Category Archives: Economy
iPhone 5 Fingerprints
Apple introduced two versions of the new iPhone 5 this week.
iPhone 5 Special Print Function
The upscale version features fingerprint recognition technology. You don’t need a password, just your fingerprint. The upside is you’re unlikely to forget your fingerprint. (You might be unlikely to forget. I’m not. I have ten fingerprints and it’s not easy to keep them straight. I hope I can still use one of them to type in the name of my first pet to get an email link where I can enter a new digit.)
The downside is, it’s kind of creepy.
An NSA secret slide presentation about how it accesses data from mobile devises was leaked to Der Spiegel. You can see it here. The first slide has a picture of the famous Apple 1984 Superbowl ad. The copy says:
Who knew in 1984 that this (Steve Jobs) would be big brother and the zombies would be paying customers?
Yikes!
But Bloomberg says not to worry. With the new iPhone you won’t be leaving your fingerprints all over The Cloud. That information is stored within the device and not accessible to nosy parkers.
Political Class and Law
The law doesn’t apply to big business or the political class when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.
The employer mandate requires companies with 50 or more employees to provide comprehensive health care. However, the reporting requirements were just too complex for the government to figure out, so the mandate was delayed for a year.
As a show of good will, while ramming the bill through the Senate the night before Christmas, the politicians agreed to impose Obama Care requirements on themselves. Once they passed the bill and found out what was in it they were shocked to learn it would cost them, and their staffs, huge hunks of cash. No problem. The White House helped tweak the law and our betters were unburdened.
Who’s the Law For?
Now big labor wants Obama to twerk er tweak for them.
Who will the law apply to? Just us serfs.
Obama Phone
Has your Obama Phone been bugged yet? Even some Dems are upset with the president over domestic spying. Not to mention some Republicans who have supported NSA surveillance in the past.
Ed Finley at the Detroit News wants Obama Phones defunded.
First Rodeo
Obama’s not the first president to be mocked as a rodeo clown. I hope he’s not the last. Drew this on in 1999.
Crony Congress
The president sings the praises of the middle class but hasn’t changed his tune on the individual mandate to buy Obamacare. Meanwhile he has taken care of big business and the political class by delaying the employer mandate for a year and relieving congress and staff of their obligation to pay for ObamaCare. The WSJ says the law is a “mere suggestion” to this White House. It’s enough to make Greta Van Susteren throw up.
Update:
Michael F. Cannon weighs in with Congress’s ObamaCare Waiver in NRO:
Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased.
Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer. What’s an aristocrat to do?
On July 30, I predicted that, even though he had no authority to do so, President Obama would waive that provision at taxpayers’ expense. On August 1, he ignobly obliged the aristocracy by decreeing we peasants give each member and staffer $5,000 or $11,000, depending on whether they want self-only or family coverage. It’s good to be king.
