Obama's Parting Gifts

[BjornP]

Did I just read you using the term "Malthusian trap"? Didn't you use to be a Catholic? Is clubgop coming online later to profess his love of bacon and Jesus as the Messiah, and diatribalist popping in to tell us how much he enjoys hymns... or that he had a really great day, loved his life and that the world was anything but shit?

Did a google search for Malthusian trap btw, and turns out I must have searched for it at some other time, because I've clicked on this one before:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12276a.htm

There's a bit on Malthus and why his observations weren't based on science or any form of sustained, methodical studies.

[pineapplemike]

I hear that BO has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, I read that he should be free by May?

I beat Obama like a rabid dog with every chance I got over the last 8 years but he deserves credit where credit is due. I am very pleased.

[BjornP]

Snowden, I can just understand giving a partial pardon... that guy still needs to do time for the stuff unrelated to the info about the tapping of everyday US citizens. Pardon everything else, though.

But Manning gave away bulk data to an organizaton singularly dedicated to the undermining and destroying of US influence in the world. Data that endangered US intelligence and military personnel. People like that shouldn't even get prison time.

[Speaker to Animals]

Did I just read you using the term "Malthusian trap"? Didn't you use to be a Catholic? Is clubgop coming online later to profess his love of bacon and Jesus as the Messiah, and diatribalist popping in to tell us how much he enjoys hymns... or that he had a really great day, loved his life and that the world was anything but shit?

Did a google search for Malthusian trap btw, and turns out I must have searched for it at some other time, because I've clicked on this one before:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12276a.htm

There's a bit on Malthus and why his observations weren't based on science or any form of sustained, methodical studies.

You obviously did not search long enough. Reference to the Malthusian trap is not support of Malthusian theory. The irony of Malthus is that he described something that plagued European peoples for most of recorded history right before we broke through it. He had a point, but right when he wrote it, we transcended the problem (at least that iteration of it).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html

http://time.com/91081/what-science-says ... -genetics/


Nicholas Wade makes a hell of a lot more sense than the progressive hand-wringing and virtue signaling. That's for sure.

[BjornP]

You obviously did not search long enough. Reference to the Malthusian trap is not support of Malthusian theory. The irony of Malthus is that he described something that plagued European peoples for most of recorded history right before we broke through it. He had a point, but right when he wrote it, we transcended the problem (at least that iteration of it).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html

http://time.com/91081/what-science-says ... -genetics/

Nicholas Wade makes a hell of a lot more sense than the progressive hand-wringing and virtue signaling. That's for sure.

The NYT link has most of the peer reviews praising his work on going through centuries of economic data, but rejecting his notion that it's related to genes.

As for the Time link:

Do Chinese carry genes for conformism and authoritarian rule? May Europeans have alleles that favor open societies and the rule of law? Obviously this is unlikely to be the case.

Similarly, West African genes (as in genetically more or less the same sort of black people as your slave descendents) do not carry genes for criminal behavior, being Muslim, joining drug gangs, being welfare cheats or similar values that would make building civilization impossible. Remember that there were kings, aristocracy and quite extensive empires in parts of Western Africa once. And again, look at the earlier difference between rate of higher education among African immigrants to the US compared "native" black Americans' rate of higher education. Do genetic differences exist? Sure. I believe there's a tiny tribe in Western Africa that have lived from diving after crabs for - not even many - thousands of years that they developed a gene that allows them perfect vision under water.

But civilization and genes? You are, as you've pointed out so many times "Anglo". Your ancestors, like mine, were living in dung-and straw covered huts when Semitic peoples and their linguistic cousins in Nubia were developing or copying each other's writing, developing bureacracies and advanced forms of government. If civilization is genetic, North Europeans must be late bloomers. We only got civilized after the Romans copied the Greeks, who copied the Minoans, who copied the Egyptians who copied the Sumerians. And it wasn't untill the Industrialization that we really took over. Compare that to West Africa. They didn't have industrialization two hundred years ago. They now have a GDP growth greater than Asia, and a relatively stable government, and rising literacy rates.

Over two hundred years. Or less. So, still genetics.... not a good argument for why one people might not be compatible with another or why one would not be at the same level. The West African rate of growth compared to the European one... is mind numbingly fast.

[PartyOf5]

I hear that BO has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, I read that he should be free by May?

I beat Obama like a rabid dog with every chance I got over the last 8 years but he deserves credit where credit is due. I am very pleased.

What he did was disgraceful. Manning should be away for life, and that would be compassionate.

Obama has commuted like 1,300 sentences. I think the prior 2 presidents commuted a couple hundred each.

[Xenophon]

I hear that BO has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, I read that he should be free by May?

I beat Obama like a rabid dog with every chance I got over the last 8 years but he deserves credit where credit is due. I am very pleased.

What he did was disgraceful. Manning should be away for life, and that would be compassionate.

Obama has commuted like 1,300 sentences. I think the prior 2 presidents commuted a couple hundred each.

Manning was the Proto-Bergdahl. Lowly private with delusions of grandeur, went outside the chain of command to pursue his own agenda. And the American taxpayers paid for his sexual reassignment surgery, to boot.

Nothing to do about it now, though. Bravo, Bradley.

[pineapplemike]

That's okay, his treatment has already been cruel and unusual, being stripped naked and held in solitary for 11 months was unnecessary. As for the leaks I'm happy the United States was able to get their exposed men and women to safety and no one was killed, I acknowledge Manning should have been more selective rather than dumping it all to Wikileaks. The collateral murder video however, featuring US forces killing those journalists in addition to the US Pentagon lying about what happened in the days afterward, I feel are newsworthy and in the public interest, and I'm glad they were revealed. Plus all that other stuff about the military downplaying the wartime civilian deaths and whatnot. Public interest 1, government secrecy 0

[Penner]

I hear that BO has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, I read that he should be free by May?

I beat Obama like a rabid dog with every chance I got over the last 8 years but he deserves credit where credit is due. I am very pleased.

Here is the first article about this news (that, btw, I didn't know until I came home and spend a few minutes on Reddit and was hoping that I would share this here- because apparently, this is about Obama's legacy as president) but it states that it's just shorting his remaining time in jail. The person (him or actually more like her, now) will be done in May and I have heard rumors (already) that Trump supporters want to rescind Obama's decision. Personally, I thought of what Manning did as not heroic but more seeking attention. Sure there was something about that death of the journalist but that was it. Everything else just seemed like he just gave a bunch of info and dump it onto Assange lap and said, "I really don't care what you release." And if my memory is right, he was in prison since the Bush W. years- so, probably a little bit over 10 years in some kind of prison.

[Smitty-48]

Holding Bradley Manning for 35 years simply makes him a martyr, with good behavior, he was elegible for parole as early as 2019, no sense in holding him for 2 more years, when that only serves as a rallying point for opposition against the United States Military, just get him off your backs, US Army, it's not worth the headache.

Time served; get the fuck out, have a nice life.

He was after all, aqcuitted of the most serious charge "Aiding the Enemy", and it's not like that aquittal came from some liberal activist judge, he was acquitted; by a UCMJ courts martial.

As to the other charges; pound of flesh taken, it's in the interests of the Army; just to be rid of him at this point.