What is the Sound of Styrofoam Columns Collapsing?

Posted: November 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS | Tags: , , | 20 Comments

I suppose that I really don’t need to remind any of you of all the triumph of the Dauphin de Chicago that we endured during 2008.  In fact, I don’t want to go there any more.  I am going to mention that aspirational Nobel Peace Prize from a year later.   And, okay, one more inkle of all that 2008 hoopla in Germany when Der Speigel asked “Where is Germany’s Obama”?   Do you honestly think they’d really ask that question now and want an answer?

How the worm has turned and the facades have fallen.  The one area where Obama was supposed to excel was in the world forum.  If the world was expecting something different, they are sure realizing they didn’t get it.  But just as in 2008,  they trumped up Obama into some mythological sun god shining wisdom upon the world, we’re now seeing every one peel the paint off styrofoam and skin.  What is it about the Villagers?

Do they all really want to write heroic epics and tragic endings rather than just report the damned news?

This tidbit is from Politico.  Well, let’s just say I’m going to start with Politico. There will be more coming than this headline:   ‘View from Middle East: President Obama is a problem’. A problem?  Isn’t that a little different tale than  alt that “this is the one we’ve been waiting for” spin a few years ago?

He was supposed to be different. His personal identity, his momentum, his charisma and his promise of a fresh start would fundamentally alter America’s relations with the Muslim world and settle one of its bitterest grievances.

Two years later, he has managed to forge surprising unanimity on at least one topic: Barack Obama. A visit here finds both Israelis and Palestinians blame him for the current stalemate — just as they blame one another.

Instead of becoming a heady triumph of his diplomatic skill and special insight, Obama’s peace process is viewed almost universally in Israel as a mistake-riddled fantasy. And far from becoming the transcendent figure in a centuries-old drama, Obama has become just another frustrated player on a hardened Mideast landscape.

…

The political peace process to which Obama committed so much energy is considered a failure so far. And in the world’s most pro-American state, the public and its leaders have lost any faith in Obama and — increasingly — even in the notion of a politically negotiated peace.

Even those who still believe in the process that Obama has championed view his conduct as a deeply unfunny comedy of errors.

“He’s like rain,” said a top Israeli official involved in diplomacy with the U.S., speaking of Obama’s role in negotiations. “You can do all kinds of things to cope with it.”

Some fret that not only has Obama failed to move the process forward but he and his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts may have dealt it a setback that will leave it worse off than when they began.

Obama has moved from the man that can do nothing wrong to the man that cannot do anything right.  His failures since the mid term  “shellacking” have been failure on the world stage.   China, South Korea, Brazil, and now both Israel and The Palestine Authority are telling unfavorable tales.

How could any one be less respected than a President who thinks massaging the shoulders of a German Chancellor is acceptable behavior?

The Politico narrative is a long one and is peppered with items like this.

But the American president has been diminished, even in an era without active hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. His demands on the parties appear to shrink each month, with the path to a grand peace settlement narrowing to the vanishing point. The lack of Israeli faith in him and his process has them using the talks to extract more tangible security assurances — the jets. And though America remains beloved, Obama is about as popular here as he is in Oklahoma. A Jerusalem Post poll in May found 9 percent of Israelis consider Obama “pro-Israel,” while 48 percent say he’s “pro-Palestinian.”
Other polling in Israel shows a growing gap between aspirations for peace and the faith that it can happen. One survey last month found that 72 percent of Israelis favor negotiations, while only 33 percent think they can bear fruit. (Palestinians show a smaller gap, primarily because a smaller majority favors negotiations.)

Obama has resisted advisers’ suggestions that he travel to Israel or speak directly to Israelis as he has to Muslims in Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia.

“Israelis really hate Obama’s guts,” said Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for two leading Israeli newspapers. “We used to trust Americans to act like Americans, and this guy is like a European leader.”

Many senior Israeli leaders have concluded that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were right about Obama’s naiveté and inexperience.

So, it may be expected that Israel misses some cowboy swagger and doesn’t want any more “European-style Leaders”.  The article does spend most of its virtual ink on the I side of the I/P equation.  As we know from experience, any conversation about that topic tends to escalate into more than discussion; even among friends. There’s just one P in there to 9 I’s.  Where’s the balance in that?  Has every one in the U.S. bought into the new paradigm of what “fair and balanced” represents?

But, Politico isn’t the only one in the process of toppling the Styrofoam columns today. WAPO’s Jackson Diehl also examines Obama’s Foreign Policy today and suggests Obama may need an update . He timetrips back to the 80s as a way to talk about the new START treaty process. Diehl looks for clues in that, the I/P negotiations,  and the recent tour of Asia’s nascent democracies.  The bottom line is not flattering.  Diehl concludes that Obama is stuck on the 80s.  (Let’s hope that doesn’t include the Presidential taste in hairstyles and clothing.)

Still, this administration is notable for its lack of grand strategy – or strategists. Its top foreign-policy makers are a former senator, a Washington lawyer and a former Senate staffer. There is no Henry Kissinger, no Zbigniew Brzezinski, no Condoleezza Rice; no foreign policy scholar.

Instead there is Obama, who likes to believe that he knows as much or more about policy than any of his aides – and who has been conspicuous in driving the strategies on nuclear disarmament and Israeli settlements. “I personally came of age during the Reagan presidency,” Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope.” Yes, and it shows.

Of course, the Conservative Blogosphere is having a hey day with both of these pieces.  Why wouldn’t they?  What’s lacking is a thoughtful liberal response to all of this.   What is also lacking is any mention of the Secretary of State who has been receiving some pretty glowing reviews and must be seen as carrying out an entire White House policy.  If the foreign policy is visionless, wouldn’t that reflect on Hillary Clinton also?

Hidden away on Project Syndicate is an article on START by Radosław Sikorski. Sikorski  is Poland’s Foreign Minister.  Poland is a country that has not forgotten the 1980s at all.

The US remains the world’s most powerful state, however, and the senators’ decision will inevitably have an impact beyond their country’s borders. It will be particularly significant for Poland, a staunch ally of the US in NATO. So it is important to make clear: my government supports the ratification of New START, because we believe it will bolster our country’s security, and that of Europe as a whole.

President Barack Obama’s nuclear-disarmament efforts have gained wide support in Poland. The country’s first democratic prime minister, along with two former presidents, including Lech Wałęsa, the legendary leader of Solidarity, published a joint article last year in support of Obama’s bold disarmament agenda.

For almost a year now, since the expiration of the original START treaty in December 2009, no US inspectors have been on the ground in Russia to verify the state of its nuclear arsenal. The START verification provisions provide crucial information that is essential for the force-planning process.

Without a treaty in place, holes will soon appear in the nuclear umbrella that the US provides to Poland and other allies under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the collective security guarantee for NATO members. Moreover, New START is a necessary stepping-stone to future negotiations with Russia about reductions in tactical nuclear arsenals, and a prerequisite for the successful revival of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE).

While we in Poland do not perceive an immediate military threat from Russia, most of the world’s active tactical or sub-strategic nuclear weapons today seem to be deployed just east of Poland’s borders, in speculative preparation for conflict in Europe. The cataclysmic potential of such a conflict makes it essential to limit and eventually eliminate this leftover from the Cold War.

The START treaty is area where the U.S. should and could succeed.   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has indicated that it is deal that should be ‘beyond politics’.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday that ratifying the treaty is a “national security imperative” that cannot be delayed.  He called on the Senate for quick passage of the deal.

Ratification requires support from 67 of the Senate’s 100 members.

Senator Jon Kyl, the chief Republican negotiator on the issue, has resisted the president’s efforts to hold the vote before the new Congress takes office in January with a stronger Republican presence.  Kyl has voiced concerns that the new START treaty would harm U.S. missile defense efforts.

I’m very much with Clinton on this one and with the President.  For a press that seemed eager to believe that those Styrofoam columns were the real deal two years ago, they now stand as eager to push them over and point to an emperor with no clothes.  This is evident even when the topic is something that should be above politics and not highly debatable like the value of START.

Why can’t we get some reasonable attempt at holding people accountable rather than these all in or all out approaches?  You don’t make up for the sins of 2008 by committing equally egregious but different sins in 2010.  Let’s not lose sight that the START treaty is good policy.

Just sayin’.

Monday Reads

Posted: November 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, Human Rights, just because, morning reads | Tags: , , , , , | 88 Comments
Good Morning!

First up is something that is one huge step back for civil rights and humankind.  I can’t believe this outrageous motion was adopted by the UN.  The US and its allies need to object vigorously.

The UN has removed a reference to sexual orientation from a resolution condemning arbitrary and unjustified executions.

The UN General Assembly resolution, which is renewed every two years, contained a reference opposing the execution of LBGT people in its 2008 version. But this year’s version passed without any reference to gay rights after a group of mostly African and Asian countries, led by Mali and Morocco, voted to remove it.

Gay rights groups fear the move — which passed in a narrow 79 to 70 vote — will act as a signal that persecuting people for their sexual orientation is internationally acceptable.

“This vote is a dangerous and disturbing development,” Cary Alan Johnson, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said in a statement. “It essentially removes the important recognition of the particular vulnerability faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — a recognition that is crucial at a time when 76 countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, five consider it a capital crime, and countries like Uganda are considering adding the death penalty to their laws criminalizing homosexuality.”

Johnson was referring to a bill introduced in Uganda’s legislature last year that would mandate the death penalty for multiple acts of gay sex or for any gay person carrying HIV. Though the bill appeared to be shelved after an international outcry, its principal supporter said last month the bill would be law “soon.”

Thankfully, we’re moving closer to repealing DADT.   The Marines have stated that they stand ready to remove enforcement of the provision. Semper Fi!!!

The head of the U.S. Marine Corps will fully cooperate with a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay and lesbian soldiers from the military, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mullen said there was “no question” that Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos, an opponent of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at this time, would implement all necessary changes to allow openly gay Marines to serve if Congress passes a repeal measure.

“He basically said that if this law changes, we are going to implement it, and we are going to implement it better than anybody else,” Mullen said of comments Amos recently made at a townhall-style meeting with Marines.

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on repealing the policy in coming weeks. The House already has passed a repeal measure, and President Barack Obama says he supports repeal under a process worked out with Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that includes a review of what the change would entail for the military.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on Fox News on Sunday . Clinton told Chris Wallace that she believed the ‘vast majority’ of Gitmo detainees should be tried in civilian courts.

We do believe that what are called Article Three trials, in other words in our civilian courts, are appropriate for the vast majority of detainees,” Clinton told Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

This week, a civilian trial convicted Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani on one count and acquitted him of more than 280 other counts.

“The question is do you have any choice now except to hold all of the terror detainees at Gitmo or either give them military trials or hold them indefinitely?” Wallace asked Clinton.

“The sentence for what he was convicted of is 20 years to life,” Clinton replied. “That is a significant sentence. Secondly, some of the challenges in the courtroom would be the very same challenges before a military commission about whether or not certain evidence could be used.”

Clinton also appeared on Meet the Press. She expressed reservations about the intrusive pat down procedures adopted by the TSA.

The Secretary of State also branded the procedure as ‘offensive’ and called for officials to make the new airport security measures less intrusive.

Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press, Mrs Clinton said she recognised the need for tighter security but said there was a need to ‘strike the right balance’ and ‘get it better and less intrusive and more precise.’

When asked if she would submit to a pat-down, she replied ‘Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?’

Mrs Clinton added she understood ‘how offensive it must be’ for passengers forced to endure the measures.

Another economist–Professor James Hamilton–is incensed about that stupid bunny cartoon with it’s outrageous lies on QE.  There’s some more take down of the stupid thing on Econbrowser.  Hamilton explains why ‘the Goldman Sachs’ is one of the agents used by the Fed when it does Open Market Operations.   Basically, it’s the law and this is true  if it’s in the name of QE or just regular monetary policy.  He also takes down some of the other ones so that I don’t have to do it.  He tackles the inflation fallacy as well as the stupid comment about QE being the equivalent of printing money.

Goldman Sachs is one of 16 different dealers from which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York solicits competitive bids. That’s the way it’s been done for a century, and it would be illegal for the Fed to do as the bunnies propose. From U.S. Monetary Policy and Financial Markets, 1998, Chapter 7:

The Federal Reserve makes all additions to its portfolio through purchases of securities that are already outstanding. The Federal Reserve Act [of 1913] does not give the [Federal Reserve] System the authority to purchase new Treasury issues for cash. Over the years, a variety of provisions had permitted the Treasury to borrow limited amounts directly from the Federal Reserve. Options for such loans existed until 1935. Temporary provisions for direct loans were reintroduced in 1942 and renewed with varying restrictions a number of times thereafter. Authority for any kind of direct loans to the Treasury lapsed in 1981 and has not been renewed.

The reason that the Fed has always been required to buy bonds from private dealers rather than the U.S. Treasury is that the process of money creation needs to be institutionally separated from the process of financing the public debt. In fact, the potential blurring of those boundaries is one of the most important legitimate criticisms of quantitative easing.

Another topic that confuses a lot of people is the Social Security Trust Fund. Does it exist or not?  John Holbo at Crooked Timber takes on Matt Yglesias and a Planet Money podcast.   He explains it in terms of a parent (the government) borrowing a future allowance from a child (Social Security).

If the US government completely and unrecoverably collapses, as a going economic concern, then the Social Security Trust Fund will be bust – and there will be no United States, too! (The latter is the more consequential concern, I should think.)

If the US government falls on seriously hard times, economically, there may need to be belt-tightening. Maybe the US government will have to break the deal it made, not making good on the IOU’s in the Social Security Trust Fund. Likewise, if our family falls on hard times, I may be driven to spend my daughter’s back allowance money on food for our table, in the sense that I may never pay her that money. (Hope not!) But if that happens I won’t describe the logic of the situation in terms of my daughter’s back allowance having turned out not to have been ‘real’, all along. If I don’t pay her, it won’t be because I don’t owe her – nor because that specific money ‘doesn’t exist’, whereas the money to put food on the table ‘does exist’. Talking that way just takes the minor accounting fiction that starts us out, and inflates it into a major fiction.

If the US government doesn’t fall on seriously hard times, but just finds financial life a bit tight – as it often is – the same point applies, only more so.

Scientific American has an important piece up on the Web with an important call for continued Open Standards and Net Neutrality.  They also have taken a strong stand against snooping and protecting free speech on the web.  You can see in this article just how far ahead our European cousins are in protecting individual rights over corporate rights on the Web and the internet. They even quote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s firm stand on internet freedom.

Free speech should be protected, too. The Web should be like a white sheet of paper: ready to be written on, with no control over what is written. Earlier this year Google accused the Chinese government of hacking into its databases to retrieve the e-mails of dissidents. The alleged break-ins occurred after Google resisted the government’s demand that the company censor certain documents on its Chinese-language search engine.

Totalitarian governments aren’t the only ones violating the network rights of their citizens. In France a law created in 2009, named Hadopi, allowed a new agency by the same name to disconnect a household from the Internet for a year if someone in the household was alleged by a media company to have ripped off music or video. After much opposition, in October the Constitutional Council of France required a judge to review a case before access was revoked, but if approved, the household could be disconnected without due process. In the U.K., the Digital Economy Act, hastily passed in April, allows the government to order an ISP to terminate the Internet connection of anyone who appears on a list of individuals suspected of copyright infringement. In September the U.S. Senate introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would allow the government to create a blacklist of Web sites—hosted on or off U.S. soil—that are accused of infringement and to pressure or require all ISPs to block access to those sites.

In these cases, no due process of law protects people before they are disconnected or their sites are blocked. Given the many ways the Web is crucial to our lives and our work, disconnection is a form of deprivation of liberty. Looking back to the Magna Carta, we should perhaps now affirm: “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.”

When your network rights are violated, public outcry is crucial. Citizens worldwide objected to China’s demands on Google, so much so that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. government supported Google’s defiance and that Internet freedom—and with it, Web freedom—should become a formal plank in American foreign policy. In October, Finland made broadband access, at 1 Mbps, a legal right for all its citizens.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

A Follow-up to Dakinikat’s Latest Post on the TSA Controversy

Posted: November 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights | Tags: , , , , , , | 36 Comments

This morning, Hillary Clinton weighed in on the enhanced searches being used by the TSA during her appearances on the morning political shows.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer asked Clinton Sunday if she would submit to a pat-down by a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent.

“Not if I could avoid it,” she replied. “No. I mean who would?”

On Meet the Press, she told David Gregory:

“I think everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public,” Clinton told NBC’s David Gregory.

“I mean obviously the vast, vast majority of people getting on these planes are law abiding citizens who are just trying to get from one place to another. But let’s not kid ourselves. The terrorists are adaptable,” she continued.

“Striking the right balance is what this is about. And I am absolutely confident that our security experts are gonna keep trying to get it better and less intrusive and more precise,” Clinton said.

Now let’s compare that with President Obama’s statement about the naked scanning machines and abusive TSA procedures, beginning with one of his patented self-referential remarks. Because everything is always about him, of course.

Responding to a request for his opinion on the matter from NBC’s Chuck Todd, President Obama opened with a confession: “I don’t go through security checks to get on planes these days, so I haven’t personally experienced some of the procedures put in place by TSA.” He then proceeded to defend this measure which he will never experience– one which everyone from Geraldo Rivera to Anderson Cooper seem taken aback by:

“I will also say that in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing, our TSA personnel are properly under enormous pressure to make sure that you don’t have somebody slipping on a plane with some sort of explosive device on their persons. And since the explosive device that was on Mr. Abdulmutallab was not detected by ordinary metal detectors, it has meant that the TSA has tried to adapt to make sure that passengers on planes on safe. Now, that’s a tough situation. One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us.”

Which statement is the least obnoxious? Perhaps Obama should just defer all questions to Clinton from now on.

Here’s an interesting reaction to Obama’s remarks from Huffpo:

“What I don’t like about Obama’s statement is the sense that there’s nothing to be done about the violation of civil liberties. It is as if the TSA is not accountable to anyone, which can’t be accurate. Who oversees TSA and who is responsible for setting these policies? Who are these people accountable to–Dick Cheney?”

I totally agree with that commenter!

Now check this out: Body scanner CEO accompanied Obama to India

The CEO of one of the two companies licensed to sell full body scanners to the TSA accompanied President Barack Obama to India earlier this month, a clear sign of the deep ties between Washington politicians and the companies pushing to have body scanners installed at all US airports.

Deepak Chopra, chairman and CEO of OSI Systems and no relation to the New Age spiritualist, was one of a number of CEOs who traveled with the president on his three-day trip to India, which focused primarily on expanding business ties between the US and the emerging Asian power….

That a manufacturer of body scanners accompanied the US president on a foreign trip shows the extent of the ties between the industry and the US government. With anger growing at the intrusive news screening procedures, many observers have focused attention on Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary whose consultancy, the Chertoff Group, counts OSI as a client….

“Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to abuse the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners under the pretense that the scanners would have detected ‘[the alleged Christmas Day bomber’s] explosive,” Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, told the Washington Post.

If that doesn’t make your blood boil over the way innocent Americans are being treated in U.S. airports, what would? This is all about money for corporations, not about protecting Americans from terrorism.

We are now experiencing exactly what James Ridgeway predicted earlier this year:

…airport security has always been compromised by corporate interests.When it comes to high-tech screening methods, the TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed technologies, and there are signs that the latest miracle device may just bring more of the same.

Ridgeway calls the naked body scanners a “scam.”

Known by their opponents as “digital strip search” machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies—millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays—to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities—an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that’s the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected. Yesterday, the London Independent reported on “authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation.” A British defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in detecting “low-density” materials like plastics, chemicals, and liquids—precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs.

Ridgeway lists a number of powerful Washington insiders who are profiting from the Naked body imaging scam. So what if a terrorist gets through the scan with explosives hidden in a body orifice? There are even more invasive machines available.

there’s always the next generation of security equipment: the Body Orifice Security Scanner, or BOSS chair. This contraption, which has an uncomfortable resemblance to an electric chair, is used in prisons, mostly in the UK, for tracing cell phones, shivs, and other dangerous contraband that’s been swallowed or inserted into body cavities by inmates. So far, it only detects metal, but you never know.

And of course there is always the humiliating “enhanced pat-down” process for anyone who doesn’t want to appear naked to a bunch of TSA thugs.

If you are still unconvinced that the government isn’t really protecting us with their police-state tactics, consider this:

The recent public ire toward the TSA’s new pat-down and body imaging screening methods is likely to cause more people to drive automobiles and forego airline travel, say two transportation economists who have studied the issue.

As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.

“Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,” said Horwitz. “The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.”

Clifford Winston, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institute, stopped short of saying that more people could die as a result of the TSA policies, but said that the airline industry will definitely see a decline in passengers if the public’s contempt for the pat-downs and advanced-imaging technology systems continues.

It’s time to get serious about stopping terrorist attacks by using a method that actually works, instead of just focusing on further lining the the pockets of rich corporations and their CEOs.

President Obama needs to understand that he works for us. We shouldn’t have to serve as experimental subjects for his rich friends’ latest police state technological projects. We should have the right as American citizens to travel freely in our own country.

If President Obama continues to insist that we be seen naked or be groped by his TSA thugs in order to fly, then he should have to go through one of the scanning machines himself followed by an “enhanced pat-down.” And the entire humiliating process should be shown on national TV for all of us to see.

Groping for fun and profit

Posted: November 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , | 21 Comments

Politico reports that the TSA and the Homeland Security Secretary are just fine with these procedures.

John Pistole, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, said several times Sunday that no changes are planned in airport screening procedures, despite an online backlash.

“Do I understand the sensitivities of people? Yes,” Pistole said to CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.” “If you’re asking, am I going to change the policies? No.”

His boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, was asked on Bloomberg TV’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” if the pat-down procedures are working.

“Yes,” she replied. “And I think it is objectively better at helping us find the liquids, the powders, the gels that could be smuggled onto a plane and used to explode it. … Remember, the walkthrough metal detector was hugely controversial when it began, and now, of course, we don’t even think about it.”

Meanwhile, the ACLU is actively looking for TSA Pat-Down Abuse.

The ACLU is interested in obtaining information about the conduct of these searches. If you are denied the right to opt out of the body scanner machines or believe you have suffered from rough, rude, and humiliating manhandling and groping of breasts and crotch areas, sexual comments, and a lack of privacy, please contact us by using the complaint form linked below.

REPORT YOUR EXPERIENCE
File a complaint with the ACLU

More and more outrageous stories are coming out in the press every day.

Here are some links to a view of these:

From the San Diego Examiner:

This time the defendant, Sam Wolanyk says he was asked to pass through the 3-D x-ray machine. When Wolanyk refused, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel told him he would have to be patted down before he could pass through and board his airplane.

Wolanyk said he knew what was coming and took off his pants and shirt, leaving him in Calvin Klein bike undergarments.

“It was obvious that my underwear left nothing to the imagination,” he explained. “But that wasn’t enough for the TSA supervisor who was called to the scene and asked me to put my clothes on so I could be properly patted down.”

It was clear to Wolanyk that TSA only wanted him to submit to a pat-down and if they were interested in ensuring the safety of all passengers they would have rifled through his clothes, carryon baggage and acknowledged that he was not carrying any illegal paraphernalia on his person.

ABC Action News; Tampa Florida:

Antonia Riggs Miernik reluctantly rolls up her left pant leg, revealing a scar that runs down her knee. When Miernik was 27 years old, she was injured in a car crash, and “basically destroyed the knee.” Now, she has a metal knee implant.One of the effects of the implant is that whenever the New Port Richey woman flies, she triggers the metal detectors at airport security. She says the normal procedure is that she is then subjected to a TSA pat down. She has experienced multiple pat downs since Sept. 11.

“I feel molested. I’d like to go take a shower with Lysol (afterwards),” Miernik said, describing the pat downs, which she said includes being “touched all over.”

Miernik said the worst experience she had came when her 7-year-old granddaughter was at the airport with her. When her granddaughter saw the pat down, “She went ‘Grandmama, they touched you on your special girl spots.’”

Is this really necessary?

UPDATE: Bostonboomer has found this at Politico that says Pistole may be open to some changes.

Sunday Growing

Posted: November 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Farming, gardening | Tags: , | 25 Comments

I’m hoping that a regular post about gardening and farming, but mostly gardening, will be useful on the blog. I’ve picked Sundays to run the post, perhaps every other Sunday at first depending upon interest, because it’s often a slow news day.

I hope to convince a few of the commenters and writers here to write about what is happening in the garden(s) in their neck of the woods. So feel free to dive in, everyone!

Up here in the PacNW it’s been rainy. No surprise there, eh? It’s also cold; we are having a cold snap with cold winds barrelling down out of the Fraser River Valley from Canada. This often means snow, but I think it’s a bit too warm for snow as we are hovering just above freezing, but the skies are clear. The fire has been burning in the wood stove all day. Outside the goats are all puffed up, like little fur puff balls on 4 stick like legs. They are out in the pasture looking for something to eat. The pasture is green (this is Washington after all) but the grass has little nutrition. So they come in to eat hay every few hours. The cats are similarly puffed up, lounging in the warm spots in the garage. The dog is in her heaven, being a northern spitz type dog. She’s only 9 months old. I can’t wait until she first encounters snow.

Frost on the Pasture

Frost on the Pasture

The plants in the herb garden are curled up against the cold. But there is still viable rosemary, thyme and some oregano. The last of the chives gave up the ghost a month or so ago. Green onions are still hanging on, hoping I won’t pick them before they can flower in the spring. In the greenhouses that I got from The Tree Center and set up last season, the last of the tomatoes have ripened and need to be picked. Their mother plants are completely brown and dead. Peppers hang here and there amidst the brown leaves of their plants. I need to get those picked and processed. We chop peppers, sweet and hot, and bag them into zip-locks. We freeze them and use them in cooking all the rest of the year. Instead of canning tomatoes I chop them, skins, seeds and all, in the cuisinart and freeze them. They too are used in cooking for the rest of the year.

Out in the fields the garlic we planted in October is showing the first of its growth. Yum! If it were to get really cold we’d have to cover it with straw, but I’d rather not. That way there’s no convenient hiding place for our garden nemesis, the slug. We also have lettuce, mesclun, carrots, broccoli, kale, swiss chard, cabbage, rutabaga, beets, turnips and more growing in the fields. Some of the plants are under cover to protect them from super cold weather. Others are left to grow as they will. I expect the beets and the swiss chard will finish shortly. I should grab some and chop it and freeze it for eating later before it turns into a brown frozen mush!

I expect we’ll have our first snow, if not over Thanksgiving where it can most effectively screw up travel plans and therefore is the chosen time of the weather gods, by early December. Before then, I hope to have the paths in the herb garden weeded, and we really need to get the plowing done.

I’d like to refer everyone to a gardening blog from our own Grayslady, Gardening in the Mud. Please visit there for information about Mid-West and North-East gardening and plants. She knows her stuff! If anyone else has a garden blog they’d like linked, let us know!

So, what’s happening in the garden in your area? Go outside and then let us know!

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