Policia de Catalunya

Occasionally, Peggy Noonan is off the mark. But today she is right on about our country's collective psyche, and she's described it to perfection with delicious wit.
Her essay is called, "Special Assistant for Reality." By necessity rather than choice, she acknowledges, the president lives in a bubble. He has no idea what Americans are thinking and feeling because, well, he's so bubbled.
The solution? Read on. Her imagined dialogue hits the bulls eye.
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What a president should ideally have, and what I think we all agree Mr. Obama badly needs, is an assistant whose sole job it is to explain and interpret the American people to him. Presidents already have special assistants for domestic policy, for congressional relations and national security. Why not a special assistant for reality? Someone to translate the views of the people, and explain how they think. An advocate for the average, a representative for the normal, to the extent America does normal.
If Mr. Obama had a special assistant for reality this week, this is how their dialogue might have gone over the anti-TSA uprising.
President: This thing is all ginned up, isn't it? Right-wing websites fanned it. Then the mainstream media jumped in to display their phony populist street cred. Right?
Special Assistant for Reality: No, Mr. President, it was more spontaneous. Websites can't fan fires that aren't there. This is like the town hall uprisings of summer 2009. In the past month, citizens took videos at airports the same way town hall protesters made videos there, and put them on YouTube. The more pictures of pat-downs people saw, the more they opposed them.
President: What's the essence of the opposition?
SAR: Sir, Americans don't like it when strangers touch their private parts. Especially when the strangers are in government uniforms and say they're here to help.
President: Is it that we didn't roll it out right? We made a mistake in not telling people in advance we were changing the procedure.
SAR: Um, no, Mr. President. If you'd told them in advance, they would have rebelled sooner.
President: We should have pointed out not everyone goes through the new machines, and only a minority get patted down.
SAR: Mr. President, if you'd told people, "Hello, there's only 1 chance in 3 you'll be molested at the airport today" most people wouldn't think, "Oh good, I like those odds."
President: But the polls are with me. People support the screenings.
SAR: At the moment, according to some. But most Americans don't fly frequently, and the protocols are new. As time passes, support will go steadily down.
President: I've noted with sensitivity that I'm aware all this is a real inconvenience.
SAR: It's not an inconvenience, it's a humiliation. In the new machine, and in the pat-downs, citizens are told to spread their feet and put their hands in the air. It's an attitude of submission�the same one the cops make the perps assume on "America's Most Wanted." Then, while you stand there in public in the attitude of submission, strangers touch intimate areas of your body. It's a violation of privacy. It leaves people feeling reduced. It's like society has decided you're a meat sack and not a soul. Humans have a natural, untaught understanding of the apartness of their bodies, and they don't like it when their space is violated. They recoil, and protest.
President: But you can have the pat-downs done in private.
SAR: Mr. President, you don't know this, but when you ask for that, a lot of TSA people get pretty passive-aggressive. They get Bureaucratic Dead Face and start barking, "I need a supervisor! Private pat-down!" And everyone looks, and the line slows down, and you start to feel like you're putting everyone out. You wait and wait, and finally they get another TSA person, and they take you into the little room and it's embarrassing, and you start to realize you're going to miss your plane. It's then that you realize: all this is how they discourage private pat-downs.
President: I've wondered if this general feeling of discomfort might be related to a certain Puritan strain within American thinking�a kind of horror at the body that, melded with, say, old Catholic teaching, not to be pejorative, might make for a pretty combustible cultural cocktail. This heightened consciousness of the body might suggest an element of physical shame we hadn't taken into account.
SAR: Mr. President, the rebellion isn't shame-based, it's John Wayne-based.
President: I don't follow.
SAR: John Wayne removes his boots and hat and puts his six-shooter on the belt, he gets through the scanner, and now he's standing there and sees what's being done to other people. A TSA guy is walking toward him, snapping his rubber gloves. Guy gets up close to Wayne, starts feeling his waist and hips. Wayne says, "Touch the jewels, Pilgrim, and I'll knock you into tomorrow."
President: John Wayne is dead.
SAR: No, he's not. You've got to understand that. Everyone's got an Inner Duke, even grandma.
President: What should I do?
SAR: Back off. Say you spent a day watching YouTube. You're not giving in to pressure, you're conceding to common sense. "Free men and women have a right not to be trifled with. We'll find a better way."
President: If I don't?
SAR: Well, every businessman in America already thinks you've been grabbing his gonads. You'll continue that general symbolism.
President: Janet Napolitano won't like it. Drudge is always after her. He'll get all "Big Sis Bows Now." She might quit.
SAR: Oh God, yes. A twofer!
President: I'd look like I got rolled.
SAR: Then look strong. Fire her. She's been a disaster from day one. Now she's the face of the debacle.
President: Won't they think I'm weak?
SAR: No. They'll think you returned to Earth. They'll think ground control broke through to Major Tom. They'll think you took a step outside the bubble.

Labels: Barack Obama, Fondling, Groping, Janet Napolitano, Naked People Machines, Peggy Noonan, Privacy, Reality, Tsa

Greetings, fair maidens. I bring you glad tidings and good news.
Unless you are one of those paranoid privacy nuts who doesn't appreciate Apple tracking your every move via your iphone, this will come as very good news indeed.
The Obama Administration wants to tax you for every mile you drive. They're including this new tax in their "Transportation Opportunities" legislation.
Within the Department of Transportation, a new office would be created: the Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. (Why not call it the Surface Transportation Alternative Revenue office? "STAR" is so catchy. And positive!)
Enforcement will be carried out by installing an electronic device in every person's car, making the government privy to every mile that we drive.

So if you are a cancer or dialysis patient living in a rural area who must drive miles for medical treatment every day, too bad. Oh, but wait. Surely the government will make an exception for people like you, if you'll just give the b-crats all the personal details of your life. I mean, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to hide.
What an opportunity! What a country.
I need a recomposure bench.
� 2011, .

Labels: Government, Mileage Tax, Obama Administration, Opportunity, Privacy

When a new drug comes out on the market, I like to wait a while, watch for any side effects, see if it works. I'm cautious that way. My mom never took hormone-replacement therapy and hardly a day goes by that she doesn't remind me of her medico-prudence.
For me, it's especially wait-and-see with all of this social networking stuff. Hells-bells. Six years ago, "social networking" wasn't even in the dictionary. If it was, I never heard of it and that's saying something.

Now, many people I know have been on Facebook for years. And most of them are rational. But Facebook . . . for me? Meh. I just got the techno-courage last week and already I'm having clicker's remorse.
Today, though, I'm feeling vindicated, victoriously "told-you-so."
Because Google has come out with this new thing called "Buzz." And even though I, your intrepid trend-setter, did not brazenly jump on the bandwagon, Buzz is nonetheless all the buzz.
It's Google's answer to things like Twitter and Twinkle, neither of which I am on.
No doubt, you savvy tech-dwellers already knew Buzz was on the scene, but this sort of scene I'm always the last to attend. And now I can proclaim my hesitation is grounded in good reason.
So come. Groove with me now and get a load of what's happening at Google's Buzz.
In a nutshell, if you sign up for Google Buzz, any and all of your frequently emailed gmail addressees will become public . . . to anyone you follow, or who follows you, on Buzz.
Oh, and do you email with the bloggers in your google reader? Shazam! Those emails are out there as well.
Here's a nice extra: post to Buzz from your iphone and all of your "followers" will instantly know your precise physical location.
Here's a clip from "Business Insider":
When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow. A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail. That's fine. The problem is that -- by default -- the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile. In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see the people you email and chat with most. A Google spokesperson asked us to phrase this claim differently. Like this: "In other words, after you create your profile in Buzz, if you don't edit any of the default settings, someone could visit your profile and see the people you email and chat with most (provided you didn't edit this list during profile creation)." (Freaking out already? Here's how to IMMEDIATELY make these list private and then edit them >) When you first post to Google Buzz, there is a dialogue box that reads "Before participating in Buzz, you need a public profile with your name and photo." It also says -- albeit in tiny gray letters against a white background, "Your profile includes your name, photo, people you follow, and people who follow you." But it does not say that these publicly viewable follower lists are made up of people you most frequently email and chat with. Even if it did say that, we doubt most users bother to read the text in the dialogue box before clicking "save profile and continue."Good God almighty! So I've got to qualify for NASA in order to fix this "following" problem? No thanks. I never liked the idea of someone following me around anyway.
Imagine you're a psychiatrist (or worse, the psychiatrist's patient). You frequently email your patients via gmail. Oops. Now everyone you "follow" or who "follows you" sees your patients' email addresses in your google directory.
"So whose this Bob Bongdong on his email list?" your wife's friend will remark to her friend, the same friend who happens to teach Bob's 4th grade kid. "Maybe he's bipolar," they'll wonder together.
Use Google as a lawyer and frequently email clients via gmail? Voila. Now the world, which is anyone who can see your Google profile, knows X's email address and can quickly figure out whether X is a client of yours. Think the Grievance Committee's only question will be how stupid you were?
The possibilities for abuse are endless, exponentially endless.
"But wait, Lawyer Mom," I can hear the technocrats clamoring.
"Only certain hapless persons in your gmail email list need be involuntarily exposed to the world. All you have to do is change the cosine in the Google equation and replace pi with 3.12 in the fifth tab of the drop-down menu called "advanced operations." Then just create an automated filter. So easy a caveman could do it."
"Umm, great," I'd say, and, oh . . . what's the expression kids use nowadays? "Back at you!"
Because old fogies like me, we've just figured out how to turn on our blackberries.

Labels: Buzz, Google, Nightmares, Privacy

The federal government, through the TSA, believes safety is more important than . . . well, anything. Hence, the "groin checks" we are now forced to endure in order to fly. That, or get virtually naked and subject ourselves to an intimate visual inspection, and radiation.
My new-found hero, John Tyner, stood up to them. "You touch my junk and I'll have you arrested," he told the would-be genital groper. And he got most of it on tape.

The TSA groper, who sounds eerily like Dexter (or, for us older folk, Carlton the doorman), took it all in stride for the most part. (Click here for new CNN video and you can hear Dexter yourself).
Some of the other agents, though, were not amused. It's not a molestation, one female agent can be heard arguing. "It's an administrative search."
In the end, American Airlines refunded his ticket. And the TSA threatened him with a $10,000.00 fine and a civil lawsuit if he left the airport. He took the gamble and got the hell out of Dodge. Note to John: I'll contribute to your legal fees.
You can read his blog post about it here.
Ah, safety. It is of such paramount importance that we must give up our rights and essential liberty.
But why stop in the air! What about Greyhound buses? Shopping malls? Football games? Street festivals? Block parties?
Speaking of safety, child abuse is a major problem in our country today. Now we have the ability to keep children safer: by installing a government-monitored camera in every kitchen in the country. That would curb a lot of abuse.

Then there's the issue of domestic violence. It's epidemic. Why not install cameras in the bedroom, too? Think how much safer women will be.
We could keep college women safer by stopping bulimia with cameras in every college bathroom.
What's that, you say? That allowing the government to watch us while we're naked, having sex, or putting on our clothes is just . . . wrong?
Oh, calm yourselves. We're already letting the government see us naked and feel our genitals and breasts. Might as well give them a few more jollies with a little sex.

After all, if we're willing to undergo searches of our bodies in the name of "safety" so quickly -- and the sheep-like masses clearly are -- what aren't we willing to do?
James Madison said, "The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."
He also said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
A more modern-day statement, no less profound, comes from an unnamed teenager in Juarez, Mexico. Although he was speaking of drug lords rather than tyrannical government, he makes my point just the same.
"We prefer to die in one year standing up than living all our lives on our knees."

Labels: Breasts, Fines, Fondling, Genitals, Groping, John Tyner, Liberty, Naked People Machines, Privacy, Radiation, San Diego Man Ejected From Airport, Tsa, Whole Body Scanners