Seen in a Slashdot thread on Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet:
The Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin. Neither is there to help you. Both have a long history of trying to steal elections. Democrats claim to be liberal, and Republicans claim to be conservative, but both parties are actually populist. Both want to tell you what you can do in your home and what you can do in business, only in different ways (and honestly, it’s not uniform across the parties either.)
Very well said.
Yep, that’s right. H.R. 4279, the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property” Act would create a “Intellectual Property Enforcement Division” within the office of the Deputy Attorney General.
Because this is clearly what we need - a police organization to enforce intellectual property rights in our own country. Riiiiiiiiight…
I may be a little hazy on the details, but I’m pretty sure we already have laws that protect intellectual property rights. Can someone explain to me why we need a freaking police organization for this???
There’s a very good discussion about this over at Slashdot - it’s worth a look.
Can we seriously claim to be a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” with a straight face anymore?
Via Bruce Schneier’s blog - the TSA has a new photo ID requirement:
Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.
This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures.
You used to be able to travel without showing ID - your “papers” - it was a hassle, but you could do it. Now you can forget about it - ID is required. Unless you say you forgot it, in which case you’re OK. Because someone trying to hijack a plane or blow one up would never lie about not having ID…
Repeat after me: Identification does not equal security. Say it again: Identification does NOT equal security.
We’ll keep this up until someone gets the hint. In the meantime, get out your papers, comrade… or else!
UPDATE: In case you forgot about it, here’s part one of “Papers, Please,” and a really good quote from the Slashdot article that started me on this rant:
“I remember in the 80s we used to make jokes about Soviet citizens being asked “show me your papers” and needing internal passports to travel in their own country. Now we need internal passports to travel in our country. How did this happen? The requirement to show ID for flying on commercial passenger flights started in 1996, in response to the crash of TWA Flight 800. This crash was very likely caused by a mechanical failure. How showing ID to board a plane prevents mechanical failures is left as an exercise to the reader. How mandatory ID even prevents terrorist attacks is also not clear to me; all the 9/11 hijackers had valid government-issued ID. I hope the courts don’t wimp out on this fight.”
It seems like maybe the courts have wimped out on this fight, which is not only sad, but terribly distressing.
The next time you get upset about the state of the world, or the next time you cringe at the gas pump at how much it costs to fill up, or when you can’t pay your bills because the economy is going down the tubes - make yourself a promise.
Promise that in this upcoming election, you will vote. If you were already going to vote, then promise that you’ll vote for someone different. Maybe it’ll be the “other party” from the one you normally vote for. Or maybe it’ll be a 3rd party candidate (may I recommend voting Libertarian?). Whatever it is, just do it.
Whatever excuse you’re coming up with right now to justify why your vote doesn’t matter, or how you don’t have time - well, you can take your excuse and stuff it, because it isn’t good enough. And it’s still not good enough - you can keep trying all you want, I’m not going to let up. You made a promise to yourself!
Once you’ve made this promise, you can try passing on this advice to someone else, the next time you hear them complain about things in the world (gas prices, economy, war, security, politics, etc.).
Just make sure you don’t go back on your promise - you may regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
After all - the biggest changes in the world can still be started by just one person.
I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend lately - people are becoming more and more xenophobic. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at all the anti-immigrant sentiments floating around these days. And in case you weren’t sure, the definition of xenophobic is:
- An exaggerated or abnormal fear of strangers or foreigners.
- A strong antipathy or aversion to strangers or foreigners.
Don’t think that this describes society today? Think again:
I hope you will notice that this is not confined to just the United States, either.
This is more than a little bit troubling.An awful lot of post-apocolyptic sci-fi stuff that shows nations with very strong anti-immigration laws - off the top of my head I can name V for Vendetta and Children of Men.
Things like this should make us ALL a little concerned.
I’m not saying that one necessarily follows the other (correlation does not imply causation, after all) - but still, it is very… troubling.
What is perhaps even more troubling is that this is not new. Anti-immigrant sentiment seems to come and go in cycles - looking back through history shows periods of very strong anti-immigrant sentiments in just about every country at one point or another in their history, and often multiple times. Here in the United States, even people like Ben Franklin voiced what would today be seen as very vocal anti-immigrant views.
Of course, that was over 200 years ago - you’d think we’d have made some sort of progress along the way, right?
Or is this another case of “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” or something?
Whatever happened to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free?”
Something to think about before you head to the voting booth this year. (Assuming your vote gets recorded correctly; but that’s another blog post entirely.)
Keithius | July 10, 2008
