Hello Liberals, ye so-called true patriots and defenders of all that is good and fine in our troubled union.
Now that your tarnished lion is nursing a split jaw behind White House curtains, and as the Bush-spawned TSA is putting you through an i-see-your-hiney bodyscanner in vain search of that lone gramps with a shiv up his kilt, where is your powerful voice in defense of all that is good and fine?
There is nothing good and fine about the body scanner or the disgraceful pawing of American citizens as they prepare meekly to travel from Oklahoma City to Portland, Oregon by air. There is only blunt, careless, ineffective, insulting disruption of the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution in which we are protected against illegal search and seizure.
O Liberal, have ye lost your voice? Are ye now waking to the call of yon Partisan Idol who whispers to you that you must defend Bad in the long term interest of Good? So it seems. And it is certainly a surprise that the so-called Liberal Media has decided that, since Republicans seem to be leading the charge against invasiveness (because they are "against the government snicker snicker"), you must downplay and poo-poo the whole thing as Redi-Whipped hysteria.
American pollsters seem to say you are politically correct to do so--most Americans seem either to support the erosion of their own rights (didn't need 'em anyway!) as long as it provides that infinitesimally small measure of additional security for them that they will not be confronted with boxcutters while cramped on the way to Tampa. But Americans, having elected GWB not once but twice and then apparently duped by a man who claimed he was Change Itself, need not apply for the National Perceptiveness Award.
But you, Liberals! Ye who saw early the insane clown folly of the WMD farrago, who railed against torture and illegal detention, who bawled in our faces that we would have a Better, Finer America if only Liberals were empowered to see to our collective betterment--where are ye now that we are being driven like cattle to machine-enabled nakedness; or, if we refuse that, a ten-times-more disgraceful manhandling by rubber-gloved flunkeys (who probably mean well, as do so many flunkeys)? In either case our hands are up like perpetrators; cops are searching us as if we had been pulled over on the highway drunk like Charlie Sheen and shotgun shells littering the floor of our car.
We are stripped bare in the name of airtight security but without good reason or sense, and certainly no sensibility. And Liberals are just pretty okay with it for some reason only the electoral map can help us discern.
Our rights deserve better than that.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Hating on Air Travel
I am a hater.
Of air travel.
I did not used to be.
Now I try to avoid it unless it cannot be avoided (trips over 1500 miles; overseas).
The MAIN REASON: airport security.
One supposes there is an argument for all the security on airplanes these days but I doubt it could not be done as efficiently and at no inconvenience to the traveler. Our current mindset (post-Osama) is that rights can be abrogated without a second thought.
The dressing down at the gates had become distasteful enough (and time-consuming)--an exercise in authoritarian-induced paranoia and humiliation--but now we hear it's to get worse, with more invasive pat-downs and full-body scans at the gate.
I actually don't give a hoot about full-body scans. It does not inconvenience me. Let them do it for everyone at the airport, all the time. Fine. And if you find a weapon, go for it. Or, put an armed air-marshal on every flight (which cannot be more expensive than the current horror).
But the current innocent's perp-walk through the officious security line reeks of the police state we have become, and I would love to know how many bombers have been caught this way. Can I have some hands for "none"? Maybe they are just being deterred. Or maybe we just had to stop being utterly effing lame about letting people on with weapons.
My personal opinion is that the TSA itself should be abolished and replaced with a police force trained to spot trouble. The notion that everyone must wait in line to be scanned and their liquids examined, seems lazy and wildly inconsiderate of the American "leave me alone" spirit. To me it seems a disgraceful waste and a huge entitlement program for security wannabes now dressed in gray and having far too much authority over the typical citizen traveler.
At worst, keep the TSA around for international flights and/or non-US Citizens. But the sight of US Citizens traveling from, say, LaGuardia to Tampa being patted down as if they are likely to be minions of Qaeda strikes me as a national disgrace.
In another post, I may complain about the tininess of airline seats but this is a consumer complaint and market driven, so there really is little in fact to complain about in writing but instead many plane tickets not to buy.
But I am a hater of the flying experience because my rights and privacy are brutally violated each time I encounter the security checkpoint. I feel it is a near certainty we are slowly being made immune to a near total lack of rights which may at some point become the norm. And like the frog that slowly boils in water, we will not notice until we are cooked enough to be nearly dead and able only to jerk spasmodically in anticipation of the total death of freedom.
Of air travel.
I did not used to be.
Now I try to avoid it unless it cannot be avoided (trips over 1500 miles; overseas).
The MAIN REASON: airport security.
One supposes there is an argument for all the security on airplanes these days but I doubt it could not be done as efficiently and at no inconvenience to the traveler. Our current mindset (post-Osama) is that rights can be abrogated without a second thought.
The dressing down at the gates had become distasteful enough (and time-consuming)--an exercise in authoritarian-induced paranoia and humiliation--but now we hear it's to get worse, with more invasive pat-downs and full-body scans at the gate.
I actually don't give a hoot about full-body scans. It does not inconvenience me. Let them do it for everyone at the airport, all the time. Fine. And if you find a weapon, go for it. Or, put an armed air-marshal on every flight (which cannot be more expensive than the current horror).
But the current innocent's perp-walk through the officious security line reeks of the police state we have become, and I would love to know how many bombers have been caught this way. Can I have some hands for "none"? Maybe they are just being deterred. Or maybe we just had to stop being utterly effing lame about letting people on with weapons.
My personal opinion is that the TSA itself should be abolished and replaced with a police force trained to spot trouble. The notion that everyone must wait in line to be scanned and their liquids examined, seems lazy and wildly inconsiderate of the American "leave me alone" spirit. To me it seems a disgraceful waste and a huge entitlement program for security wannabes now dressed in gray and having far too much authority over the typical citizen traveler.
At worst, keep the TSA around for international flights and/or non-US Citizens. But the sight of US Citizens traveling from, say, LaGuardia to Tampa being patted down as if they are likely to be minions of Qaeda strikes me as a national disgrace.
In another post, I may complain about the tininess of airline seats but this is a consumer complaint and market driven, so there really is little in fact to complain about in writing but instead many plane tickets not to buy.
But I am a hater of the flying experience because my rights and privacy are brutally violated each time I encounter the security checkpoint. I feel it is a near certainty we are slowly being made immune to a near total lack of rights which may at some point become the norm. And like the frog that slowly boils in water, we will not notice until we are cooked enough to be nearly dead and able only to jerk spasmodically in anticipation of the total death of freedom.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Govern!
Not two weeks into the Tea Party Era in Washington and we already know the basic tenets of the TP are untenable, or at least unsellable in practice.
For instance--Jim DeMint, Tea Party's own pre-elected Senator from the South, has already said the debt ceiling shall be raised (even though the Tea Party insists it cannot be, or else they will sweat blood until we are drowned in it); and Rand Paul, that intemperate enemy of Pork, has realized that his own district might like a taste of bacon now and then, and that this in fact is what gets folks re-elected more than anything else; so he's going to get some earmarks for his hometown crowd, lo and behold. Finally, when confronted on television (by Chris Matthews) on what exactly would be cut from the budget, a lame-looking TP spokesperson said "discretionary spending" which meant nothing of course, and promptly exempted the military, social security, medicare and pretty much everything that costs all the money.
One can almost feel sorry for these electees, now they are stuck with the promises they made. The trouble is not that "across the board cuts" are a bad idea.
The trouble is that Americans won't tolerate cutting any real spending. And they also won't tolerate taxation.
It is the American people who have made themselves ungovernable. Mainly this is through an almost exquisite flavor of economic hipocrisy comprised of the belief that we are a nation of self-reliant pioneers in need of unfettered "freedom"; while in fact we are a nation of slack, subsidized, overprotected, aggressively militant, pie-hole-stuffing crybabies who want what we want when we want it and who collectively stop our ears with our fingers when anyone talks about the real sacrifice needed to achieve this so-called "independent spirit" none of us really want (except to bray about it in town halls).
The states that get the most subsidy from the Feds crow loudest about taxes. This is because, since they are small in population and relatively uneducated in general, they have become cheap, easy pickings for spindoctors employed by the cynical megawealthy who court these simple voters with utterly false notions that there is solidarity between the no-tax desires of the billionaire and the food-on-the-table needs of the slogger and his wife and kids and pickup truck and dog and ATV and rifle(s).
We are in this mess, at least partly, because since the days of the Reagan Administration, intelligence itself has been attacked as somehow a betrayal of American values; therefore it is more American to be dumb. And how well this has worked for the wealthy elite! They have created a polity so easily manipulated they can actually win time after time in elections against candidates who might benefit someone besides the no-tax megawealthy.
Tea Party--go ahead and try to govern. You will soon find that we are where we are because the wealthiest manipulators want us here: jobs being performed overseas at a tenth of the pay (boosting profit quite magnificently); giant military to protect the interests of the wealthy everywhere; no costly safety net for the wretched and the screwed in this country; and enough existing subsidy for homeowners and corporations so that not one small thing gets changed in a land too big to fail. Oh and the other thing--the government just keeps borrowing from China to make it all go-round. And when it collapses, the megawealthy will have their gates and their military and their foreign accounts and la-de-da.
Let me finish, however, with optimism. In the end, we always seem to pull a trick out of the hat. We come up with something nobody's ever heard of before and that everybody wants. It's happened many times in our nation's history. The good, smart and driven people here, despite all, will probably make it happen again.
But it won't be thanks to the Tea Party.
For instance--Jim DeMint, Tea Party's own pre-elected Senator from the South, has already said the debt ceiling shall be raised (even though the Tea Party insists it cannot be, or else they will sweat blood until we are drowned in it); and Rand Paul, that intemperate enemy of Pork, has realized that his own district might like a taste of bacon now and then, and that this in fact is what gets folks re-elected more than anything else; so he's going to get some earmarks for his hometown crowd, lo and behold. Finally, when confronted on television (by Chris Matthews) on what exactly would be cut from the budget, a lame-looking TP spokesperson said "discretionary spending" which meant nothing of course, and promptly exempted the military, social security, medicare and pretty much everything that costs all the money.
One can almost feel sorry for these electees, now they are stuck with the promises they made. The trouble is not that "across the board cuts" are a bad idea.
The trouble is that Americans won't tolerate cutting any real spending. And they also won't tolerate taxation.
It is the American people who have made themselves ungovernable. Mainly this is through an almost exquisite flavor of economic hipocrisy comprised of the belief that we are a nation of self-reliant pioneers in need of unfettered "freedom"; while in fact we are a nation of slack, subsidized, overprotected, aggressively militant, pie-hole-stuffing crybabies who want what we want when we want it and who collectively stop our ears with our fingers when anyone talks about the real sacrifice needed to achieve this so-called "independent spirit" none of us really want (except to bray about it in town halls).
The states that get the most subsidy from the Feds crow loudest about taxes. This is because, since they are small in population and relatively uneducated in general, they have become cheap, easy pickings for spindoctors employed by the cynical megawealthy who court these simple voters with utterly false notions that there is solidarity between the no-tax desires of the billionaire and the food-on-the-table needs of the slogger and his wife and kids and pickup truck and dog and ATV and rifle(s).
We are in this mess, at least partly, because since the days of the Reagan Administration, intelligence itself has been attacked as somehow a betrayal of American values; therefore it is more American to be dumb. And how well this has worked for the wealthy elite! They have created a polity so easily manipulated they can actually win time after time in elections against candidates who might benefit someone besides the no-tax megawealthy.
Tea Party--go ahead and try to govern. You will soon find that we are where we are because the wealthiest manipulators want us here: jobs being performed overseas at a tenth of the pay (boosting profit quite magnificently); giant military to protect the interests of the wealthy everywhere; no costly safety net for the wretched and the screwed in this country; and enough existing subsidy for homeowners and corporations so that not one small thing gets changed in a land too big to fail. Oh and the other thing--the government just keeps borrowing from China to make it all go-round. And when it collapses, the megawealthy will have their gates and their military and their foreign accounts and la-de-da.
Let me finish, however, with optimism. In the end, we always seem to pull a trick out of the hat. We come up with something nobody's ever heard of before and that everybody wants. It's happened many times in our nation's history. The good, smart and driven people here, despite all, will probably make it happen again.
But it won't be thanks to the Tea Party.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Can't We Just Admit We're Not One Country?
In the 1860s, many thousands of our fellow countrymen died to defend the institution of slavery. Today, we gloss over that grotesque fact by calling the conflict in which they died "The Civil War" or "The War Between the States". It was a war against slavery by the North and a war in favor of slavery by the South.
Thank all that is just in the world for the victory of the North and the end of slavery. However, one should long have wondered why the unrepentant Southern states, in which African Americans would continue to be disgracefully abused for another hundred years, were allowed back into the Union.
Probably they should have been cut loose then. The United States would be a much stronger place now if they had been. And this is not to disparage the good people, and there are many, in the South. I am only making a political point, but one I believe in.
At the obvious risk of sounding insufferably elitist, can we just stop pretending that the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, as polities, have anything much in common with, say, Missouri or Kansas? Can we make a case for saying we've had enough of being held back by this increasingly uncomfortable union?
Where is it written that the United States must not have fewer states in it tomorrow than it does today? Who would be sorry if the Northeast joined the Pacific Coast to form another nation that adhered much more closely to the progressive ideals of these areas than the one we live in today? And this would also leave the so-called "flyover" states to create their own, much more conservative government (though one has no idea where they would find the tax revenue to run any government at all).
I am certain this post, if read by some, will be found offensive. Mind you, I do not disparage any individuals of merit in any state north, south or in the middle. I simply believe we have, as a nation, crossed (perhaps) a Rubicon of political discord.
I would like to know how much longer the engines of wealth in this country (the Northeast and the Pacific Coast) are going to continue supporting laggard, subsidized places like Mississippi and Wyoming while granting them enormous Senatorial and electoral power over our standards and requirements. How much longer are the regions where education is respected and concentrated going to carry economic water for the regions where many seem to believe education is contemptible and elitist? And while I am not against responsible gun ownership, I have to wonder how much longer Virginia guns need to be permitted into the state of New York only to wind up putting bullets into the heads of shopkeepers?
Personally I would prefer if we might find a civil manner in which to part ways. I am pretty sure the constituency for separation in the non-elitist states could be found without great difficulty. It may also be found in the elitists states of the Northeast and the Pacific.
It's the world's least likely political eventuality, I know. But we don't seem to like each other that much in this country anymore. Therefore, to me, some kind of separation beetwen the States sounds like an idea whose time may be upon us.
Thank all that is just in the world for the victory of the North and the end of slavery. However, one should long have wondered why the unrepentant Southern states, in which African Americans would continue to be disgracefully abused for another hundred years, were allowed back into the Union.
Probably they should have been cut loose then. The United States would be a much stronger place now if they had been. And this is not to disparage the good people, and there are many, in the South. I am only making a political point, but one I believe in.
At the obvious risk of sounding insufferably elitist, can we just stop pretending that the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, as polities, have anything much in common with, say, Missouri or Kansas? Can we make a case for saying we've had enough of being held back by this increasingly uncomfortable union?
Where is it written that the United States must not have fewer states in it tomorrow than it does today? Who would be sorry if the Northeast joined the Pacific Coast to form another nation that adhered much more closely to the progressive ideals of these areas than the one we live in today? And this would also leave the so-called "flyover" states to create their own, much more conservative government (though one has no idea where they would find the tax revenue to run any government at all).
I am certain this post, if read by some, will be found offensive. Mind you, I do not disparage any individuals of merit in any state north, south or in the middle. I simply believe we have, as a nation, crossed (perhaps) a Rubicon of political discord.
I would like to know how much longer the engines of wealth in this country (the Northeast and the Pacific Coast) are going to continue supporting laggard, subsidized places like Mississippi and Wyoming while granting them enormous Senatorial and electoral power over our standards and requirements. How much longer are the regions where education is respected and concentrated going to carry economic water for the regions where many seem to believe education is contemptible and elitist? And while I am not against responsible gun ownership, I have to wonder how much longer Virginia guns need to be permitted into the state of New York only to wind up putting bullets into the heads of shopkeepers?
Personally I would prefer if we might find a civil manner in which to part ways. I am pretty sure the constituency for separation in the non-elitist states could be found without great difficulty. It may also be found in the elitists states of the Northeast and the Pacific.
It's the world's least likely political eventuality, I know. But we don't seem to like each other that much in this country anymore. Therefore, to me, some kind of separation beetwen the States sounds like an idea whose time may be upon us.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Banks Have no Fiduciary Responsibility
Did you know:
When you put money into your bank, they may have no responsibility to make sure it stays there. The account-holder agreement you signed may absolve them of any fiduciary responsibility whatsoever as it relates to the safety or security of your money even in a supposedly no-risk checking account.
This means they can, without bothering to check with you, either knowingly or unknowingly aid and abet fraud that removes money from your account; and allow business partners to open secret bank accounts in contravention of any prior agreement you may have had with the partner or the bank; and refuse to cooperate in making things right once money has been taken except under a judge's order--all with impunity!
I discovered this in the outcome of a court case against JPMorgan Chase that went against me. I attempted to retrieve damages from them that I claimed were caused when they allowed an ex-business partner of mine to fraudulently remove me from an account,then remove all the money from said account and move it to a secret account at their bank, all without my consent even though they had insisted on my consent to open the original account.
The judge agreed with Chase's assertion they had no fiduciary responsibility due to a "no fiduciary responsibility" clause in the account-holder agreement--and therefore no culpability at all as certain quite obvious banking shenanigans were perpetrated right under their noses.
It is interesting to note that other institutions, including other large banks, when they learned of these matters, offered full cooperation and saw the trouble immediately. Not Chase.
Caution: your bank may have, as far as the ruling goes, absolutely no responsibility, nor any need of looking out for, the safety of your money.
Naturally a followup letter to the bank's management won a self-serving response noting that no one at the Company had done even a single thing wrong legally or as regards the Company's own policies. Based on their senior branch management's abusive, adversarial stance towards me during a time when their integrity was called upon, this can hardly be credited.
From a marketing standpoint it is essential for banks to encourage a sense of security in the depositor; but at least in my case, this sense of security did not stand the test.
Go ahead and read the fine print in your account-holder agreement--see if your bank will protect you. I was surprised to find out mine would not, and did not.
When you put money into your bank, they may have no responsibility to make sure it stays there. The account-holder agreement you signed may absolve them of any fiduciary responsibility whatsoever as it relates to the safety or security of your money even in a supposedly no-risk checking account.
This means they can, without bothering to check with you, either knowingly or unknowingly aid and abet fraud that removes money from your account; and allow business partners to open secret bank accounts in contravention of any prior agreement you may have had with the partner or the bank; and refuse to cooperate in making things right once money has been taken except under a judge's order--all with impunity!
I discovered this in the outcome of a court case against JPMorgan Chase that went against me. I attempted to retrieve damages from them that I claimed were caused when they allowed an ex-business partner of mine to fraudulently remove me from an account,then remove all the money from said account and move it to a secret account at their bank, all without my consent even though they had insisted on my consent to open the original account.
The judge agreed with Chase's assertion they had no fiduciary responsibility due to a "no fiduciary responsibility" clause in the account-holder agreement--and therefore no culpability at all as certain quite obvious banking shenanigans were perpetrated right under their noses.
It is interesting to note that other institutions, including other large banks, when they learned of these matters, offered full cooperation and saw the trouble immediately. Not Chase.
Caution: your bank may have, as far as the ruling goes, absolutely no responsibility, nor any need of looking out for, the safety of your money.
Naturally a followup letter to the bank's management won a self-serving response noting that no one at the Company had done even a single thing wrong legally or as regards the Company's own policies. Based on their senior branch management's abusive, adversarial stance towards me during a time when their integrity was called upon, this can hardly be credited.
From a marketing standpoint it is essential for banks to encourage a sense of security in the depositor; but at least in my case, this sense of security did not stand the test.
Go ahead and read the fine print in your account-holder agreement--see if your bank will protect you. I was surprised to find out mine would not, and did not.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Dear UFOs: Put Up or Shut Up
An open letter to Whomsoever or whatsoever is in control (or not) of the million-plus sightings of disks, domes, cigars, chevrons, v-shapes, balloon-like objects, flashing and/or stationary lights, hovering superstructures, "ball lightning" and other queer objects in the sky; "aliens" or Whomever is appearing to us as large-eyed, gray-skinned, scrawny lurkers in the dark; or Whomever is surgically removing all those animal organs; or Whomever is abducting "thousands" of us; or Whomever has a message for us about global warming, nuclear catastrophe or our own plain stupidity (including all of you "Men in Black" and "Nordics"):
Dear Abovementioned:
It's been about sixty-five years since Kenneth Arnold saw those skipping saucers up in the northern Cascades and no one knows what he saw or if he actually saw anything. There are those who believe the advent of sightings coincides with the use of curved glass in cockpits and automobiles, but that probably accounts for only half of the possible sightings we've had over the decades.
There have probably been over a million baffling UFO sightings/encounters/abductions to date.
Frankly I am getting a little tired of it.
If you have a message for us, let's get on with it. If you are going to attack, what in heck are you waiting for. Our weapons just keep getting better. If you are hoping to acclimatize us to you, fear not. Many of us would welcome your appearance and the rest will continue to go to work and to shop (just don't make them stop shopping).
If you plan to play peek-a-boo with us for much longer, I would expect your little game to begin losing its appeal after a while. Heaven knows why the fascination has lasted this long and with so little to show.
If you're afraid of us, I do understand. I am afraid of us. But I can't move vertically at a thousand miles an hour to get away, so I'm stuck. Go for it--hover and then split. Seems to work for you.
Overall, it's just starting to get a little annoying. Lights in the sky over China, balloons over NYC, Jimmy Carter saw one, we've got specimens at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. . .come on. Play ball with us a bit. Or maybe just go away.
In sum: if you've got something to say, say it. If you are planning to hang around for a while, come and knock on the door--don't skulk around in the bushes, because that just makes us think you're weird. If you've got some amazing technology for us, hurry up, because pretty soon we'll have it anyway, and then you're going to seem like yesterday's lunch meat.
Just quit monkeying around. After a while, even the best mystery needs a conclusion. Otherwise it can turn into a real snooze.
Sincerely,
Fed-Up Earthling
Dear Abovementioned:
It's been about sixty-five years since Kenneth Arnold saw those skipping saucers up in the northern Cascades and no one knows what he saw or if he actually saw anything. There are those who believe the advent of sightings coincides with the use of curved glass in cockpits and automobiles, but that probably accounts for only half of the possible sightings we've had over the decades.
There have probably been over a million baffling UFO sightings/encounters/abductions to date.
Frankly I am getting a little tired of it.
If you have a message for us, let's get on with it. If you are going to attack, what in heck are you waiting for. Our weapons just keep getting better. If you are hoping to acclimatize us to you, fear not. Many of us would welcome your appearance and the rest will continue to go to work and to shop (just don't make them stop shopping).
If you plan to play peek-a-boo with us for much longer, I would expect your little game to begin losing its appeal after a while. Heaven knows why the fascination has lasted this long and with so little to show.
If you're afraid of us, I do understand. I am afraid of us. But I can't move vertically at a thousand miles an hour to get away, so I'm stuck. Go for it--hover and then split. Seems to work for you.
Overall, it's just starting to get a little annoying. Lights in the sky over China, balloons over NYC, Jimmy Carter saw one, we've got specimens at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. . .come on. Play ball with us a bit. Or maybe just go away.
In sum: if you've got something to say, say it. If you are planning to hang around for a while, come and knock on the door--don't skulk around in the bushes, because that just makes us think you're weird. If you've got some amazing technology for us, hurry up, because pretty soon we'll have it anyway, and then you're going to seem like yesterday's lunch meat.
Just quit monkeying around. After a while, even the best mystery needs a conclusion. Otherwise it can turn into a real snooze.
Sincerely,
Fed-Up Earthling
Friday, September 24, 2010
Tea Party Member Portrait (Post-Apocalypse)
"I can't believe I supported the interests of the wealthy while they were robbing me blind!"
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