Rush Limbaugh Describes a PDF
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LIMBAUGH: In addition, they have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this; they want it happening as fast as possible so nobody can know what's in it.
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I ... really don't know where to begin. I've never respected that fat fuck anyway.
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@campkev said:
they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page.
Um - it's entirely possible to have a PDF that is searchable, and not 'a picture of a page.' This, for random example.
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See campkev? This is what happens when you quote
the linked articleRush Limbaugh without using quotes. People think you're the one saying it.
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@PJH said:
Um - it's entirely possible to have a PDF that is searchable, and not 'a picture of a page.' This, for random example.
Thanks for the clarification...
Here's another, "random" example: http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/Recovery_Bill_Div_A.pdf
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Well, the bill is covered in proofreading marks, which interfere with the text
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@campkev said:
LIMBAUGH: In addition, they have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this; they want it happening as fast as possible so nobody can know what's in it.
There are a lot of WTF PDFs which are scans of a printed page as an image, so someone might be confused, but he should have looked at the PDF and tried searching.
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He's being a deliberately obtuse douchenozzle.
He ran into the same problem several years ago; he couldn't search a PDF because it was on his Blackberry or iPhone, or because his shop was Apple or somesuch - Apple was involved in the discussion in some way. Helpful callers walked him thru fixing it, and there was a discussion of PDF - and what it is and isn't - as well.
He can be forgiven for encountering a PDF that is unsearchable, and then thinking that all PDF's are like that. At first. And maybe the one they had was unsearchable, for whatever reason. It's all a moot point, he's either forgotten/ignorant of the qualities of PDF, or he knows, and is shading the truth to fit his message. I think it's the latter.
The fact is, it's all out on Thomas now, and it's searchable (like any legislative catalog, with some effort). His point of it being rammed thru is irrelevant; even if the general public knew of something heinous in there and wanted to stop it, it's too late already - it's passed both houses and we're a Representative Democracy, not a Direct one. He's pretending like somehow if people knew what's in the bill, they could rise up in the streets squelch it.
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@PeteyF said:
He can be forgiven for encountering a PDF that is unsearchable, and then thinking that all PDF's are like that.
I remember when every fucking PDF on the entire fucking internet was fucking rasterized. I even remember a few notables where the text was done with vector graphics. Ughhhh. Thank god that OCR got better, PDF itself got better, and freebie PDF "Printers" have stopped being utterly asstastic (I just uploaded a 1500pg 2.5MB PDF. YAY TEXT!)
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OCR? What does OCR have to do with it?
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@immibis said:
OCR? What does OCR have to do with it?
Generally when a PDF is made as image only it is because the source itself is an image (eg: fax, scan, lame converter script), thus OCR would be able to grab the text from such a document and produce a sane PDF.
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His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
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@morbiuswilters said:
But the fact that he appears to be outright lying about it in order to make a point takes away a lot of the legitimacy. He may be making a vvalid point but the use of scare tactics and mob logic to get there is inexcusable in my mind.His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
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@galgorah said:
As hard as it is for me to defend Rush Limbaugh, I think you're attributing to malice that which should be attributed to ignorance.@morbiuswilters said:
But the fact that he appears to be outright lying about it in order to make a point takes away a lot of the legitimacy. He may be making a vvalid point but the use of scare tactics and mob logic to get there is inexcusable in my mind.His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
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@bstorer said:
@galgorah said:
As hard as it is for me to defend Rush Limbaugh, I think you're attributing to malice that which should be attributed to ignorance.@morbiuswilters said:
But the fact that he appears to be outright lying about it in order to make a point takes away a lot of the legitimacy. He may be making a vvalid point but the use of scare tactics and mob logic to get there is inexcusable in my mind.His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
Ditto. If he was lying, he'd probably be far more creative than that. Like, saying that Obama wrote the bill on the side of watermelons and then ate those watermelons before anyone could read the words on the watermelons. Then he'd act shocked when people accused him of being racist.
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@bstorer said:
As hard as it is for me to defend Rush Limbaugh, I think you're attributing to malice that which should be attributed to ignorance.
At some point, willful ignorance becomes malice. The guy does zero fact checking before spouting off his crazy bullshit, and rarely (if ever) broadcasts retractions. That's pretty inexcusable for somebody claiming to be informing the public.
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@Maciej said:
@bstorer said:
As hard as it is for me to defend Rush Limbaugh, I think you're attributing to malice that which should be attributed to ignorance.
At some point, willful ignorance becomes malice. The guy does zero fact checking before spouting off his crazy bullshit, and rarely (if ever) broadcasts retractions. That's pretty inexcusable for somebody claiming to be informing the public.
How's that different than the rest of the media? Face it, "news" programs are biased, agenda-pushing entertainment and anything who takes them seriously is a fool.
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@Maciej said:
At some point, willful ignorance becomes malice.
Having not heard the show in question, I only have the linked comment to go on. As the OP's link shows, he was wrong about this particular PDF being unsearchable, but PDFs can be created as images of the text (e.g. scanning a document but not OCRing it). And the bill was rushed to vote before anyone had a chance to read the thing. Still, I don't know how the whole thing was couched. If his larger point was (and this is pretty likely, knowing Limbaugh) that this is yet another example of the Democrats being evil, then he's certainly being disingenuous. Searchability of PDFs aside, rushing bills to vote before they can be read is so common in Congress as to make one consider shutting down the whole democracy and starting over. But if it were, say, a juxtaposition of the rushed vote with Obama's claims that this bailout will have unprecedented levels of transparency, then it's just a minor mistake. Either way, Rush Limbaugh can go eat a dick.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Face it, "news" programs are biased, agenda-pushing entertainment and anything who takes them seriously is a fool.
Which is why I get all my news from only credible sources unfraid to take the hard stance, like the Weekly World News. They aren't just puppets to the Bat Boy administration; they ask the tough questions!
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@bstorer said:
I could almost believe that he still uses some Wfw3.11/Win95-transitional-era PC with one of the first versions of Adobe Reader on it, from before they added the search function.@galgorah said:
As hard as it is for me to defend Rush Limbaugh, I think you're attributing to malice that which should be attributed to ignorance.@morbiuswilters said:
But the fact that he appears to be outright lying about it in order to make a point takes away a lot of the legitimacy. He may be making a vvalid point but the use of scare tactics and mob logic to get there is inexcusable in my mind.His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
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@morbiuswilters said:
His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
Because no congresscritter would do something crazy like have several members of his staff each take a section and review it. That would just be crazy.
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@PJH said:
Except either Limbaugh already knows this and is obviously talking bulls#!t, or is totally ignorant to the PDF file format.@Rush Limbaugh said:
they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page.
Um - it's entirely possible to have a PDF that is searchable, and not 'a picture of a page.' This, for random example.I'm tempted to say: both things.
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@campkev said:
@morbiuswilters said:
His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
Because no congresscritter would do something crazy like have several members of his staff each take a section and review it. That would just be crazy.
That's not the same thing as them reviewing it for themselves. I'm pretty sure having interns making $10 an hour vetting unprecedented pork spending that will cost trillions is not particularly wise. Then again, it's not like the Members and Senators are any smarter or less corrupt, so who really gives a shit? Regardless, you can be sure that even if underlings did read some of the bill that plenty got shoehorned in without any oversight. This is how Congress has worked for 70 years and to believe otherwise is hopelessly naive. Additionally, the Democrats reneged on their promise to permit public review of the bill, which isn't really surprising but is still slimy. This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit. It's retarded, unethical theft from American taxpayers. In short, it's just another day in Washington.
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@morbiuswilters said:
This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit. It's retarded, unethical theft from American taxpayers.
Tell me about it. $700 billion in new tarps is entirely too many tarps.
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@bstorer said:
@morbiuswilters said:
He's talking about the Troubled Assets Relief Program, a.k.a. The CitiBank CEO Multi-Billion-Dollar Bonus Fund.This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit. It's retarded, unethical theft from American taxpayers.
Tell me about it. $700 billion in new tarps is entirely too many tarps.
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@morbiuswilters said:
That's just not what it means for an argument to be valid. You meant that his *point* could still be valid, not that his argument (the chain of reasoning from the initial proposition to the conclusion, which turned out to be based on a false premise) is still valid. You shouldn't criticise others for poor logic if you're not going to be scrupulous yourself. And the WTF in this story is his false premise and faulty reasoning based on computer illiteracy, not whether or not his political point is valid. Shall we try and keep it topical?His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error.
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@campkev said:
@morbiuswilters said:
His point is relevent even if he might be wrong on the technical details. Every effort has been made to ram this bill through without letting anyone read it (including the Congresscritters voting for it who voted without having enough time to read it). So his argument is still valid, even though it has a technical error. Your argument, however, would be a strawman.
Because no congresscritter would do something crazy like have several members of his staff each take a section and review it. That would just be crazy.
1. I didn't vote for the staff members, I voted for the senators, and they very well should know what they are voting for.
2. Lets say you are a staff member and the congressman is like, "read this 150 pages by tomorrow and tell me if anything is wrong with it." Now you know, that if the congressperson is a Democrat he will vote for it no matter what you say, and if he is a Republicanhe will vote against it. What would you do? get drunk, pick up some chicks and have an all-night orgy; or stay up all night carefully reading the bill?
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c) Recruit said hot chicks to read the bill for you in between orgiastic fun.
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@bstorer said:
$700 billion in new tarps is entirely too many tarps.
Perhaps you are underestimating just how much the administration intends to be pissing on us.
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@savar said:
@PJH said:
Um - it's entirely possible to have a PDF that is searchable, and not 'a picture of a page.' This, for random example.
Thanks for the clarification...
Here's another, "random" example: http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/Recovery_Bill_Div_A.pdf
WHOA! So PDF can almost do the dodgy typewriter font like PostScript can! If they keep working on it then one day PDF will be good enough for use in academia...
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@samanddeanus said:
There are a lot of WTF PDFs which are scans of a printed page as an image, so someone might be confused, but he should have looked at the PDF and tried searching.
I once received a terrific PDF via email. It was a badly scanned in crumpled up hardcopy...of an email. Someone had printed the original email, scanned it in, saved the scan in a PDF, then sent the PDF onto me.
Yeah, there is no real point in me mentioning this or anything. Oh, and unfortunately I couldn't see any wooden table in the edges of the scan either :(
Another kind of bizzare non-searchable PDF used to be the car review ones from parkers.co.uk. They used a funky custom font that had the glyphs scrambled. So you couldn't copy+paste the text without getting gibberish and you couldn't search it either. I suppose TRWTF there is that the same reviews were available on their site where they could of course be copied easily.
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@bstorer said:
@morbiuswilters said:
This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit. It's retarded, unethical theft from American taxpayers.
Tell me about it. $700 billion in new tarps is entirely too many tarps.As usual, it's just more lib'ruul pandering to Mon Calamari special interests.
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@morbiuswilters said:
...unprecedented pork spending ..... This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit.
Perhaps you should look up "unprecedented"
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@campkev said:
@morbiuswilters said:
...unprecedented pork spending ..... This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit.
Perhaps you should look up "unprecedented"
TARP wasn't pork, it was just a moronic attempt to stabilize the financial markets with an infusion of fresh credit in the hopes of propping up the dying Federal Reserve banking system. Both TARP and the Spendulus are stupid, but only the latter really qualifies as true political pork.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@campkev said:
@morbiuswilters said:
...unprecedented pork spending ..... This is just another handout of billions to special interests and lobbyists just like the $700 billion TARP bullshit.
Perhaps you should look up "unprecedented"
TARP wasn't pork, it was just a moronic attempt to stabilize the financial markets with an infusion of fresh credit in the hopes of propping up the dying Federal Reserve banking system. Both TARP and the Spendulus are stupid, but only the latter really qualifies as true political pork.
You got me. I was wrong. You don't need to look up unprecedented, you need to look up pork. In case you missed it, included in the "TARP" bill was:
a tax benefit for manufacturers of toy wooden arrows for children
a tax break to benefit automotive racetracks
rebates for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry
tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers who use imported yarn
tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill
money for film and TV producers who produce their work in the United States
and tax credits for select corporations earning income from American Samoa
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@campkev said:
You got me. I was wrong. You don't need to look up unprecedented, you need to look up pork. In case you missed it, included in the "TARP" bill was:
a tax benefit for manufacturers of toy wooden arrows for children
a tax break to benefit automotive racetracks
rebates for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry
tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers who use imported yarn
tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill
money for film and TV producers who produce their work in the United States
and tax credits for select corporations earning income from American Samoa
Eh, I didn't know that this stuff was in TARP, but it's not surprising. However, most of the bill was supposed to "stabilize credit markets" and my understanding is that most wasn't spent on this kind of pork, whereas the Spendulus seems to be 100% pork.
Regardless, I'm not sure how any of this nit-picking over what you call it matters. It's clearly stupid, unethical theft from American taxpayers, which was my original point. Both bills were rammed through Congress with little-to-no oversight, even though such oversight was promised by the Democrats and by Obama. Once again, nothing new or shocking here, but you seem more intent on whining about the precise definition of "pork" or setting up strawmen rather than just admitting it's a massive WTF and that Limbaugh still had a point even if he was ignorant of the technical aspects of the PDF format. Either you don't know how to successfully argue without falling back to pathetic fallacy or you're just being a dick for the sake of it.
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Did anyone think he's just trying to dumb it down for the less technical-minded audience members? Instead of taking the time to explain that some PDFs are text and can be searched, but many such as this one are images, he just generalizes and says "it's a PDF, which means it's an image and can't be searched." Saves time, most people don't care about the generalization.
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Dumbing down and generalizations are how that woman got told that she had to quit school because her computer ran Ubuntu.
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@lolwtf said:
Instead of taking the time to explain that some PDFs are text and can be searched
This does not take a siginifcant amount of time, as you've just proven.
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@lolwtf said:
Did anyone think he's just trying to dumb it down for the less technical-minded audience members? Instead of taking the time to explain that some PDFs are text and can be searched, but many such as this one are images, he just generalizes and says "it's a PDF, which means it's an image and can't be searched." Saves time, most people don't care about the generalization.
Except, "this one" is searchable. So that leaves us with three options. He's ignorant about computers, he's an irresponisble "journalist", or he's a lying douchebag. My vote is for all three.
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@campkev said:
Except, "this one" is searchable. So that leaves us with three options. He's ignorant about computers, he's an irresponisble "journalist", or he's a lying douchebag. My vote is for all three.
The first available copy of this bill I found online was not in text form (nor did I get it from the official site for the bill). I had to run it through OCR in Acrobat Professional before I could search it. ...Not that I spent more than about 10 minutes afterwards trying wrap my mind around all the waste it contained.
Ref: http://www.house.gov/billtext/hr1_legtext_cr.pdf (it was since reposted after being OCR'ed, but on 1/24 was not)
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@campkev said:
Except, "this one" is searchable. So that leaves us with three options. He's ignorant about computers, he's an irresponisble "journalist", or he's a lying douchebag.
Actually, I suspect that it was a case of mixing up previous reports. I'd seen a clip of Sen DeMint's staff looking over the bill, and one complained that they couldn't even get it in PDF so that they could do searches, but that they had to manually read it all without the benefit of using the soft copy for quick searching. Note that this was before the vote, generally be considered a good time for being able to read and search the bill would. The PDF wasn't released until after or just before the vote.TRWTF is that it would have surely been quicker, easier and less expensive to distribute soft copies instead of reams of printed paper. Or maybe it was a little extra stimulus for the paper and toner lobbies.
So, (as morbs already pointed out) his technical details were incorrect--not surprising for a Mac user--but his point about being able to have the bill in searchable electronic format was correct. But please don't let his uninformed technical explanation get in the way of your own uninformed rants.
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I don't know when Rush made his comments, but the searchable PDF version has been around at least a week.
Edit: Looks like he made the comments on Feb. 13. The OCR'ed version was definitely available then.
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@Anon Ymous said:
I don't know when Rush made his comments, but the searchable PDF version has been around at least a week.
I believe he was talking about the conference report (which you cannot possibly be talking about, since the conference hadn't finished yet), which is what will actually be made law, as opposed to either the House or Senate version. According to the Huffington Post, the bill was released late Thursday night, with the vote scheduled for Friday. According to readthestimulus.org:<h1>Final Language Posted</h1> <h3>Posted at 11:00 pm on Thursday, February 12, 2009</h3> <p>The final language has been posted; you can find links to the various docs <a href="http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1694">at the Speaker's website</a>. <b>Update:</b> The speaker's website is apparently down. Imagine that. Docs are also available <a href="http://appropriations.house.gov/">here</a>. </p> <p>Thetotal size of the four major files is over 100MB, and consists of 1419
pages. Three of the four files are huge "scanned" PDFs, meaning they
were created by printing the original document and then scanning it in
again --- and therefore contain no real "text" that can be easily
searched. This will make our parsing process difficult and more time
consuming, so we most likely won't have our versions ready until midday
tomorrow. But we'll see...</div><p> </p></blockquote>
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@boomzilla said:
@campkev said:
Except, "this one" is searchable. So that leaves us with three options. He's ignorant about computers, he's an irresponisble "journalist", or he's a lying douchebag.
Actually, I suspect that it was a case of mixing up previous reports. I'd seen a clip of Sen DeMint's staff looking over the bill, and one complained that they couldn't even get it in PDF so that they could do searches, but that they had to manually read it all without the benefit of using the soft copy for quick searching. Note that this was before the vote, generally be considered a good time for being able to read and search the bill would. The PDF wasn't released until after or just before the vote.TRWTF is that it would have surely been quicker, easier and less expensive to distribute soft copies instead of reams of printed paper. Or maybe it was a little extra stimulus for the paper and toner lobbies.
So, (as morbs already pointed out) his technical details were incorrect--not surprising for a Mac user--but his point about being able to have the bill in searchable electronic format was correct. But please don't let his uninformed technical explanation get in the way of your own uninformed rants.
Except, even if his technical details were completely correct, his point about that somehow keeping the people from know what was in the bill is still fucking stupid. It being an unsearchable scan of an image might hinder a single person from trying to find out what's in the bill, but it doesn't hinder 200+ Million people. It's a fucking retarded comment coming from a hypocritical douchebag. And I'm not even a Democrat.
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@campkev said:
Except, even if his technical details were completely correct, his point about that somehow keeping the people from know what was in the bill is still fucking stupid. It being an unsearchable scan of an image might hinder a single person from trying to find out what's in the bill, but it doesn't hinder 200+ Million people.
Huh? Here was the quote (from the OP's link to Media Matters):@Rush said:
In addition, they have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this; they want it happening as fast as possible so nobody can know what's in it.
First, I'd note that if he'd said "This PDF file is..." instead of "A PDF file is..." he would have been correct.I suppose that if you skimmed this really fast (or didn't read or hear it at all), you might be able to reasonably come to your interpretation. But since the vote was scheduled for less than 24 hours after the rasterized PDFs were released, it should be pretty obvious that it was going to be difficult to go through it all. This goes for citizens as well as members of Congress and their staffs. A searchable PDF wouldn't have changed the ridiculous time line, but it would have made analysis a lot easier.
But the context of the quote is obvious that it was in relation to the actual voting.
@campkev said:
It's a fucking retarded comment coming from a hypocritical douchebag.
At least you took my advice to not let anything stop the ranting...@campkev said:
And I'm not even a Democrat.
Maybe not, but you seem to be trying to enable them.
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@boomzilla said:
@campkev said:
Except, even if his technical details were completely correct, his point about that somehow keeping the people from know what was in the bill is still fucking stupid. It being an unsearchable scan of an image might hinder a single person from trying to find out what's in the bill, but it doesn't hinder 200+ Million people.
Huh? Here was the quote (from the OP's link to Media Matters):
@Rush said:
In addition, they have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this; they want it happening as fast as possible so nobody can know what's in it.
First, I'd note that if he'd said "This PDF file is..." instead of "A PDF file is..." he would have been correct.I suppose that if you skimmed this really fast (or didn't read or hear it at all), you might be able to reasonably come to your interpretation. But since the vote was scheduled for less than 24 hours after the rasterized PDFs were released, it should be pretty obvious that it was going to be difficult to go through it all. This goes for citizens as well as members of Congress and their staffs. A searchable PDF wouldn't have changed the ridiculous time line, but it would have made analysis a lot easier.
But the context of the quote is obvious that it was in relation to the actual voting.
@campkev said:
It's a fucking retarded comment coming from a hypocritical douchebag.
At least you took my advice to not let anything stop the ranting...
@campkev said:
And I'm not even a Democrat.
Maybe not, but you seem to be trying to enable them.You act like the Democrats just whipped this thing up and nobody saw it until Friday morning. Plus, let's be honest, 40+ % weren't going to vote for it unless (maybe even if) God showed up and personally told them to. Just like another 40+% were going to vote for it, regardless of what it contained. So the decision basically came down to about 10% of the congresscritters (yes, I'm unabashedly stealing that from Morbius) who would have been in on the negotiations and known what was in it anyway. Limbaugh's comments are stupid talking-head anything to get ratings crap. He and Bill Maher are two sides of the same ugly coin. I wish someone would lock the two of them in a room so the Rush would eat Bill and then die of indigestion.
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@campkev said:
You act like the Democrats just whipped this thing up and nobody saw it until Friday morning.
Those who weren't in the conference report (which was most) didn't see it until then.@campkev said:
Plus, let's be honest, 40+ % weren't going to vote for it unless (maybe even if) God showed up and personally told them to. Just like another 40+% were going to vote for it, regardless of what it contained. So the decision basically came down to about 10% of the congresscritters (yes, I'm unabashedly stealing that from Morbius) who would have been in on the negotiations and known what was in it anyway.
Well, 40%+ in the Senate could have killed it, and there were only 5 senators in the committee. And none of them were the 3 Republicans upon whom the deal hinged.@campkev said:
Limbaugh's comments are stupid talking-head anything to get ratings crap. He and Bill Maher are two sides of the same ugly coin. I wish someone would lock the two of them in a room so the Rush would eat Bill and then die of indigestion.
Rush has always been up front about being an entertainer. But that doesn't make him wrong.
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@campkev said:
Except, even if his technical details were completely correct, his point about that somehow keeping the people from know what was in the bill is still fucking stupid. It being an unsearchable scan of an image might hinder a single person from trying to find out what's in the bill, but it doesn't hinder 200+ Million people. It's a fucking retarded comment coming from a hypocritical douchebag. And I'm not even a Democrat.
*sigh* 200 million people might be able to scan through the document in parallel, but human beings are not computers. The fact is that there is no reasonable way a single individual could read through the entire 1500 page bill in the time alloted, including the people who voted for it. What's more, even if a group did read it in parallel, it is not reasonable to assume that any useful action could have been taken in the little amount of time the bill was available, thus completely circumventing the point of participatory democracy. And this is coming from the party that is supposed to be the most about "power to the people". Addititionally, both parties violated a promise to permit 48 hours of public review for voting and Obama yet again broke his campaign promise to permit 5 days of public review for any bill.
Rush's point was that this is just a giant mass of pork that was pushed through Congress without most even knowing WTF was in it. True, it would be theoretically possible for a group to read the entire bill in parallel, but that's just not reasonable or sensible. Clearly this was shoved through as quickly as possible so the special interests and lobbyists could get their cash at the expense of the US taxpayer. I completely understand and agree with Rush's point and so far the only arguments against him I've seen all hinge on petty technicalities, strawmen and the like. The fact is, this was an incredibly undemocratic action by the Congress (Democrats, mostly) and people should be outraged (and opinion polls show that most aren't happy).
I don't know much about Rush, to be fair. I don't feel bad for defending his statement because I think it is correct. A lot of people seem to think he is an asshole, which makes me think he might be alright. Assholes make people think. Assholes get stuff done. He also coined the term "Halfrican" (I think) which is freakin' hilarious. But before anyone accuses me of being some Limbaugh fan or GOP shill, I just want to make it clear that I really don't have much of a clue what the man is about and that this is not about bias or "loyalty" to Mr. Limbaugh.
