This, actually, is not as bad as it sounds:
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat.
Used to be most of the malfeasance on the web was low-grade criminal stuff. But state actors have gotten into the game as well, occasionally blurring the line between basement hacker and national security cracker. The average (Windows) PC is connected on the web for mere seconds before the first automated attempts at hijacking occurs, and given the propensity of most folks to save their sheckels and hope for the best, the odds of a distributed botnet attack causing real denial of service problems given the right motivation approaches 1.0. Since much of the national security infrastructure rides atop the broader global information grid, it makes sense to find a way to temporarily turn threats off as they manifest themselves.
It ain’t pretty. But it also isn’t your father’s network.
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Krauthammer looks into the health care future, declares the public option dead, disparages quasi-governmental bodies dispensing end-of-life guidance and predicts inevitable rationing.
In the same paper, Ezra Klein – who reminds me altogether too much of “Scrubs” J.D. Dorian to take him seriously – responds that we already ration health care.
Reason’s Roger Bailey reminds Ezra that that word? It does not mean what he thinks it means:
It’s not rationing if an individual decides to spend his money on a 16-ounce steak—but it is rationing if he can only purchase a USDA prime rib eye when he has a coupon issued from a government agency. In other words, true rationing occurs when individuals are forbidden from spending their money on products or services they want to buy.
Imperfect as private health insurance markets are, if a customer [or his employer] doesn’t like the decisions made by Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, or Golden Rule insurance bureaucrats, he can look elsewhere for his health insurance coverage. But if the government health care scheme becomes a monopoly, when the bureaucrats at the new Health Benefits Advisory Committee decide that a treatment should be withheld, that treatment will be withheld. That’s rationing.
I believe you have to be of a certain age to remember what governmental rationing really means. Or else live in Britain.
That’d work too.
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Were you aware that you could buy a piston twin for less than $100k?
I was not.
Still, there you are.
Still made of unobtanium for a guy sending his daughter off to college out of state.
Found myself wondering about the time and expense of building a Glasair III. Three hundred horses under the cowl, 284 turbocharged knots at 18K, a 2000+ FPM rate of climb, aerobatic and 1000+ miles of cross country range. What’s to hate?
One of these days.
And you know what question I ask myself, when I get to the point where it’s all paid for and I can just go somewhere: Then what’ll I do?
And then I answer: Just go somewhere else.
Because you can.
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This sort of thing? It’s not supposed to happen here.
In Austria maybe. But not here.
This is not a capital case, of course. Although for the life of me, I can’t imagine why. A life was taken here, the life that Jaycee Lee Dugard should have had. And obviously, there are special circumstances.
I guess there’s a reason why I’m not in charge.
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Sherlock homes could solve a crime by noting the dog that didn’t bark. It’s left to us to ponder what other echoing silences might mean.
De mortuis, nil nisi bonum.
Dicendum est.
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Yeah, well. That’s it for the now. Supper beckons, and the Hobbit will not be denied.
If you’ve got any sense at all.
Y’all have a great weekend.
Re: the horrifying kidnapping-imprisonment… In clicking through that link I saw his face for the first time. I don’t know exactly what it is, but on some indefinable level he looks just like that evil Austrian man. Maybe it’s the eyes…
*shiver*
I think one of the reasons that the Democrats don’t seem to take seriously the fact that we are engaged in two wars right now is that we are still living in the midst of such abundance of goods, services, food, shelter and other goodies that it just doesn’t seem real. When World War II hit us, the country in general was much less prosperous, and the edge of prosperity we had just climbed back to was very fragile. Soon we had rationing of all kinds that we felt every day; meat rationing, rationing of such staples as butter, sugar, lard and other natural fats [try cooking darn near anything without those], gasoline rationing, tire rationing, clothing rationing — it goes on. And every family felt the pinch, one way or another. A thriving black market in what had been everyday necessities as well as luxury goods sprang up. My Dad, being a moral bank executive [yes, Virginia, there are some, even more in those days] was co-opted by the federal government to work for the War Production Board, meaning he was away from home for months on end.
What I’m saying is, literally no one was unaffected by the War and our part of it. We couldn’t escape it. And only by patronizing the Black Market could anyone regain the illusion of opulence.
That’s not happening now. Yet. But if our government persists in spending us into bankruptcy, or near it, it could happen. And having lived through it once, I do dread it.
Marianne
The reason you’re not in charge is the same reason I’m not in charge. They’d all be dead – drawn and quartered and their pieces hanging in the public square to serve as a reminder to those that might choose to emulate them.
And that would make too much sense.
Yes, I have some anger in regards to cases like this. Why do you ask?
As long as ‘unobtanium’ is lighter than air ‘she’ll be right mate’.
All but the top-of-the-line piston twins seem to be relatively affordable (purchase price wise) right now. What hurts though is the ongoing stuff: maintenance ($5-20K per year for my birdie), plus insurance, plus …
Lex:
Take from financially painful personal experience: Twice the engines, three times the expenses. You’ll have every loss of engine emergency procedure foremost in your mind from leaving the driveway until the last shutdown. And the sightseeing isn’t as good, as most of them are low wing and you’re either abeam or aft of the engine cowlings.
In town this weekend but free time almost non-existent. If you want to meet up I’ll be on Midway 10-3 today visiting a couple of “old friends” as it were. I have the Crackberry on so email if you’re not flying.
Comjam
All the many AssHats out there that mince-words in the Health Care debate should be made to live first in the system they want to foist upon the rest of us. Test drive it so to speak. Those that split-hairs over the meaning of “rationing” should go to one of the many Indian Reservations where the Indian Health Service provides ‘total’ and ‘free’ health care to the 1.9 million Native Americans. But don’t go until October, right now they will all be closed up waiting for the new fiscal year and the money that pours in from the treasury. Seems that a frequent refrain on the reservations is not to get sick after June, cause they don’t have the money to treat you till the new year. Sound familiar? Government health care, nothing like it on earth.
BT: Jimmy T sends.
I have one simple rule. I refuse to fly anything that I built.
Hi Lex,
I found another kit project worth keeping an eye on. It’s probably a couple of years away from first flight, but the designer is making great progress, and I figure that’s more time to save up!
http://members.iquest.net/~aca/
All carbon fiber, pressurized, turbonormalized. People may scoff at his performance predictions (300 kts cruise @ FL290), but empty weight’s looking to come in around 1200 lbs, and with up to a 505 hp engine up front, I don’t doubt they’re close.
The designer is an experienced hand from IRL – lots of skill building light, strong parts for race cars. Also lots of emphasis in this design on crashworthiness.
It’s got a good mailing list you can follow here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/algiecompositeaircraft/
Regarding Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters: props should go out to University of California Berkeley Police Officer Ally Jacobs for breaking this case–she recognized what parole officers working the case missed over and over again…she is the one who recognized the children were in trouble when she saw them with Garrido on campus, tracked down his criminal record and notified his parole officer…without her, those poor souls would still be locked in an Antioch back yard.