Posts Tagged ‘government’
Internet “Kill Switch” passes Senate Committee
The government seems determined to control the entire internet one way or another.
Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate
A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.
Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet “kill switch.” Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause “the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication” in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.
The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.
I don’t see how this matters really, by the time we realize that we are under some kind of cyber-attack it will be to late to do anything about it anyway.
Controlling and regulating the internet seems to be some kind of “holy grail” for government agencies.
There’s a lot at stake here, the internet is truly the last frontier, entrepreneurs can be made or broken.
Free expression can exist unregulated by the government, it’s the new “pamphlet” of the next century where every political or social idea can be posted, examined or discussed.
Do we really want the government choking the last available outlet of freedom?
Tags: cyber-attack, government, internet, kill switch, regulations, Senate commitee
Surprise, Pelosi Blames Bush for Oil Spill
- They believe us!!!
Queen Nancy pontificates.
“Many of the people appointed in the Bush administration are still burrowed in the agencies that are supposed to oversee the [oil] industry,” Pelosi said when asked if Democrats could have prevented or mitigated the crisis by keeping a closer watch on the industry.
Added the Speaker, “the cozy relationships between the Bush administration’s agency leadership and the industry is clear…I’ve heard no complaints from my members about the way the president has handled it,” Pelosi stated.
This from the most clueless speaker ever.
So when is Obama and queen Pelosi going to take responsibility for anything?
Tags: government, hypocrits, idiots, leftists, liars, liberals, oil spill
So Now What?
So now we finally have a heart breaking disaster that every eco-libtard, liberal, Maoist, socialist busy body could have ever wanted.
Oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at a near disastrous rate threatening livelyhoods, habitat and economic growth.
What we have here folks is not a disaster….at least not for the eco-loons and their pliant democratic party enablers, what they have now is an opportunity.
Already the Obamessiah has halted all drilling, oil lease sales and exploration basically indefinitely.
Obama to extend drilling moratorium
President Barack Obama on Thursday will announce that he’s extending his moratorium on new deepwater oil wells for six months in response to the BP crisis – but he’ll go further than that, putting on hold drilling off the coast of Alaska and cancelling other oil-lease sales.Obama will announce the moves at a 12:45 p.m. news conference in the East Room, his first in months. He’ll also announce new standards to strengthen oversight of the oil industry and enhance safety, the first step of a process that he’s asked a blue-ribbon presidential commission to continue.
The changes come after a 30-day safety review on offshore drilling conducted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, which Obama will discuss at the news conference.
Obama is effectively hitting the pause button on new wells like the Deepwater Horizon, which has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for more than a month.
And he’s delaying planned exploration off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas while his blue-ribbon panel explores what went wrong the BP spill and how to prevent future accidents.
So what are we going to do folks?
Unemployment is high, the economy is slowly inching its way back by fits and starts, tax revenue is falling and our deficit has reached over 13 trillion dollars.
This country depends on oil, natural gas and coal to power it’s cities and industries. It won’t take long for the prices of oil and fuel to rise, and then goods and services will increase.
As devastating as the the oil spill is for the gulf states, a lengthy moratorium on drilling and exploration would compound it many times over.
This could have all been avoided if we could have used our own resources inside this country and in shallow areas off shore. Excessive government regulations drove BP and other companies to drill in deep water at the edge of our technology where mistakes are magnified 100′s of times over.
BP took a big risk and failed and should be held accountable, but the rogue legislators who took their marching orders from the most deranged element of the worshippers of Gaia should be held accountable also.
Tags: BP, eco-nuts, Gaia, government, Gulf of Mexico, gulf states, idiots, leftists, liberals, Obama, oil spill
Obama once more snubs the American people
What a pose.
What is it with politicians and their propensity to just ignore the will of those who elected them into office and pretty much just proceed to do what they want anyway?
There is nowhere in this country where the polling doesn’t show overwhelming support for Arizona’s tough new stance on immigration.
GOP could gain by raising Arizona
According to a New York Times/CBS poll released Monday, 69 percent of respondents from the South said that the law is either “about right” or does not go “far enough” and 66 percent from the Midwest said the same. Opinion is more divided in the Northeast and West, but nationwide, 60 percent of respondents said the Arizona measure is about right or doesn’t go far enough.
“You can’t start singling out people because of who they look like or how they talk or how they dress,” he said.
Instead, Obama called on Congress to enact “common sense, comprehensive immigration reform” that would focus on securing the border and providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Tags: democrats, enforce the law, government, illegal immigration, Immigration, law, leftists, path to citizenship
The Lazy, Morally Corrupt Bureaucrats
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. ~Laurence J. Peter
Getting rid of the corrupt, criminal democrats in congress is only half of the solution.
The other half is pruning out the morally bankrupt, lazy parasites in the civil service.
SEC Workers Accused of Watching Porn Instead of Policing Financial System
WASHINGTON — Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system, an agency watchdog says.
The SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.
It was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The memo was first reported Thursday evening by ABC News. It summarizes findings of past inspector general probes and reports some shocking findings:
– A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office.
– An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as “Sex” or “Pornography.” Yet he still managed to amass a collection of “sexually suggestive and inappropriate images” on his hard drive.
– Seventeen of the employees were “at a senior level,” earning salaries of up to $222,418.
– The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.
An SEC spokesman declined to comment Thursday night.
They want to do this crap in their own home then fine, but if they do it on the taxpayers dime then they need to be fired and replaced with someone who will do the job.
Civil service is really just another welfare program.
Tags: Bureaucrats, Corrupt, democrats, government, Lazy, liberals, Morally
Teaching 9/11
I don’t have much faith in public education teaching the truth about anything.
New Program Will Teach Students About 9/11
NEW YORK — Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined Sept. 11 family members and college professors on Tuesday at a hotel blocks from the World Trade Center site to unveil a plan to teach middle and high school students about the 2001 terrorist attacks.The 9/11 curriculum, believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks, is expected to be tested this year at schools in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea, the only problem is that government schools will be under constant pressure to teach the “other alternatives” to what happened on 9/11.
How much you wanna bet that troofers and CAIR sue to get their own programs taught as alternative explanations in the public schools?
There’s no doubt in my mind that special interests will warp this program in a few years to the point that the who, why and where will be washed out until the truth is lost completely.It was developed with the help of educators by the Brick, N.J.-based Sept. 11 Education Trust, and was based on primary sources, archival footage and more than 70 interviews with witnesses, family members of victims and politicians, including Giuliani and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a New York senator at the time of the attacks.
The curriculum is taught through videos, lessons and interactive exercises, including one that requires students to use Google Earth software to map global terrorist activity.
One of the main goals is to help students entering middle and high school, who may have been too young to have strong memories of the attacks, to develop a tangible connection to what happened.
“In a few years, we will be teaching students who were not even alive at the time of the attacks,” said Anthony Gardner, the executive director of the Sept. 11 Education Trust.
~snip~
The problem is that the government is under constant pressure from special interests to teach their perspective on events also.
How much you wanna bet that troofers and CAIR sue to get their own programs taught as alternative explanations in the public schools?
There’s no doubt in my mind that special interests will warp this program in a few years to the point that the who, why and where will be washed completely out until the truth is lost.
This is a good effort, but vigilance will always be required to keep the curriculum from being sanitized or twisted for political reasons.
Tags: 9/11, CAIR, government, history, students, troofers
Cash For Clunkers Sunk
Wow, who’d a thunk the government would admit it made a mistake when it OK’ed a program that they didn’t think through?
Brakes put on ‘cash for clunkers’ plan
The government is suspending the explosively popular “cash for clunkers” program, fearing it would go broke before it could parcel out what it still owes dealers for a huge backlog of sales, according to congressional offices and a dealer group. The suspension was confirmed by Bailey Wood, legislative director for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which had been called Thursday night by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which administers the program. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., confirmed as well, saying she had been told by congressional leaders. “Obviously the program has been an immense success in stimulating automotive sales,” Wood said.
“The thing has exploded. It has exceeded everyone’s expectations,” said Miller, who was involved in writing the original legislation, known as CARS, for Car Allowance Rebate System. “Throughout our history, it has been auto sales that have pulled us out of recession. People are more likely to buy cars than houses. Not to be too Pollyannaish, but we’re gettin’ our mojo back. This could be the pivot” that begins an economic recovery.
~snip~
I guess the administration over looked the appeal of money for nothing.
Tags: cash, clunkers, government, idiot congress, idiot Obama
Sarah Palin’s on the Loose
Sarah Palin is no longer governor of Alaska but she didn’t go quietly in the night,
Here’s the money quote:
“You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy,” she said. “Democracy depends on you, and that is why-that’s why our troops are willing to die for you. So how about in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin’ things up.”
Whatever she has planned for the future she ain’t saying, but I doubt very seriously we will hear the end of her, nor the end of the personal attacks against her and her family.
I don’t know what it is about this woman that has pundits and commentators on the left so determined to marginalize and vilify her….other that the fact that when she accepted the invitation from the McCain campaign to run as the VP nominee people who were depressed and uninterested in the republican party suddenly sat up and took notice.
She connected to the base and maybe that’s what has them scared….and it should. Obama’s poll numbers are not looking as rosy as they did a month ago and neither is congresses.
Pelosi doesn’t care what your opinion of her is.
Maybe that’s another reason they despise Palin, people feel that she does care and she seems to communicate that. That’s a lot better than the pompous arrogance we’ve been getting from the White House and congress for the last few months…..and I don’t see it getting any better.
Maybe what the pundits and commentators are really telling us with their attacks on Palin is that she truly does have a chance in the next presidential election, with Obama and Pelosi’s help that is and that they have to do something to prevent that.
Tags: arrogance, attacks, commentators, Congress, government, left, mad as hell, Obama, Pelosi, pompous, pundits, Sarah Palin
Barney Frank Wants Pot Decriminalized
Barney Frank, democratic congressman, ranking democrat of the Financial Services Committee while the worst financial crisis since Jimmy Carter has occurred has introduced legislation to decriminalize marijuana.
Frank files bill decriminalizing marijuana
WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank has reintroduced legislation that would curtail the federal government’s authority to arrest and prosecute minor offenders, his latest attempt to roll back federal penalties for people who possess small amounts of the drug or use it to ease symptoms of chronic illnesses.
Frank, a Newton Democrat, filed the legislation late Thursday, the measure — co-sponsored by Texas Representative Ron Paul and others — would wipe out federal penalties for possession of up to 100 grams of pot, and for the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce. The legislation would leave it up to the states to determine punishment for those offenses.
~snip~
Does anyone else not see the hypocrisy here?
Everyone’s ready to go all libertarian over pot smoking, as in “it’s a personal choice”, the “government needs to get out of my personal business”, “it’s my body” and the big one……”it violates my freedom!!!!”.
Yet no one brings up these same concerns when it comes to taxing and regulating the bejeesus out of tobacco products.
Smoking pot gives off second hand smoke, just like cigarettes, there’s even some research that suggests pot can cause cancer. Prompting California regulators to add it to proposition 65 listing it as having cancer causing chemicals.
Personally I don’t really care if it’s illegal or not cause I don’t use it, but lets at least have some consistency in our outrage here. If the government is going after tobacco products regardless of the choice and freedom issue, shouldn’t they be consistent enough to regulate marijuana use as well?
Tags: Barney Frank, cancer, decriminalize, government, marijuana, pot, proposition 65, Ron Paul, smoking, tobacco
Killing the American Auto Industry
So I’m looking around on the web and while perusing CNN I come across this article.
The embattled automaker has one week to reach deals with Fiat, unions and banks, raising doubts it can avoid bankruptcy and a shutdown.
OK, Chrysler’s got some problems negotiating deals to stave off bankruptcy and save it’s bacon from creditors, I get that and here’s hoping that they can get what they need to turn the auto company around and make themselves stronger.
But then a little deeper in the article I found this video.
Here we have a company fighting for it’s life and they are promoting a teenie tiny little electric car that goes 25 miles and hour with what looks like a smiley face on the front.
Is this what they are expecting to save the auto industry with? Because I got to tell you that before I would spend $12,000 on something like a “Peapod” the government would have to point a gun to my head.
I’m beginning to wonder what price we’ll have to pay for all this “government help”.
Tags: Chrysler, electric car, government, Peapod
