This is so sad and funny, yet mostly just sad. There are a trillion things happening to this country every day that erode our freedoms. People like Obama have learned that we will take it, so they will keep going unless someone stops them. Did you see the story about that girl who got arrested for being nasty to a 911 operator/police officer? Did you know that in Vegas we have police monitored video cameras in what are admittedly high crime parts of town? We literally allow them to videotape us to make ourselves feel safer. I would go destroy one tonight if I didn't know that my girlfriend would be SOL trying to make ends meet without me. You know I would go to jail for doing something that should be applauded. The brain damaged amongst us would be perfectly fine if we had 40 something minority presidents in a row just to make up for all the whiteys we had previously. It wouldn't matter to them if a less qualified person were president as long as it was "fair" I would propose some sort of testing for the office, I had to take tests to get hired to push buttons at SEH America. You wouldn't have to be the clear winner of the tests, but at least score in the top group. Something I think Ben Stein could do well on, unlike Sarah Palin. If you didn't like him, but you liked her...tough. Find someone with her values that could pass the damn test. After 9/11 some people banned songs, during Katrina they confiscated weapons that people were using to defend themselves. None of our laws or rights are exempt from those in power trampling on them. I find it funny that people suspect that 99 percent of whiteys walk around harboring racist feelings towards people of color, yet any mention that Obama MIGHT have some racist thoughts deep in his soul is a joke to them. I know Obama is a genius to them and when you think about it you realize that if he is that smart, he probably should have at least a little ill will towards the white man. I know I would if I were black, whether it was deserved or not. Sorry if this post is rambling, there are just so many symptoms of this country going straight to hell that it is hard to stay on one topic.
Boy, you said a mouthful there. I remember Democrats in 2000 protesting that George W. Bush wasn't "ready" for the White House, and that we had to find someone more qualified. Then, eight years later, they turn around and elect a guy who used to be a "community organizer" in Chicago and had served only about three months of his first term in Congress. So much for the "qualification" test . . .
No, but it sounds good to me. No, but that sounds good to me. That reads as totally insane. Sorry that you feel that way. Ed O.
You might think it is insane now, wait until they have the cameras installed in your house. Or cameras outside that can see in and tape your converstations. No biggie huh? I will find the link about that girl who's father might have died thanks to a nazi prick police officer. Hey, pretty soon you will have to have a credit card handy when you call 911. Hope your grandma doesn't die if you are rude to a 911 operator. Here you go.......sounds good huh?..................[video=youtube;Zj91eeoFOBk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj91eeoFOBk[/video] I really hope for a day when people like you stop giving flippant answers to serious issues. You can say stuff like that as a joke and none of us will care, but if enough stupid people hear it they might start to believe in your jokes. On the other hand you might not be joking, in a world where a mother will eat her child's brain who knows what to think?
That is how politics works. When you get caught doing something, say the other side did it first. Or say they do it more often so you can be excused this one time. Now the left feels like they can do whatever they want. They can blame Bush for everything. They can say that we would have been worse off if they hadn't spent however many trillion dollars. We can't actually prove them wrong, we just have to trust them. Off topic, someone I know found out that their boss got fired today. The boss didn't do her damn job, she had a young child at home and milked her job because she could. One of her employees went behind her back and ratted her out. Coupled with her low performance scores and her employee ratting on her she got fired. Guess who gets all the blame? You guessed it, the employee who ratted her out. Nobody takes any responsibility for what they do anymore.
Who the hell even knows who is responsible for this one? No biggie huh? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/19/earlyshow/contributors/susankoeppen/main4106816.shtml Huh?
Thanks for the link. That's clearly not how it's supposed to work, and I hope that he is properly punished. With that being said, the system allows for people who act inappropriately to be caught. You're railing against technology to monitor public locations and yet ONLY through recording and monitoring is this story able to be told. I don't mind the idea of someone being arrested for disorderly conduct over 911. It's a valuable resource and people should not abuse it or the operators. Again, in the case you linked to it appears that the rules were violated by the operator, but that doesn't mean that the rules are bad. Well, you are the one who would go out and bash video cameras and go to prison for... what? Aren't there more constructive ways to deal with that? Would you appreciate if everyone who disagreed with a law resorted to violence? Ed O.
If by violence you mean smashing a piece of plastic with electronic devices hidden within then yes. We are only talking about our civil rights, no biggie. The only silver lining to this cloud is that there is a possibility of catching the cops when they beat up a drug dealer. That video would probably just disappear though. By the way, I am all for beating up drug dealers. I just don't want the cops doing it.
There is no guarantee of privacy in public places, IMO. You disagree. If you want to get your friends to outvote my friends, that's cool. That's the way the system works. If you go out and break cameras, then you're merely costing yourself your freedom and money. At minimum, you're just costing taxpayers money when the camera is replaced. Who would you rather have beat up drug dealers? Ed O.
Here are some instances where some real violence went down. The horror http://virtualology.com/revolutionarywarhall/
Would you care to find me a link that shows Las Vegas Metro Police waited for a public vote on installing these cameras?
They were traitors. They were revolutionaries because they successfully overthrew the government that they betrayed... if they had not succeeded they probably would have been beheaded. It doesn't mean that they were wrong, of course, but revolutions like those of the US are rare in world history and rarely result in a stable situation in the near term afterwards. Ed O.
No. You DO have publicly elected officials, right? So have it put to a vote. Of course, you probably can't, because you're in a minority in terms of people who are actually motivated enough to vote against it. I know that I merely visit Las Vegas, and I've done some crazy things in Vegas, but if I saw cameras on the street I would feel MORE safe, not violated. Ed O.
Absolutely. This goes to my theory on crime and punishment. You can do anything you want illegal or not. You have to be prepared to pay the price for doing so. I am not prepared to go to jail for smashing a camera. However, if I didn't have family and my girlfriend to think of and there weren't a thousand other things I could protest I might do it. If I did, I could gain access to the courts and get the ACLU to fight it all the way. You know how the courts often throw you out because you haven't been harmed by something don't you? The problem is that smashing that camera would be like throwing a 1 liter bottle of Aquafina on a forest fire.
You would be a sucker then. Logic would help one realize that the cameras don't have every inch of Vegas covered. Criminals would likely be smart enough to wait out of view for unsuspecting suckers and pounce on them off camera. Let's get silly and explore this for a second. What if you were in Vegas and weren't even drunk, but pissed your pants on camera? Shouldn't one reasonably expect that they could cover their wet pants with their jacket and sneak home with few if any people noticing? Imagine that officer donkeycock just happened to zoom in on you and your little accident and then he decided to upload a copy on youtube. Would you feel violated if people sang a song to you everywhere you went? Like this.... Ed O. had to go Couldn't hold it doh doh doh Piggy saw it so so so It's on the internet Now we know But hey, vote for whatever you want.
So someone could break into my apartment and kill my cats, as long as they're willing to pay the fine and do the time? There's no moral obligation to follow laws? It's admirable that you acknowledge that your disagreement with the law doesn't exclude you from being punished by the law, but it strikes me as sanctimonious that you believe that people who think cameras are a good idea ought to be applauding you for breaking the law. Yes. I know something of the law. Lack of standing is important, indeed. It seems that the ACLU would have plenty of people to have as test cases against this kind of situation. I believe that the ACLU position is that there are no laws protecting privacy from video monitoring in public places, and while they might fight for your (by their admission illegal) actions, I'm not sure that they would want to waste time or resources to do so. I think the problem actually is that people commit enough crime in that area that cameras aren't outrageous to most people. Ed O.
If it's a choice between getting pounced on right then or maybe getting pounced on later, I'll always take the later pouncing, thank you. I think that would be hilarious, actually. I would not feel violated in the least. I can't think of anything happening to me in public that I would feel humiliated by suddenly showing up on YouTube. I agree. Fortunately we can vote and we don't need to resort to breaking things when we think we're helping other people out. Ed O.
Of course there isn't a moral obligation to follow laws if the only reason we have them is because you and enough people who think like you voted for them. One would have to require that people vote based on what to you is an obvious moral standard????? How would you differentiate which laws one should follow due to a certain morality? Murder...Immoral I would say Rape...Immoral I would say Tax evasion? Moral? Speeding? Gray area? I would guess that most people feel that suicide is immoral, yet you can do that any time you want. We might say you were depressed, so how could we blame you? We could fall back on the whole "Ed O. voted against it" reasoning. If we all voted on a constitutional amendment that made it legal for people to eat their children's brains would you sit back and do nothing in the admittedly rare instance? You can't say it couldn't happen because a woman did just that recently. What if we made it a law that unless you were a certified lifeguard you couldn't rescue someone who was drowning? Would I be wrong to be proud of saving someone even though I broke the law? You can't seriously argue these points. I admit they are extreme and even ridiculous issues but holy crap knowing how liberals think I can almost see the lifeguard baloney coming some day. I hate to be all sanctimonious and shit but I gotta go to bed now. later
I'm not saying that laws should never be broken because of morality issues. I'm saying that, in my personal set of ethics, I give laws the benefit of the doubt. It's not purely a cost-benefit analysis, because I think that, morally, I have an obligation to society and I believe that I best fulfill that obligation by following its laws. If I believe that a certain law exists differently de facto, rather than de jure, I am much less likely to follow it. Speeding 10 mph over the limit is one example of this. Speeding 100 mph over the limit is not. Maybe I addressed that question above? I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I don't consider it immoral. I don't know how other people consider it, morally. I know that it is not--and never has been, in the US--illegal. Why would we make that a law? Why would I want to live in a country where everyone but me thinks it's an OK idea? I recently read a story. In ancient times an angel came to a man and told him that there would be a change, and that one day soon the rivers would stop flowing and everything would dry up and only stored water would remain pure. After a delay water would flow again and rains would fall, but that the water would be different and it would drive the drinker mad, along with erasing the memory of the stopped water flow. The man stored water and told some others, but no one believed him. One day, sure enough, the rivers dried up and the people wandered around, thirsty. After some time, great rains came and the people drank... except the man, who had enough water to last the rest of his life. He drank his own water and he felt fine, but he talked to others and they didn't remember the rivers going dry and they spoke differently. He was worried, but he was glad that he was still sane. Unfortunately, everyone else thought he was crazy. He became lonely and frustrated... and one day took a drink of some water that was not his. He forgot about his water, he forgot about the dried-up river, and he forgot that he thought everyone else was mad. He fit in and he drank the new water the rest of his life. The point? Being "sane" is, at some level, worthless. If everyone thought eating their kids' brains was OK, what COULD I do? Kill the eaters of brains? Blow up buildings? Maybe I'd move away. Or maybe I'd see the value in eating brains that everyone else did. I'm actually not liberal. Or not Liberal, at least. It's funny that you would think I am Ed O.
Man, I really respected Ben Stein. He lost a lot of credibility with me. I looked at him more as a guy who would research things and then allow the truth to come out of his mouth. Half of what he said is pure right wing propoganda.
