Thank you.
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Apparently, you don’t get it if your phone is in airplane mode.
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Is an amber alert free for you? Then this should be as well.
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I’m having a hard time understanding how a program that’s been in the works for a while now, and that is an expansion of something that’s existed for decades, that’s never been used. It’s not like Trump (or any other president) couldn’t misuse the emergency systems that already exists or employ an actual disaster to declare marshal law.
I’m honestly far more concerned with Kavanaugh getting on the bench and think that’s a more dangerous and insidious problem than an expansion of a system that already exists to new technologies.
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That’s entirely possible, but again, it’s not like he hasn’t had the ability to employ what current exists in an abusive manner. He hasn’t. I think it’s perfect sane to think he might do so, but this isn’t giving him anything new to do that with, it’s an expansion of existing systems that have never been used. I don’t think this is a case where there is some magic button that he can just push to send out text messages - like much else, it has to go down a chain of command of bureaucrats who are able to make judgement calls on what is or isn’t a threat.
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There are times over the last couple years that I’ve suspected the only thing preventing absolute chaos is the dedication of career bureaucrats.
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Indeed, I think that’s part of what’s saving us.
In the things that illustrate the authoritarian tendencies of this administration (and the GOP) this is INCREDIBLY LOW on my own list (FWIW). I’m more concerned with how they are chipping away at various kinds of regulation, putting in dangerous people to the judiciary who are going to erode various rights that have been fought over already, and their tendency to ignore the majority of the country on various issues. An expansion in the emergency alert system that has existed for decades and has been in the works for a while now just isn’t bothering me that much. I mean, the Birch Society probably railed against the original CONELRAD, because they thought it was a communist plot to take over.
I’m certainly not saying this administration is stable or isn’t dangerous (because I will be misunderstood on this point if I don’t reiterate it a million times here), but I think this is becoming a distraction in a week where they’re about to ram through a nominee to the supreme court who is going to do serious damage to women’s rights and to privacy rights in general.
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Yep. I’ll take clickbait headlines over Faux News any day, though. (and sometimes the boing boing articles are actually relevant to my interests, so there is that.)
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Or perhaps definitive proof of the origins of the pavlova.
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“Can be sent by state and local officials” implies to me that there was already a statewide system in place. Is the hurricane really moving so fast that the time delay between officials sending alerts in 5 states is a problem?
The tornado thing I’ll just leave off, tornados don’t even cross county lines unless they were born on them. Why would we need a national alert for that? 
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