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Showing posts tagged government
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BREAKING NEWS
It’s just been revealed that the government has been secretly forcing auto manufacturers to include a covert communication device in every new vehicle they make. This has been going on for years.
This is huge guys! Click through to find out if one is in your car!
*giggle*
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President Obama summed up our debt crisis best when he told Republican members of the House in January 2010 that “The major driver of our long-term liabilities … is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending.” A few months later, however, Mr. Obama and his party’s leaders in Congress added trillions of dollars in new health-care spending to the government’s balance sheet.
Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table. Still, committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year. The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose.
Democrats rejected this approach but assured us on numerous occasions they would offer a “structural” or “architectural” Medicare reform plan of their own. While I do not question their good faith effort to do so, they never didJeb Hensarling: Why the Super Committee Failed - WSJ.com
Interesting.
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Three myths about the detention bill - Salon.com
Everyone please, please, please read the full article. The language in the bill is clear.
Condemnation of President Obama is intense, and growing, as a result of his announced intent to sign into law the indefinite detention bill embedded in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). These denunciations come not only from the nation’s leading civil liberties and human rights groups, but also from the pro-Obama New York Times Editorial Page, which today has a scathing Editorial describing Obama’s stance as “a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency” and lamenting that “the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all,” as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is “another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie.” In damage control mode, White-House-allied groups are now trying to ride to the rescue with attacks on the ACLU and dismissive belittling of the bill’s dangers.
For that reason, it is very worthwhile to briefly examine — and debunk — the three principal myths being spread by supporters of this bill, and to do so very simply: by citing the relevant provisions of the bill, as well as the relevant passages of the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), so that everyone can judge for themselves what this bill actually includes.
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SOPA: Stop Grandstanding, Start Crafting An Alternative - Security - Government and vertical industry security - Informationweek
I’m not here to defend SOPA or PIPA. If, as their critics maintain, the bills effectively give ISPs, search engines, and payment services carte blanche to cut off foreign websites that U.S. movie, music, and other content creators merely claim are profiting from their stolen goods, then the legislation is an abomination.
But due process still exists in this country, so I have trouble believing that the courts will sit on their hands while a fundamental constitutional principle is violated. “Fair use” of copyrighted and trademarked material also still exists, so I have trouble believing that YouTube execs who let a 14-year-old post a video of herself singing “Sexy And I Know It” will get taken away in shackles. Still, if the SOPA and PIPA language is so broad as to invite such flagrant abuses, then the bills’ authors need to go back to square one.
….it’s up to the Internet industry stalwarts opposing SOPA/PIPA to rally support for a meaningful, 21st century alternative to stopping online content piracy. Most of them pay lip service to the notion that such piracy is a serious problem. It’s time for them to stop grandstanding—stop stomping their feet and holding their breath—and start showing the 20th century studios and record labels and media companies and their clueless lobbyists and Congressional supporters a much more effective way to address this issue.
To its credit Google, whose YouTube is a dumping ground for pirated material, is behind an alternative bill—The Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade, or OPEN, Act—and is seeking industry comment and collaboration. That collaboration must include movie, music, and media companies.
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Report: White House Pressured Scientists to Underestimate BP Spill Size | Mother Jones
*sigh*
Back at the height of the massive Gulf oil spill in 2010, there was quite a bit of controversy about just how much crude was blasting out of the well. According to new documents that a watchdog group released on Monday, there was heated debate among the scientists who evaluated the flow rate as well.
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Federal agencies scour Twitter, Facebook updates
I’m intrigued that people are upset about the government “scouring” publicly available information. Why are those protesters not also raising a similar outcry over the tracking, recording, and “scouring” done by search engines, shopping web sites, and online advertising services?
I realize there are gray areas and potential abuses. But really, if you put it out there without securing your account (on Facebook, Twitter, whatever), then do you really have a right to complain about what people learn about you?
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Drone use in the U.S. raises privacy concerns - CBS News
Unmanned aerial vehicles, a key weapon in the hunt for terrorists overseas, are coming to America. In February, President Barack Obama signed a bill that opens U.S. airspace to thousands of these unmanned aircraft.
The drones come in just about any size you want - as large as a passenger plane - or as small as a hummingbird.
“There’s no stopping this technology,” said Peter Singer, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and perhaps the country’s foremost authority on drones. “Anybody who thinks they can put this genie back in the box - that’s silliness.”
Singer watched them dramatically alter the American battlefield overseas, and says they’re about to become the next big thing at home.
“They’re technologies that not only give you capabilities that you couldn’t have imagined a generation earlier,” Singer said. “But they’re also technologies that cause questions that you weren’t asking yourself a generation earlier.”
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Likes
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I’m having a very difficult time finishing anything lately. Post-college blues? I literally forced...
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Minimalist DC Superhero Mugshot Poster by Michael Myers
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“When The Chips Are Down”
Emmanuel O’Brien
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The Fifth Element by Paul Andrew/December Studio
