OH, THAT’S A NEW ONE. BLAME THE COMPUTERS! White House budget director blames old computers for ineffective government. Funny, it seems the government was a lot more effective fifty or sixty years ago, when it hardly had any computers at all, but better people in charge . . . .
And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job. I think that we have a big mess on our hands. It’s not going to be solved immediately, but it is going to get solved. And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to.
(Emphasis added.)
Guess Mr Orszag didn’t get the memo.
Well, old patterns are hard to break.
If I remember correctly, it was Gore in the first Clinton administration who headed up a huge effort to make government more effiicient by incorporating computers more effectively into government offices. By this piece, I guess he failed, huh?
Kind of OT: In the arguments for brodcasting the Prop 8 hearings harassment and death threats are only what the prop 8 folks deserve.
Don’t blame us for trying to change the law, blame those haters for trying to uphold it!
If the computers were doing what they are supposed to do, then the humans could be freed up to do other things. When the humans are doing other things and the computers don’t do what they are supposed to do then the other things have to wait while the humans do what the computers should have done.
Clear?
Now lets talk about computerized medical records and national health care. How in the name of Sam Hill can we computerize diagnosis, age and cost ratios, probability, wait time, best facility use and availability of limited humans with computers that do not work? H-m-m-m-m-m-m?
Now lets talk about airport screening. If we had a fiber optic probe that could climb into all the human cavities and send messages to a computer, we could obviously beat the terrorists! We could probe tiny babies, people in casts and bodies in coffins. We would not even need humans, except to line people up for the computerized probings.
Now lets talk about welfare dependency. We could have computers which listen to complaints and make assessments on how much more money to pay people to temporarily satisfy them. If the machine is not programed to be racially, ethnically, faith, age, gender, or LGBT biased, it will be pure of charges of profiling or discrimination.
Now lets talk about social justice. We simply program the markers for social justice into the computers and we are able to ferret out actions motivated by hate, people who are suffering from equality injustice syndrome, and all manner and shades of unfairness, political incorrectness, social arrogance and insufficient pity.
Now lets talk about man-made global warming ……. oh, forget it.
Instead of TARP, the money could have been spent on completely overhauling the entire government computer system.
Oh, wait!!!!! Al Gore did that already. Good job Al.
This is a really bizarre post. Pointing out that a system has outdated computers is not an example of “blaming someone else’. It is pointing out a problem that needs fixing.
I guess this is a good example of why Republican administrations tend to be so incredibily incompetent – there is a disinterest in even identifying problems – no wonder y’all cannot figure out how to solve them.
‘Al Gore did that already. ”
??? Al Gore has not been in office for 9 years. How old is your computer, and software?
And here comes the official Democrat appologizer…
Guess what Tano, my computer is 9 years old and chugs along nicely. It’s not like they’re doing CadCam or playing Dragon Age or anything.
It is pointing out a problem that needs fixing.
No, it is blame-shifting.
Here’s the problem, Tano; your criminal Obama is sending money to fake Congressional districts to be pocketed by his supporters.
Do you have an interest in fixing that? No. Instead you whine how the lack of new computers causes Obama Party members like you to steal.
Why do you support sending billions of dollars to nonexistent Congressional districts, Tano? Instead of endlessly repeating the same dumb rejoinder, why dont you actually read our comments and answer the challenge.
You can do that, can’t you? After all, you would never be so hypocritical as to skip out on answering when you’ve stamped your feet and namecalled GPW for allegedly not answering YOUR questions.
He blames the delay not knowing about the Crotch Bomber on others. Now from the NY times, that the delay in getting the troops to Afghanistan as intentional to make him look bad– “Paranoid, or just blaming others:
http://bunkerville.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/obama-paranoid-or-just-blaming-others/
I’m typing on a computer that is 7 years old. It runs XP and several versions of linux. It also runs quickbooks 2000 for my business.
The problem the government has is NOT a hardware OR software problem. It’s what we call in the tech industry a PBCAC error. Person Between Computer And Chair!
Or in this case, it would be a BBCAC error – Bureaucrat Between Computer And Chair!
And yes, I’m gonna have to post this.
“a BBCAC error – Bureaucrat Between Computer And Chair!”
Oh, and this, I guess, is not an example of blaming someone else. Right?
Hey Tardo, they coulda gotten a bunch of spiffy computers at NewEgg.com for a helluva lot less than $787 BILLION. For that matter, the incompetent won could take over microsoft and have all the computers he could possibly want.
No, it’s a guess that the computers are fine, but the corrupt, incompetent boobs using them are the problem.
I always heard it as PEBCAK – Problem exists between Chair and Keyboard.
Either way, it’s blaming the meat, not the metal.
Sonicfrog: I’ve often referred to it as the Chair-to-Keyboard Interface.
I think you guys are right. I didn’t have my breakfast yet….. And Tano…. Jeez, do you EVER smile at anything?
PS. There is also the classic “I.D.10 T” error.
Never heard of any of those. Guess I know less of IT than I thought. Then there’s “Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?“
#11: PLEASE don’t suggest that Obama take over M$… their crap is bad enough as it is.
(I just spent three hours installing Visual Studio 2008 on a fresh OS image, hunting all over the place for critical updates that M$ won’t put in one place, and then having it tell me that it corrupted some key and I need to re-install it.) Come to think of it – M$ is becoming a lot like a gummint agency.
I’m typing this on an iBook G4. At work I use a Dell Latitude D610. Neither are exactly new, and I’d like a new one at home.
But my work and life experience tells me that 90% of what people do doesn’t require anything newer than 3-5 years old, more so in many cases. A simple RAM upgrade takes care of most performance issues.
More, this whole issue just typifies the behavior of Obama. He cannot give a speech without blaming George W Bush, either directly or by implication. It’s getting old, and his slumping popularity is an indication voters are getting tired of it.
Well, since nobody’s taken the notion that we all have the right to free computers, I’m working with a Compaq somthing-or-other that’s at least 5 years old. It won’t even allow a printer to be connected anymore.
I seem to recall Tardo, or maybe it was one of the other sock puppets (they’re all the same to me) going on about how rich he was. I suggested on more than one occasion that I wanted a new computer, but that never came to fruition.
I seem to recall Tardo, or maybe it was one of the other sock puppets (they’re all the same to me) going on about how rich he was.
There was a troll who always used to brag about how rich he was, and how his inherited wealth somehow made his opinions more valid. Who was that guy?
Doesn’t Tano use a computer to pound out what is his opinion on this site? Do you suppose if Tano had a new, super-power computer his opinion would vastly improve?
Just asking.