TB Tech Corner

There's a request we hear all the time, "Matt and Sean, I know the Department of Homeland Security spent tons of money creating a million dollar puke ray. Is there anyway I could build a vomit causing flashlight for under $300 dollars and also make sure it has an alternate setting so I can use it as a disco light?"

Yes, yes you can.

Meet the Bedazzler, the world's first open source Homeland Security non-lethal weapon project. For $250 and using a flashlight, three-dollar LEDs, a nine-volt battery, and a PC heat sink, you too can cause temporary blindness as well as vertigo, nausea, and disorientation.

How dies this all work? According to the DHS weapon creators Bob Lieberman and Vladimir Rubtsov

“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says Lieberman. “Vlad calls it the evil color.”

So if you were looking for an amusing party trick or a new weapon for the post-apocalyptic world where guns and ammo will be at a premium, we we suggest the Bedazzler, the puke gun one, not the "rhinestone on your jacket" one. We can only hope that soon, someone will have made progress on the brown note so someone can make an iPhone app out of it.

Incompetent dogs

What with the whole "Joan Rivers is a terrorist"/"that actual terrorist isn't a terrorist" thing, you might think that it's only the humans at the TSA who are incompetent. You would be wrong.

Several TSA security dogs serving at Philadelphia International Airport have been removed from active service due to issues with their training, officials said Tuesday.

The dogs, which are typically used to detect drugs, bombs and other potential security threats, failed their recertification training. They were unable to distinguish the scents of explosive materials, officials said.
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The affected dogs have been undergoing an intensive rehab training program since the failure, but they remain on-duty to act as visual deterrents, officials said. Philadelphia Police K-9 units are not affected and still being used at the airport.

Great, now we don't even have the most accomplished ass and crotch sniffers in our security apparatus out there searching for weaponized undergarments and high tech groin explosives. Sadly it seems the dogs were subjected to the Philly school system and sports culture and as such were rendered mentally unfit. Thankfully it is Philadelphia, so right now the best deterrent to would be suicide bombers is that they would actually have to go to Philly to blow part of it up and they obviously wouldn't want to do that. It's too dangerous.

So not only is the TSA leaderless and it's employees seemingly unable to perform their jobs, the animals we've hired aren't even able to correctly use their noses to smell stuff. Surely there is something working correctly at the TSA, right? Perhaps a copier that makes good copies, a coffee machine that is ably letting hot water filter through coffee grounds into a pot, perhaps a Roomba that is keeping the office tidy, or a janitor that has properly mopped the floor and competently put up "wet floor" signs? We'll just trust that there is and that a typical TSA office isn't full of Clouseau-esque bumblers getting their hands bitten by dogs or falling down stairs and destroying suits of armor.

But that's probably an accurate description.

Airport security is serious business

The whole underwear bomber has got people understandably a little rattled and more questioning of their safety and security at an airport, despite the fact that air travel is still quite safe. But it's also got airport security on higher alert for shady figures, not wanting to be the one who lets another guy with Semtex in his shorts or perhaps a cable knit cardigan made out of C4 onto a plane. So what does this mean? It means we can't let obvious national security threat Joan Rivers back into this country because she's too fucking suspicious.

Rivers wasn’t allowed on her Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica this past weekend by a “jittery Continental Airlines gate agent” who thought the two names on her passport, which reads “Joan Rosenberg AKA Joan Rivers,” seemed “fishy.”

Yes, because when you want to avoid any suspicion you pick a Jewish name and write it as your alias on your passport. On the other hand, Rivers has had so much facial surgery that at this point anyone in a wig could be wheeled out in front of us and as long as they talked shit on what celebrities were wearing we'd believe it was her. So clearly this could have been any number of terrorists trying to use the name of a famous comedienne to rage destruction on the American mainland. Thankfully, Costa Rican security was thinking laterally and had foreseen this very chain of events.

So, for those of you playing at home, let's recap here. A Nigerian man whose father had warned intelligence agencies that he was being radicalized in the known terrorist breeding ground of Yemen, who had already made it onto watch lists, and bought a one way ticket, in cash, and checked no bags: not suspicious. Comedy legend: very suspicious. I'm just glad that we seem to have our best and brightest on the front lines defending us from former Tonight Show guest hosts. Someone start tailing Gary Shandling and Jay Leno, they could be planning something big.

Broken News: TSA to implement Pervert Screening System

Above: A test run of the new TSA policy at New York's JFK Airport

ARLINGTON--In the wake of the narrowly averted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound flight, the Transportation Security Administration announced today a planned overhaul of its airport screening procedures.

The revised regulations call for all passengers to be sorted by race, gender, age, and clothing type before being pawed at by an employee possessing whatever paraphilia, or sexual fetish, corresponds roughly with the ticket holder's appearance.

Gale D. Rossides, acting TSA Administrator, cited as inspiration a recent court case in Britain, wherein civil liberties groups argued that the full-body scanners present in many major airports essentially constituted a strip search of each passenger, including children.

"We have been paying close attention to British security procedures and legal challenges and believe that our method will be more effective," said Rossides. "Without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology that fails half the time, the American people get peace of mind while a perverse coterie of fetishists, many of them on parole, will be able to find gainful employment in a harsh economic climate."

As of this writing, the American Journal of Psychiatry has identified 547 distinct sexual fetishes, ranging from the mundane (Sthenolagnia, or a love of muscles) to the more creative (Maiesiophilia, or attraction to pregnant women), to the sincerely fucked up (Ursusagalmatophilia, or a desire to have intercourse with teddy bears).

Continued Rossides, "Granted, the task before us is daunting. While America obviously has no shortage of Symphorophiliacs (witnessing or staging disasters), how many Macrophiliacs (domination by giant women or men) do we have walking around? Two, three?"

In an effort to quickly identify and assign pervert to post, the TSA has requisitioned not only criminal records from all 50 states, but also the rolodexes of John Waters, Roman Polanski, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and anyone who has ever supervised the Congressional Page Program.

"We need to find a lot of specific freaks, so who better to go to than Hollywood and the GOP?" asked Janet Abasio, the HR director for the TSA who will be heading up the search. "Right now we definitely have the resources to thoroughly check every Asian woman in this country several thousand times over. But what about Polish men with unibrows or one-legged Lithuanian sadists? Areas such as these are where we will be focusing our efforts."

Furthermore, the TSA announced they were giving special hiring preference to any self-identified masochist who wished to work in any job that an airport has to offer. In the job listing posted simultaneously to USAJobs and BondageNet, the TSA describes airport employment as "degradation unlike anyone has known before" and notes that it has positions for both submissives and dominants who specialize in letting any tiny bit of authority go to their heads.

When asked if allowing a subset of perverts to grope passengers as they attempt to enter an airport was really something Americans should have to endure, Abasio seemed dismissive.

"Look, is it the ideal situation? No," she admitted. "But I think this country is used to sacrificing personal freedoms in order to feel more secure."

"Plus," Rossides added. "When was the last time government implemented a security program that made you feel sexy? Not only are you going to be searched by people who find you to be unbelievably desirable, but most of these perverts will actually achieve sexual gratification from confirming you are not smuggling a bomb or weapon on your person. It's not as though this is the first time Americans will be taking it up the ass for a little security."

She then blurted out "That reminds me..." before reminding her assistant to place an ad for people that specialize in "taking it in the ass" for a consult on rectal PETN bomb smuggling, thought to be the next type of attack al Qaeda's will attempt.

The agency hopes to have the program up and running by the beginning of the summer travel season and advises that you dress a little more sexily the next time you visit the airport, to "make it a little bit more fun."

I don't feel that my fear is being exploited enough

What with a terrifying and groin singing attack so recently in our minds, we need the calming voice of authority to sooth our jangled nerves with rash, shortsighted action. Thankfully today it looks like we're getting the start of that as the President has returned from vacation, our security and intelligence heads have been gathered, and we have been deemed to be sufficiently past the New Year and Christmas to be relied upon to pay attention. What are we getting? A big important meeting, promises from both Congress and the White House to look into what happened, and... not a lot in the way of new rules or onerous assaults on our personal freedoms.

The Transportation Security Administration already has directed airlines, effective Monday, to give full-body, pat-down searches to U.S.-bound travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries.

White House officials, while eager to portray Obama as aggressive on the issue, also sought to minimize expectations for the president's remarks. He planned no big airline security announcement, officials said.

Since the attempted attack, the government has added dozens of names to its lists of suspected terrorists and those barred from flights bound for the United States.

So... brown people pat down theater and updating a list that should be constantly updated? We're not even going to frisk white people and pull grannies out of line to make it look like security is getting serious? This isn't pseudo fascist police state I was led to believe we lived in. They're barely putting any effort into making air travel more miserable.

If all they want to do is one semi-meaningless thing and one thing they should have been doing all along, I have a few other suggestions for them: mandatory flip-flop wearing for all passengers, airports are officially "going commando" underwear free zones, one-up Lt. General Tom McInerney and not allow any Muslims anywhere to use any flying contraption, and Joan Rivers is not allowed to use any form of transportation. That's just a start, but I think you get the picture.

I'm worried that if we don't take enough petty, reactionary measures and mainly stick to behind the scenes tweaks and inter-agency co-operation we're in danger of damaging our national character. Tell us about vague unspecified threats that may kill us! Marshall our fear into a bad war or two! Do something crazy! Not this "gathering important figures together and have them talk" shit. We're in danger of losing our national governmental identity as a collection of bed wetting, vapors getting reactionaries if this course continues. Invent a color coded system and then raise it arbitrarily! C'mon. Frisking foreigners? That's so 2001. Get creative. The nation is depending on it.

Big important meeting of big important individuals

Today the President is meeting with 20 of his top advisers to discuss both the failures leading up to the Flight 253 attempted underwear bombing to solutions they have going forward.

Among the things expected to happen at the meeting are:

• Obama banging Janet Napolitano's head off the conference room table while yelling "You couldn't think of anything better to say than 'the system worked'?"
• Obama incredulously asking "He's a foreigner from a country we recognize as dangerous, whose father warned us about his increasing radicalization in a terrorist country, he paid for a one way ticket in cash, checked no bags... and we still couldn't piece this shit together?" punctuating the speech with a "fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"
• Obama angrily asking "and where was the TSA on this?" before gesturing to a chair that he turns around to find out is empty and not likely to be filled soon. He punctuates that revelation with a slap to his forehead and a groaning "fuuuuuuuuuuuuck"
• The President casually mentioning that this is the first meeting he's had where Tim Geithner and Larry Summers weren't telling him something awful about the economy
• Obama will casually remind everyone that their fuckups ruined both his families' vacation and his families' Christmas and that he would be holding a grudge and planning revenge. Note that Sasha seemed most upset and referred to Homeland Security adviser John Brennan as a "big doodyhead" and a "rotten son of a bitch"
  
• 45 minute improv session where advisers try to come up with best underwear, security, and explosives related jokes, one-liners, and skits they can think of. Best will be performed at the January 23rd Security Follies show at the Kennedy Center.
• Again note how great it is to not see Tim Geithner in this meeting with a hangdog expression and using the phrase "I need to tell you something awful about the money"
• Ask the security experts to place a provision in the law that makes sure that the President is sent the best photos from the body scanners that are being installed. Noting that he wants to see "big boobs", "big wangers", ""famous celebrities", and "the most pear shaped humans America has to offer"

Sounds like a serious discussion by serious individuals. I can only hope that they're able to solve some of this county's more serious security issues

Your new "security"

In a bit of good news, today the US finally lifted it's longstanding travel ban on anyone with HIV or AIDS from entering this country. For those of you counting at home, that's one more list we're off of where our only companions are extremely repressive and regressive regimes. Funny how often we find ourselves on them.

Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if the day that we were patting ourselves on the back for tolerance on one type of passenger we announced that we were also going to declare anyone darker than an albino Irishman was to be considered suspicious? Funny I should mention that...

Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
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Passengers holding passports from those nations, or taking flights that originated or passed through any of them, will be required to undergo full-body pat downs and will face extra scrutiny of their carry-on bags before they can board planes to the United States.
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The changes will mean that any citizen of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the United States.

That's right, if you want to come to the land of milk and honey, we get to cup your balls first. Just to be sure. But only if you're in violation of Homeland Security's new color alert system. Right now it's at 'Eggshell White', meaning everyone gets searching in order to make everyone feel better. Soon it'll be reduced to 'Khaki' and then 'British Tan', so just us white people can feel better when we see pat downs and increased security for those "dangerous types". You know the ones I'm talking about. Ethnics.

Now I know what you're saying: "Aren't passports easy to fake? Aren't terrorists smart enough to get around this? Has any terrorist ever actually hopped on a Saudi Arabia-to-US direct flight with C4 in his boxer briefs? Wouldn't it be better to pump money into getting uniform shared databases so that information can be shared and pieces could be connected, like what didn't happen in the Detroit case? Why don't we take things seriously for once? Isn't this just more of that 'illusion of security' shit we've been going through since 9/11? Stuff that just makes us feel better but doesn't actually protect us?"

Yes, yes it is. I have an interesting response to that: Shut up. Sure, none of this will make a difference. Sure, it's kind of racist and probably harms our relations with Muslims more than it protects us from them. Sure, this is all empty theater. But it looks good and makes us feel good, so we'll take that in lieu of real safety measures. Thankfully our leaders are content to follow our lead and only deal with security and terrorism in terms of empty gestures, rhetoric, politics, and tough guy posturing.

At least they didn't decide to make us all take our underwear off at the scanners as well. There's at least that.

That's different

Hey, remember back a few years ago when Richard Reid tried to blow up an airplane with his shoes and failed? Remember how he was arrested, put on trial within the American legal system, and sentenced to serve a life sentence in an American prison? And how all of this happened under the watchful eye of the Bush Administration and DHS Secretary Tom Ridge? Well, if you're remembering something like that, it's probably because someone has tampered with your memories. THAT NEVER HAPPENED, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? THAT NEVER HAPPENED!

In fact, despite the similarities between the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, even down to the explosive type, the fact that we're going to try Abdulmutallab in a court with laws and shit just proves that President Obama is a week-kneed weak weak-ass who is weakening the country with his weaky weaking on matters of national strongness. Letting this man into our legal system is a violation of all we stand for. Just listen to former DHS head and hypocrite Tom Ridge:

"I take a look at this individual who has been charged criminally, does that mean he gets his Miranda warnings? The only information we get is if he volunteers it?" Ridge said. "He's not a citizen of this country. He's a terrorist, and I don't think he deserves the full range of protections of our criminal justice system embodied in the Constitution of the United States."

Hell, even Former Vice-President Cheney came out to opine on the matter, grunting the same line of cliches he usually does out of whatever orifice it is he speaks out of these days:

"As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war.
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But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe. Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war?"

Because he's a liberal pussy that hates America? I thought we were all clear on this.

But what is their response to the fact that when they had a crazy foreign Muslim come to this country and fail to blow up an airliner with a hidden cache of PETN, that they felt it OK to arrest him (the shame), Mirandize him (the horror), charge him in US courts (Constitution shattering), try him in US courts (shanking freedom in the gut), and house him in US prisons (retroactively negating America through a time-space wormhole)?

*crickets chirping* *silence* *off in the distance... a wolf howls*

I'm sure they meant to say "That never happened" or, if someone actually points out that it did happen, a nicely timed "Well, circumstances were different" ought to suffice. I just think it's a shame both of these guys couldn't come out a dramatically/hypocritically politicize this on the day it happened. We're five days past it. These guys must be slipping.

We are a serious country governed by serious people

With all the furor and scrutiny surrounding Homeland Security and the TSA over the failed Detroit bombing, you would think that the heads of both branches would be in for some criticism. Of course DHS head Janet Napolitano has been taking fire over her contention that "the system worked", but why haven't we heard anything from or about the head of the TSA for their failures? Oh, that's right, there is no head of the TSA and there hasn't been for nearly a year. That's probably a good idea, it doesn't seem like an important position.

An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

Yeah, who needs to worry about airline security and the leadership of the organization behind most of it when there's a cheap political attack to make on the concept of unions? I'm sure complex agencies like the TSA run themselves and it's best that there's no boss type figure there to confuse everyone with uniform goals, policies, implementation, or structure. Hell, if that happens you might get confusion and some nut with C4 in his Jockey's might be able to slip through. No, thankfully Jim DeMint is there to stop the confusion that a properly run organization can cause.

Thankfully these kind of forward thinking and meaningful Seante holds are common practice on Obama Administration nominations. Out of some 200 open nominations only 75 have gotten past delaying tactics in committees to face the delaying tactics of the Senate floor. But you must understand that the reason we didn't have something like a US Trade Rep for a long time (and in this economy who needs one) is for very important reasons of principle.

One of those finally approved was Miriam Sapiro, who had become the Obama administration’s prime example of stalled nominations since being chosen in April to be a deputy United States trade representative. Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, put a hold on the confirmation of Ms. Sapiro, an Internet policy consultant, to try to pressure the trade representative’s office to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization against Canada over a law that bans cigarettes with candy flavors.

See! Candy flavored cigarettes. Whining about unions. Important shit.

I'm just glad we have serious individuals like Jim Bunning and Jim DeMint out there looking out for this country in a serious manner. A properly run government and properly run government agencies aren't important, candy flavored cigarettes are. I'm just glad someone finally had the balls to stand up and say so.

This explains so much

We've all taken our fair share of shots at the Bush Administration for their conduct during the eight years they prosecuted the war on terror. Hell, some of us have taken more than our share of shots. But for far too long we've been laboring under the misapprehension that they were acting with some sort of nefarious disregard for the laws of this country. That their actions were a means to some overarching sinister end. Well it turns out they weren't. They were just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, fucking stupid.

A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.
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The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree -- and whose former lawyer calls him a "habitual liar engaged in fraud."

Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.

Eventually the CIA found out he was utterly and completely full of shit. But not before the Bush Administration had already been using his proclamations as means for action and raising threat levels. And not before he inked another $3 million dollar contract with the Air Force in January. At the very least, no one in the CIA gave Montgomery a nuke when he claimed he could build a Cylon detector.

Seems the only code this guy found out was the one embedded in the Bush Administration: tell them what they want to hear in a way that can benefit their aims and you get millions of dollars. In retrospect, it was not a hard code to crack. But this explains so much. A man claimed he had a magic bean and before anyone could verify if he was as obvious a con man as he seemed, the government was handing him millions and acting the information he divined from said bean. I think our jaws would drop if we ever found out how much money, time, and action was taken on similar ideas and various magic protective rocks.

But just in case you were thinking "Surely this stupid scam I conceived of couldn't possibly fool the CIA and US Government to the tune of millions of dollars", you're either underselling your idea or overselling the intelligence of the United States. Both, as we've learned, are mistakes.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.05

Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared
Doesn't it warm the cockles of all our hearts when we see a venerated and popular American company bankrupted? Yes, it does. But I think it always leaves us with one question: were financial companies, private equity firms, and investment firms able to rape close to a billion out of the company as they essentially overburdened it with debt and ran it out of business? In this case? Yes. It's a heartwarming tale of greed and quality mattresses in our new financial apocalypse.

Goldman to be paid $1bn if CIT fails
God bless Goldman-Sachs. When they aren't giving Matt Taibbi an aneurysm, stocking the government with cronies, and working the financial apocalypse to their benefit, they get to do things like take out credit default swaps on companies like CIT and make a billion dollars while sticking the government for a $2.3 billion dollar bill. I'm sure Tim Geithener will get right on this, provided any deferred compensation he's owed by Goldman isn't affected by it.

Obama's Meeting With the Dalai Lama Is Delayed
There are a multitude of reasons you don't want to meet the Dalai Lama. His drinking, the racist jokes he tells, the expensive items he orders off the menu and sticks you with the tab for, and lets not forget the constant droning bullshit about "spiritual enlightenment" and how to achieve it. But probably the best reason to snub the Lama is to placate your biggest creditor, China. I'm glad we've chosen that track, along with soft pedaling criticism of their human rights, financial, and trade policies. It just feels right, you know?

Gov. Perry replaces head of agency investigating Texas arson findings
What do you do when clear evidence shows you that you're about to execute an innocent man based on witnesses that are proven to have lied and deeply flawed scientific evidence that everyone in the scientific community now recognizes as wrong? If you're Texas? Execute the guy anyway, and then, as a coda, start firing people who are set to investigate the case and your seriously flawed arson investigations. I'm surprised at this, I thought Texas Governor Rick Perry, what with his calls for secession and his cries against the tyranny of government...and his calls for more government assistance and money, seemed like such a stable and honest fellow.

Mysterious Private Security Firm Gets Control Of Empty Jail In Small Montana Town
This feels right. Isn't it about time a shadowy unregistered private security firm took over a small rural town after they take over the town's jail and unilaterally declare themselves the town's police force? We had Blackwater run rampant in Iraq (among other places) and private security firms already served as a villain in 24, isn't about time we imported that fun here? I think we can sacrifice the 3,400 people of Hardin for what will almost certainly inspire an awesome season of 24 or at least a great sequel to Red Dawn.

Farewell and adieu?

Hey remember that system the government used to keep us all paranoid and afraid immediately after 9/11? No, not Fox News. I meant the Homeland Security color coded alert system. You remember the one. It got raised and lowered depending on how Bush was doing in the polls and laughably had to two green and blue rectangles, "guarded" and "low", that we all had a good laugh about because we knew they'd never be used. Well, we might have to wave goodbye to that little bit of fear inducing brilliance, it seems the chart has outlived its usefulness.

The often-spoofed, color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System may get an overhaul – moving from five colors to three in a bid to win the public trust.

The nation has been at Yellow, “an elevated significant risk of terrorist attacks” for three years. International and domestic flights have been at an Orange “high risk of terrorist attacks” for the same period.

Just so we're clear, they've shitcanned the two we knew they'd never use and have redefined the previous three. They are now:

Yellow=Guarded - Did that Muslim just look from side to side in a shifty manner?
Orange = Elevated – Vague, non-specific threat that is going to kill us any second...WHAT'S THAT BEHIND THAT BUSH OVER THERE!?!
Red = High Alert – Barack's gone rogue, Barack's gone rogue!!! Joe Biden is dead and Osama is prowling the White House grounds. Glenn Beck was right!!

Remember them and stay fearful. In all this confusion about being afraid of socialism, you may have forgotten that the Muslims are still out there. That's why we still need this useful and effective system that Americans take completely seriously.

Weekend reading assignment

In Wal-Mart's Image
Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect looks into the almost Dickensian beginnings of the Wal-Mart empire and how it ties together with how retail business operates within the US economy and our financial collapse through a review of two new books on the subject.

Shotgun Adoption
Kathryn Joyce of the Nation takes a look at the Christian right's community of crisis pregnancy centers and their ties to the Christian right's adoption agencies and finds an almost 'baby mill' type environment filled with lies, coercion, near brainwashing, and mental abuse towards the pregnant women who partake of their services in an attempt to shepherd newborns for large adoption fees. Heartwarming stuff.

An Insider’s Guide to the Large Hadron Collider
Wired Science provides excerpts from the new book Collider by Paul Halpern, a book which looks at the creation and running of the LHC as well as the theory, mechanics, and science of the experimental high-energy physics going on in it. In it are detailed diagrams on how they plan to use the LHC to capture and kill God by opening up a black hole and devouring the Solar System, as well as pictures of the gravestone they had made up for our Creator.

Homeland Security Marked By Waste, Lack of Oversight
I know I'm going to shock you here, but it turns out that not only did Mayberry and Hooterville not need all that money to protect the Sorghum Festival from al Qaeda, but it turns out that the money they did get they wasted. At least that's the conclusion of G.W. Schultz and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I don't know, maybe lawnmowers, big screen TV's, and boxed up, never used security equipment are useful in scaring away Osama.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.04

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
The ECON7-KRUGBOT MK-3000 takes time out of his busy day to explain to the country how the people in his profession could get the economic forecast and resulting financial apocalypse so wrong. Along the way he's kind enough to point out the other two economists who were, along with him, skeptical of these whole underlying theme of "housing prices will go up forever" that gripped the market. Well worth your time if you'd like to know what exactly went wrong.

White House Scaling Down Health Reform Ahead Of Address
ThinkProgress' Wonk Room takes a look and recent rumors that the President and the Senate are looking to cut back the costs of health care reform to $700 billion over 10 years. They're kind enough to point out that real reform that covers all Americans costs around $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Anything less and you're offering lower subsidies and giving people weaker less protective insurance. So keep that in mind when you hear they're trying to cut the cost of something that will be spread out over a decade or more: they aren't helping you.

Obsessed bin Laden wanted to kill Whitney Houston's husband
Listen I think we've all dreamed, at one time or another, of killing Bobby Brown. Hell, maybe Flavor Flav, Dane Cook, or the entire cast of the Hills as well. But surely we wouldn't want to risk our highly secretive multi-national terrorist operation to gain the affections of Whitney Houston, would we? Ah, but such are the claims of OBL's new biographer, who in addition to the Houston obsession notes that Osama's favorite shows are the Wonder Years and MacGuyver. Makes sense.

Ridge’s Groveling Tour: I Never Meant To Accuse The Bush Administration Of Politicizing Homeland Security
You know what's great? When a man makes a claim that's obvious to all and then supports it with his own personal experiences from inside the situation as evidence.....and then after he gets yelled at by his own party tries to walk it all back claiming that he never said what everyone heard him say and that he was misquoted in the book he wrote. We understand Tom, it's not that you lied, it's that you said too much of the truth. Keep on trying to distance yourself from your own book while you're out there promoting it.

Urinal protocol vulnerability
Finally, someone has mapped out proper urinal availability protocol with diagrams, cartoon, and a math equation. Finally there are answers for where one should unsheathe his junk if there is a two urinal gap and no possibility for an "every other" urinal lineup. Finally we know how to decrease levels of awkwardness. Thank you XKCD, I will make sure to give you an honorary "post-urination penis shake" the next time I put your theories into practice.

Shocking

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has just written a book he's out there hawking. In the rush to promote the book there are many shocking and stunning revelations that are coming out....that aren't really that stunning or shocking.

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Oh my, he was pushed to raise those security alerts as part of a politically motivated fear campaign? Thanks for pointing out the blindingly obvious. Nice that you're trying to claim some sort of integrity and spine in this revelation. I mean you "almost resigned" over the complete politicization of terror alerts. Hey, isn't using the threat of terror, real or imagined, to advance your goals...uhh terrorism?

Still you can learn this, plus what I'm sure are some hoary old chestnuts about freedom, vigilance, and the majesty of the bald eagle, in Ridge's new book The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again. It turns out fake terror alerts are one of those ways to be safe and failing to say anything or do anything about it until a buck can be made counts as passing said test.

Loosing terrorists on American soil

Dear God, the sick freaks at the Justice Department and White House are again considering loosing the insane super-criminals at Guantanamo in the United States. Moving them from their island fortress, replete with force fields and a special kind of chain link fence, to the woefully inadequate American prison system, with their bars and concrete that a super-powered terrorist could rip through in a second. I thought we already went through this: it's a bad idea....because.

The administration is considering whether to transfer some detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a facility in the United States that would contain courtrooms to hold federal criminal trials and military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects, administration officials said Sunday.

The maximum-security facility would be jointly run by the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, with each assuming responsibility for different sets of inmates. Officials said such a facility could also house prisoners held in indefinite detention and those cleared for release but who have no country willing to accept them. Those convicted in federal court or military commissions could serve their terms there.

Two things I like about this idea. One: the presence of a courtroom. While lawyers and international observers telling the terrorists that their detainment is a travesty of justice surely was able to help them understand just how large a farce their imprisonment is, the presence of a courtroom on-site and unused would really drive that point home more symbolically. Maybe the addition of the Constitution or international treaty under glass with a sign that said "do not obey under any circumstances" would help. Two: letting 3 separate government departments run it. When something goes wrong or there's another international outcry they can all comically point at each other and fight like the Three Stooges. Only this time they'll be hitting each other with law books instead of hammers and raking the concept of justice over each others heads, like a saw.

Still though, at least this kicks up another round of shame and awkward eye contact with foreigners. At the very least it'll start another round of those hilarious arguments where people try to claim, with a straight face, that Federal Supermax prisons, military prisons, and regular prisons are somehow unequal to the task of holding prisoners as a chain link fence and a cinder-block row house. If it's good enough for Americans, it's good enough for the terrorists......and people we've grabbed, imprisoned, and claim are terrorists, but are actually unwilling to go into a court and legally say so. But hey, it's not like federal courts have found that in 85% of the cases we have insufficient evidence to even hold these men, now is it?