Would you honestly rather your kids live through another Great Depression (with the knowledge that neither of the "Great"s were solved by anything other wars so massive that they slaughtered good percents of the working base, thus removing the issue of unemployment) or with a devalued dollar and stable nation?
STUPID is cutting your nose off just to spite your face, which is exactly the plan of action you are pushing for.
STUPID is letting the whole thing go down the tubes and fucking everyone over just to hold on to your sense of pride over the fact that a few scam artists might get away with their scam. Not, mind you, have any of them actually made it to the clear yet.
STUPID is waving the banner for your children while setting them up for a life of misery.
And frankly, as STUPID as I consider your plan of action, since my life is also impacted by your STUPID, I'm not interested in hearing anymore. Take a tranquilizer or something for your stiff neck and let it go.
A bad loan is a loan made to someone who obviously can't or won't pay it back.
A bad loan is not a loan made to someone who could have paid it back had their income not been suddenly dropped to zero.
A bad loan is a loan made to someone for property that is obviously overvalued, regardless of their current ability to pay off the loan.
A bad loan is not a loan made to someone whose property's value suddenly took a nose dive because 90% of their neighborhood is currently unoccupied and unsold.
Yes, Fannie Mae may have made mistakes. But they didn't make the big ones, the ones that started this.
There are plenty of people who are willing to tell it like you see it, the problem is, you all don't seem to see that this particular brand of "STUPID" hurt is going to hurt everyone, not just the folk who were stupid.
Sometimes it's comforting to let stupid people fail when you have been playing it 'smart' all along. But sometimes it's just your own brand of stupid for not recognizing that their failure will bring about your own.
That would be a lovely idea, but not how the world works. Banks need liquid assets to make loans. When late payments threaten their cash flow, they threaten the liquid assets of that bank. Without liquid assets, the bank can't make loans. The tighter the times, the more a missed payment hurts their cash flow, the more it hurts their ability to make further loans, the more likely they are to be stringent on cutting you down the first time you are late.
For most lending banks, a short term hit in value is far less of a scare than a short term hit in the ability to make more money.
They would have also made less loans, period. And they would have been far stricter on the terms of the loan (i.e. one strike and you are out) since being forced to hold onto the loans would have made their cash flow dependent on timely payments.
Certainly, an arguement could be made for that setup. On the other hand, if you go that route, you also have to accept that housing would still be out of reach of most of the nation because most people wouldn't be able to afford a home without a loan and wouldn't be able to get a loan without a home (or similar property).
It's like saying that the power company was at fault because it provided electricity to run the servers that the loans were tracked on and that if only we stayed in a pre-electric state, this would have never had happened. While it might be true, we'd also loose many many benefits of electricty that we now take for granted. You are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that there was irresponsibilty in the banking industry (but not just the banking industry), I just don't feel like playing the part of torch wielding peasant in the mob to hang Fannie Mae. They acted responsibly in this, they weren't making risky calls, they weren't being greedy, they weren't even advising people to be greedy.
Banks don't make money (really, not much) on money sitting in their vaults. For them to make money, they have to invest it. Banks invest money by making loans. Some of those loans are home mortgages, some aren't.
Loans come with the expectation that they will be repaid.
In a 'nicer' time, banks might look at a person's situation before foreclosing after the first missed payment. But in lean times, missing a payment means distrupting the bank's own flow of money. It's better, in their head, to foreclose, sell to recoup what can be recouped, and reinvest in something else that is less likely to miss a payment.
Plus, banks were used to dumping risky mortages off onto other companies, and thus many have a fairly large stable of unstable mortages which may or may not make their payments. It's safer to foreclose those as quickly as possible and move the money to a more stable mortagee.
Fannie Mae was not the problem there, they only purchased "conforming" mortgages which matched their definition of a 'non-risky' loan.
The problem was from the fact that the banks started moving from relying on Fannie Mae and started making "non-conforming" mortgages and selling them to other privately held companies. Once these mortgages started defaulting and housing prices started falling, even the "conforming" mortgages started having problems and the house of cards fell.
Fannie Mae is a good scapegoat for people who want to pin this whole situation on one group, but that's all they really are, a scapegoat. They had their own problems (notably shady dealing in the upper echelons) but they weren't the ones who cause or even setup this scenario.
I'm guessing you don't really understand what Fannie Mae does if you think the folk taken down a peg would be the banks.
Fannie Mae purchased mortgages from banks to ensure the banks always had money on hand to make loans. They sold these mortgages as securities, guarantying the purchaser the money (paying it themselves if the mortgagee defaults).
Them loosing their records would simply mean that suddenly the banks would run out of 'liquid assets' to make loans with. Who do you think that would hurt: The average joe or the banks?
Let me give you a clue, it wouldn't be the banks. They'd just hold onto the mortgages they have and start foreclosing aggressively to come up with the assets they need.
Though a short search didn't turn up the article I was looking for, I remember reading here that there was a report that definitively linked a person's perception of the road with their tendancy to road rage.
The more you thought of it as "your road" and people getting in "your way", the more likely you were to become angry when someone didn't drive as you wanted them to. I think this is a far more likely indicator than 'debt ratios'.
Those who tailgate typically do it for one reason, and one reason only, they think you are in their way and they think riding your bumper is a way of bullying you out of their way.
Even as a real program, it was used in a fake manner in a fake scenario. It was a file navigator, not a command line.
But there were far more issues with that movie's tech than "I know this, it's UNIX" from a running a demo program (which ultimately, is what FSN was, a demo).
The movie had a serious BLINKEN LIGHTS issue with random blinking lights in the background, but didn't even bother to plug in most of the machines on the screen (most didn't even have their power lights on and in some cases you could see they were obviously missing power cables).
How about the Quicktime movies, complete with the seek bar, that were passed off as live security cams?
It was a movie full of 'almost right's as far as the tech went, and because of that, the errors were fairly glaring in the "wait, that's not right" manner. If they had stuck to some imaginary setup, it might have been a bit better, because you wouldn't be looking at something that you used 'everyday' being portrayed as something completely different.
At which time, I, as the wiley "bad guy", press the button telling the camera to make the clicking noise when taking a picture. After the mean ol'cop has left, I press it again and resume taking illicit photos of manhole covers.... ohh.. look, that one has some bubble gum stuck in the lettering.
See, I give movies like Dark Knight a pass when they do things like that, simply because everything else is so surrealistic and overblown that having the 'tech' portion the same way really isn't that inconsistant.
You don't walk away from a Batman movie (either the new 'reboot' ones, the old 'reboot' ones that Tim Burton started, or even the old Adam West ones) thinking "Oh yeah, that totally could have happened in real life."
On the other hand, while Jurassic Park was also definatly not 'real', a good portion of the story was dedicated to the idea "maybe this could actually happen, maybe", so having a completely bogus computer scene was completely out of place. Lets not even get into things like "Hacking the Gibson" in movies like Hackers that had actual (although abortive) attempts at authenticity but completely failed the moment those moments were over.
Maxthon and Avant are based on the Trident Layout Engine built into Windows. So including them in the list wouldn't exactly resolve the "You are forcing IE on people" complaint. While they do have their own code base, it's still based on the same engine from Microsoft.
Amaya is a test bed application for the W3C, I'm sure it's lovely for the few people who use it as their main browser, but it's not exactly what you'd foist onto the general poplulace.
Flock and SeaMonkey are both based on Mozilla (aka Firefox). And while they add value to the Firefox proposition, if the point is to provide an alternative to IE then both of them are 'over qualified'.
And while I agree with the arguement that a solution would be to not ship with anything installed and simply install their own, there are numerous disadvantages to that that you are overlooking. Such as the fact that most people new computers aren't going to know which one they want and simply pick the top one on the list. Who do you think that's going to be?
In fact, while I also agree that if this happens and the list is codified as the summary and article presents, it would hamper new comers, the truth is that covering the 'top' browsers also covers the top engines that 90% of the rest of the crowd use anyway.
His only possible excuse for his actions, that it might sabotage his campaign, has been removed, but his actions have not changed. Surprise, surprise.
Or you know, perhaps his actions, both then and now, are based on his belief that he's right on this and have nothing to do with attempting to curry polictical favor or win votes.
Do I agree that he's made the right choice? No.
But isn't it the definition of being corrupt to change the way you vote/act based on what it gets you rather than what you think it'll do for the nation? Did he come out and say "I voted for this as a Senator only because I wouldn't get elected as President if I hadn't."?
The list of emails include an exchange with Alaskan Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress. Another screenshot shows Palin's inbox and an e-mail from Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor's Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.
and
According to the Guardian, who has looked at the Wikileaks data, among the emails in Palin's account were several from addresses belonging to her aides, including a draft letter to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeals, and several bearing "DPS", the acronym for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
but then
by QuantumHack This really is becoming "SlashKos". Anyone who could be bothered to actually READ the screenshots at Gawker of Palin's Yahoo! account could have seen that it WAS NOT GOVERNMENT BUSINESS.
Sheesh. Come on. You may hate Palin, but this is a technology website. Let's deal in the truth.
Is that the O'Reilly "No Spin" flavor of Truthiness you are sampling there or do you make your own Kool-Aid?
And the policy says it happens when you click play. So either CNET is full of morons which, since I visited that page and then checked what cookies were modified on my computer today - not finding any from any.gov or youtube site, is likely. Or they managed to find one of those "glitches" that the policy also spoke of.
The advantage they have in posting the streaming version to YouTube is that now the videos are seen by more than just the folk who follow whitehouse.gov. YouTube is the #1, no contenders, site for sharing videos. Myspace, Facebook, nothing else comes close to it's viewer base. Even the "don't upload, just watch" sites are below it in terms in traffic.
Allowing more people to hear your message = good as far as I'm concerned. If I ever have an issue, it'll be when I start seeing "Five for Five!" ads in the middle of his speeches.
For videos that are visible on WhiteHouse.gov, a 'persistent cookie' is set by third party providers when you click to play a video. (We may experience some engineering difficulties as the new Whitehouse.gov is posted and reviewed. We intend, however, to fully enforce the above provisions as soon as possible. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please contact us.)
This persistent cookie is used by YouTube to help maintain the integrity of video statistics. A waiver has been issued by the White House Counsel's office to allow for the use of this persistent cookie.
If you would like to view a video without the use of persistent cookies, a link to download the video file is typically provided just below the video.
In other words, "When we link to a third party, non government owned, website to host videos, they will set their own tracking cookie as per their own policy. We've checked with our lawyers, they say this is OK and written a waiver to that effect. But just in case you don't want the cookie, we also include links to the videos to accomidate you."
Actually I read it as more arrogant than clueless, or perhaps hostile would be the word. He definately didn't defend as much as say "Yeah, we don't care" to most of the questions.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13233 FURTHER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures implementing section 2204 of title 44 of the United States Code with respect to constitutionally based privileges, including those that apply to Presidential records reflecting military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, Presidential communications, legal advice, legal work, or the deliberative processes of the President and the President's advisors, and to do so in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), and other cases, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Definitions.
For purposes of this order:
(a) "Archivist" refers to the Archivist of the United States or his designee.
(b) "Presidential records" refers to those documentary materials maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. 2201-2207.
(c) "Former President" refers to the former President during whose term or terms of office particular Presidential records were created.
Sec. 2. Constitutional and Legal Background.
(a) For a period not to exceed 12 years after the conclusion of a Presidency, the Archivist administers records in accordance with the limitations on access imposed by section 2204 of title 44. After expiration of that period, section 2204(c) of title 44 directs that the Archivist administer Presidential records in accordance with section 552 of title 5, the Freedom of Information Act, including by withholding, as appropriate, records subject to exemptions (b)(1), (b)(2), (b)(3), (b)(4), (b)(6), (b)(7), (b)(8), and (b)(9) of section 552. Section 2204(c)(1) of title 44 provides that exemption (b)(5) of section 552 is not available to the Archivist as a basis for withholding records, but section 2204(c)(2) recognizes that the former President or the incumbent President may assert any constitutionally based privileges, including those ordinarily encompassed within exemption (b)(5) of section 552. The President's constitutionally based privileges subsume privileges for records that reflect: military, diplomatic, or national security secrets (the state secrets privilege); communications of the President or his advisors (the presidential communications privilege); legal advice or legal work (the attorney-client or attorney work product privileges); and the deliberative processes of the President or his advisors (the deliberative process privilege).
(b) In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, the Supreme Court set forth the constitutional basis for the President's privileges for confidential communications: "Unless [the President] can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends." 433 U.S. at 448-49. The Court cited the precedent of the Constitutional Convention, the records of which were "sealed for more than 30 years after the Convention." Id. at 447 n.11. Based on those precedents and principles, the Court ruled that constitutionally based privileges available to a President "survive[] the individual President's tenure." Id. at 449. The Court also held that a former President, although no longer a Government official, may assert constitutionally based privileges with respect to his Administration's Presidential records, and expressly rejected the argument that "only an incumbent President can assert the privilege of the Presidency." Id. at 448.
(c) The Supreme Court has held that a party seeking to overcome the constitutionally based privileges that apply to Presidential records must establish at least a "demonstrated, speci
To help consumers with the DTV transition, the Government established the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a part of the Department of Commerce, administers this program. Every U.S. household is eligible to receive up to two coupons, worth $40 each, toward the purchase of eligible digital-to-analog converter boxes. Beginning in January of 2008, the NTIA has begun accepting applications for coupons. The coupons may only be used for eligible converter boxes sold at participating consumer electronics retailers, and the coupons must be used at the time of purchase. (Please note that these coupons will expire 90 days after mailing). Manufacturers estimate that digital-to-analog converter boxes will sell from $40 to $70 each. This is a one-time cost. For more information on the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program, visit www.dtv2009.gov, or call 1-888-388-2009 (voice) or 1-877-530-2634 (TTY).
Don't see anything in there regarding it being for the 'po folk only', I don't see anything in the submitter's request that invalidates the purpose of the program in relation to them. Maybe you should use try getting some of that assitance you are so proud of refusing to re-evaluate what you actually know and what you've just decided you 'know'.
Of course, I'm a legally blind individual who doesn't take the various forms of assistance for which I do specifically qualify unless I actually need them, so I doubt you and I have much in common in our debating positions.
And I don't see anything in there other than an asshole using his blindness to throw a barb.
And if this was welfare you'd have a right to look down your highly tilted nose at me, but it wasn't, despite your attempt to define the program as such.
There are approximately 33 million coupons that were allocated; by most accounts there are around 15 million households (or 23 million people) that still consume over the air broadcasts. Even given you were limited to a maximium of two coupons that doesn't sound like a welfare program to me, it sounds like exactly what it was billed as. A program to allow those of us who have equipment that will be impacted by this change access to some of the revenue generated by it in order to purchase what was necessary to allow it to continue working.
Oh and btw, FUCK YOU, you smarmy asshole. Congratulations on being a stiff necked blind guy who attempts to use his disability to assert moral superiorty over anyone who doesn't want to live life as crappy as you obviously do.
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus FUCKING Christ on a stick.
Would you honestly rather your kids live through another Great Depression (with the knowledge that neither of the "Great"s were solved by anything other wars so massive that they slaughtered good percents of the working base, thus removing the issue of unemployment) or with a devalued dollar and stable nation?
STUPID is cutting your nose off just to spite your face, which is exactly the plan of action you are pushing for.
STUPID is letting the whole thing go down the tubes and fucking everyone over just to hold on to your sense of pride over the fact that a few scam artists might get away with their scam. Not, mind you, have any of them actually made it to the clear yet.
STUPID is waving the banner for your children while setting them up for a life of misery.
And frankly, as STUPID as I consider your plan of action, since my life is also impacted by your STUPID, I'm not interested in hearing anymore. Take a tranquilizer or something for your stiff neck and let it go.
A bad loan is a loan made to someone who obviously can't or won't pay it back.
A bad loan is not a loan made to someone who could have paid it back had their income not been suddenly dropped to zero.
A bad loan is a loan made to someone for property that is obviously overvalued, regardless of their current ability to pay off the loan.
A bad loan is not a loan made to someone whose property's value suddenly took a nose dive because 90% of their neighborhood is currently unoccupied and unsold.
Yes, Fannie Mae may have made mistakes. But they didn't make the big ones, the ones that started this.
There are plenty of people who are willing to tell it like you see it, the problem is, you all don't seem to see that this particular brand of "STUPID" hurt is going to hurt everyone, not just the folk who were stupid.
Sometimes it's comforting to let stupid people fail when you have been playing it 'smart' all along. But sometimes it's just your own brand of stupid for not recognizing that their failure will bring about your own.
That would be a lovely idea, but not how the world works. Banks need liquid assets to make loans. When late payments threaten their cash flow, they threaten the liquid assets of that bank. Without liquid assets, the bank can't make loans. The tighter the times, the more a missed payment hurts their cash flow, the more it hurts their ability to make further loans, the more likely they are to be stringent on cutting you down the first time you are late.
For most lending banks, a short term hit in value is far less of a scare than a short term hit in the ability to make more money.
They would have also made less loans, period. And they would have been far stricter on the terms of the loan (i.e. one strike and you are out) since being forced to hold onto the loans would have made their cash flow dependent on timely payments.
Certainly, an arguement could be made for that setup. On the other hand, if you go that route, you also have to accept that housing would still be out of reach of most of the nation because most people wouldn't be able to afford a home without a loan and wouldn't be able to get a loan without a home (or similar property).
It's like saying that the power company was at fault because it provided electricity to run the servers that the loans were tracked on and that if only we stayed in a pre-electric state, this would have never had happened. While it might be true, we'd also loose many many benefits of electricty that we now take for granted. You are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that there was irresponsibilty in the banking industry (but not just the banking industry), I just don't feel like playing the part of torch wielding peasant in the mob to hang Fannie Mae. They acted responsibly in this, they weren't making risky calls, they weren't being greedy, they weren't even advising people to be greedy.
Banks don't make money (really, not much) on money sitting in their vaults. For them to make money, they have to invest it. Banks invest money by making loans. Some of those loans are home mortgages, some aren't.
Loans come with the expectation that they will be repaid.
In a 'nicer' time, banks might look at a person's situation before foreclosing after the first missed payment. But in lean times, missing a payment means distrupting the bank's own flow of money. It's better, in their head, to foreclose, sell to recoup what can be recouped, and reinvest in something else that is less likely to miss a payment.
Plus, banks were used to dumping risky mortages off onto other companies, and thus many have a fairly large stable of unstable mortages which may or may not make their payments. It's safer to foreclose those as quickly as possible and move the money to a more stable mortagee.
Fannie Mae was not the problem there, they only purchased "conforming" mortgages which matched their definition of a 'non-risky' loan.
The problem was from the fact that the banks started moving from relying on Fannie Mae and started making "non-conforming" mortgages and selling them to other privately held companies. Once these mortgages started defaulting and housing prices started falling, even the "conforming" mortgages started having problems and the house of cards fell.
Fannie Mae is a good scapegoat for people who want to pin this whole situation on one group, but that's all they really are, a scapegoat. They had their own problems (notably shady dealing in the upper echelons) but they weren't the ones who cause or even setup this scenario.
I'm guessing you don't really understand what Fannie Mae does if you think the folk taken down a peg would be the banks.
Fannie Mae purchased mortgages from banks to ensure the banks always had money on hand to make loans. They sold these mortgages as securities, guarantying the purchaser the money (paying it themselves if the mortgagee defaults).
Them loosing their records would simply mean that suddenly the banks would run out of 'liquid assets' to make loans with. Who do you think that would hurt: The average joe or the banks?
Let me give you a clue, it wouldn't be the banks. They'd just hold onto the mortgages they have and start foreclosing aggressively to come up with the assets they need.
It'll only bite him in the ass if the only thing his administration is known for by then is his campaign promises.
People forgive not being perfect if they perceive you are not just doing 'the best you can' but actually having an effect.
The folk who won't forgive him regardless, frankly are the same folk who will be gunning for him no matter what.
That's the one!
Thanks!
The truthiness of your post overwhelms me oh prohet of martyrdom. Please. Do you have a news letter? I wish to subscribe.
Alternatively, this comment to be read as to say:
"WTF did what you just posted have anything to do with my comment? And why did you feel the need to get snarky?"
Though a short search didn't turn up the article I was looking for, I remember reading here that there was a report that definitively linked a person's perception of the road with their tendancy to road rage.
The more you thought of it as "your road" and people getting in "your way", the more likely you were to become angry when someone didn't drive as you wanted them to. I think this is a far more likely indicator than 'debt ratios'.
Those who tailgate typically do it for one reason, and one reason only, they think you are in their way and they think riding your bumper is a way of bullying you out of their way.
Even as a real program, it was used in a fake manner in a fake scenario. It was a file navigator, not a command line.
But there were far more issues with that movie's tech than "I know this, it's UNIX" from a running a demo program (which ultimately, is what FSN was, a demo).
The movie had a serious BLINKEN LIGHTS issue with random blinking lights in the background, but didn't even bother to plug in most of the machines on the screen (most didn't even have their power lights on and in some cases you could see they were obviously missing power cables).
How about the Quicktime movies, complete with the seek bar, that were passed off as live security cams?
It was a movie full of 'almost right's as far as the tech went, and because of that, the errors were fairly glaring in the "wait, that's not right" manner. If they had stuck to some imaginary setup, it might have been a bit better, because you wouldn't be looking at something that you used 'everyday' being portrayed as something completely different.
At which time, I, as the wiley "bad guy", press the button telling the camera to make the clicking noise when taking a picture. After the mean ol'cop has left, I press it again and resume taking illicit photos of manhole covers.... ohh.. look, that one has some bubble gum stuck in the lettering.
See, I give movies like Dark Knight a pass when they do things like that, simply because everything else is so surrealistic and overblown that having the 'tech' portion the same way really isn't that inconsistant.
You don't walk away from a Batman movie (either the new 'reboot' ones, the old 'reboot' ones that Tim Burton started, or even the old Adam West ones) thinking "Oh yeah, that totally could have happened in real life."
On the other hand, while Jurassic Park was also definatly not 'real', a good portion of the story was dedicated to the idea "maybe this could actually happen, maybe", so having a completely bogus computer scene was completely out of place. Lets not even get into things like "Hacking the Gibson" in movies like Hackers that had actual (although abortive) attempts at authenticity but completely failed the moment those moments were over.
Well, lets see.
Maxthon and Avant are based on the Trident Layout Engine built into Windows. So including them in the list wouldn't exactly resolve the "You are forcing IE on people" complaint. While they do have their own code base, it's still based on the same engine from Microsoft.
Amaya is a test bed application for the W3C, I'm sure it's lovely for the few people who use it as their main browser, but it's not exactly what you'd foist onto the general poplulace.
Flock and SeaMonkey are both based on Mozilla (aka Firefox). And while they add value to the Firefox proposition, if the point is to provide an alternative to IE then both of them are 'over qualified'.
And while I agree with the arguement that a solution would be to not ship with anything installed and simply install their own, there are numerous disadvantages to that that you are overlooking. Such as the fact that most people new computers aren't going to know which one they want and simply pick the top one on the list. Who do you think that's going to be?
In fact, while I also agree that if this happens and the list is codified as the summary and article presents, it would hamper new comers, the truth is that covering the 'top' browsers also covers the top engines that 90% of the rest of the crowd use anyway.
Or you know, perhaps his actions, both then and now, are based on his belief that he's right on this and have nothing to do with attempting to curry polictical favor or win votes.
Do I agree that he's made the right choice? No.
But isn't it the definition of being corrupt to change the way you vote/act based on what it gets you rather than what you think it'll do for the nation? Did he come out and say "I voted for this as a Senator only because I wouldn't get elected as President if I hadn't."?
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008
and
but then
Is that the O'Reilly "No Spin" flavor of Truthiness you are sampling there or do you make your own Kool-Aid?
And the policy says it happens when you click play. So either CNET is full of morons which, since I visited that page and then checked what cookies were modified on my computer today - not finding any from any .gov or youtube site, is likely. Or they managed to find one of those "glitches" that the policy also spoke of.
They do have the videos up on their site, go to the link posted in the summary, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/ and check the download link. It's a direct whitehouse.gov link.
The advantage they have in posting the streaming version to YouTube is that now the videos are seen by more than just the folk who follow whitehouse.gov. YouTube is the #1, no contenders, site for sharing videos. Myspace, Facebook, nothing else comes close to it's viewer base. Even the "don't upload, just watch" sites are below it in terms in traffic.
Allowing more people to hear your message = good as far as I'm concerned. If I ever have an issue, it'll be when I start seeing "Five for Five!" ads in the middle of his speeches.
In other words, "When we link to a third party, non government owned, website to host videos, they will set their own tracking cookie as per their own policy. We've checked with our lawyers, they say this is OK and written a waiver to that effect. But just in case you don't want the cookie, we also include links to the videos to accomidate you."
What a non-story story.
Actually I read it as more arrogant than clueless, or perhaps hostile would be the word. He definately didn't defend as much as say "Yeah, we don't care" to most of the questions.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/11/eo-pra.html
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13233
FURTHER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures implementing section 2204 of title 44 of the United States Code with respect to constitutionally based privileges, including those that apply to Presidential records reflecting military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, Presidential communications, legal advice, legal work, or the deliberative processes of the President and the President's advisors, and to do so in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), and other cases, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Definitions.
For purposes of this order:
(a) "Archivist" refers to the Archivist of the United States or his designee.
(b) "Presidential records" refers to those documentary materials maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. 2201-2207.
(c) "Former President" refers to the former President during whose term or terms of office particular Presidential records were created.
Sec. 2. Constitutional and Legal Background.
(a) For a period not to exceed 12 years after the conclusion of a Presidency, the Archivist administers records in accordance with the limitations on access imposed by section 2204 of title 44. After expiration of that period, section 2204(c) of title 44 directs that the Archivist administer Presidential records in accordance with section 552 of title 5, the Freedom of Information Act, including by withholding, as appropriate, records subject to exemptions (b)(1), (b)(2), (b)(3), (b)(4), (b)(6), (b)(7), (b)(8), and (b)(9) of section 552. Section 2204(c)(1) of title 44 provides that exemption (b)(5) of section 552 is not available to the Archivist as a basis for withholding records, but section 2204(c)(2) recognizes that the former President or the incumbent President may assert any constitutionally based privileges, including those ordinarily encompassed within exemption (b)(5) of section 552. The President's constitutionally based privileges subsume privileges for records that reflect: military, diplomatic, or national security secrets (the state secrets privilege); communications of the President or his advisors (the presidential communications privilege); legal advice or legal work (the attorney-client or attorney work product privileges); and the deliberative processes of the President or his advisors (the deliberative process privilege).
(b) In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, the Supreme Court set forth the constitutional basis for the President's privileges for confidential communications: "Unless [the President] can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends." 433 U.S. at 448-49. The Court cited the precedent of the Constitutional Convention, the records of which were "sealed for more than 30 years after the Convention." Id. at 447 n.11. Based on those precedents and principles, the Court ruled that constitutionally based privileges available to a President "survive[] the individual President's tenure." Id. at 449. The Court also held that a former President, although no longer a Government official, may assert constitutionally based privileges with respect to his Administration's Presidential records, and expressly rejected the argument that "only an incumbent President can assert the privilege of the Presidency." Id. at 448.
(c) The Supreme Court has held that a party seeking to overcome the constitutionally based privileges that apply to Presidential records must establish at least a "demonstrated, speci
Don't see anything in there regarding it being for the 'po folk only', I don't see anything in the submitter's request that invalidates the purpose of the program in relation to them. Maybe you should use try getting some of that assitance you are so proud of refusing to re-evaluate what you actually know and what you've just decided you 'know'.
And I don't see anything in there other than an asshole using his blindness to throw a barb.
And if this was welfare you'd have a right to look down your highly tilted nose at me, but it wasn't, despite your attempt to define the program as such.
There are approximately 33 million coupons that were allocated; by most accounts there are around 15 million households (or 23 million people) that still consume over the air broadcasts. Even given you were limited to a maximium of two coupons that doesn't sound like a welfare program to me, it sounds like exactly what it was billed as. A program to allow those of us who have equipment that will be impacted by this change access to some of the revenue generated by it in order to purchase what was necessary to allow it to continue working.
Oh and btw, FUCK YOU, you smarmy asshole. Congratulations on being a stiff necked blind guy who attempts to use his disability to assert moral superiorty over anyone who doesn't want to live life as crappy as you obviously do.