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Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase, has warned American investors should be more worried about the risk of default of the state of California than of Greece’s current debt woes.

Everyone knows that California is a greater risk financially than Greece. The socialist machine in Sacramento will simply take any monies from any source and spend it on welfare and illegal immigrants. J.P. Morgan Chase understands this.

California is broken. Its one of the reasons I named this site BrokenCountry.Com. Its been broken for more than 25 years, since the hippies from the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco decided to run for office.

These socialist assholes have ruined California and turned the state into a mecca for degenerates and low lives from every corner of the planet. Now the state is bankrupt because these same socialist spend every penny sent to Sacramento on their unions, which run the state, and their social programs that they create to ensure that they are re-elected. JD

Mr Dimon told investors at the Wall Street bank’s annual meeting that “there could be contagion” if a state the size of California, the biggest of the United States, had problems making debt repayments. “Greece itself would not be an issue for this company, nor would any other country,” said Mr Dimon. “We don’t really foresee the European Union coming apart.” The senior banker said that JP Morgan Chase and other US rivals are largely immune from the European debt crisis, as the risks have largely been hedged.

California however poses more of a risk, given the state’s $20bn (£13.1bn) budget deficit, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to reduce.

Earlier this week, the state’s legislature passed bills that will cut the deficit by $2.8bn through budget cuts and other measures. However the former Hollywood film star turned politician is looking for $8.9bn of cuts over the next 16 months, and is also hoping for as much as $7bn of handouts from the federal government.

Earlier this week, John Chiang, the state’s controller, said that if a workable plan to reduce the deficit and increase cash levels is not reached soon, he will have to return to issuing IOU’s, forcing state workers to take additional unpaid leave and potentially freezing spending.

Last summer, California issued $3bn of IOU’s to creditors including residents owed tax refunds as a way of staving off a cash crisis.

“I can’t write checks without money; that’s against the law. My main goal is to keep the state afloat, but I won’t be able to do it without the help of new legislation,” said Mr Chiang.

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Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, assholes, budget deficit, contagion, debt repayments, degenerates, hollywood film, jp morgan chase, Morgan Chase, Mr Chiang, Sacramento

WHILE the Top End and Central Australia have been battered by torrential rains, a Territory town has reportedly had fish falling from the sky.

The freak phenomena happened not once, but twice, on Thursday and Friday afternoon about 6pm at Lajamanu, about 550km southwest of Katherine, The Northern Territory News reports.

Christine Balmer, who took the photos of the fish on the ground and in a bucket, said she had to pinch herself when she was told “hundreds and hundreds” of small white fish had fallen from the sky.

“It rained fish in Lajamanu on Thursday and Friday night,” she said,

“They fell from the sky everywhere.

“Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere.

“These fish were alive when they hit the ground.”

Mrs Balmer, the aged care co-ordinator at the Lajamanu Aged Care Centre, said her family interstate thought she had lost the plot when she told them about the event.

“I haven’t lost my marbles,” she said, reassuring herself.

“Thank God it didn’t rain crocodiles.”

Lajamanu sits on the edge of the Tanami Desert, hundreds of kilometres from Lake Argyle and Lake Elliott and even further from the coast. But it’s not the first time the remote community has been bombarded by fins from above.

In 2004, locals reported fish falling from the sky, and in 1974, a similar incident captured international headlines.

The small white fish are believed to be spangled perch, which are very common through much of northern Australia.

Weather bureau senior forecaster Ashley Patterson said the geological conditions were perfect on Friday for a tornado in the Douglas Daly region.

He said it would have been an ideal weather situation to allow the phenomena to occur – but no tornados have been reported to the authority.

“It’s a very unusual event,” he said.

“With an updraft, (fish and water picked up) could get up high – up to 60,000 or 70,000 feet.

“Or possibly from a tornado over a large water body – but we haven’t had any reports,” he said.

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Tags: central australia, fish falling from the sky, geological conditions, international headlines, lake argyle, northern australia, raining fish, spangled perch, water body, weather situation

So let me get this straight. The leader of the free world, who is telling us we need his health care reform, smokes cigarettes? Imagine that. Aren’t these the same leftist guerrillas in Congress that made the tobacco industry the bane of society by vilifying them and suing them for medical costs associated with smoking cigarettes?

How in the hell are we to believe in a man that’s too weak emotionally to quit smoking cigarettes? Bob

President Obama’s doctors hinted Sunday that he still might be sneaking smokes when Michelle and the kids aren’t around to yell at him.

Obama’s routine physical at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center found him in “excellent health” and “fit for duty” but the docs also included a cryptic recommendation that he “continue smoking cessation efforts.”

Obama should continue his “nicotine replacement therapy – self-use (gum or the patch),” the doctor said.

Obama owned up during the 2008 presidential campaign to falling off the wagon occassionally in his effort to quit with the help of nicotine gum.

Obama has also said that First Lady Michelle Obama, and kids Malia and Sasha, have been all over him to break the habit.

The initial report on the physical from Dr. Jeff Kuhlman, director of the White House Medical Unit, also suggested that Obama may have lost some of the jump on his jump shot.

The report said his knees sometimes ache and the docs recommended a “lower extemity muscle strengthening program.”

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Tags: bethesda naval medical center, falling off the wagon, leftist guerrillas, medical costs, michelle obama, nicotine, nicotine gum, nicotine replacement therapy, Obama, presidential campaign, smoking cessation, smoking cigarettes, tobacco industry

What a travesty. Andy Griffith statue vandalized? I consider this an attack on America. Andy Griffith is pure Americana. Griffith represents all that is good in America.

For some retarded kids to randomly deface a statue of the man is a direct attack on America and should be considered a terrorist act. The perpetrators should be treated as terrorists.

If you’re curious if hoodlums would actually spray paint a statue depicting Andy Taylor and his son Opie, the answer is yes.

The statue of Andy Griffith that cable network TV Land put in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, was defaced by vandals over the weekend – Andy’s head was painted green and his body red. Local residents are appalled by the misdeed, puzzled why anyone would do this to something dear to the community.

TV Land, who actually maintains the statue, will be flying someone down shortly to repair the damage. A cash reward is offered by the Mt. Airy police department for information leading to the culprits.

Mt. Airy was the hometown of The Andy Griffith Show, hence the statue being erected there. Similarly, TV Land has also erected statues of Mary Richards in Minneapolis (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Bob Hartley in Chicago (The Bob Newhart Show), Ralph Kramden in New York (The Honeymooners, The Fonz in Milwaukee (Happy Days), and Samantha Stevens in Salem (Bewitched).

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WASHINGTON- In yet another stunning show of disdain for American voters, President Obama had his left wing radicals all over the Sunday morning news shows trying desperately to keep health care reform alive.

Obama has demanded what the White House calls “a simple up or down” vote on the massive spending bill designed to nationalize the U.S. health care system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and compared passing health care reform to selling pie. Pelosi said “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

We are still trying to figure out what selling pie has to do with health care reform, especially in light of the fact that the legislation contains a special tax on pie to help fund it.

In voicing support for a simple majority vote, White House health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle signaled Obama’s intention to push the Democratic-crafted bill under Senate rules that would overcome GOP stalling tactics.

Republicans unanimously oppose the Democratic proposals. Without GOP support, Obama’s only chance of emerging with a policy and political victory is to bypass the bipartisanship he promoted during his televised seven-hour health care summit Thursday.

“We’re not talking about changing any rules here,” DeParle said. “All the president’s talking about is: Do we need to address this problem and does it make sense to have a simple, up-or-down vote on whether or not we want to fix these problems?”

DeParle was optimistic that the president would have the votes to pass the massive bill. But none of legislation’s advocates who spoke on Sunday indicated that those votes were in hand.

“I think we will get to that point where we will have the votes,” predicted Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “I believe that we will pass health care reform this spring.”

In a sober call to arms, Pelosi said lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said. “We’re here to do the job for the American people.”

Pelosi said it took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, “and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”

It’s unclear whether Pelosi’s remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Her comments seemed to acknowledge the widely held view that Democrats will lose House seats this fall—maybe a lot. They now control the chamber 255 to 178, with two vacancies. Pelosi stopped well short of suggesting Democrats could lose their majority, but she called on members of her party to make a bold move on health care with no prospects of GOP help.

“Time is up,” she said. “We really have to go forth.”

Her comments somewhat echoed those of President Barack Obama, who said at the end of last week’s bipartisan health care summit that Congress should act on the issue and let voters render their verdicts. “That’s what elections are for,” he said.

The White House is redoubling efforts to remind voters that the Senate passed an Obama-backed health care bill in December with 60 votes. Every Republican voted against that bill. A Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts in January, however, left Democrats one vote shy of the number necessary to overcome GOP filibusters.

As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters.

Exactly what the legislation would look like remained a matter of negotiation within Democratic ranks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, “is working with his caucus, the White House and the House leadership on strategy and next steps,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Sunday.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky renewed his party’s demand that Obama and the Democrats start over and write a bipartisan health care bill. He said that while the reconciliation process has been used to pass legislation in the past, it should not apply to health care legislation.

“There are a number of other Republicans who do not think something of this magnitude ought to be jammed down the throats of a public that doesn’t want it through this kind of device,” McConnell said.

Pelosi said that “in a matter of days” Democrats will have specific legislative language on health care to show to the public and to wavering lawmakers. She predicted voters will warm up to the bill once they understand its details.

“When we have a bill,” she said, “you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell.”

Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” DeParle was on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while Menendez appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and McConnell spoke on CNN.

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Tags: bipartisanship, democratic leadership, health care reform, house speaker nancy pelosi, Medicare, Mitch McConnell, President Obama, robert menendez, senate rules

FONTANA – Police officers shot and killed a 35-year-old Beaumont man in an exchange of gunfire Saturday after he tried to flee in a stolen car.

Mark Smith was killed at 7:22 a.m. when the car pursuit ended at Cherry Avenue and Merrill Avenue and shots were fired, according to a police news release and Deputy David McCarthy of the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner’s division.

Police were investigating a grand theft auto call at Arrow Boulevard and Sierra Avenue when a person was reported driving a stolen vehicle and brandishing a handgun.

When officers found the vehicle and tried to stop the suspect, the suspect tried to escape in the car.

McCarthy said he had no further information about the incident.

San Bernardino County fire dispatch supervisor Tim Franke said he had heard Cherry Avenue was shut down for a period of time Saturday because of the investigation.

Arden Wiltshire, spokeswoman with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said her department’s homicide team was conducting the investigation.

“That’s usually standard procedure,” she said. She said Fontana is responsible for releasing information about the shooting.

A message left for spokesman Sgt. Jeff Decker on Saturday was not returned. A Fontana police dispatcher said no one else in the department was authorized to speak about the shooting.

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Tags: arden, Beaumont, coroner, david mccarthy, dispatch supervisor, Fontana, handgun, homicide, mark smith, san bernardino county sheriff, Sgt. Jeff Decker, Tim Franke

Marie Osmond’s teenaged son, Michael Blosil, has killed himself by leaping to his death around 9 p.m. Friday in Los Angeles, reports Entertainment Tonight, which quotes Marie’s brother, Donny Osmond, as saying, “Please pray for my sister and her family.”

According to ET, Michael left a note explaining he intended to end his life after a lengthy battle with severe depression that left him, he said, feeling as if he had no friends and could never fit in.

In 2007, Michael, then 16, entered a rehab facility. His mother said at the time, “My son Michael is an amazing young man, shown through his courage in facing his issues. As his mother, I couldn’t be more proud of him.”

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Tags: brother, donny osmond, entertainment tonight, Los Angeles, Marie, marie osmond son commits suicide, Michael, Michael Blosil, rehab facility, severe depression, suicide, young man

The White House has appointed a Washington insider to replace Desiree Rogers, Obama’s social secretary who stepped down on Friday in the wake of an embarrassing security lapse late last year.

Julianna Smoot, who will be responsible for organizing social functions at the president’s residence, is currently chief of staff to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

“Julianna shares our commitment to creating an inclusive, dynamic and culturally vibrant White House, and Michelle and I are pleased to have her join our team,” Obama said in a statement on Saturday.

Smoot served as finance director of Obama’s election campaign and formerly worked for four senators.

Smoot’s predecessor, Rogers, was part of a group of Chicagoans who came to Washington with Obama. But she came under fire for a security lapse that allowed party crashers into a state dinner last year.

The White House denied on Friday that Rogers had been forced out. Rogers told an interviewer that now was “a good time for me to explore opportunities in the corporate world.”

Her departure will be among the first from high-profile administration posts since Obama took office in January 2009.

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Tags: chief of staff, Desiree Rogers, interviewer, Julianna Smoot, Michelle, Obama, predecessor, profile administration, representative ron, smoot, social functions, social secretary, trade representative, Washington, washington insider, White House

Gary Coleman has officially been added to the death watch list of celebrities predicted to die by years end.  Here is a link to KROQ death watch of Gary Coleman.

Gary Coleman suffered an apparent seizure on the set of “The Insider” on Friday and was taken to a Los Angeles area hospital. Fellow panelist Dr. Drew Pinsky, who was sitting next to him at the time, administered care until paramedics arrived. (Note to self: If possible, always make sure Dr. Drew is nearby in case of emergency.)

It’s not the only recent medical setback for the Utah-based actor, who in January suffered a seizure requiring hospitalization while he was in L.A. for a meeting regarding removing full-frontal nudity from a film in which he stars.

Coleman, who is 41, suffers from a congenital kidney disease and requires frequent dialysis, which he has said he prefers not to discuss. “The Insider” says it won’t release footage of the incident, E! Online reports.

Coleman had appeared before on an “Insider” panel that aired Feb. 17, angrily defending himself against questions regarding his relationship with his wife and allegations of domestic violence. In that expletive-peppered appearance, Coleman stormed off the set.

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Tags: death watch, dr drew pinsky, full frontal nudity, gary coleman, Gary Coleman death watch list, hospitalization, kidney disease, music hall, N.Y., night at the temple, note to self, paramedics, temple music

Is nature out of control? MSNBC Proves How Incredibly Stupid They Are

Is it just me or is this the dumbest headline you have ever seen? Nature out of control? Has nature ever been “in control” in the first place? The article from MSNBC never asks this pressing question.

Its the same thing with the global warming myth. Can you imagine a time when mankind has become so egocentric that we believe that we can control nature?

So here is MSNBC doing what all news agencies do to keep the sheeple watching their crappy network. Trying to scare the masses into believing that somehow humans are responsible for all these earthquakes.

Now that the global warming issue is being debunked, I can already see the next big socialist cause. Global Earthquakes. Somehow a correlation will be made to scientifically prove that man is responsible for earthquakes.

I got it. Its because our automobiles are putting extraneous forces on the earth’s crust, thus causing the planet to to be pulled in a million different directions at once, creating the earthquakes we are having today. That’s the ticket . . .

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth’s crust dives under another. It’s part of the active “Ring of Fire,” a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

“This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history,” said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960.

Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.

Is Earth shaking more?
The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake on Friday night. News of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.

“From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent,” Arrowsmith said. “But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance.”

Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we’re going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.

Thousands rattle the Earth daily — but only a few cause utter devastation.
However, “relative to the 20-year period from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years,” said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth’s lithosphere.” (The lithosphere is the outer solid part of the Earth.)

While the Chilean earthquake wasn’t directly related to Japan’s 7.0-magnitude temblor, the two have some factors in common.

For one, any seismic waves that made their way from Japan to the Chilean coast could play a slight role in ground-shaking.

“It is too far away for any direct triggering, and those distances also make the seismic waves as they would pass by from the Haiti or Japan events pretty small because of attenuation,” Arrowsmith told LiveScience. (Attenuation is the decrease in energy with distance.) “Nevertheless, if the Chilean fault surface were close to failure, those small waves could push it even closer.”

In addition, both regions reside within the Ring of Fire, which is a zone surrounding the Pacific Ocean where the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates dive beneath other slabs of Earth. About 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur along this arc. (The next most seismic region, where just 5 to 6 percent of temblors occur, is the Alpide belt, which extends from the Mediterranean region eastward.)

Colliding plates
The Chilean earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. These rocky slabs are converging at a rate of 3 inches (80 mm) per year, according to the USGS. This huge jolt happened as the Nazca plate moved down and landward below the South American plate. This is called a subduction zone when one plate subducts beneath another.

(Over time, the overriding South American Plate gets lifted up, creating the towering Andes Mountains.)

The plate movement explains why coastal Chile has such a history of powerful earthquakes . Since 1973, 13 temblors of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred there, according to the USGS.

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Southern California Beaches Under Tsunami Warning

Surfs up here in So Cali. Turns out that we could have 25 foot waves out there from a south easterly direction. Get out your boards dudes. Tsunami Surfing is the all the rage today. Oddly enough, the local media is telling us all not to try and surf the tsunami. Gee . . . Ya think? LOL JD

LOS ANGELES – Southern Californians were urged to avoid going to the beach Saturday after a massive 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile prompted the National Weather Service to warn that a minor tsunami could strike the local coastline.

If a “wave fluctuation” of as much as three free happens today it would probably occur at 12:25 p.m. at Santa Monica, according to the NWS. There is no threat of major damage.

“The Coast Guard strongly encourages waterfront users to take extra precautions in preparation for the possibility of a surge, to include securing vessel mooring arrangements and possible sources of pollution,” stated the U.S. Geological Survey.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, Chile at 10:24 p.m. Los Angeles time.

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Tags: coast guard, fluctuation, local media, Los Angeles, mooring, National Weather Service, Santa Monica, santiago chile, southern california beaches Under Tsunami Warning, Tsunami, u s geological survey, waterfront users

I posted this here because Wordpress was giving me fits. I lost my RSS feeds, ATOM feeds and my post time was being set to UTC-0, which for anyone that knows anything about how the internet works, means that all of my posts were happening in the future.

In other words, lets say I post an article about the Chilean Earthquake at 8:00 am. Well my Wordpress was putting the post time at 4:00 pm, eight hours before it happened.

This wreaks havoc with the Google sitemap and causes Google and all the other search engines to create “unreachable” reports to my articles until 4:00 pm when it can then see that the time stamp on the article has actually passed.

A real pain in my ass I must say. Anyway, I posted the work around below if any of you reading this are having the same problem. To all of my non geek readers, disregard this article. JD AKA Smartass

I ran into a problem that I have not seen mentioned anywhere online. When I initially upgraded to WP 2.9.1 and 2.9.2, I lost my server time synchronization. This also caused my RSS feeds to crash. I noticed that when updating my posts, I would check my XML Sitemaps Generator to make sure that the sitemap was updated and Google and the like were notified.

The time stamp was eight hours ahead to GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time. I live in Los Angeles California, and my servers are located in Spokane Washington. We are in the Pacific Time Zone of the United States, which is UTC-8.

I notified my webmaster of the issue and he assured me that the servers were set to the right time. After a day or so of picking about my site through an FTP client, I stumbled upon a file called WP-Settings.php.

In this file I found the following line,

if ( function_exists(‘date_default_timezone_set’) )
date_default_timezone_set(‘UTC’);

I immediately saw the problem. Although I had set the UTC time to “Los Angeles” in my “General Settings” located in the Wordpress Dashboard, it was being disregarded because of the WP-Setting file was setting the time to straight UTC.

To remedy this problem, I changed the line to read as follows,

if ( function_exists(‘date_default_timezone_set’) )
date_default_timezone_set(‘UTC-8′);

The change being the addition of the “-8″ to the UTC parameter to suggest to Wordpress to put my server time to PST.

I may be a dullard, but I have seen no mention of this anywhere on the internet with the exception of people like me Googling around looking for possible reasons as to why they had suddenly lost server time.

I hope this will help anyone like me struggling to understand all of this.

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Tags: chilean earthquake, Google, google sitemap, greenwich mean time, Los Angeles, pacific time zone, RSS, server time, Server Time Issues After Upgrading to Wordpress 2.9.1, smartass, time stamp, time synchronization, United States, utc time, WP-Settings.php, wreaks havoc

It just never ends with Obama. The guy probably sits around and wonders why people compare him to Hugo Chavez. Not a day goes by that Obama isn’t trying to expand the powers of government.

The president would have the power to safeguard essential federal and private Web resources under draft Senate cybersecurity legislation.

According to an aide familiar with the proposal, the bill includes a mandate for federal agencies to prepare emergency response plans in the event of a massive, nationwide cyberattack.

The president would then have the ability to initiate those network contingency plans to ensure key federal or private services did not go offline during a cyberattack of unprecedented scope, the aide said.

Ultimately, the legislation is chiefly the brainchild of Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, respectively. Both lawmakers have long clamored for a federal cybersecurity bill, charging that current measures — including the legislation passed by the House last year — are too piecemeal to protect the country’s Web infrastructure.

Their renewed focus arrives on the heels of two, high-profile cyberattacks last month: A strike on Google, believed to have originated in China, and a separate, more disjointed attack that affected thousands of businesses worldwide.

Rockefeller and Snowe’s forthcoming bill would establish a host of heretofore absent cybersecurity prevention and response measures, an aide close to the process said. The bill will “significantly [raise] the profile of cybersecurity within the federal government,” while incentivizing private companies to do the same, according to the aide.

Additionally, it will “promote public awareness” of Internet security issues, while outlining key protections of Americans’ civil liberties on the Web, the aide continued.

Privacy groups are nonetheless likely to take some umbrage at Rockefeller and Snowe’s latest effort, an early draft of which leaked late last year.

When early reports predicted the cybersecurity measure would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency,” online privacy groups said they felt that would endow the White House with overly ambiguous and far-reaching powers to regulate the Internet.

The bill will still contain most of those powers, and a “vast majority” of its other components “remain unchanged,” an aide with knowledge of the legislation told The Hill. But both the aide and a handful of tech insiders who support the bill have nonetheless tried to dampen skeptics’ concerns, reminding them the president already has vast — albeit lesser-known — powers to regulate the Internet during emergencies.

It is unclear when Rockefeller and Snowe will finish their legislation. And the ongoing debate over healthcare reform, financial regulatory reform, jobs bills and education fixes could postpone action on the floor for many months.

Both lawmakers heavily emphasized the need for such a bill during a Senate Commerce Committee cybersecurity hearing on Wednesday.

“Too much is at stake for us to pretend that today’s outdated cybersecurity policies are up to the task of protecting our nation and economic infrastructure,” Rockefeller said. “We have to do better and that means it will take a level of coordination and sophistication to outmatch our adversaries and minimize this enormous threat.”

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Tags: brainchild, cyberattack, cybersecurity, draf, emergency response plans, forthcoming bill, healthcare reform, Hugo Chavez, jay rockefeller, privacy groups, private services, private web resources, response measures, senate commerce committee, unprecedented scope, web infrastructure, White House

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.

Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.

Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.

“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.

“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.

“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
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Obama’s legislation would insure some 30 million more Americans over 10 years with a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry insurance and would end insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans generally oppose mandates that make everyone get insurance, and although they want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to buy insurance, they would try to address the problem without new requirements on insurance companies.

Obama plans to unveil an updated proposal this coming week, likely on Wednesday, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs suggested it would include concepts put forward by Republicans at the summit. One Republican who was there, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was contacted Friday by the White House and asked to submit details of suggestions he made on rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system, Coburn’s spokesman said.

Spokesman John Hart said that Coburn views Obama’s legislation as a government takeover and would not be able to support it even if it’s changed to include some of his proposals.

Adding Republican ideas is not likely to win Republican votes because the GOP insists Democrats should start from scratch. But Obama would be able to say that he’d listened to Republicans and attempted to meet them part way, and that could give Democrats political cover to move forward on their own. Doing so would require use of controversial Senate rules that would let Democrats pass legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer command.

The approach infuriates Republicans and is opposed by some Democratic moderates because of its partisan nature.

Coburn, the GOP’s weekly address, argued against a Democrats-only bill.

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