Rush Limbaugh Describes a PDF



  • @campkev said:

    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.

    Actually, the Democrats pretty much did just whip it up and nobody did see it until Friday morning.  Hence the outrage.  Clearly you are naive enough to believe government "just works" and aren't willing to actually check out the facts.  Also, your percentages are all wrong.  This was highly partisan, end of story.  The Republicans would have supported it if it just had more money for their particular supporters.  This was pure pork and looting of the Republic, period.  There was not contientious 10% that actually throught this thing through, or else they would have voted against it and we would not have it.

     

    Also, I didn't invent the term "Congresscritter".

     

    Finally, I don't know much about Rush but I do know Bill Maher is a piece of shit (calling the 9/11 hijackers "courageous" pretty much sealed his fate with me) and I do know Rush is a fattie, so your proposal might work. 



  • @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.

    So what you mean is that first, you'd note that if he had been correct, he would have been correct.  Well duh, but let me point out to you that by the exact same token, he wasn't, so he wasn't.  This has to be the silliest apologia for an egregious and inexcusable falsehood I've heard in some time.

    The entire charge is palpable nonsense.  The process of government of the United States went on for over 200 years using entirely non-searchable paper copies of everything, and nobody claimed it was a pretext to exclude the legislation from oversight back then.  Anyone who claims they can't represent their constituents without having a Ctrl+F function to bring the stuff they're supposed to be paying attention to to their attention isn't competent to be doing the job of democratic oversight in the first place.  I don't want to hear an elected representative crying that they can't do the job because it's a bit difficult and might involve some hard work and actual reading - I want a capable adult human being to represent me. 


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @DaveK said:

    So what you mean is that first, you'd note that if he had been correct, he would have been correct.  Well duh, but let me point out to you that by the exact same token, he wasn't, so he wasn't.  This has to be the silliest apologia for an egregious and inexcusable falsehood I've heard in some time.
    I guess we have different definitions of "egregious" and "inexcusable."  It was either the verbal equivalent of a typo, or a bit of technical ignorance from a non-technical person.  A minor WTF, perhaps, but definitely not egregious and inexcusable.

    @DaveK said:

    The entire charge is palpable nonsense.  The process of government of the United States went on for over 200 years using entirely non-searchable paper copies of everything, and nobody claimed it was a pretext to exclude the legislation from oversight back then.  Anyone who claims they can't represent their constituents without having a Ctrl+F function to bring the stuff they're supposed to be paying attention to to their attention isn't competent to be doing the job of democratic oversight in the first place.  I don't want to hear an elected representative crying that they can't do the job because it's a bit difficult and might involve some hard work and actual reading - I want a capable adult human being to represent me. 
    This is plain silly.  We expect things to move quickly in this day and age, partly due to our technology in general, and communications in particular.  An electronically searchable large document could plausibly take less time to analyze than a non-electronically searchable document--at least for the more egregious bits of pork.  But I wonder how any capable adults could have possibly done due diligence with respect to this bill. 

    I know this site is focused on technical matters, but the quote really wasn't about the technical aspects of the bill.  It was about the procedural issues of trying to get this thing passed without anyone taking a close look at it. The technicalities of the PDF should really garner a snide, "TRWTF was his description of a PDF," just like we would about a typo in some code with an obvious buffer overflow, or something.

    Supposedly, the only thing standing between us and abject poverty was this bill, so we couldn't delay or think about it at all, and just had to do it.  Of course, once it was passed, we still waited through a three day weekend before it was signed.  So maybe we could have survived a few days debate after all.

     It's true that most of them don't care enough about reading the bills and understanding what they're voting for.  But there are a few, such as DeMint and Coburn, who do. I recall some parliamentary motion in one of the houses where a member can forcea clerk to read the entire bill aloud on the floor.  I wish they'd make this happen more often.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I know this site is focused on technical matters, but the quote really wasn't about the technical aspects of the bill.  It was about the procedural issues of trying to get this thing passed without anyone taking a close look at it.
     

    Yes. 

     

    @boomzilla said:

    The technicalities of the PDF should really garner a snide, "TRWTF was his description of a PDF," just like we would about a typo in some code with an obvious buffer overflow, or something.

    Sorta.  I don't expect lay users to know the difference between rasterized PDFs and actual text.  Generally this site is devoted to the ineptitude of supposed "professionals" who open themselves up to much harsher criticism due to their positions.  Generally when users make mistakes due to the confusing nature of technologies, I don't fault them.  Imagine if Rush was arguing against abortion (presumably he is pro-life) and made some medical error when describing the process of aborting a fetus.  It doesn't invalidate his main point and anyone who harps on his lack of medical knowledge is just being a twat.

     

    @boomzilla said:

    Supposedly, the only thing standing between us and abject poverty was this bill, so we couldn't delay or think about it at all, and just had to do it.  Of course, once it was passed, we still waited through a three day weekend before it was signed.  So maybe we could have survived a few days debate after all.

    And of course the Lefties jumped on Bush and the Republicans for pushing through the Patriot Act in much the same way.  The difference there being that the opposition party also voted for it without reading it and only later started to question its provisions.  And arguably much more was at stake right after 9/11 when we didn't know if more attacks were forthcoming, although saying there isn't time to read a bill before making it law is just plain retarded.  Without hypocrisy, politics wouldn't be politics.

     

    @boomzilla said:

    I recall some parliamentary motion in one of the houses where a member can forcea clerk to read the entire bill aloud on the floor.  I wish they'd make this happen more often.

    You must really hate Congressional clerks.  If someone asked me to read 1500 pages of pork aloud to a mostly-empty chamber I would just throw in random nonsense to see if anyone is paying attention and to keep myself from going insane..  "And we have $30 billion in tax credits for the Mole People to pacify their vicious nature and stop their attacks on our subterranean infrastructure..."



  • @morbiuswilters said:

     "And we have $30 billion in tax credits for the Mole People to pacify their vicious nature and stop their attacks on our subterranean infrastructure..."

     The $30 billion is to establish the STRATA action team composed of  Jim J. James, Lieutenant Jen E. James, Robot, Kiko, Saul Malone, Don Rogers, and Johnny Tambourine.


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