Politics, religion: was 2008 Elections...? - enter at your own risk

[Russ McDonald]

This argument is becoming circular because we are working from different basic premises, so we will never agree on conclusions.

I believe torture is immoral and medieval, and our government should not be engaged in it. So while one could come up with some extremely unlikely scenario where torturing may save lives, I cannot on principle condone it as an interrogation practice. People have to operate with some sense of what's right or wrong in their lives or else risk becoming soulless, even
sociopathic.

So you would call for Impeachment.

We will agree to disagree. I find this "So while one could come up with some extremely unlikely scenario" Terrorist use a Nuke is far from an extremely unlikely scenario, because many including me thought someone flying planes into the twin towers, and the pentagon an extremely unlikely scenario. But I was wrong.

 

[Eugene]

Golly

Golly

Clinton supports Huckabee. Just look at the picture above. Oh, wait, that is Jim Nabors.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

People are throwing the word "crime" around pretty freely on this thread. Isn't that decision a judicial one, and not one to be determined by an individual member of the vast public?

Yes, a judicial and legislative one, but there is already historical legal precedent for labeling torture as a crime. If you're referring to those who are calling Bush and company "criminals" I agree it is a somewhat loaded appellation, but sometimes an accusation of a crime is the only way to get investigations to begin.

 

[Russ McDonald]

War doesn't solve anything, pure and simple. Going into Iraq was a huge mistake compounded by terrible planning at the top. The mind bogling amounts of money spent however could do far reaching good in the world and at home. That is how you fight terrorism, by improving the lot of humanity not with water boarding.
Aloha
-A

I would say those who were liberated from Hitler would disagree with your assessment of War.

 

[number6]

Yes, a judicial and legislative one, but there is already historical legal precedent for labeling torture as a crime.

But the Congress itself okayed CIA interrogation techniques, and as far as waterboarding is concerned, a former CIA interrogator said it has only been used either twice or three times and was okayed by the Whitehouse each time. It was early on and gave us information from Sheik Kaleed ....whatever... and another of the planners.

The interrogator himself said he now believes it is torture, but didn't think so at the time. He also said it broke those two after about 30 seconds, and one of them said the next morning "Allah came to me during the night and said I should co-operate" (Don't any of you people watch Nightline? Get a life!)

The interrogator also said he underwent waterboarding himself and he only lasted about 5 seconds. He finished by saying that we gained intelligence from those two detainees that saved lives by capturing others and stopping other known planned attacks.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

War is necessary as long as the enemy thinks it's necessary.

Putting people in Jail doesn't solve anything either but it does get the public out of immediate danger.

War doesn't inherently solve any problems but it usually creates a situation where the obstacles to the solution are removed. Fighting World War 2 didn't stabilize Europe, end fascism or save the Jews from anti-semitism. It only removed the authority of the propaganda machine and created a space for us to fill it with our propaganda.

This is what the Bush administration disasterously misunderstood. Winning The War (tm) only buys you time to plead your case before the people. The mission was accomplished on the Aircraft Carrier. It skipped their revolution and went straight to the inevitable following Civil War. New War.

 

[Ken Willinger]

I would say those who were liberated from Hitler would disagree with your assessment of War.

Sometimes war is necessary. In our case with Iraq, it wasn't. We are not keeping terrorists from our shores by fighting in Iraq.

 

[PaulClements]

I would say those who were liberated from Hitler would disagree with your assessment of War.

And the Sith wouldn't have been destroyed if it wasn't for the star wars... OK mine wasn't quite so profound

As for the elections, I think Obama would be good for America (He'd be better than Gordon Brown is in the UK!). I can see him being able to mend a few wounds that Bush's foreign policies have created and I can't quite picture Hilary doing that. Having said that, I don't know enough about all those running to give a decent enough opinion. I'm just going by what little I've read and seen recently.

Paul

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Wow this thread went insane... I could respond to lots in here, but I guess all that I can say is I agree with a few things said. But mostly, I disagree with the lot of ya! :bleh:

A few years back...(maybe 50 years or 150 years) the government in the USA stopped being for the people and started being for the people in the government...

By my accounting of American history, this happened somwhere in the 1820's... Really just a few years after the last of our founding fathers had passed. Every now and then the stars align and major events are met with a truly charsimatic leader with the right stuff and we end up with a great president. ...Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, etc.. Many of them not appreciated by all or even recognized for their great achievement(s) while in office or even before their deaths. ...Same can be said about those who've come along with the "wrong stuff". G. W. Bush is probably going to go down in history right next to Tricky Dick.

Modern day Lobbyist are nothing more than well polished bag men.
We are seeing a broken system full of greed and dirty politics !
Put this system back on track by making lobby contributions illegal with jail time for violators

I agree... But who is going to change these laws on which our very country was founded? Surely the very branches of our government, especially congress, is not going to vote to eliminate their bread and butter.

.....o yeah...don't forget to enforce the laws you put on the books!

If only we could start with something like this. Our society wastes so much energy on wanting new and "tougher" legislation or laws in the name of gun control, violent crime, drunk driving, etc.. Perhaps we should actually enforce the laws that are already in place and see how that goes? There's a big difference between having a law on the books and enforcing that law. I believe that many of our laws are more than tough enough and would serve as a true deterrent to crime if only these laws would be fully enforced when they should be.

 

[number6]

If only we could start with something like this. Our society wastes so much energy on wanting new and "tougher" legislation or laws in the name of gun control, violent crime, drunk driving, etc.. Perhaps we should actually enforce the laws that are already in place and see how that goes? There's a big difference between having a law on the books and enforcing that law. I believe that many of our laws are more than tough enough and would serve as a true deterrent to crime if only these laws would be fully enforced when they should be.

My fear is that most of us are breaking at least one law we are unaware of at this very moment, if not every moment of every day.:blink:

 

[krd]

If the president could stop a Nuke from going off in LA by waterbording a terrorist, but chose not to, and 300,000 people were vaporized. What do do think would happen. How pissed off would you be. This is a real possibility.

Now who's being naive, in citing this Hollywood scenario? The sad fact is, the U.S. has a long history of using torture on an administrative basis, and we know exactly how and why it's done -- as an instrument of terror, repression and counter-insurgency, for which it's highly effective. As a tool of interrogation, its value is largely restricted to TV shows.

And even if you falsely believe that torture is reliable and ethically justifiable, you'll never know if there's a ticking time bomb unless you torture everyone to find out. In which case torture has to becomes routine to be of any use at all. Which turns you into a monster, and destroys all rule of law.

The abuse of this supposedly rare practice is not theoretical. Innocent people all over the world have been picked up off the street by the U.S. government and tortured in Egypt, Syria and secret U.S. prisons. The cases are currently being kept out of U.S. courts based on a "state secrets" defense. And there's the small matter of Jose Padilla, an American citizen. Did you know, for example, that Bush claims the right to seize any American citizen, here or abroad, and torture him indefinitely, without allowing any access to the courts, lawyers or even the Red Cross? All Bush has to do is declare you an "enemy combatant". There is no appeal, according to Bush. The courts have no say.

Even King George, at the time of the American revolution, didn't have such powers.

And this is what you want?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I thought the concept behind "tougher" legislation was to better enforce existing laws.

 

[Erik Bien]

So you would call for Impeachment.

We will agree to disagree. I find this "So while one could come up with some extremely unlikely scenario" Terrorist use a Nuke is far from an extremely unlikely scenario, because many including me thought someone flying planes into the twin towers, and the pentagon an extremely unlikely scenario. But I was wrong.

This is the Ticking Bomb Fallacy. For a more in-depth explanation of why it's horse-puckey, see this link.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

completely random thought:

In the future behavior and intelligence 'adjustment' will be possible and widespread. In the distant future the trend will be away from biocomputers towards far more contrived and far more efficient processors. What makes us human isn't really our processing power so much as our way of looking at the world. Even within the general human experience there is a diverse and abundant array of philosophy and culture. Most of this is the result of communication and upbringing on top of the more abstract personality and generic human sapient framework. In a world where our intelligence and sentience is understood and controllable it would seem that the people with the real power are going to be the programmer/philosophers.

When it really gets down to it that's all culture is. A shared philosophy. I presume democracy will still be the safest way to avoid homogeny from dominating the thought landscape. Laws will become firmware upgrades and politicians will be the philosophers who debate and conclude the optimal set of guidelines. Of course we'll still have police officers. They'll be the real programmers writing the machine level applications to be installed based on the philosopher's concepts and insights.

Public servant's primary task will be to maintain the infrastructure of these dispersements.

While there will be a strong desire to make individual customizations to the personality which operates within the system philisophical guidelines, I expect this will be frowned upon, not as a loss of free will which we've obviously realized was never there, but as a pragmatic approach to ensure diversity in abilities, insights and random happenchance.

Most importantly we'll need a strong constitution that each unit can evaluate the guideing directives and limitations and raise an alarm if it goes down a path to homogeny. Homogeny and loss of objectivity will the ultimate sin. If the philosophers are wrong it must be pointed out but in a process that doesn't in of itself violate the constitution.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Going back to the elections...

It's interesting to hear now that some Republicans think Obama will be easier to defeat than Hillary Clinton. I thought the conventional wisdom was that the dislike of the Clintons was so great among Republicans that it would galvanize and energize the party base in the effort to defeat her. Is it because they think he's a political lightweight who won't stand up in a head-to-head contest against Romney (who I think is most likely to end up with the nomination) or one of the others? Or do they think that an African-American simply has no chance to win? I'm curious to hear what their thinking is.

 

[number6]

completely random thought:

In the future behavior and intelligence 'adjustment' will be possible and widespread. In the distant future the trend will be away from biocomputers towards far more contrived and far more efficient processors. What makes us human isn't really our processing power so much as our way of looking at the world. Even within the general human experience there is a diverse and abundant array of philosophy and culture. Most of this is the result of communication and upbringing on top of the more abstract personality and human framework. In a world where our intelligence and sentience is understood and controllable it would seem that the people with the real power are going to be the programmer/philosophers.

When it really gets down to it that's all culture is. A shared philosophy. I presume democracy will still be the safest way to avoid homogeny from dominating the thought landscape. Laws will become firmware upgrades and politicians will be the philosophers who debate and conclude the optimal set of guidelines. Of course we'll still have police officers. They'll be the real programmers writing the machine level applications to be installed based on the philosopher's concepts and insights.

Public servant's primary task will be to maintain the infrastructure of these dispersements.

While there will be a strong desire to make individual customizations to the personality which operates within the system philisophical guidelines, I expect this will be frowned upon, not as a loss of free will which we've obviously realized was never there, but as a pragmatic approach to ensure diversity in abilities, insights and random happenchance.

Most importantly we'll need a strong constitution that each unit can evaluate the guideing directives and limitations and raise an alarm if it goes down a path to homogeny. Homogeny and loss of objectivity will the ultimate sin. If the philosophers are wrong it must be pointed out but in a process that doesn't in of itself violate the constitution.

Huh? Gavin, do you have the cliff notes to that?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I hear lots of talk of hating Clinton but I rarely see the actual rationality behind that.

It's clear the ultra right does hate her but they're not going to be voting for her or Obama anyway. The "Everybody hates Hillary" card has always seemed like a red herring to me.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm going to have to run Gavin's post thru Babel Fish... :wink:

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Huh? Gavin, do you have the cliff notes to that?

As much as things change, they don't.

......

 

[Poi Boy]

I would say those who were liberated from Hitler would disagree with your assessment of War.

Different era, those kind of wars are likely gone forever.
Aloha
-A