A Smattering of Ignorance

Security & Stupidity

I've just returned from a pleasant visit in Mexico, having visited some places I've long wanted to see and also to learn more about that country's history.  My return home was altogether different.  My experience, as a US citizen,  in passing through "customs" at the border airport, in Houston, can best be summed up as a" torture chamber."  I had to walk, along with all other travellers,  the long distances in seemingly endless corridors in that cavernous building to "customs,"   and then to wait in long lines before being "admitted." I saw no evidence, e.g., signs, that the requirements of ADA, which mandate special provisions for the disabled and the infirm, were being complied with.

The next step in this rite of  passage was a set of security hurdles, including shoe removal, a variety of other inspection absurdities, often including luggage inspection (again). Here, also, I saw no different treatment for some physically handicapped individuals in lines near me.  Add to this chaos the hundreds of people milling about on the day I was there, many wondering where they will have to spend the night far from home because now that they will have missed their flight.

It has been said the definition of insanity is to do something over and over and to expect a different result. The definition applies equally to stupidity. Thus billions of "security" dollars are being spent at airports, train stations and the like in an effort to protect the US with borders like a sieve.  Among the millions who evade our border guards, north and south, how many aim to do us harm? How many others have been here long and have both the  intention and the means of contaminating our water supply? Of  exploding chemical plants, causing killing fumes to blanket many cities?  Of detonating "dirty bombs" in population centers? By the way, who's guarding our seaports at all three entries -- Atlantic, Pacific and the Great Lakes? How many WMD's are getting through?

Thus we have the spectacle of many millions of people who daily are being subjected to outrageously burdensome (and costly) "security precautions" that have almost nothing to do with protecting our country, when considering the enormous  (and obvious) loopholes that still allow virtually incalculable harm to be done to us -- all because of the incredible laxity several years ago of our "protective" agencies (and because of that dumb oaf with a wired shoe).

Isn't it about time that our government dealt with true priorities and spent taxpayer's money on real problems and made it less of a chore for travellers? (I suggest that the name for it should be Department of Home Insecurity).    

          

Cheney's Mouth

I've been studying the curvature of our Vice Pres' mouth for some time. When Cheney was Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War his mouth line was relatively straight. As VP for Bush his mouth line began to tilt so that the left side became more pronounced, drooping as it were. In a recent televised speech I noticed that Cheney's mouth had begun literally to sag so that the left side was approaching the perpendicular with respect to the right side of his mouth -- this much so that Cheney seems to be speaking out of one side of his mouth.  Thus we have the interesting spectacle of our Vice Pres talking out of only one side of his mouth; one has wonder what the "other side" is saying.  Or, maybe we're witnessing a re-enactment of Oscar Wilde' s "The Picture of Dorian Gray," in which the main character's debauchery ("lying" as in Cheney)  finally shows up in Dorian Gray's portrait.

I'd appreciate learning whether you, too, have noticed the "Cheney mouth" as the lies have begun to pile up.