The rollout of new body-scanners at airports severely impacted American's understanding of the Global War on Terror this week, crippling the nation on the eve of its busiest travel day.
"I'm fine repeatedly deploying soldiers to far off countries and conducting drone strikes on small villages, but these body-scanners are just wrong," said a loud, slightly overweight American in line at Reagan Airport's security check point. "This is just an excuse for some TSA-man to eye-rape me."
The body-scanners and full pat downs have been used throughout other parts of the world for years, including places like Iraq where American Soldiers routinely pat down local Iraqis. "Well that's fine," said the woman, "that's all in the name of national defense, but this is unconstitutional."
Many others supported the woman, believing that the pat downs and body scans are invasive. When prompted for alternative ways to protect airline passengers from terrorists they simply shrugged their shoulders. "I don't know what the right answer is but this isn't it."
The addition of body scanners at airports was the second in a string of blows to Americans understanding of reality this month. Earlier in November, Americans were shocked to discover that the country had compiled a sizable debt after excessive tax cuts and waging two, decade-long wars. In protest of the deficit, they voted in Congressmen who promised to somehow cut taxes and also reduce the deficit.
"This is all too much to handle," the woman sighed.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
When pork flies
There's a lot of chatter here in the District about slashing budgets and cutting waste from the Federal government. Well, we here inside the beltway couldn't agree more ... unless it somehow affects our livelihood or job security. So, we'd like to turn your attention away from the beltway to the small New Mexico town of Alamogordo.
While a passenger will pay about $200 for a flight between Albuquerque and Alamogordo, the federal government pays $3,623 smackers, according to the website, OhMyGov (which is awesome by the way).
The reason, says the Congressmen who love it so much, is that the government must subsidize flights to rural places no one really goes. It's called the Essential Air Services, and came about when the airline industry was deregulated to ensure flights would continue to places no one would want to fly because the routes aren't profitable.
Make sense? Only in a Helleresque Catch-22 way.
A look at the EAS website shows an abundance of spelling errors and confusing sentences, but beneath it all are the cold hard numbers. Those flights to Alamogordo and to other rural areas cost you about $133 million a year (the latest data provided was actually from a Bloomberg report, the website only shows budget changes thru 2003, when the subsidy was $127 million).
Those numbers don't include the proposed $55 million dollar boost the Obama administration sought to give the program in 2009, according to the same Bloomberg report. But Obama isn't the only one to blame: 22 Senators also signed on to defend the program.
So how many people are on the 12 flights per week from Alamogordo to Albuquerque?
Less than one per flight.
Maybe the new Congressmen on the Hill will find it in their fiscally conservative hearts to slash the funding of this program. Then again, maybe some day pigs will fly.
While a passenger will pay about $200 for a flight between Albuquerque and Alamogordo, the federal government pays $3,623 smackers, according to the website, OhMyGov (which is awesome by the way).
The reason, says the Congressmen who love it so much, is that the government must subsidize flights to rural places no one really goes. It's called the Essential Air Services, and came about when the airline industry was deregulated to ensure flights would continue to places no one would want to fly because the routes aren't profitable.
Make sense? Only in a Helleresque Catch-22 way.
A look at the EAS website shows an abundance of spelling errors and confusing sentences, but beneath it all are the cold hard numbers. Those flights to Alamogordo and to other rural areas cost you about $133 million a year (the latest data provided was actually from a Bloomberg report, the website only shows budget changes thru 2003, when the subsidy was $127 million).
Those numbers don't include the proposed $55 million dollar boost the Obama administration sought to give the program in 2009, according to the same Bloomberg report. But Obama isn't the only one to blame: 22 Senators also signed on to defend the program.
So how many people are on the 12 flights per week from Alamogordo to Albuquerque?
Less than one per flight.
Maybe the new Congressmen on the Hill will find it in their fiscally conservative hearts to slash the funding of this program. Then again, maybe some day pigs will fly.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Facts? Facts!? We don't need no stinkin' facts
CNN, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Anderson Cooper, Mike Huckabee and a handful of other great and reputable news sources have falsely reported as fact that President Obama's trip to Asia will cost taxpayers $200 million dollars a day.
While the reporting has no basis in fact--other than some loosely claimed source affiliated with the government that also said 10% of the Navy's entire fleet would be moved to protect Obama--that hasn't stopped either the left or right from jumping on the shocking statistic.
That said, India has taken some strange steps, similar to those taken during Bush's 2006 visit, of removing coconuts from trees Obama could walk under and hiring monkey catchers to prevent a "simian invasion," according to the AP.
The war in Afghanistan costs $190 million a day, for comparison.
While the reporting has no basis in fact--other than some loosely claimed source affiliated with the government that also said 10% of the Navy's entire fleet would be moved to protect Obama--that hasn't stopped either the left or right from jumping on the shocking statistic.
That said, India has taken some strange steps, similar to those taken during Bush's 2006 visit, of removing coconuts from trees Obama could walk under and hiring monkey catchers to prevent a "simian invasion," according to the AP.
The war in Afghanistan costs $190 million a day, for comparison.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Time traveler caught on tape?
This Belgian filmmaker was sorting through a 1928 Charlie Chaplain film when he noticed something very strange in the background: a woman on a cell phone.
iPhone wielding time traveler, or crazy lady from the 1920s? Skip ahead to 2:37 in the film below and judge for yourself.
iPhone wielding time traveler, or crazy lady from the 1920s? Skip ahead to 2:37 in the film below and judge for yourself.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sign of the Apocalypse: Dumbnicity
In two hundred years the Constitution hasn't been invoked as many times as it has during this election cycle. The Tea Party decries that it is under attack, that Barack Obama and his policies have hijacked the country from its founding principals and that, should we continue on this track, we are collectively doomed as a nation.
The Federalist Papers are considered documents critical to understanding the thought process that resulted in the Constitution, and so, to understand the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers, it is essential to have read them. But the party that is invoking a return-to-American-roots this November appears to be exactly what Alexander Hamilton warned us against in his introduction to the essays.
Both sides are equally culpable in pointing fingers and drawing up sound bytes, but one party has hijacked much of the national dialogue with invented words, talk of witchcraft and is undermining the national debate with ignorance. It is the Tea Party.
An article in today's New York Times lists out the crimes:
While racism, Constitutional ignorance, and grammatical flubs may amuse us on tabloid stands and around the water cooler, it will be far less amusing in places like the Senate Arms Committee or around negotiating tables where highly capable people are discussing items like the impact of embargoes on a nuclear-armed rogue state like North Korea.
Sarah Palin has ushered in this crowd of Palinistas. They rally around a return to bare-bones Constitutionalism, but then announce gays shouldn't marry (a state issue), and that creationism should be taught in government-funded schools (see the First Amendment). This is not intellectual discourse. This is, as the New York Times article puts it, "making ignorance chic."
This is a shame on two fronts. One, it undermines our national dialogue by undermining the art of debate, the value of intelligence, and the need to build consensus. Second, the Tea Party has its roots in some very legitimate political concerns, but its platform has been undermined by those speaking from it. The Tea Party fundamentalists seceded from the Republican Party because they believed fiscal conservatism had been hijacked by conservative morals. It sought to keep the fiscal conservative platform while removing moral righteousness from it (Republicans: if you want tax cuts, you must also be pro-life and anti-gay; Tea Party: if you want tax cuts, good!) Somewhere, the Tea Party evolved into reactionary politics that is unapologetically Christian, notoriously unwilling to negotiate, and so anti-Washington that it's a mystery they want to get elected to serve there in the first place.
As a nation, we are at a delicate crossroads. We have a huge debt, but economics insists we not scale back government spending during a recession. We want to bring our troops home, but also want to ensure we don't leave a job half-finished. We must reduce our tax burden, but a generation of baby boomers have been promised social security and health care. These are problems without right or wrong answers. Remedies for them will not come by entrenching ourselves in our own viewpoints, but by rational thinking, compromise, and intelligent dialogue in Congress. Liberal or conservative, we must elect people capable of such a task. I have yet to see a Tea Party candidate who fits the bill.
This is not a new problem, though. Alexander Hamilton addresses it in the opening paragraph of the Federalist Papers:
The Federalist Papers are considered documents critical to understanding the thought process that resulted in the Constitution, and so, to understand the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers, it is essential to have read them. But the party that is invoking a return-to-American-roots this November appears to be exactly what Alexander Hamilton warned us against in his introduction to the essays.
"... the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants. "It's important to note that this quote could be hijacked by either party. After all, Barack Obama was elected on a tide of anti-Bush sentiment. What I believe is a considerate difference between the debates of the 2008 election and the 2010 election is a serious degradation in intellectual dialogue.
Both sides are equally culpable in pointing fingers and drawing up sound bytes, but one party has hijacked much of the national dialogue with invented words, talk of witchcraft and is undermining the national debate with ignorance. It is the Tea Party.
An article in today's New York Times lists out the crimes:
It’s news to Christine O’Donnell that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. It’s news to Joe Miller, whose guards handcuffed a journalist, and to Carl Paladino, who threatened The New York Post’s Fred Dicker, that the First Amendment exists, even in Tea Party Land. Michele Bachmann calls Smoot-Hawley Hoot-Smalley.Sharron Angle sank to new lows of obliviousness when she told a classroom of Hispanic kids in Las Vegas: “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”
As Palin tweeted in July about her own special language adding examples from W. and Obama: “ ‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”
On Saturday, at a G.O.P. rally in Anaheim, Calif., Palin mockingly noted that you won’t find her invoking Mao or Saul Alinsky. She says she believes in American exceptionalism. But when it comes to the people running the country, exceptionalism is suspect; leaders should be — as Palin, O’Donnell and Angle keep saying — just like you.
While racism, Constitutional ignorance, and grammatical flubs may amuse us on tabloid stands and around the water cooler, it will be far less amusing in places like the Senate Arms Committee or around negotiating tables where highly capable people are discussing items like the impact of embargoes on a nuclear-armed rogue state like North Korea.
Sarah Palin has ushered in this crowd of Palinistas. They rally around a return to bare-bones Constitutionalism, but then announce gays shouldn't marry (a state issue), and that creationism should be taught in government-funded schools (see the First Amendment). This is not intellectual discourse. This is, as the New York Times article puts it, "making ignorance chic."
This is a shame on two fronts. One, it undermines our national dialogue by undermining the art of debate, the value of intelligence, and the need to build consensus. Second, the Tea Party has its roots in some very legitimate political concerns, but its platform has been undermined by those speaking from it. The Tea Party fundamentalists seceded from the Republican Party because they believed fiscal conservatism had been hijacked by conservative morals. It sought to keep the fiscal conservative platform while removing moral righteousness from it (Republicans: if you want tax cuts, you must also be pro-life and anti-gay; Tea Party: if you want tax cuts, good!) Somewhere, the Tea Party evolved into reactionary politics that is unapologetically Christian, notoriously unwilling to negotiate, and so anti-Washington that it's a mystery they want to get elected to serve there in the first place.
As a nation, we are at a delicate crossroads. We have a huge debt, but economics insists we not scale back government spending during a recession. We want to bring our troops home, but also want to ensure we don't leave a job half-finished. We must reduce our tax burden, but a generation of baby boomers have been promised social security and health care. These are problems without right or wrong answers. Remedies for them will not come by entrenching ourselves in our own viewpoints, but by rational thinking, compromise, and intelligent dialogue in Congress. Liberal or conservative, we must elect people capable of such a task. I have yet to see a Tea Party candidate who fits the bill.
This is not a new problem, though. Alexander Hamilton addresses it in the opening paragraph of the Federalist Papers:
... it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
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