Category: News You Need to Know

Airport Security Remains a Joke

How can one best illustrate the ineffectiveness of airport security? By pointing out that serial stowaways are a thing:

The woman known as a “serial stowaway” for her years-long history of sneaking onto airplanes was arrested once again at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport early Sunday — just two weeks after she managed to board a flight to London from the same airport.

In an attempt to divert attention away from the failure of the airport security team, a member of the local sheriff’s department made a statement that actually made them look even more incompetent:

The sheriff’s office had advocated for special treatment for Hartman, according to NBC Chicago.

“Releasing any seriously mentally ill person without support and treatment is never a good idea,” Cara Smith, the sheriff’s policy chief, told NBC Chicago on Thursday. “This order seriously reflects many things wrong with the criminal justice system.”

“We have a woman who is obviously suffering and in need of significant services,” she said, according to the station. “Without the help she clearly needs, history is likely to repeat itself.”

Not just any woman managed to board two flights but a woman who apparently doesn’t have full faculties.

Security theater continues to be a joke. Its existence only serves to ease the fears of ignorant flyers. Anybody who has read the seemingly ceaseless stream of stories about airport security failures is left to realize that airport and security are currently mutually exclusive terms.

The Rules Change When the Super Bowl Is in Town

Starting either late Sunday night or early Sunday morning an incident erupted at the Graduate Hotel in Minneapolis. Police have been very coy about the entire ordeal. From what little they have provided it seems that their officers are standing off against an individual who has locked himself in his room. What is especially noteworthy though is that as of this writing the situation is still ongoing:

A standoff between police and a man holed up in a hotel room near the University of Minnesota entered its second day Tuesday as authorities continued to work for a peaceful resolution.

[…]

Late Monday after 21 hours, the man released a woman who had been in the sixth floor room with him. She was uninjured and was talking with investigators, said University of Minnesota spokesman Chuck Tombarge.

The suspect was still in the room negotiating with officers from the U, Minneapolis, State Patrol and Brooklyn Park, he said.

I feel as though this guy is only alive because the Super Bowl is in town. If we look at the history of the Minneapolis Police Department, we could safely assume that the standard response to situations like this is to rush in and waste the guy. However, that kind of reaction tends to result in a lot of bad press and none of the higher ups in Minneapolis want to make any headlines that aren’t exceedingly positive while the city is hosting the most holy of holy events.

America Had Always Been at War with the Great Powers

America was at war with the great powers. America had always been at war with the great power.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis has said competition between great powers, not terrorism, is now the main focus of America’s national security.

Just like that the War on Terror has taken a backseat and America is locked in a conflict with the forces of communism the great powers.

This shift in enemies isn’t surprising. America has been at war with terrorism for over one and a half decades and hasn’t achieved victory. It has to be pretty embarrassing for the world’s most powerful military to be unable to declare victory against a bunch of desert peasants in tents after more than a decade and a half. So instead of continuing to declare those peasants public enemy number one, America is going to shift focus to Russia and China who at least match up militarily and therefore aren’t as embarrassing to lose to.

The important thing to remember though is that America is at war with somebody and you should therefore continue to believe that the federal government is the only thing standing between you and certain death.

Welcome to Costco. I Love You.

Tide Pods have been in the news as of late. A series of challenge videos made predominantly by teenagers have been cropping up and apparently the challenges are being accepted by other teenagers. I would argue that if you survived at least 13 years on this planet, you should be smart enough to read the warning label on the Tide Pod bag that specifically warns against consuming the product. However, if you’ve made it all the way to college and still can’t read the warming label, you’re a unique level of stupid:

A Utah State University student was reportedly rushed to a hospital Saturday after ingesting a Tide Pod, which has become a dangerous trend on social media as teens dare each other to eat the miniature, neon, detergent-filled pods.

I’ve understood that education has been diminishing here in the United States for a long time. I didn’t realize just how far it had diminished though. At this point I’m convinced that the only inaccuracy in Idiocracy was the timeline. It won’t take 500 years for humanity to reach the level of stupidity portrayed in that movie. That level is already being achieved today.

Making Up Numbers

The economic boost provided by major sporting events can’t be emphasized enough… by how lackluster it is. Those who argue for public funding to build stadiums or host major sporting events like the Olympics and Super Bowl will show a bunch of numbers to make their point. One of their favorite numbers to bring up is the number of visitors the hosting city will receive from events. For example, we’ve been told that Minneapolis will receive about 1 million visitors during the Super Bowl. That number sounds impressive until you realize that it’s bullshit:

The number is tossed about frequently in national and local media reports: 1 million people are expected to visit Minneapolis for the Super Bowl.

[…]

“What’s a visitor?” I asked Kenneth McGill, managing director of West Chester, Pa.-based Rockport Analytics.

“A visitor is one of two things,” McGill said. “It’s a person who has stayed overnight in some sort of paid accommodation. In that context it doesn’t matter where they’re from. The could live downtown and move to a hotel just to experience it all.

“The second definition of a visitor is someone who has traveled more than 50 miles, one-way, to get to the event.”

If McGill’s visitor estimate comes true, it means that roughly 874,600 of the 1 million visitors expected by the Host Committee already live in the Twin Cities, a metro area with a population of 3.5 million.

So Minneapolis shouldn’t expect 1 million visitors. It should expect roughly 125,000. While 125,000 people might bring a bit of business to the Twin Cities that wouldn’t have existed without the Super Bowl, I have my doubts that it will be anywhere near enough to compensate the tax cattle of Minneapolis and Minnesota for the publicly funded security expenses alone.

I guess on the upside the arrival of the Super Bowl has forced the state and municipal governments to fix some of their damned roads. Even though I’m told that I have to pay taxes to maintain the roads it seems like the roads are only maintained when people from out of town are visiting. Why I have to pay for road repairs to impress people from out of town is also a mystery to me.

The Conditions are Right for a Coup

National Public Radio (NRP) recently ran a poll asking participants about the amount of trust they hold in various government institutions. It turns out that the participants have almost no trust in Congress or the presidency but hold a great deal of trust for the military:

The only institution that Americans have overwhelming faith in is the military — 87 percent say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. That is a striking change from the 1970s during and after the Vietnam War.

[…]

The American public has the least confidence in Congress, the body tasked with making laws that can affect every person in the country. Just 8 percent of people have a great deal of confidence in the institution. Almost two-thirds of Republicans expressed little confidence in Congress — and their party runs it.

Not far behind Congress is the Republican Party, not a good sign for the GOP in an election year with an unpopular president. Just 29 percent of Americans said they have quite a lot or a great deal of confidence in the party, compared with 68 percent who said they don’t have very much or none at all in the party.

Democrats, though, should temper their glee. They fare better, but not by much. Just 36 percent expressed confidence in the Democratic Party versus 62 percent who did not.

It should be noted that NPR has a Democrat bias so it’s not surprising to see its participants hold one party in higher regard than the other. However, I was a bit surprised that they held the presidency in higher regard than Congress. But the takeaway is that the participants would probably be supportive of a military coup at this point.

Why do these participants hold such high regard for the military? Most likely it’s because of propaganda. Since 9/11 the government has been dumping stupid amounts of money into marketing the military as heroes who protect us against encroaching barbarians. A lot of people currently reaching adulthood have been fed this propaganda for their entire lives. So nobody should be surprised that the view of the military is so high, especially since it hasn’t done anything to harm people domestically. However, by creating this propaganda the politicians have also created a potential threat to themselves. If a military is viewed high enough in a society, the masses will welcome or at least begrudgingly accept a military coup.

I don’t believe the military is currently planning a coup but if it were it would likely be cheered more than opposed.

Some Good News to Start Your Morning

Good news, everyone:

Would a latter-day Gibbon describe today’s America as “decadent”? I recently heard a prominent, and pro-American, French thinker (who was speaking off the record) say just that.

He was moved to use the word after watching endless news accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweets alternate with endless revelations of sexual harassment.

I flinched, perhaps because a Frenchman accusing Americans of decadence seems contrary to the order of nature. And the reaction to Harvey Weinstein et al. is scarcely a sign of hysterical puritanism, as I suppose he was implying.

And yet, the shoe fit. The sensation of creeping rot evoked by that word seems terribly apt.

The author of the opinion piece places a lot of the blame on Trump but I think Trump is actually a symptom more than a disease. In my opinion Trump is actually the first president in my lifetime that is an accurate representative of the masses. He’s crass, he lacks of mastery of the English language, he feels the need to publicly retaliate against even more most insignificant slights. In other words, he’s very much like an average American and that’s the problem.

More and more America reflects Idiocracy. Education is severely lacking. Part of this is because so many parents send their children to government schools, which are little more than propaganda centers. But a more significant part of this is the fact that so few seem to value an education. Being stupid is almost seen as a badge of honor to many. When you have stupid Americans you shouldn’t be surprised when they elect a stupid president or stupid members of Congress.

I agree with the author’s sentiment that the United States is in its collapse stage. I don’t know whether the collapse will take a decade or a hundred years. But it shares too many similarities to collapsing empires of history for me to think everything is going to be fine.

If You Don’t Love America, You Can Leave… If You’re Allowed

Whenever somebody makes any criticism whatsoever about the United States, jingoists are quick to respond by saying, “If you don’t like America, you can leave!” However, you can only leave if your government masters give you permission to do so and they’re less inclined to give that permission than they used to be:

A law that would deny or revoke passports for U.S. citizens with seriously delinquent tax debt is set to take effect later this month.

Under the law, the Internal Revenue Service is required to notify the State Department after it has certified that an individual has unpaid federal taxes, including penalties and interest, of more than $51,000. The State Department may then deny issuing or renewing a passport or revoke an existing passport. The threshold for being considered seriously delinquent will be indexed yearly for inflation.

Jingoists often ignore the fact that the United States isn’t a free or equal country. Just like in Ancient Rome, the United States is divided into plebeians and patricians. Although the criteria for both groups is slightly different than Ancient Rome’s the fact of the matter is if you’re a member of the plebeians, you are the subject of the patricians. You only have the privileges that the patricians bestow upon you. Leaving the United States isn’t a decision a plebeian can make for themselves, they need permission from the patricians.

Nobody Cares What the Plebs Think

A recent poll discovered that a strong majority of Americans oppose the endless state of war that the United States is engaged in:

The headline findings show, among other things, that 86.4 percent of those surveyed feel the American military should be used only as a last resort, while 57 percent feel that US military aid to foreign countries is counterproductive. The latter sentiment “increases significantly” when involving countries like Saudi Arabia, with 63.9 percent saying military aid—including money and weapons—should not be provided to such countries.

The poll shows strong, indeed overwhelming, support, for Congress to reassert itself in the oversight of US military interventions, with 70.8 percent of those polled saying Congress should pass legislation that would restrain military action overseas in three specific ways:

by requiring “clearly defined goals to authorize military engagement” (78.8 percent);

by requiring Congress “to have both oversight and accountability regarding where troops are stationed” (77 percent);

by requiring that “any donation of funds or equipment to a foreign country be matched by a pledge of that country to adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention” (84.8 percent).

If the plebs had any power to influence politics, the players in the war economy might have cause for concern. Fortunately for them, the plebs have no actual influence over politics. At most they can decide which preselected candidate should occupy an office. The preselected candidates are chosen by the Republican and Democrat parties, which are both major players in the war economy though. So when the plebs go to the poles the option to not engage the government in further wars isn’t on the ballot.

Although this poll shows a promising change in attitude it’s also meaningless because it, like voting, won’t change anything. The only silver lining to this cloud is that the more wars the United States engages itself in the more thinly spread it will become and the sooner it will have to make a decision between pulling back its forces or collapsing entirely. Once that point is reached the wars will end one way or another.

Welcome to Costco, I Love You

I’m starting to believe that Costco may actually love its customers. Seattle implemented a ridiculous tax on sweetened beverages. As usual for sin taxes the politicians who championed this tax claimed that it would promote healthier living. What it actually did was jack up prices and piss people off. But Costco, unlike so many businesses throughout the country, decided that it wasn’t going to take the fall for government induced price increases:

Mega-chain Costco isn’t feeling the surge either and put in big black numbers how much the new tax is costing their customers. Not only that, they’re putting signs next to the price display that tells shoppers where they can get their fizz fix outside the city!

More companies should do this. I know if I owned a retailer, all of my prices would be posted as what I’m charging and what the government is charging. Most businesses just post the price so the customer doesn’t see just how much they’re paying the local, state, and federal governments for goods and services that they had no part in creating or brining to market. Costco also deserves bonus points for twisting the knife by pointing out to customers that they can get soda are normal prices outside of the city.