Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
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Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
You can do that, but only if they police age discrimination out to 75... If you HAVE a job age should not be a condition of keeping it. They also need to revive the loopholes that push WORKING adults out of private insurance just because the are 65... That's just wrong as well and is the leading cause of the first problem.
Remember, those that decry the system the most are the same ones that ORGANIZE to abuse it!
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
You have the point dead on. If we DIDN'T have social programs the "blight" on cities would be particularly bad.. That's where the right wants to put more people in jail, a pseudo-slavery argument, but they don't get that it won't work.
In addition, the over educated, welfare workforce helps keep wages low for Walmart, and all the corporate call centers that pay wages for 50 hours work that don't cover basic living or health expense.. If the state didnt have those services, minimum wage would have to be $15/hr just to get "able bodied" workers.
China is using US debts to stash it's profits from it's own citizens. It also gives them ridiculous global bidding power because China's government tells the companies holding that debt when and what they can spend it on... China can "break" any commodity they are interested in.
On the flip side I could see China holding up Taiwan.. If they simultaneously sold a huge number of US positions for Euros, and "claimed" Taiwan, how could the USA AFFORD to pick a fight? Just put the boats on the other side of Taiwan and make them sign themselves over like Hong Kong. Then move on the Russian coast, Japan, and the Aleutian islands for the oil.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
In the Regan era the idea was to cut the "punitive" tax rates so companies would spend money on big upgrades, that hires workers, workers pay MORE taxes than the company would have.
That worked... To a point. In the 1990s and 2000s tax receipts were at record levels and good states cut the rates. But now that the economy is down governments need a minimum amount of taxes and they're refusing to adjust. Meanwhile they are still trying to give "breaks" to the rich that have no intension of spending that money in the USA.
Re:For a revolutionary workers party!
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Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
"Finally the capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes!" Austin "danger" Powers.
On a more practical note $5 Trillion of the debt was racked up DIRECTLY by a Republican Congress and a Republican President in 6 years of "no veto". And worse, they didn't put it in the budget and CUT taxes while spending it... But hey, let's blame Obama!!!
Because in tech stocks, or housing you can easily get better interest that the State is paying. In fact in most payout schemes, the State doesn't pay any INTEREST to you on the money at all. So the payout is the amount they actually have on hand from the drawing.. The difference they were planning on getting from inflation or their own fund interest.
But there's this magic thing called "retained earnings" as well as the ability to create "trusts" both "individuals" can't do. First, companies get breaks for everything. Cars, gas, office, warehouse... Those are all 100% deductible from profit... Imagine if citizens could do that.. 100% credit on all the money you can spend on kids!!!
But that's the my point, that is exactly what corporations do. Nobody but "stockholders" decide if a charge is wasteful, so companies like Microsoft are run like the CEOs piggybank. They buy crap just to not declare profit.
That's why Smatr states tried going to VAT, essentially the same rules that citizens play buy... The stte wants 5% of EVERY dollar whether you make profit or not...
Corporations have huge rates, but if they're posting CASH profits... Called dividends... They're doing it wrong. Corporations only contribute 15% of the tax receipts. Of course, YOUR boss has to write the check for a large amount of withholding of YOUR money. That's what hurts many small businesses... When they realize Uncle Sam only let's them keep that 30% the company takes off the top so long... Usually that means the Boss has to remember to pay that, even if they DIDNT HAVE IT when they wrote your paycheck...
THAT is why Republicans hate pensions and taxes... It requires THEM to pay up money after months of hanging onto it for you.
Exactly, they do the roll down because chances are still huge that somebody would win the big pot... And the state lottery commission MUST get rid of the money in a certain time frame... So they let more people get some.
This effect is the same reason "capitalism" is broken as well.. The math is the same. When you are buying enough of anything to measure in whole percents, then it's easy to look at the numbers and get a better that average return. In this case the numbers sound like they are getting maybe 10% back. But in reality, that's not really that great. It's about what a good stock broker can get per year (without being illegal) doing much the same thing. At least in this case the state is still getting their sizeable cut up front, so the Lottery is now being cheated... It looks to have the same dynamic as "real" capitalism. ANYBODY can buy one pig, and has a fair chance... Buy 100k pigs and you now have a better picture of which ones are more valuable and optimize your operation. At least this is JUST A GAME and nobody needs bailouts!!!!
But this is the point... Google did build this from what they believed was a patent-free, or at least patents they thought they has rights to... But MPEG-LA is such a massive licensing firm, they'll FIND somebody in their group with something Google could possibly infringe on. The group has gone from being a way for big companies to AVOID lawsuits, to a group of old guys that beats up new kids with 20-year-old crap.
Google is of the "don't ask, charge ahead" approach to patents. Google is throwing CS Masters and PhDs at this stuff.. Part of patents is proving how you got from A to B... Parent Courts tend to favor those that can show their own work, even if it is close to something else patented.. Because that's the "spirit" of the patent system.
We need a more "European" system.. Once something is brought before Court, you should not be able to "settle". In both Civil and Criminal court too many cases are known to be losing by a bigger party, just to drain resources from a smaller one.
We need to adjust the system to the "Court's Satisfaction". In a criminal case like OJ or Casey, the resulting perjury and damage charges for losing the case should all be presided by the same court... So the court can punish the actions of it's agents, not just the parties...
In the case of things like all these IP cases, the Court should have the right to keep an interesting case open and RULE on a subject. This whole "drop the case" at the 11th hour because you don't want a losing precedent has to stop.
That's a pretty contradictory conclusion, no? To extort anyone, they'd have to show the patents. As long as they don't show them they can not extort anyone.
This is like saying "something" on your house I thing is mine... But I won't TELL YOU what it is because then yod hand it over or dig out the bill of sale. It's all about "kicking on the door".. That's extortion.. Look Gogle, that's am awful nice codex you got there.. Shame if somebody started DMCA'ing your followers, "buddy".
but without fixing the uncanny valley problem you won't WANT to have sex with the sexbot. I think that's an excellent example of how we think a sexbot is cute in movies or cartoons, but in reality it's a machine that's got to convince me to stick my wiinis into it. Even Animals have a leg up (not on the furniture) on feeling Alive versus the best robots.. that's why there's whole internet sites devoted to cat pictures. (not that I would know anything about that.. don't judge me)
I think that's part of the delay as well. After all the phone companies have no interest in letting people out of their contracts too early. How many people would actually be out of a 3GS contract now? if you got a 3GS on the day it was released for sale it would have just barely expired. There's really no reason to stuff new phones just for the sake of new phones, and I think Apple understands that as well. At this point a new iPhone is just competing with the people that ALREADY HAVE iPHONES, not growing the market. Apple wants the GROWTH dollars because those are the people that pay premium, there's just not something to put in a phone right now that's "that much" better... at least until iOS5 comes out.
In think they should have left all the future stuff till the "after credits". We should have seen his men come home, the lady mourn his loss, but move on... And left the main movie right there. Utterly depressing, but THAT is how the story goes for the REAL heroes of the world.
I thought they would have saved finding Captain America until the Avengers movie anyway. he's the missing piece on the team between MEN, freaks, Gods, and people that think their gods.
But that is also WHY people feel the movie is more true to it's roots. Prior to the 1990's heroes were mostly perfect.. It wasn't "period" to write about Captain groveling.. The General did that, not the fighter. It's the fighter' job to keep fighting. Then receive a heroes welcome... 40's and 50's comics weren't about feeling sorry...
Come to the NEXT movie and well get the 00's version... The hero fought and won... And outlived everybody he cared about.. But that's not for THIS movie.
I didn't see anything in Captain America worse than in Indy Jones... There might have been swearing. These days, they tend to add a few scenes to a PG movie to "boost" it to PG13 because that makes it "not a kid's movie".
Hint, if it is on TV at all it is not "left" at best places like BBC, PBS, and NPR are "middle-to-right". Even guys like Michael Moore or John Stewart are far right... Just little guy right, not corporate right.
Unfortunately, all the public establishments in my town run FOX News almost exclusively... A few run CNN. I'm repulsed by almost every show... Even their weather reports piss me off now. it's 24x7 poison... How can anybody be surrounded by that stuff and not live in fear, anger, hate all the time?
Now that they have a conviction, they could have each BANK file separate charges. Cards are owned by banks, each separate bank and jurisdiction should be able to charge him separately.. As THEY are the wronged parties with hundreds of cards each. That would add just ONE year per bank... Or potentially 100's of CONSECUTIVE 1-2 year terms on top of the ten.
Frankly, it's time for the law to "step aside" in these cases intil people learn not to do this. O think it's time to bring back public corporal punishment... Travel to each city, break out the cat-'o-nine-tails and just do the rounds till he gets all 675k lashes in!!! Somebody want to run the numbers to see if it's even possible to take that many lashes in ten years... It's not like we're giving him death or anything... That'd be cruel! It takes way less than 30 minutes in a phone tree each of the victims will have to endure.
But my point stands... The right-wing "shock jocks" combine with the old men that don't know any better of the Tea Party have created a state of blatant political Fear, Uncertainty, and Dread since it was obvious there simply was no GOP-backed candidate in 2008.
McCain and Palin were never INTENDED to win by the GOP party. Historically, very few times the same party wins 3 terms in a row. This entire 4 years is about getting the GOP back in the big chair by "any means necessary" in 2012. The goal that was achieved is to Troll the President of the United States and get their Congress seats back... So that when 2012 election comes things are so bad they'll get the "big chair" back and go right back to "business as usual" that was set up under Cheney's reign.
Objective One of stalling Obama's push for Change was done... that way the people still think Democrats are stupid. Objective Two is to keep this budget mess going another 18 months so "their man" can fix it. (which will mean essentially, start more wars where the IMF, World Bank, UN wants us, borrow more money and pretend that "the flag of freedom" now is more important than health of the nation later...) If anything expect a strong, backed candidate next time.... they'll come out of nowhere so there's no time to really debate with them versus Obama. Republicans are a BUSINESS.. that's how BUSINESS thinks... no debate, no discussion, just swoop in with "overwhelming influence" at the correct time.
So yes, at first I swear I heard the right wingers on TV somehow saying the congresswoman "deserved" it for being Democrat. Really! Although it went away fairly quickly, just like the accusation before the war in Iraq of Saddam Hussein somehow involved (it was "leaked in error" about 2-3pm on Friday and gone by Monday morning). Of course "nobody" wants these things to happen... except of course when we have every GOP member that DOESN'T threaten Obama "contested" for their seat by their own party, and conservative media all but threatening "second amendment" options.. really?
See the deal is that these people have highly paid supporting staff making up every word, action, and clothing that appears on TV. There is a war against the "poor leechers" which REALLY means anybody making less than $200k per year. There is no "middle" there is only Right or Wrong. Force yourself to watch Fox News or CNN for 3-4 hours... the people in the "real world" are trying to achieve "uprising" far more than the craziest of Slashdot posters. The "mainstream" is nothing but fear and dread against Obama 24x7. This isn't "freedom of press" they are actively inciting a riot. In the case of Jared Loughner, big media and the GOP got exactly what they wanted.
On the other hand, this guy is just one of many whipped into a frenzy by the Tea Party. Ever since it was obvious Obama would win the election I've been hearing words from right-wing commentators "right up to the line" to incite people to publicly draw this conclusion. I have had a big problem with that since before the election.
10 YEARS AGO when we were disagreeing with BushCo starting a war in Iraq that we didn't have money for, under false pretenses, we were all paranoid as hell to watch what we said, no matter how upset we were. You know our Slashdot posts have to be in a big file somewhere.. I was surprised when I flew recently that somebody DIDN'T have a stack of some of my worse ones handy. Out of all the Bush Rage on internet boards from his 7 years in office, it's kind of ironic, that the first political violence has been directed at DEMOCRATS...like the assassination attempt in Arizona... right from the highest levels of media, nothing to do with us internet crazies. I certainly think that that attack put the dampers on most of the right-wing media talking heads in a hurry, but the cat is out of the bag... blood is in the water... the pundits did their job of seeding ultra-violence against the one side that's tried to at least have a FAIR discussion. GOP doesn't even want discussion... they want to RULE, not serve.
I think in this case, it's no different than being drunk at the bar with friends... you go home, sleep it off, and realize that you shouldn't have said that... only in the online world nothing ever "goes away". If they didn't TRY to prosecute it, then something would happen and the Secret Service would not have done it's job.
For normal people photographing "everybody" is a crime called stalking as soon as you act on it. It's also called blackmail or extortion when you threaten law enforcement over something you collected.
There is clearly a difference between looking up ONE license plate of somebody, and just "collecting them all for later". Up until J. Edgar in the 1950's the technology and manpower didn't exist for large scale tracking.
IDEA! how about a "grass roots" effort to add "privacy of personal data" to our Constitution when the Tea Party comes around for the balanced budget.
Slashdot Mirror
You can do that, but only if they police age discrimination out to 75... If you HAVE a job age should not be a condition of keeping it. They also need to revive the loopholes that push WORKING adults out of private insurance just because the are 65... That's just wrong as well and is the leading cause of the first problem.
Remember, those that decry the system the most are the same ones that ORGANIZE to abuse it!
You have the point dead on. If we DIDN'T have social programs the "blight" on cities would be particularly bad.. That's where the right wants to put more people in jail, a pseudo-slavery argument, but they don't get that it won't work.
In addition, the over educated, welfare workforce helps keep wages low for Walmart, and all the corporate call centers that pay wages for 50 hours work that don't cover basic living or health expense.. If the state didnt have those services, minimum wage would have to be $15/hr just to get "able bodied" workers.
China is using US debts to stash it's profits from it's own citizens. It also gives them ridiculous global bidding power because China's government tells the companies holding that debt when and what they can spend it on... China can "break" any commodity they are interested in.
On the flip side I could see China holding up Taiwan.. If they simultaneously sold a huge number of US positions for Euros, and "claimed" Taiwan, how could the USA AFFORD to pick a fight? Just put the boats on the other side of Taiwan and make them sign themselves over like Hong Kong. Then move on the Russian coast, Japan, and the Aleutian islands for the oil.
In the Regan era the idea was to cut the "punitive" tax rates so companies would spend money on big upgrades, that hires workers, workers pay MORE taxes than the company would have.
That worked... To a point. In the 1990s and 2000s tax receipts were at record levels and good states cut the rates. But now that the economy is down governments need a minimum amount of taxes and they're refusing to adjust. Meanwhile they are still trying to give "breaks" to the rich that have no intension of spending that money in the USA.
"Finally the capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes!" Austin "danger" Powers.
On a more practical note $5 Trillion of the debt was racked up DIRECTLY by a Republican Congress and a Republican President in 6 years of "no veto". And worse, they didn't put it in the budget and CUT taxes while spending it... But hey, let's blame Obama!!!
Because in tech stocks, or housing you can easily get better interest that the State is paying. In fact in most payout schemes, the State doesn't pay any INTEREST to you on the money at all. So the payout is the amount they actually have on hand from the drawing.. The difference they were planning on getting from inflation or their own fund interest.
But there's this magic thing called "retained earnings" as well as the ability to create "trusts" both "individuals" can't do.
First, companies get breaks for everything. Cars, gas, office, warehouse... Those are all 100% deductible from profit... Imagine if citizens could do that.. 100% credit on all the money you can spend on kids!!!
But that's the my point, that is exactly what corporations do. Nobody but "stockholders" decide if a charge is wasteful, so companies like Microsoft are run like the CEOs piggybank. They buy crap just to not declare profit.
That's why Smatr states tried going to VAT, essentially the same rules that citizens play buy... The stte wants 5% of EVERY dollar whether you make profit or not...
Corporations have huge rates, but if they're posting CASH profits ... Called dividends... They're doing it wrong. Corporations only contribute 15% of the tax receipts. Of course, YOUR boss has to write the check for a large amount of withholding of YOUR money. That's what hurts many small businesses... When they realize Uncle Sam only let's them keep that 30% the company takes off the top so long... Usually that means the Boss has to remember to pay that, even if they DIDNT HAVE IT when they wrote your paycheck...
THAT is why Republicans hate pensions and taxes... It requires THEM to pay up money after months of hanging onto it for you.
Exactly, they do the roll down because chances are still huge that somebody would win the big pot... And the state lottery commission MUST get rid of the money in a certain time frame... So they let more people get some.
This effect is the same reason "capitalism" is broken as well.. The math is the same. When you are buying enough of anything to measure in whole percents, then it's easy to look at the numbers and get a better that average return. In this case the numbers sound like they are getting maybe 10% back. But in reality, that's not really that great. It's about what a good stock broker can get per year (without being illegal) doing much the same thing. At least in this case the state is still getting their sizeable cut up front, so the Lottery is now being cheated...
It looks to have the same dynamic as "real" capitalism. ANYBODY can buy one pig, and has a fair chance... Buy 100k pigs and you now have a better picture of which ones are more valuable and optimize your operation. At least this is JUST A GAME and nobody needs bailouts!!!!
But this is the point... Google did build this from what they believed was a patent-free, or at least patents they thought they has rights to... But MPEG-LA is such a massive licensing firm, they'll FIND somebody in their group with something Google could possibly infringe on. The group has gone from being a way for big companies to AVOID lawsuits, to a group of old guys that beats up new kids with 20-year-old crap.
Google is of the "don't ask, charge ahead" approach to patents. Google is throwing CS Masters and PhDs at this stuff .. Part of patents is proving how you got from A to B... Parent Courts tend to favor those that can show their own work, even if it is close to something else patented.. Because that's the "spirit" of the patent system.
We need a more "European" system.. Once something is brought before Court, you should not be able to "settle". In both Civil and Criminal court too many cases are known to be losing by a bigger party, just to drain resources from a smaller one.
We need to adjust the system to the "Court's Satisfaction". In a criminal case like OJ or Casey, the resulting perjury and damage charges for losing the case should all be presided by the same court... So the court can punish the actions of it's agents, not just the parties...
In the case of things like all these IP cases, the Court should have the right to keep an interesting case open and RULE on a subject. This whole "drop the case" at the 11th hour because you don't want a losing precedent has to stop.
This smells like more bullshit extortion.
That's a pretty contradictory conclusion, no? To extort anyone, they'd have to show the patents. As long as they don't show them they can not extort anyone.
This is like saying "something" on your house I thing is mine... But I won't TELL YOU what it is because then yod hand it over or dig out the bill of sale. It's all about "kicking on the door" .. That's extortion.. Look Gogle, that's am awful nice codex you got there.. Shame if somebody started DMCA'ing your followers, "buddy".
but without fixing the uncanny valley problem you won't WANT to have sex with the sexbot. I think that's an excellent example of how we think a sexbot is cute in movies or cartoons, but in reality it's a machine that's got to convince me to stick my wiinis into it. Even Animals have a leg up (not on the furniture) on feeling Alive versus the best robots.. that's why there's whole internet sites devoted to cat pictures. (not that I would know anything about that.. don't judge me)
I think that's part of the delay as well. After all the phone companies have no interest in letting people out of their contracts too early. How many people would actually be out of a 3GS contract now? if you got a 3GS on the day it was released for sale it would have just barely expired. There's really no reason to stuff new phones just for the sake of new phones, and I think Apple understands that as well. At this point a new iPhone is just competing with the people that ALREADY HAVE iPHONES, not growing the market. Apple wants the GROWTH dollars because those are the people that pay premium, there's just not something to put in a phone right now that's "that much" better... at least until iOS5 comes out.
This is what Open Source gets for Building Bridges!!!
In think they should have left all the future stuff till the "after credits". We should have seen his men come home, the lady mourn his loss, but move on... And left the main movie right there. Utterly depressing, but THAT is how the story goes for the REAL heroes of the world.
I thought they would have saved finding Captain America until the Avengers movie anyway. he's the missing piece on the team between MEN, freaks, Gods, and people that think their gods.
But that is also WHY people feel the movie is more true to it's roots. Prior to the 1990's heroes were mostly perfect.. It wasn't "period" to write about Captain groveling.. The General did that, not the fighter. It's the fighter' job to keep fighting. Then receive a heroes welcome... 40's and 50's comics weren't about feeling sorry...
Come to the NEXT movie and well get the 00's version... The hero fought and won... And outlived everybody he cared about.. But that's not for THIS movie.
But that's the McGuffin that makes Captain unique. His "creator" is dead, all the "Chemical X" lost..
That was tossed in to point out that there's no "reverse engineering" the process either.
As they weren't speaking German he could probably figure OK.
Unless he had an Austin Powers moment... Oops!
I didn't see anything in Captain America worse than in Indy Jones... There might have been swearing. These days, they tend to add a few scenes to a PG movie to "boost" it to PG13 because that makes it "not a kid's movie".
Just remember Patrick the Starfish lives under a rock too.
Hint, if it is on TV at all it is not "left" at best places like BBC, PBS, and NPR are "middle-to-right". Even guys like Michael Moore or John Stewart are far right... Just little guy right, not corporate right.
Unfortunately, all the public establishments in my town run FOX News almost exclusively... A few run CNN. I'm repulsed by almost every show... Even their weather reports piss me off now. it's 24x7 poison... How can anybody be surrounded by that stuff and not live in fear, anger, hate all the time?
Now that they have a conviction, they could have each BANK file separate charges. Cards are owned by banks, each separate bank and jurisdiction should be able to charge him separately.. As THEY are the wronged parties with hundreds of cards each. That would add just ONE year per bank... Or potentially 100's of CONSECUTIVE 1-2 year terms on top of the ten.
Frankly, it's time for the law to "step aside" in these cases intil people learn not to do this. O think it's time to bring back public corporal punishment... Travel to each city, break out the cat-'o-nine-tails and just do the rounds till he gets all 675k lashes in!!! Somebody want to run the numbers to see if it's even possible to take that many lashes in ten years... It's not like we're giving him death or anything... That'd be cruel! It takes way less than 30 minutes in a phone tree each of the victims will have to endure.
no, he's just crazy...
But my point stands... The right-wing "shock jocks" combine with the old men that don't know any better of the Tea Party have created a state of blatant political Fear, Uncertainty, and Dread since it was obvious there simply was no GOP-backed candidate in 2008.
McCain and Palin were never INTENDED to win by the GOP party. Historically, very few times the same party wins 3 terms in a row. This entire 4 years is about getting the GOP back in the big chair by "any means necessary" in 2012. The goal that was achieved is to Troll the President of the United States and get their Congress seats back... So that when 2012 election comes things are so bad they'll get the "big chair" back and go right back to "business as usual" that was set up under Cheney's reign.
Objective One of stalling Obama's push for Change was done... that way the people still think Democrats are stupid. Objective Two is to keep this budget mess going another 18 months so "their man" can fix it. (which will mean essentially, start more wars where the IMF, World Bank, UN wants us, borrow more money and pretend that "the flag of freedom" now is more important than health of the nation later...) If anything expect a strong, backed candidate next time.... they'll come out of nowhere so there's no time to really debate with them versus Obama. Republicans are a BUSINESS.. that's how BUSINESS thinks... no debate, no discussion, just swoop in with "overwhelming influence" at the correct time.
So yes, at first I swear I heard the right wingers on TV somehow saying the congresswoman "deserved" it for being Democrat. Really! Although it went away fairly quickly, just like the accusation before the war in Iraq of Saddam Hussein somehow involved (it was "leaked in error" about 2-3pm on Friday and gone by Monday morning). Of course "nobody" wants these things to happen... except of course when we have every GOP member that DOESN'T threaten Obama "contested" for their seat by their own party, and conservative media all but threatening "second amendment" options.. really?
See the deal is that these people have highly paid supporting staff making up every word, action, and clothing that appears on TV. There is a war against the "poor leechers" which REALLY means anybody making less than $200k per year. There is no "middle" there is only Right or Wrong. Force yourself to watch Fox News or CNN for 3-4 hours... the people in the "real world" are trying to achieve "uprising" far more than the craziest of Slashdot posters. The "mainstream" is nothing but fear and dread against Obama 24x7. This isn't "freedom of press" they are actively inciting a riot. In the case of Jared Loughner, big media and the GOP got exactly what they wanted.
On the other hand, this guy is just one of many whipped into a frenzy by the Tea Party. Ever since it was obvious Obama would win the election I've been hearing words from right-wing commentators "right up to the line" to incite people to publicly draw this conclusion. I have had a big problem with that since before the election.
10 YEARS AGO when we were disagreeing with BushCo starting a war in Iraq that we didn't have money for, under false pretenses, we were all paranoid as hell to watch what we said, no matter how upset we were. You know our Slashdot posts have to be in a big file somewhere.. I was surprised when I flew recently that somebody DIDN'T have a stack of some of my worse ones handy. Out of all the Bush Rage on internet boards from his 7 years in office, it's kind of ironic, that the first political violence has been directed at DEMOCRATS...like the assassination attempt in Arizona... right from the highest levels of media, nothing to do with us internet crazies. I certainly think that that attack put the dampers on most of the right-wing media talking heads in a hurry, but the cat is out of the bag... blood is in the water... the pundits did their job of seeding ultra-violence against the one side that's tried to at least have a FAIR discussion. GOP doesn't even want discussion... they want to RULE, not serve.
I think in this case, it's no different than being drunk at the bar with friends... you go home, sleep it off, and realize that you shouldn't have said that... only in the online world nothing ever "goes away". If they didn't TRY to prosecute it, then something would happen and the Secret Service would not have done it's job.
Bit at some point it does...
For normal people photographing "everybody" is a crime called stalking as soon as you act on it. It's also called blackmail or extortion when you threaten law enforcement over something you collected.
There is clearly a difference between looking up ONE license plate of somebody, and just "collecting them all for later". Up until J. Edgar in the 1950's the technology and manpower didn't exist for large scale tracking.
IDEA! how about a "grass roots" effort to add "privacy of personal data" to our Constitution when the Tea Party comes around for the balanced budget.