Protectin' and servin', one victim at a time.

We don't get television reception where we live.  Just don't get it.  Not even with "Fox viewing positions" a la Married...With Children.  Basic cable packages available to us have been in the $100/month range (not kidding) and so are laughably absurd on a budgetary basis alone.  And the only reason we really turn a television on any more is for either a) a hockey game or b) a football game. 

So, we stream what little we watch.

On the (rare) occasions when we want to see a Simpsons or South Park episode, we can stream them directly from an official website.  If we suddenly had a hankering for pretty much any other television "show" currently available (not likely, but still), it appears that we could do precisely the same.  And on some occasions a network will stream a select sporting event/game (e.g., NBC has streamed its Sunday Night Football games for a couple of years now) just like all their other offerings.

For the remainder, the intertubes meet our meager need with relatively little fuss.  We have used a site called ChannelSurfing.net, which essentially streams someone else watching their television.  Functionally, it's really not all that different from going down to the local tavern and watching a game on their big screens--well, except that the stream tends to have glitches, hitches, reconnects, and a much smaller viewing area, and it's of course at home instead of somewhere else.

Enter the protectin' and servin' warriors at the Department of Homeland Security.  (Seriously, you knew that was coming, didn't you?  Be honest, you knew it all along!  Homeland Security...streaming television...why, of course!  It's so obvious!)

Sometime in the last couple of days, ChannelSurfing.net has now begun serving this output:

Once you get through choking on the sheer arrogance of the logos ("Protection is our trademark!") you can draw the obvious conclusion that the Feds have shut down ("seized") that Internet domain because--get this--they (the Feds, now) feel that taking someone else's property and using it without consent, is--here it comes--wrong.

Ya wipin' vomit off your chin yet?  (Ooo, ya missed a little there.)

Yeah, wrong.  So wrong that they're gonna threaten the perpetrators with criminal fines and imprisonment, and of course violence if they resist.  Always with the violence if they resist.  And always with the sanctimonious smugitude of the morally unblemished.

(Let's be clear.  I'm not trying to advocate, here, the use of someone else's property without consent.  I've come to a peace with this, personally, because I have no viable "legitimate" options and because I fail to see, by the "watch the game at the public tavern" example, how anyone is harmed by my viewing a live event that would be broadcast to me freely anyway, if I were simply located in another town that picked up the signal.  My point here, rather, is the limitless irony in being lectured by the FedGov on any matter regarding ethics.)

Shall we review?

• Prosecute wildly unpopular foreign wars with forcibly extracted tax dollars, over any and all objections both procedural and moral?  No problem, it's the FedGov.
• Prosecute wildly destructive domestic wars (drugs, guns, "hate speech", fatty foods, etc.) with forcibly stolen tax dollars, over any and all objections both procedural and moral?  No problem, it's the FedGov.
• Continue and expand wildly unpopular domestic social engineering programs with forcibly stolen tax dollars, over any and all objections both procedural and moral?  No problem, it's the FedGov!
• Repeatedly devalue the forcibly-standardized, fiat-style currency by monetizing both current operational costs and the accumulated debt from all the above spending of forcibly stolen tax dollars, over any and all objections both procedural and moral?  Nope, no problem here, it's the FedGov!
• Make available streaming rebroadcasts of live events and shows, many of which are already freely available over network airwaves?  Private party?  Lock and load, soldiers!  The security of the Fatherland is in grave and imminent jeopardy!   Break out the lawyers, and the fines, and of course the ninja!

Don't think I missed anything major there--looks about right.  Oh, I'm sorry, we don't use "Fatherland" any more--a little too recent, perhaps--now it's "Homeland", which is totally different.

"Top men" at work, lookin' out for those they serve.