerto wrote: post #311
danenania wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a serious amount of uneducated racist people want. This has been tried before a number of times in history. It doesn't end well, for the working class or anyone else.

> uneducated racist people You sorely overestimate anyone's intentions. Nearly all Trump types simply want productive jobs and to be left alone. I know this because I've worked in factories with them (non-Union). If it's racist to not want to send my job to China, then you really need to check the definition of racism. And why is it that so many legal immigrants are pro-Trump? Hmmm.....

Should we try to read intentions beyond what he is literally saying? The defense of Trump is solely based on the idea that he doesn't mean what he says. But this is tantamount to say that he is a liar. If that is the case, how can someone ever trust him? If you need to build on fear and lies to be elected, it is anyone's guess what might be the result.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#317

Post by jonathanmh »

willholloway wrote: post #165
jordanb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Washington has changed Obama more than Obama changed Washington. He's spent seven years in the craziest bubble in America surrounded by people being paid millions to distort his worldview one way or another. A while back he advised some kids in College to never type anything into a computer if they want it to remain private. For him, it probably seems completely reasonable. I doubt he's touched a keyboard sin…

Let's take a moment of deep appreciation for President Obama's decision to not panic after the San Bernadino shooting, reinstate color terror alert codes, spark a ground invasion of Syria, or in any other way overreact. For a brief interlude in American history, we had a president that didn't capitalize on terror attacks politically, or generally set a tone of paranoia and fear. We won't always be this lucky.

I have (from afar) also witnessed the Bush presidency and regarding tone of voice and speeches, Obama was the far better diplomat and seemed very concerned with humanitarian causes.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#318

Post by mikeash »

MicroBerto wrote: post #309
mikeash wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's hard to do well. My point is that Trump hasn't done well. The fact that he built a not particularly successful business empire with inherited money doesn't say much about his skills or smarts. Hiring good people is hard, for sure. Has Trump ever done it?

I find this line laughable. Everyone seems to think that turning a million into billions is a cakewalk. Most people wouldn't even know where to begin and would lose their minds during any downturn. The others would buy a small house and whither away savings. The rest would waste it all on idiocy. If you're running a billion dollar empire and it hasn't burnt to the ground, you can be sure that he's hired good people.…

Trump inherited tens of millions. Other people have done the "market simulator" thing and the result is that Trump has not outperformed the market. My shell script would have done about as well at growing Trump's wealth as Trump did.

Turning tens of millions into a few billions over the past forty years is a cakewalk. I don't know why you think it's "laughable" to say this. It doesn't even require smart investing, just the minimal amount of non-stupid investing.

I haven't answered your original question because it's simply not relevant. You're trying to make an ad-hominem argument against me. I'm not exactly going to jump at the chance to help you with that.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#319

Post by nkurz »

graycat wrote: post #308
nkurz wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My Muslim faith": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUgNg7aD8M Some people will look at that clip and conclude that Obama just misspoke or was repeating something McCain didn't say but might have, etc. I appreciate you posting that video. Watching, I feel that clearly the context is "John McCain himself hasn't said that I'm a Muslim but he insinuates it", and that he's just phrasing it as a counterfactual. I was inter…

To me Obama is a subject I wish I'd never heard about. I don't want to know about Obama. But I am a US citizen and, thus, basically need to try to understand him. To understand him is, as usual for people, not an exact science, but I have to try. My first conclusion is that no way before he leaves office will he really say what or who he is. Not a chance. So, instead, he is putting on an act, much more than nearly an…

I appreciate the genuine response, although your explanations for events seem bizarre to me. I find them parallel to another current front-page article on mental illness:

  I had tried to fill the gaps with guesses. But when my   
  guesses were wrong, conspiracy theories crawled in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/sunday/the-neurosc...

For me, the explanation that politicians are fallible humans is mostly sufficient. My guess would be that nothing to contradict Obama's official narrative comes out after he leaves office.

But I also fear that my own reasoning is flawed in ways invisible to me. We'll see what truth the future brings to light. Thanks for engaging.

Re: Re: Obama on Fetishizing Our Phones

#320

Post by rapind »

rdl wrote: post #306
rapind wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Sanders could maintain. I could be wrong, but he has a pretty long record of doing the right thing (from my perspective) and I'm not sure what else you're supposed to vote for if not his / her record? Charisma? Promises? Anger?

I think Sanders is more ideological than most credible candidates in history (which is a lot of the appeal); same as Ted Cruz. (just polar opposites on ideology) They're both pretty exceptional as top-2 candidates for their party nomination for that reason, compared to historical trends.

Agreed on Sanders. I probably would have picked Rand Paul as the opposite though.
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