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Posts with tag georgebush

Bush Seeks Midnight Law Prohibiting Online Gambling

by Lee Bains, posted Nov 13th 2008 at 7:03AM


In the waning hours of his presidency, George Bush is pushing to effectively outlaw online gambling in the United States. These efforts have met strident opposition by Democrats, proponents of Internet betting, and even some financial institutions.

The Bush administration's pursuit of these prohibitive laws follows on the coattails of a rider vaguely prohibiting online betting that was included in a piece of 2006 legislation ostensibly dealing with the security of U.S. ports. While that rider did, in fact, become law, its unclear language -- leaving open the question of what constitutes online gambling -- has left it largely unenforceable. President Bush and Congressional Republicans hope to clarify that language and outlaw the Internet practice before President-Elect Obama and the slew of newly elected Democratic Congress members take office.

In these troubled economic times, we're appalled that the government is trying to take away our one sure-fire means of supplementing our incomes. We mean, it is a sure thing, right? Right? [From: AOL News]



Internet Provides New Opportunities For Political Dirty Tricks

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 27th 2008 at 1:01PM



Dirty tricks used to mislead voters and keep them away from the polls, but new Web-centric attempts to disenfranchise voters are stoking fears amongst voters and activists. In the past, political trickery has relied on phone calls, fliers, and direct mailing, which are much easier to track and prosecute than the new wave of political scare tactics.

Traditional calls, like the push polls in 2000 that lifted Bush over McCain in South Carolina, have been replaced by robo-calls via VoIP that are harder to trace and not subject to the same restrictions land-line and cell phone based political phone campaigns are. Such tactics were turned on African-American voters in North Carolina during this primary season when calls were placed that led voters to believe they were not properly registered.

More familiar online techniques such as phishing, pharming (secretly redirecting traffic from one site to another), and good old fashioned typo-squatting have also made their way to the political arena. The primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton saw hackers redirecting visitors to Obama's social networking site MyBarackObama.com to Clinton's home page.

Experts expect to see spam e-mails giving out incorrect polling locations, misleading information about who can and cannot vote, and even money making and identity theft schemes centered around voter registration.

Of course all of the uses of the Internet in politics are not nefarious. Barack Obama has proven himself adept at utilizing social media and activists have been using it to organize large numbers of people since the 2004 Howard Dean campaign. [From: CNN]

White House E-Mails Missing

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 24th 2008 at 4:27PM

White House Dragging its Feet on E-Mail RecoveryRemember all those e-mails that went missing at the White House? The Bush administration is hoping you don't. According to an internal memo leaked to the Associate Press (AP) the government is pushing forward with its recovery "effort" the only way it knows how -- completely half-assed.

According to the memo, the White House is missing as much as 225 days worth of e-mail that just so happen to date from the time of the Valerie Plame leak and the Abu Ghraib scandal. The White House is theoretically taking bids from contractors to recover the e-mails, but has no expectation of the work being completed before April of 2009, after the current administration has left office.

According to contractors questioned by the AP, the memo doesn't appear to be a legitimate request for help in the recovery process. The memo says anywhere from 25-225 days of e-mails may be missing. The large discrepancy makes it hard to estimate the man power and time needed to tackle the project. Steve Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement program at George Washington University said, "Generally, when the scope of the work is expected to fluctuate by a factor of nearly ten, I can only take you so seriously." [From: AOL News]

Geek Gifts for Bush's Birthday

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 6th 2007 at 11:48AM


Franklin Speaking Language Master Believe it or not, President George "Dubya" Bush turns 61 years young today. And just in case one of his pals/cronies is stuck on what to buy him, we've made a few suggestions.

Franklin's Speaking Language Master

One bit of information that we picked up early in the president's career -- he's not too proficient with his native English language. Sure, it makes for good late night TV jokes, but the poor guy has got to be a bit embarrassed. At last, he can find the words he needs and have them pronounced for him phonetically before a big speech -- now no one will ever misunderestimate him again.

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