Why don't you find a camping spot with a good 3G or 4G singal and use a solar power solution. You can tether your phone by enabling the hotspost feature. You can also charge your devices or even run off AC by picking up a solar panel kit. For a few hundred dollars at Harbor Freight, you can by a two panel solar kit with inverter and a compatible 12V battery to store it. If you plan on hiking in, you can also get a small portable charging system with USB which you can use to charge your phone and a small Windows tablet, which you can make as useful as a laptop with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

I've read and been told several times to avoid extended warranties and insurance, but I personally have found that they generally pay for themselves on big-ticket items like laptops and smart phones. For those that are accident prone or unlucky with electronics, like me, they are a lifesaver. I replace my laptop every 2-3 years. Parts start to fail after about 1.5 years, but base warranties expire after one year. Purchasing the extended warranty allows me to budget my laptop purchases more carefully and save up for less frequent laptop purchases that are an improvement over my previous laptop, rather than paying to replace my current laptop more frequently. The same goes with cell phone insurance. I carry it around with me everywhere I go and sometimes s**t happens. Extended warranties and accident insurance are two insurance products where the companies don't have the luxury of evaluating the risk of individual policies, but instead issue everybody the same price at point of sale. The prices are set in such a way that most people are basically overpaying by enough not only to make the company a healthy profit but also to offset costs incurred by people like myself.

Don't mean to point out the obvious, but TFA states that Obama's now the defendant, not Bush, because Obama's now the president. Requesting a stay only means that he's buying some time. I'd do the same if I found myself in a new job being sued for what my predecessor did.

On the other hand, he can disagree with spying on US citizens but still support immunity for the telecoms. A private company (or individual) should not be punished for cooperating with the government when the government was doing something illegal. Sure, its a Nuremberg defense, but the difference here is that we're talking about a legally ambiguous request, not a heinous immoral act like genocide or DRM.

This has nothing to do with the environment. It is simply a greenwashed incentive for boosting the ailing auto industry. Not that there's anything wrong with that given our economic woes, but it's kinda dishonest. Not only does the production of a new car produce more pollution (as another commenter pointed out), but many older cars are still fuel efficient, especially small ones that are well maintained, while new cars other than hybrids are no more fuel efficient than they were a decade ago. My aging stick-shifting Saturn, for example, still gets around 40 mpg on the highway even though it is now 11 years old. If they were really interested in environmental issues, they would instead propose an investment public transportation and give those who scrap their cars free train/bus passes. In most cities public transport is a joke. There's limited or no rail service and a network of depressing buses. Would I scrap my carbon belcher for a few years of free rides on an expanded and convenient public transit system? Maybe. But is this the point of this bill? Probably not.