Security Theater

I really hope this continues to get even more interesting. I want very much for this to be "the tipping point", but I'm afraid we'll bitch about it (while it's hip and popular to bitch about it) for the standard four or five days, and then just learn to live with it. And it'll pass into being just one more thing the historians will include in the many reasons the USA finally broke down and took its place among all the other failed empires.

Well, That Explains A Lot

Airport "Security"

Rightly rebranded "Security Theater".  I wonder how much Mike Chertoff is making from the contracts he's able to influence.  Now that he's done with the "public service" part of his career, he can safely get stinkin' rich by siphoning off a nice pile of taxpayer dollars - knowing that while there's still a real threat of terrorist attack, it's minuscule compared with the amount of money we're throwing at it.

Here's my suggestion:  You can opt out of the body scan, but by doing that, you automatically draw the pat down.  So my idea is that you could insist on a hetero-pat-down.  After all, how do I know the TSA guy isn't gay?  How do I know he isn't getting some kind of a cheap fantasy thrill from coppin' a feel off a stranger's junk?  If somebody has to rub up against my tender bits, I have to insist on having a woman do it.

Close Encounters

...of the police state kind.

9/11 changed everything, because our reactions to the terror of that day have created the conditions necessary for the petty tyrants to be handed power.

Here's a blogger describing the events at an airport in San Diego.

I wonder how many of us have to be abused before we find the courage to insist that we be allowed to take the risks of living in freedom again.

Verifiable Voting

Design And Engineering

Death Penalty

I don't really have a hard and fast position on the death penalty.  I think I have to lean more to the Anti side because we seem to have such a hard time getting it right; ie: there's a heavy probability that hundreds of not-really-guilty people have been killed by state governments over the last 20 or so years.

That said, I still think there're people in this world we can do without:  Charles Manson, Tim McVeigh, Celine Dion.  Anyway, I think what has to happen is that we need to raise the standard of proof a bit if we want the jury to convict for a capital offense.

We can argue about "cruel and unusual" or the over-representation of minorities on death row, or the silliness of continuing to apply 8000-year-old philosophies to modern age problems; but the main reason we need to change the way we approach capital punishment is that we have to keep assholes like GW Bush from killing innocent people in order to score  political points.

Read this. 

Push Back

It's at least doubtful that confrontation will change anybody's mind, but it's always a good thing to stand up to bullying.

One of the protesters makes mention of a newish slant on the anti-choice side of the debate - suicide risk among women who've had abortions. So of course I had to do a little research on that one, and guess what? They made it up. There is no credible clinical authority that recognizes any causal link between abortion and suicide. It's just another in a long line of bullshit arguments manufactured by smug self-righteous Right Radicals.

(tip o' the hat to Nick and friends for posting this on FB)

Today's T-shirt

Projection

Hearing about Sarah Palin's little word spasm at a school in Pennsylvania allowed me to take a small step closer to what I think is a bigger truth.

Palin characterized attempts to teach kids and parents about healthy diets as some kind of dictate from big government.

I think this is revealing - I don't think it's a big stretch to say Palin thinks education is all about indoctrination.  And I think it illustrates the main difference between these Right Radicals and the so-called Lefties.

"Liberals" wanna teach kids how to think; "conservatives" wanna tell kids what to think.