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Think about electricity deregulation: the transmission is seperate from the generation, and while everyone has to pay for the transmission (since we don't want overly redundant infrastructure), individuals can choose their generation source.

And we all know how well electricity deregulation worked out for consumers, right?

Why do you dittohead nitwits keep regurgitating that refrain? Libby was a leaker as well and the leaking "campaign" was probably initiated by Libby, though he may not have made the first phone call. Libby was busted for lying about his involvement. Check out the Washington Post's Libby timeline.

It was the CIA who requested the investigation into the leak, not the Democrats on a "witch hunt." And, the only reason Armitage wasn't brought up on charges is the leaker statute is too weakly worded to nail him (something about the act being knowledgeable and intentional).

But, I guess if you don't see it on Faux News, it didn't happen :(

Can you tell us which 7 netblocks they are (were) using, so that we can block them on our firewalls?

All that I could find was the fourth comment to this article, in which a /20 block is mentioned. The article itself was previously linked on Slashdot; it's about a sysadmin who decided to block the RBN's address ranges and was rewarded by a noticable drop in compromised customer boxes.

Wife Alison, and has a daughter, Margo, who is veternarian in Denver. According to this.

She works at

High Plains Veterinary Relief Services
Margot Kerr Vahrenwald, DVM
8*37 E 25th Place
Denver, CO 80238
720-2*4-2747

Here's a picture, and a story which names her daughters Savannah and Caitlin, her two cats Bart and Mish-Mish, and her dog, Tobermory.

According to a story in the Washington Post on home sales:

LEXINGTON ST. N., 2523-Christopher S. Vahrenwald and Margot K. Kerr to Mary Ellen Dudar, $575,621.

So, we do a quick search for him and what do you know, their Property tax record. Looks like she owns her office.

Chris, the husband, appears to be an insurance agent, accident, health and life, according to the Colorado Division of Insurance.

I could go on. Of course, this only uses free information, from Google. And I'm only posting this because of your comment and the fact that he said specifically what he said. All in all, his daughter looks like a pretty nice person so&!*&^^#$*&@#*(HD*&! NO CARRIER

Yeah, aircraft carriers were a big innovation in WW2, but now they're steel death-traps for the sailors inside.

from 2004, Paul Van Riper trashes US fleet using zergrush tactics (lots of small crappy boats)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28161-2002Aug16

more recently china sub surfaces undetected behind a US carrier within torpedo range.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20061113-121539-3317r.htm

and this latest demonstration? the Chinese are showing their first wasn't a fluke!

How many small boats and planes do you think China would have along its coasts? Combined with a sub attack, they could easilly decimate the US fleet if it tried to defend Taiwan, for example.

Unless you're Valerie Plame Wilson.

The feds have always spied secretly on phone calls, but the incident where Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card went to John Ashcroft's hospital bed to get him to sign off on the spying program points to something much worse. You can either believe a) John Ashcroft is a principled civil libertarian and doesn't believe in spying on Americans or b) the spying program under Bush was so egregiously illegal that it far exceeded any secret spying that we may have conducted previously.

This blog, Security Fix, in the washington post has additional info based on an "exclusive interview",
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/security_pro_admits_to_hijacki.html?nav=rss_blog

From the article: The poor guy saw the light in early January 2006.

"Ever since then, I've been more trying to create a positive thing and trying to prevent crap like this happening," he said. "I kind of saw the error of my ways and decided I'd had enough."

from the story:....Schiefer said he and his friends spread the bot programs mainly over AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). By using malicious "spreader" programs such as Niteaim and AIM Exploiter, Schiefer and his co-conspirators spammed out messages inviting recipients to click on a link. Anyone who took the bait had a "Trojan horse" program downloaded to their machine, an invader that then tried to fetch the malicious bot program." Read more at this link here.

The article left out presidential candidate Ron Paul's botnet. It's huge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/04/AR2007110400026.html

From yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html?sub=AR

Maybe you should check the news about our failures more often. I hope it doesn't break your heart but things appear to be looking better over there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401245_pf.html
  and
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48001
  along with various reports of the violence at an all time low since the war seems to say that your not going to be smirking for a while. I'm sorry that our men and women dieing is such a joy for you. But I am gload that your not seeing as much joy now.

I think you need to read the Washington Post multi part story on Dick Cheney a month or two ago. He and his aide David Addington have in fact been largely behind most of the sinister things that have happened since 9/11 especially the sanctioning of torture, secret prisons, rendition and wide spread spying on Americans.

You forget Dick Cheney was originally tasked to select a VP for Bush. He quickly deduced George W. was a clueless, easily manipulated tool and he saw his dream come true. He knew he couldn't get elected President especially with his heart condition, but he could be the most power VP in history, and have most of the power of the President without being President, so he picked himself to be VP. When elected he proceeded to install his closest allies at key spots all through the executive branch. He has in fact been running a shadow government. People like Colin Powell tried to stop some of his excesses but Cheney completely out maneuvered everyone who tried to stop him and since he had his allies all over the executive branch, and he knew how to manipulate Bush, he won every round. In particular Rumsfeld and Cheney are best buddies from when they worked together under Nixon and Ford.

Several people who left the Justice Department have spelled it out that David Addington, Cheney's right hand man, was the one that instituted torture as an authorized interrogation technique, defended it against every opponent including people in the DOJ who knew it was illegal and immoral, and has managed to preserve waterboarding as an approved technique to this day. Every time anyone has tried to restore sanity and ban torture Cheney and Addington have out maneuvered them and retained torture as American policy. John Yoo is the other reprehensible low life of a legal academic that helped Cheney's office build the rationalization that torture was acceptable.

Normally VP's are completely impotent figureheads but thanks mostly to the feeble mindedness and naivety of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney is probably the most powerful VP in American history and is the sinister force behind almost everything bad that has been done in the last 7 years.

I realize there is almost no chance you could successfully impeach Cheney but there is probably no one who deserves it more for shredding our Constitution and destroying what little goodwill America had in the world. The crap Clinton got impeached for is insignificant compared to the high crimes Dick Cheney has perpetrated using 9/11 as an excuse.

China has stated publicly as long ago as 2005 that they wanted to move away from the USD. Here's one source from January 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010901042_pf.html

Sure, they can't do it too quickly without hurting themselves - but if they do it right, they can end up owning a huge chunk of the US. Flood the market with USD, and when the banks crash, buy them.

>"It's erroneous to believe that China would willingly walk away as the US economy tanked... that is, until their domestic market makes our market seem like a drop in the bucket. I give it at least three generations, probably more, until the Chinese middle class has developed enough."

Read this: http://www2.goldmansachs.com/insight/research/reports/99.pdf

Your 3 generations is actually less than 1 generation. By 2039, the US economy will be smaller than China. India will be right behind the US. Also, the report goes on to say that they expect other curencies to appreciate by up to 300% against the USD - a polite way of saying that the dollar is expected to shrink in value by 2/3. This was BEFORE the current financial crisis.

Nasty stuff.

a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and one of George Bush's allies on the Democratic side, facilitating the war in Iraq, authorizing the use of force by the president in Iraq.

It is illegal for peasants to leave their village without the headmaster's Ok (he is the one issuing them passports), and for all others to leave the country.

Those suspected of subversion are tried by secret courts -- either for the actual subversion, or (in the later stages of the Cold War) for "drug dealing", "gun possession", or homosexuality.

It is illegal to own "xerox" machines and other "publishing" equipment.

Cars are small, unreliable, polluting, expensive, but you can't get them anyway. Same is true of electronics and most other manufactured things.

Patently false -- the government is seeking access to one particular method of communication -- unencrypted e-mails. Whether they get it or not, you are a fool, if you expected privacy of that to begin with...

Sprint has invested heavily in 2.5 GHz spectrum, with 85% coverage of U.S. households. Predicted speeds are 2-4 Mbp/s down and 1 Mbps up. Sprint's partnership with Google was announced in July. Quote: " '[T]his is not a cellular model,' said Atish Gude, Sprint's senior vice president for mobile broadband operations." At about the same time, Sprint announced a partnership with Clearwire, the other big WiMax spectrum-holder.

This could really put competitive pressure on telcos, especially if applications development leads to truly useful products. (Instead of silly little widgets.) Who wants a phone that can do less but costs more?

http://theyellowpages.com/index.php vs.http://www.yellowpages.com/?From=Branding_ypbrnd_yellowpages vs. http://yellowpages.msn.com/
vs. http://www.yellow.com/ vs. http://www.yp.com/ vs. http://www.authoryellowpages.com/ vs. http://yellowpages.washingtonpost.com/
vs. http://www.yellowpages.ca/ vs. http://www.musicyellowpages.com/ vs......

Oh hell do a google and check it out for your self.

The OP is perhaps mystified because he is expressing an opinion from 2005 as shown here. Clearly mobile is where the money is, as Steve Jobs can tell you. Their English compatibles page is not too exciting but take a look at NTT DoCoMo's lineup (Japanese). DoCoMo sells advanced phones in Japan with Napster built in. Actually, the brand seems on that page to be "Napster x Tower Records" which will make you either gleeful or sick.. like the RIAA is selling Napster or vice versa. Phones providing unlimited songs it seems are made by several manufacturers (list).

There are two more data points to note.

1. The monthly flat fee format is very popular at least in Japan. In particular, ring tones are a big business, but also all kinds of other media like games, weather reports, and what looks compelling to me is NaviTime which tells you the combination of train and other transportation to get you to your destination in the shortest time. Flat fees though are usually I think 300 yen per month though (for a subscription to downloadable Java games from a game manufacturer). Perhaps you can get more money if bundled when you buy the phone.

2. The HSDPA high speed data network rollout is marketed to people as the way to deliver songs to your phone. Personally I wanted to go to the Internet at high speed but it turns out (at least until sometime in the future) that this is only within the carrier's network, perhaps only to registered sites. So a Napster-like unlimited service is very useful for HSDPA rollout especially for carriers (all of them) who just want to stuff things down your throat and could care less about connecting you the rest of the world.

I should note two things: it may be possible to get out of the network but you will go broke, and also the docomo person told me they might come out with a pcmcia card or some such that could do it. Anyway I'm waiting for the model supposed to come out this month or so that can also do roaming (World Wind service) in the U.S. (the last country to be added it seems).

What is so confusing is that a for a group of people who depend so much on science are willing to let it all go just so the trains run on time.

Someone has gone power crazy, I'm glad this is being drawn attention to.

Clinton was the one who kept vetoing Congresses' budget.

And Bush has kept vetoing funding bills that contained troop withdrawal provisions. Congress should have stood firm and not given him one without such provisions.

Bush would say "troops daily are not getting the supplies they need to fight, because the Democrats shut down the government." And he would be more or less right, and he would win.

"Win" in what sense? If Congress stands firm and denies him funding for the war and for his little domestic Big Brother operations, he has no choice. Congress gets its way. America wins when we stop wasting our blood and treasure over there and we reign in the madness of King George; Iraq wins when the people get their way and the occupation ends.

(Does Iraq then fall apart? Probably. Blame for that lies with the British Empire who put together such an unstable structure in the first place. The nation of Iraq was doomed from the start; the best we can hope for now is to put the area under an international team of peacekeepers and let a partition work itself out with as little violence as possible.)

If by "win" you mean "score political points", if Congressional leaders are more worried about poll numbers than saving lives, fuck 'em. Fiat justitia, et ruat caelum. But I can think of two possible political responses:

1. "Mr. President, we've sent you bill after bill to fund our heroic troops, yadda yadda yadda, red white and blue apple pie. But you've vetoed each and every one. Mr. President, why do you hate our troops?"
2. "Mr. President, the Congress has stepped up to take responsibility. We erred when we believed your fabrications and authorized you to send troops to Iraq. Your job as commander in chief is to lead the troops in battle - but it's our job to decide which battles. You lied to get us to send troops into Iraq, then screwed the pooch and left it to us to clean up afterward. Fine. We are revoking your authorization. We will fund only military operations with the goal of bringing our heroic troops home after their quick victory over Saddam's forces, yadda yadda yadda, red white and blue apple pie. The American people will not give you a dollar for anything else. If you refuse, you will be stranding the troops over there without funding to fight. Only someone who hates the troops would veto this proposal to fund the operations to bring them home. You don't hate the troops, do you, Mr. President?"

Of course, either would require principled and courageous leadership from the Democrats. Har de har har.

and whenever the leftists win a bigger government vote

Oh, I just read this one. They've been to Cuba, a state sponsor of terror. No wonder they're on the list. Never mind that I hear Cuban cigars are perfectly legal in Canada.

To be criminally rehabilitated, they would have to do a huge amount of paperwork and state that they were no longer going to commit the "crimes" they were convicted of.

It looks like these ladies like being arrested, and I think the convictions are coming by default when they just pay the fine. It doesn't sound like they've done anything particularly dangerous.

I wouldn't be surprised if an investigation up the bureaucratic tree finds that it was deliberate retaliation from the Bush administration, and I'd like to see what the muckraking press turns up.

She is a member of the Rodina block, which was a political party created by the Kremlin and which was eventually merged into a larger party called "Just Russia". The leader of the Rodina block has advocated restricting the operation of human-rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russa.

Narochnitskaya herself has opposed the Orange Revolution (a.k.a. the democratization movement) in the Ukraine.

Worst of all, the Rodina party has fueled racist xenophobic violence in Russia. According to a report in 2004 by the "The Globe and Mail", "According to official estimates, 20,000 people in Moscow alone now belong to skinhead organizations or other extremist groups, a 30-per-cent increase from five years ago. Among their favourite targets are Jews -- dozens of street signs last year were painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti -- and those from the Caucasus region on Russia's southern flank, a historic hatred that has grown deeper through a decade of bloody war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya."

The report further states that when an African student sought help from the Russian police to protect him from violent skinheads, a Russian police officer said, "Why are you here, Mr. Nigger? We don't have any bananas here."

She is a member of the Rodina block, which was a political party created by the Kremlin and which was eventually merged into a larger party called "Just Russia". The leader of the Rodina block has advocated restricting the operation of human-rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russa.

Narochnitskaya herself has opposed the Orange Revolution (a.k.a. the democratization movement) in the Ukraine.

Worst of all, the Rodina party has fueled racist xenophobic violence in Russia. According to a report in 2004 by the "The Globe and Mail", "According to official estimates, 20,000 people in Moscow alone now belong to skinhead organizations or other extremist groups, a 30-per-cent increase from five years ago. Among their favourite targets are Jews -- dozens of street signs last year were painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti -- and those from the Caucasus region on Russia's southern flank, a historic hatred that has grown deeper through a decade of bloody war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya."

The report further states that when an African student sought help from the Russian police to protect him from violent skinheads, a Russian police officer said, "Why are you here, Mr. Nigger? We don't have any bananas here."

She is a member of the Rodina block, which was a political party created by the Kremlin and which was eventually merged into a larger party called "Just Russia". The leader of the Rodina block has advocated restricting the operation of human-rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russa.

Narochnitskaya herself has opposed the Orange Revolution (a.k.a. the democratization movement) in the Ukraine.

Worst of all, the Rodina party has fueled racist xenophobic violence in Russia. According to a report in 2004 by the "The Globe and Mail", "According to official estimates, 20,000 people in Moscow alone now belong to skinhead organizations or other extremist groups, a 30-per-cent increase from five years ago. Among their favourite targets are Jews -- dozens of street signs last year were painted with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti -- and those from the Caucasus region on Russia's southern flank, a historic hatred that has grown deeper through a decade of bloody war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya."

The report further states that when an African student sought help from the Russian police to protect him from violent skinheads, a Russian police officer said, "Why are you here, Mr. Nigger? We don't have any bananas here."

The "Washington Post" recently published a chilling story about "police psychiatry" in Russia. Powerful thugs in the government (including the police) and in commercial businesses bribe judges and doctors to declare that a mentally healthy person is mentally incompetent. Then, the "justice" (in a very loose sense of the word) system will imprison the victim in a mental institution. There, the doctors proceed to "treat" the victim with beatings and injections of psychotic substances.

The article by the "Washington Post" mentions that Larissa Arap, a human-rights activist, was one such victim. She had written a damning article about the horrible state of psychiatric wards in Russia. In response, psychiatrists and judges -- under orders from the Kremlin -- imprisoned her in a psychiatric ward. She was subjected to 6 weeks of beatings and injections with an unknown psychotic substance. After numerous letters pleading for her life from Gary Kasparov and other human-rights activits, the Kremlin finally released her.

What is most disturbing about police psychiatry is that it is practiced not only by the Kremlin. This "tool" is also used by ordinary Russians who want to rid themselves of people whom they dislike.

Slashdot should create a new topic category for Russia. It deserves its own topic category for story submissions; the horrors in today's Russia should be an active topic of discussion (condemnation?) for any Westerner who has an iota of compassion. This article by the "Washington Post" should scare any Westerner.

My impression is that Stewart and Colbert are slightly liberal (both are self-described Democrats; Stewart says he is probably "more of a socialist or an independent" and Colbert "admits to being a Democrat".) I don't think they necessarily believe that the majority of Americans are moderates, but rather that the majority is more intelligent than the politicians make them out to be. That is, they want politicians to be direct and honest, and not hide behind stupid photo ops or make blatant lies. I think they also want the Republicans to stop preaching their "conservative values" and the Democrats to stop compromising on things like the war (i.e., move left).

The way the USPTO is run is the cause for so much drama. A few weeks ago Slashdot reported that employees at the patent office are overworked and underpaid with unreasonable quotas. It's an open secret that the patent and trademark office has a high turnover rate from being overworked and underappreciated for the role they fulfill for the government and inventors. Some companies and investors take advantage of this and gamble that prior art among other criteria will be overlooked because an examiner simply wants to get the job done, get to the next application and collect his paycheck.

oops, pretty much doesn't change the situation.

A system of government that promotes extreme nationalism, repression, anticommunism, and is ruled by a dictator.

Do we get the significance of that? The list is of names, not individuals. Remember Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy's little problem with the list?. Or how about this vicious 4 year old terrorist?

God help you if your name is John Smith, but it's probably even worse if your name is Mohammed or a variant of it. Oh, wait a second; most Islamic men's legal birth name is Mohammed.

If you want to fly without hinderance, you should probably just go ahead and change your legal name to your social security number, as it's the only way you're likely to get a unique one.

I was (still am) irritated that companies in the west quite frequently make money by selling arms to dictatorships that use those arms to stay in power against the wishes of the people who live under their rule. Companies like BAe Systems make huge profits by selling to countries like Indonesia who have an appalling human rights record. I know you can always make the argument that if we don't someone else will but that still doesn't make it any less morally wrong.

I am especially against schemes like the Export Credit Guarantee Department which underwrite these sales so that if the people in said country manage to oust the dictator from power before payment has been made then British taxpayers money is used to pay the bill and then the cost (plus interest) is added to the countries national debt.

In this manner the people who get rid of the dictator end up paying for the weapons that were used to suppress them. I think that if a western company is willing to do business with a country that is on the brink of collapse it should do so at its own risk.

One example is various companies supplying Saddam Hussein with arms (and the Falluja 2 chemical weapons plant) shortly before he invaded Kuwait.

Here are some links:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/040.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,908426,00.html

Although these links only mention British involvement President Reagan was also a supporter of Saddam when he was fighting Iran so American companies were also involved. Here is an interesting photo of Saddam and Reagan shaking hands, not that it proves anything by itself:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Here are some other random links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DC123DF936A35751C0A963958260
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml

McVeigh served in the US Military and was awarded the the Bronze Star during his service in the Gulf War. He went wacko after he left the Military.

The US should increase Military spending and should concentrate on bulking up air power because after all the caterwauling over Iraq, the next war will be a bomb fest.

That's a pretty narrow view on life. Parents are generally the ones who can least afford to pony up extra taxes to solely fund the schools. If parents cannot afford to pay for schools, would you want to live where there are lots of uneducated youth with nothing to do?

As for the other parts of your ill considered rant, property owners generally DO pay for fire protection through property taxes, which get passed down to the renters. Roads are funded chiefly through gasoline taxes (43 cents per gallon in my state).

While I subscribe to a lot of the Libertarian ideas, this is where we part ways.

From the Washington Post (and a little less subtle than the NYT):

"Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning."

Earlier 'research' was conducted by a Rick Nevin. This 'scientist' also stated:

"Rick Nevin examined the association between blood lead levels in U.S. children and IQ changes over several decades. He concluded that "long-term trends in population exposure to gasoline lead were... remarkably consistent with subsequent changes in violent crime and unwed pregnancy," and that paint and gasoline lead levels correlated with changes in murder rates. Improvements in children's IQ scores over several decades, as measured by the Cognitive Abilities Test, also showed a strong correlation wi ith declining blood lead levels."

http://www.crimetimes.org/00c/w00cp4.htm

Now who would have imagined?

CC.

This dude claims that the precipitous drop in crime in New York City is not entirely attributable to Rudy Giuliani, but may actually be due to NYC's decades-long efforts to eliminate lead exposure among children. Apparently he has been studying this topic for some time, and has found identical correlation between lead exposure and criminality in studies from nine different countries.

Or you could try doing a little Hammer Time at Comcast while you're there.

"A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction."

75 year old takes a hammer to Comcast.

Fast forward to Sept. 20, when Security Fix took its second snapshot. In that analysis, IronPort found approximately 55,000 distinct Storm-infected systems being used to spam and spread the worm. While far smaller in size, this group of Storm-infected machines was spread over a much more diverse set of networks. Whereas in the first measurement 60 percent of the senders resided on just 10 networks, this second cross-section of Storm showed that the top 10 networks accounted for just 29 percent of the spam. What's more, there was relatively little overlap in the Internet addresses of both the spamming and Storm hosting machines from each sample days.

That number has remained somewhat constant. According to Secure Science Corp., which has been closely tracking the Storm worm outbreak, as of 7 a.m. ET, Oct. 1 there were roughly 53,000 Storm-infected PCs either sending spam or acting as Web hosts to spread the worm.

Story here

Virtually every document, video, audio track, or what not can claim some sort of copyright, including those you may make yourself, so the goal here is overreaching and thus unworkable. It makes as much sense as trying to legislate, say, the second law of thermodynamics.

The real solution, as many have slowly come to realize, is to revise copyright law to adapt it to the 21st century. In particular, "fair use" should be elevated from a mere defense against claims of copyright infringement to a codified right, so that that the big media companies don't waste their time issuing take-down threats to grandmothers whose video of a grandchild happens to have someones' music playing in the background (washington post)

Lawsuits claiming copyright infringement should focus on (or be limited to) those cases in which monetary loss can be proved, not merely hypothesized.

The poster's may not have been verbatim charges against Monsanto, but read here, here, here, here, here and here. And if that's not enough, add this and this.

Let's not forget Terminator Seeds, Agent Orange and Bovine Growth Hormone. Sure, it could all be hyperbolic, paranoid, general left-wing nutiness, but I think there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

Is there a system where you need to provide ID that you bought the tickets?