I found that getting a wi-fi broadcaster for the house so that I can read Newsweek on my netbook at the kitchen table will cost $80. That should be a one-time charge. Is it worth it? Or I could buy a Nook or Kindle, but I'd want the color version which runs about $200.
On to the story in Newsweek that caught my attention, this one by Andrew Romano and Daniel Klaidman.
Back in 2011 Obama was apparently stunned by how unwilling the House GOP was to create a deal to raise the debt limit. Hopefully, you remember this wasn't a case of holding out for the best possible deal. Instead it was an effort to deny Obama any sort of victory even if the blew up the gov't and national (and global) economy.
Just a few months before Obama refused to act on important issues, saying he had to work through Congress. But that debt limit crisis showed him that there was no hope of bipartisan solutions and the House wasn't going to play. If anything was going to happen before the end of Obama's first term, he would have to do it by himself.
So his slogan became "We can't wait." By executive order he:
* Declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (this and a few others were done before the debt mess).
* Implemented the greenhouse gas regulations the Senate had stalled.
* Issued waivers for No Child Left Behind, but bound states to his own policies that Congress hadn't passed.
* Issued waivers for welfare.
* Made a few "recess" appointments, bypassing Senate confirmation even though the Senate was technically still "in session."
* Announced many provisions of the DREAM act Congress wouldn't pass.
* Started a program to help those with underwater mortgages.
* Eased terms on student loans.
* Took military action in Libya.
When the GOP rages on about how Obama has usurped power and essentially become a dictator, they are right. We progressives raged when Bush II did similar things and Obama is doing it to a much higher degree. Does it make any difference that Obama is doing this power grab on behalf of progressive causes?
Of course, Obama wouldn't have done this if Congress hadn't been its most obstructionist in history. But it leaves a bad precedent. There is now nothing to keep a President Romney from deciding not to enforce the penalty provisions in the Affordable Care Act.
For the record, I was one of many urging Obama to use his executive order to end the ban on gays in the military. The resolution of that through Congress appears to be the last time the prez. and Congress accomplished anything (and happened before the current bunch took office).
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Re: Kindle and Nook. If you want ones that can operate without WiFi, then you'll pay quite a bit more than $200 for the color ones. The only Kindle version that operates without WiFi (on a 4G network) runs nearly $400, I believe. I'm not certain about Nook prices.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty tied into the Amazon cloud. I subscribe to their Prime service, have music stored in their cloud as well as a few books. My main issue with both services, though, is DRM. This past week another incident of Amazon deleting a customer's account came to light. Amazon deleted all of the books (and music, if there was some) that the customer had bought because she allegedly crossed country boundaries and bought books from their UK store even though she lived in Norway. Amazon (and Barnes and Noble) are completely within their rights to do such a thing according to their own EULAs. In other words, you don't buy books from them; you rent them. That completely rubs me the wrong way. It's one thing to stick DRM on material in order to try and prevent me from viewing it on another device and a completely other issue to say that I don't own the product I paid for, but rather paid an exorbitant price just to rent it. Some eBooks cost nearly as much as the published versions. I gladly pay for the paper versions in order that Amazon cannot take it away at a later date. I'm further happy to wait in a queue for the library version to become available rather than pay anything at all for a title I'm taking a chance on. If Amazon et al didn't have this crazy DRM issue, then I'd be all in and they'd be earning even more money than they are getting from me, now.
FWIW, Amazon does not do this same thing when storing my mp3s on their servers. I can download them later to any device I wish. So, why the issue with books? As a result, I recently installed a new WiFi router and have not considered a Kindle (but have toyed with a new Nexus 10 instead).
As to Obama's expansion of presidential powers: I'm as uneasy with it as I am with Bush II doing it. To my mind it's a step towards a form of government that wasn't intended for our country. Republicans and Democrats alike sound alarmed about it when the other party lurches towards these expanded powers, but they have not accepted that they should not do so themselves.
At least with Bush II, when he was doing it Congress was generally willing to work with him. His expansion was naked power grabbing. In Obama's case, he did so as a reaction against a hostile Congress. That is some solace, but it is very little compared to the wariness I have on the issue. Even though I agree with many of the positions the President took, I, too, am unhappy with the precedent.
Let's not forget that action in Libya isn't the only military one that Obama has done unilaterally. Based on the precedent set by Bush and the astounding willingness of Congress to ignore it's basic functions and cede power to the Executive branch, Obama has run a drone program extensively, killed Al Qaida members in multiple foreign countries, has declared that the President has the power to decide who may be targeted and killed based on a panel of judges convened by the President, and more. I find that VERY disturbing.
At least in Libya, Obama had the cover of McCain and other Republicans supporting action. If it had come to a vote, I'm sure he would have won. However, it still should have come to a vote.