Obama...not so transparent!

[Saoirse]

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House
Taking Bush's position, administration denies msnbc.com request for logs
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
msnbc.com
updated 2 hours, 22 minutes ago

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.
Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

read the rest here... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407...s-white_house/

I guess all that talk about transparency doesn't quite work for him. I wonder who is visiting him that he doesn't want us and the press to know about!

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by Saoirse

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House
Taking Bush's position, administration denies msnbc.com request for logs
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
msnbc.com
updated 2 hours, 22 minutes ago



read the rest here... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407...s-white_house/

I guess all that talk about transparency doesn't quite work for him. I wonder who is visiting him that he doesn't want us and the press to know about!

Saoirse,

I think it may reveal "muslims"(my tin foil hat is firmly attached)who he maybe working with secretly,to try and work out something with Iran....... Doesn't want us peasants to know about it......... Time will tell........

GB TFS

[echoes]

Originally Posted by greenberetTFS

Saoirse,

I think it may reveal "muslims"(my tin foil hat is firmly attached)who he maybe working with secretly,to try and work out something with Iran....... Doesn't want us peasants to know about it......... Time will tell........

GB TFS

Great point TFS!

And well, if I was asked to visit to give my two cents on anything...I sure as hell would be talking about it till I was blue in the face!

Hussein O. : "So, how do you think I am doing my first 200 days?"

Me: "Well, Mr. President, if I may direct you to a website that I know of?...Just type in Professionalsoldiers dot com. Yes, yes, I know it is a lot to ask of 'your greatness', but I think you'll be very surprised to hear how a lot of us US Military supporting-REAL Americans feel sir! So here, let me type it in for you!"

Holly

[ACE844]

Originally Posted by greenberetTFS

Saoirse,

I think it may reveal "muslims"(my tin foil hat is firmly attached)who he maybe working with secretly,to try and work out something with Iran....... Doesn't want us peasants to know about it......... Time will tell........

GB TFS

"GB TFS,"

Perhaps he's having late night prayer sessions with Reverend Wright and discussing his ideas for Homeland Security with Bill Ayers?

[Defender968]

Originally Posted by Saoirse

Obama blocks list of visitors to White House
Taking Bush's position, administration denies msnbc.com request for logs
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
msnbc.com
updated 2 hours, 22 minutes ago

read the rest here... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407...s-white_house/

I guess all that talk about transparency doesn't quite work for him. I wonder who is visiting him that he doesn't want us and the press to know about!

Saoirse you got it, just talk, what he says and what he does have seldom matched thus far, and I think it will only get worse.

[Richard]

Personally - I'm surprised that anyone would think he's any different than anyone - from whatever party - seeking to become POTUS.

Richard's $.02

[echoes]

Originally Posted by Richard

Personally - I'm surprised that anyone would think he's any different than anyone - from whatever party - seeking to become POTUS.

Richard's $.02

Richard Sir...

In my neverending quest to obtain knowledge...

May I ask, "Why" Sir?

Thank you Sir,

Holly

[rubberneck]

Originally Posted by Richard

Personally - I'm surprised that anyone would think he's any different than anyone - from whatever party - seeking to become POTUS.

Richard's $.02

Normally I'd agree with you but I find it particularly galling that the media and a large swath of the American electorate fell for the President's empty promise of change. Usually when a politician says that he is going to change the tone in Washington most reasonable people assume that they are full of it. What I can't figure out is if people are just that stupid or they were so desperate for any sort of change they believed every word of it. IMHO aside from the infidelity issues there isn't much difference between WJC and President Obama. They are both master politicians that seem to be able to delude large crowds armed with little more than charm.

[Defender968]

Originally Posted by rubberneck

IMHO aside from the infidelity issues there isn't much difference between WJC and President Obama. .

I'll have to disagree with you there, I think WJC was in it for himself only, and while I think President Obama is also in it for his own glory I think he is also is in it to truly "CHANGE" America, the problem is what he wants to change it into.

Just my .02

[rubberneck]

Originally Posted by Defender968

I'll have to disagree with you there, I think WJC was in it for himself only, and while I think President Obama is also in it for his own glory I think he is also is in it to truly "CHANGE" America, the problem is what he wants to change it into.

Just my .02

I was referring to style not motivation.

[GratefulCitizen]

Originally Posted by Richard

Personally - I'm surprised that anyone would think he's any different than anyone - from whatever party - seeking to become POTUS.

Richard's $.02

I'm not convinced that the President is actively trying to do all this evil which has been attributed to him.
(and my political leanings are just a little to the right of Ghengis Khan...)

Rather, it seems that he's just going with what he knows: Chicago-style politics.
Under stress, people revert to what they know.

He's a likeable guy who is utterly incompetent at his actual job (governing).
It's jimmy carter's second term.

[KClapp]

Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen

I'm not convinced that the President is actively trying to do all this evil which has been attributed to him.
(and my political leanings are just a little to the right of Ghengis Khan...)

Bad analogy. On the spectrum of political ideology, where left is total tyranny and right is total anarchy, Ghengis Khan would be on the very left edge of the scale. Your statement indicates you are on the left most side of the scale. However, I believe I get your drift.

He's a likeable guy who is utterly incompetent at his actual job (governing).

He's a Progressive (a Communist by any other name is still a Communist) who believes strongly in that ideology. He also has an ego the size of the Milky Way.

It's jimmy carter's second term.

Carter was not nearly as dangerous or adept at taking power.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen

I'm not convinced that the President is actively trying to do all this evil which has been attributed to him.

I agree. Rather, he's of the opinion that he's enlightened, and must act to protect us, the citizenry, from our own ignorance. As C.S. Lewis observed:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

[Saoirse]

Originally Posted by Razor

I agree. Rather, he's of the opinion that he's enlightened, and must act to protect us, the citizenry, from our own ignorance. As C.S. Lewis observed:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Razor..I agree with you! And I see him as an "enlightened idealist" with his Chicago-style politics (we have seen in the news how that works..thanks Blago for your lessons in Chicago politics).

"Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt. Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves."
— Robert Anton, philosopher

[Sigaba]

Could the issue of transparency grow to be a stone around the president's neck? First MSNBC News and now Newsweek are taking the man to task for his flip flop.

Source is here.

Obama Closes Doors on Openness
Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 29, 2009

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

The hard line appears to be no accident. After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts. The directive, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, instructed federal agencies to adopt a "presumption" of disclosure for FOIA requests. This reversal of Bush policy was intended to restore a standard set by President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno. But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the Reno policy. (The visitor-log request falls in this category because of a pending Bush-era lawsuit for such records.)

Administration officials say the Holder memo was drafted by senior Justice lawyers in consultation with Craig's office. The separate standard for "pending" lawsuits was inserted because of the "burden" it would impose on officials to go "backward" and reprocess hundreds of old cases, says Melanie Ann Pustay, who now heads the FOIA office. White House spokesman Ben LaBolt says Obama "has backed up his promise" with actions including the broadcast of White House meetings on the Web. (Others cite the release of the so-called torture memos.) As for the visitor logs, LaBolt says the policy is now "under review."

FWIW, I strongly disagree with the statement that a Progressive is anywhere close to being a Communist. IIRC, Theodore Roosevelt spoke very highly of progressivism (link).