9 ms·

I'm not American, so this is a little removed for me. In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations t

• jshen 13y ago
  The bush administration asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. This is not equivalent to any average administration as you implied.
  • bmj 13y ago
    And the current, Democratic, administration hasn't exactly rolled back many of these changes, right? My point isn't to criticize the Obama administration, but rather ask: if Hillary Clinton was asked to serve on the board of $your_favorite_service, would you consider dropping that service?
    • talmand 13y ago
      Hasn't exactly rolled back? In some cases they were expanded, including to the point of shoot first and ask questions later. As for your hypothetical, since she's apparently going to run for President and would have a decent shot at winning, I wouldn't hold my breath.
    • stevehawk 13y ago
      You mean the current President that authorized the assassination of a U.S. citizen abroad?
      • biden423 13y ago
        Not to mention the countless drone strikes that kill numerous civilians in the process. Don't let that fool you though. They're apparently not as bad as waterboarding for some reason.
        • stevehawk 13y ago
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04L8Sf3K4Lw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04L8Sf3K4Lw
        • jshen 13y ago
          I think we've always held that torture is worse than killing a in a war.
    • vdaniuk 13y ago
      I am not an American, so I am not really acquainted with transgressions of Hillary Clinton but if the tech community would provide the reasons to do so, I would definitely quit using the service.
  • maxcan 13y ago
    The current administration asserted that it has the right to assassinate anyone it wants, American citizen or not, outside of a battlefield, without any oversight or due process.
    • atmosx 13y ago
      That's why the US citizen should not elect the same PMs or (maybe) even the same party (although If I were a US citizen I'd sure as hell be a democrat).
    • gnopgnip 13y ago
      Could you provide a source for this? There is an entire process that is full of oversight.
      • aeroevan 13y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki is the case most people bring up. Killed by a drone strike without due process, but nobody claims that he was anything but a terrorist.
        • kzrdude 13y ago
          And his US-born US citizen 16-year old son was killed in a separate strike. Nobody claims he was a terrorist.
    • jshen 13y ago
      I never said the Obama admin was better. I was replying to the implication that the bush admin was typical.
  • netcan 13y ago
    I agree this was bad. I disagree that it was uniquely bad. I strongly feel that it's a red herring. Perhaps I'm wrong, but Americans seem have become easier to whip into a tribal-political rage recently. That in itself is dangerous. It makes the country more susceptible to populism. To me, this immediately registers as a visible hint at problems in the system which are never eliminated but need to be constantly challenged to keep them to a tolerable level. It's a sign that there is a market where political capital and influence is being acquired, traded and sold. It implies crony capitalism, corruption, class entrenchment. If your reaction is 'Look a Republican! Charge!' then you bury the other stuff. The real, genuine, scary problems with the system, not a party and not an old administration.
  • jnbiche 13y ago
    Compared to the Obama administration's assertion that it can kill any American it wants without trial? Here's are reports on this policy from two traditionally liberal news organizations (the conservative ones are equally damning): 1. http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/ 2. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassinates-us-citizen http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassin... Don't get me wrong, I believe the Bush administration was horrific. But the Obama administration has turned out to be equally immoral, and in some cases (spying and assassinations) even more so.
    • jshen 13y ago
      I was replying to the implication that the bush admin was just your typical political sin of power. Why you viewed that through a partisan lense I do not know.
      • jnbiche 13y ago
        I didn't view it through a partisan lens. I don't give a damn what party Bush or Obama belong to -- they've both been horrible presidents from an international relations and domestic privacy/constitutional rights perspective, regardless of what letter comes after their name.
• chasing 13y ago
  > In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have. Then you don't know American politics. How different might the country be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?
  • shiven 13y ago
    > How different might the World be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?
  • biden423 13y ago
    Umm, I think you're the one who doesn't know American politics. "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
    • streptomycin 13y ago
      Ridiculous. Read the full speech and see how its message compares with your cherry-picked quotes: http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        • streptomycin 13y ago
          Yep. As one of the results in your linked Google search says, a decent headline summary is "Gore blasts Bush on Iraq war".
      • mikestew 13y ago
        Wow, I've seen some cherry-picking in my day but parent tries to bring out a message that is the complete opposite of what the speech says.
• gnufied 13y ago
  Agreed and this begs the question where does Dropbox sits with surveillance thing because US govt. makes it clear that non-americans are fair game. So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data. Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals.
  • netcan 13y ago
    IMO, it's a fools game trying to figure out what exactly Rice & dropbox are getting from eachother. In the absence of knowledge, it's easy to just jump to a conclusion that it has something to do with one's pet issues. On HN that's probably NSA/privacy DMCA/copyright stuff, etc. In reality it could be to do with anything. Think of all the powerful people she has access to. It could be nonspecific. I think we can be pretty sure that she's not on the board to give engineering advice though.
    • amorphid 13y ago
      I'm also not trying to figure out why Rice is on the board. I'd like to think she's on the board because she has intimate knowledge of how Washington works, and how privacy van be invxed. I seriously doubt she's been hired to promote a serious agenda. On a more practical note, I've stopped using Dropbox (and any other cloud service) for storing the few things that I really want to be kept private.
  • 001sky 13y ago
    Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China If people want open-access to technology around the world, do you really think a 28 year old founder is going to get a fair deal from Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Government/? The US Potus has a hard enough time (with all his staffers) dealing with the complexities of internatinal relations. The same goes elsewhere... So, one can show up un-prepared or not show up...again no easy answeers. (also) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...
• gdulli 13y ago
  > In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have. Right at the beginning of the page: "This is not an issue of partisanship" and then it launches into detailed points about Rice as an individual.
• gnopgnip 13y ago
  What would you suggest to improve the situation?
• afterburner 13y ago
  While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different. You probably don't pay any attention to this though. It does however ultimately affect you, since such a powerful but broken country could wield incredible damage abroad. However even in foreign policy matters, there would have been different results with respect to the Iraq war. The invasion was a quick and massive pivot away from the more justifiable war in Afghanistan. Given that Saddam Hussein tried to have Bush jr.'s father killed, that leaving Hussein in power was possibly some unfinished business of that same father, that Cheney's pet company Haliburton made ridiculous profits on government war contracts, and that it was a Republican sub-faction of neo-cons who were so desperate to invade, I think there's a good case for there being a big difference between the parties. Not to mention the key personal opinions among top Republican admin officials seemed to drive the use of "enhanced interrogation".
  • cmsmith 13y ago
    >While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different. I think that this is a fiction put forth by the parties to inspire their more extreme members, but is false when you consider where the two parties fall on a full political spectrum. Take for example a couple of the most divisive social issues today: Same Sex Marriage: Clinton signed DOMA 15 years ago, Obama was against SSM 3 years ago, and I would be surprised if the 2024 (or even 2020) republican presidential candidate wasn't OK with SSM. I would guess those numbers to be similar in opinion polls, meaning that Republican voters' opinions on SSM probably lag those of Democrats by about 10 years or so. It's hard for me to get behind the idea that one party is evil and worthy of divestment when the 'preferred' party only came around in the last 5 years. Health care: One party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and mandatory system for the rest. The other party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and optional system for the rest. Who wants single payer for all? Who wants to abolish medicare?
    • burnThis 13y ago
• saalweachter 13y ago
  I don't really see a big difference between whatever political parties exist in whatever country you're in. To go through a few places the two parties in the US differ substantially - voting rights, civil rights, healthcare, minimum wage, immigration, unemployment benefits, unionization, SNAP. You know, small stuff.
• zurn 13y ago
  > Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country's sins and there are no "clean" administrations. This sounds a lot like apogolism. These war crimes are VERY far removed from the standards of contemporary western civilized countries. Obama administration continuing many of the evil policies doesn't make it any more acceptable, taking this as "the new normal" would be apathy bordering on nihilism. From a broader POV, this line of reasoning exemplifies the syndrome "perfect is the enemy of good" (also known as the Nirvana fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy).
  • mahyarm 13y ago
    What he is saying that ANY high level ex-politician will have the same issues. You can probably dig up similar dirt on Al Gore and boycott his seat on the apple board for example. In my foggy childhood memory, I remember a few wars, PGP & Clipper chip fiascos and so on when he was VP in the 90s.
  • Sammi 13y ago
    He said every politician is guilty, and you're interpreting that as him saying they're all ok? I think you're reading what you want to read, not what he actually wrote.
    • zurn 13y ago
      I'm saying very few high level politicians in western countries are guilty of things of comparable badness.