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vulcan

obama is not our first african american president

he's our first vulcan american president

the emotionless measured speech cadences, the prominent ears, the mind meld level charisma

c'mon, look at the dude!:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president_obama/

this dude's an alien. not an illegal alien, a space alien

so you can bet all the comments that want ufo records unsealed as referred to in the article aren't going to get their request met

That link I posted requires Java. It sometimes takes a minute to load. Also, I see the link you mean now. I didn't realize you meant back in the original post and thought you meant you messaged me after that.

Why is it odd? I'm including everything in the budget. Even the link you posted says discretionary spending "is one third of total government spending". Whenever I've talked about the budget with someone, it has been the whole budget, discretionary and non-discretionary. Social Security is in the budget and voted on, so is Medicare/Medicaid and a variety of other things. Regardless of it being discretionary or not, it is money being spent by the federal government and is part of the presidents budget. All that non-discretionary means is that the government has some equation made years ago for making payments and it can change it when it wants to. i.e. It can change social security payments or medicare/medicaid payments by passing a bill as it has before for both of them. Non-discretionary spending has to be voted on in appropriations bills, just like discretionary spending, which means the president still signs the spending bill into law.

Also, It's also not like the non-discretionary spending doesn't increase the national debt. Medicare/Medicaid spending alone this year totals $1058B, while medicaid/medicare taxes total about $375B, leaving a difference of about $675B that has to be made up in taxes or borrowing.

(PDF) Here's the presidents budget for FY10. You want page 3, receipts and outlays, specifically outlays. FY10 Outlays: $3591B

...it's crucial to keep track of what is real and what is FUD... President Obama (who has yet to speak in support of the protesters)...

way to spread some FUD there, chief

"If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion."

sounds like speaking in support of the protesters to me...

The President has not said nothing...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-on-Iran-The-World-is-Watching/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-Meets-with-Prime-Minister-Berlusconi-Comments-on-Iran/

He is basically saying that if the US gets involved it no longer becomes about the Iranian people. And he is right.

The President has not said nothing...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-on-Iran-The-World-is-Watching/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/The-President-Meets-with-Prime-Minister-Berlusconi-Comments-on-Iran/

He is basically saying that if the US gets involved it no longer becomes about the Iranian people. And he is right.

Using google prevents mistakes, such as the typo http://www.bankofamerica.cm/ for Bank of America instead of http://www.bankofamerica.com/ or the wrong tld http://www.whitehouse.com/ (NSFW) for the White House instead of http://www.whitehouse.gov/. I have made both type of mistakes before, and Google prevents them.

If that's the fringe, then so are these.

But, strangely enough, the first thing you get in the list when you search for, "miserable failure", is President Bush's bio page on whitehouse.gov, so apparently they've got that working for them again! ;-)

the sleestak fossil revealed yesterday was a nice advertisement for the upcoming land of the lost will ferrell movie

and electing a vulcan as president of the united states was a nice pr coup for the star trek movie now playing

but when the armed forces start building real terminators just to plug the upcoming christian bale terminator salvation movie, this hollywood pr stunt business has gotten a little out of hand

i'm sorry i have to draw the line. what next? someone releases a global pandemic just to plug... oh wait

Lawyers for the House of Commons argue that using videos of elected representatives without permission constitutes copyright infringement and a contempt of Parliament.

You know, you have to hand it to lawyers ... just when I think they are enforcing copyright on everything possible, they go and surprise the hell out of me.

Finally, news where I can actually stand up proudly and say take a page from the United States on this one, Canada:

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Whether or not that mentality actually will be implemented here in the US remains to be seen--I certainly hope Obama follows through.

When it comes to selecting individuals for political appointments, quite often they are done for... well... political reasons. Sometimes it's because of bipartisanship, coalition building, or because someone is really well qualified. Other times it is because they are well networked or engaged in a little quid pro quo. Sure, if it is to the level of Blagojevich they may get caught, and we should discourage the outright sale of governmental positions. On the other hand, I still think as long as he was working within the rules, a total of $2450 in donations to Mark Warner isn't quite to the level where I'd be calling the ethics committee.

It certainly didn't hurt his chances to make $2750 in donations to various Obama supporting groups either, but do I think it was a primary reason he was selected? Not really. I think he got selected because he's well connected and has prior experience in healthcare. With Obama's big push for electronic healthcare records and other cost savings measures, I do agree all the more with wanting some questions to be raised concerning the theft of pharmaceutical records in VA, but depending how the investigation goes, I believe the highest uphill it will get in the org chain is to this guy. More likely though, it'll stay a problem of the agency that oversaw the day to day operations.

Since the White House said Chopra will be creating jobs and reducing health care costs, it seems a question or two about his involvement with Healthaxis should be asked. In 2005, Chopra took a seat on the Board of Healthaxis, which was brokered as part of an offshoring deal that required Healthaxis to throw offshoring work to an investor's BPO company in an effort to reduce the costs of its Utah and Jamaica resources. At the time of his 2006 resignation, Healthaxis reported to the SEC that Chopra, who also sat on the firm's Compensation Committee, had 'no disagreement with the Company on any matter'.

More was done to secure the US govt by OMB fiats, than any other recent actions.

Why? Because someone at OMB said:
Harden every desktop installation of Windows XP & Vista. One leader at the NSA, for the entire federal government, could greatly assist in doing the same for every piece of IT we operate. This is a start on the massive IT security problem the federal govt has. After that, a govt wide approach for software security would be nice.

www.budget.gov, which has a link to
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/A_New_Era_of_Responsibility2.pdf

Fiscally responsible? Seriously? He received a raw deal budget wise from Bush, but his own proposed budget for 2010 is $1.178 TRILLION (source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=764). Indeed he's projecting less of a deficit than 2009's budget. Hooray!! But this kind of proposed spending is hardly fiscally responsible.

Here's the latest tweet from @whitehouse:

Good Jobs Here at Home: The President offers proposals to curb tax havens and replace tax advantages for creatin.. http://tinyurl.com/cwzcv6

It's basically repeats of what they are posting on the White House Blog at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

Related, there is more 'social data and social software' at the White House today. The WH Change website now uses OpenLayers and OpenStreetMap! Great to see such penetration of open data and open source :-)

Will this software give them a voice? Will it allow them to get a fair or timely trial or avoid being tortured by the Americans?

Hell no.

Well, for starters, we have an immanent closure of the facilities there. Even with the trial delays being attempted, it won't be operating for long.

Nonetheless national debt did shrink as a percent of GDP under his tenure. Oh, and when we state something as a matter of fact, please cite data sources. Historical Debt (U.S. Treasury). Debt as percent of GDP.

In this Fact Sheet it says:

"This goal would be met with both public and private investment." Also mentioned is the fact that in Fiscal Year 2010 this includes, on the public side: "...$75 billion to make the research and experimentation tax credit permanent..."

Why don't you go after Social Security http://www.ssa.gov/budget/ instead? There's more being spent on Social Security than on defense http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/defense.html.

I had no expectation that either party would act to lessen the power of copyright. I rather expect, if the question comes up at all, they are rationalizing that strong copyright encourages more creativity by allowing people to live on enjoy the fruits of their labor. The fact that the "stronger copyright" stance enjoys such wide support is probably a reflection of this. Free access to and use of information appeals primarily to "intellectuals" and "academics" not acting directly in the commercial markets (although even academia seems to be getting into the IP business these days) and neither of those groups under most reasonable definitions is a major voting block or large percentage of the population.

It might be argued that open source movements are a backlash against over-application or poor definition of copyright, but despite the movement's successes it still remains a niche in terms of overall impact and support. There are even people who consider the very existence of the movement a Bad Thing, and they get to vote too.

It's not a rosy picture, and probably won't be for a loooong time. However, there is one ray of hope that someone up there has a clue - look at http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ The presence of a Creative Commons license for whitehouse.gov content that has had copyright assigned to the government by 3rd parties must be taken as a hopeful sign.

The Automobile? While there are dozens of possible "inventors", none of them were in or moved to the US. The father of the "modern" automobile was Karl Benz, not Henry Ford.

Not according to a recent speech of Barack Obama before the congress, the quasi state of the union

"And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

Non techies shouldn't be appointed to positions like this. I know I'll catch flak but who else to champion things like Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality doesn't need the CTO to champion it, it's already on the agenda
Protect the Openness of the Internet: Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

The administration doesn't live in a vacuum, they have experts to advise them.

I don't know where you're getting that. Could you cite a source please?

Here you go: Executive Order 13491, signed January 22, 2009.

Well, I think they agree with you about the routes. Look at the map
at the bottom of this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/A-Vision-for-High-Speed-Rail/

No... Las Vegas is not planned to be incorporated into the high-speed train system. Core Cities are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, Buffalo, Boston, and Montreal.

See the map at the bottom of this page.

Here.

I don't think that's true at all, lots of important sites can be easily remembered, and that's a good thing. Otherwise, we place all of our information, some of it vital, into the hands of a few big companies, like Google, who would then hold the keys to the castle.

Except we do. And we already know what happens to websites not in googles indexes. Nothing.

And its whitehouse.gov

I don't know of any moves afoot to restrict gun rights.

I guess you haven't looked at Obama's urban agenda or paid attention to what Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder have been saying?

given that any meaningful gun ban would be unlikely to be upheld.

Just because it eventually gets struck down doesn't mean it won't make life miserable for every law-abiding gun owner in the country until that happens.

While I applaud the Senators' efforts to assist in securing cyberspace, historical efforts to legislate cyber-security have not proven effective. (that was tough to say with a straight face) To wit, examine the Government's own record: Currently all federal agencies are required to follow strict guidelines/policy, yet the average info-security grade given by OMB, for FY2007 was a C-. How far would you get in life if your average grade was a C-? I'd guess the average Slashdotter had better than a 1.7 average.

Further, they seem to think that if NIST establishes "measurable and auditable cybersecurity standards", then all will be right with the world. NEWSFLASH - The Fed already has that for the entire GOV, and while many agencies have improved it has not shown to be the panacea they intended. According to OMB's report out 3 weeks ago(go to page 9), the DOD, the agency with the most important security concerns and highest risk (and consequently the most stringent InfoSecurity program) is failing miserably.

Funny, if you read the FISMA top page, it refers to 'cost-effective' security programs, but nowhere does it mention effective programs...

New legislation is not the answer - holding people accountable is. [to keep this relatively short I'm not going to expand on this - you know how to find the laws]

As one previous poster noted, a bunch of us posting here is not going to change anything. So, I will end this with a call to action for all Slashdotters - write a letter to your Senator and Congressman and let them know (using clear, thoughtful words) that this is an f'ing stupid idea and that they should not support it.

Find your congressman

Find your senator

There was no debate. As the Wall Street Journal (and numerous other publications) points out, a group of beurocrats with their own and their party's interests in mind sat down and negotiated the bill.

"The final terms of a stimulus plan will be hammered out by a conference among House and Senate leaders, who will bargain over how to reconcile competing Senate and House versions of the plan."

They chose a very appropriate word there. "Bargain." We no longer debate. We bargain.

As for the rest of congress -- Like I said, there was not a final draft of the bill available until less than 24 hours before the voting took place. And I didn't say this was limited to Republicans. I said "the whole of the house."

Regardless, even if every representative could have gotten a copy of the bill to review, you're being quite unrealistic to state that simply having staffers is enough to read, research and comprehend 1100 pages of law and all of the associated bills referenced within in less than 24 hours. Let alone debate it in any publicly visible forum.

The only so-called "debate" that you could possibly be inferring is the media's vague talking points on the bill. But even then the media spent most of it's time on biased opinion-presented-as-journalism nonsense. The leftist media praising the bill and calling the right idiots for questioning anything about it, and the right media playing along, focusing on the name calling and "those evil Democrats."

The reality is that the last thing any of the House and Senate leaders want is debate. Debate just gets in the way of "bypartisianship" laws chock full of goodies that can bragged about on the pulpit next election cycle. The economic downturn was simply a great opportunity to use FUD as an excuse to rush through billions in spending without review.

Cynical? Sure. But that is the state of things and anyone not blinded by party bias can see that.

And for what it's worth, stop playing and feeding the damn blame game. This isn't about Democrats vs Republicans. It's about our government out of control, government involvement being largely responsible for the mess we're in, and more government being far, far from an appropriate or effective solution.

Read the bill in its final form here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ARRA_public_review/

This is important everyone, please voice yourselves at the OP's link here http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ [whitehouse.gov]. Also, Please spread this link to other forums you frequent and explain why it's so important that we speak up together _now_. We all know the abuses of the RIAA/MPAA over the past 8 years. Bullying private citizens, stifling innovation, refusing to embrace emergent technologies, and most importantly their slow but successful erosion of the public domain through congress. These are monopolists who have consistently attacked the public domain, and if they win here they will be very difficult to stop. Please spread the word to your friends and family, explain to them why this issue is so important...and what's at stake. Encourage anyone you can to comment on this, raise the issue in forums, college newspapers, and wherever else you think public discourse on the subject would be most beneficial. Do your part. Obama will listen if enough of us speak up. Joe Biden is sided with the RIAA, we need to outvoice him and the Hollywood lobbyists. This is the part where you work for the country you want to live in, not sit back and expect the government to 'do the right thing'.

Thank you for that, grumpygrodyguy. This is really important, and this is a really important moment in which to express it. I hope everyone will get on that link and tell the President how we feel. (I just heard that they've upped the size of the input field to 5000 characters!)

This is important everyone, please voice yourselves at the OP's link here http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

Also, Please spread this link to other forums you frequent and explain why it's so important that we speak up together _now_.

We all know the abuses of the RIAA/MPAA over the past 8 years. Bullying private citizens, stifling innovation, refusing to embrace emergent technologies, and most importantly their slow but successful erosion of the public domain through congress.

These are monopolists who have consistently attacked the public domain, and if they win here they will be very difficult to stop.

Please spread the word to your friends and family, explain to them why this issue is so important...and what's at stake. Encourage anyone you can to comment on this, raise the issue in forums, college newspapers, and wherever else you think public discourse on the subject would be most beneficial. Do your part.

Obama will listen if enough of us speak up. Joe Biden is sided with the RIAA, we need to outvoice him and the Hollywood lobbyists. This is the part where you work for the country you want to live in, not sit back and expect the government to 'do the right thing'.

He's made some very good pledges about openness and anti-corruption measures, so now's the time for him to live up to them.

It may or may not be a token gesture, but it certainly makes me smile to read the White House's new Copyright Policy:

Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Even better:
Same thing, but secure

Going to various Obama web sites where public submission of comments are facilitated is exactly where people should go to voice their view on these matters.

Exactly. Here's the one I know of. If there are others, would appreciate the links.

You just just been mugged by the slashnigger!

Gotta' love that crime-ridden nigger, who just stole $700 Billion of you dollars and handed it over to the irresponsible.

Those who promote forced redistribution of wealth should be in prison.

You must be new here.

Do I have to say I told you so? I realize it's difficult on slashdot to tell the difference between someone who's just blowing smoke and someone who actually regularly reads the congressional report, for example, but you might want to do your research first next time just in case you happen to be responding to the latter.

Sure am glad that Obama won't go along with an attack on any of our constitutional rights to appease the far wing of his party. Oh, wait......

GW did some terrible things with our freedom, and Obama will surely do terrible things to other aspects of our lives. QED.

why else would we have the 10th amendment?

Has either political party ever taken the 10th amendment seriously?

They haven't. Libertarians are pretty tough on that one, but they constitute an ideology, rather than a political party. The states better start taking it seriously again. It may already be too late.

GW did some terrible things with our freedom

Sure am glad that Obama won't go along with an attack on any of our constitutional rights to appease the far wing of his party. Oh, wait......

why else would we have the 10th amendment?

Has either political party ever taken the 10th amendment seriously?

This is a misleading summary, albeit cribbed from the first story linked.

This is the basis of the story for both articles linked, it's a part of the Agenda found on Whitehouse.gov:

Ensure Freedom of Space: The Obama-Biden Administration will restore American leadership on space issues, seeking a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. They will thoroughly assess possible threats to U.S. space assets and the best options, military and diplomatic, for countering them, establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets and accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack.

link

A ban on weapons that interfere with satellites is very different from a ban on space weapons. The former I could support, it's an agreement to protect the common good, mankind's access to space, from the possible disastrous consequences of ringing the planet with debris. The latter I would have deep reservations about.

Open source code, Open Government http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and Open Source Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_intelligence all good ideas that may well speed things along and save the tax payers some cash.

We haven't had an honest and decent President[1] in over a century http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williamhowardtaft/ and few people today seem inclined to crack history books. I'm not surprised there's so much ignorance.

Jimmy Carter. Maybe not all that effective, but honest and decent.

Strictly speaking when Barack Hussein Obama became President, not all George Walker Bush traces disappeared. Here's one. Indeed, all ex Presidents have some representation, including the arrogant incompetent inarticulate moronic lying ones.

Strictly speaking when Barack Hussein Obama became President, not all George Walker Bush traces disappeared. Here's one. Indeed, all ex Presidents have some representation, including the arrogant incompetent inarticulate moronic lying ones.

You're seriously comparing the CDA and the DMCA to the likes of the Iraq War,

The CDA was attached to the Telecom Bill that directly led to the Telecom crash. There's certainly bipartisan blame for that one, Republicans may have pushed it through the House and Senate, but impeached ex-President Clinton signed it.

Both groups that the US ended up going to war with in Afghanistan and Iraq had been originally funded by previous administrations (to bipartisan support as the Republicans did not have enough votes to get any bills through congress at the time).

The war in Iraq I agree was petty and a mistake. Son wants to make good on Daddy's mistake. It hasn't turned out as badly as Vietnam did ... yet, but give the current administration some time ...

... and staffing every position with hacks and cronies? Repubs are demonstrably worse for our country.

You must be new here. Bush did the stacking thing a bit less than the previous administration. but that sort of thing is Politics As Usual.

I will not comment on Katrina, there was too much disaster going on where I was living at the time that was being handled quite badly. Hey, I like living on the ring of fire which is subject to earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires (thank you Greenies in CA!) and typhoons depending upon which part you're in. Does that mean I should expect the government to bail me out because I enjoy this part of the world?

I don't buy this "Oh, they're all bad, Dems are just as bad" meme. It's just not factually true.

Hmmm, maybe you *were* born yesterday.

We haven't had an honest and decent President[1] in over a century http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williamhowardtaft/ and few people today seem inclined to crack history books. I'm not surprised there's so much ignorance.

[1] Of couse, the reward for being an honest and decent President is retirement after 4 years, sigh.

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

12. Deleted all historical info, including executive orders, from WhiteHouse.gov, as well as no more press room and daily briefings. So much for transparency.

This is what he did on his first day: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords/ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-EthicsCommitments/ Not too shabby.