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-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
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Monday, February 11, 2008

Soon you'll be able to roll a bowling ball down Broadway without hitting anything
Posted by Jill | 10:05 AM
Go into midtown Manhattan on any nice spring day, or stroll over to Fifth Avenue. Good luck getting through the mobs of tourists, many of them European. And if you have a business that caters to these tourists, enjoy it while you can. Because who on earth would want to travel to a country that does this:

The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.

The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements.

According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.

The data from the US's new electronic transport authorisation system is to be combined with extensive personal passenger details already being provided by EU countries to the US for the "profiling" of potential terrorists and assessment of other security risks.

Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as "absurd".


As it stands now, the crap you have to go through when traveling even inside the United States as an American citizen has stripped away just about anything that was ever pleasant about travel. Even going to Jamaica isn't as much fun as it used to be because of the hassle of just getting there. If I had to go through what the Bush Administration is asking Europeans to go through in order to travel here I wouldn't even bother -- and I suspect that many Europeans will decide exactly that.

It isn't just every American who's assumed to be a Muslim terrorist until proven otherwise. It's now everyone in the world.

(h/t)

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Friday, September 07, 2007

Going Backwards
Posted by Anonymous | 9:24 AM

Even if we don't wind up nuking ourselves into extinction, America has other things to worry about.

Forget about Stephen King and his fake boogeymen. If you want to have the shit scared out of you, then read this nightmare scenario by David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York:
"One day you’re gonna wake up in a hostile world where your country no longer has any friends. There will be governments of other countries – former long-standing allies – that cannot afford to have anything to do with you, lest their publics angrily remove them from office for collaborating with a country as hated as yours. Nor will those governments trust yours anyway. They will perhaps possess intelligence that could save your life, but they will not share it. They will possess forces that could help you survive real security threats, but they will not provide them. Your country will have become an international pariah, the South Africa of the twenty-first century."
See what seven years of easy answers have gotten us? Bupkes.

Complex issues don't have simple solutions. Leaping before you look isn't "staying the course", especially if you're stepping off the roof. But that stubbornly-loyal 28% of the public with fifteen second attention spans doesn't want to hear that. What they want is fast food news they can gulp down without thinking, and big, won't-go-away political headaches like Iraq solved by tossing it in the microwave. Bush is the type of President they want, the guy they can have a beer with and not worry about him making them feel stupid. That's why loud empty barrels like Mutt and Ghouliani are so popular; they're just selling more of the same. What's worse, there are other voters who feel the same way as the 28% does, they're just not out of the closet yet.

It's a seductive but false luxury America can't afford anymore. Ignorance isn't bliss; it's a temporary blindness that keeps you from seeing the beast that's gonna tear your throat out. Personally, I wouldn't want the guy I'm having a beer with to fix my car, never mind putting him in the White House. I don't want a boozehound that's going to vomit on my shoes. I want the sober, boring, responsible guy who's going to drive my drunken carcass home. What I and the rest of this country needs is somebody in charge who isn't afraid to be smart. As Thomas Fuller said, “Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.”

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