Obama Administration Wants Your Old Email 639
Nemesisghost wrote to us with a story about attempts to reform the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Under the act, messages left on a server are considered abandoned after six months and are trivially subpoenaed by law enforcement. A group of ISPs is lobbying to extend the protections afforded to locally stored messages to messages stored on third party servers, but the Obama administration is urging Congress not to reform the law.
One good reason to avoid webmail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well here would be one big reason to avoid webmail or outsourced mail servers in general.
Although most people really aren't "geeky" enough to avoid having someone else handle their email server. This law is just attempting to take advantage of the average n00b's clueless and disorganized nature....
+...calling something at the bottom of that big pile on your desk "abandoned".
They should enforce a standard like that for out of print creative works...
It's all just a part of the Corporate/Individual double standard that both parties heartily embrace.
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I leave my mail on the IMAP server of the hosting cooperative I'm in (for easy access anywhere, they keep backups so I don't have to, etc), and it looks like I unknowingly abandoned the data! I trust the cooperative infinitely more than I would trust e.g. gmail, but it looks like law enforcement can just as easily request access to my old mail there.
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I've got my own mail server, and it forwards my mail to gmail. I've been experimenting with going more cloud-based, and right now gmail is the best option for this out there. The next closest options I've found are Roundcube and Zimbra, and they're not nearly as nice.
All my mail is safely stored on my own servers, and a copy is sent to gmail. So I'm safe if they ever go under. However, I'm in no way protected from anybody with access to Google's servers.
What we really need are open source cloud solution
Re:One good reason to avoid webmail. (Score:5, Informative)
I was astounded to find out the other day that on yahoo mail servers, the word delete doesn't mean what you think it means. It just ticks a bit in a db field which prevents the email showing in your inbox and being counted in your quota.
However, the yahoo coders were too incompetent to leave the emails out of the search function.
Imagine my surprise when I performed a search recently, and emails I had deleted and emptied from my trash in 2007 showed up!!!
Are those emails considered abandoned (since I marked them as deleted) and available under this new legislation?
There is no privacy in the cloud.
Cloud Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
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Is my old data on a cloud based system considered abandoned if I continue to actively use the system but don't touch some items?
This is one of the problems the ISPs want clarified; the law doesn't specify if the whole account has to be inactive, or just certain items. The law has many other problems because of changes in modern technology.
Not totally against this. (Score:4, Interesting)
However I disagree with the consideration that emails on a web server that are 6 months old on are abandoned.. i have 6 year old emails on the web that i still refer to occasionally, with a push to the more efficient cloud computing its important to recognize this, a web based email account should be considered the same as a PO box as far as privacy is concerned.
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> So they would require an additional warrant to investigate additional email addresses for emails older than 6 months?
Why would they need two warrants? They would need ONE warrant to access ALL emails. Currently, they need NO warrant to access old emails and ONE warrant to access new emails.
The initiative wants to get rid of the provision for warrantless access. More power to that.
Eerie feeling (Score:2)
Abandonment Term (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's increase this term to Life + 95 years for e-mails sent by people, 120 years for those sent by corporations (including works for hire). For e-mails that are in the outbox, drafts, or any other unsent mail, it's life + 95 years, or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shorter.
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Aren't your personal emails already copyrighted to you by default?
Technological equivalency (Score:5, Insightful)
If the people don't have the right to be secure in their papers and effects (by extension, computers and emails), what right does the government have (by extension) to
-buy weapons systems that didn't exist when the Constitution was written?
-set up a cyberspace command?
-use electronic money?
When interpreting the people's rights, it's always done to the letter. When interpreting the government's rights, it's done expansively. [/rant]
Seriously Dude? (Score:2)
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Come on, man. I agree with you, but we've had the same argument here a thousand times before, and will a thousand times more. There is nothing left to be said, let's spend our time arguing about the specifics of email abandonment instead.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Obama stopped the war and thank god he closed Gitmo! He's way better than G Dub!
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
>Don't forget that instead of universal health care he got us a universal requirement to purchase private insurance.
Which was a Republican Idea (TM).
This is how it works:
Republicans come up with something on their own.
Democrats come up with something on their own.
Republicans vehemently oppose the Democrats' ideas.
Democrats cave, and adopt a Republican idea
Republicans vehemently oppose the Democrats' Idea (formerly republican) because there are "points to score"
Democrats get the formerly Republican idea through and signed and call it victory.
Republicans wail and gnash their teeth calling Obama a Communist Nazi Jew (Go back to Canada) etc. for passing a Republican idea.
This country is fucked.
--
BMO
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem are the voters - how can they be so stupid? Much as I think the Republicans are venal, their ability to convince the sheeple to vote against their best interests is truly astonishing.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
Who really cares? It's the same corrupt pile of shit on both sides, just with a different label attached.
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The sheeple think they might be rich someday and they don't want anyone to take their imaginary money away.
"You too could be rich some day ! Don't let your fellow poor leech away your riches! Kick those women off the free abortion train today or you'll be ruined!"
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The sheeple think they might be rich someday and they don't want anyone to take their imaginary money away.
"You too could be rich some day ! Don't let your fellow poor leech away your riches! Kick those women off the free abortion train today or you'll be ruined!"
I really do think this is phenomenon is underestimated. Of course, conservatives like to promote the idea of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", and like to imply that people become rich by their own hard work, with no help, while diminishing the roles of luck, connections, and all the help from the government that they received in achieving this goal (such as public education, public infrastructure, and protection of law).
In addition, I think there is a bit of influence from the Christian Right invo
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I have to wonder how they reconcile the whole "it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" bit.
Although that's assuming that the teachings of Christ still have anything to do with modern Christianity. I agree with Gandhi more and more, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
(Though I suppose with sufficient funding a miniature lap camel could be bred to fit through the eye of a comically over sized need
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Let me reduce that equation for you:
This is how it works:
Multinational corporations run almost everything.
Unions run a few things.
They sponsor a show called "Congress" which is a lot like American Idol, except that the dummies paying attention to it think they're smarter than the dummies who watch Idol.
We can reduce this equation further to:
Money.
I'm not sure that we're fucked. As they say in the salvation game, "The bad news is, you're going to Hell. The good news is, you don't have to get there".
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
>Don't forget that instead of universal health care he got us a universal requirement to purchase private insurance.
Which was a Republican Idea (TM).
This is how it works:
Republicans come up with something on their own.
Democrats come up with something on their own.
Republicans vehemently oppose the Democrats' ideas.
Democrats cave, and adopt a Republican idea[snip]
Actually, it was more like:
Democrats strongly push single-payer socialized medicine.
Conservative think tanks try to come up with a more palatable solution that focuses on individual responsibility so conservatives don't look like tone-deaf morons without a plan of their own, knowing full well that their "proposal" will never see the light of day with the Democrat stranglehold on Congress.
At any rate, that was a long time ago. Things change. The Heritage papers weren't written by Constitutional scholars, they were written by policy wonks.
The funny thing about this whole thing is if the Democrats weren't so chickenshit about creating a new tax, they could have done an end-run around the Constitutionality argument. Nobody denies that the federal government has the right to levy taxes, and nobody denies that the federal government can provide a service. So create a new tax called the ObamaCare MegaTax of 2011, and a new service called the ObamaCare Catastrophic Health Insurance Plan. Enroll every man, woman, and child in this new plan.
There, done. Now everybody has some sort of minimal coverage. Let the free market handle any needs beyond that like the MediGap plans do today for Medicare.
Jesus Christ, Democrats. Is it so hard to stay true to your Tax And Spend(TM) ideals? What the hell is in that 2,000 page monstrosity of a bill, anyway?
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Yup. Democrats in Congress and Senate are so spineless that they should be reclassified like molluscs.
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It was a German idea originally from immediately after WW2 (1949 or so). USA conservatives copied it after it was adopted by all of Western Europe sans UK. In any case, that is how the medical system in all of Europe except UK works nowdays.
I have lived in the US, in a country with a regulated mandatory medical insurance (Bulgaria - it reformed to medical insurance from "socialist health for all") and in the UK which is the last remaining developed country worldwide with "pure socialist" style health system
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No, it was a Mitt Romney idea.
Wow, the doublethink in your head must be staggering.
--
BMO
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who thought those items were even slightly possible drank waaay too deeply from the ultra-liberal kool-aide.
Delusional...
Anyone who thinks them impossible has become to brainwashed by the political tendency (by both parties) to keep saying something until people believe it.
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Flip-flopper!!! ;)
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
he is still head and shoulders above GWB
We're still in Iraq. We're still in Afghanistan. He's started a third war in Libya. Gitmo is still open. Unemployment is still way too high. We're still broke and spending more than we ever have. The Patriot Act is still around and the Administration continues to press on with other initiatives which erode the rights of American citizens. So, exactly how is BHO "head and shoulders above GWB"?
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Informative)
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What war in Libya? We've basically done some live bombing practice and sent in a handful of trainers and some covert troops. We expended more resources arresting Noriega.
Yeah because it doesn't cost money flying those planes, shooting those missles, and running the logistical equipment needed to not only handle those troops on the ground.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
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What war in Libya? We've basically done some live bombing practice and sent in a handful of trainers and some covert troops. We expended more resources arresting Noriega.
Just because we're doing it half-assed doesn't make it any better.
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We've basically done some live bombing practice and sent in a handful of trainers and some covert troops
Yeah, because no recent wars ever started exactly that way.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
We spend 100 million a week in Libya without any debate except to cut more social services and prohibit collective bargaining.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
Not war! Kinetic military activity! And we're only providing our unique dictator-removal capabilities, not bombing!
And didnt we have to invade a country to arrest Noriega?
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For one I would say Obama has a head above his shoulders.
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Come on, it's TEXAS. Being intelligent is considered a character flaw there.
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Don't the American people deserve to see the school accomplishments of the "smartest President ever"?
No.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't vote for him even if I could, but I don't see why does anyone deserve to see his grades, or how is that relevant.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Informative)
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
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So, exactly how is BHO "head and shoulders above GWB"?
He has only gotten us in 1 war, which is reasonably tractable, and under completely truthful pretenses. He didn't establish "free speech zones," whereby protesters outside of free speech zones can be arrested. While he hasn't closed Gitmo, he hasn't opened any new ones either.
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Pretty sure GWB didnt open Gitmo either. Pretty sure GWB wasnt the first to establish free speech zones. And im pretty sure EVERYONE was for war in Afghanistan when we first invaded.
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Except everyone who knew anything about how all the wars in Afghanistan have turned out in the last century
ALL of congress (except for 1 nay and 16 abstentions)-- a full 518 out of 535 votes-- voted to invade Afghanistan.
I repeat, Bush would have been impeached if he hadnt invaded; to blame him for the war is about as partisan, biased, and blindered as you can get.
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Obama made a lot of crazy promises. You can't expect him to actually keep them, or even remember what they are.
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Unjustly, you mean by getting the consent and approval from congress, verses Obama, we're going to send planes to bomb a sovereign country without any provocation what-so-ever?
You may not like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is fine. The war in Lybia is pure and simply a "war for oil", more so than Iraq ever was, but you seem to like it because the bombs have (D) on them and not (R).
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Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait. The U.S. has a Constitution?
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I think the GP was engaging in a bit of hyperbole - while BHO is taller than GWB [wikipedia.org], the difference is more comparable to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Homer voice: "Mmmmmm...PB&J...")
Abe Lincoln vs James Madison - now that's head and shoulders. (Zombie voice: "Mmmmmmm...head and shoulders...")
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You forgot about actually expanding FISA (which he criticized) and greater use of direct-kill with UAVs (we don't need no steeeenkin' trials). He wants to expand surveillance programs to give the government ever more ability to monitor communications, financial transactions, and other things that one might prefer kept private. TSA has become an even bigger clusterfuck ("hey! free porn on this here monitor thingie!). Essentially, all that stuff he said in the election? Fuck that shit
But on the positive,
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You forgot that his TSA implemented the full body scanners /. is so fond of, and his ICE team has started doing IP enforcement raids.
Woooooo....
Because he ain't BUSH!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Really it seems to be what most of it turns into. Far too many were willing to take anything "but Bush"; and many true conservatives were in the camp of anyone but McCain yet we still had our senses and would never vote for Obama; that as soon as the press piled on no one else in the Democratic party had a chance. Sorry, but Hillary would have made a much better President. This guy really comes off as someone who could step outside in the rain and not decide that its raining.
We have near record prices at the pump, we have very high unemployment, we have the Libyan issue, Gitmo, the Bush started wars, and we have deficit spending at a level I don't even think Bush would have tried. Yet what we don't have is a press willing to take Obama on. They seem to still be enamored with him. At least when we had Bush in office we could count on the press to constantly ride his ass over every little thing. While it got tiresome on some fronts it kept people informed as to what was going on and what was being done. Hell, where are all the Democrats screaming about gasoline prices now? Can you imagine the outrage if Bush had said "get used to it?"
The last thing America needs is a President the press likes, the worst possible outcome is a President they are essentially in love with. Obama comes of as Bush Squared. Meaning, if it was bad under Bush it is just as bad under Obama if not worse. Hell, I think he managed to pick an AG worse than than Bush.
With the Republicans in charge of Congress I was hoping that Obama would wake up and try to lead. Before the losses in 10 he was overly willing to allow Democratic leadership to run amok in Congress and lead on any idea he wanted. He would not make decisions, define the goal, or even try to compromise. As such we got abominations of bills and no clear leadership. We had a Congress which REFUSED to submit a budget for consideration simply because the Democratic leadership at the time did not want to deal with it during an election year and suddenly if you asked the press it is all the Republican's fault for not passing what should have been passed LAST YEAR under Pelosi.
No, we need to get back to Presidents the press don't like. I know it sounds like a negative but the point is, the very people that many Americans need to provide them the truth about their government apparently need incentive to investigate it.
This Presidency is more about Wall Street and big money than Bush ever was. There are rumors of a BILLION dollar reelection campaign. Tell me how that is representative of main street and the American people.
As for accomplishments. I find them all neutered simply because of the deficit and the his lack of trying to fix it. We cannot tax our way out of it, we could take 100% of the earnings above 250k per year for those who earn it and still not reduce it by half. We simply spend too much and very few on either side of the aisle are even trying to do anything about it.
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You are right, this isn't like GWB, this is like Clinton., and his whole escapade into jugoslavija
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VAElynx, just in case you were curious: having a high school diploma is great. I highly recommend it.
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If you support humanitarian intervention then you can't very well condemn GWB for deposing Saddam.
But you can easily condemn him for being a dickbag about it. "We don't need a permission slip to defend ourselves," is a sentence that did an enormous amount of damage to the world.
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Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Funny)
they'd have made it a jailable offense to not have a job.
Nah, they'd have to feed you in jail. It's cheaper to let the jobless fend for themselves on the streets. The 1% can't see those streets from where they live.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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If it were McCain right now we'd already be rounding Arabs up into concentration camps (whoops "internment camps"),
For years, people made jokes about watching what they said because GWB would throw them in Guantanamo, yet no one ever got thrown in Gitmo no matter what vile, hateful things they said about him.
the uber-rich would have had their taxes entirely removed,
They already hire reams of accountants and lawyers to minimize their taxes. Why not make things simpler by eliminating their income/CapGains taxes altogether?
we still have to deal with Paul Ryan's insane "budget plan" which consists of mainly (of) by switching grandma from Ramen to Alpo.
As it is, China and Japan are the ones buying Ramen for Grandma. What happens when they come knocking asking for their money back?
The US must radically cut s
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we still have to deal with Paul Ryan's insane "budget plan" which consists of mainly (of) by switching grandma from Ramen to Alpo.
As it is, China and Japan are the ones buying Ramen for Grandma. What happens when they come knocking asking for their money back?
Grandma gets switched from eating Ramen to being Alpo?
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The only way to radically cut spending is to not have unfunded military adventures.
A war tax of about three dollars a gallon on gasoline would do wonders for the countries fiscal condition.
Let's see how many people want to spend a billion dollars bombing Libya if they pay for it at the pump.
The majority of the budget is military adventures that could be greatly reduced. Many of the more expensive military programs were recommended AGAINST by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Pissing away billions of dollars of Amer
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Funny)
Obama Brought back Jobs and Growth (Score:4, Informative)
Look at this chart. [washingtonmonthly.com]
That chart shows that Barack Obama saved the economy from the Republican engineered disaster.
A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster. Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.
We may wish it was faster, but every competent software developer already has a job, and the economy is only getting better. Err.. it was until the Republican party decided to shut down the government for the second time in as many decades.
The people who complain that our recovery isn't fast enough advocate the policies (of insane deregulation) that brought us the economic disaster in the first place. And now of course they are doing their best to kill the recovery before it reaches the rest of the country.
Just like they want to kill health care reform before it saves to many lives.
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That's an awful long way of saying that you approve of uninsured freeloaders who get care when they get hurt, even if they can't pay. So much for personal responsibility...
If my hospital has to care for an uninsured person who gets into a car accident, then everyone has a responsibility to carry health insurance. It's the only fair way to deal with the unexpected illnesses that people can't afford.
Even people like you who value insurance company profits over human life should be able to see that.
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You mean the "unexpected" illnesses caused by eating McD's everyday, like heart disease and diabetes? Or smoking two packs a day for twenty years and getting lung cancer? You mean like drinking yourself silly till you need a liver?
And how, exactly, do you "fairly" decide who gets a the one kidney that is available?
The problem is, life isn't fair. And you can't make it any more fair with your mandates towards "fairness". Fairness that is really your sense of fairness, and not mine.
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If untreated, the chances are much much higher than 1 in 500. This is the problem in a nutshell with non informed people directing policy on risk management.
An untreated cavity (like a vast array of other common minor situations) can easily kill you within a few years, and the process isn't likely to be pleasant. Yes it seems very minor, but so do a lot of things *with proper care*.
Remember we used to do amputations to deal with infections before the days of antibiotics, there was a reason for that, we didn
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An untreated cavity (like a vast array of other common minor situations) can easily kill you within a few years, and the process isn't likely to be pleasant.
I know nothing about dentistry, but nonetheless, I do not believe that you are telling me the whole story. That, or we have very different definitions of the word "easily".
I have had 2 cavities in my lifetime, the first of which was in my teens. Are you seriously going to have me believe that I'd "easily" be dead right now if I hadn't had them filled? I mean, I have pretty decent dental hygiene. How did anybody live beyond age 20 before the days of modern dental care and dentistry?
They didn't.
But keep in mind it's not an either or, there have been degrees of improvements for thousands of years which drive up life expectancy before "modern" medicine, but yes, the real explosion in life expectancy has been in the last 200 years or so. Heck my Grandmother was one of 6 surviving children out of 13.
There is a beautiful graph of wealth to life expectancy over just the last several hundred years for many of the world's countries that shows this far better than I could ever hope to, I really
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Oh, god. 'rammed down the throats of the American people'. Jon Stewart did a clip of Republicans/right wing commentators repeating that phrase over and over - try having an original thought. Obama made clear he was going to seek healthcare reform when he ran for office, and the American people elected him and a majority Democratic congress. Polling suggests that if anything a plurality of Americans are annoyed that they didn't go far enough.
Until you decide that it's not okay to let people die from illness
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I've never understood the Republicans' fear of "frightening expansion of government" while in the same breath they're happy to have the government track and monitor their every move in the interests of national security and tell them what they can and can not watch or read in the interests of morality.
It doesn't make sense. How can you not trust them to give basic services and necessities to the poor, but you can seemingly trust them to listen in on your every move and tell you exactly what you can and can
Re:Obama Brought back Jobs and Growth (Score:5, Insightful)
What right do you think you have to "choose"? You've got to be kidding.
Here you go:
But you're concerned about having the "right" to choose to go to an emergency room if you get sick so the rest of us can pay for it. Fuck you.
Obama's a disappointment for a lot of reasons. But taking away your "right" to leech off the rest of us by not having health insurance is not one of them. And the health care reform act is not one of them. I'd have preferred a single-payer system similar to the ones the rest of the world have, because it will cost less, but this one is a big improvement over what we had before.
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I hope you're wrong about it not being enforceable.
My guess is that it's going to be moot because Paul Ryan's proposal to end Medicare entirely is going to hasten our move to a single-payer system.
I know that may not make sense, but I believe that's what will happen. We just can't afford to do anything but have a single payer system. Everything else makes us go broke.
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Funny, that chart's data ends a year ago. That's a nice touch too, how it cuts off right at March 2010, padded by ~50K temporary Census jobs, to give it a pretty upward spike at the very end. But where's today's chart showing all of the last year, so we can revel in the full extent of the Savior's impact?
Seriously dude, your partisan hate is waaaay over the top. Anyone claiming a decade long Republican (or Democrat) conspiracy to destroy the US -- and who really believes that -- is part of the reason the
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Unemployment is at it's lowest rate since March of 2009. The chart only gets better from where it left off.
Until April, when the Republican party is going to once again totally ruin the economy.
If I seem angry, it's because I voted for a guy to clean up the mess Republican policies created. And he did clean up that mess. And now that Obama's policies are incontrovertibly working, taking us out of this mess, Republicans are back to mess everything up.
In the real world, Barack Obama is very different from Geo
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Additionally, it has been the Democrats who have been
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Look at this chart. [washingtonmonthly.com]
That chart shows that Barack Obama saved the economy from the Republican engineered disaster.
Actually, that chart shows that Obama and Democrat policies caused the labor market to recover much more slowly than the economy did. The Great Recession ended in June, 2009. That was only a few months after President Obama took office. To claim that any Obama policy ended the Great Recession is silly. If you disagree, please tell me what Obama did between 1/20/09 and 5/31/09 to end the Great Recession.
A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster. Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.
Please name the specific policies that caused an economic disaster, and those that put us on the "path to
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Actually, that chart shows that Obama and Democrat policies caused the labor market to recover much more slowly than the economy did. The Great Recession ended in June, 2009. That was only a few months after President Obama took office. To claim that any Obama policy ended the Great Recession is silly. If you disagree, please tell me what Obama did between 1/20/09 and 5/31/09 to end the Great Recession.
jobs are always a lagging indicator. You claim to have an expert knowledge of economics, but you don't und
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Do you have any information contradicting those numbers?
I didn't think so.
Liberals don't spend all day lying, unlike Fox "News". A liberal newspaper isn't automatically false, and the Peace Corps is very honorable institution.
The linked numbers are accurate, so provide information to the contrary or kindly stfu.
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No, I'm talking about an insane level of deregulation of the financial industry, which Republicans pushed for and got.
The affordable housing act couldn't have taken down the whole economy if not for deregulation of the entire financial industry.
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Deregulation suddenly stopped when George W Bush and the 'deregulate everything' Republicans got full control of the government?
That doesn't sound right. Didn't Republicans take their policies of deregulation to absurd levels while they controlled the government?
Financial deregulation was taken to extreme levels by Republicans when they controlled all branches of government.
Financial deregulation is still advocated by the Republican party.
Re:Obama Brought back Jobs and Growth (Score:4, Insightful)
The government intervened to help the economy, much to the consternation of Republicans everywhere.
That intervention stemmed the job losses, as it was designed to. It gave money from the states that were hemmoraging teachers and other government funded jobs. Those teachers and other workers still paid their bills.
The stimulus plan which was passed over Republican objections also created jobs in the private sector. These people also paid their bills and continued to support the rest of the economy.
The President also propped up the banking system, allowing credit to continue flowing, even if at a slower pace.
Over time, things got better until the private sector was able to start hiring again.
Without government intervention, job losses would have continued unabated.
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:5, Insightful)
Left-wing die hards ARE the ones cursing him! Obama is not a leftist, he is a socially moderate pro-business Democrat. Look at his handouts to the media industry (appointments of industry insiders to high positions in his administration) and favorable treatment to business with tax (they practically let GE write their own tax code). Even the much derided "socialist" Obamacare was in actuality a massive government give away to insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Real socialized medicine reform wouldn't have allowed those two players to have a seat at the negotiating table, it's impossible to balance their interests (profits) with the idea of covering everyone because the people in most need of care are the least profitable to insure. He does no better on foreign policy. He hasn't closed Gitmo, has made no real progress divesting us in the Iraq or Afghanistan adventures, and has in fact added a third mid-East country to our list of active military engagements; Libya--although that is only in an air-war capacity, similar to America's involvement in the war in the Balkans under Clinton.
I voted for him the first time. I wanted a real left-wing president to bring the US back on course after so many years of disastrous right-wing imperialist policies that nearly brought our economy to the point of utter collapse, increased inequality to points nearly as high as our nation has ever seen in its history, and squandered the good will of the world that we had just barely started to win back.
Obama is NOT a socialist, and that's a shame, because that's what the US needed. It is what we still need.
Re: (Score:3)
The only thing that Obama did good was get elected. Every single person except real left wing die hards are cursing him.
I am a "real left diehard", and trust me I'm cursing him too. I also agree with you that the best thing he did was get elected. The other three genuinely good things he has done is not be Bush, not be McCain, and speak in complete sentences. While he's a marked improvement over the former resident of the White House, he still sucks. I can't imagine anyone who is a "real left diehard" that hasn't been really bothered at just how much Obama has been like his predecessor.
You see the real problem with
Re:Obama acomplishments (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Real, in this case means "Really", as in "extreme", not "real" as in "The Real World" (which isn't really real either really).
Come on, get real, already and really join the real brigade.