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Comment by RexRollman | Hacker News Reader

I voted for Obama, but when he says "Let us be clear", you know some bullshit is coming.

To me, bullshit indicates that the speaker does not actually believe what he says.

Is it possible that Obama just has different values from you? The way I read it, he very plainly is in favor of prosecuting copyright violators, and simply wants to eliminate some of the more egregious provisions of the currently proposed law.

I don't think Obama is trying to obfuscate that view in any way, and is being very clear about it.

Perhaps values themselves can be bullshit. The word sounds more like cursing than terminology, so when someone says that something is bullshit, it is not clear if the meaning is "something is a lie" or "something is incorrect" or something else.

I believe Harry Frankfurt had something to say about that.

Read the essay "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html).

Yes, if he doesn't believe what he says he is lying. If he doesn't care whether it's true or false, but feels what he's saying will further his goals, he's bullshitting.

"Bullshit" is generally a messy combination of lies, misdirection and words intended give one impression but have a different meaning.

Unless the WH response stated that explicitly, it's probably phrased specifically to sound like a reasonable position to everyone who reads it, regardless of their position.

So no, it's not clear.

While I agree with the sentiment, this isn't written under Obama's name. Its listed authors are Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt.

Attempting to alienate the President from an official press release from the White House is pushing a bit too far on a technicality. His administration is responsible for the ideas expressed in that release, whether his name is on it or not.

I didn't mean to "alienate the president" from this in policy position terms, but speaking of rhetorical style and flourishes, it seems a little silly to use "Obama says" to cover anything written by anyone officially on behalf of his administration.

And anything that starts with "Look...".

Quote of the day.

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