Hits & Runs

What, 4 weeks and he hasn't turned the country around after 8 years of Bush Rules!?

The White House's missing documents

In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.

Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.

Wow, President Obama shut down Bush's "system for reviewing regulations". That's a good thing! We may actually have professionals in charge of reviewing regulations instead of incompetent politicians. (e.g. 'Heckuva job, Brownie')

And the "Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration" is just plain stupid. Republicans get a honeymoon, Democrats just get f*%ked.

Oh, and the "nary a mention" quote, well if you actually read this diatribe, (it's not a news article,) you find out they DID mention all of the changes. It's called the Federal Register. Freakin' morons!

BTW, this POS article penned by JOSH GERSTEIN of Politico is just another example of Politico's mission statement:

THE MISSION: Politico journalism drives conversation in official Washington, making us ESSENTIAL READING for anyone who is or wants to be a player, and a KEY OUTLET for anyone who is trying to shape a political or government debate.

They even admit they have no interest in reporting, um, ya know, actual news.
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Now this is actual news:

Bill proposes ISPs, Wi-Fi keep logs for police

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

What morons these Republicans are. In the first place, even with my humble servers, I can't afford the disk space to keep 2 years of logs! Are the rethugs going to pay for additional personnel, ($30k minimum, per year, per server, for IT professionals to perform this service), or do they think magical ponies will work for free to harvest this $hit!

In the 2nd place, it's a huge invasion of privacy! Why don't they just require the United States Post Office to open and copy every letter that is sent via snailmail?
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Submitted without comment:

The World Veterans Advocates Riled by Report on Army charity

Veterans advocates are venting anger and frustration toward the biggest charity within the U.S. military after revelations that it has been packing more money into reserves than it has spent on aid during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[...]
From 2003 to 2007, the charity, also known as AER, packed $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, records show. By contrast, smaller Navy and Air Force charities both put far more of their resources into aid than reserves. Also, more than 90 percent of AER's aid was given as no-interest loans, not outright grants.
[...]
Though tax-exempt and legally separate, AER operates largely under Army control, the AP found. Soldiers are squeezed for contributions, often rewarded for them in violation of regulations, and sometimes delayed in transfers or promotions when loans aren't repaid.

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And finally a bit of good news:

In copyright lawsuit, McCain claims he wasn't aware RNC ad 'existed'

"My friends, I didn't do it. I didn't even know it was going on."

That's the line former Republican presidential nominee and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is taking in a federal lawsuit that claims he violated the copyright of Jackson Browne's 1977 hit song, "Running on Empty," when it aired in one of his presidential campaign commercials.
[...]
McCain claims the Republican Party is solely responsible for his campaign ad, not him, and has asked that he be stripped from the case.

The federal judge handling the case disagreed. Judge Gary Klausner said McCain and the GOP have an "agency relationship," meaning that "once an agency relationship is established, the principal is liable for the acts of her agent, even if the principal does not expressly authorize or instruct her agent to take any action." He also questioned how using 20 seconds of the song in a TV ad constituted fair use, as the RNC claims.

Hmm, I wonder if the RIAA will weigh in on this?



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak