12/23/2010

The Christmas Gift

The first significant snow of the season is here, right on schedule to transform the backyard fences and sheds into a holiday card. The roads are greasy; the people driving on them all seem impatient, as if they are running out of time and have decided to make bad conditions worse by driving foolishly. I’ve been within 50 feet of two crashes involving six cars in the last 24 hours. I’m grateful to have only been a witness.

Don’t try to get near a store. Any store. People are making last minute rushes for food and gifts. Why do we need presents at Christmas? Answer: we don’t; that’s why they’re presents.

Doesn’t feel that way, does it? It doesn’t feel like “this is a special item that captures the affection and esteem I feel for you.” It’s more like “this falls within the acceptable parameters to ransom my end of our relationship from year-end emotional blackmail.”

That’s a pity, because it means we wind up with a sentiment in our hearts exactly opposite of the one the holiday is supposed to engender, which probably makes us feel worse for all that.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
12/17/2010

Do It (For) Yourself

The Bush tax cuts for the rich are now the Obama tax cuts for the rich. As we wait for the Great Recession’s double dip, as the smart economists (Hello, Paul Krugman!) tell us we need more government spending to offset the consumer spending that just ain’t there, Congress today sends a bill to Barack Obama that will reduce government revenue by $858 billion dollars.

When Mr. Obama announced the tax deal he’d made with the Republicans last week, he took pains to chastise Americans on the left to… well, to STFU. I’m one of those Americans. There’s this meme going around (Thanks, David Axelrod!) that disgruntled people on the left are poor sports and are undermining Mr. Obama with our criticism.

Really? I don’t think so. Yep, I’m to the left of the president and unsatisfied (vocally, at that) with his performance. But because Mr. Axelrod and the Democratic moderates seemingly have no ability to listen, they misunderstand the nature of the complaints (at least mine).
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
12/09/2010

Hypocrisy

Week two of the WikiLeaks massive document dump and I have yet to be surprised. By anything.

I’m not surprised the US government has a dishonest and unreliable partner in Afghanistan, the State Department thinks Vladimir Putin is an ass, the Americans put pressure on the Germans not to prosecute the CIA assets that kidnapped and tortured a German citizen they mistook for a terrorist, that our diplomats spend a good portion of their time (most of it, probably) shilling for US companies abroad.

I’m not surprised that the Justice Department is trying to figure out a way to prosecute WikiLeaks for passing along leaked documents, while at the same time NOT prosecuting the New York Times and other news outlets for publishing those leaked documents. We must all strictly adhere to the Double Standard. Major news outlets are part of the American establishment; Australian troublemakers with Chinese names are not. That’s why Mike Huckabee is calling for Julian Assange’s execution, but not Bill Keller’s.

Speaking of Double Standards, let’s not be surprised by the distinction everyone is drawing between the WikiLeaks document dump and the 1971 leaking of the Pentagon Papers. The latter was a courageous exercise in truth telling, the former a craven tantrum by alienated outsiders. Except don’t ask Dan Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. “The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time,” Mr. Ellsberg said.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
12/02/2010

Thank You, Bumbler

I thought they had me this time. I was coming home via DCA Tuesday night and in every security line stood the full-body scanner, dead ahead. Either that, or the pat down, no way around it. I was resigned to my fate.

It was a late evening flight; there were few people ahead of me in line, so if I opted for grope, it wouldn’t hold anyone up. I’d promised to think through my decision beforehand, so I could look cool when the moment came (as cool as one can look – either with one’s hands up over one’s head in the glass booth or while getting one’s privates massaged – an unhappy ending? – in front of other travelers).

Now, in real life, it was different. So few people around, the tail end of a Tuesday evening, plenty of TSA staff around, the whole thing set up to move you toward the scanner. If you want the grope, you have to take the initiative, make a fuss, etc.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
11/25/2010

The Big Squeeze

Happy Thanksgiving. The threatened “pat-down” protest at the nation’s airports didn’t materialize yesterday, so if you flew, that’s one thing you have to be thankful for. It’s not surprising, either. Regardless of how steamed you might be to read about full-body scans, I can’t think of anyone who wants to take more time getting through airport security. Nor can I think of anyone who wants to endure a groin massage in front of a live audience rather than pass through a glass booth, even if someone, somewhere is looking beneath your clothes. You can comfort yourself with the idea that unless you are physically exceptional for good or ill, the person in the screening room will not remember your body from among the hundreds she or he looked at yesterday.

I’m a frequent flyer, but have yet to have my full body scanned. We don’t have those devices at BTV (that’s Burlington International – jet-setters use pilot lingo), but they’re coming in 2011. They do have the machines at DCA (Washington National) but not at every security checkpoint and not everyone who passes through the checkpoints where they are present is selected for a full-body scan. I’ve never been selected. In fact, in the six months since I first witnessed the operation of full-body scanners, last week was the first time I saw anyone selected who was not an attractive female between the ages of 20 and 30. (“Hey, Bobby, got a good one coming through for you on six.”)

So yeah, the TSA staff who run the machines are checking out the babes. Did you expect anything else? Should you be surprised when (and we could start a pool on this) we find out someone in the monitor room has been snapping photos of young women’s scans with his phone camera and passing them around at the bar? I say six months, at the outside.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
11/18/2010

Vote for Me!

Now that election season is over and in the brief window before the jockeying for the 2012 presidential begins, I want to take a moment to talk about – elections. (Sorry. If you want to go do something else, you have my permission.)

If you stick around, though, you might find it worthwhile, because you may have experienced the same electoral phenomenon I have. In recent months, I’ve gotten emails from folks asking me to vote for someone – usually a young person – in an online election.

These young people – candidates, as it were – are fine kids, surely deserving of whatever they’re running for. These “elections” often have something to do with winning a scholarship. What could be wrong with that? Send a kid to school, make the world a better place.

So the email says something like “My nephew Melvin is a finalist in the OWottaWorld Scholarship essay contest. If he gets the most votes, he wins a $10,000 college scholarship. Please click here to vote for Melvin pass this along to everyone in your address book.”
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
11/11/2010

The Five-Percent Solution

Happy Armistice Day, as we used to call it. I had a great uncle in the American trenches at 11:11 a.m. on 11 November 1918. (Although, I wouldn’t “have” him as an uncle for another 42 and a half years.)

That was the “war to end all war” and/or “keep the world safe for democracy.” We missed both targets, failed to learn the lessons and were back at it with far more destructive technology just 21 years later.

The sense I got from my Uncle John was that we (or at least he) believed his war’s sales pitch. A college history professor was of the opinion that the US entered the war because the House of Morgan made so many loans to the British government that a German victory would take down the US economy, which sounds closer to the truth.

Current wars still have rhetoric about democracy, etc. but the frosting is getting thin. The first gulf war was about oil, the Iraq invasion and occupation were about oil, the Afghan war is indirectly about oil. Where and over what will the next war be?

No predictions here, but I recently saw several stories about the extractive plunder of Papua New Guinea. (Quick, without looking at a map, where is Papua New Guinea a/k/a PNG?)
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)