Ground 'em. Let's face it, the terr'rists have won. They've made us so crazy we're looking at electronic strip searches, nothing in your lap on the airplane, frisking babies, probing adults' crotches with a determined groping inquisitive hand. And then of course there's the dire peril of that handy receptacle, the rectum -- what the media have been coyly referring to as "inside the body". Though come to think of it, I guess you could swallow a device too. What's the next step -- emetics and enemas at the security gate? Passengers handcuffed naked to their seats during flight, taken in cohorts to the crapper, and monitored to make sure they actually do some harmless business there? No pee, no fly!
Quem Deus perdere vult, prius dementat -- whom God would destroy he first makes mad. What the Detroit incident shows is that there is no limit to human ingenuity, and that the advantage lies with the offense. It shows that all this mad theater of security -- taking your shoes off, leaving your shampoo at home -- just doesn't work. And so, since we are crazy people, our natural response is to do more of what doesn't work -- which is about as tidy and compact a definition of mental illness as you could devise.
So: if you really want to confound the terr'rists, ground the civil aviation fleet.
Oh, I know. Dream on, dream on. It's probably unreasonable even to ask people to stop flying. But on the other hand, we could easily decide to fly a lot less. Just Say No, as Nancy Reagan advised us -- vow that you'll fly no more than once a year, let's say. If a good number of us signed that pledge, the airlines would be bankrupt in no time -- their margins are already so thin it takes an electron microscope to see 'em.
And of course, when you do go to the airport for your annual visit, stop traffic®. Hold up the line by any means you can. Bring crazy stuff in your carryons. Have a dildo up your ass, and take it out after the pat-down -- "Oh! Sorry! You probably want to inspect this, don't you?" -- or a strapon strapped on, if the dildo is a little too Leninist for you. Take ten minutes untying your shoes. Forget your boarding pass, so you have to go back for it. Make a distracting scene -- moan orgasmically, for example, when you get patted down: "Oh! Secure me! Secure me! Oh! Thank you, thank you, Officer!"
This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland.... We ... will examine all screening policies, technologies and procedures related to air travel. We need to determine just how the suspect was able to bring dangerous explosives aboard an aircraft and what additional [emphasis mine -- MJS] steps we can take to thwart future attacks.Somalia? Christ, when did Somalia get on the ever-expanding hit list? It was only yesterday the guy was threatening Sudan. Did he just get confused? Did anybody even notice? Towelheads, towelheads, who can tell 'em apart.Third, I've directed my national security team to keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country.... [T]he United States will more -- do more than simply strengthen our defenses. We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia....
Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans.... That's who we are as Americans; that's what our brave men and women in uniform are standing up for as they spend the holidays in harm's way.Open society? If we ever had one, it's long gone. And the "values we cherish as Americans" are apparently the surveillance camera and the strip search.
Oh and the sentimentality about the soldier boys, and particularly that phrase "in harm's way" -- there you have the absolute sure and certain sign of severe brain rot: the cliche machine has taken over this formerly intelligent and well-spoken person's synapses and made them its own.
Comments (14)
The culture is not only utterly bonkers, but also global. This prick Schuringa seems to have stopped to snap a cell phone frame before moving against the wanker-bomber:
"The flight landed just before noon Friday. By that afternoon, a person identifying himself as a friend of Mr. Schuringa had called CNN’s viewer tip line, said a network spokeswoman, Carolyn Disbrow.
"'It was a person saying he was a friend of Jasper’s and that he had a still cellphone picture of the guy who had explosives on the plane,' Ms. Disbrow said.
"The network and a representative of Mr. Schuringa negotiated and signed a contract for the photograph early on Dec. 26. Ms. Disbrow would not say exactly how much CNN paid for the blurry photograph..."
Posted by Michael Dawson | December 29, 2009 2:15 AM
Posted on December 29, 2009 02:15
Mock the gwot
Btw
More air port security means less. Commercial flyiers
Go noodle head
Crotch bombers
Posted by op | December 29, 2009 10:50 AM
Posted on December 29, 2009 10:50
I thought prison inmates proved there's no limit to human ingenuity. I'm actually more impressed with the creation of a cross bow from a newspaper and underwear elastics.
Posted by Son of Uncle Sam | December 29, 2009 11:37 AM
Posted on December 29, 2009 11:37
You're too generous, MJS. Nothing has taken Mr. Obama's thinking over, he made his choice at the crossroads long before we ever heard of him. He's a whore, worse yet, he's a boring whore.
Posted by Mchael Hureaux | December 29, 2009 1:37 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 13:37
Obama too says "they hate us for our freedom"; good to know.
O = W
Posted by Save the Oocytes | December 29, 2009 6:42 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 18:42
I'm with MH on this topic of when the corruption occurred. It wasn't recent
Shit, here in this particular Pentagon net-loser state, we have two ballot initiatives that would raise state incomes taxes (now flat) on $250,000-plus households and raise the corporate minimum income tax, which is now $10.
Guess who is the star of the Associated Oregon Industries' "Vote No!" TV blitzkreig?
Yep, it's him:
http://www.web.pdx.edu/~mdawson/6667.jpg
The TV ad shows Zero delivering a remarkable, quite lengthy piece of supply-side ignorance -- a real display of Ivy League arrogant, clueless failure.
Posted by Michael Dawson | December 29, 2009 6:52 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 18:52
"O = W"
Don't say that too loud. You'll have the fascists and the liberals gunning for you.
Posted by Sean | December 29, 2009 7:15 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 19:15
I'm sure it's true that Obie's actual thinking never strayed outside the boundaries of conventional wisdom. But unless my memory is playing me false, there was a time when his language wasn't merely a bricolage of thoroughly played cliches. "In harm's way", for heaven's sake -- was he always that banal?
Posted by MJS | December 29, 2009 7:30 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 19:30
Going white house
Puts anyone's rhetoric in harms way
Posted by op | December 29, 2009 7:57 PM
Posted on December 29, 2009 19:57
Ali Abunimah on Obama's changing trajectory, demonstrating previous arguably unconventional thinking.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | December 30, 2009 3:58 AM
Posted on December 30, 2009 03:58
Mr. Dawson just made my day.
Yeah, I actually did acquire a "Yes" sign for the initiatives in question. Sadly, there's no room on said sign to scribble in, "Suck it up, you egocentric assholes!"
Posted by ms_xeno | December 30, 2009 9:39 AM
Posted on December 30, 2009 09:39
Stop Me Before I Double-post Again
A passage in the recent Peace Prize address jogged an old memory. When the film "Gandhi" was released in 1982 a colleague who had just seen it remarked that Gandhi was lucky he was up against Brits rather than Nazis.
Then I had a fantasy of Obama in Oslo saying "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Truman's destruction of Nagasaki."
Now THAT would exemplify "expansion of our moral imagination".
Posted by Boink | December 30, 2009 11:19 PM
Posted on December 30, 2009 23:19
boink
there is a nice exchange between
H and lord halifax
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/std/images/Halifax1940.jpg
H tells Halifax
if he had those congressers show up on his watch he'd shoot top dog gandhi and his top side kicks and kepp shooting em till the congress was no more
ie H would conveniently
convert the liberation struggle
into an armed struggle
tit for tat is the name of the liberation game
yes he'd prolly win a few rounds
by blood thirst alone.... but ...
one thinks of the boers b4 they caved
and of course the zionics
"could" be worse
H simply had no conception of much beyond the type of ethnic cleansing made workable in norte amigo
in the colonial period
against sparse native populations
alas
india wasn't sparsely populated eh ??
Posted by op | December 31, 2009 8:17 AM
Posted on December 31, 2009 08:17
FYI - Somalia has been in the hit list since Alqaeda started to recruit Somalis, including three American born Somalis who left US to be trained in Somalia and never made it back (meaning, they were killed...). Of course there is a difference between a couple people deciding to join group and state that a whole country is evil, but as we know from past experiences, the people "in charge" don't really know how to distinguish a "group" from a "nation"! That is why US keeps on being labeled an "A** Hole" nation... for by the same precepts one judges it might be judged!!
Posted by JNetto | March 11, 2010 9:57 AM
Posted on March 11, 2010 09:57