And this whole Reagan started it theme is morally bankrupt.

Fact Check traces the concept back to FDR. The first program to issue cell phone was started under GW. So maybe they are not “Obama Phones”.

I love history, but that is not what’s important here. What is important is that we’re spending 2 billion on what appears to be a completely unregulated and undisciplined wasteful program. Yes, there are cases where it might be good for some one to have a phone handy, say an elderly person who has no phone and might need a way to call for emergency services. But to just basically hand the things to anybody who says the deserve them…..

I love history, but that is not what’s important here. What is important is that we’re spending 2 billion on what appears to be a completely unregulated and undisciplined wasteful program. Yes, there are cases where it might be good for some one to have a phone handy, say an elderly person who has no phone and might need a way to call for emergency services. But to just basically hand the things to anybody who says the deserve them…..

Want to know when someone is insular and their “facts” come from the Fringe Right Wing Blog-o-sphere?

No one heard of Obamaphones until this gentle lady showed up and went viral.

littlelettermike links a Forbes article that apparently he did not or could not read. It is a nothingburger of an article that micro-picks a distinction without a difference. The program is funded by a federal system of taxation which is not income tax based. Like the gasoline tax, it is consumption based. Big whoop. Who came strutting in saying it was income tax based in the first place? As if that little nerd level quibble is worthy of a Congressional inquiry.

And this whole Reagan started it theme is morally bankrupt. Sure, you can trace to behemoth program back to its beginnings and that was, indeed, the Reagan administration and had Reagan’s support. So, from its beginnings it morphed and expanded and grew from a two million dollar a year program under Reagan to the present two billion dollar a year program under Obama.

Somewhere in the process, Carlos Slim figured out a way to make $10 per phone and he got into the program big time. The merger of big donor money, big corporate profit and big government welfare is at the core of crony capitalism. This $2 Billion pot is way to big not to attract cockroaches.

If you honestly believe that he could have walked into Rep. King’s DC office and gotten a fair hearing, I have a bridge you might want to buy. Assuming that he’d even get that far, I have no-doubt that Rep. King would have picked-up the phone–while smiling at Mr. Snowden—and three men in black suits would have been swiftly “escorted” Mr. Snowden quietly out the freight-entrance to a van. Dropped down the Rabbit Hole…never to be heard from again.

Where one-branch of the Government violates the Constitution, there are legitimate outlets for protest. When all three branches appear to be conspiring-together to burn the Constitution, I can understand running-first.

Good men in good government can do very bad things when “they think” they’re in the right. Ask the Nisei. Ask those at Tuskegee. Ask William F. Buckley’s ghost about HIV tattoos.

I still remember those few tense years in the Eighties where there was plenty of loose-talk about mandatory tests, banned professions, camps in Montana, and midnight knocks on the door. I still remember making quiet enquiries about immigration to Canada or Australia to make my own escape.

Trust the “process” when your life’s on the line? Bwhahhahhahhah…

Who cares about Obama’s polls? The one that matters he won.

Focus on the Senate and the House. If the Dems win the House the country will be in trouble. This country needs divided government. – Comment by mike — June 19, 2013 @ 3:50 am – June 19, 2013

We all know voters return the same damn people time and time again. It is like we are stuck on stupid.

http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2013/06/truth-to-power-party-switcher-elbert.html

Focus on the Senate and the House. If the Dems win the House the country will be in trouble. This country needs divided government.

When that person uses the term “Obamaphones”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/02/12/are-taxpayers-paying-for-free-cell-phones/

hee hee

Boo-ba-doo-ba-doop!
Boo-ba-doo-ba-doop!

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
Obama phone
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
Obama phone
I’ve got this feeling, so appealing,
for us to get together and sing. Sing!

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring Obama phone
Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dobama phone
It grows in bunches, I’ve got my hunches,
It’s the best! Beats the rest!
Cellular, modular, interactivodular!

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring Obama phone
Boop-boo-ba-doo-ba-doop!
Ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pabama phone
It’s no baloney, it ain’t a p(h)ony
My cellular obamular phone!

Don’t need quarters, don’t need dimes,
to call a friend of mine!
Don’t need computer or TV,
to have a real good time!
I’ll call for pizza. I’ll call my cat.
I’ll call the white house, have a chat!
I’ll place a call around the world, operator get me Beijing-jing-jing-jing!

(Soprano Sax Solo)
Yeah!

Play that thing!
(Piano Solo)

Whooo Hooo!

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
Obama phone
Boop-boo-ba-doo-ba-doop
Ying yang ying yang ying yang ying yobama phone
It’s a real live mama and papa phone,
a brother and sister and a dogaphone,
a grandpa phone and a grammophone too! Oh yeah!
My cellular, Obamular phone!

Obama phone, ring ring ring!
(It’s a phone with a peel!)
Obama phone, ring ring ring!
(Now you can have your phone and eat it too!)
Obama phone, ring ring ring!
(This song drives me bananas!)
Obama phone, ring ring ring!

Boo-ba-doo-ba-doop-doop-doop!

Back when AT&T was “the phone company” for the entire US, long distance rates subsidized local calls. If you made no long distance calls, phone service was very cheap. With the AT&T breakup, the local service provider no longer got the benefit of long distance revenue, you got to pick your own long distance provider. As a result, the cost of basic telephone service went up. This hit old people and poor people hardest. Reagan created a “lifeline” program where qualifying people could get a cheap phone line so they could have basic local service that was subsidized by other rate payers. Clinton expanded this in his administration to include cellular service.

At some point the cost of providing cell service and the price of very cheap phones became low enough that wireless carriers could sign people up for this service and actually make money at it. They are guaranteed a certain monthly amount from the program. If they can get the cost of service delivery below that amount, they make money for every such subscriber they sign up.

It isn’t an “Obamaphone”. It could just as easily be a “Romneyphone” or a “Republicanphone”. Republicans could just as easily hand these out to poor and elderly who qualify. The program is owned by the telecom company. The Obama people are simply distributing them and have managed to brand the damned things Obamaphones.

Police regularly cruise Facebook and other online media looking for gang activity. People go missing. People are abducted or kidnapped. Someone takes someone to court for harassment. All of these result in a request for user information.

Yes, thousands of companies DO trade information with the government. This might be information about a worker who was found to be attempting to infiltrate their employer’s computer systems. It might be about a worker who is suspected of transmitting information overseas to a third country without authorization. It might be the government tipping off a company that they suspect a new hire is engaging in corporate espionage on behalf of a foreign country. Right now countries are trying VERY hard to steal our technology so they can save the time and money of having to develop their own to compete with it. It is much easier to steal someone else’s work than to attempt to create a competing product from scratch. Part of NSA’s mission is to protect the US from that sort of technology transfer (or more accurately, leakage).

I just wish somehow people would lay this out for people a little better. Folks have much better things to do than watch someone’s porn stream.

Next, I suppose Germans will start to compare Obama to Hitler.

Nah, Hitler had a better economy and would have killed for Obama’s domestic spying apparatus.

several hundred leftists staged a colorful demonstration on Monday afternoon in Berlin…with a poster showing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. uttering his famous line, “I have a dream.” Underneath was Obama saying, “I have a drone.”

Next, I suppose Germans will start to compare Obama to Hitler.

Boehner is a professional politician who runs the House of Representatives. He is, to a large extent, his own man. I don’t much care for him, but I am not enough of a mind reader or political strategist to know why he and his “folk” (whoever they may be) are smiling. [And, while I'm at it, I am not too impressed with Eric Cantor either.]

Now, If their are guidelines within the program that specifically say that the phones are not to be given to people who are known to be using them for anything other than their intended purpose, then someone will definitely be busted. But, I’m betting there are no such rules…..

The bigger scandal is that 2 billion dollars is being wasted in this fashion.

Wow, VS…that list of “slip ups” by Palin just fails right out of the gate.

Your little list fails in #1: Paul Revere DID warn the British.

Or maybe you don’t believe those Right Wing TEA Partiers over at freakin’ NPR!:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/06/136997415/sarah-palins-had-her-say-now-lets-hear-from-paul-revere

Palin was right…it wasn’t a ‘slip-up’…and that is typical of pretty much every claim like yours of Palin’s supposed lack of intellect or ‘slip-up’. The ignorance is usually on the side of those (like yourself) making the accusation.

Now, don’t you feel a little ashamed seeing one of your talking points popped like a party balloon in front of everyone here?

Comment by AF_Vet — June 14, 2013 @ 5:35 am – June 14, 2013

Now, if you follow the NPR link that AF-Vet is providing, it is actually repudiating many of Sarah Palin’s “facts” concerning Paul Revere, yet it’s presented here as a defense of her verbal assault on history.

Sorry. but you’ll have to do better than this specific link. There are other gaffes that are more defensible.