THE LIE
At his meeting with bipartisan leaders of Congress, Obama said he would make his stimulus proposal available on the Internet, with a Google-like search function to show each proposed project or program, by congressional district, according to three people who attended.
THE REALITY
In a press conference Thursday, the House Republican leadership spoke candidly about being kept out of the House-Senate conference on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid so-called “economic stimulus” bill. They confirmed they had not yet seen the text of the bill as of 4 p.m.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was unsure how many Democrats would vote with Republicans again on this bill but that he thought Republicans “may get a few” Democrats to side with them. The fact that the Demos have now broken their promise to have the public able to see the bill for 48 hours may drive more Dems into the Republican camp.
“[I] don’t know, ‘cause they haven’t seen the bill either,” Boehner said. “The American people have a right to know what’s in this bill,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) told HUMAN EVENTS after the press conference. “Every member of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — voted to post this bill on the internet for 48 hours, 48 hours ago. We’ll see if the Democrats keep their word.”
For some completely unknown reason (I just can’t possibly imagine) MSNBC has not followed up on its own article by asking Democrats what happened to the 48hr online review?
So, who DOES know what’s in the bill that Congress is going to approve? Congress doesn’t. Lobbyists do
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
At least, I am flinching less now when I start surfing to the blogs and see this kind of stuff. I guess I am getting de-sensitsed now. Not sure if that is good or bad…
Can you imagine the outcry from the left and the MSM (as if they aren’t one and the same…)if this had been a Republican led Congress had pulled this crud? Or, if Bush had hand picked the reporters for his first press conference? They’d have screamed NAZI!
…and you believe Human Events???
Number of press conferences, in the first 3 years of a Presidency:
George HW Bush > 40
Wm J Clinton > 40
J Carter > 40
Gerald Ford > 40
Ronald Reagan > 20
Richard Nixon > 20
George W Bush = 9
They selected the reporters (including one from Fox News); they didn’t select the questions. Obama had been in office 3 weeks. No President in my lifetime stepped into office with the immediate challenges on his plate as Obama. We’ll just have to see how his press conferences go over the next three years, and then we can make comparisons.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Oh look.
Ronald is here.
Isn’t he cute?
You know what makes Ronald so very, very special?
He’s the latest arrival from the sock drawer of none other than
Jan/sanjay/simply.done/timebug.
Let me ask you a question Jan (assuming, of course, that Jan is your leader).
Did your mommy give birth to all of you at once like the crazy chick out in CA or have you self-cloned?
LOVE the photo, Aye! LOL
Larry, what does all the “press conferences” have to do with the promise to post the bills online? In fact, Obama… if I remember rightly (without researching the links at the moment)… promised to post prospective bills on a website for the public to ready and express opinions for a couple of weeks before he signed them.
But if you want to play the “press conference” game, I believe Kennedy answered something like 37 questions in the space of 40 minutes in his first press conference hours. Obama… Mr. I-love-the-sound-of-my-own-voice answered 13 in 60 minutes. And “answered” is being generous to the run around of non-answering rhetoric in which Obama excels.
I’d say the qualification of your “lifetime” is the defining statement. Obama knows what he is stepping into, unlike George W. Bush who had 911 lurking around the corner. Obama knows who his friends and enemies are in the Middle East… and there are more of the former than the latter, now… thanks to George W. Bush.
Bush also inherited a recession. Compound that with the immediate recessive hit after 911. But he didn’t know all the puzzle pieces that were going to affect that recession years downline.
And those he did know about (Fannie/Freddie) he tried to correct several times in 2004-2005… but no dice against Barney Frank & company.
Yeah… I really feel sorry for Obama, Larry. All those “hidden” speed bumps that he has compared to others. snort… chortle… LOL
Give me a break, Larry. You’re blowing BS here.
Hey Hey …
It’s Howdy Doo Dee Time…
My first venture into the bowels of Flopping Aces.
This HR1 bill has been open to public scrutiny since being introduced 1/26/2009.
Better get your reading glasses on, Twenty sharpened #2 pencils, and a note-pad handy and report back in 72 hours for a pop quiz:
1/26/2009–Introduced.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – See Full Bill Text
And here’s what I’ve thought about all these Kabuki dancers on the Potomac since 1966.
Cherrios —
This is only the beginning…
@Dog_Knows:
That’s just the House version before conference, not the final bill.
Pelosi didn’t post the final language until 11:32 p.m last night.
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1694
Ready for all to read and vote on this afternoon, ignoring the 48 hour amendment passed earlier this week that would have allowed all to study it for 48 hours before voting.
See:
http://www.readthestimulous.org/
Final Language Posted
Posted at 11:00 pm on Thursday, February 12, 2009
The final language has been posted; you can find links to the various docs at the Speaker’s website.
The total 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…
http://www.readthestimulous.org/
Stuck in spam. P&T
Just found this, dem Congress critters complaining:
Congressional Offices Don’t Have the Stimulus Bill, Lobbyists Do
February 12, 2009 04:14 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
We’re receiving E-mails from Capitol Hill staffers expressing frustration that they can’t get a copy of the stimulus bill agreed to last night at a price of $789 billion. What’s more, staffers are complaining about who does have a copy: K Street lobbyists. E-mails one key Democratic staffer: “K Street has the bill, or chunks of it, already, and the congressional offices don’t. So, the Hill is getting calls from the press (because it’s leaking out) asking us to confirm or talk about what we know—but we can’t do that because we haven’t seen the bill. Anyway, peeps up here are sort of a combo of confused and like, ‘Is this really happening?'” Reporters pressing for details, meanwhile, are getting different numbers from different offices, especially when seeking the details of specific programs.
Worse, there seem to be several different versions of what was agreed upon, with some officials circulating older versions of the package that seems to still be developing. Leadership aides said that it will work out later today and promised that lawmakers will get time to review the bill before Friday’s vote.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2009/2/12/congressional-offices-dont-have-the-stimulus-bill-lobbyists-do.html
Ok
RedState has a post up about breaking the 48 hour rule the Dems agreed to.
The House Rules Committee has the conference report up in a four part pdf file set and it is still not in final legislative form since you have areas crossed out with pen to show deletions and such with substitution notes in handwriting in the margins.
Boston Globe reports Kennedy is headed home to FL for rest.
This whole thing is trying to be rammed through without a decent look.
Obama’s promise was 5 days on the White House website for NON EMERGENCY bills prior to signing and they consider this and emergency bill.
There seem to be two new websites set up to track the status of the spending AFTER the bill is passed
Recovery.gov
EconomicRecovery.gov
According to the ruling at the rules committee link above they are only scheduling 90 minutes of debate on the passage in the House.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
The number of press conferences a variety of past presidents does not hold even a sliver of relevance to the topic at hand.
What your effort provides is yet another opportunity for everyone to see you
R-E-A-C-H to make some obscure point in your tireless, never ending, and tiresome “Boosh, Boosh, Boosh” bashing.
The problem is that you are, once again, inaccurate in your criticism, whatever the point was.
We all know that we can count on you to bash the former president at every turn. If you want to be nit picky in your efforts, then I will be nit picky in making sure you toe the line on the facts.
Now, let’s get back to the topic at hand.
How do you feel about the Dim efforts to ramrod this bill through the House when it is not humanly possible that any one of these critters could have read it.
The bill was released to K Street lobbyists before it was even given to members of Congress or their staff members.
The bill was not posted on the Internet until after 11pm last night.
It’s over 1,000 pages.
There’s no possible way that ANYONE could have read it to even know what is in it, yet they lined up like sheep to go out the House floor and vote.
In addition Larry, the House voted for this legislation to be available for public review for 48 hours prior to a vote.
By my count, it was on the Internet for less than 15 hours before the vote happened.
I guess that was just more lip service, of course you’re very familiar with that.
Every single member of Congress who voted “YES” on this should be run out of town on a rail. There is no POSSIBLE way that they could have read it.
Absolutely outrageous.