Re: Britain leads the world

[David Hobby]

William T Goodall wrote:

Jews and Muslims
are allowed to ignore the laws on animal cruelty and engage in the
barbaric practice of slitting the throats of live animals without
numbing them in order to create kosher and halal meat.


I don't have a big problem with this one.  Back when
it became a tradition, it WAS one of the most reliably
humane ways to slaughter animals.  Given that the animals
are raised to be killed and eaten, the throat-slitting adds
little extra cruelty to the process.

...

where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is granted special
rights just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible
supernatural being. 

...

I'm with you on this one.  Ideas should stand on their
own, not on their supposedly supernatural provenance.

---David

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Brin: Obama closes curtain on Transparency

[KZK]

More brilliance from a one-term president:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-closes-curtain-on-transparency-468557-100595914.html

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated 
to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a 
partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of 
disclosure by government and politicians.

...
Bauer's own words -- gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight 
Foundation -- show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the 
good intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the 
powerful.


x

xxx
xx
x

One of the most surprising things I learned as a young man working his 
way from the hinterlands of a multi-national behemoth into the lofty 
towers of headquarters is that quite simply, they do not know. They are 
too often just frightened people making it up as they go along. Decision 
making too often comes down to verbal acuity, cults of personality, 
tides of emotion, and totemistic tribalism...It is hard to think of a 
better characterization of the Obama Administration than a dysfunctional 
US corporation led by a high profile CEO surrounded by mediocre 
functionaries with enormous egos and retinues, bounded by special 
interests, losing its long-time monopoly status, foundering on the 
unyielding rocks of change. The decline of the Soviet Union redux, writ 
larger.

-- http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

One criterion to judge any struggle by is the extent to which it gets 
co-opted by those in power.

--Unknown.

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Re: Brin: Obama closes curtain on Transparency

[Nick Arnett]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 8:15 AM, KZK evil.ke...@gmail.com wrote:

 More brilliance from a one-term president:


 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-closes-curtain-on-transparency-468557-100595914.html

 President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to
 transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan
 ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by
 government and politicians.
 ...
 Bauer's own words -- gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight
 Foundation -- show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the good
 intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the powerful.


Did you read the article?  I can't find one fact in there that shows
opposition to transparency on the part of  the partisan ex-lobbyist, who
clearly has much more meaningful credentials than that.

And what is really, really awful about this column is that it leaves the
impression that the Sunlight Foundation was criticizing Obama's decision.
Hardly.

What the author (who took one journalism class and started calling himself a
reporter) did was dig up a two-year-old Sunlight Foundation press release
and twisted into a criticism of current events. Sleazy.  Unethical.

http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2008/06/10/reflections-on-election-laws/

The item's concluding paragraph:

As Bauer cautions, we should take great care in what we regulate. And many
of the issues are complex, requiring difficult and careful decisions.
Legitimate citizen organizing and association should not be discouraged. But
made clear by the convention loophole, there are still some easy decisions
left unaddressed.

The Sunlight Foundation was praising Bauer (two years ago) for his insights
into regulation and politics, not criticizing Obama for giving Bauer
responsibility for transparency.   To really get at the facts here, go to
the comments Bauer made, which prompted the Sunlight Foundation item.

http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/news.html?AID=1277

Obama chose a man who defended the FEC's decision to leave Internet media
such a blogging, unregulated.  Terrible blow to transparency, was that?

I am all for deliberative democracy.  The opposite has little to commend
it.  Progressive political action depends, too, on finding and building
strengths in numbers, in raising any one voice by amplifying it with the
voices of others. Alliances must be fashioned and coalitions built.  This is
work done on the streets or the phones or the on web, wherever support can
be recruited and energies toward a common goal can be mobilized.   This
comes about not only through the protection of free speech, important as
it is:  the right of association, broadly construed and vigorously defended,
captures an aspect of this political work that has been seriously
neglected.

Of course, the first clue that the column might be deliberately biased was
that it appeared in the Washington Examiner.  But there is no excuse for
twisting the Sunlight Foundation's report this way.

Nick
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