Does this post make me look political?
Three wire stories on the TSA and their grotesquely intrusive body scans/pat downs today:
A grope too far: Fliers’ anger at TSA boils over
Under pressure from public and pols, TSA head says airport screening will be refined, adjusted
If even small number of people participate, security protest could disrupt holiday travel
You would think astute politicians would sense an opportunity here, but the ChiTrib reports no way are pat-downs going away for the holidays. The thinking here is pretty obvious: if the TSA backs down then al Qaeda has huge incentives to hit us. But, if the pat-downs continue, we’re practically begging al Qaeda to hit us just to prove they can.
The Republicans aren’t jumping on this yet, but if today’s Charles Krauthammer column is any indication, they’re about to. [Roy Edroso wrote pretty much the same column, btw] The fact that the TSA is an all-Republican creation won’t slow them down anymore than having destroyed our economy gave them pause when they trashed our Democratic Congress all election year long. (Not to worry, instead some Republicans are talking about privatizing TSA!)
Instead, I think we’ll get half-assed measures in which you’re still digitized into buck nakedness, but “fun-house mirror” distortions will distort your genitals into something more in keeping with what you’d like others to see. [more (via Bob Collins)]
Stupid shit. Obama would be re-elected automatically if only he would declare a 40-day moratorium on scans and pat-downs until after the holidays. And yes, this is all about politics which is why I’m kicking myself for writing about it but anymore it seems like everything is about politics, even dancing.
Friday, Hillbuzz.org blogger Kevin DuJan wrote, “The real aim of Bristol’s Pistols: to expose Democratic hypocrisy on voter fraud and ask why the media is so obsessed with the voting on a reality show but doesn’t care about Leftist tampering with actual elections.
“The Left is angry whenever I teach conservatives the tricks the Left consistently employs against Republicans. . . . The media and the Left are engraged [sic] right now because ‘Bristol’s Pistols,’ as they are calling us, have been creatively and energetically voting for her on a reality TV show. It’s what I call ‘Voting like a Democrat’ . . . voting early . . . voting often . . . voting as cartoon characters . . . voting under aliases . . . ,” DeJan wrote.
And this is what teabaggers are like when they win.
Even Paul Krugman is less political than these guys but speaking about economics, how much chutzpah does it take to screw the world with shitty, overpriced software then call for cutting pay to master teachers?
Still, even Bill fucking Gates can’t touch the insurance industry for bastardly conduct.
American General Life Insurance Co. markets its policies as protection for “the hopes and dreams of American families” — a promise Ian Weissberger took to heart during his losing battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
But after the Cathedral City mortgage broker died in 2005, American General cancelled his life insurance policy and refused to pay his widow the $250,000 benefit.
The Weissbergers’ premiums were paid up. There was no foul play suspected. There was no question Sheila Weissberger was the widow and sole beneficiary. And Ian’s illness was diagnosed months after he took out the policy.
The problem, the insurer told Sheila Weissberger, was that Ian’s application for coverage was incomplete.
American General concluded that he had failed to disclose conditions, including bipolar disorder and pulmonary disease, that, according to his doctors, he did not have.
The only good thing about invasive pat-downs is that they disproportionately affect business travelers. I hope insurance execs are frequent flyers.
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Wolcott on ocicat anal glands.
Because you’ll click any link that says Wolcott. For more of James, try Sam He Am, a longish tribute to Sam Peckinpah, a director who hugely impacted my late teens. The Wild Bunch made every other violent movie ever made (up until Scarface) look gay. The Dirty Dozen? Gay. Bonnie and Clyde? Really gay. Cabaret? Compared to Red Dawn, not so gay.
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Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, NY, sets new record for grotesquely incompetent malpractice.
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The rock stars who got jail time for protesting the Vietnam war can, I guess, just go suck on Jim’s dead dick.
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Forget the $125 million stories in the Strib and NYTimes, the L.A. Times says Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 grossed $330 million this weekend.
Having watched the leaked opening 36-minute clip I decided to download a cam version. Horrible video quality but the audio was OK. The movie wasn’t. And just to be a prick about it, here’s a spoiler: Dobby, the Jar Jar Binks of elves, dies (so yeah, there are some positive plot developments).
You’ll have to wait until next week to find out how pirated Harry is.
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Reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Now I don’t think I’m going to get to Twain’s autobiography until I’ve read all three of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander books. Initially I had my doubts but as soon as I realized that all the bad guys were Swedish, I was OK with the setting.
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Chalmers Johnson, R.I.P. [video]
Plus Mexican sugar skulls
If a teenager goes through a scanner, does the operator have to register as a sex offender?
Sentencing laws in most states would probably make that so, since provisions for medical scans are the only ones I’ve heard about.
I didn’t link to it, but someone took one of those scans and reversed it in Photoshop and it came out looking like a regular nude photo.
I saw that image, and it was close enough to a nude picture.
Another question I have is why wouldn’t they want to save the images? (And they claim they don’t.) If the scans exist, and the plane blows up in midair, wouldn’t someone want to see the passenger images? It makes too much sense not to. The images are being saved, don’t doubt it.
I know why they don’t want to say they save the images, but they’re the government: once they have information, they keep and use it.
I’m a bit reminded of this old story: http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/texts/posture.htm
I wish our government wouldn’t lie to us.
Nah, because if a plane blows up, the bomb probably was put on the plane in the un-scanned luggage under the plane.
It’s not scanned as much as it should be, certainly. But not scanned? I don’t think so.
It’s the workers on the planes that will be the next security challenge: what can they put onboard in either the baggage or the passenger area? What can they do to the plane? The food service, fueling, repairing, cleaning, and even the washing people are the next targets for both the terrorists and the overreacting agencies.
You are going to love the Steig Larsson books. My SO bought all three and read them without so much as looking up. We watched “Dragon Tattoo” (Swedish version) together and it is brilliant. After watching the Nobel committee give an never-ending stream of economic awards to the most buffoonish right-wingers over the years, I knew Sweden had a problem with their right wing, but Dragon makes this crystal clear.
I type this from my laptop enroute on Alaska Air between Chicago and Seattle (yay free wifi until 12/9 courtesy INSERT MAJOR CAR MANUFACTURER HERE).
Two things about O’Hare: (a) there is no free wifi in OHare airport. It costs $6.95/day. So much for that dream. Another mobbed up contract to keep the populace paying and paying and paying for what should be a benefit of paying the highest combination city/state/federal income taxes in the country. (b) I did not get xrayed or patted down to go through security. The total time value start to finish through my gate was maybe a half hour. The xray machine was there … the pictograph panels explaining how to stand pasted on the side of the machine … but it wasn’t being used. I was not wanded, either. Just the usual stroll through the metal detector.
Back in August, I did refuse to go through an x-ray scanner in Richmond, VA. So a cocky ex-military type with a languid, *uck-you, citizen, kind of attitude did a leisurely full contact grope with the blue gloves.
First it was the nail clippers … then the shampoo … then the shoes … now they want to see your underwear or feel your underwear because we had one idiot underwear bomber (that’s the reason why, right?, you can tend to get distracted and forget the WHY behind all of this ridiculousness).
My cheap comment for free is this: why do we not have terroristic mayhem on a regular basis? Elevator cables being cut, municipal water supplies being poisoned, tunnels being blown, bus bombs, etc., etc., etc.? Because most people do not want to harm other people. And those that do — if they’re a class of people, as is the case with our “enemies” — then they usually put forward a set of grievances. As Al Qaeda has done. We know what those grievances are. We just continue to say FU and we’ll stay in your country and blow shit up as long as we want to, and we’ll support other countries that do the same.
And so it goes.
The reason the underwear/diaper bomber tried his far-fetched plan was entirely because steps were taken to stop earlier plans (that succeeded in Saudi Arabia, I believe) that used liquid explosives to take a plane down in midair. That’s why the shampoo (and so much else) is not allowed. The shoebomb was a similar failure that attempted to hide explosives, and the fact that his shoes looked anything but normal makes the current policy seem absurd. And it mostly is. Still, it’s based on real threats and real dangers, and we’ve got them trying dumber and dumber ways to get around security.
I don’t understand the nail clipper nonsense anymore, since the cockpit doors are now secured. No one is getting in there, no matter how many stewardesses’ toenails get clipped. That’s what makes another 9/11 unlikely: the pilots won’t open the doors and the passengers can’t.
I’m not sure where the “this is stupid” factor outweighs the “there is danger” factor, but all it takes is one more plane going down and the calculations get thrown out the window. And it will never be the whiners’ fault when someone is looking for someone to blame.
Yep, I get all that. I still think the broadest possible resolution of this — i.e., the most comprehensive and elegant solution — is for this nation to stop being so violent in our globe-spanning empire. Plus, the country is bankrupt and headed for a massive economic fail, so there’s that. The time to start making peace instead of war might be right about now.
btw, shared a brief lounge conversation at O’Hare with a teacher mentor headed to Anchorage today. Just long enough to find out that this middle-aged, middle-class white woman has been doing it for about 20 years, is married to a half-native blooded man, and many of her mentored teachers are extremely remote (as in 4-hour bush plane flights). But she seemed deeply satisfied with her work. Sometimes the teachers will get off the plane at their remote posting, look around and say — on the spot — I cannot do this. And get back on the plane. But most stay. And need the nurturing care of the elders, which describes this woman. She said she has come to have a deep love for the native worldview, but we timed out and I didn’t get a chance to listen to her talk about that. She did say it was possible to combine the white/western view and the native view, but the two do not start from the same place. And there it ended.
Science on the SCAN. Excerpt from link below
“…Stroud and Shuman note that this comparison is “very misleading.” The TSA estimates only consider the radiation as it would be if absorbed by the whole body, as opposed to how the scanner really operates, which is to concentrate the radiation on the skin.”
http://rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=685
Chicago Rob don’t believe everything you hear about the “bush”! Alaska or the Midwest (Have you visited Sioux Country lately?) especially from folks on the government payroll who “work’ in the bush but live elsewhere.
Irreconcilable conflicts abound 50 to 1. The fluffy, fluffy is fucking bullshit 20 to 1. Its all about the money, hate, and poverty. The drugs and conversation are usually pretty good though.
It doesn’t help too much that the cultural inclinations are pretty fucking hierarchal and clannish to the extreme on both sides as well. A few win most loose give me the marrow in the land of milk and honey and ain’t it a shame that we can not create societies as wonderfully light and strong as the fucking bones that get broken everyday through “mentoring”.
And just because I feel like saying it FUCK middle-aged, middle-class white woman that are “teacher mentors” in the bush and are deeply satisfied with their work after 20 years. Geeze so much progress has been made! Give me a fucking break I hope she enjoys the pension. I give you 100 to 1 she will be enjoying it far, far away from any bush community. Yes over the top harsh without all the info needed but mentoring just what exactly to become what actually and just WTF is it with “you have a great culture but we are here to save you and mentor you on a few things“. I would like to see some bush residents regardless of race or cultural identity put on some weekend seminars in urban areas to mentor the deprived populations there. The urban homeless need some fucking skills man!
Are you assimilated yet?
Fuck the fucking fuckers.
BTW Wege were we not promised more obscenity during the blog evolution?
She lives in Alaska, not Chicago. And I think it counts for something if you marry into a culture and then devote your professional life to that culture. Sometimes a good thing is a good thing. There’s such a thing as reverse racism too.
(afterthought) Also … just to add some additional info to your snap judgment … our conversation prior to me knowing what she did for a living was a shared disgust in the ridiculousness of the creeping invasiveness of the security searches. We shared a belief that the broader, better solution, is to be a better citizen of the world, listen to our “enemies” and make headway changing those things that so piss off people in the world that they want to bomb us. Maybe you’re against her on that belief, too?
Snap judgments are fun, she may be gold. I have no idea.
I am not questioning her nor her individual motives. I know only one thing she is a Tier One State of Alaska Employee out “spreading” the good word of the State. Call me fucking cynical but culture is a very low priority assimilation is a high priority.
That’s legitimate right?
As to the rest, I have no enemies I am a watershed anarchist who likes to sleep with Quaker women.
Anyway, hope you had a good flight. There is an excellent card room in Renton called Diamond Lil’s (about 15 mins from the airport) and there is some excellent fun via cultural diversity conversations to be had down the road a bit towards Seattle if you enjoy cocktail bars without windows.
FYI Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau may be in Alaska but they are about as far away from the bush as Chicago. Also if you are feeling the native love tonight google up how many schools have been burnt to the ground in the bush in the last ten years. Then smoke a bowl and assimilate or better yet smoke some more and ponder The Hudson Bay Company and monetary easing.
I love ya man and I was not trying to chew on your shins I just have a “thing” with “mentors” and the vision the State of Alaska, the Federal Government, and the leadership of every last ANSCA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Claims_Settlement_Act) Native Corporation has for rural Alaska.
And hell I just wanted to get that science link out there with the SCAN and push the Wege for more obscenity and non work friendly material with the blog evolution and I triped over your Alaska mentor.
Call me a cynic but she was just chicken shit to tell you the whole story. Irreconcilable is a mother fucker to put positive spin on especially when you are on the payroll.
In response to your post title:
“Yes.”