Yup. Magenta. Don’t you go around using that color all willy nilly, or you will here from the T Mobile legal department about how you are trying to mislead people into thinking that you are a 2nd Teir Telecommunications company.
I know today’s date but this actually hit yesterday. What makes it funnier is that Engadget has since made it’s entire background magenta as an appropriate “screw you” to the hysterical letter.
As always google is a step ahead of everyone else, but they are licensing that technology to the common man. Google gDay let’s you search tomorrows internet today!
I heard about this and I just had to laugh. Rush Limbaugh has elicited the help of his call screener Bo Snerdley to criticize Obama in areas requiring an African American perspective. Mr. Snerdley offers his criticism twice – once for whitey and once for the brothers. The translation alone makes it worth the read:
This is Bo Snerdley, official criticizer for the EIB Network, certified black enough to criticize. I have a statement. Senator Obama, we understand the need for you to take time off with your family, but this is a presidential race, and while you were away, your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, continued making news. Now he’s attacking Italian-Americans, referring to them as garlic noses. Senator Obama, one of your platforms is that you would speak to America’s enemies, persuade them somehow to become our friends. Yet you apparently can’t even speak with your friend, your former pastor, after all that has happened in recent weeks and persuade him to just be quiet, for the sake of your own campaign to be quiet and for the sake of unity. Mr. Obama, we’re losing hope, and it’s very sad.
And now the translation for the brothers and the sisters in the EIB community: Yo Barack, I had you confused with the brother that knows how to throw down. Your homey, first he goes out and disses the World War II vets, he disses us dropping the bomb to win a war, then he lifts some lines from brother Malcolm. All right, all right, that was cool. But after all that, it starts to blow over. What does he do? He comes out and disses the Italians. What’s next, bro? He’s going to diss the Jews? Yo, Obama, tell your homey to shut up, at least, man, until you win. Your main B man, he sounds like he’s hooked on madness, and what are you doing? Chilling somewhere out in the Caribbean. Yo, bro, you in the game, you wanted to be in the game, now you in the game. In the game, you either play or you get played. And bro, you’re getting played out by your homey, Reverend Wright. That concludes our statement.
On March 19th at the Campaign for America’s Future Take Back America Conference in Washington, Arianna Huffington (co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, and one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential people”) made the following statement:
“It’s time to actually have zero tolerance for certain ways of arguing. First of all, we can not allow John McCain to ever say again that Al-Qaeda is going to increase the levels of violence because it doesn’t want John McCain to be president. That should be outside the realm of political debate in this country. We need to say, it is completely un-American to politicize real threats to this country for the sake of getting elected. There is nothing we can do about Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of them. They are toxic curiosities. But there has to be a different standard to what happens in the United States Congress, and it is up to us to demand censure and to demand an absolute zero tolerance for statements like that starting with John McCain’s statement.” – Arianna Huffington (emphasis added)
Please realize that Arianna became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union, at a mere 21 years old. Now consider for a moment that the best defense to Democratic ideology and positions she can formulate is to censor all opposing ideas. Well, their positions must be solid to allow that kind of scrutiny!
Our good friend Patrick Bedard of Car & Driver has a excellent piece on the governmental sneaky tax: Robo-Cop.
This just in: A red-light camera on Broadway Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, has suffered fatal gunshot wounds. Three bullets struck the device, destroying the lens and rendering it inop. Clifford E. Clark III, 47, holed up in a nearby minivan, was arrested and charged with felony vandalism.
Not to put words in Clark’s mouth, but what I think he was trying to say with his .30-06 Ruger was that he had withdrawn his consent to be governed by robots. You may remember that our founding fathers had a very clear idea of the source of government legitimacy. The Declaration of Independence says that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The political theory here is that there is no moral authority to use state power unless the people say there is.
One guy expressing disapproval of a red-light camera won’t curb government zeal for robot surveillance, but it’s a start…
Let’s be clear about the tyranny here. This is not about running red lights. Camera enforcement is a revenuing scheme that depends on an end run around the fundamental American principle of innocent until proven guilty. The glassy-eyed accuser is a robot, and it’s not subject to cross examination. Moreover, it’s a robot employed by a for-profit business that makes its profits from guilty verdicts. It makes nothing on innocent verdicts. Such an obvious conflict of interest should bring out all the rifles…
But there is growing frustration. Consider the case of Tim Alstrom of Aberdeen, Washington, as reported in theNewspaper.com. He opened an envelope last summer to find a demand for payment of $101. Nearby Seattle had convicted him of running a red light at 3:21 a.m. on June 29, citing camera evidence as proof. He was at home asleep at the time, and the car in the photo wasn’t his, but never mind. It gets worse. Seattle, like most camera jurisdictions, will dismiss a camera ticket under one condition only: The car owner has to rat out the actual driver, who must pay the $101.
Students: Test your knowledge. Red-light cameras are about (a) the money, (b) the money, (c) THE MONEY…
As good as it might be for safety, lengthening the yellow is bad for (a), (b), and (c) above. San Diego saw a $2 million increase in revenues in the first year after trimming its “grace period” to 0.1 second versus 0.3 to 0.5 before. In Dallas, 7 of the 10 highest revenue-raising cameras have yellows shorter than the minimum recommendation of the Texas Department of Transportation.
When the choice comes down to safety versus the money, safety doesn’t stand a chance.