Shots Fired At US Capitol

skade88 writes with a report that "The United States Capitol has been put on lockdown after shots were fired. Reports indicate a policeman was injured." From the story: "The FBI was responding to the unconfirmed reports of shots, and a helicopter landed in front of the Capitol. A message from the Capitol Police ordered anyone in a House office to 'shelter in place.' 'Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows,' the message said." Doubtless more to come on this; watch this space for updates. Update: 10/03 19:08 GMT by T : ABC News reports that the shots followed an attempt to ram the White House gates; the police subsequently shot and killed the driver. Other than that the driver was a woman, the reports adds little detail. Update: 10/03 19:19 GMT by T : Reuters' U.S. Politics Live feed is currently collating many reports from the scene. Of note: the lockdown itself was brief, and has been lifted.

Comments

Zombies.

[adolf]

TSIA.

Re:Zombies.

[Garridan]

Nope, just the lamest attempt at an armed revolution, ever.

Re:Zombies.

[cayenne8]

Don't these idiots know the US Federal Govt is shut down...no one is at home, right...?

Re:Zombies.

[ebno-10db]

You think congress would furlough itself, or at least go without pay until other federal employees start getting paid again? Get real.

Re:Zombies.

[tippe]

Maybe she knew that and literally thought that nobody was home and that she could get away with a bit of looting...

Can't blame her. I imagine that the pres must have a pretty nice TV in there...

Re:Zombies.

[Frellac]

Gotta be Holographic TV with a super computer in the basement.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

An armed revolution committed by an unarmed woman with a child in the car? RTFA, doesn't pass the smell test.

Re:Zombies.

[anagama]

Suicide more likely.

Re:Zombies.

[phantomfive]

They've declared themselves essential and thus continue to get paid.

Also, they refuse to go with health insurance provided by ACA (obamacare), it isn't good enough to satisfy them. Really.

Also, they get automatic raises every year, but I think most people are aware of that.

Re:Zombies.

[Curunir_wolf]

Also, they get automatic raises every year, but I think most people are aware of that.

Well that's necessary because of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which states:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Of course, the slimy lawyers in Congress saw the loophole in this populist amendment right away: just pass a law making raises automatic, and once it's in effect they get raises forever.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine.

But the refusal to use ACA it a structural problem. The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons. It's bad enough piling on law after law faster than anyone can keep up with what's legal, but when it all doesn't work out acceptably, the right answer is to change the law until you find it acceptable. Once the rulers start saying the rules don't apply to them, or their friends and donors (but I repeat myself), with a waiver here and selective enforcement there, all hope is lost.

I'd almost call that feudalism, except in feudalism tradition demanded the noble class provide a lot for the serfs - not a good deal for the serfs, but not entirely one way. We don't have that spirit today, so if we allow a ruling class to form that's above the law that applies to the commoners, it will end badly indeed.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe she knew that and literally thought that nobody was home and that she could get away with a bit of looting...

Can't blame her. I imagine that the pres must have a pretty nice TV in there...

Nah, he just pirates everything to his tablet like the rest of us.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe she knew that and literally thought that nobody was home and that she could get away with a bit of looting...

Can't blame her. I imagine that the pres must have a pretty nice TV in there...

Yeah, it's pretty good. Unfortunately it only gets video feeds from NSA cameras. Oh look, that dude is taking a massive dump!

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Language barrier.... Arabs get some things wrong in the translation....

Re:Zombies.

[Obfuscant]

Well that's necessary because of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which states:

That amendment doesn't make automatic pay raises necessary.

Re:Zombies.

[jergantic]

The President lives in the White House, not the Capitol building.

Anyway, the gunman should've known that they'd need to get elected or register as a lobbyist before they could get away with looting the federal government. There's a process!

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Congress doesn't have any specific exemption in the ACA; that's just this weird right-wing meme that's going around.

Since every member of congress has employer-provided health insurance, they don't need to use the exchanges and don't have to pay any taxes for not having insurance, but that applies to everyone with employer-provided health insurance.

Re:Zombies.

[LordLimecat]

How, exactly, would the body that needs to reach an agreement to open government, go on furlough until government reopens?

How would that work?

Re:Zombies.

[Obfuscant]

I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine.

The more they get paid, the easier they are to bribe. Money becomes less of a thought, they don't see the problem with getting a trivial sum from someone, it isn't helping them much.

But it also makes them easier to bribe because they get used to the pay and realize if they can curry favor with rich interests while they are in congress they can cash in later in life. "I'll glady vote your way today for $5000 up front and a promise of a no-show boardroom job in four years."

Re:Zombies.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Don't these idiots know the US Federal Govt is shut down...no one is at home, right...?

The woman was a communist agent, and on her part, the shots were vodka shots, so you needn't be so surprised about that.

Re:Zombies.

[adolf]

It does if you want to give yourself a raise without having anyone be able to say "No, stop that."

Re:Zombies.

[Garridan]

LAAAAME

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine."

Well, first off I agree with the other poster who said it makes them not care. But I will go further: pay that is too high (and cannot be revoked) makes them also not care what other people make.

The salaries of Senators and Representatives should be tied to the median incomes of everybody in the United States. Note that is the median income, not the mean, because a relatively few, very rich people skew the mean by a long way. (The other common method of averaging, the mode, is ridiculous in this context and need not be considered.)

That will give them an actual incentive to see that the income of everyday Americans stays at a decent level. And it should also be in dollars adjusted for REAL (not the current, bogus, weasel method of calculating inflation that the government currently uses). That would remove much of the incentive to fudge the figures by inflating the dollar... as they now do.

"The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons."

Agreed. They should be bound by ALL the same laws as other citizens. No special privileges. The latter, yet again, just gives them motive to not care much about everybody else.

Re:Zombies.

[fizzer06]

"The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe."
It hasn't worked out that way. All that money and power attracts the worst types of people. Too much is never enough for them.

Re:Zombies.

[Obfuscant]

It does if you want to give yourself a raise without having anyone be able to say "No, stop that."

Anyone today can say "no, stop that". The congress could tomorrow vote to rescind the automatic pay raises; that would be a meaningful "no, stop that". The amendment says nothing about automatic pay raises, nor does it make them necessary.

An honest congress could vote every so often to say "after the next election for each seat, the person holding that seat will receive a raise of X". That's allowed by the amendment. Thus, QED, automatic is not necessary.

What makes automatic pay raises necessary is not that amendment, but the political suicide that would accompany any vote to raise pay. Anyone who voted to raise their pay would have it used in the next election against them. As it stands, since the congressional leadership won't allow the a bill to rescind it, nobody can be blamed if they don't vote to cancel automatic raises when there was no vote held on the matter.

Re:Zombies.

[dcherryholmes]

I don't have to use the exchanges either. I have pretty top-shelf insurance through my employer, via Blue Cross Blue Shield. I think you're being led by the nose.

Re:Zombies.

[Rene S. Hollan]

Wrong.

Employees can not use employer insurance subsidies to purchase Obamacare, only insurance through their employer. The exemption in question specifically permits members of congress to do just that: use their employer's (that is us, via our tax dollars), insurance subsidy to purchase Obamacare.

They could have at least tried to obscure this with a commensurate (taxable) pay increase, but as so bold as to not even both with the faintest attempt to hide their corruption.

Re:Zombies.

[Valdrax]

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Of course, the slimy lawyers in Congress saw the loophole in this populist amendment right away: just pass a law making raises automatic, and once it's in effect they get raises forever.

You do realize that all this means is that any automatic raise had to wait until the next election after it was passed. It can be removed as easily, but that would just have to wait until the next election to take effect.

It doesn't mean that every time they get a raise, the counter resets on when it could be repealed.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or she was trying to navigate to the nearby super market with her iphone.

Re:Zombies.

[cold fjord]

Note that is the median income, not the mean, because a relatively few, very rich people skew the mean by a long way

So make it a trimmed mean. Drop the top and bottom 2.5% and calculate from there.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a citation to show that "they aren't using ACA?" What does it mean to "use ACA", anyway?

I hope you aren't talking about this: http://thedailybanter.com/2013/10/that-thing-about-congress-being-exempted-from-obamacare-huge-whopper-lie/

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

:The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine.

By that theory.. Criminals are not bad. They're just underpaid...

Re:Zombies.

[khallow]

The more they get paid, the easier they are to bribe.

I agree with the original poster here. The first reason is that as many have observed, money has declining utility. If you don't have a cent to your name then finding $10 is a big deal. It means meals or a place to stay for a day or two. If you have a million dollars, it might not even be worth your while to pick it up.

Second, it increases the downside to getting caught doing something illegal. You can lose that nice income and pension.

There are other factors like the likelihood of getting caught and punished in a meaningful way, which I'd consider more important than how much they're getting paid.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are suggesting the same kind of scheme used for compensation for executes - a scheme that is by all accounts an unambiguous disaster for everyone except shot-term stock flippers. By the time you've raised the funds and following to get into high-level politics, the salary for the job really isn't the point. There are much easier ways to make money.

Re:Zombies.

[PopeRatzo]

Employees can not use employer insurance subsidies to purchase Obamacare, only insurance through their employer. The exemption in question specifically permits members of congress to do just that: use their employer's (that is us, via our tax dollars), insurance subsidy to purchase Obamacare.

Do you know that this issue, the requirement that congress people and staffers have to seek insurance on their own through the public exchanges, was put into the bill by the Republican Senator Grassley, who meant it as a "poison pill". To his chagrin, the House let it stand and now they're blaming the President.

It is just a right-wing meme that there is some "exemption" for congress. They get insurance the same way we do, except they are subsidized, just as they were before Obamacare was passed.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you let their income be at the median, they should not be getting any expenses or special perks including retirement package.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been? The ruling class has been here the whole time. Take some future-ivy-league-attending trust-funder vs. some mcjob-slaving and/or welfare-having person's kid as examples. How many more times over does wealth and affluence get the rich kid out of the exact same legal trouble that will forever shadow the poor kid? Futhermore, until they have realistically equal chances of success, then there is really no equality. By that, I mean putting in the same amount of effort. In fact, we'd all be better off if everyone started at the same place, which, I think, would be truly libertarian. None of this starting with 499/500 laps then bitching/laughing about people who start with 0/500 laps.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you have mean and median reversed. The Mean is what most people understand from the word 'average', and would benefit most from a healthy middle class.

Re:Zombies.

[plurgid]

you guys have got to be kidding or you've got to be really disconnected from reality.
almost *every single* member of congress is already *at least* a millionaire. No shit:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/01/new-congress-new-and-more-wealth.html

and it's not like this is even a new thing. It's been this way a LOOONG time.
So if you honestly think that the salary these d-bags are pulling is anything more than tip money for the golf caddy to these guys you're living in a fantasy land.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious how much closer a trimmed mean, using your proposed heuristic, is to the median.

Re:Zombies.

[geekoid]

Since they are still working, why shouldn't they get paid? If they weren't working, how could they vote to end it?

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's actually lots of other methods of averaging. You're using mean to refer to the arithmetic mean. You could construct a cogent argument for a harmonic mean, which would likely come to a much lower value than the median.

Re:Zombies.

[sootman]

> The other common method of averaging, the mode, is
> ridiculous in this context and need not be considered.

Au contraire -- the mode (most common value) is EXACTLY what we should use: because it'd be minimum wage! :-)

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

Did you know that the average congressional staffer gets a 15x payraise when he moves into the private sector? Do you believe that pay is not for work done while a staffer?

The Japanese had an institutional problem with corruption of officials themselves that worked the same way, widespread enough that it has a name: amakudari ("descent from heaven").

You can't do much to change the total compensation of elected officials - what you can change is the share that doesn't have to come from corruption.

Re:Zombies.

[snadrus]

In Rome they never fed the military enough, and they trained in cities, so they inevitably stole from people or went survivalist.
I'm most interested in a pay level that generates the best response for the public, which would logically be high.

Re: Zombies.

[Badblackdog]

No gun+no man= no gunman It was actually an unarmed woman, a "caroman". Just so we are all on the same page.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe.

They know that most Americans these days are fat, pathetic cowards so they'll take the bribes either way. What the fuck are you cowards going to do about it?

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

In CS terms, the shutdown is a loop and congress is the exit condition. If they furloughed themselves, we'd be in an infinite loop.

Since they haven't furloughed themselves, the government is only deadlocked (the Senate is waiting for the House to behave like rational human beings and the House is waiting for the Senate to cave to their extortion).

Re:Zombies.

[TapeCutter]

The more they get paid, the easier they are to bribe. Money becomes less of a thought, they don't see the problem with getting a trivial sum from someone, it isn't helping them much.

Mate, read the logic in what you wrote - how the hell do you bribe someone with something you say they don't want? Having said that I actually agree that most politicians don't care about money, they care about power. Money is a powerful tool but political power trumps it.

Re:Zombies.

[phantomfive]

They were just fine until the mid 90s when they passed the law to give themselves automatic pay raises.

Re:Zombies.

[ATMAvatar]

Only the first automatic raise had to wait. The amendment only states that the law had to wait until the next election to go into effect. It is in effect now. Subsequent raises merely follow the law which is already in effect.

Congress could pass a law which states that their salaries double every time they vote on a bill, and while that law could not take effect until November 2014, Congressmen would see their raises after every bill after that without running afoul of the amendment. It's completely against the spirit of the amendment, of course, but it should be pretty clear by now that the spirit of a law means next to nothing

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't care about the pay stuff. The more they get paid, the harder they are to bribe. That's fine.

The problem is that that reasoning is incredibly flawed. First of all we aren't talking about minimum wage here, taking the bribe is done out of greed, not to improve living conditions. Then there is no reasonable salary that wouldn't be peanuts to any company that could have an interest in bribing someone in a ruling position.

Essentially an increased salary does not decrease how possible it is to bribe someone, it only raises the bar marginally but not to a level that matters.
On the other hand a high salary tends to attract greedy people, the kind of persons that can be bribed.

It all boils down to honesty. A dishonest person can always be bribed regardless of salary. A honest person can usually not be bought.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

The few of us that know better just need to convince everyone else to stop voting for rich lawyers. Right now that's a serious uphill battle, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

If government didn't regulate every little detail in business, there would be less reason to bribe them. The more that power is centralized in DC, the more money will flow there.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's how Congress's health care plan has worked since Nixon, only it was on a separate exchange.

Re: Zombies.

[rtb61]

It seems all shots fired were by law enforcement and after the car chase and the woman was boxed in and couldn't escape she was executed on the spot for ummm, traffic violations, ohh and for being shot at. Next time law enforcement trigger happy freaks might keep track of who was doing the shooting prior to public execution by firing squad.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

The real story is probably more like: "hysterical police murder mommy in car with infant after she goes the wrong way".

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there's dirty little tricks like this. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130416/08344222725/congress-quickly-quietly-rolls-back-insider-trading-rules-itself.shtml

Re:Zombies.

[drkim]

You think congress would furlough itself, or at least go without pay until other federal employees start getting paid again? Get real.

When this happened, Congress was ordered to lock down, and shelter in place.

The Democrats refused to budge.

The Republicans offered to move, only if anyone shot would NOT be given any health care.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am surpised it took three days!

Re: Zombies.

[Mabhatter]

That was at the END of the Empire when the rich didn't want to pay taxes for the Emperor's army. That was just after the Ceasars when the Generals essentially "owned" their armies with other private interests... Until the Emperor's government stopped that practice for obvious reasons.

Re: Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one was home even when gov wasn't shutdown. We're just a bunch of slaves to our big brother who lives off our backs.

Re:Zombies.

[jandersen]

The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons

It's a beautiful dream, but a dream is all it is. When the outcome of a legal case depends on how much money you have to pay for a lawyer, then you have, in effect, different laws for different classes. And since money and other wealth can be inherited, you actually have a mechanism for inheriting class independently of your personal merits. Just take the Bush family as an example: would GWB have become president of the US, if he had been the son of a factory worker?

Even the potential for upward mobility in American society is not unique - it has always been possible for a clever person to work their way up through the ranks; Roman and Greek slaves could win their freedom and achieve high titles, churls (a very low class in feudal society) could become nobles etc - there are many examples throughout history. What really makes a class society is when the useless children of the upper classes end up as rulers despite their distinct lack of ability. Does that not sound like the US today?

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"So make it a trimmed mean. Drop the top and bottom 2.5% and calculate from there."

Nah. Wouldn't work. The next year they'd amend it to 1.5%. then 1%. Then 0.5%...

Can't give 'em the opportunity. Stick it to the median and keep it there.

Having said that, I don't think they should be PAID the median. But a rigidly-fixed multiple of the median. Say, 2 x the median. I like that figure because it would keep everybody perpetually pissed off.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"You guys have got to be kidding or you've got to be really disconnected from reality. almost *every single* member of congress is already *at least* a millionaire. No shit:"

I think you have misunderstood.

The idea is, they get paid that much and THAT'S ALL.

They can still profit from their own private business, true. But how did they get that business in the first place? Brown-nosing politicians?

If you take the big money out of politics, and keep it out, you will soon see people who are actually there to do some good, rather than a great big circle-jerk.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"Au contraire -- the mode (most common value) is EXACTLY what we should use: because it'd be minimum wage! :-)"

Well, what I meant was that it should be a FIXED -- i.e., not easily increased -- MULTIPLE of the median.

Start paying them like peons and most of the candidates will be whackos. You have to be realistic.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"You can't do much to change the total compensation of elected officials - what you can change is the share that doesn't have to come from corruption."

Yes, you can do something, *IF* you can get the legislation passed. Granted, that is sometimes a rather large hurdle. But in principle, it's actually very simple.

First off -- and related to both the former and latter parts of your sentence -- you can limit contributions from ANY entity other than a voting-eligible citizen, to ZERO. Both campaign and other contributions. Half the problem is solved right there. Make it a crime for both parties involved, and give it teeth.

Second, limit the TOTAL political contributions from any of those individual voters, annually, to a reasonable percentage -- say, maybe 10% or even much less -- of the MEDIAN U.S. annual income. That solves most of the problem of rich people having more influence. Poor people can easily outgun them with a little bit of effort and sacrifice. It may not be ideal, but it's WORLDS better, and far more FAIR, than what we have now.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole damn point of the USA is that we don't have a ruling class who gets to live by a different set of rules than the peons.

LOL

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"I'm most interested in a pay level that generates the best response for the public, which would logically be high."

Yes, of course. I didn't state that their pay should be the median. My point was that it should be tied to the median. So if the median income goes up, so does theirs, and vice versa.

Of course, this is somewhat predicated upon the idea that they aren't getting outrageous amounts of lobbying money, which would destroy the whole concept.

I therefore propose that lobbying be abolished.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also, they get automatic raises every year, but I think most people are aware of that."

They should be paid by non-tax-deductible donations from their electorate. Bam!

Re:Zombies.

[Wildclaw]

So make it a trimmed mean

I think that is exactly what he suggested. Median is a trimmed mean.

Re:Zombies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe she was just wasted and had been arrested for drunk driving before and was afraid of going to prison this time.

Re:Zombies.

[sootman]

> Start paying them like peons and most of the candidates will be whackos.

And that would be worse than what we currently have because... ?

(Only half-kidding. :-) )

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

Well, I meant it wouldn't be an improvement, so why bother? :)

More than half not kidding.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

I see you didn't actually read my post. Here's how it works:

1. A corporation gives no money to an elected official while he is in office. No siree, that would be corruption.

2. The elected official mysteriously does each and every thing the corporation wants.

3. The elected official, having served his term and retired, now takes a job with his corporate overlords paying $10 million a year (or whatever). He's not an elected official any more, you see, so no corruption!

This is not hypothetical! Call it "descent from heaven" or call it "Chris Dodd", it's a tried and true system.

Anyhow, it's already illegal to give money directly to elected officials, and limiting donation to election campaigns in the way you describe pretty much destroys the first amendment.

Would you limit the ability of those who own a newspaper press from editorializing in favor of their favorite official/candidate? The NYT would be 4 pages long!

Would you limit the ability of someone who doesn't own newspaper press from buying ads rather than buying the entire company? Is freedom of the press only for the very wealthy?

Would you limit the freedom of people to peacefully assemble and jointly contribute money to buy ads in a newspaper? Is the freedom of the press only for those well off enough to buy a full page ad?

Would you limit the ability of this peaceful assembly of people to ask the candidate for ad copy to run, rather than just making stuff up that accidently harms the guy they're trying to help?

Do you see there's no where you can draw the line without destroying first amendment rights? This hatred of "Ebil Corporations Scary Scary" is misplaced and frankly reflects not having thought deeply about this stuff.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

I'm not sure anything but technology affects the purchasing power of the median income much, and the less labor-centric production is, the stronger that effect will be.

Lobbying money of course goes to campaign funds and not the pockets of the congresscritters, unless existing laws are being broken.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"I see you didn't actually read my post."

I did actually read your post. I was replying only to the part I quoted. If I had been replying to the other parts, I would have quoted them.

I know how "the system" you describe works.

"Anyhow, it's already illegal to give money directly to elected officials, and limiting donation to election campaigns in the way you describe pretty much destroys the first amendment."

It's not illegal to contribute to campaigns and party coffers. Those are the kinds of contributions I was referring to. And limiting the allowed amounts does not destroy the First Amendment. You are still allowed to contribute to any candidate(s) you want. And it's been done before. What's bizarre and destructive is this notion of "corporate free speech" put forth by the Supreme Court. Corporations are not citizens, and they do not have rights. The people in them do, but that is a very different thing. The Court essentially contradicted itself, because if corporations actually had constitutional rights, much of the regulation currently applied to them would be unconstitutional.

"Would you limit the ability of those who own a newspaper press from editorializing in favor of their favorite official/candidate? The NYT would be 4 pages long!"

Of course not. But while political contributions might be considered "speech", they are not the same kind of speech as an editorial in the newspaper. But even free speech is not absolute. Lines are drawn. You cannot, for example, editorialize about assassinating the President without breaking Federal law. Other limits to speech are recognized by the courts. My suggestion would just be acknowledging that allowing unlimited campaign contributions actually does societal harm. Because, after all, it does. You have acknowledged that yourself.

"Would you limit the ability of someone who doesn't own newspaper press from buying ads rather than buying the entire company? Is freedom of the press only for the very wealthy?"

Again, of course not. This is a ridiculous argument has has somewhere between very little and zero to do with what I was suggesting.

"Would you limit the freedom of people to peacefully assemble and jointly contribute money to buy ads in a newspaper? Is the freedom of the press only for those well off enough to buy a full page ad?"

No, as long as that group and the ads they buy are actually representing people who voluntarily contributed. That part is very important.

"Would you limit the ability of this peaceful assembly of people to ask the candidate for ad copy to run, rather than just making stuff up that accidently harms the guy they're trying to help?"

See the previous paragraph.

"Do you see there's no where you can draw the line without destroying first amendment rights? This hatred of "Ebil Corporations Scary Scary" is misplaced and frankly reflects not having thought deeply about this stuff."

I see nothing of the sort.

Corporations do not REPRESENT the people who make up the corporation. Therefore, contributions made by corporations, which are ultimately derived from the joint efforts of the employees of that corporation, are not making contributions made voluntarily by citizens, nor are the views of the corporations necessarily the views of the individuals in that corporation. It is not representative of the individuals. It is corporate power-mongering, plain and simple.

I do not claim that corporations in general are evil. On the other hand, some of them definitely are. Your attempt to equate corporations with voluntary organizations of people who are of like mind on an issue is a straw-man argument. It's simply not valid. They are two very different things.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"I'm not sure anything but technology affects the purchasing power of the median income much"

I am. Government spending, taxation, monetary policy, etc. all affect the median income. I fail to see how you do not recognize that. After all, we are right now, today, climbing out of a terrible recession that was largely caused by government regulation (or lack thereof). And we are right now starting to feel the real ill effects of government-influenced (Fed) monetary policy. Have you looked at your grocery bill lately? Commodities like food are usually the first things to go up when inflation hits.

Lobbying money mostly goes to LOBBYISTS.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

You're talking income in dollars. I'm talking purchasing power of that income.

The economy as a whole is going to make about as many TVs, houses, cars, and so on as people need. Sure, that can be screwed up by truly excessive government intervention, and by investment bubbles, but either has to get extreme before it matters. And of course people these days mostly focus on conspicuous consumption, not subsistence, and obviously the median income will never buy the sort of things that impress one's neighbor with one's success.

I spend a lot of time worrying what the Fed will do to my investments, but none at all worrying about how I'll buy the basics. Even if the dollar becomes worthless, my employer will pay me in some form that people selling the basics will accept - some sort of barter-intermediary will be around. Local government is really important to the basic functioning of society, but distant central government just isn't.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

"Even if the dollar becomes worthless, my employer will pay me in some form that people selling the basics will accept - some sort of barter-intermediary will be around."

It's happened before, even here, and the people it happened to would have laughed at your reasoning. If they weren't too hungry to laugh.

The consensus (among non-"Keynesian"... which pretty much means most non-Government) economists is that government monetary policy led directly to the crash of '29, and that FDR's subsequent monetary policy prolonged the depression for 10 years longer than it might otherwise have lasted. Which -- hint, hint -- is exactly the kind of inflationary, interventionist policy Obama has been following.

FDR's own Treasury Secretary thought he was nuts... and history pretty much agrees.

But to get back to the main point: it HAS happened before, it WAS bad, and "modern" economics isn't going to prevent it. On the contrary: they are making the very same mistakes that were made 80+ years ago.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

I share your beliefs on the economy in general, but I think you may be oversimplifying, unless you're predicting world-wide currency collapse, which I guess isn't completely far-fetched (credit default swaps are integral to modern banking, but simply aren't backed by any real ability to pay those "insurance claims" if TSHTF, and that systemic fault could bring down banking in the western world for long enough to be a disaster IMO).

I think it far more likely we'll get Carteresque inflation once the economy gets going in this business cycle, which will ease the strain of the existing debt, coupled with rampant cheating on the COLA for government programs, which will ease the strain there. The interest burden will carve a huge hole out of medicare/SS/pension payments, which will be quite unpleasant for anyone retired with no savings, but perhaps charity will help. I know I'm setting aside savings to help out my parents when those programs fall apart.

But I was more talking about the notion of "raising the median income" as often trumpeted by the Left. You simply can't raise the purchasing power of the average family above what any reasonably efficient economy delivers - ignore all the currency, the actual cars and TVs and such per family are a matter of manufacturing capacity/efficiency, not income distribution. Growth in that regard comes from technological progress, not economic games.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

By "Carteresque" I presume you mean "stagflation", which (maybe preaching to the choir?) Keynesians denied was even possible under their "scientific" projections... until it actually happened and lasted for years. (In fact it was not even the Keynesians, with all their "scientific" theory, who figured out a somewhat plausible mechanism for stagflation to fit the Philips curve... it was Milton Friedman, who was rather rabidly anti-Keynes.)

But it just goes to show you that just because you can reduce a theory to a nice "scientific" curve on a chart, the worth of your theory is still only how well it can predict... and Keynesians have historically scored near zero in that regard.

"But I was more talking about the notion of "raising the median income" as often trumpeted by the Left. You simply can't raise the purchasing power of the average family above what any reasonably efficient economy delivers - ignore all the currency, the actual cars and TVs and such per family are a matter of manufacturing capacity/efficiency, not income distribution. Growth in that regard comes from technological progress, not economic games."

I agree. I guess I should have clarified that when I wrote "median income", I meant "median income, adjusted for inflation". Because that compensates for buying power. *IF*, that is, you use real figures for inflation, not government's customary lie of "2%". Or -- Keynesians, please hide your eyes -- the mild deflation that would be an indication of an actually healthy economy.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

You've been preaching to the quire for a while now. While it's fun to blame Carter or OPEC for the double-digit inflation of the 70s, the fact is that was mostly the gold shock. It still amazes me that the financial markets continued acting like the dollar was on the gold standard for so long after FDR, but they did - I guess "community based reality" has always been central to the finance guys. I expect similar double-digit inflation when the last, biggest bubble bursts - the sovereign debt bubble. I don't expect the collapse of civilization - the federal government just isn't that important.

I can't see that deflation could ever be healthy, however - Japan presents decades of evidence to the contrary, and I don't see any real world evidence demonstrating that "healthy" view.

Re:Zombies.

[lgw]

Wow, "quire" is actually a word, if you believe my spell-check.

Re:Zombies.

[Jane Q. Public]

" It still amazes me that the financial markets continued acting like the dollar was on the gold standard for so long after FDR, but they did - I guess "community based reality" has always been central to the finance guys."

They did so for a very good reason. While the U.S. was not officially on a Gold Standard internally, the Bretton Woods agreement meant that in regard to international trade, the dollar was still tied to gold. So it didn't change all that much.

But in '71, the U.S. government had been spending too much money for its gold reserves to cover, so Nixon decided to renege on Bretton Woods. The result was the "gold shock" you mentioned... not only did it affect the local markets but for all practical purposes, Nixon defaulted on U.S. debt to other countries. They didn't call it that, but that's what he did. Because by nixing (pun definitely intended) Bretton Woods, Nixon effectively and quite massively devalued the dollar in foreign trade. So if some creditor owned, say, $1M in U.S. debt, it was now worth only $600k. The whole world was pissed off at us, as they rightly should have been. But it wasn't "us" who did it, it was the money-mongers in government who wanted to print more money (inflation).

"I can't see that deflation could ever be healthy, however - Japan presents decades of evidence to the contrary, and I don't see any real world evidence demonstrating that "healthy" view."

Look at the computer and smartphone market. They get better every year, and (per feature) they get much cheaper every year. That's deflation, and that's a HEALTHY market. I did say MILD deflation, though. In a healthy market, goods should get a little bit cheaper over time as technology and other factors make production more efficient.

But now let's look at what inflation does. That is PRICES OF GOODS in dollars (or dollar equivalent, in the earliest years) according to the definitive source of same (cited on the chart). Price is of course the inverse of buying power. Prices for real goods were FLAT from 1665 clear through 1913. There were blips when the government borrowed money during wartime (also marked on the chart). BUT... everything always went back to normal shortly afterward.

UNTIL you get to 1913 (the year the Fed was created). There is a clearly visible war blip, but it doesn't go back down. The chart starts to slope up. Then the slope changes again in 1934, when the Gold Standard was abolished (internally). The slope gets steeper. Internal inflation started hitting a bit harder and then in '71 Nixon canned Bretton Wood. And look at the damned thing now. I've had people look at that and say, "so what?" But if you want to chart buying power rather than price, all you have to do is flip the chart vertically. That tends to get more reaction.

Re:Zombies.

[adolf]

An honest congress

For some reason, upon reading your comment, I immediately found those three words and just kept laughing.

Whatever you have to say that is based on a concept of "an honest congress" must also be similarly hysterical.

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
- John Adams

Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

[insert stereotypical mentally ill socialist]

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^ stereotypical retarded libertarian

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

^^^ [insert stereotypical republican/democrat whine]

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

i'm not a lib i'm the sort that likes to watch everything burn.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

careful not to cut yourself on that edge, kid. where will you get your fedoras when the world is burning?

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

i don't wear fedoras, pop my collar, or drive green.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

surprised people took this as serious as they did...but i guess its the internet.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with fedoras?
-Carmen

Re:Angry Citizen?

[brxndxn]

^^^ A bunch of people that allow themselves to be divided by the people that are screwing them

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Frellac]

their associated with hipsters or something corny like that.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[AK Marc]

Aren't those the same thing?

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are an affectation. The modern version of wearing a monocle. Worn by people who worry about ridiculous things like clothing style due to their insecurities and need for acceptance.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[Bigbutt]

Awww, but I like my hats. I have a cowboy hat (Stetson) I bought in DC, two bush type hats (one from the amusement park in Virginia and one from Yellowstone; the crushable types), a fedora I bought for a couple hundred in New York, an artists type hat with a big yellow feather, plus an assortment of baseball hats that I don't wear because I don't like baseball hats.

Being old has its benefits. I don't care what folks think about my hats. I'll wear them anyway :)

[John]

Re:Angry Citizen?

[zieroh]

You had me until I saw your sig. Then I realized you were just another one of them.

Re:Angry Citizen?

[brxndxn]

I would like to know what you mean by that. Do you think it is a fair argument to merely label me?

Re:Angry Citizen?

[zieroh]

You labeled yourself.

So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[UnknownSoldier]

n/t

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the guard has health insurance.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[interkin3tic]

Hopefully double or triple their regular pay, at least. They have to guard assholes who make their jobs more difficult. And they have to defend the assholes against the citizens, the very citizens who voted in such a way that this was going to happen, the very citizens who are now totally outraged that the assholes they elected to congress are acting like assholes.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

They voted in the fashion that their church told them to vote because gay people. Also because abortions! Also because terrists! They didn't realize that was in direct conflict with what most people actually want. They voted because guns! They didn't realize that these people are so pro rich and pro business as to not give a rat's ass about normal people. (We all know you have to be at least pro business enough to keep the economy strong, but these guys are nuts).

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Eunuchswear]

No, the guards are not being paid neither are your brave soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines. They are still required to protect the bums in the house who are still being paid.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[X0563511]

Wrong. Active duty is being paid.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

The military IS being paid.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

As are other essential or outside funded employees. It is against federal law to force people to volunteer their time as employees. If a federal worker is on the job today, he's being paid.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Several federal employees who are on the job today are only getting paid once an appropriation is approved. Until that time there is no paycheck coming. I'm a current federal employee who has been told to report.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yes, because there were so many clear and excellent choices that it is mind boggling that the US citizens didn't pick them! News flash. Getting a vote isn't the same as being able to choose between the douchebag and the hero. In the last decade it was a choice of: Would you like this complete douchebag, or this even bigger douchebag?"

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

The government increased "security" expenditure on the shutdown. I heard that the cost in locking down and patrolling national monuments in DC exceeded the cost of keeping them open but they were shut to prove a point. We are spending more money to be shut down that it would cost to keep running, for at least some things. And we still could hit the debt ceiling and default for the first time ever on the National Debt. Nothing could be better. Once we default on $1, our credit rating will drop and we'll finally be forced to pay off some of it or default on it all. Oh how I wish we'd just default on it all and start over. It's the SS generation that got us into this. And they leave it for us to pay it off for them while paying their SS.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Eunuchswear]

Maybe I'm wrong, but usa.gov says:

Hundreds of thousands of Federal employees including many charged with protecting us from terrorist threats, defending our borders, inspecting our food, and keeping our skies safe will work without pay until the shutdown ends.

Ok, that seems not to include the armed forces, but it does say people are working without pay.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

Several federal employees who are on the job today are only getting paid once an appropriation is approved. Until that time there is no paycheck coming.

You seriously believe there will be no appropriation bill passed?

I get paid on the last working day of the month. If I were to start complaining that I'm not paid to work the other days because I didn't immediately get handed a check at the end of each day, and had to instead depend on a promise to be paid at the end of the month for work I do today, everyone would laugh in my face.

When someone says that they are paid to work, they don't mean there is a small cash dispenser ticking out nickels consistently as they do their job, they mean that they get paid at some point in time. Unless they are a government worker trying to claim that they aren't being paid for having to show up while the shutdown is in progress. Then it's "we're being forced to work for no pay!"

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like this complete douchebag, or this even bigger douchebag?

Ya... but which was which?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[interkin3tic]

There are primaries and third party candidates. If there are congressional seats where law is "Each of two major parties selects a candidate through a secret closed process without voter participation, and those are the only two candidates allowed," then yes, you have a point, but I don't think that's actually the case anywhere.

Voters usually have a lot more than two choices. It's just that the choice they usually make is "Ignore everything but the very last vote, and usually ignore that too." That's a choice. Maybe "...who voted in such a way that this was going to happen" should be changed to "... who did or did not participate in politics in such a way that this was going to happen" would be more fair.

Whatever phrasing you prefer, my point is still that people always get the government they deserve. And that IS true in America right now as well.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

Ok, that seems not to include the armed forces, but it does say people are working without pay.

Then they will have a wonderful lawsuit under labor standards federal law that makes it a crime to force people to volunteer for unpaid employment. Federal employees are very good at knowing they can't be forced to volunteer.

They may not get their regular paycheck on the regular day, depending on when that happens to be, but they can be reasonably sure that the pay is accruing and will be given to them as soon as the checks can be cut. If they get paid at the end of the month and the shutdown ends in ten days, they'll get paid as usual. Nothing different at all. Work thirty days, get paid for all thirty on day thirty. Bi-weekly payrolls may be delayed if the shutdown lasts that long, but they'll still happen.

But putting it as "they're working for no pay!" is a good way to scaremonger and hype the political side of the issue.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[omnichad]

With this standoff, I don't find it hard to believe they might keep this up for over a month - even while destroying the credibility of both sides in the process.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

In the last decade it was a choice of: Would you like this complete douchebag, or this even bigger douchebag?"

You're forgetting about the turd sandwich.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I get paid on the last working day of the month. If I were to start complaining that I'm not paid to work the other days because I didn't immediately get handed a check at the end of each day, and had to instead depend on a promise to be paid at the end of the month for work I do today, everyone would laugh in my face.

If I get told that I'm going to be paid biweekly, and then all of a sudden one payday I'm told "yeaaaaaaaah, your paycheck isn't going out this time, but don't worry, all the money will be there in the next one, unless that one also doesn't happen in which case you'll just get three at once in a month and a half", I'm allowed to be pissed off about that.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

It's the SS generation that got us into this.

And I predicted that the only result of this discussion would be flaming. This is a mild example of what I found later down the page.

It's actually the people who created the "SS generation" that got us into this. "We will take money from your paycheck today and give you money when you retire" made the mess, not the people who say "you took money from me for thirty years and now tell me you don't want to provide the support you promised?"

If you want to give everyone who paid into SS their money back, with interest, ok. If you just want to blame the people who are trying to recover on the promise that was made to them for all their working lives, not so ok. One would be an honest admission that "hey, this Ponzi scheme isn't working out like we hoped it would, we'll make you whole", the other is "tough shit for believing us, we got your money and now we don't care" dishonest.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[omnichad]

You can be opposed to Obamacare and still want socialized medicine. Forcing someone to make a private purchase or pay an exorbitant penalty is a much bigger trampling on rights than just having taxpayer-funded healthcare. It's true that this isn't the majority Republican reason for being opposed. But it's a good reason that a lot of Democrats should have been opposed.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[mrchaotica]

It's inaccurate: those employees are working with deferred pay.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[T.E.D.]

That's actually too generous.

The real issue is that voters don't actually pick their candidates anymore; its the other way around. Every 10 years when the census is done, all the states have to redraw their congressional districts. What happens in most states is that whoever controls the state legislature gets to do the drawing. They get maps and their state's entire voter registration database out, and make a modern computer-aided science of drawing things so that as many districts as possible are packed full of their party's registered voters. Any districts that have to go to the other party are drawn to look like malaria germs so that they scoop up every voter possible from the other party. Ideally those opposition districts will have more voters in them too. The idea is to give voters from the other party as little voice in government as possible.

In other words, nearly every voting district in the country is designed to be a "Democratic" district or a "Republican" district. The only true election happens on primary day, and nobody from the other side of the political spectrum gets a vote. So you end up with a Congress packed full of extremists. Extremist congressmen don't give a damn which party won or lost the last election, because their own seat is safe either way. All they have to worry about is that someone more extreme than them will challenge them in the next primary.

TL;DR: elections don't matter

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Zero__Kelvin]

You have an extremely quaint view of how things work in the real world.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[interkin3tic]

And you have an extremely arrogant, unconvincing retort.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

ACA is surprisingly similar. Force the young and healthy to pay into health insurance so benefits can be paid out to the old and sick.

In the old days, you had kids so you could get farmhands to help out. These days, you had kids so they could pay into a system that can cash out to you. Same difference.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[domatic]

I thought the choice was between a Turd Sandwich or a Giant Douche.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[NatasRevol]

Nothing different at all

You change your pay schedule. By weeks. See if it doesn't fuck with your bills that don't change.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[LordLimecat]

Youre in a country of 300 million. Perhaps the decision to have states with separate laws was a really good idea, if you feel like the federal government isnt representing your needs well. Heres a thought, maybe we could stop making everything a federal issue and the quality of the president wouldnt be so life-and-death?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

You change your pay schedule. By weeks.

No, you don't. You ignored the entire context of the statement "nothing different at all" in a rush to flame.

The entire context was that if you are paid at the end of the month and the shutdown lasts only a couple of weeks, you get paid as you normally do. It's only the 3rd of Oct. If you get paid on the 31st and the shutdown ends on the 20th, you get your paycheck on the 31st. Just as if the shutdown hadn't happened.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[NatasRevol]

Guess what? Most federal employees don't get paid monthly.

http://www.gsa.gov/portal/mediaId/145871/fileName/payroll-calendar-2013

See those 3 red circles every other Wednesday in October?

Yeah, you're wrong.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Zero__Kelvin]

Why didn't I think of it??!!! But why stop there. Instead of having one powerless government trying to manage 50 powerful ones, why not just form 50 different countries! No, that just isn't taking it far enough. Instead of forming 50 different countries, why don't we make each city town and village its own separate country! What could possibly go wrong?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

SS as practiced by most places (other governments and private companies) isn't a Ponzi. We just did it wrong because the SS generation was happy to borrow from their kids who weren't born yet. It isn't SS that''s the problem, but the generation that's now on it. They are the ones that ran up the debt, and SS didn't drive the debt. SS is now, and likely will always be, in the black. It's the rest of the government that's in the red.

It's actually the people who created the "SS generation" that got us into this.

Yes, the voters that are now collecting SS are the ones that did this. The SS generation. Not SS itself, but the generation on SS. They are the ones responsible.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

As are other essential or outside funded employees. It is against federal law to force people to volunteer their time as employees. If a federal worker is on the job today, he's being paid.

WRONG!!!... technically

Exempted employees of the federal government speaking here.

As an exempted employee I am required to show up for work, based on the promise that they will pay me when the shutdown is resolved, but during the shutdown there is no pay. Note: the last shutdown lasted 23 days, would you like to work for a month or more without pay?

Oh and if you were on vacation or sick leave, too bad, you're furloughed, no work/no pay.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[tbannist]

If the makeup of Congress matched the actual votes cast during the last election, this wouldn't be happening. The Democrats got 1.7 million more votes than the Republicans across the country, but because of gerrymandering*, they got 33 fewer seats. Actually, if the Republicans weren't also enforcing an anti-democratic rule that only laws that most of the Repbulican party supports can even be voted on at all, this wouldn't be happening either.

Most americans aren't actually getting the government they voted for, they've been robbed by partisan maneuvers.

* Yes, both parties gerrymander and it should be counted as vote fraud regardless of who's doing it.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[LordLimecat]

You arent aware of the 10th amendment, are you?

But I guess you compensate with your skill in creating strawmen.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Is douchebag really the right adjective for their behavior?

A quick list of recent scandals:
Obama/Biden: kill list, not closing guantanamo bay, many more
You have Romney and Ryan: Romneys tax scandal, Ryans insane economic plan.
McCain/Palin: McCain political positions I'll just point out his support of the Iraq war/ resistence to minimum wage, her lack of experience.
Bush/Cheney Iraq War/torture/etc apparently it's quite a list
Kerry/Edwards Kerry's initial support of the Iraq war, although it can't be stressed enough that it was Bush's group that initiated this war Kerry, having actually been in Vietnam, and part of the antiwar protests afterwards surely was well aware the invasion of Iraq was unjustified (hell I was and I was 15 at the time).

Esteemed recent presidents:
Clinton/Gore Kosovo
Reagan/Bush Iran Contra

All of them have supported changes that did some good too, but these acts are inexcusable.
Looking at the consistency and scope of these scandals its clear, and I think all reasonable people would agree that structural change is needed to our government. Not just the next politician not just another party (its not like dems and GOP weren't third party at one point).

There needs to be some better way of electing representatives than our current two party system. The little I know of other governments suggest politics isn't fundamentally different in other countries, the variance seems more to do with the excessively unequal distribution of wealth in america. Since modern technology seems to have made communication essentially free and practical to anyone in the same culture I suspect alternative voting methods should be more seriously considered, apparently there are many well known already. I think these could (in theory) be applied in business (risky but useful data) or MMO games (much less risky, much less useful data).

If anyone else is interested I found the book "Governing the Firm: Workers' Control in Theory and Practice" to be interesting and very down to earth, it takes an economists approach to evaluating worker controlled vs traditional top down management of firms that have historically existed and essentially concludes they are about the same economically with each type being a bit more practical in certain industries.

Does anyone know of practical ideas that might bring some structural change to government more useful than ramming a car into a reinforced gate?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[geekoid]

It would be more correct to say: The scheduled pay date will be delayed.
They'll get paid.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[tompaulco]

This happened to me where I work right now. Literally on the day that we were supposed to be paid, it was announced that they didn't have the money to pay us, but the would get us paid later that week, or whenever an expected check from a customer came in.Of course, by that day, it was too late to cancel any automatic payments for mortgage, utilities, etc. that were due to occur on that day. They also knew in advance that this could be an issue but decided not to tell anyone because they knew that would damage moral, so they just hoped the check would come in before payday. It didn't. Of course, moral was blown by even more for them not telling anybody that this could happen. The upshot of this was that I literally lost about a hundred dollars due to late fees, NSF fees and interest.
The lesson here is never work for a company unless you are independently wealthy and not actually dependent upon getting a paycheck from them on a timely basis.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Zero__Kelvin]

That's hilarious. You assert that I'm not aware of the Tenth Amendment out of nowhere and then accuse me of creating strawmen. Priceless absurdity!

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like no healthcare; or a stupid healthcare law.

Would you like to pay more overall for healthcare (due to people going to the ER since its free)
Or would you like to pay less overall for healthcare (because most people have been forced to buy it - and at the same time your choices for purchase are actually affordable).

The choice isn't between ACA and a fully subsidized healthcare system.

The choice is between status quo (wilfully inefficient) and the ACA.

ACA trumps the shit you guys have now.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[MBGMorden]

Guess what? Most federal employees don't get paid monthly.

Not only "most Federal employees" but by far most people in the country aren't paid monthly. Seems like virtually everyone is biweekly with some paid weekly and a VERY small minority paid monthly.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

Yeah, you're wrong.

I guess you missed class the day they talked about the use of "if" to create conditional clauses. "If you are paid at the end of the month" is a conditional statement that applies to all the rest of the words.

Now, you've helpfully pointed out that government employees don't appear to be paid at the end of the month. That means the conditional is false (not "wrong") and the rest isn't wrong, it just doesn't apply. But the part where I talked about being paid bi-weekly does. So, if the shutdown ends after a week, the next paycheck comes out just as it normally would.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

The lesson here is never work for a company unless you are independently wealthy and not actually dependent upon getting a paycheck from them on a timely basis.

The alternative lesson is don't give anyone direct access to your checking account so they can't try to take out money you don't have. And a third would be something along the lines of "don't count your chickens before they hatch".

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

SS as practiced by most places (other governments and private companies) isn't a Ponzi.

I'm sorry, I thought you were talking about the US SS system and the people who are in the US drawing SS benefits.

Yes, the voters that are now collecting SS are the ones that did this.

No, the people who created the system did this. That would be FDR and the other liberals in congress. The people didn't vote for the SS system any more than they voted for ACA.

Not SS itself, but the generation on SS. They are the ones responsible.

No. They are the ones who are living on the promises that were made to them about what they would get in exchange for all the money that was taken out of their paychecks before they ever got to touch it. The people who made the promises are the ones who created the Ponzi scheme, the people who are getting SS benefits now are the victims of those lies. Like I said, if you want to give all the people who have paid into SS their money back with interest, then fine. You want to tell those people they should get screwed because they trusted the government and the liberals who created the system, there is a problem.

You'd probably be up in arms if you had gone to K-Mart a year ago and put a nice new television on layaway, paying a little bit every month, only to be told "no TV for you, you leech upon society" when you made the last payment and expected to take the TV home. That's what you want to do to SS.

Demonizing the people stuck in the system for actually getting the benefits they were promised is just insulting and dishonest.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[bmo]

>get owned
>be shown how wrong you are
>argue semantics over logic and facts.

Yeah, you're a tool.

--
BMO

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

The people voted for people who promised the ACA. The people wanted it and voted in a manner that made it happen.

I have a cousin. He's on SS. He never paid in. It's, by definition, not a Ponzi if there are payouts to people who never paid in, right? A Ponzi is where you pay in until you convince the next schmuk to pay in to pay out to you. That could be changed any time. SS could be "privatized" anytime. The problem is nobody could come up with any plan to privatize it, other than ones which would have a very high likelihood of leaving old people staving to death alone in slums. Even if SS were "fully funded" it wouldn't work with regards to the payouts to those that never put in. It was explicitly designed to pay out to people that never put in, and every "private" solution I've seen would never pay out to those that never paid in.

Of course we can't replace it. We don't even know what "it" is. We'd need to reform welfare at the same time if we intend for welfare to cover for those who are paid SS today that never paid in.

I can think of plenty of private plans that would be better (including transition plans), but the politicians prefer to talk about it without doing anything about it. The Republicans had the presidency and both houses in the '80s, right? But no fix then. The Democrats have had chances too since then, and neither did anything about it. That's proof neither wants to fix it. Broken is better. It gives something like abortion to talk about while both parties funnel trillions to friendly corporations. Welfare/SS is the bribe to the poor to prevent a revolt while the 1% triples their holdings.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[rjstanford]

The real issue is that voters don't actually pick their candidates anymore; its the other way around. Every 10 years when the census is done, all the states have to redraw their congressional districts. What happens in most states is that whoever controls the state legislature gets to do the drawing. They get maps and their state's entire voter registration database out, and make a modern computer-aided science of drawing things so that as many districts as possible are packed full of their party's registered voters

While your concern is valid your math is a little odd. When you're drawing the districts you want - as much as possible - to get slight wins everywhere. If you have 45 voters to your opponents 54, and there are 10 9-person districts, you want 9 of them to go 5-4 your way and have the last be 10-0 for your opponent.

"Everyone" used to do this kind of gerrymandering - a bit. It wasn't until the last 10-15 years when the RNC started breaking all the unwritten "gentlemen's agreement" rules (including triggering our current shutdown situation) that it became a massive rights issue instead of simply a "perk" of being an incumbent.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[rjstanford]

Yeah, I can't do math. You get the idea though.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[khallow]

Would you like no healthcare; or a stupid healthcare law.

That isn't the choice. It was between a bad situation and another bad situation where people were forced to do things in a unliberal manner.

Let us keep in mind that none of the options have been "no healthcare". You could always get as much health care as you could pay for. Even now, it's not a choice of health care, but subsidized health insurance. You still have to pay the deductibles which may still be high enough to be a problem for the people who have a problem buying health care.

Would you like to pay more overall [...] Or would you like to pay less ...

Why do people think Obamacare is "pay less"? Someone has to pay for all those subsidies and expanded health insurance coverage. It looks to me like it generates similarly inflationary dynamics as subsidized student loans did for educational costs.

ACA trumps the shit you guys have now.

I don't buy it.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

The people voted for people who promised the ACA.

Somehow I knew you were going to say this. There's two (at least) problems with that statement. First, nobody knew what was in it until the congress voted for it. Remember the catchy slogan supporters came up with (or was it just Pelosi, or Reid?): you won't know what's in it until you vote for it. And even so, the congress critters did not go through a vote cycle with anything close to an ACA bill in the hopper so their constituents could know what they were voting on. In other words, nobody in the mass populace voted for the ACA and they aren't responsible for the mess it is making. Just as nobody in the mass populace voted for SS.

Second, there are an awful lot of Republicans who were elected on the premise that there wouldn't be an ACA no matter what it said. Thus, every Republican who voted to delay the ACA in the current continuing resolution is doing exactly what they were elected to do. Now, you seem to imply that doing what the electorate sent you to do is the right thing when it comes to congresspeople who voted for the black-box ACA, so pot, meet kettle.

It's, by definition, not a Ponzi if there are payouts to people who never paid in, right?

So when you fail to show that the current SS recipients are the people to blame for the existence of SS, switch to debating whether SS is a true Ponzi scheme or not. Yes, a scheme can be a Ponzi scheme for the vast majority of people who are forced to participate even if it is a simple handout for some who didn't pay in. But this doesn't change the fact that the blame for SS rests with the people who created it, and that's not the people who were forced to participate. You'll notice that Congress and the Prez are exempted from that, too.

That could be changed any time. SS could be "privatized" anytime. The problem is nobody could come up with any plan to privatize it, other than ones which would have a very high likelihood of leaving old people staving to death alone in slums.

You're simply fascinating. You claim it could be privatized anytime knowing that doing so would leave people destitute and starving. The destitute part is a pretty good reason why it can't be privatized. Most people with any care for others at all would say that. Where is you compassion, man?

The Republicans had the presidency and both houses in the '80s, right? But no fix then. The Democrats have had chances too since then, and neither did anything about it. That's proof neither wants to fix it. Broken is better.

You can't "fix it" in the way you want without leaving people who were forced to participate with the promise of support in their retirement years destitute, which is deliberately breaking a promise well after the money has been collected. I notice that you didn't pick up on the K-Mart analogy, so either you're ok with being denied the TV after you've paid for it or you're ignoring something that you can't answer.

Welfare/SS is the bribe to the poor to prevent a revolt while the 1% triples their holdings.

Now it's the lame old class envy argument. SS is the payout on the promise that the liberals made to everyone when they created the system. Bribe? Right. Everyone on SS is voting for FDR. Well, you know, there are a lot of people who see welfare as a bribe to vote for the people who want to keep handing out more money despite deficits and repeated debt ceiling increases. But for most people, it isn't a bribe, it is a promise kept for their participation in a Ponzi scheme.

By the way, the anxiety of the youth who are paying in is why it is a Ponzi. They're the next level of participation so the previous participants can get their payout. They want to bail out and leave Grandma eating dog food. Very compassionate.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[IdolizingStewie]

Or, you know, have an emergency fund? I didn't realize there was no middle ground between independently wealthy and paycheck-to-paycheck. I wonder which one that makes me? I could probably go 5 or 6 years before I was unable to pay my bills, but I expect to live for another 60 years.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Khashishi]

Forcing someone to support corporations sounds a lot more like fascism than socialism.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[sjames]

SS is solvent except for having it's funds raided periodically.

If the Rs had balanced the budget the way the Ds did, the national debt would have been paid off in the early 2000s.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

Somehow I knew you were going to say this. There's two (at least) problems with that statement. First, nobody knew what was in it until the congress voted for it.

So what universal health care did you expect, and was this one significantly different?

Second, did Obama get voted out after it was passed? No? Then the people liked it. As much as they liked Bush Jr. starting a way in Iraq.

By the way, the anxiety of the youth who are paying in is why it is a Ponzi. They're the next level of participation so the previous participants can get their payout. They want to bail out and leave Grandma eating dog food. Very compassionate.

No, the youth are trying to cut their losses. They know it's not sustainable forever with the rules imposed on it by Congress. So they want it fixed before they are a burden on everyone else, like the SS collectors are now (who were generally voters, and aren't going to try to improve the system). When the young want to improve the system to help billions of unborn people, they are labeled uncompassionate. It's not paying that's the problem, it's perpetuating the system that's the problem.

You can't "fix it" in the way you want without leaving people who were forced to participate with the promise of support in their retirement years destitute,

Ah yes, the age old, "If I can't think of a way to do it, it must be impossible." It's never been right so far. I'd tell you one of the 1,000,000 ways to do it, but you'd not listen anyway. Fair Tax is one. Make the prebate poverty*2 (not just the taxes on poverty). That'll be a welfare called "guaranteed income", and toyed with elsewhere, though never implemented, that I know of. I don't think it's the best plan, but when you claim it's impossible to eliminate SS without leaving the elderly destitute, one needn't try hard to show you to be an ignorant fool. It doesn't matter if I have a perfect plan, nobody will listen to it, especially you, a troll who thinks he's ok if he only trolls those he disagrees with.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

SS is solvent, but those collecting SS now are the ones that voted in Reagan and showed that treason wins elections (Reagan committed treason in 1980 to beat Carter, giving material aid to our enemy, with the knowledge and aid of Bush, and did so again in 1987, and Bush, provably involved in two acts of treason was not only not impeached, but elected). And Reagan tripled the debt, only to have his VP elected. The message was "we like debt". The Boomers got old, they liked voting in the people that promised them the most at the expense of the Gen-Xers, and blamed the Gen-Xers for being whiners when they found they inherited a country fundamentally broken and deep in debt.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[sjames]

That seems true enough, but doesn't really explain Bush the second.

Given the way he manipulated things to get us in a war, his part of the debt should be declared odious.

Re: So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a putz

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Eunuchswear]

I get paid on the last working day of the month.

And what do you do if you don't get paid on the last working day, your boss mumbling something about "well, I'll pay you when I can get around to it".

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Several federal employees who are on the job today are only getting paid once an appropriation is approved. Until that time there is no paycheck coming. I'm a current federal employee who has been told to report.

So in other words, they ARE being paid (unless the federal government completely collapses, in which case, whether or not they get a bunch of bills backed only by a non-existent government will be the least of their concerns).

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

SS is independent of the deficit/debt... until we borrowed from the SS fund. If we had left that alone, like responsible adults, SS would be covered just fine.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[odigity]

If only people would see how much sense secession makes, rather than auto-responding based on their school programming with such stupidity as "the issue of secession was already decided in 1865" and "so you want to go back to slavery?".

Sigh.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[odigity]

We are spending... we still could hit the debt ceiling... our credit rating will drop... we'll finally be forced to pay off some of it...

You keep saying we. Did you personally borrow and spend that money? Is that *your* debt?

As for paying it off, you're naive if you think it's ever going to be paid off, or that the state even *wants* to pay it off, or could if it wanted to.

And even if they did, who's money do you think they're going to use to do it? Yours, that's who's.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[NatasRevol]

False isn't wrong?

WTF is wrong with you?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[stdarg]

The people who made the promises are the ones who created the Ponzi scheme, the people who are getting SS benefits now are the victims of those lies.

In a broad sense they're not the victims of the lie until and unless SS is reformed in a way that has a net financial harm on them. In other words cutting their promised benefits does not make them victims if they're still getting more than they paid into the system.

And as for the promise.. from day 1 of SS, it was NOT a program that entitled you to or guaranteed a certain benefit, like a savings bond might be construed. It was billed as an insurance program that would help you in retirement. Well no matter how much they cut benefits, if they're still helping you, the promise is kept.

Like I said, if you want to give all the people who have paid into SS their money back with interest, then fine.

This is the best possible outcome for SS but sooooo unlikely to happen unfortunately.

You'd probably be up in arms if you had gone to K-Mart a year ago and put a nice new television on layaway, paying a little bit every month, only to be told "no TV for you, you leech upon society" when you made the last payment and expected to take the TV home. That's what you want to do to SS.

Strawman? Looking over the existing thread, and having personally engaged in many such discussions over the years, people who want to terminate or privatize SS are not saying "Thanks for all the money, now get lost." You are morally entitled to get back most or all that you paid plus interest and I think most people (even anti-SS people) have no problem agreeing with that. (I mean technically a lot of SS money has already been returned to the people since the government takes the SS money and spends it on projects that supposedly benefit us all.. so it's like if you loan someone $10000, then they spend $5000 of it paying for your college, and then you're like "give me back my $10k!")

There are many simple and intuitive ways to end SS, if still painfully either to retirees or youth (some split seems most appropriate), but less painful than it will be if we keep putting it off.

One thing we can do immediately to lay the groundwork is to relabel SS payments as welfare as soon as you get more money than you paid in (plus the interest your money earned in T-bills) so that people understand they did not EARN or PAY for their continued benefits. If the government gave every person a report of how much money they contributed, how much it has earned in investments, and how much has been withdrawn, people would suddenly see that the money isn't unlimited, nor was it stolen by the government or whatever (that's a common theme among people who don't understand the whole "invest in T-bills" thing. And if you have a negative balance, you're on welfare. Simple, and honest.

Just doing that would clear up a lot of misunderstanding about the fiscal nature of the program. I talk to idiots on the internet all the time who tell me they paid into the system and earned their benefits and I point out that the SS tax they paid for much of their career was less than half of the current rate which I've been paying since day 1 of my career. Which of us is REALLY paid in then?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[mcgrew]

Yes, because there were so many clear and excellent choices that it is mind boggling that the US citizens didn't pick them!

In the last Presidential election there were five candidates on enough ballots to win, had the corporate-controled media not convinced you (as evidenced by your comment) that you only had two choices, both of whom are for jailing your friends and relatives who smoke pot, are for insanely long copyright laws, are for insanely high penalties for sharing a half-century old work of art, are for the DMCA... honestly, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent my interests. Why would I vote for a man who wants me in prison?? That's just insane!

If you think "both" candidates are scumbags, vote for someone else. At least you will not have been marked as someone who thinks either Obama or Romney are good candidates. Sure, your candidate will lose, so what? If a vote for a Green or Libertarian is a wasted vote, than all of you who voted for Romney wasted your votes. Have none of you any logic whatever? Stop voting against your own interests and for those who want to fuck you over.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[mcgrew]

The Boomers got old, they liked voting in the people that promised them the most at the expense of the Gen-Xers, and blamed the Gen-Xers for being whiners when they found they inherited a country fundamentally broken and deep in debt.

"The older generation had certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing it on to us," wrote one of them (John F. Carter in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1920), expressing accurately the sentiments of innumerable contemporaries. "They give us this thing, knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow up; and then they are surprised that we don't accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with which they received it, way back in the 'eighties."

-- FL Allen, Only Yesterday (1931)

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

How about the hundreds of quotes about how bad the next generation is, spread over 2000+ years?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

You very selectively edited. "or default on it all". Just default on the entire thing. Walk away from it all. The effect on the economy will be no more or less than paying it off, but instead of paying on it for 100+ years, we can take the entire hit at one time, and then just move on. That's the best option for the 99%, and the worst option for the 1%, so it won't happen. But it's still an option, and one I did mention.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Zero__Kelvin]

In the last Presidential election there were 2 candidates that might win. That being said, I encourage people to vote for a third party candidate all the time, but making them understand why that makes sense is pretty much impossible. In a world populated by smart people their were 5 candidates that might win. We don't live in that world unfortunately.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[ultranova]

With this standoff, I don't find it hard to believe they might keep this up for over a month - even while destroying the credibility of both sides in the process.

Both sides? As always, it's the Republicans playing shenanigans.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[omnichad]

There's no compromise of any kind. It's an outright standoff. There's really no way to blame just one side now.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[ultranova]

Once we default on $1, our credit rating will drop and we'll finally be forced to pay off some of it or default on it all. Oh how I wish we'd just default on it all and start over.

Well, if that happens, at least you don't have to suffer any wiseass remarks about being careful about what you wish for, since you won't be able to afford an Internet connection. Assuming there will be an Internet after the cascade failure is done, of course.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[ultranova]

Second, there are an awful lot of Republicans who were elected on the premise that there wouldn't be an ACA no matter what it said.

And this here sums up perfectly what's wrong with US politics, and increasingly politics elsewhere: it's not about whether something is a good idea, it's about whether it's our idea or the other tribes idea. That would be fine if the debate was over what logo or slogan to use, but policies have a nasty tendency to have effects besides scoring political points.

So when you fail to show that the current SS recipients are the people to blame for the existence of SS, switch to debating whether SS is a true Ponzi scheme or not.

SS is not an investment scheme, so it can't be a Ponzi scheme. It's a pretty standard insurance scheme, where you trade a chance of disaster (too old to work and no money to feed yourself) to periodic predictable payments.

Alternatively, if you will, you can think of SS as a maintenance program: every retiree requires a certain amount of money per month. The total payment is bound by average pay per retiree x the number of retirees, and there's a steady pool of payers, so there's no reason why it couldn't be paid ad infinitum. By contrast, in a Ponzi scheme, the required payouts grow without bound, and the only source of income (new investors) will eventually dry out, so it's doomed to collapse.

Either way, claiming that SS is in any way similar to a Ponzi scheme is an outright lie.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

Ah yes, too big to fail. It's never been true so far, but let's keep using that excuse until we are all slaves again. It's just an excuse for the 1% to continue to extract wealth from the 99% "for their own good".

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

False isn't wrong?

A conditional statement where the initial condition isn't met isn't wrong, the condition is "false". The statement as a whole is quite correct. If you get paid on the last day of the month and the shutdown ends on the 20th, you will see no difference in how you are getting paid. "If you get paid on the last day of the month" is neither right nor wrong since it makes no declarative statement about what the actual conditions are. For the statement to be wrong the rest of the sentence would have to be incorrect when the conditional part is true.

Perhaps a coding example would help?

if( x==5 ) printf( "x is equal to five\n");

If x isn't equal to five, the code is still absolutely correct.

WTF is wrong with you?

I went to school and learned how to read english. What's your excuse?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

So what universal health care did you expect, and was this one significantly different?

Since ACA is not universal health care, it is mandatory health insurance, you've reached a point where no further debate is worth the time. Except to correct one deliberate incorrect statement on your part:

Ah yes, the age old, "If I can't think of a way to do it, it must be impossible."

YOU are the one who claimed that nobody could figure out a way of changing the system without leaving people destitute. I'm simply pointing out that you want the change while knowing that it can't be done without hurting people.

especially you, a troll

You've now been caught in a deliberate misquote, and I'm the troll. Ok.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Obfuscant]

You could always get as much health care as you could pay for.

Actually you can get as much health care as it takes to deal with your critical issues, whether you can pay for it or not. The sign in our local ER is clear: they cannot refuse to treat you because you don't have money.

Once you are out of the ER, that's when ability to pay is an issue.

Someone has to pay for all those subsidies and expanded health insurance coverage.

ACA is supposed to be for people who couldn't buy health insurance. Here is the story of a UCONN law student who was paying $39/month for health insurance who went to the ACA exchange looking for a cheaper plan. He found it: medicaid. He now pays nothing at all for his health insurance, the taxpayers are footing the entire bill. So, while he's paying $39 less a month, we're picking up the tab, and it costs us all more.

And this talks about higher costs for young people overall. So "pay less" is a very localized phenomenon.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trampling on rights?" What rights? I don't see that as a right in the Constitution. You want rights? 10% of Vaseline; now get back in the closet!

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[ultranova]

Ah yes, too big to fail. It's never been true so far, but let's keep using that excuse until we are all slaves again. It's just an excuse for the 1% to continue to extract wealth from the 99% "for their own good".

Any excuse will serve a tyrant. But that doesn't mean the excuse itself is necessarily false. And the US government defaulting on its debts would definitely cause a worldwide cascade failure due to the sheer amount in question.

As for too big to fail in general... the problem is that efficiency requires everything to be leveraged as far as it will go. But that kind of economy is fragile, where any disturbance will cause someone to go bankrupt, and that in turn causes other people to do so, and so on, until you have a cascading crash. Yet no one can choose not to leverage, because then they'll be outcompeted by those who do, and go bankrupt anyway when the general cascade failure occurs. It's a classic tragedy of the commons, and also occurs in non-economic ecosystems - specialization makes you more effective but also more vulnerable. Perhaps we could solve the problem the same way nature does: by introducing constant small-scale grief killing over-leveraged companies and ceasing that when a depression strikes?

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

YOU are the one who claimed that nobody could figure out a way of changing the system without leaving people destitute. I'm simply pointing out that you want the change while knowing that it can't be done without hurting people.

The idiots we elect can't figure out how in a manner that will get them more bribes (donations *wink*). There are piles of practical solutions, but no politically advantageous ones. Because the voters are stupid (including you).

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

Perhaps we could solve the problem the same way nature does: by introducing constant small-scale grief killing over-leveraged companies and ceasing that when a depression strikes?

Yes. The over-leveraged company that needs a killing is the USA. We should have defaulted 10 years ago, but we didn't. Better now than in another 10 years. The world will survive. The US is a shrinking portion of the world economy, and the effects will not be as bad as you think. Much like Iceland was "ordered" to bail out British banks. And didn't. And the lies told about "too big to fail" didn't come true. Life goes on, even if a few billionaires are now merely multi-millionaires. Having to actually wash socks (well, their servants), rather than wearing once and discarding. Oh the horror.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[mcgrew]

Indeed, even as far back as Plato and Socrates, and even before that -- there are some passages in the old testament of the bible bemoaning youth. Geezer cave men were probably bitching about "those damned pussified kids and their newfangled spears; real men use rocks and their bare hands!"

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[AK Marc]

Funny how the political parties are some of the smartest organizations on the planet when it comes to playing the generations against each other (or races against each other, or classes against each other), but can't manage to do their own jobs.

Re:So the guards are still getting paid? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've missed the point. That IS their job now. :/

Funny how different news outlets react

[smooth wombat]

CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and the BBC all have big, front page pictures and caption for this story.

The lone holdout? The Fox tabloid with a small banner above their big story asking the question: Can We Do Without It with graphics for HUD, Ed. Dept, IRS and NASA.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[CajunArson]

So you are saying that Fox is presenting serious news about issues that will actually affect millions of Americans while everyone else is focusing on pushing hyped-up violence to get eyeballs.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how thats a complete lie, and its dead center "breaking news" ( I actually checked), But hey, spout your lies more.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and the BBC all have big, front page pictures and caption for this story.

The lone holdout? The Fox tabloid with a small banner above their big story asking the question: Can We Do Without It with graphics for HUD, Ed. Dept, IRS and NASA.

Homogeneous news bad.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably was not a "complete lie" at 3:03 pm.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and the BBC all have big, front page pictures and caption for this story.

The lone holdout? The Fox tabloid with a small banner above their big story asking the question: Can We Do Without It with graphics for HUD, Ed. Dept, IRS and NASA.

But holy shit, look at the comments on the fox news article:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/03/us-capitol-in-lockdown-reports-shots-fired/

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

The display changed in the last few minutes. Before that it was just a minor text banner.

Sometimes things change. That doesn't make it a lie.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Freshly Exhumed]

Fox Snooze was just waiting for Ted Nugent to get back to them first with what they should say about it.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wandered over to fox and their headline is 'BREAKING NEWS: Shots fired outside US Capitol, injuries reported' ...

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Tailhook]

CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and the BBC all have big, front page pictures and caption for this story.

Do they have a throbbing AR-15 silhouette against a spattered blood background up yet?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[smooth wombat]

I have the screenshot as proof. Or do facts not fit in your world view?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are saying that Fox is presenting serious news about issues that will actually affect millions of Americans. . .

The Fox headline is a classic case for Betteridge's Law. "Serious" news my foot.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[gandhi_2]

I guess Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are faster at getting the marching orders emailed over to CNBC.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

BREAKING STORY: Fox News 5 minutes behind other major outlets in changing website headline. NEWS AT 11 ...

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no you don't. You're not going to trick me into reading Fox News comments.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[h4rr4r]

What else would you expect?

Fox news comments make it really clear who visits that site.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Freshly Exhumed]

While the Dem leadership are in constant contact with their media operatives, Ted Nugent is out ripping open animals with his bare hands and can't be contacted.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I wonder if anyone on here has an original thought in their head? Really? Fawx news again, you liberals on this site are f-ing stupid. I call BS on this story, what was it last time fireworks? Watch how all your beloved news outlets change the story two or three times never with a final explanation.

Liberals are truly retarded people. I bet Obama just farted, that's just as valid.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe I actually used to watch Fox News and vote Republican.

Re: Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

11:05, on fox.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[h4rr4r]

He was too busy crapping his pants to answer.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[NeutronCowboy]

What comments? I also don't see any ads. *Pets his adblock and noscript extensions*

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Freshly Exhumed]

You keep saying that.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[ebno-10db]

Why? Don't you have a sense of humor?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[romco]

So you are saying that Fox is presenting serious news about issues that will actually affect millions of Americans while everyone else is focusing on pushing hyped-up violence to get eyeballs.

FIFY

So you are saying that Fox is presenting propaganda about issues that will actually affect millions of Americans while everyone else is focusing on pushing hyped-up violence to get eyeballs.

slimdown... really?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[someSnarkyBastard]

11:05 for Fox though

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[CanHasDIY]

Giimme 15 minutes.

20 tops.

Sincerely,
Piers Morgan

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not going to get much support around here. These folks are pretty anti-fox, anti conservative, (not to mention anti-common sense). For being a bunch of "smart" nerds they have a propensity for missing things that are blatently obvious to me. I think fox is more balanced than any other news outlet I've seen. Yes, they too have an agenda, but without their viewpoint all we'd have is hard left liberal news.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeahhhhhhhh, especially Fox would neeeeeeever do that. "Fair an balanced (from inside the bobble)"...

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a SCREENSHOT! Irrefutable proof! Couldn't have been beforehand or anything. Guess the big red bar and facts don't fit into your worldview? Fucking troll

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

For being a bunch of "smart" nerds they have a propensity for missing things that are blatently obvious to me.

A lot of things are obvious to a lot of people. For instance, for some paranoid schizophrenics, it's obvious there's a man across the street listening in on his conversations.

I think fox is more balanced than any other news outlet I've seen.

Then it's time to broaden your horizons. Try Al Jazeera English and Christian Science Monitor for starters.

...without their viewpoint all we'd have is hard left liberal news

Piling hard-right viewpoints of top of hard-left is hardly balance, it's just shit being shoveled onto a pile of shit.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[HybridST]

I'm constantly surprised when i check CSM and find neutral, factual stories rather than the partisan propeganda i read in most places. Not what i'd expect-but i still prefer /. and it's user-submitted aggregation of troll-fodder!

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[X0563511]

I don't think it takes humor to voluntarily watch train wrecks.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Talderas]

Once the dust settles it will be amusing to see that all the shots were fired by police.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it cannot make up for the feeling of dread of knowing that people genuinely believe the things that are said there.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[stud9920]

Well, look at what the Fox says http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[green is the enemy]

Hmm.. smells like a troll.. Ignoring a possible threat to the White House or the Capitol is not something a self-respecting news organization would do. This definitely takes priority (for a short time) over the dragged out debate on government spending. Looks like they fixed their front page.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[LordLimecat]

What on earth are you talking about?
MASS PANIC': Car chase from White House to Capitol ends in gunfire

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[istartedi]

Said before and will (sadly) say again:

What kind of sicko does $crime. I respond, "I don't know. What kind of sicko hears about $crime and their first thought is 'call the graphics department and get them to work up a logo for that, ASAP".

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[CrimsonAvenger]

CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and the BBC all have big, front page pictures and caption for this story.

The lone holdout? The Fox tabloid with a small banner above their big story asking the question: Can We Do Without It with graphics for HUD, Ed. Dept, IRS and NASA.

And, with it looking more and more like the police got overexcited and gunned down an unarmed woman, it's looking more and more like Fox was right to not play this as a "big front page pictures and caption for this story"....

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[locopuyo]

Thanks, I always wondered what does the fox say.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[hey!]

Well, I think gunfire on the capitol. grounds *is* a legitimate news story that Americans need to know about. However it's far too early to have an opinion on the events. What bugs me isn't that the event is *covered*, it's that in lieu of facts news outlets spread speculation. There's very little factual information as of yet to report upon.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[tbannist]

What kind of sicko hears about $crime and their first thought is 'call the graphics department and get them to work up a logo for that, ASAP".

That's simple, a marketing executive. Got any other easy ones?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

slimdown... really?

This "Shutdown" is a reduction of about 25-30% in the government's activities. 800,000 out of 3,000,000 employees. No halt in the three most expensive part of the budget (Military, SS, Medicare).

Hardly a "total shutdown" or "destruction" of the government.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[bobcat7677]

Now that is funny. Mod parent up!

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Anonymous Coward]

Was the draft reinstated?

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[robsku]

Yes, they too have an agenda, but without their viewpoint all we'd have is hard left liberal news.

Now that's just funny. ...and kinda sad to be honest. I've yet to see any left-wing politician in power in USA - if there are any they would have to be in 3rd parties. And your people have been largely brainwashed into belief that 3rd parties, for all purposes don't exist.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[Xest]

Because an unarmed woman with a child being gunned down right outside the capitol building isn't newsworthy?

Is this some American thing where because you're used to this sort of over the top gun violence it's non-news? I know in pretty much every other country in the world bar perhaps Iraq, Afghanistan and the like some woman getting gunned down right outside their nations centre of power would be an important headline story.

I'd like to think that's true in the US too, I don't think your country is quite that fucked up yet such that an unarmed woman with a child getting gunned down in your capitol by police isn't headline news.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[robsku]

There can be - Ususally it's called black humor. but when the trains and passengers are "enemies" it's a hilarious triumph. To some.

OT, yes.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[robsku]

I guess the joke is there seems to be zero comments on the subject.

Re:Funny how different news outlets react

[robsku]

"A female terrorist with a small child as hostage tried to ram capitol gates today. We have yet to gain inormation if^H^H how heavily armed the jihadist was."

Yeah, better Fox didn't release this as first page scoop. ;)

SEC Suspicious Package

[chill]

Earlier today two entrances to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in downtown Washington, D.C. were closed due to a "suspicious package".

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[krept]

Was anything more discovered from this? I would assume the incidents are unrelated, and if we don't hear anything about the SEC packages, they were false alarms.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[chill]

My guess is "false alarm". All that was said was "situation all clear" message.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Sounds like someone forgot that the government is shutdown and therefor not a good time to drop off the monthly bribe.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[Anonymous Coward]

We had that happen at city hall where I live once, it turned out to be a box of new some CFL bulbs that some company sent as free samples.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[Talderas]

Many "suspicious packages" are probably just a paper bag that blew off a garbage truck or some kid left their school backpack lying around.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[Anonymous Coward]

Brown envelopes with less cash in them than usual?
Catchpa: circus.

Re:SEC Suspicious Package

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier today two entrances to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in downtown Washington, D.C. were closed due to a "suspicious package".

This sounds dangerously close to being staged. The assholes running the intelligence agencies say "we'll have difficulty keeping the nation safe" then a bunch of stuff goes wrong shortly after it.

You can see it as prescience, or you can see the "we can't keep you safe" as an "it would be a shame if anything bad were to happen if we don't get our money" threat.

Isn't it empty?

[pseudorand]

It's probably just some responsible gun owner assuming that since the government has shut down the capitol should be empty and therefore would be the ideal place for a shooting range since there should be no chance of hitting anyone.

Seriously though, $10 says it's a U.S. citizen unhappy with D.C. dysfunction. The terrorists wouldn't waste their bullets. They're home watching CSPAN with a bowl of popcorn and thinking "Mission Accomplished".

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Frellac]

i wouldn't doubt it.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[interkin3tic]

Ten dollars says you won't find anyone to take you up on that bet.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

With any luck its a coup, I mean, whoever controls the royal seal in the throne room is the king, right?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Newander]

Seriously though, $10 says it's a U.S. citizen unhappy with D.C. dysfunction. The terrorists wouldn't waste their bullets.

A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at the capitol is a terrorist.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[St.Creed]

A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at the capitol is a terrorist.

So you're saying someone who is exercising his or her freedom of expression AND second amendment rights at the same time is a terrorist? You're... un-American!

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Frellac]

I don't approve of how he used his right, but i'll stand over there while he expresses himself.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[cold fjord]

Seriously though, $10 says it's a U.S. citizen unhappy with D.C. dysfunction. The terrorists wouldn't waste their bullets. They're home watching CSPAN with a bowl of popcorn and thinking "Mission Accomplished".

No, the terrorist that was most recently shooting up DC is in prison now. They caught him.

Former Marine reservist pleads guilty in Pentagon shooting incident

Melaku, a 23-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Ethiopia, was arrested June 17 at the cemetery. He had a backpack with four plastic bags each containing 5 pounds of ammonium nitrate, material commonly used in homemade explosives. He also had numerous 9 mm spent shell casings; black paint and a notebook with Arabic statements mentioning al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the "Path to Jihad." ...

Melaku admitted to five shootings with a legally owned handgun at military buildings in Northern Virginia between October 17 and November 2 of 2010. He said he attacked the Pentagon, Marine and Coast Guard recruiting offices and he twice fired at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

They also previously caught the Beltway snipers. There are some interesting things there too. -- The Beltway Snipers' Motives

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CrimsonAvenger]

1) It's a woman.

2) This started with her ramming her car into the White House gate. Then there was the car chase down in the general direction of the Capitol Building.

3) Shots were fired. Doesn't say whether she shot first or the police did. Given the ramming the gate of the White House and the car chase, could have gone either way.

4) She was shot, one police officer was "injured". Not sure whether that means he was shot or not.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Wookact]

I'll take you up on that, so I win your ten dollars which I will use towards the previous bet. Worst case I am out nothing, best case I am up twenty. :D

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Teancum]

A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at the capitol is a terrorist.

That is a real stretch of the definition of a terrorist. A proper definition of a terrorist would more properly be a group of individuals organized in a para-military or military organization with the express purpose to cause a military revolution or achieve some other political objective through the use of military force. Also noting that in almost every case what you call a terrorist is usually acting with the support (especially financial support) of some sovereign government... usually (but not limited to) governments other than the government currently running the territory where the terrorist is operating.

America has sponsored many terrorist groups over the years, and still continues to do so.

A stupid thug committing an ordinary crime is most definitely not a terrorist, and neither is a disgruntled citizen.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Pft. Women drivers. Jeeze.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[cold fjord]

Apparently the police office was injured by the barrier.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[smooth wombat]

You can add to that that she is now dead.

That is what MarketWatch is reporting. I saw elsewhere there was a kid in the car with her but I have not seen corroboration for that point.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[someSnarkyBastard]

They're home watching CSPAN with a bowl of popcorn and thinking "Mission Accomplished".

I see what you did there...

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Antipater]

the terrorist that was most recently shooting up DC is in prison now. They caught him.

Uh, did you forget about the Navy Yard Shooting?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CanHasDIY]

Webster's defines terrorism as, "Using fear and the threat of violence to coerce people into certain behaviors."

Going by the actual definition, there is no terrorist organization larger or more powerful than the U.S. Federal government.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

A stupid thug committing an ordinary crime is most definitely not a terrorist, and neither is a disgruntled citizen.

Are you kidding? At least in Atlanta, bottles of water and dry ice will get you charged and convicted of terrorism.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[cold fjord]

No, he was just mentally ill. I'm unaware of any ideological component to it. I'm open to being informed though. Your point is worth considering.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[bobcat7677]

1. Yes, Preliminary reports are that the suspect is a woman who had a child in the car. 2. "ramming" may have been an embellishment. I heard it described more like she "tried to go through the gate" but security stopped her. 3. There is no confirmation if the "suspect" even had any weapons. From the preliminary reports, it sounds like the shots fired were actually fired by the police to stop the car from getting away. 4. It was just clarified by the capitol police chief that the injured officer was NOT shot but rather struck by a vehicle.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at the capitol is a terrorist.

Angry citizens are terrorists. Disgruntled citizens are traitors. You'll never get a job in the government if you keep confusing the two.

Re: Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a stuck accelerator peddle. Damn Toyota got her killed by a bunch of trigger happy COD guards!

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen no indication that he was a terrorist, just a regular (if delusional) murderer. He had no intent to inspire fear for a political/ideological goal.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CanadianMacFan]

It's only terrorism if the government can benefit from it being called terrorism.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Zero__Kelvin]

" They're home watching CSPAN with a bowl of popcorn and thinking "Mission Re-Accomplished"."

FTFY

Re:Isn't it empty?

[XxtraLarGe]

1) It's a woman.

2) This started with her ramming her car into the White House gate. Then there was the car chase down in the general direction of the Capitol Building.

3) Shots were fired. Doesn't say whether she shot first or the police did. Given the ramming the gate of the White House and the car chase, could have gone either way.

4) She was shot, one police officer was "injured". Not sure whether that means he was shot or not.

I'm sure that it was disheartening to the media that it wasn't a right-wing white male militia type they've been waiting for.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[cold fjord]

By your line of thinking there actually is: the government of the People's Republic of China. You should note that they managed to kill about 65,000,000 people. They actually live up to that sort of reputation even if they have been trying to take the edges off lately (and the reforms may not stick). The US isn't even close to being in the same league.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Antipater]

I don't consider being mentally ill as an acceptable standalone reason for a shooting. There's always a reason, even if the reason is the result of a delusion. For example, the Tucson shooter is clearly mentally ill, but his shooting was motivated by (illness-fueled) anarchism and hatred of Rep. Giffords. We'll never know the true motivation behind the Navy Yard thing, because the guy is dead. But just passing it off as insanity without any direct cause seems like a cop-out.

On the other hand, I do admit that I misread your post before replying to it, and I thought you had said "the person that was most recently shooting..." So, I guess your original point stands.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

The terrorists are too busy following leads they may or may not have made up and knocking down some random citizen's house [or just his door if he's lucky] and shooting his dog to be attacking their own bosses.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

You twits are more obsessed with guns than the gun nuts. Geeeze.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or part of an anti-terrorism organization.
He could be Interpol or something.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Talderas]

I'd take that bet and up the ante that all shots were fired by the police.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[omnichad]

Terrorism is trying to get maximum results with as few people as possible (since you're a small movement, for example). That involves surprise attacks and attacks done to make a point. A marching army is not terrorism. Most of our military tactics here during the Revolutionary War would be considered terrorism today.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Your.Master]

I would say that an act like this is not terrorism if it does not attempt to push a significant agenda. Random violence, even if against politicians, isn't terrorist (which doesn't make it any better). And even if non-random, if the assailant was furloughed and pissed off about not getting paid, that's more a personal revenge-motive than a political motive -- yes, the furlough was political, but if this was a private corporation that put employees on unpaid leave you could imagine something similar. I don't think it's useful to so dilute the term terrorist that it just means "violent criminal".

I don't think we know yet what agenda this person had.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[interkin3tic]

... I really should have limited that to pseudorand.

Well, jokes on you, because I'm going to pay in bitcoins!

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Bartles]

What if it's a federally employed security guard shooting an unarmed woman in front of her child? Is that a terrorist?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[slashmydots]

The only gunshots were police shots, they have now confirmed. The injured officer was not shot, he was injured in the car crash (see reuters for pics, it was REALLY smashed!) and the only shooting target was the suspect driving.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[slashmydots]

Additionally, she may have had a 13 year old girl in the car as well. Also, the police fired on the suspect and she was shot and killed. The injured officer was injured in the car crash.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Bartles]

Don't be silly. The People's Republic of China is a Communist movement. Their intentions are good, and that's the only thing that really matters.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will take him up on the previous bet if you pay me $15... and if we both win, give you $5 back.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Bartles]

It's funny that when the shooter turns out to not be a right-wing, anti-government, tea-partier, we never do find out what their true motivations are.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[someSnarkyBastard]

I'd rather duck and cover while they're "expressing themselves" like that, hate to catch a stray bullet and all

Re:Isn't it empty?

[cold fjord]

Oh, that's right! Silly me.... thanks for the reminder! ;)

Re:Isn't it empty?

[alexo]

4) She was shot, one police officer was "injured". Not sure whether that means he was shot or not.

Probably choked on his doughnut.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Latest word says the shooting was all done by the police, so 3) & 4) should read:

3) Shots were fired by the police. There is no evidence that she was even armed.

4) She was shot & killed, one police officer was injured in a traffic accident.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are just wasting bullets. A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at elected officials on the other hand is a hero.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Obfuscant]

3) Shots were fired by the police. There is no evidence that she was even armed.

3) Shots were fired by police. She was armed with a several thousand pound car that she was using to assault the police and had already injured one.

Unfortunately, we can't prohibit cars, but we certainly can limit the size of the gas tank so that nobody can drive more than a few hundred feet before having to stop for more gas. This will obviously prevent anyone from having more than one gas tank, or otherwise modifying the one installed in the vehicle, but it will prevent honest citizens from ever being able to create a high-speed chase situation. Nobody needs more than 1000 feet worth of gas in their car at any one time.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[AK Marc]

The one confirmed injury I saw listed was the officer hitting a barrier.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Rene S. Hollan]

No.

A terrorist is someone who acts to frighten the public at large, often with the aim to incite political pressure on the government to stop doing whatever it is they do to which the terrorist objects.

A citizen shooting at their government is not a terrorist, but rather a rebel.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

A disgruntled U.S. citizen shooting at the capitol is a terrorist.

Actually I'm pretty sure rebel would be a more apt description.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[ArsonSmith]

We can't allow facts to get in the way of restricting freedom.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CrimsonAvenger]

3) Shots were fired by police. She was armed with a several thousand pound car that she was using to assault the police and had already injured one.

Well, no.

Injured cop did NOT get hit by woman, he ran into something else while chasing woman.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[mrspoonsi]

Here is an image of one of the police cars:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70268000/jpg/_70268976_cpshooting1.jpg

The womans car looks very much undamaged, so possibly that police car crashed into something bigger (lorry)?
If this woman had mental issues (Post Natal?), perhaps shooting her was not the best option (especially as there is a baby in the car). Ok the police would not know that, but this whole terrorism thing has everyone on edge, in the old days, that car would have been blocked in by other cars and the woman removed, or even road spikes deployed to get the tyres. If it was mental issues, she picked the wrong target sadly, it is protected by heavy armed people just itching to bag a terrorist.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Obfuscant]

Injured cop did NOT get hit by woman, he ran into something else while chasing woman.

The Non-SlashDot-News-Network report I have seen says:

She hit a Capitol Police car near the base of Capitol Hill, injuring an officer, ...

In other words, she ran into a police officer with the several thousand pound weapon she was driving. He was in the car so she didn't make direct contact, so technically I guess you are right: she ran into the car, he ran into the inside of his own car. What a pedantic twist. Congratulations.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[CrimsonAvenger]

She hit a Capitol Police car near the base of Capitol Hill, injuring an officer, ...

I've seen other news stories that say the police officer "hit a barrier" with his own car.

As this tale is still evolving (the story is changing from minute to minute), I'll (tentatively) accept your "she ran into his car" as true (at least till tomorrow).

Note that running into a police car is not actually a good excuse for gunning down an unarmed woman.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations! Now that child will grow up to hate America, for a perfectly justified reason.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Obfuscant]

Note that running into a police car is not actually a good excuse for gunning down an unarmed woman.

You have admitted that she was in a car, which is a several thousand pound deadly weapon when used to run people down, and a high speed chase in Washington DC near the Capitol Building is a "get run down" moment waiting to happen for someone.

And, of course, she hadn't just run into a police car, she was continuing to flee. She was a continuing threat to everyone around her, including pedestrians and other drivers. The use of deadly force to stop someone who has used deadly force already and is continuing to do so is quite appropriate. This "unarmed woman" defense kind of ignores the entire situation.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the public ever create the foreign policy that a terrorist objects to? Was that the World Trade Center or a suburban mall? Global financiers or factory rats?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

What militia?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it it sad a lone woman does this and we don't even know why.

This is terrible. And its terrible that the military industrial complex is devouring our nation.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[dave420]

You should read a dictionary. Seriously. Terrorism is the use of, or threat of violence in order to coerce a people into political change. It's a motive, not an action. You can't look at an act and determine whether it is terrorism - you have to look at the motive.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Officially, a terrorist is a _non-state_ actor frightening the public. If a government does it, it's not defined as terrorism. Convenient, eh?

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Agent0013]

So if a gun wasn't used this time, will they try to ban cars then?

This example just shows me that gun violence will never go away. Even if they removed every gun from every citizen and there was no possible way to get one, the police will still have theirs and will be quite willing to use them any time they feel like it. This woman was obviously deranged in some way, but why did they shoot her. She didn't have a gun, they chase and ram into things all the time to capture the criminal. But here they just shot her to end it quickly. Must keep control of the populous so the elite that run the place don't have to hear your complaints!

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Obfuscant]

I've seen other news stories that say the police officer "hit a barrier" with his own car.

The stories in today's paper report that she ran through a barrier leading to the White House, was temporarily stopped by the second set, and hit a Secret Service agent while she was backing out of that impediment. She then continued down the street towards the Capitol where she hit another cop.

This proves exactly my point about why /. is not the right place for this story. Everyone is saying what they think happened, it's all second hand from some other source, and much of it is incorrect. Why not just go to the sources directly? The only reason I can see for not doing that is if you want to be misinformed with as much conjecture and wild supposition as possible.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[Teancum]

Terrorism is trying to get maximum results with as few people as possible (since you're a small movement, for example). That involves surprise attacks and attacks done to make a point. A marching army is not terrorism. Most of our military tactics here during the Revolutionary War would be considered terrorism today.

Your definition as used here could be applied to all military organizations. Very few armies actually "march into battle", and rarely did even at the beginning of the 20th century. Certainly tactics used by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan today (literally, as I type this up) are designed to use as few people as possible.

There is, however, a distinction between a national army out on the battle field and a covert army that isn't wearing uniforms and tries to hide among ordinary civilians to achieve their aims. That is a difference, where such groups really are a bunch of cowards in the end.

I would also disagree with you in terms of what the Continental Army did during the American Revolutionary War would be construed as terrorism. Certainly some of the actions of Nathaniel Greene might be considered properly terrorism (and rather effective I might add), but Washington was fielding soldiers in uniform and even lining them up for battle as most armies did in the 18th Century. Massed gunfire from a few hundred soldiers was absolutely brutal if you could maintain discipline. I certainly don't think the Battle of Yorktown in particular was what could be considered a terrorist action, nor most of the Saratoga campaign.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[omnichad]

I guess I don't know enough history to say most tactics. But stories of plainclothes militia sniping from the trees was the most memorable from history class. Britain likened it to what we call terrorism now.

Terrorist isn't a term I'd apply to any militia. It's their tactics that define them. Using fear and threats and attacking primarily civilians come to mind.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[robsku]

I don't know what dictionary the GP's definition came from, but nevertheless both definitions seem to fit your claim. It's frightening.

Re:Isn't it empty?

[robsku]

And during other witch hunts ordinary people were labeled as witches too.

Re:It's about time.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

CIA employees won't be furloughed. It's only agencies and services that people need or want that get shut down.

If I were a betting man...

[intermodal]

I believe we will see most of the coverage tonight trying to paint the shooter as a supporter of one side or the other on this whole stalemate deal. Fact is, unless he managed to shoot a few legislators, it won't matter anyway who he sides with, since he's obvious nuts.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Joce640k]

I believe we will see most of the coverage tonight trying to paint the shooter as a supporter of one side or the other on this whole stalemate deal. Fact is, unless he managed to shoot a few legislators, it won't matter anyway who he sides with, since he's obvious nuts.

I want to know what'll happen if he's NOT Muslim. How will they spin that story?

Re:If I were a betting man...

[intermodal]

Well if he's not Muslim, he must be a double secret Muslim. Surely you're not unaware of how the propaganda machine works!

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Well considering how irresponsible _all_ the news outlets are, early reports are not to be taken too seriously. But I'm sure folks have already made up their minds about what happened already and had the trial.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Saethan]

I want to know what'll happen if he's NOT Muslim. How will they spin that story?

Because a shooting in DC is not uncommon? The only thing that makes this special is that it's near the capitol.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Tynin]

I believe we will see most of the coverage tonight trying to paint the shooter as a supporter of one side or the other on this whole stalemate deal. Fact is, unless he managed to shoot a few legislators, it won't matter anyway who he sides with, since he's obvious nuts.

The way the story is worded, I'm suspicious that the woman in the car never fired a shot. That the only shots fired were from the police. But that is just speculation.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[intermodal]

It's a distinct possibility.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Tynin]

Looks like it is a little more confirmed now, the shots were from the police. http://live.reuters.com/Event/Politics/91888535

Re:If I were a betting man...

[multisync]

I want to know what'll happen if he's NOT Muslim

Never mind not being a Muslim, what if she's not even a he?

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Antipater]

Remember, Muslims are allowed to lie to infidels! Therefore, every shooter is a Muslim.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[intermodal]

Pardon me if I don't seem surprised.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know what'll happen if he's NOT Muslim. How will they spin that story?

Surely non-muslim violence in public places has happened enough since 2001 that you should know the story by now. Mass shooters who are not Muslim are sick people, generally depressed or mentally disturbed. I expect we'll see the same details emerge here, even though this person seems not to have successfully shot anyone.

quick recap: Muslim shooter = terrorist; non-Muslim shooter = crazy.

Re: If I were a betting man...

[JWW]

Interestingly enough, reports are indicating that the driver/shooter was female. Yet again initial assumptions are wrong this time, but just wrong in a different way.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Perhaps "he" is nuts, but it turns out that "he" doesn't actually have any.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[marcello_dl]

Then a saudi cleric who recently said "women should not drive" will turn the speakers on, and shout in the microphone TOOOOOOOLLLDDYOOOUUUUUUUUU....

Re:If I were a betting man...

[Hemi Roid]

it won't matter anyway who he sides with, since he's obvious nuts.

Nuts with a Voter ID card.

Re:If I were a betting man...

[intermodal]

the nuts who vote the most work in the Capitol Building.

It was firecrackers

[Anonymous Coward]

Some kid was playing with firecrackers he got in neighboring VA. It's all over the local news in Fairfax already.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:It was firecrackers

[Nimey]

Hirez or STFU. Where's the link?

Re:It was firecrackers

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yes. Firecrackers stormed the gates of the White House! Thanks Virginian! You are a credit to your state!

Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, look at people's comments on the fox news article:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/03/us-capitol-in-lockdown-reports-shots-fired/#

Re:Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's bad, you should see the comments on slashdot....oh, wait

Re:Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi, shut up, I'm trying to drive clicks to my employer's site.

Re:Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

"Probably just a middle class mom whose child's cancer treatments were stopped by Obama and his Shutdown"

Yeesh.

Re:Fox news comments

[omnichad]

Maybe the child was a military veteran. Wait - no even the VA hospitals are open during the shutdown.

Re:Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... I think the slashdot redesign would benefit greatly from a Fox News style comments section. I like how every time a new comment is posted it scrolls, so I can't actually ready anything.

Re:Fox news comments

[istartedi]

I like how every time a new comment is posted it scrolls, so I can't actually ready anything.

No. The best part is how I couldn't see them with NotScript. Then when I enabled two domains for scripting, it revealed a couple dozen more domains that wanted to script, and I still couldn't see any comments.

Re:Fox news comments

[khallow]

I like how every time a new comment is posted it scrolls, so I can't actually ready anything.

Yea, that would be a good safety feature.

Re:Fox news comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I expected - well thought out, intelligent debate.

Re:It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

some furloughed CIA assassins who didn't get their weekly heroin allotment are doing us all a favor.

I thought it takes longer than that to come down off the high and go into full-on rage mode.

Government Shutdown

[Anonymous Coward]

Now THAT's what I call a "government shutdown"!

Ths important question is

[Anne_Nonymous]

What color code do we use for this crisis?

Re:Ths important question is

[Freshly Exhumed]

The color code that signifies that all Americans are to be on the lookout for aggrieved ladies trying to ram their cars onto public property. Shoot to kill.

Re:Ths important question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Brown.

What else color is there when the propaganda is that you must shit your pants?

Re:Ths important question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Mauve?

Re:Ths important question is

[VortexCortex]

Considering red means danger, it's the most reddest of red: Infrared.

Re:Ths important question is

[iggymanz]

any color of the "I care" ribbons should be sufficient to trigger such response

Re:Ths important question is

[mjwx]

The color code that signifies that all Americans are to be on the lookout for aggrieved ladies trying to ram their cars onto public property. Shoot to kill.

Fuchsia?

Fuck that, I'm going straight to brown alert.

Only two days of government shutdown ...

[malraid]

... and society is already crumbling. Hope you know how to fish or hunt!

Re:Only two days of government shutdown ...

[mdsolar]

Or count...

Re:Only two days of government shutdown ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's you're conclusion you're suffering some sort of delusion.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, cmon. Is this reddit? Are we supposed to get the CCTV records and look through to try and identify the shooter?

Sure this is front page news... But why on slashdot?

Stuff that matters.

No, FOX is pushing an agenda.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone else is reporting the news.

Re:No, FOX is pushing an agenda.

[Teancum]

What news? That Washington DC has a bunch of criminals (other than members of Congress, their staff, and lobbyists trying to influence all of the above) who shoot up people? It isn't exactly news that Washington DC is also the leading city in America for gun violence.

From all that can be seen, this is just another stupid street punk that just happened to choose a lousy place to have a high speed car chase in what might be a stolen vehicle. Again, besides the sheer location, is this something that even deserves to be called news?

Re:No, FOX is pushing an agenda.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Great point. I think we all know that gunshots that cause a lock down, and women in vehicles storming the gates of the White House is a regular event. Oh wait, I posted that a few weeks too soon, didn't I.

Re:No, FOX is pushing an agenda.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just posted another troll. We get it.

Re:No, FOX is pushing an agenda.

[tompaulco]

Everyone else is reporting the news.

News meaning an agenda that aligns with your agenda.

Unfortunate. How is this tech news?

[sl4shd0rk]

Maybe I'm callous, but unless it's some kind of duck-and-run emergency, I'd rather not read about news drama on slashdot. Maybe we need a tag for that.

They're gonna use this as another excuse

[AvderTheTerrible]

Well great, some more nutjobs are out there providing the "trade liberty for security" crowd all the ammunition they need to strip more of our liberty away in order to implement whatever kind of draconian, constitution violating law they'll end up shoving down our throats again.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[Dunbal]

Don't complain, you guys actually like it.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[DogDude]

Why do all of the Right Wingers use the "shoving down our throats" analogy? It's strange how many times that is parroted among the tin foil hat crowd.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the "car analogy" of political analogies.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[CanHasDIY]

analogy

Pretty sure that doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[Richy_T]

What's a meta for?

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[DexterIsADog]

Is that any worse than an elected official espousing a "second amendment solution" for her opponent in the senatorial election? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html

And as for the "trade liberty for security" crowd, I suspect you're talking about the 80% of people who wanted modest commonsense background checks following one or another horrific mass shooting. Rest easy, you may not remember that the republican lapdogs thwarted the will of the people quite handily in that case.

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[CanHasDIY]

Isn't it self-explanatory?

Re:They're gonna use this as another excuse

[retchdog]

yeah, it's clearly an oral-ogy.

Re:It's about time.

[Grog6]

Lot of astroturfers on this story already, lol.

Re:Really?

[Wookact]

Because this matters, and frankly I prefer to discuss this sort of thing with my fellow slashdotters. Sure maybe we troll each other some, but its head and shoulders better commentary then what you will find on CNN for example.

And Suddenly!

[cookYourDog]

Divisive American politics appears!

What do you want to do, [playerName] ?
[1] Ad-hominem attack against another American political party
[2] Retreat to echo chamber of own political affiliation
[3] Accuse other of racism or communism [2 Special skill points]
[*] Find common ground [Skillset not yet unlocked: need maturity level 5]

CBS reports

[mdsolar]

Suspect shot by secret service. One capitol police officer injured. -Washington DC CBS affiliate report.

This just in!!!

[madhatter256]

Shot's fired at the US capital!

No reports of injuries since the town has been shut down.

The town is now on lock down and suspect has been apprehended since he was the only person in town...

Re:This just in!!!

[Freshly Exhumed]

What an amazing coincidence that shots were fired at the exact same time in both the Capitol and the capital! Who knew?

Terrible Advice

[TheCarp]

"Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows. Take annunciators, emergency supply kits and escape hoods; and move to your office's assigned shelter in place location or the innermost part of the office away from external doors or windows"

No no no. This is capital hill, these are american congresscritters. It would be preferable that they go outside and defensively wave their arms over their heads yelling the safe phrase "I am a United States Elected Official" so that any shooters know who not to target.

Seriously, I think they should try that. It might "work".

Re:Terrible Advice

[ebno-10db]

It wouldn't do any good unless the staffers and lobbyists join them. Get rid of one corrupt congresscritter (but I repeat myself) and another one will just sprout up. You always have to get to the roots.

Re:Terrible Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck were they thinking, it was just a car ! Whatever happened to hid under your desk and cover head with hands ? We learned that move protected us from a direct hit by a fucken nuke.

Re:Terrible Advice

[TheCarp]

I am pretty sure that if Duck and Cover was good enough for the US Government to teach my parents, then it is damned sure good enough to teach a US Congressman. ... unless they want to admit that wasn't good instruction that kept my parents safe? Do they?

Re:Terrible Advice

[Anonymous Coward]

"Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows. Take annunciators, emergency supply kits and escape hoods; and move to your office's assigned shelter in place location or the innermost part of the office away from external doors or windows"

No no no. This is capital hill, these are american congresscritters. It would be preferable that they go outside and defensively wave their arms over their heads yelling the safe phrase "I am a United States Elected Official" so that any shooters know who not to target.

Seriously, I think they should try that. It might "work".

Awesome. So your suggestion is to remove what little buffer we have, allowing the lobbyists to DIRECTLY govern us!

Oh, please, don't embarrass yourself by suggesting the lobbyists join the officials. The lobbyists are just itching for their own chance to open fire if it means they don't have to talk to another dim-witted old white guy to tell them what to do.

Re:Terrible Advice

[VortexCortex]

It would be preferable that they go outside and defensively wave their arms over their heads yelling the safe phrase "I am a United States Elected Official" ....

Seriously, I think they should try that. It might "work".

Personally, I wouldn't wish mortal harm on another sentient being. Or, are you saying such action as a response to terrorists, would confuse the attackers since some would be considered allies?

Re:Terrible Advice

[LordLimecat]

You always have to get to the roots.

Free expression?

Re:Terrible Advice

[TheCarp]

> Personally, I wouldn't wish mortal harm on another sentient being

You are welcome not to if its not your thing. However, I don't shed tears when members of violent gangs find themselves on the receiving end of what they have brought upon so many others.

Alright, lets predict

[SmallFurryCreature]

Since the person in the car was female, with a child in the car and the car was involved in a high speed pursuit I am guessing this is NOT political but someone who tried to flee from the police for whatever reason and did it in a really silly place. Either the woman was the driver, or was a passenger and the driver is the man mentioned by some new sources who was fleeing the scene.

Even terrorist don't take kids with them on a suicide run. Well, not without a bomb strapped to them.

Re:Alright, lets predict

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe the woman was diabetic with hypoglycemia, or suffered from some stroke that caused her to drive erratically, and the Capital police cowboys decided to open fire on her because that's what police nowdays. Fucking cowards.

Re:Alright, lets predict

[anagama]

Maybe she made a wrong turn, maybe bumped something and tried to get out of an insurance claim, then it all just unfolded from there. When our police are as trigger happy as they've become, these sort of unfortunate circumstances become increasingly probable. Or maybe she was trying to commit suicide and our kill-happy police forces were stoked to get a chance to help her.

Re:Alright, lets predict

[AK Marc]

She was trying to drive around. She got confused, and ended up in the wrong place. She panicked. The police, in attempting to peacefully diffuse the situation, shot and killed her.

Overreaction to road rage

[Animats]

It's starting to look like this: Some woman in an ordinary sedan tried to ram the White House gates. (Which wasn't going to do much; those gates were upgraded decades ago to stop much heavier vehicles.) Then the car went down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol area. Some Capitol Police officer may have been run down. Shots were fired, probably by cops. Others heard the shots and hit the panic button.

Time for everyone on Capitol Hill to get back to work.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather they stayed home. The more "work" they do the worse off we are as a country.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[T.E.D.]

Time for everyone on Capitol Hill to get back to work.

Umm...yeah...Well, about that ...

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[Anonymous Coward]

People are asking if this is terrorism and there's still not enough evidence to say she intended to even hurt anyone. Go 'Muricka!

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[BenSchuarmer]

Woman driver with a kid in the back seat. We need laws to prevent that kind of thing.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[Anonymous Coward]

Woman's owner should always have a remote to disable the car.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[Anonymous Coward]

DC got kind of confusing after 2001... there are these spots that look like roads that aren't anymore and instead have barricades 5-10 feet back from the corner. A few years back, in DC on business the dude who was driving us was following GPS and made what looked like a safe turn and then stopped short of the barrier, we got more than a little attention from the police on duty there though I'm sure not nearly as much as if he had been a little less attentive and had actually "rammed" the barricade.
It's not going to surprise me if that's what happened here, though obviously we will never hear about it if this was a case of the police gunning down a lost tourist.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[khallow]

Well, the current word is that it was a dental hygienist from Connecticut. Looks to me like the people saying it was a police overreaction are right this time.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[T.E.D.]

Yup. Although, of all the sad stories of an unarmed black person shot by police (or by armed vigilantes) that I've heard over the last 3 years or so, this is the one where the overreaction seemed the most understandable. For all the cops knew, this was part of an organized attack, and the car itself may have been rigged to blow upon trigger from the driver. This is the kind of stuff they are trained for.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[khallow]

I think the problem here is going to be that maybe they should have been trained for different scenarios. I don't see an idiot trying to drive into a barricade as all that different from an idiot playing real life GTA on the highway. Yes, those guys get shot and killed very often as well, but at least the cops try to take them alive first.

I know that there are some groups out there that think bombing the White House would be really cool. But if you're going to allow the public that close to the White House (or really to the National Mall as a whole), then you need to let up on the trigger even if that means the occasional bomb explosion (something which doesn't seem to happen very often).

It's also possible that taking that person alive would have given them valuable information. After all, if it is a group doing this, then you just captured one of the members alive. That's information you wouldn't have otherwise.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[Animats]

but at least the cops try to take them alive first.

They tried. See the video. They had her car stopped, boxed in with four police cars, and surrounded the car with six cops with pistols. She backed into the police car in back, turned, and drove off on the sidewalk, with cops jumping out of the way. Only then did the cops start shooting.

Re:Overreaction to road rage

[khallow]

This video shows the beginning of this mess and I expected the GTA-style driving I saw in the video. I would say that the shooting shown in that video was warranted. If she had been killed at that point, I would have dropped the discussion.

My concern was based on news reports that claimed she was killed at the end of the chase after she had left her vehicle. At that point, she would be genuinely unarmed - at least according to the stories. That one needs looking into even given her reckless and criminal behavior to that point. Though I would, if I were on a jury in trial for these officers give a considerable benefit of the doubt because of this behavior.

Reading this PBS story, it appears that most (but not by any means all) of the law enforcement involved was Capitol police. My impression is that organization would have more appropriate training for the situation at hand. That eases my concerns a bit as well.

At least...

[cyn1c77]

At least this emergency is happening somewhere that will not interrupt any actual work!

Re:At least...

[Anonymous Coward]

except for everyone staying glued to news websites instead of doing their jobs

Fox removed all their comments

[tekrat]

I guess someone went too far even on the comments page, because on the link you provided, there are no comments.

Re:Fox removed all their comments

[cold fjord]

Nah, there were no comments, you just got "fox rolled."

Re:Fox removed all their comments

[DogDude]

FoxNews.com pulled all of their comments about a year ago. That's where *all* of the crazies congregated. Their comment sections were literally nothing but people saying horrible, violent racist things about the president and other people that were not approved by the Right Wing Brain. I used to read them out of sheer amazement at the things that people said. I've never really seen anything like it, except at Glenn Beck's site (TheBlaze.com).

Re:Fox removed all their comments

[Nimey]

Yahoo News's comments are/were the same way.

Re:Fox removed all their comments

[khallow]

I recall the eternal struggle between shorts and longs in the Yahoo stock discussion comments. So much naughty language and broken logic.

orly?

[slashmydots]

Someone's pretty mad that the government is shut down. Either that or they thought they could rob the white house while it's closed. Either way, quite the stupid lady.

Re:orly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or somebody made a wrong turn and freaked out when half the city started chasing her. That's not very likely, but it's still possible.

Re:orly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither of which justify gunning her down unless she was clearly homicidal. If she was without a doubt homicidal I would have think the authorities would have relayed that fact the first instance to cover their asses. Police state indeed.

This was an assassination attempt.

[Anonymous Coward]

An attempt doesn't need to have any chance of success to be an attempt. Thankfully this one clearly had no chance. It appears simply insane. Look at the story in the update. It was a woman who tried to ram the White House gates with her car and the Secret Service pursued her. She's now dead.

What else would she have had on her mind? They don't say she was armed, but what's the most likely reason the Secret Service would fire on her when miles away from the White House by that point? Or why the hell would she run to the Capitol unless she planned to do something there?

Holy fuck. Talk about deranged. It'll be interesting to learn what led up to this.

Re:This was an assassination attempt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, you have this ALL wrong... She was trying to get in to see Jr's Daddy and when the car didn't make it though the gate she ran.

Re:This was an assassination attempt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever suffered from diabetic hypoglycemia, or have a stroke? She may have been disoriented and not realized what she was doing. Remember, any speculation about locations she was heading to, or her motives is entirely from the idiot media, and we've seen over and over how wrong they have been when it comes to reporting breaking news.

A simple misunderstanding

[m.alessandrini]

She thought the police was closed.

Re:A simple misunderstanding

[Anonymous Coward]

She thought the police was closed.

She promised her kid a tour of the White House and lost it when she found out that tours were canceled because of the shutdown.

The NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why we need the NSA folks, to prevent incidents like this from ever happening...

Re:It's about time.

[Xabraxas]

CIA employees have been furloughed. 70% of CIA analysts have been furloughed.

your country is a bunch of savages

[Anonymous Coward]

Just some impoverished citizen trying to get arrested so she can get medical treatment.

Re:I bet

[Xabraxas]

The car drove into a White House barricade. What repub resides there? Unfortunately your intelligence belies the fact that your life savings is probably worth shit.

Re:Really?

[TWiTfan]

Actually, sometimes I look at comments on FoxNews just for fun. Something like this will probably have a good cross-section of commenters claiming:

A) Black helicopters were spotted in the area beforehand
B) Barack Husein Obama staged the whole thing himself for sympathy, no doubt using his Muslim Atheist friends
C) ...and this is why we need to get rid of government and taxes.

STOP THE PRESSES!

[idontgno]

There's been GUN VIOLENCE in the District of Columbia!

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!

[jdmuskrat]

praise da lord and jesus keeryst for da NRA protecting that ho's right to have a gun.

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!

[PPH]

There ought to be a law.....

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!

[bobbied]

I'm shocked SHOCKED that there is gun violence in a gun free zone!!

Your side arm sir!

Thank you..

False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another false flag operation, the "solution" to which is a crackdown on Americans.

Re:False Flag

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh go take a drive in DC.

Re:FIRST

[X0563511]

This is actually somewhat amusing.

Re:Really?

[Obfuscant]

Because this matters, and frankly I prefer to discuss this sort of thing with my fellow slashdotters.

Why? Not why do you prefer, but why at all?

This isn't a technical issue where debate can come to a good understanding of a problem, or resolve some issue for someone who has a question. The only possible outcome from discussing this here is the inevitable flame war when it turns political. Each side will score points for their side, leaving the people in the middle wondering why this kind of stuff is relevant to techies in general and why does it always devolve into flames and insults.

Who done it and why isn't the topic for a debate. Who done it won't change if someone makes a really good point about reaction of the suppressed masses or creates a fictional similarity to some other even at some other time. Why it was done won't change, only points will be scored by the "Republicans drove her to it" (she drove herself, pun intended) or "racism" or "tea party this or that" sides as they award themselves points for one-upmanship.

In truth, this event has very little impact on techies per se, even if a few care a lot because they live in their parent's basement which is next door to the White House. We've lost the concept that every topic isn't technical in nature just because someone who is technically inclined finds it interesting. I'm sure that some ./ers knit, but that doesn't make the latest news about knitting either "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters (to nerds)."

When did Slashdot become CNN?

[jfdavis668]

Breaking news? What does this have to do with /.?

Re:When did Slashdot become CNN?

[Sedated2000]

These posts always happen when a story like this gets posted. Someone always asks what it has to do with /. or "news for nerds". Slashdot however, has always had stories like this, and most people enjoy discussing these things with other slashdotters. I personally prefer to hear the insight and information from other people in discussions such as this than from commentators from random news sites. Usually the facts I find out from other posters here are very good and at the very least give cause to think things over.

Re:When did Slashdot become CNN?

[PPH]

When its attempt at being the National Enquirer failed?

Michelle Bachman finally snapped?

[BenSchuarmer]

the warning signs were pretty obvious

Re:Michelle Bachman finally snapped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nancy, is that you? I told you to lay off the Botox injections or you'd loose more than some wrinkles....

Re:Really?

[Frosty Piss]

Because this matters, and frankly I prefer to discuss this sort of thing with my fellow slashdotters...

It had NOTHING to do with the current budget situation. But it matters... So we are to discuss every cop shootout on the front page?

AMERICA!

[Gravis Zero]

FUCK YEAH! :)

Re:Really?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Its a strange phenomenon really, but a lot of Nerds these days pay taxes, vote, and would like to know if the White House is under seige. Weird, I know.

I bet: furloughed staffer with canine fetish.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I'm going with. I mean in modern media they give the wild speculations a great deal of air before they have the facts. So without any facts to back me up, I believe she is a furloughed Republican staffer who was trying to break into the White House to fuck Bo in the ass with a dildo to relieve her pent up sexual tension.

And you can't tell me I'm wrong.

Damn furries.

Re:Really?

[gstoddart]

Sure this is front page news... But why on slashdot?

My honest (and exceedingly cynical) answer: because the government will latch onto any event like this to further curtail what the rest of us are allowed to do under the guise of security, and it will have a run-on effect in other areas.

My best guess, they'll push back the secure area around the White House, and even more of DC (or anything even close to a government building) will be under lock down more often, and they'll give themselves heightened powers to stop things like this.

Give it a little while, and there will be new secret regulations saying they can stop and detain anybody in a car to question them to be sure they don't plan on trying something like this.

It sounds very tinfoil hat, but I've started to conclude that the most paranoid/cynical interpretation tends to come true over time.

Diversion

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a bad feeling that somewhere in D.C. Lex Luther is hiesting some kryptonite.

Re:Really?

[InlawBiker]

Because all the other news outlets are whoring for eyeballs, why not Slashdot?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

better this than to know whatever crap Microsoft is releasing today.

Automatic barriers

[PPH]

I got a kick out of the ABC article description of cops and secret service vehicles wrecking on those automatic barriers they've placed around DC. It sounds like the perp's vehicle made it over the barrier, triggering it to pop up just in time to disable the pursuing cops. Good thinking there.

Re:Automatic barriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the road runner cartoon.

Re:Automatic barriers

[Trax3001BBS]

After the 1983 Beirut Barracks bombing that killed "241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers" Areas of high security have barriers put in place so you have to weave, no more straight shots.

But using Google Earth I get pillars that autos can't get between
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/82858047?source=wapi&referrer=kh.google.com

For a car to set them off defeats their purpose. Her cars front end wasn't damaged, even after the chase
her front end looks to be fully intact, and these pillars are seen as well in the pictures of the event.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2442703/Miriam-Carey-Woman-killed-outside-Capitol-Hill-trying-ram-gates-White-House.html

Yet they still refer to it as a ramming. "The Connecticut woman who rammed a White House barrier with her young daughter in the car before being gunned down by police was suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth last year, her mother has revealed."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2442703/Miriam-Carey-Woman-killed-outside-Capitol-Hill-trying-ram-gates-White-House.html

Beirut Barracks bombing:
The 19-ton Mercedes-Benz truck then passed between two sentry posts, passed through an open vehicle gate in the perimeter chain-link fence, crashed through a guard shack in front of the building and smashed into the lobby of the building serving as the barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th Marines (BLT). The sentries at the gate were operating under rules of engagement which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

Re:Automatic barriers

[wonkey_monkey]

Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!

Re:Really?

[Ardyvee]

All you have said is very true. Except on the fact it is not an inevitability for it to turn into a flame war. Your very post has showed it. You managed to formulate a level-headed opinion about why the discussion is pointless because most discussion would center around irrelevant information. Of course, it ignored the fact that people have this desire to know those very pieces of irrelevant information -- although, thinking better about it, maybe knowing about it would help us learn about it and avoid the loss of life in the future? Nah, who am I kidding. We only care about it to have something to talk about when there is nothing else to talk about, in order to avoid silence. It'll soon be mostly forgotten by most, who will never think about it again unless somebody else mentions it.

Now, to be honest. Shots fired at US capitol? That's news. Why would it ever reach a political flame war is beyond me (if I assume, of course, that we always behave rationally), since Shots fired at US capitol has little to do with politics beyond what drove the whoever to do whatever (in this case try to ram the door, me thinks). And if we are going to discuss the cause of the behaviour, there is little to discuss in politics: the reasons do not need to be grounded in reason, and debating the merits of the reasons as valid politics is a jump too far from topic, bordering going off-topic which is shoots fired.

But then again, you can talk about cheese, reach cheese production, regulations on cheese productions, how hard those regulations make it for new small players to enter the market, and suddenly you are talking about politics again. Which teaches us that nothing is apolitical, unless you are talking about the laws of the world. And that's because they just are, no matter how much you argue they are unfair/against your preference.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even front page news... only reason it gets noticed is it is near the white house, people shoot each other all the time in the US

Maybe if there were some irony, like a NRA lobby group getting shot up

Re:Really?

[SGDarkKnight]

no worries, she was proably using apple maps and followed the directions a little too closely

Re:Really?

[AK Marc]

The funny thing is that the latest I saw was that there were no shots fired. They killed the "suspect" for shooting who was unarmed. The gunshot sound was from someone chasing her who hit a barrier. A second car was also damaged from hitting a barrier. She was shot and killed with her kid in the car, unharmed. But then, at this point, it's all guesses from people who know that the most outrageous story will get them on the news, and the truth isn't related to their ability to get on the news.

We all have CNN, ABC,CBS,NBC,MSNBC,FOX

[Lawrence_Bird]

SKY, etc, etc. How is this news for nerds? Was the car remotely piloted? Did it have lasers mounted on the hood? Microwaves?

Re:Really?

[TWiTfan]

Hey, lighten up. Would you rather be discussing a story on Oracle's latest earnings report, or a Slashvertisement for some new "revolutionary" piece of tech that's never going to materialize?

govt shooters only?

[harvey the nerd]

Sounds like all the shooting was police or Secret Service. Car impact, female with babe in car chased, and shot ?

Re:That is what you get...

[CanHasDIY]

...for enshrining the "right" to bear arms in your constitution. "Gun control? Fuck no, we have the right to wear guns and shoot things, goddammit! Zomglol bless Murrica!"

Nothing to see here, folks, move on. It's most likely some gun-nut teapublican protesting being "disrespected" at not being able to get his way and using a gun to get attention. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened before.

Um, pardon me, but I believe you've stumbled into the wrong discussion; Idiotic Nonsense Based on Personal Beliefs and Speculation is room 12A, down the corridor.

Re:Really?

[excelsior_gr]

Because this matters

No, it doesn't. Just because some looney decided to ram the gates of the White House and get herself killed doesn't mean that there is something to discuss. There is no political meaning, no background story, it isn't even funny. Even if there is a deeper cause behind all this it will get covered up and we will never learn of it, unless some deepthroat/whistleblower decides to enlighten us, in which case it will become interesting. For the time being, however, there is nothing to discuss, move along.

Having said that, this is why I love reading the news (online and in print) instead of watching them on TV: one can skim over the headlines and only read the interesting bits. So the GP also didn't have a point.

Apple Maps Strikes Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Another victim of faulty directions.

You're trying to get to the White House and you end up crashing into the gates and getting shot at by the secret service.

Re:That is what you get...

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. This is what we get for not respecting and upholding the right to bear munitions. The government does what it wants, screws the people, and the few people who do what our founding fathers did get labeled nut jobs by the very people they are brave (or crazy) enough to stick up for.

" It's most likely some gun-nut teapublican protesting being "disrespected" at not being able to get his way and using a gun to get attention."

So you think that after successfully shutting down the government, they now want to protest their own actions?

tragedy of errors?

[harvey the nerd]

Sounds like all the shooting was police or Secret Service. Car impact, female with babe in a car with out of state plates, chased, and shot ?

What if she was lost, confused and just made a wrong turn while talking on her cell phone, surprised by the barrier?
Perhaps the true price of paranoia.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Bartles]

No, stop being reasonable and skeptical. She was obviously a right-wing, tea-partier who was trying to overthrow the US Government by attacking the president.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[TechyImmigrant]

> She was obviously a right-wing, tea-partier who was trying to overthrow the US Government by attacking the president.

Perhaps she should have tried the white house instead.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[arth1]

Perhaps she should have tried the white house instead.

Perhaps you should have tried following the news before mouthing off. She did crash into the gate to the White House, and cops went after her, chased her to the Capitol building where the car was stopped, and the cops shot her repeatedly.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[NatasRevol]

Yeah, that's the barrier she ran into. Then drove to the capital & got shot at.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like Maryland (Chesapeake Bay) plates, so she should've been familiar with the area. I don't think you "accidentally" drive into DC, anyway.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[TechyImmigrant]

I got the clear impression from the news report (I think it was an ABC thing I clicked on) was that it was all at the capitol building. But they were throwing around 'capitol' and 'capitol building' loosely.

That's what you get for doing your day job rather than meticulously researching a topic before commenting.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[harvey the nerd]

It's a rental car. I've driven in DC twice, the triangular streets and decor are confusing, easy to miss planned turns.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Lumpy]

Then that means you deserve to die according to DC police and the secret service.

Honestly, It's BS that they started shooting at her.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are saying she was unarmed. The officer who was injured apparently caused the injury himself. I suspect this was a mistake and the amped up, hyper violent thugs that have transitioned from the military to the police decided just to take her down.

But of course, the right wing wackos will cheer law and order, and the libtard lefties will say she was a neocon or something.

We have entered a new phase where both left and right statists like the ultra violence imposed by our police.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok yeah, but what if she didn't!? That would have been horrible! Lets talk about how they could have killed an innocent lost women talking on her cellphone with her baby.

HOW COULD THEY SHOOT HER!?

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Trax3001BBS]

Sounds like all the shooting was police or Secret Service. Car impact, female with babe in a car with out of state plates, chased, and shot ?

What if she was lost, confused and just made a wrong turn while talking on her cell phone, surprised by the barrier?

Perhaps the true price of paranoia.

Yes it was tragedy of errors and mayhaps bad timing on her part (being in the area).

Shots reported fired, a helicopter reported landing in front of the Capitol. The cop car that hit the barricade appears
to of hit it sliding sideways, he was at first reported as being injured by gunfire - and an "active shooter" scenario was called.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or was paying attention to her GPS driving aid, even when all the signage said stop!. 9 times out of 10, incidents like this are stupidity rather than malice.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Trogre]

She was armed. The article says that she was driving a car.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

The events as described are consistent with behavior of a panicked woman who just crashed her car.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[nbauman]

What if she was lost, confused and just made a wrong turn while talking on her cell phone, surprised by the barrier?

Yes. And there are several commonly-used drugs which can cause delirium. There's one drug used used by people who are going into areas where malaria is common, for protection against malaria. There are other drugs that cause delirium and panic. There are a few other medical reasons why somebody could be acting like that. And people just panic. That doesn't justify killing them.

About the time of the Rodney King case, I read in a magazine for police management that car chases are a big problem. Cops get into a chase, they get all pumped up, the chase ends with the car getting smashed up or something, the cops go out and attack the guy. They recommend that the commanders get cops who weren't involved in the chase to arrest the suspect.

Cops are authorized to use deadly force only if they're facing a threat to somebody's life. Otherwise, using deadly force is some degree of homicide.

There have been a few incidents in in New York City where cops killed somebody who (in my reading of the facts) could have been captured alive with little or no risk to the cops. The cops usually claim that they saw a gun (even though there was none), or that they believed their life was threatened (which are the magic words to justify the the most indiscriminate killing), and they usually get off on criminal charges.

There was a really bad case of a cop in upstate New York. There was an elderly (black) guy who had some dementia, and had a lifeline emergency service installed. The alarm went off and the service called an ambulance, and 911. The cop who responded had a long acrimonious relationship with the elderly guy. The elderly guy said that he had no problems, and he wanted to cancel the call. The cop refused to cancel it, and insisted on breaking down the door. On the recording, the cop was taunting the guy. The guy tried to defend himself with a kitchen knife, and the cop shot and killed him. The cop was tried and acquitted.

So I would bet, dollars to donuts, that the cops will say that they thought their lives were threatened in some way, and maybe they'll use the standard excuse that they thought they saw a gun.

There's another philosophy that a cop is getting paid to take risks, and part of his job is to protect lives, even at a small risk to his own life. I know a cop who confronted a man with a gun and told him to drop the gun, repeatedly, and then shot the man (who lived). But that doesn't happen consistently.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[TechyImmigrant]

The cured her panic problem by shooting her.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[arth1]

The events as described are consistent with behavior of a panicked woman who just crashed her car.

And indeed of American police too.

It's sad, but I am far more scared of the cops here than I am of anyone else. And that seems to be the way they want it..

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to disarm the police. Nothing more dangerous than cowards with guns and the blessings of the media to kill anyone they want to.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[nbritton]

Ok yeah, but what if she didn't!? That would have been horrible! Lets talk about how they could have killed an innocent lost women talking on her cellphone with her baby.

HOW COULD THEY SHOOT HER!?

I'm sorry, but no. I watched the video, she had ample opportunity to stop when the police approached her. I counted like five officers that she assaulted with her car and another five that had to jump out of the way to avoid being run over. From what I recall, she then gave chase and ultimately ran into another barrier. It's possible she was in the middle of a delusion or panic, but the police can not be held responsible for her actions.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, you can see in the footage they tried to stop her peacefully, yet she went crazy and tried to run the police over. She was not quite there mentally.

Re:tragedy of errors?

[arth1]

Nonsense, you can see in the footage they tried to stop her peacefully

Pointing weapons at people is considered "peacfully"? Only here in the US....

Yes, I'd panic too, and try to get away from the potential murderer.

Grand Theft Auto VI: Cap City

[ThatsNotFunny]

I guess she got tired of waiting for all the bugs in "GTA Live" to be ironed out, she figured she'd play IRL.

Re:Really?

[arthurpaliden]

The shooter was on the grassy knol......

Re:Really?

[anagama]

Don't forget all the extra communication monitoring the will be necessary now.

If the woman was a muslim immigrant or visitor, that will provide an excuse to harass and violate the rights of our new favorite category for discrimination.

If the woman was a white suburban soccer mom, that will prove that the Feds need to monitor everyone, not just select a group for special discrimination.

If she was religious or political, it will provide an excuse to monitor religious groups or activists even more.

If poor, inflict further draconian prison sentences for minor infractions and increase monitoring.

The list can just keep going. No matter who she turns out to be or why she did what she did, it is going to provide the Federales an excuse to further curtail civil rights even though nobody was in any real danger because of the physical barriers - except for the cops injured by deploying those very same barriers.

Re:That is what you get...

[CrimsonAvenger]

...for enshrining the "right" to bear arms in your constitution. "Gun control? Fuck no, we have the right to wear guns and shoot things, goddammit! Zomglol bless Murrica!"

It's looking more and more like all the shots fired were by the Police...

Fort Sumter or Batshit? You make the call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like it was the shot heard round the asylum. Too bad the inmates they are attacking are busily throwing poo at each other.

You want nuts, act nuts. Congress itself has fomented this kind of behavior.

Posting AC for obvious reasons.

Re:Fort Sumter or Batshit? You make the call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC for obvious reasons.

We at the NSA know who you are anyway....

Posting AC, because I can!

Grim times

[Torodung]

So the only question in my mind is "How is this any different or less ethical than what Congress has done to this country?" The only difference is that, for some reason that escapes me, what Congress is doing, putting hundreds of thousands out of work because we don't accept election results any longer, is legal.

Clearly, this act is illegal, but my point is that both acts should be, and both are about the same level of nuts. Congress' behavior should be criminalized.

All those years of Russian history and I never understood why you might have to dissolve the Duma. This is a prime example. Our legislature cannot function, and is randomly lashing out at the people it represents. They have caused more harm to more people than this sick perp could ever hope to.

Re:Grim times

[iggymanz]

what are you babbling about, election results are irrelevant to process of getting budget passed, or obstructing such process. of course it is "legal" so what is your point? Government workers should always have a reasonable expectation of either not being funded or having their job eliminated. 90% of what the government does is not essential to anything.

Lockdown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lockdown for a little shootout BY POLICE?

Yet another case blown way out of perportion. If I want to go outside, and do my normal business. Lockdown not withstanding.

Re:Really?

[Obfuscant]

Except on the fact it is not an inevitability for it to turn into a flame war.

Oh, come on. If you've read /. for more than a month you've seen it happen more than once. At this point, it's like predicting that the sun will come up in the east tomorrow morning sometime around sunrise. Or that dropping a hammer on your foot will hurt because gravity sucks.

Of course, it ignored the fact that people have this desire to know those very pieces of irrelevant information --

Nope, didn't ignore that at all. For those folks there are the news websites. All the information you'll get here will be either blatant supposition ("It was probably a teapublican..." one commenter says) or second hand ("over on CNN they say ...").

People are free to read multiple websites. The reason for specialization is so that not everyone has stuff they don't have any interest in they have to sort through.

Now, to be honest. Shots fired at US capitol? That's news.

Didn't say it wasn't. But for at least me, I say ... so what? There is nothing in that "news" that has any direct impact on me right now, and I can easily wait until I read the paper or pull pull up a news website to learn about it. By that time, all the initial nonsense reporting will have died down and there will be a good idea of what happened. I won't get drawn into speculation about Muslims and he/she and/or kid in the car or/and an escaping driver and how many shots were or weren't fired.

If you can honestly say that immediate knowledge of every supposition and clue as it comes in is important to you, I'd guess that it isn't because you are a nerd, it's because you are close to the action and need to duck.

Why would it ever reach a political flame war is beyond me (if I assume, of course, that we always behave rationally),

Welcome to /.

Re:That is what you get...

[Raved Thrad]

Nope. I think that it's someone thinking that the right to own a gun gives them the right to argue from behind a gun, violence being the last refuge of the incompetent and all.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Not why do you prefer, but why at all?

This isn't a technical issue where debate can come to a good understanding of a problem, or resolve some issue for someone who has a question.

When someone dies, what good does discussing it do? None, honestly - nothing will come of a debate. It still makes you feel better, though, to share in sadness.

When major strife is occuring in the land that you grew up in, that you love, that has given everything to you (and you to it), that you KNOW can be much better than what it currently is, what good does discussing that strife do? None - again, nothing will come of that debate. It still makes you feel better, though, to share in sadness.

And, I don't know about you, but I prefer to discuss things with like-minded people.

OMG it's Christine Darrisaw Wright again

[slashmydots]

Okay, probably not but did anyone else have that pop into their mind too? :-D
Definitely worth googling her just for the mug shot by the way.

Re:That is what you get...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Don't think. You weaken the nation.

Criminal act, no question, regardless of motive.

[HermMunster]

As bad as this is it wouldn't be too difficult to see the nation's frustration with the actions of the congress and the president.

This is a criminal act, no question about it. I'm glad they managed to nip it right away before it got any worse.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even front page news... only reason it gets noticed is it is near the white house, people shoot each other all the time in the US

Maybe if there were some irony, like a NRA lobby group getting shot up

I guess by that definition of irony, how many people have been shot, directly or indirectly, due to actions or inactions of this and previous presidents? Plenty.

Re:Really?

[VortexCortex]

Step aside child, you are not yet courageous enough to brave the Flame War, nor logical enough not to click the link if you don't want to read it, nor smart enough to utilize the filter options... When you've grown up, experienced the world, learned to take the good amidst the bad, then your voice will be more valuable.

Re:Really?

[LordLimecat]

CNN says we DEFINITELY have the shooter in custody this time.

Re:That is what you get...

[Raved Thrad]

You obviously speak from experience.

scared, the car in black

[harvey the nerd]

Looks like she made a wrong turn, toward a "wide street" and missed seeing the short posts wide spaced, painted in a decorative dark rather than traffic safety colors. Confronted by the armed plain clothes guy in shorts on drivers side, and a flash mob of guns waving, she stepped on the gas and ran. DOA.

34 year old woman

[mdsolar]

Unarmed, from Stamford, Connecticut is being reported as victim of police shooting.

I blame the NSA

[VortexCortex]

And in their vast archives won by sacrificing our privacy sits the evidence that this attack was going to occur. We must then posit that either the NSA knew and did nothing, or they are demonstrably useless.

Re: shots fired at U.S.A. Capitol

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: CNN has live coverage of the aftermath. It will be interesting to see why the suspect ran away from police officers.

Re:That is what you get...

[Zero__Kelvin]

I do. I've read what you've written about what you think!

she injured no one

[Anonymous Coward]

the dumb bitch didnt injure anyone. sounds like a stupid cop could not drive a car and crashed it himself while persuing...
Gainer also said the officer injured crashed a police cruiser while trying to join the chase. The cruiser "seriously clipped" a barricade, he said, but the injuries are "not life threatening."

Re:she injured no one

[Anonymous Coward]

The cruiser "seriously clipped" a barricade

What's that? A policeman rammed a barricade at the White House?!

Re:That is what you get...

[Raved Thrad]

You... read? *Gasp* Reading implies thought. How could you!

Re:That is what you get...

[HornWumpus]

Only the incompetent leave violence until it's the last refuge. By that point it's almost certainly too late for violence to do any good. The competent get to violence much sooner.

L. Long, paraphrased.

Re:That is what you get...

[Raved Thrad]

Actually, I was quoting Asimov, but I applaud you on the Heinlein reference.

Murder

[MrL0G1C]

So, given the choice between disabling the car, boxing her in and arresting her or just shooting her, they shot her. How the fuck is that ok? That's called murder where I come from.

Re:Murder

[Anonymous Coward]

The US government likes to murder. It does it all the time.

Re:Murder

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone, ANYBODY, who kills someone else, for King or Country, is still a "MURDERER"

Re:Murder

[bill_mcgonigle]

How the fuck is that ok? That's called murder where I come from.

It was just a peasant. She was having a mental episode where the rulers are - how terribly inconsiderate of her superiors.

Re:Murder

[LeeRyman]

I don't know about anyone else, but I found it very disturbing when police shoot an unarmed woman with child (okay, you could consider she was armed with her car) and the response of the people who run the country is to applaud and congratulate them on the outcome. I personally cannot think of any situation in which someone shoots and kills someone else in which applause is an appropriate response. Recognition of duty, and perhaps somber soul-searching as to why it could happen is warranted, but applauding the unfortunate outcome is not.

Re:Murder

[CauseBy]

I'll agree with you if it's clear that they made that choice. Usually situations like this don't provide a bunch of safe, effective alternatives. Usually it's a decision between (1) shoot the perp (2) have no control over the situation, in which case we have to go with #1.

Re:Murder

[Animats]

So, given the choice between disabling the car, boxing her in and arresting her or just shooting her, they shot her. How the fuck is that ok? That's called murder where I come from.

The Capitol Police tried boxing the car in. Here's the video from AlHurrah (widely copied on other outlets, but here without all the overlays, captions, clipping, and re-compression). AlHurrah was recording some protest at the Capitol when this happened. Cops got her car stopped facing into the curb, with a police car behind it, a police SUV on the car's left, a third police car on the car's right, and a fourth car behind. Six cops are pointing guns at the car. At that point, it's being handled as a felony traffic stop. It could have ended non-lethally.

At 0:24 you can see the escape attempt. The car backs up a little, denting the police car behind it, turns right, then goes forward onto the wide sidewalk (Google Maps view of location) and around the police cars on the car's right. Four cops try to jump out of the way of the car, which goes plowing down the sidewalk where there are even more cops (and possibly some non-cops; it's a busy area). Only then do the cops start shooting. Not very effectively, though; the car speeds off.

No video coverage yet of the end, which happened on the west (back) side of the Capitol. But there's probably surveillance recording.

Re:Murder

[MrL0G1C]

Your comment is fallacious because

(2) have no control over the situation

is wrong. The police had other options, like shoot the tyres, shoot the engine, block the car, use spike strips, smash the windows, use bean bag guns, use taser, use pepper spray etc.

They say there was a child in the car, that child most likely just saw their mother being shot to death by police, do you really think this was the best option?

Re:Murder

[CauseBy]

Yep, they shot seven bullets and couldn't hit her tire? I think that's a good critique. It's time to go do some target practice, officers!

But pepper spray and tasers don't work through car windows. Bean bag gun? Maybe. Spike strips? That's a good option in certain rare situations, different than this one, when a car is driving on a long road with no other way to go except over them (specifically, highway chases where you can radio ahead, clear traffic, put down the strip).

"do you really think this was the best option?"

The best? Maybe, maybe not, but it was a good option given the circumstances. It's an option not worthy of dismissal.

Re:Murder

[Hentes]

Trying to stop the car could've resulted in a crash, putting the child in danger. Heck, in my opinion entering into a car chase with a child is already a cause for a bullet.

Re:Murder

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about anyone else, but I found it very disturbing when police shoot an unarmed woman with child.

Based on the video her behavior was pretty dangerous to everybody nearby - including other children and it's not certain that the cops could see that there was anyone else in the car.

(okay, you could consider she was armed with her car)

A car is much more dangerous than a gun. Don't you know that even most people who are opposed to gun control accept that those deadly devices need to be registered and drivers must have proof of training and licenses...

and the response of the people who run the country is to applaud and congratulate them on the outcome. I personally cannot think of any situation in which someone shoots and kills someone else in which applause is an appropriate response.

Concur.

Re:Murder

[iggymanz]

turn in your geek car, you don't know how a car works. bullets into tires, radiator and the belt driven devices at front of engine would have immediately stopped car.

Re:Murder

[Hentes]

Bullshit. There's nothing that can immediately stop a car other than a wall. A bullet into the tire just makes the car uncontrollable, but doesn't stop it. A bullet in the front might be able to disable traction if you hit in the right place. But with a moving target that's very hard to do, and if you accidentally hit a fuel line you'll introduce a fire hazard.

Re:Murder

[iggymanz]

don't work with cars or firearms much? any failure of several fragile devices in front of engine will bring car to a halt, especially anything made in last ten years. trivial to disable a car with a firearm, and easy to hit with precision a vehicle starting from standstill. the bullshit is between your ears

why the hell is this on slashdot?

[iggymanz]

this isn't tech news, or is there "an app for that"

Slashdot isn't tech news. It's that simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

/. focuses on science and technology more than a great deal else, but this is "news for nerds, stuff that matters", remember? This incident looked like a possible attack on the U.S. Capitol at start and however apathetic you may be to politics or human life, in the real world that sort of things matters.

Do you get it now?

Re:Slashdot isn't tech news. It's that simple.

[iggymanz]

this is barely news, doesn't matter. looks like a possible attack to people numb from the neck up

Re:Overreaction to road rage FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Woman driver. We need laws to prevent that kind of thing.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is u.s. national news, medium size event in D.C., ok, I don't mind (i'm not the AC from above), however, during September 11th I knew there was something going on just from the weird traffic but when I checked the internet, every major news website and most sites were down, i didn't find out until i checked slashdot did i find out about 9-11

The car she used...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it an AR-15 sedan?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

it isn't even funny.

Speak for yourself. I thought it was.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Anthony Weiner has applied for a job at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ever heard of women being criminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right: she could have had a stroke.

Or she could have been criminally nuts and rammed the white house and drove off when it didn't work.

They're both possibilities.

Ever think of that?

Re:Ever heard of women being criminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

She was fleeing and no longer a threat. So the correct course of action was arrest her and have her face fair trial.

Re:It's a BRILLIANT strategy!

[fyngyrz]

Think about it - no one around, walk and declare oneself Emporer!

Yes... yes.... Walk in, strike a pose, and declare "I shall pour for you -- I, and no one else. For I Am Sancho. Now give me the wine bottle."

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's looking more and more like all the shots fired were by the Police...

It is looking even more like:

1) a distraced mother with a baby in the backseat took a wrong turn driving in DC
2) accidentally ran into some low-visibility short-height pole barriers
    (see this view on google streetview)
3) was confronted by plain-clothes police brandishing firearms
4) was scared shitless for herself and her baby and took off
5) was chased for a while until she got out of the car
6) was shot dead

To me, this looks like a case of cops who have been militarized to the point of neglecting training on de-escalation. Hyped to believe that terrorists are hiding under every rock, they over-reacted when they should have realized that it was just the far more likely scenario of a regular citizen finding herself in an unfamiliar and threatening situation.

Re:Really?

[Tom]

So, post a story when it is, not when it isn't. Because, you know, you could post that story daily.

Pointless

[rsilvergun]

the kind of power even a House of Rep has let alone a Senator is so massive that trying to restrict their pay to median income is a waste. They'll just make it up an bribes.

They're going to get special privileges. They're going to use the gov't to their advantage. They're going to do these things and you can't stop them. Get over it and start making use of the Gov't yourself for your own benefit. You can't choose not to play the game, but you can lose the war by not fighting in it.

Re: Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

At least there is risk involved in accepting bribes, as opposed to institutionalizing corruption by guaranteeing exorbitant pay and extending it via pensions and Cadillac insurance parachutes.

It's no wonder congress and intercourse are synonyms.

Sure would appear that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

To see the barrier, pull up street view and enter: 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/police-lock-down-capitol-after-shots-fired/2013/10/03/48459e0e-2c5a-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html

"At the beginning of it all, Oregon residents B.J. and Susan Campbell saw a black sedan driven by a woman heading west on Pennsylvania, into a security checkpoint at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The driver went about 20 yards, B.J. Campbell said, before rapidly turning the car around at the concrete security barriers.

“The Secret Service guy was just having a cow,” B.J. Campbell said. “Yelling at her and banging on the car.” The Secret Service officers pulled a black metal gate into her path and she slowed to try to go around it. Then the agent moved the gate in front of her again.

At that point “she just gunned it,” B.J. Campbell said. “She ran the barricade down and the guy; knocked him up onto her hood. He rolled off into the street, and she tore off down Pennsylvania Avenue.” The whole encounter lasted about 20 seconds, he said."

What it looks like to me is that: the woman - who as her plates would reveal was clearly not from D.C. - was lost. She made a turn perhaps to stop and figure out directions. As happens to many when they're in this situation, she may not have notice the ordinary Do Not Enter sign. Suddenly a security guard type from a booth (apparently Secret Service) charged at her screaming. So she went to leave. He then tried to block her in while screaming more. Her flight or fight reflex kicked in and she opted to flee. This was seen a provocative action by the mall type security guy with Secret Service credentials apparently, he gets the message out and half an hour later a terrified, unarmed mother is dead.

The initial incident was about a third of a mile from the White House, but given the nature of the area I guess it still sort of qualifies as "white house gates", but the media portrayed it as her trying to get in when in fact it appears she was trying to leave. Am I missing anything here? Who here wants to bet that if she hadn't been pursued so aggressively, Capitol Police would have caught up with her later and this would have been a footnote in today's news about a mother taken in for questioning after entering a secured area?

Re:That is what you get...

[mjwx]

...for enshrining the "right" to bear arms in your constitution. "Gun control? Fuck no, we have the right to wear guns and shoot things, goddammit! Zomglol bless Murrica!"

It's looking more and more like all the shots fired were by the Police...

But still a sad indictment of how US gun culture is horribly wrong.

The Police are expected to uphold the law, armed as they are the use of firearms should be a last resort so I have to ask what justified this shootout? Should the police not have attempted to intercept and apprehend the suspect so that they could be bought before a court of law and have their actions judged by a jury of their peers (OK, with some of the comments I see from Americans, I'm losing faith in this idea too).

What if this had of been a horrible mistake, the woman was mentally unstable, on drugs, lost and confused (it's mentioned here the car had out of state plates) or simply disgruntled and driven over the edge by recent events. It was stupid to do what she did, no arguments about that but does it carry an instant death sentence?

If there were no shots fired at police, why were they even shooting? The problem is cultural, people are in love with their guns and see them as the first point of call in resolving problems instead of an absolute last resort in a life threatening situation. Cops are expected to take risks but this seems to be indicative of a culture of "shoot first and ask questions later" up to "trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again" in some cases. Many UK police dont even carry guns because they dont need to with plenty of non/less lethal technologies at their disposal. In this case, would it not have been smarter to intercept the car (spike strips, road blocks) rather than shoot the woman?

In my country (Australia) police are held responsible for every single shot they fire. If this incident had of happened here or in the UK, the officers involved would be placed on leave whilst it was investigated. This isn't a situation where a clear danger was presented to the officers or bystanders (unlike the incident in London a few months back where a knife wielding maniac was a clear danger). In fact the shoot out caused a more dangerous situation. Please note, I'm not blaming the officers here, I'm blaming the gun culture that says shooting people is OK and a preferred solution over more sensible ideas.

Re:Really?

[Frosty Piss]

Hey, lighten up. Would you rather be discussing a story on Oracle's latest earnings report, or a Slashvertisement for some new "revolutionary" piece of tech that's never going to materialize?

You have a point.

Carry on...

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brett Farve sucks, cheesehead.

Sentient?

[Overzeetop]

Personally, I wouldn't wish mortal harm on another sentient being.

Have you been following the news? I'm pretty sure that just about everyone in congress falls quite a bit short of "sentient." You needn't worry that anything or anyone of redeeming value be harmed should we lose a few hundred elected officials - I assure you they would not be missed.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch the video. Driving like that for that long on so many different roads. Something else was going on. Not pure terror from law enforcement and she's not done or doing something wrong.

Re:Really?

[willaien]

B) Barack Husein Obama staged the whole thing himself for sympathy, no doubt using his Muslim Atheist friends

Nono, Muslim Atheist Nazi Commie friends.

Re:That is what you get...

[blackpaw]

Interesting .... could easily see that happening, it can all be quite confusing at the scene. Years ago when I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland I got lost in the streets and ended up driving up the Royal Mile into Larnach Castle. Got politely but firmly redirected by a pair of squaddies with machine guns. That could have gone pear shaped if I'd been distressed /paranoid and the soldiers trigger happy.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:Really?

[marcosdumay]

Don't forget all the extra communication monitoring the will be necessary now.

I don't think the US gov can do any extra communication monitoring.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because some looney decided to ram the gates of the White House and get herself killed doesn't mean that there is something to discuss.

Just because you're not intelligent or creative enough, or too cynical, to understand what might be the cause of irrational behavior does not give you any authority to stiffle discussion, nor does it mean that others should not have the opportunity to explore the mystery and implications of an unarmed woman being shot dead while our government is shut down.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo

Meanwhile, outside the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people wonder where Capitol, USA is.

Perhaps it's close to the capital?

"MAC Blast Aborted"

[Anonymous Coward]

USA SAC SOD ONI: "Who in DC dialed up a MAC Blast?", General in charge at SAC Crystal Mountain was overheard asking a near-by IT operative.

NRO SOCC: "Affirmative! MAC Online. "

NRO SOCC: "FIRING SOLUTION ACQUIRED. LOCKED. READY."

USA SAC SOD ONI: "Abort Abort Abort!"

NRO SOCC: "Abort Abort Abort. We Copy Over."

War Thunder

[locopuyo]

Damn rammers are going to get this game banned!

Big Balls

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out, that in the USA, it's the women with the brains and the balls.....

Way to go guys!

Re:I was there and have it on video

[Anonymous Coward]

Unrelated animated twaddle. Unimpressed? Try out the Slashdot Friends/Foes system (the little grey sphere in the byline) and Comment Modifiers today!

Re:That is what you get...

[gargleblast]

Did you see the video? For starters, those are uniformed police. Other than that ... she's a loon.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand what you're saying, and I'm more than opposed to police militarization and their disgusting overuse of force, but come on. The woman was surrounded by marked lit-up cruisers, rammed one of them, hit a Secret Service officer, and drove like a complete lunatic through an area full of landmarks and tourists while being pursued by cops with their sirens blaring. I'm not saying she deserved to die, but I think the police can be excused for not assuming it was all just a big misunderstanding.

Re:Really?

[anagama]

that's a fair critique of my comment. sadly.

Take A Wrong Turn in DC...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if you take a wrong turn in DC, you will get shot down in cold blood by dozens of militarized officers?
That is seriously fucked up.

Welcome to DC. Enjoy your stay.

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes, I did:

1) There are non-uniformed people drawing down on her too
2) Even the uniformed people aren't wearing traditional uniforms - they have white shirts.

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The woman was surrounded by marked lit-up cruisers, rammed one of them,

I think you are vastly over-estimating the situational awareness of someone in the throes of a fight-or-flight reaction. For one thing, she backed into the vehicle that she "rammed" - she probably saw it in her rearview-camera, which shows the ground not the tops of vehicles, if she even saw it at all.

It is deceptively easy to assume calm, clear-headed and rational behavior while sitting behind a keyboard. In real life, under immense stress, all that goes out the window. That's why good cops are trained in de-escalation, they get to practice such things over and over again until they can maintain their calm in those situations.

Re:I was there and have it on video

[Kevin Fishburne]

No sense of humor, then. Wow.

Re:That is what you get...

[CauseBy]

Just to be clear, (3) is wrong. See in this video that she is obviously completely surrounded by police, not one plain-clothes officer with a gun but more than a half-dozen of them, in uniforms (weird uniforms with shorts), plus marked police cars with lights and sirens going.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/03/228942517/watch-the-capitol-hill-car-chase?ft=1&f=1001

So it wasn't some kind of innocent mom who got killed over an understandable error.

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Just to be clear, (3) is wrong. ...
not one plain-clothes officer with a gun

Just to be clear, if you watch the whole video without cnn's weird edit cuts, right around the 17 second point you can see two plain-clothes cops, one in a white shirt with plaid shorts and the other in a black shirt with khaki shorts draw pistols on her. There are indeed other cops in some sort of uniform that consists of dark pants and white shirts, but that's not what a normal beat cop looks like either.

Re:It's a BRILLIANT strategy!

[stealth_finger]

Think about it - no one around, walk and declare oneself Emporer!

Is that before or after a moistened bint lobs a Scimitar at you?

Re:That is what you get...

[joe545]

Larnach Castle? Isn't that in Dunedin, NZ?

Re:That is what you get...

[gridzilla]

In most European countries this kind of outcome for a simple car chase is unthinkable. It's almost as if the US cops were looking for an excuse to start shooting. Sure the car can be considered a weapon, but she was just fleeing (for whatever reason), definitely not warranting the on-the-spot death penalty.

Re:That is what you get...

[wonkey_monkey]

It's looking more like everyone and his dog is leaping to all manner of conclusions based on sketchy news reports and would do well to sit back and wait for the story to unfold for a while longer. Something, incidentally, that a cop in the heat of a dangerous situation doesn't have the luxury of doing.

4) was scared shitless for herself and her baby and took off

If so, sorry for her but she, for whatever reasons, made a decision that led - quite straightforwardly - to her death. What would you like the cops to do when, after drawing weapons and ordering a suspect to get out, they instead spin their wheels and drive off? Should everyone be allowed to do that three times before they got shot instead of one?

To me, this looks like a case of cops who have been militarized to the point of neglecting training on de-escalation.

To me, based on what I've seen and read so far, this looks like a case of cops bringing a dangerous high-speed pursuit to an end, and that's all I know so far. I'm not saying you're wrong, but we can let time tell on that one easily enough.

they should have realized that it was just the far more likely scenario of a regular citizen finding herself in an unfamiliar and threatening situation.

Have you run the numbers on that? How often does someone drive into barriers outside a high-profile building, speed away from armed police when ordered to stop, and then it all turns out to be a completely innocent mistake? Again, I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, just that it's too early to jump to it.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Need help in order to trigger a chase that will eventually result in your death?
There's an app for that.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

the government will latch onto any event like this to further curtail what the rest of us are allowed to do under the guise of security

You make it sound as if power is the end goal, rather than money. Power is merely the stepping stone to money. Every ounce of power gained is a justifcation for more spending, which will be leveraged for personal gain.

You're not in the business of government, are you?

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I'm more inclined to believe this was a case of an innocent person panicking when being faced by a bunch of psychopaths itching to get their guns off that pass for law enforcement in the USA.

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What would you like the cops to do when, after drawing weapons and ordering a suspect to get out, they instead spin their wheels and drive off?

You do understand that the reports are that she did eventually stop, did exit the vehicle and then was shot. How do you reconcile that with the above?

Have you run the numbers on that?

Yes I have. There have been precisely zero attempted attacks there - ok there was a crazy guy who tried to climb the fence a few years back, but he was just crazy not malicious. That makes pretty much every other scenario more likely. However, I do find your hyper-specific categorization disingenuous to the point of being intellectually dishonest.

The ONLY shots fired

[Anonymous Coward]

The Capitol Police were the ONLY ones to fire shots in this incident. The woman they gunned down was unarmed.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we had that in the UK.

Some cops watching a house where they thought a 'terrerist'(TM) might be:

- cop who can identify him goes to the john
- completely innocent Brazilian electrician comes out of the house carrying his tools
- other cops panic and tell Control they're following a suspected 'terrerist'
- message sent to firearms unit saying 'terrerist on the move'
- electrician goes into the subway
- firearms team put 7 shots through his head following orders that if a terrerist gets onto a mass transit system with a box they are to kill him...

Welcome to the 21st Century! Much the same as the 14th, only the killing is a bit more random. All those who prefer a more peaceful but still civilised existence, please stay on the Time Bus until we reach the 18th and 19th centuries...

Re:That is what you get...

[wonkey_monkey]

You do understand that the reports are that she did eventually stop, did exit the vehicle and then was shot. How do you reconcile that with the above?

No, I didn't know that, which is exactly my point. Now I do know, but what you've written is literally all I know about it. For all I know she could have then done anything number of things that gave the cops reason to use deadly force. Equally, she may have fully complied and someone just got trigger-happy. Who knows? Not me. Not yet.

There have been precisely zero attempted attacks there - ok there was a crazy guy who tried to climb the fence a few years back, but he was just crazy not malicious.

Didn't someone try to fly a small plane into the building once? And someone else shot out some windows a few years ago?

That makes pretty much every other scenario more likely.

Not if the other scenarios have never happened either, and even so probability of occurence is not the sole factor in formulating a response. If someone brandishes a firearm in the street over here they're quite likely to get themselves shot or tasered, despite it being more likely* to be a replica.

*disclaimer: I don't actually know this for a fact, I'm just using it as a plausible scenario.

On CNN

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuomo (who I like actually), when relaying the news that the depressed/disturbed unarmed woman was shot and killed, kinda shrugged and agreed with Kate Bolduan that "hey, she used the car as a weapon and didn't comply with police instructions".

So, flamebait as it may be, I have to ask:
In America, for driving recklessly and disobeying police, is the punishment summary death?
Seems to be happening an awful lot lately, such as the good samaritan who got 12 cop bullets put in him for failing to obey instructions.

Just asking. I don't recall seeing it in the penal code.

Re:That is what you get...

[CauseBy]

You're talking about a moment when two plain-clothes cops are standing next to four uniformed cops while the entire scene is literally surrounded with marked police cars with lights flashing. I think it would be untenable to argue -- as you have -- that any conscious person could mistake this for a non-police interaction.

"Oh, sure, there's that cop car in my back window, that other cop car in my back window, that THIRD cop car in my right side-view mirror, that FOURTH cop car in my left side-view mirror -- plus there are those two uniformed officers pointing guns at me through my driver-side window, and two more uniformed officers pointing guns at me through my windshield -- but oh, I'm pretty sure this whole situation is not a police interaction because back there, standing behind those two uniformed police officers, I can see a guy with a gun wearing plaid shorts."

You are really really reaching for a way to blame the police for this and you didn't succeeded. Without video maybe we could speculate on how everything was different but with video we can see that the police did everything right and the woman did everything wrong.

If you're just dripping with desperation on how to find some way to criticize the police [why the heck do people do that? why not just criticize them when they do something wrong?] then criticize the inability of six officers to shoot seven bullets and fail to take out even one of her tires.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my country (Australia) police are held responsible for every single shot they fire. If this incident had of happened here or in the UK, the officers involved would be placed on leave whilst it was investigated. This isn't a situation where a clear danger was presented to the officers or bystanders (unlike the incident in London a few months back where a knife wielding maniac was a clear danger). In fact the shoot out caused a more dangerous situation. Please note, I'm not blaming the officers here, I'm blaming the gun culture that says shooting people is OK and a preferred solution over more sensible ideas.

But in the UK, the uniformed perpetrators of extra-judicial executions tend to get away with it scott free most of the time and go straight back to work after the investigation concludes.

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

The great part about the streetview link you posted above is the police car parked behind the barrier.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it doesn't matter, why did you even bother reading the comments to find something to reply to and give your explanation of why we should all move along?

Re:That is what you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those low barriers are the same color as the pavement as well. How is this not cold blooded murder? How was this even reported as a hostile attack? Why? How does this not make a reinforcement of the 2nd amendment rights? How else do Citizens defend themselves against poorly trained, hair-trigger, obey-anything law enforcement? what the fuuuuuuck...... :'(

What is this doing on /.?

[YoungManKlaus]

As if anybody gives a crap ... esp. anyone outside the US

Perhaps she couldn't hear the guy in the booth?

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone was angrily approaching you, wouldn't you flee?
If someone tried to trap you, wouldn't you panic?

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You are really really reaching for a way to blame the police for this and you didn't succeeded.

That's funny. I see you narrowly focusing on just one aspect of the entire situation as a way to blame an unarmed driver for getting herself shot after she exited her car. I don't think you've succeeded at all, nevermind the specific details you got wrong in your narrow analysis.

Re:That is what you get...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

No, I didn't know that, which is exactly my point. Now I do know, but what you've written is literally all I know about it.

Actually you knew it after reading my first post. You chose to ignore it and then to go on speculating in exactly the manner you castigated me for, except I actually knew a lot more than you did. The irony is palpable.

Not if the other scenarios have never happened either,

With the millions of people who visit the area every year, it is absolutely guaranteed that there have been confrontations of all kinds.

Headline Correction

[CPLWeeks]

This headline should read: "Unarmed woman shot and killed by D.C. Police in front of her 1-year-old daughter". This woman was mentally unstable, but she was unarmed. The Police officer "injured during the pursuit" accidentally drove right into a Police barricade. The suspect got her car stuck on an obstacle, and was immediately killed. Does this event set the precedent to execute every driver involved in a high-speed pursuit now?

easy to take out a normal car

[iggymanz]

bullets into everything at front of engine will stop a normal car dead. heck I've had two cars over the years stop because of broken hose and engine choked and died on water vapor and steam. (late 70s and early 80s, hoses are higher quality nowadays). ever try to steer a car with two front tires out?; they don't steer.

but our increasingly militerized cops are adrenaline junkies looking for excuse to kill

Re:That is what you get...

[wonkey_monkey]

If I've speculated at all it's only been to highlight the folly of attempting to do so on the motivations and thought processes of anyone involved in this incident based on news reports.

With the millions of people who visit the area every year, it is absolutely guaranteed that there have been confrontations of all kinds.

The fatal outcome notwithstanding, this would still have been one of the more newsworthy ones.

I'm still not seeing why the assumed high number of non-fatal confrontations or any of the facts in this particular case should automatically lead to the conclusion that the cops over-reacted here.

Re:That is what you get...

[blackpaw]

Brain Fart! Yes Larnach Castle is in Dunedin (Where I went to University). I meant Edinburgh Castle.