"Home of the Brave"? It is to Laf! Yesterday Boston police closed down highways and deployed huge numbers of cops to investigate supposedly 'suspicious devices'. The bomb squad even blew one up. Those 'suspicious devices' turned out to be advertising signs for cable's Cartoon Network! What a bunch of morons. And cowards to boot.
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Similar 'devices' had been placed in nine other major cities, but no one in any of those cities called 911 about them, and no other public authority closed down highways in panic, nor blew up advertisements.
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Now the Boston authorities, not content with looking like morons yesterday, are intent on making themselves look even more moronic and more cowardly by persecuting the two guys who placed those ads.
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Let's be plain here. The fault is not in the ads but in the grotesque overreaction to those ads by ONE city.

In nine cities across the country, blinking electronic signs displaying a profane, boxy-looking cartoon character caused barely a stir.

Oddly, Boston is the one city that pretty much started the American Revolution. But Boston has apparently lost its guts in the intervening centuries. New York, which (unlike Boston) actually has had a major terrorist attack, was not so gutless.

The New York Police Department removed 41 of the devices — 38 in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn, according to spokesman Paul Browne. The NYPD had not received any complaints. [Nor had Seattle nor any other city — except Boston.] But when it became aware of the situation, it contacted Cartoon Network, which provided the locations so the devices could be removed.

The guys arrested should sue the individuals responsible for their arrest. Public officials do not have the right to act irresponsibly, as the Durham, NC prosecutor has found out. He is likely going to be severely punished for his wrongful behavior in regard to the persecution (that is not a typo) of Duke University lacrosse players. And the individual fools who arrested these ad-placers should as well be individually and personally sued and/or otherwise punished for their misbehavior.
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Worrying about Nothing. Boston police are not the only cowards and fools in the Nation, of course. U Tube is showing an alarmist video report about attempts by some communications companies to 'privatize' the Internet and give preferential service to websites that pay thru the nose, while slowing down or cutting off websites that do not. My friend Joe in Belleville (NJ, which he sometimes calls "Bella Villa" because there are so many Italians there, including himself) sent me the URL to that site, but after I'd watched about 20 seconds I realized the whole issue was absurd, so turned it off.
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As of two years ago, 75% of Americans had Internet access at home. The number has only grown since. Moreover, almost all the rest have access from the job, school, library, etc. How could Congress take away something that 90% of the people want? Would Congress dare to do anything to interfere with American access to the wealth of information available free on the Internet? Of course not, not any more than it would tax emails, another scare that ran thru the Internet a few years ago.
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There are 535 members of the two houses of Congress. There are about 270 million Americans who use the Internet. If 1/5 of them wrote an email of complaint, that would be 54 million emails. Divide that by 535, and you get 101,000 emails for each member of Congress. What Representative or Senator is going to go against 100,000 constituents (more in the case of Senators from large states)? We just had an election in which the people ended what the Republicans had bragged would be a "permanent majority" because of vague discontents. How would either major party turn a blind eye to 100,000 emails per Congressmember? It's absurd.
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Find something else to worry about, folks. But if you are worried, nip this in the bud. Send your own email to the President and Congress. The email address for the White House is comments@whitehouse.gov. You can find your Representative's website, with email info, at http://www.house.gov/; your Senator, at http://www.senate.gov/.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,085 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:01 PM