Somebody told me that you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February...

[gemfyre]

America - land of the free. *snorts*

Makes me sooo glad to live in Australia which is nowhere near as bad, even with the new terrorism laws.

Hrm, I seem to have done something to my right calf muscle. It hurts when I tense it. I didn't cramp it, I'm not sure what's going on. Well, I'm off to a fitball class in a bit, don't know if that will help or make it worse.

Later

Well, I was gonna do my workout after the fitball but my legs feel like jelly now so I decided to pass up on it. The fitball class is all stuff I can do (unlike pilates) but MAN my legs have suffered for it.

Comments

[roshy.livejournal.com]

RE: The whole Secret Service thing.

My dad was speaking to a security guard at the airport the other month and cracked a joke about carrying a bomb strapped to his (ample) midsection. It was obviously a joke and there was no harm meant, but the security guard looked at him very seriously and said that were he more anal about his job, he was required by law to detain him/search him/do whatever they do to suspected terrorists. It's a safety thing.

Likewise, the Secret Service is required to protect the President at all costs. They are required to follow up on every single reported threat they recieve. It's not like the Secret Service is secretly monitoring everyone's personal livejournal-- if they did that they'd never run out of work. But someone reported anniesj. It wasn't an arbitrary thing-- some jackass went to all the trouble of getting in touch with the Secret Service and presenting this highly-stretched 'threat'. They may very well have thought it was ridiculous. Doesn't matter, they still have to check it out. And it's unfortunate for anniesj, but the blame isn't with the Secret Service doing what they're paid to do.

It's the equivalent of calling in a bomb threat. Even if there's no bomb, it would be irresponsible not to clear the building and send the bomb squad in.

*phew* And that's all I have to say about that. :P~

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. My sister was quite put out when she wasn't allowed to take party poppers into the airport to greet my parents when they returned home because they classed as explosives. My parents also saw some of the pyrotechnicans for the Hong Kong handover have a heap of trouble getting their stuff on a plane.

I think it's more the alarm factor of here you are, living in a "free country" and you express dislike for the president and you suddenly have a record with the FBI, which is pretty unnerving. But terrorists are more to blame for it for making the government so stringent about those things in the first place.

[willowbean.livejournal.com]

The feds investigating people really has nothing to do with terrorism. They have a history of monitoring and harassing those who disagree with the pres (not just those who say/write thing that could be construed as a threat). They've also been implicated actually killing activists. See history of COINTEL PRO and Judy Barry for examples. This is nothing new, it's just now people are more willing to accept it because it "countering terrorism." *snort*

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

14 Apr 1865 - Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford's Theatre during a performance of the play "Our American Cousin" - the President dies the following day.

14 Apr 1865 - Confederate sympathizer Lewis Powell attempts to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward, who survives.

2 Jul 1881 - Disgruntled lawyer and office seeker Charles Guiteau fires two shots, one of which lodges in the body of President James Garfield. Due to medical ineptitude, the President dies from complications of infection and a massive heart attack on 19 Sep 1881.

6 Sep 1901 - At the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo NY, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots President William McKinley twice as he stands in a receiving line outside the Temple of Music. The President nearly recovers, but dies eight days later of gangrene as direct result of the bullet wound.

14 Oct 1912 - Former President (and Presidential candidate) Theodore Roosevelt is shot in Milwaukee by saloon keeper John Schrank, but survives due to the bullet being deflected by a thick speech manuscript and an eyeglass case. His campaign is effectively ruined, but he survives another seven years.

15 Feb 1933 - Giuseppe Zangara attempts to assassinate President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago, is hit as he sits next to the President, and dies 6 Mar 1933. The President is unhurt, but loses a powerful political ally and colleague.

1 Nov 1950 - Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, attempt to shoot their way into Blair House, the temporary residence of President Harry Truman while the White House is under renovation. Due to the effort of mortally wounded Private Leslie Coffelt, and three other White House guards, the President escapes harm in the firefight. One assailant is killed, the other wounded and captured.

22 Nov 1963 - In Dallas TX, Lee Harvey Oswald fires a sniper rifle from the Texas School Book Depository building, fatally wounding President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

5 Jun 1968 - Senator Robert F Kennedy, brother of JFK and himself a presidential candidate, is shot by Sirhan B Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and dies the following day.

5 Sep 1975 - Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempts to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California, with a .45 pistol, and probably would have succeeded if she'd remember to load a round in one of the chambers.

22 Sep 1975 - Radical Sara Jane Moore tries the same thing, at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, just seventeen days later, with a .38 pistol. A bystander, Oliver Sipple, deflects her aim, saving the President's life.

30 Mar 1981 - Psychopath John Hinckley Jr shoots six shots from a revolver. President Ronald Reagan is hit, but survives. Also hit are Press Secretary James Brady (permanently paralyzed), Officer Thomas Delahanty (nerve damage), and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, who had leapt in front of the President to protect him. All survive. Ronald Reagan dies of complications from Alzheimer's disease 23 years later.

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

It all goes to show one thing:

If people didn't occasionally act on the impulse to kill the elected president, there wouldn't be a need for an FBI or a Secret Service.

Plain and simple.

[blue-cat.livejournal.com]

More to the point, President is the highest insurance risk as far as jobs go in America. Now I don't actually give a monkeys about the insurance bit, but it goes a long way to explain why they take threats fairly seriously.

Still makes you freak out seriously - how many of us blast off our leaders and expect it to be filed under 'personal opinion'.

and again, how many people throw empty threats around to ordinary people - sometimes they make good on them.

Just ... meh.

[willowbean.livejournal.com]

Ah the stories I could tell about how little it takes to get an FBI file. I have one, many of my friends have them, and one of them was first approached by the Feds while still in high school. Dissent is not very well liked here.

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you're dissenting about.

I dislike the President -- in fact, I dislike both major-party Presidential candidates, intensely.

However, I do not advocate destroying the system wholesale, because it's frankly more trouble than it's worth, and the majority of American citizens simply wouldn't go along it. Remember, this is a government of the majority -- if you're a communist or an anarchist, then of course you're not going to feel well-liked here, because the society has largely rejected all of these philosophies as valid forms of government.

If you are vocal about issues that directly challenge the governmental system of the United States, then you will probably earn an FBI file. That's a matter of application of common sense. If you speak out against the government, OF COURSE they're going to watch you in case you decide to try acting out on the things you say on the college campus.

However the vast majority of people with FBI files never get evidence that they even have one. So you have an FBI file. How does it directly affect your day-to-day life? Generally, it doesn't.

As far as killing activists ... it is not a common occurrence. The biggest killer of activists ... is a person's choice to voluntarily leave activism to others.

[sternenglanz.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I know I have quite the file amassed just for looking up information on different hazardous sites for an internship at an environmental organization.

If you've requested information from a courthouse that's a little strange, you've got a file. If you've been to a protest, you have a file. Try requesting your FBI file some time -- if you didn't have one before, then they'll definitely start a file on you!

[erase-n-rewind.livejournal.com]

Thats some weird, and downright funny shit. Seriously. thank god our leader is a complete freakin idiot!

[faeriewoman.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. Wow. umm... I hate my country? no wait... scratch that.. I don't hate the enire country... just certain people in it... and if I get more specific the FBI might come after me so I'll leave it at that.