Personal assaults on Obama

Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
Verbal skill is a common element of IQ measurement. There are others. At the extreme, one can be mute and intelligent (Helen Keller). Any skill is a potential measure of IQ, since the rate at which an individual can acquire the skill can be compared to the average.
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Very well, I concede that my statement that it has nothing to do with intelligence was hasty; I stand by my position that attacks on his public speaking as a means of asserting a lack of intelligence are likewise hasty and extremely presumptuous.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
...You're also making a few comparisons that don't make sense (idiotic torture of prisoners and military attacks on specific targets) as well as assuming the President has ultimate power.
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This makes as much sense as your "10,000 years" comment. Rough interrogation produced important information. With interrogation off the table, expanding Guantanamo an embarassment, and rendition out, the US has two options: absorb punishment without retaliation or kill. The US misses out on intelligence and the terrorists miss out on life. Lose-lose for everyone but Obama. And if this is "crime" and not "war", the President is no better than the cop who shoots a suspected burglar as he climbs through a window.
I'm not complaining about the drone warfare, just about the sanctimonious criticism of Bush II over interrogation and Guantanamo.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
That's a reasonable position, except for "so far he has".

The candidate who criticized the Bush deficits, the President who ran up record deficits and said "spending is stimulus", or the President who subsequently expressed concern about deficits? The candidate who promised to close Guantanamo in the first year in office, or the President who, as Commander in Chief, continues its operation. The candidate who criticized the Bush interrogation methods or the President who has expanded drone warfare? I mean, which would you prefer: a sinus full of water or a Hellfire missile on your head? Where's Holder on this? Remember he said he'd treat terrorism as a criminal matter and not warfare? If this is "crime" and not "war" what authority does the President have to execute people without trial? The President who opposed gay marriage or the President who now supports it? The President who advocates tax increases on the top income earners or the President who subsidizes his connected friends (e.g., Solyndra) with DOE money? Corzine's MF Global stole $1 billion of client money and no one faces prosecution?
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The issues I cared about: 1) reform health insurance so that I can, at long last, get some again. 2) Create a stimulus to stop our descent into a depression 3) And fund alternatives to roads for ground transport.

He made an honest effort on all three so he's golden in my book.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
Remember, these are Ken's words. The implication that this is my argument (if that's what he won't make explicit) is false. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Maurice Ashley made it under their own power. Williams and Sowell are to old to have benefitted from affirmative action and there's no affirmative action in tournament chess.
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So you believe that any academically successful black person born after the implementation of affirmative action cannot be considered intelligent or a hard worker because affirmative action MAY have been a factor in college admission?? :confused:
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
Remember, these are Ken's words. The implication that this is my argument (if that's what he won't make explicit) is false. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Maurice Ashley made it under their own power. Williams and Sowell are to old to have benefitted from affirmative action and there's no affirmative action in tournament chess.
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LOL!
 
Juniversal said:
So you believe that any academically successful black person born after the implementation of affirmative action cannot be considered intelligent or a hard worker because affirmative action MAY have been a factor in college admission?? :confused:
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Makes perfect sense. Obviously the only legitimate way is to be the son/daughter of a multi-millionaire former President/Governor/Senator. Those are the true self-made.:rolleyes:
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
Rough interrogation produced important information.
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Torture was discarded as useless by the Army long before, they developed methods that actually worked at getting verifiable information---by making the person WANT to tell them everything, not by making them want to say ANYTHING TO MAKE IT STOP. Torture was brought back in by vindictive amateurs who wanted to powertrip.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
Torture was discarded as useless by the Army long before, they developed methods that actually worked at getting verifiable information---by making the person WANT to tell them everything, not by making them want to say ANYTHING TO MAKE IT STOP. Torture was brought back in by vindictive amateurs who wanted to powertrip.
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That would be convenient if it were true, but it's false. Like Todd Akin's "women can shut their reproductive systems down if they are honestly raped". How does an enemy interrogator "make" someone want to betray his side with positive reinforcement alone?
 
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Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
That would be convenient if it were true, but it's false. Like Todd Akin's "women can shut their reproductive systems doen if they are honestly raped". How does an enemy interrogator "make" someone want to betray his side with positive reinforcement alone?
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From what I understand it is taking advantage of similar psychological ticks in humans as leads to Stockholm Syndrome, or institutionalization in prisoners. It is supposedly not that disimilar from programs armed forces use to break down and rebuild soldiers, and even similar to the rough dirty and quick style used by pickup and confidence artists.

Basicaly you make them trust you. However, it is not positive reinforcement alone, that is a strawman. There are negative reinforcements in these programs, it just has to be applied with finesse and can lower success if you focus too much on it, or become too brutal with it. For instance, too much brutality and they just start saying what you want them to say. Useful for propoganda but not so much for intelligence gathering. The most successful programs appear to be a variation of good cop/bad cop where the bad cop is their former allies rather than the interrogator's own allies.

Apparently it is not too difficult to convince terrorists or collaborators that their networks would do horrible things to them and make life imprisonment in the west in exchange for reliable information a hard to resist choice.
 
The Fallen Serpent said:
...too much brutality and they just start saying what you want them to say. Useful for propoganda but not so much for intelligence gathering...
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This would be convenient for the anti-torture side if it were true, but it's not. The method to avoid this is so obvious that it demonstrates the deception behind this position (you may believe it. I'm not saying you're deliberately deceptive here, just wilfully credulous). The interrogator includes in his list of questions some to which he knows the answer. False responses produce further pain. If you really think you can make people come around to your side, try it on the next Jehovah's Witness who comes to the door.
 
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Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
That would be convenient if it were true, but it's false. Like Todd Akin's "women can shut their reproductive systems down if they are honestly raped". How does an enemy interrogator "make" someone want to betray his side with positive reinforcement alone?
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Do you have some reason to believe it's false, or are you just making an argument from ignorance?
Everything I've heard from people experienced in interrogations claim that torture does not work and only makes the subject say what you want to hear, not necessarily what's true.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
This would be convenient for the anti-torture side if it were true, but it's not. The method to avoid this is so obvious that it demonstrates the deception behind this position (you may believe it. I'm not saying you're deliberately deceptive here, just wilfully credulous). The interrogator includes in his list of questions some to which he knows the answer. False responses produce further pain. If you really think you can make people come around to your side, try it on the next Jehovah's Witness who comes to the door.
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I think you still fail to understand the programs here. The intent is not to convince them your side is right, the intent is to retrieve useful information. Your own example, giving pain when they give false responses to answers you already know is well known to lead to the targets to start giving answers they think you want to hear, not what was is accurate. Torturing people to be on your side is generally not acceptable in the US, but we are not even talking about that, we are talking about torturing people for reliable information, which is a method that has been discredited. This is the pretty standard stance of experts in the fields of interrogation. This is why in the designing of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques for the CIA under the Bush administration they had to seek out psychologists with no interrogation background, who lacked proper medical expertise in the techniques, and who just reverse engineered elements of SERE designed to combat against torture intended to illicit propaganda not intell. The elements of the SERE program intended to resist intell gathering by enemies are the things we are advocating for. The decisions to reverse engineer the torturous aspects of the SERE program was a political one, and not based on the advice of experts in the field of intelligence or interrogation.
 
elbe said:
Do you have some reason to believe it's false, or are you just making an argument from ignorance?
Everything I've heard from people experienced in interrogations claim that torture does not work and only makes the subject say what you want to hear, not necessarily what's true.
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Pauline Kael said she was surprised when Nixon won, since nobody she knew voted for him.
 
I'd like to bring this thread back to what I was originally talking about in the OP. This isn't about whether or not Obama is intelligent; nor is it about whether or not one agrees with his politics. What I was originally talking about is stuff like the following:

1) The 'birther" assertion that he was born in Kenya.

2) Assertions, apparently believed by 18% of the American public, that Oama is a secret Muslim.

3) The claim by that dipwad from Megadildo that Obama was behind some of the resent mass shootings, so he could confiscate all our guns.

4) The recent assertion by a Lubbock County, Texas, judge that, if re-elected, Obama would turn the nation over to direct control of the United Nations.

It seems to me that Obama has gotten more than his share of this sort of nonsense, though I have to admit that Clinton got his share of crap - Whitewater, etc. - from the frantic far-right when he was in office. What I wonder is:

1) Am I overreacting, or is Obama getting more that the average of bizarre personal attacks, utterly unrelated to reality.

2) Assuming I'm not overreacting, are these attacks race-based, or perhaps "other" based, i.e. based on the perception that he is the "other," something alien to America, because of his white mother, Kenyan father and African name?
 
TimCallahan said:
It seems to me that Obama has gotten more than his share of this sort of nonsense, though I have to admit that Clinton got his share of crap - Whitewater, etc. - from the frantic far-right when he was in office.
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I'd say Bush got his share of crazies too. I'm not sure how many more liberal crazies there were than the perennial crazies.

TimCallahan said:
What I wonder is:

1) Am I overreacting, or is Obama getting more that the average of bizarre personal attacks, utterly unrelated to reality.

2) Assuming I'm not overreacting, are these attacks race-based, or perhaps "other" based, i.e. based on the perception that he is the "other," something alien to America, because of his white mother, Kenyan father and African name?
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I wonder how much the changing times have an effect here. Does the increasing prevalence of the internet and the self reinforcing environment the internet can provide for fringe groups have a significant effect?
 
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