Too Bad Wilson is not Running Louisiana
 

Can I put a word in for the north to keep King's Canyon and the rest of the Sierras? Cuz the southerners would just drive through it as fast as they could, anyway.

Too Bad Wilson is not Running Louisiana
 

You heart me, don't you?

PB book club
 

The date should be obvious - September 11th, 2006.

Plus, school shouldn't start until after labor day.

If anyone else wants to join us (Sidd, Club, GGG, Fringey, Spank, Panda, Gatti, Adder, Sebby, RT, Weed, Burger, Viola, Keaton, Hank, Wonker, etc) - this is the read:


http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/...V65774996_.jpg Amazon link

Too Bad Wilson is not Running Louisiana
 

Either the opposite of that, or I feel really, really sorry for you because of where you have had to live. Or both.

Did you spend time in Boston? Also don't like Boston. All of those places, from pretty much the second I land/arrive, it's like a constant background fingernails-on-the-chalkboard-sound-type feeling.

Or they are the best places ever, like Heaven, and I'm inherently uncomfortable in them because I'm Satan.

PB book club
 

OK, I'm in. I'll probably finish Fiasco this week, though I doubt we'll get the same book club to do that one too.

PB book club
 

Missed this thread. Are we all supposed to discuss this book over tea? Do I have to make out with anyone? Is there something special about this book, other than the author is known for spending years writing the book, "Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water-Closet." Will the Osama book be as fascinating?

PB book club
 

If you want tea, you'll have to make your own. You don't have to make out with anyone, but do let us know if you're coming to town.

The book has been getting a lot of good press, and both Slave and I decided to pick it up. It seems to me that the thing to do is to start a separate thread re the book, which I will do shortly, although I don't think I'll be in a position to say much until the week after next.

Internet Privacy
 

Guess who?


"AOL removed a list of the Web search inquiries of 658,000 unnamed users from a public Web site over the weekend, after bloggers complained that the information was so detailed and personal that it could compromise the users' privacy." —New York Times, Aug. 8, 2006

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http://www.slate.com/id/2147808/?nav=tap3

Marty Peretz -- who is a pompous gasbag, and a jackass to boot -- describes how Israel screens airline passengers:

• Every passenger who flies El Al, whether from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv or from locations outside Israel, is put through a personalized psychometric at point of departure. This is not a machine test. It is an interview, short but probing, with questions that some may experience as a bit invasive, before the passenger gets to the ticket counter.
  
  It is hard to imagine the current crop of Transportation Security Administration employees deployed in U.S. airports performing this delicate function. The interviewers are smart and young, mostly female, and on their way to other jobs. It was one of these El Al personnel who discovered, simply by talking with and closely observing a young Irish woman, that she had carried in her checked baggage a "gift" she had not seen, handed to her by a Palestinian boyfriend. She was also carrying his baby in her stomach. The boyfriend was a ... well, you understand what he was.
  
  I have traveled to and from Israel on dozens of occasions. Each time I am a bit surprised and sometimes even thrown off balance by the questions. The volume of passengers at U.S. and big European airports might preclude relying on a system like Israel's--unless, of course, security service at airports and other vulnerable spots in society were to be made mandatory for a year or so. You can't imagine what a trained young person can discover in watching the subtle behavior of anxious people.
  
  Here is a true story. Do you remember the days when student air discount tickets were available for almost anybody not obviously in middle age? Well, some twenty years ago, a friend of mine, an American who was living in Rome and working in advertising, was to meet me in Israel. He had purchased a bootleg El Al student ticket. When he arrived at Da Vinci Airport, he was greeted by a genial security officer. She looked at his passport and then his ticket. "Oh, you are a student," she exclaimed. "What do you study?" Fishing out of nowhere and quickly, Bill said, "Architecture." "So, tell me," asked his questioner, "when was Palladio born?" He did not get on the plane till the next day when his innocence of malevolent intent was vouched for and proven. Now that is security.

There is no good reason for us not to be doing the same thing, except that our government does not take the threat of terrorism as seriously as Israel's does.

PB book club
 

Why doesn't she have to make out with anyone? Can we make that a predicate to her participation? Not that I want to, necessarily, nttawwt, I just wonder why we want to dismiss it out of hand........

Can we serve wine and bill LT?

\

Stop posting him, my opinion of MP is starting to change. To your chagrin.

PB book club
 

OK.

OK, but none of that Washington State box wine you keep pushing. It tastes like plastic, with hints of armpit and lumpy milk.

I agree. We had a very pale shadow of this sort of thing at one point, but the universal uproar against the three questions (did you pack your own bags? did anyone give you to take on the plane? have your bags been with you since you packed?) after 9/11 only moved us farther away. Those questions were far from sufficient, but the goal there was to catch the stupid (like the Irish girl in the story), not the suspiciously nervous.

Anyway, point being is that I think we could get some incrimental gain just by enlisting airline ticket and gate agents again in the interrim while professionals are trained.

PB book club
 

I can get a discount on some CT wine...

The liberals view terrorism as a domestic criminal matter. Those questions were designed to bolster the fraud prosecution, after the fact.

Too many people in this country do not trust authorities to use their discretion, and would rather address problems through rules. This same impulse gives us sentence guidelines, which take discretion away from judges (and give it to prosecutors, but few people understand that), and zero-tolerance policies, so that six-year-olds can be suspended from school for having butter knives in their backpack.

I don't think this is necessarily a conservative impulse, but it is consistent with the conservative attacks on government over the last couple of decades and with "get tough" politicians who put more energy into campaigning than into governing.

I can give that a qualified 2... is that 1.8?

we don't trust the government, so we want rules? do you laugh behind your back at the people who respond to you?

We have far too many airports and far too few* "smart young people" willing to be in Governement service. also, don't know if you remember, but the brave Democratic congress made sure TSA was ruled by government employment rules. So don't talk about our "level of warm comfort with little real security" as being tied at all to anything other than your union lobbys.

*especially as compared to Israel.

2, I am unqualifiedly against the unions.

I agree with this -- if we are going to protect against terrorism on airplanes, people are going to have to trust the government more. And get (meaning pay for) better TSA people.

Nothing to see here, move along
 

How is this possible:

• BOSTON -- Fighter jets escorted a diverted London-to-Washington, D.C., flight to Boston's Logan airport Wednesday after a distraught passenger pulled out a screw driver, matches, Vaseline and a note referencing al-Qaida, an airport spokesman said.
  
  United Flight 923 landed safely, Logan airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said.
  
  The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members landed safely, UAL Corp. spokesman Brandon Borrman said. Borrman said a female passenger was spotted engaging in some "suspicious" activity, but he could not immediately say what the activity was.
  
  State Police and federal agencies took control of the plane after it landed.
  
  Passengers were seen coming off the plane on the tarmac and being loaded onto a bus. Orlandella said their carry-on luggage was being checked. The flight was from London's Heathrow Airport to Dulles.
  
  Last week, British authorities said they foiled a terror plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from London to the United States

link

It's the question of rules vs. discretion, Hank. If you were awake in the first year of law school, you may remember the issue. It probably came up when your friends in Pennypacker were shooting the shit late at night.

If you give people a meaningful job, pay them better, and give them a chance to make a difference, you'll get interest in the job. TSA offers none of those things right now.

And you correctly remember that the terms of employment at DHS were an issue, but you are wrong about how it ended up. The GOP won on that one. And yet TSA isn't exactly a model bureaucracy. Go figure.

discretion = profiling. as to TSA I am almost certain it's employees come under normal rules for Union/discipline etc. but have to go right now so I can't google it.

And the TSA people I see seem like they are quite interested- maybe not all, but certainly a good majority seem like people who do not want to allow the next 9/11 to happen.

I think the liberal view of terrorists as criminals also has something to do with liberals' sympathy for terrorists. Terrorists do what they do because they have no other options to fight those in power. Liberals live to challenge power structures. Its part of the definition of a classic liberal in this country. Liberals "understand" terrorists. In a queer way, they sympathize with a terrorist's struggle, even if they loath what the terrorist does.

The liberals are misguided. They miss the fact that this isn't a David v. Goliath thing. The terrorists are not fighting for righteous change - they just want to be in power, and be every bit as oppressive as the regimes they cry have oppressed them.

PB book club
 

Only if I don't need to write a paper afterwards.

PB book club
 

I'm buying this at lunch. My concern about these books is they are often jammed with dry, shitty prose. They say this cat is a whipsong writer. I'll read that.

22222...

When you elaborate on horseshit, you generally spew more horseshit.

Sounds more to me like the Stevens side of SCOTUS

Dude, you cannot tell me there is not a perpetual "support the underdog" thing going on in the minds of a lot of liberals.

They have an odd dislike for the people who tend to hold the levers of power in a capitalist system.

It's a cult of victimology. See Israel. They supported Israel back in the day, after the holocaust, when the Jews were victims. Once Israel become the regional power and a beacon for commerce in the region the liberals (on a global, one world scale) turned hostile. Can't have these victims actually becoming success stories...it would undercut their dependence on their liberal benefactors.

It's all about control.

The libertarian wing of the conservatives, to contrast, is about individual liberty and responsibility. Unknown concepts to some on the left.

Dude, have you ever met a liberal who didn't think a regulation or a statute couldn't cure societal ills? Liberals LIVE for making rules.

That's not to say conservatives don't. The Rockefeller Drug Laws are an excellent example of how stupid conservatives can be.

Rules are a simple salve for an idiot who doesn't want to take the time to understand the problem. Hence, blind airline screening regs, banning smoking on San Diego beaches, etc...

The miles of endless codes, regs and caselaw - that we are so litigious and fixated on the lowest common denominator solution to any problem [passing a law] - is a testament to our lack of creativity and intelligence as a society.

Control. The impulse to rule by a paternalistic big brother nanny state is a powerful lure for the left.

Huh?

The right has that same problem, however. My right-inclined friends call me a nihilist every time I mention my Libertarian registration.

"You have to belive in something!"

"Really, why? But as a matter of fact, I do. Individual freedom."

People are dumb. They need groups to identify with. The only movments I require are those that generally follow my 20 oz Sbux coffee.

ETA: The problem is, when people think like me, there's no respect for any of the structures around us. Keeping the "guides" of law, God, country, political affiliation allows people to view their lives in terms of right and wrong, success and failure, etc. Some folks need a map. I subscribe to the notion that your guide is in your head. If you need a structure to tell your right from wrong, you're a dumbass.

Don't blame me, I voted for Perot.

And I am boycotting Sbux.

Something so minor seems really out of place in the middle of your rant.

It's illegal in Malibu, too. And Santa Monica. And even in Northern California areas. But perhaps after they secede, they will reinstate smoking.

Given that smokers tend to sea the beach (and the woods, the street, the sidewalk, or basically, anywhere) as their own personal ashtray, I do see the logic in it.

But if sebby has a market-based solution to the problem of littering, I am all ears.