Well, God forbid the people (the crazies) have a voice in the direction their representatives take!! Heck, why post them at all? And why did Obama make such a big deal about this on the campaign trail? It sure sounded like a good idea, didn’t it?
And, you know, if they were posted for five days, maybe the damn things would be read before they get signed into law. Just a thought…
Bull–to be tactful–shit. You posted two quotes from two different posters, paraphrased them both within a single set of quotation marks, and called the paraphrase “a productive argument.” You were conflating the two, and it was a lame tactic. Apologize sheepishly and move on; you don’t want to fight that hill.
No? Then perhaps you can explain to me what magiver meant by
…which was the quote that resulted in my only mention of the previous administration. I read that as saying that Obama is no more transparent than the previous administration, which is close enough to the argument you’re denying has been made as to make no nevermind.
When you say that I “handwaive [sic] away anything Obama does,” you’re astonishingly incorrect, diametrically opposed to what I’ve actually done in this thread. When you say that we should “judge what the current administration does under its own merits,” you’re preaching to the choir, since that’s obviously what I’ve been doing in this thread when I say that this was probably poor form.
The crazies are liars. They lie. They do not tell the truth. They create panics about something as banal as voluntary end of life consultations. They are the shit at the bottom of the cesspool, the worst and most wretched Americans there are. Some things are too important to let them torpedo.
And again, this is my assessment, I certainly haven’t heard anyone from the administration say that sunlight has been waved away for this reason.
And congress knows what’s in the bill, they wrote it. If you change one line on page three are you daft enough to think you need to re-read it?
What?! Do you deny that during the last six months members of congress have admitted they have NOT read a complete bill before voting on it? And do you think that every member of congress helps author every bill?
Also, we’re not talking about one particular bill here. And do you really think that everyone would agree with who you decide to characterize as “crazies”?
The people on the committees know what’s in the bill in detail. Everyone voting on it know what’s in the bill at the least on the broad strokes.
The crazies are pretty easy to spot. They are currently screaming in town halls across the country. They are the ignorant who are motivated by lies. Palin is a liar, so is Limbaugh, so is Beck. They are riling uncomplicated people into a state of frenzy. Look at the death panel controversy.
That wasn’t the point I was making. I’m not comparing the Obama administration to the Bush administration because on this issue there is no comparison.
I doubt Obama ever promised 100% transparency. Without looking up his specific promises, I would speculate that he promised to significantly increase government transparency. And the point I was making is that he has done what he promised.
Of course it was an easy promise to make. Bush and Cheney were so anti-transparency that virtually any incoming administration was going to be significantly more transparent.
FWIW, Lobohan, I really dislike the idea that the insane liars of the rightwing offenderati machine should have the power to force Obama into secrecy. This isn’t a war, no matter how much they want it: it’s politics. Obama needs to maintain his sunlight policies, because he said he would, because they’ll pounce all over him if he genuinely reneges on them (look at their histrionics when some trifling shit like this occurs), and because it’s the right thing to do. Trying for secrecy won’t stop the histrionics anyway.
Yeah, I could be wrong though. Like I say, it seemed like the reason to me, but not from anything I’ve heard.
And as I said, the stuff is still available, they just have pushed back from giving the five days after the final form he promised. I’m okay with the reason being that it’s just untenable with the demands of the legislative process.
And you know this how? You’re just assuming that’s the case. But let’s say you’re right; then people we elected are voting on stuff without knowing the particulars. Now on somethings, that may be reasonable. But on items that are going to 1) cost us hundreds of billions and 2) completely overhaul our health care system, they SHOULD read the entire bill.
But if you think that is unreasonable, that is all the more reason to have it posted online for five days. What better way to make sure that all the stuff in a 2,000-page bill makes sense than to let millions of eyes read it? I love the fact that Obama made a big deal of the five-day posting, and you said earlier that you wish he had stuck to his promise, but as soon as the heat gets turned up on him a tad, you decide to argue FOR darkness and against sunlight. Why is that?
But we’re not talking about the death panel controversy in isolation. And it looks like Pailn—amazingly—is winning that particular fight. If I heard the snippets of news today correctly, some language that she objected to was taken out of the bill.
But again, we’re talking here not on any specific bill, but the more general proposition of transparency. I think the five day sunlight promise was a really good one. And I am very disappointed that Obama decided to turn himself into a liar on this. It didn’t require him to DO anything—except wait the five days after a bill was posted.
Politicians keeping things secret and breaking campaign promises they asked people to elect them on… Same old, same old.
Transparency is the only real issue facing us at the moment. The side-effects of its lack (Cheney’s hidden energy policy, Obama’s deal with the (legal) drug dealers, govt’s accommodating regulation of Wall Street) hide the real issue.
A democratic govt without transparency is an oxymoron.
Does the cost of hardware fall under FOIA exemptions? All the hardware pricing is blacked out which bothers me a great deal. I have a decent idea of what things cost (I built a network last year and just recently finished a rather large upgrade) and I’d really like to know what they paid for certain hardware. For example, I know what we got our SANs for and I’d like to see how much they paid for the things. Same thing with switches/routers, servers, etc. I don’t even want vendor name or OS. Just the generic specs (Dual/Quad X processor, X gigs of RAM, etc) and prices.
Side note, on page 69 there is this:
Which is funny considering the amount of redacting in the document.
Tangent: Is just me or does it bug anyone else that a federal contract also have glaring errors like:
From page 70.
Also, if the government will redact whatever the vendor decides should be pulled without any kind of over site, then we aren’t going to get any useful info.
Slee