Slashdot Mirror
TSA Got Everything It Wanted For Christmas
OverTheGeicoE writes "It looks like Congress' recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May."
Yes. Revolution is an extension of evolution.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Just sayin'.
...Not going to education, science, health care, yadda yadda because that would 'cost too much money'
I thought Barack Obama was a democrat.
dumber people are doing harder things everyday
Between this, Indefinite Detention, and SOPA, I am really struggling to recognize America this month.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
When did the difference between Democrats and Republicans amount to anything more than a distraction? We have a one-party system, except that the one party happens to be somewhat divide on minor issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. People are easily distracted, which is how these crooks get away with so many abuses of power.
Palm trees and 8
Hope and change my friends. Hope and change.
Until we dump the two party monopoly in America, the current direction will not waver regardless of which presidential candidate gets elected.
Well, their budget is larger than that of the National Science Foundation. If that is not obscene, I do not know what is.
But is that because of or in spite of the TSA?
When Napolitano said "the system worked" with regards to the underpants bomber... she was right... but not why she thinks.
Just as with the shoe bomber, both attacks were thwarted not by the TSA, not by attentive passengers... but because of limited options on the part of the terrorist.
In the old days, a terrorist would smuggle on to the plane almost anything as there was virtually no security. Whether it be DB Cooper or Pan Am Flight 103 the sky was the limit.
Know what happened? We started looking for such things. All of the sudden getting a traditional bomb, gun or knife onto the plane got a lot harder... so the bad guys would have to find other means. The problem though (as evidenced by both the shoe and underpants bomber) is that some of their alternatives are not as effective as they’d like... leading to an increased chance of failure.
Don’t get me wrong... the majority of what we face at the airport today is security theater... one upshot of which is we have (theoretically) increased the chances of finding a bomb/knife/gun carrier... forcing them to try to find more difficult ways.
Body scanners are not the answer... profiling and behavioral analysis is.
It’s no wonder El Al hasn’t been hijacked in in 40+ years. They take security seriously and don’t dink around with nonsense like forcing people to take off their shoes or (likely unhealthy) body scanners.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
One party fought for public option health care. They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it, rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down. They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war. They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics. They fought against torture. They fought against teaching creationism in school. And despite your hand-waving dismissal, they fought for the rights of gays and women, who probably don't view themselves as minor issues. And that's just off the top of my head.
Saying the parties are the same is just the excuse of the lazy, trying to rationalize why they don't bother voting.
It's pretty clear that the primary threat the Think Tanks envision is not shoe wearing, scrotum burning terrorist but rather the US population and what's likely to happen when it becomes obvious to every unemployed dolt that we are in a serious depression, that the chance of a multiple massive riots/race war/civil war starting is high and the sheer volume of military weaponry owned by the average citizen makes it a certainty that it will be bloody, very bloody.
From the nut job militias, (Idaho, Utah and elsewhere) massive illegal immigration, record gun sales and ammunition sales, to the fact that the membership of the 18th street gang in L.A. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_Gang) is more than twice that of the police force, and that's just one gang, it's become clear that we are in serious trouble and it won't take much to set off the powder keg.
I hope I'm wrong about this and it's really just some large corporate contract raping the wallets of the American people again but things are looking grim.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
They fought against torture
While failing to fight against the prison-industrial complex, and while fighting for NDAA.
despite your hand-waving dismissal, they fought for the rights of gays and women, who probably don't view themselves as minor issues
Sorry, but gay marriage is a pretty minor issue by comparison with the other problems facing this country. What do you consider to be more important, allowing people to marry members of the same sex, or not being the world leader in imprisoning people? When we stop having law enforcement officers that carry M-16s on a day-to-day basis, maybe gay marriage will move up a notch.
While you were busy cheering for the democrats pulling our troops out of Iraq (after nearly a decade spent in Iraq, and the approval of the democrats for the invasion in the first place), they were busy establishing more surveillance, more law enforcement power, more curtailments of your rights, more hand-outs for large corporations, more union busting policies, more censorship, and more imprisonment -- just like the republicans. It was not a republican president whose drug czar interfered in popular TV show scripts for the purpose of spreading propaganda.
Yeah, I see what you mean about them being different from the republicans. After all, the republicans try appealing to the religious sentiments of middle America, while the democrats only use racial prejudice and fear. Republicans overtly support big business, while the democrats quietly support big business. As someone with liberal leanings, I guess it is clear that I should stop voting third party and start voting for the democrats, right?
Palm trees and 8
That is what I thought. However, recent evidence points to the obvious problem -> people become used to the current level of fear. Which means you are either in a race to continuously pop out a larger and stronger crisis, or you have to pull back for a bit. Right now, people are losing their life savings -> in the end, the people upstairs have ensured that the people downstairs have *nothing* to lose.
And people enjoy comfort only so long as it doesn't chafe their freedoms. So, you get a few years out of the trade before people want to switch back. Why? Because after the trade, the comfort slowly gets cut back. Happens every time. The thinking of the people here seems to be one of "I'll have them trade their freedom for comfort, then I'll bolt the door, and take back the comfort. Win! Win! Win!" when reality dictates that removing their comfort, at the point, tends to sober them up. Then you're stuck in the room with someone who is pissed at you, and again, has nothing to lose.
What I see now, going on with the global economy / politics, is something out of a video game -> FF7, to be exact. The {new} people {currently} in charge have decided to control through 'fear,' instead of money, because they think it's cheaper and just as effective. They are obviously too lazy / stupid to have read a history book, to realize how many other people throughout history have attempted the same, succeeded, then were found murdered in their beds. Yes, people will try to kill you whether you are a good or evil person, no, you do not need to provide them with additional reasons to come after you.
I am John Hurt.
No big surprise that you posted this as AC...don't want to claim your own opinions? Revolution is necessary in a large number of situations - generally speaking, when all other avenues have been exhausted. The United States is not - YET - at that point, however (as many) I'm seeing the same trends happening around the world and, let's face it, the United States is not full of leaders. We are not, as you say, "stuck" with what we have. We have had (and continue to have) opportunity to effect positive change. We also have probably the worst case of National Apathy that I've seen in a long time. When people get pissed off ENOUGH, then the Apathy will go away out of necessity. I see this playing out in one of three different ways (there may be more, lists are for goobers): 1) Citizens pull their heads out of their asses, get educated, and start participating in effecting positive change. That needs to happen before: 2) The Government manages to strip the last of our remaining rights away. If #1 doesn't happen, then #2 certainly will. As soon as people wake the fuck up, then we can expect to see: 3) People rebelling against the government that treats them as a consumable to be bought, sold, and abused as They see fit. I can't say that there will or won't be a revolution, but I will say that it's likely to help things more than hinder them (in the long run)
Obama got in by a lot and it was a clear message that was sent; Obama didn't get that message himself but it was quite clear people wanted a big change with their new outsider of a new color with a vague broad message of change.
The biggest obstructionist move EVER in the history of the nation was the response. Ron Paul wouldn't be any different, he couldn't bend over backwards with compromise and get much of anything or become a moderate; both which Obama did and neither of which actually worked. You are not thinking; Ron Paul would get LESS out of them than Obama did. Then as things got worse, incumbents would be punished but its not likely people supporting him would get in; but those with the money to hire marketing to exploit whatever the trends are will -- the most corrupt ones... as we had in 2011.
The problem is getting enough honest ones in office when the process is so controlled to filter those people out.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Probably not but.... most great successes come after lots of failures.
In fact, government will always suck, and we will always need to overthrow them and start again... that is inevitable. However, it doesn't mean that we should stop trying. I like the way that Allen Moore (of V for Vendetta fame) described his view of anarchism:]
About sums it up.... now, lets talk about whats wrong here.
Well, I don't see how the voting system and representation system can evolve anything other than a 2 party system. The effecitvely means a constant 2 party struggle, meaning that no issue can have a third side and everything is broken up. Look at congressional approval. Polls show most people don't believe their rep represents their interests, and the majority of them, don't like the other parties candidates either. Where does that leave people in a 2 party system?
Of course, also with centralization.... it means the interests of 300 million people need to be distilled down into a few hundred people. A few hundred people who can't possibly be experts about everything, and so even with the best of intentions they can be manipulated easily. Its too much concentrated power, and too broken of a voting system.
To fix it from within itself, easily seen to be impossible. The two party lockdown ensures that no serious reformers could ever get power, and if they did, would have to be virtuous enough to vote themselves less power.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
George Orwell was an optimist.
The fact that the people of the United States not only tolerate but encourage chicken little security theatre over respecting their own Constitutional rights is a sad testament to a people who've forgotten who they were before 9/11.
Who've they stopped so far? An underwear bomber whose bomb wouldn't go off. Some guy with a car dealership who was theoretically contacted and working for an unbelievably incompetent and mismanaged foreign nation's security forces.
Yet they didn't stop the homegrown terrorism of that fellow who shot and killed a half dozen people or so recently. They haven't stopped the terrorism of gangs that control entire cities. They haven't leashed the horrors of oxycadone addiction in the general population. People in Iraq are still being blown up by crazed lunatics who fantasize of being rewarded by their God for murder and suicide. The Afghanistan conflict shows no signs of ending soon.
What, precisely, have the American people gained by giving up their right to be protected from unlawful searches and seizures? Even the Nazis only asked for papers at checkpoints; the police can harass you anytime, anywhere in the states to identify yourself and explain why you're where you are, and no one says boo about it.
How sad to see a nation fall prey to the manipulation of those who instill fear and distrust of a vaguely identified "other" to justify their abuses of the rights of the people.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.