Truth will set you free

Click image for full Ruben Bolling/Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon.

Electric sheep

Unless you need to be touched, choose the scanner.

"Most people are unaware about the fact that there is significant radiation exposure associated with air travel because they are well above the Earth's atmosphere," said Robert J. Barish, a radiological and health physicist in New York City. "You'd get as much radiation in a whole-body scanner as you'd get in two minutes at 30,000 feet."

Of course, if you'd never wear a bathing suit in public, you may have concerns not related to the health impact of being scanned. But then you'd probably be Amish, so that would be moot.

The steady erosion of any privacy at all - and what if anything to do about it - is another question altogether.

Touch me there

Right-wing dilemma

With abortion illegal and punished in many Mexican states, if a Mexican woman crosses the border to the United States while embarazada to have an abortion, is her fetus in the eyes of the wingnuts just another undeserving mojado and a danger to our national security, or is it a citizen deserving the full rights of a person?

Update: My 3,000th published post! Think I'll have a Tanqueray and tonic to celebrate.

Asleep at the switch again

Republicans talk tough, but:

The United States has repositioned some of its intelligence assets to provide the Bush administration with direct information about the conflict in Georgia and Russian military movements, a U.S. defense official said Thursday.

...

In the initial days of the Russian-Georgian conflict, the United States did not have its own assessment of the fighting, said the official, who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity of the situation.

When the news doesn't make sense

So, the AP has a White House document that indicates Duhbya's last budget (hallelujah!) will/might/plans to slash the parts of the homeland security appropriation that actually protects the homeland. Why?

Well, port security mainly helps blue states. That couldn't be it, could it?

Congressional Republicans do have a huge need to separate themselves from Duhbya. Could this be a gift to them, a painless way for them to distance themselves from an unpopular president?

Of course, the Republican reflex is to cut any budget, no matter how useful the expenditure, so long as it can't be directed to a crony. Probably, the reason this appropriation is in the Bushists' sights is that the funding is directed by other people.

Wouldn't a new attack help the Republicans at all levels? Surely that's too farfetched even for this bunch of criminals. Even our lazy press would notice if al Qaeda exploited the elimination of port security funding.

Codifying ignorance

The Bushists think they are the first people ever to think about security, just because they rebranded it "homeland security". Here's the money quote:

"Homeland security both as a policy matter and as a concept didn't exist prior to 9/11 and prior to . . . President Bush assuming office," said Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser. "We believe that we had an obligation, regardless of who the next president is, Republican or Democrat, to leave them the benefit of our thinking."

The Bushists didn't know about it because they resolutely refused to listen to all the warnings and briefings and policy documents to come out of the Clinton administration. The Bushists were singing lullabies to Duhbya all of summer 2001 so that he could get away and clear brush for the cameras. (And, please note, no one resigned from pangs of conscience.)

And, now, at this late date, they have the utter, arrogant, absurd gall to emphasize disaster preparedness! These people have been obviously full of shit since their very first step onto the public stage. It didn't take Katrina to tell a lonely few of us. Why did so few other people notice?

Profit vs. security

Do I really have to say which one the Bushists choose?

Ed Markey says:

If the Bush administration tries to bend the law, it is going to discover that there is a new sheriff in town.

Let's hope this is more than an empty threat.